Family Means Everything To Me

Players usually create backstories that make them loners. They travel alone until they find their party of adventurers who become their best buddies. It’s the story of D&D. 

The player has a family in the real world. They know how messy/boring/time-consuming it can be. 

Why would they want a family in their fantasy world too!? 

They are orphans with a tragic past, a dark and mysterious one, much more mysterious than that other character’s past anyway. 

Of course most of them love their families in real life (or at least a family member), and so this will translate into the game you are playing. Obviously as with all of my RPG Philosophy articles, this does not apply to every player’s character, this does not apply to every game, this does not have to apply to your game to make it great. This is something I usually include in my game. This is a style I like to run and would recommend you give it a try!

The Player Character With A Family 

It is normal in my games for a character to get a stronghold, a tower, a keep or whatever when they reach about 5th level, especially in 5th edition. In AD&D definitely not, they were still working out of houses or taverns or temples in a village. With a castle they acquire retainers, servants, soldiers and so on. 

But a player in my game should also be thinking about a family, about maintaining their legacy, about having a bloodline. They have to step out of the orphan with a tragic backstory and become something more. Most people in our world make families, either intentionally or unintentionally, in whatever way they do, regardless of gender or sexuality. I like it when my players try to create a family in the game too. It makes the game feel more realistic. It forces the game to have higher stakes. 

So no orphans with a tragic backstory?

I actually kind of like the orphan with a tragic backstory trope. It grounds the character against a cult, an event, a race or an NPC. To quote Westworld Season 1, it gives them a “cornerstone memory” - something they can always fall back on if they aren’t sure where to take their character in terms of arc or the game in terms of plot. 

It’s the building of a family that becomes the fun part, not the having of one in a backstory, threatening to become merely names and numbers scribbled on the back of a character sheet, rather than characters that have grown with each session.

Only A Nuclear Family? 

Absolutely not. The more complicated the better, sometimes. It can create all sorts of magnificent role-playing opportunities. Two surrogate fathers to an unruly daughter whose genetic father is a cult leader. You get the idea. It doesn’t even have to be paternal or maternal, perhaps one NPC they now see as a sister, or a father figure. Creating meaningful bonds between PCs & NPCs in D&D can turn your game from a standard game into something special… take this example. 

I had one player whose character and party attacked the Blue Dragon Cult beneath the mountain waterfall, where the cult were sacrificing people to the sleeping dragon, Drorg the Lightning Lord. 

In battle, The Skirmishers (the party) killed many cultists. They didn’t know who they were striking down (bodyguard with a backstory trope incoming), they just did. 

When they arrived at the cultists village, after destroying the vanguard, they found it a village in fear. They snuck in with invisibility and other means. 

Finn Voltaire, the character in question, got into one home and parleyed with a woman who was assuring her son and daughter that they would not be sacrificed, and that father would be back from patrol soon. 

It dawned on him that perhaps he had slain a father and husband. He then decided he wanted to save them all from the dragon’s greedy sacrifices. 

So they snuck the family out and sowed chaos throughout the cult village. 

Eventually, in a twisted, yet poignant way, Ptayla (the NPC whose husband was killed), eventually grew to love Finn. He felt guilt at potentially killing her husband, responsibility for his actions, the need to take care of them, and attempted to atone for his sins.

It took a lot of time, it took weeks and weeks of playtime before she fell for him. Finn adopted her children into his castle and had rooms made for them. He took Ptayla to be his lawfully wedded wife in a ceremony performed by another character and the family grew. It was not his initial intention to make a wife of Ptayla, he only wanted to right a wrong, or at least set himself on a path of redemption. 

Eventually Finn had a child with Ptayla also, making the family more complex. Finn loved his whole family, which had grown out of downtime and gameplay. The player protected his in-game family at all costs. 

The game took a new weight, each time he would get back from an adventure, he would check in with his family. He couldn’t wait to see them. 

What happened to them all I wonder? Another story for another time. But it was one of the greatest moments in an RPG session I’ve ever experienced. 

Backstory family members? 

