5e Backgrounds - What Do They Ask of Us?

I previously noted that 5e's character backgrounds often call for discreet bits of co-creative worldbuilding, where the player adds something to the campaign setting in cooperation with the DM. A few of them have tables with random bits of backstory. And all of them have a feature that gives the character some kind of special ability.

What I want to do here is just take stock of what each background asks for and offers. I'm looking at the Player's Handbook and the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, because they're the two places I've seen complete backgrounds. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide has some additional backgrounds, but they're basically minor reskins of the existing ones rather than complete backgrounds, so I'm not going include it in this exercise, at least for now.

You don't actually have to follow 5e's advice on this. A DM with a more fully-developed campaign setting could simply offer each player a small menu of options for things that currently exist in the setting, rather than asking the player to co-create them. The right decision depends on both what you want as a DM and what you players want, whether they want to help build a setting together with you and the other players, or if they'd prefer to just play the game in a pre-existing setting. Before I start, I also want to re-mention Jack Shear's idea to let players design much larger and more important elements of the setting, rather than the relatively small elements that the backgrounds typically call for.

Ship's Passage + Position of Privilege = Adventure?

Player's Handbook Backgrounds

Acolyte

•  Feature - "Shelter of the Faithful" - basically room and board at the local temple wherever you go, plus free access to healing magic at these temples, plus a home-base temple

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to either design a new god/pantheon (or at least a new denomination or sect for worshiping an existing god), plus other details about your home-base temple and your role in it. your equipment list mentions that your holy symbol was a gift, so possibly design the NPC who gave it to you.

Charlatan

• Feature - "False Identity" - a second persona you can adopt for social roleplaying whenever you want (in an intrigue game where everyone can disguise themselves as a different member of the same profession, I would say that charlatans can use any disguise they want. if I gave the other characters get A secret identity, I'd give charlatans TWO. or, I'd give them one stable secret identity, and a second disguise that has to be different every game session.)

• Random Table - roll to discover your favorite scam, rather than designing your own con

• Creative Opportunities - only the second persona, in whatever level of detail you like, plus anything you want to make up about how you do your cons

Criminal

• Feature - "Criminal Contact" - you know an NPC who acts as your liaison to the criminal underworld, and you and/or your contact are connected to the underworld well enough to send each other messages wherever you go

• Random Table - roll to discover what kind of crimes you commit

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design your NPC point-of-contact

• Alternative - you could choose to be a spy instead of a criminal (personally, I think the Charlatan background's second identity is a better fit for a spy, but I guess this is based on the ability to pass messages via your contact/handler?)

Entertainer

• Feature - "By Popular Demand" - basically room and board at the local theater wherever you travel, along with a bit of popularity and name recognition among the local NPCs wherever you perform

• Random Table - roll to discover what kind of performance you give

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to flesh out your entertainment routine in a way that charlatans and criminals are not asked to flesh out their scams and crimes; but unlike the acolyte, you're not asked to help design a home-base theater. your equipment includes a letter from an admirer, so possibly you need to design them as an NPC

• Alternative - you could choose to be a gladiator instead of a performer (really, any kind of athlete would fit as well here, but maybe gladiatorial combat is the only sport in the Forgotten Realms?)

Folk Hero

• Feature - "Rustic Hospitality" - room and board with the local peasants, who will also hide you from their own government

• Random Table - roll to discover the defining event that makes people think of you as a hero

• Creative Opportunities - only more detail about your defining event, if you so choose

Guild Artisan

• Feature - "Guild Membership" - room and board again! plus the guild hall is explicitly a good place to meet NPCs, and you can get out of most crimes or get access to important political figures by paying back your overdue membership fees (5 gp per month since your last visit)

• Random Table - roll to discover what your guild does

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design your guild as a faction; plus you were apprenticed to a master artisan, so you should help design that NPC

• Alternative - you could choose to be a guild merchant instead, if you do, you'll need to help decide what goods you sold and how you transported them

Hermit

• Feature - "Discovery" - you know something important about the campaign setting that none of the NPCs are aware of 

• Random Table - roll to discover the reason you left society

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help determine your secret discovery, which is explicitly described as being pretty much anything you and the DM want; you can also add more detail to your reason for going into seclusion, and you'll need to think a little about what your secluded life was like

• Alternative - none listed, but a philosopher or scientist would be a pretty good fit to make a cool discovery

Noble

• Feature - "Position of Privilege" - NPCs generally like you, peasants defer to you, other nobles treat you as a peer, and you can meet with politically important NPCs if you want

• Alternate Features - "Retainers" - you get 3 loyal NPC servants, they're all supposed to have different jobs, and they won't fight or go into dungeons

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design your title, decide how much political power that title wields, to design your noble family/house, determine your position in the family, and design any noble regalia associated with your household

• Alternative - you can be a knight, which, among other things, means you're a low-status noble trying to move up in the world

Outlander

• Feature - "Wanderer" - room and board! specifically, you can find a good campsite and forage for enough fresh food and water for the rest of your party, and you are familiar with the overland map of your campaign setting (this one's sort of fascinating for what it implies - are other characters city-slickers who don't know how to camp? are you the only one who knows what the campaign setting looks like?!)

