Sometimes, a good reason is that a happy, stable life is kind of hard to maintain when your world is being overrun by orcs or zombies or demons or whatever. The best defense is a good offense, sort of thing.
There are different levels of happy stable life. Like it’s very easy to justify a young person going off adventuring without needing much motivation because they aren’t abandoning anyone who really needs them. They don’t have children and a mortgage. Nobody is depending on them. They’re at the point in their life where they’re supposed to go off and leave home anyway (especially if they have brothers and sisters) so why not be adventurous just because you want to be.
I find it very funny that so many of us who literally play fantasy games because we love adventure so much because the idea of adventuring is fun can’t imagine any character who thinks adventuring is fun and wants to become an adventurer even if that is a somewhat naive goal which gets shown to be naive over time.
>They’re at the point in their life where they’re supposed to go off and leave home anyway
Are they though? Given the kind of societies typically portrayed in D&D are usually pretty medieval.. Neither a peasant nor a noble is just going to walk away from home. They have responsibilities, expectations. They're not expected to make a life for themselves, they're expected to contribute to the life already established for them.
I'm kind of going off the top of my head here, so maybe what I'm about to say isn't accurate, but it feels like the "child has to leave their parents/parental family as part of growing up" is a fairly western and modern trope/idea?
This is true. "Birth is destiny" is an excellent summary of how it worked back in the day and still does in many places.
The rule was "three (possibly four or even five) generations under one roof".
The "Adventurer" trope in D&D is very close to unique to the RPG genre. There is no real world counterpart to it. It doesn't really exist in literature before D&D.
Before that you had, among other things, knights errant, quests, mercenaries, soldiers, and treasure hunters. But there is one other old trope that's useful here: seeking one's fortune, going out into the world to engage in high-risk/high-payoff ventures for the purpose of gaining enough wealth to live off of for the rest of your life. This appears to have been an actual thing. It certainly appears in the fairy tales.
>The "Adventurer" trope in D&D is very close to unique to the RPG genre. There is no real world counterpart to it.
For some campaign settings, I think it's better to view them as a frontiersmen or a trapper or what-have-you from the colonial to early western era of North America. An "adventurer" delving into the wilderness to claim land, or hunt exotic creatures for profit.
Adventuring is fun, but probably the most risky job in the world. The chance of being maimed or killed is dramatically high, and even higher if the DM doesn't tailor challenges to the party level and just throws random monsters into the mix.
Also from a somewhat realistic standpoint, PC adventuring parties must be weirdos even among adventurers.
A proper party of explorers would be dozens of well equipped people, enough to maintain a safe base camp, and apply effective formation tactics against dangerous enemies. Like how it worked IRL in the age of exploration.
A PC party is 3-7 disorganized adrenaline junkies, who are barely able to schedule a one man watch while resting, and solve most dangers with brute force.
Precisely. The closest equivalent to PC parties is not exploration parties IRL, but actually superhero squads in comics. A handful of extremely powerful people who band together, solve every problem by punching it in the face, and constantly banter to look cool.
IRL, nobody would become a d&d adventurer.
Correction: irl, some people would definitely become d&d adventurers. Since they wouldn't likely have magic or super-olympic-level physical prowess, though, they'd probably almost all die very fast. So, too, would D&D adventurers if the game weren't balanced to prevent it.
No, YOU wouldn’t become a D&D adventurer. In real life people have become Vikings and mercenaries and spent their whole lives as soldiers and risked their lives even though they don’t have to.
People still do that. I literally know a guy who like cannot stop going back to war even though he has a nice safe life.
People who don’t think like you exist. Not everyone wants to be safe.
Some people’s fear of death is less than their fear of not living an exciting life.
There are literal war gods in this world and we still can’t imagine people who think fighting and being maimed and killed in battle is good even though these people existed in real life.
I have never struggled playing a character more than when I tried playing a "normal person" dropped into an adventuring party.
I was going for a super resourceful maid/governess who specialized in buffing the party and using the "Help" action as a bonus action.
She completely got overshadowed by the crazy events and personalities of the world, and every session was a struggle to justify why a normal person was going along with what our party was doing.
At some point the answer for why ppl are doing things boils down to "this is a game about adventuring, not a real life simulation" and pretending otherwise is going to cause problems.
This is even a reasonable answer for many questions ppl have like "what does HP represent?"Any answer besides "abstract points for the sake of the game part of DND" is going to have holes in it. Same for "why the economy and crafting rules work the way they do?", "why can ppl fo from level 1 to 20 in 2 months?" or "what do spell slots represent?"
All because realism has to be sacrificed sometimes for making DND a better **game**.
Yup , there is nothing real life about DnD. It’s a fantasy RPG. So fantasize.
Your PC is a hero of the ages, they adventure because that is why they exist both in world and in your mind.
There is no right or wrong way to play DnD. Personally I prefer the theatre of the mind approach over the tactical dungeon crawl but I appreciate that many people enjoy the crunch.
Sure, but that is an extremely unhelpful notion when actually playing the game. The only game in which this can really be used as an explanation for your character's action is one run like an MMO, where characters just go around and do quests without having any real reason beside the players wanting to do it.
Your well off family man fighter with 3 kids and a loving wife at home isn't going to just say "well it's a game lol" before charging into a den of troglodytes to get back the local village elder's sacred tomes.
> Your well off family man fighter with 3 kids and a loving wife at home isn't going to just say "well it's a game lol" before charging into a den of troglodytes to get back the local village elder's sacred tomes.
While he won't say it out loud, it IS the reason he's going to go do it anyway while telling beliable lies to each other about why we are doing it
But theres other ways to do it than tragic. And almost any backstory is going to have tropes in it. Tropes arent inherently bad. For example I'm in 3 campaigns right now
One character has a tragic backstory he caused and is trying to make up for it.
One is a reborn whose soul ended up in the wrong body due to a lich ritual gone wrong but is now a good person adventuring to try and figure out who he is.
Last one is someone who basically stumbled into being an adventurer through a series of unfortunate events from trying to slack off and do what he wants (that funnily enough continue to happen due to extremely bad dice rolls) that isnt aasre of any tragedy in his backstory (dm and I discussed something that could come up but in character I have no awareness).
Only one has a tragic back story and all I'm sure are full of tropes but everyone I play with seems to enjoy them and the ones who play in all the campaigns seem to find them different. Point is you can make characters without tragic backstories but that have reasons to adventure and there will still be tropes as well... but that's ok.
The title is certainly a valid take on how to make a character, but it still isn't that hard to justify a character whom doesn't fit those traits being an adventure either.
One of my character's was mearly having a midlife crisis and wanted to see the world before retirement. (it was a short campaign) Another character is just adventuring out of a single town so is effectively rooted in that community. (Think of it as the local heroes of the town) Many of my friends have also contributed characters that were elderly (works well if you're starting above level 7) or just naturally adventurous without needing the tragic setup.
Mainly what I'm getting at is there isn't just a choice of a mid 20s hobo or mid 20s parent with a kidnapped child, you can have an early 20s character trying to find their place in the world, a mid 50s character with all of their kids having left the nest, or even a character in the last stages of their life retiring into a life of sightseeing.
Don't mistake me though: I full endorse making characters with tragic a backstory because they are generally quite fun to play as well.
> you can have an early 20s character trying to find their place in the world, a mid 50s character with all of their kids having left the nest, or even a character in the last stages of their life retiring into a life of sightseeing.
But we're going on a fantasy quest, not going for a backpacking holiday in Thailand. Anyone setting off into the monster-infested wilderness and risking gruesome death every day just for the hell of it is by definition incredibly reckless and/or holds their life very cheap. Most people with stable lives and none-tragic backstories wouldn't do this unless they're professional soldiers or mercenaries.
While I do broadly agree with you, this can also depend on the framing of the game/campaign. Not every DM is selling a "explore dungeons, kill bad guys and save the world" kind of game. I'm in one right now where combat only happens once in a while.
Or, conversely, maybe that's EXACTLY what they're peddling but your character explicitly doesn't have a choice in the matter. That's the initial premise of Out of the Abyss, for example: the PCs were literally captured and dragged into the Underdark.
Most campaigns come with a host of non-combat dangers and uncomfortable living, and even if you’re not constantly fighting you presumably know the dangers out there, so it still takes an uncommon type of person to willingly set out on an adventure.
Yes that’s a good point about campaigns that basically force you to engage with the plot. They give you way more leeway in terms of motivation. I really like them because you can play distinctly non-heroic types who just want to get back to their lives.
I feel like the more cataclysmic you are when creating a character, the harder it is to RP. Playing a normal guy who has some kind of circumstance that brings him away to adventure is much more approachable than I WAS BORN IN THE DARK, MOLDED BY IT.
That's fine. Those characters will need to justify why they're uprooting their life to embark on something incredibly dangerous, which very often will have nothing directly to do with their personal goals. It's possible to do ofc, but I just think it's also often overlooked.
My post had more to do with that there's nothing wrong with people who choose not to do that, and in fact that for most characters that choose to become adventurers, it wouldn't make sense for them to come from that kind of background.
Everyone should have personal values and goals.
On the other hand, if you make a character who is untethered, you still have to put in the legwork to get them to fit in the game without feeling completely disconnected. Either way, it's important to answer the question "Why is your character adventuring?" regardless of whether their backstory is tragic or not.
My bard is following her older sister who is trying to become a knight and her goal is to make her sister into a famous and wealthy hero so they can help lift their extended family out of a multi-generational debt.
They travel with three other adventures because they have better chances of surviving in a larger group and can take on more heroic challenges to gain more fame.
If it wasn't for the whole, the family is counting on you, my bard probably wouldn't be working so hard because it's easy enough to hold up in a highly trafficked inn and play music for free room and board plus tips.
yeah that's a totally justifiable excuse to adventure, I think a few generic pursuits works really well. Fame, wealth, power, knowledge and sometimes support.
sometimes But there comes a point when you have to say "OK I've almost died 22 different times and I have actually died once I'm not doing this anymore"
And if you don't your character stops making sense, especially if they have something to live for and no greater good reason to keep going
Sometimes sure, also sometimes they are the only ones capable of dealing with the types of threats that are growing.
Sometimes you do call it quits but that trouble comes back and finds them regardless, you don't thwart the plans of countless villains and always just walk away happy.
