I was told a story of a totem barbarian that had a "punisher" moment. Supposedly this barb had been slowly getting more grated and cruel, with short moments in their party where their gentle side would shine, especially when they met with their daughter and wife. Suddenly the almost 7ft muscle man turned into a teddy bear and carried their team with love and support, the story sounded neat until the next part. His daughter and wife got kidnapped supposedly by the bbeg of their chapter of their campaign, and of course he didnt let that slide. The party storms a castle, corners the bbeg (who was some broken monster of a npc who could duel cast spells in the same turn, leveled spells i mean.) who holds both their family members in each hand, as a battle started they charge in, divide the boss from the minions with magic, and as the barb rushes in **legendary action from bbeg**. Both of them instantly disintegrated, followed by the barb losing their shit. From what he said, he had the most thematic moment possible after losing his family, he action surged attacked with 3 back to back nat 20's rolling high damage, with a 4th attack being normal. He shredded the boss with some help, after the fight his character was on a death march endlessly and relentlessly slaughtering anything that pissed him off enough to spend time on them. It wasnt until a literal god was like "yo chill you're gonna accidentally transform into a eldritch horror if you let your loss consume you, lets bargain." that he mellowed out. He went on a adventure to complete the bargain, and revive his family despite it not physically being possible from his position. His last actions led to his death, not in a vengeance hatred, but in reluctant love, he died in efforts to finish the boss with some kind of explosive sacrifice (maybe literally i cant remember, i dont remember if he exploded or he ment he popped off on the boss) and in his dying breaths as he's rolling death saves he hears his family calling his name, and with memories of his friends and family he perishes with a smile on his face, and in reality the god honored the bargain as his wife and daughter cried over his smiling corpse. Whether or not this story was true, i liked it. Good character concept, good execution.

@Jay_Playz2019

7 ай бұрын

Honestly absolutely love the first 2/3 of that, but I might ask them to tone down the last bit. I’d probably still allow it though.

@Tazazak

7 ай бұрын

Holy crap. 😦

I Think the "I Slayed my first dragon when i was still in diapers" backstory could be fun. You can play it off as a Gilderoy Lockheart character who became famous from other peoples achievements. Or a Charlatan who makes up stories to get free drinks at the tavern. The adventure could be them going "Oh Shit! If i back out now everyone will know I've been lying. And i can't have that"

@SasamiTM

7 ай бұрын

I did once have a character who had stayed with the horses while the knight he was squired to and his companions slayed a blue dragon does that count? He got one strip of small scales he built into his sword scabbard that imparted juuuust enough immunity to lightning that he never had static cling in his clothes

@juliusnebulus7303

7 ай бұрын

How about: "i've slain a dragon at the age of five" Technically speaks the truth but forgets to mention that he just accidentally caused a stone avalance by messing with the protective stuff, so he killed the dragon by accident.

@AlibifortheAfterlife

7 ай бұрын

I guess, but frankly I think a King from OPM thing would be a lot less annoying and funnier for the others in the party. Basically Lockhart but unwillingly in the off chance you aren’t familiar

@SGTcz90cz

6 ай бұрын

@@juliusnebulus7303 I was also gonna suggest something like this. I have an example from my own life, actually. I have survived a stab wound to the face. Technically true, but... It was self-inflicted and accidental. And that's the story how I learned to cut AWAY from myself... It ends up being true, but the reality is nowhere near as badass as the first statement might imply.

@juliusnebulus7303

6 ай бұрын

@@SGTcz90cz 😂THAT is great. I'mma steal this for one of my characters🤣👍

I once played a character who was spying on the party for the villain. His orders were specifically to help the party get to the treasure so the villain could show up and take it from them, so I still got to be a team player and didn't have to do any toxic sabotaging stuff until the big reveal at the end. It worked out pretty well, the betrayal was shocking and memorable without ruining anybody fun or killing the flow of the plot.

@issackaiser

7 ай бұрын

Man I'm so gonna borrow this idea for my next PC. I like being bad guy and this route mean I get to play as one without ruining folks fun !

@Sorain1

7 ай бұрын

@@issackaiser Those kinds of setups lead to fun 'will they betray us or will they side with their friends?' questions some of the time.

@littlemoth4956

7 ай бұрын

D&D players when the villain is evil (they kicked them from the game for being toxic)

@AshAsmodeus

6 ай бұрын

I have a similar story.... Context: I played with a fluid active pantheon at the time. Sorceres in my party wanted to eek out a corner of the death domain for herself to challenge the (current) goddess of death via gaining some foothold in the Evil Domain as a stepping stone (don't ask; pantheon politics...think Game of Thrones but on a deific level). She discovered that in order to do that she would need to corrupt the soul of a powerful hero in a ritual.... so she choose her best friend.... not in game... she choose the character of her best friend to be the target... A bit of a twist though.... the "minor god" that was helping her do this had previously enlisted that same best friend to squash an upcoming herald of evil... and gifted him a single return from death garrantuee because that upcoming evil would try to kill him. Result... full scale PvP battle when the sorcerer tried to kill the warrior to reap his soul to corrupt and the warrior finding out just who this upcoming evil was....They never found out they were played against eachother by the actual bad guy though

I think probably the best amnesia backstory I’ve thought about using with a character was one where he was the manifestation of the wish spell. The basic concept being that he was created by an adventurer or even just a random schmuck who got there hands on a ring of wish or something and was wished into existence as a servant or knight to the new lord/lady. Then the person who made the wish dies and the newly created character has to grapple with being a fully fledged person just spawned into existence and their whole reason for existing is now gone.

@maryi685

7 ай бұрын

That's an interesting concept for a book or a movie.

@Gallacant

7 ай бұрын

Dragons dogma

@ved2360

7 ай бұрын

So, a Mister Meseeks?

@Alassandros

6 ай бұрын

That's not amnesia. That's a newborn. There isn't a missing memory. There's just no memory. It's not as lazy, but still a little lazy.

@ryankornacki9918

6 ай бұрын

@@Alassandros ooh, you’re right, but that just gave me another idea. What if the character was another person before the wish spell and it warped his mind to fit what the person making the wish needed? I know amnesia is inherently a little lazy, but I do like some of the fun interactions that can come if it.

“I’m the strongest person in the whole universe! I CANNOT DIE!”

@Apathetion

7 ай бұрын

proceeds to die at level 3 from a critting hobgoblin

@cosmoniums5990

7 ай бұрын

Honestly this could be a fun backstory for a character if you put a spin on that. For instance, they believed that cause they were from a backwater town where they were the strongest and most skilled around. And died to their first encounter with bandits only to make their way back to the living through luck, and have been traumatized into being an unsure sniveling coward.

@cosmoniums5990

7 ай бұрын

Or you could play it straight, with a genuine actual focus on it. With them slowly becoming aware that they’re now a small fish in a big pond and have to figure out their own way of coming to terms with that.

@user2C47

7 ай бұрын

Or the opposite: so cowardly that they hide in their bag of holding whenever combat starts.

@danielhale1

7 ай бұрын

I've encountered the player who thinks their backstory makes them invincible (convention game), or players pulling other munchkin nonsense to backstory their way into an overpowered character. One right response is to say "Interesting theory, let's see how that works out!", possibly while writing "insane" in the traits section of their character sheet. What a player announces to be so does not determine how the game works, so just casually enforce the rules and ignore their assertions. When they've been dropped by a basement rat and start failing death saving throws, and they're nervously + faux-confidently announcing it's okay, they can't die... hold eye contact and ask "Are you sure? That's not in the rules".

I actually just made an amnesiac character. She's an undead warlock who awoke hanging in the tree of an abanoned town. While looking for supplies, she found a story of a heroic woman who was exploring Shadowfell. She adopted this woman's name and tries to replicate her personality, telling the events as if they happened to her and she actually accomplished all these amazing feats. But, she struggles to keep up this stoic, hardened personality because everything in the world is new and amazing to her, so she struggles to stay "in character".

I really hate that DM response to a character whose backstory seems convenient or happy, and said DM immediately goes "Ok, how can I ruin this?". Don't get me wrong, some twists and turns to a backstory are fine and great, but is it really that hard for you to not actively try to rain on other people's parades at the very least when the player is sincerely working with you to make it work?

One of my players has the tragic orphan type backstory, but hoo boy is it a doozy. Kobolds, normally considered cannon fodder at best for adventuring parties, they like to cause mischief and make traps. A commission was put up to get a group of kobolds living not far from town to stop making mischief, the party opted to go to a cave that was recently uncovered instead. When a new player came to me wanting to play a kobold and had the idea of their family being murdered, it all clicked into place. A legendary adventuring party, known across the continents for taking all the low paying requests most would overlook, getting upwards of 30 done in a single day. But in truth, they’re arrogant, narcissistic, they do it all for the praise, and what’s a couple dozen kobolds to them? They murdered the kobolds in cold blood as soon as they didn’t agree to stop. Now, the last remaining kobold of that pod joined the party, hoping to one day find this group called the Roaring Dragons, and get his revenge

@BlertaPupu

7 ай бұрын

My character does but it makes sense imo. Because she's a changeling. Guess how that mother got the child. So when they found out she's a changeling they either had to admit to everyone else that this is not the child of the father in the family or, well get rid of her somehow. So she's not technically an orphan but I'd still say, she is.

