Make your tragedies matter to your character, the party, and the story.
Have you ever felt the backstory pains that we used to? This was our strategy: We write an elaborate backstory full of murder, mystery, and utter loss. We imagine telling our friends around the gaming table, hearing their "oohs" and "aahs" as their minds are blown by our creative genius. Then we get to the game and realize that it's probably inappropriate to give a half-hour monologue about how Goretrax the dragon emperor tricked us into shooting our family into the sun. And so the backstory is forgotten. To top it off, we play a character that exists completely separately from the backstory we labored over! Well, since then, we've grown and considered how the tragic backstory can not only be interesting to the party but create incredible moments for our characters.
In The Strategy Stateroom, we lay out what we think are four crucial questions about your character. Their answers will bring their tragedy into the game in the best way. We dive into each of them in the episode and talk about specifics that will help you get the most out of them.
What is the source of your character's trauma?
What is your character's path?
How does your character's trauma manifest?
How does your character's trauma get resolved?
Then we go to The Extra-Dimensional Gateway to talk about the traumatic backstories of Iron Man and Arya Stark to see what we liked about them, what we can borrow, and how they differ.