One of the rites of passage for a Dungeons & Dragons player is creating a character for the first time. One of the most common pieces of advice given to new roleplayers making their first character is “Have a backstory!” Doing so gives you an idea of who your character is and where they come from, and it helps the Dungeon Master think of plot hooks to engage you. But if you’ve never written a backstory for a character before, this can be pretty daunting advice. Where do you start?
This brings us to maybe the most unsung aspects of character creation: backgrounds! Sure, there’s a lot of excitement to be found in the class and species selection, and of course the fun of assigning ability scores. But with just a read-through of the background that works best for you, and maybe even a roll of some dice, you can emerge with a fleshed-out backstory.
- What Is a Background?
- Using Suggested Characteristics
- Sample Character Backstories
- Creating Your Own Background
What Is a Background?
A background typically refers to the primary focus of your character’s life before they became an adventurer. For example, someone who might have lived a life of crime in their hometown would likely use the criminal background. Take a look at the criminal in the Basic Rules if you want a visual reference for what the backgrounds look like. In addition to the Basic Rules, background options can be found in books like the Player’s Handbook and the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, as well as other adventure and setting books.
Each background has a set of assigned skill and tool proficiencies, as well as a background feature, which is a storytelling prompt that you can partner with your DM to use when relevant to the game. For example, with the provided criminal background, your character has a contact within the underworld to try to suss out or share some information.
Beneath all of those are a set of tables for four suggested characteristics. These four characteristics form the foundations for building strong character backstories from scratch.
Using Suggested Characteristics
Once you’ve selected or scrolled past your proficiencies for now, you can either select from the suggested characteristics yourself or roll dice according to the provided tables. If you’re building your character using the D&D Beyond character builder, there’s even a shiny red button that will pick randomly for you.
Here’s a close look into how each of the elements of a background can help you craft a fully formed character.
Personality Traits
Each one of these is a bold, declarative statement about how your character interacts with others. “If someone is in trouble, I’m always ready to lend help.” tells you about a very different type of character than “I don’t like to get my hands dirty and I won’t be caught dead in unsuitable conditions.” Choosing two from these lists can help you build characters with personality conflicts that make them feel more three-dimensional.
Ideals
These give you a sense of what your character values most. Knowing this can help you understand what motivates them to engage with the story. Are they operating out of ambition? Are they just following the path of altruism? Does your entertainer believe “The world is in need of new ideas and bold action.” or are they “only in it for the money and fame?” Knowing that answer will inform interactions moving forward, especially ones involving their art in this case.
Bonds
If you’re not sure yet where your character comes from, the bonds section can help you establish roots that connect your character to the world they inhabit. Do they have a rival? Do they have a sense of duty to someone? Did they lose someone? This kind of info not only helps you visualize your character but also helps your DM work them into their story and world. Your folk hero could have a former bully that has created their desire for justice, or a missing family out there for you to discover somewhere in the story.
Flaws
Possibly the most important of the bunch, flaws can be extremely helpful for fleshing out your roleplay. Knowing that your character struggles to keep a secret or is keen to pick up loose trinkets gives you direct instructions for what to do with them in situations where leaning into that flaw could heavily influence the story being told.
As a sailor, your character being someone who follows orders even if they think they’re wrong tells you a very different story than saying anything to avoid doing extra work. In all these cases, story conflict is right there on the table. Maybe your character causes a stink by picking up a loose item, maybe your character accidentally blabs confidential information because an authority figure intimidated them. All because you now know their flaws and how to lean into them.
Sample Character Backstories
Once you’ve worked through each of the items, you’ll have your character's values and flaws, plus how they generally interact with the world and an idea of who are some of the most important people in their life.
To show just how simple and effective it is to create a table-ready, fleshed-out character from just a background, I’ve selected some of the backgrounds from the Basic Rules and rolled random selections from the suggested characteristics. Then, I strung them together to create a simple description of a brand-new character.
Noble
Personality Traits (d8):
- I take great pains to always look my best and follow the latest fashions.
- My eloquent flattery makes everyone I talk to feel like the most wonderful and important person in the world.
Ideals (d6): Independence. I must prove that I can handle myself without the coddling of my family. (Chaotic)
Bonds (d6): I will face any challenge to win the approval of my family.
Flaws (d6): I too often hear veiled insults and threats in every word addressed to me, and I’m quick to anger.
Putting it together: This combination of traits paints a picture of a person who has taken great labor to present themselves as charming and composed, while masking a deep insecurity. They’re desperate to both break free from the shadow of their family and also get their approval.
Ways to expand on this is to ask who their family is. Were they adventurers? Is this vain child a product of the privilege that their treasures paid for? Or is this generational wealth that the character feels unsure they deserve and have a burning desire to prove their own worth, to the world or even to themself? Things to look out for in roleplaying is grasping at opportunities for your character to try to do something impressive, or having them get bent out of shape at perceived slights.