@Kez_DXX

7 ай бұрын

I've never played a noble before, and I wanna some day to change things up. As has been brought up in similar videos, why is a noble with the party? He's been living with the nobles of this country due to hostage diplomacy, "as guarantee of good faith in the observance of obligations" as wikipedia would put it. If his family didn't abide by a treaty or alliance, etc. then his life was forfeit. The trouble is, his family is now dead due to civil war or revolution in his home country. So now he's a worthless hostage, and could theoretically do whatever he wants now... but may also be useful in the future as a legitimate heir to the throne of that nation so this kingdom can't let him off the leash completely. There are plenty of notable examples of political hostages in history, so I'm kinda curious why I haven't heard of anyone doing this when they play a noble before. Vlad the Impaler, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Richard the Lionheart, and Henry II are probably some of the most famous examples of people who were political hostages in their youth. But I've never heard of a political hostage becoming an orphan and I think this cuts out the much more common exiled trope and still gives the party some link to the local monarchy. It's annoying not being able to flesh this idea out further, but I can't do that until I have a suitable campaign to work with.

I find it pretty concerning/frustrating/gross/cringe that so many DMs seem to relish punishing players with in-game things to get back at them for a bad backstory.

@--...--...--...

6 ай бұрын

THIS DMs get real God-Complexy

@zodiacwitch

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, like, DO NOT solve your ingame beef with ingame beef. Just talk to your player

I've run the amnesia backstory before. The DM had a lot of fun with the actual pre-amnesia backstory that my character didn't know about. Went with a former high profile general. Was a God, commanded armies, accomplished swordsman, the whole thing. Then I picked druid as my class. What had happened is his side had actually lost the war and instead of killing him on the spot, the enemy had decided to spare his life but mind wiped him and drained him of his divine power. Then they tossed him someplace in the wilderness where a group of rangers took him in. The DM and I got together on designing the enemy commander and decided on a drow whose skin was actually reflective and could turn spells back on the wielder if cast at him directly, similar to spell turning. He turned into the big bad of the campaign and my character had no idea who he was, but my character was still meddling in his affairs even after all that had transpired. I ended up biting the bullet on the spell turning ability to show the rest of the party what we were up against with this guy and took a bunch of my own spells to the face, almost killed my character.

The Bilbo Baggins that does not actually leave their house. The party has no reason to drag the character outside their comfort zone taking a good portion of the session. This can have some payoff down the line when the character goes into the campaign theme like at mirkwood fighting the spiders. most players probably wont want to hear about your character having tea while they fight off goblins raiding the storehouse for food.

@THEPELADOMASTER

7 ай бұрын

I like to avoid this entirely by simply starting the campaign in the action. My current campaign: "there's a war, you've joined the army. You meet each other in a caravan on its way to the front" I told everyone to come up with a reason they joined the army. Boom. Can't have a reluctant PC when the campaign starts with you already having joined in.

@Zellonous

7 ай бұрын

​@@THEPELADOMASTER"I was evacuating with my family but I accidentally got into the wrong wagon and here I am. I'd like directions please, I'm missing second breakfast with my wife."

@krel7160

7 ай бұрын

@@Zellonous "Fighter?.. No-sir, I'm a farmer. Aw, shucks, I guess there ain't no goin' back now.." Bonus points if they become a ranger or something due to having fought off wild animals in the past, or taming a wolf because they were already good with animals. Honestly, you can do *a lot* with a simple backstory like 'I was a simple farmer tendin' to my pa's animals when the bandits torched our life's work'

That first guy is a damn fool. Having a player give you control of their backstory is a sign they trust your writing. More importantly, it lets you fuck with them. You could LITERALLY MAKE THEM THE FORMER ANTAGONIST, you could make them BE ANOTHER PC’S DAD

Personal backstory that was described as "the edgy rogue" that turned out to be really good. Underdark campaign. People start out as slaves to the drow brought in from a raid. Player decided "My character has always been a slave to the drow, his entire life" and runs with that. Now while the rest of the party is trying to get out of the underdark and get away from the drow his character is fascinated by that magical land called "Surface" where things are bright and not everything or everyone needs to be feared and served without question else he gets punished. Rogue made sense too: Someone who spend his entire life trying to be small and out of sight, to not get on the bad side of the drow, with no special training in martial weapons or magic, but who surely could sneak up on you to stab you before making a run for it seems pretty damn on point for a runaway slave. And seeing as he was raised as a drow slave his sense of moral was a bit off so he often asked players "Why are we helping them?" or "Why did you share your food with me? It's your food!" and slowly learns that there is a whole different world out there he never knew was there!

Honestly, I think the best use of Amnesia with a character I've ever seen is with Harrier Du'Bois in Disco Elysium. The Amnesia is in part used to allow the characters to discover the world through Harry, but it's also a huge aspect of his character development. Before he bludgeoned himself into Amnesia, he was rock bottom. Severely depressed, suicidal, and an extreme alcaholic. The Amnesia is almost an opportunity for him. A chance to rebuild himself with the help of those around him. Or it's a chance for him to rediscover his problems and double down on them, only worstening his situation. It is important to note that Amnesia is not a character's backstory as much as it is a moment in their timeline, one that can have a huge impact on who they become in the future.

@ericb3157

6 ай бұрын

somehow that reminded me of a crazy story called "teamwork" that i read in a collection of story stories. i think it was by Timothy Zahn. anyway, it involves a team of people who are trying to stop an alien invasion that uses mind-control tricks. BUT... after winning, it turns out that the "team" was really ONE person with multiple personalities!

Hearing other people's DM stories just make me so glad I have a group of normal players and a DM that values player agency and fairness

Oh man, That “Four questions” post is actually really great. I especially love the agency given in the third question, “Something terrible is going to happen and it will be your fault”, Because it can really take a million different perspectives. Is it pain unto others? Is it something they’ll want to happen? Is it self-destructive? . . . God I hope my DM doesn’t kill off my mom. I would cry. ((But also it’d be so thematic...))

@crazcatladeestudios9956

7 ай бұрын

Oh I get the being afraid of what your DM will do with what you've given them. I need to stop telling mine about details I've realised/decided about characters because I know it only leads to more trauma for my characters (but I also kinda want it to come up lol)

Amnesia works when the PC and the DM work together , literally made a character that has two souls because one was trying to use the other as their lich's phylactery (because y'know if it works on inanimate objects why not put it into a monk who takes incredibly long to die and would be super hard to kill) and... ya that didn't work too well as the monk fought them and killed them in the middle of the process resulting in both of them dying and fusing together. Aka they woke up in their grave eventually with amnesia and a voice in their head (I learned that the monk was literally a mom as we ran into her kid now grown up and ya it's been a time, possibly the lich person that is my secondary PC basically might be the BBEG lol)

@Fantasmaa9

7 ай бұрын

The difference of "split personality" and "oh fuck the villain of the campaign is literally living in my head rent free" has been fun so far lol

@foodomanthemagnificent2650

7 ай бұрын

The closest I got to that was a slayer I played in Pathfinder a while back. He used to be a high level monk that lead a small commune. Then a bunch of demons attacked and slaughtered everyone he knew, then they tortured him in various ways. This completely broke the character and left him with a severe case of PTSD. The only name he went by for a while was "Last One." Because he was the last one to have survived the attack.

I had the "I am basically god" character at one point. My character was a retired Grand Heirophant of the Church of Bahamut. However, in my final battle with the Archdeacon of Orcus, the foul priest called on his God to sever my connection to mine. My character went into early retirement as his divine connection had been forcibly broken. Then the Cult of Tiamat started causing trouble 30 years later and I felt a spark of Divinity within me once more, but had to re-learn how to access that magic.

About 5 months into my first campaign, everyone in my group told me they weren't having fun. One of the players in my group expressed that he never got to explore his character backstory. Keep in mind, I had double checked everyone's character sheets throughout the campaign, and I knew _nothing_ about the "Edgy Rogue with Dead Parents" trope until that fateful day. Suddenly, I had to move away from the plot, working up an almost separate story from my own in order to make it up to the players for their _own_ shortcomings. So umm, yeah. Don't wait to share your backstory.

@hereandnow3156

7 ай бұрын

Did they say why they didn't provide the back story prior?

@bigshaggy6742

7 ай бұрын

No lol. They just didn't @@hereandnow3156

@ChaosLemonVIII

7 ай бұрын

If everyone else in your group isn't having fun, there's only one common denominator.

@bigshaggy6742

7 ай бұрын

@@ChaosLemonVIII There is, actually: they all had a skill issue in communication. Still waiting on them to level up that stat lol

@awakeninfinity2940

7 ай бұрын

It's also important to be frank and clear; and to not drop what you think are good hints. If you want your character to become a hero goddess because your Cohort was setting you up to have a burgeoning faith in your kingdom... you should probably tell them that's what you want. Anyways, that's a lesson learned for me.

I think the only kind of Backstory Trope I don't allow is the "Ex or Fallen God" You're a Lvl 3 Monk, get off your high horse. One that I can't stand is the "Edgy Rouge with Killed Parents" My homebrew has an orphanage full of edgy orphan rogues and warlocks, always brooding and sulking in dark corners, but will complain if their tavern meal doesn't come with a toy. They form a kind of club in one guy's basement that lives with his mother and talk about theater performances with a lot of "Umm, actually..."s involved. If a player comes up with that backstory, they're from that, and no exceptions.

