As I sit here typing this, it is Labor Day in the United States, a day created to celebrate and recognize the working men and women of this country. It was first celebrated in New York in the year 1882 as a “workingmen’s holiday.” Over the next few years, more and more labor organizations around the country chose to follow suit, and the federal government formally recognized the first Monday in September as Labor Day in 1894. As such, I thought that it would be fitting to talk about those characters in our games that hail from the working class – ways to leverage and utilize those kinds of skills in a game and how to thrust the humble stonemason, blacksmith, or bar wench into the action and become heroic themselves.
The humble villager that is elevated to the position of a hero through circumstance out of his control is a common trope in heroic fantasy – we see it time and again in both movies and literature. Orlando Bloom’s character in Kingdom of Heaven was a blacksmith before his father found him and Russell Crowe’s character in Gladiator had a farm back at home. Tika Waylan in the Dragonlance novels was a simple barmaid until her home village was attacked and she was forced to take up a weapon and take part in the War of the Lance. Tony Stark and Danny Rand are both worth billions and have companies they own and operate when they aren’t defending or avenging. There are many more examples of this kind of character in our media.
And while this trope is usually quite well represented in fantasy roleplaying, either through professional skills that can be purchased with whatever resource the game uses to advance skills, non-weapon proficiencies, or background choices, I have found that they don’t always see a lot of use at the table in any sort of impactful manner. They’re chosen and then forgotten. And it stands to reason – most of these things are meant to be events from the character’s past and usually provide circumstantial or minor bonuses (if that). Most players would rather know how well they can hit someone with a sword or how much damage they can do with an arcane spell than focus on how well their character can mend a shoe or lay cobblestones for a road. These aren’t heroic pursuits, and it’s hard to see how they can be useful when fighting hordes of undead or stopping a death cult from awakening an ancient and evil god to destroy the world.
But these skills and traits are important nonetheless. They may not give your character any sort of power or necessary ability during gameplay, but they give the character depth and breadth at the table in ways that go beyond dice rolls. They certainly aren’t going to come up every session, but when they do, they can offer unparalleled flavor, color, and verisimilitude for both the player and the game world if used correctly. A stonemason that can help reinforce battlements before a siege action or a farrier that use his skills to direct a stable in making sure the horses are properly geared for battle or even an accomplished farmer helping a village get its fields ready for the next planting season can provide no end of roleplaying hooks and give the characters a chance to show that they are more than just a collection of numbers and combat feats. The sailor that can use his skills to help the party pick the best ship for the party’s transoceanic voyage is a stronger character that the one that simply has “sailor” marked as his background that never gets brought up beyond marking “sailing” as a class skill on his character sheet.
Figuring out what these characters were before they were adventurers is the easy part. Finding ways to use those skills through the course of play happen often enough if you are actively looking for ways to leverage them. The real trick however is getting these characters involved in the action. Some of these characters gave up their ordinary life years ago, and the skills they learned are nothing more than memories in their life. But sometimes they are simply men and women who are thrust into a world and a role bigger than themselves. And making a blacksmith or other simple laborer heroic and competent enough to survive as an adventurer is no easy feat. These kinds of characters are more often than not simple background characters that don’t see screen time beyond the scene they are in and often have little more thought put into their character than a few cues and tics. What could draw men and women like them into the world- and plane-shaking events that adventurers so often find themselves drawn into?
Start small – connect them immediately to smaller action that leads to bigger action. Are the characters going to be working to stop a power mad cult of a death god? Then maybe the blacksmith’s wife or daughter was kidnapped by a local cell as part of one of their dark rituals and the local authorities won’t help. A sailor has a child sick with a rare blood disorder, using his wage to keep her alive while he spends whatever spare time he has looking for rare and exotic reagents a local alchemist can experiment with, when he hears stories of the cult’s blood rituals. A beggar and cutpurse could have family involved with the cult, directly or indirectly, willing or not. Maybe they want the PC to join so they can escape the life they are currently living. Small, personal ties to the events at hand give the characters reason to be there, and reason to continue to see things through as they get bigger. They may find that they can no longer return to their ordinary life after the events of their adventures – just look at Bilbo Baggins. He was nothing more than a home maker when he was plucked from his hobbit hole and taken on a grand adventure. And when he got back, he found that he had changed too much and no longer fit in with the rest of the hobbits in the Shire.
You can also make it really personal – revenge is a very strong character motivation. Perhaps an agent of the villain took something from the hero, either stole something or someone important from them. Maybe a prized family heirloom has been stolen because of a connection with the villain. Maybe a spouse or sibling was murdered by agents of the villain. Maybe their home town was taken captive or destroyed while they were gone. You do need to do a little more work here in regards to the character’s motivations after the subject of their revenge is dealt with, either by giving them a more powerful target that was really in charge or by tying them into other events or characters through play. We saw the former in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy when Drax the Destroyer decides to stay with the group for a shot at Thanos after learning that he was the power behind Ronan the Accuser. The latter can be utilized any number of ways with a little bit of thought and a little bit of working with the player to find out what else the character could want.
Any way you slice it, the call to action for these kinds of heroes needs to be strong to take them out of the realm of the ordinary. Simply throwing them into conflict with the villains probably won’t be enough to make for a compelling story. It needs to be something personal for them. It needs to be something that they are willing to fight and die for. It needs to be something that they are going to be willing to leave their entire life behind to save. But by thinking about who the character was before they were an adventurer and how that impacts their life, whether that be 20 years or 20 seconds before the first session is something that can yield stunning rewards at the table, and give the character ways to interact with the game world that they may not have ever thought of otherwise.
Ben Erickson
