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I just got my first "GM Parent" blush of pride today.
Four sessions ago we had a guy join the group and play in a short Ravenloft game as a gnome illusionist, no real back story but they were learning the rules so it was fine. For the second session they had gone away and learnt more about the class, how illusions work etc. and was using silent image in clever ways. Third session they were playing as fluently as some of the people who'd been playing for years. Still no back story or real meat to their character.
Now I just started a Skull and Shackles campaign and they're the first person to hand me their back story and they actually went and bought Islands of the Shackles so they could know something about the setting AND asked me to roll knowledge checks to see what background information about his hometown the character would know as opposed to what he, as a player knows.
The backstory they gave me of a changeling summoner:
A strikingly tall waif of a girl, with a mane of black hair reaching her waist. Lilith has remained surprisingly pale despite the warm climate of the shackles - one of the first things that draws the attention of others to her. The second thing strangers are likely to fix their gaze on are her strangely mismatched eyes - one light blue like the summer sea under the sun, one as black as a moonless night sky.
That Lilith has already lived as long as she has is a surprise in itself. As a baby she was found by a a sloop named the Covert Rooster floating on a crude raft in the vicinity of one of the outlying islets to the south of Widowmaker Isle. Brought aboard by the Covert Rooster's crew, she was taken in by the Captain, Henri de Belleville, who had been unable to conceive with his wife for many years and took Lilith's arrival as a gift from Besmara.
At first, Lilith's presence seemed to justify this conclusion. Journeys undertaken by the Covert Rooster, which specialised in smuggling contraband from Port Peril throughout the Shackles, always seemed to progress more smoothly with her aboard - the sloop always seeming guided by creatures of the sea [Besmara's Blessing trait].
At the age of fourteen, however, things started to change. Lilith, by this time a skilled sailor in her own right, continued to be helpful aboard, but once Henri and his wife were asleep at night, the boat would mysteriously change course, always heading back in the direction of Widowmaker Isle. One such change of course proved to be the undoing of the Covert Rooster, as on its return from a particularly long venture to Ilizmagorti she directed the boat into the outlying storms of the Eye of Abendego, wrecking the ship entirely. What became of the crew, and Captain de Belleville, is unknown. Lilith herself almost drowned, turning up over a week later in Drenchport, bedraggled and exhausted. It was about this time that fishermen started to notice a strange eel-like creature in the bay [Eidolon = Bokrug], which they claimed had large claws and teeth as long as a man's arm.
After the disaster, Lilith's all consuming desire to seek out Widowmaker Isle inexplicably ceased - it was as though a spell that had been cast on her had been suddenly lifted. Lilith worked as a barmaid in the Drowned Dwarf in Drenchport, looking to sign on with a free captain while gathering together enough money to buy her own ship.
Her time in Drenchport did not however go well. Within two months of her arrival there, she fell foul of the followers of one of the newer sects in the Shackles- the Cult of the Eye. Disciples of this cult believe the Eye of Abendego to be the birth pangs of a new deity, sometimes called the Deluged God. A few of Lilith's misplaced remarks about what a whore the mother of such a god must be to have an orifice that large infuriated the cult clerics in Drenchport, who branded her a heretic.
The arrival of Captain Thomas Every shortly after this episode was therefore fortuitous. It was a stormy spring morning when Lilith observed the Jaundiced Outlook berthing at Drenchport docks, and a man with a rather fine hat disembark. Drenchport being rather limited in its entertainment, Lilith was not surprised to find him nursing a pint of black kelp beer at the Drowned Dwarf when she began her shift later that afternoon. Striking up a conversation with him she discovered he was a Free Captain, and by his fifth pint she had convinced him to let her sign on.
Any one else got stories of players growing, making them proud?
That's a really well written back-story! I wish more people would do things like that, you have a good player on your hands it sounds like.
Keep them happy by USING that back story. Too many DMs complain of island like characters (no connections to anything) and then fail to tie in the info that is provided.
Use the NPCs she mentions to tie her into the story. Have the ONE mate that was too drunk on the day the ship sailed show up and accuse her of being it's demise. Have someone from the crew of the second ship approach her in a tavern with news, etc...
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Already have plans! I searched long and hard for decent adventures featuring sea hags that may or not be her mother, will have them facing ethical decisions regarding it and have the Cult of the Eye playing a larger part.
I make demands on my players that they give me a backstory so that I can tie them into the world. One player has already stated she had a one night stand with Tessa Fairwind for instance so when the actually encounter her it could go two ways for them