Characters who do greater feats than their level allows them. Being an assassin is fine, being the top assassin in your assassin family where you already killed your assassin dad isn't.
I did a sorta spin on this with my most recent rogue. She tried pulling off a heist that was way above her skill level, but it went terribly and she had to flee for her life as she was chased out by an angry mob. Still probably not that original though. 🤷🏻♀️
consider: >liar >was severely injured and is essentially having to relearn all their skills again because they lost their fine motor skills >a minor god who decided to/was forced to quit being immortal and is trying to figure out how to be made of meat >suffering a severe psychosis >is possessing another body/is a genetic memory to someone who has absolutely no idea how to do any of that >double-isekai where they got hit by cybertruck-kun after going from a japanese salaryman to a techno-demigod in a cyberpunk dystopian future and woke up with dragons this time >it actually did happen but not nearly the way everyone says it does and their contribution was greatly exagerrated by the bards and common word of mout and they either desperately try to tell it like it it and nobody believes them or they roll with it for fear of being a disappointment
What if it was a really shitty assassin family, and throughout the campaign, the assassin realizes they were a big fish in a small pond? Does that sound like an interesting way to take this? (I’ve never played DnD before)
I love all the ideas, the problem is that normally isn't what the player wants, If they wanted that to be their backstory I'd love it. Instead you get a upset player because that isn't their story and at the point, I just shouldn't allow it in the first place.
My Hexblades backstory has him defending his clans village from an attacking force, the way ive done it is when he made the pact, he was given basically level 20 stats and abilities. When that battle was over and his Clan safe, his power was reset back to level 1 for his adventure. Kinda like in a game where the tutorial gives you your endgame abilities. so this kind of backstory can work, just needs to be done right.
Let's be honest, as a new player, no matter what you do you're creating a character that irritates someone somewhere because it's "such a trope" despite being completely new and fun to you.
I challenge you to prove 2 of my characters as tropes. A Mortal Plane Chaotic Neutral Female Shadar-Kai Acolyte background Undying Warlock whose patron is Larloch. Whose family is also alive in the Mortal Plane and love each other as well as her & her siblings. Whose brother is a Circle of Dreams Druid who is married to a Dwarven Circle of Wildfire Druid. A Surface Female Drow Feylost background Death Domain Cleric sworn to The Raven Queen whose family is loving and successful as well. She also is Chaotic Neutral.
@morrigankasa570 I said as a new player. A new player doesn't understand the setting and how all the races work and whatnot. So... I'm not really proving anything to you, but I read "neutral female shader-kai" and was already lost. Also, I'm not going to try and prove anything. Not everything is inherently cliche. That isn't what I meant. So enjoy your characters.
@@TheSkelzore Fair enough, I'm technically a "New Player" in regards to created my 12 Characters in the last few years. Yet don't have a regular group to play with. However, I did research a bit about the various Races during Character & Backstory Creation. But have played a couple sessions of 3.5e back in Highschool that didn't last long. Anyway, Shadar-Kai is an Elven Race originally from the Shadowfell.
@@morrigankasa570, [Valley girl voice: on] Oh mah god! Like, not another Mortal Plane Chaotic Neutral Female Shadar-Kai Acolyte! We like, had three of them in, like, my last campaign... Ugh! Gag me with a spoon.
Some of these examples are just DMs with a massive chip on their shoulder: "Ugh, I HATE religious characters!!!" "Why?" "Because they're wary of doing things that contradict their character's values!! Crazy, right!?!?" If a DM only knows/wants to play one type of campaign, that's a DM issue, not a PC issue...
I LOVE religious characters as a DM. Most religions have rituals/rules to abide by and that makes roleplay and immersion. Seeing how they interpret or disregarded those rituals/rules makes character development as well.
My issue isn't so much with religious characters, as with DnD's stupid gimmicky "morality" system that makes no sense, makes the setting black and white, does not allow for moral conflict or dillemas and objectifies morality to such a degree it becomes a perceptible force. It was lazy writing on the parts of the initial writers of DnD and it still is to this day. This inherently makes "paladins" just very poor stereotypes. Sure you can "write around it", but you really shouldn't need to to begin with. I fully understand why a DM would be frustrated with that. But of course, that just means you should play a better roleplaying game than DnD. Which isn't hard. Shots fired.
The "I hate religious characters" guy was telling on himself. If the paladin or cleric is "dragging behind" because of their strict adherence to their moral code (which is a PART OF THOSE CLASSES) then that means that you, as the DM, have exclusively been giving the party morally grey or morally black choices to make. That's a failure on you buddy, not the characters
I totally agree! My most developed PC is neutral good (he’s a devotee to that world’s deity of justice), so he’s understandably very adverse to hurting people and murder. My DM has done a good job of allowing me to find non-violent or non-lethal solutions to problems. Unfortunately a lot of the people I spare end up dead anyway because the people around me aren’t exactly good, but I didn’t have to do it and that’s the important thing. It’s not my fault if I spared the pirate captain and one of my party members decides to kill her instead.
"And live a little" just say you're against organized religion fam. It's the 21st century, you're not likely to get flack. But yeah, either there's some massive miscommunictions between player and DM... or he's a subpar DM.
It tends to happen when every other PC is playing a murderhobo and doesn't bother to hide it. What the hell is the LG paladin supposed to do when the NE rogue just goes around stabbing orphans all the time to get some spending money? Either it's going to be a campaign-ending fight to the death between the PCs, or the DM has to disallow evil characters in a party of what are supposed to be "good guys", or the player with the paladin has to just suck it up and go OOC to ignore it.
That’s just a lazy DM. I’m currently playing in a paid campaign with a professional DM, who created a totally opposite issue for me: I play as a peace cleric 1/eloquence bard x. Took the cleric level for the emboldening bond. It also so happens, that my PC is a devotee of Eldath - pacifist goddess of peace and nature, and it also so happens that there is a war happening around. I would say, I play in a very tactical and optimized manner, I’m just level five and haven’t actually killed anyone at all yet, it just so happens that my use of magic was clutch at killing some very potent foes. OK, we killed a lot of people, but my PC didn’t even make a single point of damage yet, just simplified his companions’ job (significantly). And you know what my DM did? Eldath started disowning my PC due to multiple deaths he was involved in, the fact that some of my party members are chaotic-stupid doesn’t help either. This started to cause him losing his cleric powers. And she (the DM) is like: “you can always devote to another god”. And I like: “Nope, I’m still devoted to peace (peace through superior firepower)”. Thus, I constantly have to justify his actions and go into philosophy just to retain his powers. And do persuasion checks (to convince his goddess), here being an eloquence bard with 20 in charisma and expertise in persuasion really helps. This actually makes the game more interesting.
4:21 telling your party they can’t have normal problems in their backstory is kinda weird. My group favorite character I played was literally a college dropout who has an abusive relationship with his wizard dad
They did explain it, from the specific wording they used I figure they have a history of people projecting personal issues into D&D and I wouldn't want to work through that either.
@@AGrumpyPanda I mean that is pretty fair, no one wants to be a therapist on the spot. But when they started talking about how they would recon the backstory mid game to day the family was nice and the pc was the jerk, that raises eyebrows for me. If that kinda of backstory really was such an issue for them, ya think he would just shut it down from the get go, not lead the players on and then recon their story and twist it to where they’re the jerk, that comes off as pretty petty if you ask me. It makes me think that dm has irl family issues themselves.
Yeah that kind of “twist” is a really big red flag. I think you could give the shitty family some context and backstory for why they were shitty (family trauma is usually passed down), to make them into more sympathetic characters, but the thing the DM described is possibly the worst way to handle this situation. It’s the right of the DM and everyone else at the table to talk about what they want to RP and what they don’t want to RP, and I’d hope any DM would be upfront about how they feel about this kind of backstory, rather than twist their player’s idea around to make their character (and probably their player) feel foolish.
Just sorta goes to prove that no matter what you do in DnD, someone is going to have a problem/complaint/criticism about it. Dark tragic character? "Ok edgelord." Character with real world type problems? "Ok gaming-as-therapy self-insert"
I wonder how many of the DMs in the video would hate my current campaign. Four players, three of us are halflings and one an elf. The halflings came from a sleepy village where nothing exciting happens and left because two of the halflings were bored out of their minds, the third halfling is their childhood friend who wanted to make sure they didn't do something extremely stupid (but is himself not a good chaperone) and the elf (who traveled through the village frequently but didn't live there) went with them to make sure they didn't all die in the first 5 minutes (which was pretty likely).
For every video that says "D&D is a game where you have the freedom to play ANYTHING your heart desires! Play what makes you happy!" is a video that says "Here are the things you should NEVER EVER play in D&D"
This is why, instead of prematurely "banning" sexual taboos, perceived "perversions" and "bad backgrounds", instead have a pre-session discussion about the limits that the players can explore, with all players present, including the DM. There is no such thing as a universally accepted "moral line" that shan't be crossed. To say otherwise is to be a brainwashed ideologue. If all players come to a good enough consensus, this shouldn't be a problem so long as you're all relatively reasonable people. Even if an outlier is still created this way, that's just the risk of inherently playing a game where "freedom to roleplay" is the very premise of why you play. Otherwise, the DM is at risk of railroading an experience just because of a few snowflakes that didn't have the guts to mention beforehand what their "trigger" is. For an above example: If a player wants to have a sister that is also his wife, then I say why not? Sounds kinda funny. You can make up all sorts of funny shenanigans with that. Just because that's their backstory, this doesn't mean the other players can't make fun of their character for it (in-game). TL; DR You are all adults (presumably) and so you should be adult enough to actually talk things through before a session. No need to be the arbiter of moral laws in roleplaying games.
You can do lots of stuff in this game, but there are also a lot of things you shouldn't do. Remember that D&D is a group activity that you gotta work together on.
After looking through a few videos to get tips for dming (me and my friends are doing a campaign for the first time) my recommended got flooded by random videos exactly like that
Honestly, if this was me and my friends we would totally allow it… Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s immoral as fuck. But not in a way that is either triggering sensible players or disrupting the game for everyone else. It’s just funny. And if Kyle wants to play Grumok the Orc from the ancient city of Alabama, I say let him !
Adopted siblings and step siblings and sometimes even half siblings get married. This is nothing new. And way back before even the fall of Rome cousins would marry. Hell, that even happened after it fell. Just saying.
4:56 This is not a good thing to do, and you should not take this as advice. That completey destroys player agency by taking their backstory and warping it AGAINST THEM. Its disrespectful, and frankly, pathetic. I understand not wanting to be someones therapist but for God's sake, this DM just sounds so apathetic and uncaring. You cannot alter someone's backstory. THAT part of the story _BELONGS_ to the player. The DM needs THEIR permission to change ANYTHING about it. If I had established that my character had a bad relationship with their parents and they suddenly welcomed my character with open arms, I would just say that my character was "Overjoyed at his realization and decided to completely abandon the party in favor of making up for lost time with his *supposedly* loving family." Then I would quit the group. If you have time to plan all of this sneaky shit behind the players back, you have the time to discuss the problem with them, and if you actively choose to NOT do that, it's officially NOT the players fault at that point.
Yeah when it came to that part of the video, I heavily suspect that either the dm had REALLY bad encounters of “I use gaming as cheap therapy” people (which too be fair is possible since they do give it as an excuse) or actually has irl family issues themselves, and that’s probably why they have so much anger towards it and thus “punishes” the players for even thinking it up, then use the previous explanation as an excuse.
If mine did that with my sad character, I would make it so my character immediately knows these aren't their parents and that something is horribly wrong.
Thought the same thing, that guy definitely rubbed me the wrong way, wouldn't want him as a DM myself. If PC'S have bad parents then so be it, all of my players are usually my friends, and if I as a DM could also give them an outlet for some repressed trauma and help them through that I'll gladly do it. Just seems to be like the DM is one of those people who just wants to follow his own ideal of what a game or tabletop should be, and is fully willingly ignorant of his players wishes in what they might want of the campaign.
Yeah, I was listening to that with increasing bewilderment. It's like, "You don't want your PCs to be people?" Not to mention, the way the OP spoke of parental trauma in quotes makes we wonder exactly what kind of family issues THEY have. There's a huge difference between exploring IRL issues - and almost everyone has SOME kind of IRL issues - in a game and having it take over the game. The first of those is fine but this GM sounds like he automatically assumes every player who even hints at a bad childhood is going to do the second one. His lack of empathy is a tad disturbing.
I have no problem with a player's backstory being Harold from Accounting. Some people just want to fantasize about doing extraordinary things despite being perfectly ordinary.
I think the really fun thing here is that in Ravnica, you pretty much COULD be Harold from Accounting and still end up as an adventurer; it's just that you'd probably be working as an accountant for a sphinx or a bunch of ghosts.
I play a wizard and a we have a "normal guy" Alchemist in the group with a wife, kid and a Clinic to heal people in. My Char sneared at him in the beginning for beeing so "boring" but as my Char keeped fucking up things he started to appriciate his measured life style.
I've never had an issue with Harold from Accounting being the starting point, but your character achieves more responsibility and notoriety as the game goes on. At level 12, Harold might still be the same awkward guy you avoid in the office, but to the public he is Harold, Lord of Coin and Numbers. As long as the player understands that your ordinary person will be forced into the limelight by being in a successful adventuring party, it works out totally okay.
Honestly I think having grandiose feats in your backstory can work so long as you don't take it too far. You can be a famed and well liked captain in the army but you can't be a general. Captains are a dime a dozen but generals are among the highest rank. You can't have killed a dragon all by yourself but you can be a part of a large group of twenty or so people who were sent to kill it and be one of the few that lived to tell the tale. Having cool feats in your backstory is great but you can't take it too far otherwise it starts to stretch what can be considered conceivable. I usually build my backstory as I play. I start out with a basic idea and build from there as the story goes along
I'd say for a level one fighter, a cool backstory that spins the "I killed a dragon" trope, would be that instead of killing the dragon, your fighter saw this happening by a notoriously powerful character and wanted to one day slay dragons of their own. Epic things happening can be apart of your backstory, but when your backstory makes you out to be this powerful being while you're a level one fighter, it's just not interesting. You could have the player be an aid that the hero picked up to carry items, or for a specific talent of theirs, while acknowledging the power gap if you want them to be a little closer to the action while retaining that backstory to power balance.
I always find the exaggerated feats in the background to be a much more compelling backstory, like " I single handedly took down an entire tribe of bandits" when in reality it's "I helped arrest a shoplifter"
I made it work with a pc who was a great figure in the army who was turned into a tiefling and started heavily drinking because the army kicked him out due to policies and he could no longer use the sacred family heirloom (an armor) thus I created Jin, a tiefling monk(drunken master) with a level of fighter for proficiencies with martial weapons and a fighting style Of course he’s not gonna be as great as he once was, dude is drunk all day
Granted, if I played a character who has defeated an entire bandit camp or killed a dragon it would be the character did it through a complete accident and struggling with their reputation of being a supposed badass.
I did this as a bard. A group ran across him and had him tag along for entertainment. That group killed a named and known dragon that was terrorizing an area for 20 years. My bard was listed as being one of the killers and wrote a song about it. The song never mentions himself. People asked him what it was like and the bard was always "I was scared shitless and just hid behind things! Look at me, do I look like I would willingly do something like THAT?!" But in that kingdom everyone knew his name as one of the dragon slayers. Our party even met the dragon slaying party regularly in taverns and inns within that country. That party loved my bard, always asked how he was doing. The priestess (pelor cleric) routinely asked how he was eating and acted like his mother. The fighter always had gifts for the bard...a dwarven fighter hand making things for a half-elf youngin' he calls "boy". The wizard asking after him to make sure he is still practicing the magic that was taught to him. The party was basically my bard's surrogate family. There were 10 of them and they split into three groups. 2 went to the castle and became advisors. 4 stayed in a small-ish town on a river that leads to the capital. And the other 4 stayed in a trade town down the coast a ways. They ended up being my bard's contacts for information and jobs for his party during their early levels and moral support and places of rest as the levels increased. Was a fun character design and he NEVER liked that people called him a dragon slayer. Not once did that group kill a dragon either.
I've played characters who just happened to be the only one around a dead dragon or slaughtered bandit camp so everyone THINKS he killed them all before
My version of this is: a champion of the local arena, who's never been beaten, decides to go adventuring for more challenge. Too bad nobody told him all his fights were fixed
I'm still a pretty new dm, and I used to go with "anything you want," but now I have two rules: 1) Must be a character that this setting could produce (ie no samurai's in a setting that has no country that would have produced samurai's) and 2) must, MUST be capable of working in a group. You don't have to like them, you can hate them, you can prefer to be alone, you just have to be capable of working with them.
Yeah i like playing my little edgelord idiot characters but i always find some way to integrate them into the party through some rules that make sense to the character (like they only like picking fights with strong people, or they're not interested in killing [X] thing, or "well unfortunately they ran out of money so they have to skulk around with the team or be left destitute", or entirely motivated by [X] thing so if the party or DM needs an easy way to corral them they have it.), a loose cannon but with easy instructions to maneuver. I make sure to lampshade or communicate any big ballsy moves too so that other players can have a moment to stop or add on to it, which makes it a lot more fun too. Unless the spotlight is on me/my character, I don't go out of my way to be disruptive.
Even as someone who doesn't DND but role plays, the "loner edgy unwilling to cooperate" types are such a pain. Edgy characters are hella fun but if you, not just the character, won't cooperate how are we supposed to have fun?
Honestly, a fun way to work around your rule 1 would be to have the pc be the proliferator of the combat style. Have them work a reason for the styles invention into their backstory, using Samurai as the example again, as a style they came up with to counter a rival swordsman, or as a desperation style using a broken broadsword to fend off a group of bandits that they developed and started teaching to others, using a custom made sword (katana). Go the extra mile, have them give the style a unique in universe name.
@@FizzieWebb I would allow that, it would just be divorced from the innate culture and they would have to show their work. That is, have a reason for why they're adding each item/move/tradition that shapes it towards what we recognize as "samurai".
@@JustToSaveYou The samurai could also just be a foreigner from a different region that somehow ended up there. It's not like people can't travel, and I doubt any setting has medieval europe painted over every single continent lmao
5:26 This actually used to be a plenty good reason for adventuring in the really old D&D days. The game was way more dangerous at lower levels, and if you survived to level 3 or 4, THEN you'd start worrying about fleshed-out character motivations.
I mean, that's the main reason anyone would do adventuring. To get some money And if you look carefully, you'll realize that "I'm an adventurer to find a treasure" is old as fantasy Random example of how it can be used: Bilbo Baggins from hobbit. Class rouge, he is an adventurer on his way to find a treasure. Same with dwarfs he's with
I actually have a character right now who lost his regular job due to some shady stuff someone else pulled and now he's adventuring to pay the bills. Dudes got a wife and kid to provide for.
I think nowadays this would be a very campaign-dependent thing. "I'm a treasure hunter, I want money" seems quite par for the course for an adventure where the promise of wealth is a major part of the plot hook from the start, such as the dungeon-crawler modules that have been officially updated to 5e from really old editions, like White Plume Mountain, and I think it could work pretty well for something like Rime of the Frostmaiden with its emphasis on survival. But when the narrative is expected to have heavier emotional investment, such as the Radiant Citadel adventures, or is primarily centered around social encounters, such as The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, it starts to fall short.
The DM at 1:30 seriously has to calm down. I can't imagine how little fun I'd have if I got mad at every player who didn't want to write a backstory. Also if it seriously takes you a year to set up a D&D campaign, write a book. No D&D campaign is worth that much prep.
Actually I palyed a character with no backstory, because I had a complicated schedule at the time and couldn't play some times, so why bother the DM with a starting a character arc or prepare roleplay that will have to be constantly paused?
1:09 I would allow this but only if the character is exaggerating. Example: Character: I am Sir Rob and took down an adult white dragon myself. Player: Rob leaves out the fact that this was after half of his village had been attacking it beforehand.
I have a character i have yet to play but her whole backstory is "baker whose cookies were so good an archfey decided to give her magic for it, and now she gets to use it to explore/adventure" (She's always wanted to go adventuring from the stories her customers told her)
Hot Take: Many tropes are actually helpful for people new to roleplay and people who are testing the waters, and sometimes punishing them and forcing them to be all-in and thus out of their comfort zone from the very start will only sour the experience. As a DM, you shouldnt be an elitist lol. Please dont adopt the mindset of a character not being worth your campaign just because it uses tropes, or you will lose alot of players. Ease your players in to the idea of expanding on their character. Players might have a good reason for using these tropes, whether it's that they were inspired by them, or it might be just because they don't know if the campaign will be longterm so they don't want to use extended time to develop a completely baseless backstory. Its not good to be so quick to assume that you know better than your players, or to barr them for as silly of a reason as their character not being good enough. That messes up the entire point of creativity and imagination. There aren't meant to be rules (besides the obvious NSFW/sensitive topics).
I'd even go farther and say tropes are good for everyone. TTRPGs are a storytelling medium and tropes are signposts that reinforce genre and setting. If tropes are good enough for professional writers, they are good enough for the table. The problem is people who don't understand the trope they are using and fight against it. I.e. The "edgy loner who trusts no one" implicitly signs up for the narrative arc of "opening up and learning to trust their found family" and it's an issue when that character never starts to grow.
