I dunno why this thread has turned into "coach OP on how to play D&D properly," but if that's what we're doing, I'll throw my two cents in: Basing your character's decisions on their history is a magic trick. You can just as easily make the decisions first and invent the history after. Do with this knowledge what you will.
And here's one tough thing I've learned playing D&D: no one cares about your backstory.
This is... not true. In an RP heavy campaign, teasing little glimpses into your backstory is not only welcome, it's expected.
How about this addendum, no one cares about your backstory except what comes up at the table.
There's very little difference for the other players between someone who has comprehensively mapped out every day of their character's past and someone who can make up a particular event on the spot. Once you've played the character enough, those events weave together into a story, as long as you remember them all.
There are two ways it can come up at the table: you can bring it up, or the DM can connect events to it. If you want the latter to happen, you need to come up with it ahead of time, at least before the session.
Or the DM can do the same thing you're doing.
Or the DM can just give you a character sheet and tell you what character to play, but most people like to have some input. For my game, coming up with backstory is a collaborative process between player and DM. I ask the player to give a general idea of what they want their backstory to be, and then I propose ways it could be integrated into the backstory of my world. They have the final say.
Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
Nah, you're doing fine. Be the main character in your own mind, if you want to. As long as when you're at the table you don't dominate the game or try to, it's not an issue.
Don't insist on following your own personal storyline over the main party goal
Make sure your character wants to follow the main party goal more than their own personal story goals (see my post above about character motivation)
Allow everyone equal opportunity to participate at the table
Ensure your character values and works well with other party members - that way collaboration is inevitable
Letting the DM in on your backstory will usually prevent you from hogging the spotlight. The DM will decide when it's time for your story to get center stage. They will present a plot hook that you recognize as connected to your story. Ideally it will also advance the group's goals at the same time. When you see that opportunity, obviously you fill the rest of the party in on how you're connected to this NPC, location, or item you've run across.
It's the DM's responsibility to ensure each character's backstory gets a balanced amount of screen time.
Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
Then write a story about someone else. Maybe about the person who inspired your character to become a hero, or about the parents who raised your character to be virtuous and selfless, or about the villain who caused your character to go on the run if you want to go that route. Write about the spirit that guides your fledgling adventurer, or the infant sibling whose upbringing your character is trying to fund doing dirty work. Write about the baron’s son who has everything your character wants, or about the kid your character grew up with who settled into a life of drudgery that is to be avoided at all cost. Write the story about someone else, and restrict the actual backstory to how that other person affected your character’s choice to become an adventurer and some essential info about what kind of adventuring qualities your PC has.
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Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
Nah, you're doing fine. Be the main character in your own mind, if you want to. As long as when you're at the table you don't dominate the game or try to, it's not an issue.
Don't insist on following your own personal storyline over the main party goal
Make sure your character wants to follow the main party goal more than their own personal story goals (see my post above about character motivation)
Allow everyone equal opportunity to participate at the table
Ensure your character values and works well with other party members - that way collaboration is inevitable
Letting the DM in on your backstory will usually prevent you from hogging the spotlight. The DM will decide when it's time for your story to get center stage. They will present a plot hook that you recognize as connected to your story. Ideally it will also advance the group's goals at the same time. When you see that opportunity, obviously you fill the rest of the party in on how you're connected to this NPC, location, or item you've run across.
It's the DM's responsibility to ensure each character's backstory gets a balanced amount of screen time.
I completely agree, although I have DM'd games where PCs have done what I've suggested, and I've also DM'd a game where the players didn't.
One example of players doing it well: in my current campaign, a character's backstory started around a cursed book. They are now level 8, have just discovered the book is evil, and swayed the party to go to a location for more info around it. That's totally fine - I had seeded the threads throughout the story, it has been a real slow burn, and the location they've gone to is also a major story point for everyone (even if it's a bit special for the character).
An example of players doing it so badly I ended the campaign:
One character longed to find a home because of their backstory. They would do nothing except try to find a home, taking no interest in the lich that they had accidentally freed who was now taking over the world. There was no room for any other character in their goal to find a home.
One character wanted to resurrect a group of children who had died. They decided that this made them a pacifist when they reached level 7. They refused to participate in combats thereafter.
Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
Nah, you're doing fine. Be the main character in your own mind, if you want to. As long as when you're at the table you don't dominate the game or try to, it's not an issue.
Don't insist on following your own personal storyline over the main party goal
Make sure your character wants to follow the main party goal more than their own personal story goals (see my post above about character motivation)
Allow everyone equal opportunity to participate at the table
Ensure your character values and works well with other party members - that way collaboration is inevitable
Letting the DM in on your backstory will usually prevent you from hogging the spotlight. The DM will decide when it's time for your story to get center stage. They will present a plot hook that you recognize as connected to your story. Ideally it will also advance the group's goals at the same time. When you see that opportunity, obviously you fill the rest of the party in on how you're connected to this NPC, location, or item you've run across.
It's the DM's responsibility to ensure each character's backstory gets a balanced amount of screen time.
I completely agree, although I have DM'd games where PCs have done what I've suggested, and I've also DM'd a game where the players didn't.
One example of players doing it well: in my current campaign, a character's backstory started around a cursed book. They are now level 8, have just discovered the book is evil, and swayed the party to go to a location for more info around it. That's totally fine - I had seeded the threads throughout the story, it has been a real slow burn, and the location they've gone to is also a major story point for everyone (even if it's a bit special for the character).
An example of players doing it so badly I ended the campaign:
One character longed to find a home because of their backstory. They would do nothing except try to find a home, taking no interest in the lich that they had accidentally freed who was now taking over the world. There was no room for any other character in their goal to find a home.
One character wanted to resurrect a group of children who had died. They decided that this made them a pacifist when they reached level 7. They refused to participate in combats thereafter.
The "It's what my character would do," fallacy applies to backstory as well as chaotic stupid alignment. As some people have alluded, you have to have a backstory that will incline you to be an adventurer, and you also have to have a backstory that will incline you to be a member of an adventuring party. Whether your personal goals depend on the group goal (it's easy to work a "protect my family" backstory into a "save the world from utter destruction" story), or you see the party as helping you with your goals as a quid pro quo for helping them with theirs, you need to have a reason to participate in adventures not directly related to your goal.
