Character Creation

In order to play in Fourth Place, you will need to ballot and then submit a character. Balloting is a joint process with the other society game, The Rat Race. You can find more information at the bottom of this page.

During the game you will play a character of your own creation within the world of Fourth Place. To create your character, you must decide their appearance, physical form, personality and backstory, and then fill in the corresponding questions in this google form. If that isn't possible for you, you can email your answers here instead.

The deadlines to ballot and submit a character are listed here.

In order to help potential players to decide which game they want to play and create a character for that game, we will be hosting an in-person Character Creation session at 19.00 on the 20th of October (Tuesday of Week 2), at Balliol college's Jowett walk site. This is an opportunity for you to ask us questions, meet and plan links with other players, and get excited for the game. Attending this session is not required to submit a character, but you may find it useful in clarifying issues you have with the creation process.

Outlined below are descriptions of each section in the character creation form.

• The Player Information section: for out-of-character information, such as your real name, pronouns, and important contact details. (See the Glossary for an explanation of any unfamiliar terms, like "OC".)
• The Character Information section: for in-character information, including your character’s name, pronouns, and Kingdom.
• The Traits and Quirks section: for selecting and providing more information on the Kingdom quirks you’ve taken for your character.
• The Bios section: for your Public Bio, which will be made available, along with your and your character’s names and pronouns, to all other players; and for your Private Bio, which contains further details and secrets about your character, seen only by the GMs.
• The Welfare section: for selecting your Playstyle Quirks, and communicating any concerns or requests to the GMs to help us create a comfortable experience for you in the game.

The first section of the character creation form. Information about you, the player, that we'll use to contact you and invite you to the game's Discord server. This includes your OC name and pronouns, your Discord username, and your email, which will be used by other players to email you in-character during Downtimes.

For a full description of the information we collect, see the Privacy Policy.

In developing a character concept, it is important to have an understanding of which themes you particularly want to explore and evoke through the character. Consult the Style and Tone page, and consider which of the game's themes most interest you. Also see the Ways To Play page for more specific advice on how to explore each theme. Keep these ideas in mind throughout the process of creating your character!

To fill in the rest character creation form, you can follow these steps:

In Fourth Place, your character belongs to one of four Kingdoms, distinct sapient species created by humanity sometime before its destruction. Each Kingdom has radically different needs, wants, and ways of engaging with the world. You can choose from:

• The Emulated, robots who consume power constantly, and require spare parts to repair themselves;
• Myconids, fungi who communicate over vast distances using their mycelial Networks;
• Smarties, uplifted animals driven by the constant need for food;
• Triffids, sapient plants who restlessly grow, and absorb water, nutrients and sunlight to survive.

You can also now decide your character's name and pronouns, according to their Kingdom's naming conventions.

A number of Organisations have recently arrived in the Fourth Place, and some visit regularly. Each has come for their own reasons, and each was reliant on the resources it provided to survive. Those resources have now been cut off, and the ideologies of these diverse factions will guide how they respond to the crisis.

Your character might have arrived at the Fourth Place with a specific Organisation, or they might have been drawn to it separately. Their own personal philosophies might agree or disagree with those of the Organisations, to various extents. You can be associated with more than one Organisation, or none at all. Use them as options and inspiration for how your character came to live in the Fourth Place, and their ideology towards it.

The Organisations present are:

• The Ascensionists, a commune of robots driven from their home due to their radical ideology.
• The Feralists, a human-sceptic group sheltering in the Fourth Place out of desperation.
• The Hominists, an enclave of human-worshippers.
• The Inheritors, a motley union seeking to establish a permanent settlement in the Fourth Place.

As a resident of the Fourth Place, your character will have goals they seek to complete whilst there, and have formed various beliefs about the strange landmark in which they live. Of course, they may also feel a great deal of uncertainty about such matters. Decide your character's overall aims during the game, and flesh out some details of how they feel about the world around them.

Much of the game's content will lie in exploring the ruined Fourth Place, or attempting to control and use the resources found within. Consider what might drive your character to engage with these parts of the game — or, if they don't interest you, what else your character might spend the game trying to achieve.

Each Kingdom has a number of Traits which apply to every character in that Kingdom. However, you may also select up to two Kingdom Quirks from your Kingdom's list. We recommend taking two, as they do not generally have downsides, unless you want your character to be deliberately less capable than others. Most Kingdom Quirks are designed to provide your character with tools they can use in exploring the Fourth Place. We aim to balance their usefulness, so feel free to take whichever ones you think best fit your character!

Your Public and Private Bios are the key pieces of prose that describe your character in the fullest detail. The Public Bio will be shared with all other players on the wiki — including a section on your character's Physical Form. Any details you want to keep private, or that would merely not be widely known, should be kept to your Private Bio.

In writing your Bios, aim to include plenty of detail on: your character's backstory, that is their life before arriving at the Fourth Place; their motivations, desires and aims; any important secrets, particularly those that might come to light during the game; and their fears, doubts and uncertainties.

Also make sure to tell us how you want your character to grow and develop during the game. In particular, if there are any events that are needed for your planned arc to proceed, such as, as mentioned above, a secret coming to light, please tell us!

The Playstyle Quirks allow you to opt-in to parts of the game experience that some players might find uncomfortable, such as gore, injury, or perception-altering effects. If you do choose to opt-in, we will still aim to treat the subjects carefully, and seek OC consent when appropriate.

Note that you can change your choice of Playstyle Quirks at any point in the game, and you can also qualify your choices. You might, for instance, specify that you only want to opt-in to depictions of gore involving plants, robots and fungi, not animals.

You can also use this section of the form to discuss any other welfare concerns, including health or accessibility issues.

To sign up for Fourth Place, you must fill out the Ballot Form by 23:59, Tuesday October 20th. This is separate from the Character Creation Form, which will be due on Friday October 23rd.

Fourth Place has a preliminary player cap of 20. In the event that Fourth Place is oversubscribed, we will run a ballot to determine who will play. This ballot will be run jointly with The Rat Race and in a way to ensure as many people as possible are involved in at least one Society Game.

The order of priority in the ballot will be as follows, with players randomised within each group:

• Current University of Oxford students who have never played a Society Game
• Current University of Oxford students who have played a Society Game before
• Non-University of Oxford students

On the Ballot Form, you will be able to select a first choice game and (optionally) a second choice game, as well as whether you would like to play one or two games. The ballot will run so that no player will end up in two games before everyone is in at least one. We will do our best to assign as many players as possible to their first choice, but cannot guarantee this, so make sure you only put a second choice if you would be happy to play that game. You may also put no preference; this will not affect your chances of playing a game.

Additionally, Fourth Place is considering adding GMs to our team, so please indicate on the form if you are interested, along with any conditions (e.g. only want to GM if you don't get into Fourth Place in the ballot). If you have any questions about what GMing might involve, please reach out via email or Discord.

For more information about the ballot process, please visit this link for the full documentation and code.