Family stories, anecdotes, and childhood memories may be fanciful but that makes them no less important to the identify of the members of the family. Image by Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay

This continues the article that I started last week, offering a simple technique for the quick and easy generation of families for RPGs. Most of the time, this would be used for the families of PCs, occasionally it might be used for the family of an important NPC. I should also note that most of the time, this technique will need a little modification for the generation of Royal Families, simple because they have a far sharper focus on inheritance!

Starting in, I think, the 1980s, John West started a global advertising campaign around the concept that it was ‘the fish that John West reject’ that made their offerings better than those of any rival or competitor. That concept, in a way, is also at the heart of the simplification process.

Whole branches of the family tree are replaced with generalizations, and more time is spent adding to the family as the focal character knows it. That’s the key – this family construction is subjective and not objective.

Normally, that’s a bad thing – objectivity permits truth to show through and fair comparisons to be made, when context is taken into account – but subjectivity has its place. Objectivity can make the character more aware of their family than they ‘should’ be, can make the character more familiar with their history than they ‘should’ be, and leaves fewer holes for the GM to use to forge personal connections between the shared storyline that evolves through play and the characters participating.

One memory has persisted throughout the writing of this introduction – one of my players, for one of his characters, presented a complete family, every member listed in detail, with stats (D&D) and classes and characterizations and a synopsis of personal history. About 1% of which actually got used in the campaign, simply because what he had provided didn’t fit into the plots. The details were incompatible. As a result, 99% of his work was wasted, and it wasted a lot of my time when running the campaign – not something that either of us intended. Prior to that experience, I would have (and did) encourage completeness and objectivity in such things, so this was a developmental experience on my road to where I am now. As a result, the memory remains sharp even now, 20-odd years later.

Throw in the fact that it’s a lot less work, and I have no hesitation in commending this as my preferred technique henceforth!

The process contains 12 stages, one of which won’t always apply. These have been divided into three groups representing increased levels of abstraction and vagueness – the patterns will become clearer as I proceed through specific descriptions.

These steps are:

Immediate Family
1. Family Theme
2a. [Spouse & Children]
2b. Siblings
3. Parents

Family Nexii
4. Matriarch/Patriarch
5. Handyman
6. Record-keeper

Remote & Extended Family
7. Family Clusters – places and family groups
8. Direct-line anecdotes and measures of ignorance
9. Extended family, with anecdotes and measures of ignorance
10. A couple of notables – anecdotes, possibly untrue
11. A couple of family legends

Detail Limits

The level of detail is relatively easy to regulate using the groups and the number of entries to be contained.

Immediate Family

For a family of typical size (2 parents, 2-3 siblings), half a page. As the family grows, increase this length by about 10% for each additional member. If the character has entries in stage 2a, Spouse and Children, they may receive twice this addition (+20%, not +10%). If the family is extraordinarily large (2+ parents AND 9+ siblings/nieces/nephews IN TOTAL), go for a 5% increase per added person.

The larger the family, the less room there is to be detailed and specific, indicating that the character’s knowledge of them will be more general. It is presumed that the player will actually do most of this work, perhaps in consultation with the GM. That’s appropriate because this is all about the PC’s family background – but, once it’s done, the GM has full license to get creative about filling in the blanks and specifics, which will proliferate with growth in the size of the immediate family.

Family Nexii

Normally half a page, max. If the character is a family nexus, or a prospective nexus, you may add 25% to this, to be used to detail the individual who used to have that role in the family prior to the character taking it on.

Remote & Extended Family

At most, a page (approximately) should be devoted to this entire group, again forcing compression, abstraction, and leaving things out. At the GM’s discretion, the last category (family legends) may be excerpted and given a half-page of its own.

For the typical family, that’s two pages, maybe 2½. And a blank line should be left between individual entries to make them easier to parse – that’s about half a page used up before word one gets committed to paper. That’s not a lot of room to contain everything a character knows about his family – but that’s because it isn’t, quite, everything he knows. It’s just that everything else is the GM’s responsibility.

For example, so long as it doesn’t violate anything in the written family description provided, the GM can quite happily tell a player (upon his arrival in a new town), “You have a distant cousin who lives somewhere in this city. You’ve only met Rodrango a couple of times, mostly when you were both children; he’s a little older than you and seemed to be quite a risk-taker back then, getting you into trouble on both occasions. Still, it’s to be hoped that he’s settled down somewhat; you have the vague impression that he married and has children of his own, now. The family are somewhat estranged from your more immediate relatives, due to bad blood arising between Rodrango’s father and your grandfather years ago, but you don’t remember the details (if you ever knew them).”

