Hootman
2019-08-19, 08:51 PM
A friend of mine is setting up to DM a new 5e game starting this weekend, and I don't have a character ready. Or, more accurately, I have ideas about a backstory, but no...frontstory? (Why isn't that a word?) No Class, anyways. And I could use an outside perspective.
The World
In loose terms, it's going to feel like the worlds common to isekai anime (Overlord, Konosuba, and Goblinslayer all came to mind while reading the DM's notes). You start in a smallish town in the middle of nowhere important, there's a world-spanning Adventurers' Guild that governs how adventurers live and work within general society, and handles Quests as official business. There are multiple nations of varying size and governing style, but the Adventurers' Guild crosses borders and more or less does whatever it wants as long as it doesn't piss off any local leadership.
The town itself has a big magic tree in the middle of it, with legends about how it came to be and how it supposedly protects the town. Or, more likely, draws the attention of the Nature God who does the actual protecting. The three main religions of the town, using Forgotten Realms deities, are Silvanus (True Neutrality of Nature), Eldath (Peace), and Mielikki (Forests and Protection).
The Character
With some random rolls and some spit-balling, I've come up with the following story tidbits that I think will make a decent character...once I figure out where I'm going with this. To start, I have been assuming that the character is a human male, though I'm not married to that if a better idea floats up.
So, my character is roughly the middle child of several siblings, most or all of which are still alive despite the medieval usual, and for good reason. Mom is a (former) adventuring cleric of [God Unknown], and did work as a travelling missionary, even after having a few kids. Dad was a farmhand/handyman, someone that could find work easily enough as the two of them (and then more, as kids came along) kept moving from place to place. My character was old enough to remember being generally poor and moving constantly, travelling to different congregations as the need arose.
Eventually, they probably settled in a place that they ended up staying longer than they normally might have in order to keep helping, and once you're really part of a community, it's hard to just up and leave again. Maybe they were starting to feel age slowing them down a little, or Mom got pregnant again and it wasn't as smooth as previous ones had been, or they just really liked wherever they were at. Regardless, life became more stable, and we stopped moving.
The other three things I rolled up in my backstory generator were that my character got wrecked in a large-scale armed encounter (it said War, but Monster Raid or something like that would be equally viable) that left them with some pretty impressive scars (mostly physical, but possibly also a few mental). Some time after that they were imprisoned for a relatively short time (perhaps briefly enslaved/press-ganged by whatever group won the conflict?). The most recent thing was falling in love with a halfling cartographer.
Now, obviously I don't have to use all (or any, technically) of what I rolled, but it feels like I might be able to hack a decent story out of this, which is why I'm looking for outside ideas. I really like the idea of this socially awkward young man trying ineptly to impress a pretty halfling girl by taking jobs that will let him survey the surrounding lands and coming back with a bunch of unhelpful notes. I'm not totally sold on the 'got wrecked in a war' thing, though that would be a useful motivation to Get Stronger so he doesn't have to go through something like that again.
And I really don't know what class to go with. The only thing I'm certain of is that I want them to act in a way that is consistent with the idea of Good. Everything else is still flexible, though they are probably going to end up something of a dork. At least where the halfling is involved.
So....yeah. Any help and ideas would be appreciated, as would any thought-provoking questions that end up leading me to make decisions.
The World
In loose terms, it's going to feel like the worlds common to isekai anime (Overlord, Konosuba, and Goblinslayer all came to mind while reading the DM's notes). You start in a smallish town in the middle of nowhere important, there's a world-spanning Adventurers' Guild that governs how adventurers live and work within general society, and handles Quests as official business. There are multiple nations of varying size and governing style, but the Adventurers' Guild crosses borders and more or less does whatever it wants as long as it doesn't piss off any local leadership.
The town itself has a big magic tree in the middle of it, with legends about how it came to be and how it supposedly protects the town. Or, more likely, draws the attention of the Nature God who does the actual protecting. The three main religions of the town, using Forgotten Realms deities, are Silvanus (True Neutrality of Nature), Eldath (Peace), and Mielikki (Forests and Protection).
The Character
With some random rolls and some spit-balling, I've come up with the following story tidbits that I think will make a decent character...once I figure out where I'm going with this. To start, I have been assuming that the character is a human male, though I'm not married to that if a better idea floats up.
So, my character is roughly the middle child of several siblings, most or all of which are still alive despite the medieval usual, and for good reason. Mom is a (former) adventuring cleric of [God Unknown], and did work as a travelling missionary, even after having a few kids. Dad was a farmhand/handyman, someone that could find work easily enough as the two of them (and then more, as kids came along) kept moving from place to place. My character was old enough to remember being generally poor and moving constantly, travelling to different congregations as the need arose.
Eventually, they probably settled in a place that they ended up staying longer than they normally might have in order to keep helping, and once you're really part of a community, it's hard to just up and leave again. Maybe they were starting to feel age slowing them down a little, or Mom got pregnant again and it wasn't as smooth as previous ones had been, or they just really liked wherever they were at. Regardless, life became more stable, and we stopped moving.
The other three things I rolled up in my backstory generator were that my character got wrecked in a large-scale armed encounter (it said War, but Monster Raid or something like that would be equally viable) that left them with some pretty impressive scars (mostly physical, but possibly also a few mental). Some time after that they were imprisoned for a relatively short time (perhaps briefly enslaved/press-ganged by whatever group won the conflict?). The most recent thing was falling in love with a halfling cartographer.
Now, obviously I don't have to use all (or any, technically) of what I rolled, but it feels like I might be able to hack a decent story out of this, which is why I'm looking for outside ideas. I really like the idea of this socially awkward young man trying ineptly to impress a pretty halfling girl by taking jobs that will let him survey the surrounding lands and coming back with a bunch of unhelpful notes. I'm not totally sold on the 'got wrecked in a war' thing, though that would be a useful motivation to Get Stronger so he doesn't have to go through something like that again.
And I really don't know what class to go with. The only thing I'm certain of is that I want them to act in a way that is consistent with the idea of Good. Everything else is still flexible, though they are probably going to end up something of a dork. At least where the halfling is involved.
So....yeah. Any help and ideas would be appreciated, as would any thought-provoking questions that end up leading me to make decisions.