A Character's Home Town!

[Diana]

On a really detailed character bio you can add in where a character was born or grew up. A lot of times this can make a HUGE difference to a character's personality and their history. Consider a character that lived out in the country and then moves in to the city. Or a character that was born in a laboratory and spent their childhood there, only to end up escaping later.


How often do you consider hometown or birthplace when designing a character? What are some examples of your characters where it made a big difference?

 

[Dawn Bringer Invictus]

I've considered this a few times, but the only time I've really made this an important part of the character was with my character, Arkoss Schvensson, in Soldiers Of Misfortune: Into the Labyrinth of Oppression. Life on the hive ships as part of a homeless nomadic collective of arthropod species meant he grew up in an environment that was very rugged and harsh, as well as desperate and splintered in its sense of identity. He actually started off as a very rebellious character in his youth, leaving the hive ship later due to his perception of it as a restrictive and inhumane environment to live in, although he returned to it years later after serving as a mercenary, coming to accept it as the only real home his people have now.

 

[Pirogeth]

To be honest this has never really mattered to my characters for the most part. Mostly because RP's take us through so much adventures and things driven by the GM you are never able to complete a large an important subplot based on your hometown.

But as far as "Where a Character Comes From?" that part makes a true difference for my characters. The background of their surroundings let's me develop emotions. Taking for instance, Atoshi from ICSYL, he was raised to be a crude military figure throughout most of his life. The area of Coltier has always been one of military functionality and really a place that could mostly be described as goblinless Mordor. (That is until you read through ICSYL 1) After his background the city really did not mean much to him. He had a few friends there in politics but that was it. (Then again the cities were destroyed over and over again so not much could be recognizable.)

 

[King Weavel]

Done this a bit..It's not always that vital...It's more about their upbringing and early life development itself than where it happened most of the time.

Let's see..Time when it was most important was...Probably Arisa in ICSYL2, having spent the majority of her life in the Underworld, having been born there and then going to the surface. So yeah, her birthplace being the Underworld was essential seeing as it's a far more harsh and cruel world than living on the Surface.

Her early years in the Underworld were as royalty. Then was all it taken away due to her parent's assassination and being forced out of the castle by others conspiring to rule the Underworld. She had to wander the savage wasteland that is the Underworld for with only her brother Jackal. That lasted until the tournament to determine the new ruler was held, which Jackal won.

So she saw how people were suffering and saw the the good areas of the Underworld later in her life. Areas that were much more civilized and under control as well. She and her brother dealt with people constantly trying to kill or deceive them. All this helped her get a realistic view of the world. It also made her be a more friendly person, as she decided to NOT be blood thirsty/self serving like 70% of the people she met in her travels with her brother.

So yeah, she became the opposite of typical Underworld dwellers, being more friendly and not as violent or hateful as some are. She also isn't one to blame the people living up on the surface as she has seen most of the conflicts in the Underworld stem from it's own people and thus she doesn't suffer from blind hatred some dark beasts exhibit, she made up her own mind based on her experiences.

 

[Blind Hemingway]

Depends on the plot. For Joshua in Sword of Embera, his hometown and eventual place of residence is the key to his plot since he's the big Patriarch in my plot lines. Much of SoE is about moving from one place to another for him since I loosely based the plots of the series off the Book of Genesis starting with Abraham and ending with Josef. Joshua's tie to the land is more important overall than the place where he started. Chavvah on the other hand loved her home town but was forced into action out of her own accord and eventual entrapment within the SoE. She has a nostalgic love of her birthplace but can never return to the past. Selina from the plot that bears her name, does not have a homeland. She's stuck being the perpetual wanderer fleeing from both her past and the former ideology she believed in. Being a partisan of sorts, her only home has been either the airship where she received her training or the open road.