Every Backstory Ever in Dungeons and Dragons 

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The Doofenshmirtz: "Everything started on the day of his birth. Both of his parents failed to show up."

It's not just a smile, it's when the DM's lips curl up Grinch style the more you describe your background that should frighten you.

If you let your dm come up with a backstory for your character with amnesia, then while his job does get quite a bit harder, you know that your character will have at least one twist that probably involves at least one family member being evil.

One of the DM’s campaigns I was in had a rogue pirate. This pirates weakness was that she would do anything for her crew. So we’re in the final boss, and he he slaughtering us. She decides to try and sacrifice herself, and rolls a Nat one on persuasion. So everyone died except for her, character trauma!

If I interpreted it correctly... I AM HAPPY FOR BOTH OF YOU!

You missed mine which was "the self aware" Mine was basically he was a student trying to become an artificer and a sage and it was taking him too long and he was annoyed with school and he realized if he became an adventurer he could learn it and level up his artificer much faster

I once played a Fairy Barbarian who I was planning on giving the Noble background, but the Session 0 adventure ended up forcing the Feylost background on her because she was kidnapped by a Hag. As to why her parents never went looking for her, her father was scheming to have her twin brother inherit the throne by going even as far as falsifying their birth order, so he made sure that any search-and-rescue attempts were doomed to fail.

I gave my character a tragic backstory that left him with a fear of horses. My DM then added a new character to my backstory because I told him he could.

I love pulling the "my family are wonderful, loving, supportive, and not at all toxic!" one. The pure joy in the DM's face and the utter bewilderment on the other players' faces when they find out are worth every horrible twist of fate!

Personally, I actually work with my DM to write my character's story and because he lost a lot of his memory at the start of the game, I worked with him to flesh out his past.

Love how the childhood trauma wasn't 'enemy killed my camp' it's clearly just the players trauma

My first character had the book and the tragic backstory, it was SO long and with SO much blood that I think I run out of it, every character I had after was kinda non tragic and happy. My favorite is a tabaxi warlock that when he was a kitten he was playing in a forest, when an Archfey looked at him and thought "Oh cute, now it's mine", now he uses his powers to learn about the world with his group.

You forget the “created by a god or deity for there origin because they have a small case of divine destiny syndrome + issues with parents irl” I say this from experience

The non tragic backstory where the dm is smiling hits me so hard because the main one I play under (there's one that's running an off an on session) loves to make things tragic even though it doesn't need to be.

"He has a family and his family....is family and-

"This is Kongol. He's a goliath barbarian seeking an adventuring party to call family." I got that reference!

I'd probably be the one who'd write a whole books worth of backstory for my characters. 🤣

My last character, a Kenku, was born into a family of thieves. He never got but a glimpse of normal society and was shunned away by people for being a thieve and shunned away by his family and the local thieves guild because of his desire to be normal. He ran off into the woods at the age of 7. He re-emerged as a 15 year old man with a staff connected a a forest god and a pet crow. He rebuilds his life under a new identity as a cleric as a way to cleanse himself after being a thief. He tries to act like a normal person. He doesn’t really know how though because he’s been a thief his whole life. His goal is to really just burn his past as much as possible so that no one knows his origins but his party.

I demand more cleric content! Hail be to Lathander!

I made the mistake of writing a really long, tragic backstory, with everyone my character hates still alive, and my DM has now decided that my character has voices in her head, and is having her try and find her dead sister's ghost. So, yeah, my character has had to deal with people that she hates, and people that love the people she hates in order to find her sister's ghost, whom she likes. I instantly regretted having my backstory something that my DM could use to further traumatize my character, and now she can't sleep because she's having PTSD

My cleric character has the most abusible backstory ever. A loving mother and step father, a wonderful connection to her temple and everyone in it, and a brother who died of a mysterious illness nobody could cure that led my character to become an adventurer, still grieving her brother. My DM was very excited to use my backstory against me.

You know, Killer McStabYouToDeath does technically cure world hunger if his last name is indictive of what he does.

