Killing Orphans; or why your mum is alive and she loves you very much.

[Lockles]

Are you sick of orphans in every single group you play in? There's always at least 2 players who don't want a family that the DM can abuse in a Kidnapping.

Tell them what I told my players:
Your mum is alive, and she loves your very much. Deal with it.

Examples:

Your mum was a well-known paladin. A proper divine butt-kicker that rode into danger on a white horse for 8 years, before she decided it was time to settle down.
Nowadays, she's the guard captain of your hometown. Crime completely ceased when she took up the mantle.
Inspired by the tales about her, you always wanted to go on quests too. All through your childhood, she's trained you to wield a sword and shield and now that you're old enough, she's gifted you her old blade to start your own adventure.
That's a mum you can come home to, talk with about your own adventure, get advice from.
That's a mum that'll hear of your first adventure, and decide to use her savings to buy you an expensive set of full plate armor. Because she's both proud of you, and very worried that you might get hurt.
That's a mum you don't want to mess with.
The city guard is going to protect their captain, so a gang of thugs isn't going to bother. And the big bad evil guy? He's heard the tales of the proper hero she used to be. Even he will think twice.

Your dad is a sage. He's been studying the arcane arts for decades and even teaches at a college at the capital. He's been trying to teach you too, but you're not the bookish kind of student. You need a hands-on approach to get a feel for what things do, rather than reading the outcome in some dusty tome.
He gives you a small crystal, by which he can contact you from time to time. See how you're doing. And tells you that if you ever need anything, he's here for you.
That's a caring, loving father, who would love it if you would follow in his footsteps. But he also understands you need to find your own way.
That's also a father, who's a good enough wizard, that he's teaching others as a professor.
Imagine the trouble you'd have kidnapping a mage who can teleport around, and hurl fire and lightning at you. Now imagine, you're trying to kidnap that guy from a building where everyone can hurl at least some fire and lightning at you. And that's ignoring the Slytherin-esque bunch, who would take the ones you managed to dismiss, and un-dismiss them in a rather cruel, gruesome manner. (I'm talking necromancy, folks.)
Your bad guy would have to be particularly insane, or very, very adept at dueling mages to pull off a kidnapping like that. Probably a bit of both.

Your sister isn't much of a fighter, but she's studious and smart. Last year, she made it to Lawmaker over at the country's capital.
Where she's protected by it's police force, because she's considered some one who's at a risk of being assaulted or abducted, due to her position in the city. They'll be prepared for bandits, thieves' guilds and other low-lives. So the ones you meet along your travels who'd think "Hey lets kidnap his family, whom we have no idea of who they are or where to find them" won't get very far.
And big bad evil guys who can march into capital cities and take on it's military/police/(royal) guards, is already so strong and powerful, he shouldn't need to kidnap anyone to get to you.

Giving yourself family members that enjoy a position of protection and power, has a great potential to be a considerable asset on your adventures.
You need to get some cooperation from the guards? Your mum is their boss, and you've been training alongside them for years. They'll gladly comply.
Need some advice on a magical artifact that sees to have put a curse on your party's bard, after he tried to produce offspring with it? Dad will know a thing or two about magical STD's.
Run into some trouble with the local thieves' guild? A shop-keep scammed you out of your money? Some Crown's Guard is bullying your friends? Sis can probably sort that out for you.

Now, of course, don't give yourself all 3 examples. If you're giving yourself a family of heroes, you're not going to have much of an adventure for yourself. But daddy's big balls of fire alone can keep the family safe. Mum's such a great warrior, no criminals even dare set foot in town, she's going to keep pops and your brothers safe, no problem.

Your DM isn't going to mind a somewhat powerful person in your backstory. He's seeing a set-piece that can be used as more than Kidnap-fodder. And he's just happy you didn't make that third Orphan in the group.
We're running an Adventure here! Not an Orphanage!

He's also thinking about how he could replace the old sage in the village that you'd have to talk to on your first adventure to get info about the dungeon you're about to enter that's known to be covered in maical traps with Magical Pops.
Or how the cleric in the village is going to be much kinder to you than the rest of the group, because he recognizes you as the daughter of Mommy the Divine Slayer of Evil and Bringer of Light and Stuffs.
Or how your sister might have heard you joined a band of adventurers trying to solve problems in the countryside, and she's pushing the quests with the good rewards your way.

It's opening up a lot of options for you, your group and the DM.

[Koo Rehtorb]

This is way overstepping your authority and I'd consider this a pretty big red flag from a GM. Unless the game was specifically sold as the GM making your characters for you, in which case I wouldn't join in the first place.

[Lockles]

These are examples of what your parents might be. I didn't force my players to have a paladin mum and a wizard dad.
I did want them to think about how much it adds to their character and the world they're in if their parents weren't just "lulz I don't have a family because I don't want the DM to force my PC into doing stuff".

Which is a dumb reason for it. You want to play a game where 1 person has agency of everything that's happening in the world. And you want them to find ways to engage you in it.
But you're not giving them anything to work with except for an MMORPG-like "I popped into existance, now entertain me" kind of character.

If your DM's keep kidnapping your family members, they're lousy DM's, because they can't come up with new material.
Your brother got kidnapped. Okay, sure. You save him.
He gets kidnapped again? Really? What kind of bars is he drinking at to get kidnapped twice in a row? Screw it, fine, lets save him again.
Now, what's ne-... He's captured AGAIN? Either he's on some kind of self-destructive quest to his own grave, or "the world" is seriously out to get him. We'd better consult clerics to find out what "the gods" have against him!
Also, lets set some of our earnings aside to buy better locks for my family's home. Maybe ask ma and pa to move to a safer town.