• Random Table - roll to discover what sort of nomadic lifestyle you were leading

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design one (or more!) foreign countries

Sage

• Feature - "Researcher" - whenever you don't know a piece of information, you do know where you'll need to go in order to find out

• Random Table - roll to discover how you were trained (like, were you a librarian? a researcher?) weirdly this table does not tell you what topic you're sagacious about

• Creative Opportunities - the Player's Handbook doesn't mention it, but I feel like maybe you should decide what topic you know about? also your equipment includes a letter from a colleague with a question you can't answer, so you should probably eventually design the colleague and the question.

Sailor

• Feature - "Ship's Passage" - you can get a free boat-ride for your party, although since you're riding for free, you don't get to pick exactly when you'll leave or how long it'll take, and it's kind of implied that you have to help the NPCs who run the boat with whatever quest they're on

• Alternate Feature - "Bad Reputation" - NPCs are generally afraid of you, and you can get away with small crimes because people are too scared of reprisal to risk calling the cops unless it's really important 

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design your old boat, its reputation, its eventual fate, and like the noble, you need to decide what your relationship is with your old crewmates

• Alternatives - you could choose to be a pirate, arrrrgh

Soldier

• Feature - "Military Rank" - you can command lower ranking soldiers, both from your own unit, and potentially from other units who need a commander, you can requisition military equipment, and you'll be allowed to enter military-only facilities

• Random Table - roll to find out what your job was within your unit, only 3 of the 8 options are officer, infantry, or cavalry

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to help design your own former military unit, and your rank within that unit

Urchin

• Feature - "City Secrets" - you can find shortcuts through any city to travel through it twice as fast as you'd usually be able

• Creative Opportunities - you're asked to invent a brief explanation for how just now made enough money to get out of poverty and go adventuring (what this mostly makes me notice is that NONE of the other backgrounds ask you WHY you're adventuring, which is surprising, since the urchin is the only background for whom treasure-hunting needs no explanation)

What do you MEAN "the book's on another planet?!"

Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica Backgrounds

While the backgrounds in the Player's Handbook are essentially occupations, the backgrounds in the Guide to Ravnica are all faction memberships. Let's see what WotC recommends for co-creation and potential features in a campaign where the setting is much more well-defined from the very beginning.

In addition to personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, each background now also has a random table for generating contacts. Interestingly, both the bond and contact tables seem designed to build up a little backstory. Pretty much all the entries on the bond and contact tables describe the NPC you care about in a word or two, and spend the rest of their text explaining how you're connected to them. Those explanations serve as defining moments in your character's backstory. Also, you have three contacts, an ally inside your guild, a rival inside your guild, and someone you know in another guild.

Azorious Functionary

• Feature - "Legal Authority" - you're a cop, NPCs avoid breaking rules in front of you, you can go into restricted areas and question people as long as it's "for the investigation"

• Creative Opportunities - you carry around a copy of your favorite law, so you should decide what that is, I guess

Boros Legionairre

• Feature - "Legion Station" - hello darkness room and board, my old friend, this time you get a side of free medical care and requisitioning military equipment, which is de facto much cooler when you're in a setting where there are magical war machines than it is when "a horse" is given as an example of the kind of materiel you can request

• Creative Opportunities - you have a souvenir from a famous battle, so decide what battle that was, maybe?

Dimir Operative

• Feature - "False Identity" - you have a second persona, and most of the time, you pretend to be a member of another guild, this is very similar to the Charlatan's feature, but with the added structure of the Guide to scaffold the second identity

• Random Table - roll to find out your reason for infiltrating, everything from secretly wishing you could actually join the guild to sincerely desiring to destroy it from within

• Creative Opportunities - you get to pick which guild you're infiltrating, and you're asked to make up a bit of backstory about how your infiltration is going

Golgari Agent

• Feature - "Undercity Paths" - similar to the Urchin, you can overland travel through cities twice as fast as other backgrounds due to knowing secret passages, but there are two differences - on Ravnica, everywhere is city, and the feature explicitly points out that "your journey isn't guaranteed to be safe", ie, there might be an obligatory sewer mini-adventure waiting for you if you do this

• Creative Opportunities - none beyond what's standard - although in Ravnica, "standard" also includes deciding your place within your guild, and making up some backstory about your three contacts - but most of the things you're asked to invent in the Player's Handbook are already designed for you here

