I would say that the ideas I’ve been giving in posts have been medium levels of backstory. It has been more than just suggesting playing a rogue who likes to stab stuff. But it also hasn’t been creating a lot of very depth heavy backstories. I leave stuff generally vague like what deity it is that the cleric is following, what town or area you grew up in that something horrible happened in. It is very possible to set-up a very in depth backstory where you list out your friends, you family members, everyone who has wronged you, what your life was like growing up, what all of your hopes and dreams had been.

There are multiple reasons for me doing that, the first being, if you want to use it, some of those things are things you’ll have to work through with your DM, because I don’t know your game, and some of them are stuff that you don’t need to know. Knowing too much about your character does a few things, it can limit what the DM can do around your character, because there will be a lack of mystery. It can force you into playing a character in a certain way and finding out that you don’t enjoy it. It can limit your character in how they can develop.

The one that I want to focus on for this topic is the fact that it can force you into playing your character a certain way.

The point of this topic was to cover two things, the first being, what’s my motivation for adventuring, the other other being, what’s my motivation for role playing. These two topics are fairly closely held together. Most likely the reason you have for adventuring is also the reason that you’re going to have for some of your characters motivations and interactions in role playing. If goblins murdered your family, you’re probably adventuring to get revenge on the goblins, it’s also probably going to mean that when you run across an injured goblin that poses no threat to you, you’re still going to want to kill it.

With motivation for adventuring, there can be a lot of different reasons. A bard might be in it to see the world, be able to travel and perform on different stages that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. You could also have a Barbarian who is just in need of and bad with money, so they don’t care too much about the adventuring, but they always need money and the adventuring party always gives them a little money. Or you could be out looking for a lost holy artifact as a cleric, getting revenge on a ruler who slaughtered your village as a fighter, or out to protect your grove against a blight that is on the land as a druid. There are a lot of reasons otherwise that you could be looking into adventuring. But one of your jobs as a player when creating your character is to make sure you have this answered.

Along with having that answered, a lot of DM’s will put your party together, but if you and fellow players can come up with a reason for putting together, or better yet come up with a reason for keeping your party together, that is huge. Whether it’s because your party has similar goals or needs or because you actually like each other, it’s important to have some reason. This motivation with help inform some of your interactions and will help it make sense when the story of the game isn’t focused on your character to keep them as part of the group. Now, this isn’t all on you as a player, the DM has to keep all the characters involved in the story as well, but if you’re creating the loner Druid who cares only about her part of the forest, when the characters aren’t focused on that, that druid is probably going to leave the party to either go off on their own or to find another adventuring party to help them.

But also with motivation, we want to talk about the idea of role playing your character. I talked some earlier about having a medium depth background story. Some of the reason was that it doesn’t lock you into a single specific way of playing your character, but also because it doesn’t lock you into a single path going forward. It’s too easy to lock your self into a single purpose and single goal while role playing and then finding out that you really don’t enjoy it.

Now, I realize that sometimes it’s fun coming up with a ton of backstory and all of these different plot hooks, but often times it’s going to be too much to actually work into a game and there is a chance to feel disappointment because it wasn’t fully touched upon. As a DM, personally I don’t try and avoid using peoples backstories and generally I’ll try and tie them into the campaign as I go. However, if something doesn’t fit in with the overall story, or if I feel like the story is leaning too heavily on a single person, I am going to try and change it up which might keep it from using all of your backstory. If there are too many plot hooks as well for your character, I might not touch on all of them, instead just focusing on one of them to really add into the main story with a nod or two thrown to others of them.

Beyond having too many plot hooks, having too few is bad as well. If, as a DM, I don’t get much to work with, I’m not going to put as much effort into keeping your character engaged story wise. My assumption is that you’re going to like combat more so and I’ll make sure to sprinkle enough of those in as well. But it also doesn’t give you much framework to role play, if you want to role play a lot, a consistent character. They might end up being consistent because you’re just playing your own personality, but it might be that they are very chaotic in how they respond to everything presented to them. Being a little chaotic isn’t bad, and a lot of people play chaotic characters, in fact, the Total Party Thrill podcast has an episode (linked here) about how Chaotic Good is probably where most adventurers should be playing out of.

So there is chaos in a good way and in a bad way. A chaotic character can at times be used as an excuse to do whatever you want, but chaos means less that you just do whatever sounds the most fun in the moment, it more means that you’re willing to do what it takes in situations laws be damned, and you’re willing to be flexible for the greater good, again, I think that Total Party Thrill with their episode does a really good job of explaining it, so I’ll leave that as a listen for people.