That should tell the player that his family member is somehow going to be bound up in the plot that comes with this particular location – either a provider of essential information, or a victim, or any number of other possibilities. It also gives them an immediate splash of color, and adds some color to the family that the player knows about, increasing their engagement with the adventure immediately. The Family Member is a bespoke part of the plotline, not something being adapted or injected into it as an afterthought – but it still provides a personal connection to both location and events for the character, which can be important if the plot is something they would normally have more sense than to get enmeshed within!

Sure, the GM is fully capable of dropping that information into the plot, regardless of how much work the player has done in imagining his family – but how much better would it be if this cousin and his story fitted the family story, as devised by the player, like a glove?

What results is not, then, an end-point; it’s a foundation, a garden bed into which innumerable plot seeds have been planted, ready for the GM to harvest.

Immediate Family

Four steps. Half a page in most cases, maybe more, but the growth in space is slower than the growth in family.

1. Family Theme

Every family has a theme, a general single-line description that summarizes the story of who they are. As the circumstances of each generation evolve, so can this story – the character’s grandchildren might have an entirely different view of the family; that doesn’t matter. This is how the character sees his family – which means that his relationships with them will inevitably color the theme, and that the theme itself can evolve and change as the character does.

That means that the family theme is, at least partially, an outgrowth of the personality of the focal character, and this entire process shouldn’t start until the owner of the character has some idea of what that personality will be.

However, if the focal character is currently just a mass of stats and game mechanics, and has not yet appeared in play, this can also be the beginning of characterization, should the owner be ‘stuck’.

Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing:

     “Flowers in the muck”
     “Diamonds in the very, very rough”
     “Rebels without a clue”
     “Contented drifters on the river of life”
     “Social Climbers who always choose the slipperiest slope”
     “Prickly and dysfunctional but with great depths of affection for each other beneath the surface.”

This isn’t to say that every family member will fit this mold. But every one will have experienced some sense of the generalized family. and have a reaction of some sort to it. So this is not only a kick-start to personalizing each of them, it gives the owner of the focal character a general relationship with the rest of the family that can be interpreted and played off.

I especially want to draw attention to the subtleties that are possible – the first and second items are similar, but not the same. The first suggests that the circumstances of the family may be rough and common, even lower-class, or criminal; but that the family themselves regularly rise above that in some respect or perhaps many respects, even while drawing strength from it. The second says less about the family circumstances and more about the individuals – rude and even crude and crusty exteriors, always arguing with each other and putting each other down, but they would give you the shirt off their back without your even asking, and should an outsider threaten one, the family will instantly form an impenetrable barrier to protect that individual (criticizing him or her and complaining, the whole time).

These show just how much can be unpacked from or implied by these simple descriptions, how much meat can be contained within. This simple statement is, in essence, an abstracted introduction to the family in generalized terms, and the foundation of everything else.

2a. [Spouse & Children]

Which means that it’s time to get specific. The most important people in the focal character’s life are their spouse and children, if they have any. Focus on the relationships and the modes of expression that reflect and cement those relationships. Try to avoid cliches. Specifics should be little more than name, gender (if not obvious from the name), and current age.

What’s the cornerstone of the relationship? In the case of the spouse, what attracted the focal character to them, and vice-versa – and how is the relationship holding up? How do those involved feel about that?

You don’t have time for a long and involved story – which means that this is nothing more than the foundations of a subplot or plot arc to form part of the background of the campaign. So you should be more focused on telling the GM the status quo of the relationship and how you see it evolving over time (how it actually evolves in response to campaign events may be something completely different, so if you have a strong desire for a particular outcome, now is the time to express it).

If you get specific, you might be able to afford 1-2 lines per individual. But if you can conflate individuals into a general statement, you might get four or five lines to describe the general situation – ironically, permitting greater detail in the process. That’s because, as individuals, each has to be followed by a blank line – one that can contain content if the two are treated as one. Which approach you use is up to you. And, the more you can summarize and synopsize, the less space an individual entry requires, leaving more space for others.

Here’s an example: Loldath bonds with her sons over sports and games, never suspecting that she hates them and only participates because they enjoy them. She is closer to her daughter, who loves to cook, and is driven to a study of science by a fascination with the way the world works, the same drive that draws Loldath into politics.”

To see the effectiveness of this approach, let’s summarize:

– Loldath hates games but is drawn to politics.
– Her sons love sports and games.
– Her daughter loves science and cooking.

…and yet, that summary tells us so much less than the short narrative passage about the bonds between mother and children and the expression of the relationship. It also tells us less about Loldath herself! The latter is dry and objective – the former, when added to names and ages, creates a starting point for characterization and personality.

