Why do so many people hate the "dead parents" or "street child" background in medieval fantasy when it's really not...

>You want me to have ties to this setting? Fuck you! I'm taking my katana and my trenchcoat and going home!
okay autism mcedgelord

>Family is but one bond, and it is usually the flimsiest kind.
sorry your family sucks, some of us have family members who wouldn't sell us for parts and would even prefer over a non-family person

Everybody has a childhood. Not everybody has a traditional nuclear family style childhood. And even if they do, parents and family die all the time.

And some don't. Family comes in all shapes and forms, good and bad, existent and non-existent. Same thing for player characters.

Having dead parents is perfectly fine if the player can give proper reasoning for how they died and how it effected their character emotionally. Maybe they have a grudge against the Empire which is why they want to join up with the rebels or whatever. It has to be something more than an excuse for psychopath murder hobo behaviour.

Guys, what if you killed your parents instead? Would you still go full murder hobo or would you try to come up with some edgy backstory on why?

My suggestion is that you play as a half-elf and only killing one parent. Who's gonna miss a knife ears am I right?

Half the people who complain about it are contrarians who hate common tropes and think a common tragic backstory like that is just the player refusing to engage in the world. See this thread's responses for such examples. They insist only edgy murderhobos have this kind of background, but I find those types of players don't even bother mentioning their parents in the first place.

The second camp are weirdos who want to play out extended scenes of some domestic fantasy and get mad when the GM sandbags that.

As a GM I'll usually fuck with your family if you provide me with one. But I try to make sure it's suitably dramatic and interesting.

>As a GM I'll usually fuck with your family if you provide me with one.

This is why people give themselves a dead family.

Sure, but healthy adapted people generally still have SOMETHING they consider to be family.

Edgy "my parents and siblings are dead" are players specifically trying to avoid things that are basic human needs, and this is a red flag.

>why can't I use the player's imaginary family for cheap drama
"Muh family is DEAD!" is the very definition of cheap drama.

Not everyone who does dead parents is refusing in the world, but it's definitely a red flag.

Jesus, not everybody develops some grand purpose from tragedy. Some people just drink or find a hobby to distract themselves.

Adventurers are not exactly what I'd call "healthy adapted people". Not even the Good ones. And what are "basic human needs" besides food, water, and air? If you're gonna say something cheesy like "love" then there are plenty of people who get by just fine without that.

rate my backstory, wall of text incoming

>never knew my parents, or at least i don't think i ever knew them
>street kid from an early age, sleep in the cold and resort to stealing
>about to pickpocket an adventurer
>he takes notice but doesn't react negatively
>he has a little chat with me
>asks if i'm interested in training to be his squire in exchange of access to decent beds and food
>of course i join him
>carry his huge weaponry around
>travel with him and his buddies
>grow up training with him from time to time and picking up some combat tactics
>also need to maintain his gear so the blacksmith workshop becomes like a second home
>pick up some things about the blacksmith trade along the way too
>years pass and I continue to learn about combat and craft
>when I come of age, he arranges everything to officially make me a part of the adventurer's guild
>get upgraded from squire to companion
>i'm pumped as hell
>learn at some point that the knight previously had a daughter that he lost in circumstances which led him to become an adventurer
>feels bad
>after some time, the knight is struck by sickness
>shortly after he realizes he has no more fight left in him, he makes the arrangements for me to officially be his daughter and carry on his name
>i didn't know my master thought that way of me
>turns out the reason he picked me up in the first place was because i reminded him of his daughter
>he passes away peacefully
>i'm left with his teachings and legacy
>not many people know his name or deeds
>yet he changed my life forever, and I will always remember him

Thats fine, because it literally covers your character's childhood and influences growing up beyond just "LOL MY PARENTS ARE DEAD". There's stuff there to expand upon and work into being a real character and not just a facsimile.

I've used dead parents several times with my characters, though in those cases they were always raised by someone else, for example I played a ranger that was raised by an older ranger who found my character as a child alone in the woods after his family had died in the forest. Except for the campaign where we were playing street urchins.

>he thinks having dead parents stops me from using them against him

This. It's popular as a reaction only. Though I'd totally play a character who was a street child who was basically family with other street children, ala Gavroche.

When do GM's offer this though? I've never had a GM play my sister or brother or father: the places I'm from always end up being far enough away that they don't come up and when they do it's that they were all killed of plague/orcs/big bad's minions/whatever the fuck for cheap drama.

