Character Background



Campaigns should start out standard enough, but by slowly linking in stories that are personal to the characters, the players will start to get deeply invested and deeply involved in the game.

Think of Star Wars- how cool would the series have been if Darth Vader had simply been a villain with no relationship to the characters. He tortured his daughter. He cut off his son's hand. He saved his son and his son saved him. His son thought that Vader had killed his father! All of this made the original trilogy a classic that is timeless.

But follow the lead of Obi-won Kenobi, don't tell your players the big lines right away- let them think Vader killed their father. And don't give the big reveal in a monolgue either.

Let the players discover it slowly, bit by bit, one piece of evidence at a time. Let them realize that what they thought they knew is wrong, and then when they have almost figured it out, then reveal it- and make it worse than they thought! If you want to hook the players you have to appeal to their greed first, and then slowly draw in their emotions. Greed will start players on the road- emotional attachment will keep them on the road when that road gets hard- and their backgrounds are the key to this.

Background and Motivation
Using class, race, and attributes as seeds for background and motivation is a great way to start. A character that is playing a close combat character is likely more physically motivated- perhaps a Preservation/Gluttony character or a Justice/Wrath character. A close combat character who is internally motivated suggests a more complex character with hidden layers. A long range combat specialist is often internally motivated, and a physically motivated long range combat specialist goes against type and can be thus used to create a memorable character.

Importance of Strong motivation cannot be overstated. Weakly motivated people don't go adventuring. A character who was weakly motivated to avenge his parents’ death would not have become Batman, and if he did try to become a vigilante, he would have gotten killed or given up very quickly. Motivations must be strong to create interesting characters. Examples of Good Motivation include: Batman, Blade (from the movies), Strahd Von Zarovich (Ravenloft), Queen Latifah in ‘Last Holiday’, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo (for entirely different reasons), and Artemis Fowl II (in the first two novels only).

Once motivation is decided, the player can move on to deciding on background. The Difference between Background and Motivation is that motivation is the engine that drives a person or character and the background is the kindling that was used to create and fuel that motivation. Batman’s background is the murder of his parents at the hands of Joe Chill when he was a young boy, and his subsequent training until adulthood. Batman’s motivation is Justice/Wrath.

Because background is what creates a character’s motivation, it is tempting to think that background should come first. However motivation should come first, because it then makes generating a background easier for the player. Likewise motivation can help determine alignment. A character driven by Envy/Identity will likely never be lawful in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and will never have an altruist nature in World of Darkness. By teaching the players to favor motivation over alignment, the Game Master gives primacy to role-playing as a story, rather than role-playing as a video game. It is even possible to use motivation in place of alignment without too much trouble if the Game Master wishes.

Helping Characters develop a good background
How much to let the players write is an important question for a Game Master to consider. How much space the player leaves for the Game Master to play with will determine how many good plot hooks a Game Master can hang on the player’s background. If both the character’s parents are happy moisture farmers on a desert planet (just as a hypothetical example of course), then it may seem difficult to make the villain the character’s father the villain. But obviously, it can be done if you transform the apparent parents into adoptive parents. After all many adoptive parents don’t tell the child that he or she was adopted. In fact almost any amount of the background can prove to be misleading, if the character was denied information growing up, or openly lied to or misled. Even if the player lays out ‘War and Peace’ as their background, the Game Master can still play around in the character’s past with a little creativity.

The Game Master can also use the character background tables to help players generate backgrounds if the player is unsure. However, it is much better for the player to simply look at their motivation and extrapolate from their. Avoiding the cliché (if you want to), isn’t too hard. Just have the player read their character background to the party and see if they notice any major crossover with pop culture icons (does he have a scar on his forehead shaped like a lightning bolt?). Fleshing out a background is likewise not too hard. The motivation tends to do a lot of the work, and if there are still holes, simply suggest that the character draw a quick family tree and think about how each relative ties into the background.

Example backgrounds and motivations that can build from backgrounds include: Luke Skywalker (a Pride/Self-Worth motivation leads to internal mastery of the Jedi tradition), Ender Wiggin (a Greed/Advancement motivation leads the character to become the youngest army leader in the school’s history), Count Dracula-Francis Ford Coppolla film version (a Wrath/Justice motivation leads the character to defy death in order to reunite with his stolen love and balance the scales), and Spider-man (a Wrath/Justice motivation leads the character to enter a lifelong quest to live by the morals of the person he let die and thus balance the scales of justice).

Providing enough fodder for background development
Having enough rough setting information to give players ideas is a really good idea. Once the players have created the meat of their characters such as stats and equipment and are ready to start on the character work, the Game Master should create a rough outline of the campaign setting. This will give the characters some information to help them create a believable background for the world that the game will be taking place in. Giving them the freedom to create story elements through their backgrounds also makes your job a Game Master easier. Don’t tell them that you are doing this of course. That would spoil the surprise.

===Dealing with shallow or incomplete backgrounds ===

Reminding players that empty backgrounds give the Game Master control of said backgrounds is often the best way to get a character started on their character background. Using the guidelines set above will help ensure that said backgrounds are reasonable. Adding orphan stories or amnesias to incomplete stories is easy and useful. This way, even the character is surprised by their background information when it appears. Be careful not to overdo the revelations though. The careful use of family secrets, black sheep relatives, family histories, family curses and other bits of background fun is a fine art, and used poorly will make the character’s background seem like cannon fodder for a soap opera.