Soldier
Personality traits:
- I’m always polite and respectful.
- I face problems head-on. A simple, direct solution is the best path to success.
Ideals: Live and Let Live. Ideals aren’t worth killing over or going to war for. (Neutral)
Bonds: I’ll never forget the crushing defeat my company suffered or the enemies who dealt it.
Flaws: I’d rather eat my armor than admit when I’m wrong.
Putting it together: From this combination, you can imagine a soldier who is not ruled by passions. When conflict breaks out, they’ll fight efficiently and directly, but they will likely remain calm until their hand is forced. But there is that sense of failure from some long-ago defeat that drives them now, something they don’t want to repeat, which will influence their decisions. They’re also stubborn, they’ll dig their heels in when they’re sure they’re right. A fun conflict to play as a player, even when you might know they’re wrong even if they don’t.
Acolyte
Personality traits:
- I quote (or misquote) sacred texts and proverbs in almost every situation.
- I am tolerant (or intolerant) of other faiths and respect (or condemn) the worship of other gods.
Ideals: Power. I hope to one day rise to the top of my faith’s religious hierarchy. (Lawful)
Bonds: I seek to preserve a sacred text that my enemies consider heretical and seek to destroy.
Flaws: My piety sometimes leads me to blindly trust those that profess faith in my god.
Putting it together: This combination actually gives you a few ways you can go with it. Initially, the quoting or misquoting could feel like something to play as a fun affectation, but when combined with their piety and their goals of power within their faith, it could actually be more of a power move, a need to be seen as someone who knows their sacred texts inside and out.
Their tolerance or intolerance of other faiths could be part of this power play as well, either by brokering deals with other deities’ followers or by reinforcing their dedication to their faith in the eyes of those who might be in a position to advance them.
The sacred text in the bonds could be a juicy nugget for a DM to grasp. Is it a book considered apocryphal within the faith but, if canonized, could establish the character’s legacy within the organization? Or is it something that directly threatens someone currently in a position of power? All these are fun avenues to explore within an ongoing D&D narrative. All from a handful of dice rolls.
Creating Your Own Background
Once you’ve explored the variety of published backgrounds, you may find that none of them quite match what you imagine for your character. For these cases, you can actually create your own customized background.
The rules for customizing your own backgrounds can be found in the Basic Rules. D&D Beyond makes it super easy to build your custom background in your character sheet, with drop-down menus for setting your features in the character builder. Reading through the suggested characteristics for the published backgrounds might give you some ideas for crafting traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds of your own.
Conclusion
As you can see, while they might not have the immediate mechanical benefit as class, species, or ability scores might, there is a lot more to backgrounds than simply the proficiencies and starting equipment they provide. Taking the time to fill in the charts can have as much benefit to your roleplaying as those other new character details can for your rolls. It takes you from a blank page to a character that feels ready to be played with just a few easy steps.
Riley Silverman (@rileyjsilverman) is a contributing writer to D&D Beyond, Nerdist, and SYFY Wire. She DMs the Theros-set Dice Ex Machina for the Saving Throw Show, and has been a player on the Wizards of the Coast-sponsored The Broken Pact. Riley also played as Braga in the official tabletop adaptation of the Rat Queens comic for HyperRPG, and currently plays as The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast The Game of Rassilon. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Great Article!!!
Dungeon Masters when the new player shows up with a 5 page backstory
hm, quite a pain, I do say so lad.
I love writing backstories for folks. I have a thread over on the Order of the Stick forums, specifically for taking requests for writing backstories!
a 5 page backstory give to me so i can see what i can write into my game world
Or just ask ChatGPT to write one for you and use it as a starting point ;)
Absolute best way to find a backstory
The latest Backgrounds, Strixhaven - 2 Ideals) & Dragonlance (none), have NO Traits. On D&DE Beyond, I need to switch through Backgrounds and pick exisisting Traits or creat my own. SO why an article of Traits when you have obviously decided to phase them out?
It's for people new to creating backstories, who will often have access only to the Basic Rules or the PHB. This site is still primarily for 5e, even if One D&D is being promoted here, so using the most basic and fundamental 5e rules makes perfect sense.
I would rather my players write a short novel than nothing at all. With 5 pages I would be able to create some great stories and scenario's around it. Not so much if you give me five sentences.
Great article! I am a relative newcomer to all things D&D, both as a player and as a DM. The Ideals, Bonds, Flaws and Traits that are built in are a big first step, as well as some of the prompts in the race and class sections of your character. The decision as to how long or in-depth your character backstory goes should be a conversation between you and your DM. Some DM's might want a 6 page backstory with rich detail, but if none of that will ever be worked into the campaign, it's just wasted pages. Conversely, if you are brand new to the game, as I recently was, you might struggle to create a 1 page backstory. D&D Beyond, the sourcebooks, and the internet are great helps for anyone that wants to give their character more depth. My biggest help was "Six Questions to Ask When Creating a D&D Character" from Board Goblins YouTube channel.