I pointed that out in another comment, that the amnesiac hero trope many see as lazy, is a fantastic quick start for newer players who want to test the waters with a new system, or a new group, or just as an all around beginner in general. It also means that if they stick around, they can simply work out a story for their character to either piece together, or have as a massive triggered remembrance at some point. Like all tropes, it's a building block, and how it's used is more important than it being used at all.
Besides, tropes are basically impossible to avoid. If you try to avert something, chances are you stumble into an entirely new trope that is meant to subvert the first one. At the end of the day tropes are just tools for storytelling.
Well, I'd push back a bit on the idea of boring/generic backstories for one reason. Some DMs will just actively use any detail of a character's backstory as a weapon against the player. They will make things up, grasp at straws, even rewrite the character's story. That has always been crossing a line with me. So if you have a player that believes you to be such a DM or who has just come from a group where something like this happened, then it is completely understandable that they wouldn't want to invest the time and effort into creating a backstory that at best would be ignored and overwritten, and quite possibly could be ammunition against them. When you have earned a player's trust, then you can work on prying out a backstory and integrating it into the plot. But only when you have their trust.
Another good reason to have a boring/generic backstory is because you know the DM _will_ find a way to kill off your character in 1d3 sessions---so why bother?
The big one I tend to see is people coming from groups with DM's that just... Don't use your backstory. Ever. They really don't care, as long as your character is a character you can roleplay and is motivated. Having played with such DM's, it's not even necessarily that they're entirely bad DM's. Some are just so improv heavy that backstory would only be relevant if you push it.
I had this happen to me once and it really got on my nerves. I mentioned that my character had a distant/estranged husband who she had left her son with for his own safety and the DM immediately opens our first game with “They’ve been kidnapped and are probably at the plot relevant location everyone was going to anyways” So I had to explain to him that the husband was my way of having a backup character written into the backstory and we went back and forth on it but he finally relented.
I know I personally play 'red shirt' characters at a new table, nothing but the bored son of a farmer looking for adventure. I won't bother putting extra detail in until I know people at the table are chill and interested in a cooperative and fun experience. That's not to say that one-shot deathtrap runs aren't entertaining, but any decent DM will talk with players about hopes or expectations to ensure everyone is comfortably on the same page.
@@Vgy1592also one shots. Many DMs I've met prefer just doing 1-3 sessions and being done. So all you need is "I am Tom, here to slay Ted" and BOOM backstory done.
My first D&D character was the stereotypical orphaned rogue. But instead of being all edgelordish and traumatized, I lampshaded it a bit by being little *too* well-adjusted and sociable and perfectly okay with awful things. Sometimes a horrific detail from his pre-party life would drop and the rest of the party is like, "Oh, you poor thing" and he's all, "What? No. You should have seen the other guy..." shit like that. It was fun, but in response my next character had live parents, a live wife, live kids, was a successful businessman, and was a pillar of the community (he was forced to pick back up his bow and go adventuring due to some prophecy thing, and his whole motivation was finish the thing so he could get back home to the life he loved and live in peace).
Kinda the opposite one of my players' first character was the succeasful merchant and loved member of his town going on an adventure because it started as just part of a business trip that went wrong, and later unveiled into a curse he was afflicted by.
As an orphan IRL, I can safely say that your character was more true to life than you might think. Orphans are socialable and well-adjusted, mainly because we had to be. When your world is that unstable, you either adapt or perish. Being cool with awful things, or people, is also not uncommon. We've probably already seen it all. Your worst day is our Tuesday. People overreact to so many things that just don't matter.
Reminds me of the time our party came along a camp in the woods with a soldier covered in blood sitting on a log next to a fire. My wizard, who was a dickbag conman saunters up and takes a seat next to him, hand on his shoulder. He leans in close to the soldier and says “Heeey Buuddy, you doin’ alright? Gonna eat the rest of that fish?”
I have a character with dead parents who were emotionally abusive to her, but she has a chosen family who she confides in, if the dm made it so it was just "being a shithead teenager" i'd be pissed off and quit the campaign. Tragic backstories can work if you put some thought into it.
I know what part of the video you're talking about and honestly I think that dm actually has family drama irl and they're doing the "out of sight, out of mind" coping defense, immediately shutting down any resemblance of that kind of tragic story so they doesn't get reminded of their own, and using the "oh its just lazy/don't wanna be a verbal punching bad" excuse.
@@Rebell-mi4zu Yeah. I mean, if they've had players treat them like that, they've every right to be upset but they're doing pretty much exactly what they're accusing those players of- taking out their issues on others within the game.
Imagine a character that had a happy childhood and has never seen a day of combat and just happened upon the rest of the party and just wants to come along for an adventure
The thing that always surprises me with orphan backstories is how many people don’t seem to get that ‘orphan’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘miserable childhood’ and/or ‘no interpersonal connections.’ Like, depending on how young they were when they lost their parents, they still had to be raised by *someone.* Maybe it was an older sibling, a family friend, an older member of a gang of urchins, a mentor who taught them a trade, or even just the manager of the local orphanage. Regardless, they’d most likely have at least one significant figure in their past. Even if they lost their parents later in life, parents aren’t typically the only type of important people in a someone’s life. One of my characters is a human cleric who was left at a temple as a baby and was raised by the priests there. He had a happy, if sheltered, childhood and considers the temple clergy to be his family. Just the fact that a character is an orphan tells us almost nothing about them. It’s a circumstance, not a character trait.
I susepct that a good chunk of the players who go out of their way to avoid having connections have been bitten by a GM who just uses connections to screw over PCs and never makes anything good come from them, or anything interesting. A character of mine had EXACTLY the backstory you mentioned for your cleric. She was also sheltered but happy.
You know funny thing about the amnesia thing. I have an android character on Friday who came online in a pocket of nature energy (she was thrown out of her factory because she didn’t come online) and wrote a whole backstory with the DM’s help where she has friends, a buisness, family. And never once did I ask “where did she come from (the place that rebuilt her actually picks up androids from the ground to try and retrofit them), why did she only come online in that grove?” It has been a blast discovering that my Android might be a relic of a world that’s long gone and is actually important to humanities last ditch efforts to preserve not just their soceity but themselves. And i never even considered the idea that I had amnesia of any kind.
@@arcshadowstorm especially since the way i learned this also allows me to help the rest of the party with their backstory stuff like a psychic domain so someone who doesn't have a clear memory of events with psychic abilities could try to see the event. its been even funnier gaining access to stuff way before he expected us too aswell.
Secret protocols or memory altering is a cool thing for droids. There was a Star Wars table where I made up that the Jedi had a group like Cadmus from Justice League and I was a prototype security droid secretly specialized in taking down Jedi whose line was to have basically committed order 66…. But the droids were scrapped for clones and the party junker has found the only surviving but dormant prototype
I disagree with like 2 of these But I'll give my 2cent on the last 1. A person who has a healthy homelike is a perfectly valid. Playing the boy scout going into the tomb of horrors to do their best to help their friend who is going in for their own reason is good enough. The game is the story told by the DM,party,and dice as to whether the boyscout was able to help his friend. If he fails then that's just part of the story.
I agree with your assessment of the last one and go one better to the OP. "I will not have you disrespect Samwise Gamgee by saying his background was unbelievable or not enough. That man went all the way to Mount Doom, just to keep his friend safe."
Characters with healthy homelives but decide to adventure anyways for whatever reason are some of my favourites to play. Typically, they add the spice of variety to the party, have room to *become* more tragic, and are excellent at supporting other party members' own journeys. A wizard driven by their fascination with discovery, a knight that wants to protect that healthy homelife, an adventurer inspired by heroes before them, a sorcerer feeling the call of their bloodline. None of these concepts need tragedy to push them forward. Saving the tragedy for along the way gives more room for growth.
My own D&D character is a Kenku bard who heard singing and wanted to do that so she just…stole the closest instrument (a concertina), mimicked how to play it and sometimes accidentally makes new music, and then essentially got adopted by the party because they thought a kenku being a bard was funny until they saw that she was a really good bard with how she’d mimic voices. She’s essentially a raven who plays the concertina because she thought “yeah I could do that”.
As a GM, when someone hands me an amnesiac character... its like a fine five star dinner. I have so many tools I can use with to build that character up, over time. In my current campaign, we have an amnesiac child, and he's been learning his own history, alongside the rest of the group, and its been one of my favorite character progressions as a GM. If you are so obsessed with being anti-trope, you can fail to notice why it became a trope in the first place. Also, a creative player can do so much with it, too. Don't shoot down amnesiac backstories without giving it some genuine thought.
I fall into a trap where I try to make characters that break certain conventions (Wizard orc, rogue goliath, etc.) and I realize halfway through my brainstorm session that the character doesn't have to be an outlier all the time. It annoys me personally, so I have to make a conscious effort to make my characters a bit more grounded instead of having them be so hyper quirky like that.
The thing is making the weird quirky build idea actually make sense and feel coherent. Half orc is wizard robes feels mismatched. Half orc war mage who got his ass kicked by an elven mage and then hunted down this mage & strong armed them into making the orc their apprentice, becoming a war mage with the hopes of one day besting this elf, that's workable.
You can also use the “breaks convention” to doubly subvert expectations. I played a human wizard in a campaign who was from a backwater town, and I gave him my strongest, heaviest Texas redneck accent, full yeehaw, everyone laughs. Side note, everyone but me used INT as the dump stat. Eight months and ~30 sessions later, we encounter a wizard that mine recognizes as equal or superior. And starts speaking in a clipped, rapid, sort of intellectual tone, clean of any accent. Everyone is confused. “I adopt the accent so people find my intellect less intimidating, but there was no need with him.” And everyone simultaneously realized that he’d been low-key insulting their intelligence since day one
Oh my gosh SAME I didn’t know other people struggled with this too and now I’m so happy to know I’m not alone 😢 my first character I ever made (based off of red yoshi from Mario wonder….) is a copper Dragonborn paladin with a past as a rogue (8-7 Dragonborn who’s excellent at sneaking around) and is chaotic good and that’s FAR from the most odd oc’s I’ve made before Also sry this is so long 😅 my bad
@@an8strengthkobold360Brother you’re too close minded about what people can be. A half orc may not be geared towards wizardry but are you telling me there isn’t a single wizard half orc? What if their dad was a wizard? What if they grew up amongst wizards? What if they just want to be a wizard? I think it’s foolish to assert that they can’t be that or it would be unrealistic. “In my head that feels mismatched” well your generalizations feel racist. A kobold could be a wizard for crying out loud. A kobold could be a paladin. There’s an absurd amount of Dragonborn bards for otherwise a clan-based culture. Half orcs can be anything, they don’t have to be a product of spite in order to be a wizard. As for your elf example: they’re already a war mage in your example. All that does is flesh out their tutor, they were already a wizard so what difference would that make? It’s pure foolishness. You think that a half orc wizard wouldn’t be capable of being a normal wizard without assistance. That’s the only interpretation of needing an enemy and a teacher to be an effective wizard. I think that’s completely ridiculous and very racist if half orcs were real. As a side note Halsin was invented to spite people like you.
I start out with something simple like 'I WANT TO FIND THE TREASURE!' then evolves into something else. Character development. Im creating the characters backstory with the adventure
I really dont see an issue with that trope either lol. Its open ended but looking for wealth or glory is like, the motivation of many irl adventurers lol.
I once played a wizard who was "The most powerful arcane mage in all the elven kingdom". The setting's lore was that the elven kingdom shunned arcane magic. She wasn't the most powerful by any other merit than "there's no one to say otherwise".
3:59 Yeah fuck this OP. I get not wanting to be a combination trauma dumpsite and punching bag, but also when you're dealing with a storytelling medium, literally everybody brings prior baggage and it's 9 times out of 10 unintentional, so don't blame them for having shitty parents and imperfect coping mechanisms. Again, if you want to avoid it, that's fair, you are not a therapist. But OP explicitly states they haven't always avoided it: they went out of their way to flip the story around to blame the victim KNOWING that this is their outlet for shitty experiences with their family. Imagine being his player, you sheepishly submit a very deeply personal backstory about a character who was kicked out for being gay, something that actually or at least nearly happened to you, and you're wondering if you've crossed a line. But DM approves it and says he has plans for this. It's good to feel validated and seen... Until you realize your DM is twisting your clearly written-out story to make it so that your character's parents are, just like your real parents, gaslighting you and saying "We never said those things! You've always been so dramatic. We would never threaten to make you leave." Are you having fun? I thought the fuck not. So I say again: Fuck. This. OP.
He could’ve just talked to the player about it and they could’ve worked something out. Hell, the family being nice when they meet could’ve worked if there was a discussion about it before hand, like maybe the niceness is fake and it was all a trap for the heroes or something. But no, he had to be a vindictive little shit and basically rip the character out of the player’s hands
My current character is the tyoe to have “normal issues” with his family. He’s adopted by a couple of nobles who couldn’t have children. He’s expected to carry the family name and honor ir. But he ran away after fear of punishment for what could disgrace them. Well, it’s become way more than that, and I love it. They are basically black market dealers and cultists, mom is a mage, and they’ve worked with a certain villain we had to help try and apprehend (he got away after we scouted his base and a high level swat team was sent in). It’s a far cry from my own life so I dont think it’s only used by those who use it for “therapy “ of irl issues
@@mc_cheshire Also true, though my character did have something more akin to modern days, and that’s standing up for himself (even as an adult) vs the rules of his parents. Actually, our last interaction with them (specifically his father) had him finally growing a spine (sorta) and just breaking down afterwards when in the privacy of a party member who had gone with him for this interaction
@@phobiawitch835 Then that is much more like the realistic interpersonal issues that the guy was talking about. There's nothing actually wrong with that; I think it can be a cool story. It's just serious and weighty enough that all parties need to agree to participating before it's put into the lore, versus expecting someone to be okay with doing emotional labor. That's my take, anyway.
@@mc_cheshire Oh agreed. It was definitely some, hedty stuff, but the entire party was excited for it cuz my character has, throughout the entire game, been in random conversations about his life growing up. Let’s just say that if it weren’t for him wanting them to be at WORST arrested for various crimes, the entire party wants his parents dead for the effective emotional abuse they’ve put him through (which he didn’t even REALIZE was the situation until only a few sessions before we ended our first campaign. Story will be continued in Campaign 2, a Sandbox continuation of the Dragon Heist module). He still loves them deeply, but realizes how flawed his family (and his relationship with them) is now.
I actually think it’s perfectly fine for a character to have a good, non-traumatic life before the campaign. You really just need some reason they’re adventurous - sure, no happy settled family man is going to go try and kill dragons, but an idealistic kid with dreams of being a great hero would. Or a paladin who’s only ever lived within the walls of his temple. It drives me crazy when other DMs act like the only reason someone would adventure is ~trauma~.
If a DM decides Plague’s parents didn’t actually die, I would actually quit. Plague *sees* his mother die, and is there when his father’s death is announced. Like, yeah orphans are a trope, but I didn’t write Plague to fit it. He’s a kind doctor who was inspired to help save others by his parents’ deaths. He went to medical school and had a practice of his own (he’s lvl 8). He has friends and an adoptive family. He has an alliance with a noble he saved. I worked so hard on making him subvert expectations that someone saying ‘actually, Plague’s dad survived and he just blah blah blah…’ would piss me off and make me cry. I have occupations and personalities for his parents and the primary people in his life. I am a DM and I would *love* to have a player give me this style of backstory, which is why I wrote it to be developed and detailed.
Very easy way to get the "Orphan with no last relations" backstory to work - Oddjobs are a POWERFUL tool for building rapport in a town. And, by sheer statistical chance, someone gave your orphan goods rather than coin. Maybe it's a coat, or a knife, or food, SOMETHING... And to a streetrat surviving off of nothing, especially if you're going with the full-on no-home streetrat wandering the city line... Those gifts are POWERFUL and will stick in your character's mind. Sure, the butcher you cleaned up the gutters for those couple of times, you may not know her that well. But you know the knife she gave you as payment VERY well. And you'd use it to cut any thief who tried to steal from her shop in a heartbeat. Yeah, that tailor you delivered a very important and valuable shipment to isn't really someone you'd call a friend. But getting that blanket in the middle of winter saved your life. And you'll never forget his smiling face as he thanked you. You can have no lasting friendships and still know people. Even if you don't know their names.
A really dumb plot that would be a funny joke for a one shot The party goes to fight an adult red dragon, the sorcerer having a strange grudge against it. According to the party, they’ve never met the dragon before, yet they hold such resentment over the beast. When the party arrives infront of the dragon, spells and steel raised, the sorcerer goes to speak out however the Paladin shouts out Paladin: “I’ve come for the child support you owe my mother!” Sorcerer: “wait what? That’s why I’m here!… who else is here because they are trying to get their dead beat dragon dad to pay child support” The entire party raises their hand and proceeded to kick their dads shit in.
That's *the* default reason to be an adventurer though? Why would even somewhat sane people throw themselves into mortal danger even once, much less somewhat frequently, if it wasn't to get fat-payed? I mean; bards, clerics, paladins, and wizards have some baked-in motivation but why would any rogue or fighter even consider it when there are cushy, in-town jobs their skill sets are well suited to? I'm not saying you *can't* contrive reasons beyond simple cash to motivate a character but it's "hands down" the most reliable, relatable one by far.
I once had a player give me this one. He said he was a mercenary with a mercenary's heart and no ties to anyone. Then, there was an area of illusion that showed each character his/her 'heart's desire'. One saw his lost family, another the tribe he missed, another saw a beloved mentor, and one saw a lover. Mercenary-heart saw piles and piles of treasure. Player became *unglued* and ranted that there was way more to his character than just wanting money! He stormed off and left the table.
I had a half-orc barbarian who idolized her great grandfather who was an orc warlord. Meanwhile her parents owned a well respected bakery in a very nice village. The DM had them send a box of cookies and a hand knit sweater whenever we came back from an adventure.
Honestly as a dm I can level with and work with pretty much any backstory, but the one that really gets my goat is when players include graphic sexual assault in their backstory cuz I am not a licensed therapist and don’t know how to help you deal with that trauma
This is an interesting one because you don't have to be a therapist. Let them run away from their problems, turn their characters sexual assault into fuel to get them to go into other situations, increasingly more dangerous ones, ones you expect from an adventure. Bandits, wolves, goblins, spooky warrior guys and skeletons, ooze, gnolls, zombies, vampires, cultists, ect ect ect. Have them run through those situations and when the character bulks, remind them of the fear at their back, the thing creeping up on them, that what is behind them, trying to get them is far more scary then the disgusting thing in front of them. Give them strong friends, buld scenarios that link them with the rest of the party. Then later in the campaign, have them go back, let them dread and hate it, use the NPCs and the other players to comfort them, reinforce them, but leave the monster that violated them as level one as nothing. If they lash out at that person, let them, let him win and show them just how far they've come from the scared person that got hurt so long ago. Fudge dice if you have to. Let the event explode to give them that closure.
@@androconiachangeling6535 Well, making the monster level one and easy to beat may undermine the catharsis ("The thing I've been scared of all along is this pathetic nuisance I could've kicked to death in one hit?"). For the rest I agree that this is a good way to approach it, but also, if the DM is not comfortable with a story like this or is unsure they can do it justice, it is their right to back out. You don't need to be a therapist - using someone with more experience as a soundboard or doing research can definitely help, as well as talking to the player about their experiences - but if you're aware that you're not qualified, not cut out for this, underprepared, or you're just worried about hurting this person, it's your right to choose not to do it.
@@trishapellis So to approach the first part of this. Your character didn't start strong. If your character was a victim of something like this, chances are, they trusted this person, were manipulated by them, then were taken advantage of. Chances are, at this time, that hostile character may have even been a level or two higher. But they aren't going on an adventure like your character is. You've missed the point. They couldn't kick them to death when they started, but they could when they returned. The start, they were just a relatively normal individual, living in a relatively normal place, doing relatively normal things. By the end, you've carved up wolves, torn apart tribes of monsters, beaten down the undead, formed friendships, saved a village from vampires, slain a dragon, you've gone through a whole cycle of running in to problems with the idea that the thing behind you was infinitely scarier. So when you get back to them, and they're *still* just normal, of course they're trivial. They're a whole lot weaker than you remember them being. Your character never stopped seeing them as something that could just casually hurt them, something that could use and break your character. For the rest you're 100% right. I never said a DM *had* to do this and it's okay to back out and not like it. You shouldn't ban it, but at least explain why it makes you uncomfortable. This also doesn't *need* to involve therapy, it can just be a good story about growth, the player that made the character very well could never have experienced these things themselves. I even stated parts of this in the first sentence.
yeah it's good to have boundaries of what stories you're trying to tell as a DM, i wouldn't bring my cannibalistic fighter into a campaign where the DM wasn't comfortable with eating people. i work with a grimdark/hyperviolent setting with some campaigns i run too but im not too interested in scat so i don't make mention of it, plenty of blood to go around instead
I think this is a fair boundary to set. It makes sense to cut out things you arent comfortable with or equipped to handle. Topics like that cant just be used for light story fodder. And if you arent able to unpack or make something like that work no one should expect you to.