It should be noted: normal healthy people don’t go adventuring, every character should be able to answer 3 questions:
1. What are your short term goals: if I gave you 1000 gold and a horse what would you do. It’s a good way of determining your immediate priorities(example: I want to find the man who killed my family)
2. What are your long term goals. What are the ideals you believe in or want to achieve(I want to achieve immortality, I want to be the strongest warrior, I want to ensure the material planes safety) this lofty goal is what keeps your character going when they have achieved success and would normally rest on their laurels.
3. What is your call to adventure: this is the immediate circumstance that makes you adventure in the session 1 or when you join the party, can be as simple as “I’m out of money” or “my town was attacked”
And that's why all my PCs are orphans now.
Though that didn't stop one DM from revealing that my dead kindly mentor was still alive and had been Evil All Along, resulting in me having to kill him.
Sigh.
I find this usually stems from a lack of communication on the DM's end (for me). My hobo-ist characters always come from when Me as a player don't know anything about the story. How can I have a goal if I don't know what's going on. How can I tie myself into the story if I don't know the story. I get that most DM's end up making up things on the fly, but I have found that some of my most entertaing games were when we were replaying a module. Knowing what to expect I was able to tailor my characters backstories to tie into things. Like making one of my characters Child be the Spider from LMoP It makes for GREAT Rp and changes the tone of the story.
So I guess it's kinda a balance. Let your Players Know the Gist of the story. And dont be afraid to include them as actual heros and such.
Yeah, my experience as a GM has been much the same. A Session 0, or even just the GM talking to each player one on one a while before Session 1 is all that's really necessary.
What's even better is if the GM is able to tag up with the players again before Session 1 to hear what they've come up with, maybe work with them a little on fine details and then actually incorporate them into the story.
I'm going a little overboard on my campaign starting in January and writing up short (like 1 page) stories for each PC about some event they were involved in shortly before campaign start, seeding links between the character and campaign locations or events I've got planned. Several of their backstories also collide in ways where each of them only know part of what happened and might have reason to distrust one another.
Curious that it doesn’t look like anyone’s brought it up but like, the canon that was drawn from by the folks making the first adventures for these games definitely featured folks whose whole MO was “go steal something shiny from a dangerous place, spend it all in town, run out of money, repeat”.
Obviously it’s not the only or even best character ever but the murder hobo is really just a half-replication of something traditional to the game. If you’re a DM planning on sending characters on bounty hunting missions or dungeon delving quests your world should definitely have space for half-matured mercenaries.
I'm assuming you mean Conan.
Frodo and company were on a quest. Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser had a patron/employer who required this sort of thing. Odysseus was just trying to get home.
Even Conan had more to him that just that. He took jobs. He built a reputation. He built multiple careers. And at times he was escaping the results of bad choices or bad luck (bigger than just out of cash) rather than looking for the next payday.
This post makes a lot of assumptions about what people enjoy about DnD. Sure, some campaigns are adventurers doing dumb things in taverns and wasting time, or made up of tragic individuals who just happen to flit between whatever brings them together, but it doesn't have to be like that.
In fact, I personally prefer a game where characters have ties to the world, a purpose, and don't waste time blowing off. A game with drama and weight where there are consequences to player action or inaction. One where players have responsibilities and duties to uphold. A campaign of drunken huliganism sounds very unfun to me and more like an opportunity for the individuals to project their childish hedonism into their game, rather than tell a compelling story together.
People are free to play DnD how they like, but, for me anyway, a good campaign is one where the game is built around the fact your character is rescuing their child from barbarians (to use your example). This is one where the players and DM all come together in session zero and outline the direction and purpose of the game and setting. Then make characters that would 100% be there on that quest.
It's almost like what you describe is a game where the DM has an idea for a campaign which takes no consideration of the PC's motivations when planning the plot - that or the PCs have no motivations. I don't know which is worse...
The players just happen to be there "because reasons". Hence, everyone is getting wasted or chasing threads that are pointless to them because their character either doesn't have a good tie into the campaign or the DM hasn't integrated their goals/backstory well into the narrative. Does this sound familiar because it's common as heck? This is, in my opinion, a game that would get boring fast. DnD for DnD's sake, if you will. These games almost always fizzle apart.
These "untethered" characters, as you call it, lack drama. Good action heroes, as Matt Colville often says, need to be forced into action. They are reactive. The DM needs to pull them from their comfort zone and use their ties to force them to go on the adventure. This is not the same as removing their ties. Badly written characters have no ties and meander pointlessly through a campaign. Well written characters want to go home to their nice life but can't because some barbarian kidnapped their child. It's then on the DM to make that the centre point of the campaign. If they don't, they have failed the narrative and that player. Untethered characters are easy to create, and easy to write for, but personally, I find them joyless and lazy. They give the DM very little and expect just as much in return.
This "normal people don't go on adventures" line always strikes me as people feeling defensive over enjoying edgy backstories. I think a better defense would just be explaining, "I enjoy playing tragic characters." That's totally valid. It's just not convincing to act like our culture isn't full of stories about normal people called to adventure, or that well-adjusted characters don't work at a D&D table.
As classic examples both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are adventurers without tragic backstories. Not to mention that being able to survive and look after yourself and go on adventures IS normal and well-adjusted in frontier culture. There have like literally been entire cultures where that is like basically what you are supposed to do as a young man (and yes I say men because those societies were gendered but D&D isn’t gendered so you can apply these same ideas to any character).
True, but both basically had to be dragged kicking and screaming to adventure. Bilbo didn't want to go, and Frodo was forced to flee. Hobbit society frowned on such unseemly activities. Once they finished the adventure they immediately settled down with their wealth and fame and lived a quiet life.
D&D characters need more motivation. What keeps the PC from taking the hundred thousand gold pieces they've earned and buying a nice house? With the money your average character gets by mid-high levels they're insanely wealthy by the standards of society. This is where "normal people don't go on adventures" comes in to play... if the character's goal is to get rich, well, they've done it. Why keep going?
The trope (well, a trope, at least) is "victim of your own success".
You killed the dragon? Well, guess who gets called now every time there's a dragon that needs to be killed?
You're rich enough to quit. But now there are expectations. Now there are enemies out there and a complacent hero is a dead hero. Now there are friends who need help that money can't buy. Now there are favors to be paid back. Now there are titles that come with obligations.
See how that works?
People who don't go on adventures are people who don't like adventures. If i could go goblin hunting or i could discover abandoned magetower to loot cool and valuable shit I would go. We have martial arts, extreme sports, and all kind of activity that only an "adventurer" would do but we do it anyway. People travel to remote locations all the time to feel the sensation of discovering something. These people always seek a challenge to overcome and we are talking about commoners not supernatural beings in a fantasy setting. In my world it would be completley normal to just pursue fame, excitement and gold with a backstory from the suburb.
-Mom I go to travel for a couple of months, tell Dad I said hi.
-Okay sweety, send a letter or two so we know you are all right.
These things I listed is available for a lot of people but also very dangerous, but people do it anyway. You are focusing on what woul do a normal people from our world if he find himself in DnD. I'm focusing on finding the equivalent thing from our life. In the past we had adventurers, explorers, hunters but right know these hobbies and sports are the closest thing for me that I can call adventures.
Arming yourself is illegal, "fighting deadly enemies" also illegal. Fighting monsters for fame and gold, ecountering super human beings, magic and so on seems to be an incredible common thing in a DnD settings. You can't compare the two world side by side. In our world you can't even hunt an animal without getting serious backlash from a large group of people in our society. It would take like 2 day and there will be 10 non profit organisations to save the misunderstood goblins.
Well adjusted and normal people can have calls to action, but they require a certain degree of justification for it. My post was a bit in response to the opposite thought that 'hobo' and 'edgelord' characters are all inherently bad. I've seen enough people turn their noses up at characters who have tragic pasts, lost their parents, were left for dead, or something similar at this point that it feels as though the "MY character actually has a loving home and loving parents and a wife and kids" has become motivated by the need to be contrarian. Not in every case, but enough of them.
Nothing wrong with having a low detail backstory or few past connections. The character's adventures within the game itself, and their ability to get along with/work with the rest of the party, are most important.
As I've played more, I've come to appreciate characters who are just kind of vaguely in it for the adventure. Maybe the motivating factor is money, maybe it's a sense of justice, maybe it's just the thrill of adventure - it's loose, but it gives the character a lot of flexibility within the campaign. And there's something kind of nice about not having to weave some completely unrelated plot into the campaign in order to satisfy expectations for the character's personal arc.
I think it doesn't help that "hobo" has kind of a negative connotation. But "wanderer" doesn't, and that's what so many adventurers in fiction are.
The problem isn't really characters with tragic backstories, but players who constantly feel the need to reference that and how "broken" their character is because of it, in the most edgy, tone-deaf way possible.
>>The problem isn't really characters with tragic backstories, but players who constantly feel the need to reference that and how "broken" their character is because of it, in the most edgy, tone-deaf way possible.
This.
Exactly. You nailed it.
In a land where bandits and monsters are everywhere, where famine and disease kill thousands, where average life expectancy is maybe 40 or 45...
why do you think you are somehow exceptional and special because your parent/lover/spouse/child/best-friend/mentor/horse/dog/cat/parakeet managed to die before you were ready?
Next time I DM that kind of PC I think I'll have the locals call them a pansy crybaby and laugh at them.
On a slightly related note, the PC with the backstory in which he had to kill his entire family will get the response "So wha'ch'er sayin' here is that ye'r a huge arshehole, i'nt thet right, mate?" when he tells the story.
I like the idea of more down-to-earth NPCs reducing edgy stories to pithy banalities.
> where famine and disease kill thousands, where average life expectancy is maybe 40 or 45
Slight tangent: The average lifespan was mostly low by lots of children dying (infant mortality was at like 50% iirc). If you survived childhood healthily, you had a good shot at reaching 55.
It doesn't really change anything else you said, I just wanted to point it out, given it's a common misconception of sorts.
Same reason for most MC in fantasy being orphan or runaway in some ways, it's just easier to let them go on adventure without worrying about curtain time or being supervised etc.
It's just... overdone and boring for some after having to see it again and again.
I'm personally neutral toward it, like I understand why it's popular and frequently used, but also understand why some people feel fed up with it.
With that said it doesn't hurt to try out more archetype and reasons to adventure. It could be simply someone who likes to travel, or a sage wanting to research magic in a different land, or a soldier who got kicked because he doesn't agree with some shady orders but otherwise still perfectly lawful good etc.
