Monday Motivations #9

Article #9 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class.  I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.

What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.

KNIGHT

Paladin by Katie De Sousa

3.  Lost Crusader - You were born into a noble family trained from birth to be a knight and to fight alongside other noble sons as a knight in the kings army.  The tales of honour, glory and valour which were taught to yiu as a child did not prepare you for the grim reality of war when as a young noble you were sent to fight in a foreign land on a holy crusade.  Your training didn't contain lessons on how to kill women and children, or how to burn down whole towns and villages as the army roamed agross the land like some savage beast.  Eventually the tides of war turned on the kings army, in one ferocious battle the defenders had the upper hand and the army was routed, you were lost far from home in a foreign land surrounded by a people that only days before you were trying to slaughter...

4.  A Squire's Chance - You'd followed your knight across hill and dale, tundra and desert, forest and ocean since father entrusted you into his care.  The days are long and the work never ending with never a thank you nor a coin to spend of your own.  When you woke one morning to find him slumped over the table after a night's gambling and drinking in the local tavern you cursed that you would soon suffer one of his beatings if you had not completed your chores.  By noon he still had not stirred, so you went to check on him, he was still slumped over the table.  Gingerly you prodded him with your wooden practice sword and his lifeless body rolled off the bench and onto the floor.  His face was purple and his eyes had rolled up into his skull, there was no doubt about it he was dead.  Your years of hoping for a chance like this had finally paid off, and you swung your plan that you had rehearsed so many times into action.  You swapped your clothes with him, packed the armour and weapons and loaded the horses.  By nightfall you were 20 leagues away from your past and well on the road to fame and fortune as a true knight...

5. Country Justice -  The Prelate of your monastery bestowed the honour of Marschall upon you three summers ago.  Since then you have roamed the five counties tracking down bandits and thieves, defending villages from ravenous beasts which raid their homes for food and rooting out the odd band of goblins or tribe of kobolds who seem intent on setting up home in your peaceful homeland.  The lifestyle suits you, and you've never been happier than when you're riding out into the wilderness to pursue some vagabond or villain intent on meting out justice from the saddle at swordpoint...


PALADIN

1.  An Old Code - You were just a regular soldier in a regular army sent by your lord to burn the library of some town you can't even remember the name of.  The only difference between you and the rest of your company was that you could read.  You knew that setting fire to the library was a bad thing and that the gods would likely punish you for doing so, so you grabbed the first book you came across and stuffed it inside your breastplate.  Back at the barracks that night you opened up the book to read what you had saved from the flames.  It was the life account of a holy warrior who fought evil and injustice wherever he found it.  He was noble in thought, deed and word because he lived by a holy code.  The code which you committed to memory and which you have vowed you will live by from now on...

BARBARIAN

4.  Slave Child - You were not born into a barbarian tribe, you were enslaved into one.  You were born in a land far away, when your parents were killed in one of the tribe's pillaging raids, you were taken back to their land across the sea with the other loot.  You were given to one of the barren wives cast off by the chieftain to raise as her own and look after her in her old age.  Your new mother was outwardly grateful for the kindness shown to her by the chieftain, but as you found out later, secretly harboured revenge against her husband and his new wife.  As you grew up in your new home you were schooled alongside the other children by the best teachers the tribe had to offer in how to fight, track, hunt, fish, sail and survive in the barabarian way and by night your surrogate mother taught you about the world, where you came from and  that you had been sent to her by the gods as a weapon to strike down the Chieftain.  At age 15 you took the rite of passage to manhood and became a fully fledged member of the tribe and at age 17 you took part in your first raid during which you used the confusion of battle to your advantage, slew the chieftain and faked your own death in a burning house.  You have since put many leagues and years between you and your barabrian upbringing and embarked on a new quest to find your true family and true heritage...

Citymorphs #009 to #012

A big thanks to Risus for the plugging Citymorphs in the Geomorph Roundup.  Here's four more:

#009 - Parkland

Too many orderly streets makes the morphians walk in straight lines, they need to feel the wind in their hair and wet grass under their toes.

