Integrating Player Character Backstories

I started running Vaesen with one of my RPG groups recently and, while overall the support for GMs in the core book is not bad, there was one area where it seemed very poor. Each Player Character has a Dark Secret that complicates their life. There are some prompts to help players come up with their Dark Secret, but after that the book basically tells them not to worry about it, and the GM will work it into the game. In this 200 page book there is a short paragraph on 'Dark Secrets in Play', giving some very general advice that doesn't get far past the concept of "yeah, you should have the Dark Secrets come up during play". Not terribly helpful.

D&D 5E has this same problem. Players are encouraged to come up with a Backstory and to "work with the DM" so that it can be worked into the game. But there's not much support for the DM as to how they're actually supposed to do that. I've always found it tricky. Sometimes there are obvious ways to make it work, but as soon as you're having to introduce new elements (characters, places, things or events) it can start to clutter up the game, slowing progress and killing momentum.

But the promise of a PC's backstory coming up has so much potential - when it works it really works. Players are so much more engaged and it truly takes the game farther in the direction of collaborative storytelling. So how can we as GMs fix this?

The way that Myths work in Mythic Bastionland is that each Myth has 6 Omens. These take the place of Wilderness Encounters: Whenever something would happen, you don't roll for a Random Encounter, you encounter the next Omen of the nearest Myth. It allows the Myths to play out organically, but still in a satisfying arc because you're encountering them in order. It's a really flexible system, and in play feels a bit like the NPC questlines in a Souls game. I think this would be a great engine to drive PC backstory arcs.

I'm going to use the Backgrounds from the 2014 Player's Handbook to quickly pull together a backstory for an random example Character: A sorceror named Reena, who is a Forest Gnome with the Hermit background.

She lived in seclusion as the caretaker of an ancient ruin or relic. Her Ideal is Free Thinking (believing that inquiry and curiosity are the pillars of enlightenment). Her Bond is that she entered seclusion to escape from the ones who might still be hunting her, whom she must someday confront. Her Flaw is that now she has returned to the world, she enjoys its delights a little too much.

The 2024 backgrounds are great but wow, I really miss these background tables from the 2014 PHB!

We've got a Character on the run from a group she must someday confront. If this were a real Player Character, I'd be inviting the player to tell me a little about who that could be but for this example I'm going to generate a Cult from Sly Flourish's Lazy DM's Companion. So Reena is on the run from The Paper Masks : A wasp-worshipping cult who serve The Yellow Queen. So maybe Reena's sorcerous origin is linked to this cult. Whatever the reason, it sounds like a confrontation with them would be the climax of this arc. So the Omens might be something like this:

1. A faint buzzing can be heard, only by Reena. It sounds close, but there's nothing there. 
2. A traveller, dead at the side of the road. Huge welts cover their skin, they were stung to death by giant wasps.
3. A village fayre, in lively celebration of The Yellow Queen, who has provided a great feast in exchange for their subservience.
4. A faint buzzing, heard by all, getting louder as a group of giant wasps attack.
5. A ruin conceals a terrified pair of scriveners, who have escaped The Yellow Queen's palace.
6. Paper Mask assassins now hunt the party. They try to remain hidden until an opportune moment to strike. Their target is Reena.

Knowing the end point and working backwards was helpful. I looked back to the backstory for inspiration, and tried to have each Omen do at least of the following:

• Challenge an Ideal
• Test a Bond
• Provoke a Flaw

I think there's some potential here for a procedure for integrating character backstories naturally into the game!

That's it for now, till next time!

Legends of Alba: A 5E Player's Guide

A couple of months ago I wrote about Custom Backgrounds, what a difference they can make to 5E games, and what they might look like for the Legends of Alba setting.

I've since written Legends of Alba: A 5E Player's Guide for use in my home games. I'm pleased with how this has turned out and very grateful to my players for their engagement and encouragement.

Having run two separate groups through this guide, one for a campaign, one for a one-shot, it's made a huge difference to the feeling of the game. The Characters that have emerged are Legends of Alba Characters, and have hit the ground running. This is Mythic 5E!

I've not much more to say that's not in the guide so I'll keep this one short.

Till next time!