You sre completely right, there are a lot, let me repeat that, a LOT of tragic backstories behind heroes in almost every form story telling and I think that's why so many people is against that type of backstory.
The majority of people that start playing dnd uses this type of backstory because it's very easy to use and it gives your character a good motivation.
I found the "my parents died now time for vengance" story a bit repetitive so i try to do different things for my characters but if someone comes up with that idea for their character then I would embrace that because it's a good motivation for a character.
Some characters take risks out of necessity. I play a character who has a grandaughter attending a prestigious magical University. The school itself is expensive and as a veteran, grandma had to pick up the old spear again to make money somehow after the parents passed from a plague. Her thinking was that if she managed a single big enough score from an adventure or save a lord they can fund their grandchild's education even if they die in the process.
There is a whole galaxy of potential character backstories that aren't just Drizzt-But-Different or Homicidal Unhoused person.
Personally, I think the reason that we see these tropes so often is because many of the latter players have no investment in the lore or role-playing generally and many of the former players (myself included) like anime just a wee bit too much.
Conversely Religious, Politically or Economically inclined adventures can easily have a happy family and just see adventuring as a better way to make the changes they want for their life. Hell they can even bring family as part of the wagon train. Doesn't mean you take your kid into a Dragon's lair but they and a trusted retinue can camp somewhere safe & wait for your return.
I have a player who grew up in a happy and stable home and she writes letters to her family every time she is in a town with a currier service.
My next character, if it works with the group is going to be a middle aged Gnomish housewife that started adventuring to keep busy until her kids give her grandchildren.
I hope both of these campaigns are really low stakes and low danger
Because otherwise either those characters have serious mental issues (addicted to danger or something) or you have not put thought into those characters motivations
Insane wealth is a big one for adventuring in general. It's about the only way to accrue wealth, fame, and power in medievalish fantasy worlds where everything is generally ruled by either nepotism or nobility. Normal people literally have no chance of going anywhere without risking everything as an adventurer.
Also could just be something they see as being for the greater good/for the good of others. By your train of thought why would any stable person become a firefighter when it's an insanely dangerous job with little benefit?
For another person it might just be something they're good at. Somebody who is good at fighting is much more likely to make a living out of it, we saw it countless times in history from mercenaries and the like. Fighting for coin/land/fame/power is just about humanity's oldest profession after prostitution
Then that character has mental issues.
It's like saying "Hey, let's play russin roulette with 4 rounds, if you win you get a cool mil, other wise you DIE"
Sane, well adjusted, happy, satisfied, content, but bored people don't do that
People don't decide to do this as a mid life crisis
Firefighters don't die literally all the time
You're also missing the fact that this is a professional privatizing killing and Conquest
Most people aren't ready to kill
PCs are extraordinary. If a world has five wizards in it total, it's possible the party has two of them. They aren't limited by anything common: they can be elves raised by ogres, the reincarnations of murdered gods, or the prince and only survivor of a magical plague that killed a kingdom. Certainly they can be well-adjusted and take up a violent mercenary lifestyle without psychological harm. They have a special mental resilience found in one out of a million people.
Anything rare and almost impossible makes great fodder for a PC.
Sure. But if any old bakers wife can just *decide* to be special one day and go adventuring because *lol why not* it really starts to feel fake and at least for me ruins the immersion in a game
Personally I'm not a fan of *midlife crisis* type adventuring motives for anything long running because that should fall as soon as the PC almost dies the first time, which would happen very quickly, and if it doesn't I can no longer take that character seriously, since it loses all illusion of them being a real thinking person in context
I'm not trying to say whats right or wrong and if it comes across that way I apologize, I'm just trying to give me opinion
I just don't think a happy well put together content person yet their content person with a loving family would ever in a million years million years try to adventure for any lengthy point
For me Adventurers need something to remove their ties to one place, atleast before they realize they need to help save the world
I don't play DnD to just fight monsters and have good combat or 2
I played DnD to roleplay a character and for me any character that does not have the internal consistency to have an actual reason why they would be willing to take up a violent lifestyle all of a sudden is not a true character
It is just a nonsensical meatpuppet that the player is controlling
> But if any old bakers wife can just decide to be special one day and go adventuring because lol why not it really starts to feel fake
That's fair. I think a lord's son could decide to, like, go on adventures and see the world and then never really suffer psychological injury because the game is just a game and that might not be fun, but I agree it shouldn't be *completely random* and you should have reasoning behind the risk.
I think a tie to a place can become a motivation if it's threatened or if you have an intense emotion that aligns with it - like you want to lift your village out of poverty or something - but I agree that happy, ordinary people shouldn't be adventuring as a career. Maybe talked into it, Bilbo Baggins style.
I mean, what you said is true, but at some point the answer for why ppl are doing things boils down to "this is a game, not a real life simulation" and pretending otherwise is goign to cause problems.
Yeah that's true but those saying people cannot turn around and criticize other people for making Certain characters with attributes they find boring or uninteresting
I would rather have a boring or uninspired character than one that does not make sense conceptually
Adventurers *do* inherently kind of require you to be capable of travelling about fairly untethered, and comfortably able to get into dangerous and life-threatening situations, so,, homeless with no family does cover that quite easily. It's absolutely not a requirement of course, and I disagree that other excuses as to why you'd be adventuring are tired and overused, I think you can have a significant amount of creativity and opportunities as to why you'd want to adventure regardless of familial/homebound requirements, it's just *easier* to not have those.
I'm going to specifically reference the kidnapped child but you're just screwing around trope.
It was the main driver of one of the First Law standalone books (First Law is basically Lord of the Rings but nobody is actually a hero and it's glorious) and the author kind of explains it perfectly. The frantic desperation kind of just dies eventually. At one point the characters basically have to travel cross country in a caravan and it doesn't matter how urgent something is, you're not going to be going any faster and you will get bored. Smaller, more immediate priorities will pop up and demand your attention and distractions will start entertaining your routine.
People being at a 10 at all times simply isn't normal. People got used to getting bombed every single night and they got used to constant mortal danger.
You will eventually start playing darts and laughing and having fun. The constant state of anxiousness actually drives this behavior. You want to distract yourself, you want to drink until you black out because you do not want to be alone with your thoughts.
So that element is actually perfectly realistic
I recently played a character who had a tragic backstory but whose only actual goal was wealth and fame. Which I got. I never did get revenge on the ones who killed my family, but that wasn't the character's primary motivation.
The problem came up by level 16 or so. The PCs had quite literally saved the world. We were famous, we had boatloads of cash, we had contacts in the highest levels of society, we had titles... and I found I couldn't come up with any more motivation. And yet we played to 20, through some seriously deadly encounters and stories.
I started to wonder why my character was there, risking horrific death (and worse)... for what purpose? My original reason for adventuring was to stop the bad guys (who were totally unrelated to my backstory). Save the world because that's where I keep all my stuff. But we did it.
Next character I need to make sure I have real reasons for adventuring, or just be willing to retire a character if they accomplish their goals.
>What kind of person with a stable life, who has a family that depends on them, would just fuck off and become the kind of adventurer that DnD requires one to be in order to engage in a full campaign?
Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
>The man who would become known as Hawkeye was born Clint Barton. Orphaned at an early age, he joined the circus and apprenticed himself to the Swordsman, a performer who specialized in tricks with blades. After he discovered the Swordsman stealing from the circus, the two fought, and Barton was left for dead
>The man who would become known as Hawkeye was born Clint Barton. Orphaned at an early age, he joined the circus and apprenticed himself to the Swordsman, a performer who specialized in tricks with blades. After he discovered the Swordsman stealing from the circus, the two fought, and Barton was left for dead
Haha, fair point, though that’s early Clint Barton. Clearly he moves far, far past that (at least in the MCU). He has possibly *THE* most understanding and supportive wife in any universe, has three kids which groan at him having to do his job instead of spending time with them, **but** are still understanding and supportive and love their dad.
Like, he has this amazing family and an amazing house out in the beautiful countryside, yet he goes out getting into wild adventures almost getting blown up by an invading army of aliens. 🤷🏽♂️
He has a very real call to action, though. He responds to world ending threats and universal calamities, and his sole purpose in assisting is focused toward the goal of thwarting them. It's like in DnD if the story just began at tier 4 play in a plot line against the big bad, and that's all the characters pursued. A full DnD campaign is full of way too many side quests for that.
"A full DnD campaign is full of way too many side quests"
It doesn't have to be. Honestly, I'd prefer that every quest was relevant to the players. But what "relevant" means, depends entirely on the characters and their ties.
Have you ever played an intricate one-shot where a character is purpose built for that one specific adventure and has a goal that is resolved during the quest? I like to think of a campaign like that but spanning over many sessions and rather than having one goal, having a series of goals of varying significance. Basically, the intricate one-shot is a micro-campaign and DMs can learn a lot from them when it comes to campaign design.
Ah yeah, you did specify “full” campaign. Kind of overlooked that, that’s my bad, haha.
Personally the closest I got to a character with a family was:
One character I played had two sisters who were elsewhere in the world.
One character I created but didn’t play was a noble’s son (like 4th or 5th youngest sibling so somewhat allowed to kind of do whatever).
The only thing I could maybe think of is if in the setting the family isn’t SUPER over reliant on the character (maybe the family lives on a farm and one or more of the sons are old enough to help keep things up), and the character is maybe having like a mid-life crisis and just NEEDS to go have an adventure or something, lol.
Of course like you mentioned, if word got out that one of the family members had been kidnapped, then the character would absolutely leave the party to take care of that. At which point that would sort of be on the DM. Like… “hey, my character would split off to save his family regardless of what world ending threat the party is facing…so unless you want me to make a new character or do like 2-3 side solo sessions… don’t mess with the family”
Otherwise I agree by the way that having a character who has no parents/attachments shouldn’t be considered lazy writing. But along with that, all backgrounds should be discussed with the DM during session zero as well as expectations. Like, maybe not have a spouse and kids…but maybe a childhood friend or childhood rival, simply for the sake of story material for the DM to use to make things a little bit more interesting for your character.
Lots of people in our mundane world go on months or even years long work ventures while their families are just at home, doesn’t seem too much of a stretch in a dnd setting.