I think it's fine if your character wants to exit the story once your personal goal is achieved. If you've found your home, or you've decided to become a pacifist, that's fine. Your character retires from adventuring and you make a new character or leave the campaign. You should probably discuss this possibility with at least the DM if not the entire group in session 0, in case they were planning to run a campaign with the same group of characters from beginning to end.
I have been thinking more about the character concept that I made for my character, Sifa Celestine. After considering what you all had to say about my original character concept, I have decided that I need to change it. I aged the character up to the point where she’s middle aged. I then made her a single mother who has two adult children who have already left home to start lives and families of their own. Then I said that because she never married, and, with her children gone, she starts to feel bored and lonely and begins to spend more and more time in her garden looking after her plants.
Eventually she started talking to them and to her surprise they talked back.
What surprised her the most though was that she could actually understand them and have a conversation with them.
That backstory seems to stupid and boring though. There is no real excitement in it, no drama or trauma or anything like that and it’s not very long either. It’s basically the backstory of a lonely middle aged woman who discovers she can talk to plants and then goes on an adventure for some reason. I had this idea that she goes on an adventure to learn more about the powers she’s discovering she has, but that just seems like a stupid and boring idea.
Why do you think it's a stupid and boring idea? What makes you feel that characters, especially female characters, have to be young, beautiful, sexualized and traumatized victims to be fun? Like many others have pointed out, this is actually a really cool idea. Personally I get some nice Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax vibes.
I’ve been trying to make a character and a backstory that’s normal and not a total cringe fest like the last one but I’m really struggling because I feel like it’s either stupid or boring and when I try to make it exciting and full of lore and stuff, it feels like I’ve wrote the backstory of an edgelord.
You don't have to be "normal" to not be a cringy edgelord. As has been mentioned, there were things in the previous background that was quite good.
How do you make boring backstories like this cool and interesting, without being cringe or turning your character into an edgelord?
The soccer mon character was already cool and interesting. Perhaps just give her a reason for why she wants to go on an adventure. It might just be that she always wanted to see the world and fight evil but she had children and she decided to raise them instead of going on an adventure. Now that the kids are grown and take care of themselves she's free to finally live out her dream. What's her background?
The other question you probably should ask yourself is why you feel the need to have (borderline) underage female character who are "extremely beautiful" victimized and traumatized to be "cool and interesting".
Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
That's the thing. D&D doesn't have "their own story". You share that story with the other players, including the GM. Saying that there should be "your own story" in the shared story doesn't really work. Sure, there can be parts of it where your character is the focus of it but it can never be "their" story. Compare it to an Avengers movie. Sure, Peter Parker can show up and steal the scene for a short while, Natasha and Clint can have their thing going on for a bit but all in all it's still an "Avengers" movie. If you all of the sudden stopped the main plot so that Tony could go away and fight a completely different villain for 45 minutes you probably get a much crappier movie. Especially for the peopl ewho want to see Steve Rogers or Wanda Maximoff.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
That might help. But I think something that will help you more is that a level 1 character is supposed to be at the start of the hero's journey, not halfway through it. That doesn't mean that the character can't have experienced anything before becoming a level 1 [whatever class] PC but it should be the things covered by your background. Which actually does give you quite a bit of room to maneuver but it (purposefully) limits you in scope.
Something I've noticed about your many character backstories is that they're all very highly detailed, highly specific, high concept backstories. You always go into the little minutiae about everything and try to make your character interesting before the game begins.
You wanna know my number one tip for making an solid character backstory that doesn't frontload everything but gives a plausible starting point? Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Roll on the tables and build a skeleton of your character, then stop. Let the rest get filled in as you play so that your character grows into the game and the party.
A lot of your characters suffer from 'Single Player Syndrome'; like you're trying to be the most important person in the party or like you're protagonist of a single player RPG video game. When it comes to character backstories as a DM I find breadth of information is more useful than depth. I don't need to know how many years a PC spent suffering in the Pit of Longing, thrown there by her evil cultist stepmother. What I need to know is she was a prisoner of a cult, escaped, travelled around, now seeks revenge. Short, punchy, covers a lot of ground in few words.
I think part of this problem is that I am first and foremost, a storyteller and so I am driven to write these stories. It’s not that I want my characters to be the main character in every situation, but I find it hard to write stories for characters without writing them as “the hero”.
Though I do try hard to only make the the hero of their own story.
That's the thing. D&D doesn't have "their own story". You share that story with the other players, including the GM. Saying that there should be "your own story" in the shared story doesn't really work. Sure, there can be parts of it where your character is the focus of it but it can never be "their" story. Compare it to an Avengers movie. Sure, Peter Parker can show up and steal the scene for a short while, Natasha and Clint can have their thing going on for a bit but all in all it's still an "Avengers" movie. If you all of the sudden stopped the main plot so that Tony could go away and fight a completely different villain for 45 minutes you probably get a much crappier movie. Especially for the peopl ewho want to see Steve Rogers or Wanda Maximoff.
Several of those people literally have their own story: a separate movie or show.
I don’t know. I think that maybe this is something that I need to overcome in order to grow as a player.
That might help. But I think something that will help you more is that a level 1 character is supposed to be at the start of the hero's journey, not halfway through it. That doesn't mean that the character can't have experienced anything before becoming a level 1 [whatever class] PC but it should be the things covered by your background. Which actually does give you quite a bit of room to maneuver but it (purposefully) limits you in scope.
Campaigns don't always start at level 1. Taking the Avengers example again, several of them had already had their own movie before the first Avengers movie. If you are starting at level one, I guess you should have a level 1 appropriate backstory. That doesn't mean you can't have pages of backstory if you want. Whole novels have been written about people who would be D&D Commoners.
There's just no plausible way for someone who has been a stay at home mother to decide to live an adventuring life without something bigger having happened in her past. She has no motivation to go on these awful missions.
