#byanyother

[by-any-other-games]

     so i originally tried to make this as a youtube video, but my camera autofocused to the wall the entire time, and it was otherwise a pain in the ass. but anyway, here’s a way too long post about how to write a character backstory for your next ttrpg

warning, there’s literally no pictures or gifs or anything, this is just a massive wall of text

        this guide will be more aimed towards newer players, but even if youre a veteran, writing backstories is a challenge. A lot of people will jump to compare their backstories to stuff from critical role and dimension 20, but youve gotta remember that those backstories are done by professionals, people who get paid to play d&d. It’s okay if what you come up with isn’t shakespear, but that is totally okay, and should be at least a little bit expected. But don’t just take off writing random lore, if you keep your processed organized, you can get a lot more valuable insight into your character, for a lot less work

    so ive got some rough steps that i use as a guideline to keep myself on track, and avoid hitting some of the big snags that can ruin a whole backstory from the get go.

Part 1: Pitfalls

       so, The Big Three of backstory pitfalls, “Forgetting your Level”, “No Attachments Nate” and “Making a Soloist”. 

    The easiest trap to fall for (and to avoid), is ‘making a soloist’. D&D is an ensemble, it is at best when everyone plays their part, harmonizing with everyone else. If you want to make your character the best at everything, you’ll hit some deadends pretty quickly. First, you can’t be the best at everything. it’s just about impossible to make a character who is better at everything than everyone. your eldritch knight / arcane trickster rouge multiclass will never be as tanky as a full fighter, and never as magically inclined as a full wizard. a character needs strengths AND weaknesses, you don’t need to cover those on your own, your party is there to help you.

    but weaknesses are just one of the ways to give a character ‘texture’, another very important piece of texture comes with attachments. fhats friends, enemies, family, or even just a location you care a lot about. there is not a single person alive today with no attachments. it would be ridiculous to make a “no attachments nate” as a D&D character.

    this does tend to go hand in hand with the Edgy Loner trope, the ‘brooding assassin who sits in the corner of the room, and trusts no one’. Edgy Loners aren’t inherently bad, but they can be a little bit boring. If youre dead set on an edgy loner, i highly reccomend Play Your Roll’s video about it. Just make sure that you care about SOMETHING. A mentor, a parent, a friend or a former employer, if your character knows people, they start to feel like a real part of a world, not just a game piece that you’ve dropped onto a map.

    lastly, before you write, remember what level you are. old and new players alike let this slip their mind when writing backstories, even I’ve made this exact mistake: if you are writing a level 1 backstory, then you need to be doing level 1 things. your level 1 fighter might have killed a few goblins, or a really big wolf, but they definitely didn’t spend 200 years fighting demons in hell without gaining a single level. just keep your starting level in mind. if you get to start at level 15, yeah, 200 years of demon fighting sounds great! Level 5? maybe you fought ONE demon, but have plans to go kill some more

        now I didn’t mention this as one of the pitfalls, because its really just a basic skill for everything in ttrpgs, not just writing a backstory. writing a backstory is not a one person job. TALK TO YOUR DM. ask them things about the world, tell them your ideas and theories. Do not keep secrets from them. 

    If you wait until halfway through the campaign to reveal your top secret, 10 page long lore packet, you can’t expect your DM to rewrite history for you. There’s probably something similar to your idea in your DMs world, something you can help them flesh out, and by doing so, feel more connected to the world. D&D is collaborative: so, collaborate.

Part 2: Attachments

    Like i said before, attachments are a vital piece of texture, but they work best when they are meaningful. not just ‘the nameless parents’. 

    this bit worked better as part of a video, but im still gonna do it anyways, i’ve got an example character that imna build as i go over the steps here. for my example character, I’ve decided to make an elven fighter, named “Fellin” .

    Now before even considering any details or attachements, i’ve got a rough idea of what i want this character to be,, like a silhouette for my DM and I to fill in together. This fighter will:

Be taken in by a noble family

Be smart

Have a strong sense of duty to the less fortunate

    literally just three bullet points

    there are thousands of different characters that share these exact same traits, but I’ve still managed to narrow down my options from literally infinite, to thousands. These three bullet notes give my DM just enough info to start recommending things in their world that might suit this character, and open some points of discussion between the two of us

    so after some discussion with my DM i can solidify these bullet points into proper attachments, using new details about the world, and things that we’ve come up with together. Now, my elven fighter:

Caught the attention of Lord Tul’dala, and was adopted by them.

