Characters for Reckonings are made using risus, the everything RPG.
Think animeish, think cliche. No inappropriate cliche stuff, but you can get Hook(s), and possibly a Tail for, say, drawing your PC or something. Character backgrounds are mandatory and do NOT count as Tails, unless it's something really exceptional.

You start off with 12 dice, cliches as four dice max. However, you can increase a cliche up from d6 to d8 or d10 via spending one die (this doesn't count to total cliches used to make your character).

Each PC begins with a Gift. This is an inate magic ability that each Family has, spread out among many branches. A Gift is, essentially, one shot magic that can be used quite often. Gifts incluce Swordsmanship, Elements, Singing, and the like. The following gifts are NOT available: Command, Fire, Shadow, and any taken by another player.

Things to keep in mind: PCs tend to be exceptions to rules (such as quiet gifts, i.e. a gift where they can only manipulate their substance of choice and not create/summon it (harder to be detcted as a Gift), and even more than one Gift -- which is so rare as to be a thing of legend.

This game is going for anime epic style, so expect your PCs to do fairly scary things from time to time. You've been warned.

Group Cohesion

This game is intended to be a Group game. The PCs as a whole are all necessary for The Prophecy (perhaps just in terms of numbers, perhaps individually) and various threats - such as the Hands of Bremen who a) hunt down gifted and b) are immune TO gifts - necessitate working together. There may also be Politics. Playing your PC as a loner/prima donna is not advisable and will lead to PC death.

Dice Rolling, Combat, and Crunchy Bits

While the use of Inappropriate Cliche is, technically, not allowed, it does count as surprising your opponent, and works in that regard. Surprise != stupid in this regard. Having someone grossly underestimate you doesn't count, unless your PC is, say, acting and such. There is a quasi healthy system, based on "okay, you lost, he hit you. A few hits, and you go down," modified to situation and such. The ideal method is for you, the player, to have some idea how much damage your PC could take and RP the results without being msged with: "You are scratched. Wounded. Incapacitated. Inebriated. Dead." etc.

Keep in mind that the game is anime-style, at least in the Gm's head. While there are no healing magics, Gifts are strong and the gifted tend to take a bit more punishment than the average person and heal quicker. (This is mostly because Rping lying in a bed is boring; in general, if a PC gets the snot kicked out of them, expect them up and about in 1-2 days unless it's really bad.

Money

I'm not going to worry about this. I will add a section on currency to the World part of the site eventually. but in general people use gold coins (often called stones, but seldom in Estavia) and bits, which are broken pieces of coins. 4 bits make one coin, one bit = 1 meal, one coin = 1-2 nights of lodgings. Actual rubies, gems etc. count as larger coins, and silver and iron as currencies also exist, though are often only half the worth of gold. Larger coins exist for larger transactions (generally work 5, 10, and 20 coins each), and for anything larger credit sticks bought from bankers and the like apply.

Most of the PCs are fairly wealthy, so I don't think the lack of funds will be a problem. (The kids can either sponge off of the others or procure money through other means.) In general, PCs can afford their living expenses + bribes etc. without any trouble. If they want to buy a home or expensive services like an alchemist they'll need to pool resources.