The guy with the parents post has absolutely ran into a few people like that, they do exist, but his way of talking about it just rubs the so wrong. It costs nothing to just say to a player "Hey, I don't want to deal with the topic of parental abuse in this game. Please choose something else." and a hell of a lot more to apparently string that player along for half a campaign and then act like they were the only problem in that situation. Proof: I watched something similar happen between a DM and player. It sucked to watch and the campaign absolutely stopped being fun. Afterwards I had a way worse view of the DM than the alleged trauma dumper.
During my first time as a DM, I had a player convince me to ban backstories based off of popular movies. After two weeks of talking to him about it, he handed me a mix of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (complete with copy/pasted names) and Batman. Now I don't watch a lot of movies or television, so it's pretty easy to name a movie character I won't know. Now I also understand some movie/television characters would make for great DnD characters, but that one player made me skeptical of anyone who brings one to my table, because he was painfully lazy about it.
That is a little much but there are plenty of cool movie and book tropes that are useable. You can always try and work with player to turn it into a more unique story that is inspired from said trope.
Exactly. Currently in my game I've got a player who made a character inspired somewhat by Eddie Brock (aka Venom) from Spider-Man. The character, Samuel Brockman (Sam to his friends) is a Variant Human Fathomless Warlock/Draconic Sorcerer (black dragon heritage). He is the son of a noble family in Waterdeep, but doesn't really care much for them. He runs his own newspaper, and spent a good chunk of his money from adventuring to build a shelter for the poor in the city, so that they have a safe place to stay and don't fall into the grips of criminal groups (such as Xanithar's Guild).
I legitimately told my players to go ahead and completely rip off a character they love, from a show or movie if they want. Because by the end of the campaign they are going to more than likely wind up different anyway. Some players don't have the same creative muscles as others. So its not a bad thing to use something tride and true. Nothing is 100 percent original. Steal (or borrow) if you must.
The best backstories and characters I've had pitched to me as a DM are those who wrote them to work specifically for this campaign. And I personally believe it should be a DM's right to outright tell a player "No." if a character they pitch is completely not working with the material.
Reasons why I have a huge backlog of concepts. I get ideas when I'm not in games, and then when I do get in games I make something entirely new to fit the GM's specific lore (as well as to mesh with the rest of the party) instead of the generically usable concepts I'd had before.
@@Vgy1592 And those characters are usually much richer to play than the "Concept I wrote up five months ago" When the table works together to not only create a story, but create the "cast" of the story, you get in my opinion much better parties for adventures.
Honestly, The most annoying characters ever are the ones with 0 motivation. I attempted to DM a campaign for some people, and there were 2 guys who made characters who were "cool guys who don't care who are only in it for the money." There was no motivation, no reason why they were greedy, this was it. They basically wanted to play an rpg. I've learned now how to push people to create motivation. Now a days I would ask "Why do they want money?" and have them flesh something out. But MAN is it too easy for some players to make lazy backstories.
This interaction played out at a table I was playing at. Bard player: Proceeds to hide from the encounter and the party and not engage with the scenario. (Mind you, this was an on-going campaign, so it's not like it was session one) DM: "What's going on here? Doesn't your character want fame? Fortune? To go on grand adventures?" Bard Player: "No. He doesn't want any of that." DM: "Then why the F*CK is he in my campaign?"
@@ArawnNox i like to play rather serious campaigns, but of course humor will come in when necessary. anytime someone wants to play in my games, I say it is a requirement to have a setting-fit goal.
One of my players did the same thing, no backstory other than I am a money hungry fighter and my parent's are dead. There was no reason for him to be with the party so I asked him if it was okay for me to add to his backstory and he said sure. Mistakes were made. I made him a descendent of Tiamat and explained that his greed came from her blood and that his parent's weren't just killed by raiders but were actually killed by him when Tiamat took over his body during a celestial solstice. One of the other players is the paladin of Bahamut and things have been very interesting between the whole group because of these two opposing sides.
10:42 Alright, this one had me up to this point. Not believable huh? Alright, Bet. "I was but a lad, barely a year out from attending the towns sole schoolhouse, when the flames took my families house... I was the only one who made it out.. I was always the quiet child, rarely went out unless it was to do chores, never made any friends, or none that stuck with me after the fire anyway.. the rest of my extended family wanted nothing to do with me, my parents were the problem children of their own families I learned, so I was lumped in with them as a bad egg. One day a kingdom/empire guard spotted me, and had me hauled off to the capital alongside other street children. There, we were trained.. abused, beaten... kept alone so we couldn't bond over our tormentors cruelty, and then sent out as disposable saboteurs and assassins. Those who survived were given more training, better training, allowed to mingle with others, got respect. When it was my turn, I failed my mission, but did not die, so I used the skills in stealth they had drilled into me, and slipped away, keeping out of sight, until I reached the borders, now I sit in this tavern/inn, using what meager coin I have been able to find and pilfer to pay for a room and meal, and hopefully start anew..." A bit edgelordy and overly sad, but I came up with that on the spot, a believable reason for a pc to not have family or friends or anyone else in their life. Editted for spelling mistakes.
Holy shit, that "no normal family issues in backstories, fantastical ones only" is quite possibly THE worst take on character backstories I've ever heard. If anything, it would piss me off much more for all of a character's issues to be based around grandiose supernatural events with no grounding in reality. And going as far as to rewrite players' backstories without their permission (the way it's phrased, seemingly to "punish" them for writing... a plausible form of conflict)?! If I played with a DM who reduced a complex conflict in my character's backstory, familial or otherwise, to a trivial, black-and-white, one-sided thing and passed it off as a "reveal", I would be livid. I would probably quit on the fucking spot. Incidentally, my group actually DID once have a shithead teenager PC whose problems were almost entirely his own fault. This was established in his characterization and backstory from the very start, and it was a major theme of the character. He was a fantastic character, and out of all the characters that player has ever played, he's still my favorite.
There was an attempt among my college creative writing class to do a campaign and, i am not bullshitting, I was the only one whatsoever who did anything throughout the first and only session. *Every* *single* player that was not me just passed on opportunities to do anything at all because all of their characters had social anxiety. The DM clearly allowed it because he didn't want to be 'mean' about it.
At that point I have to ask: was it the characters, or players who had social anxiety? Did they even want to play the game, or were they forcing themselves to do it because of an assignment?
I have recently regretted making a character with social anxiety. I don't do it often, but I figured with half the party being charisma, I'd make a more shy character to let those charisma characters take the lead on social encounters easier. We just sit there in silence entirely too often.
You know, I actually created a character to deal with my own social anxiety. I’m a really introverted person, that does not have much social experience. And my character is a witty bard, that does lots of social stuff for my party. With him I use DnD to imitate different social situations and learn how to deal with them: come out with excuses, jokes, pick-up lines etc. I even told the DM when she asked if I’m ok to start not from level one (I was joining an existing party): “I’m competent at combat, I created this character, specifically, to work on a social pillar of the game”. I didn’t tell that I lack these skills IRL though. And yes, I've chosen a group with a female DM, deliberately to have realistic responses from the female NPCs. P.S. Strangely enough, playing low int character makes it even harder then just high cha: “no, your character is not smart enough to figure out that those doors that lead to the smithy must have traces of coal nearby as well as tracks of heavy stuff being regularly dragged inside and out”
8:27 What is that supposed to mean? I can't make my character the way I want with amnesia and I can be forced to play as someone with no memories even if I already have something cooked up? Decisions like that are absolutely up to the player and a DM forcing otherwise is a huge red flag.
I have a general rule of thumb: In whatever backstory you come up with, it needs to be a) grounded in the setting and you need at least two characters from backstory that have influenced you and are still around. And b), you need a motivation why someone would risk their life to go adventuring. Having a reluctant or cowardly adventurer is fine but they need enough innate motivation to bite hooks. If I don't have these two, I probably can't integrate your character in my world in a way that will interest you.
watched through the series again last week, absolutely loved his arc, but it is certainly difficult to pull off in the grand scheme of things, which is why I think I loved it so much
Happy back stories can work but you have to have a reason you're out in the world that isn't boredom. Example: "Well, I have 15 siblings and Ma and Pa just can't afford to feed em all, so here I am!" It gives two possible motives for adventuring that make sense, either you're just trying to take one mouth out of the home to ease the burden, or you're trying to make more money for them. This works for any class as well.
Being one of the youngest in the family work even in wealthy ones. Historically, the eldest child would earn the lion's share of the family's business, land or heritage. The others would be given various job and education opportunity (merchant guilds, religion, army, profitable marriages...) in their order of birth. But the youngest most likely would have to hit the road and build their own path, even in noble families.
The "feat greater than lvl indicates" trope really needs to be replaced by a braggard backstory. The character claims to have done this, and maybe have been given credit for it, but hasn't really done anything. Think King from one-punch man.
Happened to me in a small campaign that sadly ended falling out. We were just starting out on dnd and since I knew the rules best I was DM. One of my friends wanted to play a dwarf folk hero, and as his tale, he wanted to have been the one who defeated an army. I didn't outright reject the concept, but we did rework it together: dwarves LOVE telling epic tales to the point they'll sometimes change a thing or 2 to make a story seem even cooler than it already is. His character was one of the combatants in a war against an army of dark elves who were invading the kingdom through a cave entrance that led to the underdark. His character did win the war for his people...by blowing up a wall that caused the passage to be sealed, which stopped the invasion, but also caused great losses to his people, including his brother. The tale that's circled around however usually doesn't mention the how, only that there were great, yet necessary losses and that he was the hero who single handedly banished the army back to the dirty caves where they belonged (also I'm guilty of the "reviving a dead character" thing cause I 100% made it so the brother and some of his men survived the cave in only to be captured by mindflayers and turned into very angry and vengeful duergar not happy about being abandoned by their kind)
I've done the "amnesiac orphan" thing. Story to the other players was "amnesiac orphan with some talents". Story to the DM was "evil psychopath who killed his parents and ran off". Took like a year of real time for the party to figure out that the string of horrific murders that took place everywhere wasn't coming from the DM :)
came to the comments just for this comment.. literally spitting in your traumatised players' faces, and downright telling them it's their fault their parents treated them poorly was a huge yikes, and i would walk if my DM did that shit
I can kinda see that guy's perspective. I get not wanting to be a verbal punching bag for a player who's got problems with their own family they need to sort out in a game where everyone is trying to have fun. And it's not like the guy doesn't make it clear that he doesn't allow those kinds of backstories
@@violetdoggo I do agree in that regard… but also maybe don’t trauma dump on your GM and use him as therapy? I imagine that makes most people uncomfortable.
@@gerstein03 Except that they said they *did* allow for the backstory with the *sole purpose* of gaslighting the player as a part of some sadistic revenge thing, probably for reminding them of their own trauma.
Character has no backstory because they want the DM to make it up for them. I hate the idea of a "blank check" backstory because it means the DM has to do more work to not only come up with the backstory, but also tie it into the campaign. I had a DM who invented a whole "kobold messiah" backstory for a player who made an amnesiac kobold who crawled out of a sewer grate one day with no idea who he was or where he came from, and the problem with that was he devoted so much time and energy to making it work that he neglected developing the other characters' backstories at a decent or consistent pace. Between the kobold and the tiefling artificer in the group who was metagamed from day 1 to be the party's "main character", he hyperfixated on those two to the point where everyone else just got forgotten. When I complained that my character didn't have sufficient motivation to care about her involvement in the plot, it laid the groundwork for my eventual expulsion when I started pointing out how skewed his focus was
As a DM I hate that as well. In the long term it is just me doing everything while the player do nothing. If I do make something up, it will not help them move the plot forward as it only matters as long as I push that forward. If I stop and turn my attention to someone else the player will just go back to do absolutely nothing. If anyone gives me a blank sheet today. It will remain blank. I don’t have time to write your character for you.
+trueblade39, writes _"Character has no backstory because they want the DM to make it up for them"_ Oh my god, that's even lazier than the "amnesia" backstory. My main problem with both (aside from the player being lazy and that being a huge red-flag) is your back story also details the whys and wherefors of your personality and such a player is showing you that they don't plan on their character having a personality. Such a situation _could_ be acceptable if you know the player well and you know they are a top-notch role player who is looking to you to make them an interesting character for them to play as a challenge.
As a DM, if you decide to go with a character having amnesia have most of the NPCs they meet treat them poorly, some even openly hostile. They enter a bar and order a drink? The barmaid slaps the character across the face and yells at them to get out. They get robbed and report the theft to the guards? The guard says "Now you want my help? You should have thought of that before. Now get out of my sight before I arrest you and let you rot in prison!"
I have had a couple of those. i warned them that 1 they wont have as much fun because of being less invested and 2 i would absolutely be vindictive about it. if they still insisted on blanking their backstory i did exactly as promised. I had NPCs that they were required to meet at some point be relatives who would bring up really embarrassing things about blank background around the party as well as made at least 1 that they would actually like/ sympathize with then have that NPC drag them into all sorts of trouble like having to bail them out of jail or pay off their debt or do a favor to the lord they slighted all small/ short things that were inconvenient. I do the reverse for the ones who plan too much. You made a whole town with a bunch of details strictly for your backstory? Awesome! Ok so where is the adventures guild then? No not what buildings its by, I need the left and rights for directions from where the party currently is. Incidentally, what was the name of the townsfolk you were asking for directions and their personality? A backstory is there to provide plot hooks/world development for the DM to felsh out and buffs/ connections for the players to use. The DM then portrays the more developed world to the rest of the players that then bask in your personal side story rife with benefits.
My current character has had many adventures before level 1…but he never did the fighting. He was an archeologist who always hired other adventurers to protect him. He was basically an NPC escort quest in his backstory. Now he’s a warlock that can do his own protecting on the most important expedition of his life
One of my favorites is simply "civilian with a grudge". Imagine it this way. Someone gets assaulted by bandits. They get badly wounded and left for dead, but don't die. Now they're pissed. So they originally go to the local adventurer hangout, looking to hire somebody. But you know what? That's not good enough. He wants blood on his hands for what they did to him. So instead of hiring the party, he joins it. And you can tailor their job to be relevant to certain classes. Want to play a rogue? Who better to pick the locks than the guy who knows how to make them? Want a ranger? Village hunter. Warrior? Village guard. Barbarian? Town drunk. Monk? You worked at the local orphanage and got fired because of your new scars. Hell, you can even work in warlock, by saying they were offered a deal to save their life. Sorceror? The experience awakened their latent magic potential. Druid? They were saved by a woodland animal. Paladin? They felt the presence of their god as they were on death's door, or worked in the town's place of worship. Cleric? Ditto. But, this kind of origin has two major benefits. For one, your character starts with a connection to the world. Possibly family who live in areas the party might need to visit, or friends who can back them up in a pinch. And for the second major benefit, you have a clear motive, but no predetermined plan. At some point, your character will have sacrifices to make if they want their vengeance. But nothing is predetermined. That said, one of my favorite combinations of the above factors is a villager turned warlock/rogue. Pact of the blade. And their weapon of choice? The dagger that was put through their throat, that made them make the pact to survive. And when they find the motherfucker who stabbed them? The dagger gets planted in the same spot, and shoved fully through with a point-blank eldritch blast. They don't get to make a pact. They get to die.
Love this. I like to say that my group has this unspoken assumption that anyone could become a player character/adventurer, and it sounds like you have the same sort of mindset. :)
For the "NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN" comment, I gotta give my two cents. My primary main character had normal mortal parents who were verbally and physically abusive. (Not SA) and since my main character is a jerk but has a good heart, if I made him a jerk with good parents, everyone would hate him. And no, I'm not projecting my own problems with my parents. My parents are absolutely amazing, and I love them to death. They think my main character having abusive parents is great because despite his apprehension to be an adventurer, its better than going back home to them
My character is dad died in battle against the BBEG in his own quest. Mom had to give him up ( Mom was an Amazon/Barbarian and had to give him up. Later, I tweaked her to a Celestial to play an Aasimar in a new game) I might actually create a character where the parents are alive and well, basically the antihisis of the edgelord character
Yeah I totally disagree w that “NEIN NEIN NEIN” comment and would hate to play w that DM. Just bc you make a character w trauma, doesn’t mean it’s projecting your own shit. I have a character that I would love to play at some point; and her abandoning mother and abusive father are a portion of a backstory that sets up an entire thematic concept of inner strength and resilience in the face of external helplessness. That thematic concept is loosely *derived* from my own experience with hardship, but anything you make is derived from your own experience. And the huge thing is - if they were to meet her mother (can’t meet the father bc self-defense patricide) and the DM pulled a “you were just a shithead teenager” it would entirely undercut the very thing that makes this character special. It would break my heart to see my Mona Lisa of D&D characters reduced to nothing.
@@skylark7921 honestly even if you ARE projecting on a character, just airing out associated trauma in the course of natural roleplay can be cathartic for you and anyone else involved that might also hold similar trauma, and can be done without turning your DM into a therapist, and yeah, the fact the DM wouldn't just say no, and then twist things to make the PC look like an awful person with a great family is a HUGE red flag
I kinda got the sense that A) this is something that DM makes very clear he doesn't allow for character backstories B) he's not opposed to stuff like "daddy is an abusive shithead drunk" and more opposed to things like "daddy is passive aggressive, subtly homophobic, subtly racist, and subtly disappointed in you no matter what you do" and C) that he's experienced it enough times that he's sick of having his players use him as his therapist If I'm off base then yeah he's kind of a dick and even if I'm not it's still a bit of an extreme reaction but I can completely see why a DM wouldn't feel comfortable in that situation. The dungeon master is not the father you have problems with and they are not your therapist. It's not right to put it on them to be either
One of my absolute favorite characters of all time was the wife in a happily married bard couple. They would go an adventures separately, returning together to share their collected stories and trysts. That adventure ended in a dramatic TPK, and is still one of my favorite campaigns ever.
I have used amnesia for only one of my DND characters before. BUT I knew and wrote out the entire story of who he was before and how he got his mind blanked by more powerful forces that he had a "disagreement" with. His mind being wiped was why he was level 1. (An as he leveled he was slowly remembering things) He wasn't adventuring to remember he was living as as a hermit when the party found him. As he remembered I was gonna decide where he was at if he wanted revenge or just to count his blessings and move on. (Dm story dependent)
In a campaign I currently playing in, I told my DM "My character has amnesia with absolutely no idea who he was before. Here's a write up of everything he's done in the two years since he woke up. Go nuts." I think making a character with amnesia without knowing what their previous life was is completely fine. Leave that part entirely up to the DM. Focus on what your character does remember, and you can really put yourself in their shoes when the hints of their past life begin to crop up.
@@KodasGardenTrue. It does require both the DM to be fine basically making the character and the player being fine with whatever the DM throws at them but in theory it could be cool
And what about amnesia, but with a backstory? Like a lot of shit happened, this character was actually really powerful (a high-level wizard), he just does not remember anything. But sometimes he has glimpses of his former training/education through the “Knowledge from a Past Life” (he is a reborn). Also, as he is relearning magic, he starts remembering stuff.
The "Being an Amnesiac is up to the GM, not the player" actually pissed me off. I once had a character with a backstory about being sepreated from their siblings and was one the hunt to find them once more and make sure they were safe. And the GM thought it would be more tragic if I also had Amnesia... The hell... This completely ruins the character becuase how can they know to look for their family if they can't remember their family? Their entier motivation is gone, their backstory is gone, everything becuase it's "More tragic."
Not a trope, but one thing that irks me that ive experienced, as a player, is when the GM gives your character a nickname you didnt ask for. My first ever character's name is "Akko". Immediately after hearing that name, the GM said "Taco". Like...no
"I come from a centaur barbarian clan and I for some reason have an innate desire to protect the people around me." What to do, what to do..... Your character's clan are normally brutal raiders. You discover during the course of the campaign that you are under a tweaked geas that obligates you to protect those weaker than yourself. Are the desires and wants that have motivated you for so long even real?
I use the badass trope sometimes but I usually pair it with it being from their youth and now they're at level 1 again due to being out the game for too long. last one was an elf who took up being a merchant for a good few hundred years but business went under and so now he's back to mercenary work to try and get the funds to start over. I also paired it up with him having had like 7 wives or so and now has like a shitload of kids and grand kids everywhere.
Similar to a character I'm running rn. In their youth they were a pretty renownee gladiator and warrior. But I play them at their elder years, starting back at lvl 3 due to not having kept up with training and no longer fighting as often, as well as having a new goal and proffession in life.
Yeah like at around the 5 minute mark with that dm complaining about someone giving their character a more normal family drama backstory. when they said the people who used this trope were people who wanted to vent out their irl frustrations onto them… the anger there was actually understandable since yeah no one wanna be a therapist on the spot. But on the other hand when they would mention that they claimed the backstory was “lazy” and how they would actively recon the hell out of it and say the family was actually nice and the pc was the butthead, that’s just extremely petty on the dms part. If the player want a more down to earth family drama backstory, and it’s clear it’s not meant to be an outlet for irl issues, let them use it. There really is no reason to basically shut on the concept and recon it mid game. With how the dm talks out it kinda makes me think the dm secretly has irl family drama issues themselves and wanna avoid that kinda stuff in his games because of that.
