A pc in a game I was running had a wife and three young children. The wife was fat and nagging and his children were always crying that is why he went out questing. I have been running the shackled city adventure path and had a jealous Stormblade (Todd Vander-whatever), kidnap one of his children. Even after the characters death the party hates the Stormblades as a whole for the incedent. Even the death of the character lead to some interesting role playing, when the survivors brought the sad news to his wife and kids.
Anyway I want to know what role PC families play in a campaign? How often does a family member appear in the game?
Better yet what interesting stories have been played out involving PC family?
In my old game, family members made an appearance in the game in every encounter -- there were two players, and one character was the daughter of the other. They started their quest because a strange disease swept through their village, wiping out a good portion of it and raising the dead as Ghosts or something akin to Sacred Watchers (depending on the alignment of the victim). This included one character's wife (the mother of the other one). So they went out adventuring to try and find a way to bring her back from undeath (well, technically, deathless... but that's irrelevant).
Later on in the campaign, when the father had taken Leadership and they'd raised the mother, she was his cohort (though we tried to minimize jokes about her being his feat.)
In my play, it's depended on the campaign.
In a brief game I played (the group just sort of broke apart), the families of the PCs were a strong presence. Our first adventures started off in our hometown, and the characters were all members of the community. Some still lived with their parents.
In the longest running campaigns I've been involved in, the family members had a minimal presence. They occasionally pop up now and then, like when the PCs are relaxing or visit their respective home towns.
I'm glad I ran across this thread, though. It reminds me to make use of these valuable plot hooks. :) Now, who's mom should I kidnap first... ;)
This is IMO one of the most under used plot devicees in the entire game. My wife and I have many characters that are married and have families, some are several generations long at this point (Demonic and Lycanthrope (True born) age at an accelerated rate, lycanthropes aging to maturity at the same rate as their animal phenotype.) We don't do this with other players, mainly because I have a real jealous streak and my friends like to push that button. The other end of that is the fact that our other players come and go, so it's easier to tie the storyline in with someone you know is going to be there. We have had other people play children of some of our characters, but even that has been more trouble than it's worth.
We have had other people play children of some of our characters, but even that has been more trouble than it's worth.
Hey!
May I ask why? We're thinking of doing something similar.Peace,
tfad
Hello everyone - my first post (on these boards atleast!)
I promote my players to use family and I even reward them by not using the dreaded "family member in danger" plot hook.
One thing that all my years of DnD/roleplaying in general has become near a pet-peeve to me is the PC background:
"I'm an orphan, my family slain by orcs and ogres in the village of Blabidy Bla. A ranger took me in and..."
Anytime I get a chance to actually play, I create a character that has a full on family: brothers and sisters, mom and dad, cousins, et al. At the least, my PC gets to play out interactions with it's family for comedy effect (I do this mostly in serious style cmapaigns). This works great when you have a really effective combat type PC that really shines in a fight - only to get yelled at by his mother when he gets home from the adventure.. .covered in dried blood of fallen foes.
I'd also like to add the advantage of bringing in new PCs when your other one dies (it happens). What is an easier way to fit in a replacement PC to an ongoing campaign than the brother of the fighter who was just slain by those gnoll archers?
We have had other people play children of some of our characters, but even that has been more trouble than it's worth.Hey!
May I ask why? We're thinking of doing something similar.Peace,
tfad
In my experience, it's a recipe for disaster.
Dad: "Honey, I'm home!"
Mom: "Hello snookums! The kids are outside killing kobolds again."
Dad: "Those crazy kids - always up to something! Did they take my holy avenger?"
Mom: "Do you think I'd let them out of the house without the elven chain and your sword? What kind of mother do you think I am?"
Dad: "I just remember that time you let them go on that 'field trip' to Avernus...what have I told you about reading things before you sign them?"
Mom: "I thought it would be a good learning experience for them, Mister I-am-too-busy-ruling-the-kingdom-and-hanging-out-with-my-epic-level-friends ! Besides, your sister, the Hierophant, was with them the entire time."
