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Galliun
2009-01-05, 10:17 AM
Nevermind the oxymoron on the title. This is merely a topic on backgrounds, nothing special. Not sure this is the forum for this.

More and more, you see more and more characters with epic backgrounds, such as the long-lost firstborn to the King of Pwnland, who was born in a tempestuous night, while all wolves suddenly howled to the moon in foreboding to the future, before the evil sorceress took him away, planning to raise him under her rule.

The problem lies when things begin to get TOO epic. In an adventuring party where everyone is destined to greatness, in a campaign setting where everyone and their mother is some kind of future ruler, it tends to get a bit old. Sure, everyone wants a cool story for their character, but what do you think about the adventurer who just didn't have anything better to do? The guy who was sitting in a tavern just when it was stormed by raiders, and was whisked away without consent? The average soldier, the guild apprentice and whatnot. What do you guys think?

Malacode
2009-01-05, 10:22 AM
My current Sorcerer is like this in one campaign. Ordinary guy (Other than the whole "Whee! Fireball!" thing), but his friends are all destined for greatness (Bar one, who's a self serving sonofabitch). So he rides on their coat-tails to glory. Nothing special about him at all. I like this character a lot, but the DM's tried to subvert the "Ordinary person" part of him by connecting his sorcerous power to the power of the BBEG. It's not a big thing though. He's still Joe Average Mage.

Telonius
2009-01-05, 10:28 AM
It depends on how far you go with the "non-Heroic" part. Are we talking about Apropos, or are we talking about Rincewind?

If you don't take it to extremes, it can work very well. Just like a "Heroic" character can work very well if not taken to extremes.

kamikasei
2009-01-05, 10:35 AM
More and more, you see more and more characters with epic backgrounds, such as the long-lost firstborn to the King of Pwnland, who was born in a tempestuous night, while all wolves suddenly howled to the moon in foreboding to the future, before the evil sorceress took him away, planning to raise him under her rule.

More and more? Really? I doubt that this is a genuine problem. If you're seeing this more and more in your experience, it's possible you're a) just having bad luck or dealing with a local issue, b) generalizing from too small a data set, or c) becoming a cranky old man (these whippersnappers and their destinies and their half-celestial bloodlines, in my day we started out on a dirt farm and no one cared about what we did until we'd cleared out twenty dungeons of kobolds! Barefoot! In the snow! Uphill both ways!).

In my experience in PbP on these boards people1 are fairly modest and reasonable in their backgrounds. Characters have unusual abilities or remarkable degrees of skill, and those have to be accounted for; they are willing to live a rootless existence wandering around questing for danger, which demands an atypical mindset. Adjusting your expectations for those two facts, you see characters who at some point displayed or were taught their powers (turned out to be sorcerors, went to study wizardry, grew up in the wilds) and left their old life behind for one of adventure (village burned down by raiders, master slain by a rival, just wanted to travel and kick ass). Sometimes you don't even have much of either: one of my characters was simply a smart kid whose parents sent her to magic school so she could have a good career and then the university sent her on an expedition to Xen'drik.

Other examples:
- a war orphan adopted by her military uncle who wanted to be a soldier but was prevented by family and political factors. Sent away at the outbreak of war to keep her out of the fighting, so she became a mercenary.
- a scout in the service of a feudal lord who was wrongfully convicted of a crime and sent to a penal colony, finding adventure when the ship was wrecked.
- a noble's son who was crippled as a child and became a druid to heal himself, becoming an outsider and object of suspicion in the process. A childhood friend of the prince, who joined in an adventure when the prince commissioned an expedition.
- a psywar who studied war and psionics simply because he was good at it and it was a respected path, and who went adventuring to prove and/or find himself (after a love affair went sour).
- a changeling Sharnite who, again, learned magic because he had an aptitude for it, got mixed up in shenanigans prompting him to leave home, became a spy and message runner in the Last War, and ended up coming home to set up a detective agency.

The problem with the guy who had adventure forced upon him is that he's unlikely to have a PC class.

1 Of course, this means people whose characters I see, which are those who apply to games I'm interested in myself and usually the ones who succeed, too, so it's filtered both for quality and for my own tastes and biases.

Malacode
2009-01-05, 10:44 AM
There's always a way to shoehorn a PC class in. That blacksmith/militia/town guard has a level in fighter to go with his Expert/Commoner levels. The hobo on the street that hums to himself while begging? Yeah, he's a Bard. The head of the local temple has a level in cleric mixed in with his commoner levels. It can work if you want it to.

Saph
2009-01-05, 11:13 AM
The non-heroic hero can be pretty fun, actually.

