One of the greatest appeals to tabletop roleplaying games, or TTRPG, is the ability to create characters in your own image, and carry them through an epic story with your friends! Character creation is often the first thing done when beginning most tabletop RPGs, and is usually the first thing that the rules cover as a completed character is necessary to play the rest of the game. Once the player has finished that, while technically finished in the sense it can be used to fit within a games’ mechanics to succeed or fail within the rule, the character is still far from finished. Since TTRPGs are more than just games, they are cooperative storytelling tools and player characters need context, motivations, backgrounds, relationships, ideals, flaws, obligations, missions, goals, dreams, and more to flesh them out. While some systems have some of this built into their character creation process, there is so much more that can be done. It can be difficult to know where to start, while some may provide their DM with three pages of character description and history describing exactly the series of events that lead said character to get wrapped up in the narrative that the DM/GM has planned (guilty), other players aren’t sure where to start and can sometimes be intimidated by the process.
No matter the situation more can be done! This is where “The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide” by James D’Amato comes into play. James D’Amato is most well known as the creator and game master of the One Shot Podcast which is notable for presenting different TTRPGs and combining them with talented improv artists. I provided a review of the podcast awhile back which can be read here! https://maroonersrock.com/2015/08/one-shot-podcast-is-tabletop-roleplaying-at-its-finest/ James decided to take all of experience creating and playing numerous interesting characters and put it into a handy guide book for those interested in buffing up their characters’ backstories. As I’m currently living in a house that is currently running multiple TTRPG campaigns I’m pretty excited to put this to use and see how useful it is in helping make characters not just interesting but fun to play!
The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is 277 pages of activities that can be used to help players get into the mindset of their characters and serve as little icebreaker exercises which is perfect as you are still meeting your newly formed avatar. That really is the best way to think about this, and even if you are deep into a campaign you could go through a good number of these activities as a group in character. Each activity is presented as a series or themed questions for each character participating to answer. These cover a massive variety of subjects and details from prior love interests, childhood memories, lessons learned, and some impact the world building itself drawing from and adding to the characters’ individual cultures they grew up in. Some activities are intense, forcing players to think about their beloved character’s most dramatic moments and their hardest decisions. Other activities are silly and ask about who you’d swipe right or left in a list of potential dates, select out of a series of options how you’d save a cat, or five things you packed but shouldn’t have. These activities can be picked and done in any order at your or the group’s discretion.
James D’Amato separated The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide into three major categories based on the amount of experience that the character has. Humble Beginnings is intended to fresh brand new characters ranging from level 1 to 7 in traditional RPG terms. Veteran Heroes covers characters in the 8 to 14 level range. Finally Myths and Legends covers levels 15 to 20 characters. This is a general guide and should be adjusted accordingly depending on which game system you are playing in. Each section covers questions that are relevant to characters that fit into these different levels of experience, power, and fame. This is handy as starting a campaign with level 12 character should look different than those starting at level 1. Covering and thinking about the events that took place that brought them to be qualified as a veteran hero/villain is important but not always easy, and these activities definitely help guide that process. Particularly in the Myths and Legends section covering an entire campaign’s worth of events can be tricky and short of writing an entire novel how do you go about creating a backstory for that character that makes reasonable sense? That character is going to draw from vastly different experiences and respond to things differently than a level 1 character and James’ guide helps immensely in that.
One of the things I love about many of these activities, particularly in a group setting versus doing it myself for just my character is that it can add to the world building being established. Questions about a characters home life growing up can add to a culture’s ideas about home life, what holidays they celebrate, political affiliations, all those small details that attribute to how a person grows up. It can even impact geographical elements of a world, establishing that a character grew up in a desert town in the south not only establishes the fact that there is a desert, a town in that desert, and that it is in the South, but impacts how that character may react to seeing a snowy mountain, or lush forest for the first time. This guide asks questions that will lead players to think about their character’s origins and as more activities are done it becomes progressively easier to think in that mindset. For example now that you know that your character is from a small desert town in the South it can be easier to think about hobbies they may have, what type of mentors, rivals, and friends they had, what sort of useless or odd trinkets they carry with them, and as each of those are decided each thing in turn becomes easier to fill in those gaps that character creation commonly misses.
James created this meme to use to test out how his book works, try it for yourself!
The one downside to The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is the fact that is completely supplementary. Standalone, it asks some good questions, but is put to best use when combined with a game’s system and already mechanically built character. This guide is simply to expand on those ideas, not create them. Picking this book up expecting to be able to build a character completely from scratch will be a disappointing endeavor. If James D’Amato were to ever create a 2nd edition of his guide I’d love to see a rules light RPG included that people could play and practice going through the activities without feeling like they have to commit to an entire campaign of their decisions. As I’m sure he knows One Shots encourage playing and creativity with a games rules or mechanics because there is less at stake. If a game were included in his book it would create an incentive to play with his guide.
Whether you are a DM/GM that wants to encourage their players to have deeper characters and create more engaging Non-Player Characters (NPCs), or a player looking to bolster their roleplaying by establishing more about a character’s origin, or even an author in need of a tool to assist in building believable characters, relationships, and establishing worldbuilding, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a perfect supplement to any game’s character creation process. Ever activity is well thought out and cover a broad range of impact to the character and the world they live in. Some are silly and fun, while others dig deep into a character’s major events. For RPG veterans and new players alike grabbing The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a sure way to expand your overall RPG experiences!
To listen to the One Shot Podcast hosted by the Author you can go to http://oneshotpodcast.com/ or look for the One Shot Podcast in your preferred podcatcher!
If this book is something that interests you, you can buy it on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1507208375?pf_rd_p=a526cdf5-1d83-4a09-853e-0767afc685eb&pf_rd_r=H1NTYGNVPVQP5H4591D4
DISCLAIMER: A REVIEW COPY OF THIS BOOK WAS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHER
