I Am An Orphan And Have No Friends

[Wombat]

No one gets to enter one of my games anymore without written background on their character. It doesn't need to be a 3-volume autobiography or anything, but I want to know about family, friends, pets, and quirky things (maybe a type of food you really like, a style of music that you think is cooler than any other, etc.).

If people put some thoughts into their characters before they start playing, the game becomes that much richer.

 

[ForceUser]

I was just thinking about this recently, and got to wondering, how many PCs have actual connections to family or friends within the world? It seems to me most PCs are completely disconnected from that area of life, and their only companions are the fellow party members. Perhaps this is because DMs have a tendency to screw players for putting in people they care about in their background.

I try to give me PCs some common bonds when they start because I find that it helps them connect to each other and the game world. Also, threats seem more immediate and relevant when it's possible that those you care about could be affected. Having connections helps players be more heroic.

 

[pogre]

I usually impose family on PCs, but it has usually been positive. In a long running campaign of mine the paladin had a brother high in the church. I often used him for adventure hooks.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

The way I see it, if they're alive, then they're liabilities - just waiting for the DM to use against me. So I off 'em. Personally. What, where did you think all those Starting GPs come from?

 

[TalonComics]

How many players actually have spouses in-game that aren't other PCs?
I think I only have two PCs out of six that don't have any living relatives and one of those PCs just started playing.

I think it comes down to game style. If you're playing in a game where the DM makes you "roll" up 3 characters "just in case" then there doesn't seem much of a reason to create a background much less NPC family members. I think that is why there are so many PC orphans out there as most games are hack and slash fests with little or no character background.

Of course I could be wrong! ;D

~D

 

[Larry Fitz]

Played in an FR campaign where all the PC's were Orphans, from the same orphanage. Essentially we were each other's family, solved a lot of problems of "why are such different people so important to each other?" Made for some great RP too... my character was a dwarf who was convinced that his parents were coming back for him, and would check back every now and then at the orphanage to see if they had yet...

 

[Tonguez]

I usually detail out a family. It's an interesting thing, if you've never done it before. Huge extended pre-industrial family, where you might be related to a third of the town you grew up in .

What do you mean pre-industrial - thats exactly what my life is NOW in this small town I call home (yep my daddy had 18 brothers and sisters and a whole lot of cousins)

Anyway IMC I always have the characters create families - and I give each of them a NPC 'Patron' figure (a parent/grandparent/mentor) whose level is determined using the Leadership Feat table (ie Level 1 + PC cha mod).

The Patron is often an important figure in the community and a source of information and goodies when required (ie the PCs need a +3 Sword - well uncle Boris the Blacksmith (Expert 3/Fighter 1) just happens to have one in his shed)

My favourite PC background involved a Rogue character in a 16th Century setting who had killed his stepfather and thus runaway to escape capture. A few years later he returned and unable to face his mother, he only had contact was with a younger sister who was now a woman being courted by various NPCs, one of whom was a Guard Captain with a warrant to arrest my character should he ever find him...

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

I have one character where the title of this thread so applies to her. She an half elf that was dropped on the door step of an orphanage while still a baby with nothing except for her name engraved in gold on a piece of parchment. She would later turn to adventure in the hope of finding her family and is often caught looking at her "name parchment" with a wondering look upon her features. Anyhow it was a great hook and slightly original or so I hoped… So far the DM has done nothing with it, nor would I expect him too as I added it just to explain why she adventures.

I my eyes it's the past not the future...

 

[Thresher]

I find it hard to make up a decent character background without at least detailing the nuclear family around them and a few close friends, its what gives them their outlook on life, reflects their personality and their essential upbringing. Though, when your the only one who bothers to make them up sometimes they just feel like youve attached a boat anchor to a characters ambitions and anyone the character cares about becomes "Mobile Targets" for marauding bad guys regardless of what you do to protect them.
Though rarely do they seem to be 'useful' for being anything but a sponge for finances and dont do anything but lie around mooching or know anyone interesting.

During the last 5 years I think Ive only made up one character thats a genuine orphan and it had some quite nasty psychological problems that made it a mean, bitter, paranoid little person that no one liked much but definatly was remebered for being a bugger. Not that people who are orphans are all like that! Just this one in particular I based off someone I knew
Then theres those games where a GM treats everyones character as some disposable plot device to drop in a meatgrinder and you sort of wonder why you bothered spending the last 2 weeks of your spare time piecing together something interesting only to have it completly ignored. Still, if they get mangled beyond recognition I dont bother to give them anything Im attached too after the next game, if I bother to play.
As a GM Im a real meanie for people who opt out for the 'easy option' of doing up a character background that is open in terms of family background. Sort of what would have happened if Uncle Ben didnt tell Luke about Leia...

 

[Agback]

I usually detail out a family. It's an interesting thing, if you've never done it before. Huge extended pre-industrial family, where you might be related to a third of the town you grew up in

Pre-industrial? I'm not that old!

In Ninth grade History we did an exercise in which each of us tried to construct as much as we could of a personal pedigree, showing out parent, and our grandparent, and their parents as far back as we could discover them. Then we compared them in class.

Three of us had parents who had moved into this valley already married. Of the rest, every one had at leas one first cousin in the class, and no two were any further apart than third cousins. And only two of the pairs of first cousins had been aware of their relationships: 67% of the class had had no idea of who their own parents' siblings children were. All of the hanky-panky that was going on among the class was incest under canon law. Astonishing.

Regards,


Agback