Character Hook Ideas?

[Hawke]

In the latest Save my game article he mentions allowing players to pick from roughly 7 "character hooks" at the start of a campaign. This idea seemed great as I'm starting up a campaign with several people new to roleplaying so they might need some guidence.

He gave two example ones, but I'd love to see lots more! Anybody got any cool suggestions? It also might help me flesh out my campaign world.

 

[dragon_eater]

If you are looking for more of Stephen Radney-MacFarland's character hooks you can find the rest of them on his campaign blog.

http://community.livejournal.com/srmcampaign/471.html

 

[Hawke]

Thanks!

Bummer - getting a 500 error as of now.

Anybody else use this format? Pros? Cons?

 

[Adso]

Anybody else use this format? Pros? Cons?

Well, I can tell you a small con I had this past weekend. My player with the Hexed background didn't show up (and I didn't he wasn't showing up until 5 minutes prior to the session). As it happened, it was the first session that the voice popped up.

While I rolled with it, and the story moved forward, but it was mildly frustrating.

As another potential con, I am going to channel one of the other players in the game (or at least my take on some of that player's points). The hexed background was created in response to some of the more out-of-control behaviors of one of my players (see DMG 32). It does this by focusing that behavior rather than punishing it. One of my players sees it as supporting that behavior. There is a fine line there, and I'm straddling it, I'll admit.

On the plus side, the backgrounds and the motivations have started some fantastic in game (and out of game) conversation on the play group’s message board. I have a good time reading those conversations and letting them inform my adventure design. Everyone has a background, everyone has a goal, and everyone has a stronger place in the overall campaign story, and I'm really enjoying that.

 

[Hawke]

Cool, thanks for the extra info.

 

[Rechan]

I noticed that the piece talks about creating character hooks that tie into your campaign's themes.

Problem is, what happens when you don't know your campaign themes before your players roll up their characters?

The way I've been starting campaigns is getting everyone together and asking them to decide what kind of game they want to play (city campagin, pirates, etc etc). And then ask them to make their characters together, with and try to tie their background to another PC in some fashion, so everyone has a reason to adventure together.

Given the variable campaigns I could be running, having hooks ahead of time that tie to themes I haven't chosen yet would be a real bugger.

 

[Adso]

I noticed that the piece talks about creating character hooks that tie into your campaign's themes.

Problem is, what happens when you don't know your campaign themes before your players roll up their characters?

The way I've been starting campaigns is getting everyone together and asking them to decide what kind of game they want to play (city campagin, pirates, etc etc). And then ask them to make their characters together, with and try to tie their background to another PC in some fashion, so everyone has a reason to adventure together.

Given the variable campaigns I could be running, having hooks ahead of time that tie to themes I haven't chosen yet would be a real bugger.

That's just about timing and how lose you want your themes to be. I knew what I wanted to run. I know the major events that will occur in Eilthir (sans PC meddling...and I want plenty of room for PC meddling) but even then I made all of my backgrounds brief and loose. I wanted plenty of wiggle room.

If I didn’t know the overarching campaign themes when folks started to write up characters, I think I could easily come up with 20 or so very loose ones, tweak them slightly as I see how the PCs shape up and the tone of the campaign the PCs want to play, and still have time to hand them out.

The goal of the backgrounds is not to serve as a straight jacket, but as a hook. It sounds like you are entirely reacting to you players, which is a hook in itself, and may just serve the same purposes as the background.