How often do characters have families?

[Tanarii]

Brand new characters, in a setting where high mortality for adventuring types is somewhat normal in theory, even if the specific game mechanics don't really bear it out for player controlled PCs in particular. And the PCs quite likely spend large amounts of time traveling far from home while adventuring.

How often do your characters start off with a spouse? How often do they start off with children?

How often have you seen other players with PCs like that?

[Satinavian]

I never had one of my characters start off with a spouse or children.

I have several times see other peoples characters start off with children, but never with a spouse. But even that is far rarer than not, below 5%.

[Mastikator]

Only once a long time ago have I seen a player character have spouse and children, their adventuring motivation was to get them out of slavery. They never actually entered the game though, it was just a motivating mechanism (however my character did retire from adventuring when he got enough money to buy their freedom). Most people I play with don't bother with backstories.

I have seen two players have sibling characters, they got no backstory really, but siblings are family.

[Easy e]

Families like mothers, fathers, and siblings? Pretty regularly. Starting with spouses and kids is pretty rare.

Once a character has a spouse and kids, there motivation for high-risk, high-reward adventuring rather than a more stable career choice better be top-drawer. It is a lot harder (for me) to justify an adventuring dad and husband.

Adventuring is too dangerous for family folk!

[Ionathus]

Frequently my PCs' parents or other childhood family members are still alive out there somewhere.

Almost never a spouse or children.

I've only played one PC with an ex-wife and children with split custody, and even then he was brought into the adventure against his will and is trying to leave it as quickly as possible (that goal just happens to match up with the campaign's goals).

[PhoenixPhyre]

One of my current campaigns has a cleric whose backstory involves running away from an arranged marriage (post hoc, so she's actually married). But that only sorta counts. Another character has family local to the area, but she's kinda a black sheep/outsider. Doesn't stop her from using her connections (as a noble-background character). The others have families on record, but they're not part of the campaign. Yet, at least.

The other current campaign has all four of the characters being actively courted/pursued by at least one other person (different ones); one character is engaged, another might as well be. Another is the one doing the pursuing; they've been home to meet the family (his family, her family doesn't exist because she's a time-lost refugee from an alternate, now defunct timeline). That campaign also features several of the party members' immediate family in significant matters--the engaged party member has had parents, a sibling, and an uncle all be plot-relevant. Another party member has his parents playing an active role. And they're currently searching for another of the characters' father (who went missing years before).

An earlier campaign with the same people as that second party had a character who had a son and an estranged wife as well as a twin brother. That played a massive role in things, even if he rarely interacted with them. One of the climaxes of the campaign was the party fighting to defend the son's wedding against a meddling avatar of a god, for example. And an earlier arc saw that PC in a knock-down, drag-out, to the death fight with his estranged wife and twin brother (who had hooked up and were evil). This culminated in the PC and the wife fighting on the back of a hostile dragon (ally of the wife) and him body-slamming her off of the dragon and then landing on her with a few smites.

Another campaign had a showdown between a character and his older brother feature in it.

So yeah, I've had characters with families fairly often.

[Quertus]

“Wife and child(ren)” and “hazardous profession”… ok, fine, I’m sure that exists irl.

“Wife and child(ren)” and “Adventurer”… ok, fine, “getting away from them” is probably why a lot of people became adventurers / why a lot of people take jobs that involve travel.

Sigh. I just can’t win.

Still, “Wife and child(ren)” and “hazardous travels without them” just feels wrong somehow, like the proper order would be “adventure, find SO, settle down / retire”. That’s certainly the “cadence” for most characters I build.

So, no, I’ve not often seen this particular arrangement, of domestic life preceding a life of adventure; usually, only if the campaign goal is sufficiently telegraphed that the character / background can be constructed to tie clearly into the campaign (“this is our fault / responsibility”, “I’m the only one who can…”, “with this, we’ll finally be…”, etc) will this anti-pattern emerge.

[oxybe]

The general conceit with adventuring, to me at least, is that it's done either as a necessity or because you're fundamentally broken as a person and such a lifestyle is the only one suitable for you or the only one you can do that'll let you make use of your more... unique... talents without society falling down on you HARD.

That's not to say there aren't people who don't do jobs that are highly dangerous. if your job consists of the word "boat", congrats! you're doing something that's probably dangerous. But even in those jobs there are some concessions and safety precautions to help minimize the routine danger you're put in.

Adventurers are routinely put into a wide array of different dangerous situations. One day you're an Alaskan crab farmer, the next you're fixing the lightning rod on the Eiffel Tower, the third day you're in the bayou knife-fighting were-crocodiles and on your fourth day you're guiding a group up Mount Everest... all situations you've likely had very little training for outside of some them being on the periphery of your circle of expertise and most of them you're learning and adapting to the situation as it progresses.

This, to me, is why "career" Adventurers don't have spouses or kids until they quit being an Adventurer.

The father who goes on an adventure to get a magical flower to cure his sick son isn't an Adventurer: he's a Farmer who's desperate for a cure no healer or priest can grant him, and should he come back with the flower in time, he'll be a Farmer with a family and a good story to tell and his son can brag about how his dad did a cool thing that one time. But he has little reason to leave the family again: he got his goal: his son is healthy now. His singular adventure is over.

But the same way that going fishing in the creek that one time doesn't make you a Fisherman, a singular harrowing adventure doesn't make you an Adventurer.