Gruul Anarch

• Feature - "Rubblebelt Refugee" - like an Outlander, you can find a campsite and forage for food and water in destroyed and untended neighborhoods of the city; this ability actually makes more sense here, since in a world where it's always city, it makes sense that most people don't know how to rough it in the few rough areas available

• Random Table - roll to see which of the Gruul clans you belong to

• Creative Opportunities - in addition to deciding your place within the guild, also think about your role within your sub-guild clan

Izzet Engineer

• Feature - "Urban Infrastructure" - you know about the magical HVAC, magical plumbing, etc, that goes into Ravnica's buildings behind the walls, you can also pick up copies of blueprints from the city planning office, basically you're allowed to ask your DM for a map of the dungeon before you go in, and you're sometimes allowed to find secret doors that aren't on the map - or at least, that's my read on the implications of this feature, although the implication also seems to be that this depends on the DM making a ruling rather than having real explicit rules about how you can do this

• Random Table - actually none, but I would recommend rolling a d10 to find out which lab (and thus, which type of mad science) you're affiliated with

• Creative Opportunities - your equipment includes the remains of a failed experiment, so probably think about what that was, if I were playing an Izzet character, I would for sure be plotting to try the same experiment again

Orzhov Representative

• Feature - "Leverage" - you have at least one flunky / underling you can bully into doing menial labor for you, and if you can increase your status within the guild, you can get acquire more and better sycophants to do your bidding

• Creative Opportunities - none beyond what's standard

Rakdos Cultist

• Feature - "Fearsome Reputation" - like a Pirate, you're so scary that NPCs let you get away with small crimes without calling the Azorious cops on you

• Random Table - roll to find out which nightmare-circus performance you give; this table is more important here than it was for the Entertainer since Rakdos performances are much more tightly thematic, and shows like "spikewheel acrobat" and "pain artist" aren't necessarily ones you'd come up with on your own

• Creative Opportunities - your equipment includes a costume, so maybe describe what that looks like

Selesnya Initiate

• Feature - "Conclave's Shelter" - oh look! it's a completely new ability room and board AGAIN! you can also get free healing magic, like an Acolyte

• Creative Opportunities - none beyond the standard. Selesnya might be the simplest background for a new player to opt into, if that was intentional, then hopefully WotC made it the most conventional gild for novices to advance in

Simic Scientist

• Feature - "Researcher" - just like a Sage, you have the ability to know where to go to learn unknown information, also this time there's an explicit reminder that going to site might be an adventure (or several) by itself, and that finding the information within the site might be another adventure as well

• Random Table - roll to find out which sub-guild clade you belong to and thus what type of mad science you're working on

• Creative Opportunities - this background probably has the coolest equipment, basically a series of glass vials of alchemical reagents made of fish parts, but there's nothing for you to decide there; you should probably think about your specific mad science project, since the table just gives you a general area of interest

A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal?
image by Cliff Chiang

Concluding Thoughts

The first thing that jumps out at me is how different the creative opportunities are in the Player's Handbook and the Guildmaster's Guide. The base game sets each player up to help co-create the campaign setting in cooperation with the DM and with each other. If you started with only the most barebones setting idea - like "let's pretend we're in fantasy world like Lord or the Rings or like Game of Thrones" - then the creative prompts during character creation would immediately help lend some specificity to the setting and start to turn it into a unique place. Possibly not to the same degree that the creative prompts in Dungeon World or Beyond the Wall do - but clearly the baseline assumption here is that the players and DM are inventing a new fantasy setting together at the table.

Ravnica, on the other hand, is already a pretty-thoroughly imagined setting, although it is, I'll hasten to add, MUCH less oversaturated with detail than a place like the Forgotten Realms or Harn, where it can feel like if you start cross-referencing all the supplements, every person who lives there has a name and lifelong biography, and every village and nation has a day-by-day history going back a thousand years. But still, Ravnica already has a strong imaginary presence, and the backgrounds are much more about slotting the player characters into that pre-existing world than about helping invent it. The creative flourishes called for here are mostly about the character's own backstory.

Another reason for the difference, I think, is that a lot of the co-creation in the Player's Handbook is helping to invent factions for your shared world - after all, what you're mostly inventing isn't places or even individual people, it's GROUPS - whereas Ravnica has factions already. The backgrounds in the base game are occupations, they're things you DO. In Ravnica, all the backgrounds are group-memberships. The Boros background might say you're a Legionnaire and the Simic background you're a Scientist, but my sense is those are just names to help distinguish when the book is referring to a background and when it's referring to the guild itself. The names could just as easily have been Boros Member and Simic Member. Whatever job you had within the guild, whatever your role or place there, if you're with Boros you're "a legionnaire" and if you're with Simic you're "a scientist." Notably, this means that you COULD still co-create some of the geography of the world like in Freebooters on the Frontier, even though the Guide doesn't explicitly ask you to.

