Building a Backstory

## **Building a Backstory: Backgrounds and Traits**

Empire of Wyrms uses the backgrounds from the 5th edition PHB but also offers several new ones. After choosing your race we setup your background and a bit of backstory in order to flesh out your character's past and present.

A character background details the significant events, people, and life experiences that make up the origin story of a character prior to his or her role in the saga of a campaign. Some characters are born under extraordinary circumstances, heralded by prophecy and omen; others live completely ordinary lives until some dramatic event casts them onto the dangerous roads traveled by heroes and monsters. a character's background forms the basis for complex motivations and emotional vulnerabilities, and these past experiences guide the way the character responds to circumstances in his or her present life. As the child of a goddess and a mortal, do you view ordinary creatures as inferior beings? Having grown up in abject poverty, how do you react when someone steals from you? If a militant theocracy burned your siblings as heretics, how do you respond to clerics of other religions? When playing a new character, the details in your background give you a quick handle on your past, making it easier to slip into the character's skin and embrace this mind-set in play. As the campaign proceeds, your early adventures gradually become part of that background—a seamless chain of events that make up your life and contribute to your constantly changing and evolving persona.

## **Backgrounds**

Before you fill out your backstory and choose traits/flaws that fit your character. First choose a Background or a combination of backgrounds that you think would fit your character. This is a basic representation outlining what has shaped your training, lifestyle, ideals, and personality.

## **Traits and Flaws**

You are allowed to choose up to 3 traits to help further customize your character and shape them into a unique entity in this world. You can also choose to take flaws in order to recieve an extra trait, it is up to your DM how many more you can take though.

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## **Early Life**

Experiences in childhood have a monumental impact on the person you become later in life. Family, social class, region, family trade or profession, religion, culture, and major events that occur during your life have a formative influence on your character development and the worldview that you adopt as an adult. As you think about your early life, consider the following questions and imagine your roots in a time long before you gained the knack for the character class you have chosen—after all, almost nobody starts life with their future profession already laid out for them. This information will influence your choice of skills, traits, story feats, and penalties, and help to ground you in the campaign world.

## **Adolescence**

Adolescence is the physical and psychological transition from childhood to adulthood in which you start to become more conscious of the world around you. This is the time when you grow in body and mind, take greater risks, question the rules and structures under which you've lived, and test the boundaries and authorities that put those structures in place. It's also when many key events happen that influence you toward the path of the character class you will one day adopt. Now that you know something of your childhood circumstances, imagine the kinds of risks and choices you might have taken upon entering adolescence. Conversely, imagine the kinds of risks and choices you would avoid because of ethics, family, customs, tradition, religion, pride, or fear. As you read through the following categories, consider the questions and take some time to visualize the experiences you encountered during this turbulent time.

## **Adulthood**

When you reach biological maturity, undergo the final initiation rites of adolescence, or reach the age of legal responsibility in your culture, you're considered an adult. At this point, you're the sum of all the feelings, experiences, and choices you have made from birth through adolescence. You are capable of analyzing your past, and your emotional and intellectual response to your experiences shapes your moral and ethical view of the world.

In adulthood, you likely adopt your character class—although some people might assume full careers in the military, academia, the seminary, or a trade years before they begin adventuring, just as others pass through adolescence swiftly and reach maturity at an extremely young age. Playing an older or younger character can vary the party dynamic, and may warrant one extra or one fewer trait during character creation in order to reflect the character's greater or narrower life experience, at the GM's discretion. No matter your age, the experiences of your earlier life are a prologue to the character class you've chosen.

## **Family Lineage**

A hero doesn't just blink into existence the moment you fill out a character sheet; he came from somewhere. For most characters, that means he has or had a family: a mother and father, who in turn had mothers and fathers of their own, and so on, stretching back into the past in a chain of ancestry. This is the character's lineage, and it shapes and defines the character, whether he's consciously aware of it or not. Some lineages are more complex than others—adoption, sorcerer bloodlines, and reincarnation are a few examples—but the idea of family is still important beyond immediate blood ties. Whatever form this lineage takes, it has a profound effect on the character's life, story, and role in the campaign.

## Quick Jump Menu

1. **[to Players|Introduction]**
2. **[Creation Overview|Character Creation Overview]**
3. **[a Race|Choosing a Race]**
4. **[a Class|Choosing a Class]**
5. **[Scores|Ability Scores]**
6. **[a Backstory|Building a Backstory]**
7. **[your Persona|Customizing your Persona]**
8. **[[1]]**
9. **[and Spells|Magic and Spells]**
10. **[into Faerodorn|Stepping into Faerodorn]**