Character Background Generator

The character background generator is a series of random rolls designed to outline a new player character's basic characteristics and idiosyncracies resulting from cultural heritage, race, age, ability stats and chance events happening during the individual in the time prior to joining the game. The generator concentrates on social relationships and skills that originate with the game world and do not, therefore, come within the player's sphere of control. For example, the player isn't given the choice of deciding whether or not his or her parents are alive, whom he was raised by, what generational skills he or she was taught, into what social class the character was born, what others who have known the character for years think, how much money he or she has with which to start the game and so on.

It's standard in many games to allow the player to invent an entirely fictional "background" that serves their personal needs; this system sets out, instead, to create a completely RANDOM background, over which neither the character nor the DM has control. Players may, after the fact, choose to lie about their background; they may make up a background that suits them; but they cannot change the actual fact of what their background was, a fact that's known to the other players and the DM as a matter of game play.

The generator includes a considerable number of both elaborate and simple tables that strives to offer so many possibilities that the generation of two identical characters would be next to impossible. Normally, these tables are incorporated into an excel file for random generation, but for the wiki I have chosen to include all results as a series of open tables for readers to examine.

Physical Characteristics

Height & Weight

Initially, the character's physical creation requires the character's height and weight. For this, height is measured in feet and inches, while weight is measured in lbs. These represent the character in the peak of condition, unless indicated otherwise elsewhere in the generator. Base height depends upon the character's race and birth sex. Base weight depends on the character's race and birth sex, and also upon results indicating gluttony, agility and lack of balance.

roll 4d6	FEMALE HEIGHT							MALE HEIGHT
dwarf	elf	gnome	half-elf	halfling	half-orc	human	dwarf	elf	gnome	half-elf	halfling	half-orc	human