Family Relations

Like many things about the setting in which the player character adventures, the character has no control over the family he or she is born into, how many members it has, how successful it is or even if the character has a family at all. This reflects real life. Naturally, everyone would like to be born rich and be possessed of influence … but of course most of us are born the children of farmers, miners, artisans and other common people.

The character background generator is used to determine the nature and extent of a character’s family. The calculation is linked to the character’s strength, arguing (right or wrong) that “virility” relates to “fertility.” Stronger characters are more likely to be a part of a large extended family, with many brothers and sisters, a living father and mother, and probably more than one living grandparent. There is a fair chance that one or both parents are already be dead and that the character was raised by an older sibling, a grandparent or even an uncle and aunt. There is a fairly high chance that a character is an orphan, particularly if the character’s strength is 10 or less. The generator determines the gender of each sibling and enables the DM to determine randomly the order in which all the children of the family were born. This can be very important if the character is in line for an inheritance which would go to the eldest son.

Family relations are also affected by the character’s wisdom. Those player characters with a low wisdom are more likely to be disliked or even disowned by their families. A high wisdom, on the other hand, would likely win over the character’s family, so that the character may be especially welcome at home, allowing them to maintain a relationship with their family.

The character’s family relationship is also affected by the profession of the father, the mother or both. It is presumed that the character was given a chance to learn a secondary skill related to that profession. In the case of an orphan, this would be something that was learned before the last member of the character’s family passed away. The profession also determines the character’s starting wealth (which may also be affected by the character’s wisdom), credit and the possibility of the character being of noble birth and perhaps having other responsibilities.

In deciding their background, a player can “make up” a family relationship of their own ~ but this would be an invention, or lie, as the character’s actual relationship is not determined in any way by the player.

See Player Characters