Origin Stories: Thief
Be honest now. Raise your hand if you knew that Thief had the Variant Sailor: Pirate background. Anyone? No one? I think we alluded to it back in “Diva,” and I’m pretty sure we had this sweet-ass Pirate Queen Thief print available on our store for a while. It hasn’t really come up too often in the main comic though. But in my experience, that’s pretty par-for-the-course with most characters.
In a world where games die out due to GM burnout, lack of interest, or RPG horror story before Session 10, there are some elements of your backstory that just won’t see the light of day. It can be frustrating when you’ve loaded your dude down with hooks only to watch the game go in another direction, but I think that learning to accept that with good grace is the mark of a good gamer.
To continue with today’s example, Thief’s long-standing feud with Swash and Buckle has been her primary motivation since character-gen (never mind that Swash and Buckle were just recently invented thanks to a Patreon poll). It’s a compelling and very-original revenge plot ripe for high-seas hijinks. However, the Heroes’ many misadventures never quite took them back to the pirate campaign Thief hoped to play.
In situations like this, it’s easy to shout, “Session Zero could have fixed this!” and lay the blame on miscommunication. But I think this issue is more common than you might think. Every warlock that never meets her patron, every orphan that never finds his true parentage, and all those on-the-lam charlatans that never have a reckoning with the law fall into this category. I don’t think that’s anyone’s fault. It just means that the campaign went elsewhere and focused on other things. Maybe some bounty hunters tracked you down. Maybe another party member had pressing family business. Maybe you fell in love. Sure it’s not the swashbuckling storyline you had in mind, but chances are that other players had to make some compromises as well.
More importantly though, even if the campaign failed to pick up on one of your pet character hooks, that doesn’t mean you can’t adapt yourself to the game as the story progresses. After all, part of the excitement of RPGs lies in discovering what happens next. If one of your plot hooks never comes to fruition, that just might be the cost of doing business.
And so, as Thief’s traitorous former first mates sail off beyond the horizon, we are left to contemplate the question of the day! Have you ever had a major character hook get left on the table? Do you regret not getting to play out a certain piece of a your backstory, or did it all work out OK in the end? Tell us all about your most under-utilized character hooks down in the comments!
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I find (intentionally or not) parties tend to have main characters/leaders, and to claim otherwise is Communism. They tend to be the more serious characters in the party, Dwarves, Charisma-focused, or holy in nature. So long as you’re not talking over the other party and letting them have their chance to shine it’s fine.
In Storm King’s Thunder the main character was the Dwarf War Cleric (Serious character, Dwarf, holy nature) whose unit was massacred by Fire Giants. The goofy Halfling Rock Star Bard (Me), the Joseph Cambell-esque farmboy ranger, ambiguously evil Half-Orc Barbarian, and the Drow Thief (New player, got handed a pre-made sheet, didn’t realize all the edgy baggage that came with that combo. Due to random loot rolls eventually ended up with Slippers of spider climbing and a Scimitar of Speed to complete the Driz’zt image) were all clearly supporting players in spite of my being a low-key diva, and the party’s face.
In Tomb of Annihilation I played a Dwarven Devotion Paladin who by most metrics was the main character. He was the party’s leader, (Serious, Dwarven, Charisma, Holy) he was the face, he came up with most of the plans, was usually the party’s face, and had the most concrete motive for being there since in addition to backstory stuff involving hunting a plot-MacGuffin as a DevoPal there was no way he could turn down this chance to save the world/punch evil. It also helped that most of that table was introverted, new to D&D, or both.
In a mid-length homebrew the party leader was a young Noble Hexblade Warlock with a magical destiny. My Gnome Wizard served as a grumpy sidekick/adviser/comic relief. To be fair my Gnome voice is a high-pitched fast-talking squeaky cartoon character which hurts the chances of any Gnome I play being the protagonist.
In the year-long homebrew I DMed the party-leader was initially the Noble Human Lore Bard (Charisma-focused) whose noble family were at odds with the BBEG, but when the player had to leave it became the Tempest Cleric, (Serious, Dwarven, Holy) not for any backstory reasons, but simply because they were the responsible adult of the party. (There’s an early point in every campaign where we need to figure out who is stuck playing as the responsible adult, and I usually get stuck in that role unless I make my character goofy as heck) Later a Wizard joined the party. He thought of himself as the party leader, but the party still deferred to the Cleric. When the Cleric couldn’t make it the party became a lot more directionless, and amoral. (“Hey; let’s press these sailors into our service!”)
