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All the riches went to the "good kid", your younger sister... you know, the one that didn't run off with their hooligan friends to "adventure", or whatever you ungrateful miscreants called it at the time.
You. Get. Nothing.
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You have no idea how much of a pain in the ass I intend to make it for you to maintain that wealth.
Beware... there are many ways to ensure that your inheritance never reaches you...
1) you were written out of the will for one reason or another...
2) there is no record of a will (be it destroyed, stolen, or “misplaced”)...
3) the local lord has seized your families wealth and land, citing some “divine rite owed to him by his position”
4) you have been framed for their murder...
5) another has already come forth claiming to be you, or to have been sent by you, and received your inheritance in your stead.
6) not only did your parents get murdered, but the bandits who slew them have made your estate their new base...
7) the local government has been overthrown, your family was slain during the coup and their estate sieges by the new rulers of the land.
8) a failed coup was attempted and your family was slain during it, the ruler of the land has seized your estate claiming your family to have been involved in the coup.
9) while you were out adventuring, word reached your home claiming of your demise, shortly thereafter your family was slain. Since you, as their only heir, had already been declared dead, the estate and all of its assets has been returned to the state, and you are no longer able to lay claim to it.
10) your family had been murdered a good long while ago, but due to your adventuring, no one has been able to inform you until recently. Unfortunately as a result your estate and inheritance has been seized by the local lord claiming that since you had not deemed to appear sooner you have hence forfeited your claim.
11) your rightful claim to the estate has been challenged by someone claiming to be the bastard son of your father. What’s more, they have garnered support from another very influential noble family.
12) your uncle has claimed rite of succession on account if you bring an absentee heir.
13) your estate was destroyed along with the surrounding village/town/city and all valuables pillaged. There is nothing left to inherit and any form of insurance has gone with it.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg... any creative DM can come up with hundreds of ways do deny you that inheritance you believe you’ll get if they kill off your rich parents.
14) The will states your inheritance goes into a trust to keep Suzy alive and well. Be nice to Suzy and scratch her behind the ears once in a while.
15) Liquidating the estate to pay everyone will take a few years, and you'll need to stay in town where you can be contacted easily - or your cousins lawyers will make sure all you get is the debts and not their corresponding properties.
16) This is a magical world. With major estates the law says that they can't be transferred to their heirs for a year and a day in case the original owners turn out to be merely misplaced and not as dead as they seemed to be.
etc.
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I like how nobody has addressed the jerk gms who kill of players' families :p
I mean thats main reason why majority of players play orphans, so gms can't do that :p so doing it to pcs with families just perpetuates the stereotype
The real power fantasy is having a loving and dependable family unit that believes in you and is proud to see you off to be an adventurer.
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I don't really understand the issue. Do many players introduce story elements and not want the GM to touch them?
I mean, the whole "kill your parents" bit is rather tired, but if a player doesn't want me interacting with their character in a specific way, I feel like they ought to tell me.
I'm not saying I'll go messing around in their stuff with zero warning; I had a player who really wanted their character to have a dog. I warned them that, in a life of giant-slaying and ghost-hunting, something like a dog may well prove to be a liability.
Sure enough, they had to make a run for it and couldn't get the dog up the ladder and had to leave him behind. The player broke down and wept. Really emotionally powerful moment. I asked them if they wanted to take a break, they said no.
So an NPC took advantage of the character's (player's) distraught and distracted state and suckered them into an otherworldly contract of sorts,etc.
--the player was fine with all of this. It made a good story. The pain and grief they felt were real, but they'd already acknowledged them as a possibility.
Does that make me a jerk? I dunno. I didn't ask them "hey, is it cool if I kill your dog?" but I did sort of vaguely point out that stuff like this could happen at session 0.
There should be some level of communication/narrative consent, but there should also be trust in the GM. Don't suckerpunch your players just 'cause you can. But if you think you've got something for a memorable story,I say go for it.
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I mean...if i were a mid level villain and the pc's were continually thwarting mine and my masters plans, why wouldn't i send them one of their beloved parent's heads?
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See now me, I'd go a slightly different direction. The parents are the villains. Every one of the PCs' adventures would somehow serve to benefit the one PCs' rich parents. They'd both stay alive for the whole campaign. Then, on the last leg of the story the player would have to learn - Everything we ever did, all of it... it was for you Damien... it was ALL for YOU!
Then the PCs have to make a choice: murder one character's doting parents or accept their roles propping up the greatest evil in the campaign.
ALWAYS keep the PCs' family alive, if at all possible, no matter what traits they pick. The more ties to the game world the PCs have, the more rope to strangle... I mean, the closer to the setting.
I think the lesson we've all learned here is that there are a LOT of ways to make people regret using traits as some sort of magic armor for backstory elements.
The only thing I have learned in all this is that Reksew_Trebla had an unimaginative GM with equally unimaginative problem solving skills...