What Does Your Character Do When Not Adventuring?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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The Neal raises a valid point: how often to we really think about our character's motivation to go off on said "adventure?"

Murdyk:
I have a fighter that just started a new campaign, name of Murdyk. Now I was having writer's block when I made him so I grabbed Ultimate Campaign and rolled up his major events. He is the son of a peasant family but his entire family is still alive. Murdyk is the oldest of three with a little brother and a kid sister.

Now in life events I ended up getting the following elements
- Major childhood event: mentor
- Fighter event: survival
- Moral Conflict: Betrayal
- subject: family member
- motivation: family
- resolution: sincere regret

What I ended up with was that my siblings and I were both adopted by the same mentor, an old dwarf ranger (I wanted to use Dwarf weapons but be human) who took us in when our father was in prison for debt. We were trained in survival and lived off the land for a few years but my kid sister chafed at the "indignity." Per my GM I had to spend a couple years in the military and my sister as well so the two of us were in the same unit. I saw her falling in with the wrong crowd so I betrayed her to the guard, trying to get her out of the life.

It backfired. When she came back out she was cold, distant. She finished out her time in the guard but I found out that, days before we were both to be discharged she'd planned to help heist a naval ship to become a pirate. I was torn with regret and knew that this would be far worse than before so I actually helped her escape.

Now my sister's disappeared but I've heard tales of "The Viridian Queen", a female pirate ravaging the islands where the campaign is taking place. I've come to the big island of Ierendi looking to track her down.

So between adventures I'm trying to track down my sister, Raina who has become a pirate captain. Why then would I take on the adventures that I do? Seriously, can you imagine actually being Murdyk?

The scene: Murdyk has tracked a clue on his sister to the Dockside Tavern in the town of Maroc in the Ierendi interior. Despite being miles inland there was talk that some of the Viridian Queen's last shanghaied crew members escaped and one of them may have come here. The young warrior is busily questioning the tavern patrons for any further info on the sailor's whereabouts

Murdyk - Please tell me, have you heard anything of the Viridian Queen or perhaps a sailor who fled her ship. He may have passed through this town.

NPC - No, but I've been having some trouble of my own: a couple of workers on my plantation have been killed and strung up in the trees by vines.

Murdyk - that's terrible, but what does that have to do with the pirate queen?

NPC - Well I was hoping you could help me solve the mystery

Murdyk - Isn't there a guard for this sort of thing? I hate to sound mercenary but I really must find the Viridian Queen unless... you said you OWN the plantation right? Perhaps you might have some influence in this town, maybe you can ask around for me if I help you?

NPC - oh no, mine is only a middling operation at best. I was just hoping I could pay you these 15 GP for a night's work.

Murdyk - ... Umm, I guess I should help, since folks are in danger, but what if I lose my only lead, that sailor...

I guess my point with the above is that if we DO want our PCs to have real lives and reasons they either have to be fluid enough to tie into many plot hooks or vague enough to get put on hold at a moment's notice.

Incidentally our GM has asked us to make second PCs for his game. I'm thinking of making a wizard whose only ambition outside adventuring and growing her knowledge and power is crafting items for use and sale. In short she's a crafter and business woman who also goes on adventures.


Mine plaus table top RPGs to simulate herself to plan build out in accordance of the rules... lol

Shadow Lodge

Neal Litherland wrote:
How often do characters with purposes greater than "I need the gold, for reasons," or "I accept this quest, because it's the right thing to do (and the DM clearly wants me to)" make themselves known in your heads?

Frequently. But like Kestral and Mark Hoover, I find it's easier to play when those purposes are very closely aligned with the adventure.

For example, one of my two current characters (a gestalt alchemist//drunken monk) is trying to establish a world-class bar. Since it's an urban game, most of the adventuring serves that purpose, whether it's directly protecting customers, building a reputation, or obtaining specific resources - one plot hook involved tracking down a whiskey supplier.

We've also had several explorer/cartographers at the table. A summoner in a game I'm running is writing his thesis on his eidolon, which requires field testing.