In a game I'm playing in, I came up with a character who decided to worship St. Cuthbert, the god of retribution, because he wanted to find, and wreak vengeance upon, the people who had abducted his wife, and burned down his house with his 8-year-old son inside. I wrote out a fairly long story about how I'd met my wife, about the traumatic event, etc.
My DM ran with it! By level 10, the character had found his wife, learning things about her he didn't know, and he discovered that his son had not been in the house when it burned down after all -- we found him alive, being cared for by a ranger. His wife is now the cohort of the party's (female) paladin (a PC of one of the other players), who took the Leadership feat, and his son is fostered in a safe place.
But that's just the happy ending. The DM's plot revolved around the reason HE made up for my PC's wife's abduction: she knew the location of an artifact, and a city's thieves' guild had finally caught up with her, taken her, and were trying to torture the information out of her. Even still, that's probably not the whole story; the party is off on another track right now, but it's awfully suspicious that the "thieves' guild" was employing half-fiends and just generally seemed uber-powerful!
For another family example, I am about to start the SCAP, and one of my Players is playing an orphan who, only upon attaining manhood (ie - he is now 1st level) has learned that he has a half-sister who is a half-elf, who is one of the orphan abductees in Life's Bazaar. As DM, I plan not directly to threaten his half-sister anymore in the future, but I am looking forward to having such a powerful beginning to the SCAP.
In my old game, family members made an appearance in the game in every encounter -- there were two players, and one character was the daughter of the other.
Yup, and I made her prepare and cast Blinding Beauty every week (which has an abstinence component of being chaste for a week)... and then told her to go look behind rocks and trees all the time on our journeys after we returned my wife to the living (again, and again, and again... she kept being killed... good thing we always had Revivify prepared...).
My current campaign (of many but a personal fave of mine) is an Epic Level Faerun campaign. First thing I let the players know is that there's a distinct difference between making a 20th level character, and a 1st level character. 20th level characters aren't just powerful...they have history, so much history in fact that the inertia is naturally for them to retire and rule over some plot of land somewhere. They are often married with kids old enough they can give them lip. The characters are somewhere in the vicinity of middle age to elderliness with all of the aches and scars and haunted memories of a life spent adventuring. The concepts turned out were beautiful, and for two of the most memorable characters in the game--family is what it's all about:
Rhondel, think Ian Rickman, is an ooze merchant with a sick fascination with the formless and amoebian. So much so that he has started a little ranch for his family. The kids tend the ooze pits watched over by their mother, a matronly if somwhat nerdish Emma Thomson type. Rhondel goes about the world trying to peddle his "unusual" wares as guard animals, sewer cleaners, and whatever other capacities he can imagine for them. The catch being however, that addled old Rhondel is actually hiding a great secret. He was once the dread General Talthea of the North, bane of orc and giant. His tactics and dark armor of chill were the stuff of both legend and nightmare--the nightmares mostly his own. After many campaigns and atrocities he sought to abandon his old life, burying himself in a business and becoming someone totally different. He has a closet in the cabin, magically locked, that opens into a frozen waste of a demiplane where the old gear of General Talthea slumbers in an austere cave. Circumstances being what they are he has been forced to go in and don once more the aspect of Talthea. Needless to say his family is distraught, having to cope with the thought that their dad is a General known in many bards tales as the Great Murdering Wind. The wreckage of this has yet to even work itself out, but when it does, wow will that be good roleplay.