I call BS on that one. There could be countless reason why someone witha comfy life would want to change that up. Both Bilbo and Frodo were pretty much stay at home couch potatoes way into their 50s before going on their adventures. Beth from Rick & Morty didn't start "adventuring" until both her kids were teenagers. Granny Weatherwax is ancient and she still goes on adventures. Lady Sybil Ramkin lived comfortably
I agree that there isn't a motivation for this particular character, since the OP hasn't given us one. But that doesn't mean that there's "no plausible way" that this character would go on an adventure. Maybe they're just bored now that the kids or gone and they read a bunch of romance novel and wants a bit of fun?
There is no problem with the character's backstory in terms of creating a history, but there is a problem with the character you've described.
To be an adventurer means that you'll do the most dangerous and undesirable work imaginable.
You will have acid spat in your face
You will be swallowed by a giant froghemoth and partially digested in its gut
You will venture into the arctic, or the mouth of a volcano, or mosquito infested swamps, and crypts full of spirits and ghouls
You will be roasted by dragon fire, then resuscitated, then burned alive again
You will be shot full of arrows and stabbed by many swords
You will fall into pit traps onto spikes, be shot with concealed crossbows
You will be betrayed, ambushed, chased out of town
You will speak with fiends and the undead
You will contract rare and fatal diseases
You have to enjoy killing things: if you don't take pride or otherwise enjoy it, this would be a crazy life to choose
You "might" do some or all of these things but there's nothing that says that you "will". Spider-man went to the prom, for example. No Acid or diseases there. And even if you do encounter some or all of these events, that's not the reason you do it. Especially not the last one. You might kill only because you need to. Bilbo for example only killed a bunch of giant spiders. Pippin killed a troll, possibly a few orcs and a few of Saruman's lackeys in the Shire but you don't have to kill people and you don't have enjoy it. You could probably have quite a lot of roleplaying fun with playing a character that avoids killing (there's at least two subclasses dedicated to actively not killing, btw).
Being an adventurer is one of the worst jobs that anyone could possibly imagine.
Or the most rewarding, depending on what the adventure is.
So why be an adventurer? This is the problem that Celestine currently has. There's just no plausible way for someone who has been a stay at home mother to decide to live an adventuring life without something bigger having happened in her past. She has no motivation to go on these awful missions.
Most characters need to meet one of the following requirements:
They need money, either because they love being rich or because there's something they need to buy, or they have an emotional connection to wealth
They are driven beyond reason to do good for the world/innocent people
They crave power/magic and this is a means to get to it
These are some good motivations, but absolutely not the only ones.
There are few motivations that work for a DM that don't fit one of those at a basic level. The DM needs to be able to offer the whole group of characters an easy hook to get them motivated to adventure. When you come to the recently burned village, the headwoman offers you 500gp to bring back the kidnapped children. Either you want to risk your life for the money, for the greater good, or because you think it will advance your life in some other way. Your character needs motivation in this way.
Question to ask yourself:
Why is adventuring preferrable to starting a herb allotment and using her powers there?
Why does she feel a need to pursue this?
My twist on the character would be to put her on the run: she tried a nice peaceful business, and the local crime syndicate extorted her for protection money. When she fought back against them, she ended up killing one of the enemies, who was the youngest son of the crime boss. She was forced to abscond during the night. But you know what? She found that she enjoyed the thrill of killing someone.
Again this is one possible motivation for this character bit it definitely isn't the only "plausible" one.
I think I read someone’s comment asking what class I was going to make the character, unfortunately I can’t see who said it now to mention them, but I wanted to answer their question.
I was planning on making her a Variant Human, Fey Touched, Druid of the Circle of Dreams. She would be more of a support character than a front line fighter. I choose the Circle of Dreams because I really liked how it was heavily inspired by the Fey and I really liked the idea of her being, Fey Touched.
i.e. at some point one of her distant ancestors was Fey. Maybe one of her distant ancestors was a Dryad or something, but so far back in her bloodline that it’s been forgotten. So unbeknownst to her, she carries some Fey blood that is beginning to awaken her magical potential based on the area where she spends most of her time - her garden. Her garden is not your typical city garden, it’s beautiful and exotic, almost like a little piece of the plane of faerie. Her garden is her paradise and it is there that her previously dormant ancestry begins to awaken and she starts to dream.
She dreams of a verdant, wild echo of the mortal realm, of towering forests that sprawl for miles. She dreams of perfect amber prairies that roll between pristine mountain peaks that soar ever skyward into the flawless clouds; of emerald, turquoise and jade seas that crash along endless shores, kissed by skies a shade of blue unseen by mortal eyes.
The more she dreams, the more she is drawn into the dream and the more she longs for scenes where men have never trod. For places where women have neither smiled or wept and there to sleep as in childhoods warm embrace she sweetly slept; untroubling and untroubled where lies, on velvet grass below vaulted skies.
Eventually the allure of the dream becomes so strong that she joins a band of adventurers and sets out on an adventure to explore herself and the powers she’s discovering, and she hopes, to gaze with real eyes upon the places that she has until now, only travelled in her dreams.
Remember though that she is a middle aged woman who has already raised children of her own, and is used to having to people to care for. She’s practical and caring and has a wealth of experiences and skills from the life she’s lived. She’s not just a dreamer with her head in the clouds. Although at times, she can be that too.
I really hope I’ve been able to answer the questions about what class she is going to be, what race, and why she might be adventuring at her age and so on, without making the character seem totally stupid, cliched and boring.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Let's not completely discount "edgelords". I found that players can be entertaining with their edgelords when played in certain ways. My favorite to see is parody; turn the concept into self-ridicule on the rare occasions that the backstory even came up in the campaign. Another one that was fun was the entire party had the most awful edgelords, turning the whole edginess thing into one big joke.
Yet to the topic at hand, I cannot think of any adult character who cannot have any possible reason to adventure even if they've had a pleasant life with no tragedies whatsoever. Try to come up with one and someone here could probably easily provide a no-drama motive for adventuring.
What happens on the adventure is a different tale altogether.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
The general guideline I go with is that a backstory should consist of a number of paragraphs equal to the PC’s starting PB, plus or minus 1 paragraph. A paragraph should consist of between 3-5 sentences. So, for any PC starting from 1st to 4th levels, should have a backstory somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs, or roughly 3 to 15 total sentences in length, a PC for a campaign starting between 5th through 8th levels should have a backstory somewhere between 2-4 paragraphs, or 6-20 sentences in length.
