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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8015080" data-attributes="member: 18">I feel like family is just unnecessary in there. Between Culture and Background, you have all the same things covered. You're just unnecessarily pulling stuff out to make something else, and the name "family" isn't perfect, because an awful lot of D&D characters won't have been raised by any kind of conventional family, but rather by monks, or communally by lizardpeople, or on the mean streets without a home, or the like. I'm just not seeing how family is needed as well as Culture and Background.I do think inflexible Backgrounds which don't allow Skill choices are unhelpful (there are a few) and should be revised to always allow a bit of choice with at least one of the skills, but I don't think adding in a bit about family is going to help - instead by tying in a bunch of mechanical stuff to that, you're going to cause actually less diverse character stories, when one "family" option gives Perception and Athletics, and another gives History and "Merchant" or whatever.So I think a better solution to the same issue is to make sure Backgrounds are flexible, rather than this.Further, how would you even do "family" if it gives "contacts" and a home/town village? There a tens of thousands of towns across many different settings. It's not like you can list them, so they'll need to be made up each time. Why does it need to be such a major mechanical element? Does it actually help? Would it perhaps not merely be better to have a non-mechanical "upbringing" so the player considers it, and can choose how much weight to give it. You're giving it a huge amount of weight here. Especially considering many backgrounds likely include upbringing (acolyte, noble, etc.). Why would it not make vastly more sense for Background to give contacts, if you were going to detail them?</blockquote>

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