@Destructaconn

7 ай бұрын

I'm presently in the process of making a roguish character with dead/missing parents, but i'm trying really hard not to fall into the basic bitch edginess trap. If you're a DM who has seen the worst that trap of character "writing" has to offer, can you give any tips on how to avoid it? Edit: Thank you to all the people who weighed in here, the consensus seems to be "Don't make it their only character trait. Make them interesting" which Is exactly what I expected, but it is good to have it confirmed nonetheless. I appreciate the help. 👍

@ShadowDude6488

7 ай бұрын

@@Destructaconn I simply made my rogue old enough that his parents would've died of old age in order to keep the backstory from being tragic. He works for a thieves' guild that is comprised of older gentleman that sounds like a usual gentleman's club, but under Thieve's Cant, it's a group of assassins to eliminate any positions of power that enforces a tax code as it cuts into the money of the people unnecessarily. He's also an Arcane Trickster and a Loxodon, so he can cast Invisibility to really make someone lose 'the elephant in the room'.

@JLynne36

7 ай бұрын

@@Destructaconn Another option is to just give them something else, besides being edgy. My favorite rogue had parents that were murdered when she was 14, but she also had a little brother who survived. Even though she still has that trauma, she had to put it aside in order to take care of him. As an adult, she takes special care with all children, and even does horse therapy for the local orphans.

@unevennoble9363

7 ай бұрын

​@@ShadowDude6488GOD DAMMIT. SAAAAAAAANS.

@kc5997

7 ай бұрын

oh the mf edge lord of rogue because my family was murdered and now im forever edgy.its critical role "percy". cant stand that trope.

i dont mind the amnesia backstory but it has to be with the carte blanche to do whatever i want with it the backstory i ban is the 'no backstory' the 'im just a guy, no friends, no family, no training etc' just a stat sheet with nothing else to it, one of my players is constantly giving me stat-stick characters because 'im bad at making thinking up characters but i have to be powerful' and me sitting there nodding while i create a whole damn world full of npc's with wants/needs/goals my session zero's also consist of open discussion on character creation, group make up etc and what the group does and doesnt want to see from their fellow players

I don't know what all the hate for nobles is, to be honest. I mean, *royalty* is a bit too much for many campaigns, sure. But a low-tier noble is usually fine. This idea that a noble adventuring would universally be frowned upon is a bit silly. Especially when 5e has it as a built in background option. Being a knight was a form of nobility, in the real world. You got status, but you also had an obligation to go to war. In a fantasy setting, it makes sense that nobility may not only be allowed to, but have an obligation to participate in the adventures the plot may call for. It can also be used for quite a bit. Most nobles I've played in campaigns have been sorcerers, with their bloodline being a part of why their family is nobility in the first place. Often you can tie back that origin of why the family was awarded nobility in the first place into some heroic ancestor, and when duty calls, the commonfolk expect you to follow that ancestor's example.

@Wyvernil

7 ай бұрын

I think it comes down to two factors: 1. Playing as a noble character to have an advantage over the other players, like wealth or connections. The kind of player that claims that he should be able to get the royal guard to do the adventure for him. Of course, this is easily solved by a DM coming up with reasons why the noble can't leverage their status at will. 2. The noble character using his status to pull rank over the rest of the party. Demanding that he should be the leader because he's the prince or whatever. Looking down on non-noble PCs, and trying to have them thrown in prison for not obeying him. This is definitely a symptom of main character syndrome, and should be addressed accordingly.

Mine is "half elf whose whole backstory is how my parrents got together" also applies to sorcerers

@troperhghar9898

6 ай бұрын

@@mal2ksc never heard of it

@danemr6808

6 ай бұрын

What do you have against Neil Patrick Harris?

@troperhghar9898

6 ай бұрын

@@danemr6808 that despite having the same name and is growing to look like, he is in fact not related to Ed Harris

"One parent was an angel, one was a demon. I am a vampirespawn."

I tried a character that’s whole thing was he had amnesia that was at one point very powerful. I think it went very well because how you use these tropes is key. He was an ancient wizard that was dying and decided to transfer his essence into a warforged body. The attempt was successfulish his soul transferred over but there were problems. Thousands of years past and he finally woke up when some farmers dug him up on accident and remembered nothing but his name. His tower long ago crumbled to dust, no one alive remembered his name, and he had no allies or friends. His whole point is he was supposed to be nobody. A strange creature in a land he knew nothing about, no knowledge of customs, races, religions, ect. Truly a blank slate.

One of the neat things about Traveller is if your character's backstory connects with another PC's backstory, you each get an extra skill. That means a lot of "We were in the academy together" or "My doctor got shanghai'd by your pirate vessel and I worked as the ship's doctor for four years" No "meeting at a tavern". The characters have all know each other for years until someone said "hey, I got a scoutship! and they all gathered together.

as someone who got into the swing of writing characters and making OCs years before playing dnd for the first time, it honestly never even occurred to me once that someone would deliberately make someone else write their character's backstory. i mean. how??? if anyone tried to even vaguely change something about my character's lore without my okay id be mad as hell LOL

Lone Wolfs cause lets be honest here they have no reason to be in the party and interact with anyone. So I will force you to be in a tarven called in The Lone Wolf where there is no windows, ALL of the tablets are in the middle of the room so you are forced to talk to EVERYONE, and a bubbly and happy barmaid taking your order while asking about your day.

@ZeoffArcaneOfficial

7 ай бұрын

If they are aware that the lone wolf story is about learning to NOT because lone wolf, it can work, but so many miss that part.

@galactick3816

7 ай бұрын

When I'm DMing I have two requirements for the character creation. 1. The character has to have a reason to travel and get in the typical DnD shenanigans. 2. They have to have reason to work with the rest of the party. Yes, I absolutely wouldn't mind character who is just using the party to find powerful artifact, or something

in my many years playing dnd, i have never encountered the amnesia trope... until this most recent campaign in which TWO players asked my permission to give their characters amnesia. the first one has a fully-written backstory, as in the player knows what happened but the character did not. she had a painful past and asked her goddess to wipe her of her painful memories. even so, the effects of her past still colour things like her gut reactions, even if she can't remember WHY certain things scare her so much. the player has given me full reign, as the one who technically plays the goddess, to remove those memory blocks whenever i want to (probably in whatever moment i find that will cause maximum emotional pain lol) the second player has chosen the more stereotypical route, in which the character and the player both have no clue about what happened in her past. but what she lacks in backstory, she makes up for in personality. due to not having memories, she's very naive about the world. she's very trusting, and immediately imprinted on the first people she ran into (the party) like an orphaned duckling. she's very curious about the world, so it gave me the opportunity to teach about basic lore in-character in the early game, rather than just going the route of "here's a list of facts that your average kindergartener would know about the world. please read it." also i am having fun making up the character's backstory and dropping little hints about it, i can't wait for the big reveal

@QuatarTarandir

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, I think the amnesia backstory can totally work with players like yours who do it right. Really, any backstory can work if the player does it well Also, all those backstories sound cool. Hope the reveal goes good.

My favorite isn't really a character issue as it is a player issue. The charcter fought a dragon, saved the world, killed a god, been adventuring for 20+ years. And yet, the charcter is only level 1-3. It's such a disconnect between chacter and backstory, I can't help but laugh.

Any backstory is good, but the best backstories are the ones you work with the dm about

Fun story here, one of my players in a current campaign did a 'multiple personalities' thing because of a cursed sword in their backstory. basically they grabbed a magic sword as a dumb teen and it fractured their mind. HOWEVER they were all part of the same mind so there wasn't really any major problems with it. it also came out during a minor exposition dump about the real goal of the adventure that, if they died before getting 'cured', there was no revivify or resurrection or even afterlife for them. because it fractured not only their mind, but their SOUL, if they died, that was it. kaput. it also turned into a fun quest where party all worked together with an NPC companion to get the character fixed in a way that still allowed them the fun parts of their condition.

My favorite player character so far is actually in hiatus in my friend's 5e game. A goliath who lost everything to a siege upon her clan, became a ruthless predator of the north and eventually began wandering as the conquerors looked to finish the job and tie up loose ends (aka kill her). She went on quite a long quest throughout the world, eventually became associated with the local adventuring guilds, bonded with and helped escort a kidnapped noble child back to his father, and then disaster struck: The army from her backstory showed up to a village the party was staying at. And it was pretty clear if the army were to attack the village they would destroy it. So we let them take us as captives only to find out the "king" of the territory was a lord-playing-king and his "army" was just a bunch of mercenaries. So she paid them double what he was, they took her and the party to the north on a warship, ended up killing the lord and the changeling in the party took his place. So now the party is on hiatus and we're doing a "soft reset" with Level 3 characters, when we come back to our original party my goliath will be class-changed from Barbarian/Ranger multiclass to Paladin (with a level in bard due to party memes) as, without the looming threat of death over her, she's been able to reintegrate her spirituality into her daily life and refine her fighting style. Basically went from blacksmith, to marauder, to knight.

some of these backstories.. things like the amnesia or the "i was once a powerful person".. i find it funny that BG3 pretty much has all of that and makes it work well.. i dont think they need to be outright banned, just need the player to create good reasons for them (and like, forvthe amnesia, that shouldnt stop the player from writing the backstory, just the character from knowing it)

@THEPELADOMASTER

7 ай бұрын

Even in BG1, the character you create is an orphan, raised in candlekeep, your mentor dies tragically, and it's revealed that you're the son/daughter of the god of murder Bhaal and the bad guy is your sibling. It's like 4 tropes in one, but the story is still good.

@darcraven01

7 ай бұрын

@@THEPELADOMASTER exactly. most tropes are fine if they're done well.. the trick is to actually do them well.