So… By declaring yourself the main character you never miss out on your backstory hooks? Is that the idea here?
No, just engaging with the comic rather than the blog post and rambling aboot the subject of party-leaders.
Half the time the leader doesn’t get their backstory interacted with either.
Spent a few hours thinking about it.
In my first WoD game, I player Sir Cayleb von Jarl, a nobleman seeking to “prove” to his father that heroes could change the world. It was a fantasy world using the mechanics. The entire game took place outside of my ancestral homeland and no one from there every found me. Everyone was too busy dealing with the other plots, which was fine. An ancient vampire waking up because of bad party decisions is kinda important.
Another game (same GM) had a PC who’s backstory basically said “look at me I’m going to be important” attending fantasty university. While I might have the Legend background, the plot revolved around the invasion of the mushroom spote things and getting the new players to understand the system. It was just agreed my legend would start later.
That’s the trouble with coming from a faraway land. Shit’s far away.
I’ve run into this myself more times than I’d care to admit.
Very first character I made on my own was a Witch with the Deception Patron in Pathfinder 1E. Worked out with the GM how her familiar knew more about her Patron than she did, but both thought they were the smartest one in the room. Was kinda hoping that the Patron’s identity would have more meaning in the campaign or even cause some friction – but it basically never got brought up again after character creation and left me rather unsatisfied… (especially when I look jealously at how the Cleric’s deity choice has an instant setting tie-in with the existence of churches, compared how the incredibly vague description of the witch’s patron basically guarantees that a GM will rarely touch it.)
Other than that, I had another character who was a Tiefling with the Pass for Human alternate racial trait who was basically set up to have some kind of family drama. They were aware of their tiefling nature, but tried to hide it since their family/peers didn’t realize and would likely react poorly. Additionally, I communicated to the GM how they were the 4th or 5th child of lesser nobility, meaning they had practically no status and zero inheritance prospects – which lead then into enrolling at the adventuring school campaign setting. But they also specifically enrolled into the Arcane Magic program despite being something their parents would not approve of (especially being a necromancy-focused Cabalist Vigilante), and tried to give GM option to have one of their older siblings also at the school for increased drama.
Instead, the only drama related to that was one incident they got WIS-drained and started wandering in the darkness while spaced out and forgetting they were supposed to pretend they didn’t have darkvision like a human. Otherwise, she spent most of her drama time in a love-triangle-situation where she had a crush on the rival-party bard who was roommates with her party member that had a blatant crush on her. Was completely unexpected development on my end and gloriously cringy in execution, but it worked out well enough until the campaign got cut short…
The deity vs. patron thing is a great example. Clerics have this long-standing tie-in to setting in dungeon exploration games. Nebulously defined patrons don’t really get the same infrastructure.
GJ adapting to the circumstances with that love triangle though. Not the drama you expected, but the drama you made along the way. 🙂
Wouldn’t the new captain be the one that the former captain hates the most? That’s how I would settle this dispute. It just makes sense.
Hate is a complex and beautiful emotion. You can’t just weigh and measure the contents of someone’s heart.
My Human Dragon-Sorcerer was, in fact, a dragon cursed into human form by his rivals and sealed away with the three pieces of his hoard he most treasured (his first gold coin, a wyvern’s stinger, and a toy crown made of tin). It was the first paragraph of his three paragraph long backstory, and tinted his personality accordingly.
Despite this, it never came up. People just assumed it was a quirk of his bloodline or a psychosis.
Was is supposed to be a secret?
Initially, but not forever. The idea was to start finding those hoard bits and go after those rivals, but the DM never wove that particular backstory in. Just decided that ‘thinks he’s a dragon’ was funnier and retconned that as the truth for the character. Sort of a bummer.
Wow. That is really shitty actually.
Hey, since we’re talking about Thief, what is her relationship with Wizard now that the latter is basically trans now? Are they still a thing or is it more of a platonic relationship now? Sorry if I am derailing.
(PS: what spell did wizard use again to genderswap himself?)