That's the passive-aggressive way of letting your DM know he needs to come up with a better plot hook.
You may just tell him he's a hack and look for some one else to take that role. Or maybe the solution is that your character is now constantly on guard near his brother and won't go more than a few feet from him.
That'll ruin any adventure before it even begins.

"You're going on a quest to find the lost scrolls o-"
"I'm not going anywhere. Everytime I turn around, Billy is being kidnapped!"
Now it's on your DM to find a way to convince you to go on the adventure.
Of course if he's a ****, he'll convince you, run the adventure, and Billy is going to be kidnapped when you get back. But at that point, why are you even playing with this guy?

[Mechalich]

Traditionally, in the kind of fantasy, science fiction, and other stories that RPGs draw upon, the kind of people who run off to seek fame and fortune at extremely high personal risk originate disproportionally from broken homes, orphanages, and other tragic upbringings. People with two parents who love them very much and have stable employment don't allow their children to run off and risk their lives plundering tombs and roaming through haunted wilderness. Even those that society expects to train to fight for much of their childhood, such as the children of feudal nobles, don't operate under any 'adventuring' expectation though they may fight in wars.

In general, it is extremely common for adventuring types to be 'unable to go home,' for any number of reasons. That may be because they never had a home, or they ran away from home, or they were exiled from home, or their home was destroyed, or the authorities will capture them if they go home, etc. In truth the only common adventurer backstory that is fully compatible with having loving parents and a stable family situation is conscription.

'Orphan' is a perfectly acceptable backstory, especially given the often very high mortality levels of the pre-industrial world's commonly used in games - having Mom die in childbirth and Dad kick the bucket to the plague is garden-variety stuff. Everyone alive would know someone like that. The problem with 'orphan' is that players often try to use it as an excuse to get out of having a backstory, which doesn't actually work. A child has to be raised by someone in order to survive to adulthood, whether it's extended family, an uncaring civic institution, or a nice religious institution (honestly, paladins are probably more likely to be orphans than anything else), and the player needs to generate that and to be aware of how that upbringing would influence their character.

[Metahuman1]

Any DM I've ever felt I might need to try this on would look at me and say "No, that gives your character too much power!" because of the connections that opens up.

Then agree the kidnapping thing wouldn't be a problem, and either kill them and claim it wasn't a kidnapping, or just kidnap them anyway.

[Mendicant]

Kidnapping is hardly the only thing keeping people from wanting to create family for their PCs. I think more important than trying to gameplan what the DM might do is simply not wanting to go into a lot of depth on backstory, and wanting a Pony Express rider who doesn't have deep connections to anyplace other than what the choose to connect to during play.

[Lockles]

If you want to look at things "traditionally" and "rationally" in games about fantasy worlds filled with magic and/or technology that doesn't make sense, then an orphan being trained and experienced enough to take up arms is extremely unlikely.

Who trained them? Not their parents. And not having parents = not having proper food sources (or you'd be adopted, in which case you have adoptive parents which makes the being an orphan somewhat mute, doesn't it?). Which means you're malnourished, making you physically weaker, untrained making you less skilled at combat than anyone who's ever had training.

The problem with orphans isn't whether they fit into a world or not. Anything can fit into a world. But some one who's accomplished nothing but find barely enough food to eat, while apparently never meeting anyone noteworthy enough to have been noted in a backstory is a boring protagonist to any story. And lacking any ties to the world makes it more difficult for a GM to ground you to that world.
And why would you actively make it more difficult for a GM to create the entertainment you want?

You're in a world where half-demons walk around among humans like it's no big deal. Elves are using magic arrows to fight. I even heard of people who can sing others into doing their bidding.
But you're drawing a line at the reason why some one might be interested in seeing that world? Because surely you wouldn't be interested in the marvels of a particularly marvelous multiverse if you had people who loved and cared about you...?

Columbus family was very much alive, and wealthy when he set off to sail to a new world. Quite the adventure for some one who's not orphaned.
Ragnar Lothbruk (is that how you spell his name? The show didn't do much for me.) set sail across oceans while his kids were home on his farm. Didn't say much about his parents, but clearly loved ones didn't tie him down much.
Dirck Hartog sailed to discover Australia, and mapped out it's coastline. His family was fine.
Marco Polo went on his journeys together with his father and uncle. Seems instead of being an orphan, his family was the reason he went on adventure
Walter Raleigh was a soldier, adventurer, spy and even schmoozed up to Queen Elizabeth. His father was Sir Gilbert. A lord. Didn't keep him from seeking out adventure.
Amerigo Vespucci was a diplomat, thanks to his daddy's influences, a banker, thanks to his family's wealth. Had a wife and children. And then went on such an adventure that an entire continent was named after him.

So much for tradition, huh?

[Mystic Muse]

If a DM is forcing my character to have a family, he better have a good reason in mind.

Using them as bargaining chips is the most boting option available of course, which is why many people don't have their characters have parents.

How likely my characters are to have parents id directly proportionate to how much I trust the GM to leave them be.

[Lockles]

Having relatives who are accomplished doesn't have to make your character powerful.
Putting them in power structures (Part of a college staff, captain of the guard, lawmaker in a city) means they'd have to adhere to the rules of that power structure. Thrive within that power structure. So we're making them lawful.
And lawful folks wouldn't abuse their power.

And that's why mum isn't sending all the guards under her command with you to defend some town outside her jurisdiction.
(If you were to alert guards to a threat to a town within their jurisdiction they would likely go out to help anyway, so your mum being in charge wouldn't affect this situation much.)

