Are your players risk takers?

[Glyfair]

I myself do it. When I'm playing with a DM whose skill and style are unknown to me, I'm a lot more likely to come up with a "friendless orphan" background for my PC than I am when I'm playing with a DM I know and trust not to abuse the information.

Which is why Mike's tables are a reasonable idea.

BTW, he has expanded on his idea in his latest blog entry

So, I've had several people ask for copies of the tables I mentioned in my last post. They are works in progress, to say the least. The version I used on Thursday worked like this:

1. Pick one of three general categories that fit your character's vocation. The three I had were physical (manual labor, soldiering, that kind of thing), fringe (crime, arcane study, things that exist on the edge of society), and social (talky jobs, like preaching, diplomacy, trade).

2. Each player rolled three times on the category's table, with a 50% chance of something bad happening. For instance, you might be kidnapped by slavers or involved in a major battle. Otherwise, you gained some benefit relating to your vocation.

3. When something weird happened, we'd figure out what it was as a group. I used an Everway fortune deck to help generate ideas.

The system worked fine, but I think 80% of the success came from making up stories behind the unfortunate incidents that befell each character. Some of the players also felt that it was lame that they could either get a weird event in their background or a benefit relating to a vocation. The either/or element was a little lame. Also, if you never had a Bad Thing happen to you, your background was sort of dull (I studied geometry for 5 years, now I'm a wizard!).

Here's how I think I might do it in a revision:

1. Pick a vocation, and then roll on a table to determine how your pursuit of that vocation went. So, the player just selects "blacksmith" or "diplomat" and that's done. The interesting thing is to see what sort of complications arose from that work. Did you develop a rival? Did emissaries from the dark lord keep trying to commission you (and only you) to build some weird gizmo?

2. Roll twice on the unfortunate events table, and construct a narrative that ties them together. The fortune deck really proved helpful here, as it pushed things in unexpected directions. It's also a great catalyst. If you can't find a fortune deck, try a Harrow deck from Paizo or a tarot deck.

3. Roll once on the starting events table to see what just happened to you. Again, do a drawing to flesh things out.

The key, IMO, lies in constructing tables that speak directly to the setting and the campaign's story arc. For instance, I used a table that listed the 20 key Greyhawk nations/territories that will could play a role in the Temple of Elemental Evil game, along with short descriptions of each. Not only did this table yield a starting point for each PC, but I also used it to spin characters off in random directions. For example, one PC was part of a mercenary unit in the Bandit Kingdoms that was destroyed in battle. We rolled on the table to see where he ended up next. We got Theocracy of the Pale, and his being an outsider in a xenophobic, hyper-religious culture directly influenced the rest of his story in an interesting way.

I also seeded the tables with stuff that made sense in Greyhawk. For instance, there were several results for raids, characters dragged into captivity, and so on, to reflect the ongoing war between evil (Iuz, the Great Kingdom) and good (Furyondy, Veluna, etc.) I didn't use the Scarlet Brotherhood or the nations near it because I don't have plans for them in ToEE, but if I had a game in that region I could modify the tables as appropriate.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Good analysis. If you see your PC as nothing more than your vehicle for exploring the adventure, then you're more likely to avoid background interests or relationships than you are if you see your PC as a character in the narrative (which I tend to do).

I thought it was the other way around: if you just see your character as just this thing which you play with then you don't mind when something bas happens to them and their associates, whereas a character as an avatar involves you in being them and you like what happens to them about as much as if it actually happened to you.

 

[Mallus]

My players, including ENWorlder's shilsen, Rolzup, and Atlatl Jones, are...

... sense-averse

... taste-averse

... and certainly morality-averse

... but risk-adverse? Never.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My old group had eight players. Of those I had three who had extensive backgrounds that provided interesting opportunities: The Sorceress who ran away from her wealthy family, the Paladin trying to please his disapproving father and the braggart Ranger whose tales got him in so far over his head he ran off rather than let his neighbors discover he was not the hero he claimed to be.

I had three players who provided no background whatsovever. One complained that their character was never tied into the plot and I explained that a background would help me do that. I never got one.

The last two players had carefully constructed backgrounds lacking anything that could be "used against them." One of these was my wife, whose first D&D experience was with a DM who thought he would quickly hook her into the game by making her character the central focus of the game, taking all kinds of liberties with her character background. The DM pretty much ruined her enjoyment of playing the character and she eventually put the character into a situation where she would be killed so she could roll up a new one.

 

[Jackelope King]

I thought it was the other way around: if you just see your character as just this thing which you play with then you don't mind when something bas happens to them and their associates, whereas a character as an avatar involves you in being them and you like what happens to them about as much as if it actually happened to you.

Not quite, but I might have been unclear. I was describing a point of view another poster (Philotomy Jurament) was actually good enough to explain to me some time ago.

A character-as-an-avatar viewpoint means that your character is "your guy", just like the thimble might be "your guy" in Monopoly. If something bad happens to the thimble in a game of Monopoly, it's really a bad thing happening to you. You don't say, "Aw, the thimble went to jail!" You'd instead say, "Aw, I went to jail!" While you might have less concern about the avatar itself (since it doesn't exist much beyond being a vehicle to take you into the adventure), bad things happening to your avatar are tantamount to you "losing". Sure, you might be a little less concerned about it if it'll only take you a few minutes to roll up a new character (as is true in some games where it's six ability scores in order, hit points, game on), you still tend to be unhappy at "losing" when bad things happen to your avatar.

A character-as-a-part-of-a-narrative view means that you view the character as further separated from you. Your character isn't just an avatar: he or she is a fictional character with unique traits, personality, and a whole life. And while there is more invested in these sorts of characters, that investment distinguishes between bad things happening to the character and bad things happening to the player. For example, if your favorite character in the original Star Wars was Luke Skywalker, you might not be happy when he gets his hand cut off or when Vader tells Luke that he's his father, but you're excited by the conflict and the way that the events unfold to help Luke as a character develop and travel along the hero's journey. Same with these sorts of characters: I wasn't happy when my poor character got the call from the BBEG to go all Vader on my character, but at the same time, it opened a lot of new doors for the character and explored my character's personality and nature more, which is why I wound up enjoying it so much.

 

[sckeener]

I tend to find women usually have backstories and very few men do.

I'm an exception (as a guy.) I write long detailed backstories filled with their family.

I draw on the backstory when justifying my adventuring.

My current 2nd level character is Innsmouth-ish type whose family comes from a town down the coast from Waterdeep. He is the third triplet of 3 triplets (i.e. 9 brothers&sisters) and he was raised to be inquisitive and curious. Picture the addam's family crossed with Luna Lovegood's family with a dash of Cthulhu (Dagon) and you have his backstory....I'm aiming him to be a CG alienist.

For higher level characters, I have pages of background with much more detail than the outline above.

(I tend not to write too much of a background for low level characters...after all...what are the chances they are going to die permanent? i.e....I don't know a party that is willing to shell out 5k gp at low levels to raise.)

 

[Lanefan]

We dropped the puck on my new campaign last night - during roll-up I told 'em not to bother with backstories and histories and so forth until they've survived the meatgrind... a few adventures. It just saves time and effort.

Later on, once some key characters emerge from the rubble, I'll start possibly using background and ancestry in plot hooks. Until then, there's still lots for them to do.

Lanefan