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View Full Version : Player Help Help with a character backstory



Screecher
2019-04-02, 09:08 AM
I started playing D&D fairly recently and decided to be a high-elf rogue that'll later become an Arcane Trickster. What I really want is to make an interesting backstory for him that wouldn't be too cliched and to just really flesh out the character. So I'd like to get some advice from the more experinced players on how I can make it better. Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!

So far I've come up with this:

As a new-born baby this elf was left at the doorstep of an orphanage during a winter night. When madam Leaftrassa - a kind dwarven lady and the owner of the establishment found him in the morning, she decided to take the child and named him Norro Dael'feer. Norro spent about 15 years at the orphanage and by that time found a new mother in her, whom he always aided in day-to-day tasks. For the help in managing her institution, Leaftrassa made a handkerchief with embroidered stars for Norro (which stays a deeply treasured trinket for him up to this day). Leaftrassa also loved pranks, so time from time she took the children for a walk around the streets of Grit (the town where they lived) to subtly mess with merchants and tourists, sometimes stealing a bit of coin from the richest and the meanest.

When Norro turned 15, he began to observe some arcane capabilities in himself. By coincidence, a travelling researcher - a human named Aramile Amakeer was passing through the town at the time, decided to make some donations to Leaftrassa's orphanage and met Norro there. Starved for company, he took the child as a pupil to travel with him. Together they roamed the world for about 10 years, forming a strong bond with each other. Norro has been trying to find any kind of information about his missing parents while also being taught arcane theory. Once Aramile decided it was time for his apprentice to take the next step, he wrote a recommendation letter and sent the elf to study magic at the academy.

Afterwards Norro entered the Wizard's Academy of Tossaria. His years of learning allowed to become an apprentice of a renowned divinator and professor Salazar Defo, who worked on creating a chronicle for important future events. Elf's curiosity sealed the deal as he decided to break into Defo's office at night to take a peak into his research. There he discovered predictions for political events, magical innovations, but, most importantly, a paragraph about an unknown creature that will awaken in a few thousand years, bringing devastating consequnces. This mystery intrigued Norro, so he wrote it down into his notebook, using a custom cipher. Next day the Academic Council found out about this, they decided to exclude Norro for breaking the rules. To prevent any trouble, however, they also agreed to remove his memory and magic abilities with a spell. In a brief second that he had, Norro tried to counter it, but only managed to preserve his memory.

Out of the academy, Norro roamed the world for many years changing made-up names and using Leaftrassa's teachings to get money and food while fullfilling a more important goal: to retrieve his arcane capabilities by stealing scrolls and books from all kind of librarys and scriptoriums. One time though, he stumbled upon an article, that shed some light on the mystery in his notebook. Since that happened, Norro's sheer interest in unraveling it made him obsessed with the idea. Once the elf arrived to Criffridge - a metropolis, contaminated with crime syndicates fighting over control, he heard rumors about John Lemontane - a rich collector of jewelry and magical items. In hopes of finding useful manuscripts, Norro tried to rob him and failed at the last moment of escaping. After catching the thief, John revealed himself to be a leader of the Sunscars, a large and influential guild of thieves. Being impressed with a robber, who managed to overcome his security and traps, John made a proposal to Norro: either they execute him or he joins the guild. With not much choice a bargan has been struck. During his time with the Sunscars, Norro met a human fighter by the name of Kwynto Ipp (a PC of one of my friends), who was working as a bouncer. They became friends and soon abandoned the guild, despite the possible persecution.

Since then Norro became an adventurer known as Zarathorn Crowley, together with his new-found buddy. Norro took this path to find his parents, retrieve his magical abilities and discover the nature of the unknown creature. Kwynto - to help people, drink ale and earn money while doing so.

Zakhara
2019-04-05, 07:39 PM
Since then Norro became an adventurer known as Zarathorn Crowley, together with his new-found buddy. Norro took this path to find his parents, retrieve his magical abilities and discover the nature of the unknown creature. Kwynto - to help people, drink ale and earn money while doing so.

My preferred method of developing character is to ask questions:

1.) What does this "power loss" angle add? It feels like you don't trust this character to be interesting unless they were credibly powerful to begin with.

2.) To add to #1, "power" is not personality. You've explained many of this character's actions, but not how it informs their personality. There's a semblance of the Robin Hood archetype, but I think that--for other players at the table--they'd be more interested in how 'Zarathorn' acts. They won't really get to experience the backstory 'in the moment,' nor is it a tool in roleplaying with NPCs.

3.) How does this discovery of an Ancient Evil Awakening inform their personality? The ultimate conclusion to Norro's pomp and circumstance is, essentially, another benevolent drifter. But why is he so? Does the loss of parents, or carrying that knowledge, or wondering why this secret remains under wraps, or losing everything he had, affect him? And if so, how?

4.) Why are they so obsessed about the idea of the notebook? What motivates them to care? Compassion for their fellow man? Power? Profit? Boredom (though I would discourage that)?

5.) This is a quip from Apocalypse World, but what body part does this character follow? Do they follow their heart? Their brain? Their hands? Their genitals? This sort of shorthand guidance gives this character direction.

6.) What are this character's short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals?

7.) Wouldn't a backstory reading "magic college orphan read something they shouldn't; is on the lam" ultimately communicate most of the same information without reliance on future unpacking?

My basic thesis is that you've back-loaded a lot of information that seems destined to be decoded late in the game. But you should be considerate of what will make this character interesting to play and entertaining in general. You can afford to bank a bit against the future in favour of right now.

