What Your Fantasy Character Really Needs

When playing tabletop games based in fantasy settings, people often forget to include an important aspect of their character: why are they on some wild adventure in the first place?

“But-” I hear you say. You are considering the story, features, traits, or other things written on the sheet of paper before you. The problem is that what really started your character down this path is not included in these characteristics. Take the Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons for instance, with the prominent feature of backgrounds.

In 5E, the background is meant to be a simple catch-all of what your character did before they were an adventurer. In the previous example, you could have said something like, “My fighter was a soldier, that’s why he is an adventurer!” Let’s break this down for a moment: You were part of an army or martial force, perhaps sent into battle, or maybe sent to guard some random keep or tower. Either way you are not adventuring and likely have a decent life even though there is risk involved in war.

So why the choice of danger?

With the previous fact in mind, why would your character wish to be an adventurer? There are many ways to fund a life well lived, and very few of those options involve fighting multi-ton monstrosities every ten-day. This brings us to the missing ingredient your character lacks: the call to action, or known specifically in the “Hero’s Journey” as the call to adventure. This concept is not the same as your character’s background. The background is what you were before you began the path of an adventurer. The call is the why in this equation. To use another literary term we are looking for an inciting incident.

So what’s an inciting incident? Often players stumble into different tropes of an inciting incident due to trends in role-playing games. The classic “my parents were killed” could be one. If the death of your parents forced you into the life of a vagabond, that could be your call to action. For brevity, I will simply refer to this idea as the “call” of your character. This is the way it will be presented in the Character Path for generating RPG characters upon its completion.

Find the call for your character

The call for your specific character could vary based on your class and background. You could also select something based on the type of adventurer you wish to play. You might like the sound of a character who chose this life because it’s the only way they’ll ever pay back an enormous debt. Another could be adventuring in the hope you find something that can cure a loved one of a mysterious disease.

The call of your character might change over time, or you may retire a character who completes their call to play another. Regardless of what you decide on, try writing that extra bit of story for your new creation. Go beyond the basic characteristics and add in the reason your adventurer can’t do anything else but explore the unknown.

Now go and adventure!

This small addition can help significantly in understanding your motivations and why you continue to travel with your game’s party. Even if the quests you complete are not directly advancing your goals, an appropriate call provides a reason to continue adventuring. You might need the money or rare items from these quests to complete your objective during downtime or you may need to work off a penance placed on you by your deity by providing aid to others.

If you’d like more inspiration you try out some of our character resources and look for further updates as they arrive. You can add yourself to a mailing list to see when we release new blog posts and game resources.