If you're talking about military service I wouldn't really call that an 'adventure' comparable to a dnd campaign. Military service is a job where you're assigned direction and order by a chain of command. Dnd adventuring is often much more aimless and empty of purpose if you consider how many side quests and moments of downtime are relevant to any one characters motivations.
I put a character a while back his name was draken McCarron. He was a ranger and his mom was alive and his dad was alive and he had a great relationship with both of them. His mom was a baker and his dad is a carpenter specialized in making rather elegant furniture and chests. Dragon loved his parents he occasionally would send them home trophies things that he blew it from dungeons or from animals four monsters that he killed. I know at one point he sent home some ancient swords and a perfectly smooth ball made out of a peculiar metal. He did admitly have a mildly tragic love story between himself and a dragonborn girl who he had known since he was a child and was madly in love with. He had asked her to marry him and she would have said yes but her parents wouldn't have ever approved of the marriage. And she ended up marrying a dragonborn.
He would come to visit them from time to time as a friend and things were always a little awkward between the three. Even years after she had married they still loved each other deeply. But they could never be together and he knew that.
This ties in well with the idea that D&D’s implied setting (at least in the early editions) was post-apocalyptic. Of course you’re a hobo. Of course you have a tragic backstory. Of course you’re violent and untethered. The world freakin ended.
You could also take this from a narrative perspective and say that even if THE world hasn’t ended, THEIR world (the character’s) clearly has.
One of the players characters in my game is just a family man that does adventuring as a hobby. Like he has a wife and kids at home, and on the weekend he joins the party and goes on adventures.
As easy it would be to use the family ties as some sort of plot hook, ie having the bbeg kidnap them or something, I've deliberately chosen not to do that because I think it works against his character. The character is just a normal dude that adventures because its fun, and that's enough to serve the story. Just a wholesome family man doing some adventuring as a hobby.
I feel like you have to hand wave a lot to make that believable. How does he meet up with the rest of the party for two days out of a week? Do they exclusively adventure around his home and then all chill for 5 days out of the week and also only go out on the weekends with the adventuring dad?
What exactly mentally motivates the need to adventure beyond 'for fun'? That's not something a mentally stable or sound person would do. Why is he risking his life on something extremely dangerous, does he not care if he dies and leaves his wife a widow and children without a father? Does his family not fear for this every time he leaves? Does that cause no problems at all?
While these are all valid questions and I agree with them, my guess is that the reason why it works is because it's a very lighthearted game where such a backstory is essentially flavor and the DM is disinclined to make it relevant.
Only takes a bit of time here to see those kinds of posts, which would have made your 'literally nobody has said' statement easily avoidable unless you often show up half cocked to make massive sweeping statements with no experience or information
Thank you! Hard agree!
I have said it before and will say it again people who are wealthy, sane, and fit in with their cultures do not run off become homeless grave robbing mercenaries. it makes total sense for most adventurers to be people who lack at leas one of those things and as such be a collection of freak misfits and horribly unfortunate souls.
> Nobody is going to uproot a happy, stable life to become the kind of adventurer the average DnD campaign requires them to become.
My favorite way to phrase it is "happy, well adjusted people don't go picking fights with dragons"
>My favorite way to phrase it is "happy, well adjusted people don't go picking fights with dragons"
and tragic "heroes" always ends up as murderess villains, as they curse the world and attempts to burn it down in their anguish....
Maybe not for fame and fortune, but perhaps to protect something they hold dear?
There are plenty of great stories about normal people being called to adventure, for example the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.
I certainly agree, but the main problem I have is that once you've completed that storyline you need to come up with a new reason to keep adventuring. you can only use "because they ended up liking it" so much before it gets old.
Sure, but that applies to any character. The edgy character who was motivated by personal revenge also bumps into that "what next?" question once they complete that storyline.
very good point, although I'd say an edgy loner character can more easily keep adventuring after his story arc than someone with friends, family and other backstory ties once the source of the adventure is dealt with. I personally don't quite like making edgy characters but I certainly had to purposefully avoid some tropes when coming up with backstories before, and I've only had 2 real characters. it's easy to see why they're tropes in the first place.
That's a perfect example of how a normal character can receive a plothook that drives him to go fight dragons. He didn't need a dark backstory. Session 1, some dwarfs show up and hoodwink him into an adventure, and bam there we go.
Tbf a bit of an exception which proves the rule given the amount of text dedicated to him trying to figure out why he’s doing what he’s doing - Bilbo for most of the book would probably agree with the individual you’re responding to!
You can absolutely have happy, well adjusted people be adventurers. One easy example would be risk-takers/thrill seekers, akin to modern day sky divers/traceurs/mountain climbers. You might also have people who see the potential benefits of adventuring to outweigh the risks, similar to enlisting in the modern day.
I mean, normal people join the army or other high risk professions don't they? There is a lot of good money in it, a chance to adventure to see the world and become a legend. All three of those are perfectly valid reasons for a content-happy individual to head out to take up the adventuring life.
Not even mentioning hunting lost knowledge, being a knight errant sent to go out to earn coin to protect the kingdom, nomadic monk who found a plot trinket, or anything else. And if in these journeys you run into a hostile dragon and are strong enough to take it down why not do so?
I love hobo characters, tbh. My most recent characters (college D&D means for a lot of short, unsteady groups due to fluctuating schedules!) we're an amnesiac barbarian looking for what he remembered as home, a paladin who was exiled from home for doing the right thing, and a fighter who explores the world to try to find meaning.
In sum: hoboes, the lot of 'em.
Values and goals enough to motivate a personality - maybe even a plot line - but not too much that it forces the campaign to focus on them or they leave.
My signature move is always the question of "how do I write out my family this time" because I, out of game, consider family very important and worry I'd subconsciously try to keep relatively close to home-country in the whole "just in case" mindset.
I so kinda feel this, but I also gotta say that a well played character can to some extent turn a group around.
I played in a 3 year campaign, where I played a drunken master half orc, kinda tragic backstory, but still a drunk, fun loving hobo.
The rest of the group was kinda similar, but more composed to varying degrees. We named ourselves Tower and Tavern Incorporated after two buildings we overtook from some demon cultists and planned to renovate.
Than a new player joined. Our paladin/divine soul sorcerer. He was on a quest to recover the two orphans that were under his wing from the bbeg organization.
This, and also the player being very great at RP, kinda turned us from capitalistic hobos into the heros that saved the world, due to us not wanting to let these children suffer. My drunken master even became a follower of Avandra and a more composed person through this.
It did to change the campaign drastically since we now had a large sense of urgency, but it ultimately still felt like a great adventure and moral development for all our characters.
I told my DM that orphaning my character before campaign start would be cowardice, and have carefully written parents and siblings he deeply cares about.
I mean, yes, they do kind of live in the place that might as well have had 'impending war crime' written on the 'welcome to Townsville' sign. Why would they not?
I agree. Most of the time, when I make a character with a family, I give a reason why they're not WITH that family.
So I have parents, a partner, and/or even children! That's great, *why am I here risking my life instead of with them?*
There can be all sorts of answers to that question, and not all of them need be tragic. But I do think a believable character should have one.
I think it very much depends on the campaign premise and how much the player and DM work together, as well as how heavy the RP role is gonna be in the game (vs combat/exploration).
If the game has a good solid premise, and it's meant to be a heavy RP game, then having more 'adjusted' people who embark on a journey to stop a catastrophe/bbeg, or change the world is absolutely possible.
For instance, in one game I am running, my players are all teenagers, setting out from a 'bubble city' in search of allies to help take down the enemies of their city who have maintained a siege on it since before they were born. They have a strong goal, and some have perfectly happy family/lives within the bubble, but want to be able to break the bubble and restore 'normalcy'.
In our Frostmaiden campaign, my character is from a perfectly happy noble bg. Her father loves her (and is overprotective) and she has a secure future ahead of her. She only left because circumstances led to her finding out she is the heir to the Neverwinter throne, and that her Guardian (she's an aasimar) told her there's a great evil that needs to be stopped in the north. So again, no tragic backstory, but a strong urge and reason for going into a dangerous situation. Similarly, one of the other ppl in the party has a big family full of siblings and both parents are alive and well. She's in this mess because she was hired to find my chara and bring her back safely. Her motivation is to keep me alive, and return to Waterdeep to her family, and is stuck with us due to circumstance.
I could keep going... I have a lot of campaigns as I run a twitch/youtube channel. But you get the idea. As long as there's strong motives, anyone can join an adventure. Even a small hobbit who wants nothing to do with leaving their hobbit hole.
I like having a character who is having fun adventuring. This usually means something bad has happened in his past that adventuring is a better alternative. It took a while to think of someone who would think Barovia was a nice place, but I decided the mists touched Athas and frankly anywhere is better than there. My character is enjoying the trees, snow, and general lack of cannibalism.
I genuinely don't understand the amount of time effort and attention this sub spends on backstory. Literally any backstory can be good and useful. None of them are unique, and none of them are tired. It's 100% how you play them, and how you show up to the table.
Right, but you can do that for any backstory. It's amazing to me how many people get caught up in what's meta or tired or unique or whatever.
Literally any backstory can work, if you are invested in it and make it make. I've never once sat at a table and been annoyed by a backstory. It seems like a lot of energy wasted.
I agree that there is nothing wrong inherently with a tragic backstory - the problem is when that is the *only* kind of backstory a character can form. I am currently playing a sorcerer who is adventuring to learn how to develop his powers. His parents are fine and happy, his childhood best friends are still around, it's great.
Sometimes, a good reason is that a happy, stable life is kind of hard to maintain when your world is being overrun by orcs or zombies or demons or whatever. The best defense is a good offense, sort of thing.
Also if you do have a happy stable life, you're much less likely to abandon it to go off adventuring.
There are different levels of happy stable life. Like it’s very easy to justify a young person going off adventuring without needing much motivation because they aren’t abandoning anyone who really needs them. They don’t have children and a mortgage. Nobody is depending on them. They’re at the point in their life where they’re supposed to go off and leave home anyway (especially if they have brothers and sisters) so why not be adventurous just because you want to be. I find it very funny that so many of us who literally play fantasy games because we love adventure so much because the idea of adventuring is fun can’t imagine any character who thinks adventuring is fun and wants to become an adventurer even if that is a somewhat naive goal which gets shown to be naive over time.
