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90sMusic
2017-09-22, 03:33 PM
It is so ridiculously predictable and kind of mind blowing honestly that even after all these years of playing D&D, anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/2 of player backstories I read involve their family being dead.

Sometimes they are murdered, sometimes they just died from natural causes, whatever. But Regardless of the reason, players love their families to be dead.

Just curious how often you run into this EXTREMELY tired trope and when choosing players for a game, do you ever pass over any that use the same tired cliches like "Dead family" as the catalyst for their adventuring career beginning?

Geddy2112
2017-09-22, 03:42 PM
At some point, we all have dead family. Unless the adventurer is a race that is biologically immortal, I highly doubt their great great grandparents are alive by the time they are born, much less old enough to actually go out and adventure. If the characters being adventuring later in life, it is possible their grandparents and possibly even parents have died of natural causes at this point.

Enough being a smart alec aside-you are clearly talking about dead immediate family. I don't see it as an inherent problem-few adventurers have strong family ties, as adventuring is both extremely dangerous and will call you away from your family for possible years or more. It is pretty rare for an adventurer to be incredibly close to their family, or for their family to be relevant to a story. Killing them off just makes things easy-they have nothing tying them down so they can run off and do whatever. People who are married and have children rarely just up and leave them. Likewise, you can't just bring your family on an adventure...

A lot of players use it as a vehicle for their character to go on the adventure-the BBEG is clearly tied to their dead family/village/sibling etc, so it is motivation to engage in the campaign. I have had a couple characters with no living family, but plenty with some living family and some with all immediate family being alive, including children of their own.

It is a trope sure, but it exists for good reason. Certainly it can be cringe if it is ham-fisted, but I don't see any reason to be inherently hostile towards it. Again, being close to your family makes it very hard to adventure, and having no living family is easy, particularly to new players.

Tinkerer
2017-09-22, 03:45 PM
Generally I won't hold it against them. I almost never use it myself however my favourite character has a dead family (although her step-father is alive...ish, still moving, kinda lichy). I always make sure that they have a connection which replaces the familial bond though. Maybe to a street gang or an orphanage or a step-family or a school. Honestly 1/3 to 1/2 isn't even that high and about what I'd be expecting from a shifty group of vagabonds.

I asked one of my players about this and he said that he was playing a good character and in such a violent world if he had a family he wouldn't be leaving them alone. Probably the best response which I ever got to the question.

I wonder how many members of the French Foreign Legion have dead families...

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-22, 03:48 PM
Adventurers need a reason why they aren't leading happy normal lives.

Stable balanced people don't become adventurers. At least that's how I see them.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 03:53 PM
Depending on the campaign setup, family can often simply be far enough outside the physical or conceptual scope that it just never comes up.

On the other hand, I've purposefully written up a family for one of my characters as their adventuring motivation.

He came from a culture that expected the a man to take in his brother's wife if his brother died, and his dead brother left behind a large family. And the PC already had his own kids. So instead of just getting by, he went out adventuring to score some treasure hauls or big rewards / bounties.

One of the ongoing elements of the character was that he'd go off alone to "take care of some business" with a big chunk of his share whenever they were in a major city, and never had "throwing around" gold like the rest of the PCs. One of the other PCs kept insisting that my PC was "off wenching and bedding strumpets", which eventually got the other PC punched in the face.

The truth was that he was making arrangements to securely make the funds available back home.

Amphetryon
2017-09-22, 03:55 PM
The Dead Relatives trope is often a reaction to GMs who use any living relative of the PCs as plot, forcing the party to go on rescue mission after rescue mission like Spidey chasing after Mary Jane. While some folks don't mind this, others feel manipulated & resentful at this "attempt to hijack their backstory."

Of course, the Dead Relatives trope can just as easily be its own jumping off point for adventures: PCs can reclaim inheritance, avenge a wrongful death, run from authorities accusing them (rightly or not) of arranging the death of a relative for their own profit....

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 04:03 PM
The Dead Relatives trope is often a reaction to GMs who use any living relative of the PCs as plot, forcing the party to go on rescue mission after rescue mission like Spidey chasing after Mary Jane. While some folks don't mind this, others feel manipulated & resentful at this "attempt to hijack their backstory."


Yeap. And I think many of us have had that GM who thinks that this is the entire reason for backstory, maybe because they've watched too much Hollywood / pop fiction.

Rerem115
2017-09-22, 04:29 PM
I've never had a character start with dead family in there backstory, but one DM I've had made a point of killing them off during the campaign.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 04:29 PM
Anytime I see someone say their motivation for killing a BBEG is because he wiped out their village and killed their family, I already put that player way down the "desirables" list because it makes me feel like they aren't even trying or just don't care enough to come up with any real motivation outside of the same old tropes.

You could just be an adventurous type, a thrill seeker and want to be an adventurer for that reason.
You could've just spent too many years pouring over old books and studying in quiet libraries and just wanted to get out there and actually do something or put some of the magical power you have accumulated to good use. As Samwell Tarly puts it, "I'm tired of reading about better men."

You could just see adventuring as a get-rich-quick scheme (because honestly, it is) and are doing it just to line your pockets.
Or maybe you just genuinely believe in the cause of trying to do your part to make the world a better place.

There are all kinds of motivations for going out into the world and most normal, well-adjusted people simply move out of their family home into their own and start their own lives when reaching adulthood and their parents no longer hold any sway over their future or career choices. The idea that their family HAS to be dead in order for them to want to do anything other than live a mundane life seems silly to me.

I mean I imagine some folks who aren't just super poor might even move to entirely different cities or villages than where their parents lived and they aren't even close by enough to impact their personal lives and stories at that point except maybe when you go back to visit for special occasions.

I have often wondered if this was caused by Disney since essentially all of their classic works involve at least one dead parent and it caused some kind of psychological impact on people or if it's just some deep seated issue people have with their own families and don't see the value in family. I've known countless people who say things like familial ties mean nothing to them and the concept of things like blood is thicker than water just doesn't exist in modern generations. Family was SUPER important back in the day. I just find the whole situation very odd that people are so heavily attracted to this trope.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 04:31 PM
Yeap. And I think many of us have had that GM who thinks that this is the entire reason for backstory, maybe because they've watched too much Hollywood / pop fiction.

Most players i've known have enjoyed seeing elements of their backstories being added into the game world because it validates their existence and means that the time they took to write their backstory actually had an impact on the world instead of being a pointless waste of time.

Players also usually like personal quests related to their backstory.

RazorChain
2017-09-22, 04:38 PM
The avenging orphan is usually a thing of the past with my gaming groups.

Currently only one character in my game is an orphan and that's because his parents died of tuberculosis but he has an uncle.

Oh...I forgot the other one, his family is all dead because he was under a curse and slept for 300 years. In that instance the point wasn't to kill off his family but to explore a concept of playing a character that's out of place, wakes up and knows no one and doesn't recognize the society as it was.

Potatomade
2017-09-22, 04:40 PM
Lots of people in my group have characters that come from broken families, but not completely dead ones. The go-to trope for us is "dead mother, estranged father" for some reason.

I think I'm the only person who ever went whole-hog and wrote "dead family" into my character's background. That character was motivated to give his family a legacy- have their name remembered through his own deeds. He wound up being such a game-changingly overpowered character that he conquered whole civilizations and became a dictator with a massive cult of personality. So that was a thing.

I don't see a problem with it, personally. You can take any old trope and make something interesting out of it. In fact, it's often more fun to intentionally start from a well-worn cliche, and build it into something weird. Getting huffy about somebody using a trope seems kinda try-hard to me.

Drakevarg
2017-09-22, 04:54 PM
The only time I can think of where my character was explicitly an orphan as part of their backstory was in my first campaign ever, where the DM made that backstory element part of the game's basic conceit (the entire party had grown up in the same orphanage). Though after playing that character across like three different campaigns, it ultimately turned out that I wasn't an orphan because my parents were dead, it was because my parents were the lords of the Fae (literally Oberon and Titania) and they wanted me to grow up with a mortal perspective so they dumped me in an orphanage somewhere with a gaggle of half-siblings.

Since then, my characters have had parents who were uninvolved (half-dragon paladin who grew up in a monastery), far away (they lived in a tribe while I was out doing mercenary stuff), or just never came up (most of the time), but I've never specifically cited having dead parents as part of my backstory. More often than not I see the "dead family" motivation as an excuse to not characterize them and allow the PC to exist in a vacuum. That's the boring part, really. PCs who just sort of exist with no real background to speak of.

It's definitely possible to make the dead family thing work. Frank Castle losing his family became his driving factor, but it's made clearly apparent that the incident scarred him and defined his outlook, it didn't just sever his roots. The people who raised Luke Skywalker had to die for him to leave home, and while it didn't seem to bother him too much it was clear he was frustrated and dissatisfied where he was and it was hardly the end of his family's impact on his life.

The dead family thing can work. The problem only comes in when it's used as a cop-out because the player doesn't want to be a part of the world they're exploring.

Potatomade
2017-09-22, 05:00 PM
More often than not I see the "dead family" motivation as an excuse to not characterize them and allow the PC to exist in a vacuum. That's the boring part, really. PCs who just sort of exist with no real background to speak of.

...

The dead family thing can work. The problem only comes in when it's used as a cop-out because the player doesn't want to be a part of the world they're exploring.

That shouldn't be that much of a drawback, though. If a player wants to just put together a quick, tropy background for their character, it doesn't make them less of a player for it. Nor does it make their character less of a character. Maybe the player just wanted to focus on personality over history, and saying their family is dead is a quick way of making sure they don't have to overthink it. Maybe the player just cares about what happens now. Those are not bad points of view.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 05:00 PM
Most players i've known have enjoyed seeing elements of their backstories being added into the game world because it validates their existence and means that the time they took to write their backstory actually had an impact on the world instead of being a pointless waste of time.

Players also usually like personal quests related to their backstory.

We (Amphetryon and I) were specifically talking about the way some GMs, and too much fiction, treat "supporting characters" as expendable drama fuel. In the minds of those GMs and writers... spouses, SOs, parents, children, friends, old flames, all exist to either be threatened, hurt, kidnapped, killed, etc, to ratchet up the "drama"... or to betray or mistakenly hate the PC / protagonist. If we see attention paid to a supporting character in those games or fiction, it's a sure sign something like this will happen involving that character.

Nifft
2017-09-22, 05:24 PM
I blame my childhood role-models:

- Batman

- Superman

- Spiderman

- Wolverine

Lord Raziere
2017-09-22, 05:45 PM
I recall that being something some of my characters do, but not all of them.