As to content, I like to know about home life, that’s helpful. (Live alone? Parents? Siblings? Significant other?), a single significant event in the PCs life, good or bad. (They won a contest, fell ill, lost a sister, helped their parent who was the greatest thingamajigger in the village, etc.) However, most importantly I want to know why they are an adventurer instead of a different life. (Why an armed monster chaser instead of anything less nuts.) That’s it, that’s all the backstory I need. And if it’s more than 2 pages total I’ma be less than thrilled at having to read it.
Let's not completely discount "edgelords". I found that players can be entertaining with their edgelords when played in certain ways. My favorite to see is parody; turn the concept into self-ridicule on the rare occasions that the backstory even came up in the campaign. Another one that was fun was the entire party had the most awful edgelords, turning the whole edginess thing into one big joke.
Keep in mind that "edgelord" is a term that more accurately is applied to players rather than characters.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I think I read someone’s comment asking what class I was going to make the character, unfortunately I can’t see who said it now to mention them, but I wanted to answer their question.
I was planning on making her a Variant Human, Fey Touched, Druid of the Circle of Dreams. She would be more of a support character than a front line fighter. I choose the Circle of Dreams because I really liked how it was heavily inspired by the Fey and I really liked the idea of her being, Fey Touched.
i.e. at some point one of her distant ancestors was Fey. Maybe one of her distant ancestors was a Dryad or something, but so far back in her bloodline that it’s been forgotten. So unbeknownst to her, she carries some Fey blood that is beginning to awaken her magical potential based on the area where she spends most of her time - her garden. Her garden is not your typical city garden, it’s beautiful and exotic, almost like a little piece of the plane of faerie. Her garden is her paradise and it is there that her previously dormant ancestry begins to awaken and she starts to dream.
She dreams of a verdant, wild echo of the mortal realm, of towering forests that sprawl for miles. She dreams of perfect amber prairies that roll between pristine mountain peaks that soar ever skyward into the flawless clouds; of emerald, turquoise and jade seas that crash along endless shores, kissed by skies a shade of blue unseen by mortal eyes.
The more she dreams, the more she is drawn into the dream and the more she longs for scenes where men have never trod. For places where women have neither smiled or wept and there to sleep as in childhoods warm embrace she sweetly slept; untroubling and untroubled where lies, on velvet grass below vaulted skies.
Eventually the allure of the dream becomes so strong that she joins a band of adventurers and sets out on an adventure to explore herself and the powers she’s discovering, and she hopes, to gaze with real eyes upon the places that she has until now, only travelled in her dreams.
Remember though that she is a middle aged woman who has already raised children of her own, and is used to having to people to care for. She’s practical and caring and has a wealth of experiences and skills from the life she’s lived. She’s not just a dreamer with her head in the clouds. Although at times, she can be that too.
I really hope I’ve been able to answer the questions about what class she is going to be, what race, and why she might be adventuring at her age and so on, without making the character seem totally stupid, cliched and boring.
Yeah! I like it!
If -- if! -- you're taking this concept into a prewritten adventure like the ones published by Wizards, I would urge you to leave "discover more about her powers (and her place in the world, I assume)" behind in favor of a motive whose payoff can come from interacting with the existing adventure, rather than needing to have its own content written by the DM to address it. For example I'm imagining this character might meet some distant ancestor, or travel to the Feywild, or any number of very cool story moments... but if you, like me, are on a quest in Avernus, for example, then it's gonna be pretty hard for your DM to fit any of that in. Not impossible, and maybe your DM enjoys the challenge, but since I don't know them, I'm just speaking generally.
As an example, my character's motive in Avernus is to have children with Zariel. It's kind of stupid and a meme, but we know we're going to be learning about Zariel and most likely facing her by the end of the adventure, so I'm not derailing us by delving into it. And when he inevitably gets shut down and/or killed, or when he finally abandons the quest and undergoes character growth, it'll be driven by what was already happening.
As a counter-example, I have a character in another game whose goal is to exorcise a hostile spirit that's haunting her church. Cool, thematic stuff. You could imagine a lot of fun coming from that. But there's not really any time for it. We're on an adventure, and everybody signed up to play that adventure, not to play my hypothetical church ghost adventure. Learn from my mistake!
But if you're starting a game and it's intended to have the room for such things, like the Critical Role games are, then by all means. That was all just "if."
I think this all works just fine. It raises a question that I can't ignore, and I hope it inspires even more creation -- why's she leaving behind her garden paradise? It sounds like it's very precious to her. Did it burn? Is she afraid it *will*? Does she feel like it's lulled her into a sedentary lifestyle with its saccharine charm, and needs to escape for her own health? Etc.
The general guideline I go with is that a backstory should consist of a number of paragraphs equal to the PC’s starting PB, plus or minus 1 paragraph. A paragraph should consist of between 3-5 sentences. So, for any PC starting from 1st to 4th levels, should have a backstory somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs, or roughly 3 to 15 total sentences in length, a PC for a campaign starting between 5th through 8th levels should have a backstory somewhere between 2-4 paragraphs, or 6-20 sentences in length.
As to content, I like to know about home life, that’s helpful. (Live alone? Parents? Siblings? Significant other?), a single significant event in the PCs life, good or bad. (They won a contest, fell ill, lost a sister, helped their parent who was the greatest thingamajigger in the village, etc.) However, most importantly I want to know why they are an adventurer instead of a different life. (Why an armed monster chaser instead of anything less nuts.) That’s it, that’s all the backstory I need. And if it’s more than 2 pages total I’ma be less than thrilled at having to read it.
I have said it before. 1st level char's backstory: "3rd son of loving parents. Left the family farm to seek fame and fortune at age 18."
Done. There is nothing more than needs to be said, or expanded on. Sure, for campaigns starting at higher levels, some kind of backstory might be needed. And no DM in their right mind asks for a backstory, nor accepts one, for a one-off.
