Ode-No! to the 10 Page Character Background

A picture shares 1000 words. 

Everyone has had that 10-page character background story show up at the table. I don’t mind, but there are limits. When I go into a campaign, I have less than a 10-page setting outline and there is an excellent chance that I can tag off of a player’s writings and interject some of those things into the game. 

So, I am looking at this whole process of ideation for a completely different reason. At the moment, I have limited access to rule sets and want to make sure I have everything I need to play a campaign. This is a solo venture, I have no players because I don’t know if I have items I need. 

Funny that I don’t know what items I need. 

One of my anonymous readers, whom I shall call “Blackrazor” because his mom did not name him that, gave me a boatload of stuff to get started. The Basic and Expert rule set and dice. Technically, that’s all I need. The links will take you to DriveThruRPG.

Last year, I backed Todd Leback’s Into the Wild. I really want to use that book, too. 

Just before this adventure began, I ordered a hard copy of Rules Cyclopedia, which strongly mirrors what I was trying to do with e1 back in 1980. Between the stuff from Blackrazor, my luck, and ordering habits, I think I have all I need. But I will test that by engaging in some solo play. 

I want 6 adventurers. That gives me an Elf, a Dwarf, a Magic User, a Fighter, and two Clerics. I feel pretty good with this creeping capitalization. Today is a new start, and I am not sure how I was blogging class titles before. So, caps for classes. 

Now, who is the “hero” of this story? The party, all 6 of them. So they need a reason to be together or character background. How many pages does that take? I don't know. Let us see. 

When I rolled these characters, I threw an additional 1d6 for level:

1-3 is first level, 

4-5 is second, and

6 is 3rd level. 

So I have a first-level Elf, Magic-User and Cleric. I have a 2nd level elf and fighter and a 3rd level cleric. I’ve decided that no one has magical equipment at this point, but they do have transportation, which is sometimes better than magical items. 

Why are they together and where?

Let’s start with the young Magic-User. He is really smart and very young, say 16 years old. He is the 9th child of a well-to-do stationer. 

What’s a stationer? It used to be that people came to town on market day and threw their wares out and had people buy off a blanket, wagon, cart, etc. A stationer was a person who sold goods that were not easily transportable or too fragile to handle the weather, therefore they needed an actual shop. Back in the day, the first of these were scribes, they provided goods and were “stationary” by definition. Think of them as the mall’s anchor stores. That definition solidified into the definition of their trade goods, “stationary”. 

As the 9th child of this stationer, I need to tell you a bit about this family. The Magic-User is named Charles, whom everyone calls “Chuckie”. Charles Sr. hates this and wants his son to leave home and name “Chuckie” behind to get a proper education. 

So, we have a bit of the story. Young Chuck is going places. Let’s circle back to Charles Sr. for a moment. He didn’t start out as a bookseller, he was conscripted into the army. After a single campaign, he lucked out and was granted a small but rich plot of land. He got married and had 2 boys with his first wife. His first wife died of the plague. 

When he remarried, he granted his oldest boys the farm while Dad started milling. One of the boys enjoyed farming, while the other was interested in seed stock and seedlings. They tagged off of each other’s skills to become successful. Dad was still doing good work of the land as a miller, which allows his boys to capitalize off of super cheap milling prices. 

Charles Senior’s second wife produced a trio of girls, plus one more son. The son got into cattle ranching, while 2 of the two of the girls married well and the third daughter became a priestess. 

Unfortunately, the second wife died giving birth and poor Charles senior had to remarry again. This time it worked out fine. Chuckie is the youngest of the children, he has two older sisters plus the brood of much older siblings.  

Charles Sr.'s current wife is an illuminator, an artist specializing in books. This was Charles Sr.'s final career change, to stationer. He buys skins and papyrus from his children’s farms or ranches and provides these materials to his daughter’s convent. It's a good deal for all.

Chuckie has a best friend in similar shoes. His name is Avfin, and he aspires to be a Bishop. His dad works for Charles Sr. The two young men will be traveling to a larger town for schooling. 

I am nowhere near 10 pages at this point, so let’s throw Alice into the mix. Alice is an elf who lives at the edge of town. She is friends with Avfin and Chuckie despite being wildly older than them. As if being an elf in a human town isn’t odd enough, she is a free spirit who runs wild all over the surrounding countryside, much to the consternation of her family. Think hippy-chick. 