I have to physically restrain myself from writing a whole book sometimes, it’s great

There’s also “my backstory is actually someone else’s backstory” like my paladin Renshik, whose youngest sibling had a near-death experience while he was vibing at art college and now he feels guilty about not being there to help them recover so he found a new group of people to take care of. Nothing bad ever happened to him though like even when his parents divorced they got back together along with their new partners

i created a character who's purpose was finding is best friend who was captured during a raid on his village and sold into slavery, then the next campaign i played as the best friend who was captured and ended up being a catalyst for a crossover event between my two campaigns lol

making your backstory last second/not making one at all is just a surefire way to end up with an amnesiac and a dm who is actively keeping your own secrets from you

After the "No" at the end i just want to hug him!

I missed "The heroic feat" or "The BBEG's minion, but now his doom" back storys

Whenever I write out a really good backstory, the second the DM says “introduce your characters” I become the Last Minute

Having played various characters, written many characters, and run multiple campaigns, I still think my first character's backstory was the best. Ragnar was a mountain dwarf who, as a young dwarf, was mining with his brother. There was a mine collapse and Ragnar was not strong enough to lift the massive beam that held his brother in place. Ever since then, Ragnar's personal quest in life was to get hella swole, so that he would never let anyone down again. However, Ragnar was convinced that on that day, out of the corner of his eye, as he struggled and failed that he saw a goblin. This goblin, made of shadow and darkness, used some sort of foul magic to sap his strength when he needed it most. Ragnar dubbed this unknown creature, the Gains Goblin, and always kept an ear out for any leads on such a creature

I have a character who decided to become an adventurer because risking his life in dungeons seemed better than another day in customer service

I can't believe ad-barian didn't make an appearance in the "hiding an announcement" backstory

I somehow feel personally attacked for every single one of my characters...

I guess my backstory is kinda the Royal one mixed with the ”DM Gift” for I am next in line but gave up on it for love and gave the dm 2 gifts 1 lover go missing what happen 2 split me mentally between party, family/tribe, and lover

2:07 When there's no one to starve, there's no world hunger *thinking emoji*

I currently have a wizard where I straight up told the DM "she is young, she only knows the society she grew up in, and screw it I'm always standoffish so let's play the most trusting and naive little cinnamon roll you can imagine" the DM straight up told me that I'm a horror protagonist and my wizard can now add to the constant backstory 'immediately dying, resurrection, soul bound to a relic, and won't stop getting downed by animals even when I improv-ed being an animal lover'

I wrote one of my character with an absentee parent they didn't know. My DM still brought them in and then killed them, but I had access to gentle repose. Now my character only need to get high enough level to learn how to cast resurrection, since their other parent's head got mailed to them in a box.

God, the secretive is me. Got a gnome and an elf who went to college together, and a human druid who is a former streamstress. DM wanted us to introduce our characters in character. Gnome and elf explained how they met in school, continued to college, are very close, are from a different country, learned their toolsets (AKA their classes) and are on a kind of abroad studying trip. Human druid explained how her workshop and warehouse got burned down for reasons she still doesn't know, and out of spite decided to live in the forest. Also because there weren't any tailors or shops in the first town we went to, one of us joked that the fashion police had gone through the town and confiscated any tailoring stuff and arrested tailors, so now it's canon that the fashion police burned down her workshop. My character, a half-elf, just introduced herself as Willow. That's it. The kicker is, her name isn't even Willow. It's a pseudonym.

The DMs worst Nightmare: "His name is Old Man Henderson..."

I recently added a fail condition to my characters backstory and am currently walking on a very tight line between failing and succeeding. I love it

I let my GM write most of my backstory for my last character, within a background I provided (adventurer who died 100 years ago and came back to life via unknown means) The result was my mostly mysterious, slightly tragic backstory turning into something that would've made Guts say "that's rough buddy"

The evil laugh is my DM. I felt this so hard.

I made a character with a tragic backstory, but it happened 1,000 years ago. At the time of the campaign she was in, any trauma had long sense worn away, and her main motivation was trying to get enough money to start a clothing shop in a town where her thirst for blood wouldn't be a problem.

Creating a back story where you're enemies with your family, is a good option. The DM can use that, but your character doesn't care about them, so they can't be hurt to get to the characters emotions.

OK, out of all my characters, I might have written 2 of those... That last option sounds really close to my Gladiator Wizard though...