The main difference between the two is how likely the guards would take you seriously. As in.. Show respect. So basically exactly the Soldier Background Feature..? That hardly seems overpowered.

For the wizard it's essentially the Sage's background feature. You don't magically know where the info can be found, which is a silly part of that background, honestly. Instead, you ask Daddy Wise Old Ghandalf where to find the info.

How overpowered that you'd use some one in your backstory to use a background feature.

[Lord Raziere]

the weirder thing about orphan characters is that in reality, it'd give them a lot of reasons to try and MAKE a family they never had rather than try to ignore the whole thing. I mean, I have orphan characters, I'm guilty of that, but the result is that they always desire a family of their own. its just logical that they would work to find some way of getting the emotional connection others have. the result is that my current orphan character is a mother with her lesbian wife and an adopted daughter and they all kick ass together (granted, there was a lot of time travel shenanigans involved and the daughter isn't even the same species, but since when did those matter?) as well as establishing many friendships with others around her.

but yeah there is a lot of reasons why you make your character an orphan or otherwise have no special notable connections to other people, especially in combat campaigns. roleplaying games can sometimes be like gambling: you hope you play your cards right and have things your willing to put at stake, but sometimes the dice don't always go your way. an emotional connection like a beloved mother of a character (for example, my Solar Exalted character, a sorcerer has a neomah mother whom she loves more than her actual mother who taught her sorcery for reasons) can be something you don't want to risk or put at stake of the whims of the dice. and GMs don't like it when the players have it easy or don't risk things because they tend to want to craft campaigns with Tension and people being safe with no risk of dying doesn't create Tension. and if you don't enforce the consequences of things not going your way....the tension goes away as well.

making sure your character doesn't have anything that makes the PLAYER too emotionally attached to that they won't lose, is a hedging of the players bets. Its making sure that they will have fun without the pain of losing something they don't want to, out of caring for it too much. I want to care about a beloved npc thats related to my character, and I understand that risks are apart of the roleplaying game. that doesn't mean I want those beloved npcs to be what I have to put up at stake for the bet. because every combat is the GM making a bet with the player: "I bet you can beat this encounter, if you don't you lose X, and if you win, you gain Y". and sometimes if I get too invested in an NPC.....I can't risk that bet. I can handle losing money or a piece of equipment, but an NPC is another story.

and unfortunately, making that NPC powerful, just opens up different avenues of how you can be be hurt through them: positions can be taken away. towns can be destroyed. figures of power can be assassinated for all sorts of reasons, power could corrupt the NPC you knew and make them evil, and so on. GMs are gods and if they want to hurt you through your beloved NPC, it doesn't matter what in game precautions you take, they will find a way eventually. the only solution is OOC communication. which not everyone has time to talk out. so you instead you get the default of being an orphan, minimal communication, no connections, no pain.

of course its real funny that the GM never just pulls the classic "you find out your real family" trope to give the player loved ones just so that they can yank it all away. because from another point of view, orphaning is basically giving your GM a blank check to make your real family turn out to be anyone they want for maximum pain. guess not even GMs are that cruel. or simply don't like the work involved.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Frankly, I rather dislike all of those examples. The way I see adventuring, people with happy stable home lives don't become adventurers. Adventurers are the outcasts, the desperate, the mad, the people who can't fit into normal society.

So, sure, maybe you have parents, maybe you don't. But if you do they're probably drunken and abusive, or deranged cultists, or desperately poor. If you have a famous guard captain for a mother then you better believe you should be enlisting in the town guard yourself and taking a nice safe cushy job there at home behind tall strong walls. Because out in the wilds lies twisted abominations and a gruesome untimely death.

[Potato_Priest]

I don't think there's anything wrong with orphans per se, just characters who have no connection to anyone in the world. And there's an easy solution for that one: encourage/force the players to make characters that know each other before the campaign. I just did it for a game of my own, and I think it's helped make the PCs' interactions with one another more interesting knowing their shared background.

[Kaptin Keen]

On the other hand, I'd wager the overwhelming majority of everyone who was ever considered a 'hero' in real life came from an absolutely normal and loving upbringing. I'd wager very nearly everyone who choses a high risk job - whether in military service, law enforcement or as a cartoonist - has an enormously ordinary background.

We feel somehow that our adventurers need to come from some sort of special circumstance, their mothers milk infused with the ability to overcome hardship and wickedness. To a man (m/f/w) they were born under a dark sign, during a thunderstorm, omens and portends in every fibre of their beings - and frankly, the harder we try to make them oh so fated, the more boring and predictable it becomes.

I do it too, mind - I'm not pointing any fingers. But I do think we need to at least be honest about the fact that .... it's the polar opposite of being inventive, creative and original: Our backstories are, generally speaking, utter crap. And, using such harsh words, let's say I'm speaking mostly of myself - unless you agree =)

[5crownik007]

As a GM, giving your characters backstories and family members makes everything so much more interesting. It's also why I insist that people roll their stats rather than use array or point-buy except for GURPS, but that's a different topic entirely.

I insist that they roll their stats because it makes everything so much more interesting. If everyone was an orphan with arrayed stats and perfect optimization, then you'll literally end up with identical adventuring parties from group to group.

Incidentally, this is why I'm fine with point-buy in GURPS. GURPS has disadvantages, which encourages players to make their characters more interesting and layered.

Anyway, if every character was an orphan, it's not only boring, but it makes the GM/DM's job harder. You have no idea how much time my players spent completely silent because they stood there, waiting for me to push them down the railroad, when I was expecting them to exercise their agency. The problem was that they had no ties to the world and didn't have any personal goals. They were blank slates.

