I’m a regular viewer of the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are?”. We in Australia are in the privileged position of seeing not only our own domestic series, but also the US and UK series of this show.

For those who have never watched it, the show traces the ancestry of a celebrity and uses that story as a vector into a slice of history. What makes it work is that it is part detective story, part historical drama, and part celebrity… “expose” seems to be the wrong term. What makes it rewarding for the GM is that it often shines a light on little-known or appreciated aspects even of history that you know fairly well – for example, while Britain increased its intake of Jewish immigrants once the persecutions started, unless a £50 pound bond was put up by someone to certify that the immigrant would be a productive member of British society, the only way to get in was to gain employment as a personal servant in advance, producing column after column of “work wanted” adverts in the newspapers.

This is the sort of color that most histories neglect, and that can really bring an era to life for a writer, or for players.

What’s more, it places a human context on big-event history, showing how it affected real people. That’s not only valuable directly, but invaluable indirectly as examples of how ramifications should derive from in-game events.

As a result, almost any GM can derive material of value from almost every episode.

I was watching an episode this evening, when a thought occurred to me about the bigger picture, the patterns that I have seen recurring on the show time after time. And those patterns are relevant to every campaign that has a PC – or an important NPC. Which doesn’t leave many exclusions…

Pattern 1: The exceptional individual

The first pattern that I identified is the one that manifested in both the episode I was actually watching and to the one that I had watched previously (the subjects were Cynthia Nixon and Nigel Havers, respectively).

In this pattern, looking back in time from one generation to the one that preceded it, and the one that preceded that, one finds one individual after another of relative insignificance/change until someone is in the right place at the right time to make a profound difference to the future opportunities for their family.

The term insignificance/change requires further amplification. It means that a respected legal professional will be preceded by a respected professional, quite possibly within the range of legal professions. And by another, and another, until we reach someone who was the first to have an extraordinary story of how they achieved that status from a social position in which it is normally not possible, or at least, is extraordinarily difficult. That individual will also have some story attached to their circumstances about how they achieved what they did, and another about why they sought out that position in society in the first place.

Similarly, a working class individual, like a laborer, will be preceded by another, and then another, and so on, until some exceptional individual is reached. This could be exceptional in that they are a criminal, or exceptional in that they were a success but their occupation was automated out of existence or went out of style or they otherwise fell from grace. And, whatever their position may have been prior to that fall then becomes the new “family norm”.

Pattern 2: The Self-made family

When I considered the totality of the episodes that I had seen, and excluded Pattern 1, the majority of the remainder also had a pattern in common, which I have labeled “The self-made family”.

In this pattern, looking back in time from generation to generation shows each generation’s peak to be at or below the same level as the one that follows it, chronologically. This is a steady progression of successive generations improving their lot in life and bestowing the benefits of that improvement upon successive generations.

These changes can be profound – from a small retail merchant to owner of an import/export/distribution firm – or they can be small, like transferring from a position that will soon become redundant or in which opportunities will be increasingly limited to one in which there is more potential. Or the job might remain the same, but the family relocates, sometimes for greater opportunities, and sometimes for some other reason – but it turns out that the move is (eventually) the making of them. That was the case with London Mayor Boris Johnson, for example – a daughter who was the illegitimate child of nobility and who eventually received a small amount of state support which was used to move to another country and start a family – a family that eventually included Johnson.

It can take an astonishingly short period of time for people to climb the social ladder from nobodies to people of great importance – if each generation makes a material advance to the cause.

Pattern 3

The third pattern is the logical converse of Pattern 2, in which successive generations squander and dissipate some advantage. This tends to show up relatively infrequently, but I suspect that this may be because the show cherry-picks successful people to appear on it; if more “ordinary people” were the subjects, there might be a greater representation of this pattern. Even taking that into account, however, there are far greater numbers of successful people in the modern world than there were at any prior point in history, and the average living standard has gone up for centuries – so I can’t help but feel that Pattern 2 would be more prevalent than Pattern 3.

