Lifepaths & Templates

 “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Lifepaths and other background mechanics in roleplaying games help players gain some sense of the world their characters inhabit, even if they themselves just discovered it. They provide backstory and motivation, context for developing characters over future misadventures. Few games use them, despite their origins in the earliest days of the roleplaying game hobby. Many prefer to rely on genre stereotypes to define character roles, leaving the (often optional) job of developing a backstory to players, if they bother at all; some fill it in during play, but most focus on where their character is going, rather than where they’ve been. Lifepaths and templates serve as game mechanisms to provide some sense of a character’s past — even if only defined in terms of stats and equipment — but offer more story hooks to entice players to create more depth to their fictional personae.

A lifepath usually consists of a series of random tables helping to determine a character’s background circumstances. Sometimes they’re more involved affairs with rolls for each year between coming of age and the current game time (such as those in the Cyberpunk games, which I mention below). They’re part of character creation game mechanics, often providing adjustments to core abilities or adding bonuses to skills. Along the way they provide some hints — broad and specific — to help players create meaningful backgrounds for their characters

Perhaps the first game to incorporate a “lifepath” was Game Designers’ Workshop’s Traveller. Character creation consisted of initial stat generation followed by service for several terms in a military branch, which granted various skill increases and other boosts, along with equipment and benefits upon mustering out...assuming the character survived. The system is still infamous for killing characters before they even make it to the game table, as each term required a survival roll to endure the rigors and dangers of service. Subsequent books focusing on each military branch added more depth to this process. But overall it essentially served as an in-universe method of generating character stats and equipment within the narrative framework of one’s military career. It also tended to generate characters of middle and upper-middle age as my teenage self attempted to maximize stat benefits before even starting a scenario...and had to come to grips roleplaying someone far older and world-weary than his youthful self.

I regret few roleplaying games use lifepaths to provide detail and inspiration for developing character backgrounds and motivations. Traveller and Cyberpunk 2020 stand out in this regard, though I realize my own experience remains limited; surely other games use this method, though, still, it seems the exception rather than the rule.

Far more games seem to rely on templates, a further elaboration of the basic class/career descriptions most roleplaying games offer. A template presents a stereotypical background and personality in greater depth than the basic class/career outline. Players can simply accept the background as it stands, though they’re often encouraged to use it as an inspiration for a more customized back-story. These sketches, cliches, if you will, of character types in a particular setting, present a more complete package, detailing one’s role (and sometimes attitude) within the game world, motivations, connections with other characters, the obligatory starting equipment, and sometimes even quotes (a nice hint at “catchphrases” characters might utter at notable points in the game).

My first experience with the template character format came in West End Games’ Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Each template represented a character type derived from the original Star Wars films. They provided in-setting background, including the obligatory starting equipment as well as notes on personality and connections to other characters. Granted, if you were playing this game in the first place, chances are you knew a great deal about the galaxy far, far away, including the roles major characters played. The game, however, expanded our vision of the universe and hence had to provide some context for lesser-known roles. Templates ranged from core heroes like the smuggler, brash pilot, Wookiee, bounty hunter, gambler, and young senatorial to to lesser-known cliches one might see “just off screen” (or hinted at from other early media like comic books and spin-off novels) like quixotic Jedi, laconic scout, Mon Calamari, and failed Jedi. While the backgrounds anchored characters in some element of the Star Wars universe, personalities and connections with other characters helped infuse game sessions with some (albeit forced) story narrative players could develop. And, of course, suggested catchphrases found constant use during play...and when they got tired, players often created new ones.

Cyberpunk 2020 combined the best of both worlds, presenting a host of roles as career templates — with full-page second-person vignettes not simply describing “classes” but imbuing each with personality and attitude — then sending characters through several pages of lifepath flowchart tables to fill in details from one’s personal style and family to motivations and major life events. The title of the brief lifepath chapter, “Tales from the Street,” sums up the narrative intent of both this background mechanic and much of the rest of the rulebook (if not the game line.)

Other game use character creation systems to encourage players to think about their character backstories and motivations. The numerous Powered by the Apocalypse games, inspired by Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Apocalypse World, employ “playbooks” to define characters, both their game abilities and roles. It seems a refinement of the template method, though much of the information focuses more on rules interpretations of one’s role than deep background (as I recall from my distant dabblings with the system). Other games use some “playbook” elements to enhance the basic class/career tropes. For instance, Beyond the Wall uses playbook tables challenging characters with notable questions about their past and providing a list of answers to roll or choose (with corresponding stat adjustments).

Shawn Tomkin’s Ironsworn and Starforged games take character background one step further. Aside from giving players a host of assets from which to choose — each providing meaningful opportunities to envision where characters came from and where they were going — both games involve the player in determining specific setting elements, many of which have implications for character backgrounds. While some might see such game mechanics as forced, they provide those players who want deeper character development some inspiration tied to the setting...and future adventures.

I find these game mechanic tools useful on a number of levels. Lifepaths add depth, provide a process through which players muddle through abstracted prior experiences, and offer some launching points to create meaningful backstory for characters. Templates help players dive into a game, ideal for those new to roleplaying who must quickly understand both rules and their characters’ roles in the setting. They, too, offer some more detailed baseline from which players can develop their own personal touches for their characters.

I regret the notable absence of much character background guidance in Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons or Advanced D&D (or other early TSR games) beyond basic class and race descriptions. Those labels served as the broadest of character backgrounds — elven fighter, human magic-user, dwarven cleric halfling thief — but didn’t really impart a sense of personality or accomplishments to help fill out a character’s previous life that led down the path of adventuring.

When I started gaming in 1982 with B/X D&D, my friends and I had few clues about how to play the game, let alone how we might develop our characters beyond the outlined race-class system and the motivations presumed in various adventure modules (often of the dungeon-looting variety).

We might as well have been playing a slightly more complicated version of David Megarry’s Dungeon! or HeroQuest (a later diverions) for the near-lack of deeper character background and development in our games. A little encouragement and inspiration from some character-creation rules might have helped expand our perspective on narrative elements as well as as our general perception of what we might accomplish within the game. Lifepath and template mechanisms draw from a game’s setting, providing some ideas of the kinds of people who inhabit the roleplaying game world and what kinds of activities they experienced before the game begins. They encourage deeper character development, beyond the stats and game-mandated story elements, allowing players greater freedom and creativity forming a foundation for their characters’ experiences within the game setting. I’m sure other lifepath/template systems have existed over the years and across the rich publishing landscape of roleplaying games. What are your favorites?

Players ultimately bear the responsibility for developing their characters’ backgrounds and bringing them to life (to varying degrees) during play. To do so effectively requires player knowledge of the setting from which their characters emerged. Lifepaths and templates help inform players about the game world so they can create meaningful characters; in these roles they can further explore as they stumble through adventures, adding to that background and developing their characters.

“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

— Cicero