D&D 5E Official complete background list!

[The Hitcher]

Farmer isn't your Background. What caused you to your trade your plowshare for a sword? That is your Background.

I think you're onto it, although it seems to be a combination of both.

The biggest duds on the list, for me, are the two newest additions: Sailor and Guild Artisan. I appreciate Guild Artisan quite a bit more than I would Merchant, because it at least makes explicit a connection to an organization that could have reason to send you on adventures, but it doesn't really imply any inciting incident beyond "it's your job." Sailor is too broad, too dull. It's Peasent, but of the sea.

Running away to sea seems like the prototypical adventuring catalyst to me. It certainly was historically in the real world. "Fisherman" would be a peasant of the sea, but Sailor has enough romance to it without becoming too specific (or implying that the character is already an accomplished fighter, as Privateer and Corsair do for me).

So how is becoming a Hermit the same as becoming an adventurer? Unless you're doing solo adventures!

Discovering some crazy secret through his isolation is the catalyst for the Hermit. He then needs help to deal with it.

IMO Background is your background (the key is in the name), what you did before you came an adventurer and there need to be more

Blergh. There should only be more if they're interesting as adventure catalysts and mechanically different to what's already there. I ask again: how is Peasant different (mechanically) from Folk Hero?

 

[mach1.9pants]

I want to play a peasant that is out to get rich quick not 'stand up against tyranny', the entire defining event and rustic hospitality is rubbish for the majority of peasant background PCs in my games that I have seen. Sure some want to be the folk hero, mostly paladins, but everyone else just wants the money.

TBH I think we just have a disconnect on what a PC is. In the majority of my games they are just people out to do their best or get rich. They are not knowers of some great secret or a fabled hero in waiting. They don't have One Unique Thing. They get on out there to take the loot and get a better life. Sometimes this involves saving the world, often not. I do play games that Folk Hero and Hermit who like all the other Hermits have discovered they have to save the world. But not the majority. ANd we should have backgrounds that cover the more mundane stuff IMO.

 

[Li Shenron]

Looks like there is hope for Merchant. From twitter:

I am not particularly confident in this case, about Mearls remembering it right...

I just see no current background in the list where Merchant would fit solidly.

TBH I think we just have a disconnect on what a PC is.

Indeed there's more than one (or two) ways of conceiving the whole adventuring thing in a RPG. I hope that WotC designers are very aware of differences, since they've always said they want 5e to be inclusive!

E.g. I've played in D&D games where an adventurer is just an adventurer. You are an adventurer, or you're not, but if you are then you are 100% of the times. I think of it as same as in a MMORPG like WoW, adventuring is everything you do all the time.

But I've also played in even more D&D games where each adventurer is a member of society who now and then goes adventuring. You're a noble, a soldier, a merchant or a peasant most of the time, except when there is trouble or opportunity for something out of the ordinary.

That's why I keep insisting that backgrounds can support both views. And in the past 2 years Mearls has often said they do: that a background can be seen either as what you were before you became an adventurer, or what you are between your adventures.

 

[Nebulous]

I like the list too but think it is also too short. but that said i'm sure it will expanded on somewhere.

 

[Jester David]

The need to make each background fit into a single page likely hurt the number a lot, so we have the shrt little list missing commoner, merchant, clerk, politician, labourer, and the like.

Normally I wouldn't worry as I could just say "we'll have more backgrounds than we can handle after the first splatbook" but that might not be the case this edition, and likely won't be for some time. And it looks like we might be lacking the magazines for added content as well, since there's no space for them on the new website...