My longest-running wizard PC was an elven girl from Evermeet who'd learned wizardry just for fun and for something to do. When she was 86 (about 14 in human terms) her parents took her on a trip to the mainland and vanished. So she went looking for them, and fell into the habit of travelling with a group of adventurers as a way of doing it (because they move around a lot and tend to be fairly capable).

The way I played her was that she didn't actually think of herself as an adventurer, as she was only trying to find her mother and father. It led to some entertaining conversations.

NPC Woman: "Hello, little girl. Are you lost?"
Me: "No, I think I know where I am."
NPC Woman: "Does your mother know where you are?"
Me: "I don't think so. I'm trying to find her."
NPC Woman: "Where did you last see her?"
Me: "Well, I came from Evermeet to Tethyr two years ago and we got separated. I went looking for her but then a group of drow started trying to kidnap me, and some friends took me north but then I was captured by a family of red dragons. A silver dragon helped us escape, but we were attacked by wererats a while afterwards and everyone but me was killed, and then I was sent forward fifteen years forward in time and back again, and then I found a new group to travel with, but we were captured by the orcs in Xul-Jarak, and-"
NPC Woman: "Um, you're not an adventurer, are you?"
Me: "Oh, no. That would be much too dangerous."

- Saph

kamikasei
2009-01-05, 11:21 AM
The way I played her was that she didn't actually think of herself as an adventurer, as she was only trying to find her mother and father.

You know, thinking about it, only one of my characters would have called himself an adventurer. The others just had adventures while trying to achieve their own goals. They might start out as mercenaries, explorers, bodyguards, thieves or evangelists, united for some specific task or bound by some circumstance, then discover something important that needs doing and that they're the only ones to do it.

In many ways, being "an adventurer" or "a hero" is a rather shallow and uninteresting thing. A character with depth probably thinks of him or herself in quite different terms.

Malacode
2009-01-05, 11:26 AM
That's actually quite true... Characters who think of themselves as heroes are less fun to roleplay than those who don't. Hmm... I wonder why this is... *Starts to think about it*

Tokiko Mima
2009-01-05, 11:44 AM
Well, the reason someone would create a character with a background like you're describing is because it's an easy/cheater way to make a character interesting. It's not how you create real depth, but I would say that at least it means the player in question is trying to achieve depth. You can create unique and compelling characters with or without what you term a 'heroic' background so it really doesn't matter one way or another.

Myself, I prefer a minimalist approach and limit myself to one strange circumstance of origin (nobility, early talent, unusual birth, orphan, selection by a deity, etc.) at most. More than that and you hit eye-rolling territory pretty quickly.

PinkysBrain
2009-01-05, 11:55 AM
As contrived as most backgrounds are ... trying to use the background of a "normal" as a hook for in game events gets even more contrived. Look at the character's who's past has come back to haunt them in OotS ... not very ordinary.

Adumbration
2009-01-05, 12:02 PM
My Kenku Starlock is on the run from the thieves guild of Sharn after his twin brother embezzled cash and got killed, after which the star-gazing accountant for the guild in question stole all the gold, magic items and treasure he could find and fled the city. Now he's trying to maintain a fairly low profile and re-invent himself. Fortunately a mercenary group which includes two of his childhood friends is a good group for that. He also carries around a feather from his brother in case he ever manages to scratch together enough cash for resurrection.

It's not epic, per say... He never sought out to become a "hero". He just happens to gain power from the aberrations from far realm by gazing at the stars at night and is playing in a campaign called "Red Hand of Doom". :smallamused:

Dublock
2009-01-05, 12:49 PM
Well my favorite character concept I have is Aldr, a human wizard who was raised on a farm in a small town/whatever and he decided at a very young age that knowledge is the key to everything and as such the goal of his life is to learn more and more, and this lead him to magic as well as studying nature, history, and religion.

The adventuring idea for him...he isn't so keen on it. He just wants to sit down and look over books, artifacts, and whatever catches his eye. Going off to save people's life, he will do it, but scared and prefer someone else to. But when push comes to shove and he knows no one else will, he will step up.

Deimos_
2009-01-05, 05:19 PM
Of course the example of the OP is over-the-top and should definitely be avoided at all costs. Though a royal forgotten bloodline or a prophecy are pretty cliche, they are after all, valid plot devices, and can be done in a new, effective way by a good player. But hey, the 'original campaign' involved a bunch of pretty ordinary guys, right? Sam, Peregrin, Meriadoc and Frodo were all normal people who got involved in huge things, which is one of the main points of LOTR. Granted that Frodo was regarded as weird by the Bag-end community and was all drooling on elves, and Aragorn fits the Heir to the Throne, Destined King and everything, but it works.

