PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

[Lightray]

In looking over some of the background of my campaign (which was restarted, after having been a multi-GM campaign 15 years ago; so there's a lot of background) I realized that some of the biggest background and metaphysics ideas came from PC origin stories.

 

There was a White Magus, with an enemy Black Magus, and they became two of twelve magi that act as the Archimages.

 

Someone had a character who was half-dream, and so was created entire metaphysical realms explaining how dreams and nightmares work.

 

We had a character who was psionic, and so gained a second "source of powers" for the campaign world (it's a magic-source campaign mostly).

 

Someone wanted an elf (a la "Elfquest" *sigh*), and now I've got pseudo-Amerind tribal elves in a subdimension in New Orleans to deal with.

 

Anyone else have examples of PC backstories that suddenly redefined large portions of your gameworld?

[sinanju]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

Anyone else have examples of PC backstories that suddenly redefined large portions of your gameworld?

 

I've posted here (somewhere) before about a PC elven mage in another GM's game who got so fed up with the mulish stubbornness and stupidity of the human villagers he was trying to help that he decided at the end of that adventure that the Dark Elves were right--humans had to go!

 

So when I started a fantasy game later on for the same group, the PCs were modern humans transported to Yrth (this was GURPS) where they wound up in the forefront of the battle against YADE (Yet Another Dark Elf), whose campaign of genocide was well advanced....

 

That disgruntled elf's backstory was the fundamental motivation for a later campaign!

[hooligan x]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

In my current campaign (a restart of my BBB campaign of the early 90's set 50 years later) the supreme magus is an android built by an old PC. There are legacy heros decended from the original PCs as well. The first story hook involved a now infirm former PC who needed rescuing.

 

The current PCs' backstories have influenced the tone of the campaign. Lillith's ability to talk to ghosts and her dead sister's use of dreams to attack her have made me address metaphysical issues I wouldn't have thought of. The fact that only an immortal Golden Age PC was a "traditional" superhero made me decide that spandex and codenames were out of fashion and tightly regulated by the government. The dark tone of the campaign is a reflection of the original moral ambiguity of the PCs. It is interestiing that the PCs are now evolving into a more traditional superteam and trying to fight the darkness and corruption both (internal and external).

[Jhamin]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

Hmmm.

 

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I ran "Pyramid in the Sky" for my high school group. In the final leg of the adventure, the scrappy geneticist/weird science hero led the Beddun revolt against the Psychophants. He was last seen on a refugee shuttle headed to deep space (the player left for school).

Years later when BlueBudda joined my group he created a bio-engineered alien supersoldier. We adapted the character into a lost soldier from the ongoing Beddun/Psychophant war. It was determined that his genetic modifications were induced by the old PC, who is busy creating a large force of supersoldiers not based on Psi-powers to better fight the Psychophants.

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Hex's old PC was hunted by Buzzsaw from the old Murder in Stronghold adventure from the Hero System Almanac. When I ran Menace out of Time from Champions Presents he got picked to be stranded with the PCs in 13000 BC. Over the course of the next year his close contact with the PCs got him to reform his villianous ways. He is now a full NPC member of the team, and has grown into my main NPC loudmouth ally.

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When I switched from 4th to 5th Edition I decided to run a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" style dimensional shakeup/game world reboot.

As coincidence would have it, Hex retired her PC at about the same time and created a new character who was a Celestial reborn as a mortal.

I ended up adding a villian to my "Crisis", a powerful demon manipulating events to create a loophole in the rules of Heaven/Hell, allowing her to escape hell. The PCs spent weeks fighting her, only to have her reborn as Hex's new PC!

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[lemming]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

Most of the campaigns I've run and been part of the GM would place a skeleton of a campaign and over time the PCs would fill in the details.

[concord]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

Most of the campaigns I've run and been part of the GM would place a skeleton of a campaign and over time the PCs would fill in the details.

That is kind of what happened in my Wardens/Foundation Chronicles campaign as it has grown through the years.

 

The history of the world started as kind of a skeleton.

 

There were some things that I felt strongly about so I "fleshed" them out but about 35-40% of the background comes from character backgrounds.

 

Some of the background of the campaign comes from adventures ran in the early 90s, so the campaign world has been evolving for about 15 years of real time. With about 20 years of game time having elapsed.

 

I had one player that was never really happy with one character for too long, so he was always creating new characters. At first it was disappointing that he was always changing characters, but after a while I became use to it. It was just who he was as a person. But there was a bonus to his changing characters all the time and I learned not to mind it. He would create characters with very detailed backgrounds that built upon the campaign's established history or fleshed out another part of the campaign's skeleton history. Probably 15-20% of the campaign background comes from this one player's characters.

[Red Knight]

Re: PC Origins Defining Your Campaign

 

I ran a Cyberpunk campaign for approx 7 years... Initially, the world started out as a basic skeleton and as the campaign progressed and we did flashback episodes and such, the history got more fleshed out.

 

Persoanlly, I think that if you allow the PC's to generate at least a partof your campaigns history then you intergrate the PC's more fully and make them feel really connected to the world.

[Lightray]

Like I said, I started thinking about this because I was reviewing some of my campaign's loooong backstory. When I restarted it, I both updated original characters (for higher point PCs), and made some pregen PCs to choose from.

 

Someone's just made another (secondary) PC who's background involves the "Ortisa Drug Cartel". No idea who they are -- other than a new toy for me. So I'm thinking I should have been encouraging this sort of thing all along. Not only does it involve the players more, but it's nice having someone else do some of the creative thinking once in a while.