2b. Siblings, [Nieces, and Nephews]

The same process should be employed to discuss siblings and any nieces and nephews. In general, the best results will manifest if you treat each sibling and their spouses and any children as a single “bubble”, OR make a general statement about in-laws and nieces/nephews. These are two different structures for the generalization and compression that almost effortlessly strikes the right balance between specifics and general statements.

As usual, here’s an example or two:

“Harold has an almost paternal relationship with his nieces and nephews, seeing them as representative of the children he never had. They don’t see him in that role – he isn’t with them often enough, for one thing – but they sense his deep affection, nevertheless.”

“Jonlyn feels distanced from his sister by competitiveness with his brother-in-law, something he deeply regrets. He is even more estranged from the older of his two brothers; his relationship with him having always been fiery – but he knows that should his brother ever really need him, he would be there in a heartbeat. Until that day, he’s content to almost pretend that his brother does exist. He is deeply supportive of his younger brother, who has always struggled to emerge from the shadows cast by his older siblings, one of the few things that both elder brothers agree on.”

3. Parents

In most families, there will only be two of these. Some families – exceptions to this rule – may have three, four, or even five (and that’s before unconventional family structures are even considered) – for example, my parents are divorced and both have since remarried, so I have four parents (and get on with all of them).

Here’s a challenge: write down everything you know about each of your parents in three or four lines. When they were born, and where, and their personalities, and their relationships with your other relatives, and all the family history – it’s really, really hard to do without leaving most of it out. But this exercise will give you some idea of how much you need to compress these entries on your family tree. Plus you need to squeeze in the focal character’s relationship with his parents, as well.

You will need every trick that I outlined in my 6-part series on Stylish Narrative and maybe one or two more. The secret to success is not to actually squeeze everything down to the indicated length, but to try to do so – and, if it takes an extra line or two to describe one of the character’s parents, so be it.

That said, self-censorship, and the art of knowing what to leave out, will serve you in good stead.

As usual, an example:

“Brignath has always adored his mother’s spirit and compassion; never cowed or defeated by circumstances; no matter the struggle, she always embraced it in good humor. He worries that he has disappointed her, but his temper was always too fiery and his pride too easily tweaked to fully emulate her example.

“She was born in the midst of a locust plague, when prosperity deserted the land and all had to scramble to make do, and this was always the making of her (to hear her talk). ‘When you have nothing, you feel grateful for the least scrap,’ she impressed upon her children.

“His father was a traveler from afar, a butterfly who landed within his mother’s life one summer, and found himself captive to her positivity and enthusiasm for life. Where he came from before than, no-one knows.

“Brignath simply doesn’t understand paternal parent, and the choices that he has made to favor various obsessions over his offspring over the years; Brignath thinks that his old man would cross a field of broken glass in furtherance of this or that, but wouldn’t even cross the street to see his children. He hopes that there will be more to the story, and that it is not too late for him to bond with his ‘lost parent’ – though it would be with the remove of two adults and not a child’s unconditional love, which was lost long ago.”

Only one example this time, because it is more complete and substantial, and emphasizes the points made earlier.

And that’s the entire immediate family done.

Family Nexii

In terms of relationships and recent histories, the members of the family nexii are treated the same as family members, but with twice as much room to be expansive. In reality, because you need to include some details about how they perform their role, you might think that you need even more space, but in most cases you won’t know very much about their family histories; they simply are, appearing complete and from nowhere within the family, bigger than life.

4. Matriarch/Patriarch

You can generally only choose one – there isn’t room enough in the family for both, much of the time. When both do appear, not only do you have to squeeze two people into the space left for one, but you need to explore the relationship between the two. Part one of this article detailed some of the many ways in which a Matriarch or Patriarch can fulfill their role within the family structure.

You also need to specify how, and through whom, you are related to this personage or personages, and that further eats into the available space.

“The matriarch of Clan Donaldson is Grandmother Levitica, who rules with an iron fist. One does not approach a parent for permission to marry into the family; it is Levitica who must be wooed and won over. If she vetoes a match, it is an ultimatum – choose between the family and the prospective match. If she is in favor, it’s a done deal, no matter what objections a parent might have. Above all other concerns for her is family unity, because her own family was so dysfunctional; once a year, she hosts some social event, which all members of the family are required to attend; it might be a wedding, a birthday, or some other occasion emphasizing togetherness. At least once a year, every branch of the family can expect her to show up out of the blue and take over the social life of the branch, regardless of what plans they might already have; none dare overrule her. Nevertheless, she is always mindful of family unity in the timing of these events, giving ample notice of her intentions. If ever a family member is in need or in crisis, she will be there immediately and in full formidable authority, and will not depart until she is satisfied; at such times, those she was to visit are expected to come to her, wherever she may be, and however inconvenient that might prove.”