Ironically, the characters whose parents and family were saved from any death by backstory or DM were the ones that were simply never mentioned in the first place. They weren't important to the character's backstory so no one paid attention to the fact that the parents were never confirmed to be alive or not. so if you want your character's parents to stay alive, simply make them as unimportant as possible and have the characters actual problems and motivations have nothing to do with family or anything.

killing off the family is meant to be an exploration of how important family is, because it takes away an important support structure for the protagonist so they have to find a way to replicate family and thus re-achieve that important bond. it explores family by showing us someone who loses and regains family. Ironically the times when you keep the family alive but important, they end up being antagonists and its an exploration of how a family can be screwed up, so the lack of a family is often show how a family is positive and the presence of a family is often how negative it can be. this most often occurs with nobility in fiction. which is fitting, given that noble families were scheming evil political jerks who were unfair to everyone involved. mixing family with politics and important decisions over land is unsurprisingly not a good idea. the protagonist often ends up rebelling against their family to do whats right in that situation.

whats that you say? a positive blood-related family that doesn't die, doesn't turn evil, and doesn't be a jerk to the protagonist of these kinds of stories in some manner? I'm sure there are examples out there if you look, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Cluedrew
2017-09-22, 05:45 PM
A lot of my characters have ambiguous family relations. That is it just didn't come up. I've got a few characters who have dead family and some who have strong relations with their parents, siblings and occasionally (although I didn't actually get to play this one) wife and kids. It was a one shot character who was an almost stereotypical paladin for a one shot.

Knaight
2017-09-22, 06:06 PM
There are all kinds of motivations for going out into the world and most normal, well-adjusted people simply move out of their family home into their own and start their own lives when reaching adulthood and their parents no longer hold any sway over their future or career choices. The idea that their family HAS to be dead in order for them to want to do anything other than live a mundane life seems silly to me.
Even today this is a culture specific thing with a lot of exceptions - the nuclear family structure is if anything less common than extended family structures. That's without things like outright clan structures, feudal obligations, or even the benefits of living in larger groups amidst more serious concerns about roving bands of violent people. Heck, there's even the matter of a significantly more rural society with hand tools making it somewhat harder to set up new farms and the like.

On top of that, adventuring is inherently extremely dangerous, and thus the sort of thing likely to appeal much more to those at the margins of society than those with social obligations (such as the clan connection). That encourages certain characters, and the survivors of devastation are in that category. Others are outcasts and outlaws, former soldiers who've been displaced, pilgrims, and essentially a lot of other archetypes that are also likely to get criticized as being cliche.


We (Amphetryon and I) were specifically talking about the way some GMs, and too much fiction, treats "supporting characters" as expendable drama fuel.
This is one of the things that drives people towards the dead family trope, but it's probably still a smaller factor than huge sections of the hobby being built around a small team of adventurers doing dangerous stuff for personal gain. If the standard game was instead about characters embedded in a community balancing their conventional community obligations with being pushed to greatness we'd get different characters.

icefractal
2017-09-22, 08:09 PM
So personally, I don't really like interacting with NPCs where the PC /should/ have a strong emotional connection, but it's specified as backstory rather than built up through roleplaying interaction. I can't usually portray it well at all without those previous conversations having existed, and so it just feels shoddy and makes me annoyed with myself.

Therefore, I'm perfectly happy to /have/ a living family, but I don't want them to come up in game. But to a lot of GMs, this basically causes ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND; they just don't grok at all why someone would want anything in their backstory not to be spotlighted. And so they do it anyway, I get annoyed, and they get annoyed because in their mind they're doing me a favor and I'm being weird about it.

Simpler to have the family out of the picture and avoid hurt feelings.

Mr Beer
2017-09-22, 08:19 PM
Anytime I see someone say their motivation for killing a BBEG is because he wiped out their village and killed their family, I already put that player way down the "desirables" list because it makes me feel like they aren't even trying or just don't care enough to come up with any real motivation outside of the same old tropes.

This is way down my list of red flags. Of course, if the character is now perpetually brooding, no longer values human life and has a sword called 'Mourning Razor', yeah my snowflake/edgelord detector just went off.

Nifft
2017-09-22, 08:28 PM
So personally, I don't really like interacting with NPCs where the PC /should/ have a strong emotional connection, but it's specified as backstory rather than built up through roleplaying interaction. I can't usually portray it well at all without those previous conversations having existed, and so it just feels shoddy and makes me annoyed with myself.

Therefore, I'm perfectly happy to /have/ a living family, but I don't want them to come up in game. But to a lot of GMs, this basically causes ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND; they just don't grok at all why someone would want anything in their backstory not to be spotlighted. And so they do it anyway, I get annoyed, and they get annoyed because in their mind they're doing me a favor and I'm being weird about it.

Simpler to have the family out of the picture and avoid hurt feelings.

What I do is ask the player to write an interlude with family who might be relevant.

I can continue the voices that they establish for the NPC(s).

VoxRationis
2017-09-22, 08:34 PM
At my table, the matter, quite honestly, rarely comes up. Probably not a sign of the best character development, but hey. My current character, however, is pretty much defined by her dead family, since it makes her the last of a noble house. Fallen noble families are kind of common in the setting, though, since the brutal conquest of the country the game is set in is the most recent and prominent historical event.

Alcore
2017-09-22, 08:51 PM
When I first started playing my characters never had family. I didn't want to deal with so they were dead, murdered or otherwise unspoken. However they have been a catalyst for the current game. Sir Greenhilt's case is a unique one none of mine could relate too.


As i got more experienced more family show up in backstory, rarely were they all alive though. It has been avoided like the plague by every GM. Which i would expect; it's a touchy subject and while i wouldn't mind most would not consider stepping on that land mind.

Esprit15
2017-09-22, 08:52 PM
I tend to agree with the "people with strong social connections don't normally go adventuring" camp. That said, even when I employ the dead family trope, I try to leave a thread to connect them to the world. The orphan was taken in by a kind librarian who served to educate them and make sure they reached adulthood. After fleeing his destroyed village, the young man took refuge in a church and devoted his life to serving X god. The necromancer studied his mother's old spell book after she fled the town's angry mob, and is unsure whether she lives or not.

The dead family is not always the catalyst for adventuring, but it serves to explain why the character doesn't feel a need to stay near any new loved ones, and why they might adventure beyond simply defending a small town.

2D8HP
2017-09-22, 09:15 PM
Oh, generally I find that most DM's require a "Back-story", and the longer and more tragic it is the more likely a PC of mine will be accepted.

Jokes on them when "Mournblade Stormwind" turns out to be played as a combination of Captain Haddock, Julio Scoundrél, and Pepé Le Pew

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9a/Pep%C3%A9_Le_Pew.svg/440px-Pep%C3%A9_Le_Pew.svg.png

Mournblade Stormwind


Fortunately PC creation may be systemized:
Name:

Edgy name generator! Roll 3d20!



d20
First name
Last name (1st half)
Last name (2nd half)


1
Agony
Beast
Arrow


2
Dagger
Black
Blade


3
Ghost
Blood
Blood


4
Ghoul
Cold
Bone


5
Gloom
Dark
Crow


6
Misery
Despair
Dark


7
Mist
Doom
Demon


8
Moon
Ever
Death


9
Pain
Fright
Eye


10
Raven
Fury
Flame


11
[Refuses to state first name]
Grim
Heart


12
Shadow
Hate
Ice


13
Shudder
Never
Mark


14
Spider
Pain
Martyr


15
Talon
Poison
Scar


16
Twilight
Razor
Shackle


17
Venom
Steel
Skin


18
Wander
Storm
Skull


19
Whisper
True
Snow


20
Wolf
Vengeance
Sword



A few try-outs:

Talon Despairmartyr
Dagger Razorflame
Twilight Poisonice
Venom Darkcrow
Misery Whisperdeath

Working as intended, it seems.


Class, Race, and Tragic Events:

Well, here is an edgy character generator I made for 5th edition D&D. Use with the name generator. Enjoy!



1d6
Race


1
Human


2
Half-orc


3
Drow


4
Half-drow


5
Tiefling


6
Ghostwise Halfling






1d10
Class


1
Fiend Warlock


2
Shadow Sorcerer


3
Assassin Rogue


4
Undying Warlock


5
Death Cleric


6
War Cleric


7
Berserker Barbarian


8
Hunter Ranger


9
Vengance Paladin


10
Shadow Monk






1d8
Backstory p1
1d8
Backstory p2


1
I was abused by
1
Family member(s).


2
I hate
2
Dragon(s).


3
My family was killed by
3
Orc(s).


4
I am a transformed
4
Demon(s).


5
I am in love with a
5
Devil(s).


6
I killed a
6
Drow


7
I have the soul of a
7
Ghost(s).


8
I work for
8
Assassin(s).




Alignment:

I'll add some stuff to the class table.

Alignments that are edgy? I would say CG, CN, TN, LN, LE, NE. Gives us a nice 6 alignments.


1d6
Alignment


1
Chaotic good, Probably racist.


2
Chaotic neutral, 'classic' edgy character.


3
True neutral. Pragmatic to the core.


4
Lawful neutral. Probably serves an evil higher power.


5
Lawful evil. Lives by her own code.


6
Neutral evil. Like chaotic good, but probably racist towards more people.



Edit: The characters that are being ended up with are awesome. My tables do have a lot of bugs (killing an orc isn't much), but with the working for your family, what if your family is evil?


Fashion accessories:
(Sadly requires some actual creativity, but fortunately not much)

Grimblade Mourncloud rued birth into this world of pain and especially wearing spiked bracelets and skull epaulets to the mall that matched those adorning Darkfire Stormwind who's tragic deal and awesomicity had no match. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
Verily if Darkfire Stormwind had any tears left to shed, surely they would turn to steam upon release due to the bitter fires that rage inside one such as Darkfire Stormwind! Just a gaze from Darkfire Stormwind steel colored eyes (which were set off well by the spiked bracelets, and skull epaulets) was enough to turn one such as Grimblade Mourncloud into a mere tepid stain at the mall!
Darkfire Stormwind tragic deal and awesomicity were such that Darkfire Stormwind only spoke of Darkfire Stormwind in the third person. Darkfire Stormwind just liked to say Darkfire Stormwind!


This personality is good for any campaign!

Well, hold on, I think we're missing one of the most important parts of the proper edgelord here.

He's got to be misunderstood! His misanthropic nature is simply the outward manifestation of a deep-seated insecurity, resulting from the internalization of the notion that he is apart from others and always will be, that he somehow stands alone, and that no one will ever truly understand the incredible, titanic struggle within himself, nor will he ever truly be able to relate this to another person, no matter how close they become.

Darkedge Shadowblade's behavior and affectations are, in large part, due to this deep-seated need for understanding and acceptance. And yet, as a half-tiefling, half-aasimar assassin, given incredible gifts in the art of death that, in truth, are more of a burden than a boon, who can truly claim to understand or know him? Of course, he does what he must do to survive, and so he will tell himself, as his black-edged knife cuts the throat of one more unsuspecting nobleman, fatted on the wealth of the nation that he's enslaved with his unjust regime; but there will always be that shadow of self-doubt. The kind that can usually only be expressed during brooding internal monologues while Darkedge Shadowblade crouches, hunched and ready to leap at a moment's notice, on the silent gargoyles of the largest church in the city -- itself an impossibly large symbol of greed and lust for power given form in unfeeling stone -- as the rain pours down his hooded and implacable face.

