A good 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaign brings together many aspects of the game. There's exploration, combat, and, of course, the story. If you focus too heavily on one of these things, the 💧others may slip away from re🅘ach.
Of course, players almost inevitably prefer one aspect over the others, making i𒊎t a delicate balancing act for the Dungeon Master (DM). A great way to keep the players engaged in the story is to incorporate their characters' backstories. In this article, we provide a ton of♛ suggestions for how exactly to accomplish that, as it's no small task.
7 Make Someone They Know Involved In The Story ⛎
This is the one we all think of first, right? Pull a 'Luke, I am your father' moment and make their spouse or mother or brother the big bad guy (BBG) of the campaign. It's definitely a familiar trope, but that doesn't mean it can't be done well.
If you want to make their loved one your BBG, we won't stop you. There are other ways of achieving a similar effect, though. One good way to start is that, rather than making the player character important to the story, make a character from their backstory important to the story. Like if, instead of Vader telling Luke he was his father, Vader t✱urned and said it to Luke's childhood friend Biggs.
Here are a few other suggestions to help you start brainstorming:
- An important historical figure was friends with their ancient ancestor, giving them access to critical new information.
- The BBG is a close friend of the character's mother, and the mother has to decide who to believe.
- Their sibling was actually the one dropping small inconveniences in the way of the party this whole time, not the BBG, because they were hoping the character would give up and come back home where it's safe.
- The BBG starts impersonating the character around their loved ones.
- The character was raised to believe they were the hero of a prophecy, only to discover it was actually their dead twin sibling whom they never knew.
- The nerdy kid that the player's character used to bully is now an expert in the field of research the party is investigating.
- An old friend is actually one of the informants for the BBG (or another major figure, like the local king or spymaster).
- The character's mother adopted them years ago from (unknowingly) the BBG or the BBG's relative/friend.
6 Chꦰallenge Their Preconceived Ideas & Internal Biases
This is good life advice for anyone, but in D&D we specifically mean that you should contrive situations that challenge something fundamental about the character. Perhaps a religious person sees proof that the God they worshipped is not so benevolent as they thought. Perhaps someone who grew up playing by the river learns that they were bei😼ng watched by the local fey or a wizard.
Whatever you choose to do, it should hit home and cause the character to do some self-reflection. These preconceived notions are based on something - pick at itꦑ until the source reveals itself! Who did they get in a fight with as a child? Who taught them about the world? Where did they grow up?
It's all about the execution. It may seem tempting to build up to a big reveal; maybe they spend the entire session battling to the end of a dungeon, only to discover the mastermind is of a race they did not expect, like a goblin. While this undoubtedly works in some cases, there's also something to be said for more mundane realizations which probe further and allow the player time to react. Perhaps an elf who grew up with that elf-dwarf rivalr✅y spends time talking to a dwarven princess, learning about dwarven culture.
Either way, the real aim is to open up the door for more backstory-related roleplay going forward.
5 Give An NPC A Cr🔯ush On Them
Plenty of DMs have done this without a second thought. Something romantic between a character and an NPC can be anything you can dream of - a one-sided crush, a secret affair, true love, and much more - and it provides some great drama for the story.
However, have you considered using it to peel back the walls around a character's backstory? Romance, as many of us know, can bring up past feelings and emotions in a snap.
To start, different people have different feelings about the entire affair, from how formal courtship should be, to how long people should wait before getting married, to how intimate partners should be before and after marriage, to dozens of other details. Where did the players' character get their opinions? How will they affect this new relationship?
If the character has a childhood crush or dead lover or the like, even better. Will they allow this new relationship to be influenced by the pa🔜s🌠t? Are they still holding out hope? Have they sworn to never love again?
Once you've got the player hooked with something, feel free to add a curve ball and probe into their backstory further. Maybe their old lover returns. Maybe their ne𒊎w lover dies. Maybe their mother decides to weigh in o🍷n the subject. Up to you.