Oh, c’mon, you can add another sentence in the middle about a meaningful childhood event. Maybe something like this for a Cleric PC: “Once when I was a boy a plague almost whipped out our village, but was saved by a traveling cleric.” Or perhaps for a martial PC something like: “I’ll never forget that summer the adventuring Knight saved our village from that monster.”
Honestly though, as a DM I would only accept that same 2 sentences as a backstory a couple of times before I asked for something other than “to seek fame and fortune” or else all of your PCs start to be the same and if every PC you make is the same I would stop inviting you into new campaigns. I ask for a minimum of 3 sentences and some variety. Seek a fortune to save your village. Seek fame as a grasp for immortality. It won’t take a lot of work to mix it up just a little.
The general guideline I go with is that a backstory should consist of a number of paragraphs equal to the PC’s starting PB, plus or minus 1 paragraph. A paragraph should consist of between 3-5 sentences. So, for any PC starting from 1st to 4th levels, should have a backstory somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs, or roughly 3 to 15 total sentences in length, a PC for a campaign starting between 5th through 8th levels should have a backstory somewhere between 2-4 paragraphs, or 6-20 sentences in length.
As to content, I like to know about home life, that’s helpful. (Live alone? Parents? Siblings? Significant other?), a single significant event in the PCs life, good or bad. (They won a contest, fell ill, lost a sister, helped their parent who was the greatest thingamajigger in the village, etc.) However, most importantly I want to know why they are an adventurer instead of a different life. (Why an armed monster chaser instead of anything less nuts.) That’s it, that’s all the backstory I need. And if it’s more than 2 pages total I’ma be less than thrilled at having to read it.
I have said it before. 1st level char's backstory: "3rd son of loving parents. Left the family farm to seek fame and fortune at age 18."
Done. There is nothing more than needs to be said, or expanded on. Sure, for campaigns starting at higher levels, some kind of backstory might be needed. And no DM in their right mind asks for a backstory, nor accepts one, for a one-off.
Oh, c’mon, you can add another sentence in the middle about a meaningful childhood event. Maybe something like this for a Cleric PC: “Once when I was a boy a plague almost whipped out our village, but was saved by a traveling cleric.” Or perhaps for a martial PC something like: “I’ll never forget that summer the adventuring Knight saved our village from that monster.”
Honestly though, as a DM I would only accept that same 2 sentences as a backstory a couple of times before I asked for something other than “to seek fame and fortune” or else all of your PCs start to be the same and if every PC you make is the same I would stop inviting you into new campaigns. I ask for a minimum of 3 sentences and some variety. Seek a fortune to save your village. Seek fame as a grasp for immortality. It won’t take a lot of work to mix it up just a little.
If you would ban a player over their backstory, I am not sure what to say. Backstories for any individual player is a tiny tiny portion of a campaign, it becomes trivial. No 1st level char should have ANYTHING interesting or involved. I have also stated that the campaign that fired up 2 sessions ago at my gaming cafe, in that campaign, my Bladesinger's backstory was "dad was a bladesinger, his dad was a bladesinger, and I am following in the family business". That allows the DM to tell HIS story, which is what D&D should be. The chars grow and their story grows within the structures the DM provides. D&D is NOT "the DM's job is to cater the campaign to my story, because my char is special".
Chars die. Or, players quit as real life intrudes. If a DM caters a campaign to some story an individual player created, that can really put a dent in the campaign. And don't say "a good DM will adapt." The more appropriate view should be "WHY should the DM create all that extra work if a char dies or a player leaves?"
Why should a 1st-level character not have “anything” interesting have happened to them? I had dozens of interesting things happen to my by 8th grade for crying out loud. And I didn’t say I would ban a player for their background. I said I would stop inviting a player if every character they made was the same generic, 1-dimensional non-character. If the PC has no character beyond “third son, loving parents, seeks fame & fortune” then I got no time for your samesame in every campaign I DM.
I put a wackton of work into the campaign to make it meaningful to my players. The least each player can come up with is the minimum investment of giving me three, different sentences for each PC’s backstory. It isn’t a matter of how meaningless the backstory is. It’s a matter of how meaningful the show of investment is. Three - fifteen sentences to show me this character is an individual and different from every other character you make. And I don’t mean class/race loadout blahblah, that’s a PC, not a “character.” Your PCs should also be different, I’ll only accept a Tabaxi Undying Partron warlock twice too.
No samesame. If you want samesame, then I’m sure you can find a table more suited to your preferred play style than mine. You want to play at my table, I expect a minimum sho of investment that you can hand in three sentences unique to your character. If that’s too much to ask, again, there are other tables than mine.
And what happens when a char dies, or a player's work schedule changes?
What of it? I started in 2e when we would create multiple characters at a time in batches and run them 3 at a time each until 3rd level because 80% of them died before 3rd level.
I’m not asking for a novella, I’m asking for something unique to your character. Look at your previous example:
“dad was a bladesinger, his dad was a bladesinger, and I am following in the family business”
If you change that up a little you got “significant event” and “why” right there, just chop that into two sentences and give me one more sentences telling me if it was just him and Da growing up, or the three generations, or if he was orphaned and raised by his Aunt May. There, now we got:
My father and my father’s father were both Bladesingers. But I was orphaned during the war when I was too young to remember and raised by my Aunt May. Now I have left to follow the family tradition.
Look at that, three sentences about your character that make them unique. There’s my ask list:
Home life: Aunt May
Significant event: orphaned as child
Why: family business, 3rd generation Bladesinger.
Is that really too much to ask for?!? Three different sentences that tell me about your character. That’s it. Three things about who they are as a person. Now if I need it your character can get a letter from his Aunt May. If I need it he can get a request for help from one of his Da’s old party. Now if I need it he can meet his long-lost Gran’Da presumed dead these long years. Now if I need it I can mention your character’s resolve to see their family proud. Now if I need it I can invent a bagillion different things on the fly, or not. And if your character died or you have to leave for some reason, neither one of us is invested heavily in your backstory. But there’s something there for me to tell me you know who your character is and that they’re a distinct character and not just a page full of stats.