There is one major exception for having much of a backstory, or any of one really, and that’s at a Convention or while playing a one-shot. When playing those shorter games, focus in on a single thing for your characters. When I was playing Dungeons and Dinosaurs game at AcadeCon the first year I was there, one person made their T-Rex very impulsive, I had an herbivore and I made him into a researcher who was watching and documenting everything. We didn’t have more backstory or direction for character than what we gave them, in fact about the only thing we knew about the dinosaurs came on a dinosaur fact sheet. In that case, having that one thing you role play to is important as it’s going to allow you to have a focused character for that short time without slowing down the game because you’re trying to pick out or build more depth into your character.

What are some things you’ve used as motivation for either being part of a party or role playing a character in Dungeons and Dragons or any role playing system?

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Everything it gives you really works the best that way. Even your skills such as being able to use a disguise kit really push you towards being a rogue. I think that’s one of the weaknesses of some of these backgrounds, they align too closely with a particular class, and in the case of urchin, I think it’s probably the most glaringly obvious example of a background like that. I personally think the best feature to this background is that you get general knowledge on city planning and layouts. That sounds weird that it is one of the cooler things, but being able to walk into a town, and within a few minutes be able to generally guess the layout, that’s fun.

So what are some non-rogue classes that you can turn into an interesting backstory with this background?

When I was young, I ran away from home to the big city to become part of the circus. It turns out that the circus doesn’t just allow every runaway into their troupe without you having some skill first. I had spent the little money that I’d taken from my parents to get to the city, so I had to start panhandling to try and get money. I must not have been all that good at it because a monastery took pity on me and let me stay at their place. They offered to train me and give me a roof over my head, as long as I continued to earn my way. It was doing some odd jobs around the monastery, and if I wanted more money, I had to continue to panhandle. Soon I’d found my own spot to sleep out in the town and while I stayed working with the monastery for training, I spent my days with the other kids who were earning money on the streets. One day a man came and offered a lot of the kids money to do some work for him. I didn’t really need the extra money and I could always go back to the monastery, so I turned him down. But a lot of kids went with him. He came back a week later and offered the deal again. Then after doing that and getting fewer and fewer takers I saw one of his guards taking kids by force. I realized that the kids he had been taking weren’t coming back either.Now I want to know what has happened to my friends and stop this man.

Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Monk

I was an unwanted child. My parents already had three kids, and apparently I was an accident. I understand why they didn’t want another child, now, thinking back on it. They weren’t able to feed us all, and they had to send out my oldest sibling to work before she was done with her education. I felt like I wasn’t wanted, which I wasn’t, and even though my parents and siblings said that they loved me, I didn’t feel it. I ran away from home, just into the city we were in. I was hopeful that I’d be able to find someone who wanted me. I wasn’t able to do that, so I just hung out and begged for money or scraps of food. It was a horrible lifestyle, but I refused to go back to my family if they really didn’t want me. I heard from other urchins that they had tried to find me for a little bit, but given up assuming I’d been kidnapped. Eventually I felt bad, but instead of going back, I started going to where my oldest sister was a kitchen help. It was a school that taught magic. So I’d sit along the side of the building, listening to my sister work in the kitchen. But then I heard something more interesting. It was a classroom that had it’s windows open near the kitchen. Soon I was sitting under that window learning about the theories of wizardry. I was so curious that I bought a little notebook and started writing down what they were teaching. It took me forever practicing in back alleys, but eventually I was able to cast a spell. One day I realized that my sister hadn’t come to the kitchen for a few days, so I went off to look for my family, just to make sure they were all right. There had been a fire in the poor district of town and their house had burned down, but according to some people they hadn’t been killed. I decided it was time to return home, and I realized how much I missed seeing my sister every day so now I’m looking through the town to find where they might have gone.