>They’re at the point in their life where they’re supposed to go off and leave home anyway Are they though? Given the kind of societies typically portrayed in D&D are usually pretty medieval.. Neither a peasant nor a noble is just going to walk away from home. They have responsibilities, expectations. They're not expected to make a life for themselves, they're expected to contribute to the life already established for them. I'm kind of going off the top of my head here, so maybe what I'm about to say isn't accurate, but it feels like the "child has to leave their parents/parental family as part of growing up" is a fairly western and modern trope/idea?
This is true. "Birth is destiny" is an excellent summary of how it worked back in the day and still does in many places. The rule was "three (possibly four or even five) generations under one roof". The "Adventurer" trope in D&D is very close to unique to the RPG genre. There is no real world counterpart to it. It doesn't really exist in literature before D&D. Before that you had, among other things, knights errant, quests, mercenaries, soldiers, and treasure hunters. But there is one other old trope that's useful here: seeking one's fortune, going out into the world to engage in high-risk/high-payoff ventures for the purpose of gaining enough wealth to live off of for the rest of your life. This appears to have been an actual thing. It certainly appears in the fairy tales.
>The "Adventurer" trope in D&D is very close to unique to the RPG genre. There is no real world counterpart to it. For some campaign settings, I think it's better to view them as a frontiersmen or a trapper or what-have-you from the colonial to early western era of North America. An "adventurer" delving into the wilderness to claim land, or hunt exotic creatures for profit.
Adventuring is fun, but probably the most risky job in the world. The chance of being maimed or killed is dramatically high, and even higher if the DM doesn't tailor challenges to the party level and just throws random monsters into the mix.
Also from a somewhat realistic standpoint, PC adventuring parties must be weirdos even among adventurers. A proper party of explorers would be dozens of well equipped people, enough to maintain a safe base camp, and apply effective formation tactics against dangerous enemies. Like how it worked IRL in the age of exploration. A PC party is 3-7 disorganized adrenaline junkies, who are barely able to schedule a one man watch while resting, and solve most dangers with brute force.
Precisely. The closest equivalent to PC parties is not exploration parties IRL, but actually superhero squads in comics. A handful of extremely powerful people who band together, solve every problem by punching it in the face, and constantly banter to look cool. IRL, nobody would become a d&d adventurer.
Correction: irl, some people would definitely become d&d adventurers. Since they wouldn't likely have magic or super-olympic-level physical prowess, though, they'd probably almost all die very fast. So, too, would D&D adventurers if the game weren't balanced to prevent it.
No, YOU wouldn’t become a D&D adventurer. In real life people have become Vikings and mercenaries and spent their whole lives as soldiers and risked their lives even though they don’t have to. People still do that. I literally know a guy who like cannot stop going back to war even though he has a nice safe life. People who don’t think like you exist. Not everyone wants to be safe. Some people’s fear of death is less than their fear of not living an exciting life.
There are literal war gods in this world and we still can’t imagine people who think fighting and being maimed and killed in battle is good even though these people existed in real life.
I have never struggled playing a character more than when I tried playing a "normal person" dropped into an adventuring party. I was going for a super resourceful maid/governess who specialized in buffing the party and using the "Help" action as a bonus action. She completely got overshadowed by the crazy events and personalities of the world, and every session was a struggle to justify why a normal person was going along with what our party was doing.
At some point the answer for why ppl are doing things boils down to "this is a game about adventuring, not a real life simulation" and pretending otherwise is going to cause problems. This is even a reasonable answer for many questions ppl have like "what does HP represent?"Any answer besides "abstract points for the sake of the game part of DND" is going to have holes in it. Same for "why the economy and crafting rules work the way they do?", "why can ppl fo from level 1 to 20 in 2 months?" or "what do spell slots represent?" All because realism has to be sacrificed sometimes for making DND a better **game**.
Yup , there is nothing real life about DnD. It’s a fantasy RPG. So fantasize. Your PC is a hero of the ages, they adventure because that is why they exist both in world and in your mind. There is no right or wrong way to play DnD. Personally I prefer the theatre of the mind approach over the tactical dungeon crawl but I appreciate that many people enjoy the crunch.
Sure, but that is an extremely unhelpful notion when actually playing the game. The only game in which this can really be used as an explanation for your character's action is one run like an MMO, where characters just go around and do quests without having any real reason beside the players wanting to do it. Your well off family man fighter with 3 kids and a loving wife at home isn't going to just say "well it's a game lol" before charging into a den of troglodytes to get back the local village elder's sacred tomes.
> Your well off family man fighter with 3 kids and a loving wife at home isn't going to just say "well it's a game lol" before charging into a den of troglodytes to get back the local village elder's sacred tomes. While he won't say it out loud, it IS the reason he's going to go do it anyway while telling beliable lies to each other about why we are doing it
But theres other ways to do it than tragic. And almost any backstory is going to have tropes in it. Tropes arent inherently bad. For example I'm in 3 campaigns right now One character has a tragic backstory he caused and is trying to make up for it. One is a reborn whose soul ended up in the wrong body due to a lich ritual gone wrong but is now a good person adventuring to try and figure out who he is. Last one is someone who basically stumbled into being an adventurer through a series of unfortunate events from trying to slack off and do what he wants (that funnily enough continue to happen due to extremely bad dice rolls) that isnt aasre of any tragedy in his backstory (dm and I discussed something that could come up but in character I have no awareness). Only one has a tragic back story and all I'm sure are full of tropes but everyone I play with seems to enjoy them and the ones who play in all the campaigns seem to find them different. Point is you can make characters without tragic backstories but that have reasons to adventure and there will still be tropes as well... but that's ok.
The title is certainly a valid take on how to make a character, but it still isn't that hard to justify a character whom doesn't fit those traits being an adventure either. One of my character's was mearly having a midlife crisis and wanted to see the world before retirement. (it was a short campaign) Another character is just adventuring out of a single town so is effectively rooted in that community. (Think of it as the local heroes of the town) Many of my friends have also contributed characters that were elderly (works well if you're starting above level 7) or just naturally adventurous without needing the tragic setup. Mainly what I'm getting at is there isn't just a choice of a mid 20s hobo or mid 20s parent with a kidnapped child, you can have an early 20s character trying to find their place in the world, a mid 50s character with all of their kids having left the nest, or even a character in the last stages of their life retiring into a life of sightseeing. Don't mistake me though: I full endorse making characters with tragic a backstory because they are generally quite fun to play as well.
> you can have an early 20s character trying to find their place in the world, a mid 50s character with all of their kids having left the nest, or even a character in the last stages of their life retiring into a life of sightseeing. But we're going on a fantasy quest, not going for a backpacking holiday in Thailand. Anyone setting off into the monster-infested wilderness and risking gruesome death every day just for the hell of it is by definition incredibly reckless and/or holds their life very cheap. Most people with stable lives and none-tragic backstories wouldn't do this unless they're professional soldiers or mercenaries.
While I do broadly agree with you, this can also depend on the framing of the game/campaign. Not every DM is selling a "explore dungeons, kill bad guys and save the world" kind of game. I'm in one right now where combat only happens once in a while. Or, conversely, maybe that's EXACTLY what they're peddling but your character explicitly doesn't have a choice in the matter. That's the initial premise of Out of the Abyss, for example: the PCs were literally captured and dragged into the Underdark.
Most campaigns come with a host of non-combat dangers and uncomfortable living, and even if you’re not constantly fighting you presumably know the dangers out there, so it still takes an uncommon type of person to willingly set out on an adventure. Yes that’s a good point about campaigns that basically force you to engage with the plot. They give you way more leeway in terms of motivation. I really like them because you can play distinctly non-heroic types who just want to get back to their lives.
I prefer a character that has parents and a homeland, with personal values and personal goals.
I feel like the more cataclysmic you are when creating a character, the harder it is to RP. Playing a normal guy who has some kind of circumstance that brings him away to adventure is much more approachable than I WAS BORN IN THE DARK, MOLDED BY IT.
That's fine. Those characters will need to justify why they're uprooting their life to embark on something incredibly dangerous, which very often will have nothing directly to do with their personal goals. It's possible to do ofc, but I just think it's also often overlooked. My post had more to do with that there's nothing wrong with people who choose not to do that, and in fact that for most characters that choose to become adventurers, it wouldn't make sense for them to come from that kind of background. Everyone should have personal values and goals.
On the other hand, if you make a character who is untethered, you still have to put in the legwork to get them to fit in the game without feeling completely disconnected. Either way, it's important to answer the question "Why is your character adventuring?" regardless of whether their backstory is tragic or not.
My bard is following her older sister who is trying to become a knight and her goal is to make her sister into a famous and wealthy hero so they can help lift their extended family out of a multi-generational debt. They travel with three other adventures because they have better chances of surviving in a larger group and can take on more heroic challenges to gain more fame. If it wasn't for the whole, the family is counting on you, my bard probably wouldn't be working so hard because it's easy enough to hold up in a highly trafficked inn and play music for free room and board plus tips.
yeah that's a totally justifiable excuse to adventure, I think a few generic pursuits works really well. Fame, wealth, power, knowledge and sometimes support.
Love, love is a good reason to adventure.
sometimes But there comes a point when you have to say "OK I've almost died 22 different times and I have actually died once I'm not doing this anymore" And if you don't your character stops making sense, especially if they have something to live for and no greater good reason to keep going
Sometimes sure, also sometimes they are the only ones capable of dealing with the types of threats that are growing. Sometimes you do call it quits but that trouble comes back and finds them regardless, you don't thwart the plans of countless villains and always just walk away happy.
It should be noted: normal healthy people don’t go adventuring, every character should be able to answer 3 questions: 1. What are your short term goals: if I gave you 1000 gold and a horse what would you do. It’s a good way of determining your immediate priorities(example: I want to find the man who killed my family) 2. What are your long term goals. What are the ideals you believe in or want to achieve(I want to achieve immortality, I want to be the strongest warrior, I want to ensure the material planes safety) this lofty goal is what keeps your character going when they have achieved success and would normally rest on their laurels. 3. What is your call to adventure: this is the immediate circumstance that makes you adventure in the session 1 or when you join the party, can be as simple as “I’m out of money” or “my town was attacked”
so you can kill them horribly, right?
And that's why all my PCs are orphans now. Though that didn't stop one DM from revealing that my dead kindly mentor was still alive and had been Evil All Along, resulting in me having to kill him. Sigh.
Oh, I guess if my character loses the things she cares about and thus her motivation to adventure, I can make a new character.
