One of the great benefits of generating your own world and campaign ideas is that you can integrate the background of each PC into the overall story. With a published module or adventure, this is much more difficult to do.
Being able to do this well requires a couple of things:
1) Between the character generation session and the first game session I ask my players to write me a shortish background for their PCs that has little to do with the current conditions in the game. I also give them instructions regarding how their characters got to the place where they will begin the campaign.
For example, I may tell my players that they will begin the game on a dock, about to board a ship that is about to leave port for Nelkor, a large, well known trading city located on an island two days sail to the South West. My instructions may be to write a paragraph or two of background information on the character, which ends with a sentence or two explaining why they are about to board a ship to Nelkor. I may give them total control over their story, or I may switch it up by adding a few conditions, such as: 1) you are in disguise and don’t want to be found out – explain why and keep up the disguise as you meet the other players, or 2) you are penniless and are trying to find a way to stow away on the ship because you need to get to Nelkor, or 3) you are being pursued by the guards of the town and will be thrown into prison if you don’t escape town, a contact of yours has booked your passage on this vessel, for a price.
In all of these cases, the PC has all of the control over their character’s distant past, but I put parameters on their current conditions – usually my players come up with all sorts of strange and fantastic stories regarding why they are boarding the ship. These parameters are important because they allow you, the DM, to have a lot of control over game, while also giving the players enough leeway to feel like they own their characters.
2) I need to have the background at the beginning of the campaign, before the first session, so that I can intertwine the stories. This doesn’t require a long or very detailed background from the player, but that does help. What makes for good elements to use for adventure hook fodder?
a) Anything that causes two players to have a special bond (e.g. they are related) or a special dislike of each other (e.g. one believes the other dishonored his sister) makes for great drama during the campaign. For example, if PC 1 got into a tavern brawl with the brother of PC2 and hurt him seriously, PC2 is likely to have great distrust and feel uneasy around PC1. He might even manifest this dislike by openly challenging PC1 to a duel or try to publicly humiliate him. This also requires that PC1 have some constraints that would stop him from harming PC2; perhaps PC2 is of noble birth and PC1 has been hired to protect him, and therefore cannot harm PC2.
b) Anything that causes whatever law-enforcement entity exists to find one of the characters interesting makes for great NPC opportunities. For example, perhaps one of the PCs has been wrongfully accused of murder, but there is sufficient evidence to convict, so he ran. This leaves the door open for the rest of the party to try and figure out whether or not they should trust this person.
c) Anything that makes a character avoid a particular place or type of creature or type of situation is great for the adventure. This only works if your players actually like to roleplay the quirks that their PCs have, otherwise it is useless. It does absolutely no good to have a PC that is afraid of the dark if they do not insist, in character, to always carry the torches/sunrods/lanterns so that they always have light. This can get interesting if the player is good at it, and it can also offer great opportunities to place the party in conditions in which one of them becomes panicky – which is awesome fun.
The great fun of all of this is that you can work the overall, distant background of your PCs into the storyline. What if one of your PCs used to work for the King, as a lowly indentured servant, and was eventually released after the contract was up. What if that PC was treated well by everyone in the household except the young nephew of the king, who is now, five years later, to be escorted by the party to a neighboring land on a diplomatic mission. When the party is overtaken by bandits and the nephew is kidnapped, the PC can get blamed for being a traitor since ‘everyone knows you didn’t like him, you have wanted him gone for a long time.’ This offers great roleplaying grist and also a good adventure hook. The party can be competing with an NPC group dispatched by the king to find the nephew. Meanwhile, they discover that the whole thing is a ruse and the nephew set it up himself as part of a grand plan to overtake the king. This is the story of intrigue, deception, and redemption, all based on one line in a PC’s background.
Other, smaller items can also be used. If the PC is running from an arranged marriage, they can very inconveniently come across a relative of the betrothed, who then pursues them every step of the way to ‘bring honor back to my family.’ You can add a bit of humor to the campaign by making the guy a bumbling idiot with little social grace, but who is deadly only because of his uncanny luck. Good fodder for a light-ish adventure there.
That’s all for now, more later. I wish you good gaming.
~DM Samuel
Excellent allusion to Musashi, by the way.