@@amethystimagination3332Probably just one specific player. Instead of actually addressing the problem with that player though, they've ended up fighting symptoms.
This video has taught me that my next dnd character is going to be a fallen god who has taken down entire kingdoms single-handedly and slain a dragon with his bare fists but is actually a guy who is a pathological liar who is living in a fantasy
Also make sure to make them an Orphan who did know their parents and they were awful. And that their ghost haunt you to keep telling you how shit you are.
Some of these people are the most pretentious dms I’ve ever heard of. Let people make their characters the way they want. It’s YOUR JOB to make it work. As a dm this was infuriating to listen to.
I don't ban any particular backstory trope. I like working around it and make part of their backstory what happens in the first few sessions. That said, one of my online players wanted to do a thing where their new character was pretending to be another character for some 'big reveal' to the party. Thing is, the party has no ties to either character, one of whom may or may not even exist. "I was just pretending to be the Masked So-and-so, when I'm actually Me!" "Masked who now?" The 'big reveal' they were hoping for would have been met with crickets and confusion. I didn't ban or say no to it, but I urged the player to consider an alternative concept.
@@OfHollowMasks Once. I watched his actions during the first two or three sessions of the game closely. Wanted to help people, refuse money, just have fun and make friends, etc. So his backstory I filled in as a criminal hireling who took his job way too far and was 'taken out' by his employer for costing them a big job. Game didn't go long enough for it to pay off, scheduling and all that. But the idea is simple: See how they act, what choices they make, then make their history work against them in some interesting way that can be changed on the fly.
One of my characters was a retired army captain who once lead a group of his elite soldiers into combat with a black dragon in his den and didn't have a single casualty. One of his great feats was that he able to kill wyrmlings with a single swing on his sword. We were also told we'd be starting at level 10. I did the math, and made sure it was all possible to do as I was coming up with the background.
Yeah, level 10 is a pretty reasonable level to be a dragon killer. Hell, even at level 5 you could conceivably have killed a Young dragon (though probably not single-handedly)
I had a cavalier fighter character who’s backstory was this: “He has slain the fiercest of dragons, saving countless villages, and becoming one of the strongest hero’s in existence…or at least, that’s what he’s confused for. A little Kobold stumbled across the corpse of a dwarves warrior, with extremely high quality armor, and so, he took it, and the corpse’s weapons, to better survive in the wild. Now, he’s been confused for the mighty warrior, and has had to flee the continent to avoid the paparazzi, and enemies of the warrior he knows nothing of.”
I love the image of this tiny kobold wearing this armor and carrying a weapon slightly bigger than him trying to run away from people mobbing him and a guy vowing to annihilate him.
@@wantedbird55srandomchannel28the kobold: “wait wait wait!!! No-no-no-no-no! RUN! RUN RUN!” The bbeg with a magnet: “Get the hell back here Olanthar the unbroken!”
I do not get why so many GMs are so stuck up on backstory. Yes, it can provide you with some convenient hooks and can help with setting up how to roleplay the character, but honestly speaking, unless the GM specifically go out of their way and spends effort to tie things into those backstories they are only going to have a very minor effect on the game, at least unless the player themselves tie it in or uses it as an excuse for something. The latter is really something to watch out for in backstories, what can this be used as an excuse for, and a lot of the bad cases here comes from how they can be excuses to introduce problematic things from the players side.
Honestly I feel like the DM's complaining here feel entitled to expect a perfectly fleshed out character that belongs in a bestselling book right at the start....Good characters grow...Every character starts with a basic idea and it continues from there... These DM's complaining about ,,basic" characters sound like when working with clay they'd complain it doesn't come as finished piece
The problem some DMs have is when a player expects the DM to make a character for them, and instead of talking and figuring it out together, just gives them nothing. Yes characters change during the story, but the still need to be a character to begin with.
To be fair on the guy in the first story, sister-wife isn't exactly unheard of in canon as such a family exists in the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign
In my first ever game I ran, my brother played a Human Ranger who had the backstory trope of being a retired army veteran at level 1. But the way he played it made sense. His mental scars from the war he took part in made him retire early, where he stopped training at all and fell into heavy alcoholism. He was rusty and usually drunk, so he wasn't able to do all the badass stuff he was known for while still serving. I thought it was cool at least.
I've done something similar. The character was a Dragonborn Ranger, Soldier background. Backstory is that, 30 years before the campaign, he was called on to serve in a conflict know as "The War of the Fallen Sky". The war was a brutal one, and left him with deep mental scars that lead him to retreat from other people for some time. Duing the adventure, he was always placing himself on the front lines, trying to keep his new companions from harm. When he got to 3rd level (drakewarden subclass), he introduced his Drake to the party as 'an old friend'.
Thats not a bad backstory. Honestly tho I reject the idea that some people have that someone cant be an army veteran at level 1. Unless ur backstory is that youre the chris kyle ultimate sniper archer of DnD. But theres no reason you couldnt be just a regular archer serving in an army at level 1. Maybe that could even lead to you wanting to be an adventurer. You served in an army did some mundane archer things maybe saw a skirmish or two but now you want actual fame and glory or to do something meaningful etc etc. Its like people have this idea like in real life that army service already makes you some badass jason bourne level killer when in reality more often than not its just busy work and standin around.
I have to say that I disagree with not letting PCs have relateably shit parents. It's one thing if you, as the DM, don't feel safe or comfortable playing out such scenarios that have the possibility of hitting so close to home. Safety first and all that. But to imply that the player is getting angry *at you* for playing an NPC that was designed to be off-putting and nasty doesn't make sense. The players aren't made at you, they're mad at the villains. And not every villain has to be some world-ending baddy. As humans, we process emotional turmoil through play. We reenact horrible events in our life to work through them, in environments that allow us to run through it without being hurt. Having relatable problems with our NPC families can be part of that. We role play out these scenarios, sometimes several times, so we can move on in real life. If I was banned from doing that, I would have lost it on my parents long ago in a very unhelpful, unhealthy way. Also, you can have both. I wrote my half elf artificer's mother to be a judgemental bitch nobel who wants utter control of her daughter's life, and highly despises her inventing and longing to adventure. The DM, who is also my husband, knew I was trying to process my very negative, very complicated feelings for my real mother, and really leaned into her being a gaslighting, emotionally abusive monster, with the reveal of her being a balor in disguise who killed my real mother upon my birth, due to the fact that my real mother sold her soul to have a child in the first place (truth me told, he was probably using the opportunity to process the fact that my mom admitted that she never liked him. There's a reason I don't like my mom). What started out as "my mom is super controlling and disapproves of my choice to be an artificer" turned into inspiration for the campaign's BBEG. And that's just her. Three of my four main PCs have parental issues. (Human rouge's mother hid a very large secret about her origins and gaslit her about it for years, and kalashtar cleric's father figure was very physically abusive). The only one who isn't is my halfling bard, whose parents died when she was a kid, and she just used a wish spell to bring them back to life. Even then, playing her helps me process my very deep relationship with the crippling loneliness I experienced growing up, and the fear of losing the friends I have now. Again, if you feel unsafe playing out realistic scenarios of family drama, that's okay. But it's still an important theme to consider.
Though I do understand not wanting to be a verbal punching bag, that's something you should talk to your player about and make sure they're not just trying to vent. But Honestly I suspect the dm of that section of the video actually suffers from irl family drama issues themselves and just don't wanna see it in game. Again not unreasonable, but you should still be upfront about it and not throw the players under the bus for coming up with the backstory.
I don't like when the character has reasons to not adventure with the party, not that they have no reason to adventure but have reasons to leave after whatever they had to do in that city/place. Like delivering a crate of goods then just leaving the next day to return to their place of work( like a merchant guild or a boat with the leader of the merchants) which has to do with their backstory
On one hand, I get what you mean. On the other I remember a campaign where I'd accidentally done that, and the realization that my character was more-or-less unintentionally kidnapped when she was just guiding people to the place, as a local makes me giggle to this day. There was also something wild about the fact that by the time the campaign ended, she was the only original party member still alive.
I got some good advice once in my early days of DMing. Ask your players a some very basic questions when they create characters. These 2 are really important: 1) What do I uniquely bring to the party? 2) What do I need from the party that I can’t get/do on my own? You can rephrase these questions however you want, but it’s good to be explicit because sometimes people have an interesting idea for a character and forget this is also a team game.
I REALLY hate being the guy to let you know this, but in regards to the first story? You know “Alabama in faerun”? Yeah… Greenwood (creator and creative owner of FR) has stated that incest is not only commonplace in faerun, but most siblings have experimented in some fashion. Greenwood was a….. creative type….
Yeah, that was my reaction to that comment as well. Just another person who's only familiar with the extremely sanitized version of Faerun published by WoTC. Also if I remember correctly, it was stated that it's only really the nobles that engage in that stuff, because they can afford the contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies resulting from such consanguineous pairings.
yeah alot of back story hate. is dms that just arent familiar with the setting. hate dead parents all ya want. but ALOT of adventurers would logically have dead parents or at the very least parents that actively oppose them taking up a profession that has like a 90% fatality rate.
@yojimarusilverfang Where can I find these un-sanatized writings of Faerun? They sound way more interesting to read about than the watered-down drivel that wotc shat out with 5e.
When it comes to epic backstories, it's good to treat them are the start of your journey. Unless you join a campaign mid session, you typically start at level one. If your backstory is so incredibly that fighting a bunch of goblins on wargs feels like a downgrade rather than a genuine fight for survival, you probably went overboard. Try to treat the backstory as the beginning of your character becoming a badass, or the point where they first woke up to their own potential.
This. Your backstory is the preamble to the start of your story. It's the part of your story that TVs shows show in flashbacks. It's supposed to detail who you are and what your motivations are. Not what you've accomplished, your accomplishments are what the game is supposed to be about.
I’m actually writing a character for a campaign in a few days. Would “been trained to ride a griffin” be a good point but he’s not gotten one yet, be a good backstory point?
@@benjaminthibieroz4155 It depends on the campaign. Starting at level one is done for people who are new to the TTRPG or stories that involve the hero starting from scratch. For an example where that doesn't happen, the Calamity saga from critical role start at higher level because the story is hero's at their prime failing, and they wanted to get to the point of said prequel. So if you think skipping the struggle of your character to make a name for themselves to the point that people treat them as hero's gets to the interesting part faster, your not alone. You can skip certain levels, but your group and game master have to be okay with it. My comment was aimed at people going into a campaign that is meant to explore a hero starting from next to nothing and acting like playing god slaying bosses won't be out of place.
So I have an issue if your backstory consists primarily of 'I am in a position of power and influence in the setting the story takes place in.' Like being the primary law man of the entire setting, a king, or high ranking judge. Anyone who can effectively make the whole setting bend over backwards for them or gives them a constant excuse to brag about how they're a big shot. I will, however, allow stuff like 'a disposed member of royalty or nobility trying to retake what's their's from the villain' or otherwise HAVE been in a position of power of influence they've since lost and need to regain, heck even something like Princess and the Frog where the prince was cut off by his family to learn a lesson about humility. I will also ease up on this if the party is starting at Tier 3 or higher, as at that point, EVERY PC is in a position of power and influence over the setting, because you're the big shot borderline superhumans who can destroy entire armies singlehandedly. But if your character starts off with a noticably higher position of power than the rest of the party at level 1, then we might have problems.
One campaign I played in, the concept was people from different universes getting yoinked into an interdimensional prison for nebulous 'reality will break if you're allowed to still be around' reasons, so most of the characters were rulers, major power players et cetera, I was even playing a straight up proto-deity from Godbound. It was hilarious because we had an otherwise good guy with an ego problem who would go on and on in character about how they were a great conqueror and ruler of their world, then at one point my character just offhandedly mentioned they were a literal god like it was no big deal and clowned on them a little.
4:12 I can see that one being good with a noble family. Especially if the child has to take over and they become an adventurer instead. There's so many stories that can come out of that.
You don't have bad backstory type only players that are drama queens/MC syndrome/Lazy or any other problematic personalities. If you want you can make practically anything works if you try make it work in game world/campaing.
Honestly, it would be cool if you choose the amnesiac trope, but then ask the DM to try something with it if they want to, as long as it won't ruin the fun of the character for you.
I believe if you work closely with your DM, you can absolutely make the dragon-killing badass backstory work. Ya just gotta play a bard. If you know what I mean... I also made that trope work with an artificer once. He was basically a fantasy Fritz Haber (with all of the baggage that comes with that) and his backstory was that when the great war was over, he found himself wandering the lands regretting what he'd done. Accidentally wandered into the Fey Wild, met a fairy, was smart enough to not give her his name but not smart enough to reject the offer to be returned to where he belongs (which wasn't his world). So now he's a stranger in a strange world, none of his gimmicks work anymore and he needs to climb the tech tree from the bottom. Again.
4:00 honestly I hate this because it can be amazing and well done and develop a character in a more real way. Acting like it is just bad kids is such an afule view. I get the not projecting but normal influence is fine. Example person has a parent who always sees them as inferior to a sibling so that person puts themselves through more and more dangerous situations in attempt to feel like they are useful but always feel like they are a failure until the party helps them get better or they meet a tragic end. If you try to tell me that is not a real but still amazing way to make a character you're just wrong. Also major victim blaming vibes.
9:03 can't relate. In one of the best and longest campaigns I've played I made a tragic backstory character with a dead girlfriend. Halfway through the campaign's first arc the GM revealed that the attackers who killed my girlfriend were vampires, and she was Turned a few days after my character set out on her angsty quest for revenge. In the end the other players got to have an epic boss fight against the master vampire while my character stayed behind to deal with the second in command, AKA have a cathartic confrontation with her undead girlfriend. Said vampire ended up joining us as an NPC, the GM used my backstory notes as foundations and built upon them a fun and fleshed out NPC. None of this would've happened if I or the GM said "sad backstory bad"
I'm playing an amnesiac Reborn paladin in my newest DnD campaign, but I didn't just leave the backstory up to the GM. I came up with details like a name (both the one he forgot and the one he currently uses), a past history and such that he wants to dig into and remember (since he occasionally gets flashbacks from certain triggers), and the GM and I discuss/collaborate on things like specific people from his past he might run into in the present.
But that's the thing that you know that the ones who are complained about don't (or are just lazy). Amnesia is not an excuse for not having a backstory; amnesia is a part of it. Your character doesn't remember it but you have to know it or at least work out with your dm for them to know it.
Well it also makes sense because usually some who wasnt raised with a support structure in place and comfort is more willingly to go on insanely dangerous adventures.
My pet peeve is the god and dragon slayers. Gods more than dragons because they could have been involved with a group of dragon hunters but at level 1 you did not fight Vecna and live. Now, if you can give me a good reason for the backstory to include that like, you’re a level 1 wizard who was trying to achieve lichdom and failed resulting in your powers being drained and having a splotchy memory. That’s one way I will accept the good slayer crap but even then, it may not be a powerful god and you may be recognized as evil by others
I always have a guy at my table who plays nothing but Barbarian. He's in it for feeling like the Doom Slayer. And I know that's raising red flags for people as being a murder hobo, and he has done that before, but most often he's more than happy to humor the story to get to the ripping and tearing. I had to learn the hard way that different people play tabletops for very different reasons. He didn't want to be enthralled with backstory exploration. He wanted to rip and tear. So I tend to just try to focus on that with him and spend more time working out how to engage the other players with the story.
0:40 - In Medieval times, it was actually common for people to marry family members. So something like this with the character marrying his sister could actually happen if you're looking to be realistic. I actually had one player who's character was married to a girl and I ended up revealing that she was his cousin and he didn't know about it. He actually thought the twist was pretty good.
No no not really. Look up the catholic laws of consanguinity and it's quite clear incest was quite frowned upon. Sure people got around it sometimes, especially royals, but you had to ask the church permission to marry your widowed sister-in-law let alone your actual sister
@@seradin8029 Yeah, but royalty and nobles did it all the time. And I doubt the church was going to say no to them. If they had said no to those people, they would've made some very powerful enemies.
@SBaby The pope was powerful enough to excommunicate an entire country mate. Doing something like that as a monarch without his permission would land you in some hot water. In fairness I am mainly talking about England though.
@@SBaby It COULD happen between cousins at best but definitely not siblings. In most societies incest was the most harshly condemned crime. Even if a noble somehow managed to get away with it, the claim of his children (and thus his entire heritage) would be contested and put in danger.
I will say that I think you _can_ make the "grizzled veteran" idea work as a low-level character by doing one thing: Have them be a *long-retired* warrior who's _degraded_ to Level 1. They're older. They have lingering pains and such from old injuries. They're been working a farm or simple trade for years and are out of practice. The character isn't "leveling up" so much as them shaking off the rust and getting back into the swing of things.
I second that DM mentioning how players get involved when they have a good backstory. In an evil campaign, I'm currently playing a character who died once and was brought back as a revenant, and then died again in combat only to have his tainted soul saved and repaired by a devil in exchange for a favor down the line. Normally that's obviously a red flag, but this character's gone and become a nihilist after glimpsing the afterlife and seeing how no matter what plane, nothing really changes with power structures or who's in charge. Table was shocked when I had my character accept, then doubly so when he called the other characters "stepping stones." Think a similar outlook to Owlman in Crisis on Two Earths and you'll get an idea of just what my plan is for this character in later levels. Not destroying the universe or something that ridiculous. He's just gonna be a creeping evil who calmly watches the kingdom burn.
Characters who do greater feats than their level allows them. Being an assassin is fine, being the top assassin in your assassin family where you already killed your assassin dad isn't.
I did a sorta spin on this with my most recent rogue. She tried pulling off a heist that was way above her skill level, but it went terribly and she had to flee for her life as she was chased out by an angry mob. Still probably not that original though. 🤷🏻♀️
consider:
>liar
>was severely injured and is essentially having to relearn all their skills again because they lost their fine motor skills
>a minor god who decided to/was forced to quit being immortal and is trying to figure out how to be made of meat
>suffering a severe psychosis
>is possessing another body/is a genetic memory to someone who has absolutely no idea how to do any of that
>double-isekai where they got hit by cybertruck-kun after going from a japanese salaryman to a techno-demigod in a cyberpunk dystopian future and woke up with dragons this time
>it actually did happen but not nearly the way everyone says it does and their contribution was greatly exagerrated by the bards and common word of mout and they either desperately try to tell it like it it and nobody believes them or they roll with it for fear of being a disappointment
What if it was a really shitty assassin family, and throughout the campaign, the assassin realizes they were a big fish in a small pond? Does that sound like an interesting way to take this? (I’ve never played DnD before)
I love all the ideas, the problem is that normally isn't what the player wants, If they wanted that to be their backstory I'd love it. Instead you get a upset player because that isn't their story and at the point, I just shouldn't allow it in the first place.
My Hexblades backstory has him defending his clans village from an attacking force, the way ive done it is when he made the pact, he was given basically level 20 stats and abilities. When that battle was over and his Clan safe, his power was reset back to level 1 for his adventure. Kinda like in a game where the tutorial gives you your endgame abilities.
so this kind of backstory can work, just needs to be done right.
Let's be honest, as a new player, no matter what you do you're creating a character that irritates someone somewhere because it's "such a trope" despite being completely new and fun to you.
I challenge you to prove 2 of my characters as tropes.
A Mortal Plane Chaotic Neutral Female Shadar-Kai Acolyte background Undying Warlock whose patron is Larloch. Whose family is also alive in the Mortal Plane and love each other as well as her & her siblings. Whose brother is a Circle of Dreams Druid who is married to a Dwarven Circle of Wildfire Druid.
A Surface Female Drow Feylost background Death Domain Cleric sworn to The Raven Queen whose family is loving and successful as well. She also is Chaotic Neutral.
@morrigankasa570 I said as a new player. A new player doesn't understand the setting and how all the races work and whatnot. So... I'm not really proving anything to you, but I read "neutral female shader-kai" and was already lost.
Also, I'm not going to try and prove anything. Not everything is inherently cliche. That isn't what I meant. So enjoy your characters.
@@TheSkelzore Fair enough, I'm technically a "New Player" in regards to created my 12 Characters in the last few years. Yet don't have a regular group to play with. However, I did research a bit about the various Races during Character & Backstory Creation.
But have played a couple sessions of 3.5e back in Highschool that didn't last long.
Anyway, Shadar-Kai is an Elven Race originally from the Shadowfell.
@@morrigankasa570, [Valley girl voice: on] Oh mah god! Like, not another Mortal Plane Chaotic Neutral Female Shadar-Kai Acolyte! We like, had three of them in, like, my last campaign... Ugh! Gag me with a spoon.
@@fred_derf Ok, what classes were they?
Some of these examples are just DMs with a massive chip on their shoulder:
"Ugh, I HATE religious characters!!!"
"Why?"
"Because they're wary of doing things that contradict their character's values!! Crazy, right!?!?"