Also, you seem to dismiss "it's the right thing to do" but it can be a very flavourful form of greater purpose if you define it specifically enough, like a character trying to save his homeland or atone for past misdeeds. One of my more interesting characters was a knight who had been placed on administrative duty due to psychological trauma from the field. The campaign pulled him back into combat. He was primarily motivated by what was the right thing to do partly because there was no one else left to do it and partly because he was trying to make up for what he saw as past failures and finally become what he had always wanted to be.

He spent a lot of downtime doing paperwork.

Liberty's Edge

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Collecting bugs.


Of my last 3 characters. One spend his time building a magic powerplant to fuel even greater magics.
One is drinking and being depressed wile he tell the World of hov good everything used to be.
And one is doing charity work.


Well, most of my characters before I started DMing didn't have a whole lot of thought put into them. Being 13 tends to do that to you. However, I've actually had one character recently who did have a pretty good non-adventure gig. He was the Necromancy Department head at a Wizard's College. However, due to most of the other departments having so-called "Ethical Concerns" about his work (A real riot, considering those Enchantment specialists!), he wasn't really able to get a lot of funding. So Morkeal decided to get his own funding by adventuring. When he wasn't doing this, he was teaching his students about the finer points of raising the dead, and how to improve upon them.


@the Rue Morgue: do your female students swoon over you and write lewd messages on their eyelids so that when you make eye contact with them in class they blink slowly so you can read them? Do you ever recover artifacts and say they should be in a museum?

Seriously though, Mr 40 there inspires a thought: what do some of your favorite movie/TV/literature adventurers do in their spare time? Indiana Jones was a history professor; Buffy went to high school; the Starks prepared for winter (though I guess for them, that WAS the adventure).

On the other extreme though I've known players for whom the RP aspect of these games are secondary at best. Downtime for them was a non-event except when they needed to level or buy better gear. Once I asked one of these players what his dwarf fighter did while the other PCs busied themselves with a lot of charitable work for the town. He was staunch that his PC did nothing but wait outside the bar, despite the fact he knew it would take his party a week to return.

We got into a mini power struggle over it. In a moment of human weakness I got spiteful (I apologized later). I went through the downtime events, every once in a while calling for Con checks versus exhaustion from the dwarf. His PC was described as standing, motionless, where the party left him the week before.

The first couple of days he finished his own trail rations and was fine though the folks of the town began to wonder if something terrible was coming. Eventually he began suffering from exposure and sleep deprivation. Eventually he collapsed to the ground. Being a hero of the town people pitied him and left him crusts of bread, small cups of water and even a few coppers. When the party finally caught up to him he was taking hourly non-lethal damage, suffering from Filth Fever, his hair and beard were overgrown and he was extremely "soiled".

Yes, it was childish but I was incredulous. I gifted this PC a free skill rank for a craft or profession skill and this dwarf had pretty decent ability with brewing. He ended the previous game 80' from a bar. He couldn't have just said "I go in an work as their brewer" for a week?

I did make it up to him. In a later game part of the plot was a festival with games of endurance. His character was unanimously voted toughest in town and he chose to compete winning TONS of prizes, NPC boons and influence for his god-like Constitution.

Scarab Sages

Mine generally spend their time drawing and writing up their travels I guess not really played in many campaigns with downtime.


Nah, there was no swooning over Morkeal. I played his Charisma 7 like he was Sheldon Cooper. And the greatest thoughts about artifacts and museums he had was "Who'll pay the most for this?" Bit more like Belloq in that way.

As for my players, well.... They haven't had huge amounts of downtime in a good bit of the APs I've taken them through. For example, Curse of the Crimson Throne moved very quickly, and most of their efforts were dedicated to the adventure. The closest they had the Bard's desire to keep his little sister (one of Gaedrean's former Lambs who had nearly been fed to a Crocodile in a hostage situation) safe.

In Rise of the Runelords, Fort Rannick became the PC's fall-back job, as was rooting out any rumors about Sihedrons they could find. But the Changeling (3.5 version) had a slightly less than socially acceptable side-job. She basically stole Aldern Foxglove's identity, and went about fixing the Misgivings and enjoying his townhouse.