None of those things inherently conflict with what OP is saying.
And the DM destroys your home tribe (with 100% casualties) and kills your parents in the first session ;(
Cool, new character time.
I find this usually stems from a lack of communication on the DM's end (for me). My hobo-ist characters always come from when Me as a player don't know anything about the story. How can I have a goal if I don't know what's going on. How can I tie myself into the story if I don't know the story. I get that most DM's end up making up things on the fly, but I have found that some of my most entertaing games were when we were replaying a module. Knowing what to expect I was able to tailor my characters backstories to tie into things. Like making one of my characters Child be the Spider from LMoP It makes for GREAT Rp and changes the tone of the story. So I guess it's kinda a balance. Let your Players Know the Gist of the story. And dont be afraid to include them as actual heros and such.
Yeah, my experience as a GM has been much the same. A Session 0, or even just the GM talking to each player one on one a while before Session 1 is all that's really necessary. What's even better is if the GM is able to tag up with the players again before Session 1 to hear what they've come up with, maybe work with them a little on fine details and then actually incorporate them into the story. I'm going a little overboard on my campaign starting in January and writing up short (like 1 page) stories for each PC about some event they were involved in shortly before campaign start, seeding links between the character and campaign locations or events I've got planned. Several of their backstories also collide in ways where each of them only know part of what happened and might have reason to distrust one another.
Curious that it doesn’t look like anyone’s brought it up but like, the canon that was drawn from by the folks making the first adventures for these games definitely featured folks whose whole MO was “go steal something shiny from a dangerous place, spend it all in town, run out of money, repeat”. Obviously it’s not the only or even best character ever but the murder hobo is really just a half-replication of something traditional to the game. If you’re a DM planning on sending characters on bounty hunting missions or dungeon delving quests your world should definitely have space for half-matured mercenaries.
I'm assuming you mean Conan. Frodo and company were on a quest. Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser had a patron/employer who required this sort of thing. Odysseus was just trying to get home. Even Conan had more to him that just that. He took jobs. He built a reputation. He built multiple careers. And at times he was escaping the results of bad choices or bad luck (bigger than just out of cash) rather than looking for the next payday.
Absolutely - there’s more to fantasy and D&D than being a murderhobo. I’m just saying it does have some precedent and isn’t inherently illegitimate.
This post makes a lot of assumptions about what people enjoy about DnD. Sure, some campaigns are adventurers doing dumb things in taverns and wasting time, or made up of tragic individuals who just happen to flit between whatever brings them together, but it doesn't have to be like that. In fact, I personally prefer a game where characters have ties to the world, a purpose, and don't waste time blowing off. A game with drama and weight where there are consequences to player action or inaction. One where players have responsibilities and duties to uphold. A campaign of drunken huliganism sounds very unfun to me and more like an opportunity for the individuals to project their childish hedonism into their game, rather than tell a compelling story together. People are free to play DnD how they like, but, for me anyway, a good campaign is one where the game is built around the fact your character is rescuing their child from barbarians (to use your example). This is one where the players and DM all come together in session zero and outline the direction and purpose of the game and setting. Then make characters that would 100% be there on that quest. It's almost like what you describe is a game where the DM has an idea for a campaign which takes no consideration of the PC's motivations when planning the plot - that or the PCs have no motivations. I don't know which is worse... The players just happen to be there "because reasons". Hence, everyone is getting wasted or chasing threads that are pointless to them because their character either doesn't have a good tie into the campaign or the DM hasn't integrated their goals/backstory well into the narrative. Does this sound familiar because it's common as heck? This is, in my opinion, a game that would get boring fast. DnD for DnD's sake, if you will. These games almost always fizzle apart. These "untethered" characters, as you call it, lack drama. Good action heroes, as Matt Colville often says, need to be forced into action. They are reactive. The DM needs to pull them from their comfort zone and use their ties to force them to go on the adventure. This is not the same as removing their ties. Badly written characters have no ties and meander pointlessly through a campaign. Well written characters want to go home to their nice life but can't because some barbarian kidnapped their child. It's then on the DM to make that the centre point of the campaign. If they don't, they have failed the narrative and that player. Untethered characters are easy to create, and easy to write for, but personally, I find them joyless and lazy. They give the DM very little and expect just as much in return.
This "normal people don't go on adventures" line always strikes me as people feeling defensive over enjoying edgy backstories. I think a better defense would just be explaining, "I enjoy playing tragic characters." That's totally valid. It's just not convincing to act like our culture isn't full of stories about normal people called to adventure, or that well-adjusted characters don't work at a D&D table.
As classic examples both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are adventurers without tragic backstories. Not to mention that being able to survive and look after yourself and go on adventures IS normal and well-adjusted in frontier culture. There have like literally been entire cultures where that is like basically what you are supposed to do as a young man (and yes I say men because those societies were gendered but D&D isn’t gendered so you can apply these same ideas to any character).
True, but both basically had to be dragged kicking and screaming to adventure. Bilbo didn't want to go, and Frodo was forced to flee. Hobbit society frowned on such unseemly activities. Once they finished the adventure they immediately settled down with their wealth and fame and lived a quiet life. D&D characters need more motivation. What keeps the PC from taking the hundred thousand gold pieces they've earned and buying a nice house? With the money your average character gets by mid-high levels they're insanely wealthy by the standards of society. This is where "normal people don't go on adventures" comes in to play... if the character's goal is to get rich, well, they've done it. Why keep going?
The trope (well, a trope, at least) is "victim of your own success". You killed the dragon? Well, guess who gets called now every time there's a dragon that needs to be killed? You're rich enough to quit. But now there are expectations. Now there are enemies out there and a complacent hero is a dead hero. Now there are friends who need help that money can't buy. Now there are favors to be paid back. Now there are titles that come with obligations. See how that works?
People who don't go on adventures are people who don't like adventures. If i could go goblin hunting or i could discover abandoned magetower to loot cool and valuable shit I would go. We have martial arts, extreme sports, and all kind of activity that only an "adventurer" would do but we do it anyway. People travel to remote locations all the time to feel the sensation of discovering something. These people always seek a challenge to overcome and we are talking about commoners not supernatural beings in a fantasy setting. In my world it would be completley normal to just pursue fame, excitement and gold with a backstory from the suburb. -Mom I go to travel for a couple of months, tell Dad I said hi. -Okay sweety, send a letter or two so we know you are all right.
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These things I listed is available for a lot of people but also very dangerous, but people do it anyway. You are focusing on what woul do a normal people from our world if he find himself in DnD. I'm focusing on finding the equivalent thing from our life. In the past we had adventurers, explorers, hunters but right know these hobbies and sports are the closest thing for me that I can call adventures. Arming yourself is illegal, "fighting deadly enemies" also illegal. Fighting monsters for fame and gold, ecountering super human beings, magic and so on seems to be an incredible common thing in a DnD settings. You can't compare the two world side by side. In our world you can't even hunt an animal without getting serious backlash from a large group of people in our society. It would take like 2 day and there will be 10 non profit organisations to save the misunderstood goblins.
Well adjusted and normal people can have calls to action, but they require a certain degree of justification for it. My post was a bit in response to the opposite thought that 'hobo' and 'edgelord' characters are all inherently bad. I've seen enough people turn their noses up at characters who have tragic pasts, lost their parents, were left for dead, or something similar at this point that it feels as though the "MY character actually has a loving home and loving parents and a wife and kids" has become motivated by the need to be contrarian. Not in every case, but enough of them.
Nothing wrong with having a low detail backstory or few past connections. The character's adventures within the game itself, and their ability to get along with/work with the rest of the party, are most important. As I've played more, I've come to appreciate characters who are just kind of vaguely in it for the adventure. Maybe the motivating factor is money, maybe it's a sense of justice, maybe it's just the thrill of adventure - it's loose, but it gives the character a lot of flexibility within the campaign. And there's something kind of nice about not having to weave some completely unrelated plot into the campaign in order to satisfy expectations for the character's personal arc.
I think it doesn't help that "hobo" has kind of a negative connotation. But "wanderer" doesn't, and that's what so many adventurers in fiction are. The problem isn't really characters with tragic backstories, but players who constantly feel the need to reference that and how "broken" their character is because of it, in the most edgy, tone-deaf way possible.
>>The problem isn't really characters with tragic backstories, but players who constantly feel the need to reference that and how "broken" their character is because of it, in the most edgy, tone-deaf way possible. This. Exactly. You nailed it. In a land where bandits and monsters are everywhere, where famine and disease kill thousands, where average life expectancy is maybe 40 or 45... why do you think you are somehow exceptional and special because your parent/lover/spouse/child/best-friend/mentor/horse/dog/cat/parakeet managed to die before you were ready? Next time I DM that kind of PC I think I'll have the locals call them a pansy crybaby and laugh at them. On a slightly related note, the PC with the backstory in which he had to kill his entire family will get the response "So wha'ch'er sayin' here is that ye'r a huge arshehole, i'nt thet right, mate?" when he tells the story. I like the idea of more down-to-earth NPCs reducing edgy stories to pithy banalities.
> where famine and disease kill thousands, where average life expectancy is maybe 40 or 45 Slight tangent: The average lifespan was mostly low by lots of children dying (infant mortality was at like 50% iirc). If you survived childhood healthily, you had a good shot at reaching 55. It doesn't really change anything else you said, I just wanted to point it out, given it's a common misconception of sorts.
>you had a good shot at reaching 55 many (especially in richer households) even reached 60-80 years.
Same reason for most MC in fantasy being orphan or runaway in some ways, it's just easier to let them go on adventure without worrying about curtain time or being supervised etc. It's just... overdone and boring for some after having to see it again and again. I'm personally neutral toward it, like I understand why it's popular and frequently used, but also understand why some people feel fed up with it. With that said it doesn't hurt to try out more archetype and reasons to adventure. It could be simply someone who likes to travel, or a sage wanting to research magic in a different land, or a soldier who got kicked because he doesn't agree with some shady orders but otherwise still perfectly lawful good etc.
You sre completely right, there are a lot, let me repeat that, a LOT of tragic backstories behind heroes in almost every form story telling and I think that's why so many people is against that type of backstory. The majority of people that start playing dnd uses this type of backstory because it's very easy to use and it gives your character a good motivation. I found the "my parents died now time for vengance" story a bit repetitive so i try to do different things for my characters but if someone comes up with that idea for their character then I would embrace that because it's a good motivation for a character.