An Adventurer dad would be one that would leave the family for weeks, months or maybe even years on end at the drop of a hat if his wanderlust or greed or whatever flares up. His wife wakes up and sees the sword on the mantle is gone, there's a pair of boots missing, the backpack in the corner closet barely had time to gather dust and he's already a half mile down the road, off to the next town over to gather a few hearty men to look for the gillyweed needed to make a water-breathing elixir that'll let them look for that sunk pirate ship Old Man Jenkins was talking about in the bar after his 5th pint last night with only a quickly scrawled note saying "he loves his family, hugs and kisses".

He's not a family man. He's an Adventurer.

[Tanarii]

This was a question I had in my head when I woke up this morning, but I can't remember whatever dream promoted it. Fairly normal when I'm woken up by an alarm, but this one was about gaming so I thought I'd share. :smallbiggrin:


One of my current campaigns has a cleric whose backstory involves running away from an arranged marriage (post hoc, so she's actually married). But that only sorta counts. Another character has family local to the area, but she's kinda a black sheep/outsider. Doesn't stop her from using her connections (as a noble-background character). The others have families on record, but they're not part of the campaign. Yet, at least.Yeah I've almost never seen folks with families and children. I suspect it's partly because I run games for a younger crowd, and party because the motivation to keep adventuring dwindles quickly if your goal is "support my family". After all, they're set for life by early mid levels in your classic D&D game. (Less so in many other games of course.)

I have had a PC with exactly that motivation. The logic went something like: His life of crime wasn't doing well enough, and already was risking life and limb, so why not get rich quicker?


So yeah, I've had characters with families fairly often.Yeah the broad title wasn't as specific as the spouse / children. Plenty of PCs have parents and/or siblings, either theoretically or specified. But rarely are they a DM-facing tool to be used (and in 5e specifically IMO they need to be listed as a Bond to be used that way).

[icefractal]

Still, “Wife and child(ren)” and “hazardous travels without them” just feels wrong somehow, like the proper order would be “adventure, find SO, settle down / retire”. That’s certainly the “cadence” for most characters I build.Pretty much this - I guess it would actually be fine for a short campaign with a defined arc, going away for a couple months to do something vitally important. But since I'm used to longer campaigns that are somewhat open ended, making a character with a built-in reason to stop adventuring doesn't generally come to mind.

As far as having a family and bringing them along, two issues for me -
1) Most D&D games involve a lot of situations way too dangerous for children.
2) It's damn hard to roleplay interacting with NPCs where the PC has a very strong emotional connection to them, but you the player don't. Occasional meeting with the character's parents or siblings? Sure (although often that feels stilted too). Interacting with the PC's kids every session? No thanks.

[Bulhakov]

Hmm. come to think of it I've done PC families very frequently, but it was never spouse/children, it was always brothers/sisters parents/grandparents etc. This was often a way to have some "trusted/protected" NPCs and sometimes get the party more connected (e.g. when players were cousins or siblings).

I think the spouse/children would be more difficult to maintain. Unless, it's a short campaign and maybe the quest is family related (e.g. looking for the cure for your child's magic disease or curse). Or the players have a greater purpose than just "adventuring" (e.g. left home to fight the invading hordes).

[PhoenixPhyre]

In my experience, most people don't have spouses/children in my D&D games because they're playing young characters. Like "just out of apprenticeship" young. Not "mature adults with families and responsibilities".

On the other hand, I thought of another example of a character who had a spouse and kids. It was a dwarven barbarian who, along with his wife and kids, were "asked to leave" their clan (not formally exiled, just...asked to go live somewhere else) due to his anger issues. The wife and kids played an anchoring role. Oddly, that was the youngest player in that game (all kids ranging from 8 - 13, it was the 8-year-old), and he came up with it himself. They ended up adopting a crap-ton (~20) other elven and human kids they found in a dungeon (long story, but their parents were long dead and gone) and taking them back to live with his wife (not mentioned--how she felt about it).

I do make an explicit point in my session 0s that I won't kill, maim, or severely twist (ie heel-face turn or vice versa) named backstory characters without player input. If there's a threat to them, the party will (for metagame reasons) always be in a position to respond and prevent (if they choose) catastrophe. And if I'm going to do "plot twist, your wife is the real villain", I'll talk offline with the player first.

On the other hand, my players trust me enough to leave large chunks of their backstory in my hands. So it all works out well.

[DigoDragon]

All my characters will have parents and siblings somewhere in the written background, but rarely do they have a spouse and children, as adventuring far off means leaving that immediate family behind for long periods of time and I don't personally find that as a fun/interesting kind of setup (sure, it is common with certain occupations like fisherman or the military, but I have not played such a character). Two times I can recall giving my character a spouse--

1. A modern-setting campaign where travel would be limited to within a large city. With this set up, my character often went home between adventures, which would only last a couple days in-universe.

2. A Fallout campaign where both my character and the spouse were released from a vault as part of an expedition team to map the land around the vault. In this case they were traveling together.

[Martin Greywolf]

The only time I've seen spouse and children even come up is when I was running a fairly historically authentic world of my own, and pointed out that you can actually do this fairly easily as a noble - you are kind of expected by virtue of your station to 1) get married and procreate at some point and 2) travel around the kingdom with the explicit goal of resolving dangerous situations. I guess you could adapt this to things like Jedi order pre-Ruusan reforms or something.

At any rate, the option was pondered by some players as an interesting one, but no one decided to do it.