If a DM only knows/wants to play one type of campaign, that's a DM issue, not a PC issue...
If only religious folk were as wary of hypocrisy in real life...
I LOVE religious characters as a DM. Most religions have rituals/rules to abide by and that makes roleplay and immersion. Seeing how they interpret or disregarded those rituals/rules makes character development as well.
My issue isn't so much with religious characters, as with DnD's stupid gimmicky "morality" system that makes no sense, makes the setting black and white, does not allow for moral conflict or dillemas and objectifies morality to such a degree it becomes a perceptible force.
It was lazy writing on the parts of the initial writers of DnD and it still is to this day.
This inherently makes "paladins" just very poor stereotypes. Sure you can "write around it", but you really shouldn't need to to begin with. I fully understand why a DM would be frustrated with that.
But of course, that just means you should play a better roleplaying game than DnD. Which isn't hard. Shots fired.
@@RedFloyd469maybe you just have to understand the morality system better
For real that sounds like a genuinely interesting story? How was that a negative???
The "I hate religious characters" guy was telling on himself. If the paladin or cleric is "dragging behind" because of their strict adherence to their moral code (which is a PART OF THOSE CLASSES) then that means that you, as the DM, have exclusively been giving the party morally grey or morally black choices to make. That's a failure on you buddy, not the characters
I totally agree! My most developed PC is neutral good (he’s a devotee to that world’s deity of justice), so he’s understandably very adverse to hurting people and murder. My DM has done a good job of allowing me to find non-violent or non-lethal solutions to problems. Unfortunately a lot of the people I spare end up dead anyway because the people around me aren’t exactly good, but I didn’t have to do it and that’s the important thing. It’s not my fault if I spared the pirate captain and one of my party members decides to kill her instead.
Seriously while morally gray stuff is fine it just gets exhausting when everything is a Trolley Dilemma
"And live a little" just say you're against organized religion fam. It's the 21st century, you're not likely to get flack. But yeah, either there's some massive miscommunictions between player and DM... or he's a subpar DM.
It tends to happen when every other PC is playing a murderhobo and doesn't bother to hide it. What the hell is the LG paladin supposed to do when the NE rogue just goes around stabbing orphans all the time to get some spending money? Either it's going to be a campaign-ending fight to the death between the PCs, or the DM has to disallow evil characters in a party of what are supposed to be "good guys", or the player with the paladin has to just suck it up and go OOC to ignore it.
That’s just a lazy DM. I’m currently playing in a paid campaign with a professional DM, who created a totally opposite issue for me:
I play as a peace cleric 1/eloquence bard x. Took the cleric level for the emboldening bond. It also so happens, that my PC is a devotee of Eldath - pacifist goddess of peace and nature, and it also so happens that there is a war happening around. I would say, I play in a very tactical and optimized manner, I’m just level five and haven’t actually killed anyone at all yet, it just so happens that my use of magic was clutch at killing some very potent foes. OK, we killed a lot of people, but my PC didn’t even make a single point of damage yet, just simplified his companions’ job (significantly).
And you know what my DM did?
Eldath started disowning my PC due to multiple deaths he was involved in, the fact that some of my party members are chaotic-stupid doesn’t help either. This started to cause him losing his cleric powers. And she (the DM) is like: “you can always devote to another god”. And I like: “Nope, I’m still devoted to peace (peace through superior firepower)”.
Thus, I constantly have to justify his actions and go into philosophy just to retain his powers. And do persuasion checks (to convince his goddess), here being an eloquence bard with 20 in charisma and expertise in persuasion really helps.
This actually makes the game more interesting.
4:21 telling your party they can’t have normal problems in their backstory is kinda weird. My group favorite character I played was literally a college dropout who has an abusive relationship with his wizard dad
Also I love my dad irl man is my best friend
They did explain it, from the specific wording they used I figure they have a history of people projecting personal issues into D&D and I wouldn't want to work through that either.
@@AGrumpyPanda I mean that is pretty fair, no one wants to be a therapist on the spot. But when they started talking about how they would recon the backstory mid game to day the family was nice and the pc was the jerk, that raises eyebrows for me.
If that kinda of backstory really was such an issue for them, ya think he would just shut it down from the get go, not lead the players on and then recon their story and twist it to where they’re the jerk, that comes off as pretty petty if you ask me. It makes me think that dm has irl family issues themselves.
Yeah that kind of “twist” is a really big red flag. I think you could give the shitty family some context and backstory for why they were shitty (family trauma is usually passed down), to make them into more sympathetic characters, but the thing the DM described is possibly the worst way to handle this situation.
It’s the right of the DM and everyone else at the table to talk about what they want to RP and what they don’t want to RP, and I’d hope any DM would be upfront about how they feel about this kind of backstory, rather than twist their player’s idea around to make their character (and probably their player) feel foolish.
Just sorta goes to prove that no matter what you do in DnD, someone is going to have a problem/complaint/criticism about it. Dark tragic character? "Ok edgelord." Character with real world type problems? "Ok gaming-as-therapy self-insert"
I wonder how many of the DMs in the video would hate my current campaign. Four players, three of us are halflings and one an elf. The halflings came from a sleepy village where nothing exciting happens and left because two of the halflings were bored out of their minds, the third halfling is their childhood friend who wanted to make sure they didn't do something extremely stupid (but is himself not a good chaperone) and the elf (who traveled through the village frequently but didn't live there) went with them to make sure they didn't all die in the first 5 minutes (which was pretty likely).
As a d&d player who was encouraged by my friends to become a DM, your campaign sounds like straight fun. Hope you are enjoying it!
@@CausedcactusI am! It's quite often chaotic and there are a lot of hijinks and shenanigans. It's a blast! :D
I presume the adventure you're going on is to throw a ring into a volcano?
please tell me the elf character is the proxy-parent like character that has to pull the halflings out of any trouble they get into :D
why does that sound like lord of the rings? xD
This episode has largely been "Here's a lot of DMs you're glad you don't play with" for me.
For every video that says "D&D is a game where you have the freedom to play ANYTHING your heart desires! Play what makes you happy!" is a video that says "Here are the things you should NEVER EVER play in D&D"
Always depends on the group and people think their experience, preferences and ability are the universal norm
That's why you get friends together and not some cont that dictates on what you are allowed to do
This is why, instead of prematurely "banning" sexual taboos, perceived "perversions" and "bad backgrounds", instead have a pre-session discussion about the limits that the players can explore, with all players present, including the DM.
There is no such thing as a universally accepted "moral line" that shan't be crossed. To say otherwise is to be a brainwashed ideologue. If all players come to a good enough consensus, this shouldn't be a problem so long as you're all relatively reasonable people.
Even if an outlier is still created this way, that's just the risk of inherently playing a game where "freedom to roleplay" is the very premise of why you play. Otherwise, the DM is at risk of railroading an experience just because of a few snowflakes that didn't have the guts to mention beforehand what their "trigger" is.
For an above example: If a player wants to have a sister that is also his wife, then I say why not? Sounds kinda funny. You can make up all sorts of funny shenanigans with that. Just because that's their backstory, this doesn't mean the other players can't make fun of their character for it (in-game).
TL; DR You are all adults (presumably) and so you should be adult enough to actually talk things through before a session. No need to be the arbiter of moral laws in roleplaying games.
You can do lots of stuff in this game, but there are also a lot of things you shouldn't do. Remember that D&D is a group activity that you gotta work together on.
After looking through a few videos to get tips for dming (me and my friends are doing a campaign for the first time) my recommended got flooded by random videos exactly like that
"So this woman is your wife?! I thought she was your sister!"
"She can do both."
"NO! No, that's the WORST answer!"
Honestly, if this was me and my friends we would totally allow it…
Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s immoral as fuck. But not in a way that is either triggering sensible players or disrupting the game for everyone else.
It’s just funny.
And if Kyle wants to play Grumok the Orc from the ancient city of Alabama, I say let him !
It could be worse. Could be a daughter wife.
Adopted siblings and step siblings and sometimes even half siblings get married. This is nothing new. And way back before even the fall of Rome cousins would marry. Hell, that even happened after it fell. Just saying.
I'd definitely allow it
4:56
This is not a good thing to do, and you should not take this as advice. That completey destroys player agency by taking their backstory and warping it AGAINST THEM. Its disrespectful, and frankly, pathetic.
I understand not wanting to be someones therapist but for God's sake, this DM just sounds so apathetic and uncaring. You cannot alter someone's backstory. THAT part of the story _BELONGS_ to the player. The DM needs THEIR permission to change ANYTHING about it.
If I had established that my character had a bad relationship with their parents and they suddenly welcomed my character with open arms, I would just say that my character was "Overjoyed at his realization and decided to completely abandon the party in favor of making up for lost time with his *supposedly* loving family."
Then I would quit the group.
If you have time to plan all of this sneaky shit behind the players back, you have the time to discuss the problem with them, and if you actively choose to NOT do that, it's officially NOT the players fault at that point.
Yeah when it came to that part of the video, I heavily suspect that either the dm had REALLY bad encounters of “I use gaming as cheap therapy” people (which too be fair is possible since they do give it as an excuse) or actually has irl family issues themselves, and that’s probably why they have so much anger towards it and thus “punishes” the players for even thinking it up, then use the previous explanation as an excuse.
If mine did that with my sad character, I would make it so my character immediately knows these aren't their parents and that something is horribly wrong.
THANK YOU! I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who was pissed off at that DM
Thought the same thing, that guy definitely rubbed me the wrong way, wouldn't want him as a DM myself.
If PC'S have bad parents then so be it, all of my players are usually my friends, and if I as a DM could also give them an outlet for some repressed trauma and help them through that I'll gladly do it.
Just seems to be like the DM is one of those people who just wants to follow his own ideal of what a game or tabletop should be, and is fully willingly ignorant of his players wishes in what they might want of the campaign.
Yeah, I was listening to that with increasing bewilderment. It's like, "You don't want your PCs to be people?" Not to mention, the way the OP spoke of parental trauma in quotes makes we wonder exactly what kind of family issues THEY have. There's a huge difference between exploring IRL issues - and almost everyone has SOME kind of IRL issues - in a game and having it take over the game. The first of those is fine but this GM sounds like he automatically assumes every player who even hints at a bad childhood is going to do the second one. His lack of empathy is a tad disturbing.
I have no problem with a player's backstory being Harold from Accounting. Some people just want to fantasize about doing extraordinary things despite being perfectly ordinary.
I think the really fun thing here is that in Ravnica, you pretty much COULD be Harold from Accounting and still end up as an adventurer; it's just that you'd probably be working as an accountant for a sphinx or a bunch of ghosts.
I have played a human fighter Norman of Generrick. It was wonderful just being some guy lol
I play a wizard and a we have a "normal guy" Alchemist in the group with a wife, kid and a Clinic to heal people in. My Char sneared at him in the beginning for beeing so "boring" but as my Char keeped fucking up things he started to appriciate his measured life style.
I've never had an issue with Harold from Accounting being the starting point, but your character achieves more responsibility and notoriety as the game goes on. At level 12, Harold might still be the same awkward guy you avoid in the office, but to the public he is Harold, Lord of Coin and Numbers. As long as the player understands that your ordinary person will be forced into the limelight by being in a successful adventuring party, it works out totally okay.
Pretty sure that’s the main appeal of playing a human.
Honestly I think having grandiose feats in your backstory can work so long as you don't take it too far. You can be a famed and well liked captain in the army but you can't be a general. Captains are a dime a dozen but generals are among the highest rank. You can't have killed a dragon all by yourself but you can be a part of a large group of twenty or so people who were sent to kill it and be one of the few that lived to tell the tale. Having cool feats in your backstory is great but you can't take it too far otherwise it starts to stretch what can be considered conceivable. I usually build my backstory as I play. I start out with a basic idea and build from there as the story goes along
True
I'd say for a level one fighter, a cool backstory that spins the "I killed a dragon" trope, would be that instead of killing the dragon, your fighter saw this happening by a notoriously powerful character and wanted to one day slay dragons of their own. Epic things happening can be apart of your backstory, but when your backstory makes you out to be this powerful being while you're a level one fighter, it's just not interesting. You could have the player be an aid that the hero picked up to carry items, or for a specific talent of theirs, while acknowledging the power gap if you want them to be a little closer to the action while retaining that backstory to power balance.
I always find the exaggerated feats in the background to be a much more compelling backstory, like " I single handedly took down an entire tribe of bandits" when in reality it's "I helped arrest a shoplifter"
I made it work with a pc who was a great figure in the army who was turned into a tiefling and started heavily drinking because the army kicked him out due to policies and he could no longer use the sacred family heirloom (an armor) thus I created Jin, a tiefling monk(drunken master) with a level of fighter for proficiencies with martial weapons and a fighting style
Of course he’s not gonna be as great as he once was, dude is drunk all day
Maybe you did something famous by just getting lucky? And you really don't even know how you did it and almost certainly could never replicate it...
Granted, if I played a character who has defeated an entire bandit camp or killed a dragon it would be the character did it through a complete accident and struggling with their reputation of being a supposed badass.
Somehow succeeding while being in completely over their heads can be such an entertaining trope, done right.
I did this as a bard. A group ran across him and had him tag along for entertainment. That group killed a named and known dragon that was terrorizing an area for 20 years. My bard was listed as being one of the killers and wrote a song about it. The song never mentions himself. People asked him what it was like and the bard was always "I was scared shitless and just hid behind things! Look at me, do I look like I would willingly do something like THAT?!"
But in that kingdom everyone knew his name as one of the dragon slayers. Our party even met the dragon slaying party regularly in taverns and inns within that country. That party loved my bard, always asked how he was doing. The priestess (pelor cleric) routinely asked how he was eating and acted like his mother. The fighter always had gifts for the bard...a dwarven fighter hand making things for a half-elf youngin' he calls "boy". The wizard asking after him to make sure he is still practicing the magic that was taught to him. The party was basically my bard's surrogate family. There were 10 of them and they split into three groups. 2 went to the castle and became advisors. 4 stayed in a small-ish town on a river that leads to the capital. And the other 4 stayed in a trade town down the coast a ways. They ended up being my bard's contacts for information and jobs for his party during their early levels and moral support and places of rest as the levels increased.
Was a fun character design and he NEVER liked that people called him a dragon slayer. Not once did that group kill a dragon either.
I've played characters who just happened to be the only one around a dead dragon or slaughtered bandit camp so everyone THINKS he killed them all before
Story: I took out a whole bandit camp!
Reality: Three kobolds, and two of them accidentally fell into a nearby ravine.
My version of this is: a champion of the local arena, who's never been beaten, decides to go adventuring for more challenge. Too bad nobody told him all his fights were fixed
I'm still a pretty new dm, and I used to go with "anything you want," but now I have two rules: 1) Must be a character that this setting could produce (ie no samurai's in a setting that has no country that would have produced samurai's) and 2) must, MUST be capable of working in a group. You don't have to like them, you can hate them, you can prefer to be alone, you just have to be capable of working with them.
Yeah i like playing my little edgelord idiot characters but i always find some way to integrate them into the party through some rules that make sense to the character (like they only like picking fights with strong people, or they're not interested in killing [X] thing, or "well unfortunately they ran out of money so they have to skulk around with the team or be left destitute", or entirely motivated by [X] thing so if the party or DM needs an easy way to corral them they have it.), a loose cannon but with easy instructions to maneuver. I make sure to lampshade or communicate any big ballsy moves too so that other players can have a moment to stop or add on to it, which makes it a lot more fun too.
Unless the spotlight is on me/my character, I don't go out of my way to be disruptive.
Even as someone who doesn't DND but role plays, the "loner edgy unwilling to cooperate" types are such a pain.
Edgy characters are hella fun but if you, not just the character, won't cooperate how are we supposed to have fun?
Honestly, a fun way to work around your rule 1 would be to have the pc be the proliferator of the combat style. Have them work a reason for the styles invention into their backstory, using Samurai as the example again, as a style they came up with to counter a rival swordsman, or as a desperation style using a broken broadsword to fend off a group of bandits that they developed and started teaching to others, using a custom made sword (katana). Go the extra mile, have them give the style a unique in universe name.
@@FizzieWebb I would allow that, it would just be divorced from the innate culture and they would have to show their work. That is, have a reason for why they're adding each item/move/tradition that shapes it towards what we recognize as "samurai".
@@JustToSaveYou The samurai could also just be a foreigner from a different region that somehow ended up there. It's not like people can't travel, and I doubt any setting has medieval europe painted over every single continent lmao
5:26 This actually used to be a plenty good reason for adventuring in the really old D&D days. The game was way more dangerous at lower levels, and if you survived to level 3 or 4, THEN you'd start worrying about fleshed-out character motivations.
I mean, that's the main reason anyone would do adventuring. To get some money
And if you look carefully, you'll realize that "I'm an adventurer to find a treasure" is old as fantasy
Random example of how it can be used: Bilbo Baggins from hobbit. Class rouge, he is an adventurer on his way to find a treasure. Same with dwarfs he's with
Yeah, I don't see how that's an annoying trope. It's why most people work most jobs IRL: It pays the bills.
I actually have a character right now who lost his regular job due to some shady stuff someone else pulled and now he's adventuring to pay the bills. Dudes got a wife and kid to provide for.
I think nowadays this would be a very campaign-dependent thing. "I'm a treasure hunter, I want money" seems quite par for the course for an adventure where the promise of wealth is a major part of the plot hook from the start, such as the dungeon-crawler modules that have been officially updated to 5e from really old editions, like White Plume Mountain, and I think it could work pretty well for something like Rime of the Frostmaiden with its emphasis on survival. But when the narrative is expected to have heavier emotional investment, such as the Radiant Citadel adventures, or is primarily centered around social encounters, such as The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, it starts to fall short.
Just add what will you do with treasure or why you want treasure and you are ready to go.
The DM at 1:30 seriously has to calm down. I can't imagine how little fun I'd have if I got mad at every player who didn't want to write a backstory.
Also if it seriously takes you a year to set up a D&D campaign, write a book. No D&D campaign is worth that much prep.
Actually I palyed a character with no backstory, because I had a complicated schedule at the time and couldn't play some times, so why bother the DM with a starting a character arc or prepare roleplay that will have to be constantly paused?
Yeah throughout the story I was just like "Bro you're a fucking nerd playing the adult equivalent of make believe. It's not that serious."
1:09 I would allow this but only if the character is exaggerating. Example: Character: I am Sir Rob and took down an adult white dragon myself. Player: Rob leaves out the fact that this was after half of his village had been attacking it beforehand.
He ran up and kicked it after the knights slayed it. Claimed the kill like a legend we salute Sir Rob
I have a character i have yet to play but her whole backstory is "baker whose cookies were so good an archfey decided to give her magic for it, and now she gets to use it to explore/adventure"
(She's always wanted to go adventuring from the stories her customers told her)
This is actually pretty good/funny lol
But... the bakery!.. Who will supply the town with good cookies?
@@Rattman_4126Maybe a changeling paid by the fairies
@@Rattman_4126Give her an apprentice. One who’s not quite on her level yet, but clearly has potential to be great.
I love this idea its super original and looks fun🎉
Hot Take: Many tropes are actually helpful for people new to roleplay and people who are testing the waters, and sometimes punishing them and forcing them to be all-in and thus out of their comfort zone from the very start will only sour the experience.
As a DM, you shouldnt be an elitist lol. Please dont adopt the mindset of a character not being worth your campaign just because it uses tropes, or you will lose alot of players. Ease your players in to the idea of expanding on their character. Players might have a good reason for using these tropes, whether it's that they were inspired by them, or it might be just because they don't know if the campaign will be longterm so they don't want to use extended time to develop a completely baseless backstory. Its not good to be so quick to assume that you know better than your players, or to barr them for as silly of a reason as their character not being good enough. That messes up the entire point of creativity and imagination. There aren't meant to be rules (besides the obvious NSFW/sensitive topics).
I'd even go farther and say tropes are good for everyone. TTRPGs are a storytelling medium and tropes are signposts that reinforce genre and setting. If tropes are good enough for professional writers, they are good enough for the table. The problem is people who don't understand the trope they are using and fight against it. I.e. The "edgy loner who trusts no one" implicitly signs up for the narrative arc of "opening up and learning to trust their found family" and it's an issue when that character never starts to grow.
I pointed that out in another comment, that the amnesiac hero trope many see as lazy, is a fantastic quick start for newer players who want to test the waters with a new system, or a new group, or just as an all around beginner in general. It also means that if they stick around, they can simply work out a story for their character to either piece together, or have as a massive triggered remembrance at some point.
Like all tropes, it's a building block, and how it's used is more important than it being used at all.
Besides, tropes are basically impossible to avoid. If you try to avert something, chances are you stumble into an entirely new trope that is meant to subvert the first one. At the end of the day tropes are just tools for storytelling.
Pretty much everything has been done before, it’s how you do it that matters
Well, I'd push back a bit on the idea of boring/generic backstories for one reason.
Some DMs will just actively use any detail of a character's backstory as a weapon against the player. They will make things up, grasp at straws, even rewrite the character's story. That has always been crossing a line with me. So if you have a player that believes you to be such a DM or who has just come from a group where something like this happened, then it is completely understandable that they wouldn't want to invest the time and effort into creating a backstory that at best would be ignored and overwritten, and quite possibly could be ammunition against them.
