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What makes a good PC backstory? Is it better to introduce story hooks and/or NPCs?

What rules can a good backstory bend if any?

Were there any that were pretty good?

Then what makes a bad backstory?

I've written a few, but I tend to get self-conscious if the DM is truly okay with my backstory or if they just go with it to get the game going.

Hey so I'm thinking of a Cleric of Myrkul, what race do you think would be cool to go with it or do you think maybe a paladin would be bettoer?

>>96855730
Mmm well my PC needs gold to support his family, so he goes on adventures here and there to collect some gold before returning.

>>96855730
a backstory you workshop together with the dm instead of handing it over like it's homework

>>96855854
That's nice and succinct, straight to the point. He gets the gold and goes home. A good one-off character. Thanks for showing up to the game.

>>96855535
take the money you would spend on a box and get the singles instead

>>96855535
You should give ME the money.

>>96855593
I like opening packs and I don't want to spend like $700 for the rare cards I would like
I'd rather open packs, and if I get it, nice, if I don't, oh well.

Guy at locals pulled Hudiemon during prerelease, Hudiemon and Hudie alt in the one box he bought, and then a fourth Hudiemon in his participation packs

>>96855535
third hacker's slumber box and sold the sec + the sec aa to get another box of sinister order though :3

Humbly requesting:

Lancer: NPCs Rebaked
https://kaitave.itch.io/lancer-npcs-rebaked

Blood Money
https://pigsriot.itch.io/blood-money

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Requesting "The Restless Dead: True Tales of Gasts and Geists in the Rainy City"

Looking for Twelve Years and its supplements
https://flaminghand.com/products/twelve-years-supplements

REQUESTING: Knights of the Dinner Table

Anyone got KoDT comics? As much as possible, I'd especially like issues 79-98.

Thanks!

>>96853711
He said something awhile back about coming up on the busy season and not having free time for awhile, but we'll see how that goes.

>>96855608
I think hes asking about "are they good" rather than "what are the rules"

>>96855605
Okay, probably not great. Thunder hammers are probably still better for dueling.

>>96855631
I was going to ignore you, but then you decided to be a triggered fag KWAB

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*tricks you into revealing the spoiler text*

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>>96854866
>"I'm gonna destroy those ninja turtles!"

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>>96855797
Thank you for your input.

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Got this guy that’s like a star wars version of Brock Sampson. Big mercenary brawler type, it’d be cool to see him with some body armor like the top right of pic related, also dude wears a droid head from KOTOR like a belt not really necessary to include though.

It would be cool to have that big dude in a tac suit kind of vibe. Anyway Not really picky about the design or any big changes, feel free to do whatever’s fun just would like to see what someone can do with my guy.

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>>96845241
>>96699802
Here she is

>>96852041
Ooh nice

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>>96769932
>>96778015
I have made a couple of attempts, but I am rather concerned with how its coming out because (1) I forgot you already have a clothing outfit set up, and (2) I made him too....furry (scaley) bara like.
I got cocky when I was on a marker drawing spree as of late.

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>>96699802
>>96769932
I ended up rolling with it, but I do not have much confidence in my marker drawing skills as I did earlier. Feel free to rerequest.

>>96850496
>How do you play Chaotic Evil without making your character cartoonishly petty and stupid?
Remember that being Chaotic Evil just means you prioritize your own selfish self-interest above all else, or doesn't make you stupid or even incapable of caring about things like family or a partner.
The archetypal example of how to do competent chaotic evil is looking at how dragons act. Many species of dragon are naturally chaotic evil. That doesn't mean they act like retarded cannon fodder, and are capable of long-term alliances of interests, and if the enormous amount of draconic sorcerers is an indication, even having relations and cooperation with mortals that manage to catch their attention.
You're still going to be prideful and wrathful and selfish, but those are honestly traits MOST adventurers have to some extent already. You're probably motivated by wealth and fame....but again, that's in the job description.
The biggest problem when playing evil characters is when somebody is both evil AND stupid. That inevitably involves behaving like dumb cannon fodder, and unsurprisingly gets you a short and violent end. But alignment has no bearing on intelligence. Evil shapeshifters like succubi are chaotic evil and nevertheless manage to successfully infiltrate human society for decades at a time without being caught.


TL;DR: play your chaotic evil character with the same competence and intelligence you'd expect of a campaign's chaotic evil final boss, not like his chaotic evil orc goons.

>>96855003
another classic example are Drow, who despite being Chaotic still manage to have large scale highly advanced societies churning out shittons of high level mages and clerics and warriors who can fight against epic level adventurers on even footing. They still have politics and planning and strategy, it's just those are applied to a backstabbing cut-throat hellscape where the slightest display of weakness gets you murdered and overthrown.