They certainly have never let me develop the sense for what their portrayal of them is like, and then get attached to it. There are either too many blanks for them to fill in that they think should be left to the player, or not enough blanks for them to be happy playing someone they didn't make wholesale.

GM's don't even offer sound attachments to the player most of the time even in other forms. It's always that the players get attached to the cardboard cut out NPC who does helpful things and is a utility with a face. It's like you preferring someone who plays GTA and follows traffic laws to someone who just shoots people and runs over old ladies, and then being surprised when people choose the later because you don't make the former a fun fucking option.

That's to say nothing of the worst kind of GM, whose worse than the guy who uses your backstory for cheap drama: he throws it away for cheap drama. The guy who reveals the plot twist that your backstory with that sickly mother you were trying to take care of was all a dream. Never mind that your character has been sending letters and money home, that place didn't even exist. The GM didn't put it on his map for a reason and that was totally a hint. The whole party actually were shards of the ancient hero who was destined to use macguffin to destroy big bad and escape the matrix, as detailed in his upcoming novel. Yes this exact scenario happened to me and jaded me for fucking ever.

What my GM dislikes is not dead parents or street children, but having no past and no relationships. Humans are social creatures, pretty much everyone has connections to other humans of some sort or another. If your character is an orphaned street kid, she still must have had some network of people that helped her survive and made her who she is now. Whether that be a gang of other street kids, or a thief who took her in and taught her the trade, or the passing mercenary who married her. There is no such thing as a person who is a total blank slate with no connections to anyone else. If you don't want your character's backstory to play a role in the game, then keep it simple and ask the GM not to bring it up, he'll respect your wishes. The GM just really hates characters who seem like they have popped fully formed out of the aether.

Some people actually enjoy it when the GM fucks with them; it's part of the experience they signed up for.
Others, not so much. (Problem happens when the GM doesn't make it clear what the players are in for.)

Problem is, many GMs just decide to 'fuck with your family' by having you come back to your village to find them murderfuckedgeno-skullraped-cided by whatever nemesis you happen to be fighting that week. GMs almost never do anything else.

Because memes

Because it's lazy, and encourages empty characters.
If the player uses it well, I have no problems with it. Unfortunately, it accompanies hollow characters that exist entirely to stab things in the face far too often.

>never had a character that had much extended family, or they just never came up much in the stories they were in (very rarely had a character with the "muh parents are deeead" backstory, the DMs just never focused on my characters' families)
>recently play in a game where my family is important and I learn a lot from them
>grow very attached to them, really enjoy the sessions
>when something goes wrong and my family is split up from me, it becomes my drive to get them back
>tfw not on some huge quest of saving the world, just a humble goal of getting my loving family back

It's super refreshing, and I never knew how much I wanted a good character's family until now.

What really sucks is that dead parents/street child can be good if you just try.

Pick up band of other named urchins that you bond with. Maybe you're taken in by another family as a child or a servant. Maybe you form a semi-parent relationship with a tavern owner who feeds you for sweeping up. That's a million connections you can make if you're not lazy and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don't kill them off in the back story for cheap motivation.

>implying I can't just make their parents liches

It has nothing to do with being edgy, nor is it a reaction to killer GMs. It's a narrative thing. When you don't want your "main character" to have narrative ties that don't belong in your story, you remove the offending aspects. It's the same reason most love interests are virgins, most dogs characters bond with are puppies, most groups they join are newly formed, etc, when the history of how those things got to this point isn't narratively important.

Rather, if the love interest starts talking about her ex-boyfriend, you can expect he'll show up at some point in the future.

My favorite background is thinly veiled Snow White. Urchin girl taken in by a band of thieves, all short races.

Personally, I don't hate it, but I do think it lacks creative depth and isn't often portrayed very well by the players who play characters like this. I actually wrote something about this awhile back, if anyone is interested.
draconick.com/2017/11/15/my-parents-are-dead-the-tragic-backstory/

It's mostly salty little bitch DMs who don't have that leverage over players.

Dead parents are good when they're just a kick off for things afterwards.

Your parents died so you raised yourself and became a badass?
That's garbage.

Your parents died so the local monastery raised you and you became a complete fanatic/your eccentric uncle raised you and introduced you to his forbidden occult studies when he tried to sacrifice you/etc?
That's fine.

I generally play characters who don't have families just because I'm lazy and it gives the GM less bullshit to fuck me over with for the sake of drama.

There's rarely any incentive to create a rich background for characters, especially in D&D, because most times, the character will be far from home and will rarely see their famiy/friends anyway as the campaign takes you to parts unknown.