Ah, in my all fey party one of the players does have an amnesia backstory. He is a homebrew sorcerer class that is sorta like wild magic sorcerer but with more tables and different types of effects (usually leaning funnier and fall less deadly and annoying for the party like the usual wild magic one). I think this backstory actually works though because, again, it’s an all fey party. We absolutely act like a bunch of well meaning but chaotic fey that the normal town has learned to adopt as their resident powerful adventurers. The reason I think the amnesia thing works so well here is because it makes sense in this party that not a single one of us cares, as we are fey, about the past. We are about the now and sometimes the future. So yes, little anecdotes are dropped by the dm about the amnesia player’s past but it’s not some deep dark thing. In fact, it’s being hinted at that it may be a result of their chaotic magic in the first place, of which the only way to avoid such a thing again, is to get stronger so he can control it. But yeah, this is more about the shenanigans we get up to than actually fighting or going through some angst and such. I mean, my god, my character often wild shapes into a giant wolf spider and joins the guards on the lighthouse for a game cards. It’s a regular thing! We get up to a lot. Are we a bit terrifying? Yup actually. We are the type of terrifying you might find from a fey, if in different ways (mine is classic but also a plush toy maker so, bit creepy there when they come to life). The other is a mad scientist inventor type who looks like a science experiment himself but is jovial and fun if abrasive. The last (pc) is sincere and generous, even kind, but loves to pull pranks and has sticky fingers. He’ll lend you a hand in a heartbeat and be your friend for no other reason than you saying you wanted to be though. We also have two npc teammates, a dwarf (but from the feywild) monk and a human master potioneer and alchemist. Bit of a mad scientist that one too. We picked him up on our adventures but he fits right in to the fey mentality of the party. Little of an odd one himself. So, as you can see, a bit of amnesia is kinda a thing that falls to be background and has time to unravel as the dm so pleases. This party is in no hurry. And also don’t pity our dm. He has said he genuinely loves the chaos we throw at him and it’s a ton of laughs at what harmless antics we will get up to next (and they are harmless as we refuse to be murderhobos or creeps). Also (different game) for the “lost their loved one” trope. That comes down to us rolling backstory elements off a table. I got a rival relationship that says I was blamed for my rival’s sibling being dead. I had to figure out why this matters to my character. It led to me deciding this was from another thing I rolled up which was a rampant creature attack where only my character was the survivor of. Considering the original idea for this character was to make them a parentified eldest child who compulsively is a care taker, I figured the best way to tie this all together was to have the rival and my character both blame my character for the loss. As in, a character who agrees with their enemy that they are worthless because the character doesn’t believe they lived up to their own standards. Which in this case, was not being able to protect their dearest love. The party is meeting my character some years after this has happened though and while my character is still trying to figure out what their new life is supposed to be since the one they dreamed of having is gone with their lover and they can’t even lean on their rival (a once friend and was supposed to be future brother-in-law) to mourn together. I have my character basically be a person who takes on too much responsibility, even for things that are beyond their power and who bottle it up and attack their own self worth if they do anything they feel has led to them “failing.” The character arc here is for my character to eventually learn to toss out these toxic habits and thought patterns and be better and kinder to themself. That’s all. So yeah I’m dealing with grief as a trope but it isn’t about being angsty (my character actually tries to cheer everyone up if they are down) or getting revenge. It’s just about learning to continue living with it. As for why this character adventures, it’s actually because they are a researcher of linguistics. They often travel for their research but also because they have a wanderlust personality, a trait they picked up from their mentor. Also, as an artist and poet, they enjoy seeing new sights to inspire them. And last reason is because they are part of a faction of researchers and information collectors so they kinda are sent on actual missions….like a spy lol. They aren’t a spy but the party jokes this character is one because they can forge official looking papers in such a wide variety of languages and are rather charismatic and disarming to the right people while still coming off sincere and interested. Also they send reports back to their faction of events and include very accurate drawings of what and who they see. I like to joke that, because of all this stuff, there is never a moment the party doesn’t see a weird ink stain on my character’s face or hair or some type of paint or charcoal on their clothes. You know, like any artist lol.

i made amnesia character once but i made a whole backstory before they lost their memory i was unaware this was a thing people did to get out of a backstory. i wanted a character looking for their memory who had a lot of friends beforehand so he would wander into them and have strange interactions.

@BlueTressym

7 ай бұрын

I did the same a few years back, for a Star Wars game. I had no idea until comparatively recently that there were people who would say their character had amnesia instead of writing a backstory; the whole idea is bizarre to me. Just don't join games where backstories matter if you don't enjoy the kind of game where who your character is and was is important.

I had an orphan character, the back story was that having grown up in an "orphanage" learning petty thievery, the character was a cat-folk cat burglar (pathfinder subclass) rogue, that was supporting the orphanage now that his mentors had aged out of the profession - they still ran the orphanage, still taught the youngens the basics but were otherwise retired. His role in the party involved the "combat steal" feat tree - while not as easy as pick pocketing it allowed stealing of items as part of an attack routine - and made him the bane of enemy spell casters. Component pouch stuffed with semi precious materials? Solid silver Holy symbol? I'll take those thank you very much. Razor claw racial ability meant he didn't carry weapons other than his natural retractable claws, but could use those claws to cut purse strings, belt loops and sneak attacks. Add to that a couple of magical straps that absurdly boosted his carrying capacity - mostly as a joke - literally so he could drop literal tons of stuff from a down time heist he was coming back from, whenever the party called the gang back together. Where were you carrying all that ... In this big sack ... How were you carrying all that?

My champion (paladin cause) in my group's pathfinder campaign has the whole noble background going for her. The only thing is, she's so used to dealing with the rules of etiquette and such she has a lot of problems just talking to people normally to where she gets all shy and withdrawn in casual settings (including the party just having downtime) because she's so out of her comfort zone there she doesn't know what she's supposed to do or say. She's a good party face for us when we need to deal with people in important positions, but when it comes time to do the general social stuff, it falls to the other party members to shine there. Edit: I still had to work only with the money I earned adventuring (so no im rich and i can buy anything), which was fine with me, as she preferred to keep the two duties she had close, but still separated. She did something as the duty of being a noble, or she did something because it was her duty as a paladin and does her best to not let one interfere with the other

I do a lot of characters with the hermit background, which lends itself to some of the archetypes mentioned in the vid. I even have an orphan character (Tabaxi sorcerer) who killed his mother and was banished from his tribe. But I use that as PART of the backstory instead of just AS the backstory. I knew I wanted his backstory to involve him gaining his Wild Magic unexpectedly, and so rolled on the actual table to see what he got. It was a 7 (cast 3rd level fireball for free on self) so I thought up what happened. He had just recently learned he was a sorcerer, and an early developing one at that, and so was practicing Chromatic Orb and Shield as he was going around the village with his mom, who was a seamstress. His mother was visiting the chief to fit the princess for a new gown. His mom called for his help holding the needles and, not trusting himself, he cast shield on himself so he wouldn’t prick his fingers. Thats the first time the wild magic kicked in, killing his mom and the village princess, but leaving him unscathed. So he fled to the desert before the townsfolk and chief could find him and executed him, and vowed to never kill another soul. Orphan backstory, self imposed exile, and solemn vow, all usually pretty boring, but building on them instead of just using them is what actually makes it a backstory instead of a backdrop.

@mentalrebllion1270

7 ай бұрын

I do that a lot too, use the hermit background. It’s fun! I think on of my favorites was a noble who became a refugee after his family got killed in a power struggle between three royal factions (lore wise, these factions were no joke, seriously corrupt and dangerous). As a refugee he came to love his new town but he was also really traumatized so he kinda became the hermit ranger in the outskirts of the town for the next 50 years (yes, long lived race). He was still a political loose end though and so he always panicked if he caught wind of anyone of his homeland being around (they were very rare) or if someone knew his family name (he never shared it). So basically a hermit for political reasons and safety and also trauma. But he was also the local hero for his new hometown so he had a good life while it lasted (inciting incident for the start of the campaign meant he had to leave). The other two times I have used it in more recent characters was actually similar. They were created out in the middle of nowhere. One was a yuanti who was technically a snake that the ambient magic gave a humanoid form and a command from the land to protect and heal its people. So basically a guardian. And the other was an earth genasi that started their existence as a jade statue in an ancient and lost temple in the middle of the mountains. This forgotten temple was also where all the fractured souls of the dead from around the world gathered and their magic eventually brought my genasi to life as a humanoid elemental (because the homebrew of this world hadn’t yet included genasi). The character was born with a sense of duty to help the souls of these dead pass on, usually by helping them fulfill their regrets or hearing them out. They were basically a gravestone was my joke. But yeah, that’s my hermits mostly. I’ve had a few more but these three are my favorites for sure. The only other is a hexblood who is very fey but the hermit part of their story doesn’t come into play much, it’s more from their studies as a dream druid, very simple. That campaign is more about us getting up to fey shenanigans as it’s an all fey party.

@stanard_bearer

7 ай бұрын

I did a hermit once. The tropes I combined were: never knew his family, chosen one, and raised by an otherworldly being. I was making a goblin celestial pact warlock, with a Couatl as the pact giver. The Couatl thought that this child born during a horde must be the one to defeat the dark god... Charlie. So it spirited him away and rased him, trained him, taught him, but no power was emerging. So he did the last option available to him, he sent away the little goblin with instructions to find (guy determined by the DM). Now sequestered away the Couatl began transfering all his power to the goblin. I played him as a little ball of curiosity and chaos, my brother tied into his story in a pretty funny way. A Tabaxi rogue, a professional, one of the Frumentari, an order of spies loyal to Ceaser. Within the kingdom there was a dark ritual performed and ended up killing an entire noble house. The spell was performed by its patriarch, Charles Matteus. The Tabaxi was sent to hunt him down. The goblin seeks to defeat the dark God Charlie, the rogue seeks to deliver justice to the dark wizard Charles Matteus. Neither of us realized this naming coincidence before the DM though. He said we're after the same guy. Great times

4:49 I respect that, a new player who wants to work out if the systems are to their liking before committing to anything, like a trial run, the amnesia thing means that if they decide to stick with it, they can schedule a "revelation" moment with the dm where something triggers an important memory or their entire memory to come back. It'll be kinda weak as far as things go, but it will let the new player get their feet wet without feeling like they wasted their time on something if they end up dropping it.

