Character Background

 

Character Background

Each Character begins as a desire and an idea on the part of the player, and the creation of that idea in the “Real” world of the Campaign setting.  A great day, is the day the Player gets to actually meet the Character they are playing.

This process is about giving the player’s Character and by extension, themselves, roots in a fantasy world.  History, family, vocation, contacts, connections and justifies their experience and skills and gives them  a real connection to the world their character is living in.

At Character Generation Day, your stats are rolled, you write down some NWP’s and WP’s you are interested in, and develop a loose idea of who you want to be, what you want to play.  You do not pick equipment, or flesh out details as the Character Generation day is about finding something you want to be, and getting the rolls you can build around that.

Most of the session is about talking about the way you feel about the character, things you envision or want to do.  There are also Bargains to be made.  Lets say your highest roll is 17 and you really wanted a human fighter with 18 strength, you can bargain with the DM for those stats with “Dooms”.  A doom is a favor from fate, you get a plus one to strength from the DM and a chance to re roll your percentile strength and the DM gets to place a Doom upon you that you will receive some details about in your back ground.

Once Character Generation day is over, the DM begins the backgrounds, and provides them to the players when they are completed.  It is then the work of the Players to complete Weapon Proficiency purchases, NWP purchases and equipment purchases as well as it is their responsibility to make the background decisions laid in front of them by the DM.  This must be communicated to the DM.

Once all Players have completed this for the most part, they will meet with the DM to role play their path to the rest of the party.  This is one on one gameplay to get the character with their private history, to a place where they are realistically and legitimately with the other players in the campaign.  When these individual sessions are complete, the first day of the Adventure as a group can begin, at it is considered the first day of the campaign.

Since this is a campaign and since I cannot divide myself into three or five different DM’s to run that same amount of solo campaigns, it is imperative that the party “Stay Together”.  Characters breaking off and doing their own thing run the risk of the DM seizing their character and making them an NPC in the Game world, so that the “Campaign” can move forward.

There are also times when a character dies and does not come back.  In those situations, the Player may have the option of taking up an NPC as a player character.  This is a good reason to have a decent amount of NPC’s in the orbit of the Characters. 

It is also possible to Introduce an new character into the campaign but this usually has some constraints so it does not yank too heavily upon the plots of all the characters.

This is an example of a campaign timeline;

Day 1:  Get the players together to hang out, roll requisites and talk about what they want to play.  At the end of day one, all players need to have a 'one sheet' to the DM that has Name, race, age, gender, Preferred Stat Allocation, class, and some preferred NWP’s and WPs.

Day 2:  The DM generates all the Character Backgrounds.

Day 3:  The DM provides the Players with their back grounds.

Day 4:  The Players Complete their Characters, picking and paying for their languages, NWP’s and WP’s as well as buying equipment if possible and making the decisions about their past the DM has put before them, and providing a new Character One Sheet that has the Characters WP’s NWP’s Languages, Stats and the answers to the questions and choices the DM provided in their background.

Day5-9.  The Player and the DM meet for Solo Role playing to get the Player Character from their history to the Game day and their Companions.  It is designed to naturally get a group of different people together with a common goal of each players individual choosing.

Day 10 / Game Day 1:  The players meet each other and each other’s Characters in person at the Game Table and determine which people they interacted with are now NPC's and which are Player Characters, and the Campaign begins.  It is not uncommon to have another Players Character in their own Characters background.

 

 

This is an example of a character Background.  (NWP's and WP's in brackets are Free if taken).

You were born in the village of Farwell some two days west of Branding, a large Human town in the frontier of the Vasting.  Farwell is still inside the Kingdom of King John.  (Common/Southern Dialect 1/1).

Your father was a retired Soldier, his name was John the Lesser.  Your mother was a farmer, her name was Erin Riverwife.  Your brother Elba, is soldier in the army of King John, but you do not know where he is stationed or what group he is with.  (Barter 1).

Your mother’s brother, Einor, never was a follower.  He hunted and fought in the taverns most his life.  You and Einor were great friends.   (Hunting 1, Brawling 1).

Einor, your Uncle, taught you all of your weapon skills (Short Sword/Short Bow/Dagger)and most of your wildland skills, to sense the directions (direction Sense)and the general navigation (Land Navigation) across land and through forest.  He taught you to build fire (Fire Building) from nothing, to ride horses (Riding LB), to push yourself physically (Endurance), and how to find food and fresh water (Survival/Forest) in the wilderness, how to hunt and rock climb(Climbing), and how to fight with a blindfold on (Blindfighting).  He had loved an elf in his youth and the two of you spoke elven constantly, which he called the language of the wild(l.High Elven). 

