The Random Greatness of Xanathar's Character Generator

Like the rest of the D&D community, I spent last week reading over Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

In addition to the intriguing new class options, the game's developers threw in some interesting tools for DMs, one of which is called This is Your Life. The section opens with this block of text:

What did your character accomplish or experience before deciding to become an adventurer? What were the circumstances of your birth? How large is your family, and what sorts of relationships do you have with your relatives? Which people were the greatest influences on you during your formative years, for better or worse?

This section aims to solve what I call the Shadow Orphan problem. In my experience, whenever I introduce a new player to D&D, their only background is video games, usually Skyrim. In that game, it doesn't matter who your character is, since you're really only picking what your hands and forearms look like. Nobody cares where you came from or who your dad was; it just doesn't matter. When a video gamer comes up with a background, I often see something like this:

"I didn't know my parents. I grew up on the streets. Now I kill things."

You can almost hear the joystick clicks from the PS4 controller as the Shadow Orphan enters the world.

D&D isn't Skyrim. You don't get to customize your face (unless you're an artist), and your background DOES matter. The Shadow Orphan provides practically nothing for the DM to work with.

D&D 5e attempted to resolve this issue by providing Backgrounds during character creation, and while it helped answer the question, "who am I?", it doesn't define a character's place in the world. Now, by simply rolling dice on some random tables, you can get terrific prompts that will give both the player and DM MUCH more to work with.

To show you how easy and entertaining it is to create character backgrounds this way, I rolled up some characters.

Character 1:

• I know my parents
• I was born in a brothel or tavern
• I have 3 siblings, two older, one younger
• My oldest brother is a wanderer, neutral evil. Friendly. Missing.
• My next brother is a farmer, neutral good. Friendly. Alive and well.
• My little brother is a soldier, chaotic good. Indifferent. Alive, but doing poorly due to injury.
• My mother and father are still alive.
• My father is a merchant. Chaotic good. Hostile. Alive and infamous.
• My mother is a laborer (tavern owner), neutral good. Friendly. Alive and well.
• I had a comfortable lifestyle, due to my father's successful business.
• My childhood home was a large house in the city, built over our tavern.
• I had several friends, and my childhood was generally a happy one.
• I am an artisan in the Cartographer's Guild. My dad made a place for me and I was apprenticed under him.
• Rogue: I've always been quick of wit, so I decided to use those talent to help me make my way in the world.
• I am 24 years old.
• Life event 1: I fell in love and got married to a lovely half-elven girl named Sariel Rai when I was 20.
• Life event 2: I was wrongly accused of my father's crime of counterfeiting treasure maps. As punishment, I was chained to an oar for 2 years. When I returned, I found my wife had disappeared without a trace. My home had been sold, all its possessions gone.

For three of the options, I picked something different than I rolled, because it didn't fit my vision of the character. I really like characters with families, especially ones with hooks into the world. This character's family owns a tavern, so you can guarantee this character has information connections in that city. This gives a lot of compelling story hooks that the GM can use. If all players had a backstory like this, I could envision a whole campaign being built around it.

Character 2:

• Tiefling parents. One is human and the other is tiefling.
• Birthplace: A sage's laboratory
• Siblings: 3
• Birth order: Older, Older, Younger
• Ferghus Brazzik. Oldest brother, neutral good. Occupation: Priest. My relationship with him is friendly. His status is alive and well.
• Shatha Brazzik. Older sister, neutral good. Occupation: Entertainer. My relationship with her is indifferent. Her status is alive and quite successful.
• Dalia Brazzik. Younger sister, neutral. Occupation: Artisan or Guild Member. My relationship with her is friendly. Her status is alive and well.
• Who raised me? My adoptive family, regular humans.
• Boden Brazzik, my father, is Neutral Evil. Occupation: Criminal. My relationship with him is friendly. His status is alive, but doing poor do to injury, financial trouble or relationship difficulties.
• Krista Brazzik, my mother, is Neutral Good. Occupation: Adventurer, Bard. My relationship with her is friendly. Her status is alive, but doing poor do to injury, financial trouble or relationship difficulties.
• My family lifestyle was Poor.
• Childhood home: A village in the wilderness
• Childhood memories: I had a few close friends and lived an ordinary childhood.
• I became an Outlander because my family moved away from civilization, and I learned to adapt to my environment.
• Fighter: Horrible monsters descended on my community, killing someone I loved. I took up arms to destroy those creatures and others of a similar nature.
• Age: 21-59:
• I spent time working in a job related to my background (Outlander), so I start with an extra 2d6 gp.
• I suffered a tragedy. Roll on the tragedies table.
• I fought in a battle. Roll on the War table.
• Tragedies: I lost all of my possessions in a disaster and had to rebuild my life.
• War: I suffered only minor injuries, and the wounds healed without leaving scars.

I really like this one. First, you have a Tiefling being born and abandoned in a sage's lab, which sounds like the completion of a prophecy. The idea of a family living at some crappy outpost and scraping by entices me; it seems like the player character really has something to prove by adventuring. The drama with the father is interesting and neatly hooks into a thieves' guild. I've never considered having a characters' parent have a character class, so the mother working as a Bard is totally fresh to me.

Note that I took the liberty of picking out names from the tables in the back of Xanathar's. I don't recommend rolling on those because names are important and should sound as natural as possible.

If you have some free time today, I highly recommend rolling up some characters for yourself on these tables.