In fact, if you're orphaned, why were you orphaned? Were your parents murdered? Where is the murderer? What are you doing adventuring when you should seek justice for the murderer? Who took care of you when your parents died? (this is how to annoy an orphan player who didn't consider their backstory)

The problem I have with OP is that I don't think that players consider family members a liability/kidnap-bait. I think that players don't consider family members period. The reason so many characters are orphans is because people didn't think through their characters and are now just Bob the Human Fighter.

tl;dr orphans are boring, do something interesting.

[Metahuman1]

Having relatives who are accomplished doesn't have to make your character powerful.
Putting them in power structures (Part of a college staff, captain of the guard, lawmaker in a city) means they'd have to adhere to the rules of that power structure. Thrive within that power structure. So we're making them lawful.
And lawful folks wouldn't abuse their power.

And that's why mum isn't sending all the guards under her command with you to defend some town outside her jurisdiction.
(If you were to alert guards to a threat to a town within their jurisdiction they would likely go out to help anyway, so your mum being in charge wouldn't affect this situation much.)

The main difference between the two is how likely the guards would take you seriously. As in.. Show respect. So basically exactly the Soldier Background Feature..? That hardly seems overpowered.

For the wizard it's essentially the Sage's background feature. You don't magically know where the info can be found, which is a silly part of that background, honestly. Instead, you ask Daddy Wise Old Ghandalf where to find the info.

How overpowered that you'd use some one in your backstory to use a background feature.

The 1 time I tried 5E, I rolled Noble Background on the table per the GM's directions.

It said for it's ability I should be able to get an audience with certain types of people.

Well, game starts, stuffs going on in the town. Mayor needs help. Mayor is actively calling for adventurers to help. Being an adventurer in a part of them, I decide I will use my Noble Background ability too get an audience with the Mayor to talk about the problem and get the quest.




I will give you exactly 1 guess how successful that was.



If the answer was "You couldn't do it, your ability automatically didn't work be damned that the Mayor was calling for it actively, and the Wizard had to use spells to get the party into the damn Mayor's office to receive our quest." You would be correct.

That was with something that cost a character resource and was on the character sheet, in a slot designated for something that eats a character resource.




Can you conceive of what would have happened if I'd just written a backstory and said "Oh, yeah, My Dad's the local Lords Master At Arms, trains his knights." or "Oh, yeah, Mom's a Powerful Druid, has this freakishly hugh exotic big cat animal companion, runs a Druid Circle in a forest about a half days walk form here. " Or "Oh, yeah, Sisters a Wizard, she's got a teaching assistant gig at the local wizards college and is well on her way to being a tenured professor of Abjuration." or "Oh, yeah, my brother? He's apprenticed to the local lords spy master, he's a fixture in the court with that rapier wit and tongue of his."?

Can you? I can. Nothing that doesn't involve it being a way to get an extra pain in the ass kicking for my character.

And then people wonder why Orphans? If your getting 50% or more of your party as Orphans, particularly if they have played with you before, the real thing you, as GM, need to ask yourself is, "Have I buggered this up? Cause, this is a sign of a lack of trust, meaning I need to earn trust, and not betray it once I do get it.". You should not auto assume the PC's are the problem here.

[Knaight]

There are easier ways to encourage this. Make families an important part of cultures, run a game where the PCs are operating largely within a culture instead of out past it and occasionally in its margins, and you tend to see PCs that have cultural ties. Make games about wandering adventurers which never really center their ties to the world, and you get characters with no ties to the world, including the occasional orphaned ones.

Having relatives who are accomplished doesn't have to make your character powerful.
Putting them in power structures (Part of a college staff, captain of the guard, lawmaker in a city) means they'd have to adhere to the rules of that power structure. Thrive within that power structure. So we're making them lawful.
And lawful folks wouldn't abuse their power.

Are you seriously saying that anyone who thrived within an organized power structure wouldn't abuse their power? Because that's the implication here, and history is rife with notable counter examples. On top of that most of us probably know a few.

[BWR]

This seemingly widespread opinion that adventurers must be orphans bewilders me. Our games have never had this. While there is more than a fair share of previous family being irrelevant when we make the character and even during play, there is a general assumption that there is at least some family in the background even if we never touch upon it. Orphans are very rare.
Many characters do have family listed, and sometimes family plays a part in the story. Families help cement and flesh out a character, they give them ties to the setting, and sometimes hooks for adventures.

As for Koo's feeling that adventurers are all mad, well maybe, but the young in seek of excitement, the determined out to fix the world and the free spirit may be mad but they are not desperate nor deranged. Not everyone who does risky things does so because they have no choice.

Just to take our long-running Mystara group:
One was a noble family's son who ran off to seek adventure and prove his worth in battle. One just wanted to see the world and make things right. One, orphan but raised by the local church in a loving and supportive adoptive family and she wanted to spread the blessings of her goddess. Another orphan raised by her granduncle, and she's another runaway who just wanted adventure instead of a life of luxury. The last was married with kids in a respectable social/governmental position before being sent on a quest which kind of ballooned.
While two of these are technically orphans, they are not the kind of orphans apparently common in other peoples' games: the kind without anyone who took care of them and without family to 'be taken advantage of by the GM'. This is also the only time I can recall in 26 years that we've had two orphans in the group.