When you have earned a player's trust, then you can work on prying out a backstory and integrating it into the plot. But only when you have their trust.
Another good reason to have a boring/generic backstory is because you know the DM _will_ find a way to kill off your character in 1d3 sessions---so why bother?
The big one I tend to see is people coming from groups with DM's that just... Don't use your backstory. Ever. They really don't care, as long as your character is a character you can roleplay and is motivated.
Having played with such DM's, it's not even necessarily that they're entirely bad DM's. Some are just so improv heavy that backstory would only be relevant if you push it.
I had this happen to me once and it really got on my nerves. I mentioned that my character had a distant/estranged husband who she had left her son with for his own safety and the DM immediately opens our first game with “They’ve been kidnapped and are probably at the plot relevant location everyone was going to anyways” So I had to explain to him that the husband was my way of having a backup character written into the backstory and we went back and forth on it but he finally relented.
I know I personally play 'red shirt' characters at a new table, nothing but the bored son of a farmer looking for adventure. I won't bother putting extra detail in until I know people at the table are chill and interested in a cooperative and fun experience. That's not to say that one-shot deathtrap runs aren't entertaining, but any decent DM will talk with players about hopes or expectations to ensure everyone is comfortably on the same page.
@@Vgy1592also one shots. Many DMs I've met prefer just doing 1-3 sessions and being done. So all you need is "I am Tom, here to slay Ted" and BOOM backstory done.
Honestly, some of these dm's solutions/attitudes make me wanna avoid them just as much as the players they're talking about
My first D&D character was the stereotypical orphaned rogue. But instead of being all edgelordish and traumatized, I lampshaded it a bit by being little *too* well-adjusted and sociable and perfectly okay with awful things. Sometimes a horrific detail from his pre-party life would drop and the rest of the party is like, "Oh, you poor thing" and he's all, "What? No. You should have seen the other guy..." shit like that. It was fun, but in response my next character had live parents, a live wife, live kids, was a successful businessman, and was a pillar of the community (he was forced to pick back up his bow and go adventuring due to some prophecy thing, and his whole motivation was finish the thing so he could get back home to the life he loved and live in peace).
Kinda the opposite one of my players' first character was the succeasful merchant and loved member of his town going on an adventure because it started as just part of a business trip that went wrong, and later unveiled into a curse he was afflicted by.
As an orphan IRL, I can safely say that your character was more true to life than you might think. Orphans are socialable and well-adjusted, mainly because we had to be. When your world is that unstable, you either adapt or perish. Being cool with awful things, or people, is also not uncommon. We've probably already seen it all. Your worst day is our Tuesday. People overreact to so many things that just don't matter.
Could be a coping mechanism too.
Reminds me of the time our party came along a camp in the woods with a soldier covered in blood sitting on a log next to a fire. My wizard, who was a dickbag conman saunters up and takes a seat next to him, hand on his shoulder. He leans in close to the soldier and says “Heeey Buuddy, you doin’ alright? Gonna eat the rest of that fish?”
I can imagine a small creature having the dog from Puss in Boots as its personality in this scenario
I have a character with dead parents who were emotionally abusive to her, but she has a chosen family who she confides in, if the dm made it so it was just "being a shithead teenager" i'd be pissed off and quit the campaign. Tragic backstories can work if you put some thought into it.
I know what part of the video you're talking about and honestly I think that dm actually has family drama irl and they're doing the "out of sight, out of mind" coping defense, immediately shutting down any resemblance of that kind of tragic story so they doesn't get reminded of their own, and using the "oh its just lazy/don't wanna be a verbal punching bad" excuse.
@@Rebell-mi4zu Yeah. I mean, if they've had players treat them like that, they've every right to be upset but they're doing pretty much exactly what they're accusing those players of- taking out their issues on others within the game.
Imagine a character that had a happy childhood and has never seen a day of combat and just happened upon the rest of the party and just wants to come along for an adventure
I mean This is basically every gnome isn’t it? Even if ppl have ruined them
The thing that always surprises me with orphan backstories is how many people don’t seem to get that ‘orphan’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘miserable childhood’ and/or ‘no interpersonal connections.’ Like, depending on how young they were when they lost their parents, they still had to be raised by *someone.* Maybe it was an older sibling, a family friend, an older member of a gang of urchins, a mentor who taught them a trade, or even just the manager of the local orphanage. Regardless, they’d most likely have at least one significant figure in their past. Even if they lost their parents later in life, parents aren’t typically the only type of important people in a someone’s life.
One of my characters is a human cleric who was left at a temple as a baby and was raised by the priests there. He had a happy, if sheltered, childhood and considers the temple clergy to be his family.
Just the fact that a character is an orphan tells us almost nothing about them. It’s a circumstance, not a character trait.
I susepct that a good chunk of the players who go out of their way to avoid having connections have been bitten by a GM who just uses connections to screw over PCs and never makes anything good come from them, or anything interesting. A character of mine had EXACTLY the backstory you mentioned for your cleric. She was also sheltered but happy.
You know funny thing about the amnesia thing.
I have an android character on Friday who came online in a pocket of nature energy (she was thrown out of her factory because she didn’t come online) and wrote a whole backstory with the DM’s help where she has friends, a buisness, family. And never once did I ask “where did she come from (the place that rebuilt her actually picks up androids from the ground to try and retrofit them), why did she only come online in that grove?”
It has been a blast discovering that my Android might be a relic of a world that’s long gone and is actually important to humanities last ditch efforts to preserve not just their soceity but themselves. And i never even considered the idea that I had amnesia of any kind.
your DM is four parralel universes ahead of everyone
@@arcshadowstorm especially since the way i learned this also allows me to help the rest of the party with their backstory stuff like a psychic domain so someone who doesn't have a clear memory of events with psychic abilities could try to see the event.
its been even funnier gaining access to stuff way before he expected us too aswell.
Secret protocols or memory altering is a cool thing for droids. There was a Star Wars table where I made up that the Jedi had a group like Cadmus from Justice League and I was a prototype security droid secretly specialized in taking down Jedi whose line was to have basically committed order 66…. But the droids were scrapped for clones and the party junker has found the only surviving but dormant prototype
I disagree with like 2 of these
But I'll give my 2cent on the last 1.
A person who has a healthy homelike is a perfectly valid. Playing the boy scout going into the tomb of horrors to do their best to help their friend who is going in for their own reason is good enough. The game is the story told by the DM,party,and dice as to whether the boyscout was able to help his friend. If he fails then that's just part of the story.
I agree with your assessment of the last one and go one better to the OP. "I will not have you disrespect Samwise Gamgee by saying his background was unbelievable or not enough. That man went all the way to Mount Doom, just to keep his friend safe."
Characters with healthy homelives but decide to adventure anyways for whatever reason are some of my favourites to play.
Typically, they add the spice of variety to the party, have room to *become* more tragic, and are excellent at supporting other party members' own journeys.
A wizard driven by their fascination with discovery, a knight that wants to protect that healthy homelife, an adventurer inspired by heroes before them, a sorcerer feeling the call of their bloodline.
None of these concepts need tragedy to push them forward. Saving the tragedy for along the way gives more room for growth.
My own D&D character is a Kenku bard who heard singing and wanted to do that so she just…stole the closest instrument (a concertina), mimicked how to play it and sometimes accidentally makes new music, and then essentially got adopted by the party because they thought a kenku being a bard was funny until they saw that she was a really good bard with how she’d mimic voices.
She’s essentially a raven who plays the concertina because she thought “yeah I could do that”.
As a GM, when someone hands me an amnesiac character... its like a fine five star dinner. I have so many tools I can use with to build that character up, over time. In my current campaign, we have an amnesiac child, and he's been learning his own history, alongside the rest of the group, and its been one of my favorite character progressions as a GM. If you are so obsessed with being anti-trope, you can fail to notice why it became a trope in the first place.
Also, a creative player can do so much with it, too. Don't shoot down amnesiac backstories without giving it some genuine thought.
I fall into a trap where I try to make characters that break certain conventions (Wizard orc, rogue goliath, etc.) and I realize halfway through my brainstorm session that the character doesn't have to be an outlier all the time. It annoys me personally, so I have to make a conscious effort to make my characters a bit more grounded instead of having them be so hyper quirky like that.
Good point.
On the other hand, I would like a chance to play a neutral good goblin druid (his tribe wanted a shaman, and kicked him out).
The thing is making the weird quirky build idea actually make sense and feel coherent.
Half orc is wizard robes feels mismatched.
Half orc war mage who got his ass kicked by an elven mage and then hunted down this mage & strong armed them into making the orc their apprentice, becoming a war mage with the hopes of one day besting this elf, that's workable.
You can also use the “breaks convention” to doubly subvert expectations. I played a human wizard in a campaign who was from a backwater town, and I gave him my strongest, heaviest Texas redneck accent, full yeehaw, everyone laughs. Side note, everyone but me used INT as the dump stat. Eight months and ~30 sessions later, we encounter a wizard that mine recognizes as equal or superior. And starts speaking in a clipped, rapid, sort of intellectual tone, clean of any accent. Everyone is confused. “I adopt the accent so people find my intellect less intimidating, but there was no need with him.” And everyone simultaneously realized that he’d been low-key insulting their intelligence since day one
Oh my gosh SAME I didn’t know other people struggled with this too and now I’m so happy to know I’m not alone 😢 my first character I ever made (based off of red yoshi from Mario wonder….) is a copper Dragonborn paladin with a past as a rogue (8-7 Dragonborn who’s excellent at sneaking around) and is chaotic good and that’s FAR from the most odd oc’s I’ve made before
Also sry this is so long 😅 my bad
@@an8strengthkobold360Brother you’re too close minded about what people can be. A half orc may not be geared towards wizardry but are you telling me there isn’t a single wizard half orc? What if their dad was a wizard? What if they grew up amongst wizards? What if they just want to be a wizard? I think it’s foolish to assert that they can’t be that or it would be unrealistic.
“In my head that feels mismatched” well your generalizations feel racist. A kobold could be a wizard for crying out loud. A kobold could be a paladin. There’s an absurd amount of Dragonborn bards for otherwise a clan-based culture.
Half orcs can be anything, they don’t have to be a product of spite in order to be a wizard. As for your elf example: they’re already a war mage in your example. All that does is flesh out their tutor, they were already a wizard so what difference would that make? It’s pure foolishness. You think that a half orc wizard wouldn’t be capable of being a normal wizard without assistance. That’s the only interpretation of needing an enemy and a teacher to be an effective wizard. I think that’s completely ridiculous and very racist if half orcs were real.
As a side note Halsin was invented to spite people like you.
I start out with something simple like 'I WANT TO FIND THE TREASURE!' then evolves into something else. Character development. Im creating the characters backstory with the adventure
I really dont see an issue with that trope either lol. Its open ended but looking for wealth or glory is like, the motivation of many irl adventurers lol.
I like the dead parent trope, cause honestly, it makes sense in the world of DnD.
I was the unchallenged ruler and strongest warrior of my tribe but it was a kobold tribe so that doesn't say much.
I unironically love this.
I once played a wizard who was "The most powerful arcane mage in all the elven kingdom".
The setting's lore was that the elven kingdom shunned arcane magic. She wasn't the most powerful by any other merit than "there's no one to say otherwise".
@@Vgy1592 best out of 1 is still the best.
@@an8strengthkobold360 And also the worst 😂
3:59 Yeah fuck this OP. I get not wanting to be a combination trauma dumpsite and punching bag, but also when you're dealing with a storytelling medium, literally everybody brings prior baggage and it's 9 times out of 10 unintentional, so don't blame them for having shitty parents and imperfect coping mechanisms. Again, if you want to avoid it, that's fair, you are not a therapist. But OP explicitly states they haven't always avoided it: they went out of their way to flip the story around to blame the victim KNOWING that this is their outlet for shitty experiences with their family. Imagine being his player, you sheepishly submit a very deeply personal backstory about a character who was kicked out for being gay, something that actually or at least nearly happened to you, and you're wondering if you've crossed a line. But DM approves it and says he has plans for this. It's good to feel validated and seen... Until you realize your DM is twisting your clearly written-out story to make it so that your character's parents are, just like your real parents, gaslighting you and saying "We never said those things! You've always been so dramatic. We would never threaten to make you leave." Are you having fun? I thought the fuck not. So I say again: Fuck. This. OP.
He could’ve just talked to the player about it and they could’ve worked something out. Hell, the family being nice when they meet could’ve worked if there was a discussion about it before hand, like maybe the niceness is fake and it was all a trap for the heroes or something. But no, he had to be a vindictive little shit and basically rip the character out of the player’s hands
I've seen the idea thrown around that the OP has their own parental issues and lashes out at anyone who reminds them of them.
My current character is the tyoe to have “normal issues” with his family. He’s adopted by a couple of nobles who couldn’t have children. He’s expected to carry the family name and honor ir. But he ran away after fear of punishment for what could disgrace them. Well, it’s become way more than that, and I love it. They are basically black market dealers and cultists, mom is a mage, and they’ve worked with a certain villain we had to help try and apprehend (he got away after we scouted his base and a high level swat team was sent in). It’s a far cry from my own life so I dont think it’s only used by those who use it for “therapy “ of irl issues
To be fair, 'adopted and expected to carry the family name' is more of a medieval trope than a common real life therapy issue.
@@mc_cheshire Also true, though my character did have something more akin to modern days, and that’s standing up for himself (even as an adult) vs the rules of his parents. Actually, our last interaction with them (specifically his father) had him finally growing a spine (sorta) and just breaking down afterwards when in the privacy of a party member who had gone with him for this interaction
@@phobiawitch835 Then that is much more like the realistic interpersonal issues that the guy was talking about. There's nothing actually wrong with that; I think it can be a cool story. It's just serious and weighty enough that all parties need to agree to participating before it's put into the lore, versus expecting someone to be okay with doing emotional labor. That's my take, anyway.
Yeah, the dude in that post had some real issues. Love your character though
@@mc_cheshire Oh agreed. It was definitely some, hedty stuff, but the entire party was excited for it cuz my character has, throughout the entire game, been in random conversations about his life growing up. Let’s just say that if it weren’t for him wanting them to be at WORST arrested for various crimes, the entire party wants his parents dead for the effective emotional abuse they’ve put him through (which he didn’t even REALIZE was the situation until only a few sessions before we ended our first campaign. Story will be continued in Campaign 2, a Sandbox continuation of the Dragon Heist module). He still loves them deeply, but realizes how flawed his family (and his relationship with them) is now.
I actually think it’s perfectly fine for a character to have a good, non-traumatic life before the campaign. You really just need some reason they’re adventurous - sure, no happy settled family man is going to go try and kill dragons, but an idealistic kid with dreams of being a great hero would. Or a paladin who’s only ever lived within the walls of his temple. It drives me crazy when other DMs act like the only reason someone would adventure is ~trauma~.
If a DM decides Plague’s parents didn’t actually die, I would actually quit. Plague *sees* his mother die, and is there when his father’s death is announced. Like, yeah orphans are a trope, but I didn’t write Plague to fit it. He’s a kind doctor who was inspired to help save others by his parents’ deaths. He went to medical school and had a practice of his own (he’s lvl 8). He has friends and an adoptive family. He has an alliance with a noble he saved. I worked so hard on making him subvert expectations that someone saying ‘actually, Plague’s dad survived and he just blah blah blah…’ would piss me off and make me cry. I have occupations and personalities for his parents and the primary people in his life. I am a DM and I would *love* to have a player give me this style of backstory, which is why I wrote it to be developed and detailed.
Very easy way to get the "Orphan with no last relations" backstory to work - Oddjobs are a POWERFUL tool for building rapport in a town. And, by sheer statistical chance, someone gave your orphan goods rather than coin. Maybe it's a coat, or a knife, or food, SOMETHING... And to a streetrat surviving off of nothing, especially if you're going with the full-on no-home streetrat wandering the city line... Those gifts are POWERFUL and will stick in your character's mind.
Sure, the butcher you cleaned up the gutters for those couple of times, you may not know her that well. But you know the knife she gave you as payment VERY well. And you'd use it to cut any thief who tried to steal from her shop in a heartbeat.
Yeah, that tailor you delivered a very important and valuable shipment to isn't really someone you'd call a friend. But getting that blanket in the middle of winter saved your life. And you'll never forget his smiling face as he thanked you.
You can have no lasting friendships and still know people. Even if you don't know their names.
Aww, that's cute. *adds to ideas book*
A really dumb plot that would be a funny joke for a one shot
The party goes to fight an adult red dragon, the sorcerer having a strange grudge against it. According to the party, they’ve never met the dragon before, yet they hold such resentment over the beast.
When the party arrives infront of the dragon, spells and steel raised, the sorcerer goes to speak out however the Paladin shouts out
Paladin: “I’ve come for the child support you owe my mother!”
Sorcerer: “wait what? That’s why I’m here!… who else is here because they are trying to get their dead beat dragon dad to pay child support”
The entire party raises their hand and proceeded to kick their dads shit in.
Why so much hate for the simple "I like money"?! I just want to play the game, THAT'S MY MOTIVATION TO FOR PLAYING THE GAME DAMN IT!
That's *the* default reason to be an adventurer though? Why would even somewhat sane people throw themselves into mortal danger even once, much less somewhat frequently, if it wasn't to get fat-payed?
I mean; bards, clerics, paladins, and wizards have some baked-in motivation but why would any rogue or fighter even consider it when there are cushy, in-town jobs their skill sets are well suited to?
I'm not saying you *can't* contrive reasons beyond simple cash to motivate a character but it's "hands down" the most reliable, relatable one by far.
I once had a player give me this one. He said he was a mercenary with a mercenary's heart and no ties to anyone. Then, there was an area of illusion that showed each character his/her 'heart's desire'. One saw his lost family, another the tribe he missed, another saw a beloved mentor, and one saw a lover.
Mercenary-heart saw piles and piles of treasure. Player became *unglued* and ranted that there was way more to his character than just wanting money! He stormed off and left the table.
I had a half-orc barbarian who idolized her great grandfather who was an orc warlord. Meanwhile her parents owned a well respected bakery in a very nice village. The DM had them send a box of cookies and a hand knit sweater whenever we came back from an adventure.
Honestly as a dm I can level with and work with pretty much any backstory, but the one that really gets my goat is when players include graphic sexual assault in their backstory cuz I am not a licensed therapist and don’t know how to help you deal with that trauma
This is an interesting one because you don't have to be a therapist. Let them run away from their problems, turn their characters sexual assault into fuel to get them to go into other situations, increasingly more dangerous ones, ones you expect from an adventure. Bandits, wolves, goblins, spooky warrior guys and skeletons, ooze, gnolls, zombies, vampires, cultists, ect ect ect.
Have them run through those situations and when the character bulks, remind them of the fear at their back, the thing creeping up on them, that what is behind them, trying to get them is far more scary then the disgusting thing in front of them. Give them strong friends, buld scenarios that link them with the rest of the party.
Then later in the campaign, have them go back, let them dread and hate it, use the NPCs and the other players to comfort them, reinforce them, but leave the monster that violated them as level one as nothing. If they lash out at that person, let them, let him win and show them just how far they've come from the scared person that got hurt so long ago. Fudge dice if you have to. Let the event explode to give them that closure.
@@androconiachangeling6535 Well, making the monster level one and easy to beat may undermine the catharsis ("The thing I've been scared of all along is this pathetic nuisance I could've kicked to death in one hit?"). For the rest I agree that this is a good way to approach it, but also, if the DM is not comfortable with a story like this or is unsure they can do it justice, it is their right to back out. You don't need to be a therapist - using someone with more experience as a soundboard or doing research can definitely help, as well as talking to the player about their experiences - but if you're aware that you're not qualified, not cut out for this, underprepared, or you're just worried about hurting this person, it's your right to choose not to do it.
@@trishapellis So to approach the first part of this.
Your character didn't start strong. If your character was a victim of something like this, chances are, they trusted this person, were manipulated by them, then were taken advantage of. Chances are, at this time, that hostile character may have even been a level or two higher.
But they aren't going on an adventure like your character is. You've missed the point. They couldn't kick them to death when they started, but they could when they returned. The start, they were just a relatively normal individual, living in a relatively normal place, doing relatively normal things.
By the end, you've carved up wolves, torn apart tribes of monsters, beaten down the undead, formed friendships, saved a village from vampires, slain a dragon, you've gone through a whole cycle of running in to problems with the idea that the thing behind you was infinitely scarier.
So when you get back to them, and they're *still* just normal, of course they're trivial. They're a whole lot weaker than you remember them being. Your character never stopped seeing them as something that could just casually hurt them, something that could use and break your character.
