Writing Your Character's Backstory
If you would like to ground your character in the world using a backstory, we have a few tips to help you get along. Writing a backstory isn’t required and it doesn’t have to be long, but having a backstory very much helps in the roleplaying aspect of D&D. Here are our tips:
You are an adventurer, so give your character a reason to go on the many (random) adventures this campaign 3.
DnD is a group activity. You will have other party members while you play, so give your adventurer a reason to interact and help your other party members.
If you can, try to communicate with at least two other players at Spelslot while writing your backstory to establish relationships between your adventurers. Perhaps you’re family, friends, neighbours, (friendly) rivals, fellow-survivors, coworkers or something else.
If the characters of other players would not want to work with you, or worse, would actively try to kill you, then you’ve done it wrong and should do some rewriting.
Connect your character with the world of Kildar. This might be the most difficult part. In campaign 3, we plan to do adventures and stories focussed around the different factions in the world and their conflicts. Have a look at our LegendKeeper to read more about the different factions and think of a relationship or a familiarity that your adventurer would have with one or more factions.
Perhaps your adventurer did some freelance work for the merchants guild, or your mom is a scholar at Jared University, or your family bakery was ruined by price hikes of the Farmers Guild or perhaps the Eldritch Inquisition once rescued you from a hag and you still owe someone there a favor.
Remember, no faction is inherently good or evil, nor a monolithic block, factions are composed of people with differing opinions and goals, so writing a character that wants to kill all the members of one faction, or blindly follows the orders of another faction won’t work well.
For more tips on writing an interesting backstory, read through the Player's Handbook, there are some great guidelines in there. And don’t forget to look up guides and videos online (We love us some Ginni Di and Pointy Hat on YouTube).
If you're a story player and you've written a backstory you're satisfied with, you can send it to: [email protected]. And the loremasters can have a look at it and start thinking of ways that DM's can incorporate it into their sessions.