Pathfinder's Weapon Problem

I have a love/hate relationship with weapon lists. I think that's obvious from me moaning about the one in Mecha and Manga. I fucking love big lists of cool weapons. I love making a character who uses a strange weapon. I prefer being able to build a name around a single weapon anyway, so having to enchant it myself isn't that big a deal for me. Do you know what I hate, though? I hate it when a book is bloated up with weapons you'd never use in a million years, or systems that want to put an obvious tax on being unique or cool. Everyone uses longsword, greatsword, rapier anyway, and refusing to let anything horn in on those few basic weapons is pointless.

Not every weapon needs to be useful. That's not what I'm saying. There's always going to be people using sub-optimal weapons or armor for a million different reasons. The book has to include things like greatclubs because there's always going to be someone using them, some hill giant, backwoods hermit or ogre. On top of that...the idea of simple, martial, and exotic weapon proficiency means reasonably fair choices have to be presented at each level.

But 3.X had a few places where a designer lost his fucking mind, like the spiked chain and the scourge. Pathfinder happens to have more of those, and I collected enough commentary on weapons fill a whole post. I have something to say about a few overpowered weapons, but most of these are going to be on the other end of the scale as that. Far...far on the other end of the scale.

I'm also cutting a little slack for racial weapons. Many of them are very stupid, but racial weapon proficiency traits means they can almost always be useful to someone. Who would ever use a Dwarven pellet bow? A Dwarven monk, for one. Many other options are the same, like the Drow razor. It's more okay for them to be...not so good if someone is getting the proficiency for free or for cheap. If that's the role they fill, that's okay by me.

Here we go.


Brass Knife. Pirates of the Inner Sea was released like a year after Ultimate Combat. UC has rules for brass as a special material. Why didn't you refer to those rules? Why didn't you just use those rules? This is why I hate the splats, this right here.

Lantern Staff. What's that, there's a character in League of Legends who uses a lamp post as a weapon? You don't say. Anyway, here's my completely original idea...

Stingchuck. What lunatic created this? Why is this in weapons and not alchemical items? Who thinks a bag full of scorpions is an actual weapon? I want a show of hands. Who thinks an actual bag full of live scorpions belongs on the weapons list? This doesn't even have a listed cost, I'm so angry.

Boarding Axe. Listen, I know it's not much better than a handaxe. But it's noticeably better than a handaxe at the exact same cost. Do you splat writers not open the other books? Can't just...slap another gold piece onto its cost?

Dogslicer and Horsechopper. Do these need to exist? A short sword and a halberd with the fragile trait? These aren't even racial weapons. The descriptor of Dogslicer says "Goblins display unusual cunning by cutting holes in the blade to reduce weight". A short sword is two pounds, dogslicer is one pound. Was one whole pound of weight really that valuable to them? Why can't they have some kind of minor advantage? There could easily just be a short section on goblinoid races and weapons instead of idiocy like this. It's not like anyone was worried about how many pages Ultimate Equipment ended up being.

Sea Knife. Ooh, it's a slashing weapon designed only for use underwater. Quick, nobody look up what happens to slashing weapons underwater! Also, nobody question why an aquatic race would create a slashing weapon in the first place. Also, not marked as a racial weapon.

War Razor. So stop me if you've heard this one. It's a 1d4 weapon, with a 19-20 crit range, which gives you a +2 to sleight of hand checks to conceal it. Only this one is more expensive, a martial weapon, and can't be thrown. Holy shit, guys, the dagger is a core book weapon. What the hell is so hard about saying your particular whatever the fuck army, group or organization uses razors that function as daggers? Do the Inner Sea developers even have access to the other books? Are you making them work purely from memory?

Cutlass. This exists solely so people don't have to write "Scimitar" on their pirate's character sheet. Whatever. What the fuck ever, matey, you've got a "cutlass". This reminds me of how basic items need to be renamed or made "more manly" before some men will use them. Like "tactical" messenger bags or Hungry Man frozen dinners.

Gandasa. So this is a real Punjabi weapon, and its description is even pretty faithful. Neat. I just regret we have a whole "pan-Asian" weapon section unto its own and other cultures have to be squeezed into the corners of splat books.