You gotta' have the rain. That makes the whole scene.


:amused:

It's all 'bout word count, and packing in angst and tragedy.

I keep harping on this, but it's frustrating.

As I said before, I've never seen any back story histories ever actually used, but most DM's demand them.

I've seen a DM who specified "no evil" PC's accept players as far as I can tell based on word count, including another player who's PC was a Cleric of a "God of Murder", and since I actually read the back stories the other players submitted, it was obvious to me that despite "Chaotic Neutral" being on the character sheet (with quotation marks!), that the PC was evil.

The "campaign" ended very shortly after it started when the DM quit, after the players actually played the characters suggested by their PC's back-stories.

He selected the menagerie of PC's, and had he actually bothered to read the back-stories he demanded he should have guessed how the PC's would have acted, and since all the PC's selected had the longest back-stories it was obvious to me that he just looked for length.

I know that the more text I submit the better my chances of acceptance is.

As an experiment, I submitted the same back-story to two different DM's, one with a few extra paragraphs tacked on at the end that really added nothing to the story

Guess which one got accepted.

For a PbP at this Forum I once submitted this:

Mournblade Stormwind

Though he'd "lived", if you could call it "living" for years, growing soft in this city of men, Mournblade remembered the forest.

Mournblade loved the forest.

The sound of the wind, the river, the birds.

And foot steps.

He loved his family as well, but he always felt the call of the forest, where he could live without speaking, and be still.

And listen.

And wait.

For his prey.

He told himself he hunted to feed his family and neighbors, but deep inside he knew that wasn't true.

He needed the sounds of the woods, as well as the quiet.

And to watch

And to listen.

He heard the woods burning.

He had lived through forest-fires before, but this was different. There had been no lighting. And he heard screaming.

Elf screams!

In an instant from so still he would appear to be part of the woods, he became quick as a deer running from a couger, and he ran towards home.

Towards his family.

Towards everyone he knew.

He saw the burned bodies.

And the arrows.

And something else.

A banner.

Men's banner.

Mournblade knew then that he would leave the woods.

He had a new prey.

Mournblade Stormwind curses cruel fate:

CURSE YOU, CRUEL FATE!

THERE WILL BE A RECKONING!



The PC was accepted.


If ever DM's stop requiring back-stories with piles of dead relatives in order to play I'll be happier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?511979-Backstory-for-a-happy-Adventurer) as I often regard the back-story submittal ritual as a chore (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493730-PC-quot-Back-story-quot-why-is-that-a-thing).

It's all about demand

I pile 'em high in order to play.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 09:22 PM
I suppose coming from a family with a lot of members in the military, the idea of people leaving to adventure having to be emotionally messed up just seems ridiculous to me. It's like saying people who sign up to be soldiers don't have families or don't want/care about their families because they could spend 12 months being deployed elsewhere.

Your familial connections that exist with living people can be a good motivator to go adventuring as well. You could want to keep your homeland safe or just build wealth to eventually return home with.

If anything, adventurers have a lot more freedom to actually go home when they want to and aren't explicitly obligated to do the things they do and it would realistically be a much more "family-friendly" profession than a soldier because you'd have a lot more control over where you go and when you go.

Also, i'm a big fan of character development, and a lot of times your family is a big part of who you are and why you turned out the way you did. Seeing everyone just write them off as unimportant characters not worth mentioning ever makes me a little sad.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 09:29 PM
The reason I want a backstory for characters in my games are to get an idea of their outlook on life, attitude, how they respond to some situations, and also to see the creativity of the player and see if they come up with anything remotely original or just basically copy-paste some generic action hero story.

But then again, I also use backstories in all my games at some point. :) I incorporate old friends, relatives, their life goals, any personal quests they may have, and so on.

But I just about never take players with dead parents. Just too tired of the unoriginality of the whole thing.

"my parents were killed by..." "my village was destroyed by..." and so on, just hate seeing it crop up constantly. Just like every character that looks like it was modeled after some anime edgelord, that is an automatic rejection.

Quertus
2017-09-22, 09:33 PM
People with families do not your standard adventurers make? But, since one of my biggest gaming influences was The Hobbit, I don't exactly airways make your standard adventurer. And even in games that aren't murder-hobo centric, I'm not interested in family playing a role. Why? Well, because I've never had a GM run them "right". My response has always been, "well, if that had been their family, my character would have turned out completely different."

So, I'll stick with playing a character who is "not from around here", thanks, and let my family's vitality remain an unimportant (to the game), off-camera mystery.

Flitz
2017-09-22, 09:39 PM
I was giving it some thought and honestly in the games I've played, family hasn't really come up too often - when I've played, usually the players give their backstories to the DM and reveal very little for the group, preferring to let their character story unfold through RP, and it's not often my friends in character ask about each others' families. However, I don't doubt that it happens a lot - in my current game I'm helping guide two newer players, and both have dead parents, and I know my husband's character also has dead parents. Since I don't know the other players' backgrounds yet, I can only assume it's more of the same. Personally, I prefer to be ambiguous about my character's parents. Typically I play a character who's parents aren't in her life but are most likely alive somewhere - either they abandoned my character, or my character went on her own way at varying ages, or she was kidnapped or got lost and ended up on her own.

Actually this thread gave me a really good idea for my next character - I would really like to play one who is adventuring to earn money for his/her family, and while s/he will travel with the party wherever they go, the thought of returning to family is always on the mind. And I think it would make an interesting interaction if the party gets to my character's hometown.

2D8HP
2017-09-22, 09:39 PM
...see if they come up with anything remotely original or just basically copy-paste some generic action hero story....


Sounds like you run a cool game!

I'd like to just play a joyful daredevil, maybe a sailor trying to see the world, but I can't find a DM who wants that PC, so I just copy and paste Mad Max and at least I get to roll dice.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-22, 09:43 PM
I suppose coming from a family with a lot of members in the military, the idea of people leaving to adventure having to be emotionally messed up just seems ridiculous to me. It's like saying people who sign up to be soldiers don't have families or don't want/care about their families because they could spend 12 months being deployed elsewhere.


Yeah but here is the thing:
Soldiers are not adventurers.

They are soldiers, and obey their orders. That is not adventurous at all. An Adventurer would not be any kind of soldier, because an adventurer probably wouldn't get into the military in the first place regardless of mental health. just look at the paladin: this class practically demands you be in good mental health to be a paragon of goodness, and they wouldn't fit with a military because there is a possibility they'd want to redeem something rather than eliminate it efficiently or disobey the law for a paladin's justice if they don't think its legitimate. a soldier on the other hand would get punished for such heroic actions.

RazorChain
2017-09-22, 09:51 PM
Most murderhobos don't want to have a backstory or a family because that might cause them to look their mommy in the eye and tell her of their "adventures"

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 10:02 PM
Sounds like you run a cool game!

I'd like to just play a joyful daredevil, maybe a sailor trying to see the world, but I can't find a DM who wants that PC, so I just copy and paste Mad Max and at least I get to roll dice.

When I DM, I like to craft the world around the players. I want players who inspire me and get my creative juices flowing. I've made entire worlds change course based on the backstories of the PCs.

Creative people playing with creative people just feed off each other and it leads to really great interactions and story developments.

Maybe i'm too harsh, but I feel like if people just go with the same tropes and cliches, then they aren't really trying and not invested in that character. It is just a "thing" they made in order to roll dice. I like when players get invested and I make worlds they can relate to and like spending time in.

If I pour my heart into it, I want them to do the same. :) I'm very picky when it comes to players, but the end result speaks for it's self, the games are always incredible.

My only lament is, I never have much luck finding games I enjoy when i'm a player. I just run into a whole lot of the stuff I dislike such as railroading, DMs saying no to things that should logically work, or the sort of DM metagaming where they never cast spells against people who are immune to their effects, despite that character having no way of knowing they'd be immune to them. D&D as a player has always been less than stellar for me.

I decided a long time ago that D&D is like every other multiplayer game that exists... Most people that play it are just really bad at it. It's hard to play with people with drastically different levels of skill, levels of involvement and investment, levels of seriousness, etc. You have to sort of filter through all those things to line up people perfect to play together for optimal games but when it's left up to a DM to do that, most don't or can't do it. Reading these forums make me realize also most folks on here that DM are those same sorts who only follow the rules when it is convenient to them, as the DM, but ignore rules when it is in the player's favor and lots of little things like that.

I don't think i'll ever play with a DM I enjoy. I'm stuck to filling that role forever sadly. :P

Lord Raziere
2017-09-22, 10:27 PM
Most murderhobos don't want to have a backstory or a family because that might cause them to look their mommy in the eye and tell her of their "adventures"

Yeah, see even if the backstory doesn't prove the murderhobo PCs are in some way insane or mentally damaged, their in character actions probably will. if they did have family and backstory that weren't "entire village dead, decided to be badass" then they come home with the same insanities they had abroad, the family wonders where in the hell did they go wrong raising their child, because the village is ostensibly a healthy place to raise a child as it can be for a DnD world?? either way, it probably ends with the murderhobo feeling guilty for their act-AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH...
sorry I couldn't finish that with a straight face. no more likely the family controlled by the GM calls them out on their behavior and the PC, not wanting their fun to be ruined by GM railroading by exploiting their family, kills their own family then destroys their village themselves.

because unsurprisingly most gamers don't want embarrassing family drama playing out between the PC and the GM making silly voices. They want to get back to the good parts of adventurin' and killing things.

that and adventuring isn't really about someone going into a military. the military is a respectable profession. Something to be proud of. Adventuring on the other hand is someone grabbing a machete they ordered online, declaring they're going on a journey to kill stuff then leaving town on foot without letting anyone know where they are going.

2D8HP
2017-09-22, 10:27 PM
...I don't think i'll ever play with a DM I enjoy. I'm stuck to filling that role forever sadly. :P


Oh I don't know about that, judging by their posts there seem to be many great DM's posting to this Forum, it's just that those posts are swamped by "dang that DM" posts (including mine), my memory of them may by "sepia toned" but I remember my first, and especially my second (RIP) DM's as being great!

Anyway as a DM please post some advice at my advice for my DM'ing thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?536663-How-to-herd-PC-s-Viking-kids-vs-Morlocks)

or at my

book thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?535791-Long-tales-of-Faerie)

As to the "PC's with dead relatives" thing, do you think it's player or DM demand that drives it, or is it just from pop-culture?

Knaight
2017-09-22, 10:37 PM
I suppose coming from a family with a lot of members in the military, the idea of people leaving to adventure having to be emotionally messed up just seems ridiculous to me. It's like saying people who sign up to be soldiers don't have families or don't want/care about their families because they could spend 12 months being deployed elsewhere.