Mixing-and-Matching

Although I don’t recall any examples off the top of my head, I can’t believe that these patterns are consistent throughout the history of any given family. Even if there is a recurring theme of wasted opportunities, for example, that still requires the occasional exceptional individual or run of successful individuals to lift the family up to the point at which they begin to fall. Trace back far enough, and fortunes will wax and wane. What’s more, because no-one knows what the future will hold, transition from one point to another could occur at any time.

Why this matters

The title of the show is undeniably confrontational. It communicates a directness that any softer title would not, a implicit statement that this is the truth, warts and all, and that is certainly true of the episodes that I have seen (and there have been many). It challenges the subject to define themselves, though the subject doesn’t always do so; however, they always define or redefine their relationship with their ancestry, and with their personal history, and with the greater history that consists of many such threads intertwining.

A “big event” is one that affects many people. These are rarely positive; at best, they are neutral, but most commonly, they are negative. Wars, Revolutions, Corporate Collapses, Economic Depressions, and so on. In contrast, many of the gains are small, incremental, but cumulative, and – like compound interest or housing prices – they usually attain a higher point in the long run than the previous peak. The overall trend is upwards.

These factors can be applied to any character, providing a personal connection to campaign history. Think of the Great Took from Lord Of The Rings, or Great Aunt Adelle from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as the more obvious example of Aragorn’s distant ancestor who enabled him to eventually lay claim to the throne of Gondor.

This can even be done after a character is established, because – like most of the subjects of the show – the characters will generally have no real idea of who their ancestors were, and half of what they DO know may be inaccurate. This is true even of characters whose parentage suggests that the genealogy has been carefully monitored through the ages (nobility, for example) – it’s never too late for some scandal to out that completely redefines the character.

How to use the Ancestral Patterns

For the most part, the “same as before” is pretty irrelevant; but what is not are the notable individuals, and those who crossed some social threshold on behalf of the family.

For example: The PCs arrive at a keep. Some distant threat to the keep begins to materialize – there may be rumors of an army on the march, for example. The PCs consider abandoning the place but then a chance remark leads to the examination of a book of genealogy which reveals that the ancestor of one of them built the keep in the first place, and that it was situated where it is because his father fought a legendary battle there, and legend has it that he will return to assist if the keep is truly threatened. While the PCs may still decide to abandon the keep, suddenly it has a much higher value to at least one of them, and this decision will be that much harder to make.

Or perhaps there was a revolution a long time ago, but for some reason you want this period of campaign history to matter to the players. The discovery that one of them has an ancestor who fought and died in that revolution suddenly elevates it from dry story to personal history.

The same is true of any major NPCs – bringing their ancestry to life in terms of the colorful and important figures that occupy it make them more a part of the world, and offer nuances and shadings to their motivations for whatever they are doing.

A more concrete example

In collaboration, the player and GM come up with the following:

Ebis Falconhorn’s parents, Kerrick and Othelia married for love. Ebis knows this because Kerrick’s grandmother Dame Eloise Falconhorn told Ebis when he was still a child of the grand times that she had enjoyed at the estates of her mother, but that Kerrick had been disinherited for marrying below his station. What’s more, Great-Grandma Nesther had blamed Eloise for Kerrick’s shortcomings, and reduced her inheritance as well. Ebis has always wondered where that family money had come from, and why Nesther was so insistent on a good marriage for Kerrick – but Ebis’ father and mother would never speak of it, or Nesther.

The GM then secretly extends the story (with the player’s blessing), seeking to answer two questions in a way that benefits the campaign: How did the family make its money, and why was Nesther Falconhorn so class-sensitive?

He decides the easier problem first: Nesther was very well aware that her parents and grandparents had sweated and sacrificed (perhaps sacrificed too much) in order for the family to achieve that social status, and she saw Kerrick as ungrateful and disrespectful of them for his choice. And since respect has to be taught, it’s not unreasonable that she would blame Kerrick’s grandmother for failing to raise him properly.

Making a note of this, the GM then waits until he needs a hook that matches the Falconhorn Story, enabling him to fill in the rest.

Some time – Weeks/Months/Years later – such a requirement arises. He has a dungeon but it’s lacking any real significance to anyone, and gets a little tough mid-way through; he’s concerned that when the easy loot runs out, so will the PCs. What he needs is some way to make them more reluctant to abandon the quest.

