Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 9617828" data-attributes="member: 11">Well, part of the point of the Inchoate Empires is that it is completely open to allow for PCs to make whatever kind of backstory they want independent of knowing anything about the place where the adventures are taking place. So I look at it as broad enough to allow the engaged player to make a long detailed backstory or generic enough for them to write 1 sentence of backstory ("I am ex-solider deserter who no longer believes in the cause of the Whateveria Empire, so I fled east for a new life.")So while that backstory can be useful for shaping the version of the character who arrives in Makrinos, there is also no sense that its elements will appear in the game (though in the descriptions of classes, backgrounds, and peoples I provide some example ideas for how you might connect the now unreachable Empires with the events of Makrinos and the East).Does that make sense?For example, in my Ghosts of Saltmarsh+ game all the characters are from the Empires,1. the orc-born barbarian was a former child soldier whose people were exploited by a dictator general and mostly wiped out and looking for a new life and heard rumors of others of his kind in the east.2. the gnome bard was curious about the world beyond his secluded gnomish community, but found the empires too dangerous to him to sate his curiosity, so traveling East where gnomes are supposedly more open and involved made sense.3. The tiefling ranger was an urchin who fled her crime family and lived in the woods for years, before finally deciding to move to Makrinos where her family was unlikely to follow, but there was an old family friend from her childhood who she heard had fled the criminal life too - so she wanted to emulate him.4. the human druid was a former barrister and criminal who when things turned bad with the law, fled to swamp, joined a druidic circle, had a dramatic change in outlook and decided to find his estranged husband who had fled East when the guard came looking for them.As you can see from these examples, the stuff in their past shapes them and there is room for some connection in the adventures, but it is not the focus (the estranged husband turned out to be smuggler and turning a blind eye to working with slaves, and thus a nemesis for the party, the old family friend ended up being a reliable fence in the new land, the barbarian pursued rumors of an underground city of orc-born somewhere on the island, and meanwhile they undertook adventures.I do think you are right in suggesting that I should change the focus of how I am introducing Makrinos to be more of a "this is what you know or expect or wonder about " rather than, "Let me tell you have Senators are elected. . ."  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" /></blockquote>

Verification