#dnd ref – @colinthrobinson on Tumblr

some dnd backstory ideas that give your character a reason to leave home that isn’t “everyone in my family died.” (just to say: i have nothing against those backstories (i use them a lot), but its fun to mix it up!)

family/friends/personal

someone close to you is sick. you need to adventure to find a cure
someone stole something important from you and you need to find it
you’ve received a message from a long lost relative and are trying to find them
someone that you love has been kidnapped (maybe you have to earn money to pay a ransom or complete some deed…)
adventuring runs in the family! everyone is expected to complete one quest in their lives
your family/culture sends people out to complete certain tasks when they reach a certain age as a rite of passage
another player’s character saved you in the past so you feel indebted to them and travel with them, protecting/aiding them
there’s a magical drought in your hometown and you have to fix it
your hometown doesn’t have a lot of jobs so you have to travel and send money back home
some childhood friends and you made a “scavenger hunt” where you try and complete a checklist of certain tasks (ie. defeat a barbarian in hand to hand combat, steal x amount of gold, slay a dragon, etc) in an allotted amount of time

quests/jobs

a god/patron has sent you on a quest to do something for them
you’ve been hired by someone to complete a task (and you get sucked into the big adventure along the way)
you’re on a quest for knowledge. maybe it’s to learn the best ways of fighting, maybe it’s something more academic related
your priest received a vision from your god and they sent you on a quest
you’re writing a book about the world and different cultures and you need first hand experience
you’ve found every map you’ve come across is shitty, so you decide to become a cartographer and make your own
you’re a detective who helps solve crimes and need to travel to solve a particular case
you’re a collector of a certain object and travel across the land to find it
you’re apart of an adventuring academy and have to complete a quest to graduate
you’re an artisan and you travel with your wares, trying to sell them. alternatively, you’re trying to spread word of your business and gain new business partners
you worked at a tavern your whole life where an old bard would sing songs of their adventuring party and that inspired you to go and do some adventuring of your own

feel free to add some of your own!

probablyqueerrpgideas

you just learned how shitty the world is and damnit somebody’s gotta fix it

you did something embarrassing and need to get the hell out of dodge

you’re taking a gap year

your arch nemesis is dying and you need to call them a bitch one last time before you go

hrt is free in a certain monastery

you met your significant other on fantasy tinder but they live across the kingdom

you’ve heard humans have this thing called “djinn Der” and you want to know what that’s all about

resume building

bookenders

you’re adventuring to save up enough money to hire a wizard to cast True Polymorph on you because you wanna be a dragon, damnit

your friend got super drunk and stumbled into a random teleportation circle and you were the only sober one at the party so you have to go find them

you want that super powerful dude’s sword and will do anything to get it

you wanna get swole by hitting lots of different things with very large hammers

you want to prove the arrogant bard who told that super incorrect story in your tavern wrong by bringing them the evidence yourself

you read someone’s biography and want to imitate their life ultra-fan style

you found a message in a bottle asking you on a date

you want to find somewhere where your allergies will be less annoying but no one knows where that is so you have to find it for yourself

you really really want to see a volcano

you heard about another culture’s food and are desperate to try it

you’re interning with/shadowing a professional adventurer before you set off on your own

spite

quilloftheclouds

^^^ Really like the spite one so here’s some more detailed specifics pertaining to it:

Your magic/craft is really unconventional and no one thinks it’s useful so you head out on an adventure to prove them all wrong
You made a bet with your sibling/friend that you can find and kill a dragon/some other big monster
Honestly any bets of unlikely magnitudes are very fun
Your (possibly ex) god/patron told you a problem can only be solved one way and you don’t want to do it that way and you think there’s another way so hey, guess who’s being a rebellious child?
There’s a legendary recipe (potion or legitimately baking/cooking) that requires incredibly rare, hard-to-procure ingredients and no one thinks it’s possible to be made. Guess who’s doing it
Yeah sure everyone may think the world is bleh but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna go and and spread kindness to counter it
Or maybe you think the world needs… less good. Maniacal laughter time
Spite is very fun

helloitsbees

boredom

mctreeleth

Backpacking around Fantasy Europe while taking a gap year, got a bit carried away.

honourablejester

I always love spite as a motivator. Some other ideas:

you’re on a ‘holy pilgrimage’ that is actually a thinly disguised continental pub crawl-slash-industrial espionage mission because your monastery is of the ‘medieval european’ type that makes a significant portion of its income from its brewery and wants to get a leg up on the competition
your childhood friend was run out of town with their family years ago for being the wrong race, you were too young to know what was going on then, but you found out later and boy are you a) pissed and b) going to find your friend and apologise on behalf of your town
you’ve been getting someone’s wrongly addressed magical mail for a couple of months now, and the sender is starting to sound increasingly desperate
a variation on the dying arch nemesis one above, but if you’re a wizard and/or bard especially, as someone who has read academic journals, I guarantee you that ‘that opinion you published six months ago is so incredibly, mind-bogglingly wrong that I fully intend to cross literal continents to tell you so to your face’ is more than motivation enough in certain circles
further variation: pen-enemies, like pen-pals but more grudgy, and past a certain point you really do just need to have the argument in stab/fireball range
in a similar academic vein, you’re a ‘natural philosopher’ in the process of writing a bestiary and you need to meet as many and varied monsters as possible as quickly as possible, preferably without getting barbequed in the process but we can negotiate on that one
alternately, you are a straight-up cryptid hunter, and you have a list of ‘monsters’ that you’ve heard about and which may or may not be real or possibly being confused for other, entirely real monsters, and you’re gonna find out which
honestly, insert-plot-relevant legend here, and have yourself be the foolhardy, stubborn, obsessed idiot who’s going to die finding it, it’s always a classic
alternately, because I love literary ‘cowards’, you want to be seen as foolhardy, because you somehow got a reputation as a coward, and it was an accurate reputation as a coward, but the social repercussions got to you and you’re going on a quest to prove people wrong about you despite the fact that they’re absolutely right about you because at this point you’re more afraid of word ‘coward’ than you are of the actual teeth-and-ichor-and-undead out there
(I love the idea of a big strong barbarian-type who got big and strong because they’re scared of everything and wanted to be able to tank stuff when it inevitably hit them – not even ‘I’m going to get strong enough to beat them’ but ‘I want to level hitpoints so I don’t die’ on a character level, ‘I want to get tough enough to just survive them’)

but, honestly, try more correspondence-related reasons, letters and publications and other fun long distance communications

#dnd #dnd ref #writing ref #snack man