Thorin, think Michael Ironside, once a pleasant lad from a good family in Tethyr, got himself into a relationship with a young elfmaiden he met once wandering in the forest by the name of Selisea Arsmaior, harder to imagine--the closest I have come is a hybrid of the slightness and breathtaking features of a Milla Jojovich with the savage femininity and animalness of an Angelina Jolie. The two fell into something more passionate than love does justice to, but in the atmosphere of war and hatred between the elves and humans of Tethyr, it cost them both everything. They gladly left, however, and joined a group of outcasts, a religious commune of Lurue. Time passed however, and the sting of their rejection began to burn in Selisea's heart. The Loviatans found her in their tract for members and she turned to their doctrine of hate and vengeful spite. She tried to turn Thorin as well, unable to imagine life without their young daughter. When he refused to join voluntarily, she turned to pain to instruct him. He eventually escaped his torture and with his half-elf daughter Shanalee in his arms ran to the clerics of Lurue to help him. They offered him hostice and healing--but refused him what he really wanted in his heart--vengence. Thorin turned his bloody back to their order for the last time, nothing but contempt for them now. Eventurally he discovered Torm, a god after his own heart--lawful and good but with no illusions as to the need to seek evil out like the lance of a rider and run it down until it dies. He became a paladin, and Shanalee his charge. For decades he thwarted evil in the form of corrupt officials and dragons alike, always on the move--always watched by Selisea. Time after time defeating, but never willing to kill her, each time fueling her hatred more. Now strangely, her path of recovering her daughter and the hatred she bears her husband has marked her paraiah even among her underlings, who tried her for forsaking the faith of the Maiden of Pain in the pursuit of her own goals. They tried to kill her, but as always Thorin was there and saved her life. In associating with her in her hate and evil, Thorin risks his paladinhood to be with her, even now discovering his powers waning. It seems they are drawing full circle, facing rejection from their new homew in sacrifice for their love. But are they strong enough to do it again? Or will their pride and loyalties and the weight of a Wyrd prophecy tear them apart and slay them both?
Wow. A bit more verbose than I'd intended--but it's a good story and I'm very proud of my players that more than that it is THEIR story. I'm just honored to be able to run it for them.
Some really interesting plot developments mentioned here. Hezzrack, sounds like you have a pretty good DM, I'd hold on that person.
Family members are a constant part of my D&D campaigns and have been for as long as I can remember. One of the PC's in my campaign keeps getting letters from her father trying to arrange a marriage, while another PC writes his log in the form of letters to his cousin.
I think a good plot idea and something that lends continuity to a campaign is a large, extended family with lots of offspring (think Cartwright family and the Ponderosa). This large extended family can be a constant source of plot developments, new PC's, new NPCs and can lend some stability to a campaign with lots of deaths.
I have just realized that one of the major plot devices I am using in one of my campaigns is the BBEG (a lich) is a greatgreat uncle of one of the PCs. The PC realized this when she found out her father was one of the major powerplayers in the area (a gray elf NPC)and the lich was actually coming back to kill his brother after a few centuries of everyone thinking he was killed in a "final battle" between the gray elf and his brother (now the lich/BBEG).
Of course the PCs are in the middle of this whole thing - and now in the know of the truth.
We have had other people play children of some of our characters, but even that has been more trouble than it's worth.Hey!
May I ask why? We're thinking of doing something similar.Peace,
tfad
It has alot to do with the character of the child that was created, and the very dark nature of her family. Her mother is now a Lycanthrope goddess (Epic level character that reached godhood through adventuring) her father is the human host for an ancient evil entity from the Negative Material Plane. The daughter had been kidnaped, her death faked, and she was psionically altered and used as a weapon against her parents, who almost killed her before figuring out who she was. this left her mentally and emotionally damaged. My sister then began playing the characterknowing all of the background and has since played the character as this fulffy happy go luckey air head, no trauma, no mental scar, nothing. And while I do understand that once we gave her the character, it was hers to develope, it pisses me off that we put so much hard work building a back story only for her to toss it out and pretend that it never happened. Instead of having a great deep character, she ended up with someone about as deep as a contestant on "America's next top Model".
Kinship is one of the most powerful forces in human(oid) life, so it's not surprising it should be a great plot device for the D&D campaign. In the campaign I play with my son, his main character (a half-elf) is on a quest to find his father, who left 12 years before the start of the campaign to pursue a mysterious quest of his own. Veena Vallestero hasn't found his father yet, but has found his father's elven kin, and is currently adventuring with his foster brother and a cousin, trying to locate an important artifact that is the key to a great prophecy, in accord with instructions left behind by the father. The foster brother doesn't know it, but his half-sister has also joined the party. (Yes, I was reading too much Dickens and Dumas while coming up with these ideas).
In a game I'm playing in, I came up with a character who decided to worship St. Cuthbert, the god of retribution, because he wanted to find, and wreak vengeance upon, the people who had abducted his wife, and burned down his house with his 8-year-old son inside. I wrote out a fairly long story about how I'd met my wife, about the traumatic event, etc.