What I think is wrong about the character is how he is now unbound to the world, was he really the only person you talked to before he died?
Maybe he had a good relationship with his brother and now your "uncle" offers his house as your home whenever you want and you send him cards from time to time.
Little things like that and more complex relationships are what make a good character.

I dunno.
I had quite a lot of fun playing an orphan child of a whore who was picked up by the local evil priest ruling class for experimentation. It became an affectionate father/child relationship before long, with a strange balance of power revolving around the priest having crazy powers and doing bad things, and the kid being an extremely strong magical experiment and wanting the priest to not do evil things. You know, because it was mean.

That was a fun game.

because it means somebody else got to the family first
which unfortunately is only half joke - the dead parents background is often a response to DMs who think the epitome of drama is to just kill somebody off in somebody's background.

I like the "family hates and abdandoned you" way more.

You can make a questline and rivals out of it.

Funny, it's kind of an inverse of my own
>Be sellsword
>Parents still live in wealthy city but ran away from home because helicopter parenting / pursue Ur dream etc.
>Get attempted pickpocket by filthy street urchin
>Chase down street urchin
>End out taking him on as an apprentice / assistant mind of deal to not be so lonely
>Later on become gay lovers

The perfect brokebackstory.

As a GM, I am always a bit anxious about playing someone intricately connected to a players backstory, especially if they don't go very in-depth into it. Fucker, you just wrote you have an older brother but nothing about his personality, his job, your relationship, nothing. How am I supposed to interpret this? And even if they DO go in-depth into it, that's also a lot of pressure because they clearly have a vision in mind for who this character is, but want you to play them instead.

It's a lot easier to just kill them off-screen so you don't have to bother, desu.

The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

here. I don't do things that way. There's no gravity to that.

If I'm gonna kill off a PC's family member(s), it happens in front of their face. They're gonna see it, and who does it.

>the ex-boyfriend shows up later
>he’s actually the Chosen One who is fated to defeat the Evil Wizard King
>he’s totally incompetent as an adventurer
>he’s kind of annoying
>he keeps bugging your GF who has no interest in him
>you have to keep him around and protect him to save the world
This is the kind of bullshit drama that I crave

>believing in fate
There is where you are wrong, drop the shitty chosen one, dethrone Evil Wizard King, kick god of Fate and Prophecies in groin, marry your waifu and be happy.

One thing has nothing to do with the other.
If your players think that being orphan makes acceptable for them to be a bunch of edgy retards, you're playing with the wrong people that would be shitty players no matter how their parents were.

>Adventurers
>Healthy people
If they were healthy they would stay at their homes or at most serving under the local lord.

>babysitting a hopelessly incompetent NPC actively trying to cuck you.
>enjoying that

You do you, but me being forced to interact with a character I hate because the "plot" says he's more important than the actual players is a quick way to make me resent the GM.

Pic related was a hilarious way of doing it though.

>make human PC in his 60s
>his parents passed peacefully in old age
>his children and grandchildren were SLAUGHTERED BY THE BBEG's MINIONS
How do I stop doing shit like this?

That's only because having a GM who uses tropes is the surest sign that you have an uncreative and unoriginal GM.

>adventurer’s guild
ughh.

Vengeful grandpas are a-ok in my book

I'm not sure you know what tropes are, user. You can't tell a story without tropes. You can use tropes or avert them or subvert them or do some le ebin clever twist on them, but you can't not have tropes because tropes are just elements of a story.

Really, it's more annoying when some GM just found tvtropes and sets out to try to subvert every single possible trope because they think that makes them creative, when really it just makes them contrarian. Knowing what to subvert, what to use, and what to avoid is an important part of becoming a writer, and shitposting about using tropes is just loudly declaring you missed the point.

>bcuz my GM will use it against me!
This seems like a bad attitude. Why is drama a bad thing, again? Sure, it can be done badly, but so can literally anything. Too many retards in this thread are referring to drama, itself, as if it is inherently bad and undesirable in a game. But surely the game needs SOMETHING to happen, and if your character has pre-existing ties and contacts that can come up in the story, that's a great way to get a character personally invested. You shouldn't stupidly dismiss the approach merely because amateur GMs do it badly.

Ultimately I think it's not so much the dead parents part that GMs hate as much as that it's pretty much interchangeable with "my character's backstory is strategically constructed to ensure it has nothing for you to use against me." After all, realistically even a street child with dead parents will have some kind of social contact, and in narrative terms those would be analogous to a family. So it reeks of a toxic "GM versus players" attitude wherein the player isn't trying to have fun or play a role or tell a story, they're trying to "win."