You learned to cook from your mother, who could not read but loved you greatly (Cooking).

It was your father who taught you etiquette (Ettiuqette, R&W Common/Keshite, R&W Keshite, R&W Kordic) and to read and write the Keshite Tongue, the symbols of the Kords and how to speak their language.  You returned from a week with Einor to find your father and mother probably killed and carried off, and your home burned to the ground and Kords on the hunt.  A week later, you and your uncle found the band responsible and tortured and killed them, but they had already eaten your parents.  (Racial Antipathy – Kords).

You freed a small boy that your uncle nicknamed Dirt who is most likely mute from trauma.

The two of you had the stupid idea to hunt Kords in the plains and were beaten and captured almost immediately.  You watched them torture and kill your uncle over the week that they fed on him and carried you both as provisions for their war party.  You eventually convinced them not to eat you and were used as a manual slave in their camps over the 8 months you were a captive you were trusted more and more about the war party.

You watched many be killed and captured by them, some, people you had known.

You were tortured many ways, one of which was burning your feet.  You cannot feel the bottoms of your feet very well (Strong Feet).

The war band that owned you branded you on your back with the mark of the GodKing.  It means you are their property.  (Brand-Kord Slave-back).

The War band was wiped by a group of mounted soldiers of the Vistilry of Ingveroon, servants of Varmeylius.

They kept you in captivity though did not treat you harshly and eventually handed you off to a garrison of soldiers who took you back to Kias.

This was all weeks before the siege of the City.

In Kias you tried to make a place for yourself but city life is difficult, and while you can avoid trouble you just don’t fit in.

You have done some fighting in the pits, and occasionally get manual labor work at the docks.  (Pit Fighting, Laborer).

One day a man approached you and asked you to escort him and his nephew to the north on a boat.  He paid for your passage, and paid you for 6 months of service all in advance, and provided you with gear and weapons, all of which he had.  (up to 130gp for equipment purchases).

With your luck running out in the city, your debts increasing, and the walls of the city seemingly growing taller and closer and the siege dragging on and on, you felt going north might be the last best place for you to live life the way you loved, open and free.  This is best your life has been since running wild with your uncle.

IMMINENT:

·         You must decide if you will pay off your debts before leaving the city (-185gp).

·         You can claim one of the following things to have saved through all this chaos;

o   Your fathers Ring.

o   Your Uncles Two handed Sword – “Shaterack”.

o   Your Light War Horse, Calumel.

·         You must roll a fear check against Kords. 

·         You must choose between the following;

o   You have 500xp to start with and must save versus paralization around fires or lose a round to terror, until you conquer the fear (10 Points fear/fire).

o   1000xp to start with but un-healable injuries give you a -1 to AC permanently.

o   2000xp to start that you have earned through fighting and have 300gp to spend on Equipment, no debts, but your Intelligence is lower by 3 points.

o   You can choose to have kept “Dirt” as a boy companion.  He is 10 years old (Henchmen).  If you do, you will also gain an Unknown Nemeses from fighting in the Pits.

EQUIPMENT:

o   (190gp, 16sp, and 8cp) or (6sp).

o   Credit of 100gp towards equipment purchases.

OPTIONAL NWP PURCHASE PRIOR TO GAME:

o   Drinking

o   Animal Lore

o   Swimming

o   WP - Spear

o   Intimidation

o   Pain Management

 

This Player’s Solo Role playing began with his decision not to pay off his debts, no Henchmen, and chose more XP and the loss of intelligence points.  He did not take any of the optional additional NWP’s, and chose to retain his Light War Horse “Calumel”.

During his solo roleplaying he met the captain at the docks, got settled into his hammock on the boat, met a few other travelers, got pulled into a murder investigation after two weeks at sea, and woke to the ship on fire off the coast some days out from the harbor at Brighton, fought a Sahuagin, and was knocked unconscious by the falling mast, woke on the shore with the other survivors of the wreck (The Party), all of which he remembered from his time on the boat.

The next thing that happened was Game day 1, with the rest of the players on the beach, and each Player was given 1 Sure Hit Token, 1 Ex Machina Token, 1 Perl of Wisdom, and 1 Epic Save Token, and players find out that Beyord the Fighter, and Marina the elven thief are NPC's, and the game begins.