My DM ran with it! ..,
For another family example, I am about to start the SCAP, and one of my Players is playing an orphan who, only upon attaining manhood (ie - he is now 1st level) has learned that he has a half-sister who is a half-elf, who is one of the orphan abductees in Life's Bazaar. As DM, I plan not directly to threaten his half-sister anymore in the future, but I am looking forward to having such a powerful beginning to the SCAP.
Man this stuff is GOLD thanks for sharing you all
... The daughter had been kidnaped, her death faked, and she was psionically altered and used as a weapon against her parents,... My sister then began playing the characterknowing all of the background and has since played the character as this fulffy happy go luckey air head, no trauma, no mental scar, nothing. ... it pisses me off that we put so much hard work building a back story only for her to toss it out and pretend that it never happened.We have had other people play children of some of our characters, but even that has been more trouble than it's worth.Hey!
May I ask why? We're thinking of doing something similar.
To be fair... there was a little more to it than that, and this particular case isn't really a good example. The PC has been given to his sister before the death thing happened, and she was always played as this happy-go-lucky char.... which never sat well with Blackdragon because it didn't fit the family. From my perspective... it made for an interesting dynamic as it seemed the PC was always trying to distance herself from what her family was and was ashamed of the darker aspects... which makes for GREAT storyline material (and, as my PC was this PC's mother, was a springboard for me to do some great character development around her reaction to her daughter seeming to always want to deny her roots and the family she came from).
The reason the death scene was written was because the player (Blackdragon's sister) was moving out of state, so there needed to be reason the PC would no longer be interacting with the family. When she moved back to California a year or so later, a "resurrection" plot line was written, where we learned her death was faked to cover an abduction etc, etc.
This isn't the only instance we have of players running children of other PCs. The general problems that can arise were already pointed out by someone else: namely, if children rely to heavily on their parents' connections, resources, equipment, etc. That's when it becomes the role of the DM to ensure this doesn't happen too much. However, having the "family" connection, whether with PCs or NPCs, is a GREAT storytelling / plot device that REALLY brings another dimension to your game. I suggest anyone that's thinking about it give it a try.
My group has had some memorable adventures involving their relatives. On one,the cleric insisted on visiting his cousin, the herbalist, in a town they were passing through. They had a delightful meal (roast pork delicately seasoned with herbs, of course!) with the reclusive cousin trying to be hospitable to the rest of the motley crew. Then they went to buy some supplies and spent the night at an inn before continuing their journey. That night the herbalist's home was burned to the ground! Naturally, the party remembered how fussy the herbalist had been about fire safety while cooking the roast. This led into a wonderful mystery that was deeply personal to them.
On another, the group's braggart fighter invited the rest of the party to his sister's wedding. Naturally, he wanted them all to bring expensive gifts and dress accordingly. This extravagance blew through their accumulated wealth pretty quickly! Once there, the others were subjected to the fighter's bragging tales in which he was always the party's heroic savior while they were mere window dressing. The cleric was already miffed because the sister was being wed by a cleric of another faith. The wizard soon became irritated as he was continually being asked to "perform" for the children as if he were a common prestigitator. And the barbarian was still in mourning for the loss of his pet pseudodragon and in no mood for frivolity!
The wedding, to their surprise, went off without a hitch and the party enjoyed competing in various contests held during the reception. Of course, all of them were expecting something to happen to the bride that would require their services. Instead, a minor character, a halfling cook who had baked the lovely wedding cake, asked them to retrieve her wayward son whom she thought had run off with a thoroughly unsuitable young halfling girl. Since they didn't want to interfere in what seemed to be an affair of the heart, they politely declined. As they were about to depart at the end of the 3 day wedding celebration, however, the unsuitable halfling girl came into town looking for her fiance. She knew nothing of his disappearance. Of course now, the party were expected to help find him...
My players really enjoyed all the various personalities of friends and families in this adventure. From the fighter's mother (who treated him like a spoiled baby) to the homely old-maid daughter of family friends who pursued him relentlessly, to the uncle who lived in a nearby country and expounded endless on the advantages of riding hippogriffs rather than horses, each one had some unique and unforgettable characteristic.