This short arc offers some answers: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/classy-quests-part-1-4
Wizard coming to terms with it: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/crossplaying
Thief’s reaction: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/core-values
Their ongoing relationship: explored intimately on the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comics over here: https://www.patreon.com/laurelshelleyreuss
oh poor Wizard, robbed of her drama.
Did Thief gain XP for killing it?
Ooh… Good punchline. I may steal that one.
I can hardly claim ownership
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0710.html
Well, once a pc of mine, Gaunter Grimmdark von Pentakill, First of the Dammed and Herald of Hell didn’t got to participate on a baking contents in his hometown and avenge his father… who lose the Golden Flour Sack against the Cherry Cupcakes of Granny McSunshine 🙁
I never got to scream:
“My name is Gaunter Grimdark von Pentakill, First of the Dammed and Herald of Hell. You defeated my father on a bakery contest. Prepare to taste my Sweet Honey Cake!!!”
At least i got to unleash the forces of Hell into an unprepared world and plunge it into an age of darkness… but that is just a consolation prize compared to the Golden Flour Sack 🙁
This is almost a limerick. The fact that it’s not actually a limerick is infuriating. You clever bastard. 😛
I clever bastard find it hilaring
that Colin my works finds as infuriating
his anger so far
have make him fart
so much find it infuriating he got levitating 😛
Schattensturm and his poesis
Would make a fantastical thesis
For learning to rhyme
Hilaring’s a crime
And I hope to the gods was facetious. 😛
My mind brights as mirror polished
my smile clever and you astonished
bask in your awe
don’t let you down
but the fifth line leaves me headached 😛
I see now that I have been trolled:
That your non-rhymes cannot be controlled.
Let’s call it day
And leave off the fray
Before the fun jest can get old.
So i win? Good for me 😀
Got a few of these, both for an AP and homebrews!
Rise of the Runelords: Ninja who is the daughter of the Grocer’s Guild leader (one of the named NPCs of the setting’s first town). Her thing was supposed to be that she’s hiding the ‘ninja’ part from her overprotective parent and that she didn’t want to be a merchant. This quickly became a non-issue as her heroics would quickly become obvious and her parent was very supportive. Her parent did get involved later when some tragedy struck and needed rescuing!
Homebrew game 1: A violinist tiefling had a backstory involving a lawyer parent who he abandoned, and had the goal of becoming a world-class violinist. Neither turned out to ever crop up in the actual game.
Homebrew game 2: A LE mesmerist was hiding in cat form (reflavored kitsune in fox form), a slave in his employ pretending to be a witch and himself being a familiar. His secret would never be revealed as I would end up leaving that game due to scheduling issues.
Hate that grocer thing for ya. If you’ve set up this drama bomb, what good does it do for a GM to just handwave the reaction? It’s not that much harder to do a quick “you’re no daughter of mine” scene and let the tension build a little.
Hang on, how did Thief’s bad luck follow her all the way to her origin story? Warrior didn’t even exist back then (quite literally, being spontaneously spawned out of the ether by a fancy deck of cards).
Backstory drama is always unlucky. No Warrior required.
Yeah, that kind of thing happens to me constantly. And that’s ok. It just makes the games where something from my backstory matters or my backstory is immediately in the forefront at the start of the game all the more special.
I’ve been fortunate for that to be the case in my latest three games. Two of which oddly are nautically themed (at least for now). What an odd coincidence. (Or is it!?)
But if elements of my backstory aren’t particularly relevant, well there’s other elements of a character to focus on. Like my rogue’s reverse thievery hobby, my cat-girl’s tendency to go to sleep the moment nobody is looking, or my elven wizard’s dwarf-like drinking habit.
Stalking your forum posts in order to make suspiciously relevant comics? Who ever would do such a thing! >_>
I am unshakably convinced that by “that kind of thing”, you mean “being marooned and left for dead on a desert island while my treacherous, ADD-afflicted subordinates sail away in what was, I thought, my ship.”
And I know, right? Doesn’t it suck when that happens?
There should be, like, a support group or something.
There is, but they betrayed me and left me for dead on a desert island.
There’s a whole backlog of 1st LVL characters I created that I regret never having the opportunity to play, all of them with (what I assume are) major character hooks for the DM to peruse.