#010 - Citywall Bastion

Every old city will have seen it's fair share of war and it's ruler may have built some sort of defensive wall for the people to hide behind.  Notice the groundworks to elevate this section and the set of stairs to get those archers up high.

#011 - Citywall Straight

A straight section of citywall this time.  When laying this tile make sure you've built the stairs and earthworks on the same side otherwise the siege will be over in minutes.

#012 - Citywall Gatehouse

The wall needed some way of keeping the riffraff out but allowing the townsfolk in, so here's a useful gatehouse.

Monday Motivations #8

Article #8 in a regular series where I offer up some ideas for character backgrounds by class.  I aim to collect these ideas together for a future pdf publication.

What made your character decide to become a wizard? Why did they leave their home town? Did they leave family behind or are they looking for something? These are all questions players face when generating their characters, with the best will in the world it's tempting to rely on cliché.

BARD

4.  The Collector's Curse - As a child, whenever you went missing you were always found in the inn at the feet of whoever was telling tales of Legend, Lore, Myth and Mystery.  And so it went on until the boy became a man.  Until on stormy winter's night a strange, sick old man came in from the rain and took up the place at the hearth.  He coughed and spluttered his way through many tales and even when most of the villagers had long since left for their beds you begged another.  The old man began to tell his own tale, when on a night much like this one a wizard cursed him to roam the lands gathering up tales for all to hear, and with one last wracking cough the old man died passing his curse onto you...

5.  The Greatest Song - As a child you heard many wandering minstrel's pass through the village but none were as strange as one particular elf who passed through.  He captivated everyone that day and a lot of coin was thrown into his hat.  Of all the songs you heard before and since non were as sweet and enchanting as the one he played that day.  As a budding amateur player you decided that you would hone your skills and track the elf down and get him to teach you the greatest song in the world...

BARBARIAN

Dwarven Barbarian by Gold-Seven

2. Dreamquest - The Gods visited you in your dreams last night and led you on a journey to find a desolate volcanic island.  As you followed through many different lands you faced many challenges, some tests of strength, some tests of endurance and some tests of the heart, you gathered around you seven heroes each with a special talent destined to help you in your final challenge.  After many years of travelling you search for the Isle was over and you confronted the great beast who spoke your name and challenged you to mortal combat.  The battle was fierce and long and one by one your comrades fell to the beast, your bravery undiminished you finally spotted a weakness in the beast's defences and struck. It was at this moment that you awoke, sweating.  After several nights of dreaming the same dream and waking at the same crucial moment you consulted the village wise woman who told you that the dream was a sign from the gods that you would not have peace until you could slay the beast and fulfill your destiny...

DRUID

3.  New Official Religion - You take little notice of the political affairs of man, the rolling plains of your homeland bear the scars of countless Kings buried under their soil mounds and yet the forests encroach inexorably over them.  However, this new King has brought a religion with him from across the seas, he has proclaimed it to be the official religion and will not tolerate the old ways.  There's no alternative for you but to move on to a new home where you are free to dance naked in moonlight and talk to whatever animals you like be they chickens or men...

CLERIC

Field Marschall Kruger

4. Holy Child - Although your memory of the event is hazy, your parents began treating you differently when you healed your brother's broken arm when you accidentally pushed him out of a tree.  You said you were sorry and that you didn't mean it and like magic your brother's arm was mended.  Word got out that you had this gift and suddenly people you didn't know started turning up at the family farm wanting you to make them better.  Blind people, those with deformed limbs, even the occasional leper and they often gave your parents food or sometimes money.  You didn't mind helping, you would probably have done it anyway, but your parents made sure that any chores you might have had to do were done by your brothers and sisters.  Of course this didn't go down well with your brothers and sisters who hated you for being special and teased you mercilessly, but you never wished ill of them and always included them in your prayers each and every night.  A few years later a priest visited the farm and he had a retinue of soldiers with him.  You were examined by the priest and he watched as your father slashed his own wrist and you healed it closed.  They talked in private for what seemed like hours and when they emerged your parents fighting back tears told you that you had to go with this priest and he would take care of you...