Her parents have done backflips to make sure she gets in with Avfin and/or Chuckie in the hopes that she will learn to read and wear shoes. When they heard that Avfin and Chuckie were leaving, they encouraged Alice to tag along, as the boys will need someone with animal and wilderness knowledge with them. Hopefully, she’ll grow up on this adventure. Surprisingly, she threw herself into the adventure with gusto despite her parent’s blessing. Alice also stole her mother’s boots and sword, plus her dad’s chainmail suit. 

This is just one page, and I still have 3 more characters to describe: 

Nicholas, a 3rd level cleric,
his second-level fighter bodyguard, Gaelin, 

and a second-level dwarf named Wralin. 

Nicholas is one of Charles Sr.’s war buddies. Army life wasn’t for either of them, but Nick has made his way as a chaplain and researcher for the army. He is currently transporting religious relics and magical writings to a large monastery. Since he was passing through anyway, he agreed to keep an eye on Chuck and his friends on their journey. 

Gaelin, Nick’s bodyguard, doesn't like his job. It takes him away from the glorious, but also a non-existent battlefield. He is thankful to have Chuck, Alice, and Avfin along as the kiddos are happy to gather firewood, start fires and take care of the animals. 

Wralin the Dwarf is unusual. Like all dwarves, he has an eye for construction and mining. But he has a greater passion, horses. He can assess an equine just as well as other dwarves can spot a good diamond. Oddly, he rides a mule named Sneer instead of a horse. Sneer thinks she is a warhorse. She is very comfortable on the battlefield and when dealing with monsters.  

At this point, I have roughly covered more than a dozen different characters. Their backgrounds are pretty cool, and if I went 1 by 1, each character could have one handwritten index card of biographical information. 

So in getting these 6 characters ready, I have a lot of campaign information at my fingertips. 

The kingdom is at peace, but there was a war in the recent past. There are many villages and cities to see, some of which have schools and monasteries. A network of roads and probably caravans exists. The army is forced to do non-combat tasks because the Lord or Lady of the land is doing some sort of recon and resource exploitation. In peacetime, the leadership is getting ready to engage in warfare or negotiate a peace. Humans and demi-humans work together. We’ve mentioned that monsters roam and some characters have encountered them. 

Rather than a 10-page character background, I have a 2-page campaign primer, which includes much of the character backgrounds that I would need as a DM. The players could refine these starting points to make the characters their own. 

So much for the 10-page background. Two is more than sufficient. 

The Hobos Have Them...

There is that classic image of hobo walking with a bag on a stick over the shoulder. 

Believe it or not, that stick has a name: a bindle. It might derive from the German word for packet. While I hate hobos as in murder hobos, we can actually steal a good idea from them, their baggage.  

The Sarcina

The Romans had a version of the bundle on a stick. It was called sarcina. Because they used a forked stick or stick with an arm, it was called a furca or a fork. Its function was largely the same as the hobo's bindle, to redistribute a load to the shoulder and to allow one hand free. 

The legionary's sarcina was wildly better than an adventure's backpack. The furca carried a loculus (satchel), a cloak bag, a cooking pot, a patera (mess kit), spikes (also called wolves), and a net bag for food. On the top, there was a rolled object, perhaps a bedroll which also contained several tools, an axe, a turf cutter, hammer or mattock, saw, and sickle. It's unclear if each soldier carried each and every tool or if they were carrying just one of many. 

In any event, the items were tied to the furca in such a way that allowed them to swing front to back but not side to side. This aids marching and prevents a staggering gate. Additionally, the swinging allows for an important secondary function a bindle doesn't have. If you dropped the sarcina, the weight forced the furca's end to point upwards. This helped with recovery, but also put a vaguely pointy stick between the carrier and an opponent. 

While one person doing this seems like a very haphazard barrier, a legion's worth of men doing it as a group made an instant wall. 

In camp, the unloaded furca would be used to mark a soldier's spot and to hold his armor and helmet off the ground. In an effort to avoid a baggage train, the Roman soldiers marched in full armor and didn't remove it until they were making camp. Their shields were carried across the back in a bag with straps, like a backpack. This probably explains why they didn't use backpacks. 

Removing the armor at the end of the march felt good and let the soldier get to work digging a trench and creating a berm to keep people and creatures out. 

The netted bag carried 3 days of food. Romans avoided carrying more because they generally moved by road, so from one home base to another destination where food was available. It also seems they carried hardtack which didn't count as food until everything else was gone. The Romans would use their sickle to harvest foods in the field before resorting to the hardtack. It was really disliked. 