The one I really regret however is the urban bounty hunter wizard (my first time ever using a caster) I made for the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign. Another player and I decided to be a sibling-duo, with him as quietly menacing arbalester disabling non-cooperative targets from afar, and myself as trapper, contact man for the City Watch and the one responsible for the organisational part of our two-man outfit.
I restricted myself to spells that hold, paralyse, confuse and transport unconscious adversaries. Then I stole the idea of a Bingo Book from Naruto. A collection of bounties from all over the Sword Coast, with different ranks for the severity of the crime, spellcasting potential, last possible hideout etc.
I went sofar as to actually make an A5 size book, for which I printed out pics of C- and D-listers from earlier adventures (Trepsin from Hoard of the Dragon Queen, The Weevil from Storm King’s Thunder etc.), wrote a short profile for each one in Dethek (Forgotten Realms Dwarvish Alphabet) and formed the identity of my bounty hunter PC as a giddy lovable nerd, who’s excited to fill out his Yu-Gi-Oh folder (ehm, Bounty Hunter Bingo Book).
My DM seemed to be equally excited for my Bingo Book and commended me for building a character that can be nudged in the right direction so easily (contact with the City Watch, starts every day by reading Waterdeep broadsheets in search of new bounties, tends to talk to his quarries for the chance to bring them in alive).
Nothing came out of that. He never actually used the book to “nudge us into the right direction”. My book never came up again and the longer the plot dragged on (free hand-DM: “What do you want to do?”), the more I missed the possibilities that it offered to the DM. Those damned kenku, or the Xanathar’s lackeys, the drow or those devil worshippers could’ve easily been possible bounties for my brother and I to stalk (thus marking them as relevant).
Mostly I regret the untapped potential of my character, as he didn’t resemble a single caster PC I saw and was (in combination with the criminally underused Bingo Book) quite unique. To me at least.
Ouch. I friggin’ feel this one in my gut. You make a prop, tie it into your personality, and warp your entire character around being easily hooked into the day’s adventure. What a waste!
I can only conclude that changing the AP to fit the character was harder than using the default hooks of Dragon Heist. That’s the only way I can think to explain this wasted opportunity.
Yeah, that’s what I figured too. W:DH’s plot fits too snugly to allow for any side shenanigans. Maybe the DM couldn’t think of a way to include my hook without it becoming too distracting.
Lucena Principe, my paladin whom I gave a nuanced, well-considered take on the “uphold the law at all costs” stereotype, had reams of fluff fiction exploring her struggles within her (corrupt) order of tyrant-serving knights. The king she was sworn to uphold was clearly one of the primary antagonists of the story, and I think everyone suspected me to take the tried-and-true route of having my character discover how bad he was, have an identity crisis, and then throw herself zealously into La Resistance.
Except, between me and the DM, she already had more than an inkling that His Majesty was a fratricidal usurper. Only she’d thought it out and decided that 20 years on the throne was enough to legitimise a king, even if he had shivved his brother to get there. And heavy as his hand was, he was killing fewer people than the faction plotting against him.
I was working in the background to have my character carefully insinuate herself as bodyguard and advisor to the king’s daughter and heir, with the idea of them becomeing a powerful duo when the lady eventually took dad’s place; and when he was assassinated, I was really excited to be able to finally reveal my plans to be the new queen’s lackey and sponsor the party through the established authority, instead of the “true heir” they’d been hoping to install.
It was going to be such a deliciously different take on the old story! But then our party imploded and all was for naught. Such a pity.
What caused the breakup? Just incompatible personalities, or dragon fire and pit traps?
Incompatible personalities, really, and I was one of those at fault tbh. Our DM pulled the plug when she realised the party conflict was not going to be reconciled – which was definitely her call to make! It was no doubt a bit stressful for her as things had been going.
And did the breakup have anything to do with your PC’s machinations? I guess I’m trying to get a sense for whether the creative differences played into the personality clash.
walp, since my backstories are usually selected to fit whatever traits I want to take I‘m not overly attached to them.
Backstory once came up with my Barbarian/Sorcerer/DragonDiciple Half Orc with the Orc-Hating backstory: „Rage on sight of orcs“ in the notes is a disadvantage with good perception, took a few rounds to run to the fight.