Alignment: Neutral Neutral/Chaotic Neutral/Lawful Neutral
Class: Wizard

The under city is a place that no respectable person goes. Thankfully for everyone, I’m not a respectable person. My horns show that I’ve been demon marked and therefore I am bad. I wasn’t really given a choice in that, people always told me that I was a monster. Things down in the under city are even terrible for me. I don’t get enough food, and I have to scavenge what I can. There was a plague that’s broken out down here before, and I barely escaped with my life. In fact, when I got sick, everyone left me for dead, because the plague always killed. A kind doctor came to me and said that if I were willing to help him in the future, he’d be able to help me. I agreed because I didn’t want to die. I didn’t realize what I had done though. A few months later he came asking me to burn down a temple. Now, I’m not very religious, but burning down a temple seemed like a bad idea.  I told him no, but he insisted and my plague came back to me, and I felt my body withering away again. I promised again to help him and burned down the temple that night. Now I need to find a more permanent solution to my illness because I don’t want to do more like that.

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Class: Warlock
Race: Tiefling

The worst thing that can ever happen to a dwarf is that they are made casteless. It doesn’t happen often because you have to do something very wrong. That’s what I did, something very wrong. I was part of a raiding party out in the  mines fighting off a band of Drow who were coming up from the underdark. Things were going poorly for us, but as a dwarf you never leave a comrade behind. I was scared though, so I took off running and left left the four remaining members of my troop fighting. They were able to kill off enough drow to drive them back, but when they came back and found me hiding, my warrior caste was removed and I was sent down into the slums as a casteless. I want to return to where I was before, but you have to do something heroic and I don’t think I can do that on my own.

Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Fighter
Race: Dwarf

There are some ideas for playing an urchin who wasn’t a rogue. What have you done for an urchin backstory before? Have you played a character where them being an urchin was an important part of it?

This also wraps up the D&D backgrounds, I hope that you’ve enjoyed them.

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I mean, why else would you really be a sailor. You want to be a swashbuckling scallywag, plundering ships, getting treasure and sailing off on your next adventure. And honestly, that’s just going to be fun to play, so why wouldn’t you play that character? Sure, there might be some other options, but being a pirate is going to be a lot of fun. But what if that was in your former life? Remember that your background means that it is the thing that’s influenced your life/personality. You could be a 500 year old elf who had the experience of being a sailor two hundred years ago, just to have the experience, so when you think about it that way, there are other options than just being a pirate.

Mechanically speaking, it gives you some good skills. You have athletics and perception from it. Perception is always a big skill to have in a D&D game, and athletics can come in handy pretty often. It also gives you the ability to find passage on a ship. If you don’t want o pay, you’ll have to work hard on the ship, but you have the skills and you know the lingo.

What sorts of life would you have led with a Sailor background?

I studied in the university for five years before being skilled enough. I graduated at the top of my class as I learned about the various creatures of the land. The school was then asking for someone to go on an expedition to a newly discovered lands, and I volunteered. It was another six months of hard training as I had to be able to pull my weight as more than just a researcher on the ship. The sailing was an adventure in and of itself. I found so many new creatures that I hadn’t seen before deep at sea. A storm hit and we were blown off course and our ship was beached on the shore. It was a new land for me, so I went off exploring. I found some new creatures and a village, but when I tried to make it back to the ship, I became lost yet again. I was able to find some people whom I could communicate with, and they were able to help me find where the ship had been. But that was almost a week later, and the sailors and captain had assumed me dead and gotten the ship off of the beach and left me there. These people don’t have as great ships to get me back but they have tales of others on this land who might. Someday, I might get home.

Class: Druid/Wizard
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

I grew up in a small port town without that much to do. We would fish a little bit, but as a kid, I mainly stayed out of the way of dock workers. Then the war broke out in the kingdom and I and most of those my age were forced to join the royal navy. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do, but it did get me out of the small town. I got to see the larger world and I found a lot of interesting places. There was one town where I met a person who I fell in love with. The war was still going on, so I had to ship out again within a couple of weeks to join where the battles were now. When I came back after the war, they were gone. I asked around, and apparently, they had been taken away by a traveling troupe of gypsies. I took to drinking in the inns to find out anything that I could about this troupe and I’ve found some information and squandered away my money. Now I need to make more money so that I can get them back.

Class: Fighter
Alignment: Neutral Good

When you grow up in a pirate village on a remote island, you basically have three choices of careers. You either run a business, most likely a tavern, you become a prostitute, or you become a pirate. While the last is a bit more dangerous, it seemed way more fun to me. Now, I’m not what would be called an evil pirate. I don’t do it just for the sake of killing someone or for greed. I have actually started an orphanage on the island, for all the children who lose a family or don’t really have a family. It was something near and dear to my heart. That probably saved my life, and not being the captain of the ship helped too, when our ship actually lost a battle. We were taken into the mainland a long way from the ocean but I always had one goal on my mind. Escape the work camp I was at, and make it back so that I could help those kids again. Step one is done, but with a criminals brand and no money, I need to find a way to get back to the orphans.