I don’t build characters around backstories but go absolutely ham making backstories for the characters I make. Rolled a ranger, decided my friend’s character and him would be siblings. They had a third sibling that was killed by a breed of giant hawk (I can’t remember which) when they were kids. They followed the trail of viscera back to its nest, where they found its egg. It hatched and the chick imprinted on my character, making him thoroughly believe that it was their brother, reincarnated. So he raised it as his companion and became a ranger to care for it. Of course, the DM said it would be too high a level a creature :( I also made a little Tiefling sorcerer. She was abandoned in the woods as an infant, as devilspawn are prone to be, and grew up among animals. The frequent starvation stunted her growth and, in one such occasion, her strange, animalistic thoughts caught the many eyed gaze of an Ancient One, who made a pact with her and drove her back into civilization. She rarely spoke aloud, opting for telepathy, and canonically learned common by listening to the thoughts of others. I also had a greedy cleric who worshipped a goddess of wealth. He really was just a guy who wanted to get rich, so he fell in with a church worshipping a goddess that doled out blessings based on profit. Basically, he joined a holy pyramid scheme and he wanted to learn alchemy to create convincing fake potions for medicare money. I also rolled an Illusionist with 6 strength and 4 charisma. He was recruited from the farmers that party had protected from a goblin raid in a pyrrhic victory. He was too weak to farm, so he had stayed inside and learned magic and, when the villagers saw the chance to get rid of him, they absolutely sent him with the worst party they could’ve found (half the party had died in the raid and 2 of who were left were evil). He’d chosen illusion magic for glamour specifically. Lastly, I had a haughty half elf bard who worshipped a goddess of the sun (in that specific ttrpg, bards had patrons). She was the result of an affair between an Elven noblewoman and a human commoner, so her father had her cast into their mines to be forgotten or die. She was raised by the dwarves who worked the mines. She hated the work and she grew to hate the crass men who enjoyed it. When she had first laid eyes on the light of the surface, it was love and she fled, pursuing the arts to express it.

I played a nobleman character once back in 3.5, but it wasn't the "I'm RICH!" trope. Friend was starting a campaign just as I was about to do some work that would have been travelling every few weeks, and he still wanted me in the game. We work on a backstory together that would allow it to make sense that I was popping out for a bit (to miss a session or two) and then pop back. I played a ranger, son of a lord in his campaign setting. My uncle had sides with the BBEG, and ousted my family from their title. I had been away when he killed my father and imprisoned the rest of my family, and had been labeled a "traitor" by my uncle. I was a wanted man, and hunted. So, I no longer had access to the "family bank". The campaign began within my families former demesne. At the start I was in hiding. I saw what my uncle was doing to the people, and got pulled into the first adventure. When I had to dip out for work the first time, I took the gold I had earned so far to help my people get food and medicine, doing an sort of play-by-email with the DM to describe what I did, as the rest of the party did it's thing. Rejoin the party, adventure some more, working against the BBEG. Drop out to return to the people, eventually starting a small group of freedom fighters/rebels with the gold I had earned. My character would dip in and out over the course of a few months (real time and game time), always returning "home" and using the my earned gold to bolster the rebels and help the people. By the time I didn't need to travel for work anymore and return to the group for regular sessions, we were at the end of the first major story arc of the DM's campaign, and my character had formed a decent group of rebels. My character wasn't the military leader of the rebels; during the play by email, I had actually found my character's former mentor who trained him as a youth in the sword, and former brother-in-arms of my father, who had retired to a homestead when my uncle took over. He lead the rebels while I was away. But I had become the "face" of the rebellion, as I had been fighting directly against the BBEG with the party, most of whom also had ties to the area. The next arch of the campaign was against my uncle, who most of the party now all had one reason or another to hate on a personal level. He had become one of the BBEG's major lieutenants, and stopping him had become key. It was a great campaign. Each major campaign story arc tied into at least one player's backstory. I was basically playing off the "Robin Hood" trope. And gave every bit of gold I could back to help the people and fund a rebellion. He basically lived off what he could forage and/or hunt, and goodberries, so as spend as little on himself (but still pitched in to group costs, so as not to mooch off the other party members gold).

What a coincidence. Just as my players creates their PCs update: PC #1 Human clerick (F) Happy childhood, grew up in decent family. Loves to travel and visit new places. Became clerick of godess of trade, wonderlust and luck...by sheer luck mind you. The godess kind of liked her and she liked her back. PC #2 Human warrior, grizzeled veteran as he likes to point out about himself, yet he fought in 1 battle only, almost lost his eye and got robbed by townsfolk on his way back home. PC #3 Thiefling Warlock - Of noble birth, but kind of a wierdo. Loves to brew potions and experiment with explosives. Several time managed to blow parta of the mansion. Parents saw him a unfit of the noble title, tries to get rid of him via 3rd party. PC has to go into hiding. ( This one is a bit overdone i think, but i beleave that this player can make it interesting in the long run)

I have a character concept in the rafters that mixes “I was king once” and “I have amnesia”. Basically, the character used to be a tyrant king a really *really* long time ago (long enough to hopefully not get in the way of any DM-created history), and was killed for being a really bad ruler. But he came back as a Reborn and he only knows he might have been king because his wizard staff is a really fancy scepter. I wanted it to be a Nature V. Nurture character.

@no1nedoesstuffonyoutube

6 ай бұрын

added info in case you’re curious: he knows almost nothing about his kingdom and the life he led nor does he have anything from it besides the fancy scepter, and he wants to adventure because the world is basically brand new to him again.

This video couldn’t have been perfectly more timed. In 30 minutes I am hosting a Session 0 for a campaign, and almost everyone is a new player (one has some experience but not enough to say he is a returning player)

For Amnesia I'd still make the player write the backstory. The PC just wouldn't know any of it till he "remembered" somehow. Players do backstories, and all back-of-house things. They do the past. I do the present, and sometimes the future.

The one I ban is "I'm an orphan and that makes me extremely racist". You know the one. Parents were killed by (insert common monster here) and so the character is compelled to kill (common monster) on sight, no matter what. I've also had the opposite problem. A DM required everyone to use a detailed random background generator, so our backstories weren't up to us. I built a character around that backstory, choosing abilities that keyed into it and how the world operated. And the DM systematically stripped away all of those abilities because they were inconvenient. Noble background (that I didn't choose), ability from the noble background that provided just enough passive income to offset the campaign's cost-of-living rules? Immediately cut off from the family and declared legally dead. No access to that income. High skill ranks and a specific ability to sense trouble coming in advance? After foiling five consecutive betrayals and ambushes with it, the ability was crippled down to "You get a weird feeling". Thanks. This is an adventure game. If I don't have a "weird feeling" it's because I'm already dead.

@QuatarTarandir

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, the "orphan racist" thing would only work if it was more-so a dislike of a certain race that they would grow to go past. In fact, having the race being another PC could lead to some interesting drama and character development. Of course, the whole party would have to agree to it, especially the other player, but it could work if done well. With the other stuff, your DM was an a-hole. Perfect bad DM behavior, definitely don't play with anyone like that.

@LoneWolf-rc4go

6 ай бұрын

I played in a campaign where my Ranger really, really, really hated Giants. His backstory was that he'd been dealing with their sh*t for years and had ended up burying more than his fair share of friends. What I didn't know, while generating the character, was that the campaign was Storm Kings Thunder.

@QuatarTarandir

6 ай бұрын

@@LoneWolf-rc4go Lol, well, that sounds like that campaign would be...interesting

@LoneWolf-rc4go

6 ай бұрын

@@QuatarTarandir Yup. Basically the party had the Ranger in a headlock for most of the campaign. After a couple of brushes with Dragons my character decided that they were the only thing that he hated more than Giants making things a lot easier.

@QuatarTarandir

6 ай бұрын

@@LoneWolf-rc4go Yeah, that sounds really cool. Definitely sounds like you found a way to play it well

My current character has a tragic background involving abandonment and being looked down on for being a Tiefling. She is also a loving big sister, a massive troll and her main thing is singing upbeat songs.

I have an amnesia backstory It's well over 2000 characters long still and I want to rewrite it sometime. Tldr aarakocra *presumably* from the plane of air was a warrior, they knew this. A stormy battle happened and the next thing he remembered was falling from the sky. They remembered a name being called out. No idea who it was. Just that the name wasn't his own. He had magical powers he didn't know much about and ended up following one of the new lands religions in order to try to understand himself better, this is how he became a storm sorcerer tempest cleric. It leaves soo much that the dm can play with. Yet enough that the dm has ground to build off of. Yes that was tldr

One of my players’ backstory is that he was a pirate captain many years ago until his first mate betrayed him by convincing everyone else he had done horrible things (ala jack sparrow). Now what’s fun about it this is there’s like eight characters still alive who just hate his guts. And his argument is that they don’t understand that he was framed but mine is “these people have been holding these horrible grudges for DECADES, they ain’t gonna forgive you easily” and to this day only one of them actually has. Though a few have been kinda chill about it. The dwarf barbarian tried to kill him on sight lol

I had a backstorry for my halfling where he started adventuring with his wife as a cleric and him as a fighter. early in there adventures his wife was hurt badly in a trap and the two barely make it out. The wife gave up on adventuring and instead runs the wagon and makes potions helping with the camp, while my player went rogue to learn everything he can about spotting and disarming traps and locks to the point that he is not a sneak, or a pickpocket at all, and abhors the idea, but he is skilled at the trap part of the rogue abilities.

