Questing in Elfgames III - character backgrounds

Some of this is re-capping and re-casting conversations I've had in several places over the last few weeks. If you've seen some of this before, please bear with me (especially you Jens!), it's all part of the process of trying to understand what's going on in my head. I've been particularly considering how to connect the epic with the pretty mundane stuff that most PCs do which is effectively being pest-controllers for the local nobility/communities. My thinking on this has lead to character backgrounds and how they can relate to the game-world.

Many variants of D&D use tables to determine backgrounds. Well, no such thing in B/X or BECMI obviously but I do remember having discussions with Jens over at the Disorientated Ranger when he was starting to get Lost Songs of the Nibelungs going about using 3d6 to suggest background.

In the discussion with Jens, I insisted to him that all heroes should be orphans brought up by Dwarves. I was exaggerating but the point I was trying to make is I think valid and deserves looking at. Jens was keen to have PCs rooted in the world and I think he's completely right. PCs need links into the world - it's their world after all, they should have features in their personal history that link them to the wider history. They should know where they were when they heard King Kenneth had been assassinated (or their parents should know), they should remember the War of the Two Towers, they should have a view of the Bretexian rebellion against Eutopia. They have family backgrounds and have had personal lives that exist inside a rich social tapestry. The PCs inhabit a social space, and there should be a way of generating some kind of information about where they are in society, maybe even a social position statistic.

I've been thinking about taking 3d6 rolls apart - this post some time ago talked about having three sets of stats to cover early childhood, later childhood and adolescence. In B/X I think there's a roll that can do something to say not just what events shaped your early life (as in the suggestions about using stat rolls to suggest events that may have affected you) but also your place in society too: the roll players make to determine starting gold. Taking the same idea that the first d6 represents 'inheritance' and the next d6 is what you get from your upbringing and the last d6 is how you've been living immediately before the beginning of your career as an adventurer, you roll your 3d6 and get 1,4,1 which means an early life of poverty, a later childhood of around-average wealth and teenage (or Elven, Dwarven and Hobbitish equivalents thereof) years of poverty again. Perhaps you were from a poor family but your parents worked hard and became successful (farmers, craftspeople, traders or whatever) but you rejected them and fled from home to become a wandering vagabond (or maybe they were killed when the Beastlord invaded causing you to flee, whatever the cause you ended up washing pots or working as farmhand somewhere, if that third roll of '1' is any guide).

It may make sense to conceptually at least split these all into 7-year blocks. Under Roman law in my understanding, children up to 7 were regarded as 'infans', which I believe means something like 'without speech'. They had no real rights and were not seen as 'people' - just the property of their parents (which is why infant burials are common inside Roman towns, even though the law forbade burials inside the city limits). So 7 years might reasonably mark the point where a child acquires legal status. In both the 'Gold' example above, and the stats examples from the post about character creation, the first lot of numbers can be seen as what happens up to 7. This broadly equates I think to an idea of 'inheritance' - what you get as your start in life (for stats it could be genetic and/or based on your 'early years'; for social position, it's where you are in the pecking order when you're born).

The second block would then represent what we might conventionally regard as 'childhood' - when a person is legally recognised as a person rather than a thing, but isn't yet really self-sufficient. This would be from 8-14 in this scheme.

At 14 children in the middle ages were often apprenticed out - again traditionally for 7 years, leading to finishing apprenticeship at 21. The alternative of course is going into the church and getting an education. The first degree also generally finished around 21 (as it still does in many places). So 'around 21' (or its equivalent for other races... I'm sure I can stop adding that qualifier now) could be the effective starting-point of a Level 1 character. In this case the last roll reflects what you've been doing more-or-less by choice - in the earlier post I thought for example higher STR might be because the PC has been doing lots of exercise or training, high INT would mean they'd been studying or whatever. Here, a high roll would indicate that the character was doing something lucrative/prestigious. This might mean serving in the household of a lord or having a part in some heroic deed that was rewarded or something of that nature.

So, this conceptually at least produces a character aged 21 for a Human. I've generally used a semi-random system for generating ages, something like 16+d6, if it's ever been important. It seems like the right ball-park - somewhere around 18-21 seems like the right kind of age for D&D adventurers... because going to University is like descending into a labyrinth of homicidal monsters, or something?

