Backstory Help

[Machadawg]

My Gaming group is starting a new campaign and I need help fleshing out my backstory. I'm a level 5 Duskblade.

I'm currently human, but seeing as the campaign takes place in the Forgotten Realms I'm leaning towards strongheart halfling. I've always seemed to like races with longer lifespans.

We ran a demo session and my character will have known his party members for about six months due to their imprisonment. I've learned that the game will feature a homebrew function where we roll percentiles to find how sane we are. Well it had been my plan before finding out about this, that my character would be somewhat crazy.

As in sees and talks to his dead brother or something. N ot kill his party crazy. Maybe he is not oblivious to his mental status either. I don't know. I'm also thinking that maybe he sees what he thinks are his ancestors memories.

I've been writing my own campaign and am all out of creativity.
All help is appreciated. Thanks.

[ArcturusV]

Well, to reference a novel I read a long time ago:

If you are completely sane, you believe everything you experience, because you know it is all real because you are not insane. If you are completely insane, you also believe everything you experience, because you are unable to tell what is real. It's only at your current mixture of half insane, that you are capable of doubt.

Insanity in a DnD Campaign though is a little trickier. I mean you think of things like "He talks to his dead brother, he MUST be insane"... But that has nothing to do with insanity really. I mean it's DnD. You KNOW the afterlife exists. That souls go to other places. You even know that they watch things, and that you can talk to them and such after death. So "insane" things like every night talking to "thin air" to update your dead brother on life and your thoughts is less insane and more like polite manners.

That's what makes it hard to be "insane" in DnD as most people think about it. The classic things we think of as "insanity" in our world? Par for normal life in a DnD world. "Demons! Demons are everywhere and trying to eat my soul!"... that's not madman raving lunatic. That's the facts of life.

What I'd probably go for, to sell "Crazy", is inappropriate responses. Like a guy who laughs when you see something that should disturb you. Or when you walk out onto a three day battlefield you take a deep breath and go "aaaaah!". people might peg that as signs of "Evil". But if you're not actually being evil, it should sell Crazy fairly well.

[Harlot]

Try to look into the Warhammer system of insanity points for inspiration.

As I remember it, they have some pretty good examples of insanity and how it effects the PC's behavior.

Yup - Just looked it up - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd ed. p. 200 ff. and theres 20 archetypes of insane behavior. Like paranoia, pyromania, anxiety attacks etc.
Page 208 advice on how to roleplay that.

[BowStreetRunner]

I think there is a solid concept there. Your character is an arcane warrior type who is highly spiritual and comes from a family that, while they have for several generations accepted the modern pantheon of gods, still falls back on the ancestor-worship traditions of their ancient forebears.

Back home there is a shrine to your family ancestors, tucked away in a forest grove, overgrown and starting to crumble. Your grandmother would take you there from time to time to visit your ancestors and ask their protection. When you went off to begin your duskblade training she performed a ritual there and asked the ancestors to appoint a family spirit to watch over you.

It was after this that you started speaking with your dead brother. Your grandmother had always spoken aloud to the family spirits when no one outside the family was around to hear, so the behavior doesn't actually seem all that odd to you. It may be that the ritual she performed had no actual effect, but for whatever reason you just sensed one day that it was your brother the family spirits sent to watch over you and started talking to him as if he was there.

It's not all that crazy - people who are very spiritual often do speak to the dead - but it leaves open the possibility of stronger behavior down the same line if the DM asks for a bit more insanity later on.

[OttoVonBigby]

And/or, if you want to seem more tortured: you USED to hear your dead relative's voice. It used to tell you what to do, and it was always good advice; maybe you owe your achievements to the voice. Then it went silent, and you don't know why.

Like BowStreetRunner's idea, it gives you a little crazy now and plenty of room for growth later--growing sanity or insanity, depending on the circumstances.

[CaladanMoonblad]

to add on to OttoVonBigby....


this is D&D Forgotten Realms. Where ghosts exist. Maybe an item you had was actually haunted by your dead sibling, and now that you lost it, so has your connection to your wiser half.

[Deadline]

You could go a bit further, and saddle your character with a relative that has to travel with you too. I did something similar with a Legend of the Five Rings character a while back, he was a Crab Berzerker who carted his crazed harpy of a grandmother around and cared for her, and was also constantly haunted by the spirit of his grandfather, who died dishonorably. Also, the grandparents hated each other with unusual intensity. Only he could hear the grandfather, and often had to act as the go-between in arguments between the two. It was an amusing alternate source for the berzerker rage.

Sort of a devil on one shoulder, and crazy devil on the other shoulder. Of course, this assumes you want to go down the "crazy" road. Alternatively, if you are just looking for descriptions of mental disorders, I'm fairly certain you can find them in Unearthed Arcana and the Book of Vile Darkness.

[kreenlover]

Personally, I would play this character as the main guy from A Beautiful Mind (great movie, you guys should watch it) to not spoil anything, I'll go on in spoilers
In the movie the guy is schizophrenic. So he sees three people who aren't really there. But he acts like they are real people, ex. Hold this charles. when the thing falls on the ground, acts surprised, gets mad at hallucination. If you could pull this off, it would be pretty great. Then, like the guy does, eventually realize that the ghost, or brother isn't really there. This has great potential for character growth and stuff. or, have it become convinced his brother isn't there. at the end, turns out it really is his brother

If you don't go with that, I would say make him know that he is slightly imbalanced. Make him accept the fact that even though his brothers ghost may not be there, well, the ghost gives darn good advice, so craziness be darned, I'm going to listen to it! Better yet, have his entire life he had his brother there. Then , one day his brother died when they went out alone. After he came back sobbing about his brother dying, his family locked him in a mental asylum or some such for a while. At the end, there was no brother. He never had a brother, only a voice in his mind. This would be best revealed after the entire party has become convinced that there really is a ghost
something like that. Just start talking to the air in real life too. don't say your character does that, you just do it. should add to the whole idea.

[Machadawg]

Yeah these ideas have all been really helpful.

I think i might mix the beautiful mind idea and some flavor of my own.

Hopefully i can pull this off and create a really memberable character.

[kreenlover]

and thats all that anyone can really ask for isn't it?

To be ... ...remembered

[Averis Vol]

If you would like to progress the voices you hear, you could occasionally pay for a contact other planes spell so you can seek out and speak with your dead relative. Whether it ends up actually being him/her or some demon is up to the DM, but either way it adds both resolution and anticipation to your personal story.

[Blackhawk748]

if you (or your gamer pals) want some more examples of insanity i recommend Darkness and Dread, its Lairs and Legends but pretty good stuff in there, and im pretty sure Heroes of Horror covers insanity a bit too

[kreenlover]

Blackhawk is right, Heroes of Horror has some great coverage of that. I'd also look in BoVD, but heroes of horror has some great stuff. go with corruption rules, depravity rules, saves versus phobias, just great stuff all around. Best part, you get bonus feats for going insane