Backstory Writer; Whatever Words #3

Ohmygosh it has been such a long couple of weeks that I totally forgot to do my own personal segment. Couldn’t even make it to number three before forgetting to do it!

So I am taking some time off work to visit Noki, my parents, and some friends. Figuring that stuff out has taken time away from me, also some stuff going on with the family so that’s been distracting. Also creating a D&D one-shot! While I’m in town I thought it would be fun to do an in-person D&D sesh. Sadly, one of my normal players lives in another state so we didn’t want to make it relevant to our actual campaign. Instead, I created a whole new scenario, world, and characters. Trust me, I enjoy doing this. I figured out that I enjoy creating backstories for characters. I am a heavy lore enjoyer. I said it, I love lore. There’s tons of people out there who skip parts of the story when “it’s not relevant to the plot” like, sometimes lore is needed to have a better understanding of the character. Maybe something they did in their past justifies why they act as such now? Maybe a side plot will be relevant later on in the road? In the anime community, “filler” has become synonymous with this and that is disheartening because they’re not the same thing. Filler was literally made up content to, that’s right, fill in time, until the manga where the original source is from, could pump out more chapters/story for the anime to adapt. Nowadays, people call anything not related to the current main objective as “filler” like they’ve never done a side quest before. Side adventures and journeys can be fulfilling too. I know back in the day I’ve been a filler hater myself, but I’ve never skipped content that was from the original source. Big example is Skypiea with One Piece. I won’t go into plot points, but this adventure takes place in a remote location and feels like a fleshed out DLC or side quest. Lore does take place, but a part of the community believes the lore is not related to the main plot or doesn’t matter so they skip it. Untrue of course.

So yeah, I’ve created a little mini-adventure for my friends to enjoy. It actually took me a couple of rough drafts to figure out a story I actually liked and wanted to pursue. I ended up creating another story that might be interesting? Dealing with Gods and their mortal names, stuff like that. I was going to use it for my one-shot but as I starting typing out the lore, it felt convoluted. So I kept breaking it down piece by piece until I decided that I was going off on a big thing that no longer felt like a contained story. Now, I’m not going to lie and say this one-shot is one and done…it does have potential to continue on, but that’s optional. For this one-shot I created six new characters, one for me and five for my players. My partner will be joining for the first time, so that will be fun. Hopefully they can see the enjoyment out of it…I guess that will really fall on me as the DM. At first I created random backstories for potential character classes until I decided to try out D&D Beyond’s random character buider. I didn’t just auto–build the first five characters and said that was done, I actually went through multiple different builds until I found compelling backstories I could create for them that felt believable. I’ll go into more depth about them after my trip this weekend. For now, I can tell you backstories I created for characters not relevant to my story.

One idea was having a character join the quest because they got so drunk and lost a bet the night before. Simple but effective. Another idea was hook-up gone astray, or the character did a crime and needed to quickly leave town and used the quest in a remote area as an excuse. And my last idea that I did want to use, was a character doing the quest for community service or to reduce time off their sentence. I was thinking like some petty crime, maybe someone from a remote small town who didn’t understand city life and had to do this quest to pay off bail or something.

I really enjoyed the random character creator and just coming up with different ideas for backstories. I also didn’t want characters to overlap too closely together, so I made sure to avoid that. Maybe I can somehow make it a thing where I help people create lore for their characters. Some people are probably wondering, does a backstory really matter? Some cases no, but I believe it helps push the narrative forward. Having a reason for the character to be there only helps, but taking a chance with no lore could be negative. So for every character I auto-created, I even went in and reviewed their spells and ability modifiers to make sure they were relevant enough. For veteran players this could be a fun challenge to be given totally random characters with poor stats, but since I’m playing with people who still need guidance on playing, I wanted to make sure they were good characters to use. Nothing too powerful, there would be no fun in that. I’m also going to try and make some visuals. I have ideas, simple ideas since I’m no artist, but something at least. I normally don’t have maps and stuff since that’s not my expertise, so I’m trying something new for this.

Also, I watched a couple movies I have to talk about. I’ll do posts for them since they deserve it, but I really wish I could be writing for my blog more often. Luckily, most of the stuff that’s been posting lately has all be scheduled for the future, so this is actually my most recent written post. The past few have been old old Daniel, okay like a month ago Daniel, but still past self. 

I also read a graphic novel called, It’s lonely at the centre of the Earth. Great read that I almost finished it before even checking it out of the library. Part of me wanted to even send them a DM to just be like, “yo just read that graphic novel, so cool, so amazing, so…relatable.” Fun joke for those who’ve read it. Will I really reach out? Heck no, that’s not me. Okay, maybe one day I will. Like how on Twitter (X) I even posted a One Piece theory to this One Piece theorists I follow. Someone else actually responded back and we had a conversation about it. I was not ready to have to explain myself further, which is even more challenging because I am limited on my word count and refuse to pay for more words. I also never check my notifications and found out today, that someone else had read through our conversation and liked some of what I said. Look at me, actually making conversation with a stranger. Wow, what a time to be alive.

So yeah, if you have a character, not just D&D, but any type of character anywhere, and you need help with a backstory, hit me up.