I don't know that it's particularly common or uncommon. In my experience it happens about as often as you'd expect in a world as dangerous and unpredictable as a typical D&D setting.
I think I've only had one character that was an orphan, and that happens to be the character I'm playing right now. My Shifter Avenger was sold into slavery after his nogoodnick parents were killed during a robbery-gone-bad when he was 3.
Besides that, I think one other groupmate had an orphan character in a 3.5 campaign. I can think of lots of characters where their parents weren't huge parts of their backstory, but few orphans.
Never bother to determine whether or not a character's parents are alive or dead unless it's actually integral to the character's backstory and/or reason for adventuring... Out of all the characters I've built in 30 years of playing, there's only four or five whose parents figured prominently in their backstory...
- Had a 3.5 rogue/swashbuckler/fighter whose father ran a company of caravan guards, and the character picked up his multitude of skills being raised by men of the company while travelling the trade roads. The character was a borderline sociopath, so an emotionally distant father that the character could never please and who never showed him affection was a perfect background element - after the father's death when the character was 17 or 18, he sells the company of caravan guards to his father's second-in-command and takes off to travel on his own, drifting between working as a caravan guard, a thief and an adventurer...
- Eladrin feylock who grew up with no idea he was an eladrin - he'd been raised from birth among humans and tormented for his strange appearance. Lost his mind after getting lost in the Feydark for two weeks the first time he teleported.
- Human ranger who still carries the hatchet (magical handaxe) she killed her abusive parents with as a girl... Her backstory was an adaption of the Lizzie Borden story, extending it into a family's six-generation-long history of misfortune and madness which may or may not have been caused by their possession of a possibly-evil, possibly-cursed axe.
- Human tempest|ranger who came from a famous pirate family. Unbeknownst to most, that clan of pirates was also, in fact, secretly a family of minor nobility (famed for developing a particularly deadly and beautiful style of rapier-and-main-gauche swordfighting) who were covertly working as privateers (and adventurers) for the king. A political rival at Court engineers her father's fall from favor, and eventually the family is stripped of their lands and titles, and declared outlawed. The father is assassinated a few years later by the same rival, leaving the character with no real prospects other than continuing in the family business of piracy and adventuring and a burning desire to destroy the man who killed her father.
I think all of my Characters have had parents in their backstory, although so far most of the games I've played in havent had a big roleplaying component. Maladmud has a sister and father who are alive and well back at home. I dont think I ever came up with a story for Darun.
Discussions like this also led to the following gem regarding Brutus, my half oc barbarian.
"You know half orcs are usually the product of rape?" "Not me. My parents are happily married, you Racist bastard!" "What would cause a human woman to want to marry an orc?" "I dunno, my mom is a orc."
that campaign didnt last too long, but i got some lulz out of it
Wow that's amazing ahahaha.
The only orphan character I've had (usually I shy away from orphans cuz it's a bit cliche, even though it's very possible to do an orphan chara who isn't) is a half elf half blink hound who realized how much easier it is to make a living from stealing if you know how to teleport. Still, the orphan aspect doesn't really play that much of a role, except that it makes it really awkward for the chara in that they cant find out how the hell they actually, er, happened.
Heya everyone, here are my homebrew threads: (yes there is only one right now, but there are more to come!) And Let There Be Fish-Men: KUO-TOA
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
I'm currently DMing a campaign in which 3 of the 4 characters are orphans in their backstory. I'm wondering if this is usual at other tables. 1) Was the last character you ran an orphan? 2) Do you often use the 'orphan' element in your backstory?
So far I've only run one character as an orphan, and he was taken in by the Temple of Kord from a young age. The loss of his family was the driving purpose that lead him to become an avenger.
One of my characters was the member of a noble house and had a large extended family. One of our other PCs was his cousin and another PC was the cousin's body guard.
Orphan freakishly common background and because it lets the player handwave having a family. Releationships outside of the party are useful for DMs. Need a hook? Family member comes to the character for help. One way to sidestep the lack of family is to use childhood friends from the same orphanage and caretakers in place of family members.