As for powerful family, either personally or politically: yup. This happens. It doesn't mean they will solve any and all problems for you. it doesn't mean you will automatically be able to abuse your connections to your own advantage. Again, to use the PCs mentioned above: the noble son helped arrange travel permits and an audience with the king. The PCs could have done this without him, but things went a lot quicker and smoother with his family's help. The church that raised one PC gave free healing to the PCs when needed (including expensive stuff, if they had the necessary diamonds), but they did that to everyone in the valley. Granduncle is a king of a tiny country and a 20th level sorcerer and did actually save the party at one point.
All this comes at a cost. A noble son is expected to further his family's goals, even if they conflict with his own. The church may give free healing but that means they sometimes need money, so grateful PCs end up donating a lot to them in any case, more than simply paying for spells would cost. Granduncle was a casually brutal tyrant and had unpleasant interests (the less said about his experiments with the various clones of his grandniece the better).
In no cases did family simply solve every little problem for the PCs. Mostly there is an attitude of "you're an adult now, we can't be wiping your arse forever". If something is really bad, sure. Also, most PCs (and players) don't want to beg others to do the work for them so they don't ask for help.

Families can be useful but they are also a drain on resources. They support but require support. In any case, they have enriched the game because it gives more NPCs to interact with, more ties to work with and more consideration for actual roleplay.

And this is just in our more or less 'standard' D&D games. They have nothing on the alt.u. Rokugan we have where all the PCs are the emperor, his family, the extended family and marriage into the ruling families of several clans. Family relations are all important in games like that.

[Lockles]

If your DM wouldn't allow you to use the Noble Background's feature specifically to do what it says it does, then that's on him. Not the background feature.
So if your family is backing up that feature, and the DM still dismisses it, that's also on him.
In that situation, just point out to him that your next characters won't be given backstories, because he's ignoring them anyway, and he's a bad DM for doing so.

And no, I'm not saying all the folks who thrive in power structures are lawful good. But you're the one making this NPC, why are you forcefully making your own mother a power hungry chaotic neutral monster? Are you that desperate to give your character a leg up?
The point is to give your character something interesting in their background, rather than "I'm Oliver Twist, but also I have dragon's blood for no reason".
I'm not saying you should immediately exploit any options you're creating for yourself to be crowned emperor of the universe and at least 3 demiplanes and maybe beyond. If that's the first thing your mind goes to, that's on you.

(Exaggerating of course, but you get the point.)

If you create worthwile NPC's that would very much be able to influence your character's decisions and opinions, it helps your DM set, keep and guide you on your adventure.
And do keep in mind, you're likely not the only person in that party. So it's not like your one relative is going to be steering the plot. (Unless of course the entire rest of your group are Orphans with no background or backstory to work with, and that 1 NPC you made is literally the only proper connection the DM can use. But that more reinforces my point, I think.)

[Hyperversum]

TBH, it's a cliche mixed with a trope. AT TIMES being an orphan makes sense, but it depends on the kind of character/backstory you want to work with. The same goes for having a family.

But forcing a thing is never good. Simply because "No you can't" without a reason sounds to many player like a... useless rule. Because that's what it is. And it rarely works, if you ask me.
In particular if the player is one who likes roleplaying and the background isn't just something for the DM to work with, but also something he truly uses to RP his character.

My first character was an elven wizard, who was pretty young for his race in starting his adventure. He was was the son of a "cross-race" elven couple (dad was a Grey Elf and the mother was a normal High Elf) who were travellers, merchants and low level spellcasters, after years they settled down but here and now they left home to travel again. Also, he had another sister who became basically the village chief, a priest of Correlon (I thought of her as an adept, not even a cleric).
A wholesome family as background but one of the reason for his leaving the school of magic was the fact that the parents at a certain point were not returning home and his sister was searching for them. So he decided to search for her and offer his help, which could prove useful as a wizard.
Wholesome past but also a fear of losing such family. TECHNICALLY he was an orphan at the start of the campaign tho.

One of the character I am playing now otherwise is a paladin; a bastard son of a noble and famous paladin and a noblewoman he worked for a bit. Sadly, this woman was married and in order to avoid the wrath of the husband, the mother asked the paladin to take with him the baby while she acted like he was born dead.
Therefore, he technically he has a family, but it's a single father and never knew his mother. She isn't a part of his life. He doesn't even know her name, to avoid problems since that wrathful noble became even more important in the years.

The second character I am playing as of now is, on the other hand, a plain old-school orphan, an Archivist-Malconvoker Tiefling.
She never knew her family, not a single one of them, as she was abandoned in front of the a church as soon as she was born, since she was a Tiefling in an area where Tiefling are heavily hated (D&D 3.5 here tho, old school Tiefling, not fiendish-heavy looking. Also they can simply be born from a warlock or someone who dealt with devil too much).
This being an orphan obviously influenced her life and moving from a religion to another while escaping the persecution on Tiefling (which was developing even more when a cleric of Hextor became the king of her kingdom) was the plot-device to make her move from a bright and somehow fun childhood with the cult of Pelor to Wee Jas, where she became a more brooding and serious person, pretty hateful about humans and the masses of ignorant commoners.
And again, this was used to develop the character who changed her attitude after a certain event and decided to not hate but too become a positive figure herself, an hero, to show how those individuals are wrong, even if she kept her brooding attitude and hostile behaviour when it comes to the opinion and action of common, uneducated people.

The facts that the first character has family and a place to return, the second has something but missed something for his whole life and the third had nothing if not her fellow students and master are relevant components of their backgrounds, defining not only their past also how I wanted them to think about the experiences of others.
Forcing a mother and a father on this third character would just be asking me to change what I was thinking when I created her, forcing me to play a completely different character.

