Random backstory tables

[Story]

My DM has a set of tables which he uses to randomly generate absurdly complicated backstories with various benefits and penalties. For example, I remember one thing that came up was "you had an accident as a kid and lost (roll) 2 organs. Fortuantely a kindly Wizard provided you with a prosthetic (roll) brain and liver, giving you +5 Wisdom and Cure Serious Wounds/1day. On the other hand (roll) you were publicly flogged and lost half your charisma"

Do you know where this might have come from?

[Gavinfoxx]

...Wow, I dunno. But I wouldn't play anything other than a Warlock in his games; gotta have someone who can function with straight 3's, yaknow?

[BowStreetRunner]

I used to play Cyberpunk a lot and there were similar tables built into the game. There were a few other systems that escape my memory at the moment but which also used something like that - Traveler maybe? If nothing else, it may be that the DM, having encountered this in another game, just came up with his own tables.

Personally, I always liked the concept, but in practice the bonuses and penalties should be fairly minor and often highly situational.

[Story]

...Wow, I dunno. But I wouldn't play anything other than a Warlock in his games; gotta have someone who can function with straight 3's, yaknow?



Fortunately, he only did it for one person, though he offered to do it for me too. It sounded really stupid though.

[Acanous]

I would love this and hope you can sneak us a copy of this table.

[Story]

I decided to just ask the DM. It's from Central Casting - Heroes of Legend.

[Wyntonian]

I would like to see this the same way I would like to see that video of a little kid being abducted by an eagle. It's terrible and I wouldn't wish it on anyone... but if it exists already I suppose I'd like to see it.

[Story]

I think part of the reason it's so ridiculous is that it wasn't even designed for use with D&D.

[Gavinfoxx]

That looks like a bad idea to use randomly in ad&d, and a hideously bad idea to use randomly in 3.5e...

[Hand_of_Vecna]

I've seen/used those books before they're pretty silly and often lead to unplayable characters or silly broken characters. For the record they aren't d20 unless they made a new edition, which they could have to cash in on OGL. Also there were three books I knew of medival fantasy, contemporary and sci-fi.

The ones I used always had generic terms you had to translate into your own game system. A few high/lowlights.

An Elf Assassin I'd intended to be a scowling badass who was an obsessive compulsive that kept a log of who he stabbed where with what knife ended up as a midget.

A Hardware character (from palladium, like Artificer for super hero setting) that I can't remember what I envisioned for. Maybe this was supposed to be my redneck hardware concept with an awesome truck and heavy weapons or maybe I was going for a generic exosuit character. Anyway, he ended up as a Native American CEO with a net worth in 9 figures. Normally a Hardware Character's budget caps around 10m (and that takes a high roll) and they're allowed to build things from the robot section which also caps out in 8 digit budgets and it's a common houserule to put things from the cybernetics category on robots and vice versa. Another roll gave him a free collection of cars, some of which had superspy modifications which specifically didn't dip into his personal starting funds mechanically. I just decided not to play this character because money is the best super power and he had too much.

Another character I just let the dice drop on with no concept was a veteran of a failed revolution from a third world country who later joined the American Military and was medically discharged after shrapnel took out most of his liver leaving him mostly functional, but extremely vulnerable to toxins. His appearance was tanked by scarring, but he had the combat ability of a 5th level martial artist for free at level 1 and a butt ton of free skills. He also had an obsession with medieval torture devices and spent 50% of his income on them and had for about 12 years on an officer's salary. Yikes! Oh, I almost forgot he also escaped from 4 military prisons over his lifetime, makes that hobby seem even creepier.