>>96854727
He was also the lawful ruler of half the galaxy, only ever infiltrates into GalPol space on legal loopholes, and respects the hierarchy of his own organization. He's as Lawful Evil as it gets.

>>96855031
>Drow got so bad that their patron godess had to intervene directly and tell them to cut down on the backstabbing retardation before they totally imploded as a society
Not a ringing endorsement there.

>>96850496
You want to see the world burn and the cities crumble, just not be a "lol random shit *clown's horn sound*" retard
Does the giant evil monster that wants to destroy the whole world acts like a puppy? No. See? not that hard. Have some dignity and character.

>>96849317
I'm actually more keen on expanded mercenaries before more factions. Why not have a few more options open to everyone, or a good and a bad big guy each. I think expanded mercenaries add more to campaign play

Its funny this game and Infinity have le heckin wholesome enlightened muslim scientists faction when in reality most muslims are inbred retards.

>>96849317
Grail Vampires

I can’t be the only person who thinks that the 1.6.3 ruleset is incredibly badly written and unclear… can I?

>>96855673
Idk about unclear but yeah a lot of the sentences in here could use an edit
Playtest game
Small indie company
Please understandu

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>>96854045
P1, starting their turn with Priority as Turn Player, taps their 3 Manifest Orange Energies to Energize their Avatar by 3.

(Avatars can be Energized by X once during your turn by tapping X Energies of the color indicated on the Avatar's Time symbol).

Tapping Energies as cost does not pass Priority.

The reason why P1 does this as their first move is to take advantage of starting with Priority. P2 is able to Nullify any Manifest card, including Avatars, at Instant speed (immediate resolution) using their Avatar, "Glowie".

In order to get their play off, P1 is going to add their 3-cost Avatar effect to the Thread before P2 can Nullify the card which produces the effect ("Yakub). This is only possible because P1 is starting with Priority and P2 needs to wait for P1 to do something that passes Priority to P2 before they can do anything.

This sort of interaction is common in both MTG and YGO.

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Then, P1 invokes their Avatar effect, Transmuting (Projecting) their Energy "Franz Bardon" into an Entity.

P2 does not respond with their Avatar Nullification because P1 has already got the effect off, and it would be more worthwhile to save it for later.

Then, P1 Projects "Evocation" from their Hand as an Energy.

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>>96855441
This might look complicated, but it is just P1 and P2 exchanging responses twice, for a total of 4 effects.

1.) P1 Invokes "Franz Bardon's" effect to Identify a Manifest Entity and Invoke it, targeting P2's 12-Enity's effect: "Identify a Manifest Entity: Seize it until the end of the turn, targeting P2's 12-Entity itself.

2.) Because it would be a huge loss if P1 was able to Seize P2's 12-Entity, P2 responds by Projecting the 2-Fren "Frenwatch", using their 2-Meme and 12-Entity as material, combining them into a 20-Meme (with Autism), and fizzling the the Seizure effect.

3.) Because P2 had to decide between saving their 12-Entity and Nullifying "Franz Bardon", P1, now with Priority, Invokes "Franz Bardon" again: "Identify a Manifest Energy: Transmute it into an Entity.", targeting P1's Energy "Evocation", Transmuting (Projecting) it into an Entity.

4.) Now that P2 has Priority again, they use their Avatar "Glowie" effect to Nullify "Franz Bardon".

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>>96855747
Now P1 moves to Combat, and Directly Influences with each of their Entities, for a total of 6 damage to P2's Avatar, down from 40 to 34.

(Memes don't block your Avatar from being Directly Influenced)

P1 then ends their turn.

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P2 draws for turn.

So what's the difference between Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised and Old-School Essentials Advanced?

Just the monk class?

>>96855468
That thread is just an example of the "fishfag" lore in action. It's not about a real person, it's about how a few people who find it convenient to tap into a forced meme that originated out of one guy's intense distraught over his story being called boring.
You can even see that guy blow up if you read through that thread. https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96434718/#q96583816
There were many examples that week of him (or someone else trying to force that meme) going into several threads, trying to start up stuff with his "fishfag" business, and getting subsequently thrashed by the mob. That was in the 3.5 general of all palces, and here's another thread where that happened. https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96569835/#q96569835
I think he also tried his luck in the 5e general, but his posts were deleted before anything really started.
It seems that as long as he stays in this general, he is free to talk about his fishfag as much as he wishes, but outside of it is where the board's instincts against forced memes works against it.

>>96854478
>>96854478
Zero prep approach in four steps:
A. Roll a random floor,
B. Roll a random room,
C. Look that room up, R
D. Roll a d6: (1-3) true rumour, (4) partially true rumour (5) a red herring or something made up wholesale, (6) the opposite of the truth.

