Characteristics, Kindreds, Allegiance & Occupations
An adventurer is defined by seven core characteristics, each generated by rolling 2D6+6, which gives a working range of roughly 8 to 18. Bigger is always better, and while injury or magic can push most of them up or down over time, two — Intelligence and Power — have no natural ceiling and can keep climbing indefinitely through play.
Strength governs raw muscle: what an adventurer can lift, drag, or hang onto, and whether they can wield the heaviest weapons at full effect. It also feeds into the damage bonus described below. Humans cap out at 21 naturally, and a character reduced all the way to zero Strength can't even get out of bed.
Constitution reflects overall health and stamina — resistance to drowning, suffocation, poison, and disease, and a major factor in how many hit points a character has. It also caps at 21 for humans; hitting zero Constitution is fatal.
Size stands in for height and build together, and matters for things like seeing over obstacles or squeezing through tight spaces, as well as contributing to hit points and the damage bonus. It caps at 21. Losing half or more of it to starvation is deadly, and if it's ever reduced to nothing entirely, the character simply vanishes to parts unknown.
Intelligence covers learning, memory, and analysis, and directly sets how many spells an adventurer can know and keep active — arguably making it the single most important stat for a spellcaster. It has no upper limit. A character with no Intelligence at all is little more than a babbling idiot.
Power measures willpower, confidence, and raw magical aptitude — it sets an adventurer's maximum magic points, and a score of at least 16 is required to cast spells at all. Like Intelligence, it has no ceiling. A character with zero Power has no will of their own and acts like a zombie.
Dexterity governs speed and agility — how much a character can get done in a round, and whether they can catch themselves in a fall, balance in high wind, or lift something without being noticed. It caps at 21; without any Dexterity at all, a character can't manage a physical task unless luck bails them out.
Appearance measures how agreeable, graceful, or striking someone seems — first impressions, and how readily others want to be around them. High Appearance doesn't have to mean conventional beauty; a memorable or magnetic presence counts just as well. It caps at 21, and an adventurer with none at all provokes disgust wherever they go.
Several useful numbers are built from the seven core characteristics. Four "characteristic rolls" use a D100 against a x5 multiplier of the relevant stat: the Idea roll (INT×5) for canny guesses or awareness, the Luck roll (POW×5) for being in the right place at the right time, the Dexterity roll (DEX×5) for physical feats with no matching skill, and the Charisma roll (APP×5) for first impressions and social pull. Lower multipliers suit harder tasks; a roll of 00 always fails regardless of how high the stat is.
Hit points come from averaging Constitution and Size — (CON+SIZ)/2, rounded up. Losing hit points is tracked directly on the sheet; lost points return naturally at roughly 1D3 per game week, faster with the Physik skill, the Heal spell, or similar aid. Drop to two or fewer and a character is knocked out; hit zero or below and death follows at the end of the next round unless they're brought back above zero somehow.
Magic points max out at the adventurer's Power score and are mostly spent casting or resisting spells, or summoning demons. Exhausting them entirely knocks a character out for an hour; after that, the first point regenerates, then a quarter of the remainder returns every six hours until the full total is back after 24 hours.
Damage bonus reflects that bigger, stronger combatants hit harder. Add Strength and Size together and look the total up on the table below to find the modifier added to hand-to-hand damage (and half that modifier for thrown weapons or bows). Chaos-born creatures roll their damage bonus in D8s instead of the usual D4s and D6s; magic never gets a damage bonus at all.
| STR + SIZ | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 2–12 | −1D6 |
| 13–16 | −1D4 |
| 17–24 | zero |
| 25–32 | +1D4 |
| 33–40 | +1D6 |
| 41–56 | +2D6 |
| 57–72 | +3D6 |
| 73–88 | +4D6 |
| 89–104 | +5D6 |
| 105–120 | +6D6 |
| 121–136 | +7D6 |
| 137–152 | +8D6 |
| 153–168 | +9D6 |
| 169–184 | +10D6 |
With a gamemaster's blessing, players can take on a handful of non-human origins: a Melnibonéan, a half-Melnibonéan, a Melnibonéan-born human slave, or one of the winged Myyrrhn. Because these carry real complications, the rules suggest reserving them for later in a campaign, or letting a long-shot dice roll (a natural 01) decide whether a new player gets to try one.
