Need advice: creating PC's within the context of a unfamiliar setting.

[magnusmalkus]

I don't have players yet, and I don't know who they will be, but I'm on the verge of starting up a home-brew D&D campaign setting I've developed. But I have a dilemma:

How do you get your players to create characters within the context of the setting when it's a Home-Brew?

The players have Zero Knowledge about the world and it's conflicts or the factions on any side.

It's unrealistic to spell it all out at Session Zero; and few players have interest in reading a synopsis beyond a few paragraphs in length. (But it had better be packed full of hooks!) You can't expect players to absorb gallons of setting information at the start.

In the end, I want them to have backgrounds and personality and goals and motives that make sense within the context of the setting, but they simply do not have enough info at the start to be getting on with. Once a few game sessions passes and I've had time to give exposition to the setting (Showing, as opposed to simply Telling), THEN maybe they'd be better prepared to created something truly 'hooked in'.

What other advice could you give DM's and players putting together characters for a home-brew, going in with only a drop of knowledge at Session Zero?

The only answer I can imagine is to ask the perspective players to drop all character preconceptions before coming to the table. They'd have to draw up fairly generic PC's attached to the campaign with bare threads provided by the DM until the player finds something 'in-game' that interests them. But, is that very exciting? If I were a player, I'm not sure I'd like to be given my tie to the campaign world until I found something to hook onto on my own.

Is that my only option? As a DM bringing my pre-fabricated campaign, I realize I have a responsibility to be flexible, but I'd rather not have to flex the boundaries defined by my created work much. And in the end, aren't I permitted, as DM, to determine said boundaries?

For example: In the past, I've had players who wanted to bring in concepts like 'Witch Hunter' or 'miniature giant from a faraway land' or 'slime cultist worshiping an entity from the Xth Dimension'. Really far-out stuff that'd I'd have to stretch my setting and create whole new swaths of factions and opponents totally unrelated to my predominant theme. They all felt like square pegs hammered into square hole. I would like to avoid this, this time around.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For my part, I like to put together a basic “players guide” that sets the tone and default assumptions of the world. Not to mention any house rules or limitations. While sure, some surprises will be damaged, I think it helps to get the players invested in the world.

Now, if you want to preserve the big reveal of the homebrew setting, one possibility is to go with the Empire of the Petal Throne/Visitation Fantasy trope route and have all the PCs be outsiders to the world that ended up there accidentally.

 

[innerdude]

The #1 thing you can do for your players: HAVE A MAP.

Seriously. Give them something tangible that they can hold in their hand, that they can look at and go, "Hmmm, cities. Mountains. Places to go."

For my last homebrew campaign, having an actual map printed out made more of a difference than ANYTHING else I could have done.

It's not the greatest bit of digital mapping or anything, but it was perfect for getting the players into thinking about the setting.

 

[Celebrim]

The only answer I can imagine is to ask the perspective players to drop all character preconceptions before coming to the table. They'd have to draw up fairly generic PC's attached to the campaign with bare threads provided by the DM until the player finds something 'in-game' that interests them. But, is that very exciting? If I were a player, I'm not sure I'd like to be given my tie to the campaign world until I found something to hook onto on my own.

I'd go the opposite route. Talk to them about the idea behind their character, "I wanna be a pirate!", "I'm a barbarian!", "I want to worship the Sun god.", or whatever idea that they have. Then individually fill them in with enough details to get started with that sort of character.

"Ok, so there are three major sea faring nations, and they're in an informal naval war with each other for control of trade routes. So basically it's open piracy season all the time, and pirates operate as privateers under the auspices of one of those three nations..."

"Ok, so do you want to be northern barbarian - think Norse - or more of a southern barbarian - think Mauri?..."

"Alright, so the sun deity is actually a goddess named Showna, and her cult is primarily in this area rural..."

They still won't understand the context very well at first, but at least they'll have some idea who they are.

 

[steenan]

I ran a few campaigns in homebrew settings.

Instead of giving players a lot of setting description before the campaign (not everybody reads it and even those who do forget 90%), I ran a few one-shots first. Each of them introduced players to some aspects of the campaign world and after 3 or 4 such sessions we were ready to start a campaign.

Typically, the first one-shot (or two) is run with pre-made characters, so that the players learn some of the setting from their own character sheets. Each od the adventures uses different characters, different locations and focus on different topics within the themes of the setting.

Foe example, when I ran a Rising of the Storm campaign we had one military adventure for imperial officers, one urban adventure for a group of thieves and one urban adventure where the main conflict was tied to myths.

 

[Mad_Jack]

As the above posters have mentioned, hand them a map and a page or two of brief descriptions of the major geography and societies, and then work with them to help place their character concept within your world. You don't need to give them a college degree in your world's history and culture, just enough bare-bones info to establish the general feel of the world and their place in it. (I.e., they don't need to know the name of the King, just that there is one.)