Anyway, in basic terms the 7 3d6 rolls that players make to determine their characters can be read in this sort of way to produce background. It can at least give you an idea of emotional, physical, financial and intellectual 'ups and downs'. Jens suggests getting the party to create characters as a group and connecting them together based on their rolls, using repeated numbers as points of contact. This is a great idea, but not one I think I can port over into my current campaign structure, as it has a large 'drop-out' rate. We've had something like 11 players and around 16 PCs so far; some of the players have only played 1 or 2 out of 7 sessions, and there have been several fatalities. In theory it's an open table so anyone can at any time join the group: this means the idea of rolling characters together at the beginning is a non-starter. I'd love to try it out with a small stable group for a more focused campaign, however.

So - what's the point of all this? I need another way to connect PCs together and to their world in a post-hoc way. The PCs are already given, and I need to be able to find ways that the PCs can have a connection the the world that will generate quests and missions and 'plot'.

Returning to Lord of the Rings for a moment, the members of the Fellowship are predominantly 'important' people in their societies. Aragorn is the heir of the Isildur and foster-son to Elrond, himself the heir of Turgon and Gil-Galad, son-in-law of Galadriel; Legolas is the son of Thranduil, King of Mirkwood; Gimli is a kinsman to Dain Ironfoot, the King under the Mountain, and Balin, Lord of Moria; Boromir is the eldest son of the Steward of Gondor. Even among the Hobbits, Merry and Pippin are the sons of the Master of Buckland and the Thain respectively, and Frodo is the heir of Bilbo, a rich and famous Hobbit who is well-connected both inside and outside the Shire. Only Sam is a relative nobody, though he is the nephew of Andy Roper, who is at least somewhat famous in Hobbit-circles.

Taking other fantasy stories we can see that there is a plethora of lost heirs, unknown youngsters with the potential to become powerful wizards, and others whose background has destined them to an extraordinary life. Frodo has extraordinary adventures because he inherits the Ring; Harry Potter (to move across genres a little) has extraordinary adventures because he inherits secret magical powers; Luke Skywalker likewise inherits secret magical powers, and meets Merlin who gives him Excali... no wait, meets Gandalf who gives him Nars... no, wait, I'm sure I know this... anyway there's Elof and Pug and Garion and Taran and Aldric and Ged and any number of others who have something - some gift or talent or secret or family tie or friendship - that throws them into adventure. Colin and Susan have a family heirloom that attracts the attention of a witch. Even Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have adventures because their uncle has a magic wardrobe (though I'm not sure he's actually their uncle).

Links to the wider world are a way of providing plots. The PC has a brother - what is the brother up to? Kidnapped by a wizard? Leading a rebel army? Sitting at home dreaming of going to wizard-school? Fishing with the Lizard People of Storm Island? Joining the Thieves' Guild or the City Watch? Running for Mayor? Quietly tending the herb-garden of a monastery?

Who taught the PC Magic User to cast a 'Sleep' spell? How did the Cleric come to receive the blessing of the Lord of the Forest? Who trained the Fighter in the use of the longsword? Was it their mother or grandfather or an aunt or a wandering monk or a local hoodlum that taught the PC their skills? Were they inspired to adventure by tales of a heroic ancestor or watching their brother executed for a crime he didn't commit or seeing their village destroyed by the ravages of the Beastlord's armies?

Those option and possibilities took as long to write as to think of. Any could get the PC involved in something. All of the party members should have these sorts of links back to the world around them. Ties of family and background to events and people that have bearing on the world, and the things happening in it.

But how to implement this, in a campaign that is already in progress? That's the question I suppose, and I don't yet have an answer.

More to come, I think. I've been talking with Jens today, and he very kindly sent me Lost Songs of the Nibelungs in so far as it exists at the moment. I have some reading and thinking to do on the systems he's using there. I have also been thinking about how to have an 'epic quest' when the party itself is such a flexible beast - in the 7 sessions of my current Rift City campaign, for example, I'm the only constant. All of the players have missed at least 1 session, and even some of the players that have been to around 5 or 6 sessions have lost PCs. But perhaps there's a way. I shall think on that too.