Character Creation: Backgrounds and Contacts
Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 9:08 pm
So, I wanted to throw out two things I've found over the years that I quite enjoy when it comes to creating a character in almost any kind of RPG setting....
The first comes from the Spirit of the Century Pulp game and basically it's concept is this....
Each player writes a paragraph about an adventure their character was the 'star' in...i.e. "Joe Schmo and the doo-hicky of DOOM"; and then passes the paragraph to another player or two who then write their own paragraph of how their character 'guest-starred' in the adventure; i.e. 'Sally Sob-Story was driving down a quiet back-road when she came across the unbelievable sight of Joe Schmo facing off against a mob of frenzied townspeople who had been hypnotized by the doo-hicky of DOOM and she quickly rushed in to give the adventuring academic a hand!'.
This is all done as a means of creating a collective back-story for the group and can really be a lot of fun...something I'd recommend to almost anyone not playing a game where everyone is on their first adventure EVAH! or where it's mandatory for no one to know one-another or something like that....
The second idea came from a now defunct PBP site and I forgot whose idea it was, but the premise was to have each character come up with a list of 6 contacts......a name, a brief couple of lines about what they do/how they know the PC/etc.; and 3 of these contacts were 'friends, family or somebody who'd help the PC' and 3 were 'enemies, rivals, people with a grudge against the PC'. So something like: "Buttheadius the Wise, cousin of my character Beave Is, a Cleric of ACEY-DEECEE, grew up together and always got along" for the 'good' contact; and "Prince Mik Vikker; ruler of Highlands, who wants Beave Is EXILED from the Principality'
These 6 blurbs are given to the DM/GM who can then incorporate them into the campaign/adventures as needed.
Anyway, I thought they were both cool, fun ways to build some bonding between characters and/or provide seeds for future adventures/ arcs/plot hooks/etc.
The first comes from the Spirit of the Century Pulp game and basically it's concept is this....
Each player writes a paragraph about an adventure their character was the 'star' in...i.e. "Joe Schmo and the doo-hicky of DOOM"; and then passes the paragraph to another player or two who then write their own paragraph of how their character 'guest-starred' in the adventure; i.e. 'Sally Sob-Story was driving down a quiet back-road when she came across the unbelievable sight of Joe Schmo facing off against a mob of frenzied townspeople who had been hypnotized by the doo-hicky of DOOM and she quickly rushed in to give the adventuring academic a hand!'.
This is all done as a means of creating a collective back-story for the group and can really be a lot of fun...something I'd recommend to almost anyone not playing a game where everyone is on their first adventure EVAH! or where it's mandatory for no one to know one-another or something like that....
The second idea came from a now defunct PBP site and I forgot whose idea it was, but the premise was to have each character come up with a list of 6 contacts......a name, a brief couple of lines about what they do/how they know the PC/etc.; and 3 of these contacts were 'friends, family or somebody who'd help the PC' and 3 were 'enemies, rivals, people with a grudge against the PC'. So something like: "Buttheadius the Wise, cousin of my character Beave Is, a Cleric of ACEY-DEECEE, grew up together and always got along" for the 'good' contact; and "Prince Mik Vikker; ruler of Highlands, who wants Beave Is EXILED from the Principality'
These 6 blurbs are given to the DM/GM who can then incorporate them into the campaign/adventures as needed.
Anyway, I thought they were both cool, fun ways to build some bonding between characters and/or provide seeds for future adventures/ arcs/plot hooks/etc.