Class: Rogue (Swashbuckler)
Alignment: Anywhere on the Neutral spectrum. I’d lean towards Lawful Neutral.

This background has been a bit trickier to come up with a lot of out of the box ideas for. The first one definitely fits the out of the standard trope for a sailor background idea. Really, like I said before, it’s hard not to just want to play the pirate type of character. Even if you’re a barbarian who just wants to smash stuff, you can be a pirate who smashes stuff.

Have you played a pirate before, I mean sailor? And has anyone played in a pirate campaign before? It seems like something that would be fun, but I’ve heard that people have trouble pulling them off.

Less backstories than normal, but some longer ones than normal. I hope that you’ve enjoyed them. There are three more backgrounds left to do after this.

Have you played someone with a sage background? Why did you choose that background and what was your backstory?

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One of the most common pitfalls, though, with playing an Outlander is placing them outside of society. That is really more the role of a hermit, while an outlander generally has some connection back to the world, and while their being on the fringes of the world, they are going to know how to interact with the normal society better than a hermit would. As I talked about in the hermit background, having a lone ranger character is far from ideal for a game that is a cooperative storytelling game where players are all part of a group. So when building an outlander, think of why they would be connected into the party, what they might want from the party, or why they would change from being a homesteader to being an adventurer.

The Outlander background also gets the skills of survival and athletics, which make a lot of sense. You have to be strong and smart at survival to live on your own or with very few around you out in the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons. The amount of random encounters and monsters that are roaming around would require you to be knowledgeable  on survival. One interesting thing that the outlander gets is a language of the players choice. This goes against the loan wolf idea, this background gives a nice tie in to some other race that isn’t your own. Why would your High-Elf outlander known dwarven? Why would your halfling guide know undercommon? There’s a story that is built in for you, in some ways, with the language.

So what are some different backstories for the Outlander background?

There is much disappointment in life. Mine was not an exception to that, my parents were killed when I was young, my aunt who took me in soon abandoned me, and I was an outcast in the small town that I grew up in. Things became better when a traveling missionary came through the town preaching about their deity. They took me along with them and gave me a spot to live. All of this happened before I was ten years old. Now a lot of time has passed and it is my turn to spread the word. Things have gone well for the most part, but now I’ve started to hear rumors of issues coming out of my order. That there are those who are subverting it and turning it against everything I was taught. I’ve tried to reach my old teacher to find out more information, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of them. I know that they were off looking for a relic, and their party hasn’t been heard of now in two months. I’m worried that the issues in the order might have set them up for failure, and I need help finding them.

Class: Cleric
Alignment: Neutral Good

A lot of kids see a man putting out a fire, a woman arresting a criminal, or a doctor saving a life and they decide to go into one of those noble professions. I’m less interested in those professions. What peeked my interest as just a small one, was seeing a dragonborn being dragged out of the inn across the street from my parents house. “Savan” was really friendly with us kids and very helpful in the inn and around town. What we didn’t know was that he was actually a pirate known as Estevan Clawfist who was one of the most brutal pirates of all time, and that the crown wanted to capture him. The idea of a double life intrigued me, and he towering half-Goliath who had caught him became someone I idolized. That was the only childish game that I wanted to play, I was the bounty hunter and my friends would be criminals who I brought in. It led to some scuffed knees and a black eye or two, but my desire to become a bounty hunter never changed. When I grew older, I found out how to be one, it was a less glamorous life than it had seemed as a child, but I love the work. Now I have a large bounty, but this gang might be too much for me to bring in by myself.

Class: Fighter/Rogue
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

I was raised as part of a nomadic tribe. We wandered around and were friends with dwarves, humans, and elves alike. Our business was our own until one day a conquering force came in and subjugated us. We were forced to go live in a town and many of the older people just seemed to stop caring and did nothing. Our situation had become dire when I decided to run away. I knew that I could avoid the soldiers and live like I was meant to live roaming in the wilds. I became a guide to smugglers who were helping my people as well as a small uprising against the conquering forces. Some day I hope that what I will do will help my people be able to wander again. Then the soldiers found out where the smugglers were going, and I was on the run again. I’ve found a group to catch on with and now I hope to convince them to help me make a difference.

