Campaign Workshop - Character Background

In the last Campaign Workshop post, I discussed a useful mechanism to kick-start your campaign building process.

Once you have the campaign slogan, it's time to start developing the campaign theme and story. Since Roleplaying Games are all about fun, and the definition of fun is different for different people, it's time to talk to the players and get their idea of what's fun and entertaining. The rule is simple:

Engaged players => Great game sessions.

At this point, all you have is a slogan and a half-baked idea of the campaign overall story. If you jump into the campaign development process (creating a full-blown story, detailing locations and NPC, thinking about sub-plots, power-groups, and all the other cool stuff we DMs drool on), you might end-up with a campaign that nobody wants to play. You might spend a lot of time building something your players would not find engaging. They will either suffer quietly, or just leave.

So how do we make sure that the campaign is engaging? Simple: we ask the players to provide backgrounds for their characters.

Now here is the tricky part: some players find it infinitely boring/useless to write backgrounds for their characters, and for good reasons. A lot of DMs ask their players for lengthy backgrounds that get stuffed inside the DM's binder, never to see the light of day again.

Big Mistake.

The campaign is all about the players, and without player input, the campaign will go where ever the DM will steer it. Some find it a perfectly valid gaming experience, but I personally like (both as a DM and as a player) to be engaged, to have a lot of control of the setting, the action, the story and the events around me.

Character background is probably the first opportunity you (as the DM) have to learn about the player and find out what interests him. So how do we get the players to write good backgrounds for their characters?

Some guidelines:

1. Character backgrounds can be short - even as short as a few sentences.
2. The background should include a short-term, achievable goal.
3. The background should include a complication.

That's it.

Think about it: all you need is something to start with. Make no mistake - if a player produces a lengthy background that include some goals and some interesting complications, by all means, thank him! But a few well-written sentences can also do the trick. Tell your players to come up with several sentences with a goal and a complication, and have their characters end up in a small town called Lakeside.

Here is what you might get:

• Loan is the daughter of a once capable wizard, now a drooling madman due to a magical experiment that went really wrong. Placing her father is a sanatorium (with all the money she had), she seeks the aid of Magnus Amandas, a great wizard and a researcher of mental afflictions. Upon her arrival to the town of Lakeside, she found out that Magnus was recently assassinated, and now - probably due to her inquiries - she is being followed by the local assassins guild.
• Tardas Longhorn - the dwarven prince of the kingdom of Ironfoot - is leading a small emissary of dwarves to the town of Lakeside, to deal with the growing threats of bandits on the trade road. Lakeside's mayor - Lord Arbor Gos - has hired a group of mercenaries to clean the roads of bandits, but the dwarves suspect that the mercenaries are actually working with the bandits. As Tardas and his dwarven guards enter the town of Lakeside, some rough looking men take note of them.
• Pilir Devengil have just reached the town of Lakeside for the annual drinking contest. Overweight, smelly and broke, he has to win it to collect the prize and pay his step-mother for his lodging at her cabin. Dragging his large body on the way to the inn, he bumped into a noble, accidentally breaking the old man's glasses. The noble demands an absurd sum of money, threatening to use his connection with the local militia's commander to arrest Pilir for his rudeness.  

Taking the slogan you have in mind - what can you do with the above backgrounds? More importantly, what do these backgrounds say about the players?

You might notice that both Loan's and Tardas's players like a mystery. Loan's player might be interested in magic, and Tardas's player might like some diplomacy and nobility. Pilir's player might be in for some goofy moments, but he also might be interested in making money.

You might want to start thinking about linking the backgrounds, building a framework that will unite the stories and make them work together. Maybe Pilir's noble will make him work for him, sending him to work as a mercenary with the rough men that "guard the roads". Maybe Magnus Amandas was assassinated because found he out about a scheme to murder the dwarven prince about to come to town? Maybe the local assassins guild did not kill Magnus, and a guild-member who was an old friend of Magnus hopes to use the young woman to lure the real assassin?

Given good backgrounds, it's not hard to wrap your mind around them and create a basic story that will kick-start the campaign. You can always ask your players for background refinements if you find it hard to squeeze a good story out of them, but that refinement should be worked out by the player, after you explain the guidelines and why you need them.