For the rest you're 100% right. I never said a DM *had* to do this and it's okay to back out and not like it. You shouldn't ban it, but at least explain why it makes you uncomfortable. This also doesn't *need* to involve therapy, it can just be a good story about growth, the player that made the character very well could never have experienced these things themselves. I even stated parts of this in the first sentence.
yeah it's good to have boundaries of what stories you're trying to tell as a DM, i wouldn't bring my cannibalistic fighter into a campaign where the DM wasn't comfortable with eating people.
i work with a grimdark/hyperviolent setting with some campaigns i run too but im not too interested in scat so i don't make mention of it, plenty of blood to go around instead
I think this is a fair boundary to set. It makes sense to cut out things you arent comfortable with or equipped to handle. Topics like that cant just be used for light story fodder. And if you arent able to unpack or make something like that work no one should expect you to.
The guy with the parents post has absolutely ran into a few people like that, they do exist, but his way of talking about it just rubs the so wrong. It costs nothing to just say to a player "Hey, I don't want to deal with the topic of parental abuse in this game. Please choose something else." and a hell of a lot more to apparently string that player along for half a campaign and then act like they were the only problem in that situation.
Proof: I watched something similar happen between a DM and player. It sucked to watch and the campaign absolutely stopped being fun. Afterwards I had a way worse view of the DM than the alleged trauma dumper.
During my first time as a DM, I had a player convince me to ban backstories based off of popular movies. After two weeks of talking to him about it, he handed me a mix of The Sorcerer's Apprentice (complete with copy/pasted names) and Batman. Now I don't watch a lot of movies or television, so it's pretty easy to name a movie character I won't know. Now I also understand some movie/television characters would make for great DnD characters, but that one player made me skeptical of anyone who brings one to my table, because he was painfully lazy about it.
That is a little much but there are plenty of cool movie and book tropes that are useable. You can always try and work with player to turn it into a more unique story that is inspired from said trope.
Exactly. Currently in my game I've got a player who made a character inspired somewhat by Eddie Brock (aka Venom) from Spider-Man.
The character, Samuel Brockman (Sam to his friends) is a Variant Human Fathomless Warlock/Draconic Sorcerer (black dragon heritage). He is the son of a noble family in Waterdeep, but doesn't really care much for them. He runs his own newspaper, and spent a good chunk of his money from adventuring to build a shelter for the poor in the city, so that they have a safe place to stay and don't fall into the grips of criminal groups (such as Xanithar's Guild).
I legitimately told my players to go ahead and completely rip off a character they love, from a show or movie if they want. Because by the end of the campaign they are going to more than likely wind up different anyway. Some players don't have the same creative muscles as others. So its not a bad thing to use something tride and true. Nothing is 100 percent original. Steal (or borrow) if you must.
The best backstories and characters I've had pitched to me as a DM are those who wrote them to work specifically for this campaign.
And I personally believe it should be a DM's right to outright tell a player "No." if a character they pitch is completely not working with the material.
Reasons why I have a huge backlog of concepts.
I get ideas when I'm not in games, and then when I do get in games I make something entirely new to fit the GM's specific lore (as well as to mesh with the rest of the party) instead of the generically usable concepts I'd had before.
@@Vgy1592 And those characters are usually much richer to play than the "Concept I wrote up five months ago"
When the table works together to not only create a story, but create the "cast" of the story, you get in my opinion much better parties for adventures.
Honestly, The most annoying characters ever are the ones with 0 motivation. I attempted to DM a campaign for some people, and there were 2 guys who made characters who were "cool guys who don't care who are only in it for the money." There was no motivation, no reason why they were greedy, this was it. They basically wanted to play an rpg.
I've learned now how to push people to create motivation. Now a days I would ask "Why do they want money?" and have them flesh something out. But MAN is it too easy for some players to make lazy backstories.
This interaction played out at a table I was playing at.
Bard player: Proceeds to hide from the encounter and the party and not engage with the scenario. (Mind you, this was an on-going campaign, so it's not like it was session one)
DM: "What's going on here? Doesn't your character want fame? Fortune? To go on grand adventures?"
Bard Player: "No. He doesn't want any of that."
DM: "Then why the F*CK is he in my campaign?"
@@ArawnNox i like to play rather serious campaigns, but of course humor will come in when necessary. anytime someone wants to play in my games, I say it is a requirement to have a setting-fit goal.
One of my players did the same thing, no backstory other than I am a money hungry fighter and my parent's are dead. There was no reason for him to be with the party so I asked him if it was okay for me to add to his backstory and he said sure. Mistakes were made. I made him a descendent of Tiamat and explained that his greed came from her blood and that his parent's weren't just killed by raiders but were actually killed by him when Tiamat took over his body during a celestial solstice. One of the other players is the paladin of Bahamut and things have been very interesting between the whole group because of these two opposing sides.
Can't believe people want to play a ttrpg as an rpg, what the hell's up with that?
Wizard college
10:42
Alright, this one had me up to this point. Not believable huh? Alright, Bet.
"I was but a lad, barely a year out from attending the towns sole schoolhouse, when the flames took my families house... I was the only one who made it out.. I was always the quiet child, rarely went out unless it was to do chores, never made any friends, or none that stuck with me after the fire anyway.. the rest of my extended family wanted nothing to do with me, my parents were the problem children of their own families I learned, so I was lumped in with them as a bad egg. One day a kingdom/empire guard spotted me, and had me hauled off to the capital alongside other street children. There, we were trained.. abused, beaten... kept alone so we couldn't bond over our tormentors cruelty, and then sent out as disposable saboteurs and assassins. Those who survived were given more training, better training, allowed to mingle with others, got respect. When it was my turn, I failed my mission, but did not die, so I used the skills in stealth they had drilled into me, and slipped away, keeping out of sight, until I reached the borders, now I sit in this tavern/inn, using what meager coin I have been able to find and pilfer to pay for a room and meal, and hopefully start anew..."
A bit edgelordy and overly sad, but I came up with that on the spot, a believable reason for a pc to not have family or friends or anyone else in their life.
Editted for spelling mistakes.
Holy shit, that "no normal family issues in backstories, fantastical ones only" is quite possibly THE worst take on character backstories I've ever heard. If anything, it would piss me off much more for all of a character's issues to be based around grandiose supernatural events with no grounding in reality. And going as far as to rewrite players' backstories without their permission (the way it's phrased, seemingly to "punish" them for writing... a plausible form of conflict)?! If I played with a DM who reduced a complex conflict in my character's backstory, familial or otherwise, to a trivial, black-and-white, one-sided thing and passed it off as a "reveal", I would be livid. I would probably quit on the fucking spot.
Incidentally, my group actually DID once have a shithead teenager PC whose problems were almost entirely his own fault. This was established in his characterization and backstory from the very start, and it was a major theme of the character. He was a fantastic character, and out of all the characters that player has ever played, he's still my favorite.
There was an attempt among my college creative writing class to do a campaign and, i am not bullshitting, I was the only one whatsoever who did anything throughout the first and only session. *Every* *single* player that was not me just passed on opportunities to do anything at all because all of their characters had social anxiety. The DM clearly allowed it because he didn't want to be 'mean' about it.
At that point I have to ask: was it the characters, or players who had social anxiety? Did they even want to play the game, or were they forcing themselves to do it because of an assignment?
@@M_S_Blanc they weren’t being forced to play but yes all of the players had it
I have recently regretted making a character with social anxiety.
I don't do it often, but I figured with half the party being charisma, I'd make a more shy character to let those charisma characters take the lead on social encounters easier.
We just sit there in silence entirely too often.
You know, I actually created a character to deal with my own social anxiety. I’m a really introverted person, that does not have much social experience. And my character is a witty bard, that does lots of social stuff for my party. With him I use DnD to imitate different social situations and learn how to deal with them: come out with excuses, jokes, pick-up lines etc. I even told the DM when she asked if I’m ok to start not from level one (I was joining an existing party): “I’m competent at combat, I created this character, specifically, to work on a social pillar of the game”. I didn’t tell that I lack these skills IRL though. And yes, I've chosen a group with a female DM, deliberately to have realistic responses from the female NPCs.
P.S. Strangely enough, playing low int character makes it even harder then just high cha: “no, your character is not smart enough to figure out that those doors that lead to the smithy must have traces of coal nearby as well as tracks of heavy stuff being regularly dragged inside and out”
Nothing I hate more than college dnd sessions
8:27 What is that supposed to mean? I can't make my character the way I want with amnesia and I can be forced to play as someone with no memories even if I already have something cooked up? Decisions like that are absolutely up to the player and a DM forcing otherwise is a huge red flag.
I have a general rule of thumb:
In whatever backstory you come up with, it needs to be a) grounded in the setting and you need at least two characters from backstory that have influenced you and are still around.
And b), you need a motivation why someone would risk their life to go adventuring. Having a reluctant or cowardly adventurer is fine but they need enough innate motivation to bite hooks.
If I don't have these two, I probably can't integrate your character in my world in a way that will interest you.
Percy’s backstory is grate it’s just hard to work with if your not an experienced actor or have experience with improv
Having just watched the animated show I really dig the rage driven inventor thing he had going
Yeah claiming Perceval’s backstory sucks is an L take.
It's fine, the giant dead family feels like a bit much but the cast of critcal role are good actors so it works.
watched through the series again last week, absolutely loved his arc, but it is certainly difficult to pull off in the grand scheme of things, which is why I think I loved it so much
@@Sterling_Silver04 I just finished it the other day for the first time and I loved it. I legit got mad when he talked shit about Percy.
Happy back stories can work but you have to have a reason you're out in the world that isn't boredom.
Example: "Well, I have 15 siblings and Ma and Pa just can't afford to feed em all, so here I am!"
It gives two possible motives for adventuring that make sense, either you're just trying to take one mouth out of the home to ease the burden, or you're trying to make more money for them.
This works for any class as well.
Being one of the youngest in the family work even in wealthy ones. Historically, the eldest child would earn the lion's share of the family's business, land or heritage. The others would be given various job and education opportunity (merchant guilds, religion, army, profitable marriages...) in their order of birth. But the youngest most likely would have to hit the road and build their own path, even in noble families.
The "feat greater than lvl indicates" trope really needs to be replaced by a braggard backstory. The character claims to have done this, and maybe have been given credit for it, but hasn't really done anything. Think King from one-punch man.
Happened to me in a small campaign that sadly ended falling out. We were just starting out on dnd and since I knew the rules best I was DM. One of my friends wanted to play a dwarf folk hero, and as his tale, he wanted to have been the one who defeated an army. I didn't outright reject the concept, but we did rework it together: dwarves LOVE telling epic tales to the point they'll sometimes change a thing or 2 to make a story seem even cooler than it already is. His character was one of the combatants in a war against an army of dark elves who were invading the kingdom through a cave entrance that led to the underdark. His character did win the war for his people...by blowing up a wall that caused the passage to be sealed, which stopped the invasion, but also caused great losses to his people, including his brother. The tale that's circled around however usually doesn't mention the how, only that there were great, yet necessary losses and that he was the hero who single handedly banished the army back to the dirty caves where they belonged (also I'm guilty of the "reviving a dead character" thing cause I 100% made it so the brother and some of his men survived the cave in only to be captured by mindflayers and turned into very angry and vengeful duergar not happy about being abandoned by their kind)
I've done the "amnesiac orphan" thing. Story to the other players was "amnesiac orphan with some talents". Story to the DM was "evil psychopath who killed his parents and ran off". Took like a year of real time for the party to figure out that the string of horrific murders that took place everywhere wasn't coming from the DM :)
That sounds very good actually.
The one with the parents is just... Wow. I'm amazed someone can spew so much vitriol.
came to the comments just for this comment.. literally spitting in your traumatised players' faces, and downright telling them it's their fault their parents treated them poorly was a huge yikes, and i would walk if my DM did that shit
I can kinda see that guy's perspective. I get not wanting to be a verbal punching bag for a player who's got problems with their own family they need to sort out in a game where everyone is trying to have fun. And it's not like the guy doesn't make it clear that he doesn't allow those kinds of backstories
I was gonna say the same thing! It wreaks of victim blaming.
@@violetdoggo I do agree in that regard… but also maybe don’t trauma dump on your GM and use him as therapy? I imagine that makes most people uncomfortable.
@@gerstein03 Except that they said they *did* allow for the backstory with the *sole purpose* of gaslighting the player as a part of some sadistic revenge thing, probably for reminding them of their own trauma.
Character has no backstory because they want the DM to make it up for them. I hate the idea of a "blank check" backstory because it means the DM has to do more work to not only come up with the backstory, but also tie it into the campaign. I had a DM who invented a whole "kobold messiah" backstory for a player who made an amnesiac kobold who crawled out of a sewer grate one day with no idea who he was or where he came from, and the problem with that was he devoted so much time and energy to making it work that he neglected developing the other characters' backstories at a decent or consistent pace. Between the kobold and the tiefling artificer in the group who was metagamed from day 1 to be the party's "main character", he hyperfixated on those two to the point where everyone else just got forgotten. When I complained that my character didn't have sufficient motivation to care about her involvement in the plot, it laid the groundwork for my eventual expulsion when I started pointing out how skewed his focus was
As a DM I hate that as well. In the long term it is just me doing everything while the player do nothing. If I do make something up, it will not help them move the plot forward as it only matters as long as I push that forward. If I stop and turn my attention to someone else the player will just go back to do absolutely nothing.
If anyone gives me a blank sheet today. It will remain blank. I don’t have time to write your character for you.
+trueblade39, writes _"Character has no backstory because they want the DM to make it up for them"_
Oh my god, that's even lazier than the "amnesia" backstory. My main problem with both (aside from the player being lazy and that being a huge red-flag) is your back story also details the whys and wherefors of your personality and such a player is showing you that they don't plan on their character having a personality.
Such a situation _could_ be acceptable if you know the player well and you know they are a top-notch role player who is looking to you to make them an interesting character for them to play as a challenge.
As a DM, if you decide to go with a character having amnesia have most of the NPCs they meet treat them poorly, some even openly hostile. They enter a bar and order a drink? The barmaid slaps the character across the face and yells at them to get out. They get robbed and report the theft to the guards? The guard says "Now you want my help? You should have thought of that before. Now get out of my sight before I arrest you and let you rot in prison!"
I have had a couple of those. i warned them that
1 they wont have as much fun because of being less invested and
2 i would absolutely be vindictive about it.
if they still insisted on blanking their backstory i did exactly as promised. I had NPCs that they were required to meet at some point be relatives who would bring up really embarrassing things about blank background around the party as well as made at least 1 that they would actually like/ sympathize with then have that NPC drag them into all sorts of trouble like having to bail them out of jail or pay off their debt or do a favor to the lord they slighted all small/ short things that were inconvenient.
I do the reverse for the ones who plan too much. You made a whole town with a bunch of details strictly for your backstory? Awesome! Ok so where is the adventures guild then? No not what buildings its by, I need the left and rights for directions from where the party currently is. Incidentally, what was the name of the townsfolk you were asking for directions and their personality?
A backstory is there to provide plot hooks/world development for the DM to felsh out and buffs/ connections for the players to use. The DM then portrays the more developed world to the rest of the players that then bask in your personal side story rife with benefits.
My current character has had many adventures before level 1…but he never did the fighting. He was an archeologist who always hired other adventurers to protect him. He was basically an NPC escort quest in his backstory. Now he’s a warlock that can do his own protecting on the most important expedition of his life
One of my favorites is simply "civilian with a grudge". Imagine it this way. Someone gets assaulted by bandits. They get badly wounded and left for dead, but don't die. Now they're pissed. So they originally go to the local adventurer hangout, looking to hire somebody. But you know what? That's not good enough. He wants blood on his hands for what they did to him. So instead of hiring the party, he joins it. And you can tailor their job to be relevant to certain classes. Want to play a rogue? Who better to pick the locks than the guy who knows how to make them? Want a ranger? Village hunter. Warrior? Village guard. Barbarian? Town drunk. Monk? You worked at the local orphanage and got fired because of your new scars. Hell, you can even work in warlock, by saying they were offered a deal to save their life. Sorceror? The experience awakened their latent magic potential. Druid? They were saved by a woodland animal. Paladin? They felt the presence of their god as they were on death's door, or worked in the town's place of worship. Cleric? Ditto.
But, this kind of origin has two major benefits. For one, your character starts with a connection to the world. Possibly family who live in areas the party might need to visit, or friends who can back them up in a pinch.
And for the second major benefit, you have a clear motive, but no predetermined plan. At some point, your character will have sacrifices to make if they want their vengeance. But nothing is predetermined. That said, one of my favorite combinations of the above factors is a villager turned warlock/rogue. Pact of the blade. And their weapon of choice? The dagger that was put through their throat, that made them make the pact to survive. And when they find the motherfucker who stabbed them? The dagger gets planted in the same spot, and shoved fully through with a point-blank eldritch blast. They don't get to make a pact. They get to die.
Love this. I like to say that my group has this unspoken assumption that anyone could become a player character/adventurer, and it sounds like you have the same sort of mindset. :)
For the "NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN" comment, I gotta give my two cents.
My primary main character had normal mortal parents who were verbally and physically abusive. (Not SA)
and since my main character is a jerk but has a good heart, if I made him a jerk with good parents, everyone would hate him.
And no, I'm not projecting my own problems with my parents. My parents are absolutely amazing, and I love them to death. They think my main character having abusive parents is great because despite his apprehension to be an adventurer, its better than going back home to them
My character is dad died in battle against the BBEG in his own quest. Mom had to give him up ( Mom was an Amazon/Barbarian and had to give him up. Later, I tweaked her to a Celestial to play an Aasimar in a new game)
I might actually create a character where the parents are alive and well, basically the antihisis of the edgelord character
Yeah I totally disagree w that “NEIN NEIN NEIN” comment and would hate to play w that DM. Just bc you make a character w trauma, doesn’t mean it’s projecting your own shit. I have a character that I would love to play at some point; and her abandoning mother and abusive father are a portion of a backstory that sets up an entire thematic concept of inner strength and resilience in the face of external helplessness. That thematic concept is loosely *derived* from my own experience with hardship, but anything you make is derived from your own experience. And the huge thing is - if they were to meet her mother (can’t meet the father bc self-defense patricide) and the DM pulled a “you were just a shithead teenager” it would entirely undercut the very thing that makes this character special. It would break my heart to see my Mona Lisa of D&D characters reduced to nothing.
@@skylark7921 honestly even if you ARE projecting on a character, just airing out associated trauma in the course of natural roleplay can be cathartic for you and anyone else involved that might also hold similar trauma, and can be done without turning your DM into a therapist, and yeah, the fact the DM wouldn't just say no, and then twist things to make the PC look like an awful person with a great family is a HUGE red flag
I kinda got the sense that
A) this is something that DM makes very clear he doesn't allow for character backstories
B) he's not opposed to stuff like "daddy is an abusive shithead drunk" and more opposed to things like "daddy is passive aggressive, subtly homophobic, subtly racist, and subtly disappointed in you no matter what you do" and
C) that he's experienced it enough times that he's sick of having his players use him as his therapist
If I'm off base then yeah he's kind of a dick and even if I'm not it's still a bit of an extreme reaction but I can completely see why a DM wouldn't feel comfortable in that situation. The dungeon master is not the father you have problems with and they are not your therapist. It's not right to put it on them to be either
One of my absolute favorite characters of all time was the wife in a happily married bard couple. They would go an adventures separately, returning together to share their collected stories and trysts.
That adventure ended in a dramatic TPK, and is still one of my favorite campaigns ever.
Amnesia as a replacement for actual backstory. It's fine if they get amnesia, but I still want to see what led up to that out of character.
I have used amnesia for only one of my DND characters before.
BUT I knew and wrote out the entire story of who he was before and how he got his mind blanked by more powerful forces that he had a "disagreement" with.
His mind being wiped was why he was level 1. (An as he leveled he was slowly remembering things)
He wasn't adventuring to remember he was living as as a hermit when the party found him. As he remembered I was gonna decide where he was at if he wanted revenge or just to count his blessings and move on. (Dm story dependent)
In a campaign I currently playing in, I told my DM "My character has amnesia with absolutely no idea who he was before. Here's a write up of everything he's done in the two years since he woke up. Go nuts."
I think making a character with amnesia without knowing what their previous life was is completely fine. Leave that part entirely up to the DM. Focus on what your character does remember, and you can really put yourself in their shoes when the hints of their past life begin to crop up.
@@KodasGardenTrue. It does require both the DM to be fine basically making the character and the player being fine with whatever the DM throws at them but in theory it could be cool
And what about amnesia, but with a backstory? Like a lot of shit happened, this character was actually really powerful (a high-level wizard), he just does not remember anything. But sometimes he has glimpses of his former training/education through the “Knowledge from a Past Life” (he is a reborn). Also, as he is relearning magic, he starts remembering stuff.
The best amnesia stories are fleshed out.
Murderous rampages, mysterious heroes, etc.
The "Being an Amnesiac is up to the GM, not the player" actually pissed me off. I once had a character with a backstory about being sepreated from their siblings and was one the hunt to find them once more and make sure they were safe. And the GM thought it would be more tragic if I also had Amnesia... The hell... This completely ruins the character becuase how can they know to look for their family if they can't remember their family? Their entier motivation is gone, their backstory is gone, everything becuase it's "More tragic."