Melnibonéans are elegant, catlike, and largely detached from ordinary sentiment, having ruled their island empire and commanded legions of slaves for ten thousand years. Their long intimacy with Chaos has left its mark on them, and the Young Kingdoms fear and despise them roughly as much as the demons they call up. A pure-blooded Melnibonéan adventurer is a rarity — before Imrryr's fall they almost never leave their island, and one who does will find a world that treats them with dread and suspicion.
Mechanically, Melnibonéans get a bundle of skill points weighted toward Arts, Evaluate, Million Spheres, Natural World, Navigate, Oratory, Physik, Potions, Ride, Scribe, and weapon training, and speak Melnibonéan natively. A sufficiently powerful one starts with spells tied to half their Intelligence score, gains innate Witch Sight, and may begin with up to three bound minor demons. They typically arrive with fine armor, weapons, horses, and real wealth back home — though most of that fortune can't easily leave the island. Playing one also means grappling with why they've left paradise at all, and gamemasters are encouraged to saddle them with complications: a drug dependency, or a psychological flaw such as sadism, creeping fatalism, or crushing self-pity.
Half-Melnibonéans carry the stigma common to mixed heritage in a culture that prizes bloodline purity — viewed by "true blood" Melnibonéans as somewhat lesser and possibly disloyal, even while still considering themselves well above anyone from the Young Kingdoms. Their diminished standing at court makes them the more plausible source of an adventurer from the Dreaming City. They follow similar mechanical treatment to full Melnibonéans, with slightly lower innate Witch Sight and no real inheritance to draw on, and can usually pass as human among outsiders.
This isn't a separate race so much as a specialized version of the ordinary slave background. Melnibonéan slaves are often surgically altered for their duties, which shows up as a boost to Dexterity and Appearance at some cost to Constitution, and — rarely — one might carry a demonic trait "gifted" by a former master's Chaos Warp spell. They begin with fine but incidental jewelry, ornamental piercings, and a well-made ceremonial dagger rather than the usual occupation-based starting cash.
The Myyrrhn are an old, proud, winged people who keep to their own high aeries and rarely mix in Young Kingdoms affairs; not every member of the race actually has wings, and a Luck roll decides whether a given adventurer does. Winged Myyrrhn fly as a free skill but suffer real penalties trying to fight or fly in heavy armor and can't easily wear metal at all; wingless Myyrrhn instead run a little faster than average and can ride horses normally. The race leans toward sorcery, gets a solid handful of skill points aimed at wilderness and craft skills, and a sufficiently powerful individual may begin with a few spells and, on a good Luck roll, the true name of a minor air-spirit.
Every adventurer starts out owing some notional debt to one of the setting's three great forces, tracked as three separate scores on the character sheet. Scores rise and fall based on behavior — helping the cause increases the relevant score, while an allegiance check (a D100 roll against the current score, called after acting against one's own side) can lower it. An adventurer only holds a true allegiance with a force once its score both sits highest and beats the next-highest by 20 points or more, and the player embraces the connection; nobody is locked into a single path; allegiance can shift many times over a campaign.
Chaos points come easily, since casting magic, practicing deceit, or simply existing in a corrupt corner of the world all feed it. Points for the Balance are rarer and reward acts of simple decency — kindness, honesty, mercy, rescue — since the Balance keeps no organized church or agents of its own. Law points are the hardest to earn in the source material, mostly through service to the setting's few organized Lawful institutions and champions.
Allies of Chaos can, once their own magic points run dry, briefly borrow extra magic points scaled to their Chaos score (up to three times a session), at the cost of an allegiance check each time they do. Allies of Law can momentarily borrow extra skill points scaled to their Law score to boost a single roll, similarly limited and similarly checked. Allies of the Balance can convert a portion of their Balance score into temporary bonus hit points once per session. Each force, at high scores, may also occasionally answer a personal appeal for aid.