[Chronos]

I've had a number of characters whose parents were a relevant part of their backstory, and I might have had one with a relevant sibling (I can't remember any specific examples, but I can't rule it out). And of course all of them have had some sort of parents and probably siblings, even if they weren't relevant.

For a spouse and/or children, though, never. The closest I've come:

1: I had a character who ended up taking a couple of urchin orphans under his wing, and saw to it that they were raised well. He was more of an uncle to them, though, and wasn't personally the one raising them. But the connection was strong enough that the DM was able to use a threat to them as a very definite adventure hook.

2: A different character had a developing romance with another member of the party. That campaign ended before it got very far, but it's at least conceivable that they would have eventually gotten married, or at least shacked up (it's also conceivable that they both would have eventually realized that they were young and stupid, which might or might not have come before the prior-described event). I'm surprised that so few folks have mentioned that possibility, of both members of the couple being adventurers (though they might still be inclined to retire when/if they had children).

3: Yet another character never settled down, but his best friend and former adventuring companion (who showed up in his backstory, but was never onscreen in the game) did (and retired from adventuring in the process). As sometimes happens with my character backstories, I ended up coming up with a lot of details of the entire town that the friend settled in/helped found.

[mucat]

I don't usually play characters who are raising young kids -- it's hard to justify why they wouldn't be looking for a way out of the unpredictable adventurer's life -- unless the setting is a zombie apocalypse or something, in which case there's no possibility of stable life for them to return to.

I do often play older characters, though, and many of them have grown kids, and/or extensive ties to their communities such that they feel responsible for other people's kids. I especially liked one gnarled old first-level druid with an equally time-worn grey wolf at his side. The old man had spent his whole life as a farmer, lived and loved well, raised a family, and only now -- widowed, his kids all making lives elsewhere, and with ominous threats looming over his small community -- felt the calling of Druidism.

The rest of the party were mostly reckless local lads and lasses, along with a couple of investigating mages from the big offscreen University where the old man's youngest daughter studied. He saw his mission not so much as countering the BBEG himself, as keeping all these young fools alive despite the idiocy of youth, while THEY saved the world. The one time he couldn't, and the party had to break the news to the dead guy's parents and siblings, hit like a ton of bricks.

Another favorite was a mad ex-army surgeon in a low-magic, weird-science campaign, whose beloved wife Leah was an alchemically suspended brain in a jar, whom he was determined to revive and restore. The setting had no existing magic or science that could DO such a thing, but Doktor Krauss was determined to change that, or the universe would damned well answer to him.

What I loved about that character was how much Leah became a strong presence at the table, despite literally sleeping through most of the campaign. Krauss was not a particularly good person, but Leah had been. He was determined not only to bring her back to full function, but to be her agent in the world, defend her friends, and pursue her causes, until she could take them up once more herself...so her personality shaped the narrative as much as his.

"Yes, the injuries my wife sustained were...extensive. Are you always so rude as to stare at amputees?"

[Tanarii]

I do make an explicit point in my session 0s that I won't kill, maim, or severely twist (ie heel-face turn or vice versa) named backstory characters without player input. If there's a threat to them, the party will (for metagame reasons) always be in a position to respond and prevent (if they choose) catastrophe. And if I'm going to do "plot twist, your wife is the real villain", I'll talk offline with the player first.Absolutely. I'm a fan of systems where you have something to call out "GM can and should mess with this as an adventure point". If someone wants their family to be a hook, this is where it should go.


I do often play older characters, though, and many of them have grown kids, and/or extensive ties to their communities such that they feel responsible for other people's kids.Now that's cool. I haven't had someone play a character anything like that. Most are middle aged or younger, at least since AD&D and rolling for starting age based on your class. I did have two players opt for Old characters (as opposed to Young or Adult) when I play tested Forbidden Lands. But in that game, your age affects you stats, talents (think feats), and skills. The first being lower if you're older and the latter two being higher.

[Gimby]

I think I've only done it once - retirement aged husband and wife pairing (both on the party) with an assortment of grown/young adult children who were quite relevant to the adventure. This was however a fairly low-peril Ravnica-as-imagined-by-Pratchett game with the whole thing played a bit for laughs and with quite a lot of gentle empty nest partly estranged couple finds out how they are going to live with each other vibes.

It was a lot of fun, but probably not something that's easy to map to a more conventional game.

I've seen it done a lot in LARPs - particularly large fest scale (500+ players) ones as it's a convenient hook for when there's not a lot of active events going on. Plus people will often bring their real young children to these games in a way that you wouldn't see at a tabletop.

[Telok]

Lets see.... personally...

D&D/knockoffs, maybe 1/5 or 1/4 characters have family or relatives extant and perhaps half that have a romantic possibility going on. Its never been spouse & kids though.

Paranoia does clones. CoC yes, all of them but still no kids. Supers generally about 1/3 have family or a romantic interest. DtD40k7e is normally unmentioned but perhaps 1/8 or 1/10 of the character stubs that go beyond just stats say something (does being in the halfling mafia count as "family"? you get resources & contacts from it). Classic Traveller as a game assumes you have family if you roll average or higher on social status, for humans at least, vagyr possibly not but all other playable aliens absolutely yes (form may vary). Shadowrun yes but they were always in another city unless the GM needed them (I was explicit about that but it never got used). Amber diceless you wish you didn't have family, its practically the entire point of the game. WoD vamp, were, and mum... actually no they all tend to have participated in a "tragi-comedy backstory ala Hamlet".

Everyone else I've ever played with...
Three people... AD&D, supers, Traveller, WoD... more that 15 years ago... otherwise since WotC D&D went live everyone has been a friendless orphaned psychopath.

