Post/Author/DateTime	Post
yoippari 04-05-06, 01:22 AM	I will be starting my first real table top game in a couple of weeks and so this will be the first time where I will not be able to think about all of my actions before I pick one (I am currently in two online games). So basicly I need to know this character well enough to be able to make choices he will make. The basics of the back story: He is a gnome who comes from a wealthy family. The family (and large extended family) run a loose trade organization called the Gentlemen Freetraders. Actually a trade firm might be more accurate. They handle almost every portion of the trade between the senders and the recievers, though the different (you might say divisions) are loose enough that they have plausable denyability. Most of the trade is legit but there is a big grey market that involves forging papers and avoiding officials to get around taxes and possible wrongful seizure (legal but only because they say it is legal) of trade goods. The motto is "Conducting honest business right under your nose." There is a lot of intermarrige of whisper gnomes and regular gnomes so while my character is a whisper his older brother, and probably father, are regular. In this family (or overall gnome clan) the oldest takes over where the father leaves off and in this case at least the second born helps keep the company going in some way. The rest of the kids are encouraged to find their own path in life. There is a bit of disagreement between him and his older brother who he thinks can't think for himself because he is letting their parents push him into taking over the family business. He gets along with his sister and they are best friends. They are only two years apart while he is four years younger than his brother and closer to ten years older than the next youngest after his sister. Does that make sense? My character was expected to become a caravan driver. He would be the guy who knows directions and deals with clients on both ends. To ensure this the parents hired a tutor years ago in the form of a halfling mage (not sure of the specifics for him) who was convinced to take the job because of the contacts a relationship with this family could provide. Besides the basic education he was to teach my character magic so that he could defend himself and the caravan if needed. He has already decided that he isn't going to be just another business man and his parents have pretty much given up on that idea. They are still hoping he will run caravans or perhaps just a group of mages that protects the caravans (they have a lot of employees from hired swords, to spys, to a group of mages that are only used on high dollar transactions). He sin't quite sure what he is planning and whatever it is will almost definetly be interupted by whatever the campaing turns out to be. Now here is where I am having trouble and it determines a decent portion of the personality. My character goes out and somehow gets training from an arcane knight type guy (retired soldier or something) who teaches him how to integrate what magic he has learned into a more martial fighting style. The problem is: why does he get other training. Is he bored with magic, school, his tutor? Does he go an a rebellious phase? Does he just like to slum and he becomes friends with this arcane knight? Does he realize that his tutor is a fraud and then goes on a rebellious streak using his tutors secret as leverage to keep him from telling his parents that he is slumming?
yoippari 04-07-06, 09:49 PM	Ok, how about a short version. Why would a rich kid gnome who has been trained for years to be a mage augment his raining with training from a fighter/mage guy and become a mage blade. We are starting at level one, so this is not multi classing, this is just pre level one backstory.