Although names and numbers scribbled on the back of a sheet can naturally become great characters, there is something special about having a family to care for in an RPG that grew out of gameplay. It’s one reason I’m so obsessed with playing a game such as King Arthur Pendragon RPG, which has a heavy focus on dynasty, playing your family through the ages. 

Sometimes backstory family members are necessary, such as siblings and parents. The younger brother who joined the Assassins Guild, the twin sister who is a devilish warlord in the south. These create nice hooks, but may leave you feeling disappointed when you come to meet them and it’s not how they envisaged, it’s how the Dungeon Master envisaged.

You’d be surprised how having a normal family member who is a fisherman or a farmer can make them care more than if their family member were a wizard or a warrior. 

I’d say pepper in a family member or two into your backstory, be that the nanny who cleaned the kitchen or the grandma that is a green hag. 

I’d just recommend not having a child as a backstory family member. Let that develop in play. 

A Player’s Next Character Is Their Child 

This is an idea I’d die on a hill for. 

It’s something a game like King Arthur Pendragon encourages, and it’s something I try to make part of my D&D games. 

In all of my games, characters are running around in a world that other players have been running around in before. It creates a sense of shared history. Another player’s old character built that temple there, another player’s character retired and owns that tavern over there, and so forth. 

The next step after playing an epic two year campaign (in real time, who knows how long in game time, potentially decades) - where your character died, retired or is ventured off ambiguously - is to play that character’s daughter or son. 

This immediately creates a bond with the character beyond numbers on a sheet and a liking of their class options that the player has chosen. It has a built-in backstory, that can even be fleshed out as months will undoubtedly be skipped. 

I try to ensure in my campaigns that whatever a character has done in life, they never achieved everything they could. There was always that one sorceress who escaped them and haunted their nightmares, that one dragon that they speared in the right eye and regretted not chasing it to its lair. Then when the child hears of the dragon with one eye, they know…

The children continue the work of the parents…

How Does It Actually Come About In Play? 

We don’t role-play sex. Let’s get that out in the air. 

The best way to steer the PC towards a family is just to present them with NPCs that they sympathise with, respect, and empathise with. They may have the same religion or same philosophy, they may have a different religion and philosophy that clashes with their own, but draws them into conversation each and every night. 

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they like these NPCs and you ensure the players out of game that you run a game that includes the possibilities of a family. 

It’s definitely different to the respect they show the wizard who identifies all their magic items, but who says he can’t be loved too? 

I simply put memorable NPCs in front of them, and the players will do what they will. 

In my most recent game, The King-in-the-Ark, we have a barbarian-rogue dwarf who sees his dead mentor’s daughter as his own sister. 

We have a Roman warrior displaced out of time and space, searching for his two brothers who elude him at every turn. 

We have three chosen and prophesied NPC teens whom nearly all of the characters would really die for, I have the feeling, they have become non-biological children to them. 

There is no “family making”, it happened naturally with the Chosen Children of Prophecy, or from their backstory tying into my intentions. Of course it was my intention for them to look after the children and see them as family, but I didn’t force it upon them, they forced it upon themselves by taking tutorship of them. 

Conclusion 

The player character without a family, or close friends that are treated like family, has nothing to fear or fight for. They only fear for the death of themselves, and maybe some of the other player characters. Give them things to fight for and they will fear and respect your world even more. They will think on their actions. 

This isn’t always the play-style of course, sometimes they want to kill big monsters, collect the gold and get cool gear.

I feel that the family aspect of D&D can be accommodated into that play-style, through memorable NPCs, player investment and a desire to create a legacy in-world. 

And so fell Prince Finn Voltaire into fire and darkness, killed by the very devil lord who granted him his sorcerous powers. 

But his sons survived him. 

One child went south with his mother into the caves of Deeptemple Falls, hidden by the valley elves and the mountain dwarves, for he was the son of a prince, and might one day be king…

One child went north, motherless, to be shielded and raised by King Vaylith of he Ten Towered City, to be trained and raised in politics and knightly combat… for he was the son of a prince, and might one day be king…

Neither knew of one another, and neither knew they were themselves a prince… who might one day be king.