Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_W View Post
Separating culture from the biological aspects of a character's race is a step in this right direction, but it doesn't go far enough IMO. You're adding another fiddly bit to character creation (or two, if you have backgrounds and culture as separate elements), but it's not doing as much work as it could. In the current system, players make two major character-defining choices at creation: race and class. These, respectively, answer the questions of "what is you character, physically?" and "what does your character do while adventuring?"

If you're going to ask players to make another decision at character creation, then it should answer an equally important question, such as "what does my character do while not adventuring?" Backgrounds already lean in that direction, but I think we should take them further. Every background should give players default answers to the question of how their character usually lives, where they go where an adventure is over (at least at low levels, before the players establish a home base together), where the other characters can usually find them when it's time for another adventure to begin, and what sort of relationship they might have with other characters at the start of the game.

There was a supplement for 3.5e that suggested giving characters "lifestyles" which would determine upkeep cost and which would IIRC grant small social boons. Lifestyles existed on a sliding scale from self-sufficiency to living like a king; this was essentially a way for players to spend their mountains of useless gold in a way that gives them a mechanical advantage that's small enough to not unbalance the game, objective and mechanical enough to appeal to powergamers, and flavorful enough to appeal to everyone else. Of course, since this was a tiny little rule tucked away in a supplement, I don't think it ended up doing the edition much good - but there is a seed of a good idea here.

I'm suggesting making backgrounds similar to that, but with differentiation in kind rather than a sliding scale. Different backgrounds would allow different characters to bring different resources to the game. Say, for example, a merchant or thief could help the group by selling off art objects that they loot and buying armour and weapons at a better price than they'd otherwise get. A blacksmith could outright make that equipment themselves given enough downtime. A self-sufficient hermit can provide food and extend the range of a group's travel when moving through the woods.

One thing that I'd recommend avoiding is having backgrounds provide mechanical benefits that could mesh with racial or class features in a way that makes some combinations more powerful that others, for obvious reasons. The more complexity there is in a game, the more opportunity there is for optimized builds to rise above unoptimized ones. Balancing a wide range of race/class combos is already difficult - doing the same for race/class/background combos would be even harder. It's not impossible, though, and it'd be worth the effort.

I think the best way to achieve this would be to focus on background benefits that are noncombat-related and to focus on benefits that ultimately help a whole party. Classes, subclasses, and feats already do enough for a character's role in combat. We don't want backgrounds to be another tool that powergamers use to give themselves yet another +1. Instead, backgrounds should encourage cooperation. (This is the same reason why I like buff and BFC spells: when a fighter focuses down on an enemy with a sword that a wizard enchanted, both players feel like they're contributing on each and every hit. Everyone can be a little bit in the limelight all the time, not just when it focuses on them on their turn. That's a topic for another thread though.)

Background is currently tied to race, because that's where the concept peeled off from. This is a historical accident, though: background would have made every bit as much sense if it were ties instead to class. I can easily imagine an alternative version of the game where "nomadic tribe," "reclusive hermit," "literally raised by wolves," and "raised by druids" are all backgrounds associated with the ranger class, for example. Backgrounds make just as much sense tied to class as they do to race . . .

. . . So why not peel it off completely and let it be it's own thing? Backgrounds have several important roles that they could play in a game system, and once fleshed out to fill those roles they'll deserve their own section in between the races and the classes. Of course, it'll make sense for races and backgrounds to be correlated (although how they are correlated could be campaign-dependent), just as it makes sense for backgrounds and classes to be dependent. I can easily imagine a PHB where every race has a list of suggested backgrounds and classes, every background has a list of suggested races and classes, and every class has a list of suggested backgrounds and races. That way, players can start with any one (or any two, if they prefer) of the three as the "seed" for a character idea and have suggestions at every step of the way for how to flesh their character out.
Whilst I don't disagree with the sentiment I want to challenge your premise.. "what does my character do when NOT adventuring?"

My experience both as a player and consuming dnd media is that adventuring IS your life. There isn't any years off where you get a regular job (nor need to). Obviously my experience could be vastly different from others but it doesn't seem to me that the intent of dnd is to do anything bar adventure.