With amnesia, if I use it, I still write a backstory and all that, but the character simply has forgotten it.

I have a close friend who's played in 2 of my games and their backstory pissed me off both times. The first was a rogue who just appeared fully formed but thinks that they have amnesia. I tried to have a villain tempt him with knowledge of his past but the player just said no. His second character was a wizard with powers that rivaled a god, in his home universe, in an experiment he transferred himself to the universe the campaign is taking place in which dropped him down to a player-appropriate level but that's all according to plan.

My idea with amnesia? Flesh out everything that happens AFTER the character woke up. My favorite is when the character has built an entirely new life post-amnesia and swill inevitably have to balance their current life with the legacy of their previous one.

One of my current mains has run with an amnesia backstory for going on 16 levels now. The amnesia was a chicken/egg scenario. Decided his dump stat would be int, so head caved in and somehow lived through it back story to explain why he is so dumb was born. Party found him with a gnarly head wound under a tree and healed him. He, for a very long time, considered that tree his mother and the party his family. It was highly entertaining to play him as a dumb ass. I was not expecting the other DMs to come up with a backstory (we have a rotation), just gave them the green light to do whatever the hell they wanted. Somewhere around level 7, I think, he wound up with a headband of intellect. That one took me a bit to wrap my head around and roll play properly. I eventually settled on the analogy of adding a modern processor to a TRS80 hard drive. He is now VERY alert and quick to grasp things in the here and now, but is the same ole dumb ass he has always been as there is no room in his "hard drive" for personality growth. About level 13ish one of the DMs went hard on his backstory. Was an amazing story arc I absolutely loved. I am leaning into the WHAT I now know he is (his father is a shade from the Shadowfel), but the character himself kept regretfully telling those who KNEW him that being no longer exists. His WHO remains the same ole dumb ass the party found under a tree 16 levels ago.

@TheMemo659

6 ай бұрын

My banned backstory trope: Anything presented during session zero (or character introduction mid campaign) that has no logical tie in or reason to join the party. "Explain to me why your tiefling warlock, who is on a mission to destroy all religious orders, would team up with a paladin, druid, monk and a cleric?"

There was one time where we had a multi personality thiefling in our party whose real personality was good but when threatned or stressed his evil alternate personality took over. It was fun, but not because of the player, but because of the party. Aside from him we had two good aligned characters who liked his real self and two evil characters who liked his alternate self so it was fun roleplaying that

5:50 Man, that DM must hate the Dark Urge playthrough 🤣

The one backstory, that was more character creation because I wasn't very into RPing, that I am guilty of doing, was a child orphan that became a hermit, so they were very rusty on speech. This lead to minimal vocal lines, and it definitely strained the group. They also had strained relations with other races, because they were bullied as a kid. I tried to make them fit in the party, but I played it so poorly that I would never do that again until I know how to play it better and not make it lone wolf-y

It's not a trope per se but characters just so happen to have an item or ability that gives them an insane advantage.

There isn't a bad or annoying character backstory, only players who don't know how to use their character's backstories in a way that is fun. All of those examples in this video could be fine if the player utilized it well (there's even an example of this with the "extremely rich" trope in the video itself).

A troupe that I’m guilty of is the ‘Im an once powerful individual who’s got a shit ton of experience for being a level 5’ but I think that, at from someone like me, it’s borne from a desire to have a character who is extremely intimate with the world. Granted, I also explained my man’s loss of levels as him loosing an arm and then having a couple months of muscle atrophy. So that was fun.

@Sorain1

7 ай бұрын

Honestly that can be a fun trope to use. To be fair, I'm coming off having run a campaign for D&D that used that as the theme of the story. BBEG shows up with an army from across the sea and starts wrecking face, the big goods of the setting get together and go "Wat do?" to which someone suggests 'bring back a proven hero from the past!' After petitioning their God of Death and Afterlife, they need to decide on who to bring back. Eventually, with the looming threat of the BBEG continuing to advance, they compromise and so several culture's equivalents of King Arthur are returned... but at only a fraction of the power they had at the end of their lives. They can regain their prowess extremely fast, especially if they gathered their legendary regalia, but for political reasons needed to remain on level with each other. The whole set of players enjoyed writing up three sheets of their characters, one at level 5, one at 15 and one at 25. While I (as the DM) worked with them on what their adventures were, then (with their permission of course) wrote up what history/legend recorded about them. By far the most fun was the player who wrote up a legendary Drow warrior heroine... that was actually a guy and the church not only knew this (they were the ones that lied about it) but actively took steps to help him hide it from everyone outside the party. (Regalia was scattered among cities and all of them wanted their pound of flesh for them.) But there was great fun in 'The great Paladin of a God that actually died long ago and their successor gave up on trying to correctly attribute things to said God.' Having the Goddess of civilization as a minor character because she's really sorry about the records being wrong was a recurring fun bit of interaction.(His regalia was available from the start, save the political issues keeping it away.) The mythic 'greatest Necromancer in history' was an expert in *arcane* healing magics, but because he (re)discovered Necromancy that was all he was remembered for. (Thus his Regalia were all attributed to the wrong people.) But possibly the most interesting was best described as 'Elven Conan the Barbarian' who instead of rising from their grave stepped forth from a statue... because he never existed in the first place and the Divine alter reality did the next best thing by giving his statue life and a set of false memories instead. (His Regalia were all artifacts made modeled on the legends naturally.) The final battle was great for me, I got to have the BBEG call them imposters to their faces, citing how none of them actually matched their legends except the Barbarian. The players burst out laughing (in and out of character) at that.

I run Dungeon Crawl Classics, so your character's backstory is the level zero funnel adventure you survived, while what motivated your character to give up farming, blacksmithing, etc. is for you to choose. Even when I run other games, though, no one begins my game as a "Chosen One," an amnesiac who is "unlocking" all their former powers, or anything silly for a 1st level character to just consider themselves (i.e. a demon slayer). I find that stuff is FAR better used as something for them to aspire to during play instead of just granting themselves in a backstory.

i'm playing an "amnesia" type character right now, but they have a long and detailed backstory as a character from the module that i just hijacked and followed up on after they "dissapeared" in the pre-campaign events. I'm playing heavily into the fact that i, as a player, knows what happened in my characters past, but the character itself does not, and it's quite fun to manage what they do and do not remember.

There is nothing new under the sun especially in the art of storytelling, I urge you treat your players with kindness and respect.

Playing storm king's thunder, I had a character who was a minor god but the giants killed almost all of his wirshipers. No worshipers, bo powers. His motivation in the campaign was avenging his people, and his level ups came when he had converted enough people to worship him that he gained more powers. Everyone at the table thought it went well. We had another player though who had written in his backstory that he could one shot giants and then got upset when it didn't happen in game

Our long campaigns about on the last ‘book’ of the one we are currently playing we select what we will run next and start making the characters and weaving them together. By the time the game starts, they actually FEEL like a group of people with some shared history who know each other and work together.

Had one of my players in my last campaign give me an amnesiac with the hook of "Yeah he's a crazy hermit changeling who lives in the woods, go wild" and the *instant* I started drip-feeding his character's in-universe backstory, he was all in. He was asking me questions about the organization he had been a part of, got super invested in the source of his amnesia, even by the end of the campaign had fully reclassed from Mystic to Wizard (One of his post-amnesia goals was to learn magic, because his psionics blocked him from the weave, and this was when they officially phased out Mystic, so neither of us particularly wanted one in the game anymore) Amnesia CAN work as a "pls write my backstory DM" but only IF the player who has amnesia gets wholly invested in the character story you give them. Which, I fully realise is incredibly rare and I captured lightning in a bottle with this player and this character.

3:38 Not gonna lie, that guy sounds like a dick. Now, he's probably exaggerating (I hope), but if he isn't... yeah, using any backstory as an excuse to torture the PCs is very much not good GM-ing, that's obvious to me even with my limited experience. If it's true, than his players REALLY must be masochists. On that note, I wonder how many "dead/unknown family" backstories exist just because the GM of those players tend to constantly have bad things happen to them.

@BlueTressym

7 ай бұрын

It's well known that adversarial GMs often create orphaned murderhoboes by training players to expect their GM to dick them over if they dare to have any family or friends.

I had a character developed an Amnesia backstory in the middle of the story. He thought he was in his mid-twenties, but he was actually over a century and a half old! He had fought the BBEG of this story branch multiple times, but every time they realized the character might win, they sent them away and wiped their memory. Some other party members think it's a twisted form of Mercy, as this particular BBEG and the character are twins.

I personally love doing a stoic character who had something happen bad, (not thier whole life usually one event) and it affects them, usually with a addiction, mistrust or some other flaw added to them, one example, a police officer who was in a traffic accident, leaving him with chronic pain but still able to function as a officer, however hes too stoic to admit he needs help, he feels helping others is too important and he would end up a burden, he is usually the one whose downing a bottle of whiskey being his physical pain becomes crippling and he simply wants to feel better... Never got to play him yet

See, if I had a good DM like some of these, I would purposely make one of these backstories because I WANT to be punished that way. It would be fun starting as a noble that's living it fancy on the road only to then later find out his family had been deposed or commit treason to the high king and now I'm on that king's shitlist too. It would be fun in these situations having to deal with these things...but I'm also a maso so having things difficult is my cup of tea.