>>96854608
>BD&D basically uses the 4e 5 point linear alignment but even simpler.
If anything it's the other way around.

>>96855586
Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised markets itself as OD&D but it's actually a shitbrew; OSE-Advanced markets itself as AD&D but it's actually a shitbrew.

>>96855572
>I think the moon's broken.

That's actually Mars.

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>>96855572
>>96855659

It's I don't know what the fuck it is. Every gen throws me that same image, regardless of style.


Perchance will fuck everything else up, but at least the moon looks right.

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"It looks like you're leading them, not running from them."

"Like I said, I got lucky."

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>>96855572
>>96855696

> A huge orange moon is rising over the mountains in the background.

It looks like someone pained some kind of hipster mode textured wall treatment on a bowling ball

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>>96854460
As the werewolves began to beat down the door, Beatrice the wolf began to taunt us through the door, calling us fools, meat, and other things that some people that weren't Damian would find hot. Thankfully nobody said anything stupid while we finished setting up explosives. As we finished our preparations, the door was broken down, and we were left looking at two werewolves, a wolf headed hybrid, and what was left of Dave in the jaws of a massive wolf monster. Clearly we were seeing the missus and her spawn. Whatever bravado, intimidation, or smug wizard/wolf superiority vanished from their faces was they looked at the scene in front of them.

They had about 4 seconds to look at us with as many bags of gold we could carry, a bunch of experimental floo powder in our arms and about 100 Kg of tactical c4, landmines, and IEDS around the vault and all the walls. Verbatim, the wolf hybrid started saying "Don't be hasty, we can work out a deal here." We looked at Sharp. He flashed his middle finger, we followed suit, and we threw the powder down at the floor. We hoped that Dave didn't mind being buried with a bunch of wolf hybrids. We also hoped any Death Eaters that found the house would be so confused that they wouldn't bother chasing our truck driver. As it turned out we didn't need to worry, since he'd been just waiting at a local bar for us to radio in and had been regaling our wizard friend, who we learned actually had a name (Gambian, played by Dave now) about how the local football scene was way more impressive than any hogwash about broom sticks. Bloody Football fans.

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>>96854894
Part 3, baiting wizards into C4 with the Chosen one and tactical GTFO

Our MO at this point was pretty well known by the Ministry and the Cock Eaters (We'd started spraying the symbol and replaced the snake with a cock whenever we robbed a place blind.) We still had funds out the ass at this point from doing this for 6 straight months. We were bloody pros at this point, and had lost Hudson to another ambush (He'd unfortunately gone down rather sadly, taking a knife to the throat while medicating a muggle, but i don't have enough thread to go into it.) And Patrick had gotten a brand new magic arm after he'd tanked a Crucio curse that'd required us to cut his drinking arm off. We had a new character, a doctor named Pyotor Motolosky, who'd ran away from death eaters in Russia and ended up with a massive chip on his shoulder we had the ability to help cure. We'd gotten a bit more badass as time had gone on, killing low level dark wizards with ease, and we didn't sweat as much when they started pulling wands since more often than not we out ranged them with enchanted Flintlock rifles and pistols. We weren't immune to killing curse, as we'd learned when a random we'd pulled for a single mission got blasted when running for a door, but we were pulling off heists to the point that the heat was starting to get to us. We had 3 safehouses of the order of the phoenix raided, to the point that we were turned away by a member for bringing too many wizards to handle. Getting spotted basically summoned at least 3 wizards and bounty hunters to try and kill us with extreme prejudice, and we even had wanted posters, wanted posters that just said "Dead". We took that as a point of pride, and also escalation, since we had stopped trying to be nice after the werewolf and medic kill. However, things going hot had forced us to seriously consider different options, and we had a new problem. The Dark Lord was stepping up his ritual game.

Someone over on /osrg/ posted an entire 200 page campaign write up.
Pretty beasting

>>96855070
I tried reading it and gave up after two pages. All 200 sounds like a death sentence unless you've been diagnosed with pure undiluted autism.

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>>96854999
As we found out over the course of our robberies and assassination attempts (And outright beatings when we got caught in the woods by a bunch of bounty hunters and Death Eaters) Voldemort was getting paranoid. According to the order members who were paid more to think than we were, Potter had apparently gotten another of his Horcruxes, putting us a bit further down the timeline. However, alongside making less public appearances and causing a few people to get spooked, he'd started collecting dark tomes and the like to start preparing some ritual to either create more, or just straight up become immortal. The specter of death had him running mad, and he was even making his allies start increasing security and take body guards. We made the decision to go to ground and try to find a better source of information than the snippets we'd gotten from random order members.