The second thing that occurs to me is what the Background Features are doing. I know I gave them a hard time because "free room and board" keeps showing up over and over, but I think part of that's because I had mismatched expectations. I was expecting the Background Feature to be almost like a mundane superpower you got to use because of your old job, and they're not that. (If you're really interested in resource management play, the abundance of "free room and board" is just one more nail in the coffin for your hopes of using 5e for that play style unaltered. Although with the light spell as a re-usable at-will cantrip, your hopes of that were probably already buried pretty deep.)

What I think the Features are really doing though, is codifying something that's probably implicit in every other version of the game - which is that NPCs interact with you on the basis of your role and status. And the two main statuses you can have are "one of us" or "better than us." (Starting characters in dark fantasy games are basically the scum of the earth, but even in those settings, I think the idea is that you become notorious / infamous as a result of your career of misdeeds, thus rapidly making your "better than us" for most purposes.)

If you're "one of us," then you get welcomed inside, you get a free meal and a place to sleep. Depending on who exactly "us" is, there might be a little more "we" can do for you. If "us" is just the local peasants, then room and board is pretty much it. If "us" is a temple, you get healing; if "us" is the military, you get access to weapons and armor; if "us" is sailors, you get to ride on our boat. "We" will also hide you or protect you from outsiders, if possible.

If you're "better than us," then you get deference, either out of fear or respect. If you're a noble, the peasants will bow to you. If you're a criminal, they'll avoid you. The biggest difference difference between the backgrounds is that some are "one of us" with the peasants, and thus aren't really "better" than anyone, while others have higher status and are "one of us" with the nobility, or the army, or the criminal underworld. In those places, you get treated the same way a Folk Hero gets treated by peasants - but when you're dealing with peasants, you get that fear and/or awe I mentioned.

This is also, I think, why there aren't THAT MANY different features, and why backgrounds that are basically re-skins of one another just recommend re-using the old feature rather than writing a new one. If it WAS some kind of superpower, then yeah, you might enjoy the chance to write a new one for every single background. But it's not, and the purpose that it serves is served plenty well by re-use, served better, probably, than it would be by writing a bunch of new ones.

My mismatched expectations came because when you call something a "feature" an bill it as an "ability" you can use, then I sort of expect it to do something extra. But instead, what the Background Features are doing, mostly, is codifying and making explicit something that is an implied but unwritten assumption of other versions of the game. Your class and/or pre-adventuring occupation makes your character a part of the game world and gives them a place in that world among the NPCs who live there. Those NPCs react to you on the basis of that. If you're a rogue or some other kind of criminal, you're part of the underworld. If you're a religious figure or a scholar of some kind, then you have a place in those institutions, you can enter them freely, and get help with the services that only a temple or library can provide, even if it's just directions to the RIGHT temple or the RIGHT library. And if you're a farmer or a craftsperson, then you fit in pretty well among the ordinary villagers who make up like 99% of the population of any faux-medieval world.

As Bubba Dave put it in a comment on my previous post "If your background is Sage then you know how to talk to academics, and they'll steer you toward the best place to research that thing you were asking about; a Hermit or Urchin would have more trouble and would probably have to render payment in coin or service. A Criminal knows how to talk to mobsters, where an Urchin can deal with beggars and squatters. There's some overlap with classes, but not a lot; if your Fighter was an Outlander then even though the local mercenary company might respect her skills they don't have the same jargon and shared experiences that they do with that Cleric who turned to the Church after a military career."

All this is already ASSUMED in other versions of D&D, but what 5e is doing is making it explicit, presumably so that people who are new to the game will (a) realize it, and (b) have SOME guidelines for how to use that in play. The rules text for the Features actually isn't hyper-specific or legalistic the way that the rules around combat or spellcasting can be. Instead, the writing here really is more like a guide for DM's to make their own rulings. It's there to explicitly encourage DMs to give their players the benefits of having a place in the NPCs' world, and to place a few explicit limits on it. I haven't brought it up before now, but each background does also include a sentence or so saying that if the players abuse their Feature, they won't be able to keep using it. NPCs don't have infinite patience, and if you try to take advantage of them, they'll kick you out. Exactly what that looks like isn't specified, because again, this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, it's a guideline to help the DM make an appropriate ruling based on their situation, without locking them in or trying to enumerate every possibility.

It still might be interesting to try writing Background Features that ARE like mundane superpowers (like the Urchin's ability to travel fast through cities, or the Knight's ability to attract followers) but perhaps it's not especially important to do so.