[animorte]

I have one PC that used to travel around with his parents and younger sister, his parents were looking for opportunity. They found it and proceeded to live a middle-class life, but instead of seeking education, my PC longs for the days of open road.

Another PC is a military established old lady halfling with a high-ranking career military husband. Their three children are grown and have begun seeking out their own lives, one chose the military. They all make it a point to meet up for various events.

I have a fellow who was required to leave his wife and son, enlisted in war. He’s traveled so far that he doesn’t know his way back home, but the war still isn’t over.

Sadly, another character is on the hunt to avenge the death of his significant other and hunting down the person(s) that abducted his daughter.


Those are just some of me characters. Of course, it’s easier to justify adventuring away from a spouse and child(ren) when you didn’t have much of a choice to begin with.

That’s not a terribly common thing I see admittedly. There are easily more instances of “the orphan” and “tragedy” but I personally try to mix it up a bit. Everybody having a similar tragic background gets redundant.

[Lord Torath]

I created a retired paladin for a romp through G1-2-3 Against the Giants who had a young wife and child, as well as a farm. He had to adventure to protect his family.
But I created him at 9th level, so not really a new character.

Most of my other characters are young enough at character creation to have parents/siblings, but no spouse/children yet of their own.

[Pauly]

Brand new characters, in a setting where high mortality for adventuring types is somewhat normal in theory, even if the specific game mechanics don't really bear it out for player controlled PCs in particular. And the PCs quite likely spend large amounts of time traveling far from home while adventuring.

How often do your characters start off with a spouse? How often do they start off with children?

How often have you seen other players with PCs like that?

For “adventuring” worlds.
I’ve never started a character with a spouse or children. Nor can I recall anyone at a table I’ve played in using them. Maybe other characters did have a spouse and offspring, but I can’t recall it ever coming up in play.
The only time I had a character who was widowed was in a superhero game where my character had wolverine like regeneration and and he’d outlived the love of his life a la highlander.
I’ve seen more than a few female characters in the run from an arranged marriage.

For “modern” worlds
EG Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Spies, Gumshoe, Twilight 2000.
I’ve seen quite a number of characters with spouses, and every now and then children. However, these games tend to cast the PCs as normal people put into abnormal situations, which is far removed from the professional adventurer trope of fantasy RPGs.

[Jay R]

I don’t see any pattern, except that most of my fantasy characters are barely adult, not ready for marriage or kids.

Going backwards through my characters:

1. Pip (D&D 3.5e) started as an 500-year-old epic-level pixie wizard. He had outlived several dependents, and during play his only “family member” was a dragon cohort.
2. Telerion (D&D 3.5e) was a teenager. His parents ran a magic shop. His first quest involved saving other local teenagers from a vampire cult.
3. Gwystyl (D&D 3.5e) was just barely an adult, and left home to fulfill a quest. He had parents, and indeed, a fairly large clan, but on another continent.
4. Gustav (D&D 3.5e) was a loner – a ranger who lived alone in the woods, and was forced by his Prince to join a party.
5. Pteppic (AD&D 1e) was a not-quite-adult Egyptian Prince, and had a father (the Pharoah), a mother (one of 100 wives) and over 100 siblings.
6. Ornrandir (AD&D 2e) was an orphan who had just reached adulthood. He was to be married (to my wife's PC) in the next session when the DM moved away.
7. and 8. Doli and Felix (AD&D 1e) were brothers (dwarves), out to avenge the deaths of their five brothers. [You need to think in more than one language to recognize the names “Doli” and “Felix” as being Grumpy and Happy.]
9. Eilonwy (original D&D) was 12, and had run away from home.
10. Gwydion (original D&D) was an adopted son of two living parents.
11. Dynamo (Champions 5e) was a modern superhero. He had a wife who knew his identity, and a son who did not.
12. Shadowmonk (Champions 5e) was a modern superhero, with no relatives. But he looked after a gang of street kids.
13. Dr. MacAbre (Champions 3e) was a mystical superhero who had no immediately family, but his nephew was a DNPC (dependent NPC).
14. Hyperion (Champions 3e) was a modern superhero with a wife, a son, and a daughter. The wife was a scientist, and the two children were superheroes (and his sidekicks).
15. Jean-Louis (Flashing Blades) was a foundling left on the steps of Notre Dame in the 17th century. He had a few adventures in which he successfully tracked down his grandparents on both sides, but his parents seemed to have disappeared.
16. Hannibal Smith (Traveler) was a space-faring entertainer. Details about his family never seemed relevant.

This is a small sampling. It is by no means complete. It includes a majority of my 21st century characters. I don’t still have background notes on most of my characters from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

[gbaji]

I've played the "spouse/parent going off on an adventure to save/protect the family business/farm/whatever" bit a few times. Those are always pretty short one-shot sorts of things though.

In the long term game I play in, almost all of the characters have at least some family. Obviously, for younger characters, it's usually just parents and siblings, but we tend to play a stable of characters, and ones that aren't actively being played are still living lives and doing things in the setting. Which absolutely can include getting married and having children. Yeah, adventuring becomes a rarer thing once one has children to support though. But sometimes, it can still happen. Kinda depends on how your character is connected to the setting. It's not uncommon for PCs to settle down at some point, get married, have children, and in some cases their children may become adventurers someday (or not. Kinda depends).