I have a lot of characters, and will attempt to explain their stories and family as briefly as possible. Because this "brief" post isn't brief at all, I'll put it in the box below.
Often, my character not only have parents, but are on good terms with their parents. This wasn't always the case, though; my second roleplaying character, in an Iron Kingdoms game, was an Ogre Paladin whose parents, who were insane, gave him the name of "This Is My Name." This Is My Name did not want to dishonor his family by legally changing the name he had been given, though, and when NPC's asked him why he didn't do so, he told them about his family's honor and such.
My next character, in a GURPS game, was a minotaur monk (and a very effective one, at that; he was the best melee combatant in the whole party, even better than the other minotaur, who was fully-equipped. I know it's not relevent, I just wanted to share how awesome he was.) whose clan was killed by an evil cult. He abandoned the name he was given out of shame, since he was unable to stop the cultists, and assumed the name of "Avenging Bull." The campaign was ended too quickly for any significant amount of roleplaying, and in the short amount of time it ran, the players bickered more than anything.
For a while, I didn't do any RPing, as I lacked the opportunity. However, I was re-introduced to RPing by a local game shop (Crossroad Games), where I joined my first DnD 4e game. The character I started with was a horribly unoptimized Dwarf Paladin (like most new players I encounter, I tried to overgeneralize the character's abilities), who ended up being so boring and ineffective that I switched him out for a human fighter, flavored after Guy from Final Fantasy 2. Both characters were orphans. That game became overcrowded (it was a game officially ran by the store owner, who didn't want to restrict the number of players out of kindness), so I left.
My next character was an eladrin named Mindartis, originally a Blue Mage (homebrew class), but converted to a Wizard due to DM persuasion. His parents were incredibly rich (his father obtained the money through investing what little money he had as a youth in various merchant companies, which became successful asfterward, and then he continued investing his money afterward; his mother was the daughter of one of those merchants), and could afford to send Mindartis to many prestigeous schools. As a Blue mage, his main academic interest was Zoology; after the class switch, he instead became a generalist in his sought knowledge. Another detail about Mindartis' family: breaking the tradition of hatred between dwarves and elves, Mindartis's father was best friends with a dwarf, who Mindartis called "Uncle Edgar."
My next character, Bovill Achsteir (obviously a minotaur; his class was Warden) was born into a family of soldiers who followed a homebrew deity named Rusuficier, a god of justice and protection of the innocent. His family just about guaranteed his membership in the holy order, and he remained loyal to his deity's cause despite his training in primal magic.
I also once made a character who was brain-damaged as a result of parental abuse, and who could not speak. He was based on Arthur "Boo" Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird. Unfortunately, the campaign he was in was incredibly hard due to the party's slow XP gain and party unoptimization caused by constant character switching and player absence, and he died almost as soon as he entered the campaign.
Next, I made a human rogue (sniper-type rogue, not melee) named Aaron Irving; I've used him across campaigns, and as a result have been able to develop his background nicely. His mother, Abigail, ran away from his father, with little Aaron in her arms, when Aaron was just a baby, and later entered a relationship with a hunter. The reason for this was because Aaron's biological father, Tristan Irving, was actually a powerful, evil vampire who wanted to dominate the world, who managed to hide his nature (and his goals) until the first child of the couple started developing vampiric powers of his own. By that time, the first child, Richard, was already old enough to decide on his alignment (he chose evil, as he wanted to be like his father), and so the mother could not save Richard. Aaron eventually became an adventurer, and soon found out about his true heritage. He made it his goal in life to put a stop to his biological father's goals; meanwhile, his Tristan Irving is not overly hostile to Aaron, but instead wants Aaron to join him in his goals.