Was enrolled in University Laderra under their tutelage, where they forced me to join the dueling team.

Even after years of posh schooling, never forgot their lowborn roots in the Wall District of Fedrin, and hopes to offer the same help to others in the future.

    that’s such an immense difference! each bullet point has a specific location or person related to them, and this fighter is instantly connected with the greater world, they have an alma mater, they have a family, they have goals. honestly, if you’re not one to get super into role-playing, this is good!

Part 3: Thorns

    now that you know the basics of how this character fits into the world, its time to start looking at their thorns. im talking about flaws, inconsistencies, regrets, and unfinished business. all the little rough edges that show depth

    unfortunately the first step to this is a bit of a difficult one. you’ve gotta accept that your character is not a perfect, logical person. your character does not know what ‘optimization’ is, nor do they care about it. your character has made mistakes in the past, little ones, and big ones.

    let’s go back to that example fighter. since they were a member of the dueling team, i figure they would be using a one handed weapon, probably a rapier, so they can be dexterity based. since they’re only using a one handed weapon, it would be optimal to use my other hand to carry a shield. but Fellin is a classically trained, competitive duelist. they wouldn’t use a shield. Fellin does not care that having an empty hand decreases their Damage per Round, they like using rapiers, and they don’t like using shields. end of discussion.

    once you’ve accepted that your character needs to make mistakes, you can start looking for inspiration in the original three bullet points. details that you didn’t think of, interesting twists, and potential downfalls.

so my first bullet point was:

Caught the attention of Lord Tul’dala, and was adopted by them.

    I never actually clarified here what happened to Fellin’s parents / guardians here. are they alive? do they like them? did they abandon them? this type of ‘plot-hole’ is a great thing to hand over to your DM as a potential quest hook. 

    i’ll decide that Fellin only remembers their family a little bit. there was a big fire, but after that, they were just living on the streets. they can just barely remember their fathers face. and this is all the detail I need to write here, i don’t need to know the specifics of this fire, maybe it was a random house fire, maybe it was arson, or maybe there was a major fire in the Wall district, where Fellin grew up. By leaving this open for the DM, and leaving it out of my control, it creates a question that Fellin wants to get an answer to, unfinished business for them to investigate later.

Now for bullet point number 2:

Was enrolled in University Laderra under their tutelage, where they forced me to join the dueling team.

    i used an interesting word here, they FORCED me to do a sport?? let’s dive in on that, if they forced me to do something, maybe Fellin and Lord Tul’dala didn’t have the best relationship? fellin might have been a rebellious child, and University was a way to “get them in line”. at this stage, the exact details of this relationship aren’t really necessary, but we can boil it down to “Fellin does not have a great relationship with Lord Tul’dala, and they resent eachother a bit” 

    this isn’t necessarily a flaw, after all, they're not mortal enemies, not rivals, they just politely dislike each other. their relationship is overall beneficial, but comes with some discomfort, this won’t discourage me from using Lord Tul’dala as a resource or a connection later in the campaign, it just gives that future connection a bit of defined texture, a rough edge.

And the last bullet point:

Even after years of posh schooling, never forgot their lowborn roots in the Wall District of Fedrin, and hopes to offer the same help to others in the future.

    here, the poshness sticks out to me. that’s not exactly a positive word. from this, I’d guess that Fellin doesn’t much care for the rich and fancy ways they were raised with, they remember what it was like living on the streets, and they dislike the excessive opulence of Lord Tul’dala and his compatriots. this kind of behavior would make Fellin a bit of a sore thumb at big social events. while Fellin has some station, not many fully respect them. 

    this is alright, but its starting to sound a lot like the 2nd bullet point, so im gonna flip where i’m looking. as an outcast from the wealthy, Fellin likely takes time out of their day to do some type of good deeds for less fortunate folk, maybe handing out coins to beggars, buying meals, renting rooms and helping people carry things.