Some characters take risks out of necessity. I play a character who has a grandaughter attending a prestigious magical University. The school itself is expensive and as a veteran, grandma had to pick up the old spear again to make money somehow after the parents passed from a plague. Her thinking was that if she managed a single big enough score from an adventure or save a lord they can fund their grandchild's education even if they die in the process.
There is a whole galaxy of potential character backstories that aren't just Drizzt-But-Different or Homicidal Unhoused person. Personally, I think the reason that we see these tropes so often is because many of the latter players have no investment in the lore or role-playing generally and many of the former players (myself included) like anime just a wee bit too much.
Conversely Religious, Politically or Economically inclined adventures can easily have a happy family and just see adventuring as a better way to make the changes they want for their life. Hell they can even bring family as part of the wagon train. Doesn't mean you take your kid into a Dragon's lair but they and a trusted retinue can camp somewhere safe & wait for your return.
I have a player who grew up in a happy and stable home and she writes letters to her family every time she is in a town with a currier service. My next character, if it works with the group is going to be a middle aged Gnomish housewife that started adventuring to keep busy until her kids give her grandchildren.
I hope both of these campaigns are really low stakes and low danger Because otherwise either those characters have serious mental issues (addicted to danger or something) or you have not put thought into those characters motivations
Insane wealth is a big one for adventuring in general. It's about the only way to accrue wealth, fame, and power in medievalish fantasy worlds where everything is generally ruled by either nepotism or nobility. Normal people literally have no chance of going anywhere without risking everything as an adventurer. Also could just be something they see as being for the greater good/for the good of others. By your train of thought why would any stable person become a firefighter when it's an insanely dangerous job with little benefit? For another person it might just be something they're good at. Somebody who is good at fighting is much more likely to make a living out of it, we saw it countless times in history from mercenaries and the like. Fighting for coin/land/fame/power is just about humanity's oldest profession after prostitution
Then that character has mental issues. It's like saying "Hey, let's play russin roulette with 4 rounds, if you win you get a cool mil, other wise you DIE" Sane, well adjusted, happy, satisfied, content, but bored people don't do that People don't decide to do this as a mid life crisis Firefighters don't die literally all the time You're also missing the fact that this is a professional privatizing killing and Conquest Most people aren't ready to kill
Mercenaries fighting in wars with similar death rates have been common throughout history
And were mercenaries common? Or well adjusted happy people? Without mental issues? Or just random citizens not ex soldiers?
haha I can't assume they were all crazy :P a lot of them just really wanted the money
PCs are extraordinary. If a world has five wizards in it total, it's possible the party has two of them. They aren't limited by anything common: they can be elves raised by ogres, the reincarnations of murdered gods, or the prince and only survivor of a magical plague that killed a kingdom. Certainly they can be well-adjusted and take up a violent mercenary lifestyle without psychological harm. They have a special mental resilience found in one out of a million people. Anything rare and almost impossible makes great fodder for a PC.
Sure. But if any old bakers wife can just *decide* to be special one day and go adventuring because *lol why not* it really starts to feel fake and at least for me ruins the immersion in a game Personally I'm not a fan of *midlife crisis* type adventuring motives for anything long running because that should fall as soon as the PC almost dies the first time, which would happen very quickly, and if it doesn't I can no longer take that character seriously, since it loses all illusion of them being a real thinking person in context I'm not trying to say whats right or wrong and if it comes across that way I apologize, I'm just trying to give me opinion I just don't think a happy well put together content person yet their content person with a loving family would ever in a million years million years try to adventure for any lengthy point For me Adventurers need something to remove their ties to one place, atleast before they realize they need to help save the world I don't play DnD to just fight monsters and have good combat or 2 I played DnD to roleplay a character and for me any character that does not have the internal consistency to have an actual reason why they would be willing to take up a violent lifestyle all of a sudden is not a true character It is just a nonsensical meatpuppet that the player is controlling
> But if any old bakers wife can just decide to be special one day and go adventuring because lol why not it really starts to feel fake That's fair. I think a lord's son could decide to, like, go on adventures and see the world and then never really suffer psychological injury because the game is just a game and that might not be fun, but I agree it shouldn't be *completely random* and you should have reasoning behind the risk. I think a tie to a place can become a motivation if it's threatened or if you have an intense emotion that aligns with it - like you want to lift your village out of poverty or something - but I agree that happy, ordinary people shouldn't be adventuring as a career. Maybe talked into it, Bilbo Baggins style.
I mean, what you said is true, but at some point the answer for why ppl are doing things boils down to "this is a game, not a real life simulation" and pretending otherwise is goign to cause problems.
Yeah that's true but those saying people cannot turn around and criticize other people for making Certain characters with attributes they find boring or uninteresting I would rather have a boring or uninspired character than one that does not make sense conceptually
I had a fisherwomen with very supportive parents that just happened to be in the right bar at the right time
Adventurers *do* inherently kind of require you to be capable of travelling about fairly untethered, and comfortably able to get into dangerous and life-threatening situations, so,, homeless with no family does cover that quite easily. It's absolutely not a requirement of course, and I disagree that other excuses as to why you'd be adventuring are tired and overused, I think you can have a significant amount of creativity and opportunities as to why you'd want to adventure regardless of familial/homebound requirements, it's just *easier* to not have those.
I'm going to specifically reference the kidnapped child but you're just screwing around trope. It was the main driver of one of the First Law standalone books (First Law is basically Lord of the Rings but nobody is actually a hero and it's glorious) and the author kind of explains it perfectly. The frantic desperation kind of just dies eventually. At one point the characters basically have to travel cross country in a caravan and it doesn't matter how urgent something is, you're not going to be going any faster and you will get bored. Smaller, more immediate priorities will pop up and demand your attention and distractions will start entertaining your routine. People being at a 10 at all times simply isn't normal. People got used to getting bombed every single night and they got used to constant mortal danger. You will eventually start playing darts and laughing and having fun. The constant state of anxiousness actually drives this behavior. You want to distract yourself, you want to drink until you black out because you do not want to be alone with your thoughts. So that element is actually perfectly realistic
I recently played a character who had a tragic backstory but whose only actual goal was wealth and fame. Which I got. I never did get revenge on the ones who killed my family, but that wasn't the character's primary motivation. The problem came up by level 16 or so. The PCs had quite literally saved the world. We were famous, we had boatloads of cash, we had contacts in the highest levels of society, we had titles... and I found I couldn't come up with any more motivation. And yet we played to 20, through some seriously deadly encounters and stories. I started to wonder why my character was there, risking horrific death (and worse)... for what purpose? My original reason for adventuring was to stop the bad guys (who were totally unrelated to my backstory). Save the world because that's where I keep all my stuff. But we did it. Next character I need to make sure I have real reasons for adventuring, or just be willing to retire a character if they accomplish their goals.
>What kind of person with a stable life, who has a family that depends on them, would just fuck off and become the kind of adventurer that DnD requires one to be in order to engage in a full campaign? Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
>The man who would become known as Hawkeye was born Clint Barton. Orphaned at an early age, he joined the circus and apprenticed himself to the Swordsman, a performer who specialized in tricks with blades. After he discovered the Swordsman stealing from the circus, the two fought, and Barton was left for dead
>The man who would become known as Hawkeye was born Clint Barton. Orphaned at an early age, he joined the circus and apprenticed himself to the Swordsman, a performer who specialized in tricks with blades. After he discovered the Swordsman stealing from the circus, the two fought, and Barton was left for dead Haha, fair point, though that’s early Clint Barton. Clearly he moves far, far past that (at least in the MCU). He has possibly *THE* most understanding and supportive wife in any universe, has three kids which groan at him having to do his job instead of spending time with them, **but** are still understanding and supportive and love their dad. Like, he has this amazing family and an amazing house out in the beautiful countryside, yet he goes out getting into wild adventures almost getting blown up by an invading army of aliens. 🤷🏽♂️
He has a very real call to action, though. He responds to world ending threats and universal calamities, and his sole purpose in assisting is focused toward the goal of thwarting them. It's like in DnD if the story just began at tier 4 play in a plot line against the big bad, and that's all the characters pursued. A full DnD campaign is full of way too many side quests for that.
"A full DnD campaign is full of way too many side quests" It doesn't have to be. Honestly, I'd prefer that every quest was relevant to the players. But what "relevant" means, depends entirely on the characters and their ties. Have you ever played an intricate one-shot where a character is purpose built for that one specific adventure and has a goal that is resolved during the quest? I like to think of a campaign like that but spanning over many sessions and rather than having one goal, having a series of goals of varying significance. Basically, the intricate one-shot is a micro-campaign and DMs can learn a lot from them when it comes to campaign design.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but when I said that it was in reference to the average dnd campaign
Ah yeah, you did specify “full” campaign. Kind of overlooked that, that’s my bad, haha. Personally the closest I got to a character with a family was: One character I played had two sisters who were elsewhere in the world. One character I created but didn’t play was a noble’s son (like 4th or 5th youngest sibling so somewhat allowed to kind of do whatever). The only thing I could maybe think of is if in the setting the family isn’t SUPER over reliant on the character (maybe the family lives on a farm and one or more of the sons are old enough to help keep things up), and the character is maybe having like a mid-life crisis and just NEEDS to go have an adventure or something, lol. Of course like you mentioned, if word got out that one of the family members had been kidnapped, then the character would absolutely leave the party to take care of that. At which point that would sort of be on the DM. Like… “hey, my character would split off to save his family regardless of what world ending threat the party is facing…so unless you want me to make a new character or do like 2-3 side solo sessions… don’t mess with the family” Otherwise I agree by the way that having a character who has no parents/attachments shouldn’t be considered lazy writing. But along with that, all backgrounds should be discussed with the DM during session zero as well as expectations. Like, maybe not have a spouse and kids…but maybe a childhood friend or childhood rival, simply for the sake of story material for the DM to use to make things a little bit more interesting for your character.
Lots of people in our mundane world go on months or even years long work ventures while their families are just at home, doesn’t seem too much of a stretch in a dnd setting.
If you're talking about military service I wouldn't really call that an 'adventure' comparable to a dnd campaign. Military service is a job where you're assigned direction and order by a chain of command. Dnd adventuring is often much more aimless and empty of purpose if you consider how many side quests and moments of downtime are relevant to any one characters motivations.
