Every character is unique. Even those that share ancestry and class can be very different from each other, and there are myriad different reasons why one might pursue the life of an adventurer. Where a character has been and what has happened to it along the way sets that character apart, both in terms of story and game mechanics, and is a critical part of making a vibrant and well-rounded character.
And yet, even in role-playing games, not everyone has the same expectations for what a good character concept is or how invested they want to be. Some love coming up with extensive backstories for their characters, while others just want to slap some numbers together and not worry about it too much. There is no right or wrong way to approach it, and so your character's background in Realm of Runes is extremely open-ended in order to accommodate either extreme, and everywhere in between.
When your character chooses its background, it doesn't choose from tidy packages of options, as with ancestry and class, that narrow down your potential choices. There are therefore, essentially, infinite backgrounds to pick from. What you choose and why is entirely up to you, and requires no justification. What you pick when building your background is instead intended to get you to think about who your character is and where they've been, even if only a little bit. This step is also designed with the intent to be an excellent place from a GM to find hooks to build a story centered around who these characters are, or alternatively seed in information that can help players build characters that fit the intended story as perfectly as possible.
ABILITY BOOSTS
As one of the steps of character creation, background has an integral part to play in determining your character's overall capability. The background step gives each character two ability boosts with which to improve its basic statistics. Unlike the boosts gained through ancestry and class, these boosts are completely free rather than chosen from a limited set narrowed down by your other choices. They can't both be used to boost the same ability modifier, but are otherwise unrestricted. This can help ensure that a character is really excellent in the areas they intend to use most, or can instead go a long way toward making well-rounded characters that are surprisingly versatile.
BACKGROUND SKILL
Skills are an important way that characters in Realm of Runes grow beyond the structure of class and ancestry. While the bulk of a character's skill load-out from character creation is chosen during the class step, the background step also provides an important addition to this framework. Classes provide a character with a specific number of trained skills, though no guidance or restriction on what those skills are, and then offers a choice between two specific skills that have synergy with that class's focus to become an expert in.
When developing a background, each character freely picks any skill and is an expert with it. This additional expertise helps ensure that every character in Realm of Runes is always at least an expert with two skills to start. While more intelligent characters can exceed this if they choose, even those characters for whom intelligence is not a priority are always able to interact with the skill system from an advantageous position. Since so many of the skills don't even use Intelligence as a key ability, it's important that a comparative lack of such not impede any character's ability to utilize those skills to their fullest extent.
Since this background skill is entirely free, unlike the expert skill granted by choice of class, this also helps to facilitate interesting and unexpected combinations, like wizards that are good at athletics or barbarians that are surprisingly capable surgeons. Every class provides a character with enough trained skills to ensure its competence in areas important to that class, but the separate freedom of the background skill helps a character to break that mold and be a fresh take on a concept.
BACKSTORY BOON
The last, and perhaps most important, aspect of character backgrounds in Realm of Runes is the choice of a backstory boon. There are several types of backstory boons, and everyone gets to freely pick one of them. Each category of boon provides some unusual functionality to a character or its equipment, and each one provides a great opportunity to really think about who your character is and has been and to integrate it into the world of the adventure. When Realm of Runes publishes its own first-party adventures, each one will include suggestions for backstory boons that serve as both brainstorming prompt and campaign hooks.
CLASS FEAT
Every class has a lot of feats to choose from, and at every level there are more useful feats available than the ability to choose them. A lot of class feats also have good synergy with others. Using your backstory boon to pick up an extra class feat can help make interesting combos available earlier, and suggests that your character is, and has been, deeply invested in exploring the class's potential.
CONNECTED
One of the functions of the society skill is to use downtime to develop and utilize a social network of contacts in settlements. Using your backstory boon to begin play with contacts is a great way to be able to utilize this skill set to its fullest, and is also one of the backstory boons best suited to fully integrating a character into the setting. This boon, by its very nature, creates a relationship between a character and an NPC. While characters are free to come up with their own connections, GMs and adventures can also provide dossiers of existing NPCs that make for useful connections and relationships that serve both the mechanical function of the skill and narrative function.
GENERAL FEAT
Every character gets a general feat at first level, and every other level after that. Much like with class feats, though, there are many more general feats available than a character could ever pick. Using your backstory boon to pick up an extra general feat sets up interesting combos, or makes it easier to spend a feat on durability or teamwork abilities without having to choose them over an important combat style feat.
HEIRLOOM
All characters need gear. High quality gear is expensive, and some characters naturally want to have a lot of it. Using your backstory boon to gain an heirloom lets you start with a fine quality item at no cost. Most weapons, armor and skill tools are expensive enough that fine quality at character creation is either going to take up most of your available funds, or is entirely beyond them. Having been gifted such an item through your backstory makes a character more competent and makes that item feel special. Adventure briefings can also make available special, specific heirloom items normally beyond the purview of the backstory boon that are (or can be) important to the upcoming adventure. Much like with the connected boon, such items can serve both a mechanical and narrative function.
LINGUIST
When choosing ancestry, every character gains some fluency with two or more languages. For characters that like to be involved in conversation, or make extensive use of lingual effects, learning many languages is especially important. There are ancestry feats and skill feats that help a character pick up more languages, but those typically are restricted to common or uncommon languages. The linguist backstory boon, by contrast, can improve your proficiency with any language without restriction, including rare languages. Adventure briefings typically list a suite of languages that are likely to be appropriate for the campaign. When exploring ancient ruins, having someone that has some fluency with that lost language can be especially important for survival. Getting special access to more, or rare, languages serves both a mechanical and narrative function.
SKILL FEAT
Skill feats are incredibly important to the use of skills in Realm of Runes, as they expand and improve the use of their associated skills in ways that are often more effective than simply improving proficiency. Using your backstory boon to pick up a skill feat for your background skill can help make your character's use of that skill extra effective. With many more skill feats available than even the smartest rogues can ever choose, getting an extra skill feat early can help make character concepts work more quickly than they could otherwise.
UNCOMMON ACCESS
Realm of Runes includes many equipment and spell options that are more obscure in the world. Uncommon access works a lot like the heirloom backstory boon, except that it provides a free uncommon item or spell instead of a fine quality item. This can help make the use of some more interesting, but peculiar, options right from the start. These uncommon items or spells are especially effective at setting a character apart from the typical example, and can be the source of some notoriety within the world of an adventure. As with heirlooms, specific adventure briefings can offer specific unusual items and spells that fit the theme of the adventure, while being beyond the general purview of what the backstory boon can normally offer.
UNUSUAL ESOTERICA
When choosing ancestry and class, a character ends up filling out a suite of initial esoteric proficiency. Some of those are more freely chosen, such as weapon groups, but most of them are not optional. All sorcerers are experts with will saves. All rogues are experts with perception. Characters typically don't get to pick an esoteric proficiency boost until third level, which can feel like an eternity for a character that is trying to fill an unusual niche for an ancestry and class combination. Picking unusual esoterica for a backstory boon grants a free esoteric proficiency boost to apply at the completion of character creation. Want a wizard that's trained in heavy armor? A barbarian that's trained with occult magic to use with ritual casting? This backstory boon is especially adept at helping characters to break traditional expectations.
Backgrounds are an important aspect of character creation that helps make each character unique and fleshed out. It's also a step of character creation that ensures that players are thinking about their characters as more than a collection of statistics, but as people with quirks and histories that integrate them into the world that they will explore. This step is also a great way for GMs to provide important information about an upcoming adventure that helps with making more informed decisions about other aspects of character creation, too. Next time we'll take a closer look at some more advanced topics, such as tactical movement and mounted combat.
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