    now, we know that the rich nobility doesnt much care for Fellin, while the working class probably quite likes them. since I looked at those bullet points in different lights, and considered them in different ways, I’ve now got two groups of people, with differing opinions on this character. AND, we now know that Fellin has a bit of a soft spot towards helping people. They might be a little overly trusting towards people if they ask for help, a pretty interesting flaw, that's also very well defined to roleplay

Part 4: Aspirations

    now that i’ve got a general sense of this person, I can start thinking about what they want, what their goals are. these goals can be informed by our previous bullet points, but they don’t necessarily need to be. What you do need to keep in mind however, is the scale of these goals. 

    for a regular person on earth, it's reasonable to dream of becoming a politician, that’s something that makes sense in our understanding of the world. but if someone said they wanted to RULE the world, we would consider that ‘unreasonable’, as it doesn’t match how our world currently works

    if you do happen to have a character with lofty goals such as this, create stepping stones. instead of jumping right to ‘ruling the world’, maybe we just start by dismantling the establishment, this is a huge goal, but still makes sense in the context of our world. and this goal can change over time, after some experience, maybe this person decides that “they are the only person who is responsible enough to be in charge”.

    but that cant be the ONLY goal. people contain multitudes, so we want to have big, long term goals, as well as small goals. some of these might be urgent, but it’s also okay for these goals to be on the back-burner. that happens to real people all the time.

    so for Fellin, we are looking for a variety of goals, some long term, some short term, with various levels of urgency. each of these goals should add some new information to what is currently happening with this character, it shouldn't just rehash our thorns and attachments.

so after tossing around some ideas, I’ve come up with these:

Send someone to college    -    long term, low urgency

check in on father after cryptic letter    -    short term, high urgency

win the national duelist competition    -    short term, low urgency

    but as is, these ideas aren’t very fleshed out. they’re just a silhouette. just like how this this process started with the DMs help, you’ve gotta end it with their help as well. All of our goals are potential plot threads, or at the very least, cool sidequests. by handing these over to the DM, they can plan ahead, figure out how these can connect to the main story

    so after some discussion with the DM about locations and details, i’ve improved these bullet points a bit:

find money to send another person from the Wall District to University Laderra, and tutor them.

follow up on a cryptic letter from someone claiming to be my father

in 2 months, finally win the national dueling competition in the city of Saint Veris

    keep in mind, these bullet points aren’t going to change very drastically, what’s being affected here is not the detail in the goals themselves, but the details of progress. for instance, winning the competition. that’s not a task that Fellin is just starting, they’ve been training and practicing for years. it makes sense that they might have tried this previously and failed. It’s an actively growing goal, not something that just suddenly gets planted once session one starts. 

    and by collaborating with the DM to flesh these out, it’s another opportunity for your backstory to become part of a much larger world. if everyone in the party does the same thing, the DM can even secretly tie your backstories together. imagine if the strange letter from your father mentioned a fey being, haunting their dreams, only for that being to be a warlock's patron! that would be sick!

    But, now that Fellin is finished, let’s take a quick look at ‘em. the college educated, adopted child of Lord Tul’dala. as a notable duelist, they hope to win the Tournament in Saint Veris. but, they’ve recently had to put this on hold as they received a rather concerning letter from someone claiming to be their father. while their adventuring career is mostly a way to train for dueling competitions, they also hope to use their riches to send another Fedrin Lowborn to University Laderra, hoping to pay their luck onwards to the next generation.

    these steps certainly aren’t the ‘end all be all’ of backstory writing, but they will get you to the most important thing in your backstory, a fun character

    and the best characters will always be the fun characters. it doesn’t matter if they’re a martial or a caster, charismatic or not, a fun character has personality. not just flavor. if your character has depth, meaningful flaws, realistic goals, and personal connections to the world around them, they’ll start to feel like a living thing before you even sit down to play.

    i swear to god the next post like this will be shorter, i just converted a video script into a post, so its just a huge amount of content. this should probably be in a few parts or some shit

#text #lots of text #dnd #dnd5e #ttrpg #backstory #backstory writing #byanyother #critical role #dimension 20