To understand this part of the character's generation, the reader must start from the heading, Progenitors. The progenitor is the player's father or mother, and where either are lacking, then the character's older sibling, uncle, aunt, or some stranger met on the street after the character's family died while the character was young. Before the character could become a fighter or a thief or a druid, he or she had to grow up first; and how the character "grows up" is no more a choice of the character than it was for me or for anyone reading this. I had an engineer as a father and a housewife as a mother, I grew up in a middle-middle class neighbourhood of white, white Calgary Alberta, without any rights or freedoms except those I could attempt once I was old enough to get out of sight from my parents, the pastor (of a church I didn't choose to attend) or any other authority figure.
I don't consider a player character should have it any different. If one's father happens to be a rat catcher, then yes, your character will be taken along and made to set traps and lay out poison and hit rats with a club, in the meantime getting bit dozens of times and coming down with all sorts of diseases, which you survived because eventually you found the means and the mental acuity to make yourself into the proud, respected cleric you are today — a choice I do think the character is entitled to make because it was made after the character reached a quasi-level of maturity. And for the record, I consider that age to be about 12 or 13 in a 17th century or earlier world. My great-uncle Leo was a farmer outside of Forestburg, central Alberta; he got married at the age of 13 to my great-aunt Meri, in the 1920s. My great uncle Irving also married at 13 to my great aunt Theodora, again the same age; while my great uncle Igan married my great aunt Anna when he was 12 and she was 14. This was in the 1920s. They were each given a farm upon marrying, a farm they managed without tractors, which they still farmed in the 1970s when I knew them and visited.
I make this point because in a cold, raw, make-your-own way world, people begin their lives young. The player character is 9 when he leaves with his explorer father for some distant, strange part of the world aboard ship; the character is 7 when she helps her father rob graves; the character starts working as a miner at 6. Nineteenth century literature is chock full of such examples.
I don't provide these backgrounds so the player can build a "story" around how the character got from then to now. No. No, we do not think of our lives as "stories." We have stories about ourselves, but they're snippets and bits, or they're overarching simplifications that ignore the constant everyday changes and nonsense and things that don't fit conveniently into whatever else we do. The rat catcher isn't a "story." The rat catcher is a collection of memories, some good, some bad, some nasty, some frightening, some best forgotten ... and yes, some wedged into a tale told at a bar some night. But mostly, it's about what the character can DO. "Yeah, I've caught rats. Big ones, black ones, ones crawling with maggots, inside walls, inside carriages and sewers, inside dead bodies. You want a rat killed, I know how. But I hate it. I hate rats. I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing one. Filthy, revolting creatures. I didn't become a cleric so I could go on hunting rats."
Character raised in a smithy walks into a smithy and feels at home. Sees a porter wending way along a road and thinks, "Yeah, those were long days." Meets an unemployed labourer and says, "Buck up, fellow; I was a labourer once. Look at me now. If I could do it, you can too."
It's a feeling for place, for a past, for a way of thinking, for things thought of with a cringe and things thought of sentimentally. It's an underlay to the leveled character, making a distinction between the assassin raised in a gypsy camp and the assassin whose childhood days were spent watching swords being made. Leaves a mark. The work we were made to do as children makes us what we are — soft, hard, privileged, ignorant, worldly, entitled, miserable, grateful.
I see you just put down Monk under the Dex tab in the wiki. While many of the other Progenitors lend themselves to one class or the other (Gladiator comes to mind), this is the first that appears to be a direct character class (although maybe there's just no better word for "Martial Artist?").
ReplyDeleteAny particular reason other than Monk being your acknowledged favorite? Any thoughts about the other classes?
Pandred,
ReplyDeletePlease forgive the rhetoric. It is aimed at others, not you.
I don't want to get into another fucking ignorant D&D discussion about European vs. Asian monks. The word is OLDER than Christianity, originating with the Greek word "monos," which is OLDER than Buddhism also. Monos means "solitary;" Vulgar Latin is "monicus" ... and being "vulgar," that means by people who were NOT educated. A community of monks CAN be a fraternity of men formed for the practice of religious devotions, but long before this fucking century began, the word was ALSO used for ANY group that were bound by vows. It pisses me off to no end that people who don't understand language, don't understand history, don't understand religion and DON'T appreciate linguistics cannot get it into their pissant-tiny brains that as fantasy gameworld designers we can use the word without bowing to the tiny door of pedantic fucking priests.
*growl*
While the primary stat of a monk is wisdom, as it states under the monk page on my wiki, presumedly anyone raised by a monk as progenitor is bound to focus on the monk's high dexterity rather than the monk's wisdom. That's why I included it in the dexterity table.
Remember that while the progenitor is a monk or a fighter/gladiator, this doesn't mean that the character need be either. A mage can have a gladiator as a parent; so can a bard or a thief or a cleric. Why not? And it stands to reason that at some point that parent or mentor is going to force the kid to stand here and jump there and deflect that, often enough that the character has a smattering of skills later on. I'm not much of a carpenter, but I grew up watching my father put together a 35 ft. high, 1,100 square foot cabin, which I began helping on at the age of 5. I know enough about carpentry that I can put things together and apply sense to construction, even though I'm as likely to do it as I am to vote for a right-wing party. I wasn't asked if I wanted to learn about construction. The tools were shoved into my hands and I learned or I didn't eat supper. At least, that's the threat my father would make. Seemed pretty real at the time. I never tested it.
I think it's a mistake to equate any of these tables with a class. A gladiator is likely to be a fighter, but why not a ranger, a paladin or an assassin? Is there any physical reason why a gladiator can't be a cleric or a druid? Is there any physical reason why a mage, illusionist, bard or thief can't be tremendously strong and large? For that matter, do all gladiators possess a levelled class at all? Do they actually need one to act as a gladiator?
I suggest ditching such narrow cliches. They don't contribute to a nuanced gameworld and they aren't helpful in building an NPC's legitimate personality.