Getting Started

Step 0, Understanding the sheet

Looking at the character sheet, you might be a bit overwhelmed, but this guide will go over every part of it, and help you create a character for Duality. It may seem like a lot of steps, but that is simply because of how this guide is broken down, to explain everything on the character sheet so there are no questions.

First, there are some boxes on the sheet the already have values. You do not need to edit those, unless explicitly told to by the rules. Those are calculated for you from other values. Second, the sheet is organized into six operate sub-sheets. Not all of them will see a ton of use, you may never even use a few of them, but for convenience, they're present anyway.

Bio: This page is basically just who your character is, facts about them, and what makes them special.

Stats and Skills: Duality runs off a set of eight stats, each with seven skills. This might seem like a lot, but this is to allow specialization within characters so that every one can be unique.

Inventory: You going to collect stuff through your adventure. Probably a rather alarming amount of stuff. But, that's fine, because there's a sub-sheet just for all your stuff. Duality doesn't keep track of weights or bulk, like many other places, it relies on the rule of "Just be reasonable". Apply a little logic. Or just ask your GM if what you're about to do is okay.

Blank Exosuit: This page is meant to be copied for every exosuit you have, not edited directly. Exosuits serve as the multi-purpose ironman suits of the future; a platform for anything you could possibly want to attach to your body. They pack up neatly into a backpack-esque package when not deployed, but in the blink of an eye, can unfold and unpack to cover your body, some even providing airtight seals while they're at it, or deploying mounted weapons.

Blank Multitool: Much like with the sub-sheet for exosuits, this sub-sheet is meant to be copied as needed for all your multitools, if any. What is a multitool? What, it's pretty much what it says on the tin. Relying heavily on alchem-arc exchange chips, a fancy name for computer chips that can convert energy into matter, they serve as weapons, scanners, medical tools, shield projectors, almost anything, depending on how they're modified.

Blank Ship: the final sub-sheet could probably be a whole sheet of its own, and this character creation guide won't go into detail on how ships work, but just know this sub-sheet is for storing all the information about any ships your player, or party, owns. Frequently a whole party will own one ship, and only the best note-taker will keep track of it for the party.

Step 1, Basic Details

Looking at the character sheet, you'll want to navigate to the 'Bio' sub-sheet. We'll not be covering everything in the order it shows up, so if you feel like something was skipped, trust us and keep reading.

Name: Every character has a name of some kind, as well as often nicknames, titles, and other ways to refer to them. Some players prefer to choose this after character creation is mostly finished, so the name can better fit the character, that's your choice.

Level: Most campaigns will start at level 1, but you should make sure to ask your GM before you start. Levels are very loose and minor details in Duality when compared to other systems, they mark the passage of time and experience earned, but don't give you a whole lot in the way of direct benefits. However, after character creation, you can only spend Skill Points and Creation Points (you'll learn about those later) when you level up, not when you get them. There is no level cap, and players from two different campaigns could have very different levels and be similar in strength. You might expect a level every 5-10 hours of play time, though.

Gender: You probably know this one, kinda like you probably didn't need help with name. Feel free to have your character identify any way that you like, male, female, agender, trans, genderfluid, but consider this, and perhaps ask your GM: Duality is intended to be run with strong ability to modify the genetic structure of beings, so your character can have any sex body they'd like, even if they weren't born with it, and it will be as perfect and functional a body as if would have been if it was the original.

Age: It's not likely to matter a whole lot in your journey, but you character has been alive for some amount of time, and it might be good to decide that. Quickly breaking down Galactic Standard Time for you, Seconds, Minutes, and Hours remain unchanged from what you know. One GST day is 25 hours. One GST week is 5 days. One month is 5 weeks. One year is 16 months, or in total, 400 days. So if you have in mind an age and really care that it's in authentic units, divide the age you chose by 1.1. But in the end, it's going to be pretty close either way.