Not a trope, but one thing that irks me that ive experienced, as a player, is when the GM gives your character a nickname you didnt ask for. My first ever character's name is "Akko". Immediately after hearing that name, the GM said "Taco". Like...no
Ngl, Taco is hilarious
@@breadstix- i mean, it is lol. But it killed my immersio
Amnesiacs are fun as hell, that DM is wildly uncreative
"I come from a centaur barbarian clan and I for some reason have an innate desire to protect the people around me." What to do, what to do..... Your character's clan are normally brutal raiders. You discover during the course of the campaign that you are under a tweaked geas that obligates you to protect those weaker than yourself. Are the desires and wants that have motivated you for so long even real?
I use the badass trope sometimes but I usually pair it with it being from their youth and now they're at level 1 again due to being out the game for too long. last one was an elf who took up being a merchant for a good few hundred years but business went under and so now he's back to mercenary work to try and get the funds to start over.
I also paired it up with him having had like 7 wives or so and now has like a shitload of kids and grand kids everywhere.
Similar to a character I'm running rn.
In their youth they were a pretty renownee gladiator and warrior. But I play them at their elder years, starting back at lvl 3 due to not having kept up with training and no longer fighting as often, as well as having a new goal and proffession in life.
A lot of these are "ok" to work with if you're a good DM, some of these DM's just seem butthurt by one specific situation
Yeah like at around the 5 minute mark with that dm complaining about someone giving their character a more normal family drama backstory. when they said the people who used this trope were people who wanted to vent out their irl frustrations onto them… the anger there was actually understandable since yeah no one wanna be a therapist on the spot.
But on the other hand when they would mention that they claimed the backstory was “lazy” and how they would actively recon the hell out of it and say the family was actually nice and the pc was the butthead, that’s just extremely petty on the dms part.
If the player want a more down to earth family drama backstory, and it’s clear it’s not meant to be an outlet for irl issues, let them use it. There really is no reason to basically shut on the concept and recon it mid game. With how the dm talks out it kinda makes me think the dm secretly has irl family drama issues themselves and wanna avoid that kinda stuff in his games because of that.
@@Rebell-mi4zu I 100% agree with you
Yeah a lot of the DMs in these videos just sound like they hate their players
@@amethystimagination3332Probably just one specific player. Instead of actually addressing the problem with that player though, they've ended up fighting symptoms.
This video has taught me that my next dnd character is going to be a fallen god who has taken down entire kingdoms single-handedly and slain a dragon with his bare fists but is actually a guy who is a pathological liar who is living in a fantasy
Also make sure to make them an Orphan who did know their parents and they were awful. And that their ghost haunt you to keep telling you how shit you are.
@@apcfire I’m glad you found a way to add trauma to the backstory
Some of these people are the most pretentious dms I’ve ever heard of. Let people make their characters the way they want. It’s YOUR JOB to make it work. As a dm this was infuriating to listen to.
I don't ban any particular backstory trope. I like working around it and make part of their backstory what happens in the first few sessions.
That said, one of my online players wanted to do a thing where their new character was pretending to be another character for some 'big reveal' to the party. Thing is, the party has no ties to either character, one of whom may or may not even exist. "I was just pretending to be the Masked So-and-so, when I'm actually Me!" "Masked who now?" The 'big reveal' they were hoping for would have been met with crickets and confusion. I didn't ban or say no to it, but I urged the player to consider an alternative concept.
Did you ever have an amnesiac player character?
@@OfHollowMasks Once. I watched his actions during the first two or three sessions of the game closely. Wanted to help people, refuse money, just have fun and make friends, etc. So his backstory I filled in as a criminal hireling who took his job way too far and was 'taken out' by his employer for costing them a big job.
Game didn't go long enough for it to pay off, scheduling and all that. But the idea is simple: See how they act, what choices they make, then make their history work against them in some interesting way that can be changed on the fly.
One of my characters was a retired army captain who once lead a group of his elite soldiers into combat with a black dragon in his den and didn't have a single casualty. One of his great feats was that he able to kill wyrmlings with a single swing on his sword. We were also told we'd be starting at level 10. I did the math, and made sure it was all possible to do as I was coming up with the background.
That's a "I killed a Black Dragon" story I can accept. The normal problem is that kind of story being background for a 1st level character.
Yeah, level 10 is a pretty reasonable level to be a dragon killer. Hell, even at level 5 you could conceivably have killed a Young dragon (though probably not single-handedly)
I had a cavalier fighter character who’s backstory was this:
“He has slain the fiercest of dragons, saving countless villages, and becoming one of the strongest hero’s in existence…or at least, that’s what he’s confused for. A little Kobold stumbled across the corpse of a dwarves warrior, with extremely high quality armor, and so, he took it, and the corpse’s weapons, to better survive in the wild. Now, he’s been confused for the mighty warrior, and has had to flee the continent to avoid the paparazzi, and enemies of the warrior he knows nothing of.”
I love the image of this tiny kobold wearing this armor and carrying a weapon slightly bigger than him trying to run away from people mobbing him and a guy vowing to annihilate him.
@@wantedbird55srandomchannel28the kobold: “wait wait wait!!! No-no-no-no-no! RUN! RUN RUN!”
The bbeg with a magnet: “Get the hell back here Olanthar the unbroken!”
I had a DM who hated the orphan or outcast character.
Rightfully so.
@billyboy8534 I mean, is it overdone? Sure. But it’s not a problem unless they are being excessively edgy or melodramatic.
He had a vendetta against Edgelords @@astercat49
@@billyboy8534
Nay.
@@billyboy8534Why? It can be done right. It is the way you play it that matter, not the concept. Banning concepts is stupid in my opinion.
I do not get why so many GMs are so stuck up on backstory. Yes, it can provide you with some convenient hooks and can help with setting up how to roleplay the character, but honestly speaking, unless the GM specifically go out of their way and spends effort to tie things into those backstories they are only going to have a very minor effect on the game, at least unless the player themselves tie it in or uses it as an excuse for something. The latter is really something to watch out for in backstories, what can this be used as an excuse for, and a lot of the bad cases here comes from how they can be excuses to introduce problematic things from the players side.
Some DMs care because a bad backstory can be a symptom of a That Guy™ and they've been burned in the past.
Honestly I feel like the DM's complaining here feel entitled to expect a perfectly fleshed out character that belongs in a bestselling book right at the start....Good characters grow...Every character starts with a basic idea and it continues from there...
These DM's complaining about ,,basic" characters sound like when working with clay they'd complain it doesn't come as finished piece
The problem some DMs have is when a player expects the DM to make a character for them, and instead of talking and figuring it out together, just gives them nothing. Yes characters change during the story, but the still need to be a character to begin with.
4:16 - Why? Of course there are going to be parents that don't like what their kids choose to do. That's a fundamental cornerstone of storytelling.
Personal issues on the DMs part is my guess.
@@VoxAstra-qk4jz I was talking about character backstories, not real life parents.
@@SBaby The DM had parental issues, and they don't want to be reminded of them is my guess
To be fair on the guy in the first story, sister-wife isn't exactly unheard of in canon as such a family exists in the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign
In my first ever game I ran, my brother played a Human Ranger who had the backstory trope of being a retired army veteran at level 1. But the way he played it made sense. His mental scars from the war he took part in made him retire early, where he stopped training at all and fell into heavy alcoholism. He was rusty and usually drunk, so he wasn't able to do all the badass stuff he was known for while still serving. I thought it was cool at least.
I've done something similar. The character was a Dragonborn Ranger, Soldier background. Backstory is that, 30 years before the campaign, he was called on to serve in a conflict know as "The War of the Fallen Sky". The war was a brutal one, and left him with deep mental scars that lead him to retreat from other people for some time.
Duing the adventure, he was always placing himself on the front lines, trying to keep his new companions from harm. When he got to 3rd level (drakewarden subclass), he introduced his Drake to the party as 'an old friend'.
Thats not a bad backstory. Honestly tho I reject the idea that some people have that someone cant be an army veteran at level 1. Unless ur backstory is that youre the chris kyle ultimate sniper archer of DnD. But theres no reason you couldnt be just a regular archer serving in an army at level 1. Maybe that could even lead to you wanting to be an adventurer. You served in an army did some mundane archer things maybe saw a skirmish or two but now you want actual fame and glory or to do something meaningful etc etc. Its like people have this idea like in real life that army service already makes you some badass jason bourne level killer when in reality more often than not its just busy work and standin around.
I have to say that I disagree with not letting PCs have relateably shit parents. It's one thing if you, as the DM, don't feel safe or comfortable playing out such scenarios that have the possibility of hitting so close to home. Safety first and all that. But to imply that the player is getting angry *at you* for playing an NPC that was designed to be off-putting and nasty doesn't make sense. The players aren't made at you, they're mad at the villains. And not every villain has to be some world-ending baddy.
As humans, we process emotional turmoil through play. We reenact horrible events in our life to work through them, in environments that allow us to run through it without being hurt. Having relatable problems with our NPC families can be part of that. We role play out these scenarios, sometimes several times, so we can move on in real life. If I was banned from doing that, I would have lost it on my parents long ago in a very unhelpful, unhealthy way.
Also, you can have both. I wrote my half elf artificer's mother to be a judgemental bitch nobel who wants utter control of her daughter's life, and highly despises her inventing and longing to adventure. The DM, who is also my husband, knew I was trying to process my very negative, very complicated feelings for my real mother, and really leaned into her being a gaslighting, emotionally abusive monster, with the reveal of her being a balor in disguise who killed my real mother upon my birth, due to the fact that my real mother sold her soul to have a child in the first place (truth me told, he was probably using the opportunity to process the fact that my mom admitted that she never liked him. There's a reason I don't like my mom). What started out as "my mom is super controlling and disapproves of my choice to be an artificer" turned into inspiration for the campaign's BBEG.
And that's just her. Three of my four main PCs have parental issues. (Human rouge's mother hid a very large secret about her origins and gaslit her about it for years, and kalashtar cleric's father figure was very physically abusive). The only one who isn't is my halfling bard, whose parents died when she was a kid, and she just used a wish spell to bring them back to life. Even then, playing her helps me process my very deep relationship with the crippling loneliness I experienced growing up, and the fear of losing the friends I have now.
Again, if you feel unsafe playing out realistic scenarios of family drama, that's okay. But it's still an important theme to consider.
Though I do understand not wanting to be a verbal punching bag, that's something you should talk to your player about and make sure they're not just trying to vent. But Honestly I suspect the dm of that section of the video actually suffers from irl family drama issues themselves and just don't wanna see it in game. Again not unreasonable, but you should still be upfront about it and not throw the players under the bus for coming up with the backstory.
I don't like when the character has reasons to not adventure with the party, not that they have no reason to adventure but have reasons to leave after whatever they had to do in that city/place. Like delivering a crate of goods then just leaving the next day to return to their place of work( like a merchant guild or a boat with the leader of the merchants) which has to do with their backstory
On one hand, I get what you mean.
On the other I remember a campaign where I'd accidentally done that, and the realization that my character was more-or-less unintentionally kidnapped when she was just guiding people to the place, as a local makes me giggle to this day.
There was also something wild about the fact that by the time the campaign ended, she was the only original party member still alive.
I got some good advice once in my early days of DMing. Ask your players a some very basic questions when they create characters. These 2 are really important:
1) What do I uniquely bring to the party?
2) What do I need from the party that I can’t get/do on my own?
You can rephrase these questions however you want, but it’s good to be explicit because sometimes people have an interesting idea for a character and forget this is also a team game.
I REALLY hate being the guy to let you know this, but in regards to the first story? You know “Alabama in faerun”? Yeah… Greenwood (creator and creative owner of FR) has stated that incest is not only commonplace in faerun, but most siblings have experimented in some fashion.
Greenwood was a….. creative type….
Yeah, that was my reaction to that comment as well. Just another person who's only familiar with the extremely sanitized version of Faerun published by WoTC.
Also if I remember correctly, it was stated that it's only really the nobles that engage in that stuff, because they can afford the contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies resulting from such consanguineous pairings.
yeah alot of back story hate. is dms that just arent familiar with the setting. hate dead parents all ya want. but ALOT of adventurers would logically have dead parents or at the very least parents that actively oppose them taking up a profession that has like a 90% fatality rate.
Seriously? When/Where did he say that?
@yojimarusilverfang Where can I find these un-sanatized writings of Faerun? They sound way more interesting to read about than the watered-down drivel that wotc shat out with 5e.
When it comes to epic backstories, it's good to treat them are the start of your journey. Unless you join a campaign mid session, you typically start at level one. If your backstory is so incredibly that fighting a bunch of goblins on wargs feels like a downgrade rather than a genuine fight for survival, you probably went overboard. Try to treat the backstory as the beginning of your character becoming a badass, or the point where they first woke up to their own potential.
This. Your backstory is the preamble to the start of your story. It's the part of your story that TVs shows show in flashbacks. It's supposed to detail who you are and what your motivations are. Not what you've accomplished, your accomplishments are what the game is supposed to be about.
I’m actually writing a character for a campaign in a few days. Would “been trained to ride a griffin” be a good point but he’s not gotten one yet, be a good backstory point?
@@jamesxiaolong2199 That's a discuss with your DM issue. Personally I'd allow it but you'd have to trade it for some other ability.
Is starting at level 1 really typical? I find quite boring to be honest.
@@benjaminthibieroz4155 It depends on the campaign. Starting at level one is done for people who are new to the TTRPG or stories that involve the hero starting from scratch. For an example where that doesn't happen, the Calamity saga from critical role start at higher level because the story is hero's at their prime failing, and they wanted to get to the point of said prequel. So if you think skipping the struggle of your character to make a name for themselves to the point that people treat them as hero's gets to the interesting part faster, your not alone. You can skip certain levels, but your group and game master have to be okay with it. My comment was aimed at people going into a campaign that is meant to explore a hero starting from next to nothing and acting like playing god slaying bosses won't be out of place.
So I have an issue if your backstory consists primarily of 'I am in a position of power and influence in the setting the story takes place in.' Like being the primary law man of the entire setting, a king, or high ranking judge. Anyone who can effectively make the whole setting bend over backwards for them or gives them a constant excuse to brag about how they're a big shot.
I will, however, allow stuff like 'a disposed member of royalty or nobility trying to retake what's their's from the villain' or otherwise HAVE been in a position of power of influence they've since lost and need to regain, heck even something like Princess and the Frog where the prince was cut off by his family to learn a lesson about humility. I will also ease up on this if the party is starting at Tier 3 or higher, as at that point, EVERY PC is in a position of power and influence over the setting, because you're the big shot borderline superhumans who can destroy entire armies singlehandedly.
But if your character starts off with a noticably higher position of power than the rest of the party at level 1, then we might have problems.
One campaign I played in, the concept was people from different universes getting yoinked into an interdimensional prison for nebulous 'reality will break if you're allowed to still be around' reasons, so most of the characters were rulers, major power players et cetera, I was even playing a straight up proto-deity from Godbound.
It was hilarious because we had an otherwise good guy with an ego problem who would go on and on in character about how they were a great conqueror and ruler of their world, then at one point my character just offhandedly mentioned they were a literal god like it was no big deal and clowned on them a little.
I had a gnome wizard who faked his death to escape student loans.
4:12 I can see that one being good with a noble family. Especially if the child has to take over and they become an adventurer instead. There's so many stories that can come out of that.
You don't have bad backstory type only players that are drama queens/MC syndrome/Lazy or any other problematic personalities.
If you want you can make practically anything works if you try make it work in game world/campaing.
Honestly, it would be cool if you choose the amnesiac trope, but then ask the DM to try something with it if they want to, as long as it won't ruin the fun of the character for you.
I believe if you work closely with your DM, you can absolutely make the dragon-killing badass backstory work. Ya just gotta play a bard. If you know what I mean...
I also made that trope work with an artificer once. He was basically a fantasy Fritz Haber (with all of the baggage that comes with that) and his backstory was that when the great war was over, he found himself wandering the lands regretting what he'd done. Accidentally wandered into the Fey Wild, met a fairy, was smart enough to not give her his name but not smart enough to reject the offer to be returned to where he belongs (which wasn't his world). So now he's a stranger in a strange world, none of his gimmicks work anymore and he needs to climb the tech tree from the bottom. Again.
4:00 honestly I hate this because it can be amazing and well done and develop a character in a more real way. Acting like it is just bad kids is such an afule view. I get the not projecting but normal influence is fine. Example person has a parent who always sees them as inferior to a sibling so that person puts themselves through more and more dangerous situations in attempt to feel like they are useful but always feel like they are a failure until the party helps them get better or they meet a tragic end. If you try to tell me that is not a real but still amazing way to make a character you're just wrong. Also major victim blaming vibes.
9:03 can't relate. In one of the best and longest campaigns I've played I made a tragic backstory character with a dead girlfriend. Halfway through the campaign's first arc the GM revealed that the attackers who killed my girlfriend were vampires, and she was Turned a few days after my character set out on her angsty quest for revenge. In the end the other players got to have an epic boss fight against the master vampire while my character stayed behind to deal with the second in command, AKA have a cathartic confrontation with her undead girlfriend. Said vampire ended up joining us as an NPC, the GM used my backstory notes as foundations and built upon them a fun and fleshed out NPC.
None of this would've happened if I or the GM said "sad backstory bad"
I'm playing an amnesiac Reborn paladin in my newest DnD campaign, but I didn't just leave the backstory up to the GM. I came up with details like a name (both the one he forgot and the one he currently uses), a past history and such that he wants to dig into and remember (since he occasionally gets flashbacks from certain triggers), and the GM and I discuss/collaborate on things like specific people from his past he might run into in the present.
But that's the thing that you know that the ones who are complained about don't (or are just lazy). Amnesia is not an excuse for not having a backstory; amnesia is a part of it. Your character doesn't remember it but you have to know it or at least work out with your dm for them to know it.
The dead-parent thing is often a player's way of saying "I have other ideas, and don't want to muddy things with family relationships."
Well it also makes sense because usually some who wasnt raised with a support structure in place and comfort is more willingly to go on insanely dangerous adventures.
My pet peeve is the god and dragon slayers. Gods more than dragons because they could have been involved with a group of dragon hunters but at level 1 you did not fight Vecna and live. Now, if you can give me a good reason for the backstory to include that like, you’re a level 1 wizard who was trying to achieve lichdom and failed resulting in your powers being drained and having a splotchy memory. That’s one way I will accept the good slayer crap but even then, it may not be a powerful god and you may be recognized as evil by others
I always have a guy at my table who plays nothing but Barbarian. He's in it for feeling like the Doom Slayer. And I know that's raising red flags for people as being a murder hobo, and he has done that before, but most often he's more than happy to humor the story to get to the ripping and tearing. I had to learn the hard way that different people play tabletops for very different reasons. He didn't want to be enthralled with backstory exploration. He wanted to rip and tear. So I tend to just try to focus on that with him and spend more time working out how to engage the other players with the story.
0:40 - In Medieval times, it was actually common for people to marry family members. So something like this with the character marrying his sister could actually happen if you're looking to be realistic. I actually had one player who's character was married to a girl and I ended up revealing that she was his cousin and he didn't know about it. He actually thought the twist was pretty good.
No no not really. Look up the catholic laws of consanguinity and it's quite clear incest was quite frowned upon. Sure people got around it sometimes, especially royals, but you had to ask the church permission to marry your widowed sister-in-law let alone your actual sister
@@seradin8029 Yeah, but royalty and nobles did it all the time. And I doubt the church was going to say no to them. If they had said no to those people, they would've made some very powerful enemies.
@SBaby The pope was powerful enough to excommunicate an entire country mate. Doing something like that as a monarch without his permission would land you in some hot water. In fairness I am mainly talking about England though.
@@SBaby It COULD happen between cousins at best but definitely not siblings. In most societies incest was the most harshly condemned crime. Even if a noble somehow managed to get away with it, the claim of his children (and thus his entire heritage) would be contested and put in danger.
The cool part about dnd is that it’s not realistic. So we don’t have to excuse Incest fetishes, lmao
I will say that I think you _can_ make the "grizzled veteran" idea work as a low-level character by doing one thing:
Have them be a *long-retired* warrior who's _degraded_ to Level 1. They're older. They have lingering pains and such from old injuries. They're been working a farm or simple trade for years and are out of practice.
The character isn't "leveling up" so much as them shaking off the rust and getting back into the swing of things.
I second that DM mentioning how players get involved when they have a good backstory. In an evil campaign, I'm currently playing a character who died once and was brought back as a revenant, and then died again in combat only to have his tainted soul saved and repaired by a devil in exchange for a favor down the line. Normally that's obviously a red flag, but this character's gone and become a nihilist after glimpsing the afterlife and seeing how no matter what plane, nothing really changes with power structures or who's in charge. Table was shocked when I had my character accept, then doubly so when he called the other characters "stepping stones."
Think a similar outlook to Owlman in Crisis on Two Earths and you'll get an idea of just what my plan is for this character in later levels. Not destroying the universe or something that ridiculous. He's just gonna be a creeping evil who calmly watches the kingdom burn.
4:00 Okay but I think this DM is more traumatized by shitty players than his shitty players are of their parents.