An adventurer who reaches an allegiance score of 100 or more, and who has consistently lived up to that force's ideals, may be offered apotheosis — permanent elevation into a Champion of that force. It's optional, dramatic, and comes with lasting perks and complications specific to each side: a Champion of Chaos becomes effectively immune to ordinary death (though repeated near-deaths eventually degrade them into something less human, or promote them to serve their patron directly); a Champion of the Balance eventually earns the right to seek out the peaceful city of Tanelorn; and a Champion of Law can, after real effort, claim and populate a stretch of newly-formed land at the world's edge.
For a quick, setting-appropriate homeland, players may roll percentile dice against a table of nations — places like Dharijor, Filkhar, Ilmiora, Jharkor, Lormyr, Pan Tang, Tarkesh, and Vilmir turn up most often, with Melniboné and Myyrrhn reserved for gamemaster approval.
Much of an adventurer's personal history is simply chosen rather than rolled. A name can be as plain as a single word — many characters in the saga go by one name alone — or built to hint at something about the character: an old deed, an occupation, a missing hand, a burning ambition, a habit of manner.
New players are pointed toward a short list of starting homelands to keep early choices simple, though the national-origins table offers a quicker, randomized alternative later on. Sex is a free choice with no mechanical difference either way. Starting age runs 17 plus 1D6 years, with older characters possible at a cost — after the first several years are rolled, each additional year costs points from Strength, then Constitution, Power, Intelligence, and Dexterity in turn, offset by a proportionally larger bonus to skills gained from experience.
Players are also encouraged to jot down general look and bearing — confident, sly, nervous, sprightly, and so on — and to determine first impressions using the Distinctive Features table below, keyed off the adventurer's Appearance score.
There are no rigid character classes; instead, players pick or roll an occupation that grants a themed set of skills, optional spells, and starting funds. The typical-occupations table below can be read two ways: the "relative" column mirrors how often each trade actually shows up in the violent, unequal Young Kingdoms, while the "straight-line" column gives every occupation an even chance and a better shot at something other than peasant farming.
| Relative | Straight-line | Occupation |
|---|---|---|
| 01–02 | 01–05 | Beggar |
| 03–06 | 06–10 | Craftsperson, Shopkeeper |
| 07–10 | 11–15 | Hunter |
| 11 | 16–20 | Lost, Forgotten |
| 12 | 21–25 | Mercenary, Bodyguard |
| 13 | 26–30 | Merchant |
| 14 | 31–35 | Minor Noble |
| 15 | 36–40 | Nomad |
| 16 | 41–45 | Paid Assassin, Thug |
| 17–76 | 46–50 | Peasant, Farmer |
| 77 | 51–55 | Physician, Apothecary |
| 78–80 | 56–60 | Sailor |
| 81 | 61–65 | Scribe, Engineer |
| 82 | 66–70 | Shaman, Priest, Cultist |
| 83–88 | 71–75 | Slave (freed or escaped) |
| 89–91 | 76–80 | Small Trader |
| 92–97 | 81–85 | Soldier, Guard, Watchman |
| 98 | 86–90 | Tax or Rent Collector |
| 99 | 91–95 | Thief |
| 00 | 96–00 | Troubadour, Entertainer |
Each occupation grants 250 skill points to spread across a themed set of eight skills, usually with at least one open personal-specialty slot, plus a short menu of up to three optional Chaotic spells (never mandatory) and a lump of starting money reflecting that trade's typical earning power. A brief flavor of each below:
Survives on hard-won street smarts, small deceptions, and reading people fast — likely to have unsavory contacts in Nadsokor, the beggar city.
A settled tradesperson — potter, weaver, innkeeper, or similar — until some upheaval pushed them onto the road.
At home in the wild, quiet and observant, comfortable with a bow and equally curious about the wider world.
An amnesiac drifter chasing half-remembered dreams and visions, with no clear idea of their own past.
A skilled fighter between contracts, tolerant of rough company but particular about who they respect.
Once comfortable and well-connected, now ruined by some recent disaster and starting again from very little.
Carries a title with little real income behind it — through disinheritance, political disfavor, or simple bad luck.