Background: Before the start of your campaign, your character had a life of some kind, even if they were homeless and jobless. This is a place to put the handful of words that best some up what sort of character you're starting the campaign out with; think of it as the TL;DR of your character.

Likes: Continuing on the theme of TL;DR, there are your character's likes. This is a place for a few things your character really enjoys, that might make them a little more interesting. Don't stress about it too much, smaller boxes generally mean less is expected of them.

Dislikes: You can probably guess what goes here, let's be honest.

Step 2, Stats

Next, you'll want to navigate to the 'Stats and Skills' sub-sheet. Woah, there's a lot here. don't worry, you won't be filling in every box even in your whole time playing, and everything that already has a number will be calculated for you. You're going to want to get very familiar with the design of this sheet for when you have to roll, but that's for another Page.

Dexterity (DEX): Dexterity is your character’s speed, flexibility, and physical quickness. This governs your reflexes, and things you do that require ‘It’s gotta be good enough, ASAP’.

Strength (STR): Sometimes there’s a problem that being quick or clever can’t fix. When that something is heavy, try strength. Strength is your character’s ability to lift, pull, swing, push, and all sorts of imprecise physical things that require force. Who needs to pick a lock when you can smash the vault in!

Mechanical (MECH): When you need to act fast based on a changing situation, you need mechanical skills. It allows you to get a feel for things, trust your instinct, and figure it out, when it comes to the physical world and things you can touch. Sometimes, there isn’t time to plan, you just have to do, and that’s mechanical.

Endurance (END): If your character likes to run, they’ve probably got a lot of endurance. If your character likes to be able to run away from the bad guys for more than ten seconds, they’ll wish they had the endurance! This stat simply measures how long your character can keep up certain physical tasks before they’re out of fuel.

Charisma (CHA): When you’ve got to be charming, when fast talking is the only way through, charisma comes in. Charisma is your character’s ability to use words, body language, and to a small degree, actions, to change hearts and minds. It's also a loose measure of how attractive your character is. Don’t expect the impossible, though. And, when in doubt, roll seduction.

Perception (PER): In many situations, the winner is the one who waits, looks, and listens, before striking. This falls under the stat of perception. This is your character’s senses, attention to detail, and attentiveness. Remember to search for traps! And loot. Mostly loot if we're being honest.

Technical (TECH): Technical is your character’s ability to take the world apart, and put it back together in one piece. Technical lets them tinker, and understand how things can get done, even when it’s not in the universe's rule-book. Improvisation is often key, here. When you have a technical character by your side, manuals are not needed.

Intellect (INT): Intellectual people seem to always have their face pressed against a terminal, learning about something. While that’s not necessarily your character, they do know a lot about the galaxy that you simply can’t learn by experience, and facts come easily to them.

Characters in Duality, at character creation, have 28 stat points. They also always have eight stats. You could put three points in half of your stats, four in the rest, and move on, but that would make for an extremely flat and frankly lame character. So, instead, think of the values in this way:1: Barely functional; avoid this type of roll at all costs.2: Below average, but usable.3: Average for someone with no modifications, training, or experience with this stat.4: Average for someone who spends their life doing this kind of work.5: Above average; a mark of natural talent, but certainly not unheard of.6: Well above average; the sort of value that makes a name for itself.7: Gifted; the sort of thing where people talk for generations.8: Extremely gifted; your name will be synonymous with this gift by the time you die.9: Borderline Godlike; beyond nature, you took your gift and added science to create something legendary.10: Godlike; you are, to those around you, functionally perfect, you can do no wrong.

Now, you can put anywhere from one point in a stat, in the box at the intersection between the 'Base' column, and the 'Stat' row, to eight. But, consider that when your character is complete, you cannot have less that one in the 'Score' for that stat, nor more than ten, even after everything else you change for your character. If you min-max too much, you may have to come back and move some points around.