I had a character whose backstory was as a maxed out level 20 Sorcerer, but their power was stolen and they were now completely incapable of using magic, and so they were a level 1 Fighter. As a DM, I have had several player characters with amnesia. One was done in an annoying way, with random sudden flashes of their past coming back to them and reducing them to a blubbering immobile wreck. That can work for RP, but not when you offer zero opportunity to snap them out of it and it happens all the time, every time the player starts to sense a scene isn't revolving around them. That player moved on to a similarly traumatized Barbarian who could at least remember their past and remain functional in combat, which is an improvement. Half-rabbitfolk half-sea slug is still... difficult. Even if I allow this character, I have no idea how to build it. And I will definitely have to be the one building it. Right, so the second amnesiac character I've been dealing with is... a lot more fun. Because of how I run my setting, and the contrast with the other groups or people my players have interacted with before, my players assume a lot of things that either are not in the rules or I see no reason to enforce. For example, this player was told by someone who isn't in my group that Tieflings can have a tail or wings, never both. I don't know if this is accurate, but I don't like it. So, since this character is an amnesiac, when this subject finally came up and I found out they wanted wings on their character but didn't do it because of what someone I'd never met told them, we determined that they had forgotten they had wings and never checked. No one mentioned it because everyone assumed they knew. This character is fun, everyone likes them, and because they remember nothing from their life before, they immediately imprinted on the oldest member of the party (or the character who acts the oldest, probably because they are played by the oldest player) and follow them around like a duckling. This player also made the assumption that 'favored enemy' meant that their character absolutely hates Elementals, so they act accordingly. What we get here is a bright and cheerful character who has thus far been one of the most effective fighters in the party, despite their animal companion not being able to follow them into the current dungeon and the player never remembering that Rangers have spells. That's not really amnesia done right. I don't ask for tropes 'done right'. I just ask that they play well in-game and don't cause problems for everyone else.

For a little context: I had played a character purely for the flavor, I played a human draconic bloodline sorcerer with levels in oath of the ancients paladin. She always claimed to feel a sense of calm and serenity when in the area of a primal magic: I.e. a dragon's lair. She later gained the ability to call the spirit of her dragon ancestor once per day. We found out the bbeg was wanting to harvest her inmate magic. So when we got to the castle of the bbeg it was the typical lich's castle undead all works. But when we got to the lich himself. He said "nature bends itself to me." His edritch eyes trained on my character. "Such young and raw power, nature itself blesses you. But it bends to me, why fight it. I will have every drop of blood and then when on the brink of collapse your soul will be mine and your body my humble servant." Roll initiative

I've had multiple successes with amnesia backstory. I give the DM a proper backstory that ends in the cause of the amnesia, and just RP a character who doesn't remember their past. It's great, and sometimes the amnesia happens halfway through the backstory so the character still has some memories of their past just not all of it.

I have a character with the “wife and child have died” trope. But I had a way bigger story. My character was a devout paladin of a lawful good god who went on many conquests in their name. When he came back home he found that a disease had taken to the town and it turned some of them into undead. His family was one of these victims. He pleaded to his god to save his family, citing his exploits for her but this particular god despised the undead. She struck his family down claiming it was the best fate for them, but he knew of her bias towards undead. He spited her and left the city that was devoted to her, swore to never praise her again. He wandered through the wilderness for years bitter and defeated. On the cusp of starvation in a particularly barren forest he collapsed only to be found by a man who lived alone in the woods with his family. He felt the tenderness of this family and saw they worshipped a different god. After learning that the god they praised valued family, community and nature he decided he had found his new faith. Now with his party he seeks to find a community he can be apart of that values family and the natural way of life. His is old and kind with a certain permanent sadness in his eyes. As he adventures for his long term goal, he hopes he can prevent any other families from experiencing his fate as he crosses paths with so many people.

@JRook-00

7 ай бұрын

Oh my God, I shit you not, I was reading this, semi-concerned that a member of my ex-group ended up here, stealing credit for my character concept for comment clout. I had a character that follows exactly that story arc, right up until "family in the woods", where it deviates hard into evil (as it was an evil game), where, in his outrage, turned cloak, and gave himself over to the vampires he'd spent his life fighting against, joining them in retaliation against the clergy of his old religion. Great minds think alike I guess.

Player made a backstory, but, add amnesia. That back story can include many things that are better left alone, but that WILL come back to haunt the character and the party at some point. Probably at a time that it'll be a real pain to deal with.

I am guilty of having sometimes short backstories because I don't know how I want to play the character in the first few sessions. However, I will always add on additions as the game goes on. My last character, I had no idea how I wanted to play them, had no tangible backstory, but after a few sessions I started writing a long backstory. Unfortunately, that campaign reached a boiling point, and the DM no longer wanted to play online DnD anymore

@scorch2155

7 ай бұрын

Nothing wrong with short back stories as long as its clear who the character is. Oh of the guys in my group only has a backstory of a couple paragraphs and yet his character is very fleshed out iwhen playong because he knows his character enogub to play them as he knows the idea behind them. He just cant write things down well

In recent OSE campaign each of my 3 subsequent characters turned out to be a step-sibling of the formers and every character ended up significantly changed by magical means. It ended up with half-orc brother of petrified dracoid (formerly a halfling) wielding their late dwarf-turned-magic-shield brother.

A few of my PC backstory red flags were mentioned here. The hidden secret is a bad one. The player will either forget, or try to use it against the party. Better that the players, not the characters, know the secret beforehand. Some may argue that the secret is ruined, but I find it's a sharing experience, and the players can remind the player. "Hey your character is secretly a prince trying to hide from their tyrannical sibling. Why would you openly talk to the guards?" One I immediately say NO to immediately is when a player hands me envelopes and say "don't open until I tell you." I will open those immediately right in front of the player, because if you're hiding something from me, you intend to use it against me in an antagonistic manner. I either know everything about your character, or it isn't allowed in the game. No opening an envelope to suddenly reveal that your lawful good cleric is secretly a chaotic evil follower of the dark god the party is trying to depose and you will be rewarded for handing them their enemies on a silver platter.

I actually tend to encourage my players to have maybe three sentences max as a backstory, and then we fill it in as we go. Hell, a lot of my regulars don't even come up with a backstory beyond something like "he's former Russian military, now an expat" (we're running an isekai PMC game, where you actually get PROFESSIONALS to kill the demon lord instead of high schoolers). But any time someone tries to be "the chosen one" or make the world revolve around them in some way? Ooooh boy, they're in for some pain.

My first character i played was a paladin (5e). My characters backstory was that he was herald as a hero for slaying the leader of an orc army that was marauding its way across the lands. But in actuality my character was losing the fight hard and almost died until the orc commander slipped and fell on my characters halberd and impaled himself. It wasn't until the aftermath that my characters compatriots came across the scene and started touting him as a hero. My character felt nothing but shame for his undeserved fame.

one thing that i like to do when i DM, is reward players for really creative and unique backstories. for instance (due to the game format we are running -FFD20-), i have a player who wanted to come from an aristocratic family who specialized in making magical dolls. i allowed this as it fit one of MANY elements i had planned for this world and a few plot points. he spent a lot of time creating his backstory. he was a Temple Acolyte (temple being the only "religious" group in world), a Scholar of the Academy (worlds leading research center - like a college), and comes from a reknowned family. he even included motives and goals for his character in his backstory. he made his family. one plot point he wanted to make for his character is how his family was slowly being murdered and he wanted to investigate. this actually fit in with part of what i had planned. so because he took SO much time to write out things - IN DETAIL!!! - i complied with his request of basically having a low-level automaton at his disposal. now, this player, did NOT abuse this in any way. in fact, he kept MOST of his past secret from MOST of the party, exception being one player that worked for him a few years ago, and even that player did not know most of everything in his past. for reference, he wanted to play a white mage/monk. he even explained why he was a monk (when the party was able to multi-class). all that stuff. players like that, i feel they DESERVE that extra perk or bonus at the start. ofc, i was DMing the FFD20 system, so everyone needed something unique to make the game feel more like final fantasy and less like good ole dnd. i started with a group of 6. we are now down to a group of 4 + me as DM. this player with the doll (due to events in game) now has the doll becoming a sentient being that i am now playing as a DMPC. the opposite can be said for players that dont take time on their backstory. i often make it a POINT to include as much of a players backstory in my campaigns. i have had players ask me why they dont get to do all the cool things and make all the beneficial connections with certain factions and have good loot. i tell them "because.... you didnt work on your backstory. they did. you gave me nothing to work with. they did." "but we are all the same level, weve been together since the beginning. why am i not important?!" "because you didnt want to be i guess. if you wanted to be more important, you should have put it in your backstory"

My current wizard character has amnesia, but I talked extensively with the GM about it: I had a single memory of being in a strange place before I suddenly appeared over a lagoon and nearly drowned, being fished out by an NPC ally (who became my cohort later on). We also talked about who he'd been before - I wanted him to have been basically an evil scientist, and suggested that maybe he'd been working for the bad guys. My GM instead turned my previous self into the third major villain of the story, but we only ever encountered his minions, his creations, and old documents. I cottoned on eventually, but the in-game reveal didn't happen for a while, and was pretty epic. By then, my character had cemented himself as a "worker of wonders" and was a much nicer and happier person, and the party continues to refer to "the Architect" as a separate entity, since he basically is.