4 ♎ Fill In The 🌌Blanks With Secrets
When creating characters, many players write ominous or mysterious backstories. We're all a little guilty of it - after all, that's the kind of thing that's repeate🐭d in fantastical ꦇfiction all the time! Percy Jackson doesn't know who his father is - until it turns out to be a literal God.
If your player has given their character a mysterious backstory like this, we encourage you to take up a pen and start making it up for them. Of course, you should check with the player first to mak♊e sure they don't have an answer in mind that their character just doesn't know about. Even if they do, though, there will probably still be cracks for you to fill.
This strategy is especially effective if you can draw connections to your campaign. Is their absent mother actually the BBG of the story? Did th𓂃eir grandfather have a letter in his library that gave them a missing piece of the puzzle? Was their family profiting off of the BBG's plot?
3 🅰Include A Visit To Their Hometown
Visiting home is a naturally loaded and emotional experience, whether it's a positive or negative one. Of course, for this to work, your player's character must have somewhere to go home to.
Consider things like...
- How long has this character been away?
- Is it the same or different than they remember it?
- Is their family still here? Have they moved, died, aged, etc.?
- Where would this character have hung out in their hometown? What places would they have strong memories attached to?
- What has happened to their friends and the people they used to know in passing, like a neighbor or local shopkeeper?
- Did they have a pet growing up?
- How has the region changed? Is it wealthier or poorer? Has a small village turned into a bustling town? Was it conquered by a neighboring king?
- Is it a multicultural region? If so, is it multicultural within one race, or are multiple races living here? Has this changed since the character was last here?
If their hometown happens to be where the campaign started, that cꦚan also make for a great finale to the story.
2 Writeꦛ A Character That Reminds Them Of A Loved🔴 One
Like the tip to give an NPC a crush on the character, this one doesn't involve the character's backstory directly but rather helps create natural opportunities for the character to talk about it with the NPCs and party members.
You'll get the most use out of this if the person the character is reminded of is someone they had a complicated relationship with. An ex-lover? An old battle comp🍌anion who left them for dead? A mentor who trained them? A neighbor they were always jealous of?
Also like the previous tip, you can involve the backstory even more once you've gotten the player hooked. Maybe the person that they were reminded of suddenly re-enters their life. Or dies. Maybe the character is being a litt🔯le too mean to the NPC who reminds✨ them of their father, and the NPC gets fed up.
1 🔯 General Tips 🧸
Most of this article has shared examp🐼les of specific ways in which you can incorporate the players' backstories into a D&D story. To conclude, we'd like to share some tips that you should keep in mind when using any of these ideas or when making your own.
- At the start of the campaign, y☂ou should have a session zero where, among other things, you learn about all your players' backstories. If you want to incorporate them into the game, you may need to improvise information that the player hadn't decided on. It could be as simple as the colour of their mother's hair, to something as extreme as making up one of their childhood friends. At a session zero, you should confirm that your players are comfortable with this and ask if there's anything they'd prefer you didn't improvise.
- Ask your players to keep you updated if they make any changes to or expand on their backstory. It would suck for you to improvise or include something that goes against what they had decided, just because you didn't know about it.
- To tell a convincing story as a DM, you need to pay attention to the details. Observe the way the character behaves so that it can inform how you bring up their backstory. They may give you the perfect opportunity without even realizing it.
- Be sure not to make other players feel unimportant, underappreciated, or ignored by focusing too much on one character's backstory or by giving them a significantly larger role to play. This can also be solved by incorporating the backstories of all of the characters in various ways throughout the campaign.
- If it isn't fun, don't do it. This simple rule can lead to a lot of positive changes to your campaign. Long combat sessions aren't fun? Shorten combat. Talking to researchers isn't fun? Go out into the field and figure it out yourself. Dry politics isn't fun? Find a more violent solution. Your campaign and your players are unique, and the game is made to adapt for that, so don't fall into the trap of pushing too hard on something (a plot point, a character, a setting, etc.) that no one is enjoying.
Happy adventuring!