Sword Cane. The weapon so irritating that it made me want to do this whole post. This is a prime example of missing the forest for the trees. Who is this for? Its concealed nature is a static DC. Regular guards have a reasonable chance to notice it, and that'll only get worse for you as your game progresses. You can just conceal a short sword with Sleight of Hand and have better luck. Probably even at level 1. Hell, you can probably conceal a weapon on someone else at a penalty, that sounds like a fair use of the skill. You can't even say this is a weapon just for style: It's worse than a shortsword and much worse than a rapier. Both weapons you have the proficiency for if you've got this one. This is truly a weapon with no point.

Syringe Spear. So, this is a Martial weapon, to the short spear's Simple. That sounds fine at first glance, but...can you explain to me how a spear with an automatic poison reservoir is harder to use than a spear that doesn't have one? Say someone picks this up and has no idea it's a syringe spear. He just...randomly takes a -4 non-proficiency penalty and has no idea why? Do you make a Wile-E-Coyote rule that he doesn't take the penalty until you tell him it's a syringe spear?

Hurlbat.

"Hey, Hunga Munga, can I copy your homework?"

"Sure, just change it a little so nobody notices."

Pilum and Gladius. Listen, I know we all love ancient Rome, but giving them slightly better versions of regular weapons is probably not the best play. I mean, if I resurrected an ancient Roman citizen, and showed him a picture of a Gladius next to a picture of a short sword, he'd go "Why are you showing me two pictures of the same fucking thing?" I can't shake the idea that there's some level of colonialism here at work, too.

Bleeding Arrow. At 360 gold each, this thing seriously makes me think of the old 3.0 Stronghold Builder's Guide, which had ridiculously inflated prices to drain money out of high level adventurers. Also I'll use this entry to say this about all of the special arrows: Ya'll really, really like Green Arrow. I can tell.

Barbazu Beard. Not sure I'm okay with a weapon that lets you use two weapon fighting along with a two handed weapon. Even if it provokes an attack of opportunity to use.

Gnome Pincher. Did you seriously, actually try to turn one of those extending claw toys into a viable weapon? You know, I keep seeing Melee Tactics Toolbox pop up as the source of the dumber stuff on this list, what the hell is up with that book?

Dwarven Maulaxe. As a minor note, this "two headed" light weapon includes a section on how using a striking head doesn't activate the "wrong" type of enchant, like if it's got Vorpal, only the axe head can activate that. Fine. I guess you needed to say that, I just always thought the type-locked enchants were nitpicking anyway. I guess that's a discussion for another time, though.

Falcata. A 19-20/X3 crit weapon? One of two weapons in the whole game that breaks the rule that you get either an expanded crit range or a higher multiplier? This thing makes me want to punch whoever came up with it. It's one of the few weapons in the game too good to ignore, and every fighter who wants to use one handed weapons should be looking at this thing. Bad fucking idea.

Butchering Axe and Orcish Hornbow. I mean, you get why it's maybe not a good idea to present an exotic weapon whose sole benefit is an extra D6 of damage, right?

Gnome Battle-Ladder. Someone call Jackie Chan.

Bladed Scarf. This is exactly what I meant by Cool Tax. This weapon is just an all-around worse Heavy Flail with nothing to show for it. The book doesn't even say it's somehow concealable. No, everyone can see those blades. It's no better than just carrying around a heavy flail, but it's still an exotic weapon.

Switchscythe. This little guy almost got away from me. I skipped it in my first draft. It's mildly inoffensive, honestly. My issue is that it's exotic: It's just a regular scythe that lets you collapse the head. Actually, while we're on the subject, what exactly is the benefit to doing that anyway? It's still going to be a curvy piece of wood with handles on it. Some guard's going to see that and immediately go "Where'd you put the head for that scythe?". It counts as a hidden weapon, so it would be a two handed weapon that can be used for things like Underhanded which require a hidden weapon. That doesn't even sound niche-y, it sounds overly gimmicky. Unintended.

Thorn Bow. It's an exotic weapon completely identical to a short bow that tells you to count it as a short bow. Actually, it's worse in range increment. Anybody but me see a problem? Anyone questioning why this exists at all? No, huh? Maybe we should just move on.

Hand Crossbow. I know. I know. It technically has a use. I just really hate this thing. It serves virtually no purpose, and it's only here because it's hanging around from the 1e days where Drow all carried hand crossbows loaded with sleepy time poison. There were thin-to-no rules on poisoning so you could just say you had poisoned crossbow bolts and your GM didn't question that the poison didn't dry up, and so the hand crossbow served to budget out your doses.