Then there's Rudolph Weischel, a human psion in a Dark Sun campaign. The son of a noble merchant family (the family was good-aligned, and though they owned slaves, they treated the slaves like they were part of the family) (also, despite no cultural parallels to early-1800's Germany in Athas, they were very much German-flavored), Rudolph's goal in life was to research psionic power so that it would eventually become more viable as a power source than arcane. His parents helped him financially, and even convinced one of their slaves (a half-elf named Helga, who was a battlemind) to tutor Rudolph in psionics. Later, while on a caravan from Raam to Draj, Rudolph was captured by Dray Slavers, and found his long-lost brother, a monk (I forget his name), who was thought to be dead. After the party escaped and killed Rudolph and his brother for food, a psionic fluke caused their minds to form new bodies made entirely out of psionic energy at the family estate in Raam. I could not introduce him back into the story, though, as the campaign ended too soon for them to travel to Draj.
In the meantime, my replacement character, a human (with a little halfling blood in his veins) ranger named Lenny (and his camel, George) was a Drajan gladiator, who wanted to escape the life of a gladiator to become a hermit in the wilds. He was born into his profession because his father, a human (flavorwise the son of a human and a halfling) fighter named Apocalypse D. Reaper (the D stood for Dirge), was the best gladiator in all of Draj. Apocalypse loved Lenny, but wasn't very competent at it; Apocalypse was prone to fits of rage, and wasn't all that intelligent or wise, so he often expressed his parental love for Lenny in ways that weren't very loving at all (there was no incest, don't you worry).
Finally, there's Reginald the Unlucky a human (foulborn) ardent. After having what seemed to be the worst day of his life, the Spellplague happened, and transported him to the Far Realm in the future. He dragged himself back into the world after developing a self-sentient spellscar/alien tumor which consumed his right arm, turning it into a tentacle (in spite of this, the spellscar/alien tumor, whose name is Winston, remains Reginald's best and only friend). Reginald, upon re-entering the world, found out how much time had passed (about a hundred years), and had to adjust to all the changes in the world and his lack of any family, along with hiding his new friend/mutation.
Admittedly quite a few of the characters I've played were orphans. Maybe half of them. Although only one of them had deceased parents: A tiefling who killed her mother in self-defense, after said mother (possessed by a demon at the time) murdered her father. Grew up to be quite the schizophrenic nutjob, not that the party members ever noticed during the several weeks I've played her. And I've even given her two personalities different names! I guess they really aren't the folk to take a (huge!) pile of subtle clues and see the underlying issue.
Then there's another Tiefling orphan (these guys/gals are hard to figure out suitable parents for!) street urchin type. Never bothered to work out any parenty details for this character, really - his only family is his sister and the gang of orphans. I guess that beats having a regular family though, at least by his book.
And finally there's a gal who grew up under a kind of professor Xavier type cleric of Ioun, with his very own orphanage for gifted children and all that. She's not even a tiefling, but I never bothered to write anything about her parents either. Although I guess she might not really be an orphan anymore, being officially adopted by a crusading noblewoman when she was a teenager.
Well, there's also R.U.N.E: The Robotic Utiliser of iNscriptions and Etchings. Warforged runepriest, if you hadn't guessed. Crafted by a rather stereotypical demented artificer who is more creative with mechanical parts than he is with names. He doesn't technically have parents, but isn't an orphan either really.
Ahem. Thinking back, I'm not sure if I've ever bothered to work out natural parents for any of my characters. It just doesn't seem very heroic to have a mum and dad to fall back on. A wizened old mentor to fall back on though, that's almost mandatory for any true hero
I have two orphan characters I'd like to get a chance to play.
One was raised by a ranger near the village where his family had lived (their house was burned with them in it, in an act of racial violence). So he knows the ranger and a lot of the ranger's regular visitors, most of whom are druids. He also knows the ranger's dogs, because he helped care for them a lot. He doesn't really know anyone from the village.