That’s one example; here’s another:

“Uncle Joe is everyone’s uncle, no matter their actual relationship. A busybody who can’t leave the least situation alone, he arrives with the force of a hurricane, sweeping through lives and problems, dispensing helpful advice and the occasional form of assistance, cutting problems and difficulties down to size, and then blowing out again as quickly as he came. He visits each branch of the family regularly, at least once a year, if not more often, turns whatever problems may be present at the time into a Project and involving himself endlessly until it is deemed manageable. Gruff when expressing his emotions, but a font of dime-store wisdom. He doesn’t rule the family, he guides and shapes it, having mastered the art of making each branch indispensable to the others, and with the memory of an elephant for all matters practical or family.”

Both are clearly the hubs around which their respective families revolve. And both are open invitations to the GM to make the character’s life more complicated – temporarily. But they also bring resources to the character that the GM can exploit to turn mountains into molehills, when that seems necessary.

5. Handyman

Again, see the first part of this article for more information on this role. How it is done is less important, in this case, than the personality of the handyman. Nor does it matter what their trade or specialty might be; they are simply always there to help, no matter what it is that needs doing.

“The handyman. of the family is Aunt Matilda. Thumb-fingered at the best of times, except when in the kitchen, she will nevertheless appear whenever something practical needs doing (of a certain scope); she will either provide amateur assistance and opinions, in equal measure, or food and opinions that frees the usual ruler of the kitchen to assist. She also loves to make ‘arrangements’ for those areas of expertise that are outside the family’s resources – if a carpenter is needed, she will ‘assist’ in choosing one.”

or, perhaps,

“John Tweedy is a relative by marriage. A carpenter by trade, but unofficially able to turn his hand to almost anything of a practical nature. He likes nothing better than to watch a professional or craftsman perform some task that he doesn’t know how to do himself, taking mental notes and looking for a reason why he can’t attempt it on his own the next time he encounters the need. Sometimes, he finds one; sometimes he doesn’t. When he does, he never forgets it; when he doesn’t, he learns.”

6. Record-keeper

There are many different reasons why someone would become the family record-keeper. It might be a fascination, or nostalgia, or sublimation of some unrequited desire, or curiosity, or a love of photography, or a dozen other possibilities. Perhaps the most common is that they didn’t; they simply inherited the role and the efforts of a past record-keeper and felt responsible to perpetuate it.

Sometimes, the record-keeper can even be the Matriarch, and the family history the mechanism and justification of their rule!

To the rest of the family, it often seems like the knowledge that “X” knows all about it gives them license to ignore the family history and just get on with life – until something happens to make them value a broader perspective on the family, and their place as part of a grander whole. Often, a near-death experience, the birth of a first child or grandchild, or the questions of such, can be the impetus behind seeking the knowledge of the Record-Keeper.

Factor into that equation the fact that we’re mostly talking about PCs who have adventures, here, as the person of focus – and adventures rarely come without some form of near-death experience or crisis – and suddenly, the PC finds themselves more closely connected to the record keeper than they ever imagined they would be.

In a family with wealth, it would also be common for the ‘records’ to be accountant’s ledgers, and not the more common family memorabilia. So there is latitude for individuality in this area, and ways to make the role more interesting. Perhaps the family record-keeper is a Bard who puts the family stories into song?

So the record-keeper is likely to be more important to a PC or prominent NPC than to most members of the family, and that justifies treating them in as much detail as a family Matriarch or Patriarch, and in the same manner. How does the record-keeper function? In what form are the records? How frequently are the records consulted?

Lots of questions – this is where the owner of the character of focus puts the answers.

I’ll forego an example, because the above details in combination with the examples of the other Nexii provide enough of one.

Remote & Extended Family

And with that, the second part of the family structure is complete. From this point, isolated individuals are even less commonly mentioned, and often names are semi-completely left out, or shorn of context. Abstraction and generalization is even more favored and necessary.

7. Family Clusters – places and family groups

Each sibling of the matriarch or patriarch not already detailed or in the direct ancestral line forms part of a distinct and separate family cluster. Where these are male, and so is the line of descendance, they therefore will have a surname in common with the focal character, and the cluster will be geographically-oriented – “The Bristol Kellys”, “The O’Hares in America”, “The Golgaths in Mur-Whizdon”, or whatever. Whenever the surname is not the same as the focal character AND the matriarch, the surname itself is enough – my family has (amongst others) The Reads, The Scarrs, and The Galvins as family clusters.