Dam I didn’t think you could make a backstory any more tragic but you stabbed my heart with the dog leaving because it didn’t want to be his best friend

My first background was very vague but it was my first time ever playing D&D so used amnesia as an excuse for stupid mistakes I make like breaking laws or not knowing general information about the world....most backgrounds I see are tragic 😂 I remember my second D&D characters background was that they went to prison for stealing, broke out which caused their mother to be killed in the crossfire of his recapture to where he murdered many guards to then be sent to be hung but escapes again to be recaptured to be burned at the stake....and escape again 😂 another character was excommunicated after losing a duel for the hand of the mayor's daughter.....then there was the grandma character who had an epic violent life as a youth but everyone thinks she is a sweet old lady which she of course uses to her advantage to poison enemies with cookies

I ended up with the amnesia one because the first time I played, I didn't know we were supposed to HAVE a backstory and panicked. LOL. Now I have it fleshed out into a pretty good story and it tracks my personally because I had memory loss from a concussion, so I can play the "I have a vague memory knocking at the door" perfectly because I'm used to it IRL

I'm propably a combination of the normal and letting the DM decide. I try to explain who they are and why, but I like when the DM uses some ties to the story and hooks my character with it. Sure, that means I do know my DM is smiling villain style but frankly, I found it fun when my character ended up having lots of unexpected turns like being adopted and some royal throne heir but wanted because of it. The only condition I always tell the dm is to not make my character amnesic.

I've got a Loxodon bard. He's on a 100 year rumspringa from his tribe who he still loves very much. He learned to be a boatman, running a cargo barge up and down the rivers of the continent, playing for the people wherever he goes and making people happy, sometimes doing a bit of light smuggling as well. I really like this character, but I'm sad because the campaign is going to end early because the DM is going to have a baby in January.

Pal-Addin

1:43 This backstory could have been shortened to "I made a rogue."

Although I've never played DnD, I do have a few character concepts I'd like to try if I ever get into it. The 1st is basically the stereotypical tragic backstory of "warlock forced into a pact because cult shenanigans." I would wait until I have experience with the game and know the group well before doing this though, since I don't want to unintentionally be so edgy it's problematic lol. 2nd is Abralamb Shepherd, a seemingly wholesome firbolg farmer who secretly leads a cult. Obvious inspiration from Cult of the Lamb, but a "I was actually the Big Bad all along" kinda twist might be kinda interesting if the DM in that scenario were on board with the idea. And of course, no way would I use this until I have enough experience to pull it off. 3rd is more of a joke character. The plasmoid race looked interesting so I figured I'd just flavor it as an ooze that suddenly gained sentience and is pretending to be human, but it's really bad at convincing people since, y'know, it is literally made of goo and came from the sewers. No amount of saying "I am just a gunky flesh and bones man" is going to convince people unless they're blind.

When I made my first character I just wanted to make a short old dude who plays music. His friends died around him, he abandoned his life of adventure, settled down, grew a family, then near the end of his life decided to do something, repaired a flute, and left his home to find a new party, leaving behind just a letter to his wife explaining, but no word or warning besides that. His name was Olaf Bloodthorne, the Gnome Bard and I loved him more than anything. Favorite character I ever made.

“His family is, uh… … his family! And he likes to… y-yeah!”

"Thi- uh- this is, Snarf, he- uhm... he lives in the hills, the-thehm, the west side of the hills, he has a family... and his family is... *struggles to remember script* ...his family, and he likes... to be... yeah." I feel personally attacked by this one

Ive come up with some cool backgrounds for many different games, yeah im pretty sure other people have thought of them but whatever here they are in case you feel like reading: SW5E character: Family had a pitch black kyber crystal passed down through the generations until one could figure out how to use it, bad people showed up and the rest of the day got blocked out as a part of trauma survival (you can add whatever as that is kinda a placeholder), now on the search for the only other black kyber crystal aside from the darksaber. Regular 5E Warlock: War vet. During his service his fort was being steamrolled and begged from the bottom of his heart to be saved, patron maliciously accepted and as a result, wiped his family and ancestors from history, now hes on a quest to kill his patron to steal his power and bring them back. Cyberpunk Character (yeah its not dnd but idc): Was apart of a crime family, went on a successful heist with a crew but the other members got stupid with their money and made the leader worried, so he put a hit out on all the members including him, he survives and sets out to become the new big boss of crime. DB Character: A hit race who acted as a bodyguard for bulma up until the buu saga in which he terminated his contract with her to take care of the the menace known as kid buu. M&M Character: An old vampire spawned from the ancient sumerian tale of dying violently and being improperly buried. Now is a passive observer happily floating through life before being roped into a bunch of shenanigans. Yeah im playing all of these games simultaneously dont @ me