RTGoodman
2009-01-05, 06:12 PM
[...]
Me: "Well, I came from Evermeet to Tethyr two years ago and we got separated. I went looking for her but then a group of drow started trying to kidnap me, and some friends took me north but then I was captured by a family of red dragons. A silver dragon helped us escape, but we were attacked by wererats a while afterwards and everyone but me was killed, and then I was sent forward fifteen years forward in time and back again, and then I found a new group to travel with, but we were captured by the orcs in Xul-Jarak, and-"
NPC Woman: "Um, you're not an adventurer, are you?"
Me: "Oh, no. That would be much too dangerous."

- Saph

You always have awesome stories. :smallbiggrin:


Personally, I play the "non-heroic hero" quite a bit. The last IRL character I played was just some guy who happened to be there when the plot-hook NPCs gave the quest to the other teenager "destined heroes" PCs. He was a Factotum, but not really in fluff - he was just a guy that had some good luck and had been around the block enough to get into and back out of trouble.

The other character I want to play is someone sort of like John Aversin from Hambly's Dragonsbane. Sure, he's the title character and the only living person to fight a dragon, but it's mostly because he had a little luck and had some good planning. Really, he's no knight in shining armor - he's a glorified pig farmer who runs a small town and spends his time reading old history books.

AslanCross
2009-01-05, 10:03 PM
I really think it varies from person to person. Most of the people in my Forgotten Realms game aren't anything of the sort.

In our Eberron game, my warforged is property of the Dragonmarked House Deneith, purchased from the Karrnathi army after the Last War ended. They often stow him in cargo on the train so that he's cheaper to transport.

LibraryOgre
2009-01-06, 11:57 AM
I had a bard whose main motivation for heroics was "Chicks dig heroes. People give them stuff. Ergo, if I'm a hero, I'll get laid and rich, while having fun."

Narmoth
2009-01-06, 12:13 PM
The non-heroic hero can be pretty fun, actually.

My longest-running wizard PC was an elven girl from Evermeet who'd learned wizardry just for fun and for something to do. When she was 86 (about 14 in human terms) her parents took her on a trip to the mainland and vanished. So she went looking for them, and fell into the habit of travelling with a group of adventurers as a way of doing it (because they move around a lot and tend to be fairly capable).

The way I played her was that she didn't actually think of herself as an adventurer, as she was only trying to find her mother and father. It led to some entertaining conversations.

NPC Woman: "Hello, little girl. Are you lost?"
Me: "No, I think I know where I am."
NPC Woman: "Does your mother know where you are?"
Me: "I don't think so. I'm trying to find her."
NPC Woman: "Where did you last see her?"
Me: "Well, I came from Evermeet to Tethyr two years ago and we got separated. I went looking for her but then a group of drow started trying to kidnap me, and some friends took me north but then I was captured by a family of red dragons. A silver dragon helped us escape, but we were attacked by wererats a while afterwards and everyone but me was killed, and then I was sent forward fifteen years forward in time and back again, and then I found a new group to travel with, but we were captured by the orcs in Xul-Jarak, and-"
NPC Woman: "Um, you're not an adventurer, are you?"
Me: "Oh, no. That would be much too dangerous."

- Saph

this one is really great

horseboy
2009-01-06, 04:49 PM
Sounds to me like someone needs a genre break. Play something with a higher tech level. That way they can all be college kids on spring break "camping" in the woods. Oh wait...

Tsotha-lanti
2009-01-06, 04:56 PM
We just returned to our Gloranthan campaign, where the PCs are essentially ordinary people, made exceptional only by their choices during play. All the PCs belong to the same extended family - a perfectly typical example of a Heortling stead (celtic-viking-gothic culture on the early Dark Ages level).

One PC is a hunter, one is the bonded trickster (a combination of jester, fool, and scapegoat in the early Judaic sense), two are budding "spirit-talkers" to the wind, and so on. None are powerful, portentuous, or even wyrded, at least yet.

Their adventures are perfectly typical clan life, although we obviously only play out the interesting stuff - like going out banditing or raiding during summer, fighting off sheep-thieves, and so on. As they grow older and more powerful, they'll obviously become more important and significant to the clan and the world at large, but that will all be earned during play, by their choices.

Beats a bunch of fated heroes any day.

fusilier
2009-01-06, 05:28 PM
Heh,

I tend to design characters which such mundane backgrounds that the DM gets annoyed with me. My last D&D character (fighter) was an itinerant cobbler. Before that I had rogues that were a watchmaker and a banker. I think I also had a knight in a 3.5 campaign who was an engineer officer. I guess I generally prefer the everyday person who, through circumstance, ends up a hero.