Hi There.  Welcome to the game.  Have a look around and tell us what you think :)

Here is a brief summary of our 3 characters and their background.

Wyn Roth, Berta Roth and Gedd Gardner are the three children of Mrs Mary Roth. However Wyn is half-elf (the result of a brief fling with an elvish bard before she was married). Mum was quickly married to Nathaniel Roth (a junior officer in the Town Watch) and soon gave birth to a legitimate human daughter Roberta (otherwise known as Berta). The marriage was happy enough until the shock arrival of a half-orc bastard son - Gedd.

Nathaniel Roth rose to the rank of Captain of the City Watch but also turned to drink. He never accepted Gedd, whose name comes from the most common thing the captain said to him - "Geddoudanstayoud!"

Wyn was apprenticed with the church. Berta was more of the warrior son that Nathaniel always wanted but she has a wild side as well. Mary Roth spent more and more time with the Sisters of Minor Mercies and now lives inside the cloisters of the convent as Sister Mary. Gedd was basically raised by the family's gardener and cook but got a little bit of help and guidance from Grandma DuFeu as well.

All three kids are now level 2 characters.

Wyn is a half-elf bard / cleric. One of his possessions is a masterwork silver dagger, which is an heirloom item from his elvish father.
Berta is a human fighter / rogue. She is a two-weapon fighter, favouring a pair of shortswords.
Gedd is a half-orc ranger / sorcerer - primarily an archer. His prized possession is a masterwork mighty composite longbow that used to belong to Grandpa DuFeu.

We decided to start them at second level so their multi-class personalities would be established already. They are intended as interesting characters to play and interact together, rather than looking at an optimum build for maximum power. We enjoy the roleplaying as much as any other part of the game.

This little group started a game that was set in the Forgotten Realms, but we are quite happy to change that to something else like Greyhawk if that is preferred. The previous version of the game started off with Mary Roth having been arrested (by Nathaniel Roth!) after various stolen items were discovered in her cell at the convent after a tip off. That game folded before we found out where that idea was going, so we would be happy to consign that to some sort of alternate reality known only in the mind of that former DM.

I think I would prefer to run a new campaign, and would run it out of Greyhawk, the campaign setting that I am most comfortable with. My proposed plot is that the family matriarch grandma Dufeu has called you three to investigate a sensitive matter that would embarrass and weaken the family politically and must by dealt with internally. This would be a chance to gain some acceptance by the family and protect the families honour.
Does this sound alright? If so would you like me to create a new game for you to enter as players or would you like to change this game for me to be a DM here?

The family are there for background, rather than as a plot point.  I would much rather the three of them went adventuring.

Personally, I am not really into political or investigative games.  I have dealt with too much RL politics to want to deal with it in my leisure time, and my memory is crap -  which is a big dis advantage in investigative games  :)

That's fair enough. Without giving away too much of the plot I have in mind your Grandma will be sending you out to recover lost items. Over the first adventure I would throw in a couple of fights, a couple of puzzles and a couple of social situations to see what the party responds to most strongly, to see which scenarios caught the parties imagination the most and would tailor the next campaign to feature more of the elements the group most seemed to enjoy. It seems to me to be a real waste to not write a story entwined with the family as so much work and back story has gone into it, especially as two of the characters back stories have them raised to be loyal to the family, how ever if at one point the characters all turned around and said we're sick of this family, we're off adventuring that would make DMing even easier as there are dozens of easy campaign plots throughout the land of Greyhawk.

Ah, you miss the point of the background work. It really has been carefully crafted to be left behind.

The wider family has been designed to fade into the background and has been deliberately designed so that the ties are between the three characters with superficial relationships with the rest of the family.

To Wyn the wider family are distant and generate little concern -  his immediate family   (Mother and Father) are there, but he is starting to enjoy being away from Mother's apron strings and he has never much liked Father.

Berta has a bit of a Love/Hate relationship with father ...

So in some ways, building a storyline around the family, goes against the spirit of the background.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:18, Sun 13 July 2014.

I have added you to the group where we hid all of the detailed discussions, so that you can see how we developed the broader background to be disposable.  :)

Mind you, there is a lot of stuff there  :)

I don't think WT is talking about making the game only about the family. It sounds like a decent alternative to the traditional way that beginning parties get together (usually in a tavern, apparently) and find out about a quest or other mission (someone tells them about a reward that has been offered or a job guarding a merchant caravan or whatever).

Instead this might be a wealthy noblewoman (Grandma DuFeu) who has had some items stolen that she doesn't want anyone to know she ever had (secret or illegal things she and Grandpa found as adventurers 40 years ago), so she turns to her three grandchildren for help as they are just about ready to start their own adventuring careers anyway. Or maybe the thief turns out to be Wyn or Gedd's father, who has to be tracked down for the items to be recovered?

I have played a game before where the DM decided to twist my character's backstory slightly so my unknown father turned out to be the evil priest that the party had just defeated before I arrived. It certainly opened up one or two unusual opportunities for roleplaying in that game.

I wouldn't like the game to be all about politics or social situations (my half-orc ranger/sorcerer isn't going to do too well in that environment) but if that's just part of the background story behind the adventure I'm fine with that. :o)

Coming in belatedly (somehow RL got really busy when I wasn't looking) ...

Hi WT !  Another of the Even More Wyrd refugees here.  :>

Not at all adverse to using our background - as JJJJ says, it is/was disposable, there to bind our characters together, but if you want to use it as a hook, then that's fine by me.

I think what JJJJ is getting at is that we're after some old fashioned dungeoning, but with the ties between our characters giving us a more comfortable, easy going cameraderie - ie we have up front what usually takes new players that are just lumped in together (at the tavern, thank ye RRRR <grins>) a lot of blood, sweat and tears to establish.  The three of us have been gaming online for a longer time than any of us care to admit, so we wanted characters that fitted that idiom.

Treasure quests for Grandma definitely sounds workable. :>

Sorry Guys.  Looks like I scared WT away :(

<grins>  Looking out for a game in Players Wanted that we can all join it is.

At least that way the GM wants to make the game in the first instance, so we're not trying to persuade someone into GM-ing, and we won't have the problem with them thinking they have to tailor the game specifically to our backgrounds, which we're kinda trying to avoid.