In my current Carrion Crown campaign, the players don't have a huge amount of time still, but they all have things they can do on the move very well. First is the Chelish Diva tiefling, who genuinely enjoys showing off her skill to every racist peasant she comes across. The witch moonlights as an author for trashy romance novels. And the Ratfolk Alchemist was a retired Alchemy professor at Leipstadt University.


Theconiel wrote:
A group of us play Humans and Households.

Fixed it!

Shadow Lodge

Uses Profession: Adventurer to make a bit of extra money.


Depends on the character.

I once had a barbarian loosely based on Conan who emulated said literary hero in his off-time by blowing every copper of his money on women and booze.


Any time not spent stymieing the forces of Chaos to ensure a safe future for our progeny is time wasted.

I refuse to stop 'adventuring'.


Kyrrion wrote:
Theconiel wrote:
A group of us play Humans and Households.
Fixed it!

Just because someone else can make the same joke decades later doesn't mean the original didn't exist.


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I have a little half-elf girl who owns a small restaurant. She has many points in Profession (Cook). She specializes in sushi, onigiri and dumplings.

My aasimar bard spends much of his free time painting, writing poetry and performing. He's great with a violin.

There's also an elven girl who makes decorative masks as works of art.

I've always loved imagining what PCs do in their spare time.


Using the rules from Ultimate Campaign, my favorite character ran a burlesque style theatre.
It was staffed by followers gained from the Leadership feat with lots of them maxing out their perform skills.

I love character downtime. :)

Liberty's Edge

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Kyrrion wrote:
Theconiel wrote:
A group of us play Papers and Paychecks.
Fixed it!

It wasn't broken.


Most campaigns I've played in didn't start at level one so the back-stories I write have to account for the higher levels and greater wealth. So before he became an adventurer Octavian (CG ifrit diviner arcanist) had a successful career as a caravan guard-turned-bodyguard-turned-spy-turned smuggler. He loves to travel and seek new experiences which is how he ended up a caravan guard; he is also a hedonist and will frequently indulge in drink, drugs, gambling and the pursuit of men/women/other of questionable virtue.

Liberty's Edge

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To elaborate on the example I did back on page one, and to kinda flesh out the example PCs who go on humorous(ish?) adventures on these boards:

Snorb's Example PCs:

Amelia, the human alchemist from Maranha, spends her downtime crafting potions and alchemical weapons/remedies for sale in her apothecary. She's also trying to invent root beer that stays cold and fizzy for at least six hours.

Barto, the human bard from the Drakkhen Reich, is usually pushing up daisies at the end of an adventure. If he weren't, however, he would usually be spending his non-adventuring time working off his debts to the rest of the party (on the other hand, the Temple of Bahamut's offered him a frequent Raise Dead Customer card.)

Edvard Eddard, Evoker Extraordinaire, the human wizard from the Istorian Empire, studies the very nature of evocation magic in his workshop between adventures. His main interest is taking old spells, such as Cone of Cold, Fireball, and Burning Hands, and researching how to change their energy types.

Erik, the human cleric of Bahamut from the Istorian Empire, spreads the word of the Great Dragon from the pulpit.

Frederick, or Freddy, the half-orc fighter from the Winterlands, tends to the bar at Julia's Tavern in the city of Rampart. He spends some of his leisure time trying to create combat feats that emulate Cress Albane's fighting style. (...Look him up.)

Rita, the half-elf rogue from the Winterlands, doesn't exactly have downtime. She steals from the obnoxiously rich and puts some of her take in a retirement fund that she wants to use to buy a kingdom for herself and Freddy. Really. She wants to buy a castle, and a couple princess dresses, and a tiara, and she wants to call herself nobility.


Gregory Connolly wrote:
Kyrrion wrote:
Theconiel wrote:
A group of us play Humans and Households.
Fixed it!
Just because someone else can make the same joke decades later doesn't mean the original didn't exist.

Well, looks like I'm going to need to google it then (as this is the first I have heard of this original source)!


Kyrrion wrote:
Gregory Connolly wrote:
Kyrrion wrote:
Theconiel wrote:
A group of us play Humans and Households.
Fixed it!
Just because someone else can make the same joke decades later doesn't mean the original didn't exist.
Well, looks like I'm going to need to google it then (as this is the first I have heard of this original source)!

