Character backgrounds have been around in d20 fantasy games since before the phrase “d20 fantasy games” existed — but not always under that name. The concept of a background was known as “player character non-professional skills” way back in AD&D. These were a list of semi-medieval vocations your character might have picked up before their adventuring career took off, and which encouraged a DM to “adjudicate situations in which these skills are used or useful.”
D&D 3rd edition talked about background in a narrative sense, class by class, but focused on its newly minted skills system to cover any and all ideas of what your character might have been good at before taking up the call to adventure. For 5e D&D, backgrounds became a distinct mechanic focusing primarily on narrative, splitting the focus between a character’s former vocation (with backgrounds such as acolyte, sage, and sailor) and life experience (charlatan, hermit, and outlander, among others).
As a system built around the idea of rules modularity and flexibility, CORE20 takes a slightly different approach. Backgrounds in CORE20 are all about life experience, and are intentionally broad in flavor and limited in scope so as to make them easy to fit to and personalize for any character concept.
As the CORE20 Player’s Guide puts it:
Your character’s background helps to define their life up to the point when they took up the path of adventure. Just as all characters have unique perspectives and traits defined by their lineage, all characters have a particular upbringing that shaped them in important ways. But where your character’s lineage helps to define their broader relationship to the world and its history, your background has a more direct connection to childhood, home, and family — whether your character carries the memories of those things dearly, or has walked away from the past with no desire to turn back.
Background Versus Vocation
The idea of past professions and vocations that can tie into a character’s adventuring lifestyle are also front-and-center in CORE20 — but are handled through the use of customized personal skill groups. Just as your character might invest feat slots in the Athletics, Magic, or Thievery skill groups to represent focus and training useful for an adventuring lifestyle, you can also take feat slots in a personal skill group, covering anything from Scout to Goat Rancher to Standup Comedian (all personal skill groups that have made an appearance in my CORE20 campaigns).
As part of their background, all CORE20 characters gain a +3 bonus that can be spread across one or more personal skill groups of a player’s choice, so that you don’t need to worry about downplaying skill groups useful for adventuring just for the sake of a more flavorful personal skill group. But you can likewise use feat slots earned during the campaign to improve your character’s prowess with personal skill groups, building a character whose past vocations continue to serve them.
A Range of Backgrounds
From the Player’s Guide again:
Nine different backgrounds cover the broad strokes of the experiences that have shaped your character — criminal, exile, gentry, magical, military, outlander, rural, wanderer, and urban. Your character’s background might be a strong match to their chosen path in life, with the benefits of a chosen background providing a foundation of knowledge and training. For example, many martial-focused characters choose the military background, and the magical background is a good fit for any spellcaster.
Alternatively, part of the richness of your character’s story might come from the juxtaposition between the life they once lived and the life they choose now. A character with the outlander or rural background brings a unique perspective to a city campaign, just as a character who grew up in the city or among the gentry does in a dungeon. And backgrounds such as exile and wanderer can provide any character with an intrinsic sense of seeking something, which the campaign can ultimately provide.
Criminal
Take this background for any character with a shady past — or who plans to have a shady future.
Exile
This background suits any character who has turned away from their homeland or past, whether by choice or by necessity.
Gentry
This background is appropriate for any character who grew up in relative luxury, whether they’ve turned their back on that lifestyle or continue to flaunt it.
Magical
This background suits any character with a backstory tied to spellcasting, magical crafting, or magic-related lore.
Military
Take this background for any character who has spent time in proximity to organized battle.
Outlander
This background fits any character with an affinity for the wilderness.
Rural
Take this background for any character at home in villages and remote settlements.
Urban
Take this background for any character at home in the city.
Wanderer
This background reflects a life spent on the move, whether as a part of nomadic life or from a simple case of wanderlust.
The Way of the Wanderer
The wanderer background covers a lot of territory (pun intended) as far as the many types of adventuring characters who might make use of it — a former mercenary sellsword, a mage who spent years investigating sites of magical power, a con artist keeping one step ahead of the law, and more.
Each background comes with a range of unique benefits, and you can choose whichever one of those benefits feels like the best fit for your character. Working with the GM, you can also develop an alternative benefit that fits your character concept, and whose value is in line with the benefits presented here.
Universal Benefits
In addition to the unique benefits broken out for each background, taking a background provides a number of universal benefits at character creation.
Ability Score Increase
The life your character has lived (especially the early formative years) helps to shape their physical and mental prowess. When you choose your background, you can raise one of your ability scores by 2, or raise two of your ability scores by 1 each. Each background comes with suggestions for which ability scores to raise, but you can choose whatever ability scores reflect your character’s chosen path and training.
Skill Affinity
A character’s background provides an aptitude for particular skills. At character creation, a character gains a +3 bonus that can be applied to a number of favored skill groups for that background. A character can take a +3 bonus to one skill group, take a +2 bonus to one skill group and a +1 to a second group, or take a +1 bonus to three skill groups, as the player decides.
All backgrounds also grant a character a +3 bonus to checks with any personal skill groups. These personal skill groups reflect the vocations, hobbies, and interests that are a part of every character’s life, and will often connect to the character’s backstory or environment.
Default Languages
By default, all characters can read, write, and speak or sign a regional language (typically tied to the area in which they have lived the longest or the most recently). Characters can also learn the spoken Imperial language or Imperial Sign — the twinned trade languages that became the universal lexicon of the Empire, and which are still used in most areas of the world. Characters of all lineages except human also know a spoken or signed lineage language tied to their lineage’s history.
As part of their background, your character gains three bonus feat slots to take the Learn Language feat three times — for a regional language, Imperial, and a lineage language.
Art by Vagelio Kaliva.