In short, using friends and family sparingly and coming up with original ideas to involve them has been a wonderful addition to our games.
Hehe; pc families beg for money; coherse the pc's into beating up whatever troubles them; mom's dominate the pc's trying to pick wifes for them, wifes and husbands cheat on each other sometimes; a sometimes the mom and dad get killed and leave there children to a pc; married pc's get marriage counciling from the party cleric (dont go to the cleric of Dumathion (dwarf) cause he isnt go to say anything anyway.) and if they dont like that advice, they to to the other cleric or druid. Pc families have fueds with other families and drag them into it; sometimes pc's marry into a feuding families before they get the facts or find out that the family has a patron vampire or lich or some such that they better not touch if they wanna stay happily married. Hehe just try to tell the 12 level druid priestess who is 7 months pregnant that SHE should stay home and see what happens to you - hint; its unpleasant. You know; regular life type stuff.
LoL, I actually had a pc marry a flesh golem, wow did they need counciling; they got it from a Orc Assassin/Cleric of hmm, not sure I remember the old unearth diety; shagrass or something like that of fertility as they were haveing, uhm, problems.
The PC's families are a huge factor in many of my "stories" (okay, adventures, but we've been playing for over two years with the same characters and players, so it feels novel-like). Only one of my players built up any mention of their family background, which left the rest for me to...play with.
The elven druid's father is an ambassador from Evermeet who's been pretty much exiled due to his stance on elven-human diplomatic relations. His father used to be a member of the Eldreth Valruutha (the pro-elven racist group) and has spent the better part of two centuries trying to wash the blood from his hands. His mother was a commoner who habitually spied upon the elven nobles and sold their secrets to other noble houses. His younger brother, who's recently come of age, looks up to his older brother and wants to follow in his father's and brother's footsteps. (The family is frequently referred to as "Those Windsongs..." in a derogatory tone.)
The sorcerer/dragon disciple left her family's farm on the Dragon Coast because she didn't want to marry the butcher's son. An arranged marriage, she couldn't stand the thought of living in the same town for the rest of her life. She took her belongings and her two mules and left her mother, father and five siblings and fled to Cormyr.
The drow elven rogue was raised on the surface drow "renegades" that has invaded the old elven strongholds of Cormanthor. Finally disgusted by his father's complete lack of morals, he left his father's house. Only later (in game) did he learn that his father had killed his true mother and father when he was still a baby.
So, for me, a character's family is a mother lode of potential adventures and plot hooks. I do believe there was an issue in the early 3E years of Dragon that covered this very same topic.
Family shows up occasionally even if rarely. One of the more amusing moments were in one campaign where one character had made sort of name for himself, married into nobility and had gathered nice amount of money and estate, naturally his deadbeat family he had seen very little for a long time shows up for a visit of unspecified length...
Siblings where both are adventurers are quite common, sometimes both/all are PCs, sometimes some are NPCs.
And one character of mine was a mage who, wherever he went, was compared to his father, rather powerful archmage. Father never actually showed up in the campaign except as a cause for inferiority complex for my character...
There are occasionally functional families present too but the dysfunctional ones are just so much more memorable. All happy families are alike happy but all unhappy ones are unhappy in unique way...
Famliy comes into my campaign every session. Two of the players are sisters (chaotic good and neutral evil respectivly), and are held together by the mothers dieing wish. They also have a little brother who disapeared as a child and will come into play later.
In my Faerun campaign, two of my players decided to make their characters (both strongheart halflings) related by being grandfather and grandson.
In the Eberron campaign DragonNerd is about to run, I wrote up quite a background story for my character, Hasufin (a wizard). His father was killed in the destruction of Cyre (at least, that's what he was told and believes, but there's always a chance that such isn't the case) and his mother then commited suicide by jumping from one of Sharn's towers. He and his two siblings, and older brother and a younger sister, were taken in by a captain of the guard, a dwarf, until the brother was old enough to joint he guard himself and get the family enough money to move into their own home. Hasufin has had several father-like mentor/friends, but the family broke up when the older brother, depressed and distressed by his life, snapped at the younger sister, who ran out. Hasufin blamed the older brother and tried to convince the sister to come back, but she merely told him that she had to go and make her own life. Hasufin decided the same for himself and left to find his way in the world. Enter adventure.