What if your parents died of natural causes once you were already an adult?
It's not like there has to be a dramatic reason for people not to live into their 80's in medieval fantasy setting.

Actually, most people who lived to adulthood would live at least into their 60s, even 70s. The myth that everyone died young is just that - it stems from people mis-reading average mortality ages which get skewed because of much higher infant mortality.

People today on average really only live a few years longer than their medieval ancestors did.

Some of us actually prefer stories that are "suitably dramatic and interesting."

>Acktchully, most people who lived to adulthood would live at least into their 60s, even 70s.
There's a reason I used 80's.
But you didn't care about informing me, you just wanted to feel smart for knowing something half the people here already did.

>party is approached alone by one of the local tyrant queen's henchmen
>he's a close cousin of one of the PCs
>ends up explaining in rational terms why he and his family support the local tyrant queen
>reduces the grudge between them to a mere theological dispute fueled more by emotions than by righteousness
>actually provides a pretty interesting scene in which the local tyrant queen is fleshed out more and her followers get some actual characterization and a clear motivation for their actions
>don't even have to kill the henchman off or anything to provide drama

GMs who cynically kill off anyone the players come up with are shit, but players who don't come up with anything are worse.

>80s
I just figured you were exaggerating because most people of adventurer age wouldn't have parents in their 60s, let alone 80s.

I completely love it when players hand me the means of fucking with them on a platter.

Once, one my players gave me a character who had a strained relationship with her brother, who she hadn't seen in years.

Guess who showed up two sessions in as the guy hunting the party as traitors? I don't think I've ever seen someone more excited with a villain reveal.

>say something reasonable
>he was probably wrong and just accidentally said something reasonable, better correct him
The absolute state of ackchullyfags.

Adventurer's Guilds are the second most comfy fantasy trope after Thieves' Guilds though...

Humans are biologically social, and the direct negative health effects of loneliness are well-documented.

Too many players read "fucking with them" as some kind of aggression. I don't see it that way, I see it as simply using the elements provided to make the story better.

Psychological needs matter, user.

Stress, anxiety, and loneliness are literally, LITERALLY, killers. Humans have a need of entertainment, social contact, physical comfort and safety; without them, people degrade not just psychologically but in measurable physical performance, too. This is not a want, or a comfort thing, or something that can technically be foregone, they are literally killers. They are best expressed and understood in the terms of physical requirements just like food, water, sanitation, and air.

>thieves guild
Taste.

It lost it's punch the second time, and anyone who plays enough games is well past their second time.

That's what fellow party members and taverns are for.

They weren't raised in a tavern. They probably haven't known the party all that long.

>GMs who cynically kill off anyone the players come up with are shit, but players who don't come up with anything are worse.

Funny thing, but if you play Pendragon instead of D&D, this problem goes away *completely*.

>This is not a want, or a comfort thing, or something that can technically be foregone, they are literally killers.

Thank god. Because if you're too poor to enjoy those things, the world is better off without you.

They likely had a teacher or lived in a populated area in the meantime. And that's assuming there's even that much time between muh tragic backstory and the start of the campaign.

...does anyone else just straight up require their players to provide a small number (2-4) of important social contacts their character has?

They don't have to be family, they just have to be some kind of significant social tie. Friend, coworker, rival, mentor, ex-girlfriend, estranged sibling, childhood friend, I don't really care as long as they mean -something- to the character. I only ask for 2-4 contacts, their relation to the party, and an elevator pitch as to who they are. Any detail about them that isn't stated is fair game for the GM to invent as needed - and in my opinion it's better if they're vague concepts rather than fully fleshed out already.

It's fine - encouraged in fact - if they have some kind of potential utility, like being a tavern-owner or a friendly local city guard or a shopkeeper willing to give the party the friends-and-family discount or an enchanter who can identify items or whatever. Naturally, they still have to make sense in context and balancewise.

This usually amounts to a dozen or more NPCs who have a potential use to the party and are potentially useful to the GM, and since the players came up with it in my experience they often feel at least some sense of personal investment and belonging, which is good for immersion. Some of them over the years went on to become major NPCs int heir own right just due to being useful or in the right place.

If not, then coping with it and overcoming muh tragic backstory went from "a shitty excuse to not give the GM anything to work with" to "an actually planned character development that other people may also contribute to and play with." Which is a good thing.

Fuck that. I wouldn't play with a GM to outright required my to give him plot hooks like that.

>So it reeks of a toxic "GM versus players" attitude wherein the player isn't trying to have fun or play a role or tell a story, they're trying to "win."