Launching Crossbow and Flask Thrower. Why would you put a worse but otherwise identical weapon in a book that's intended as a sequel? Launching Crossbow is in Adventurer's Armory and gives splash weapons a 30 foot range increment. Great. Flask Thrower is from Adventurer's Armory 2 and gives them a 20 foot range increment. Guys, the teams have to talk to each other better. Or at least read the other books. This is the exact kind of thing I mean when I say the weapons list is clogged up with stuff you'd never use.

Shuriken. The description actually states that Shuriken can't be used as a melee weapon. Yeah, no shit, they're teeny weeny. But here's the thing: They're classed as a ranged weapon, not a melee weapon with a range increment. None of the ranged weapons can be used as a melee weapon. That's why they're called Ranged Weapons.

Sling Glove. Is...is this just...are you just putting a glove on and throwing sling bullets at people? I don't have the book, someone please confirm Pathfinder's splats aren't that stupid.

Stitched Sling. I like the idea of this, but this being an exotic weapon really kills it. Counting it as an improvised weapon would probably be better for it.


Exotic weapons need to have a reason you're willing to take the feat for. They need to have a mechanics reason for it. This is important. A weapon being "cool" is not, and will never be a valid reason for making someone give up a feat or class ability to use it. It's awful that some people think that it is, when it's just restriction of creativity. D20 has a narrow list of optimal weapons, and expanding that list is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I tried not to pick on everything. There's a lot of exotic weapons that may not be worth taking the feat for, but we'd have to get into the value of the various weapon traits like trip and performance. That's pretty far outside the purview of this post. As it stands, I do think there's value in taking a feat or sacrificing some damage to get a trait, especially at lower levels. A +2 to trip can be a big difference below level 10, and it still makes an impact as you move into higher levels thanks to how few places you can get bonuses to CMBs from.

I'll explain why I only went over the core weapons list. First, Firearms are getting their own post, and while we're at it, we have to talk about modernization in Pathfinder too. The Eastern weapons, however? They're mostly okay. Honestly. They were obviously designed all at once by a single person or team, and there's no severe outliers like I saw with the (relatively disastrous) core list.

As an extra, I decided to flex the weapon creation rules to make a thing or two. I focused on niches that don't exist. The weapon creation rules seem a little tiny bit out of line, but they're good enough, I feel.


Clown Hammer; Two Handed Martial Melee Weapon
DMG(M): 2d6; Critical x2; Type B; Price 8gp
Special: Nonlethal

Always colorfully decorated, these oversized two-handed wooden mallets provide a +2 bonus to any Profession(Comedy) or any performance involving feats of strength.

~~

Juggling Balls, Weighted; One Handed Simple Ranged Weapon
DMG(M): 1d6; Critical x2; Range 10ft; Type B; Price 4gp
Special: Nonlethal

Weighted juggling balls are indistinguishable from regular juggling balls unless physically inspected. Someone can also notice that they're heavier than normal by watching you juggle: they can make a perception check opposed by your performance check.

Coming Up With An Origin Story

I liked my last post. I thought it was full of some pretty good information. It even got a comment! I never get comments. It mentioned how it can actually be pretty hard to come up with the bullet points of your background, the actual events of your character's backstory that I took for granted that you'd be showing up with.

God Dammit, Dareon. Right as always.

Right after, someone new to roleplaying was asking me about that very subject too. So I thought I'd see if I had any advice for putting a backstory together and not just what to write. Forty Questions quizzes and personality tests can help you form a character's personality, but I realized absolutely nothing helps you put together a backstory.


We'll start with what Dareon said in his comment, because he's absolutely right. Every character  background needs the following things.

A. What they were doing before they started adventuring

B. How they obtained the skills they've got at the start of the game

C. Why they started adventuring


Please substitute "Adventuring" for Shadowrunning, superhero-ing, or whatever sort of action your game has. It's got something, so Item C is always going to be relevant in some way. Right now I want to point out that if you have some really simple answers to those three items, that's okay. Like I said last post, it's your prerogative, it's your character, and it's all about what you want to do. You need something for all three, but it can be as simple as this:


A. They were a farmer.

B. They joined the local militia.

C. Their village was ransacked by ogres.


Classic First Edition Dungeons and Dragons stuff right there. This is the kind of thing you see for a low level character, because plot points in your history are always going to be informed by what you're capable of. Nobody's going to believe you single-handedly killed a dragon if your character is level three at the start of the game. Non-leveled systems are always better for this kind of thing, and if you're making a character in a World of Darkness game or an edition of Shadowrun, you can probably ignore this part. In general, though, try to think of what your character is able to accomplish when you're including things they did accomplish.