Custom Backgrounds

We're at an exciting time in my local gaming group, talking about starting a new campaign! There's a few options on the table, one of them being to run something in the Legends of Alba setting again. The rules I've been writing for the setting could do with some (a lot?) of playtesting before diving into a long-term game with people, so we'd be looking to run it in 5E again.

As a player in 5E games, I've been impressed by how big an impact Custom Backgrounds can make on getting into the mindset for a setting. So I've been thinking about writing some Custom Backgrounds for Legends of Alba!

...And immediately ran into trouble, haha. In 5E the backgrounds usually represent a profession, what your Character did for a living before becoming an adventurer. This is relevant in LoA, but so is a Character's Homeland and Clan. And then I start thinking about Species and how they fit into it all, and it'd probably be a good idea to review the Equipment list and make sure players don't end up with tools that would either not exist or serve no purpose in an Iron Age setting, and suddenly the task of writing some fun and evocative Custom Backgrounds has become completely lost in the weeds of noodling with the Character Creation system for 5E. Time to simplify things.

What's in a Background? 

Here's what you get from a background as per the 5.2.1 SRD :

• An Ability Score boost (either +2/+1 or +1/+1/+1) and a choice of 3 Abilities to spend them on
• An Origin Feat
• 2 Skill Proficiencies
• 1 Tool Proficiency
• Equipment

I'm trying to cram a Homeland, Profession and Clan into there.

Let's take Clan out of the mix - the benefits of being in a Clan are mostly non-mechanical. I could offer Heroic Inspiration for players going out of their way to honour the Oath of their Clan. OR have it replace Alignment...

So that leaves Homeland and Profession. Can we split a background between those?

Homeland

• Ability Score boost
• Origin Feat

Profession

• 2 Skill Proficiencies
• 1 Tool Proficiency
• Equipment

That maps pretty neatly IMO! I'm slightly concerned that I've taken an aspect of the 5E Character Creation system, already one of the most granular and fussy ones out there, and subdivided it further. But there's an intention to this. It is really important for Characters in Legends of Alba to start the game with a tie to the land itself. Alba makes it's mark on Characters, just by living there, and having that on the Character sheet will help convey that connection to players. Similarly the Professions are not just providing Characters with tools for adventuring. The Clans of Alba are each a community, and if Characters are to get anything from those communities, they need to bring something to the table. Some downtime helping out the local smith, or foraging in the nearby woods, or sharing stories round a hearth fire is more valuable to most communities than gold, and such acts will be rewarded in kind.

So that's it, problem solved. Now I just need to write these backgrounds!

-Till Next Time!

D&D 2024 Thoughts

When the new Player's Handbook for D&D 5e was released in 2024, my wife and I began incorporating it into our games almost immediately, and moved fully over to the 2024 ruleset as soon as we could.  I find the 2024 core books to be, overall, a big improvement. They don't 'fix' 5e: I have my own personal frustrations with the system, but it wasn't broken. The biggest improvement, in my opinion, is in layout, presentation and organisation. These books provide a better onboarding experience for new players to the game, they are easier to use at the table, and they inspire me to play and run the game.

A beautiful book

Having had over a year with the system now, I wanted to use this post to talk about a couple of changes from the most recent edition vs the old: Something that's been lost and something has almost worked for me but not quite.

What's Been Lost?

Traits, Ideals, Bonds & Flaws were, to me, one of the best features of Character Creation in 2014. They helped guide towards a simple set of statements hinting towards a 'vibe' for your Character. As a player, I'd often look to these if I was unsure how my Character would react to a given situation. They made sure that your Character was not a blank slate, that you had something to hold on to for role-playing inspiration. They were more important to me than backstory. As a player, I was surprised and disappointed these were gone.

On the other hand, as a DM, I'm not sorry they got cut. Since they were tied to the inspiration system - DMs were supposed to reward players for inspiration for taking action that leant into these traits - I was constantly forgetting about it. Now that I think about it, I'm not surprised, DMs have enough to think about without keeping 4 things in their head for each Character at all times in case a player triggers one of them. For a standard table that's 16 things. No way, haha.