I'm sorry that your experiences in tabletop gaming have taught you to be suspicious that a GM seeking plot hooks is out to get you, rather than that a GM seeking plot hooks is out to get you invested and interested.

Bad GMs

How's my backstory, dudes

>be asian baby born in the west.
>nicknamed orphanborn because father died before my birth and mother died during childbirth.
>have 5 years older brother who remembers it.
>don't remember any of this because was just an infant.
>brought back to the east by samurais uncle had sent
>grandpa and grandma are emperor and empress, delighted to see grandsons and grief over loss of son (my daddy)
>dad was eldest son, ran off to the west with lesser noblegirl and broke relations with dad
>grandpa still has regrets.
>grandpa always around but hardly show emotions
>grandma always dotes on me
>uncle very hard on me growing up
>be 14 years old now
>start reading chivalric (bushido?) romance stories and want to become writer
>grandpa and uncle want me to become samurai instead
>belligerently learn to read western literature so grandpa and uncle don't know what i'm reading
>learn of stories of who I speculate to be my father from traders and ambassadors from the west
>want to travel west to learn more about father and write story of him
>be 22 years old now
>grandpa on deathbed, tells me I'm most like dad and that dad ran off to the west because he heard of cool stories of knights and dragons and shit
>grandpa croaks after apologizing for being cold all these years
>brother is emperor
>tell brother I want to travel west and learn more about father
>brother lets me go with his blessing
>learn dad was some sort of superhero who went around saving people and kingdoms and the world a few times
>got big getas to fill

Would not play with
I can forgive a lot, even magical realm and "that guy", but I could not stand my GM demanding you play only characters he can easily manipulate.

Weird how D&D players reject this but Shadowrun players outright expect it.

Like, seriously, a GM giving you your CHA in free contact points is actually giving you a massive fucking advantage in that system.

>daughter of a whore working for the mafia and an unknown halfling
>raised by the mafia as one of their own
>completely fine with stealing, violence and murder due to having been raised by the mafia
>grows up and decides to become a thief for the mafia
>mafia get slaughtered by adventurers while she's out stealing
>joins another group of adventures as a rogue in the hope of running into the group of adventurers that killed her family and killing them
Is my character too edgy?

There is a huge difference between allowing and demanding.
If the GM forbade characters from having contacts it would be just as bad.

And if you took no contacts in Shadowrun, especially at times when the CHA in free contact points houserule is in effect, your DM would almost certainly demand you take some. So the example still applies.

>How dare the GM try to involve me!
I could not stand my players insisting their characters came out of nowhere, have nothing, and know nobody, just because they're desperate to avoid me trying to involve them in some kind of unique and deliberate way, because they're afraid...what even ARE you afraid of? It seems overwhelmingly petty to deliberately try to give the GM as little as possible to work on.

Because no one wants yet another "Oh no! A ploy point involving your family is happneing"
I LIKE giving my characters a reasonable backstory, but I could never do when a GM demands it, simply because you know they plan to use that plot hook.

The second user you replied to was referring to players who have the "player vs GM" attitude, not GMs themselves.

>Family is but one bond, and it is usually the flimsiest kind.
I'm sorry your parents reacted with confusion when you decided you wanted to hack your penis off, but your view is divorced from reality. Family is the strongest bond for the vast majority of functioning adults.

You can do a lot more with a character's connections than "Oh no, they've been kidnapped/killed/maimed by the BBEG!" Especially if your character's connections are something like a thief they used to be in a guild with, an old buddy from the army, a mad wizard they used to work for, a younger sibling that went into adventuring, etc. It could be a job offer, some offered help ("I have info on X!"), a get-rich quick scheme, or whatever.

Those can be great to set up plot hooks that use stuff that ties a character to the world and makes the world feel like an actual world, not a videogame world the characters are wandering through.

It's one thing if you're just playing a mindless dungeon crawl, but most D&D players reject involving themselves in the world because they find it cheap for some reason.

>simply because you know they plan to use that plot hook.
Isn't that the point, autist?

I know, but that's not in my hands anymore. It's an established part of the DM's world, and I can use it!

I wouldn't play with a GM who I knew was going to use my characters family against me
It's like buying a lottery ticket you know is going to lose.

>I wouldn't play with a GM who I knew was going to use my characters family against me
>against me
see>I'm sorry that your experiences in tabletop gaming have taught you to be suspicious that a GM seeking plot hooks is out to get you, rather than that a GM seeking plot hooks is out to get you invested and interested.