For my group, my character I’m reusing from when he was defeated & the world was eaten by nothingness & after an unknown time, was released & finally beat the big bad evil guy after at least a century of torment specialized for each individual. Afterwards, he was in a tavern & overheard this group of 2 turning into crystal & having to find artifacts to present to gods. I chase after them, but drag along the other player in that tavern as a buddy so no one cuts my head off while I’m peeing. The 2 don’t believe me that I joined because I was bored. He’s an alcoholic. It’s helped sometimes like when we brewed a Molotov cocktail from a bottle of pure alcohol. It’s hurt us when I bought a broken magic item. I bought this coal that transforms any liquid inside it to a random magic potion, but it changes back when it exits the vial. When I realized this & sobered up again, I chucked it on the ground, chased that shopkeeper, & tried killing her. She got away. I will have my revenge & retrieve our 30 gold!!

Another amnesia story here but mine isn’t done yet. Reborn Owlin rose from my grave 2 years prior and now that my only lifeline passed away I’m left to this new group of mine (the party) to aid me in this self discovery journey of mine. DM is great and gives me opportunities to discover information when I see things in the world. Also I keep my face hidden as the undead is heavily frowned upon so I’m slowly revealing who I am to party as I get comfortable with them. I try my best not to be the annoying edgy character with the whole “I can’t show my face” thing or the lazy role player. Either way I’m having a really fun time with this one and it’s a short campaign so hey there to experiment and have fun.

It’s honestly sad that so many DMs would rather outright ban some stuff rather than work with it and turn it into something interesting. It really comes across that you don’t want to put in the effort to work with a player and realize the full potential of an idea, so you’d rather just ban it. Of course, not all ideas can be good, but with enough effort, many can be.

@thesuperMasterSword

6 ай бұрын

The problem is that the players also have to put in effort, and a lot of these tropey backstories are already showing that the player is being lazy. If they haven't already put in the effort to flesh out or elaborate on that trope.

DID/MPD. I have not seen it a lot in D&D games, but when I still participated in forum roleplays it was all over the damn place as a way for players to just engage in selfish and petty behaviors without "ruining" their perfect innocent character. They all loved to have arcs to where they would confront their evil self and then tell them off and destroy them, only for their alt to eventually reappear when the player wants to be a little shit again.

"I have amnesia, DM. I cannot remember my backstory."

One of my players was a half-elf who was killed, and in a ritual gone wrong for the god of death, lightning struck both the cultist and her. The cultist died, but she came back to life, which is probably one of my favorite uses of amnesia. After her revival, she found a home of an elderly couple who took care of her, not too far off from superman's origins. They taught her how to hunt, and her morals. While amnesia can be a pain to DM around, it CAN be done well.

Any kind of "Multiple Personalities" or the "My character is super badass, but with the mind of a child!" Oh good lord did I do a quintuple take on that one. I get the idea of naivety or maybe someone not knowing their own strength... Sure. But "Mind of a child"? How's about hell no.

I play a noble character who works in the court of the king. He almost exclusively uses his own money earned from jobs. The only exception to this was a magical experiment at the local wizard college that he funded with the court’s money because he managed to convince them it might be an advancement in the medical field. You don’t have to give your noble players extra money, especially if they’re far from home.

>Universe's Innocent Punching Bag Some formative angst in your backstory is often cool and fun. Hell, even an endless cycle of trauma is often a really interesting character hook. But if your backstory can be boiled down to "But even though / _especially_ because they didn't deserve it, bad things kept happening for no reason", that's stupid and shitty. I'm not here to indulge in your weird sadomasochism. >That Talented Asshole An interesting trope flip, sure, but Jesus christ, I've never met anything more infuriating than a character who's a huge dick and up their own about how special they are, about to get their well deserved comeuppance by having some humility forced down their throat, but they _can't_ actually because it turns out they really _are_ that special and here's the facts to prove it empirically. "Yeah? If you think you're so good, prove it!" "Sure." _Proceeds to prove it, making everyone around feel even worse._ >Captain Quirk Joke characters are fine. Basing your character around a single gimmick is totally cool. Some of my best were like that, and accidentally came down with a case of personal growth. But for the love of fuck, please don't make a guy for the express purpose of doing one singular thing and deliberately spackle over any possible crack that interesting character traits could use to seep through in favor of keeping them consistently shit. I don't wanna play with Barney ButtSniffer, the gnome who has an insatiable fart fetish. However, I _would_ like to play with Barney ButtSniffer, the gnome who has an insatiable fart fetish who comes to realize his degenerate lust may lead to the deaths of himself or those he loves and begins a long difficult road of trying to manage his addiction.

Wait "You forgot you were a rabbit, but you remember now" LOL!

I feel like most of these DM are punching down on new players. Like, who would make an amnesiac character, or a walking racial/class stereotype? Ex God or Brooding Edgelord™? That's right, someone on their first campaigns, often because they down know any better. Hell, my first character was an amnesiac because I knew jack shit about the world of DnD and wanted to avoid making anything corny. Under the next 5-10 sessions I slowly created some backstory that I was comfortable with. You know what would happen if I was told that my character is "lazy" and "boring" when I was just starting out? I probably wouldnt have gotten into the game in the first place.

Not the DM but my own learning experience, we had a homebrew pirate campaign and I brewed an afflicted siren, lycathrapy of the sea but turns into a siren instead of a shark with different foilbles. This was to be secret identity but realized quickly I had written myself into a corner and could barely RP with the players. Thankfully we all learned quickly and we found a good way around with with another player finding a way for our PC's to connect and go "Hey! We're on a pirate ship, we think being able to turn into a barbed tail monstrosity is pretty cool!" It was a good campaign.

My favorite character fits into the orphan trope, and while I always knew that he was an orphan from a young age, I also knew that he was 26 at the start of his adventure and that this didn't define him as a character. It doesn't make him broody, bloodthirsty, or a loner. Well, he is a bit bloodthirsty, but it never stops him from keeping a level head. After a few levels in Lost Mines of Phandelver, I sat down with my DM and we worked on a proper backstory. One of the questions was "Parents: dead or alive?" I immediately replied with "dead", not because I was playing an edge lord, but because I wanted my character to be motivated to be a heroic adventurer after witnessing his family's honorable sacrifice. We worked out that he lived in Thundertree, altering the lore and timeframe a bit so that Thundertree was destroyed by a chromatic dragon 18 years prior to the start of Lost Mines, which works out great in an extended campaign that focuses on Tyranny of Dragons after the starter campaign was over. The only real impact that "my parents are dead" has on my character is that he HATES chromatic dragons. After killing a young green dragon, he cursed the corpse up and down before spitting on it. When a blue dragon attacked Phandalin two years later, he got knocked out by the dragon's claw attack. Since the DM was trying some new random roll system, I rolled a d100 and got the result "You knock the attacking enemy prone". This resulted in my character, in his final glimpse of consciousness, to grab the dragon by the wrist and, with all of the strength he could muster, hurl it over his shoulder and send it crashing to the ground! The dragon fled before my character could regain consciousness, but we later stopped the Cult of Dragons from raiding the town. Other than those instances, he's just a socially awkward dragonborn trying to stop the place he's called home for the last few years from being destroyed again. Oh, and he learned during downtime that he's the lost heir of Neverwinter, (which was the DM's twist reveal) but currently has no idea how to actually prove it. He's an orphan with a traumatic backstory, but isn't dark and edgy. He's descended from royalty, but isn't wealthy and all-powerful. As of now, he's just a simple dragonborn trying his best to save others.

The “I’m a kind, thoughtful, modest, helpful, flawless, magnanimous and well-liked” character (in their bio at least) that immediately kills the first monstrous creature they see. A crying Kobold child? Fair game. I had my Goliath tackle that Dragonborn to the ground real quick.

I like to leave my backstories vague enough for the dm to stir around and play. It’s less “dm make my backstory” and more “dm feel free to come up with something to mess with my character”

Your Joker impression is so good

I know one example of amnesia backstory that worked in a campaign I was a part of. (Not a D&D but a homebrew world and system of my friend.) The PC was a dwarven clan thane that got hit in the head during the battle against an usurper and got carried by the river downstrem. He couldn't remember much besides his name (Kazdun) and that he was a warrior so he worked as a mercanary for many years among humans and eventually he got to be part of the army that the rest of players were in. (Our first session was a siege of an enemy castle.) Other player independently created a character of a very young dwarf that is a prodigy engineer. His name was Karphlin and he escaped the civil war that transpired in his clan and later offered his services for our duke. And thus the GM had a perfect oportunity to connect these backstories. Through the course of the campaign it was revealed that Karphlin was Kazdun's son. He was born right after that fatefull battle and he never meet his father. Due to the usurper taking over, young Karphlin being heir of just deposed Kazdun couldn't stay and thus he was taken to exile and brought up mostly by humans without the knowledge of his father and only the basic knowledge of the conflict he as a child escaped. It was done for his safety so that the usurper will not kill him aswell. After learning about it Kazdun and Karphlin had quite a few bonding father and son moments, and even entire session in which Kazdun was teaching his newly discoverd son how to be a true warrior. It also gave them both a goal of deposing the usurper and taking back their clan with the intent of later ruling it as father and son. Our GM basically took two lackluster backstories and turned them into one big backstory that provided goal for the two PC's to work towards and additionaly linked them together in a organic way. It's a shame it didn't last long as Karphlin was later eaten by a dragon, and the person that played Kazdun left the campaign for his personal reasons.