Epsilon Update No. 5: Character creation

The next monthly update about Epsilon — a solo adventure game about exploring a dark and corrupting forest. Creating characters with different backgrounds.

As the launch of Exclusion Zone Botanist: Epsilon approaches, I’ll be posting regular updates with a behind-the-scenes look at the design decisions going into the game:

• Epsilon Update 01: Epsilon overview and launch dates

• Epsilon Update 02: Plant features

• Epsilon Update 03: Plant morphology

• Epsilon Update 04: Exclusion Zone map

Note that everything here is in development and subject to change. These updates are a snapshot of how things looked when they were written.

Follow the Kickstarter pre-launch page to be notified when it goes live!

Character creation

“Everyone in the Bureau has a role — their occupational specialty. After a few years in the field, that specialty usually becomes their entire personality. You’re a botanist now, but your prior experiences and old habits stay with you whether you want them to or not.”

I like that Exclusion Zone Botanist is intentionally vague in its details. The Bureau is never explicitly named. The origin of the first Exclusion Zone is never explained. You are dropped into the forest with a mission and a notebook. Get to work.

One thing I did want to expand with more details in Epsilon was character creation. While the Bureau and its soul-crushing bureaucracy is only hinted at, I didn’t want the player’s character to be nameless. They need a background, a life before the Bureau, or at least a life before they stepped into the EZ.

After briefly toying with the Year Zero Engine (YZE), I decided it was too much.¹ I didn’t want players to get bogged down in endless skills, abilities, and mechanical bits.

Draft process. Not Final.

The Epsilon character creation process has a number of steps, but should be quick and easy to follow.

Character backgrounds

To keep the focus on exploration and drawing, Epsilon uses just six backgrounds.

Player will roll 1d6 or choose from the following:

1. Field Ecologist: Seasoned and experienced in the harsh conditions of the wilderness, but not used to the existential threats of the EZ.

2. Lab Technician: Careful, procedure-driven, and more at home in a structured lab environment than a dark forest.

3. Tactical Response: Trained to detect and eliminate threats, but not one for details.

4. Academic: A lifetime of studying strange phenomena and esoteric histories. Loves the action, but feels the Bureau’s methods are crude.

5. Bureau Station Supervisor: Knows how the Bureau works, but tired of the grind and riding a desk. Took a demotion to get back in the field.

6. Medic: No stranger to stress and trauma, but couldn’t take the emotional toll. Quit to study plants and work alone.

While these backgrounds aren’t necessarily final, they cover a good range of options. Everyone entering the EZ is a botanist, but they all took different paths to get there, and those paths left enduring marks.

Character skills

“Even if it’s an agent’s first time going through the portal, they’ve no doubt seen and done some unusual things in the field before that moment. The knowledge and abilities they’ve picked up during that time are part of who they are, and just might save their neck. Of course, not everything about who they are is good. Everyone has a bad habit they wish they could quit.”

Each background comes with a few pieces of specialized equipment and skills. I haven’t covered how the challenge system works yet, but it is a d6-based system.

There are four skills that act as advantages or disadvantages depending on the task:

1. Wilderness: natural hazards, mud, slopes, environmental threats, terrain

2. Precision: slow and careful work, contamination control, machinery, details

3. Exertion: physical strength, sustained effort, breath control, resisting fatigue

4. Threat: reaction time, physical aggression, situational awareness, defensive tactics

The skills act as plus or minus modifiers when performing a challenge. Each background has one positive skill (advantage) and one negative skill (disadvantage).

For example, the Lab Technician has +1 Precision but -1 Exertion. The Tactical Response background has +1 Threat but -1 Precision.

Specialty, equipment, and talent

“In the field, brains and brawn can only get you so far. When things get really weird, it’ll be that ace in your pocket that gets you back out. Kind of like a kid’s talent show, everyone in the Bureau has that one thing they can do — something to show off at parties maybe. Or maybe it’s better only to use that particular talent when there’s less chance of collateral damage.”

In addition to a background and skills, each character also has a specialty, starting equipment, and a special talent:

• Specialty: The Bureau doesn’t just throw someone with no experience into the EZ. Players will also have a specialty within botany: mycologist, ethnobotanist, phytotoxicologist, and so on. These won’t have mechanical impacts, but can help guide journaling and narrative structure.

• Equipment: Equipment was hinted at in the original EZB, but this time it is expanded and has mechanical impacts. Taking inspiration from Tunnel Goons, if you have equipment you think would help, it provides a bonus on challenges. Some gear is tied to your background, some is stock, and some is random.

• Talent: Everyone has a talent they can use once per game — a special ability that might get them out of a jam.² I’ve always loved systems that let you bend the rules and mitigate luck like omens in MÖRK BORG, glitches in CY_BORG, and luck tokens in Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone. This is an easy way to build something similar into Epsilon.

• Backstory: With all of the above in mind, the player can answer some questions about their character: Why did you join the Bureau? What’s the story behind your background? Why’d they pick you for this incursion into the EZ?

My intent is to help the player make a character that feels real with wants, needs, quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. Then, when they are given their primary and secondary objectives, it will be easier to create a compelling narrative.

Follow the Epsilon project

Proof of concept map. Not final.

I am posting an Epsilon update on the third Friday of every month through development, launch, and fulfillment. You can read previous updates in the Exeunt Omnes archive.

In future updates, I’ll talk more about challenges and encounters.

🌿 Join 900+ other field agents and follow the pre-launch page on Kickstarter to be notified when it goes live. 🌿

- E.P. 💀

P.S. If you love tabletop games, you should check out Tumulus. It’s a print-only, quarterly zine packed with Skeleton Code Machine game design content.

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Written, augmented, purged, and published by Exeunt Press. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission. Exeunt Omnes is Copyright 2025 Exeunt Press. For comments, questions, reports from the EZ, or pro tips: games@exeunt.press

1. I’ve yet to actually play a YZE game, but I do think it’s a really interesting system. Twilight: 2000, Vaesen, and Alien look like they’d be fun.

2. I’m not entirely sold on calling this a talent. This might turn into either something more like an edge or a quirk by the time this is done. Or if I wanted to keep the blurb I wrote for it, I could perhaps called it an ace? Not sure if that makes sense. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.