PCs with families: how do you like to play them?

[BlackOnyx]

TL;DR - As either a DM or a player, do you enjoy campaigns where PC families are relevant to the adventure?

Spoiler

Show

So the DM for my current campaign did something really cool for our party recently.


A few sessions back (as we were nearing the climax of our current arc) he reached out to each of us with a text: "Tell me about your home town. Location, size, climate, people you know--tell me what it's like."


Lo and behold, last session ended with each of us receiving a new map detailing the larger continent in which our previous adventure had taken place. And marked on the map along with the major cities we'd heard about? Six additional cities, towns & strongholds with the names we'd given him.


The next arc of our campaign is shaping up to be a missing persons case. Presumably, we'll be traveling across the kingdom, likely stumbling across many of the players' hometowns (for better or for worse) as we progress.


Aside from the fact that this is just plain cool (he's been a fantastic DM), this made me realize just how rarely I've seen the families, friends, & acquaintances of PCs play a major role in the campaigns I've played or watched.


Typically (in my experience, at least) families only come up at two points in the game. Briefly at the beginning, when each character describes their backstory, and briefly at the end, when the players retire rich or die trying.


This brings me to my question: as a player or a DM, how do you like to see family interactions play out in your campaigns?


Do you like the idea of using player input? To what extent?


Do you think bringing player families into the mix benefits the game?


Do you think bringing families into the mix presents any issues?


Just curious to see what thoughts people have. Feel free to share any stories/thoughts about your experiences with PC families in game.

[Jay R]

Depends on the DM.

Some people just use PC families as hostages. This is boring.

By contrast, I had a Flashing Blades character in which I deliberately left the idea of family open. Each character in Flashing Blades as an Advantage and a Secret. His Secret was Secret Origins.

Jean-Louis was a foundling, left at Notre Dame in a basket. Nothing is known about him except that he was left with a satin blanket with the monogram "JL". Is it a clue to his parentage? Is he the bastard son of a noble with those initials? Or was he born to a servant girl who stole the blanket? Is he the inconveniently legal heir that somebody wants dead? He does not know, although he still has the blanket.

Note to GM: Neither the character nor the player has any idea what this means. If you choose to clear up the mystery, the secret could easily develop into a Secret Identity, Sworn Vengeance, or Blackmailed, depending on the details. Feel free to use it any way you choose. A monogram cannot be traced (how many JLs are there?), but it might be recognized by a family member, washerwoman, or the original embroiderer. It could also be a blind to the child's identity.

The GM built a long, satisfying plot around it involving politics, nobility, religion, and a mystery. [He turned out to be the son of a mesalliance between the niece of the Comte de Montpazat and a Huguenot bureaucrat. They disappeared twenty years ago. Finding and proving his lineage took up two or three sessions, and the game ended before he could start investigating what happened to his parents.]

[Mordaedil]

My last character(s) were kind of an interesting take on this.

At first I was going to join a friend in America's campaign with his real life friends, so I rolled up a child prodigy transmuter, coming from a noble family, where both parents had come from previous relationships, where they had their own children, and the parents who weren't her parents cheated on their partners and had a pair of twins, leading to a large scandal, where the old parents were basically disgraced and driven out of noble society and they grew to love eachother while filing documents over divorce papers. They also took custody of all the children, so she comes from a big family of technically 4 parents, two of which are estranged to her, and 4 siblings.

Her birth also caused certain consequences for her siblings as she was their true heir, rendering the rest of the family bastards in accordance with the laws from that area, which led them from going from a life of cozy nobility to suddenly being ostracized by their peers. This had an adverse effect on their personalities.

Due to various complications and obligations, my character was sent away to a far-away realm to be educated at a magical academy and the plan was for her siblings to make attempts at her life or rob her of her title, which she cared naught for. This campaign eventually entered hiatus at level 4, leading me to not really get started with it.

But another campaign did pick up later that year, which I posted a bit about on these forums, where I decided to, as my DM pointed out being perfect for it, as my previous character's other sibling. This game also recently entered hiatus after my poor DM lost his notes due to a washing accident, but the plans were for her to meet her mother who would reveal her past to her.