If a player wants to embellish that backstory hot their character a bit and mention evenings by the fire growing up on his aunt’s stories of his father’s and grandfather’s adventures, cool. If they want to mention their older cousin Minuet who left home first for the west but died of dysentery or cholera and Aunt May is super worried about our hero, cool. If they wanna… whatever, cool. Just not more than 12 additional sentences worth. Three to fifteen sentences, that’s my Goldilocks zone.
I guarantee that you can write three different sentences about every character that makes them a little unique and it won’t be a burdensome loss if your PC dies. It’s just three sentences.
Or heck, combine the two and you got a different character.
I was the third son of a third son, raised by two loving parents. My father was a Bladesinger, as was his father before him. Now I follow in their footsteps as a Bladesinger myself, and have left home to seek fame and fortune.
Now that’s another whole character. Or perhaps:
I was the third child of loving parents, my mother was a Bladesinger, as was her mother. My mother died in battle, and my father and two older siblings went missing, after the battle, I know not where. My grandmother raised me to be strong like my mother was, and now I too have taken up the mantle of Bladesinger and have set out to make my own way in the world.
"Left home at 18 to seek fame and fortune" is woefully inadequate, if for no other reason than it doesn't lead to a first-level character since they apparently never received training in anything. That's the backstory of an NPC.
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The general guideline I go with is that a backstory should consist of a number of paragraphs equal to the PC’s starting PB, plus or minus 1 paragraph. A paragraph should consist of between 3-5 sentences. So, for any PC starting from 1st to 4th levels, should have a backstory somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs, or roughly 3 to 15 total sentences in length, a PC for a campaign starting between 5th through 8th levels should have a backstory somewhere between 2-4 paragraphs, or 6-20 sentences in length.
As to content, I like to know about home life, that’s helpful. (Live alone? Parents? Siblings? Significant other?), a single significant event in the PCs life, good or bad. (They won a contest, fell ill, lost a sister, helped their parent who was the greatest thingamajigger in the village, etc.) However, most importantly I want to know why they are an adventurer instead of a different life. (Why an armed monster chaser instead of anything less nuts.) That’s it, that’s all the backstory I need. And if it’s more than 2 pages total I’ma be less than thrilled at having to read it.
I have said it before. 1st level char's backstory: "3rd son of loving parents. Left the family farm to seek fame and fortune at age 18."
Done. There is nothing more than needs to be said, or expanded on. Sure, for campaigns starting at higher levels, some kind of backstory might be needed. And no DM in their right mind asks for a backstory, nor accepts one, for a one-off.
Why do you take this so personally? Sure, YOU don't see a need for any backstory more than a few lines, and maybe your player pool does not, and that is fine for your group. Other groups may want more, and that is fine for them as well.
Get down off that horse, dude, it's pretty high up there...
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I dunno why this thread has turned into "coach OP on how to play D&D properly," but if that's what we're doing, I'll throw my two cents in: Basing your character's decisions on their history is a magic trick. You can just as easily make the decisions first and invent the history after. Do with this knowledge what you will.
Or the DM can just give you a character sheet and tell you what character to play, but most people like to have some input. For my game, coming up with backstory is a collaborative process between player and DM. I ask the player to give a general idea of what they want their backstory to be, and then I propose ways it could be integrated into the backstory of my world. They have the final say.
Letting the DM in on your backstory will usually prevent you from hogging the spotlight. The DM will decide when it's time for your story to get center stage. They will present a plot hook that you recognize as connected to your story. Ideally it will also advance the group's goals at the same time. When you see that opportunity, obviously you fill the rest of the party in on how you're connected to this NPC, location, or item you've run across.
It's the DM's responsibility to ensure each character's backstory gets a balanced amount of screen time.
Then write a story about someone else. Maybe about the person who inspired your character to become a hero, or about the parents who raised your character to be virtuous and selfless, or about the villain who caused your character to go on the run if you want to go that route. Write about the spirit that guides your fledgling adventurer, or the infant sibling whose upbringing your character is trying to fund doing dirty work. Write about the baron’s son who has everything your character wants, or about the kid your character grew up with who settled into a life of drudgery that is to be avoided at all cost. Write the story about someone else, and restrict the actual backstory to how that other person affected your character’s choice to become an adventurer and some essential info about what kind of adventuring qualities your PC has.
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I completely agree, although I have DM'd games where PCs have done what I've suggested, and I've also DM'd a game where the players didn't.
One example of players doing it well: in my current campaign, a character's backstory started around a cursed book. They are now level 8, have just discovered the book is evil, and swayed the party to go to a location for more info around it. That's totally fine - I had seeded the threads throughout the story, it has been a real slow burn, and the location they've gone to is also a major story point for everyone (even if it's a bit special for the character).
An example of players doing it so badly I ended the campaign:
The "It's what my character would do," fallacy applies to backstory as well as chaotic stupid alignment. As some people have alluded, you have to have a backstory that will incline you to be an adventurer, and you also have to have a backstory that will incline you to be a member of an adventuring party. Whether your personal goals depend on the group goal (it's easy to work a "protect my family" backstory into a "save the world from utter destruction" story), or you see the party as helping you with your goals as a quid pro quo for helping them with theirs, you need to have a reason to participate in adventures not directly related to your goal.
I think it's fine if your character wants to exit the story once your personal goal is achieved. If you've found your home, or you've decided to become a pacifist, that's fine. Your character retires from adventuring and you make a new character or leave the campaign. You should probably discuss this possibility with at least the DM if not the entire group in session 0, in case they were planning to run a campaign with the same group of characters from beginning to end.
Why do you think it's a stupid and boring idea? What makes you feel that characters, especially female characters, have to be young, beautiful, sexualized and traumatized victims to be fun? Like many others have pointed out, this is actually a really cool idea. Personally I get some nice Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax vibes.
You don't have to be "normal" to not be a cringy edgelord. As has been mentioned, there were things in the previous background that was quite good.
The soccer mon character was already cool and interesting. Perhaps just give her a reason for why she wants to go on an adventure. It might just be that she always wanted to see the world and fight evil but she had children and she decided to raise them instead of going on an adventure. Now that the kids are grown and take care of themselves she's free to finally live out her dream. What's her background?