She isn't a "Oliver Twist with demon blood", as her blood was obviously meant to be a side-quest and possible plot-device as the hate and racial tension towards planetouched was a relevant detail of the setting.
And to give another fun fact, my best friend played another female orphan tiefling who practiced black magic (in her case, necromancy to spam Enervation and debuffs) but rather than being a serious&cold good character his character was a humorous&cheerful one, but evil and egoistic.
In this case playing a bunch of orphans had a reason, not just cut off connection with the world and give us a way to play an edgy character.

TL;DR The problem isn't being orphan, but playing it at random.

[gkathellar]

Frankly, if your players are so automatically terrified of their characters' families being kidnapped that they don't want any, there's a deeper problem here.

[Knaight]

Frankly, if your players are so automatically terrified of their characters' families being kidnapped that they don't want any, there's a deeper problem here.

It's an established thing - part of the reason I tend to favor new players is that there's an alarmingly high chance that experienced players have developed a real sense of paranoia around weirdly ubiquitous bad GMing practices.

[Berenger]

First: I agree that orphans (or characters so thoroughly estranged from their families that there is no functional difference) are a bit of an overused cliche and family ties are a great and generally underused tool to integrate characters into a setting.

However, you seem kind of fixated on the idea that people make such characters specifically to avoid kidnappings when in my experience there are multiple reasons.

1. It's work. Making a characters background is work and this work multiplies if you have to work out the personality of several family members, close friends or mentors and their relationship to each other and the character. While I personally enjoy designing such, I often don't have the leisure to do so when character creation is spontaneous.

2. It's work that might not be appreciated. For some GMs, the amount of text you used for your example npc parents is approximately the amount of text they are willing to read for the whole main character - in this case the work may be actively detrimental. Some GMs are not interested in your backstory at all and will ignore it - in this case the work is merely wasted. A red flag for the latter type of GM are the words "You can play whatever you want." - I have come to interpret this as "I won't bother to make the effort to tailor this standard campaign to your individual characters anyway."

3. In D&D, it may create weird power gaps between player characters and their families. Think mundane adoptive parents aware of their childrens superpowers, it's just weird and just doesn't lend itself very well to normal family dynamics. Imagine a father that is an Aristocrat 2 / Warrior 2, a mother that is an Aristocrat 3, a daughter that is an Aristocrat 1 and a hero son that is a Paladin 15 and plain superior to all of them in every way. The alternative are dynasties of medium-level hero-classed families but these open a whole other can of worms. I noticed a lot less orphans in systems in which power curves are more nuanced and competent contacts can stay viable yet balanced sources of help for the duration of a whole campaign.

4. A family well established in society and dedicated to the advancement of its children is the main key to success even in the modern world. This goes double and triple for any fantasy world derived from the cultures of antiquity and the middle ages because there are fewer attempts by society to mitigate this disparity. A young Fighter 1 hailing from a noble family should have resources, skills, connections and opportunities that are totally unbalanced in comparison to those of a Fighter 1 militia peasant boy, but the D&D system does not really support such different concepts. So your concept isn't really backed up by mechanics (e.g. a prince getting the same or maybe double or triple starting money complared to a peasant, which is an utter joke) or the GM is backing up your character background description and you get a serious advantage that feels unfair. This not being a thing because all the parents are "lawful" or want their kids to "earn everything the hard way" needs a very specific setting and does not match the patterns observable throughout history at all - a desire to make things easier, better and more accessible for the own children seems to be a predominant trait and crass nepotism was often regarded as a basic fact of life. Interestingly, I noticed a lot less orphans in systems which give the option of background resources such als Allies / Contacts / Social Rank / Resources / Henchmen / Base of Operations from level one as family members and family holdings could be fleshed out as such.

5. Parents are nosy as heck and more so in ancient cultures. If you want to play a young unmarried person*, caring parents in an average medieval setting can be expected to literally physically restrain you from most of the utterly disreputable activities commonly termed "adventuring" (unless it's straight-up warfare, that might be okay and expected). Double so if you are noble, triple so if you are a girl. Imagine: the earls daughter sleeping in some peasants' barn in the company of a handsome harbour rogue, some buff half-orc barbarian and some untrustworthy elven enchanter? Instant ruination of marriage prospects and family honor, even if nothing happens at all. "But daddy, the party needed a healer!" might just not cut it in this case. Thus, you often have to get the parents out of the picture. Killing them is an efficient and plausible way to do so. Being estranged or on the run from an unwanted marriage is another classic, but more complicated and only slightly less tired than orphans. Granted, there are other ways to get a character "on the road" and away from home, but they are somewhat more convoluted and setting-dependent. I have always wanted to play a rogue that is no criminal at all but a journeyman locksmith with a charming smile and a proper letter of recommendation and all that travels to learn from masters in foreign cities.



*Starting age is 16-19 is standard for several classes, contrary to popular belief marriages at age 15 were not that common in Ye Olde Tymes.

[Mechalich]

4. A family well established in society and dedicated to the advancement of its children is the main key to success even in the modern world. This goes double and triple for any fantasy world derived from the cultures of antiquity and the middle ages because there are fewer attempts by society to mitigate this disparity. A young Fighter 1 hailing from a noble family should have resources, skills, connections and opportunities that are totally unbalanced in comparison to those of a Fighter 1 militia peasant boy, but the D&D system does not really support such different concepts. So your concept isn't really backed up by mechanics (e.g. a prince getting the same or maybe double or triple starting money complared to a peasant, which is an utter joke) or the GM is backing up your character background description and you get a serious advantage that feels unfair. This not being a thing because all the parents are "lawful" or want their kids to "earn everything the hard way" needs a very specific setting and does not match the patterns observable throughout history at all - a desire to make things easier, better and more accessible for the own children seems to be a predominant trait and crass nepotism was often regarded as a basic fact of life. Interestingly, I noticed a lot less orphans in systems which give the option of background resources such als Allies / Contacts / Social Rank / Resources / Henchmen / Base of Operations from level one as family members and family holdings could be fleshed out as such.

