Side characters are a middle ground between PCs and NPCs, with short apps and no AC. Our hope is to allow players to flesh out the environment with character types that are underrepresented in Fade Rift—commoners, Andrastians, people with more mundane skills or boring jobs or OOCly unpopular opinions, etc.—but who wouldn't necessarily be as fun to play with the same level of commitment as more unusual or sympathetic characters. If you think it would be fun to sometimes write a put-upon diplomat telling other characters to behave themselves or a haughty Chantry Sister judging heathens, that’s what this is for!

Alternatively, you can use side characters to test or develop vague concepts that you might be interested in apping as full characters later, or to play characters with a specific short-term arc, such as temporary allies or citizens that cross paths with Riftwatch somehow.

Side characters are not required to be Riftwatch members. You can play a Kirkwall local or an openly hostile antagonist. However, please keep in mind that unaffiliated characters won’t have access to sending crystals, and it’s your responsibility to keep them playable. We won’t provide plots or mechanisms to keep them from wandering away forever if that’s what they would do. And if you decide to app one as a normal PC later, they’ll have to join up.

This is not meant to allow anyone to indefinitely RP six full-fledged permanent characters, and especially not six strange egalitarian poster children with lots of special skills, so please use it in the intended spirit. Characters who have more unusual qualities than side characters warrant may be given time restrictions on how long they can be voice tested as side characters before becoming standard characters.


Character Limits

1. You must be a current player who made full AC the prior month.
   
2. You can have two side characters at a time, but you can only add one per month.
   
3. You can app a side character as a full character at any time, as long as you have open slots. You can also change main characters to side characters if you want to put them on the back burner without dropping them. But you can’t use it just to dodge AC for a month or constantly rotate.

Character Types

1. Side characters must be native OCs.
   
2. They can’t be from any character category we limit to one-per-player.

Activity

1. Side characters do not submit AC and are also not eligible to earn AC reward points.
   
2. Other PCs can earn reward points by playing off of other people’s side characters.

Plot Involvement

1. Side characters can be members of projects, but they aren’t eligible for any IC leadership roles.
   
2. Side characters are allowed to participate in plots, but must be given lowest priority in sign-ups for any closed plot, including player plots. It’s fine for them to fill out a group that has empty slots, just not to take a slot that could otherwise go to a willing PC.
   
3. You can propose your own player plots for your side characters, and obviously in that case the 'lowest priority' rule doesn't apply.

Side character “apps” are very short and meant to encompass just the broad strokes of the character concept, to allow people time to figure details out in play. However, you can’t add big things like mod plot-relevant events or connections that were not included in the initial proposal. E.g., it’s fine not to tell us the details of a character's childhood if that childhood was pretty normal, but you can't then say that the character spent their childhood learning shapeshifting from the Chasind or is Corypheus' secret love child.

Please post your app in the body of the comment rather than linking it.

PLAYER

Name:
Other Characters:

CHARACTER

Name:
Race:
Nationality:
Mage?:
Age:
Affiliation:
Occupation:
Goal: Briefly, in one or two sentences, are you planning for this character to stick around indefinitely? Voice testing a potential full PC? Apping a temporary character for a specific plot arc? (It’s fine for your plans to change later; we just want to know what you're up to now.)
About: In 100-500 words, tell us generally who this character is—key background facts or personality traits, opinions, skills or connections, etc. You don’t have to have every detail worked out, but you do have to tell us anything that’s hugely important, controversial, rare, or plot-relevant in advance. Otherwise, think of this like the elevator pitch section of a CR meme: what are the essentials that make your character who they are and set them apart?

<div style="text-align:justify;"><div style="font-family:georgia, serif; color: #0B610B; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 3px; font-size:1.75em; border-bottom: 1px solid #bbbbbb; ">PLAYER</div> <b>Name:</b> <b>Other Characters:</b> <div style="font-family:georgia, serif; color: #0B610B; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 3px; font-size:1.75em; border-bottom: 1px solid #bbbbbb; ">CHARACTER</div> <b>Name:</b> <b>Race:</b> <b>Nationality:</b> <b>Mage?:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Affiliation:</b> <b>Occupation:</b> <b>Goal:</b> Briefly, in one or two sentences, are you planning for this character to stick around indefinitely? Voice testing a potential full PC? Apping a temporary character for a specific plot arc? (It’s fine for your plans to change later; we just want to know what you're up to now.) <B>About:</b> In 100-500 words, tell us generally who this character is—key background facts or personality traits, opinions, skills or connections, etc. You don’t have to have every detail worked out, but you do have to tell us anything that’s hugely important, controversial, rare, or plot-relevant in advance. Otherwise, think of this like the elevator pitch section of a CR meme: what are the essentials that make your character who they are and set them apart?