"Emotionally messed up" is your addition, what's actually been put forward is more that adventuring is an inherently incredibly high risk activity likely to be avoided by those who aren't desperate. It's the same way that a lot of people who sign up to be soldiers do so to escape severe poverty - and that's despite a survival rate vastly better than adventuring.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 10:40 PM
As to the "PC's with dead relatives" thing, do you think it's player or DM demand that drives it, or is it just from pop-culture?

Combination of elements i'd say.

I think part of it is inspired by pop culture because a great many stories about adventure we are introduced to as children, and because the stories are catered to children the main characters are usually underaged. You can't have kids wandering off into the woods to save the world because their reasonable parents obviously wouldn't let them do that, so some tragedy has to befall those parents and anyone else that would stop those kids from leaving home and living the "normal kid life". Disney movies are especially bad about it and also a big influence on a lot of folks that play D&D. I think that is where a lot of it comes from.

Adults can simply move out of their parent's house and start their own life with no one dictating terms or obligations to them, but I think when we access the parts of our brains relating to imagination and adventure and all that, it ties closely to being child-like and just about all the adventure stories with child protagonists are put in those situations because something happened to the parents, even if it is just separation rather than death.

Other folks just don't want to roleplay interacting with family for any number of reasons. Maybe it's awkward, maybe it hits too close to home, whatever.

I find some people don't seem to like their characters having any attachments at all in their backstories. Not even friends or acquaintances simply because they don't want there to be NPCs they may have to interact with where they have already established their feelings for that character. Since most folks that play D&D aren't professional actors, they have trouble dealing with emotions relating to characters they should have emotions for based on their history and find it easier when it's a "real" history that happened through interactions instead of backstory.

Then of course some people like being anime edgelords and want to be pure loners for whatever reason.

90sMusic
2017-09-22, 10:52 PM
"Emotionally messed up" is your addition, what's actually been put forward is more that adventuring is an inherently incredibly high risk activity likely to be avoided by those who aren't desperate. It's the same way that a lot of people who sign up to be soldiers do so to escape severe poverty - and that's despite a survival rate vastly better than adventuring.

See, that's a pretty ignorant stance to take though. Most soldiers aren't just desperate people who want to avoid poverty. I have known all types of soldiers from those proud family lineages like my own where many proudly serve because of the honor of doing so. Plenty of others who signed up because they truly believed in the cause. I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened and I had 3 friends who passed up other opportunities in life to join the military to go fight because they felt motivated and felt like it was the right thing to do.

I've also known some soldiers who only joined because they wanted to be able to kill people without consequences. Of all the soldiers i've interacted with in my life, the number of them who signed up because they "had no other choice" is almost non-existent.

As far as D&D goes, some folks just like adventure. Real adventure. Taking revenge on a BBEG for killing your family isn't really the spirit of an adventurer, that is just someone who wants revenge. Some people do things just to prove to themselves that they can, like folks who climb Mount Everest. It's dangerous and it's hard, but sometimes you just want to challenge yourself and see what you're made of.

Being in difficult situations makes people stronger, both physically and emotionally. Some people want that sort of strength. They want to challenge themselves, they want to see what they are made of. They want to find out who they really are when the chips are down.

In an bad situation, are you going to be one of the people running away from danger or one of the people running toward it? You can guess and speculate and assume all you want, but until you're actually in that scenario you have no idea what you'll actually do.

People often have dangerous jobs that they LOVE doing because the danger is part of the appeal or the risk of death doesn't bother them, or maybe in their arrogance they don't think anything bad could ever happen to them.

People are very deep and complex and motivated by a huge number of things. They don't need to be desperate to do something dangerous and they don't need to know people who were killed to want to go kill a murderer.

veti
2017-09-22, 10:56 PM
If your setting is "standard pseudo-medieval fantasy", then most people would have quite a high chance of losing one or both parents - and definitely several siblings - before they're old enough to go adventuring.

And if your family is still alive, what the heck are you doing leaving them behind to go off on some high-risk jaunt?

In all seriousness, I would expect most adventurers' families to be some combination of unknown, estranged and/or dead. Sounds fair enough to me.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 11:11 PM
Sadly this thread is quickly devolving into bashing caricutures, strawmen, and distortions about murderhobos, and nonsense about "adventurers are sociopaths", and so on.

E: I guess my fantasy-genre gaming experience was different... it involved a lot of stopping bandits, and saving villagers, and quieting the restless dead, and fighting off neighboring enemies who wanted our people dead or enslaved, and recovering stolen relics, and those sorts of things. The foes our PCs killed we pretty much all genuinely bad and dangerous, and their deaths saved a lot of innocent lives. Our PCs didn't randomly kill people -- even funny-looking green people -- just to get their way take stuff or because it was funny.

Knaight
2017-09-22, 11:16 PM
See, that's a pretty ignorant stance to take though. Most soldiers aren't just desperate people who want to avoid poverty. I have known all types of soldiers from those proud family lineages like my own where many proudly serve because of the honor of doing so. Plenty of others who signed up because they truly believed in the cause. I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened and I had 3 friends who passed up other opportunities in life to join the military to go fight because they felt motivated and felt like it was the right thing to do.

There's also no shortage of people who joined the military because of the GI bill and similar - and that's the case that holds best in terms of adventuring. The proud family lineage of adventurers doesn't work nearly as well with the higher mortality rate. True belief in a cause doesn't tend to work well with the adventuring party structure (which isn't to say it can't work), as there's not really that much of a cause. The honor of military service almost certainly isn't applied to adventuring. Then there's the matter of how the modern social structure is vastly more conducive to people leaving their local communities than the pseudo-medieval social structure.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-22, 11:29 PM
My favourite definition of adventurer comes from Torchbearer. If I may:


Adventurer is a dirty word. You’re a scoundrel, a villain, a wastrel, a vagabond, a criminal, a sword-for-hire, a cutthroat.

Respectable people belong to guilds, the church or are born into nobility. Or barring all that, they’re salt of the earth and till the land for the rest of us.

Your problem is that you’re none of that. You’re a third child or worse. You can’t get into a guild—too many apprentices already. You’re sure as hell not nobility—even if you were, your older brothers and sisters have soaked up the inheritance. The temples will take you, but they have so many acolytes, they hand you kit and a holy sign and send you right out the door again: Get out there and preach the word and find something nice for the Immortals.

And if you ever entertained romantic notions of homesteading, think again. You’d end up little more than a slave to a wealthy noble.

So there’s naught for you but to make your own way. There’s a certain freedom to it, but it’s a hard life. Cash flows out of your hands as easily as the blood from your wounds.

But at least it’s your life.

And if you’re lucky, smart and stubborn, you might come out on top. There’s a lot of lost loot out there for the finding. And salvage law is mercifully generous. You find it, it’s yours to spend, sell or keep.

To me, that's who adventurers are. They're distrusted outcasts on the fringes of society. Maybe they still have families, maybe they don't. But a family probably shouldn't be a big part of their lives either way. Respectable people with loving families don't become adventurers.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 11:38 PM
I guess I've never played an "adventurer" by that definition, then.

2D8HP
2017-09-22, 11:42 PM
My favourite definition of adventurer comes from Torchbearer. If I may:
"Adventurer is a dirty word. You’re a scoundrel, a villain, a wastrel, a vagabond, a criminal, a sword-for-hire, a cutthroat.

Respectable people belong to guilds, the church or are born into nobility. Or barring all that, they’re salt of the earth and till the land for the rest of us.

Your problem is that you’re none of that...."


Oh I like that!

Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I prefer desperate hobos rob tombs to superfriends save the world adventures.

So The Hobbit not The Lord of the Rings, or even better:

From 1939 Two Sought Adventure/The Jewels in the Forest (http://www.baen.com/Chapters/ERBAEN0088/ERBAEN0088___2.htm) by Fritz Leiber.

That's what I'm looking for!

Lord Raziere
2017-09-23, 01:02 AM
Yeah I'd say the respectable people who do lord of the rings style adventures and such are more like Champions you see? the people who go do great causes and virtue and save the world, I think a better term for them are Champions, because they are championing the common people, virtues and whatnot. an adventurer is someone who ventures, someone who goes beyond the map and fights the unknown, thus less respectable, because your a crazy guy who is just desperately trying to find something on the frontier, because whats an adventurer that stays in places known and doesn't adventure into the unknown and dangerous places?

Berenger
2017-09-23, 01:40 AM
I play mostly in pre-modern, low-fantasy settings. It's more likely than not that at least some close family members of any given character have died by the time he becomes an adult. That's just to be expected in a society with a lower life expectancy and bigger families.

FabulousFizban
2017-09-23, 03:07 AM
all the ones that cross my path

Alcore
2017-09-23, 05:21 AM
I guess I've never played an "adventurer" by that definition, then.

Indeed. Most of mine have fit that definition. I find that definition to be the 'proper' adventurer.



The problem often comes, to me at least, when those not of that definition acheive their goal; Bilbo and the dwarves don't keep adventuring after the battle of five armies. My Noble in Kingmaker never really 'adventured' like he used too after becoming king; he traveled with two dozen men, slept in a grand tent and made sure to squash any problems for his young boy left at home. Nameless PC guy with no family kills the big bad and goes 'home' marries the girl of his dreams and lives happily ever after.


See an adventurer keeps going while others go on an adventure or two. My view on it isn't really negative but some go on adventures and others are adventurers.

Nifft
2017-09-23, 05:41 AM
See an adventurer keeps going while others go on an adventure or two.

"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the innkeeper."

Alcore
2017-09-23, 05:48 AM
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the innkeeper."

Or take an arrow to the knee :smallbiggrin:



Hmm... Those guards should have been easier to outrun if that was the case when i think about it.... :smallconfused:

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-23, 07:40 AM
Yeah I'd say the respectable people who do lord of the rings style adventures and such are more like Champions you see? the people who go do great causes and virtue and save the world, I think a better term for them are Champions, because they are championing the common people, virtues and whatnot. an adventurer is someone who ventures, someone who goes beyond the map and fights the unknown, thus less respectable, because your a crazy guy who is just desperately trying to find something on the frontier, because whats an adventurer that stays in places known and doesn't adventure into the unknown and dangerous places?

So would you consider Amundsen, Peary, Shackleton, and their fellows to be disreputable hobos?

What about the Polynesians who kept setting out across the waters of the vast Pacific in outrigger canoes, looking for another new island, for 1000s of years?

2D8HP
2017-09-23, 08:48 AM
So would you consider Amundsen, Peary, Shackleton, and.....


Yet another aside, but I think that "Lewis and Clark exploring fantasy-land" would make a great campaign!

Phoenixguard09
2017-09-23, 08:55 AM
Thought it'd be interesting to see just how many of my group decided to go down this route or a variation thereof.

