Step Six: Finishing Touches
Here’s where you turn everything into an actual character,
establishing background, skills or past history, any non-special
gear, appearance, personality, and goals. Like concept, these
elements don’t cost any points, and make up the “character” of
your character.
• To read more about these fiishing touches, read
“Background” on pages 15.

Gamemaster-Controlled Aspects of Your Character
Alas, you are not in charge of every aspect of your character.
The gamemaster has some control over certain details of
background and history, and will create those in secrecy or with
your consultation. This level of creative surrender is done for
reasons important to the campaign or adventure, and to allow the
gamemaster to provide dramatic “hooks,” potential elements that
plot elements and conflct can be connected to.
What the player and the character knows do not always have to
be in synch, either. You as a player can know things that character
doesn’t, or you may know that your character is wrong about
something. This is fantastic fuel for role-playing, as long as it is
not abused.
• Parents: You can pick your character’s view of their
parents, whether they were loved or despised, but you
can’t pick who they were. You don’t get to decide whether
they are alive or dead, or how they feel about your
character. Your character’s parents may be among the
movers-and-shakers of the Gossamer world, or humble
nobodies. Hopefully, something more interesting than the
latter…
• Allies: You can choose the nature of your character’s
allies, such as “Partisan Support” or “Mentor” but the
gamemaster is the one who names and defies the
identity of that nonplayer character. And guess what?
The gamemaster doesn’t necessarily have to tell you who
that is, and may have a nonplayer character out there who
behaves in exactly the same manner, but is not in fact the
actual one you have points designating. Gamemasters are
sneaky like that.
• History and Background: This is one of those things
that most gamemasters will let players run with, and for
the most part it is a good idea to give players control over
this. But in some cases, the gamemaster may need to veto
aspects of a character’s background, or introduce other
elements. In each case, these should be for the good of the
overall campaign.
• Effects of Stuff: You can certainly decide, though
character creation, how much Good or Bad Stuff your
character has, or whether your character walks the line of
Zero Stuff. However, that’s all you can do when it comes
to Stuff. Your gamemaster decides how it manifests in the
course of game play, and how nonplayer characters and
the environment reacts to your character. Your character
may come to rely on Stuff behaving in a certain fashion,
but as a player, it’s all out of your hands.
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• Secrets: You may decide there are secrets about your
character, and gamemasters are encouraged to work
with you to develop these and integrate them into the
campaign, but gamemasters are also the arbiters of what
knowledge your character doesn’t have. Your character
might have an artifact that has unguessed at power; a
creature or Domain with an ancient and hidden origin; or
you might not know that your character is the inheritor of
an ancient curse, the sole hope of a dying mystic order, or
the prophesied one to oppose the rule of the Dwimmerlaik.
The most important thing to consider with all of these aspects
is that the player should know whatever the character would
reasonably be expected to know, and if the player has information
that is contradictory to the truth, it should be for an extremely good
reason. This isn’t a means for the gamemaster to add humiliating
backstory or some means of invalidating the character concept:
instead it should be viewed as a method of providing surprise,
depth of character, and new revelations during the course of play