Backgrounds

Backgrounds are traits that catalog your character's connections, her possessions and her position in the world. Backgrounds are closely tied to your character concept—each is more than just a dot rating. If a character has the Allies, Contacts or Mentor Background, the dots represent individuals with their own lives, personalities and motives. Having Resources means that your character has a ready source of wealth, and your character acquired any artifact or manse in some interesting and unusual manner.

The player and the Storyteller should work together to make sure that your choices make sense and work well with the overall theme of the game. For example, if all of the characters start of as recently escaped slaves, then both Resources and Influence are inappropriate. Backgrounds should complement both the series and the character concept, rather than providing a way to make a powerful character.

If the player or Storyteller is uncertain whether a character's Background rating is sufficient for a given task, the player rolls the character's Background against difficulty 1 to see if it can do what she wants. Such rolls can be used to see if allies can come to the character's aid or if she can afford a new piece of equipment, for example.

However, while this method is simple, it can easily undermine roleplaying. It is often better if the Storyteller ask the player to describe her character's use of the Background clearly and then call for the appropriate (Attribute + Ability) roll when the time comes. The player might roll the character's (Manipulation + Socialize) to talk her allies into helping her or (Charisma + Presence) to see if they come to the character's aid when they know she is in trouble. A character trying to buy something expensive might roll (Intelligence + Bureaucracy) to find a bargain on the open market.

Storytellers should not use such techniques to make the character's Backgrounds less useful. Instead, she should help make Backgrounds into real and concrete things and not just abstract numbers the player rolls whenever she needs someone to rescue her character.