- Parents died peacefully of old age, or in a boring old house-fire. The player hasn't made up his mind. Sister is still alive, brother died in the course of play.

- Killed her own parents along with the majority of her village.

- Parents died in a freak farming accident. Brothers are still alive and she supports them with her earnings as an assassin.

- Generally unknown but sister is still alive.

- Father killed by the character's younger brother. Brother currently still alive and ruling Nordtarnet. Survived the PC.

- Father unknown, mother and brothers alive and well.

- Family all alive and well. Finding them was the PC's main character arc.

- Unknown. Presumably alive.

A fair mix in there.

Cluedrew
2017-09-23, 09:23 AM
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the innkeeper."Brilliant!

To turn another, although less common, saying: "The first son inherits, the second joins the army, the third joins the clergy, the forth learns a trade, the fifth becomes an adventurer." In other words, it is what you do when your parents can't line up a job for you. Which seems to be how it worked back in the day.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-23, 09:29 AM
So far, I've had around 40 different characters in games I've ran over the last 3 years (in multiple games, 3 of which are ongoing). So far, I've only had two where the character's backstory revolved around (or significantly included) the death of close family members. Both in the same group. Both were among the more fleshed-out, least lazily backstoried characters.

One was a young (~14) noblewoman whose parents were killed and their abode burned down. She was blamed by some of the locals and ran off trying to find her older brother who had left home several years before. She joined forces with the adventurers almost by happenstance--they were a good group to hide among. In the end of that campaign, it turned out that a demon-worshiping cult had done the deed (my invention, not hers).

The other was a dwarven clan noble whose parents (and most of his clan) died as the result of another clan's meddling. Not direct murder, but definitely sabotage. He became an adventurer (which at this time was a caste of condemned criminals) after directly and publicly disposing of one of the other clan's leaders by throwing him off a cliff. His goal in life was to re-establish his clan and become a king over the dwarves.

More often I have characters with very little backstory. And that's good. I expect to have hooks--why is this character an adventurer? Who was he before he was an adventurer? What ties does he have to the setting? What does he like? What does he dislike? What does he want? I don't want a list of things the character has done--I start at level 1, so the answer is "not much, otherwise they'd not be level 1."

I like the idea (pulled from Babylon 5) of the 4 key questions for building a character:

1) Who are you?
2) What do you want?
3) Why are you here?
4) Where are you going?

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-23, 10:15 AM
Hard to say, the parents of characters rarely come up. If not specified, I assume their parents to be living happily somewhere.

When I as a player have specified my character has living family, said family has rarely factored into a game. One notable exception was when a GM asked us why a duke had thrown us in jail... and I declared it was because I was his evil mob boss father. :smallamused:

Some characters have managed to start families of their own in the game, though.

Amphetryon
2017-09-23, 11:09 AM
When I DM, I like to craft the world around the players. I want players who inspire me and get my creative juices flowing. I've made entire worlds change course based on the backstories of the PCs.

Creative people playing with creative people just feed off each other and it leads to really great interactions and story developments.

Maybe i'm too harsh, but I feel like if people just go with the same tropes and cliches, then they aren't really trying and not invested in that character. It is just a "thing" they made in order to roll dice. I like when players get invested and I make worlds they can relate to and like spending time in.

If I pour my heart into it, I want them to do the same. :) I'm very picky when it comes to players, but the end result speaks for it's self, the games are always incredible.

My only lament is, I never have much luck finding games I enjoy when i'm a player. I just run into a whole lot of the stuff I dislike such as railroading, DMs saying no to things that should logically work, or the sort of DM metagaming where they never cast spells against people who are immune to their effects, despite that character having no way of knowing they'd be immune to them. D&D as a player has always been less than stellar for me.

I decided a long time ago that D&D is like every other multiplayer game that exists... Most people that play it are just really bad at it. It's hard to play with people with drastically different levels of skill, levels of involvement and investment, levels of seriousness, etc. You have to sort of filter through all those things to line up people perfect to play together for optimal games but when it's left up to a DM to do that, most don't or can't do it. Reading these forums make me realize also most folks on here that DM are those same sorts who only follow the rules when it is convenient to them, as the DM, but ignore rules when it is in the player's favor and lots of little things like that.

I don't think i'll ever play with a DM I enjoy. I'm stuck to filling that role forever sadly. :P
I tend to believe that most folks who claim their Characters don't fit into tropes either don't know, or don't examine, the tropes very thoroughly. The Characters may well start with no intent to fit into broad categories, but actually avoiding them entirely is tremendously difficult. Even Vladimir and Estragon can have common tropes accurately ascribed to their personae and motives.

2D8HP
2017-09-23, 11:24 AM
Brilliant!

To turn another, although less common, saying: "The first son inherits, the second joins the army, the third joins the clergy, the forth learns a trade, the fifth becomes an adventurer." In other words, it is what you do when your parents can't line up a job for you. Which seems to be how it worked back in the day.


I thought about a medieval adventurer, did a search of my old posts and found the
Adventurers as a marginalized social class? thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493305-Adventurers-as-a-marginalized-social-class/)


A great example from history: John Hawkwood (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkwood)


Anyway, more on Hawkwood (https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Hawkwood)

BWR
2017-09-23, 11:46 AM
Very few characters in my groups are explicitly orphans. Indeterminate family is far more common. Parents and family probably exist, somewhere, they just aren't interesting enough to do anything more than keep as a potential NPC.

We have one orphan who grew up in the local church with the priest as a de facto parent. We have another who was raised by her rather unpleasant granduncle (the less said about the cloning chambers the better). In both these cases while the parents are dead the characters have a parental figure, so they don't really count as orphans.
One game of ours has a ton of N/PCs who are all descended from my original PC so immediate family, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, spouses, cousins, second cousins, third cousins, in-laws and more are all important characters politically and their relation to the active PCs is a major concern in almost every situation. For instance, if you're the second princess, born of a geisha but acknowledged by the emperor as his, you are very mindful of your position in society and how everyone views you, like how your younger brother (whom many would prefer as the heir to the throne) considers you an embarrassment to the family and wants you disowned.
In short, there may be dead family members here and there but family definitely exists and relationships are of paramount importance.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-23, 11:52 AM
Anyways, there seems to be a tangent about what counts as an "adventurer", so let's go over a basic point:

Not all PCs are, or are under any pressure to be, adventurers.

I've played farmhands, soldiers, daughters of French nobles, superpowered hobos, policemen etc. who are just doing their jobs, it just happened their jobs happened to be interesting enough for a game.

"Adventurer" is a pretty broad category anyway. And often just an euphenism for more unsavory jobs. Mercenaries, explorers, pirates, privateers, archeologists, tombrobbers, merchants, raiders and many many others can qualify.

Twistanturnu
2017-09-23, 02:02 PM
My current character has a dead brother; his death motivated his parents to take actions that changed my character's life course, but the death didn't really effect my character emotionally or as a person (beyond sadness at the time, of course). It was just the events the death instigated that mattered. One of my companions makes good use of his 'orphan' backstory in his personality, and our last member's family are all alive and healthy. I think that it doesn't really matter how cliche elements of your story are, as long as you use them well and create something interesting with them! ^_^

Lord Raziere
2017-09-23, 02:40 PM
So would you consider Amundsen, Peary, Shackleton, and their fellows to be disreputable hobos?

What about the Polynesians who kept setting out across the waters of the vast Pacific in outrigger canoes, looking for another new island, for 1000s of years?

Pointing out counter-examples is meaningless, there is always exceptions to everything.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-23, 03:01 PM
Pointing out counter-examples is meaningless, there is always exceptions to everything.

They're not exceptions.

Those are only a handful of all the people going back into the earliest days of humanity who have ventured beyond the map and struggled with the unknown -- from our earliest ancestors who ended up populating the entire planet to the astronauts who walked on the moon -- and painting them all as somehow "less respectable, because (they're) crazy (people) who is just desperately trying to find something on the frontier," is really unfair and inaccurate.

Venturing out into the unknown is what humans do. Settlers, explorers, inventors, and storyellers... they're tapping into something inherently human.

It's a sad day indeed if we've become so domesticated as a culture and species that people who go on adventures are considered the leftover scum with no respectable place or role.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-23, 03:27 PM
They're not exceptions.

Those are only a handful of all the people going back into the earliest days of humanity who have ventured beyond the map and struggled with the unknown -- from our earliest ancestors who ended up populating the entire planet to the astronauts who walked on the moon -- and painting them all as somehow "less respectable, because (they're) crazy (people) who is just desperately trying to find something on the frontier," is really unfair and inaccurate.

Venturing out into the unknown is what humans do. Settlers, explorers, inventors, and storyellers... they're tapping into something inherently human.

It's a sad day indeed if we've become so domesticated as a culture and species that people who go on adventures are considered the leftover scum with no respectable place or role.

Oh sorry.

But we're kind of out of places to explore and haven't yet gotten the space travel part down. Right now, we're kind of stuck. I'd love to go exploring into space ala Star Trek or whatever, but I just don't see that happening within my lifetime. in a global society full of laws with no place left to expand, an adventurer who goes around killing random things and stealing things looks exactly like a crazy outcast.

Knaight
2017-09-24, 02:52 AM
It's a sad day indeed if we've become so domesticated as a culture and species that people who go on adventures are considered the leftover scum with no respectable place or role.

The term "adventurer" as a term of art in RPGs is not the same term as applied to explorers in general. The standard RPG party is a very small group, completely self funded, lacking direct institutional support, and generally in the business of violence. All four of these criteria are notably missing from a great deal of what's being presented as counter examples.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-24, 03:33 AM
The term "adventurer" as a term of art in RPGs is not the same term as applied to explorers in general. The standard RPG party is a very small group, completely self funded, lacking direct institutional support, and generally in the business of violence. All four of these criteria are notably missing from a great deal of what's being presented as counter examples.

On second thought I agree with this. Again: an adventurer is not an astronaut, a government or company funded colony, a soldier or an explorer. even Columbus was funded by the spanish crown, and Leif Erikson who discovered America five centuries before him was actually on a religious mission to convert Greenland and was a hirdman under King Olaf Tryggvason. through technically he following word of a merchant and rescued guys who got shipwrecked in america so, he was technically the fourth guy.

