CS Guide: Aspects

Aspects are the key to your character's personality and what sets them apart from other characters. They allow you to expand on your character's merits, flaws, habits and quirks, traits that help make them truly unique and likable. These Aspects can be rooted in your character's history, upbringing or background to shed light onto what makes them behave in various situations or scenarios.

Example of Pre-Written Aspect

“Lone Wolf”

Luke Solowalker doesn't like to work in groups or teams and feels most comfortable on his own. Luke Solowalker sticks to himself, sets his own pace, and doesn't share feelings or emotions with others. While the Lone Wolf can get things done quietly and efficiently, he tends to be emotionally cut off and has problems relating to his comrades.

Though simple, this Aspect does a great job of separating your character from the rest of the pack (pun not intended). It then goes on to point out the flaw/merits of the aspect, creating a realistic character you can either relate or empathize with.

How To Write a Proper Custom Aspect

As you can see from the pre-written aspect, writing a custom aspect can be broken up into three parts.

First, you need something to base your aspect on. Finding a cause and effect is one of the easiest ways to create a unique Aspect for your character. The things that happen over the course of our lives are what shape us into being the people we are today. If you were bitten by a wild dog in your childhood, you will (possibly) have a fear of wild dogs in your adult life. Cause and Effect.

The second element to writing Aspects is the create a balance. As all things have cause and effect, each behavioral element of your character should have its share of merits and flaws. Flaws and quirks are often the things that make us relate to a character, so they can be a powerful way to give your character an extra dimension of depth.

The third element is that your Lore, Feats, Skills, and Force Powers (if applicable) are represented in your Aspects. If you have an Aspect that revolves around being good with Blasters, you should have points on your sheet in Blasters. If your character has a silver tongue and loves to motivate troops with passionate speeches, you should have a combination of points in Leadership primarily, but could also support it with Subterfuge, Tactics, Diplomacy, Empathy, Intimidation and so on. Aspects are where you can create explanations of why your character behaves a certain way based off of their Lore, Feats, Skills, and Force Powers.

Tips for Writing Custom Aspects

The following tips and examples will be taken from the Character Sheet of Major Finn.

Brainstorming

The best way to approach custom aspects, typically, is to try and isolate six (6) major bullet points that can sum up your character. This isn't law, but tends to be a good place to start.

For Finn, we can break him down as such:

• Finn prefers Blasters, and is not as comfortable in combat situations without one.
• Finn was trained from birth to be a soldier, but does not want to be one.
• Finn spent his whole life with the First Order, meaning that he has a working knowledge of they work, and little else.
• Finn is the ultimate good guy. He believes in doing the right thing, and genuinely wants to help people.
• Finn is very good at improvising/adapting to whatever crap is thrown at him, but his confidence is based on his success, not his failures so far.
• Finn is, ultimately, a traitor and deals with the repercussions of abandoning the First Order.

From these bullet points, Aspects can be created.

Examples of Custom Aspect

Here are some examples of Custom Aspects created based on those bullet points.

Custom Combat Aspect

• Finn prefers Blasters, and is not as comfortable in combat situations without one.

Anyone Have Blasters Around Here!?
Stormtrooper FN-2187 was considered to be the top marskman in his class after firing his blaster only thirty-six times and scoring kills with thirty-five of those during a difficult training exercise. Finn feels most at ease with a blaster in his hands, and will always look to equip one before resorting to any other kind of weapon. While able to pull off a wide array of marksmanship feats whether he is prone or in motion, Finn's melee and close quarter skills leave something to be desire.

With this Aspect, we show that Finn is really good with Blasters. The merit here is that we highlight that he is most comfortable with Blasters. This is supported by his Weapon Specialization in Blasters, as well as the +4 in Blaster Skill. The flaw here that acts as the balance is that Finn is not very comfortable or proficient with melee weapons. Not only is this important to how Finn handles combat engagements, it also gives us an idea of how he will behave in different situations. We now know that if there are no Blaster's around, and forced to use a sword or a staff, Finn is clearly going to be out of his element and not as effective as a fighter. Give him a Blaster, though, and he's in his element.

Syntax and Grammar

CS-STAFF NOTE: all titles for Custom Aspects should contain capital letters for each word of the phrase. try and keep your titles to a short phrase rather than a full sentence. less is more in this type of naming.

When reviewing Custom Aspects, the Voice Staff will look for correct grammar and spelling in your Aspects. Be sure to proofread your Aspects, or have someone else do so, before submitting. Other than typical grammar and spelling errors, the title of your Aspect should utilize capitalize letters.

Example:

Always Capitalizes His Aspects

Wally always capitalizes the first letter of his cleverly named custom aspects. While doing this maintains uniformity in the formatting of the brotherhoods character sheets, it can cause grammar-Nazi's to twitch with the compulsive urge to correct aforementioned grammar.

Cause and effect, merit and drawback.

CS-STAFF NOTE: all custom aspects must be approved by the Voice Staff.

Aspect Templates

Below, you can find pre-written templates for Custom Aspects. You can use these to help create Custom Aspects for your character!

GENERAL

Force Bond

After spending a lot of time working together, {{member}} has formed a unique bond with ( Insert: Member Name ) through the Force. This allows {{gender,him,her}} the ability to know when ( Insert: Member Name ) is nearby, and even allows for an exchange of baseline emotions like danger, excitement or encouragement. Even when separated across systems, {{member}} can still always feel faint echos through the Force, with stronger emotions like death or turmoil registering in vague intuition.

Master And Student Bond

Masters and students form unique bonds through the Force. {{member}}. This allows {{gender,him,her}} the ability to know when ( Insert: Member Name ) is nearby, and even allows for an exchange of baseline emotions like danger, excitement or encouragement. Even when separated across systems, {{member}} can still always feel faint echos through the Force, with stronger emotions like death or turmoil registering in vague intuition.

PERSONALITY

Believe it!

{{member}} has a singular, driving goal in life: to one day be the best ( Insert: Leadership Position ) in the Brotherhood. {{member}} is so confident that {{gender:he,she}} will achieve this goal that {{gender:he,she}} is constantly reminding others as a means of justifying {{gender:his,her}} efforts. {{member}}’s spirit, while sometimes annoying or tiresome, can also spark fires in {{gender:his,her}} peers in situations where the odds are long. {{member}}s persistence can also be infectious, spurring others to greater deeds.

COMBAT

Like No One Ever Was

{{member}} wants to be the very best, like no one ever was. {{gender:He,She}} has trained every single day without fail at {{gender,his,her}} talent and will not stop until {{gender:he,she}} is recognized as the best ( Insert Skill: Saberist, Gunslinger, Demolisitonist, etc ) in the Galaxy. This determination makes {{member}} highly proficient at {{gender:his,her}} talent, but also confident and fearless when given the chance to prove {{gender:his,her}} skill even against greater opponents. This same drive can lead to hubris, however, can allow {{member}} to not take a opponent seriously unless feeling sufficiently challenged.