Character Creation

Backstory NPC Connections

Players should be encouraged to create NPCs tied directly to their character’s backstory. These connections help ground characters within the world and give the GM immediate story hooks, tensions, and opportunities to work with throughout the campaign.

These NPCs may include:

• Family members
• Old travelling companions
• Mentors
• Debtors
• Rivals
• Enemies
• Employers
• Faction leaders
• Criminal contacts
• Lost loved ones

Importantly, SSS&S encourages collaborative worldbuilding. The GM does not need to invent every person, faction, or location alone. If a player introduces a mercenary company, criminal gang, temple, or noble house through their backstory, those things now exist within the world.

These connections help make the setting feel personal. Players become far more invested when the world contains people their characters already care about, fear, owe, or wish to avoid.

As a guideline, players should aim to create several existing connections within the world before play begins. A useful balance is:

• 2 Positive Connections
• 2 Negative Connections
• 2 Neutral or Uncertain Connections

At least one of these connections should be local to the area or settlement where the campaign begins. This helps immediately ground the party within the setting and gives the GM useful characters, factions, and story hooks to draw upon from the very first session.

Players are also encouraged to arrive with one or two rumours surrounding their character. These rumours may be true, partially true, wildly exaggerated, or entirely false, but they help immediately establish reputation, mystery, and social hooks within the world. Rumours also give the GM and other players easy ways to introduce tension, familiarity, or recognition during play.