One of my characters started out as a barbarian from a recently arrived nomadic tribe that sorta moved into the area. More or less got roped into an adventure during a drunken party/high-holy-day ceremony (hey. For barbarian gods, they're more or less the same thing, right?). When he got home a couple years later, he'd developed a taste for fine alcoholic beverages (seriously, spent a lot of time in an ancient abandoned dwarven gods age city with the stuff on tap). Parleyed a really nice enchanted great sword (that he had no skill in, but one of the more prominent noble families use as their family weapon) into a small land grant conveniently located on a corner of said nobles lands that happened to be the shortest route between the main cities of the kingdom and the area where his tribe had settled, and opened up a trading post/Inn on the spot. More or less settled down, got married (and somewhat respectable), became a priest of the air god, and basically hires a manager to run the day to day (cause he's not great with math). He occasionally goes on adventures, but restricts them to local stuff, and usually only if it's relevant to himself, his lands, and/or his tribe. And yeah, I'm assuming children arriving over time as well.

Another character is the granddaughter of an earlier character I played way back in the day. He basically adventured for a while, got a huge score early on in the kingdom, and established himself as a knight to one of the local earls (and with a fair amount of wealth), and married one of the younger daughters of said earl. I played one of his sons much later, and he went off on a few adventurers and recovered a very powerful sword that was aligned with his deity the storm god. This elevated him to a higher status in the kingdom, so he was more or less settled but was responsible for defending the area, so would occasionally get roped into local trouble type adventures. Current character is his daughter, who went on an adventure early on (the same one the barbarian guy above was on), and also returned with some decent items and gear (but less of a drinking problem), and more importantly made a name for herself, so when her father was elevated to high priest of the storm god (and for some reason no one would let him go running into combat anymore), he handed his powerful sword to her. So now she's pretty much of a battle monster character, tossing lightning bolts around while wading into combat dealing death to all around her. I haven't decided if she's planning on settling down any time soon. But even if she doesn't, she's got a couple siblings and a ton of cousins as well.

Then there's "the family". Seriously. I ran a wizard character ages ago. He went on an adventure and returned with a modest amount of wealth. He returned and took advantage of a small war that largely wiped out one of the cities, and more or less carpetbagged himself into becoming a large land owner (and may or may not have helped finance the forces that put a minor noble in charge of the city). Fast forward a few decades (and a ton of magic research), and he's established a major wizards guild, a thriving alchemy business (he doesn't do alchemy, but he patrons and then pays people who do), gets married and has a son. Meanwhile, another player's character went through a series of weird changes (seriously, too much to explain), but ultimately ended up tied by blood to the dragon orbs, then married to an ex-vampire who was also the patriarch of another major land owning family. They had two twin daughters, one of which married and traveled to another land, the other married the son of my wizard I mentioned earlier. The son didn't adventure much (he was basically a rich kid and managed his families holdings once his dad got recruited for some even more powerful wizard group to the far south), and he and his wife (and their two daughters) more or less ran the town (along with some other folks on her "side" of that family). He kept getting pulled into adventures (seriously, no choice on his part, stuff just kept happening), ultimately resulting in them moving to the aforementioned kingdom, where given the number of barbarian gods being worshipped, he promptly set himself up as the local high mage (cause every kingdom has to have a high mage, right?), and settled on a modest manor just outside the capital city. The family more or less has recurring income from vast business interests (which at some point also got expanded into a large shipping business as well), so there's no real need to work, but they get involved whenever something of interest (or threat) to them shows up. The two daughters over time also adventured (and are pretty powerful spell casters as well), and gained some items and power along the way as well and also had their bloodline come into play (both have one of the set of dragon orbs now, so yeah, pretty much not people you want to mess with). One of them (my character, the other played by the player who started with the original female who married the ex-vampire) somewhat early on was "captured" (ok, the whole group was, but they're just bit players, right?) by the "dread pirate", fell in love with him, promptly escaped to continue the adventure, but then came back married him and now is the "pirate queen", more or less running the whole operation. To avoid suspicion, the family's ships (shipping business, remember?) also get "hit by pirates", and it's amazing how they always have exactly the supplies needed to fill out whatever may be needed to maintain the folks on the secret island the pirates are based on. Shocking how that works. So yeah, the whole family is more or less one big (legally questionable) business enterprise, backed up by some pretty powerful folks up north who worship gods of trade and knowledge, and some pretty powerful wizards in both areas. Oh, and let's not forget the cousins living in yet a third land nearby who've also established themselves as a powerful land owning force there. Right now, I'm playing her son (so the great grandchild of one of my original characters), who is a roguish pirate type character, still more or less finding his way in the world (he's young, he'll figure it out). If he does well, he may even get handed some basic magic items as a sort of inheritance (they have resources that can make standard magic items pretty easily and enough wealth to make a dragon jealous).


So yeah. Different characters, but a lot of them have some degree of family connections. I do play some "loner" characters though. The occasional ones that I decide either because of personality, or just timing, don't settle down in any significant way. Or they're travelers to the lands, so they don't have any roots (or didn't bring any with them). I've literally played dozens of characters. I'd say about half of them I track some sort of significant family connections in some way. Others just get played through, maybe get killed along the way (happens), or just retire on their own, but I don't necessarily track what happened to them after that. And yeah, it does mean that sometimes characters that have family connections to others get killed, and that can lead to additional RP drama/revenge/whatever.

