- When 5E shipped they didn't really provide much info on how to create your own Backstories and they provided enough that folks didn't bother. This was a missed opportunity as Backgrounds can help really define a campaign world. The DMs Guild created backgrounds but these were hidden from most people and the DMs Guild is lame.
- Backgrounds were placed in the rules after race and class which is counter-intuitive as this is where the character came from, their upbringing before becoming an adventurer and should sensibly come between Race and Class.
- Backgrounds were professions that applied to all races when they could have been used to help define the different races by having certain or even most background restricted by race. Sort of race as class but with Backgrounds. Elves are different than Dwarves and Backgrounds jobs would have been a nice way to show that.
- The Personality Trait part was nonsense. Players should be determining their characters personality and not picking from a list or rolling. Also coming up with 8 interesting personality traits for every background was a lot to ask of the GM. Too much to ask when you consider to work properly you'd need a dozen or more Background.
- The Ideal, Bond, & Flaw (my favorite part) were linked to professions. This part of the Background is asking a lot of the GM to create for each profession, but are ideal if associated with the different races. Create an Ideal, Bond, & Flaw for each race and you help define that race for your campaign world. This offloads the bulk of the work in creating the Jobs part of the Background and really opens things up.
Thoughts On 5E Backgrounds
When I first read about Backgrounds I was kind of excited. Seemed a decent way to give a little bit of backstory with a couple of bits to give it some weight. So what went wrong?
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I think you are right that Backgrounds in 5e could have been positioned better and earlier in character creation.
ReplyDeleteThe one area that I might disagree is that my kids found the background personality features extremely helpful in fleshing out characters for the first time. My son, who runs games for his friends, uses it to think about NPC motivations. If I wasn't playing 5e with 10/11-year-olds, I would probably have agreed with you, but the personality features turn out to be a teaching tool for brand-new players (who are children). To my happy surprise, both my kids made use of random personality features, bringing characters to life in ways that they would not have considered without those tables.
Anyway, I agree that it's a bit of a missed opportunity! Maybe they can get all these things right in the Sixth Edition! ;)