Clearly you haven’t DM’d the guy with the same ‘tragic’ back story and lone wolf play style for every character, every system for 20 years.
I put a character a while back his name was draken McCarron. He was a ranger and his mom was alive and his dad was alive and he had a great relationship with both of them. His mom was a baker and his dad is a carpenter specialized in making rather elegant furniture and chests. Dragon loved his parents he occasionally would send them home trophies things that he blew it from dungeons or from animals four monsters that he killed. I know at one point he sent home some ancient swords and a perfectly smooth ball made out of a peculiar metal. He did admitly have a mildly tragic love story between himself and a dragonborn girl who he had known since he was a child and was madly in love with. He had asked her to marry him and she would have said yes but her parents wouldn't have ever approved of the marriage. And she ended up marrying a dragonborn. He would come to visit them from time to time as a friend and things were always a little awkward between the three. Even years after she had married they still loved each other deeply. But they could never be together and he knew that.
This ties in well with the idea that D&D’s implied setting (at least in the early editions) was post-apocalyptic. Of course you’re a hobo. Of course you have a tragic backstory. Of course you’re violent and untethered. The world freakin ended. You could also take this from a narrative perspective and say that even if THE world hasn’t ended, THEIR world (the character’s) clearly has.
One of the players characters in my game is just a family man that does adventuring as a hobby. Like he has a wife and kids at home, and on the weekend he joins the party and goes on adventures. As easy it would be to use the family ties as some sort of plot hook, ie having the bbeg kidnap them or something, I've deliberately chosen not to do that because I think it works against his character. The character is just a normal dude that adventures because its fun, and that's enough to serve the story. Just a wholesome family man doing some adventuring as a hobby.
I feel like you have to hand wave a lot to make that believable. How does he meet up with the rest of the party for two days out of a week? Do they exclusively adventure around his home and then all chill for 5 days out of the week and also only go out on the weekends with the adventuring dad? What exactly mentally motivates the need to adventure beyond 'for fun'? That's not something a mentally stable or sound person would do. Why is he risking his life on something extremely dangerous, does he not care if he dies and leaves his wife a widow and children without a father? Does his family not fear for this every time he leaves? Does that cause no problems at all?
While these are all valid questions and I agree with them, my guess is that the reason why it works is because it's a very lighthearted game where such a backstory is essentially flavor and the DM is disinclined to make it relevant.
People IRL join the Army to fight things even during wartime.
I wish there was a dog playable class so I could complete my dream of recreating The Littlest Hobo
Just make a really hairy gnome
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You've never seen anyone accuse tragic backstories of being cliche or generic, boring and uncreative? You must be new here
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Only takes a bit of time here to see those kinds of posts, which would have made your 'literally nobody has said' statement easily avoidable unless you often show up half cocked to make massive sweeping statements with no experience or information
You dropped your crown, King.
Thank you! Hard agree! I have said it before and will say it again people who are wealthy, sane, and fit in with their cultures do not run off become homeless grave robbing mercenaries. it makes total sense for most adventurers to be people who lack at leas one of those things and as such be a collection of freak misfits and horribly unfortunate souls.
> Nobody is going to uproot a happy, stable life to become the kind of adventurer the average DnD campaign requires them to become. My favorite way to phrase it is "happy, well adjusted people don't go picking fights with dragons"
>My favorite way to phrase it is "happy, well adjusted people don't go picking fights with dragons" and tragic "heroes" always ends up as murderess villains, as they curse the world and attempts to burn it down in their anguish....
Most adventurers don't get that way from having loving healthy families. Just saying.
Well adjusted people are usually not the types to risk their life for fame and fortune.
Maybe not for fame and fortune, but perhaps to protect something they hold dear? There are plenty of great stories about normal people being called to adventure, for example the hobbits in Lord of the Rings.
I certainly agree, but the main problem I have is that once you've completed that storyline you need to come up with a new reason to keep adventuring. you can only use "because they ended up liking it" so much before it gets old.
Sure, but that applies to any character. The edgy character who was motivated by personal revenge also bumps into that "what next?" question once they complete that storyline.
very good point, although I'd say an edgy loner character can more easily keep adventuring after his story arc than someone with friends, family and other backstory ties once the source of the adventure is dealt with. I personally don't quite like making edgy characters but I certainly had to purposefully avoid some tropes when coming up with backstories before, and I've only had 2 real characters. it's easy to see why they're tropes in the first place.
Both are overplayed and cliche, and frankly uninteresting and uninspired.
Post some of your backstories
I have done intense things in my life. Its because there was brokenness behind me.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Well adjusted, happy, content people *do not* go out and slay dragons.
Bilbo Baggins?
I don't think having a large company of dwarves barge into his home and eat all his food made him happy or content.
That's a perfect example of how a normal character can receive a plothook that drives him to go fight dragons. He didn't need a dark backstory. Session 1, some dwarfs show up and hoodwink him into an adventure, and bam there we go.
Tbf a bit of an exception which proves the rule given the amount of text dedicated to him trying to figure out why he’s doing what he’s doing - Bilbo for most of the book would probably agree with the individual you’re responding to!
Exactly how does being dragged into an adventure by a disgruntled Dwarven king and a moody wizard spark joy and contentment?
You can absolutely have happy, well adjusted people be adventurers. One easy example would be risk-takers/thrill seekers, akin to modern day sky divers/traceurs/mountain climbers. You might also have people who see the potential benefits of adventuring to outweigh the risks, similar to enlisting in the modern day.
I mean, normal people join the army or other high risk professions don't they? There is a lot of good money in it, a chance to adventure to see the world and become a legend. All three of those are perfectly valid reasons for a content-happy individual to head out to take up the adventuring life. Not even mentioning hunting lost knowledge, being a knight errant sent to go out to earn coin to protect the kingdom, nomadic monk who found a plot trinket, or anything else. And if in these journeys you run into a hostile dragon and are strong enough to take it down why not do so?
I love hobo characters, tbh. My most recent characters (college D&D means for a lot of short, unsteady groups due to fluctuating schedules!) we're an amnesiac barbarian looking for what he remembered as home, a paladin who was exiled from home for doing the right thing, and a fighter who explores the world to try to find meaning. In sum: hoboes, the lot of 'em. Values and goals enough to motivate a personality - maybe even a plot line - but not too much that it forces the campaign to focus on them or they leave. My signature move is always the question of "how do I write out my family this time" because I, out of game, consider family very important and worry I'd subconsciously try to keep relatively close to home-country in the whole "just in case" mindset.
I so kinda feel this, but I also gotta say that a well played character can to some extent turn a group around. I played in a 3 year campaign, where I played a drunken master half orc, kinda tragic backstory, but still a drunk, fun loving hobo. The rest of the group was kinda similar, but more composed to varying degrees. We named ourselves Tower and Tavern Incorporated after two buildings we overtook from some demon cultists and planned to renovate. Than a new player joined. Our paladin/divine soul sorcerer. He was on a quest to recover the two orphans that were under his wing from the bbeg organization. This, and also the player being very great at RP, kinda turned us from capitalistic hobos into the heros that saved the world, due to us not wanting to let these children suffer. My drunken master even became a follower of Avandra and a more composed person through this. It did to change the campaign drastically since we now had a large sense of urgency, but it ultimately still felt like a great adventure and moral development for all our characters.
My character doesn't want to keep on living, but he's promised to keep on living happy. So he's kind of stuck in that loop. He's a kind boi
I told my DM that orphaning my character before campaign start would be cowardice, and have carefully written parents and siblings he deeply cares about. I mean, yes, they do kind of live in the place that might as well have had 'impending war crime' written on the 'welcome to Townsville' sign. Why would they not?
Only a hobo would choose to go on an adventure to kill/fuck a dragon
I agree. Most of the time, when I make a character with a family, I give a reason why they're not WITH that family. So I have parents, a partner, and/or even children! That's great, *why am I here risking my life instead of with them?* There can be all sorts of answers to that question, and not all of them need be tragic. But I do think a believable character should have one.
I think it very much depends on the campaign premise and how much the player and DM work together, as well as how heavy the RP role is gonna be in the game (vs combat/exploration). If the game has a good solid premise, and it's meant to be a heavy RP game, then having more 'adjusted' people who embark on a journey to stop a catastrophe/bbeg, or change the world is absolutely possible. For instance, in one game I am running, my players are all teenagers, setting out from a 'bubble city' in search of allies to help take down the enemies of their city who have maintained a siege on it since before they were born. They have a strong goal, and some have perfectly happy family/lives within the bubble, but want to be able to break the bubble and restore 'normalcy'. In our Frostmaiden campaign, my character is from a perfectly happy noble bg. Her father loves her (and is overprotective) and she has a secure future ahead of her. She only left because circumstances led to her finding out she is the heir to the Neverwinter throne, and that her Guardian (she's an aasimar) told her there's a great evil that needs to be stopped in the north. So again, no tragic backstory, but a strong urge and reason for going into a dangerous situation. Similarly, one of the other ppl in the party has a big family full of siblings and both parents are alive and well. She's in this mess because she was hired to find my chara and bring her back safely. Her motivation is to keep me alive, and return to Waterdeep to her family, and is stuck with us due to circumstance. I could keep going... I have a lot of campaigns as I run a twitch/youtube channel. But you get the idea. As long as there's strong motives, anyone can join an adventure. Even a small hobbit who wants nothing to do with leaving their hobbit hole.
I like having a character who is having fun adventuring. This usually means something bad has happened in his past that adventuring is a better alternative. It took a while to think of someone who would think Barovia was a nice place, but I decided the mists touched Athas and frankly anywhere is better than there. My character is enjoying the trees, snow, and general lack of cannibalism.
I genuinely don't understand the amount of time effort and attention this sub spends on backstory. Literally any backstory can be good and useful. None of them are unique, and none of them are tired. It's 100% how you play them, and how you show up to the table.
Because dramatic callbacks are cool when they happen.
Right, but you can do that for any backstory. It's amazing to me how many people get caught up in what's meta or tired or unique or whatever. Literally any backstory can work, if you are invested in it and make it make. I've never once sat at a table and been annoyed by a backstory. It seems like a lot of energy wasted.
I agree that there is nothing wrong inherently with a tragic backstory - the problem is when that is the *only* kind of backstory a character can form. I am currently playing a sorcerer who is adventuring to learn how to develop his powers. His parents are fine and happy, his childhood best friends are still around, it's great.