It's one of the cartoons in the 1E DMG. (Maybe PHB?)

I've said before I love higher production values and art and general quality of modern rulebooks, but I miss some of the low budget quirkiness of the originals too.

Liberty's Edge

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The original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide had a cartoon referring to the game. HERE is a link.


Missionary work and running away from another church....


The World's Sexiest Mongrelman wrote poetry for hire and tried to evangelize.

Valrethis (formerly Tim) the warlock studied new languages and tried finding practice partners for all 24 that he spoke. He even taught himself the dead language of the High Mages and wrote graffti in it. (He frequently claimed that if you had real magic you wouldn't need to study wizardry, and generally referred to them as toymakers.)

Onesimus, an aspiring Mage in d20 modern, is a playwright and trust fund baby.

Xanatia was a diplomat and courtesan. She slept around and caused trouble more than she adventured.

Ulfgar the Dwarven jeweller and follower of Ellistrae: slept with Elves, tried making friends with hellhounds (successfully), avoided charitable quests like the plague, and caused DM angst by trying to get NPC pay rates for skill uses. Seriously the DMGII rules for making money were bad.

Skratsik (formerly human sorcerer turned dragon) was busy handling the administration and operations of a privateer company.


Nice read this thread so I might as well pay some tax. I'll limit it to the current characters in play.

Wultram: Not a whole lot cause the game so far has been happening in a hostile land with very small chance to breathe. Then again as he adventures because of his goal to become a lich,(childhood trauma that has him scared senseless of mortality)so adventuring is sort of the side job already. Likely he will mostly be doing research on the subject when time allows. He does have somewhat hedonistic tendencies so that will probably show up too.

Lungorth: Quite a lot actually. He and the party in general has been building up relationships. For him that has been thieves guild mainly and the local mage university. He does have plans of setting up a mercenary company and looking into psionic potential unlocking. He upgrades his gear with crafting. Also very skilled in mundane crafting and at the moment is working on lucerne hammer that uses all sky metals to be gifted to the local ruler as sort of advertisement.


In my high school/aimless twenties games I was all about detailing the everyday lives of characters. As I've grown older, I've found myself more and more drawn to either highly disciplined "professional adventurers" or to characters custom fit to the adventure at hand; followers of churches central to the story, people personally wronged by the BBEG, or any altruist in a scenario hat causes a proactive threat.

I think some of it has to do with the 8+ hour marathon sessions I played when I was younger. The last time I was at a game where people described their downtime in detail, I found myself thinking "Each player is going to talk about shopping eating and pickpocketing for 10+ minutes? That's half the session! I should have brought a book."


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Looking for more opportunities to adventure.

I am probably in the minority here, but I endeavor to create characters that are more personality than backstory. My experience has been that characters with complicated backstories and a lot of motivations that have little or nothing to do with the primary narrative mainly serve no purpose other than being a distraction; it gives the GM the obligation to create special snowflake scenarios where that particular character becomes the Main Character rather than the party as a whole.

It's more fun for me when I make a character that makes choices within the narrative rather than constantly attempting to take the train off its rails and I prefer it when my fellow party members do the same.


My rarely used PC (I'm the GM 95% or more of the time) just sits on my hard drive or in a notebook, waiting and waiting for another chance to play. The GM doesn't give a rat's butt if we do anything during downtime.


My goblin alchemist runs the town dump, cooks the party's meals in their run-down mansion at the edge of town, and brews vile chemicals with the help of his tumor, Cancerous George. He got Cancerous George in response to his backstory, in which he was raised by a paladin in a Nature vs. Nurture religious controversy, resolved when he got thrown out of wizarding school due to an... incident involving another wiz-kid's familiar.


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This is a nice thread. I approve.

Backstory Tangent:

My Tian Spiritualist, Jyin-Gua, was a slacker priest not amounting to much in his studies. His sister Yng-Hua was a great adventurer, a daring swashbuckler building a name for her good deeds. When she failed to return from her latest escapade (as adventurers are wont to do), Jyin was devastated. He attempted to call forth her soul, following an old forbidden ritual he'd come across in his studies.

