Fleshing out a Character’s Background

by Joe Wetzel (joewetzel at gmail dot com)

A few easy choices and a little help from a game master can bring your character to life. There are two primary ways to flesh out your character’s background. The first way works well if you have a character background already in mind: jot down the key points of your character background idea and keep that in mind while considering the choices below.

The second way is to consider what key background points the ideas below generate as you are choosing those points. For example, if your hometown turns out to be a city with a major slave market, perhaps making your character a former slave is an interesting idea. If so, did he run away? Did a friendly master free him? Or did something else happen? If the city’s dominant religion is a water-god like Neptune, perhaps your character should be a follower of Neptue. If he does follow Neptune he probably is comfortable on boats and may even have a profession related to the sea.

As you can see from the examples above a character’s hometown is an important aspect that will critically impact his background and personality. The hometown will impact what religion he might follow, his feelings on government, his profession, and more.

Work with the game master to choose a hometown and learn more about it. If you already have a character background in mind work with the game master to find a hometown where that background is possible. For example, if you want to be a priest of a war god, you should choose a hometown where that god has some followers. On the other hand how a character became a priest of a god that has no temple or followers nearby can make for an interesting story. If an interesting, plauseable story comes to mind use it! If you don’t yet have any thoughts about your character’s background ask your game master where are the best places for the campaign to start and choose one of those places or somewhere nearby.

A hometown also critically impacts the character’s culture. If the town is in an area known to have a Roman style culture, it would be natural for the character to be part of that culture and have similar values and attributes. On the other hand some cities may have groups from several different cultures so it is possible to be in a country dominated by one culture but for a character to be raised by people of another culture.

The hometown choice impacts just about every part of a character’s background. As noted above it impacts what religion and culture a character may be. Also, if the government is very corrupt, there are reasons the character might be lawful or chaotic: Does the corruption offend him or does he feel entitled to bribes or is his alignment more complex than that?

A character’s hometown also affects his accent. Picking an accent, even if you do it badly, can make the character very memorable to other players. If that’s not possible because there is no known accent for the culture or in addition to an accent try to come up with a couple of quotes the character likes to use. Many people can remember what movies good lines like “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” or “I must break you” are from. Likewise, other players will remember characters that have good quotes like these whether they are original or borrowed.

A couple of notes or adjectives about the character’s parents and siblings can help to round out the character’s background. These notes can be used as explanations for why the character acts a certain way in some situations.

The next thing you need to do is work with your game master to link your background so far to where the campaign will start. Perhaps your game master already has that worked out or it will start in your hometown. But if it won’t start in your hometown (or if part of your background takes you out of your hometown) you need to find a reason to be where the adventure begins. The game master should look over your background and you both can collaborate on a few points to bridge this gap. Perhaps you’re guarding a caravan that takes you to the other location or maybe you’re travelling to another place to find a rare spell ingredient. Many ideas are possible and they can certainly be more complicated. They may also serve to unite your character with another character in the campaign such as one of the other characters is also a guard for the same caravan.

Once these factors have been decided, you should now be able to brainstorm a backstory, even if it is in bullet points. Or if you already had a backstory in mind thinking about these background points should help you to fit your character into your game master’s world. As you have more time if you turn your bullet points into paragraphs you’ll be well on your way to a complete character background.