Having relationships in the game setting can create a sense of continuity that you just don't get if you are just playing a random set of characters who just met up in a bar or something and decided to go adventuring. We have plenty of "new" characters with no specific ties to anyone else, but they're usually generated in the setting and have some "place" there, so as to justify why they're doing what they're doing. And even just having like one character that's "connected" in some way, can make for easy adventure hooks. "Uncle Joe says we need to go do X, so let's go find some folks to help us", works well a lot of the time. Or the king/earl/whomever needs someone to track down the source of <some problem>, so he calls on a well known friend/adventurer, who sends a friend/family member who calls on their own friends, etc.

I've played in plenty of games where this aspect of it was more or less ignored, but I find that it's a lot of fun to add it in, and honestly provides easy RP reasons *why* characters choose to get involved. Yeah, it's one thing to say "once you have a family, are you really going to go out adventuring?", but the flip side is "if there's something threatening your family, you're going to use what resources you have to deal with it". That may be you going off to do something, or sending someone you know. Having those relationships already built and established in the setting is an amazing short cut to this process. I think it also helps to have a stable "starting point" where most of the PCs live and therefore start their adventures from. This allows for a mix of "local adventures" in which you can justify playing otherwise "settled" characters, and "traveling adventures", where you play the younger crowd (or older, but not attached ones).

Dunno. It just works.

[False God]

I almost always do. Partly I have no problem giving the DM plot hooks, I use that as a way to judge the kind of DM I'm playing with.

I'd saying my players are about 50/50. The more roleplay-heavy folks tend to have families, the number-crunchers usually don't.

[animorte]

I almost always do. Partly I have no problem giving the DM plot hooks, I use that as a way to judge the kind of DM I'm playing with.
I like to do the same. My character will always have at least one thing, usually two, for the DM to use as a bit of a compass or just to implement as they see fit.


I'd saying my players are about 50/50. The more roleplay-heavy folks tend to have families, the number-crunchers usually don't.
That’s… not something I had considered before, but it directly aligns with my experiences for the most part, with obvious room for the few exceptions.

[False God]

I like to do the same. My character will always have at least one thing, usually two, for the DM to use as a bit of a compass or just to implement as they see fit.
I know "Don't give the DM ideas!" is something a lot of players shout when they think the DM is going to do something bad, but quite honestly if the DM isn't getting ideas without me telling them directly, they're doing it wrong. And I have so many ideas.


That’s… not something I had considered before, but it directly aligns with my experiences for the most part, with obvious room for the few exceptions.
And it's not to say the number-crunchers don't want to have family, it's just that it's not a mechanical element of character creation, so it's not something they consider.

[animorte]

I know "Don't give the DM ideas!" is something a lot of players shout when they think the DM is going to do something bad, but quite honestly if the DM isn't getting ideas without me telling them directly, they're doing it wrong. And I have so many ideas.
Yeah, I have made plenty of characters I just haven’t had the opportunity to explore yet for lack of available time.

As DM, it takes very little for me to find a reason to incorporate something from one of the PCs. That drives me!

[Tanarii]

That’s… not something I had considered before, but it directly aligns with my experiences for the most part, with obvious room for the few exceptions.
My experience is that number crunching when building a character isn't the opposite of making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment (at the table), aka roleplay.

But I definitely can see that someone more focused on number crunching when building their character might be less likely to have a character family than someone more focused in telling a story about their character's history, aka not roleplay.

[animorte]

My experience is that number crunching when building a character isn't the opposite of making decisions for your character in the fantasy environment (at the table), aka roleplay.
Yes, I like to do a lot of both myself, as an exception. My wife prefers more story-oriented, my brother prefers the numbers. While each of them still do a little of the other, I just do it all! Usually with one-shots, I’ll just use one of the many concepts I have already put together, that may or may not have their motivation. I love building tons of characters that I don’t have the time to play, so many of them end up in a one-shot or as NPC.

[icefractal]

Mechanics and roleplaying are two orthogonal axes, it's not a trade-off. There can sometimes be conflict between the optimal choice and the most flavor-fitting one, but since family isn't a mechanical element that's not a factor there.

I will say there is a trope of PCs avoiding personal connections, but that's because there's also a trope of GMs reflexively using any such connections as mainly a source of problems / tragedy. Now I'm not saying that's wrong, there's plenty of media where painful personal conflicts are an important part of the character, but it's not what every player wants to experience - even assuming it's done well.

Sure, this is something that could be worked out in Session 0, but that's not always a thing. And there are (a few) people out there who'll take any reluctance to explore a theme as "they only didn't like it because those other GMs played it badly, I'll do it right". So I can see the appeal of just pre-empting all that with a clean slate.

[Slipjig]

Parents and siblings? More often than not, because family drama is an easy hook that most players won't just blow off or murder hobo their way out of.

Spouse and kids? Hardly ever, probably because being gone all the time makes you a not-so-hot spouse and parent.

[Tanarii]

Mechanics and roleplaying are two orthogonal axes, it's not a trade-off. There can sometimes be conflict between the optimal choice and the most flavor-fitting one, but since family isn't a mechanical element that's not a factor there.Agreed. Especially since number crunching is something dealt with while building a character, and roleplaying is something that happens while playing at the table.

However I can see the possibility for tension between number crunching character design and history-writing character design, if someone had limited time they might have a preference for spending it focusing on one or the other. But they're still not a single axis.

[False God]

Mechanics and roleplaying are two orthogonal axes, it's not a trade-off. There can sometimes be conflict between the optimal choice and the most flavor-fitting one, but since family isn't a mechanical element that's not a factor there.