The other question you probably should ask yourself is why you feel the need to have (borderline) underage female character who are "extremely beautiful" victimized and traumatized to be "cool and interesting".
That's the thing. D&D doesn't have "their own story". You share that story with the other players, including the GM. Saying that there should be "your own story" in the shared story doesn't really work. Sure, there can be parts of it where your character is the focus of it but it can never be "their" story. Compare it to an Avengers movie. Sure, Peter Parker can show up and steal the scene for a short while, Natasha and Clint can have their thing going on for a bit but all in all it's still an "Avengers" movie. If you all of the sudden stopped the main plot so that Tony could go away and fight a completely different villain for 45 minutes you probably get a much crappier movie. Especially for the peopl ewho want to see Steve Rogers or Wanda Maximoff.
That might help. But I think something that will help you more is that a level 1 character is supposed to be at the start of the hero's journey, not halfway through it. That doesn't mean that the character can't have experienced anything before becoming a level 1 [whatever class] PC but it should be the things covered by your background. Which actually does give you quite a bit of room to maneuver but it (purposefully) limits you in scope.
Several of those people literally have their own story: a separate movie or show.
Campaigns don't always start at level 1. Taking the Avengers example again, several of them had already had their own movie before the first Avengers movie. If you are starting at level one, I guess you should have a level 1 appropriate backstory. That doesn't mean you can't have pages of backstory if you want. Whole novels have been written about people who would be D&D Commoners.
I'm just gonna move this part up here, since it's the most important one.
I call BS on that one. There could be countless reason why someone witha comfy life would want to change that up. Both Bilbo and Frodo were pretty much stay at home couch potatoes way into their 50s before going on their adventures. Beth from Rick & Morty didn't start "adventuring" until both her kids were teenagers. Granny Weatherwax is ancient and she still goes on adventures. Lady Sybil Ramkin lived comfortably
I agree that there isn't a motivation for this particular character, since the OP hasn't given us one. But that doesn't mean that there's "no plausible way" that this character would go on an adventure. Maybe they're just bored now that the kids or gone and they read a bunch of romance novel and wants a bit of fun?
You "might" do some or all of these things but there's nothing that says that you "will". Spider-man went to the prom, for example. No Acid or diseases there. And even if you do encounter some or all of these events, that's not the reason you do it. Especially not the last one. You might kill only because you need to. Bilbo for example only killed a bunch of giant spiders. Pippin killed a troll, possibly a few orcs and a few of Saruman's lackeys in the Shire but you don't have to kill people and you don't have enjoy it. You could probably have quite a lot of roleplaying fun with playing a character that avoids killing (there's at least two subclasses dedicated to actively not killing, btw).
Or the most rewarding, depending on what the adventure is.
These are some good motivations, but absolutely not the only ones.
Again this is one possible motivation for this character bit it definitely isn't the only "plausible" one.
Cheers!
I think I read someone’s comment asking what class I was going to make the character, unfortunately I can’t see who said it now to mention them, but I wanted to answer their question.
I was planning on making her a Variant Human, Fey Touched, Druid of the Circle of Dreams. She would be more of a support character than a front line fighter. I choose the Circle of Dreams because I really liked how it was heavily inspired by the Fey and I really liked the idea of her being, Fey Touched.
i.e. at some point one of her distant ancestors was Fey. Maybe one of her distant ancestors was a Dryad or something, but so far back in her bloodline that it’s been forgotten. So unbeknownst to her, she carries some Fey blood that is beginning to awaken her magical potential based on the area where she spends most of her time - her garden. Her garden is not your typical city garden, it’s beautiful and exotic, almost like a little piece of the plane of faerie. Her garden is her paradise and it is there that her previously dormant ancestry begins to awaken and she starts to dream.
She dreams of a verdant, wild echo of the mortal realm, of towering forests that sprawl for miles. She dreams of perfect amber prairies that roll between pristine mountain peaks that soar ever skyward into the flawless clouds; of emerald, turquoise and jade seas that crash along endless shores, kissed by skies a shade of blue unseen by mortal eyes.
The more she dreams, the more she is drawn into the dream and the more she longs for scenes where men have never trod. For places where women have neither smiled or wept and there to sleep as in childhoods warm embrace she sweetly slept; untroubling and untroubled where lies, on velvet grass below vaulted skies.
Eventually the allure of the dream becomes so strong that she joins a band of adventurers and sets out on an adventure to explore herself and the powers she’s discovering, and she hopes, to gaze with real eyes upon the places that she has until now, only travelled in her dreams.
Remember though that she is a middle aged woman who has already raised children of her own, and is used to having to people to care for. She’s practical and caring and has a wealth of experiences and skills from the life she’s lived. She’s not just a dreamer with her head in the clouds. Although at times, she can be that too.
I really hope I’ve been able to answer the questions about what class she is going to be, what race, and why she might be adventuring at her age and so on, without making the character seem totally stupid, cliched and boring.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Let's not completely discount "edgelords". I found that players can be entertaining with their edgelords when played in certain ways. My favorite to see is parody; turn the concept into self-ridicule on the rare occasions that the backstory even came up in the campaign. Another one that was fun was the entire party had the most awful edgelords, turning the whole edginess thing into one big joke.
Yet to the topic at hand, I cannot think of any adult character who cannot have any possible reason to adventure even if they've had a pleasant life with no tragedies whatsoever. Try to come up with one and someone here could probably easily provide a no-drama motive for adventuring.
What happens on the adventure is a different tale altogether.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
The general guideline I go with is that a backstory should consist of a number of paragraphs equal to the PC’s starting PB, plus or minus 1 paragraph. A paragraph should consist of between 3-5 sentences. So, for any PC starting from 1st to 4th levels, should have a backstory somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs, or roughly 3 to 15 total sentences in length, a PC for a campaign starting between 5th through 8th levels should have a backstory somewhere between 2-4 paragraphs, or 6-20 sentences in length.