Ever played Prey (2017)? I made a version of Morgan who's a town guard sorcerer exploring to find a home for the remaining townsfolk in his hometown after a mysterious raid. He was on a quest when it happened (he's level 3, so it works) and didn't see even the bodies of who attacked upon his return. All the townsfolk left don't know who did it, as they hid at the first sign of trouble. Either no attackers died or those who survived took the bodies with them. Now he looks for homes and jobs for those who hid and survived the raid.

A while back me and a group of friends wanted to try dnd, I was the only one who had actually played before. One of the players (I dmed ) wanted to play a gnome and part of his backstory was that his parents were sold in Home Depot when he was young which we reworked into them being sold into slavery

The solidify tragic backstory my character became a adventurer to help people and find stories because she is a bard and doesn't like bullies but one of her friends wanted to protect her from his enemies so was going to make a deal with the bad guys she took there place put under a curse but it just solidify who she really is and what she wants to do he a adventur protecting and helping others.

The DM’s Worst Nightmare is actually what I want for most games as a DM.

I don’t like how you described my life with, genuinely, 100% accuracy at the end.

Oh my gosh are you two having a tiny human? If I caught that right CONGRATULATIONS! So happy for both of you!

I swear our dnd party is literally everyone having a childhood trauma where they were orphans except our wizard who might be a rich boi but no one knows BECAUSE HE NEVER MADE IT

Sir Duke of the house of OneShots I cordially ask that you make the oath of throwing it back paladin a playable subclass

mine was the tragic until my dm was like "so um actually you were kidnapped by pirates" and yeah. we don't let him dm anymore

No matter how hard I try I’m always the book one, I put way too much detail into my characters.

When it comes to the backstory I'm definitely "The Dungeon Master's Worst Nightmare" but not because I wouldn't want them to have a backstory, I'm just really horrible at coming up with backstories and such.

One shot I have a request for a sketch. Can you make a video of the pain of being the DM for players who are artist? Not only the question of what's their name and background but having them want the details of specifically how they look. I love your humor and would love to see your spin on this idea!!!

My barbarians backstory in D&D is that he was a dragonborn baby that was adopted by a tribe of barbarians who only had alcohol and no water he does not know what water is

I didn't choose the sad tragic back story! The sad tragic back story chose me! Its our first time playing DnD, so we all had to make characters. We chose our races by what looked cool. Rolled our stats, picked pour spells, chose our names, etc. Then came the time to make our back stories and actually do some research on our races. Yeah, I wanted to be a changeling that openly loved being themselves. :/ Like, just walking around in their normal form. :/ Then I did research. :/

The whole party sent the DM each of our backstories so he can build some of the campaign around them. I also told him that there's a certain aspect of my backstory that he can take full freedom with and I'm scared because he's already told me he's probably going to make me cry at the table at some point. And after a session some weeks ago where something interesting happened with my character, I have a sneaking suspicion that my character is schizophrenic but doesn't know it, and it is TERRIFYING

I currently play as a gnome with a gab of 60 years in my back story where the DM can put small fun things in. The only thing certain is that I was in waterdeep stealing diamonds. The rest is up to the DM

The book backstory player had me laughing my guts out, because that is literally me with every character I make

My backstories are mostly normal but with some outlashes here and there. My Eladrin Druid burned some people to death because they were treating the forest without respect but normaly she is a bubbly happy person.

I just wanted to give you a hug after the last one.

Congratulations Duke to a very different kind of adventure ahead

For my first D&D character I ever made, her backstory was that her parents didn’t want her, so they sold her for a sack of potatoes…I miss that character

Omg 1:07 is so totally me!! My current genasi wizard character, Ember, has a Character Document that's roughly 120 pages long

I believe it was Taliesin Jaffe who said he likes to leave a big gap in his backstory for the DM to fill in. That's how you end up ruling an entire city.