A proud, quick-tempered wanderer of the Sighing Desert, unimpressed by city notions of honor bought with coin.
Dangerous and effective, more loyal to the job than the employer, changed by some past act they'd rather not discuss.
Escaped a life bound to the land by law and hardship, and now, for the first time, answers to no one but themselves.
Trained to heal, sometimes with mixed results, and driven onto the road after a treatment went badly wrong.
Has already seen half the western ports and wants the rest — comfortable with storms, pirates, and the sea's other dangers.
An idealist who helped run governments or building projects and grew cynical watching the corruption around them.
A visionary whose beliefs clashed with their own community, or who heard a calling to wander and warn the world.
Formerly powerless and forced into menial or degrading work, now free and unsure whether that freedom was earned or simply taken.
Ran a modest travelling circuit of goods until bandits, pirates, or ruthless rivals wiped out the business.
Drilled for years under someone else's command with little to show for it, now ready to fight for their own stake instead.
Squeezed money out of people for a living, and either grew disgusted with the work or was finally caught skimming from it.
A career criminal — burglar, pickpocket, or con artist — who may or may not have really left that life behind.
A charming performer of songs, tales, or stagecraft, low on money and ready for a livelier way to earn a reputation.
Players who'd rather not use a listed occupation can build their own: after generating the character normally, pick any thirteen skills (excluding the two skills that can only be learned through play) and add a healthy chunk of points to each, choose or invent a matching background and up to three spells, and roll for extra starting money.
To sketch a quick, memorable first impression, roll or choose a number of distinctive features based on Appearance — low-Appearance adventurers get more features (leaning ugly), high-Appearance ones get more too (leaning striking), while a middling score gets just one or two. Roll 1D10 to land on a category, then pick a specific detail within it: hair, facial hair, a facial feature, expression, clothes, bearing, speech, arms and hands, torso, or legs and feet, each with a long menu of options from scars and tattoos to posture and accent.
| Appearance | Number of Features |
|---|---|
| 8–9 | 3 |
| 10–11 | 2 |
| 12–14 | 1 |
| 15–16 | 2 |
| 17+ | 3 |
Since nobody can max out every stat and skill, the rules offer some practical guidance for building an adventurer who can actually survive the Young Kingdoms:
Everyday costs in the Young Kingdoms are given in bronzes, a common coin worth roughly a mug of ale or a loaf of bread — valuable enough to matter, not so valuable that losing one is a tragedy. A bronze nominally equals twenty lesser groats, disreputable small coins many merchants refuse outright. Gold and silver exist too, but hoarding and mismanagement have made them scarce and largely disconnected from their old face value, so they tend to get melted down into jewelry rather than spent.
Prices listed anywhere are averages, not guarantees — what something costs to buy doesn't mean it can be sold for the same, and used gear in good condition is generally worth about half of new.
| Mug of ale | 1 bronze |
| Good meal | 6 bronzes |
| Whole roast chicken | 5 bronzes |
| Floor of an inn, per night | 3 bronzes |
| Private room, per night | 45 bronzes |
| Haircut or shave | 2 bronzes |
| Ordinary medical attention | 5 bronzes |
| Send a messenger across town | 1 bronze |
| Leather backpack | 40 bronzes |
| Saddle and tack | 300 bronzes |
| Blank grimoire | 50 bronzes |
| Old grimoire (10 entries) | 15,000 bronzes |
| Saddlehorse | 2,000 bronzes |
| Wood-and-thatch hovel | 100 bronzes |
| 3-room stone & tile house | 2,800 bronzes |
| Adult slave | 8,000 bronzes |
These are a representative slice only — the full price lists in the book run to several pages, covering clothing, weapons, ships, livestock, jewelry, and gemstone values by size and quality.
Coinage is treated as broadly interchangeable between Young Kingdoms for ease of play, even though local currencies vary in name and design — though trying to spend one kingdom's coin somewhere that particularly resents it can carry its own risks. Melnibonéan gold wheels, by contrast, aren't currency at all: each is a unique commemorative disc made for a single dragon emperor, worth vastly more than its considerable weight in gold as a work of art alone.