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View Full Version : A grim back story for my changeling character



Jaklefire
2010-12-03, 09:06 PM
Just tell me what you think of this back story for the character I'm going to make in a changeling game. My character is a goblin and has the flaw dark past; here is his dark past.
Jack Rollo (Self Named;23)
He was the second child or a silk merchant who did not love him. One day his father abandoned Jack and his brother Julio on the side of the road during a caravan trip. Jack and Julio wandered through the desert and Jack saw Julio get eaten by a gargantuan spider in front of his eyes. Jack hid behind a group of rocks until the spider passed and then ran through the desert until he came upon a huge city of Skypeak. Jack grew up on the streets for two years, making wages by picking pockets. Being a goblin he also learned to make shanks and became proficient in wielding them. Later, when he was 8, he was found by a crazed woodworker who made gnomes for a living. The woodworker did experiments on Jack in attempts to bring his gnomes to life. Jack lived with him for 4 years until he was freed by bandits who killed the woodworker. Again Jack was homeless, and for about another year. Soon plague hit the town of Skypeak and Jack survived it. He started living in an abandoned shack with two other guys (Drew and Tom) Tom was very reclusive but Drew was welcoming. He lived with them for two years (there were poor conditions, water was unsanitary, hygiene neglected, food scarce) until Jack woke up one morning to Tom eating Drew. Tom attempted to Kill the young (15 year old) Jack, but Jack stabbed Tom to death with a piece of plywood. Jack buried his friends and lived alone for 2 years until his friends (and the rest of the town who died in the plague) burst from the ground as zombies. Jack lived in zombie Skypeak for about a month until he escaped to a small town north of Skypeak along a river. He lived there privately for 6 years until he got word from his hometown that his father (who abandoned him at 6) was jailed and needed bail money. Jack is very kind and agreed to free his father. In search of money, Jack joined an adventuring party. It was kind of long so i put it in spoiler tags. Tell me what you think, is it grim enough? :smallamused:

WinceRind
2010-12-03, 09:43 PM
I don't know if that's necessarily very dark. Most of this could apply to your average D&D character, really.

I don't really understand too much about how some flaws work, I have never used them in a game. But from what I'd imagine, the flaw has to actually matter to be worth a free feat. Much of your backstory can be considered pretty brutal by real life standards - but in your average fantasy, it seems that people growing up on the street or similar conditions tend to end up just about fine. Not to mention the often used "orks killed my parents!" kind of thing.

Otherwise, it seems okay. If you reword it a little bit, it's going to be a fine backstory in my opinion.

The whole "growing up mostly alone, in dangerous conditions" thing would have pretty significant influence over your character's personality, I think. Perhaps slight paranoia, mistrust and that sort of thing might be applicable. Not to mention the fact that your character was basically held prisoner and experimented upon - that's CERTAINLY going to have an effect on him. The whole zombie episode is not even worth mentioning at this point, because it's pretty obvious that it would have to be a very serious event for him.

And when you say that he was making shanks, are you implying that he actually used them to threaten and kill people? Because that would work in fine too.

Maybe I'm going off the rails here, but I think being a street urchin who has to survive on daily basis and do things commonly considered ugly by much of the civilization, possibly even fighting with other street urchins, perhaps even being forced to kill once or twice (or accidentally as a result of a fight over some scarce resources) alone might be enough to be "dark past". And you can always add some past gang affiliations, too. The crazy experiments and zombie outbreak is just icing on the cake.

But be aware that it might be challenging - or at least different - to roleplay this kind of character, if you intend to heavily focus on it, at least. A character with dark past, especially this kind, would not play like a character that comes from fairly normal background (but then again, what is normal in D&D?).

While it certainly shouldn't limit your alignment choices, it might provide somewhat survivalist or perhaps cynical views on behalf of your character. Kind of like Sam Vimes from Discworld, if you catch my drift. He's got dark-ish past, you can certainly consider him both lawful and good by D&D standards, and, well, he's got quite a personality.

Jaklefire
2010-12-03, 11:00 PM
Yes, his back story heavily affects his character and the DM for my game is basing many aspects of the game so it will be increasingly traumatizing for my character. He does have a fear of garden gnomes, and as we've seen from him killing his partner, he does use his shanks. MY character is more of a chaotic evil roughish character. He isn't very trusting, but he's kind at heart. I just chose the dark past flaw because i felt as it would add to the story element of my adventure. This is my first time playing a changeling game so i don't know very much about the game, but i wanted to see if this was hindering enough to be usd for an extra feat. Maybe i should give him a missing arm or something so it will affect his dexterity based checks, but i think this will suffice, considering changeling eyes is worth an extra feat, and all it does is give character an unusual eye color. (yes i also have changeling eyes :smallwink:)