All you really need is:

- a list of all the character classes with a few suggestions for where each of them might be found or factions they might belong to
- a list of the campaign's gods and their domains
- a campaign map
- a list of the major geographical areas, nations, larger factions and a couple major points of interest, with a few sentences or a short paragraph about each

You could do that in a six-page hand-out. The players don't even need to read it all.
If they already have an idea for a character, they can just go to the relevant section, scan a few paragraphs and have enough campaign information to start asking relevant, more in-depth questions for clarification.

As Celebrim mentioned, it should take about five minutes per player to go around and say, "Okay, you want to play X race or class... They're usually found here, here and here.", "These two nations have large standing armies, so a mercenary ex-soldier might come from one of them.", or "Elves who live amongst humans generally congregate in the capitol city due to it's high culture and the universities, while dwarves are more commonly found in the trade city of Hull, which sits on the main road between the capitol city and their kingdom there to the north"...
If a character's concept doesn't quite fit with what you have planned, just ask them to explain why/how the character's origins are different, within the context of your world. If they started from X, how did they get to Y? If they didn't start from X, what circumstances in their life or the lives of their parents brought them from X to wherever they did start from? Given a place to start from, it's pretty much child's play to come up with a plausible adjustment - if it even requires one.
A character's place of origin doesn't necessarily need to be tied into their character class - a character who's spent their entire life on the trade roads isn't particularly from anywhere, a rogue could be trained by a thieves guild or be a military scout, and you can learn the same spells from a hedge wizard as you would from an academy-trained mage...
Clerics or paladins might be devoted to a minor god or goddess who's a servant of one of the major deities. Small tribes of barbarians (which could describe any culture from stone-age cavemen up to Medieval Scots or Mongols) could live anywhere outside major population centers. Druids don't necessarily need trees - they can be found on the plains, in the mountains, on the seas or even be an urban druid living in the major cities (sometimes the alligators in the sewers are people, or vice versa).
An elf or dwarf was raised in a human city because their ancestors were winemakers or brewers who did business in the city and seven generations of the family have lived there. Or perhaps they were orphaned when their parents passed through. If there's any form of widespread international commerce or even slavery practiced somewhere in the campaign world, it could well explain how a character or their ancestors got to someplace where they're not usually found.
And if you can't just slot a character into the world as it exists, unless you've worked out every single last detail of that world down to an obsessive level there's almost always room to add in what the character needs to exist in the world or at least something similar enough to work.

In short, unless your campaign world is something truly bizarre, it shouldn't take much effort or time to give the players enough general information about the geography and cultures of the world to give them a decent feel for the general parameters of the world and allow them to find a plausible place for their characters in it.

 

[darkrose50]

[1a] Have them summoned from alternate realities and/or different planets.
[1b] I am playing in a 3.5 D&D Ravenloft game currently with an old west mad scientist (from the Shadows of Brimstone setting, similar to Deadlands). It is fun to wield a colt revolver in D&D (took a firearms feat).
[1c] In another 3.5 D&D game the party was summoned from alternate dimensions and/or different planets in order to complete a quest. I was extremely tempted to play a Fraggle Bard, from Fraggle Rock.

[2a] Have them begin the game with amnesia (leaving class abilities and professional skills intact).
[2b] SyFi has a rather cool show called Dark Matter that did this. It screams RPG.
[2c] Play a few sessions and then have each player come up with a background fact about each other’s player’s backgrounds.
[2d] Introduce their backgrounds slowly.

-The groom of an angry bride and/or family “stood-up” on her wedding day. The father? The local thieves guild grandmaster. The bride-to-be? Well she is cursed by a witch to kill her first husband in her sleep. The curse seems happy enough to consider a fiance as close enough to husband to kick in. Have her be some crazy stealthy sleeping ninja that shadow-walks to wherever he is, and tries to murder him at night. The father has a second husband lined up.
-The weapon-smith and/or wizard that was commissioned to deliver the duke a masterpiece and/or enchanted sword (the PC could be an apprentice or an enchanter that will slowly remember how to enchant as they gain levels). The duke thinks that there is thievery involved. The sword? It can talk telepathically, is +1 (or grants advantage against goblins, or something), can dance giving a +1 AC (perhaps later also attack by itself), has a fly speed of whatever is needed to stay within the same square as its wielder, cannot go further than a square away, is madly in love with its creator, and is up to some shenanigans.
-A visiting princess, wearing an enchanted ring that changes her appearance. Everyone is frantically looking for her in order to prevent an international incident. The ring gives off a pleasant sensation (it is also a ring of sustenance . . . so she sleeps like 2-hours a night, and does not need to eat), and the wearer feels that there may be consequences for taking the ring off (she would then be hungry and would then need to sleep ~8-hours a night).
-A man who volunteered to be the village’s sacrifice to a nearby monster, so that the monster would leave his village alone. He thought that he was terminally ill, but his "best-friend" wants to marry his girlfriend/wife, has been poisoning him, and conning him into thinking that he is terminally ill.
-A werewolf (house-rule something up, the standard werewolf’s are too powerful and creepy evil) that has been searching for her pup-napped newborn. The circus kidnapped them for their freak show. Or perhaps one of those cat folks with a choker that makes her look human (or she has a soul that is part cat-folk and part human, and can look like either with some innate effort).
-The paladin/cleric? Well he is actually a sentient holy avenger, is on holiday, and was temporally given a human body by the god he serves as payment for deeds well done. For some reason he finds that weapon-smith/wizard's sentient sword to be attractive. The paladin order and/or clerics are looking for this missing artifact, and need it to combat a great evil. Divination spells keep leading them to the party, but they cannot seem to find the holy avenger. You could use this group of Paladins and clerics to help the party beat a powerful foe (let the PCs be the heroes).