It worked-- after a fashion. Only the most violent, malcontent portions of her soul could be coaxed from whatever heaven she now resided in. Terrified of unleashing this phantom of hatred upon the world, Jyin confined her to his own psyche. With practice and dedication, he learned to construct an ectoplasmic form for Yng-Hua to occupy, closely tethered to the center of his spiritual energy at all times.

Unable to cope with his Phantom of Hatred's roiling emotions in isolation, Jyin decided to follow in his sister's footsteps and travel the world. As a member of the Pathfinder Society, Jyin begged admittance into the Silver Crusade; convinced he could control his phantom's darker tendencies with an ancestral hymn, or at the least soothe her hatred by shedding the blood of evil foes.

tl;dr: Jyin-Gua the Spiritualist travels the world doing good deeds as a form of penance, convinced that only by purifying his own soul can he achieve the psychic balance necessary to lay his sister's hateful spirit to rest.


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Brother Fen spends his time collecting alms for the poor, spreading the good word of Irori and testing the alcohol content of ale at the local tavern.

Lore Baolo spends his free time writing about his exploits for the Pathfinder Society as well as researching whatever subject seems to have moved to the forefront of his mind at the time.

Jacobi Jinglestep spends his free time selling featherdusters in the street and discreetly collecting information, because people will tell their featherduster salesman more than they tell their priest.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

Attends Bard College part-time to finally get his degree.


Brother Fen wrote:
Jacobi Jinglestep spends his free time selling featherdusters in the street and discreetly collecting information, because people will tell their featherduster salesman more than they tell their priest.

It's so hard to find someone you can trust in the featherdustery market these days!


Syrah Davenport: Profession (NC17), Profession (Torturer)

};>

Liberty's Edge

Brother Fen wrote:

Brother Fen spends his time collecting alms for the poor, spreading the good word of Irori and testing the alcohol content of ale at the local tavern.

Lore Baolo spends his free time writing about his exploits for the Pathfinder Society as well as researching whatever subject seems to have moved to the forefront of his mind at the time.

Jacobi Jinglestep spends his free time selling featherdusters in the street and discreetly collecting information, because people will tell their featherduster salesman more than they tell their priest.

I am a follower of Cayden Cailean, but I am happy to listen, if there is beer involved.


My barbarian is an amateur pit fighter who loves to put up a good fight for the audience. It's how he made enough to get through the last five years on his own before he found himself at the beginning of the adventure he's on now, and while he's only half a week into this new chapter of his life he's definitely not leaving the pits behind forever.


Acacia tutors local children of the middle class/rich; scribes books and illustrates them for some extra cash. She also engages in helping those in need no matter the social station. Does research on various things that interest her in the local library.

Think the movie Mr North and you have the idea.


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Mending. Later, Make Whole and later still, Fabricate. I'm going to tack that onto Knowledge: Engineering. All those dungeons, ruins and broken tombs we explore? They're all going to be fixed up and they'll all be mine.

Seriously. Just Mending alone means at 1st level every piece of broken ammo we can find is fixed. By 3rd level I'm repairing daggers and Small sized light weapons. Since I have an Exploiter Wizard and Cypher Magic I write scrolls that I cast 2nd level scrolls into and then cast at 3rd level. By 3rd level if I've got the cash I'm going to be casting 5th level scroll spells of Mending to fix light shields, weapons and small furniture.

Then comes Make Whole. It gets the same treatment if we have enough downtime. Suddenly walls begin to come back into shape. Our first adventure we found a ruined stone cottage; that's going to be my first base of operations. I'm going to take the time to set up a restoration business, re-sell all these old weapons and pieces of gear from adventures that I can recover and use the gold to fuel the scrolls. Said scrolls and spells will rebuild the cottage along with hired help.

Once that's done I intend to build a network of locales. Anytime we find some old ruin or broken building I'm fixing it up, making it better and getting it warded with mundane (transplanted padlocks recovered with Mending, perhaps minor traps) and then magic (Arcane Lock, Alarm, Sepia Snake Sigil, etc) means.

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