The other... well, it isn't 100% definite that he's an orphan. His mother probably didn't know who his father is (in the sense of "which one?"). She's almost certainly long-since dead. The woman who raised him (and beat him and pimped him and took every bit of wealth he managed to acquire) is dead, definitely. But the thug he hired to kill that woman knows at least that much about him; there's the slum street gang he was part of; there's his girlfriend that he doesn't know he left pregnant; there's the faculty and other students at the wizard academy he got drafted into after he learned a cantrip on his own from a stolen book.
An absence of parents is not an absence of connections.
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
With me while I have played characters who did not ever know their biological parrents, I've never actually played a true "orphan" in the sense that they never really had a family. The closest I came to that was my warlord/sorcerer hybrid, Kalgor, who was raised by a very old red dragon who essentually was a more or less a "noble line" all his own(he had a masive hoard, his claws where in all manner of merchantile ventures and he even had an assemblage of Kobald minions.)whom wanted to raise him to be his loyal minion and weapon. However, while he never knew his biological parrents(they left him in the dragon's cave to die as a baby.) it never effected him, Praxis(the very old red dragon) was his surrogate father figure and ultimatly his "patron" as an adventurer, though he did have plans of betrayal on his mind and the highlight of the campaign for him was being able to finally destroy Praxis and claim his wealth and "empire" for himself.(All the party members got their moments of awesome like this, of course.)...
Other then that, most of my characters tend to have full familes, usually because about 90% of my characters are nobles of some sort and the 10% that are not of noble birth come from some other kind of family of wealth and power(such as my aformentioned character Kalgor.). However, the reason people seem to gravitate towards the "orphan" thing is because, again, it's an easy hook for one to become an adventurer. No ties to a manor(which both pesants/serfs AND nobles have), no pressure to go into the family occupation, and of course all the drama. It's something that is eveident in a LOT of forms of role play, not Just D&D and PnP(I do signifigant freeform Forum-based RPing as well.). People like characters with interesting lives and pasts; having your parrents killed by knolls/goblins/whatever is a LOT more interesting to write and RP about then how your character lived as joe shmoe the pesant farmer until he one day picked up a sword. It's for that same reason I usually play members of the nobility; Noble's lives are just more interesting then the lives of pesants, but since not everybody is a noble and some people don't like going that route, being an orphan provides the "interesting life" that some RPers seem to crave.
Oh, and not to get off topic but on the subject of nobles all having to be pretty and charismatic one of my favorite characters was a prince....who was also an artificer with 8 charisma who cared more about his(rather distrubing) work on using undead for good aka as an energy source to power magi-tech(in paticular, incorporeal undead, which all of his gadgets where fluffed to run on(So yeah, this guy was literally carrying around an "army" of incorporeal undead imprisioned in his magi-tech that where being constantly tortured to power his machines.....though he also wanted to find a way to refine zombie sludge into a useable power source too...). Needless to say his rather messed-up mad arcane-science was not something his family looked on with a kind eye...and his obssession with undead just made him kinda creepy and off-putting to most...not your typical prince charming, that one.(XD) So yeah, his family actually played a major part in his life and where a major reason for his adventuring and I find that, if used right, a family can be an excelent tool to motivate adventurers to go adventuring.(In thisc haracter's case, his family more or less wanted to keep him out of the court scene due to the fact he could be an embarisment to the family, and he just wanted more knowldage and to prefect his undead-powered magic-tech(and one day cause a magi-tech revolution creating a utopian(or perhaps distopian?) tippyverse where nobody lives in fear of undead; they are instead put to productive use as a power source and cheap labor.)..so it was a win-win situation for both of them.)
So, family can be used to enhance a character greatly, but I don't frown on the Orphan trope like some may; because I know myself a lot of people(myself included) don't find your oridinary pesant who learned to draw a sword or cast a spell interesting...we need some kind of drama or conflict in our character's past, it's just I prefer for it to come from the exsistance of a family rather then the lack of one, but both options fill the same desire for a dramatic/interesting backstory and if you can do the orphan trope with some originality or awesome despite it's "overuse" more power to you!
