Who Does Your RPG Character Care About?

Garran sat by the fire, reading over a letter. A long, thin man with dueling scars on his cheeks, and hands that always seemed to twitch toward the daggers on his waist, his face was usually set in a hard mask. He was smiling now, though, and his eyes were warm. A far cry from the man most saw when they were on a job together.

"What's that?" Grond asked.

"It's a letter, Grond," Garran replied, a bit of his old snark rising to his lips. "People who pay attention to their teachers learn how to write them when they're young."

"There's that cutting wit again," Cerise said, rolling her eyes as she took a twig from the fire to light her pipe. "Who the hell wrote you a letter that put a smile like that on your face?"

"It's from my niece," Garran said, giving the page a last, fond glance before he folded it up and put it back in the inner pocket of his jacket. "She's having a good season. She broke her leg falling out of an apple tree, and she can finally run on it again. She sent me some seeds so I can plant a few trees wherever I'm going. That way she'll be able to follow the green apples to find where I've been."

"I don't like kids," Grond said, leaning back against a fallen tree trunk. "But that might be the cutest godsdamned thing I've heard in my life."

Friends, Family, Lovers, and Rivals

When we sit down to make RPG characters, we often focus entirely on who they are as individuals. We look at their skills, their scars, their weapons, their abilities, and whatever unique powers they have. Sometimes we look at their families, but for a lot of players it's just knowing which names to put on the tombstones that loom large in their tragic backstories.

Something we often forget, though, is that our characters have people they care about. Or, at least, people they allow past their defenses and into their lives. Who those people are, the nature of their relationship, and how our characters feel about them can add a lot of details into their lives and give us a richer tapestry to paint with.

And there's a lot of different categories of individual we can dig into for this. For example:

- Family: This is probably the most common category we think of. While most of us don't think beyond parents and siblings, it's worth considering aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, children, nieces and nephews, and even godparents. Extension to close family friends allowed into your circle might also fit here.

- Crewmates: Even if your character has never been on a ship, this category is for those they've worked and served alongside. Whether you were both part of a mercenary company, you served in the same guild, or you worked the same caravan or cattle drive, you spent a lot of time alongside these people. Getting along is the order of the day in these kinds of situations, and sometimes that sort of relationship becomes far closer than one expects.

- Rivals: A rival is someone who isn't necessarily your enemy, but who isn't entirely a friend. Perhaps you and another apprentice were always vying for who earned your master's top marks as you learned the arts of wizardry. You might have been a great duelist, but there was someone else who might have been just as good. You might have been a great thief, or a noted bandit, and the lawman chasing you never quite had the evidence they needed to put you away... or you always seemed to escape once they had. This one can be especially helpful if the two of you have a kind of relationship where you both believe in similar things, but use very different methods to achieve it.

- Community Members: We all have communities we belong to, and we get to know the people we share those communities with over time. Whether it's just your neighbors in the town you call home, you're part of a group of people who plays a particular board or card game, or you share a hobby or interest ranging from painting, to brewing, to tattooing, you get to know people in that community.

- Lovers: Adventurers have a certain draw to them. Whether one has a spouse somewhere (or several, depending on your relationship style), on-again-off-again lovers, or even exes where things just didn't work out, chances are the character has feelings for these folks... and the nature of their relationships probably shaped them in some meaningful way. Whether it's learning a new language, understanding particular customs, or just an appreciation for a certain type of music, all our lovers leave a mark on us somehow.

Everybody Has Somebody

Even the most miserable bastards have people in their lives they like. It might just be their mother, a favored bartender, or maybe a local singer whose songs make them smile (or cry, depending on taste), but we form relationships with the people around us. It's why so many of the entries in 100 Character Goals and Motivations involve the people someone considers important. That's why asking who your character cares about, what the nature of that relationship is, and what effect it's had on them over time can lead to some fairly interesting developments before the dice really hit the table.

And if you're looking for some interesting places to find individuals who fit that Crewmate category, consider checking out the following!

- 100 Secret Societies: When you join a secret society, you immediately hold a bond with all the others who've taken the same vows, and kept the same silence. What else could bond people so closely?

- 100 Fantasy Guilds: A place to find friends and rivals alike, guilds are places of mutual protection, but also places where you form close relationships with others in the same field, and with similar skills.

- 100 Gangs For Your Urban Campaigns: Blood runs deep in the streets, and gangs can be a true test of loyalty. Tighter than brothers, rivalries are far from uncommon in power struggles and jockeying for position.

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