KNIGHT

1. Penniless Prince - Being a Knight isn't cheap these days, there's the cost of feeding your horse and serf, armour repaired and polished, weapons sharpened, the list goes on.  When the Prince asked you and your fellow Knights to bear with him during his latest cashflow crisis you made cut-backs and economies out of loyalty but after 3 months without pay you'd had enough and you paid off your serf and headed out on the road to find a new employer who would understand that your honourable profession requires respect of the silver and gold variety...

BONUS BACKGROUNDS


Because I screwed up in Article #4 and both duplicated a background and only posted 4 instead of the usual 5, here are 2 extra ones to make up:

KNIGHT

2.  Tourney Pro - You abhor the idea of charging into a battle in your shiny armour to get it all scratched up not to mention the fact that you might die.  Which is why you've spent the last few years travelling from one tournament to another to earn a living.  You love the roar of the crowds the smell of the armour polish, the favours of a comely barons daughter or a serving wench when you're down on your luck.  When times are tough you might even partake in a spot of goblin hunting, but never when the odds are against you...

MONK

1.  National Service - Where you come from it is law that every first-born son enters the monastery and learns the fighting techniques that have been perfected by the countless generations that have gone before.  The Empire needs people to defend it's borders from marauders and people to ensure that the public remain compliant and law abiding.  Some do not survive the training to reach maturity, others do not master their chosen style, but you, and a handful of your class, have achieved mastery and will fulfill your destiny as servants of the empire wherever that may take you...

Papercraft: Ruined Columns

My regular Friday group began another chapter in their on-going campaign which called for them to explore an ancient ruined temple.  The scenario I'm DMing is lifted straight out of an issue of Dungeon Magazine and the map of the temple is dominated by a huge room with lots of toppled columns, some of which have crashed through walls exposing new routes and blocking off others.  I drew out the main room and was particularly unhappy with the result, it was hard to replicate the adhoc passageways and the columns just looked like giant frankfurters, so I decided to make some ruined columns of my own.

As I've found with my other papercraft projects like the Adventurer's Cart, a 3D element can be a real game changer when it comes to combat, so I quickly knocked up a design for a large 4" column and a short stubby 2" column using Google Sketchup and the Unfold Plug-in (See my Papercrafting article for more info) and then exported them as 2D artwork into Photoshop for resizing to the correct scale.

Once printed and cut out they're very easy to put together as they're simple tubes.  I inserted a large bolt into each column before sealing them up, it's not essential but it acts as a weight to keep them from toppling over when the player's get excited. 

• 2" x 1" Ruined Columns (PDF 1Mb) - makes 6 columns
• 4" x 1" Ruined Columns (PDF 934Kb) - makes 3 columns

Enjoy, and don't be afraid to drop me a comment with other papercraft suggestions.

Citymorphs #005 to #008

The first batch of Citymorphs taught me a few lessons (like making the jpgs 300 pixels square) and that if they are going to be used by a randomizer engine I'll have to incorporate some features like edge tunnels if I want another point of tesselation.  So here are four more...

#005 - Harbour and Canal

Another harbour tile, this time with a river or canal, adding a new middle edge feature, I'm still learning here... 

#006 - Very Little Venice

All towns and cities are going to have a river running throught them in some way, so here's a tile with a river bending through it's middle.  Of course to keep it tesselating I had to add in some bridges and edge tunnels which needed a bit of thought.

#007 - Harbour and factory

Enthused with the transparency experiments on the bridges of #006 Very Little Venice I decided to give the factory in this tile a bit of smoke for it's furnaces and of course some coal barges to keep those fires burning.  I have no idea what the factory makes but its location close to the harbour is ideal for exporting its products and importing its raw materials..

#008 - The Chasm

A few years ago a great chasm opened up in the ground and swallowed some buildings.  The river has greated a lake at the chasm's bottom but it must have found a tunnel to flow out of as it always seems to stay at a constant level.  The locals have recently built a bridge to keep some traffic moving through this area but some of the ruined buildings still rest precariously over the chasm edge.