I see a lot of characters with happy backgrounds and healthy family life these days...

I see a lot of characters with happy backgrounds and healthy family life these days. Have we cycled back to that being the norm from tragic backstories?

Maybe dude maybe.

Is that really something to complain about? I consider it an improvement.

Pretty much. All these That Guy stories and Edgelord/Magical Realm stories have become Veeky Forums's folklore. Even /r/RPGHorrorstories (which basically rips off from us) is the same. They serve as cautionary tales that teach balanced character creation and behavior by giving the worst examples possible.

> I consider it an improvement.
I honestly don't. I think I'm the only GM that prefers characters notmhaving too much familial baggage to start with. Happy people with loving families don't run off to get killed in a dungeon for shit tons of gold fast. They stay commoners working a trade or something.

This. People with happy lives don't leave them behind.

you mean bash peoples individual creativity by making them feel self conscious from not wanting to be like people in heavily fictionalized stories from one perspective?
okay
imo unless it actually breaks story let people do what they want man people are just trying to have fun, how dare they have their fantasy be extra fantastic

They do if something is threatening that happy life. And I don't mean the DM killing them off. I mean the player themselves writing into their backstory that the family is in debt, or a sibling is sick with a mysterious disease, or one of a million other tropes you usually see in fantasy stories with non-edge protagonists.

That would still qualify as a tragic backstory, looping back to OP's original issue.

No, it's not, because a tragic BACKSTORY kinda implies the character's life was shit for a good while prior to the campaign starting, rather than being the recent event that propelled the character into the campaign to begin with.

>or one of a million other tropes you usually see in fantasy stories with non-edge protagonists.
Not having a living family doesn't necessarily make somebody edgy, and honestly I can think or more fantasy protagonists without families than with them, The obsession over keeping families just seems to be pure contrarianism/hipsterism. Like not having a living family doesn't fucking strip you of having connections to other human beings. I don't see how "my family is shitty and living a loads of debt so I'm forced to do something retarded" is any more tragic than "I myself am shitty and living in loads of debt so I'm forced to do something retarded". People that get ass mad at PC's not having families are just pissed they don't have something to hold over a PC's head.

There's a big difference between

>"I'm the lone survivor of a clan of assassins who slays demons, and even though I've been killing since age 8 it never fills the void inside my soul."

and

>"My wife is dying of a curse and I have a vague lead on [insert campaign premise here] that may hold a chance of breaking the curse and saving her life."

>>"I'm the lone survivor of a clan of assassins who slays demons, and even though I've been killing since age 8 it never fills the void inside my soul."
So you're only capable of using strawmans for your argument since no one besides actual fucking children present this as anything serious.

Because people have a tendency to overdue tragic stories.

>People that get ass mad at PC's not having families are just pissed they don't have something to hold over a PC's head.
People get mad at you for not having a family because it makes it a pain in the ass to integrate your character into the game world. If your parents are dead and you don't have any friends and all you trust are your pleather duster and hanzo steel, then why the fuck are you suddenly deciding to hang out with these random murderhobos (the other PCs)? More importantly, why would they give a shit about you, random mumbling stranger with no social ties to anyone at all?

I get it, someone hurt you long ago by killing off your backstory NPCs in a hackneyed attempt at pathos generation. But going Full Coldsteel because of it is like never dating your whole life because the girl you had a crush on when you were 11 decided to date someone else.

>People get mad at you for not having a family because it makes it a pain in the ass to integrate your character into the game world. If your parents are dead and you don't have any friends
Who says your parents being dead doesn't mean you don't have any friends or actual history in the world? Why does this suddenly mean you can't have done anything else with your time? Or associated with anyone else?
>all you trust are your pleather duster and hanzo steel
See >More importantly, why would they give a shit about you, random mumbling stranger with no social ties to anyone at all?
Any why would they magically give a fuck about random farmer boy who somehow has levels in fighter who wants to save his family from debt despite there being thousands of safer ways to do so?