We had discussed with one Remus Lupin. our new contact, the weird shit we'd found, and he told of us about some raving lunatic that new a lot about weird death majiks and charms. One Xenophilius Lovegood. A known crackpot, idiot, and apparently just as insane as the other wizards we'd been slitting throats of. We voiced our protests and even Lupin seemed dubious on visiting him, saying he'd been jumpy as of late. Sharp however, told us all our other leads had dried up, and we were clearly running low on time. Grumbling, we set out to visit the insane hermit that was more than likely going to get us killed than help us. Remus patted each of us on the back as we left to get our marching gear, and warned us to keep our triggers ready, but be wary of a certain trio, which was when the smarter half of us realized we'd been put on babysitting duty.

Do different types of roll resolution affect the feel of a game? For example, if I'm designing a modern urban noir setting vs. a medieval fantantasy setting, is there a reason why I would consider d20 over 3d6 over d100 etc?

>>96846079
Depends how those 20 chaff and couple of super dudes move.
For example if each model gets do one action, one player will be playing 20 things while the other just has 2.
So eventually the chaff will get lucky by pure number games.
There must be some activation economy to compensate.

>>96850223
Well, 3D6 vs. D20 have different probabilities, so the does change the feel. 3D6 uses a bell curve, so its a bit more reliable on what you'll roll, where a D20 is a flat chance for each result. So compared, 3D6 feels safer with spikes being more exciting. While a D20 can feel like a coin flip, so it can create more tension in key moments.

>>96850575
>>96852942

And functionally, d20 vs d100 are the same except for the degree to which modifiers affect the results and the granularity of resolution. A +5 is worth more when your randomisation goes from 1-20 vs 1-100.

>>96855768
I'm still trying to decide whether I want to use xd20 keep highest or xd100 keep highest

>>96846433
>Twig
I'm having a difficult time finding anything. Got a link or a more specific term we could research?

>>96846875
It's a web serial by the author of Worm. Very biopunk.

>>96418965
Some above comments got me thinking, what would be a good system for the Pact web serial and its sequel Pale?

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>>96418965
Kill Team

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>>96418965
Is anyone here familiar with the Return of the Runebound Professor books? I'm looking for a system that would work for it.

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>>96849239
Its bonus spell progression is the same as Eunuch Warlock, which was updated to +1 casting at every level after 1st (and replaces its upgrade to Spell Focus spells with a different one).

The issue though is that 3.0 Eunuch Warlock received "New Spell Level" as a class feature at 5th and 10th level, increasing the level it could assign its bonus spell slots to, while Mystic has no equivalent.

Their Spell Secret class feature was inherited by the 3.5 Wu Jen class (at lv3/9/12/15/18), though with Empower Spell no longer an option.

>>96855457
>fuck with muggles
it's called Prestidigitation

>>96854909
this one seemed decent, though I assume you probably found it yourself
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xLnDuzhHsPCEz_eX0yTYIf7M5w6QnipN3lFSYmoPhbg/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.o3sci3onox6

>>96849239
>>96855569
Two things to note
>The feats required to enter
>Most spells stop scaling 5 levels after you get them, sometimes 10

So I'd go with something like
>5/10 casting (+1 at even levels)
>1st level class feature lets you apply Enlarge, Extend, Silent or Still for free whenever you cast a spell, chosen each time. Your options expand to Empower at 5th level, Maximize at 7th, and Quicken at 9th
>At 3rd level, whenever you apply one or more metamagic feats to a spell (including the free ones above), you gain +1 CL/DC for each level increase. This can explicitly break caps (e.g. 11d6 fireballs) because there was a feat which works like that somewhere.
>At 10th level your spells ignore spell resistance

>>96855645
I had not, no! Thank you, I'll give it a look later

>>96846253
I'm hoping for lore about the outer provinces so I can fuck off from Luthadel in my campaign

>>96848499
Yeah, it does seem to dominate the books a lot. Same here.

>>96851059
There are quotes from Brandon that say that the point of Mistborn is to focus on a central city, which makes sense, since it turns it into a character in its own right

>>96854385
>There are quotes from Brandon that say that the point of Mistborn is to focus on a central city, which makes sense, since it turns it into a character in its own right
Interesting. Where does it say that?

>>96855666
I can't remember where exactly, because he's said it a couple times in interviews, but thanks to the autism that is the arcanum, I've got a good enough quote
>Third, in the first half of Hero of Ages, I don't like quite how much traveling there is. I don’t think it gets across the feel that I want. I would have set more in Luthadel. It feels out of place in retrospect because that story (the story of Mistborn) is sort of the story of that city. I could had the same book, but set it in a fortress within Luthadel. That would make the city's "character" remain in the third book, and let you see the progress (or in this case, the opposite) of the world through the way the city looks.