 

[Blue]

I don't have players yet, and I don't know who they will be, but I'm on the verge of starting up a home-brew D&D campaign setting I've developed. But I have a dilemma:

How do you get your players to create characters within the context of the setting when it's a Home-Brew?

Every time I've joined a homebrew there's been an information packet. Heck, even when I join an established setting like Ebrron there's a packet about the immediate who and what to tie into. I like to conbnect my characters into the world and I love when my players do it.

When I run I usually start my homebrew setting with broad strokes and my players flesh it out. This started somewhat accidentally with one player being from a race of savage humans and wanting to detail their culture and myths within the outline and pantheon I already had, and it caught on and more players did it. Since that campaign each new one has been progressively more of the setting is player authored.

Now I intentionally do it, where I have general ideas (packed with hooks) to give them, and then the world fits around the PCs, not the PCs around the world. They can make up organizations, detail more about a religion, talk about a city, write history, set racial stereotypes, whatever.

"So there's an order of knights, and they are highly human-centric, and you are the only dwarf to have ever won your spurs from them? Great! Tell me more."

"What, the elves were involved in a plot to remove the human king several generations back because they were growing too fast and encroaching on their land? Cool. How were they planning on doing it?"

(From these I can probably figure that maybe the order of knights was created as a response to the elves. And that there are still elves alive who participated in the plot. And that elven-human relations in that kingdom are strained, wonder how that ends up with the commoners, ...)

I have my broad strokes laid out to guide them, but then it's not just buy-in but pride of ownership from the players.

I tend to find RPG players have great imaginations, and once I was willing to loosen my hold on the reins of the setting and let others in I've been continually amazed by things I never would have thought of but fit perfectly.

 

[darkrose50]

Start them in one village. They only know about the the local village. Fill in details as needed by the selection of classes. Wizard? Wizard tower with a crazy old wizard attempting to brew the perfect purple healing potion. Cleric? Historically important cathedral that people never really visit, since they moved the capital a few hundred years ago, headed up by a retired cleric with the ability to select a number of the next generations clerics with a kiss to the forehead. Bard? A traveling bard who fell in love with the innkeep, and teaches those who want teaching. Warrior? Trained with the local gentry boys as a sparing partner.

"You are all from the simple and remote village of Hareilth. It is mystically shrowded, and is the home of a small wizards collective. The lot of you grew up in the village, and know little about the outside world beyond what the books in the library contain. You and your party were chosen to go into the world and collect books, paper, and rare inks."

The wizards are in charge of keeping a wildly dangerous secret, something needed, but if abused could be cataclysmic.

The money they were given? 2,000-year-old golden pentagonal coins from a long gone dragon empire that was overthrown in a violent revolt. The coins are highly valued to collectors (odd since the PC's were allowed to play with stacks of them as children . . . many cube shaped ones thick as toy blocks). The coins all bear the stamp of a rare mint, and treasure hunters have been seeking this mint for thousands of years. A find of this proportion would destabilize race relations, cause war between nearby nations, and will attract dragons. A dragon family that needs piles of gold in order to afford to live on the dragon floating island paradise will come looking for clues.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How do you get your players to create characters within the context of the setting when it's a Home-Brew?

While there's nothing wrong with darkrose50's suggestion:

Have them summoned from alternate realities and/or different planets.

Having them create PCs "within the context of the setting" requires they have knowledge of the setting. I always have some kind of information packet- printed or electronic- to guide them. And if they ask, I communicate with the players about other things they need to fill in the gaps- extant secret societies, notable vendettas, etc.

But even then, there are no guarantees that a given player will even pay attention to that info. I ran 2 campaigns in the same setting: superheroes in a Wellsian/Vernian 1890s, borrowing heavily from Space:1889, Wild, Wild West, and similar sources.

One group bought into it 100%. The other group...some did, some had no freaking clue as to the setting.