The Beginning of the Middle: Waiting for Approval and Starting Play

Once you have your first character in the Character Bank for approval, you may be wondering what to do next. It can take a few days to get your two approvals, especially if there are things on your sheet that need to be ironed out. Fear not! You can use this time to work on fleshing out your character's backstory and reputation, and earn a few extra pp for them in the process. It's also a good time to set up your character's specific thread in Freedom City News, since that's where most of this gets posted.

First up is the HellQ, our (mostly) affectionately-named super long questionnaire. Working through this very long list of questions will make you think about many aspects of your character's backstory, and will give you a resource in the future when you're trying to remember things like "Did my character have siblings? Did I give them names?" The HellQ is posted in the Freedom City News forum and is worth 2pp (because it is sooo long).

Next is the Twenty Questions interview. This is a similar idea to the HellQ, but it is also a way to start developing your character's voice. Twenty Questions is an interview-style question and answer session, where someone else asks your character the questions and they answer in their own voice. You should come up with a scenario and treat it as a story. For instance, your character might be doing an interview show for local television or meeting a fan with lots of questions. You can also ask another player to use one of their characters and make it an interactive interview. The Twenty Questions is posted in Freedom City News and is worth 1pp.

You can also make a Reputation page for your character in the Freedom City guidebook. Reputation pages are a quick and easy way for other characters to figure out what they might know about your character based on their own skills and knowledges. Set different degrees of difficulty based on how unlikely it would be for someone to know particular information about your character. And remember that some people in Freedom City have extremely good research and knowledge skills, so don't put anything in your reputation table that you absolutely don't want anybody to know just from meeting your character! The reputation table is posted in the Guidebook and is worth 1pp.

The Origin Story vignette is also available while you're waiting. Write an origin story for your character at least one page in length, including all the detail that just doesn't fit in the history section of a character sheet. The origin vignette is posted in Freedom City News and is worth 1pp for vignettes of at least 500 words and 2pp for 1000+ words.

Once your character is approved, you get to start playing! The easiest way to begin playing is to go to the Discord Chat and introduce yourself, and say you're looking for people to play with. You can also post an introduction on the Campaign Discussion forum to let people know you would like to do intro threads. It is usually not too hard to find people to play with, but you have to be proactive! If you have an idea for a thread but you aren't sure you can run it yourself, ask a member of the Ref Team for help. Campaign Discussion is also a good place to look for recruitment threads for other people's adventures.

Remember that you are the author of your own character's story here. If you want things to happen to them, you should make them happen! Find a super team to join or start one yourself, go on a wild adventure with people you just met, get into a romance or a rivalry with another character! The world is your burrito, my friend, enjoy it.