"B" is for "Backgrounds"

Today's post is about Backgrounds

Backgrounds in my opinion are one of the most important parts of character creation. A concept is good, but a background is better. A concept might be something as simple as "an ex-military special operative now working for the vampires". This is a good start, and van give some nice clues to personality, and mannerisms. Using this example ,we could assume being not only ex-military, but dedicated & well-trained ex-military, this person probably has a certain code of honor to live by. They likely have a lot of self confidence, and would carry themselves with pride. it's possible that they still keep their hair crew-cut or at least close to a military style.

However this is just scratching the surface, this would create a interesting yet ultimately 2-dimensional character. Depending on your group, the campaign/system and play-style this might be enough. Even if it's sufficient though I think developing a further more in depth character can be really rewarding, and for other styles of play or systems it may very well be essential.

I'd like to stop here and point out a a favorite set of products of mine


 

These books are bit older, and hard to find, but if you can get a hold of one it's definitely worthwhile. The provide an intelligent method for randomly rolling up backgrounds. Instead of being truly random though it uses well placed modifiers to create backgrounds that make more sense. For instance if you roll that you were born to a rich family, you will get a positive modifier when rolling on the tables for education, as its more likely you received a proper education than if you had come fro ma poor family.

When thinking about your characters background one thing that can come in handy is to think about family. A persons family can have a huge impact on a characters life well after their formative years, they can also provide great plot hooks for a Game-Master to make things more interesting.  continuing with the example above, imagine the same character, who was raised i na military family, Dad was in the army, moved around a lot as a kid, used to the life etc. Now take that same concept, but imagine that he'd been raised by a family of pacifists, and he estranged himself because he thought the cause was justified, but his parents thinking fighting is wrong no matter what.  not just his relationships will change, but his outlook on the world and personality would be very very different.

The more detail you give to a character, the more it will come to life, also the more a Story-teller has to work with. Lets assume I'm running a game and I want to introduce a plot to the group involving a crime, getting them to investigate it and run into certain detective or underworld NPC's. If I know that one of the characters comes from an abusive home, getting them involved with a case involving a child will have much more impact, than some random street mugging.

This also ties into the memorability of a character, the more fully developed and rounded they are, the more memorable it becomes.  No one remembers "hey that ex-military guy that killed things" but everyone remembers "that really tough hard as nails spec-ops guy that broke down and cried when he saw the little girls dead body". Or "That lone-wolf soldier, who fell to his knees and thanked God, when he finally found the family he thought he'd lost"

Why don't you tell me your favorite memorable character bit in the comments?

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Test #3

still testing, using different blogging platforms,  Life being unfair in general.  I can post to my blog like 7 different ways but none of them share the same feature sets, I can’t seem to find one way of posting that has all of the features I want to use, many of them have features I could care less about, it’s getting frustrating to say the least

still testing

Test # 2

Test Post

just checking some settings testing 1 2 3

A is for “Amazing”

Today's Topic letter is “A”

I'm getting the post up a little late, sadly real life took it's toll.

MY Topic for today is going to be “amazing”

That's right, amazing, as an RPG topic

What I'm talking about here, some people call “the WoW factor” but in essence, it's what makes your games memorable

No matter how big the dungeon, or dangerous the traps, no matter how intricate a story line, often it's he little details that get remembered. The funny lisp you gave a certain vendor, or some catch phrase that got way too many laughs around the table one late night gaming session.

This is part of what I strive for as a GM, and there have been a lot of articles written about it, still I think there can never be enough said about this. Some of my favorite examples. Giving weapons a name. Instead of just “that +1 dagger” call it “dagger of the guard” and also, 4^th edition D&D was big on this one, moving away from simple +# type bonuses, to giving things powers & abilities.

I like the idea, but I think there is a certain place for the simple basic mechanical bonus too, the weapon that's not quite magical but so extremely well made that eve “masterwork” hardly does it justice? Or some family heirloom that “always strikes true”

In the campaign I'm currently playing my GM has taken this to hear,t and because of it, we ended up with a near alignment shift in my character. He's done an excellent job of keeping things in this pathfinder adventure path interesting, veering from the per-written material in was that keep the game memorable, and the amazement factor for me, came fro ma simple +1 dagger.

The adventure listed a simple+1 dagger as a piece of treasure to be given from the ghost, of a prison wardens wife. This prison warden, in death tried to contain the ghosts, of the same prisoners that he had kept captive in life. The adventurers, team up with the ghost of his wife, and put a permanent end to these more malicious spirits allowing both her and her husband, to move on and find peace. The GM had been thinking about ways to name the dagger, make it more unique and personal in some way, and after some seriously deep in-character role-playing he decided I deserved something more than a simple +1 weapon.

I should note here, that I was playing Evil aligned character, short version, anyone but his immediate family could burn for all he cared, and he would do whatever was necessary to take care of him & his own. Well the GM in a moment of Epic brilliance, decided to Amaze me, and to not only reward me, but create a future plot hook and more role play opportunities. He gave me an intelligent weapon that was good aligned. It spoke to me, and instead of being a snotty, uppity snarky good aligned weapon, it recognized my good deeds, even if the motives weren't so pure, and over the course of the next several adventures it has been slowly steering me towards an alignment change. The other players, who's characters are brother & sister to my characters, have noticed the changes, it's become a focal point and introduced several new sub-plots for us.

We've steered clear of agencies we would have previously embrace,d we discovered horrors in our family passed and vowed to write the wrong our ancestors committed, we have even started to build a reputation as do-gooders in the local area. For a rogue, a witch and a sorcerer, none of whom is good aligned, it's quite an achievement, and all because my GM didn't want to give me a simple +1 dagger.

That's Amazing, and that's what will make me remember this campaign for years to come.