So yeah, all backed by institutions, probably have more than five guys. Well Columbus was pretty much in the business of violence but he had like a hundred men just killing and enslaving people for the slave trade, but even his men was only a vector for the epidemic that truly killed off most of the natives, he probably he probably commanded more people to be killed than did it himself, because his men would kill and enslave people, then he would send the slaves across the ocean and more would die on transfer. So even when completely evil, Columbus didn't personally kill everything himself, he wasn't doing this alone, he was a government backed first wave of a centuries long effort to invade and colonize the americas.

adventurers or murderhobos, are five people who just randomly find each other, just so happen to all be good at combat, decide to work together out of the blue because why not, and go wherever the hell they want, killing whatever they feel like, without even bothering with slaves or prisoners. They just go "Is this organism in the way of loot? Y/N" and kill if it is. which sadly makes Columbus look nuanced in comparison, because he had a conception of sparing peoples lives so that they may serve him as slaves forever, as well as taking tribute, but then again I've never heard of murderhobo PC's torturing or raping anybody, so score two for the murderhobos there? can't say that for Columbus's men.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-24, 08:38 AM
The term "adventurer" as a term of art in RPGs is not the same term as applied to explorers in general. The standard RPG party is a very small group, completely self funded, lacking direct institutional support, and generally in the business of violence. All four of these criteria are notably missing from a great deal of what's being presented as counter examples.


And I was responding to descriptions of "adventurers" that would include explorers, settlers, early archaeologists, astronauts, and even the earliest humans spreading across the world... and (those descriptions) also asserted that "adventurers" were awful scummy jerk scumbags... because of the qualities they share with those settlers, explorers, etc.




adventurers or murderhobos, are five people who just randomly find each other, just so happen to all be good at combat, decide to work together out of the blue because why not, and go wherever the hell they want, killing whatever they feel like, without even bothering with slaves or prisoners. They just go "Is this organism in the way of loot? Y/N" and kill if it is. which sadly makes Columbus look nuanced in comparison, because he had a conception of sparing peoples lives so that they may serve him as slaves forever, as well as taking tribute, but then again I've never heard of murderhobo PC's torturing or raping anybody, so score two for the murderhobos there? can't say that for Columbus's men.


No.

This is conflating a particular approach to gaming and/or a certain type of player, with a general sort of character. Not all adventurer PCs are "murderhobos", and not all "murderhobos" are adventurers. Some players see the game as "just a game, so nothing I do matters or has consequences", so they do whatever seems funny, or convenient, or whatever... or they think the game is their venue to act out on things they can't do in real life (*shudder*). And they have GMs who let them get away with this and never impose the natural consequences that would arise from the PCs' behavior -- the world is in effect the PCs' toilet. This happens in games of any setting and with PCs of all types (on paper), and isn't in any way restricted to or caused by the characters being "adventurers".

I've been in plenty of fantasy-setting campaigns where the PCs were a wandering group of independent "freelancers" looking for combat, loot, tavern crawls and tavern brawls, the blank parts of the map, and general excitement... who were usually brought together by circumstances at the start... who often didn't have a lot of social ties relevant to the game... and they went out adventuring on adventures looking for adventure. They were adventurers.

And yet those same PCs had morals, ethics, codes of honor, etc... and did a lot of their killing in genuine defense of people who couldn't defend themselves against the threats at hand... and risked their lives for things other than loot... and got their loot without murdering random people (funny-looking, green-skinned, or otherwise)... and on the rare occasion when a PC acted like a "murderhobo", there were consequences, often imposed by the other PCs in-game.

I've got no problem with calling actual murderhobs "murderhobos". But I'm going to say FOUL every time someone tries to assert that "murderhobo" = "adventurer" = "people without strong social ties who go out seeking things in the blank parts of the map and are ready for violence if it comes" and tar all those with the same broad brush.



I'm not going to walk into the political/historical minefield of sorting fact, fiction, and revisionism out on the subject of Columbus.

icefractal
2017-09-24, 01:35 PM
I think that "Adventurers are all scummy reviled murder-hobos because that's what I've defined 'adventurer' as meaning in RPGs" is circular reasoning.

Especially when a lot of the reasons given apply less in D&D than they do IRL:
* There are plenty of new places to explore, in many settings.
* Magic and superhuman survival skills means that a small group acting without significant logistic support can go much farther and have a much greater chance of survival than they would IRL (and even IRL, people have done it).
* When the state of nations is much less stable, hordes of monsters arise periodically, and various types of deadly creatures can show up even inside a fortified city, going around armed and having a history of fights is not such an unusual or socially aberrant thing.

If you want to play a scummy reviled murder-hobo - sure, have fun. But saying that all adventurers are or should be that is just as cliché as "all adventurers are shiny knights and heroes of destiny".

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-24, 03:46 PM
Oddly enough, I've never actually meet a murder hobo in any game I've been in or DM'd, and I run pretty stock "you're adventurers, go adventure" games.

Mordaedil
2017-09-28, 03:55 AM
I have always developed pretty involved backstories for my characters, with complex family relations and very rarely are the closest ones dead without good reason. My DM also loves it and frequently makes use of it.

My current characters' family is actually two families, divided and united, of nobles. They were married and both families had a child each, but eventually the husband of one cheated with the wife of the other, she got pregnant with twins, and both spouses demanded divorce. Eventually those spouses got in contact with each other and while filing the divorce papers got closer and eventually ended up marrying each other, also taking custody of all the children and inherenting the noble titles for themselves only, while the others were disgraced from nobility. Then they had a child together whom became the inheritor of the noble title, causing all the other children to lose their status and grow resentful as they grew older.

And this is just the default state of the family, without adding in the backstory of the family butler, the noble who tries to marry into the family for his own perverse desires, or the youngest being sent away to a far-away kingdom to study magic at her uncles place.

And I play one of the older siblings here, adventuring to recover a lost heirloom and to evade said pervert.

Penelomeeg
2017-09-28, 09:51 AM
I've honestly never played with the dead family trope as a starting backstory except a handful of times. I usually go with strained relationships over severed ones. My newest character is actually the exception.

Half drow from the underdark whose father was given to her as a personal slave, but was very kond to her behind closed doors. She caused his death by accusing him of damaging an artifact that she was actually responsible for destroying. He was killed by her mother and she has a few half sisters that were killed in the event that lead to her leaving the Underdark. I had a specific reason for each one.

1)The father was to show just how awful and ruthless her homeland was and give an example of the terrible things she did for survival. Which kick starts the redemption theme her character revolves around.

2) The sisters aren't there for tragedy, but rather to give a reason why she can't just slither back home and even for members of her house to accuse and becomer her enemies in the future.

The point I'm trying to make is it can be a good ot device if used fpr specific themes or reasons. However it can also lead tp unecessary brooding. Just ask yourself why your family has to be dead and if you have a solid reason don't be afraid to go with the cliche.

Because literally everything is a cliche at this point and hardly anything is 100% original.

Lemmy
2017-09-28, 10:06 AM
There're two main reasons orphan PCs are so common:

- It's an easy way to justify your character not just settling down and having a job in his city. If you don't have to worry about taking care of your young daughter or aging father, you're free to explore the world!
- It safeguards the player against the old "the villain kidnapped your family! Follow to railroad to save them!" trick so many GMs like to pull. It gets old fast. I had a GM who was particularly bad about this, despite otherwise being a great GM... So after the second time it happened to me, all my characters for his games were orphans with no family or childhood friends.

John Campbell
2017-09-28, 01:08 PM
Hmm, some of my recent PCs:

1) Biological mother, disposition unknown, but probably still out there, as she was too good a plot hook for the DM to throw away. Biological father, most likely killed and eaten by biological mother. (She was a changeling. Her mother was a green hag. This is SOP.) Adoptive parents, alive and well, and she helped them out in their shop when she was home.

2) Anthropomorphic personification of the concept of adhesion. No family, per se.

3) Parents killed when their limo was bombed, character survived only because of intervention by loa. This event was the trigger for her Awakening as a mambo of the loa of Death. Potential other family unknown; the character was too young when she was orphaned to know how to find them, and she was presumed dead in the explosion.

4) Literally raised by wolves. As a young wood elf, she'd outlived several generations of her pack, including all those who had taken her in when she ran away from home, before the start of the campaign. Didn't know or care where her biological parents were. They were elves, and elves are jerks. She identified as a wolf (and spent as much time as possible wildshaped).

5) Family - parents and a younger brother - alive and well, though never on-screen.

6) Due to space-time shenanigans, had two sets of her parents, an identical twin sister twenty years older than her, and a biological daughter she never had who was about her age. She avoided ever actually meeting her alternate-universe twin or her husband because it would have been too weird, but did visit her alt-parents, and helped out her alt-daughter a few times.

7) Parents might have been some kind of butterfly or something. Shadowrun pixie, and old enough that he would have been first generation after the Awakening. He was on the run and couldn't return to his homeland in any case.

8) A half-orc, with all the unfortunate implications thereof. His father was an orc raider - dead or alive, no one knew or cared - and his human mother died when he was too young to remember. His family was the orc clan that adopted him. Though "adopted" is a little strong. "Let him follow them around and didn't kill him," would be more accurate.

9) Father was unknown, one of a list of several candidates, none of whom were around anyway. Mother was killed in a demon attack during play in our previous campaign, for which he blamed our previous PCs. This led to some friction when it turned out that one of the other members of the adventuring group he hooked up with was the squire of the knight in the previous group. I spent much the campaign trying to get the squire to challenge me to a duel so that I could set the terms, and beat him to death with my bare hands without the paladin being able to say anything about it.

There were some others in there that I never fleshed out enough to know what their family status was.

So, a few living families, a lot of dead or absent ones. Almost all of them had complicated family histories. The one that came closest to being the angst-filled edgy loner was that last, which I did largely to make a point to the DM about his handling of some things in the previous campaign.

(In the encounter in the previous campaign where my character's mother died, the DM had been very insistent - through his DMPC - that we had to protect the town's high councilman, and because we were focused on the DM-imposed escort mission, protecting some dude whose only distinction was that the DM had given him a name and title, a whole lot of "unimportant" people whom we could have saved died. So my next character was the orphaned child of one of the people who got killed because the DM cared less about his NPCs than I did.)


Out of curiosity, this is the full backstory, as written on my character sheet, for #3 up there. I'm wondering if you'd reject this character as "too cliché" because her parents are dead.
Mary remembers very little of her past: Just vague images of a big house in a hot, steamy, slow-paced city, some faceless figures that must have been her parents, or perhaps nannies, and the excitement of getting to fly on a big airplane. Then there was a new, brightly-lit city with towering buildings, and riding with her parents in a long car through streets streaming with people and cars, even the sky above buzzing with drones, and then everything ended in fire.

Mary's first clear memory is of a strange man in an old-fashioned suit and hat picking his way with his cane through the twisted remains of the limousine, through flames that reflected from the one intact round lens of his sunglasses, but touched neither him nor her, to Mary's side. He took her hand, drew her out of the inferno, and led her away. None of the bystanders, innocent or otherwise, beginning to pick themselves up after the blast that destroyed the limousine in which Mary and her parents had been riding seemed to take any notice of the odd pair strolling unharmed away from the burning wreck.

After a short walk, they came to a cemetery, and the strange man led Mary onto its grounds. They walked some way among the tombstones, and then the man stopped, turned Mary towards him, and dropped her hand.

"Close your eyes, mon cherie, and don't open them until I say so," the man said.