So in my experience, I really want my families to come into play, but it seems to kill my DM.

[Jay R]

In a recent 1e game, the PCs were all princes and princesses, children of the Pharaoh. The adventures were tests to see who deserved to be his heir. This meant that it wasn't enough to succeed, we had to outdo others in competence and flair.

[At first level, we were all taken on a lion hunt. On the way out, my character joked about bringing one in alive. When we saw our first lion, I cast sleep on it, and actually brought it in alive.]

[Eurus]

Families, and backgrounds in general, should (in my opinion) be an asset, not just a vulnerability. Let players drop their family's name to get special treatment, or get occasional presents from their archlich grandma, or have a cousin who drops by every now and then to help out with cleanup after the PCs have destabilized another government.

...That makes it seem more personal when Nana Balefire gets kidnapped by a roving gang of paladins and they have to go rescue her.

[Deophaun]

I don't understand. I thought a requirement to be a PC was to be an orphaned only child. Is there like a feat in Dragon that lets you get around that?

[Jay R]

Families, and backgrounds in general, should (in my opinion) be an asset, not just a vulnerability.

Asset, liability, whatever. It should be a situation which leads to interesting encounters.

...That makes it seem more personal when Nana Balefire gets kidnapped by a roving gang of paladins and they have to go rescue her.

Exactly.

[DrBloodbathMC]

I don't understand. I thought a requirement to be a PC was to be an orphaned only child. Is there like a feat in Dragon that lets you get around that?

Yes, but the prerequisite requires you take the flaw "DM Target"

[Jay R]

Yes, but the prerequisite requires you take the flaw "DM Target"

Don't all PCs have that one? And if not, what's wrong with those DMs?

[Akal Saris]

Heh....9 out of 10 of my PCs have so little family backstory that I wonder if their players imagine they sprang from the earth fully armed and armored.

One amusing anecdote comes to mind - a few sessions ago, one PC gained access to the teleport spell. After a difficult dungeon, he said "Let's all go visit my family and rest and buy magic items!" and teleported the entire party, bleeding and dirty, into the family living room 600 miles away. This without giving me any prior heads-up or describing his home town or family to me. Nothing like teleportation magic to throw the DM's entire planning for a session into a tailspin :P

[TalonOfAnathrax]

I like all my PCs as adults with no close families, or as classic "stranded orphans" tropes.

I once had a high-level wizard spend some of his gold to make a souped-up Speak with Dead spell to ask questions to the long-dead elves who had last seen the Plot Artifacts of the week.

The first thing he did with the spell was use it to try to talk to his dead parents.

10/10 Roleplaying. I was impressed. [Then I wished we'd coordinated a little more about his backstory and relationship to them before they died... But I like to think I pulled it off anyway. He never complained, at any rate]

[Krav201]

It can be a doubled edged sword though. I had a PC whose backstory centered around trying to find his brother to apologize for the treatment he received as a child. Good start right? I mapped out where the brother was, and what he was doing the whole time and I planned out clues and hints as to where the brother was. This player however decided to ask literally ever single NPC in that world, the majority of which had no reason to know what he was talking about, if they had seen his brother. Ended up driving the whole campaign off the rails

[skunk3]

My current PC's family was killed off in a fey raid aside from his sister, as well as that of his neighbor. His sister was the sole survivor between both families. Long story short, we eventually avenged them and I became owner of both (neighboring) farms. As a cleric (eldritch disciple*), I initally had my sister hosted at my main temple for safe keeping, healing, prayers, etc. I eventually donated our ancestral lands to the church with the provision that it becomes a home for troubled youth. Youths from the city who got into trouble would be sent out to the farm for some hard work, fresh air, and holy livin'. :) My sister now lives out there as a sort of matron / overseer even though technically the clergy run things. That said, I've found that too much focus on family really cuts into adventuring sometimes, and becomes too much of a liability / worry. I feel safe leaving my sister at the farm because not only have we eradicated the threat, she is well-protected.

