Characters in NewEdo are intended to be larger than life. Heroes, antiheroes, and even villains, who may one day become part of the mythos of the city. Legends.
NewEdo is a medium crunch game, with a lot of that crunch front-loaded into character creation. We've aimed to provide a lot of potential customization, but not at the expense of the storyteller's sanity. To facilitate this, NewEdo uses a Priority Buy creation process.
WTF is a Priority Buy?
A Priority Buy process is when players get to assign a degree of importance to various components of their characters. Two characters may have a similar general concept - say, a traditional samurai - but with the Priority Buy system, the players building those two samurai may make them very different characters.
Players decide on the importance - priority - of five different ability categories while building their characters. Backgrounds, Magic, Augmentations, Skills, and Core Traits, are the building blocks that you've gotta decide between.
Getting back to the samurai example, one player may decide that Skills and Core Traits are the most important components of their character, aiming for a tough and skilled fighter without much in the way of fancy extras. The other play may place a higher priority on their character's unique abilities, giving them some magical potential, or some sweet cybernetic implants, for example. Both characters will be effective samurai, each with strengths and weaknesses that may complement the other.
This process creates a nearly infinite number of potential character builds without requiring dozens of sourcebooks. You can make a tough street brawler with a touch of the arcane, a traditional shaman with cybernetics, a sweet-talking CEO who is a champion in the ring, an elusive spy from a rich family with great connections... the potential is limitless, but not a pain in the ass. Build the character you want, pieced together from an ample pool of components, without needing to keep track of dozens of modifiers.
What About the Basics?
Every character in NewEdo has a Lineage - their physical form - and a Path - their general role in the game. These elements may affect the style of your character and your game, but doesn't define how they accomplish their goals. Getting stuff done is a function of your Priority Buy, rather than your Lineage and Path.
The Lineages and Paths have been balanced, and are not part of the Priority Buy process. Choose yours for roleplaying reasons, or to try to optimize a build. But remember that your priority choices will have a far greater impact on what your character can do than how they look or what their business card says...
Next: Lineages