Earlier editions of D&D were fairly explicit in stating that PCs were supposed to 'come from nothing' and that playing the children of nobility was not something you should do. Those characters might exist in the game world, but they were intended to be NPCs. Achieving noble status was, by contrast, an explicit goal and something you received upon leveling to a certain point and building a stronghold, and was also the point at which the traditional dungeon-crawling gameplay was largely expected to end. This intent never held up, of course, because people wanted high-level play, but that was the idea.

[Lemmy]

No matter how many times this subject comes up, the answer remains the same:

There are three main reasons orphan PCs are so common:

- It's a lot less work than creating names, stories and/or relationships for all of your character's friends and family.
- It's an easy way to justify your character not just settling down and having a job in his city. If you don't have to worry about taking care of your young daughter or aging father, you're free to explore the world!
- It safeguards the player against the old "the villain kidnapped your family! Follow the railroad to save them!" trick so many GMs like to pull. It gets really old, really fast. I had a GM who was particularly bad about this, despite otherwise being a great GM... So after the second time it happened, all player characters in his games were orphans with no family or childhood friends.

Nowadays, I explicitly promise my players not to mess with their characters' family unless they get actively involved in the plot (through the players' action).

That is... If your character's family is just background and/or roleplaying fun, of no real consequence to the campaign, like visiting your parents once in a while, sending money to your sister or adopting a dog, they'll be left in peace. In fact, I'll even give small rewards for that in order to encourage roleplay, like getting an small discount in your family's shop or having an slightly easier time meeting the leaders of the community where you grew up, that kind of thing...

However, if the player wants things like asking his military-career father for supplies and/or reinforcements, asking for favors from his politician brother or wanting an steady income from your noble family, he's allowed to, but these are major influences on the effectiveness of the party and how they influence the story, therefore, it's only fair that the PCs' antagonists will take notice of it. Of course, I'll give players a warning when I think they're starting to blur the line between "having a full-fledged background" and "getting too many free benefits". Once the warning is given, players are given the choice between toning it down or having said background be fair game to be used against them by the antagonists (within the antagonist's abilities, of course. Just because the enemy would like to use your family against you, doesn't mean they'll be able to... Although it's quite difficult to prevent them from doing so in a world with high magic and/or advanced technology, like the usual D&D setting).

I think that's the fairest and most productive way to handle it.

[SodaQueen]

Are you sick of orphans in every single group you play in? There's always at least 2 players who don't want a family that the DM can abuse in a Kidnapping.

Tell them what I told my players:
Your mum is alive, and she loves your very much. Deal with it.

Examples:

Your mum was a well-known paladin. A proper divine butt-kicker that rode into danger on a white horse for 8 years, before she decided it was time to settle down.
Nowadays, she's the guard captain of your hometown. Crime completely ceased when she took up the mantle.
Inspired by the tales about her, you always wanted to go on quests too. All through your childhood, she's trained you to wield a sword and shield and now that you're old enough, she's gifted you her old blade to start your own adventure.
That's a mum you can come home to, talk with about your own adventure, get advice from.
That's a mum that'll hear of your first adventure, and decide to use her savings to buy you an expensive set of full plate armor. Because she's both proud of you, and very worried that you might get hurt.
That's a mum you don't want to mess with.
The city guard is going to protect their captain, so a gang of thugs isn't going to bother. And the big bad evil guy? He's heard the tales of the proper hero she used to be. Even he will think twice.

Your dad is a sage. He's been studying the arcane arts for decades and even teaches at a college at the capital. He's been trying to teach you too, but you're not the bookish kind of student. You need a hands-on approach to get a feel for what things do, rather than reading the outcome in some dusty tome.
He gives you a small crystal, by which he can contact you from time to time. See how you're doing. And tells you that if you ever need anything, he's here for you.
That's a caring, loving father, who would love it if you would follow in his footsteps. But he also understands you need to find your own way.
That's also a father, who's a good enough wizard, that he's teaching others as a professor.
Imagine the trouble you'd have kidnapping a mage who can teleport around, and hurl fire and lightning at you. Now imagine, you're trying to kidnap that guy from a building where everyone can hurl at least some fire and lightning at you. And that's ignoring the Slytherin-esque bunch, who would take the ones you managed to dismiss, and un-dismiss them in a rather cruel, gruesome manner. (I'm talking necromancy, folks.)
Your bad guy would have to be particularly insane, or very, very adept at dueling mages to pull off a kidnapping like that. Probably a bit of both.

Your sister isn't much of a fighter, but she's studious and smart. Last year, she made it to Lawmaker over at the country's capital.
Where she's protected by it's police force, because she's considered some one who's at a risk of being assaulted or abducted, due to her position in the city. They'll be prepared for bandits, thieves' guilds and other low-lives. So the ones you meet along your travels who'd think "Hey lets kidnap his family, whom we have no idea of who they are or where to find them" won't get very far.
And big bad evil guys who can march into capital cities and take on it's military/police/(royal) guards, is already so strong and powerful, he shouldn't need to kidnap anyone to get to you.