You'll also notice they didn't carry shovels. Instead, they would use their pickaxe or turf cutter to remove earth and put it in a basket. When you work as a team, this is better for moving large amounts of earth. You can form a chain to quickly make berms or create ditches. 

As a DM, if a character with a backpack told me they had a pickaxe, a turf cutter, a sledgehammer, a cloak bag, iron rations, in addition to rope, armor, weapons, and rations, I would call B.S. immediately. Because that is how backpacks don't work. If you ask a modern soldier how overloaded he or she is, you'd be shocked and not a bit surprised at how fast they take chances and dump that crap to get other things done. Soldiers, time immemorial, are savvy and sneaky.  

However, a sacrina does actually allow troops to move and fight. 

The Romans made this work because they managed expectations. No shovels because they don't make sense. No ropes because they have 800+ guys who could turn net bags into rope overnight. No torches because they almost never fought at night and didn't want to expose guards and scouts with flaming objects. They carried 3 days of food because they journeyed by road from one destination with supplies to another. 

Players will like it because the loculus or satchel is backpack sized container that is full of a person's belongings and treasures. Everything is simply organized so as to stop the carrier from fumbling through a whole backpack-deep pile of stuff to get one thing. Everything is a one container reach. It's super handy. 

DM should like it because it removes hard tracking of a crazy number of things like axes and food. Eating a meal in town reduces food consumption on the road. Assuming a party is marching as soldiers mean no one asks the slow guy to run him or herself to exhaustion. Knowing that there are only 3 days of rations means the party must have a destination within 5 days to make it. 

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia equipment list gives a price of less than 40 gps for everything needed to create a sacrina. It reminds me of a cheaper version of the Standard Equipment pack from Star Frontiers Basic. It's a good option, why not let your players give it a try?

"New" Game

I ran out and bought a new game. It isn't a great game or new game, but a simple one. 

I've never had a rug checker set, but I've always wanted one. The reason is simple, memories. 

I have an incredible love of amusement parks and The Magic Kingdom is at the top of the list. Every time we go there, we eat at The Liberty Tree Tavern. It isn't the food or the ambiance, it's the lobby. They have a waiting area loaded with simple games. 

Everytime I go there, we play a game. It's been going since before my wife and I had kids. This simple game of checkers is one of my favorite memories. A memory that gets refreshed every time we go. 

Memories are sometimes the best place to be and with this set, I'll be revisiting and updating the quality time I spend with the family, every day. 

Priorities, Priorities.

As of now, the blog and all future products all comes down to priorities.

Rewind. 

44 days ago, our house was devastated by a fire. My family made it out, as did 2 of 4 pets. My wife was found in the front hall attempting to rescue the animals. She was scorched, but is doing fine. As are the kids and Tori dog and Shinubo the cat. 

Starting on July 19th, 8 pm, incredible support started pouring in to me and my family. I was at work at the time the fire began and raced home. On arrival, I found 7 fire departments fighting the blaze. Moments before I got there, they had retreated from the house as the temperature soared over the 1000 degree limits of their equipment. What I didn't know until weeks later, other fire departments had activated and were covering all of the areas those 7 departments normally cover. To say this was a massive response would be an understatement.  

The fire was limited to the basement, but where it burned didn't matter. The temperature was rising throughout the home. If the roof caught fire, there could have been an explosion that would ignited the neighbors houses. To prevent this from happening, fire fighters cut holes in the roof to allow the heat and pressure to escape. This would cause the roof to collapse in and the whole house would be lost to save the surrounding homes. Since the heat far exceeded their equipment's ratings, this was the only safe option. 

That isn't what happened. 

Instead the fire fighters mounted a rally and reentered the blaze to fight the flames directly. It was all hands on deck moment. They first used sheets of water to cool the 1000+ degree heat on the upper floor, so they could advance deeper into the blaze. In the middle of the assault, the chaplain lead a group of men and women to rescue our cat, Benny. Although Benny had already succumbed to heat and smoke, they retrieved his body for proper burial, over which the Chaplain presided.  

Inside, the battle against the fire continued. They marched from the front of the house to the back under a continuous blast of water to beat the heat back, to where the blaze raged in the basement. Just to convey how dangerous this was, the metal refrigerator spontaneously combusted from the heat of the smoke. In the back bedrooms, the plaster wall disintegrated from 5 feet up to ceiling level. 