As to content, I like to know about home life, that’s helpful. (Live alone? Parents? Siblings? Significant other?), a single significant event in the PCs life, good or bad. (They won a contest, fell ill, lost a sister, helped their parent who was the greatest thingamajigger in the village, etc.) However, most importantly I want to know why they are an adventurer instead of a different life. (Why an armed monster chaser instead of anything less nuts.) That’s it, that’s all the backstory I need. And if it’s more than 2 pages total I’ma be less than thrilled at having to read it.
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Keep in mind that "edgelord" is a term that more accurately is applied to players rather than characters.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah! I like it!
If -- if! -- you're taking this concept into a prewritten adventure like the ones published by Wizards, I would urge you to leave "discover more about her powers (and her place in the world, I assume)" behind in favor of a motive whose payoff can come from interacting with the existing adventure, rather than needing to have its own content written by the DM to address it. For example I'm imagining this character might meet some distant ancestor, or travel to the Feywild, or any number of very cool story moments... but if you, like me, are on a quest in Avernus, for example, then it's gonna be pretty hard for your DM to fit any of that in. Not impossible, and maybe your DM enjoys the challenge, but since I don't know them, I'm just speaking generally.
As an example, my character's motive in Avernus is to have children with Zariel. It's kind of stupid and a meme, but we know we're going to be learning about Zariel and most likely facing her by the end of the adventure, so I'm not derailing us by delving into it. And when he inevitably gets shut down and/or killed, or when he finally abandons the quest and undergoes character growth, it'll be driven by what was already happening.
As a counter-example, I have a character in another game whose goal is to exorcise a hostile spirit that's haunting her church. Cool, thematic stuff. You could imagine a lot of fun coming from that. But there's not really any time for it. We're on an adventure, and everybody signed up to play that adventure, not to play my hypothetical church ghost adventure. Learn from my mistake!
But if you're starting a game and it's intended to have the room for such things, like the Critical Role games are, then by all means. That was all just "if."
I think this all works just fine. It raises a question that I can't ignore, and I hope it inspires even more creation -- why's she leaving behind her garden paradise? It sounds like it's very precious to her. Did it burn? Is she afraid it *will*? Does she feel like it's lulled her into a sedentary lifestyle with its saccharine charm, and needs to escape for her own health? Etc.
Oh, c’mon, you can add another sentence in the middle about a meaningful childhood event. Maybe something like this for a Cleric PC: “Once when I was a boy a plague almost whipped out our village, but was saved by a traveling cleric.” Or perhaps for a martial PC something like: “I’ll never forget that summer the adventuring Knight saved our village from that monster.”
Honestly though, as a DM I would only accept that same 2 sentences as a backstory a couple of times before I asked for something other than “to seek fame and fortune” or else all of your PCs start to be the same and if every PC you make is the same I would stop inviting you into new campaigns. I ask for a minimum of 3 sentences and some variety. Seek a fortune to save your village. Seek fame as a grasp for immortality. It won’t take a lot of work to mix it up just a little.
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Why should a 1st-level character not have “anything” interesting have happened to them? I had dozens of interesting things happen to my by 8th grade for crying out loud. And I didn’t say I would ban a player for their background. I said I would stop inviting a player if every character they made was the same generic, 1-dimensional non-character. If the PC has no character beyond “third son, loving parents, seeks fame & fortune” then I got no time for your samesame in every campaign I DM.
I put a wackton of work into the campaign to make it meaningful to my players. The least each player can come up with is the minimum investment of giving me three, different sentences for each PC’s backstory. It isn’t a matter of how meaningless the backstory is. It’s a matter of how meaningful the show of investment is. Three - fifteen sentences to show me this character is an individual and different from every other character you make. And I don’t mean class/race loadout blahblah, that’s a PC, not a “character.” Your PCs should also be different, I’ll only accept a Tabaxi Undying Partron warlock twice too.
No samesame. If you want samesame, then I’m sure you can find a table more suited to your preferred play style than mine. You want to play at my table, I expect a minimum sho of investment that you can hand in three sentences unique to your character. If that’s too much to ask, again, there are other tables than mine.
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What of it? I started in 2e when we would create multiple characters at a time in batches and run them 3 at a time each until 3rd level because 80% of them died before 3rd level.
I’m not asking for a novella, I’m asking for something unique to your character. Look at your previous example:
“dad was a bladesinger, his dad was a bladesinger, and I am following in the family business”
If you change that up a little you got “significant event” and “why” right there, just chop that into two sentences and give me one more sentences telling me if it was just him and Da growing up, or the three generations, or if he was orphaned and raised by his Aunt May. There, now we got:
Look at that, three sentences about your character that make them unique. There’s my ask list:
Is that really too much to ask for?!? Three different sentences that tell me about your character. That’s it. Three things about who they are as a person. Now if I need it your character can get a letter from his Aunt May. If I need it he can get a request for help from one of his Da’s old party. Now if I need it he can meet his long-lost Gran’Da presumed dead these long years. Now if I need it I can mention your character’s resolve to see their family proud. Now if I need it I can invent a bagillion different things on the fly, or not. And if your character died or you have to leave for some reason, neither one of us is invested heavily in your backstory. But there’s something there for me to tell me you know who your character is and that they’re a distinct character and not just a page full of stats.
If a player wants to embellish that backstory hot their character a bit and mention evenings by the fire growing up on his aunt’s stories of his father’s and grandfather’s adventures, cool. If they want to mention their older cousin Minuet who left home first for the west but died of dysentery or cholera and Aunt May is super worried about our hero, cool. If they wanna… whatever, cool. Just not more than 12 additional sentences worth. Three to fifteen sentences, that’s my Goldilocks zone.
I guarantee that you can write three different sentences about every character that makes them a little unique and it won’t be a burdensome loss if your PC dies. It’s just three sentences.
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Or heck, combine the two and you got a different character.
Now that’s another whole character. Or perhaps:
It doesn’t take a lot, just three sentences.
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"Left home at 18 to seek fame and fortune" is woefully inadequate, if for no other reason than it doesn't lead to a first-level character since they apparently never received training in anything. That's the backstory of an NPC.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Why do you take this so personally? Sure, YOU don't see a need for any backstory more than a few lines, and maybe your player pool does not, and that is fine for your group. Other groups may want more, and that is fine for them as well.
Get down off that horse, dude, it's pretty high up there...