Character Creation

Thanks for compiling, much appreciated! Overlap is bound to occur since there are only 9 Spheres, but the table does help everyone see that their Sphere combinations don't overlap too much (and by the looks of it it doesn't. Much of the magic will be about combinations of spheres to produce effects.

Arete will go up to 3 soon, which will diversify you even more since some of you might go deep while others go broad.

For our intro chapter, nothing is set in stone on your character sheets. So feel free, you may change your attributes and your talents/skills/knowledges, as long as you haven't used them yet. If you have used them, then let's consider that 'locked in' as part of you. I may also have one or two suggestions on background changes.

Similarly with Spheres. I asked everyone to imagine a pre-Awakened self (although one or two preferred a just Awakened state) where you are about to wonder why you have certain powers. Game-wise that was being represented as you withholding from committing fully to which Sphers you are choosing or have chosen. Along the way in this chapter, I have specifically invited instances of magic use, representing your attempts at certain efforts to go beyond the ordinary. So if you did indeed use some nascent magic, please begin to note that in the form of dots in that particular Sphere. Some of you used it more, some have hardly used it. This beginning use is akin to an Awakening, and I will invite you to start narrating it that way more and more.

At the completion of session zero, please give yourself:
+1 xp for participation
+1 xp if you can point to a distinct character moment that captures the essence of who your character is*
+1 xp if you can describe a relevation that you uncovered or understood
+1 xp if you helped someone or some situation in some way

*Speaking of essence, if you haven't done so, could you identify with either dynamic, pattern, primordial, or questing, based on how your character reacted to critical moments. Did they daringly react or passionately feel, did they step back to weigh the situation, did they look towards what was secret and hidden, or did they look forward to what might happen next? You will need this when we speak about your Avatar.

This is also a good time to change up any of the dots you've allocated to attributes or abilities or spheres; consider us to be tweaking your sheets to get a more accurate representation of your PC.

Also, consider assigning your dots to your main Sphere if you haven't already done so. It's the one you resorted to using more than the others so far, emergently. We should lock that in.

It's time to nudge everyone towards their Focus! Thanks to version M20, p565-600 is a lot to take in, so let me simplify, and also explain to everyone where your PCs are at this point.

Focus = paradigm + practice + instruments.
Your paradigm is your belief or understanding of how magic works. Eg do you think magic is all about faith, or all about illusion over reality, or about power to make things happen, or about cause and effect, etc.
Your practice is what method you (think you) use to make magic happen. Eg, does your magic work like alchemy, or witchcraft, or weird science, or miracles, or personal spirituality, etc
Your instruments are the tools you use to do magic. Eg, do you use wands, gems, books, bones, symbols, music, numbers, sex, drugs, dance, etc

So far, because your PCs are literally experiencing magic for the first time, I've ruled that it's flexible and spontaneous, kind of 'so long as you can think it, it happens'. That's how they discover they are magically inclined or awakened.
But what will happen next is that, more and more, if they seek to reproduce the same ability, they need to resort to whatever they were doing previously in order to bring about that effect. Eg Eldarin has been describing how Wren turns to musical pattern as a means of bringing about a magical effect. To go further, she'll need to use an instrument to replay the same tune, or different tunes. Another eg, Psybermagi has been describing Kyle as using his phone to produce certain effects. He'll need more apps, or perhaps different processing power, to cast more things. KCC had Minsoo sing certain lines of songs, etc.

So in general, we're heading in the right direction. Those of us who have yet to flesh out these aspects, you can start sprinkling them in. I'll let you know when I'll start to invoke the rules (such as greater difficulty to cast magic without a focus).

Strictly rules-lawyering, a starting PC will need to have 7 instruments, and as your Arete (magic power) grows, you can begin to reduce your dependency on them up to a point where a master mage hardly relies on them.

I see everyone's mentioned thinking of them, on our various threads.

Let's take a broad view of instruments, ie they don't have to all be physical items, the key is a creative combination of them.

So sure, for Wren, tapping a rhythm, putting on or taking off headphones, actually having a musical instruments, hitting certain notes, can all be narratively combined to explain the magic you do.
For Myra, mathematical symbols spoken or written are pretty cool, quoting mathematical formula or science laws, remember to throw in a physical item or two in the mix.
For Jonathan, tracing things in the air, or drawing quickly on a sketchpad, or even dirty fingers smudging graphitti shapes on a surface, all can count.
For KCC, let's develop that physicality idea. Maybe she runs in a certain way, or hops, or stretches, with each contortion creating a different spell effect (some people used to think that different yoga positions produced different spells!), and you can still overlay that with humming or singing of certain tunes or lines.

Keep 'em coming! I guess the key for all these things is that they have to be deliberately enacted.