Phoenix Rising | (updated - 09/15/23) (WIP) | Imperial Chinese Harem Political Intrigue

Actually, the stats are going to be vitaly important to whether or not you’ll be able to complete certain actions. The Stats determine your abilities, where the Virtues are how your character acts/is perceived by others. If you have a bloodthirsty, scheming character with low Reasoning/Charisma, others will have a harder time trusting you and your schemes will lead to bad reputation. Whereas if your Schemy, bloodthirsty PC has HIGH charisma and reasoning, your reputation is going to be spotless, and no one can pin things on you.

The MC’s looks are almost entirely contained within the Charisma stat. So the higher it is, the prettier you are. But I leave the PC’s looks very vague, simply due to the fact I want them to be easily projectable for the player, AKA, you can imagine yourself as the character. The only mentions to specific character types are for Hair and Eye types, and that’s more for an aesthetic purpose, as eyeshape has a very interesting connotation (at least as far as I’ve found) in Chinese novels. (the hair thing is just for myself. I like pretending my characters I play have curlier hair than I do.)

But since there are some aspects of a person’s appearance that they can’t change in that time period (such as the fact that everyone had long hair, as to cut it was considered an insult and disgrace to one’s parents and ancestors) my lack of specificity in the customization of a PC’s appearance goes a long way to helping the setting fit better.

10 Likes