Class: Ranger/Druid
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

The rich spend money on stupid things. I saw that while growing up. Our village was in the middle of nowhere, but notables would still show up every summer to hunt in our forests. It was good business for the town, otherwise the only other option would have been to move. I met a lot of interesting folks and I saw how they lived and I wanted to live like that. I’d sneak off into the woods while I wasn’t helping at my parents armory and pretend to be a great hunter. On one of those excursions where I had been gone for a few days, it wasn’t that odd for me and it annoyed my parents, I came across a valley that I didn’t know was there. It wasn’t on the normal hunting route or, when I came back into town and looked, on the maps. I’d find somewhere new to hunt, and I quickly went back there again and again. I mapped it out in my head and studied the creatures in there. There were so many exciting creatures there, and as I listened to what the rich were talking about, I realized that I had found a way to make my fortune. I convinced one rich person to hire myself as a guide for a new hunting grounds, and soon my fame spread and I was making good money, but then other hunting guides found my spot. I got mad and left town with my money and realized how quickly money spent. Now I’m on the search for the new best hunting spot so that I can make my money back again.

Class: Rogue/Ranger
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Have you used the Outlander background before? If so, what was your characters story?

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The first one alphabetically is the acolyte. You’ve spent time in service to your deity. For example, maybe you started as someone who assisted the priestess as a child and then rose all the way up in the ranks to become the high priestess yourself. As I mentioned, there could be a large gap of time since the period when you were in service to your deity, but even though it could be something you did a long time before you started adventuring, it can still be a part of who you are as an adventurer. It is just a piece that has helped define who you are as a person.

There are a number of obvious classes that make the “most” sense to go with if you are an acolyte, the first being cleric. If you’re a cleric, that’s exactly what your job was in the temple that you served in, and it makes perfect sense. Next, there is paladin. This also makes a ton of sense; you are a knight in service of a deity. And then there is the monk — while the monk in Dungeons & Dragons is as much a ninja as a monk, they can make sense as an acolyte, as they trained in a monastery and have devoted their body and actions to their deity. I’m probably not going to write out much of a background for any of those classes, but I’m going to give you some weirder options or show you how you can play against type. Let’s see what some of those look like now:

I spent so many years in service of Tymora, the goddess of good fortune, and I had worked my way up into the temple. I loved the life as I spent time drinking and eating with the rich and famous of my home city. Life was great, and I was close to becoming the high priestess in my town, until my rival, Gerhim Methezar, lied to the leaders of the religion and told them I’d been preaching lies and accepting bribes. I was branded a heretic and cast out penniless onto the streets. I hate it out here, and I hate Gerhim for what he did to me. In my weakness, a voice came to me and offered me hope, offered me power, and offered me a way to get revenge. I will prove Gerhim for the liar that he is, and regain my spot in the temple of Tymora — until then, I’m going to be a thorn in his side.

Class: Warlock
Alignment: Lawful Neutral

For this one, I really leaned into the idea of being kicked out and wanting revenge as the bond and then loving rubbing elbows with the elite as a personality trait. The ideal that I used was around wanting power in the faith, and the flaw is picking a goal and becoming obsessed with it. I’m not going to break down all of them like this, but I wanted an example of how I wrote a backstory with using specific aspects from the handbook, even though I didn’t pick them out ahead of time.

I’m also going to be adding in alignments. I doubt you’ll ever see any acolyte character be actually evil, but in this case, the character might border on lawful evil at times, especially when it comes to undermining Gerhim and gaining back their old position, because of their obsession with getting their power back.

The gods speak to me and through me. That’s how the temple of Mystra found me. They seek knowledge, and I had a knowledge that they didn’t have access to. I was raised in their temple as an oracle of the gods and never knew what real life was like. Things were great until one of my visions was wrong. I don’t know what happened — maybe we interpreted it wrong, but people lost their lives, and I do not consider that acceptable. I ran away that day, but the visions didn’t stop coming. Now I’ve had another vision, about a lost relic of Mystra. I can prove to myself that I am worthy of returning to the temple if I can find this relic and bring back a piece of lost knowledge.