I also ran a one-shot adventure once where the sole player married and started his own business at second level after finding a large sum of money in a pirate vessel.
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I ran a short-lived campaign for some of the guys in my Fraternity back in college. One of the PCs had been raised by an adoptive father, who doubled as the sponsor of their party. Later, his death became a motivation for them.
In our current Iron Heroes campaign part of my character's motivation, especially when it comes to bandit killing, is revenge for the death of his parents and siblings.
I can't recall if I've ever played with a group that didn't include at least one pair of PC siblings or whatnot. This is our classic excuse for PCs to get together/adventure together in the first place.
Everyone always includes some family in their background, although many times it is just the "my father/mother/sibling was murdered and I must solve this mystery..." kind of thing.
Marriages are less frequent in my experiences. One of my characters got married (to another PC) and had a child once. My character was the mother and was NOT happy about having to stay home (and to limit spell-use because it might affect the unborn baby!).
Other than that, I once played a rogue/spy who maintained a wife and kids at home so none of the townspeople would suspect him of his nefarious dealings.
I like the background and flavor families add and as a DM I try to severely limit the "oh no, your loved one has been kidnapped/murdered/embroiled in this next plot I want you to involve yourself in".
The posters on this thread are really to be commended for their intricate and fascinating stories. Obviously you're great players/DMs, the lot of you, for including the character families into the PCs development and the plotlines without resorting to high-handed tactics. I'm really impressed and feeling inspired to do a better job in my own campaigns with this oft-neglected issue. I especially liked the description of the family wedding. Reminds me of dealing with my own family - four married siblings, 23 aunts/uncles (& their spouses/families) within a 10 mile radius in our hometown (yikes!) and all the soap-opera chaos that goes along with it! I imagine it probably wasn't a whole lot different in medieval times and I have plenty of real life experiences that I can apply to the game.
Thanks again, everybody, for some fresh inspiration!
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Saw this thread and couldn't pass by without saying something. I think families and friends are a great way to flesh out PCs and make the campaign feel more real and immediate. A lot of fun too. I'll have to remember some of the stories above for my next campaign, they sound great.
At the moment, families are a part of my characters' lives in only a very loose sense. In a AoW campaign I'm playing in at the moment, the DM tied two of our characters together by saying that my cleric of Pelor was instructed by his dying mentor to find and protect his estranged half-elven daughter (the party's monk). He found her in the town of Diamond Lake. She had always thought that she was an orphan and that her parents had left her, but in reality her kinsman, the mine manager Ellival Moonmeadow, had forced her mother to leave her human paramour and give up the child. When my character told her what he knew of her past, it was a very memorable moment. It will be interesting to see just how the monk confronts Ellival about how he destroyed her family.
In one of my other favorite games, set in the Forgotten Realms, I'm playing a fire genasi ranger/dragon slayer. As part of her backstory (I joined a group that was already fairly high level), I mentioned that her particular bloodline of fire genasi had been created by a group of efreet on the Elemental Plane of Fire. They had been badly betrayed by a white dragon, and so had birthed a line of fire genasi on the Material plane to hunt down the dragon in vengeance. This dragon turned out to be Acessiwal from "Glacier Season"/Dungeon 87, which the party was just about to take on. My character was the last of the genasi to still be hunting the dragon, as the rest of her kin had been killed or given up the hunt long ago. The DM really ran with this, and often at random times we come across one of her "cousins." Sometimes they are helpful, other times there is quite a bit of family rivalry. Oh, and the party did kill the dragon in the end, so my character is looking for another line of work.
In that same game, before I joined, another player made a new character (a paladin) that was a sibling of a current NPC. This NPC had recently fallen in love with one of the other PCs, and the player decided that his paladin really didn't approve of his sister taking up with this ruffian. The relationships between the three people really added color to the game. In fact, you can read this game in the StoryHour at enworld, under "Firebringer." The first example with the cleric of Pelor is also found there ("Age of Worms"); Brainiac is one of the best DMs I've ever played with, he's really good at bringing everything together. Check out his work.