[Jay R]

One amusing anecdote comes to mind - a few sessions ago, one PC gained access to the teleport spell. After a difficult dungeon, he said "Let's all go visit my family and rest and buy magic items!" and teleported the entire party, bleeding and dirty, into the family living room 600 miles away. This without giving me any prior heads-up or describing his home town or family to me. Nothing like teleportation magic to throw the DM's entire planning for a session into a tailspin :P

Oh, this just calls out for an ogre raid on the family's home village. Ogres shouldn't overwhelm PCs that can teleport, even bleeding and dirty, but a melee when they expected rest seems like a reasonable plot twist.

And next time, he can lay the groundwork for the peaceful home town in advance.

[Deophaun]

Oh, this just calls out for an ogre raid on the family's home village. Ogres shouldn't overwhelm PCs that can teleport, even bleeding and dirty, but a melee when they expected rest seems like a reasonable plot twist.

At which point, the character calmly and casually strolls through the burning village, ignoring the screams of panic and death wails. "Hey mom, hey dad! These are my friends. Wait! Don't attack! Didn't I mention I was adopted by ogres?"

[Jay R]

At which point, the character calmly and casually strolls through the burning village, ignoring the screams of panic and death wails. "Hey mom, hey dad! These are my friends. Wait! Don't attack! Didn't I mention I was adopted by ogres?"

DM: Your father fires over your head at the rival ogre behind you and says, "Don't just stand there - the ogres from the upper village are attacking!

I can invent just as fast as the PCs can.

[Nifft]

One amusing anecdote comes to mind - a few sessions ago, one PC gained access to the teleport spell. After a difficult dungeon, he said "Let's all go visit my family and rest and buy magic items!" and teleported the entire party, bleeding and dirty, into the family living room 600 miles away. This without giving me any prior heads-up or describing his home town or family to me. Nothing like teleportation magic to throw the DM's entire planning for a session into a tailspin :P

That's awesome.

The next session should be all about solving slice-of-life family problems using overpowered PC tactics, and about using social skills to avoid housework.

The PCs shouldn't be allowed to stay too long -- that dungeon isn't going to plunder itself, but someone else might very well pick up where they had left off and take all the good loot -- but they should feel good about having future visits with your backstory.

[Deophaun]

DM: Your father fires over your head at the rival ogre behind you and says, "Don't just stand there - the ogres from the upper village are attacking!

"Dad, that's uncle Garresh. What did I tell you about raiding without your glasses?"

"Come on, guys. Smell's like mom's roasting up a halfling in that hut. We're just in time for dinner!"

[Velaryon]

I've made some truly fun use of my PCs' families in my game, with a combination of extrapolating backstories and working with the individual players to develop them further. I'll break them down one character at a time.

Spoiler: Tyrrox, centaur fighter

Show

Tyrrox has a pretty basic backstory: his father was the tribe elder, and Tyrrox chafed under his father's shadow. So rather than following his father's footsteps to become a druid and someday lead the tribe,
he instead set out into the world as a warrior. He picked up a lance, got a set of armor fitted to himself, and the rest is history.

How I used it: One day the party was hired by the owner of a traveling menagerie to bring back some live owlbears. Tyrrox remembered that they were native to the same forest he grew up in, so the party headed that way. They encountered his tribe, helped them deal with a drider probem, and saved Tyrrox's young cousin from being kidnapped by a lamia. That was it for the time, but his player is currently planning to head back there and enlist his father's help with a magical drought that is plaguing the land, since he's one of the most powerful druids they know.

Spoiler: Goroc, half-orc druid

Show

This one is a bit tricky, because Goroc's player has a tendency to bounce between characters a lot. Usually it's because they die, but he's also lost character sheets or simply gotten tired of characters. In Goroc's case, his backstory was pretty bare-bones. He was raised in a druid enclave by his mother, and eventually became an adventurer to discover the identity of his orcish father and where he might be, if he's still alive.

I haven't actually involved said father directly, but when the player decided he'd have more fun if he just awakened his gorilla animal companion and played that as his character (the gorilla was always his favorite thing about this character),
I had one of the other druids from his enclave contact him about a lead on his father's location. So Goroc awakened his animal companion and asked the gorilla to take his place in the party so that he could pursue his father.

