Character Creation

1 - NAME YOUR CHARACTER

Give your character a name. It can be a full name, a nickname, or just what everyone calls you.

---

2 - CHOOSE YOUR ABILITIES

Pick one Seasoned ability and one Rusty ability. The remaining two are Average.

A Seasoned ability adds a Verve die (d4) to relevant rolls - something goes in your favour.

A Rusty ability adds a Wilt die (d4) to relevant rolls - your body or mind lets you down at the worst moment.

---

3 - CHOOSE YOUR IDENTITY

Your identity is who you are - your reputation, your history, and the reason people either trust you immediately or keep an eye on you at all times. It is purely flavour and roleplay guidance, but it tells you and everyone else at the table exactly what kind of person you are and what you are naturally good at. Choose one or write your own.

🎖️The War Veteran

Every situation is a mission. Every corridor is a potential ambush. Every nurse is either an ally or a double agent. You have seen things. You will not elaborate. Whatever actually happened in 1987, you have told seventeen different versions of it and believe all of them.

Years of training mean you naturally read rooms, spot exits, notice who does not belong, and have a contingency plan before anyone else has noticed there is a problem.

💊The Hypochondriac

You have had every disease known to medicine and several that are not. Your medical records are three volumes long. You carry symptoms the way other people carry keys. Somehow, despite everything, you are statistically the healthiest person in the building.

Your obsessive research means you know exactly what every pill does, how every injury presents, and how to fake either convincingly enough to fool a professional.

👂The Gossip

You know everything about everyone. Who is seeing whom, who owes whom money, what the night staff get up to after lights out. You have no idea how you know any of it. The information is simply there, waiting to be deployed at maximum impact.

There is no one in the building whose secrets, habits, weaknesses, or embarrassing history you are not already aware of.

🍪The Sweet Grandma

You smell of biscuits and kindness. People underestimate you constantly, which is exactly how you like it. Behind the gentle smile is a will of iron, a memory like a trap, and a complete willingness to do whatever is necessary. You have buried people more frightening than whoever is in your way.

Nobody suspects you. Nobody blames you first. Nobody believes you are capable of whatever just happened. This is your greatest weapon.

🌧️The Grouch

Everything is worse than it was. The food, the weather, the youth, the television, the other residents, the concept of Tuesdays. You complain about everything with such consistency and commitment that people have started to suspect you might actually be right. You usually are.

Your permanent pessimism means you have already imagined every way something could go wrong, making you surprisingly excellent at spotting problems, traps, and bad ideas before they happen.

💌The Flirt

Age is a number and that number is irrelevant. You have been the most charming person in every room you have entered since 1963 and see no reason to stop now. Staff, visitors, other residents, the man delivering the laundry - everyone is a potential admirer. Several of them are correct.

People simply like you. They open doors, share information, bend rules, and do small favours without quite knowing why. You have never had to ask twice.

🙏The Devout

God is watching, guiding, and almost certainly taking your side specifically. Every fortunate coincidence is divine providence. Every obstacle is a test. Every scheme you participate in has been quietly blessed in advance. You pray before meals, after meals, and whenever something interesting is about to happen, just to be safe.

Your unshakeable faith makes you completely immune to intimidation, guilt, or doubt. You also have an uncanny ability to make others feel that God is probably also on your side.

📦The Hoarder

Your room is a labyrinth of newspapers, tinfoil, string, and objects whose purpose you have forgotten but whose importance you have not. Nothing gets thrown away. Somewhere in there is everything anyone could ever need. Finding it may take a moment. Possibly several moments. Do not touch anything while you wait.

You always have what the group needs. It is on your person, in your room, or you know exactly where to find one. You have been collecting for this moment your entire life.

---

4 - CHOOSE YOUR AILMENT

Your ailment is a purely negative condition you suffer from. It has no silver lining. It will come up at the worst possible moment. Choose one or write your own.

Cataracts

Your vision is unreliable at best, decorative at worst.

Hard of Hearing

You catch perhaps every third word, and fill in the rest yourself.

Wheelchair Bound

You cannot walk, but the chair is faster than it looks.

Incontinent

Nature calls without warning, negotiation, or mercy.

Back Goes Out

Sudden movement is a gamble you frequently lose.

Trembling Hands

Anything requiring steadiness is an adventure.

Narcoleptic

Sleep comes for you without invitation or warning.

Breathless

Any exertion beyond mild results in a dramatic pause for air.

---

5 - CHOOSE YOUR STUFF

Choose one item to start with. You can carry a maximum of 3 items at any time. Additional items can be found, borrowed, stolen, or produced from an enormous handbag during play.

Walking Cane

It has been with you for fifteen years and has earned its keep many times over. Useful as a weapon, a pointer, a hook for retrieving things from high shelves, and a prop for a convincing limp when circumstances require one.

Pill Organiser

Monday through Sunday, colour coded, meticulously maintained. You know exactly what each compartment contains and precisely what it does to a person. Others may find this information useful, or find it useful that you do.

Hot Water Bottle

Warm, comforting, and deceptively heavy when swung with purpose. Staff never question it, visitors never suspect it, and it has never once let you down in a moment of need.

Photograph Album

Decades of evidence that you were once somewhere, knew someone, or did something important. Useful for proving a point, establishing credibility, or producing a photograph of someone at exactly the wrong moment.

Knitting

Needles, wool, and an ongoing project that has been almost finished since 2009. In your hands it signals harmlessness and patience. Nobody watches the person who is knitting. Nobody searches the bag it comes in.

Hard Candies

A paper bag, perpetually full, origin unknown. People will do surprising things for one. Staff soften, strangers open up, children become allies. You have never once actually eaten one yourself.

Medical Alert Bracelet

Engraved with a condition serious enough that anyone in a uniform must stop and attend to you immediately. Whether the condition is entirely accurate is between you and your conscience.

Stolen Master Key

You have had it for three years. Nobody has noticed it is missing. You have never discussed how you got it and you never will. It opens most doors in the building and one door you have not yet tried.

Hearing Aid

Technically a medical device. Also picks up frequencies it was never designed to receive, including the staff radio on a good day. Can be turned off at any moment, rendering you conveniently deaf to anything inconvenient.

Enormous Handbag

The interior has not been fully mapped. It contains everything you might need and several things you have forgotten about entirely. Nobody has ever searched it. Nobody has ever dared.