1. Where were you born?
2. Who are your parents? (Are they alive or dead?)
3. What were you doing {before lvl 1}?
4. Why did you leave it all?
5. What did you leave behind?
6. What does your character want {out of the campaign}?
While I think backgrounds are a great character building tool, I get the impression that Wizards of the Coast no longer agrees; newer backgrounds lack the traits etc. that make older backgrounds so useful as a character building tool, and the OneD&D playtest backgrounds show no indication of whether backgrounds in future will include these suggestions or not.
Personally I find them super useful, as you can pick the one (or 2+) that feel most right at each stage, and this helps you to answer questions about what your character is like, even when you don't have a fully formed idea of that character yet. Traits don't need to be a cage, as you can always change them later in response to how you end up playing the character, or narrative events where you choose to go against the way they used to be, plus you can tweak the exact wording, or write your own if you don't find any that fit.
Perhaps my favourite background is the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft Investigator; it has such a great range of options appropriate to the theme, as well as some unusual ones that can inspire and lead you off in a new direction to what you original thought the character would be. It's a very thematic option, but it's just a shame that it seems to be one of the last official backgrounds to have a full set of traits.
Aaron Sorkin is an Academy Award winner, five-time Emmy award winner, three-time Golden Globe award winner as a screenwriter and film director. One of the first things Aaron Sorkin expresses to his film students when it comes to writing characters is "don't write a backstory!" He goes on to say "your characters have never existed until you create them, so don't spend countless hours writing about where they're from, who their parents are, what they did earlier in their lives, it's a waste of time."
As a quarterfinalist for the 2020 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi screenwriting competition myself, I think I'm going to go with Aaron Sorkin rather than a well-meaning but misguided DM who wants six pages of my character's backstory before I can play in their game! That sounds like gatekeeper gaming, anyway.
Riley Silverman has the right idea here.
You can draw up a great picture of your character just by examining the Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws built right into the character Background in the guide book. As a DM, I don't want to hear anything about the character's backstory. I just want to see it in action. I sincerely believe the Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws is all a player needs to lean on to begin to drive the narrative of a D&D game forward. A six page essay is simply unnecessary work.
My sincere best to all the roleplaying community. Love the Game! :)
I think it depends on the type of campaign; if the story that the DM is going to be telling is essentially fixed, then the character back-stories don't matter, only their motivations. The DM can still pick up anything the players drop in retroactively if they wish, but the backstory doesn't really matter otherwise in such a campaign.
But other campaigns will be character driven, in which case their backstory may actively inform what happens in the campaign; e.g- NPCs from their past such as family members, former mentors, returning to their home-towns, past events catching up with them etc.
The key I think is finding the right balance of how much backstory comes from the players and how much comes from the DM when it's required; some players will be very protective of their characters and may be unhappy with a choice their DM suddenly makes, so if the campaign is going to involve character moments then the DM should be upfront about this so the player can fill in more detail if they need to. The DM might also ask pointed questions (e.g- "what was your mentor like?" to create hooks to use later so the player isn't uninvolved but they don't know exactly what's going to happen or when).
Other players may be happy to have the DM fill in backstory for them if it's required, e.g- define the basics, leave the rest to the DM. It's still possible for the DM to invite player input in the moment though, e.g- "it's your former mentor. Would you like to describe them?" so either the player can do it, or the DM can go with their own idea.
I'm preparing a very character driven campaign at the moment and I've tried to be upfront about what I need in terms of backstory (why you're looking for a particular thing, and how you're doing it), while giving suggestions players can choose or use as inspiration. One of the players isn't really interested in backstory at all, so I just gave them some suggestions to choose from, and built something from that. But that's for a campaign where the character's personal quests matter a great deal, and it will turn out that coincidences are less random than they seem…
But that's a particular style of campaign, very different from the others where you're just a bunch of randoms thrown together and having cool adventures where nothing from the past (or at least your own pasts) really features. Also, a "six page essay" isn't required for backstory, two or three paragraphs is plenty to establish a usable backstory, anything else is detail you can fill in later.
The most important part of any char sheet by a mile
Backgrounds are odd, I often advise my players to think about what features apply to them and then write a custom background around that
Don't want this app game.
I do love a good and rich backstory.
In my opinion it makes the characters more real and as a DM it allows me to customize the world in order to make my players feel that their stories and decisions really have an impact.
As a player, it's a way to get to know the DM's world and their perspective.
This article was very helpful! As a new D&D adventurer, these details and tips are much appreciated!
Smart