Roll your angst away with the Random Edgelord Backstory Table RANDOM EDGELORD BACKSTORY TABLE
Do you want to make a new player character with a dark and tragic past’ Great news, now you can make Amur cookie cutter edgelord backstory by simply rolling on random tables! Just role percentile die four times in sequential order to complete your edge tilled backstory sentence.
I) EDGY ANTAGONIST (d100) Antagonist 01-03 An evil wizard 04-06 A dragon 07-09 The drow 10-12 Goblins 13-15 Kobolds 16-18 A mind Bayer 19-21 Evil cultists 22-24 Ores 25-27 Trolls 28-30 A banshee 31-33 A demon lord 34-36 An archdevil 37-39 Giants 40-42 Vampires 43-45 Cnolls 46-48 A werewolf 49-51 A djinni
2) EDGY ACTION
(d100) Antagonist 52-54 A mimic 55-57 A tarrasque 58-60 A beholder 61-63 A hag coven 64-66 A kh 67-69 Barbarians 70-72 An aboleth 73-75 A sucuubus 76-78 A criminal organization 79-81 A gelatinous cube 82-84 A necromancer 85-87 Corrupt nobles 88-90 A death knight 91-93 The BBEG 94-96 The bard 97-99 Natural selection 000 The dm
(d100) Action (d100) Action 01-09 killed 68-70 mauled 10-19 murdered 71-73 stole 20-29 slaughtered 74-76 blackmailed 30-39 massacred 77-79 conned 40-49 assassinated 80-82 framed 50-52 brainwashed 83-85 humiliated 53-55 captured 86-88 pillaged 56-58 banished 89-91 ruined 59-61 enslaved 92-94 ate 62-64 betrayed 95-97 cursed 65-67 sacrificed 98-99 befriended 000 seduced
3) EDGY VICTIM (d100) Victim 01-04 my family 05-08 my hometown 09-12 my parents 13-16 my clan 17-20 my siblings 21-24 my mentors 25-28 my significant other 29-32 my master 33-36 my side squeeze 37-40 my apprentice 41-44 my friends 45-48 my previous adventuring party 49-52 everyone I knew
DUNGEON MASTERMINDS SDNONMASTERMINDS (d100) Victim 53-56 my crew of sailors 57-60 my crew of pirates 61-64 my crew of noble outlaws 65-68 my crew of thieves 69-72 the tavem I basically lived in 73-76 my start-up business 77-80 my military unit 81-84 my social status 85-88 my treasure 89-92 my aspirations 93-96 my confidence 97-99 my honour 000 my imaginary friends
4) EDGY OUTCOME (d100) Outcome 01-29 and it will have no effect on how I roleplay my character. 30-39 and now I’m a murder hobo. 40-49 and now I’m a lawful good stick in the mud. 50-53 and now I seek vengeance. 54-57 and now I trust no one. 58-61 and now I have a bleak outlook of the world 62-65 and now I strive to live by their ideals. 66-69 and now I must become stronger. 70-74 and now I seek to bring back what I have lost 75-78 and now I vow to prevent that from happening to anyone else. 79-82 and now I an haunted by their memory. 83-86 and now I seek to uncover the truth about what happened. 87-90 and now I fear it will happen again. 91-93 and now I an stronger because of it. 94-96 and now I’m an alcoholic. 97-99 and now I have multclassed into warlock 000 and now I’m Batman.
from r/dndmemes
I think a lot of the problems with Tragic Backstories™ is that the tragedy itself gets treated as more interesting than it really is, and in the worst cases gets treated as the thing that makes a character interesting, which it absolutely shouldn’t be.
For my own part, when I incorporate some tragic aspect into my own character backstories, I try to ensure it’s only ever in service of explaining why some other more interesting aspect of the character is present.
For example, I have a lizardfolk barbarian from Kara Tur who is the only survivor of his tribe – but that’s largely just a means to explain why the hell he walked all the way across an entire continent and ended up on the Sword Coast as an aimless drifter available to be recruited into an adventuring party.
He’s not out for revenge against some evil dragon or wicked warlord who slaughtered his people unjustly for grandiose reasons – he’s just the victim of a banal and ordinary misfortune. His village was stricken by disease while he was away from home, and they just didn’t have the knowledge, medicine, or clerical magic to combat it.
It wasn’t some super special disease, the product of some mad lich’s plans to raise an undead army, or anything like that – it was just an ordinary sort of pox, which most civilized peoples know how to cure, but which his isolated and somewhat primitive tribe lacked the knowledge to defeat. He came home from an ordinary trip to another village and found he’d lost everything, and there’s no deeper meaning to any of it. It was just bad luck; just senseless misfortune.
Yeah, it’s a trauma he carries with him, and it shapes a lot of his choices and behaviors. But it’s not what defines him. It’s not who he is, or what he is. It’s just why he’s where he is, instead of back in Kara Tur leading a normal life.
The tragic backstory isn’t what’s interesting about him – his tribal heritage is. He’s from a different sort of society, from the cold swamps and taiga of northern Kara Tur, and his culture and worldview are very unusual in Faerun. He thinks, speaks, acts, and feels in ways that are subtly different from most people. He’s a stranger in a strange land, who can’t go home because there’s no home left to go back to.
It’s that clash of different worlds that makes him interesting – not his angst or grief over the terrible thing that happened to him. It’s not how his life went wrong that matters – it’s what he’s doing to try to make a new life that’s interesting.
Back home he was the village strongman, beloved for his feats of strength and prowess at their traditional wrestling competitions. But for all his strength, he was helpless to do anything to save his people against a foe he couldn’t see or touch. And now in the Sword Coast, he’s no longer a celebrity and a champion – he’s a nobody at best, and an untrustworthy beast-man at worst. He’s trying to navigate a world he barely understands, speak a language he has barely heard, and preserve the last shreds of an ancestral culture now barely alive in him.
I’m not interested in having him dwell on his past. But I’m very interested in seeing how he forges his future, whenever I get the chance to use him in a campaign.