Mary obediently closed her eyes. After a few seconds, she felt the cool touch of metal on her face as a pair of glasses were put on her. She expected the man to tell her she could open her eyes now, but he didn't. She waited, and waited, and he continued to be silent. Finally, she couldn't bear it any longer, and carefully cracked open one eye to squint through her eyelashes. Finding that she was looking through the dark lens of a pair of sunglasses, she opened her eye all the way, but saw no one. She opened her other eye, also behind dark glass, and looked all around, but the strange man was gone. Thinking perhaps he was playing hide-and-seek, she began to search for him, looking behind gravestones, under bushes, up trees. Though the day was overcast, with a light mist falling, she didn't even think about taking off the sunglasses as she searched. Finally, she gave up her search and plopped down on a sarcophagus.

Then his voice, from nowhere, said, "Now," and the right lens of her sunglasses shattered. As the smoked glass fell away, her other eyes opened, and she saw the world as she had never seen it before, glowing with the riotous light of life and the calm shadows of death, and she herself was the brightest beacon in sight, though she could feel the strange man's presence, vaster and stronger than her own, as if he were standing always just behind her, though never there when she looked.

That was two years ago. She was six years old.

Since then, Mary has been living on the streets of Seattle, using her developing powers and the guidance of her new friend, Ghede, and other spirits - loa, as she learned to call them - to make her way, and fend off those who mistakenly believed a small girl, alone on the street, to be easy prey.

Mary was unaware, at the time, of the search for her and for her parents' killers, that concluded that she must have died with her parents when their limo was destroyed, with the force of the explosion explaining why her remains were never found. She is aware, in retrospect, that there must have been an investigation, and that there may still be people interested in her survival and current whereabouts, but, from what she remembers of before Death led her by hand away from her old life, she sees little reason to not simply let them continue to assume that she died in the explosion.

Mary has a SIN, issued at birth, but it was marked "deceased" when the investigation into the explosion was closed, and her new life is not linked to it in any way. She has no ID, and her economic interactions are strictly black market, bartering or simply scrounging and stealing.

Over time, she has built herself a niche in her community, trading on her magical powers, her spiritual connections, and her charisma. She provides magical healing and health care, painless death, handling of magical threats, and a conduit to the loa in exchange for more mundane goods and services.
(Mary has, incidentally, been described by multiple people as the best part of that entire campaign.)

Tinkerer
2017-09-28, 02:50 PM
Hehehehe, "Da Brudda-Cousin Clan". Heard about these guys, although they're not nearly as incestuous as their name implies. All of them are Half-Orc brothers who go adventuring for treasure for their dearest mother. And don't you dare call her any names just because one of them is a Half-Orc Half-Stone Giant, and the next is a Half-Orc Half-Dragon, and the next is a Half-Orc Half-Particularly Dexterous Gnome etc... I know that this thread is more serious but they were some goofy, fun, off the wall kinda characters with a strong focus on family dynamics.

Protato
2017-10-03, 12:53 AM
My backstory for my first character wasn't a death, but an exile. He was ousted from his home city for dumb reasons and now has decided to make the best of it, deciding to do some good, and to write a book about his experiences before returning home and stabbing his exilers in their throats..

chainer1216
2017-10-03, 03:01 AM
I often overlook parentage when creating a character, i always get nervous that the GM will feel like im forcing things into their game.

Of the two characters im playing currently, ones parents abandoned him as an infant for reasons, though hes since run into his brother.

The others parents are quite dead, burned at the stake for being a teifling and a "devil lover" after a local politician worked the common folk into a riot. This was mostly to explain why hes so short tempered, irreverent and fiercely protective of those hes close to.

Psyren
2017-10-03, 07:23 AM
Common tropes become common for a reason. Dead family is a pretty good motivation for otherwise sedentary or peaceful people to leave home, especially if the family died due to foul play and the perpetrator has eluded justice. This also gives the GM an easy hook for that player, by having the killer be related in some way to the BBEG (or be the BBEG themselves.)

LordCdrMilitant
2017-10-04, 12:22 AM
So, I think most of my characters' families are alive.

At least, of recent-ish ones:

One was a bastard child, whose mother and father were both very much alive out there, and signed on to the party's vessel to make some cash for herself since she wasn't due for any inheritance and wasn't all that useful for diplomatic marriages.

One was a dhampir, so half her family was technically already dead by the time she was born. By the time the campaign occurred, they were elsewhere, unliving together happily ever after. She had also dealt with the pesky half-mortal part too.

One was a operative for a foreign government. Supposedly, her family was dead, but supposedly she was also a lot of cliched hero things. Their actual state wasn't ever discussed, but it was assumed they were still alive leading normal lives back home.

One was a soldier who was almost destitute after WWI and emigrating to the US with had little money he had to his name. Presumably at least one family member if not several was dead, given that, you know, WWI had just been a thing.

One was a insane psionic escaped from a monastery on an island who had found a tome of eldritch lore and run off with it. She wasn't at the monastery by choice, being a psionic and all and not well indoctrinated in their teachings, so I assume her parents were probably out there somewhere.

One had barely skirted failing out of magic university, and was dispatched on a diplomatic mission. The family was very much alive.

One was a Space Wolves Rune Priest, and had most definitely outlived his not-Space Marine parents' natural lifespans, by a factor of at least two. His Battle Brothers were still very much alive, though.

At the very least, I haven't had families being dead as a plot point.


Families are rarely brought up in parties I GM for.
In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, a good 99% of the time you were either abducted by the Astra Telepathica, property of the Imperial Guard upon birth, a war orphan in the Schola Progenium, donated to a Sororitas convent, transferred to a different ship, assigned to a different department, etc. People rarely end up in service to the Inquisition with happy, caring families, and even if they do, they almost certainly are sectors distant and out of contact.

WarKitty
2017-10-04, 12:24 AM
Does it count if I told my players their characters couldn't have any living family? Because I did that.

Bastian Weaver
2017-10-04, 04:08 AM
Hmm, let's see. Last time I GMed a campaign, the PCs definitely had living relatives (and I used that to my advantage). The time before that, it was Marvel's Days of Future Past. A deadly environment. And still, one of the PCs had a sister who appeared alive and relatively well.
My own characters... often lost, never orphaned.

Mystral
2017-10-04, 09:39 AM
It is so ridiculously predictable and kind of mind blowing honestly that even after all these years of playing D&D, anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/2 of player backstories I read involve their family being dead.

Sometimes they are murdered, sometimes they just died from natural causes, whatever. But Regardless of the reason, players love their families to be dead.

Just curious how often you run into this EXTREMELY tired trope and when choosing players for a game, do you ever pass over any that use the same tired cliches like "Dead family" as the catalyst for their adventuring career beginning?

You say family, I say DM hostages.

Max_Killjoy
2017-10-04, 09:54 AM
You say family, I say DM hostages.

Which is a large part of what inspires so many players to avoid having any family, friends, etc.

Grim Portent
2017-10-04, 10:51 AM
Of my more memorable characters.

40k Inquisitor was a psyker, so he would have been taken away as a young child. Never came up in the game nor did I give it much thought.

40k Ork was an ambulatory fighting fungus, so he had no family to speak of.

AFMBE guy had well off parents back home, but he was stuck in Italy while they were in the UK during a zombie apocalypse. He didn't like his old man much anyway for pushing him into a career he didn't like. In game time was passing slowly anyway so I doubt meeting them would have ever happened.

WoD vampire's parents were dead, mostly to get around the issues of him being a vampire and how that works with family. Missed his family but was mostly focused on the here and now and the future.

40k Mutant had no family I'd bothered to think about. Didn't seem important.

Current Lizardfolk PC has lots of family, little attachment to any of them. Views them broadly the same way as a real lizard would other than not considering them as food.

Backup PC ideas I've got for if the lizardfolk croaks are pretty much all parentless/familyless, either due to longevity issues from being longer lived/undead or because they're the sort of person to sever all ties and flip their family the bird as they walk into the horizon.

Amphetryon
2017-10-04, 12:15 PM
I have had a DM invent a relative for my Character, just to push the party to rescue said relative from danger.

Knaight
2017-10-04, 12:45 PM
I have had a DM invent a relative for my Character, just to push the party to rescue said relative from danger.

I've done this, but only in the context of characters that the players made explicitly part of significant noble houses in games centered on intrigue from said significant noble houses (and rescuing them from danger was only one of many options, point was them being in danger was bad for the family in the palace intrigues). Somehow I suspect that the DM in question doesn't have that excuse.

LadyFoxfire
2017-10-04, 02:13 PM
All of my characters tend to be unmarried, but have living parents and siblings. I like the happy-go-lucky, adventuring because it's fun or the right thing to do type of character. I did have one character who was technically orphaned as a baby, but she was adopted by druids shortly thereafter and considered the druids to be her family. I also have another character with three living parents; she was the product of a one night stand between an adventurer and a town guard, and her father, who raised her, married her stepmother when she was five.

Sajiri
2017-10-04, 03:21 PM
I have a character with a dead family, it was part of the plot. In the few weeks before the game began, my character's nobleman husband provoked two other nations by having some plot item (that was unknown to my character), so they join forces, descend on their island and killed him, then executed his sons/heirs, then I spent much of the early game trying to track down her missing 8 year old daughter. The DM didnt railroad me into this, I chose to do so. Then throughout the game she's had another daughter and adopted a kitsune boy that was the same age as her dead sons, both of whom are pretty cool NPCs now.

I have another character that I admit I was pretty lazy with the backstory, the one in my avatar in fact. She's kind of an odd halfbreed so I made her parents unknown and she was raised in a coven-run orphanage because I didnt want to make up some convoluted story about how two people of races that dont share any common ground had a child together then that child ended up as part of the coven that their races are not supposed to like. Instead the DM took my lazy background and spun it into some amazingly intricate plot involving reincarnation, ancient evils, some long dead races, oh and her parents are alive out there somewhere it sounds like and I have the opportunity to find them.

I do have another character who's father is dead, but I guess that wasnt a choice I made because the DM killed him in the very first session.

pwykersotz
2017-10-05, 11:53 AM
Being one of those GM's that has never run a "Your sister has been kidnapped and your father was killed by the BBEG!" plot, I have nonetheless dealt with a never-ending parade of orphans. I have requested that my table PLEASE do not ever do this unless they have a very good reason to. Since making the request, I deal with far fewer orphans, and a lot more cool moments where a player's attachment to a place or objective because of their own perception of family ties makes the game better.

Turns out, mostly it was because they felt that a person with a happy family isn't the type of person who generally goes adventuring. It was an easy way to give motivation to seek your fortune. But my players are creative and they have found other ways.

Max_Killjoy
2017-10-05, 11:57 AM
Being one of those GM's that has never run a "Your sister has been kidnapped and your father was killed by the BBEG!" plot, I have nonetheless dealt with a never-ending parade of orphans. I have requested that my table PLEASE do not ever do this unless they have a very good reason to. Since making the request, I deal with far fewer orphans, and a lot more cool moments where a player's attachment to a place or objective because of their own perception of family ties makes the game better.