Before we go over the individual items above, let's touch on setting. You do have to fit what you're writing to the setting, but I wanted to mention this is also a really good source of ideas. If you're really blank, reading or talking about the setting, and seeing what goes on in it can be a wealth of creativity. Plenty of my ideas have been inspired by something as simple as reading lore bits in Vampire: The Masquerade or thumbing through regional descriptions in Forgotten Realms.

But you do have to try and fit your story to the world. As you go forward, make sure everything that you write can actually happen in your world. Keep details straight, and make sure everything is explained well enough. Involving organizations can be an easy way to add flavor. If something happens that's "out of character" for a group, be sure to explain it. Being persecuted by the church of Lathander sounds like a stretch...but being persecuted by a corrupt chaplain who still works inside the church of Lathander doesn't.


But that's a bit too heady for us right now. Let's go over the basics. Item A is "What they were doing before they started adventuring". This can be as simple as a profession, or it can be a timeline of incidents. It all depends on what you want to include. If you're stumped for ideas, take what you know of your character(Class, Clan, Race, or even just personality) and ask what their life would be like if they were in various situations or professions. You can easily cast about like this until you find one you like. Better yet, one of those might spawn the idea for some sort of incident or relation to their skills. That's good.

It can also be a lot of fun to play against type here. A lot of people feel that class, or clan, or auspice or whatever sort of details exist in a game logically inform a character's backstory. Wizards learn in academies. Monks come from monasteries. Brujah listen to The Sex Pistols and wear leather. No. No, there's that "Logically" word again, and it's just as unwelcome here as it is anywhere else on my blog. A class is just a set of skills. A race, vampire clan, or werewolf tribe is just something you are. There's no need for it to fit "logically". Your backstory should make sense, but you're under no obligation to fill someone else's expectations.

I've long used Porthos here as an example of a Barbarian who doesn't fit a typical mold. Along with him I can point out that Batman could be a Rogue. Ellen Ripley could be a Ranger. The brothers from Boondock Saints would probably be Paladins. So if you take anything at all from today's discussion, let it be that you're under no obligation to be a stereotype.

Item B might be pretty easy if you're following along and already filled out A. They don't always connect, though. You could have filled Item A with details of their life, and their profession is just a footnote. That's perfectly fine. Marrying two different concepts here might also be the key to a really neat background. A former Marine or other type of soldier might pick up a wide number of professions after they come home, as a quick example. Plenty of former military go into health care, but some open up pizza shops. Some work in machine shops or garages. I promise you that, at least once, a former Marine has become a birthday clown.

I do have a footnote before we continue, though. Be wary of anyone telling you that your background doesn't "Make sense" or accusing you of being a "munchkin" over your backstory. Usually, this is just people trying to use the L word against you without saying it. Accusing someone of having a "muchkin" background can often mean they just think it's boring and want their criticism to hold more weight than that. People lead weird, wild lives in the real world, and I've seen dozens of examples of people's real lives that would be called "unreasonable" as a character backstory. Fuck'em. On top of that, I could easily come up with a perfectly reasonable backstory for a monstrously overpowered character. I've done so many backgrounds, it wouldn't even be hard. A background has nothing to do with how "powerful" your character is. Don't let people pick at your decisions like that. In fact, don't let people pick at you for anything.

Ahem. Glad we had that talk. Item A does in fact inform Item B a lot, and it's okay if you want to just go with that. Remember what we said about interesting vs. "boring" bullet points last time and don't stress that your background doesn't sound "cool". They don't all have to be cool. Ripley has a boring backstory, and she's a great character.

Item C is also called an inciting incident, or The Call to Action. It's the event or situation that moves the hero forward and gets them adventuring. Your first impulse is probably gonna be tragedy. It's an easy inciting incident to write, to be sure. Before I give you alternatives, lemme just go over a few different types of tragedy that you can use. There's the obvious sympathetic tragedy. People who lost a loved one, got booted unfairly out of school, got put into a strange place against their will. Easy stuff. There's also tragedy that your character arguably deserves. This can be a super useful tool. If I want my character to be taken as a little shady, I can include jail time, or being run out of town for practicing strange experiments or magic. If I want to play someone who's repentant or a former villain, here's where his turning point goes. It can easily be a misfortune that turns him around.