Don't be afraid to tell your players that you want backgrounds that will help you create a better story for the campaign! If these stories will come forward at the very first session - the players will be totally engaged, making the first session unforgettable, and establishing a good basis for the rest of the campaign.


photo credit: quirkybird via photo pin cc

D&D Next: D&D is Back!

I was very excited to get my copy of the D&D play-test material. The roller coaster that was 2e to 3.5e to 4e was about to end, and I was very interested to see what the captains of D&D have in mind.

Well, it looks like they had this in mind:

The booklet reads like old-school D&D while taking the best of all the editions out there. You can see 2e's one-line monster stats right next to 4e at-will cantrips. You can see Basic D&D "Vancian" spell-casting next to a slightly modified version of the healing-surges system found in 4e.

Another great idea was the inclusion of character backgrounds and themes as a way to create unique, 3.5e like PCs as opposed to the cookie cutter approach found in 4e. The play-test material gave us the most archetypical heroes, but I can easily see how the system will be expanded and extended to support great character customization.

So in my opinion, D&D is now back to being D&D. The core of it - in the form presented in the play-test material - will be probably tweaked and modified, but it looks solid enough and D&D enough to my personal taste.

Taking a look at the included adventure, I was shocked at how much it reminded me of all those old, pre 3rd edition adventure module I still own. It even looks like I could run those old modules with little or no modification. In addition, it looks like the fine-tuned encounters found in 4e are out of the window, with rooms with "up to 40" kobolds in them.  The monsters stat blocks are mostly one or two liners, a thing I was really happy about - until I saw the "Special Traits" entry for each monster in the monster booklet.

I never liked the way monsters in 3.5e played out. In addition to the clearly stated melee and ranged attacks, they had this section in which tons of special abilities were listed. During the excitement of combat I usually forgot all about them, which was really annoying. Even more annoying was the fact that some of the special abilities encapsulated several traits that I needed to take into account. For example, 3.5e incorporeal means immunity from all non-magical attacks, but they are effected by supernatural attacks. And then the game was halted to look at the books to see what supernatural meant. So in that sense, I really hope that Wizards use the traits section wisely, giving just a few, self-explanatory, "classic" traits and move all other "cool stuff the monster can do" to an appropriate section (attacks, defenses etc).

To be completely honest, I really look forward to play-test D&D Next, and I really hope that Wizard's plan of providing a solid core that is easily expanded with rules modules will actually work. If they decide to revive the old Mistara campaign setting (or create a brand new old-school setting) I will be thrilled.

After all, it looks like D&D is built with an eye to its original roots, roots which I discovered when I was just a little over 6 years old, almost 30 years ago...

Hey, you know what? Proofreading my post I just realized that I unintentionally dropped the "Next" out of D&D Next in the last sentence. Yes, it feels like D&D. Not 2e, not 3e and not 4e or 5e.

Just D&D.

Rotating GMs

Funny thing happened - we decided to rotate GMs for our new Rogue Trader campaign, after I asked for some time off from GMing this system and theme. I was asked to create a character, and walla! I was min/maxing like hell and diving into the rulebooks looking for the most potent combination of skills and talents to impress my friends at the table (who am I kidding? I wanted this poor GM to get a taste of his own medicine...).

Diving into rulebooks? Optimizing? exactly what I, as the GM, ask the players NOT to do. I keep on going on rounding the characters, thinking about role-playing and character interaction - but as soon as I got the Player's Handbook, the first thing I looked for is the most damaging weapon available...

It was an eye-opener. Almost to the point were I was tempted to say: "Forget it! I'm GMing it!"

It occured to me that I wanted some time off GMing in order to improve my GMing skills. I've been GMing since I remember myself, hardly being a player at all. So rotating GMs, at least for a short, mini-campaign or a serie of adventures is a great way to view the table from another angle. Also, by playing with your "Ex-Players", you are now exposed to all that player talk, those little conversations you ignore as a GM, either because you are busy reading your notes, or because they take place when you are not there...

By rolling up a character, it suddenly occured to me that I want this character to be successful and useful. I wanted the other players to feel that I contribute to the group, I wanted to show off my role-playing skills and bring this character to life. No wonder I want the best possible armor, I want this character to live to see another day!

So maybe the key to being a good GM, is being an occasional, good player?
Can you be a good DM without playing at least part of the time? Or maybe you don't have to be a construction worker before being a good architect?