I will say there is a trope of PCs avoiding personal connections, but that's because there's also a trope of GMs reflexively using any such connections as mainly a source of problems / tragedy. Now I'm not saying that's wrong, there's plenty of media where painful personal conflicts are an important part of the character, but it's not what every player wants to experience - even assuming it's done well.

Sure, this is something that could be worked out in Session 0, but that's not always a thing. And there are (a few) people out there who'll take any reluctance to explore a theme as "they only didn't like it because those other GMs played it badly, I'll do it right". So I can see the appeal of just pre-empting all that with a clean slate.


Agreed. Especially since number crunching is something dealt with while building a character, and roleplaying is something that happens while playing at the table.

However I can see the possibility for tension between number crunching character design and history-writing character design, if someone had limited time they might have a preference for spending it focusing on one or the other. But they're still not a single axis.

Since I had brought it up, I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't saying they were opposed. I was only stating that IME, people who mechanics first tend to put roleplay last. Not saying there aren't exceptions. Doesn't mean they won't have family, just that they are less likely to put much time into it.

[Vhaidara]

One of my most recent exalted characters has a husband and daughter. It's a more modern take (the DM basically moved the setting forward about 200-300 years, which included a big tech boom that brought it essentially to modern tech levels). He's a business focused character who was basically sent to expand his company's assets into a new city. Said city is basically Gotham, so he did not bring his family, but his goal is to clean up the city so that he feels safe bringing his family to live with him (with "cleaning up crime in the city" being the campaign premise).

I've got another one who is an immortal who regularly adopts kids because they keep him grounded in why it's important to do the right thing. Also, he just likes kids. Though his campaign is also based out of a specific location.

I've also done characters with relationships between each other for a living campaign


Ultimately, I think one of the main things is that the more geographically constant a campaign is, the more likely people are to include families.

[gbaji]

Since I had brought it up, I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't saying they were opposed. I was only stating that IME, people who mechanics first tend to put roleplay last. Not saying there aren't exceptions. Doesn't mean they won't have family, just that they are less likely to put much time into it.

That's been my experience as well. It's not a hard rule, of course, but there is definitely a trend. It doesn't help that, as a couple posters have pointed out, many GMs treat any personal connection as a potential for drama, and unfortunately this can often be perceived as a weakness for the character from a game play point of view. Heck. Champions actually gave you disadvantage points for having close friends/family based on that exact assumption (and if you took the disadvantage the GM was obligated to periodically have those NPCs be put in danger, captured by the villains, etc).

I've found that I often have to ease new players into the concept, and assure them that, no, If you have friends and family you care about, I'm not going to go out of my way to use them against you. I tend to run a pretty high-fantasy focused game, so I try to avoid "gotcha" stuff like that. Close friends/family will only appear in the forefront of any table time to the exact degree that the player wishes them to be. This allows for players to write not just their backstory, but their, er, "around" story? Without fear that I'm going to use it against them. It allows them to flesh out their characters to be more real living breathing people, while also maintaining a sort of "yeah, this is in the background, and it'll stay there unless something comes along that specifically makes it relevant". I'm not going to punish a player for creating stuff like this for their character.

Now, if they want these relationships to be plot relevant... that's a whole different story.


Ultimately, I think one of the main things is that the more geographically constant a campaign is, the more likely people are to include families.

Yup. That's a huge component to it. It's pretty much impossible to have characters maintain any relationships (or build them in the first place) if the campaign consists of constantly shifting geographical locations. I like for the PCs in my game to have a "home base" so to speak. A town, city, kingdom, whatever, where they live and from where they go out on adventures. It not only encourages them to build these sorts of personal relationships, but also gives them an incentive to care about the setting itself. If each place is just a place and they're not likely to ever be there again, there's not a lot of reason not to just blow things up. If they actually care about whether something they're considering will give the evil baron from the next kingdom over some additional power in the region, they'll actually take that into consideration.

And having friends and family living in the area also gives them a strong reason to get involved in adventure hooks in the first place. It's not just for gold and glory, but maybe they're helping protect those people as well.

[Hagashager]

In a Hunter: The Reckoning game I was in years ago another player and I both started with wives. That lesson was learned very quickly after never to do.

In my 2e game one of my players is an inheritor of his family's dynasty, but that's less "having a family" and more "playing the Game of Thrones".

In the earliest part of my 2e game one player killed the family of another player. That wasn't fun, it was just weird, made things uncomfortable and eventually both players left the table.

This brings up the broader issue that actually Roleplaying in PnP very rarely goes beyond Guardians of the Galaxy tier story-telling. I joined a Star Wars game recently and even there, the GM set the record straight that any romatic or sexual shenanigans would purely "fade to black".

Physically roleplaying an intimate relationship be it romantic or sexual, is awkward for most people, especially the players not directly involved.

You can be a little more courageous with serious storytelling, but only slightly, and only if everyone's on the same page. The Order of the Stick comics are largely in the realm of fiction and not achievable in real-life pnp

[Jay R]

I know "Don't give the DM ideas!" is something a lot of players shout when they think the DM is going to do something bad, but quite honestly if the DM isn't getting ideas without me telling them directly, they're doing it wrong. And I have so many ideas.

The logic of "Don't give the DM ideas" breaks down once you realize that it's based on the false belief that you can change the DM's approach.

I promise you that if the DM is out to hurt or annoy your character, the lack of a backstory won't stop him.