But you totally don't need to involve a tragedy here. At its core, something needs to change in this person's life to make them move forward. It could be realizing they have a higher calling, feeling like they're wasting their life, or even some sort of social situation. All you need to do is tie an event to this concept and you're good to go. The fledgling paladin meets a homeless kid. The apprentice wizard meets a librarian who makes him fear that his own future is filled with dull nothingness if he doesn't go out and live, or a slave owner dies and his slaves are all unceremoniously dumped onto the street.

You're just trying to avoid an answer that sounds like a shrug goes alongside it. "One day he quit his job" isn't really a reason, it's just what happened. People don't always make decisions for big reasons, but you still need to put something here. Talk about the feelings that led up to their decision, if nothing else.  Virtually every movie has a Call to Action somewhere in it, and even non-fantasy movies can be a wealth of ideas.

You need a bit more than a movie character to go on. A character in a movie can be thrust into a situation, but once it's over, they just go back to doing whatever they were doing before that, a lot of the time. You need a reason your character wants to move forward. Still, you can use them as a decent tool: Watch a movie that's outside of the genre of your game, and think about how it would go if it were adapted to your game's genre.

There's also the idea that your character might want to accomplish a goal. Wanting to grow stronger is a little boring, but it's there. It's better to take that in a more specific direction. You could even take it in a direction that's not along their primary skill set: Wanting to become the world's best alchemist is one thing, but the same character with the same stats could want to become the world's best baker and still have a reason to adventure.

Villain origin stories are filled with goal-focused origins. Mr. Freeze wants to bring his wife back. D-Fens wants to give his daughter her present. Thanos wants Death to love him. Dr. Doom wants his country to thrive. Magneto wants mutants to thrive. If you're thinking you want to include a goal as motivation, I'd look to villains for examples. You don't have to be evil...they just tend to have goals.


Fuck me I hope this helped. It's incredibly hard to explain how to be creative to someone. I tried to put together a structure for you and give some common jumping-off points. If you take anything at all away from this post, let it be that your background is your creation. Learn when people are giving honest constructive criticism, and when they're just dumping on you. Take the first gracefully, and don't take any shit from people doing the second.

Writing an Origin Story

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."


I like to think I'm good at writing character intros, backgrounds and fluff pieces. Honestly, one of the things I've had to put serious work into was writing character-relevant things that anyone can read. I'd often have a problem of being pretty proud of something but then being totally unable to show people without explaining context.

But I slowly started to realize other people have a more basic problem with this. I mean, nobody has to write an origin story or character intro. I do it because I like it. But I started to find that a lot of people want to but don't know how. They don't know how to start or what to write down, and putting down a dry account of someone's life or background doesn't always appeal. So today I'm going to outline the methods I use, why I use them, and offer plenty of examples. Those examples are going to be pastebin links to things I've written, so I apologize if this week's offering is way more reading than some.


The absolute first thing you need to do is to decide the relevant portions of the character's background. Just put them down in bullet points, step by step life events. Don't be fancy or lump things together. Grew up in military household. Went to Boot Camp. Drummed out for bad attitude. Put together what made this person who they are when the game begins. Some characters don't have many of these...or even any. You see that a lot in low level Dungeons and Dragons characters. That's okay. We're going to handle that later. With this basic info, we're going to decide the structure of what you're going to write.

There's two main ways to express a character. We can do a typical timeline-style background, or we can write prose, a fluff piece. I'll explain fluff in detail later. In general, it's an extremely useful tool to get people to understand what your character is like when their background isn't long enough for a timeline. Or, even if you don't want to write a timeline.

Look at your bullet points. We're judging them on two things: The number of them you have, and how exciting they are. Please note I'm not asking you to write exciting backgrounds. It's not necessary. We're just judging the background on how likely it is someone will want to read it. It's fine to play a farmboy(or girl) who picked up a sword to defend their homestead from goblins. It's a great background, but that's a one-line description. Try as you might, you won't expand that into a traditional timeline style story. If you have a ton of little bullet points, and some wild, interesting events in their lives, however...a timeline might even be for the best. Here, let's look at an example of a typical, "describe the life" background.


Shivani Sedana, Shadowrun 3rd Edition


Before we start, you'll notice the description section. This is just something I find goes hand in hand with timeline style stories. Prose sometimes needs them, but often not. Including this is quite important if your character has a strange or exotic look, but even someone who looks far more normal than Shivani has plenty of details to write down. Strongly consider doing a written description, someone's appearance or style of dress can say a lot about them.