Lancelot intensifies:
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/MeekRegularImperatorangel-size_restricted.gif
We actually had a fun little side plot going on for one of my fellow player’s characters involving a cult of Lamashtu, but due to internal time constraints within the game and us giving much more attention to the main story, the GM more or less dropped it.
This is the name of the game right here. And it’s what I’m hoping today’s comic can help GMs to think about. Sure it’s on a player to learn to let go if the story goes another way. But by the same token, if players are into the side plot, I think it’s worth putting in the effort to see it through rather than cutting it completely.
I like to RP, so I always start out with some idea in mind for most of my characters, but I try not to force it into a situation where it won’t work out or isn’t natural to bring up. I figure that your character should have some kind of arc or evolution, and if something important comes along, it’s can be fun to just roll with it.
That being said, once you establish a particular in-game hook, I feel compelled to stick with it. For example, my first 5thE character was planned to be some sort of recovering nihilist/hedonist (do what you want since nothing matters) but somehow his quest for self-discovery lead, in first few sessions, into an obsessive hatred of all things undead, immortal, or even just really long-lived (so he doesn’t like dragonkin or fae either). I don’t remember exactly how it happened; all I can say is that it felt entirely natural at the time. But that puts him into constant conflict with a HUGE selection of entities in game world (the BBEG is a lich, we’re currently allied with two dragons to fight a third dragon, we’ve traveled through the spirit realm and pissed off a fae-queen, there is a WARLOCK in the party, etc etc etc). And the character is fun, but in order to stay true to my established cannon I kind of feel like I have to keep the intensity dialed up to 11 ALL THE TIME, and it gets exhausting after a while.
When I was planning my second character I deliberately avoided all that and intended him to be some kind of overly-dramatic fun-loving hero archetype (think Othar Trygvassen from Girl Genius). His background was a storm of cliches and tropes even before the game got going, and it’s only snowballed from there. I’ve established a small army of relatives who the character can reference, and his build is a clusterfudge of multiclassing. I won’t claim it’s BETTER than my other character, but it certainly is more relaxing when I can just say “what part of my ridiculous childhood will inform today’s plan? Oh right, whatever part starts with me charging recklessly into battle and ends with me whipping up Gordon-Ramsey-worthy omelettes for the party and our new friends.”
I’m not exactly sure where I was going with all this, but I guess what I’m trying to say is have a plan, but be flexible and open to modifying it (even rewriting history, at least in your own headcannon) if it doesn’t work out of another opportunity comes along.
Now there’s a bit of advice I can get behind. It’s no excuse to make nonsensical or wildly inconsistent characters, but it’s a load better than becoming one of those “it’s not what my character would do” types.
Heh, I’m a little guilty of doing this. One of my players made a 6-page backstory for her rogue about the nihilist assassin cult dedicated to a forgotten goddess of silence (she grew up in the cult, but then ran away once she developed ideological differences) that I haven’t quite managed to work into the campaign yet.
First, we were going through the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure, which, since it’s my first time GMing, I wasn’t trying to weave much complex new stuff into (a funny little side thing here, an encounter with slavers I made up on the fly there, but nothing like overarching conflict with a shadowy cult). Our warforged barbarian decided that he wants to try to stop Gruumsh from making orcs act like marauding jerkbags, which added another plot arc completely out of nowhere. Then there was the adventure in the spider-infested forest for our druid’s order (I had a cool idea for an adventure, and everybody had fun, but assassins are unlikely to appear in spider forests).
I was planning to start finally weaving the assassins into the setting once the party got back from the spider forest, but then the ranger found a wandering zombie with Primeval Awareness, they all ran off towards the nearby volcano, promptly got themselves kidnapped by firenewts, which then led to the creation of a B-Team to go on a rescue mission, and they’re probably going to want to take a closer look at that volcano once that’s fully resolved. And then Covid happened. So those assassins still haven’t shown up yet.
At least I finally thought of a good way to tie the cult into the overarching plot I hope to introduce eventually. I’m actually pretty happy that I’ve managed to get a couple other threads leading to it — there’s a reason the firenewts’ plan with the volcano was working so well for them, and our warforged being dead at the moment means he’s getting a look at some things from the perspective of Mechanus that he’ll be able to tell people about once they get him rezzed.