[icefractal]

I promise you that if the DM is out to hurt or annoy your character, the lack of a backstory won't stop him.That's assuming that bad game experiences come from malevolent GMs, which I've found to be largely a red herring.

More often, bad game experiences come from GMs who are trying to run a good game, but have a very different idea of what's fun than the player does, and/or are just handling things clumsily.

For the "family always in peril" trope in particular, some players enjoy and even expect that. So it'd be easy for a not that experienced GM to assume "if they mentioned a family, it's my job to create drama around said family" - resulting in a bad player experience from entirely good intentions. As mentioned, pre-game discussion can resolve this - but also as mentioned, that discussion doesn't always happen and isn't always believed.

[Amnestic]

One of my recent characters (a House Phiarlan agent in Eberron) had both a husband (another Phiarlan agent, who did show up) and a teen daughter (who was a pseudo-hostage during the game). Her parents were assumed to be alive, but estranged for political reasons.

My characters almost always have a family of some sort - usually siblings, rarely spouses/children. One of these days I want to play a really old elf (or dhampir, maybe?) who has a whole sprawling family tree of children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc. etc. who has picked up adventuring as a hobby during their twilight years to keep busy.

[the_david]

My current character is a Warforged. They are single and they obviously don't have parents. They do have a donkey that means the world to them.

I once played an evil cleric of Asmodeus in Way of the Wicked. He had a brother who wanted to kill him, so that was fun.

I have other ideas for characters. A dwarf who, uhm, uses the remains of his grandmother as a weapon. No wait! This is a thing! Really! Just look up vikings and bone char. Ofcourse, his jealous cousin wants the grandmother axe for himself.

I want to play a Deva (4e) who has spend multiple lifetimes with his Elven wife and even adopted her children. He outlived (kinda) them all, but their offspring should still have a place in the world.

[Alcore]

(1)How often do your characters start off with a spouse? (2)How often do they start off with children?

(3)How often have you seen other players with PCs like that?
1) almost never. There are always put into harms way and I am tired of it. My characters often adventure because they lost their chance or are trying to earn the money to retire in safety. There is usually a good main or side quest going and I don't want to bother wasting time on my backstory; character is made, it's done, let's move on to the main event.

2) more often than the above. An orphanage is a common occurrence where my good, or even neutral, characters send money. RP with the little street rats can occure.

I am more likely to have living parents and siblings than spouse and children.

3) ... :smallconfused: ... once? Twice?


This largely just applies to sandboxes. If the DM has a story in mind family usually isn't even a thought.

[Tanarii]

More often, bad game experiences come from GMs who are trying to run a good game, but have a very different idea of what's fun than the player does, and/or are just handling things clumsily.

For the "family always in peril" trope in particular, some players enjoy and even expect that. So it'd be easy for a not that experienced GM to assume "if they mentioned a family, it's my job to create drama around said family" - resulting in a bad player experience from entirely good intentions. As mentioned, pre-game discussion can resolve this - but also as mentioned, that discussion doesn't always happen and isn't always believed.
Agreed. Many GMs assume that backstory is there for them to create drama from as they see fit, often euphemistically called something like "incorporating it into the campaign". Many players see that as the purpose of backstory too.

That's why I prefer bullet point lists of certain categories. They also allow the game system to focus on what's important for that system. For example PbtA and Free League games often have you detail a relationship with other characters or NPCs. Sometimes including one player getting to invent another player's character's "history" in the process, technically without the other player consent, other than the consent of agreeing to make characters for the system. Other systems have a category (usually some kind of history and/or personality flaw) where the player puts things that are "GM make drama from this to mess with my character please!"

[animorte]

Agreed. Many GMs assume that backstory is there for them to create drama from as they see fit, often euphemistically called something like "incorporating it into the campaign". Many players see that as the purpose of backstory too.

That's why I prefer bullet point lists of certain categories. They also allow the game system to focus on what's important for that system. For example PbtA and Free League games often have you detail a relationship with other characters or NPCs. Sometimes including one player getting to invent another player's character's "history" in the process, technically without the other player consent, other than the consent of agreeing to make characters for the system. Other systems have a category (usually some kind of history and/or personality flaw) where the player puts things that are "GM make drama from this to mess with my character please!"
Yes, I think it can be one of those things that the DM incorporates into the story at some point, but doesn’t need to be, and certainly shouldn’t be abused.

It’s one of those things for session zero. Just make sure that everybody’s ok with it.

[Metastachydium]

Permit me to help increase the sum of halfling knowledge!


How often do your characters start off with a spouse?

The closest I got was a horror one-shot where my character hooked up with another PC. Sadly, the game died before the big finish, but given that one or both of said characters was very likely to do so during it… Well, I'm not exactly confident their relationship would have lasted long enough for them to marry.


How often do they start off with children?

Ha-ha, no. Most of my characters have living family, consisting of both parents (they only ever ended up figuring into the plot once as long term kind of hostages; two other characters kept in regular touch with them, one was trying to get back home to them and one is kind of hiding in a frozen hellscape for stupid reasons from her rich parents who otherwise mean well) and quite often a sibling or several (one has five, another had seven, all named). In my first game on this site, my PC had a PC sibling (and two PC first cousins who were technically half-siblings), the two going along, well, interestingly, but other than that, none of them has ever figured into the game.


How often have you seen other players with PCs like that?

I'm going to say at least twice (maybe three times)? One was widowed, another had a spouse somewhere else and an important NPC as an old flame, whereas the third, um, may or may not have an imaginary son (don't ask).