A +Jnote (Judge Note) is used to specify, record and communicate a character's special features and background where simple stats won't suffice. Some stats on your +sheet such as backgrounds (including influences) and disadvantages (Beast-traits, Inhumanities and Stigmas) require a more detailed description.
Ultimately, your +jnote describes what your stat amounts to: It qualifies and sometimes quantifies a selection of your character's in-character limitations and capacity to impact the world around them.
Regardless of what your character application or secret info says and regardless of what your stat rating might be, you can only rely upon the stat as they are described and set in a +jnote. As such, if you do not have a +jnote to a stat that requires one, it is 'empty' and the stat effectively cannot be used.
Apart from allowing you to define your character & its backgrounds in detail, +jnotes are used for the benefit of resolving scenes with minimal staff intervention. You may show your +jnotes to other players during negotiation in order to prove what your character has, can or must do, or what your character's limits are.
Writing your Jnotes
Writing your character's +jnotes is perhaps the most challenging part of CharGen for new players, because it requires you to anticipate on a setting and system that you are not familiar with yet.
In general +Jnotes should detail what a specific stat allows your character to do and how it allows you to do it. In writing your +jnotes, you are limited first by your creativity and second by your stat-level. The +explain data for your stat area provides more specificity as to the upper limits of each level. Your +jnote may not expand past these parameters.
This detailing allows our players to create characters with great depth and diversity, since two characters with the same level in the same stat may have completely different capabilities.
If you wish to know what +jnotes you need to write, you can use the command: +jnote/scan
In addition you may encounter prompts requesting submission of +jnotes that relate to the stats you selected earlier.
In CharGen, you submit +jnotes with the command: +jnote/submit type=description
Outside of CharGen, you need to submit all +jnote changes to Staff via +feedback/request
You can find more information on +jnotes and how to use them here.
Writing Guidelines
In the following pages we will present guidelines and examples on how to best describe your +jnotes so they are fully in line with the various standards and requirements. More examples of +jnotes can be found under the example characters.