What level is this character? If they're low level, wouldn't it be more concise and universal to just accept that they're small potatoes, rather than a de-powered badass? I personally try to keep my character's backstories restricted to a number of sentences equal to their Level, encouraging myself to consider their early levels as their backstory. Planning too exhaustively tends to become a straitjacket.

In other words, my biggest word of advice is: more of this character's backstory can afford to be "what happens."

Screecher
2019-04-11, 05:42 AM
My preferred method of developing character is to ask questions:

1.) What does this "power loss" angle add? It feels like you don't trust this character to be interesting unless they were credibly powerful to begin with.

2.) To add to #1, "power" is not personality. You've explained many of this character's actions, but not how it informs their personality. There's a semblance of the Robin Hood archetype, but I think that--for other players at the table--they'd be more interested in how 'Zarathorn' acts. They won't really get to experience the backstory 'in the moment,' nor is it a tool in roleplaying with NPCs.

3.) How does this discovery of an Ancient Evil Awakening inform their personality? The ultimate conclusion to Norro's pomp and circumstance is, essentially, another benevolent drifter. But why is he so? Does the loss of parents, or carrying that knowledge, or wondering why this secret remains under wraps, or losing everything he had, affect him? And if so, how?

4.) Why are they so obsessed about the idea of the notebook? What motivates them to care? Compassion for their fellow man? Power? Profit? Boredom (though I would discourage that)?

5.) This is a quip from Apocalypse World, but what body part does this character follow? Do they follow their heart? Their brain? Their hands? Their genitals? This sort of shorthand guidance gives this character direction.

6.) What are this character's short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals?

7.) Wouldn't a backstory reading "magic college orphan read something they shouldn't; is on the lam" ultimately communicate most of the same information without reliance on future unpacking?

My basic thesis is that you've back-loaded a lot of information that seems destined to be decoded late in the game. But you should be considerate of what will make this character interesting to play and entertaining in general. You can afford to bank a bit against the future in favour of right now.

What level is this character? If they're low level, wouldn't it be more concise and universal to just accept that they're small potatoes, rather than a de-powered badass? I personally try to keep my character's backstories restricted to a number of sentences equal to their Level, encouraging myself to consider their early levels as their backstory. Planning too exhaustively tends to become a straitjacket.

In other words, my biggest word of advice is: more of this character's backstory can afford to be "what happens."

Thanks for your reply!
I didn't really write any personality traits of the character into the actual backstory because I thought that they're a part of a character that's described separately (since they have their own place on a character sheet etc.) Also I felt like it'd be better if I revealed what my character is like during gameplay.
As for the points that you provided, they're really helpful and have some aspects that I overlooked. I've reconsidered some things and would really like to hear your opinion (if you don't mind, of course). I'll try to go through them one by one. (Sorry if it's too long.)

1.) The only reason why I decided to add a "power loss" aspect is because I wanted to make a mage that became a rogue rather than a rogue, who learned spells to help them with thievery, infiltration, etc. Mechanically, though, it doesn't make much sense since an Arcane Trickster compared to a Wizard knows much fewer spells, learns them more slowly and overall isn't anywhere near a full caster. So I thought that there should be a reason why even at higher levels his magical abilities would be pretty weak. It also seemed to fit with the idea that my character retrieves some of his arcane capabilities through study and attempts to overrun the blockage set on him when leveling up.

2.) "Power" isn't at all an important aspect of this character. Even during his time at the academy he was still just a regular student, his abilities, I'd say, were about equal to a level 3-4 wizard at most. As for the personality, he's really dorky, socially awkward and just overall introverted, gets incredibly excited by new information, studying, puzzles/riddles and any opportunities that allow to think outside the box, has child-like curiosity (which often creates problems, like being excluded from the academy for it), doesn't have a problem with stealing and deceiving people but only when they can take it (e.g. will never steal from poor people), tries to avoid open conflict whenever possible and doesn't murder. He's also very absent-minded and tends to overthink things (quite often when trying to come up with a creative or unusual solution to a problem to avoid monotonous ones). Generally has a pretty warm demeanor to the party and people in need of help.

3.) The discovery itself doesn't really inform their personality, but I wanted to have a long-term goal of trying to gain additional information about it to unravel the mystery. The goal itself though shows Zarathorn's thirst for knowledge even if it's not very practical or useful.
All of the things that you mention do affect him: never knowing his parents makes him question who they were and why they left him, the secret causes some slight paranoia and forces the character to go to any lenghts to make sure it doesn't fall into wrong hands, losing everything he had brings some bitter emotions to him (doubting himself, envying successful wizards, resenting the mentors that took magic away from him, regretting past choices and being ashamed of wasting the effort Leaftrassa and Aramile put into him for nothing).

4.) Obsession over the notebook comes from, again, just sheer curiosity, which serves as the motivation in this case.

5.) I guess you can say they follow their brain? If by following a body part you meant not the source of motivation but rather the main tool of problem solving then it's brain/heart: "weight down all possible outcomes, do what seems best at the time, preferably without any unnecessary harm to anyone".

6.) Short-term: help his friend Kwynto and other party members in their pursuits, set-up possibilities for studying by rummaging through libraries and collecting books; medium-term: continue studying and become a spellcaster once more; long-term: unravel the mystery in the notebook and redeem themselves in their own eyes.

7.) You're right, but I wanted to make it more detailed. Also our DM encourages revealing character information in future to make the story more engaging.