Spoiler: Solius, elf ranger

Show

Solius is another character from the same player who used to play Goroc and now currently plays his former animal companion. Solius was a veteran military commander who had gone into retirement a few years back. However, when his young son and daughter were murdered (fun fact, this was done by ANOTHER character belonging to this same player, a chaotic stupid dragonborn), Solius picked up his bow and set out to track down his children's murderer (the player's former PC, who was thrown in prison after the murders and also because the player had to drop out of the game for awhile). Tracking down information on the killer led him to the rest of the party (who had no involvement in that crime and by now were tracking their former party mate who had become an antagonist), and so Solius allied with them. Eventually they were able to defeat his old dragonborn, not only avenging the killings but resurrecting his children as well, who are now NPC's living at their castle. Eventually the player got tired of playing Solius so he went back into retirement.

Spoiler: Leon'ard, human warlock

Show

Leon'ard, or Leon for short, was born to a tiefling father and a human mother, which means his family received all the suspicion that comes with that baggage, even though they were good people. They pretty much minded their own business and led normal lives, even as the country around them collapsed into civil war (the game is set in Tethyr in the Forgotten Realms, about six years after a decades-long succession crisis finally got resolved). Leon was sent outside the country for his higher education, studying to become a lawyer. While he was away though, his parents were burned at the stake by a mob. He returned, horrified at what had happened, and tried to learn who was responsible for inciting the mob. Unfortunately, though he was able to discover that one of the land's Dukes had been responsible for inciting the mob against his family, he was not able to prove anything in court (since the government had stabilized in the meantime). Denied justice, Leon tried to keep his head down and focus on his work, but after several years of simmering anger,
he abandoned his law practice and embraced his warlock powers.

I have to be careful what I say about Leon since his player is a member of this forum as well, but without giving too much away, here's how his family has become involved in the game:
1. After a one-night stand with an NPC rogue, a random die roll determined that Leon had impregnated her. So he pursued a relationship with the character and ended up marrying her. This turned not only his wife but the adventuring party she was a part of from a one-off encounter into major storyline characters that have helped out in several important battles, and now base their operations out of the PCs' castle (except for Leon's wife who is about 7 months pregnant and is out of the adventuring life for the time being). Leon also learned fairly recently that his wife was the daughter of a disgraced former noble who had tried to seize power from the rightful king and queen near the end of the country's recent civil war. She had forfeited her name and title and wanted nothing to do with her father's legacy, but it still came as quite a shock to Leon.

2. The party has foiled other plots from the same aristocrat responsible for the death of Leon's parents (though the PCs are only vaguely aware of the Duke's connection to said plots). One of those plots involved an attempt to assassinate Leon, which was (temporarily) successful.

3. Due to having an extremely powerful fiend in his family tree (Leon believes it to be Mephistopheles, but this has never been confirmed), Leon has received some occasional help from his fiendish ancestor. When he was killed in the aforementioned assassination (along with one of the other PCs), he successfully bargained with that devil to have himself and his friend restored to life. More recently, in an attempt to both protect his family and become powerful enough to deal with larger-scale threats to his homeland, Leon has outright sold his soul to that devil in exchange for having the soul and knowledge of a powerful wizard grafted onto his own (think of a combination of V's soul splice in OotS with what happened to Mat in the Wheel of Time). Basically, he was able to respec his character into an Eldritch Theurge to add wizard spells to his repertoire.

Protecting his wife and unborn child has turned out to pretty much become the character's greatest motivation. His wife is no slouch, but she's not operating on Leon's level of power either.

Spoiler: Thallatos, human dread necromancer

Show

Thallatos has perhaps the most detailed background of them all. He grew up in a small village in rural Tethyr. Though he and his sister manifested magical powers at an early age (necromancy for Thallatos, illusion/enchantment for his sister), life was still pretty idyllic until the war came to their town. In defending their home, both of Thallatos's parents revealed previously hidden magic, showing that they were fairly powerful retired adventurers. Thallatos, his sister, and his brother (who got skipped by the magic gene apparently) all helped fight off the threat as well, after which Thallatos and his brother enlisted in the army and helped restore peace and stability to the land (though his brother disappeared during that time and has not been seen since). Afterward, Thallatos settled down with his girlfriend (a spirit shaman) and they opened a paranormal investigation agency together. One day, his girlfriend didn't come back from a mission, so he went looking for her, and ended up hooking up with the rest of the party along the way.