Killer McStabyoutodeath honestly sounds great, ending world hunger is one of the biggest achievements one could have

I think my favorite backstory was for an aasimar bard I played years ago in Pathfinder. Made it back before they adjusted the age range for aasimars, and they grew at the same rate as half-elementals (reaching adventuring age at around 80-90), and may have rolled in a background generator for rough ideas. Ended up being the son of two performers from a circus troupe, raised lovingly with his half-orc half-brother. Decided he wanted to set off on his own as a performer,.to make others happy, and had been gallivanting around for a couple decades before the adventure started. Parents both died peacefully of old age, brother was an elderly and friendly man living in the capitol city of their home region, while the bard looked like he was only in his early 20s. Probably the most well-adjusted character upbringing I've had, mostly stuck with the party because it sounded fun and like it would help people. Pretty much stuck unilaterally to non-lethal weapons (namely a sap and a blunted shortsword) and used nonlethal metamagic effects on combat spells.

Loved the Legend of Dragoon reference with Kongol the Goliath

Guys! I'm a newbie to roleplaying games and I already have my first character, here's his backstory (it'sactually not DnD but another, very similar game that is copying it but it also has a bit different mechanics, classes and races, you can play in only one world on a massive continent called Ynev and it's more easy to access in my homeland). Feel free to judge: Tieru Shataqua, the half-elf bard has an interesting family. He has 3 siblings, but none of them are from the same race. The story starts long before he was even born. Two elf wizards, Ylthin and Ossir were married and lived together in a city called Pyarron (it's a very small country of the game, just one city, but it's language is very widely spoken and it's also a huge political force with it's allies, not to mention that the most popular religion of that world was started there). They had a son called Alaron, who also became a wizard. One day, Ossir was asked to destroy a cult on a land very far away (the priests already had enough problems without that cult and they needed help) so he and a couple of other adventurers decided to go and clean the land up. Time has passed, but Ossir didn't come back. Ylthin waited for more than a hundred years (elves have a quite long lifespan in this game too), but at one point she had to accept that her loved husband was dead. She decided to marry a human trader called Duncan Arietes, and they had a child together, and yes, you guessed that right, that's our guy Tieru. When Tieru was 18 years old, an unexpected visitor arrived to their house: Ossir. Turns out, he didn't die, he simply got to a place where he couldn't come back from for such a long time, but he never gave up the hope to see his family again. Needless to say, this created some problems in everybody's personal life. After a long fight, some kamikaze exploding donkey statues (don't even ask), and other weird things Ylthin decided to be with her first husband. Duncan had some words about elves and relatives that were said to be dead but I won't type any of it since probably children can be found here too. Anyway, he moved to another place called Lar-Dor and married a human woman called Maeve who is a painter (he had enough of adventurers), and they had twin daughters (Ellaine and Irina) together. This is all that's known about him after the incident. At the end Tieru and Ossir got very close to each other and he realised that Ossir was a better person than Duncan who often cared more about work than his very own family. Tieru was always interested in magic so he tried to be a wizard like 75% of his family, but he was too cheeky with the teachers and too curious about some secrets of the library's books that were locked away. ("They wouldn't be hidden in the principal's office if they weren't interesting"). So he couldn't become a wizard, druids, rangers and sorcerers don't exist in this game, he wasn't close enough to any gods to become a priest/paladin, he's not focused enough to become a fight artist/sword artist (they are the monks of this game), warlocks are evil and two unique magic using casts in this world are also not for him (witches are exclusively women and in most cases they are also evil, and fire-wizards worship a god he's not a big fan of plus they can only learn in one city called Ordan) the only choice for him was the bard. And it could hardly fit him more. He has always been good in music, and his other skills are also perfect for it. He has 19 for Beauty (it's the Charisma of this game) and Intelligence (there's a different mechanism with stats, you don't roll with your dice but everybody gets 145 points to share between these stats: Strenght, Stamina, Speed, Agility, Health, Beauty, Intelligence, Willpower, Astral and Detection, with 20 being the max and 10 the average person's stat except in the case of the first two where it's 12 since simple peasents work a lot so they become quite strong too). After he finished school, he wanted to see more of the world, increase his knowledge and try out his abilities, so now you can find him on the roads of Ynev's southern half, waiting for his first adventure. His life's next chapter. I say it again, feel free to write whatever your opinion is in the reply section, I'm happy to recieve criticism if it can help me to get better. And also, I'm not a native English speaker so I'll be happy to get corrected about an English mistake too so I can learn more.😊