Class: Wizard – Divination
Alignment: Lawful Good

Life was hard for me growing up; I was living on the streets and having to steal. I made the mistake of breaking into a temple of Bhaal. They had some very nice things in there, but they caught me. According to their beliefs, that would be enough to have me put to death, but instead, they had some pity on me — I guess it was pity, anyway — and they put me to work. Apparently, no one else had ever gotten as far into the temple as I had. I didn’t love the work they made me do; it was messy work, and as my skills were honed, the work became so violent that after one mission I didn’t feel like I could return. So I didn’t. I ran away, and now agents of Bhaal are trying to track me down. But they trained me well, and with a lot of skill and a bit of luck, I’m sure I can stay ahead of them. Time to find a crowd to blend into and pretend like I’ve had a normal life.

Class: Rogue – Assassin
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

This is definitely one that you could go evil with — just swap it around so that the temple of Bhaal has burned your character because of some mistake done on an assassination, and now you have a character who is still on the run from them but who enjoys the killing and being a rogue if you’re playing an evil campaign.

I loved living in the church, I spent my youth at the foot of the eldest priest listening to the stories he told. I memorized every single one of them, as I asked him to tell them over and over again. When he passed away, the temple in my little town didn’t get another priest, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I took up traveling. It felt like the right thing to do — seeking out those who are part of my faith so that I can listen to their stories and add them to my knowledge, so I can spread the word to the masses who might not have heard the stories before. There’s a proverb for everything, and I know them all. Unfortunately, life on the road is a bit tougher than life in the temple, but I will not give up my mission to bring these teachings to the masses. However, after a run-in with some people who claimed to be following my deity who then robbed me, I probably should figure out a better way to travel — I’m sure there is someone out there who would let me travel with them and whom I can share my message with.

Class: Bard – Lore
Alignment: NG

How have you played an acolyte before? Is your character a strict follower of some deity, or a former disgraced member who has been kicked out?

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What is a Background?

Seems like a pretty straightforward question and answer. A background is what your character did prior to becoming an adventurer. The less straightforward part is that your character might not have done that thing in a while. For example, if you were an urchin and you’re now 50 years old, you weren’t an urchin that recently. It can also be very recently, though; maybe your adventuring started when you, with the criminal background, were caught by the owner of a mansion and instead of reporting you, they were impressed by your skills, so they hired you to do a job for them and leave them alone, and that’s where the game is starting.

I like it when players use their background to enhance a mystery or something in their backstory that I as the DM can grab onto as a plot hook. It doesn’t have to be a huge plot hook, but if there is something interesting, like an intriguing NPC or place or monster that is in your background, that helps me flesh out the world so that as a player, you feel more connected. Even if you’ve closed your past off — everyone is dead, I now have a traumatic event that happened in my past, etc. — how do you react when something like that happens again?

How Much Should You Use the Book for Backgrounds?

This is a situation where there isn’t really a right answer. As much or as little as you need to. The nice thing about the backgrounds from the player handbook (PHB) is that it helps you figure out things like flaws, personality traits, etc. if you’re having troubles or you only have a loose idea. The downside is that sometimes people feel beholden to use the ones that are in the book. I let my players tweak things as needed, or if they have an idea for a flaw, bond, personality trait, or ideal already, we make it so it works in the game. What you’re trying to avoid is making a character that is Batman and who doesn’t really have a personality, flaw, or bond.

Wait, What’s All in a Background?

A background is something that you’ve done in your past that was an important part of your life. We kind of covered that in the first part, but this is something that defines you heavily at the start of your game. Things can change as your character develops and as possible flaws are overcome or bonds aren’t bonds anymore. Let’s talk about the different parts of a background, though.

You generally start by picking out a single background — it might be that you were an urchin or criminal as mentioned above, but maybe you spent most of your life studying and were a sage, or you did something amazing and became a folk hero. There are a number of these options in the PHB and more in other books. I don’t have all of the other books yet, but I’ll probably be adding some as time goes on.

In each background, you have a few tables that you can roll on or pick from, and this is what I was talking about in the above section. Each background has a table containing personality traits, and then tables for flaws, bonds, and ideals as well. You can roll on them and get a random one to help you figure out your characters backstory, or you can pick, choose, and alter them so that they fit the backstory you already had planned for your character.

The reason that they do this is to give you a spot to start roleplaying from. It helps you fish around less to start a game to find your character if you have a baseline. It also gives you some things, like different proficiency depending on the background you took. Maybe as a Sage you are now proficient in investigation and knowledge about the arcane, but for a criminal background, it might be that you are proficient at sleight of hand and deception. Along with that, it gives you some ability or trait that you can use. For example, if you are a soldier, even retired, other soldiers still recognize your rank. Or if you’re a Guild Artisan, you can also go to the guild of your craft, but those seem to come up less. It also gives you some gear, if you’re getting gear that way, and possibly some more languages.