A lot of shit happened in Shivani's life. That's obvious. It's also a lot of stuff that shapes who she is, I wouldn't feel right not expressing all the details. I could have written a story surrounding her feelings of cyberpsychosis and loss of identity. Something set in her time at the mental hospital. I could still do that, but it would be long. Including everything I feel is important would take up a lot of length in the story, in flashbacks or dialogue. It might feel shoehorned in to put in every detail I think is important. Her basic timeline is pretty interesting by itself, though, due to how many interesting things happen to her.

The notes on her mental state section is simply the fastest way to get the details of her mental state across. What I should do there is expand that into some sort of prose piece that explains how it feels better. That's what they're good at: expressing feeling.


You also see this style a lot in genres where the events in someone's life are far more important to the character, like a superhero game or Vampire: The Masquerade. Hell, most World of Darkness games. It's okay to write these. It's not lazy, and it's not a failure. You should write everything you want to write, even doing huge stories with your character if you want. However, if your primary concern is introducing your character like I said today, you should probably stick to a certain length. I wish I had something to tell you here about how long it should be, but it's also a question of pacing that's impossible to answer. Generally, everyone playing with you will want to read it. They'll get discouraged if it's very long. Remember, they're probably reading everyone's origin stories.

So I asked you to look at your plot points earlier. Say you don't really have any, or better: You have one really exciting one and a few boring ones. You can always express your character through a story. You can invent a situation that could have happened in their background and write it out like a story. Come up with friends, enemies or other people to bounce ideas and concepts off. A little encapsulated story can tell someone a lot about how someone is, maybe even more than just writing their background out. Here's our second example.


Natalie Cable, Shadowrun


So it's probably not a surprise that the main character is actually the driver in this story, Nat Cable. I have a few "boring" plot points I work into the story: She's the daughter of a famous, stunt driving Shadowrunner. She's a physad, and not a typical rigger. I also worked a ton of her personality into this post: She drives a hearse. She likes retro style. She likes Halloween iconography. She's casual, deadpan and calm. She likes insane stunts and making wild plans like the coffin. You learn a lot about Cable by reading this. This is all without Cable really having a single bullet point: Her background is completely uninteresting, so I invented a small story to convey her personality and other traits to the reader.

Rollo, Davis and Nova are just Shadowrunners I invented for this story. Basic Payday 2 style bank robbers. A story doesn't always need more people than just your character, but it can really help. It gives someone to have a reaction(like Rollo does when he sees the Hearse) to lampshade that something about your character isn't supposed to be taken very seriously. Or even when it's the opposite and something is meant to be very serious. It gives you someone to have dialogue with, either about your character or with them. Both are very useful tools, because you're looking for ways to include information or feeling in your story without repeating yourself a lot, using the same method over and over. A conversation about your character, for example, can be a really useful tool. However: the longer it goes, the more tired a reader is going to feel.

There's also the idea that a GM might actually really appreciate having NPCs they can call on and use in the game. They're characterized a bit in the story, to make them feel like real people, but that also means they're ready-made for a GM to use if he wants. If your GM would never in a million years do that? Then they're very ignore-able. Silver lining.


It doesn't have to be a story, though. What we're trying to do is convey who your character is, and the supposed medium of that can even be a trait in of itself. You can write up a police report, a corporate work profile, diary pages, anything that sounds like it's thematic to your character will help get that theme across. Our final example.


Icke, Pathfinder


The idea here is that Icke is a goblin who used some doomed explorer's journals to teach himself how to read. This is mostly meant to be amusing to get across that he's not a very serious character, but even with this silly little thing you learn a lot: He's pragmatic, he's interested in knowledge, he's not one for agonizing over what he feels are useless details. It also gets across the extremely thin background concept of Icke: He left home in search of adventure. An incredibly common background.

Also, remember what I said about NPCs? Lord Schtolteheim Reinbach the Third did, in fact, show up in the game. He made it home in one piece after all.


A final note would be to think about the feeling you want to convey. A timeline generally conveys far less emotion than a story does, and this is something you can use to your benefit. Shivani's had a shitty life, but I don't want people feeling sorry for her. Writing her story out as a timeline can really help with that. If I were to write a story, you'd see her suffering and empathize. Of course, that could always be what you wanted in the first place.

I hope this helped someone. You should write for your characters for two reasons. The first is that it can really help you get into their headspace, and even make the other players feel like they're ready for this person. The other is that the only way to get better at writing is to do it. If it's bad...well, it's just a character origin. There will be others!