It was a race against time. If the plasterboard ceilings gave and the roof timbers caught fire, that explosion I mention would have claimed the lives of 7 different department's fire fighters.

Those men and women won the race, saving the roof and the exterior walls. Everything else was gone, but at least the home is weather tight. Which will allow us to rebuild.  

Gone doesn't really cover it. Our furnace melted. The fridge is a lump of metal. The stovetop and oven as near as I can tell, imploded. All of the copper wiring and pipes burned. The iron pipes for the gas shattered. The walls of the bedrooms and bathroom are non-existent from shoulder level up. 

But this isn't "the end" or even "an end". 

Before we left our burned out home that night, our neighbors gave my wife and daughter shoes and clothes as they were wearing pajamas when the fire broke out. Our in-laws gave us a place to sleep that night. The next day, an endless stream of visitors came to see us, each bearing gifts as they though needed. And this continued for weeks. 

I think it's all over. Except for saying, "thank you". 

Priorities and all of that. 

I would like to thank "Blackrazor", a local reader who provided us with dozens of game books. I would like to thank 716 Pulp and Dragon Snack Games for their wonderful hospitality of their establishments. I would also like to thank all of my readers and associates that reached out to me, like Todd Leback, The DiBaggio Family and many, many others. 

Thank you. I really couldn't do anything else until I said, "thank you". 

In the coming days, I have a ridiculous amount of work to do, but at some point will start posting regularly, with non-fire related posts. 

I am probably not ready to stop saying "thank you", but having said it, I can do other things.  

It's a process and a long one, but thanks to all of you, I am ready to begin. 

The Most Egregious Kickstarter Promotion Ever

Author's Note: Sometimes, life kicks you in the balls. Sometimes it just doesn't stop. If you don't laugh some or all of it off, you'll go nuts. This post is in that laughing spirit. 

It pokes fun at my situation, skewers my reviews and pays homage to a spammer that used my 52 Weeks of Magic series to promote a consignment shop by implying items sold were possibly magical. It also promotes a kickstarter campaign by Todd Leback.  

Todd Leback's Basilisk Hills Compiled Hexcrawl Kickstarter

Last year Todd Leback used Kickstarter to publish his book, Into the Wild. Mr. Leback's project was very successful, having met many, if not all of the stretch goals. In getting this project off the ground, Mr. Leback offered a preview look at his book which I reviewed. Even in the rough form, it was excellent. 

I should be re-reviewing Into the Wild now that I have a physical copy. I haven't because real life intrudes. Back on July 19th, my house burned. I am meeting the the structural engineer this week to see what parts of the building can be saved. For the most part, the entire contents of the home were completely destroy, burned to ash. 

Well, not everything. 

Into the Wild survived, as did the contents of two boxes that the book sat on. It was something of a miracle. This on Print on Demand title survived 1000° C heat. Amazing. 

This book is incredible. It was printed on high quality paper, in full color. The artwork is great and the maps are excellent as they are informative. This title is 221 pages and covers everything you need to run a Hexcrawl campaign by expanding Mr. Leback's prior works: Classing up the Joint, Domain Building, Hexcrawl Basics, Random Weather Generation, OSR Expanded Classes, and Wealth by NPC level. 

And it's affords protection from normal fires, 5' radius. 

In all seriousness I am not trying to imply that if you back Mr. Leback's kickstarter for Basilisk Hills Compiled Hexcrawl that it will protect your home from fire. 

No. 

I am telling you, you need to back Mr. Leback's kickstarter at the $25.00 Ultimate POD and PDF level to receive protection from fire. 

I've been a gamer since the 1970s. I can assure you that lesser works by Gary Gygax, Monte Cook and Dennis Sustare are not even fire resistant and absolutely do not confer any sort of bonus to your gaming shelf like Into the Wild does. Back then, we had some clues that most books were not fireproof. The Satanic Panic proved that great piles of the Holmes Editions D&D Box Sets were not proof against fire. Now we all suffer from a paucity of mint condition copies and tragically high eBay prices on sets that don't even come with chits. Don't let the Panic back in with it's crazy book burning and over the top rants targeting gamers of all types.  

Only you can prevent book burning.  And buying a copy of each of Mr. Leback's products is a good start. 

If Basilisk Hills Compiled is 1/10 the book that Into the Wild was, it should be able to save your game shelf from this: