One of the things that often gets forgotten in many games is that the player characters have a family. Unless they are a robot or sprung from the roots of a tree or the like, they certainly had parents at least, even if they have no siblings. Somewhere out there is a village or town where their parents (together or separately) are probably living their lives and wondering why their kid never visits. But family, and especially parents, can be a rich source of both role play and background, as anyone who’s ever gone home for the holidays can attest.
We are always children to our parents, and so no matter how powerful a mage they are or whatever kingdoms they claim, their parents will remember changing their nappies. This sort of relationship can obviously be played for comic effect if they come to visit or the player character is forced to return home. But it is also a way to check the ego of an arrogant character. It also completes the circle, with any visit home reminding the character how far they have come (or not) by comparing their current life to the one they had as a child (be it good or bad) and what was expected of them.
Gold Cannot Buy Off Worry
In a fantasy world, few parents probably like the fact their child has become an adventurer. It is an exceptionally dangerous life, and even if they don’t say it, the fact the character’s body might be returned to them any day keeps them up at night. Sure, the gold the child may bring home is welcome, but that also feels like trying to buy off the parents’ worries. If the character only comes home for Midwinter feast, talks all day about how dangerous their life is and how often they nearly died, they throws a big bag of gold on the table and says “see you next year” it isn’t going to go well. This may leave the character nonplussed as they have put off several jobs to get home for the family and saved a huge pile of gold to help them all out as they know things are hard. It’s all about perception, assumption and expectation, and this goes wrong when parents and child now inhabit very different worlds.
It is also important to note that what your parents want for you isn’t always the same as what you want. Sure, you may have saved the world by killing the great dragon Doomwing, but Sandra’s daughter from three cottages down qualified as a doctor last year. She’s really making something of herself. Having said that, the reverse can be worse. “Our son who saved the world!” parents can be just as much of a nightmare, wanting to show off what new presents the character brought home and parade them around all the relatives every holiday. “This magical letter opener? Yes, it is Valkyrie steel; our son brought it back from the lands of legend. Did your Sam ever go there? No? Oh you really must, it’s a magical place, just magical.”
Parents as a Character Factory
Parents are also a good way to illustrate why a character is the way they are. This might be due to their life growing up, or the traits their parents handed to them. One of the ways I tend to do this is take either the most prevalent trait of a character and make their father (although it could be any parent) twice as bad. In my 7th Sea game, Pietro the Voddace swordsman was renowned for picking swordfights all the time. Any disagreement would be met with a duel, which he would usually win as he was very good with a blade, proving his righteousness. So when the group visited his home they discovered his father was so much worse, and a better fighter. The first thing he did was challenge his son to a fight, which he fairly easily won. So after slapping his son’s sword out of his hand he smirked and said “not bad son, still, I thought you’d have got a little better by now”. In that moment the character came into focus: he’d had a life of being told he, and his swordfighting, was never good enough, and that winning fights proved you were right. Where the character was seen by the others as a bit of a bully, from that moment he had their sympathy instead.
In the same game, my Eisen swordsman Axel was always exceptionally suborn, and so I made his father worse. Dinner that day was tense with his mother and sisters were exasperated to exhaustion when both father and son stuck their heels in and refused to apologies for past troubles between them (that they were both equally culpable for, and knew it). As Axel was also quite a macho guy, loving his ale and fighting, I grew that into a streak of misogyny in his father. This was very hard forAxel’s elder sister, Ruth, who was herself a skilled fighter and general. Yet whatever she did in this martial family, she would never be Axel’s father’s “first born son” even though that son had run from home and shirked all responsibility. Even after years, Axel was set to inherit everything, and Ruth relegated to running the castle she’d be expected to just hand over when Axel finally came home to stay. This translated into her being very angry at Axel, although he did have that effect on plenty of people.
Expanding the Family Drama
While in the above examples it was the fathers I used to create conflict, it need not be the case. Any relative will do. In general most children have the most rivalry with the parent of the same gender, leaving the other one as the peacemaker between them. But you can (and should) swap this around to suit the background of the character. It is also important to note that not every parent/child relationship is awful. Many are loving, joyful and supportive. But even then, no one likes someone all the time and years of history create patterns and old arguments that never quite settle. It need not be the end of the world or lead to bloodshed, but it often makes dinnertime difficult.
Family visits need not only involve the character whose family you are visiting. There are multiple ways to bring the other characters into profoundly awkward old family arguments that might get dredged up. Again, if you have gone to your partner’s family for the holidays, you may already be familiar with this. Any “neutral parties” will be considered the audience that can vote who is wrong or right on any of these issues. “I’m sure your lovely friend Nisdar the Mage would agree that even long lived elves try to visit their mothers at least once a century, unlike some human’s I could mention, please pass the asparagus…”
Some characters drawn into this will gleefully take sides, others will do their best to escape, either option creates all manner of opportunity for entertaining scenes. In many cases, when new people come to visit, the family will be on its best behaviour. They’ll put on the mask because they have visitors. This is equally unbalancing to the character who may have taken a long time explaining just how bad their family is, only to have all of it disproved in moments. There is little more galling to hear from your friends than “they were okay really, and actually I thought your mother was quite nice”. When the character argues against what everyone has just experienced together it is they who look like the crazy one.
The Enduring Cliché of the Lone Survivor
Some of your players will try to get away from all this. Too often players create backstories that specifically kill off any family they may have had. The old “I’m the lone survivor of the Evil General’s attack on my village.” It’s something of a cliché, but also doesn’t actually get rid of family entirely. While close family often live in the same village, many move to other places, often through marriage or looking for new work. So the evil general might have murdered everyone in your village, but Uncle Frank and Aunt Betty are alive and well in the village over the hills. They really want to know why you didn’t take up their offer to stay with them and went off to seek revenge instead, when you were only 12.
In short, parents and families are an unending source of not only fun and silliness but also a powerful trigger to draw out character moments, unearth old wounds from childhood and develop how the character became who they are. This emotional conflict still counts—perhaps even more so—if the parents are separated or even one of them has died. Separation is hard on everyone, and can leave a lot of scars. A death in the family means never being able to make them proud or bury the hatchet.
Your Turn: How have PC families taken a part in your games?
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