Archetypes & Characters

Your archetype sets your social standing, and so your difficulty. Your character brings a past, skills and flaws.

Archetypes: difficulty by birth

After choosing an era you decide your social standing.

• The powerful start with money and the trust of authority. Survival is easier, but you are a target for rivals.
• The vulnerable start with little. Surviving day to day is hard, but the powerful often don't notice you.

Characters

You can't enter history as a ghost. Within your archetype you inhabit one of the era's hand-crafted characters. Wherever possible they are real people, such as Virgil Earp in Tombstone, William Adams in Edo or Hasso Herschel, who dug escape tunnels under the Berlin Wall.

Each character has:

• A biography and a secret: a backstory and a hidden motivation. Open them from your identity card, which slides out the full dossier.
• Skills and flaws: traits such as marksmanship or a gambling habit that affect how your actions turn out.
• A goal and an ambition: something to do right now and something to work towards. See Goals.
• An existing cast: friends, family and rivals who already know you, waiting in your Directory.

You can also create your own character: Forge Your Own Destiny.

See also

• Forge Your Own Destiny
• The Directory

Last updated 2026-10-08