On Characters.
So with the new year here I decided to give some more details on one aspect of Multiversal. If I can I will do this with the first post of each month until release. I'm starting with the most basic element of ANY RPG: The Player Character. Player Characters have three basic elements: Stats. Talents. Skills. Stats represent physical or mental states. In other word, how strong is the Character, how smart is the character, etc. While most games use 6 stats, Multiversal uses 8. This is because it was decided early on that Strength would not be the same thing as Constitution or Stamina, and Dexterity would be different from Agility. Another aspect is that almost all of the Stats are used in some way to make the character stronger in basic ways like amount of health, perception, defense, etc. The second facet of the Player Character, Talents, is what makes up the character's "class." In most games Class is used either to restrict the character to a specific set of abilities or skills, OR to make a small lamount of them cost less to learn. Multiversal takes the second route, but with a twist. Instead of choosing a class and that determining what skills cost less, the player instead chooses some Talents. Each Talent then decreases the cost of several Skills, and there are more than 25 Talents to choose from. Some of them are strongly combat oriented, while some of them are more social. Some of them are about supporting the group, and some are about avoiding combat altogether. Each Talent is different. What the Talent System does is allow the player to decide the shape of his or her character instead of being stuck with what is available.
Skills are the final aspect of the Player Character. As in most games, Skills represent the learned abilities of the character. Most of the skills are active, meaning that they are a deliberate attempt to do something. However, around 25% of the skills are passive. That means that the character has simply become so used to something that it has become second nature. These usually involve decreasing penalties or adding bonuses, and so affect the rolls of active skills. Both active and passive skills can be improved through purchasing higher levels in the skill. Multiversal has over 200 Skills. So now you know a little bit about how Characters are shaped in Multiversal. As always, come back to learn more about the game as it gets closer to release.