In play, Ebis has demonstrated both a romantic streak and a strong sense of honor; if the GM can play those qualities against the party, he will achieve exactly what he wants. He quickly makes a few notes, working backwards through the generations from Nesther, and naming them as he goes:

• Father, Geoffrey: Dealer in precious metals, financier, put the family on the path to the nobility by underwriting the costs of a military campaign by the Throne. Would probably have been made a Minor Noble for that, as others were, if not for some stain on his background. Traded much of the family wealth for position and estates.
• Grandfather, Alexander: Diversified and expanded the business, securing exclusive contracts with a number of mines in distant realms. Died relatively young while personally negotiating another such contract.
• Great Grandfather, Timothy: Reasonably-Respected 2nd Generation Silversmith, awarded a minor commission by the local Duke when at the height of his reputation.
• Great-Great-Grandfather, Durk: Silversmith, the source of the family’s initial wealth, and the architect of the stain on their reputation.
  
  • First, he was an illegitimate child, who came to be apprenticed to the town smith under dubious circumstances (though no-one knows what they were, any more – just that the smith took in a street urchin and taught him so well that he was able to take over the business, buying his master out, in just 15 years;
  • Second, he had some unsavory business practices, having been suspected on numerous occasions of being a Fence for stolen property, and once having been arrested, convicted, and fined for the practice; and
  • Third, he was responsible for unleashing the monstrous evil at the heart of the dungeon that the PCs are about to explore. Timothy made most of his money by buying recovered loot from adventurers (without asking impertinent questions), redecorating or re-tasking it into something modern, then reselling it. He specialized in defacing religious symbols and legends and rededicating the object – at least superficially – to a new God – one whose followers had more wealth in their pockets. He wasn’t half as good a silversmith as he made himself out to be.
• Now all the GM has to do is work out how a greedy silversmith could have released the evil in question – perhaps by defacing (and hence removing) the wards that kept him confined in something? Perhaps by sponsoring an expedition into a dungeon despite warnings not to do so? (Those are the two most obvious options) – and work out how he’s going to get the information into the hands of Ebis, who should then feel compelled to undo the harm that his Great-times-five-Grandfather Durk did, about 100 years ago (7 generations at 18 years each, minus a margin for Durk to grow up (6 years) apprentice (15 years), set up his business (included in the 15), and get too greedy (5 years)), and finally write the whole thing up in narrative form ready to hand out to the player. In other words, the usual problems of GMing.

Step one in getting the info to Ebis would be to get the family background to him, perhaps in the form of a couple of letters being forwarded, after their discovery by his Father. One might be a failed petition for nobility, which specifies something of the family history, but which is noticeably very vague about Durk and doesn’t mention prior ancestors at all, but the failure hints at a scandal; the other might be a love letter between Timothy and his wife Heather in which he alludes to his father’s reputation and begs Heather not to hold that against him.

Step two is to add the remains of an adventuring party from about 100 years ago into the dungeon, giving them receipts for past objects traded to Durk, offering a quote on “re-badging” one of the items they recovered on a past expedition, and letting a journal by one of them record his final thoughts condemning Durk for releasing the horror. Other journal entries might explain that Durk was a penny-pincher and wanted to save some time and effort doing his dirty work on the spot where the loot was recovered, leading him to deface the wrong thing in the wrong place.

Add a few more journal entries to round things out without contributing to the overall story being told, and the job is done. The dungeon, right before that sudden ramp-up in danger, is about to get very personal for Ebis…

Limited Application

You would not apply this tool to every character, of course. Save it for when it is useful. Collaborate in creating descriptions of the immediate family ancestry of each of the PCs – back to the grandparents or perhaps to the great-grandparents in some cases, certainly no further – and then wait until you need to extend the family tree, or reveal some hidden chapter in a PCs personal history. What the player then does with the information is up to them.

But you’re making the adventure more personal to the characters, and that is rarely (if ever) a bad thing. So use the three basic patterns to tell the story of the rise and fall of the character’s ancestry, and use that legend to engage them with the world in which they live.

At the very least, you end up with more rounded characters who have better backgrounds.