Background

Backgrounds should roughly come in three parts of 6 or more lines each. Below is a set of loose guidelines and motivational questions to give you a sense of what staff looks at for in a 'complete' background.

• The primary section is the 'at a glance'. This should help players quickly familiarize themselves with the character's broad strokes and immediate fame/notoriety, if any.
  • What is the character's recent history known?
  • What major events did they participate in or what groups are they a part of?

Someone unfamiliar with the character should have a passing acquaintance of their immediate past after reading the background.

• The first background section should focus on early life.
  • Where was the character born?
  • Did they come from a good household, were they raised by penguins under Gotham Zoo, or were they decanted from a cloning tank last year? How were their origins part
  • How did they live during their early years?
• The next section should be origins.
  • What motivated them to become a hero or a villain? This is the 'call to adventure' that starts the Hero's Journey:
    • It might be the death of a loved one;
    • Witness to a violent crime
    • Adoption by a more senior hero
  • Having heard the call to adventure, did they pursue that quest to completion before their current state, or is it still looming over them? Are they a callow youth or hard and experienced hero/ine?

This should bring the reader up to date on the character, though additional sections are permissible if the background gets very expository.