Turns out, mostly it was because they felt that a person with a happy family isn't the type of person who generally goes adventuring. It was an easy way to give motivation to seek your fortune. But my players are creative and they have found other ways.

I really don't know how that idea that only people with no family and no home and no hope go "adventuring" gained so much traction in RPG discussions and "character theory".

Human history is full of people who had parents and siblings and spouses and children, who none-the-less went out into the unknown reaches of the world to make their fortune or just their living. Explorers, settlers, nomads, trappers, etc.

pwykersotz
2017-10-05, 12:21 PM
I really don't know how that idea that only people with no family and no home and no hope go "adventuring" gained so much traction in RPG discussions and "character theory".

Human history is full of people who had parents and siblings and spouses and children, who none-the-less went out into the unknown reaches of the world to make their fortune or just their living. Explorers, settlers, nomads, trappers, etc.

I think it's just slowly gained traction over time. Superheroes with tragic backstories, vengeance quests, video games where the intro kills your family...the list goes on. Heck, look at Rand al'Thor in Wheel of time. Dad is dead, go on an adventure!

It's not that any of these are inextricably linked, it's just been a slow churn into a trope that people don't realize they are overusing.

Lord Raziere
2017-10-05, 01:33 PM
I think it's just slowly gained traction over time. Superheroes with tragic backstories, vengeance quests, video games where the intro kills your family...the list goes on. Heck, look at Rand al'Thor in Wheel of time. Dad is dead, go on an adventure!

It's not that any of these are inextricably linked, it's just been a slow churn into a trope that people don't realize they are overusing.

Well at least pokemon doesn't use any of that. thats a world where adventurers go forth without anyone dying or tragedy or revenge. and technically with its regional stuff, there could easily be a frontier region to explore....

pwykersotz
2017-10-05, 01:54 PM
Well at least pokemon doesn't use any of that. thats a world where adventurers go forth without anyone dying or tragedy or revenge. and technically with its regional stuff, there could easily be a frontier region to explore....

Heck yes. :smallsmile:


Rusty: I'm 10 years old, I'm an adult, I can go wherever I want!
Dad: Legally, yes, that is true.

Lord Raziere
2017-10-05, 02:01 PM
Heck yes. :smallsmile:

Just ignore all the unrealistic things that Max would no doubt hate like: how do they get 10 year olds educated enough to travel in the wilderness without dying, or handle pokemon with care at all or be qualified enough to fill out an electronic encyclopedia, or why are Pokemon Leagues the only form of government and why can they be challenged and beaten by a ten year old kid or why all these super-powerful attacks haven't killed- *continues listing* :smalltongue::smallamused:

WarKitty
2017-10-05, 06:29 PM
I really don't know how that idea that only people with no family and no home and no hope go "adventuring" gained so much traction in RPG discussions and "character theory".

Human history is full of people who had parents and siblings and spouses and children, who none-the-less went out into the unknown reaches of the world to make their fortune or just their living. Explorers, settlers, nomads, trappers, etc.

Actually, I think rather the opposite was often a motivation. In a world where your inheritance is, for most people, probably what you're relying on to make your living, being rather far down the chain was a good reason to go out and seek your fortune. Because there wasn't going to be much left once your older brothers got their share...

Lord Raziere
2017-10-05, 06:46 PM
Actually, I think rather the opposite was often a motivation. In a world where your inheritance is, for most people, probably what you're relying on to make your living, being rather far down the chain was a good reason to go out and seek your fortune. Because there wasn't going to be much left once your older brothers got their share...

Y'know that is actually a good reason that is often ignored, I should use that in my characters more often. "Was youngest sibling, won't get inheritance, decided to adventure instead." Best part is, its not just nobility; even an older brother of a farm can take that prospect from you, so you end up taking a big risk to seek your fortune elsewhere.

I can already see a guy going "no, your getting all the inheritance, so I'll be a self-made person!" then going out into the wilderness, getting press-ganged into a bunch of bandits against their will, having to fight to survive, then getting on the wrong side of authorities that are nobles that are just as evil as the bandits (those crazy torture devices aren't used for nothing), going on the run and basically going through bad times before they reach an adventuring party. so much I could do with that.

Cluedrew
2017-10-05, 09:07 PM
"Was youngest sibling, won't get inheritance, decided to adventure instead.""The first son inherits, the second joins the army, the third joins the clergy, the fourth learns a trade and the fifth becomes an adventurer."

Families where bigger back then. At the fact you might not live to old age a very real possibility to begin with. So something extreme happening to force you on the path of an adventurer is probably more than what is necessary. Course I wasn't actually there, but I can guess.

Seclora
2017-10-05, 10:51 PM
I actually had this discussion with my party a few weeks ago. One orphan, one exile, one with a dead mother and an emotionally distant Archmage father, and one of venerable age and possibly magical origin, So across the group we have 5/8[?] parental mortality with party member ages ranging from early 20s to ??[?].

My own characters had all living, all dead, and one dead and one in prison parents. So I think about a 50% parental mortality rate in my experience. People with healthy families seem less likely to seek adventure, I guess?

AMFV
2017-10-05, 10:53 PM
I personally do not remember any characters I've had that were orphans. Mostly my family just never came up. I suspect that characters who have orphan backstories are more likely to tie that to the plot, so they're going to be more memorable for that reason.

WarKitty
2017-10-06, 09:00 AM
Y'know that is actually a good reason that is often ignored, I should use that in my characters more often. "Was youngest sibling, won't get inheritance, decided to adventure instead." Best part is, its not just nobility; even an older brother of a farm can take that prospect from you, so you end up taking a big risk to seek your fortune elsewhere.

I can already see a guy going "no, your getting all the inheritance, so I'll be a self-made person!" then going out into the wilderness, getting press-ganged into a bunch of bandits against their will, having to fight to survive, then getting on the wrong side of authorities that are nobles that are just as evil as the bandits (those crazy torture devices aren't used for nothing), going on the run and basically going through bad times before they reach an adventuring party. so much I could do with that.

My understanding is illegitimacy, especially among nobles, could also be a motivation. Even without any special mistreatment - in many places, only legitimate children could inherit. A father might reasonably give what he could, but that might amount to a sword and some armor. Such a child was neither quite a commoner nor quite a noble.

AMFV
2017-10-06, 10:17 PM
My understanding is illegitimacy, especially among nobles, could also be a motivation. Even without any special mistreatment - in many places, only legitimate children could inherit. A father might reasonably give what he could, but that might amount to a sword and some armor. Such a child was neither quite a commoner nor quite a noble.

And in some places ONLY a first born son could inherit anything. Which is why there are so many French priests in medieval history.

Necroscope
2017-10-07, 06:06 AM
In our current campaign my character was somehow gated from Earth to Eberron as a preteen. His family wasn't killed, but did have one heck of a rough time growing up. First he was put into slavery, then pit fighting until he escaped. He just happened to be lucky enough that a clan of clan of assassins who took him in and trained him(since a few of them saw him deal with the couple slavers that caught up to him while escaping). One of the other members of the party is his adopted brother.

Kiero
2017-10-07, 07:14 AM
In our games, rarely, unless there's a good reason. My characters always have living and active family. In our D&D4e Icewind Dale game, for example, my character was married, and as we returned to the game on subsequent occasions, he had a growing number of children as well.

In our Planescape game, by contrast, every PC needed a reason to hate the villain. In my character's case, it was because they'd murdered his entire family and left him for dead. Vengeance was his driving motivation.

In our long-running WFRP2e game, family was the reason my character was an "adventurer" in the first place. He came home from war, and discovered his entire family gone, fled south, so he followed. His siblings turned up in the game, though two of them died in play and made for some nice plot fodder.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-10-07, 11:13 AM
My current characters have parents, one set undefined lesser nobility (to explain the fancy war camel), the others tax collectors. Neither set has come up IC. I think the rest of the table is orphan-heavy (raised by X trope), except the gnome, who is just that old.

Vrock_Summoner
2017-10-07, 03:41 PM
One thing people don't usually take into account in either dissertations on "look how discarded or screwed up 'heroic' adventurers must be" and "why do so many adventurers have dead families" discussions is that your average D&D world isn't just a bad caricature of medieval feudal nations, it's also somewhere between teeming and overflowing with threats to innocent life that can actually be solved through swording/magicing hard enough at them. That's an entirely separate context from our world, where individual determined people can't get strong enough to solve big problems or evoke major change except through politics, and where the main things threatening people's lives are either abstracts like starvation or disease, or other humans doing totally legal things and probably with a lot of infrastructure behind them.

Edit: I should probably respond to the topic. I mostly run modern games, so more modern family dynamics allow them to play more familiar roles. Hell, in my most recent campaign (based on Neon Genesis Evangelion), I actually required their pilots not have living mothers (due to how Evangelions work), and not one of them decided to leave it a mystery how their mothers died, and all of them made it an integral part of their character. Now granted, the player characters were 14, so being defined by their family situation is a lot more normal, but still.

One of the pilots, Aoma, in by far the most abnormal circumstance, never had family and had developmental issues because her pregnant mother got both of them sucked into and fused with an alien biological computer. She was "born" at seven years old after existing in a sort of hibernation state her entire life, her unconscious body nourished and cared for by the computer (which had since taken the shape of a giant human based on the fusion) during that time. She was then instrumental in helping scientists learn and develop their tech for piloting the computer and its clones (the Evangelions) for combat purposes.

The other players made their mothers and the reason and circumstances of their absence central for more mundane but no less interesting reasons.

Sonaka's mother was the Head Scientist at the time of Aoma's piloting experiments and made herself the test subject for integrating people into the clones of the computers, leaving her daughter young enough to have an idealized view of her mother and became hyper-driven in school because she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps.

Hiroka's mother was a major American celebrity on the verge of death from terminal illness and they elected to make her son a pilot concurrently with her death as a popularity stunt, so now he's constantly under pressure from the spotlight and is cripplingly afraid of being a disappointment to her legacy.

Kiki only became a pilot due to Sonaka pulling strings to get her a pilot exam (a mockup that was just meant to appease Sonaka, since the pilots are decided through the soul situation, not personal merit), followed by her blowing the physical tests so far out of the water that the Operations Director decided she wanted her no matter what and had her mother kidnapped to prep a spare Evangelion that was going to be recycled for components to be piloted. So Kiki spent the beginning of the campaign dealing with the fresh trauma of losing her mother and taking care of her now-alcoholic father.

Yotomi was more or less raised by a street gang because his father died in Second Impact (global catastrophe) and his mother is a drug addict who couldn't care for herself, much less a child. He became a borderline sociopath from the experience. Later he figured out the requirements for becoming an Eva pilot and more or less set up his mother's death to ensure his selection.