Selecting a background for your character in 5e D&D is a way of making an assertion about your character’s history. But what if it was also a way of making an assertion about the campaign setting as a whole?
Dungeon Masters who are interested in shared worldbuilding with the other players could use the background system as a place to open-up some of the more important worldbuilding details to player input. When a player selects their character’s background, they get to answer questions about the world connected to that background. Those answers become facts in regards to the invented campaign setting; the Dungeon Master is then obligated to include the players' answers to those questions in the evolving campaign in play—those answers must be given weight and they must matter.
Note: this assumes that only one player can select a particular background for their character. Each background is essentially unique.
Examples:
| Background | Worldbuilding Questions |
| Acolyte | There is one god who is never spoken of: what is their name and why are they reviled by the faithful? |
| Charlatan | You know the name of the alchemist who has discovered the true panacea: who are they and why are they in danger? |
| Criminal | What is the name of the most powerful crime syndicate? Why are they justly feared? |
| Entertainer | Who is the most famed entertainer in the land? What secret lurks in their past? |
| Folk Hero | Who is raising an army of the dead? To what end are they assembling this unholy horde? |
| Guild Artisan | Which guild is the wealthiest and most powerful? What corrupt dealings are they involved in? |
| Hermit | An otherworldly threat has entered the Material Plane: what is it and what does it want? |
| Noble | Which family possesses a valid claim on the crown? What are they doing to place their scion on the throne? |
| Outlander | What legendary beast still prowls the wilderness? What is the beast’s vulnerability? |
| Sage | Where is the greatest library in the known world located? What unique tomes are safeguarded there? |
| Sailor | What mythical land beyond the seas actually exists? Who are its people, and why do they wish to remain hidden? |
| Soldier | What war rages beyond the boundaries of the kingdom? What caused the conflict to ignite? |
| Urchin | Where do the tunnels in the sewers lead to? What creatures live in seclusion beneath the streets? |
Do you actually play 5e? Is this one of the games you're playing now?
ReplyDeleteI've been running and playing in 5e games for years. It's the only version of D&D I'll run these days.
DeleteI wonder if you've thought at all about the Holmes backgrounds?
Deletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-rvuyIrPEBCUDg4MTlzNExwYVE/view
I don't really have any interest in making stuff for older editions at this point, unfortunately.
DeleteThis reminds me a bit of your older "dark secrets" idea. You COULD include more than one character of each background, as long as you could keep thinking of questions to answer. In a way, the players would choose what kind of world they're building just by which backgrounds they choose - play several urchins, for example, and you start fleshing out a very rich underworld, one that will beg to be explored. Quite different from the courtly intrigue that would arise from several nobles!
ReplyDeleteIf I recall, you've let players create a faction or organization when they're chosen their archetype, haven't you? Choose your clerical domain and describe the church you belong to, that sort of thing?
True, I just didn't want to write a bunch of alternate questions for each,heh.
DeleteI've definitely let players contribute things like "what's your church like?" When I make a setting I tend to leave room for that stuff; Krevborna has room for new saints, Umberwell has tons of religions aside from the main one, etc.
This seems a lot like Dungeon World shared setting creation when we ask players to tell facts they characters know.
ReplyDeleteCould be an unconscious influence.
DeleteProbably. I've been using something like that since I've read the book.
DeleteHow has it been working out for you?
DeleteFantastic. I even suggested this method, suggesting some questions (class-specific), on a recent old school RPG I published here in Brazil. It was meant to give a larger scope of the world and also to determine details of the starting village/base of operations.
DeleteNice! I'm working on something similar that brings character class into the equation as well.
DeleteAsk the Cleric about the gods, the fighter about the blacksmith, the thief about legendary treasures and so on.
DeleteConsidering 5th edition, I'd create a kind of matrix where I'd cross-reference class x background and ask some questions based on those.
Yeah, right now the way I'm doing it is that background gets you some questions about who raised you in the village and your class gets you questions about who your mentor was in the village.
DeleteYou don't need to stop at that, but this may emerge during play. Found something interesting in a dungeon? Ask some player about its backstory if he could have proper ways to know that. This will make skills like History more important.
DeleteTrue. I'm just thinking more about campaign set-up at the moment.
DeleteI like it. It could definitely be used to do a bit more shared world creation.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm using these ideas a bit more extensively for a starting scenario type thing I'm working on as well.
Delete5e charged should open with backgrounds before classes, for sure.
ReplyDeleteChargen, damnable autocorrect.
DeleteI get why they did it that way, but it does seem unintuitive.
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