Step Six: Assign Initial Backgrounds
Step Six: Assign Initial Backgrounds
Backgrounds flesh out a player’s concept, helping you to define many portions of a character’s history. Does the character have a powerful mentor in vampiric society? Does the character have access to a great deal of money, or is she poor? Does she have any servitors or companions? Backgrounds help you to portray these personal items, creating a framework for the character’s life.
Each background may be purchased up to level 5. It’s not normally possible to buy a background above 5.
Choosing Backgrounds
During character creation, the player chooses three backgrounds and assigns dots in the following manner:
• Assign 3 dots to a single background of your choice.
• Assign 2 dots to a second background.
• Assign 1 dot to a third background.
Generation: If you do not assign at least 1 of your free background dots to Generation, your character will begin play as a mortal (or a ghoul). (Character creation rules for player-character Ghouls are detailed in Chapter Seven: Dramatic Systems Playing_a_Ghoul)
Losing Backgrounds
The Storyteller may strip a background permanently if your circumstances change significantly. For example, if you fake your death and change your face, you’ll probably lose the Fame background.
Other players can work to undermine your backgrounds. Attacks from other players can temporarily reduce your backgrounds, but given time you will recover. As a general rule it takes two games or one month (whichever is longer) to recover 1 dot of a lost background. For example, if another character killed your 3-dot Retainer, it would take six games or three months (whichever is longer) to find a suitable replacement.
You can find specific backgrounds here: Backgrounds