If I were to bring these back, I'd either put it totally on the players to make 'bids' for inspiration based on their traits. For example, if a Character with the Flaw "I can't keep a secret to save my life, or anyone else's" overshares during a tavern conversation with a new friend, their Player might ask if they could inspiration for saying something they shouldn't.

Alternatively but still keeping the onus on the player, I'd be tempted to treat them more like purviews from Break!!. In this case, players would get advantage or disadvantage on Skill Checks where their traits were applicable. So if a Character has the Personality Trait "Nobody stays angry at me or around me for long, since I can defuse any amount of tension.", the Player could point to this and ask for advantage on the Persuasion roll to calm down that hot-headed City Watch Sergeant.

Almost But Not Quite

One of the things that really bugged me about the 2014 PHB was that the Ability Score Increase you got at Character Creation was tied to Race. I'm all aboard with the move to Species for the 2024 books and was glad to see the Ability Score Increase was gone. If I choose to play a Dragonborn it shouldn't be for that +2 Strength and +1 Charisma (or whatever it was), it should be because I want to play a Character that looks a bit like a dragon and can breathe fire! I feel a lot more free to focus on the fiction now when choosing a Species for my D&D Character.

But the problem is not gone, it's just been shifted. The Ability Score Increase is now tied to Background instead, and I don't like this much. The Backgrounds already come with the Gear, Skills, and a Feat to represent your Character's pre-adventuring career, does the Ability Score Increase need to be here as well? I don't think so. In my experience it has mostly just led to a lot of annoying cross referencing to make sure that I'm not messing up my Character's stats by choosing to play a Paladin who is a reformed Criminal.

I sometimes stop and ask myself if the numbers matter that much. But, when it comes to D&D 5e, when the Character I build is more than likely going to be with me for the entirety of whatever adventure or campaign I built them for, I'd say 100% yes. I know I am going to be making so many Saves and Skill Checks with this Character, so a +1 on any of the 6 Ability Score modifiers is a really big deal.

My fix for this would be to lose the Ability Score Increase altogether and alter the standard array to 17, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8, since that's where most of my Characters end up anyway.

Till next time!

5E Selkie Species

I ran a 5E one-shot for some new players recently in the Legends of Alba setting. My partner was playing in the game and has been keen to play as a selkie character for a while, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to put together some rules for a selkie species. I've tinkered with them a little since our game and wanted to share it here for anyone else who fancies playing as a Selkie in D&D 5E!

Selkie by James Browne

Selkie

Selkies are Fey shapeshifters, each possessing a seal skin that allows them to transform between seal and human form. They are the children of the Goddess Mitha, Mother of The Sea, whose song calms the most violent tempest. It is this song, the song of the summer tides, that imbues the spirits of Selkies with the light and magic of The Feywild. With a song in their soul, it is no surprise that so many Selkies exhibit an open joy in movement, moving through the steps of their long lives (commonly over 400 years) as though through the steps of a dance.

In their seal skin, their seal form grants them speed and grace in the water, as well as the ability to withstand and navigate the cold darkness of the deep sea, where submarine caverns hide the Fey Crossings to The Land Beneath The Waves. So a selkie’s seal skin is their greatest treasure: It is their connection not only to nature, to the wild seas and their Goddess, but to their ancestral Feywild home.

Though their hearts belong to the Sea, Selkies are often drawn towards the land. When a Selkie removes their seal skin, they are indistinguishable from humans. They can therefore be found in coastal communities throughout the multiverse, living among the short-lived folk till the ebb of the tide calls them home at last.

Selkie Traits

Creature Type: Fey Size: Medium (about 4-6 feet tall) Speed: 30 feet As a Selkie, you have these special traits. Darkvision. You have Darkvision with a range of 60 feet. Seal Form. You possess a seal skin. Once per round, you can don or remove your seal skin for free to shift between Seal and Human Form. The following traits apply to you in Seal Form: Speed: 10 feet, swim 40 feet Armor Class: 11 + Dexterity modifier (natural armor). Hold Breath: You can hold your breath for 10 minutes. Damage Resistance: Cold. Bite: Melee Weapon Attack (Strength), 5 feet, D6 piercing damage. In addition:

• You lose the benefit of worn or carried equipment, which merges with you into your seal form.
• You can’t cast spells, but shifting does not interfere with spells you’ve already cast.

