Complete Xeno (3.5e Sourcebook)/Alien Civilizations

= Alien Civilizations =

Character Backgrounds
This is copy pasta, replace later.

"We have come to protect you from the terrible secret of space. Do you have stairs in your house?"

D&D is a cooperative storytelling game, and we would hope that the stories it generates will be worth retelling again and again. In the interest of that actually happening, it is imperative that each and every point of view character in the story (that is, the Player Characters) be interesting. To be interesting, a fictional character really only has to have three things: An interesting motivation, an interesting schtick, and an interesting set of adventures. The schtick of the character is generally going to be handled by a character's class levels and equipment and is really up to the game mechanics themselves to generate – ideally the classes contained in this writing will cover that. Interesting adventures are the game itself and hopefully involve challenges only barely overcome and dastardly deeds thwarted in the nick of time – and this falls largely upon the DM to properly gauge the talents of the PCs and provide challenges that can be bested by the skin of the teeth. But the character's motivation, their backstory, really comes from the player's own mind. That's something that the player really needs to bring to the table on his own lookout.

A character with an interesting backstory is fundamentally better for the story than one without. And while it is true that the DM's world is going to highly flavor it (sorry, there are no elven maidens in those mountains!) the fact remains that the player is pretty much going to get what he puts into this. And yet, while the story is frankly going to be somewhat uninteresting if the players don't put some effort into their backstories, putting effort into anything is... well... effort. If people don't get some tangible effect from putting in that effort, they are quite likely to just not do it at all.

So here's what we're going to do: we're going to make some minor character advantages accessible only by writing yourself a character background. Then, when your character has a simple set-piece introduction, you get a tangible bonus that isn't especially game breaking. Note that we don't expect, or even want your character's background to be 7 pages of narrow font before the beginning of the first game. In fact, we probably want it to never get that long. This is a cooperative storytelling game, in D&D you tell the story with the input of the other players and the DM. If you just want to write the story of an awesome character without the input of other players – don't play D&D at all. You really can just type up a story and either submit it for publication or hide it in your diary all emo style as your relative shyness dictates. So no, we want your character's background to be short, but we need it to be there. The kind of thing that a character might actually be able to relate in a one-paragraph info-dump in a book without causing the reader to skim. Normally, a character gets one background. This is as much to keep character background from filling up the world as anything else.

Experiment
X

Explorer
X

Guardian
X

Invader
X

Lost In Space
X

Refugee
X

Slaver
X

Stranded
X

The Failure of Feats
Nothing?

Exploits
Something?

The New Feat System
Delete?

The New Combat Ready Feats
Feats go here.