Having been a later addition to the game, Thallatos decided to put his own quest on the back burner and help the others in their own adventures, which included defending a coastal village from pirate attack, escorting a caravan of much-needed food halfway across the country to the capital city during a nationwide famine, and rooting out a Cali****e/drow thieves' guild that had made enemies of the group. Circumstances around that last one led to Thallatos gaining a noble title, and he is now a Count, with a castle and everything. Along the way, Thallatos learned that his sister was not only the royal tutor for the king and queen's five-year old triplets, but was also a spy working directly for the king. Thallatos and his sister have kept their relationship secret from all but their most trusted allies (including the king, queen, and about half the PCs).

With that done, Thallatos set his sights on resuming his search for his missing girlfriend, and the rest of the party joined in to help. Well, they found her, living as a waitress in the country to the north and with no memory of him or her previous life. They managed to persuade her by exposing her boss, who had been mind controlling the staff and running a slavery ring out of his business, so she came with them even though her memory was lost. Just last session, they were finally able to use a wish to restore her memory, which led to the single biggest twist of the entire campaign! It turns out that she case she had taken was a ruse. She was tricked into helping with a ritual, which needed two halves to complete. However, one of the participants must be a spirit, necessitating that the other person be a spirit shaman in order to communicate with them. Her own spirit totem was in on the plot and had lured her into participating in the ritual, which used a major artifact to cause a major drought across the entire country that is too powerful for regular magic to overturn (control weather and similar spells simply do not function within the area of the ritual's effect). After the ritual was done, her captors erased her memory and hid her away, because the ritual could not be undone without her and they might have further need of her.

[Calthropstu]

My current campaign is severely lacking in pc family history. Myself, I usually write up character backgrounds that explain the incessant vagaboundary required by the adventuring lifestyle... usually involving loss of family.

[upho]

As a player, I usually expect my PC's family to matter in a significant way at least once during a campaign. In fact, I don't think I can remember more than a handful campaigns I've played during the last 30 years or so where this haven't been the case. Which is one of the reasons why I always discuss my ideas on a PC background together with the GM before writing it, and so far I've only been happy to include any wishes the GM may have to make things more interesting and better suited for the campaign/setting.

As a GM, I definitely involve as much of PC backstory as I find possible, and not rarely even build very major parts of the story on their family ties. I think family is one of the most powerful tools for immersion and motivation, and of course I'm not gonna leave such a tool unused. As an example, in my current (heavily modified) Rise of the Runelords campaign, members of all of the players' families have/have had significant roles, to the point that their arguably greatest and most problematic foe during more than half of the campaign was actually the uncle of one of the PCs and the father of another. The PCs weren't unaware of this fact, although they only slowly learned about his fall to EVIL^TM through foreshadowings in dreams, found documents and various encounters with his minions. But although he actually was pretty Vader, he didn't have any reason to go "I am your father", (un)fortunately...

[Jay R]

"Dad, that's uncle Garresh. What did I tell you about raiding without your glasses?"

"Come on, guys. Smell's like mom's roasting up a halfling in that hut. We're just in time for dinner!"

DM: Three arrows hit you, doing a total of (roll dice) 23 points of damage. You have teleported into a melee, and no amount of making things up will change that. The surprise round is over; roll for initiative.

[But really, I've never had players try to backstory their way out of a fight in progress.]

[And I've never had to use "backstory" as a verb before, either. This forum continues to delight and amaze.]

[Deophaun]

DM: Three arrows hit you, doing a total of (roll dice) 23 0 points of damage. You have teleported into a melee, and no amount of making things up will change that. The surprise round is over; roll for initiative.

Fixed. We are teleporting in, after all.

But you are absolutely no fun. Handed roleplay gold (now the other party members have to deal with the fact that their traveling companion is not only perfectly okay with a village being slaughtered before his eyes, but also likely a cannibal), you insist on rollplay.

No wonder no one tried that with you.