Wild Nature. Your deep connection to the Feywild grants you proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Athletics, Acrobatics, Insight, Nature, Performance, Survival.

The Rules Skeleton

Reading awesome games like Mork Borg, Shadowdark RPG, and the upcoming Mythic Bastionland from Bastionland Press I find it hard not to come away inspired and full of ideas for games of my own.

I’d love to have a rules system to go with my Scottish-mythology-inspired setting, The Legends of Alba. I’m running it in D&D 5E, which is working just fine, but it's the tool that came to hand, not the right one for the job. There are more rules here than I need. A lot more! On the player-facing side alone, the Character Creation rules in the 5E Player’s Handbook run to 162 pages. Troika! handles Character Creation in a tight 38 pages while Into The Odd covers it in just 7 pages! Including art! Wowsers!

Most of the time this isn't a problem but when it is, I feel it. The weight of all those extra words. It's a bit like the feeling when you get to the supermarket checkout with a very full trolley and you can't remember how or when half the stuff got in there. But instead of the supermarket you’re in a dungeon full of skeletons and you have this big trolley full of things and there’s actually so many things in here that surely one of them will be helpful in this situation but you’re looking and you’re looking and what even is this thing and now the skeletons are stabbing you. Ugh. No good.

TFW suddenly there's like 3 skeletons

Thankfully, it doesn't have to be that way. So I’ve been thinking about what I’d want in my own ruleset, coming from 5E but moving towards a mechanically lighter game. 

But where to begin?

Sly Flourish’s One Sheet 5E, which you can get by subscribing to their Newsletter, describes the core loop of the RPG so concisely: “...the DM describes the situation, the player describes what they want their character to do, and the DM adjudicates the results.”

Short enough you could send it via the Sending spell!  But that's really all there is to it.  And the only bit that cries out to me as needing any rules is the last part. So there's my starting point: How does the GM adjudicate the results of character actions?

I'm going for rules-lite, so I'd like just one mechanic for this. No separate Skill Check, Saving Throw, or Attack Roll, thank you. I want one Check that covers everything, one rule to rule them all.

And I’m coming from 5E, so for this master check, let’s stick with D20 + some modifier vs a target number. “If it ain’t broke” etc. Also a D20 is just a nice big fun dice to roll.  It’s the RPG dice!

For the “some modifier” part, this is typically based on the character making the Check. How good are they at doing what they're trying to do? I want a small, broad number of variables here. Abilities rather than Skills. I'm still thinking about how to frame these but for now I like Talents. Who wouldn't want a Talented character?

As for when to make Checks, I like the simplicity of “Roll to avoid risk” but I also like a low-stakes, “let’s see how this goes” sort of Check from time to time. They can help keep players engaged and add to the feeling of an emergent shared narrative, so I want to leave the door open for that.

So here’s my WIP rules for Talent-based Checks for The Legends of Alba.

***

Talents are a Character’s natural and trained abilities.

• [STR] Strength - Brawn, resilience, endurance.
• [SKL] SkiIl - Dexterity, stealth, reflex.
• [SNS] Senses - Awareness, instinct, insight.
• [SLF] Self - Presence, charm, guile.

A Character’s aptitude for each Talent is represented by their Bonus.

Example Character starting Bonusses:

• Warrior: STR+5, SKL+0, SNS-1, SLF+2
• Hunter: STR+0, SKL+5, SNS+2, SLF-1
• Druid: STR+0, SKL-1, SNS+5, SLF+2
• Bard: STR-1, SKL+2, SNS+0, SLF+5

Checks are necessary when a Character takes an action that challenges one of their Talents and the outcome cannot be taken for granted.

The GM determines the most suitable Talent, then sets the Challenge (C) of the Check, e.g.:

• C10: Not easy
• C15: Difficult
• C20: Very difficult

Establish the consequences of success and failure before the Check is made.

The Player rolls a D20 and adds their Bonus. If the total is equal to or greater than the Challenge, the Check succeeds.

***

So there we go, hardly a full ruleset, but maybe the backbone of the skeleton of one.

Till next time!