my kobold battle smith is a wholesome cinnamon roll who sees everyone as a potential friend. Everybody is welcome wherever he's staying so he can share tales from his den. he sounds just a liiiittle bit like Stitch (he's also blue, which is pure coincidence) and his favorite food is rocks. he also happens to be running through CoS, and the party is DETERMINED to protect him from harm. he is essentially the party's precious bean. his motto: "there is no evil, just misguided goals."

Currently playing an exploitable and secretive backstory. My character is a 12 year old Triton who grew up surrounded by a loving merchant family and had an happy, comfortable childhood being "Mom's little fighter"- the same mom who secretly had promised his soul to his Warlock pact patron, which his patron is planning to reap pretty soon, leaving him nothing but an husk with a desire to kill. One half's exploitable, and one half's a secret between me and the DM.

My character Roger is very much the last one. He's an elf that can't use magic for some reason so his paladin father taught him how to be a fighter. But one day someone brutally murdered his parents. He joined a guild to learning masonry, pottery, and woodcarving in order to learn a trade to make a living but was so scared of taking the next step that he spent the next hundred years working up the nerve to finally leave the guildhall to start his business. He ended up latching on to the first adventurers he found once he set out because he was scared to be alone. Seriously there was no other reason he would have ever gotten into bounty hunting if his new monk friend wasn't one.

When your Player's chosen backstory unintentionally fits in really well with part of the story you had planned so you rewrite your campaign to fit with his backstory.

Letting the dm decide on the backstories is extremely funny when the party of 8 decides to let the dm write it because its everyones first time. 2 years in and tomorrow is my final session of dm' ing before college and I couldnt have been happier with how it turned out.

My backstories have 3 phases. First: the half page summary, with half a page of potential plot hooks. This is the important details. Second: the 2 page backstory. After the DM confirms a few potential plot points and the basic backstory, write up a brief he can use. Make sure to include [DM inserts] like “I come from a crabbing village on the [Coast]. This was before I was captured for [Slave job]. I became a Rogue by learning how to escape.” Step 3: the in character journal. Mine was 14 pages of backstory, and the 15 session campaign became about 160 pages long.

1:08 In one game I’m in, all 3 of us did this (the DM even referred to our backstories as theses), and, since the DM made the game anyways, he included all of our backstories into the main plot. It’s my favorite game!

The Adaptation; The character either created by you from something else with the story tweaked to fit the setting. The Isekai/Otherworlder; Scratch the part about reworking the story and just have them drop into the world. The Totally 'Original'; Scratch the part about being created by you...

I always bring the whole book 🤣 But always "secrets" that the DM can fill in. Which gives them that evil smile.... :P

I had a character without backstory once as a dm. It was fine

We go left. DM: you encounter a seemingly endless wall of indestructable bushes that are dense as stone abd despite only being 4ft tall cannot be climbed over.

(I’m new to DnD so can someone tell me if this is okay?) Mine was basically in a clan that was attacked by another due to famine, so he lost his family and ran off on his own. He found a snake one day, and he adopted it. He then found a circus/show/thing, and became a performer along with his snake. One of his best friends who was actually an assassin, attempted to murder him one night by setting his bed on fire. He managed to escape but with many burns. He left, and soon ran into another group. The group became travelers and that’s it. Ik it’s kinda detailed but is it… fine??? Or like??

I have a changeling character whose parents were assassins and were (for reasons I'm letting my DM decide) tasked to kill them. They ran away because of this at a young age where they were taken in by a circus and raised as a wood elf named Faen. Its fun working with the DM to make my characters true identity unfold :) Thought there has been some pretty huge hints and no-ones managed to get it lmao

Was that "Kongol" character a reference to Legend of the Dragoon? Because if it is I absolutely love it!

Nah, the DM's Worst Nightmare is this: "So I was inspired by this one guy called Henderson?"