Hi all, I am about to start a campaign of The Shattered Obelisk as my first go at DMing, however one of my players wants to be from a small tribe up north and out of the way of the general campaign area. His backstory is his whole tribe was killed. My issue is how can I tie in and honour his character's backstory when his home is a fair bit further north?
#Tying in characters from a distance from the campaign area
near stratus
vernal nexus
You don’t have to.
But you could have the people that killed his tribe be antagonists in the main area the campaign takes place in.
It would explain why he would travel so far.
pure magnet
I echo kermit
You can tell the player that since hes from so far away, his backstory might not be addressed at all, and make sure he’s cool with that
But you also can engage player backstories in a different way
Gove me a moment
I do this all the time and i really hate it but I’m gonna tlak about my own PC for a sec, Keel
Keel’s backstory was he was fleeing from a not-so-great relationship and he was only able to escape it (likely temporarily) because his home city burned down. Sound familiar to this backstory? Maybe slightly.
Keel’s former partner and what happened to his city never really comes up in the campign.
But what DID come up was another party member fell in with a guy who reminded Keel very much of his abuser and was leaning to make the same choices keel had done and he now desperately wanted to prevent what happened to him from happening to her
His backstory and his life was at the forefront every session as he navigated his relationships with these other characters - can we really trust this guy who is so similar to keel’s ex?
You can do something similar here, bring in people whove gone through similar experiences, or watch as the player character faces seeing another town burn - what will he do? A whole native tribe killed?
You dont have to directly include people or places from his backstory to still make it relevant. Analogues work well.
A good player and character will let his past influence his next choices.
(Which is precisely what a good backstory should do in trrpgs!)