Ready to create your character? Great! Let's get started:

• Background
  First of all, where is your character coming from? This category includes several things: what race they are, whether they belong to any particular groups, and where they're from. Read the sections I've put up to get an idea of your options. A word of advice: please consider all the races before making your decision! I'd love it if we had a variety of races in the game, rather than a party comprised mostly of humans. ^_^ (But that doesn't mean humans aren't okay to submit, of course!) If you want to create a new race, group, or location, please email me at arianadream@hotmail.com and clear it with me first. You shouldn't need to come up with new things because I hope I've given you a wide variety of choices already, but if you have a really nifty idea you just have to use, I'm willing to discuss it. ^_^
  
• Personality
  Your character's personality starts with their background; everyone's disposition, attitude, goals, hopes, and dreams are shaped by their experiences and their surroudings. Of course everyone also has a unique self at the center of this, but your character's background can help you come up with ideas. For example, a Mogay might be mostly interested in making money...but they don't have to; you could just as easily have a Mogay who is rather careless with money and not to concerned about where it comes from or where it goes. Likewise, a male Lainian is very scholarly and a female one very athletic, but if you wanted you could reverse those roles. So start with your character's background, then change their personality so that it is unique to them. Background is a good guideline, but I'd like to have characters that are unique, not completely stereotypical! I've had a lot of people ask me what types of characters I'm looking for, but I hesitate to give a single answer; I don't want all serious and angsty characters, nor do I want a party full of hyperactive ditzes. What I'm looking for is variety, so your best bet is not to make a character you think I'll like...make one you like and think you can play well. That's the most important thing to starting a game that will be fun for everyone!
  
• Personal stats
  Don't forget to decide such basic things as age, gender, basic appearance, height and weight, profession (or lack thereof), hometown/land, race, likes and dislikes, etc. Optional things you may want to include are a character quote and a picture.
  
• Game stats
  You can go ahead and create your character without this, as we haven't yet finished determining the numbers for starting stats, and it's not really necessary to helping me make my decision about which characters to have in the game. However, if you'd like to start thinking about your character's strengths and weaknesses, you will get a set number of points to allocate between strength (attack), vitality (defense), mind (magic power), wit (battle speed), and move (evade and hit %).
  
• Skills and abilities
  In Grandia, your character levels are not so important as your skills and abilities. The levels of each individual weapon or element of magic can determine which moves and magics you learn and when, as well as adding bonuses to your stats each time you level up a skill. Each character will be allowed four skills total, chosen from the basic four elements of magic and several kinds of weapons. Here are the weapon types you have to choose from: sword, axe, mace, whip, dagger, bow, thrown, fist, and spear. There are actually eight elements of magic, but you may only choose from the basic four: Fire, Wind, Water, Earth. These determine which secondary elements you can learn. Here's how that breaks down:
  • Fire + Wind = Lightning
  • Wind + Water = Blizzard
  • Water + Earth = Forest
  • Earth + Fire = Explosion
  Fire, Lightning, and Explosion are primarily attack magics; Wind, Blizzard, and Earth are mostly attack and status; Water is almost exclusively healing; and Forest is status and status healing.
  You will be allowed four skills total, but at least one of these must be a weapon type. You may not have all four elements of magic and no weapon abilities, but you may have skills in four different types of weapons with no magic, if you wish. The number of weapon types vs. magic elements that you choose will determine how many moves and magic spells you will learn. For example, let's say (theoretically; we haven't worked out the exact numbers yet) that each weapon skill will get you 5 moves and each magic element will get you 5 spells. If you then have one weapon type and three elements of magic, that means you will get 5 moves and 15 spells. However, even though you have 5 spells for each element, that does not mean they must be divided equally between the elements. When we have finalized a list of spells, you will be able to choose which ones you want, though of course they must be of an element type that you have. If you have earth and water magic, you don't have to have 5 spells in each; you could have 7 in earth and 3 in water if you wanted, or 5 in earth, 2 in water, and 3 in forest, etc., etc. In addition, each character will be able to create a certain number of spells unique to them. (All moves will be created the same way, but in the game Grandia, Feena and Liete were the only characters with special spells. I liked the idea so much I decided to give that chance to everyone.) So if you have magic ability, you will be able to create...say, one special spell for each basic element. (I'll decide the exact number later.)
  When you create moves or special spells, I will work closely with you on deciding what they should be. Most likely you'll determine what the ability does, and I will then decide the SP/MP requirements, and the skill levels needed to learn it. You will not know these skill levels ahead of time; you will only know that you will eventually get a move or spell, and I will tell you when you've learned it. However, all spells will be ranked according to power, so you can have a vague idea of whether you'll earn them sooner or later. Each character will start off with at least one physical move (probably one for each weapon type), and the basic spell for each basic element they've chosen. So if you have fire you'll start with Burn!, wind you get Howl, water you get Heal, and earth you get Diggin'. Further spells and moves will be learned once you've advanced your skill level in each ability; we'll discuss that later, as the system has not quite been worked out, and it isn't critical to character creation.
  This guide to magic and moves is pretty sketchy; it's designed mostly to get you thinking about what you would like your character's strengths and weaknesses to be. In your application I would like to see the basic elements and weapon types you would like to have. If you aren't sure what category your weapon of choice falls under or if it's even allowed, just drop me a line and ask.
  
• Character submission
  All right, let's review what you need to have in your application, and then you can get it all written up. When it's finished, please send it to me at arianadream@hotmail.com and then sit back and wait. ^_^ I'll most likely reply rather quickly to discuss your character with you, but you will not find out if you've made it into the game until I've stopped accepting applications and have made a final decision. I will then send a mass email to everyone who applied with the names of the chosen players. All right, now the details. When you send your application, please make sure of the following things:
  
  • Format. You may send your application either in the body of your email message, or as an attachment, but if you send it as an attachment, my preferred file type is rich text (RTF). This will be the easiest for me to open. Character pictures may be included with the URL to the picture if it's on the internet (my preference), or, if you cannot do so, you may send it as an attachment, so long as it does not exceed about 70K in size.
  • Personal info. Your application will not be accepted without this! I need:
    1. Your name (real name or online alias, I just need to know what to call you by)
    2. A valid email address (If I can't contact you, you can't play!)
    3. Times you are available to play (I need to know this in order to schedule!)
    Your application will not be accepted without the above information. Additionally, I need to be able to contact you, and you need to be able to get online for sessions and the specified time, once decided. If you are very difficult to get a hold of, this may affect my decision on whether to accept your character!
  • Character info. Basics such as gender, age, appearance, etc. See above for complete list.
  • Skills and abilities. All I really need here is which elements of magic you want and which weapons you would like. We'll figure out the rest later. ^_^
  • Personality and background. See above for details. Tell me about your character! This is the good part. Feel free to expound...but try to keep the text of your email under 15K, ne? ^_~ But it's just fine for you to be wordy, so long as your background story does not begin to rival a Victor Hugo novel for length. ^_^;;

Well, I think that about does it! So put the finishing touches on your application, and send it on over to arianadream@hotmail.com. I'm not sure when I'll make a decision about characters; probably when I have received enough applications to choose from and am no longer hearing from people who want to apply but haven't done so yet. And again, feel free to email me with any questions you may have, before or after you submit your application! Thank you, and good luck! ^_^

P.S. Here's a handy little RTF file for you to fill out and send, if that's easier for you!