What If I Have Multiple Backgrounds?

Now that you’ve heard more about different backgrounds, you might be thinking that you fall into multiple categories. That’s certainly possible, so I’m going to go into story mode with you and talk about two different characters, Silver and Syldi.

Silver had a rough life and saw many horrible things. He didn’t know all of what was going on, but has been haunted by some of it. He also didn’t grow up well and was on the street and poor as an urchin. Those two things shaped him into the god-fearing man he is today. So, when Silver was looking at different backgrounds, the player didn’t feel like a single one quite fit. So instead of just picking one, he combined two. He took the skill proficiency, and gear from just one, but when building out his bonds, personality traits, flaws, and ideals, he worked from both lists. That’s one way you can get a couple of backgrounds into the same character.

Syldi, on the other hand, grew up on the street, barely making it. She had to steal from street vendors and eventually caught the eye of the local thieves’ guild. She started working with them until she was able to land on her feet and become a bartender (at least part-time) at the Queen’s Retreat. Syldi would make sense to have a combination of criminal and urchin background. However, Syldi was a thief because of necessity, not because it’s something that she really wanted to do. Her being a criminal wasn’t a defining feature of her as compared to being an urchin, and while she has thief skills (and is actually a Rogue with the archetype of thief), those are because she was an urchin, not because she was a criminal. So, that’s one kind of thing you can lean into; maybe there is one that is more important so that is the one you really get your skills from.

But What if None of Them Are Right?

With Dungeons & Dragons, playing the game and creating characters is more of an art than a science, I’d say. If you can’t find something that works as well as you’d hoped, work with your DM. Maybe the Sage options don’t quite match what you are looking for, because you want to be a student still, and a sage seems like they’d know too much. Work with your DM on it — maybe there are parts you can use from the sage, but then tweak the other parts or come up with your own. There’s nothing that says that you can’t come up with your own background, and if you have a great idea for one, run it by your Dungeon Master.

However, if your background idea gives you four new skills, a bank full of platinum pieces, and the ability to mind control any person within twenty miles of you into giving you their home as your own so you always have a spot to stay, that might be a bit overboard, and as a DM, I’m going to nix that. Certainly, though, come up with your own ideas and skills within reason. Even if you only get a couple of skills like most classes do, don’t give yourself the option of the two best ones for yourself; look at how other backgrounds do it and balance that out on your own. Your student might have skills that look more like a sage, but maybe you’re a student of martial arts; if so, don’t give yourself investigation and stealth because those seem the handiest. You’re probably not getting much investigating done if you’re practicing your sweet kung fu moves.

The same goes with your background traits such as personality, bond, flaws, and ideals. You probably don’t have a personality trait that everyone always likes you. If you suggested that as a personality trait in a game that I’m running, I’d either tell you just get the Charm Person spell or that maybe it’s your flaw — you think everyone likes you. Or, if you decide that your bond is to the empire because you’re the sister of the emperor, that can work, but don’t expect that to get you what you want. You’re going to have to defend the empire against the common folk who think the emperor sucks, and oh, by the way, while it opens a lot of noble doors for you, the emperor is pretty sure you’re trying to steal his throne, but thanks for the plot hook.

Basically, just be reasonable about it. I’ll nix anything as a DM if it is too strong. However, if your DM isn’t going to do that, don’t take advantage of it. The game is meant to be fun for everyone, so come up with your really fun background that the DM is going to enjoy and that you’re going to enjoy; just don’t take away from the fun of the other players.

Finally, What’s the Difference between a Background and Backstory?

This is a question that is pretty simple. Your background is basically your skills that you gained through your backstory. The backstory you choose is going to be what really shapes who you are as a character, and you can slot your background into it. That means, if you’ve spent your whole life apprenticing to be an armorer in the mines of Moria, you don’t have the criminal background. You can work at it from either direction; you can use your background to create your backstory and use those traits, bonds, flaws, and ideals to flesh out what happened to you. Or you can work it from the other direction, where you have a story and pick the background that works for you in that backstory.

Now that you have an idea of how backgrounds work, we’re going to delve more into some of them, and I’ll be giving examples like I did with the classes as to how you can use backgrounds and potentially turn them into something different than what your typical sage or urchin or criminal is like.

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