Step 3, Creation Points

A quick jump back to the bio sub-sheet for the start of this section. Looking around, you'll notice four boxes that will be important: the small one labelled 'Creation Points' and three larger ones, side by side, labelled 'Gene Mods', 'Implants', and 'Reality Gifts'.



Let's start with the little box. At character creation, you have four of each of those points, you can go ahead and write them in now, but you'll be spending them in just a second, so if not that's fine. The titles of the three larger boxes are each a kind of modification your character can gain to their abilities that you buy with these points. It's a fairly straightforward system, but to keep this short, you may want to navigate to the actual Page on Creation Points to get a full description. There you'll also find the lists of those modifications, and the other things you can do with the.

Now, assuming you've taken enough of a look at that page to have a basic understanding, you'll want to do your best to at least spend the four starting points you've got in each category, writing down each ability you take in whichever of the three larger boxes in appropriate. You don't need to worry about cramming the whole description into that tiny box, just let it overflow and if you need the full description at some point, simply click the box to reveal the rest! You'll get more points as you play, but for now, if you see something you can't quite afford, it's better to take a little feedback and buy it so your character doesn't start out very flat and boring for you to play. On the 'Stats and Skills' sub-sheet there are boxes labelled 'Temp Bonus Reminders'. Since most of your time playing will be on this sub-sheet, those boxes are for things that don't always apply, but you want nearby so you don't have to go back to check your abilities as often while you're learning them.

"But wait! Most of these tell me I need to modify my skills or stats in some way!" That's correct. There are two major numerical changes to play they will cause. The first is changing MFD's, which hopefully makes more sense now that you've taken a look at the Page for that. You have, right? Good. The second is when an ability says something like '+1 CHA' or '-5 Agility'. Well, back to the 'Stats and Skills' sub-sheet for those. Every stat has a column that says 'C.P. Bonus', see? Those are the boxes where you'll total up any changes to your stats and skills. This value can total to be negative, However, if you look just a bit right to the 'Score' column, you'll see your final total after all your changes. When you are done character creation, the score of a stat or skill cannot be less than 1, and the score of a primary stat cannot be greater than 10. If a change you would make through creation points would result in your character having an invalid score in something, you either need to change some of your Step 2 stat points, or change which Creation Point abilities you're taking.

Step 4, Skills

Let's move on to the final section that involves a lot of numbers. Now is probably a good time to point out that you don't really need to do these three steps in the order presented, since they all affect each-other and you'll be jumping back and forth to change things, this is just a suggestion of the order that will be the easiest.

On the 'Stats and Skills' sub-sheet you'll see a few boxes of interest. The 'Skill Points Per Session' box in the middle tells you how many points you'll get after every session of play, but doesn't matter now. The box above it, like the 'Creation Points' box on the 'Bio' sub-sheet, is for storing your points. At character creation, assuming you haven't gotten any bonuses from any Creation Point abilities, you get 30 Skill Points for each stat. What can you do with these? Great question!

In the 'Training' section of every stat you can spend your Skill Points to improve your skills. Not your primary stats, I'm afraid, there's other methods for that you should have seen when reading about Creation Points. For every point in training you want to add, you must spend a number of skill points equal to the ten's place of your current training, plus one. Thus, your first ten points of train will cost one point each, your next ten, two skill points each, then three, and so on. Forever, if you like. You can only spend skill points for a stat on skills of that stat, though, and you will get more every session.

It's worth wondering why skill points go in 'Training' when everything else goes in 'C.P. Bonus'. The answer for that is pretty straightforward. You have natural talent granted by your stats and any abilities you have, and then you have the slow grind of collecting knowledge and experience that you use to spend time increasing how much you know, reading, practicing, and learning. However, over time it gets harder and harder to learn new things this way, and it takes more and more focus and energy, sometimes at the cost of everything else you do.

Step 5, Finishing up Bio

There's just a few tiny parts of character creation left, then it will be on to shopping for equipment! Navigate to the 'Bio' sub-sheet. Here, you'll see that there are four boxes left un-addressed. We'll cover them as a pair