Giving yourself family members that enjoy a position of protection and power, has a great potential to be a considerable asset on your adventures.
You need to get some cooperation from the guards? Your mum is their boss, and you've been training alongside them for years. They'll gladly comply.
Need some advice on a magical artifact that sees to have put a curse on your party's bard, after he tried to produce offspring with it? Dad will know a thing or two about magical STD's.
Run into some trouble with the local thieves' guild? A shop-keep scammed you out of your money? Some Crown's Guard is bullying your friends? Sis can probably sort that out for you.

Now, of course, don't give yourself all 3 examples. If you're giving yourself a family of heroes, you're not going to have much of an adventure for yourself. But daddy's big balls of fire alone can keep the family safe. Mum's such a great warrior, no criminals even dare set foot in town, she's going to keep pops and your brothers safe, no problem.

Your DM isn't going to mind a somewhat powerful person in your backstory. He's seeing a set-piece that can be used as more than Kidnap-fodder. And he's just happy you didn't make that third Orphan in the group.
We're running an Adventure here! Not an Orphanage!

He's also thinking about how he could replace the old sage in the village that you'd have to talk to on your first adventure to get info about the dungeon you're about to enter that's known to be covered in maical traps with Magical Pops.
Or how the cleric in the village is going to be much kinder to you than the rest of the group, because he recognizes you as the daughter of Mommy the Divine Slayer of Evil and Bringer of Light and Stuffs.
Or how your sister might have heard you joined a band of adventurers trying to solve problems in the countryside, and she's pushing the quests with the good rewards your way.

It's opening up a lot of options for you, your group and the DM.

It's pretty presumptive and even a little insulting of you to assume that people are making their characters parentless solely because they don't want the DM messing with their family.

I'm playing a human warlock whose mother OD'd when she was very young and she was partly raised by her older sister who was apprehended by the tyrannical empire over a false accusation of theft. And the woman who adopted her later was killed for being a sympathizer of the rebels. This led her to make a pact with a demon who was at just the right place in the character's absolute lowest most vulnerable moment.

I'd be more than a little peeved if I brought this character to your table and was told that "no you actually have a loving mother" because nothing about my character concept works if she's always had a loving parent. Hell, she wouldn't even be a warlock because she wouldn't have had a moment at her lowest where she sold her soul for power.

I'd probably just leave and say good riddance because I'm not rewriting my entire backstory and changing my character concept just because you don't like this trope.

[Draken]

Take the next step. Play a warforged, shardmind or some other manner of artificial lifeform (ideally self-spawning), have no family to begin with.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I'm going to quote my favourite passage from any RPG on the subject of adventurers. From Torchbearer:

Adventurer is a dirty word. You’re a scoundrel, a villain, a wastrel, a vagabond, a criminal, a sword-for-hire, a cutthroat.

Respectable people belong to guilds, the church or are born into nobility. Or barring all that, they’re salt of the earth and till the land for the rest of us.

Your problem is that you’re none of that. You’re a third child or worse. You can’t get into a guild—too many apprentices already. You’re sure as hell not nobility—even if you were, your older brothers and sisters have soaked up the inheritance. The temples will take you, but they have so many acolytes, they hand you kit and a holy sign and send you right out the door again: Get out there and preach the word and find something nice for the Immortals.

And if you ever entertained romantic notions of homesteading, think again. You’d end up little more than a slave to a wealthy noble.

So there’s naught for you but to make your own way. There’s a certain freedom to it, but it’s a hard life. Cash flows out of your hands as easily as the blood from your wounds.

But at least it’s your life.

And if you’re lucky, smart and stubborn, you might come out on top. There’s a lot of lost loot out there for the finding. And salvage law is mercifully generous. You find it, it’s yours to spend, sell or keep.

[Silly Name]

The issue isn't orphans, honestly. You can have orphaned character who have meaningful relationships in their backstory: best friends, mentors, bullies, rivals, love interests, etc. This is what should be encouraged - meaningful relationships, not just parents and siblings.

Reasons for adventuring are another topic altogether, but it can't be denied that characters with few ties have an easier time being adventurers: if you already don't have a place to call home, or a group of people you want to spend your life with, there's little stopping you from going on journeys across the world which may take years or decades. You don't have to worry about bringing bread home, or how your spouse and children are doing, or if dad's broken leg has healed. You can just pick up your backpack and go out of the door with no worries. After all, Frodo is an orphan when his adventure begins, and he never has to worry if the people he left behind are worried about him, but he still has ties to his friends, and in fact those friends do help him. The reason Harry Potter is ok with going to a boarding school is because he lacks loving parents, and he would do anything to be away from the Dursleys. But they exist and have an impact on Harry's life.

I would be very cross with a DM who tells me my character has to have a family. I am ok with them asking for a detailed backstory with a few important characters in it, but I want to be free to decide what is of my family. Perhaps what I had in mind was a character who is looking for his parents, or a man seeking revenge for the murder of his family; maybe she escaped from an abusive husband, or her children have been kidnapped by a mad mage. Or maybe my character is Roy Greenhilt, and even if his parents are dead they have still had a role in shaping him as a person.

"My family is all dead/missing" doesn't necessarily mean a poor or un-invested backstory, and forcing players to include a full, happy, stable family in their backstory doesn't actually help, because I can still decide to ignore that family.

[comk59]

I'm going to quote my favourite passage from any RPG on the subject of adventurers. From Torchbearer:

Ah, thank you for reminding me why I don't play torchbearer anymore.

[Clistenes]

If you force a player's character to have a family of your choice and design, you risk encouraging them to create only NE or CE *******s who don't care anything save themselves, and you will end with a game with way less depth and social interactions than it would have been otherwise, instead of the opposite...