>DM tells his players that they need to have family members and loved ones so the BBEG can murder and rape them

>People get mad at you for not having a family because it makes it a pain in the ass to integrate your character into the game world. If your parents are dead and you don't have any friends and all you trust are your pleather duster and hanzo steel, then why the fuck are you suddenly deciding to hang out with these random murderhobos (the other PCs)?
Do people not hang out with orphans in your setting? Are they pariahs? Why would not having a still living mommy and daddy have anything to do with who want to form a party with who? Do your PC's demand to have dinner with a prospective allies parents or some shit? Are you from rural bumfuckistan? Are the only relationships you can imagine between people familial?

Like you can still fit and have a role in the world/be integrated into the campaign without having a family. "Muh family" is just one of the fucking laziest ways to do it? Maybe the he's hired by the church to do odd jobs so the cleric's heard of him, maybe he knows the blacksmith who went to the same orphanage as he does, maybe he can still know the PC's personally because again there are more relationships between people beyond who popped out of a given cunt.

Not only is that lazy writing, it's a fucking meme. Oh so because I have no family that means it's harder to do anything with my character as a whole? How is that hard at all to do? Not having a family means you have no real ties to the land/setting as you would normally have as a family, but that's also incorrect because it leaves the backstory up to so much interpretation that you can generally fit anywhere you need to.

> I get it, someone hurt you long ago by killing off your backstory NPCs in a hackneyed attempt at pathos generation

Actually, that would be every DM pretty much using the family system as a way of saying "Btw your mom/dad was raped and killed and your motivation is to do good because lol rape is bad" 90% of the time.

> then why the fuck are you suddenly deciding to hang out with these random murderhobos (the other PCs)? More importantly, why would they give a shit about you, random mumbling stranger with no social ties to anyone at all?

This is implying that there is no backstory at all, and that cutting out the family means "Lol no backstory" nice bait

Edge is a trend, it comes and goes. Pop culture was getting edgier and edgier starting in 2014 (arguably even going back to 2012). Now we're cycling out of it, and we'll spend the next decade making fun of it like we did the early 90s or mid 00's

Maybe. I know my players still write tragic backstories because they're paranoid as fuck that I'm going to have their parents killed or whatever. And to this date, I've never even harmed a PCs family in any way. When i get the chance to play, i just write whatever makes sense for the character, although I'm partial to the young person leaving their family to make their way in the world and find their fortune. But I've played everything between that and full edgelord clan-killer. I think people just need to do whatever makes sense for their character.

Is it possible to have a backstory where your parents are dead and it's not tragic at all?

Youngest child of a large family and your parents died of old age.

grrr! Old age killed my family, so I'm going to get my revenge on aging by killing age!
-edgelord probably

Do you not ask a PC's parents for permission to adventure with them over dinner?

They died of normal causes and you inherited a shit load of wealth and land maybe. And you are on the road trying to establish a reputation suitable enough to marry a noble lady/lord to have kids with to share your wealth and land to ensure a positive future for your bloodline?

That's what I got.

These "trends" only exist on Veeky Forums.

There will always be teenagers making chosen ones with tragic backstories, and other teenagers making normal people with happy families as a reaction to their edgy friends. Older players will continue to play a variety of characters. Every character type fits in some games and groups, and doesn't fit in others.

Also a good way to make that point interesting is for the inheritor of the wealth to just be too lacking in discipline or know-how of how his family works to know what to do with his newly acquired wealth. And so, paralyzed by this, he decides to abandon his destiny, and go out adventuring instead.

Leaves room for character development for him to grow the fuck up at least.

Nice fence sitting non opinion. I bet you’re a notary public

cahracter backstory idea: retired soldier gets a plot of land in the hills as promised for his service, marries, has a small farm, and 2.5 children. twenty years later the kids have grown up and have moved elsewhere and the old soldier and their spouse are bored with their now very quiet life and want some adventure.

This is true.

>how DARE you accurately portray this issues as realistically complex instead of adhering to my black-and-white "trends" backed up by zero data REEEEEEEEEEEEEE