Don’t try and specify all of them – just a few that have been significant to the focal character. Treat that entire branch of the family as a single unit, specify how they are connected to the focal character, and talk (very briefly) about the focal character’s relationship with them. If there are one or two members of the cluster who are particularly well-known to the focal character, those individuals should be named and specifics of the relationship synopsized – all in the space of half-a-dozen lines (or less if there are many clusters).

“The Zarulths are centered in Lower Dunsdith, in the Greenglow Mountains region. Jacklun doesn’t know them very well, but before they moved so far away, he visited them a number of times in Roaring Bullswither in his chlidhood, and found them friendly but oddly formal and a little stuck-up. His distant cousins Radger and Floreth were good company, though; it’s a shame Radger was killed by a wild Joath some years back. ‘Mater Zarulth’ is the centre of the family, and sister of Jacklun’s grandmother. He always wanted to see their mountain homes, which he imagined to be so very different to those of the plains he knows so well, but the journey was too far and his opportunities too few. One day, perhaps.”

8. Direct-line anecdotes and measures of ignorance

Who were the Matriarch/Patriarch’s parents? Who were their grandparents? How much does the character know about them? Give one or two colorful stories (perhaps of dubious accuracy) that would have survived the years. “My great grandfather was a light horseman at Gallipoli” – to anyone from Australia or New Zealand, that statement means a lot.

To anyone outside of this part of the world, perhaps not so much. I remember that a horse trod on his thumb there, allegedly, and that was why he only had half a thumbnail – but, contrary to this official story, I suspect that he may have been both wounded and very lucky. But I may have mixed up the whole story; I was about 8 years old at the time, and that was a very long time ago.

Geography tends to be fairly tightly woven into these anecdotes, and that may demand assistance from the GM depending on the game setting.

“My grandmother’s father was a spy in 18th century Greece.” (really?)
“One of our ancestors was rumored to be a pirate.” (are you sure?)
“The family has a long history of political office.” (then why aren’t you or your parents in Politics, then?)

There’s a tale to hang off each and every one of these, if not several – and you can never tell when the GM will bring one of those stories into modern-day relevance.

9. Extended family, with anecdotes and measures of ignorance

It’s time to mention a couple of other aunts, uncles, cousins, etc – those you know are somehow related to the character of focus, but you aren’t completely sure how. Each should have some anecdote attached that justifies the person of focus remembering them.

A real-life example:
My uncle served as an MP in Vietnam, for example, staying with my Great Grandmother (who was no relation of his except through my parents’ marriage) prior to deployment and leaving some comic books behind – there was a Spider-man, an Iron Man, an Avengers, a Batman, a Fantastic Four, and maybe two or three others. And I remember this story because it was with the Spider-man that I taught myself to read (at 3 years of age, which makes it 1966-7), and with the Iron Man that I proved to my relatives that I could do so.

Don’t ask me which issues they were, though!

I still remember descending the staircase in her apartment, which was wooden, steep, narrow, and twisting, sitting down and lowering myself one step at a time, because it wasn’t considered safe for me to go down it standing up. Each step came up to my shins, making them about eight inches in height. The apartment was positively Victorian in many ways, and whenever I see a documentary about such times now, I flash back to it.

10. A couple of notables with anecdotes, possibly untrue

Individuals who could find a home here are people who aren’t members of the family, or are incredibly distant members, but who get treated as family members, nevertheless.

“Uncle Norm”, who was related to my Uncle-by-marriage, and who eventually became my sister’s father-in-law, for example. Or my step-father’s old roommate, Stephen, or his brother Mervyn. Or my great-grandfather’s second wife – no blood relation to any of us, but as dearly a part of the family of my youth as any ‘real’ great-grandmother could have been. Or my grandfather’s seeing-eye dog. Even some of my school-teachers were almost as close as extended family – and some such are even closer to their students (in some cases).

You can also add in some other family members who the person of focus considers notable for some reason, or anecdotes about family members already listed. The family member to whom I always had the closest resemblance was my Uncle Johnny, for example. I used to compose music for my Aunt Maria to play on the piano (i would have been about 8 at the time). The time the nuns got tired of resetting the high-jump bar and taped it in place, shattering (?) my sister’s kneecap. The time when my little brother fell out of bed onto a shag-pile rug and managed to break his nose and drive the bones back through the skull, having to be rushed for emergency surgery here in Sydney, 700 miles away.

People’s lives can be expressed through an endless stream of little anecdotes like that, and they all add to the family history far more than a dry and empty family tree, which exists only to give those anecdotes context within the family structure.

Always remember to indicate how little the person of focus knows about the individual beyond what you’ve written – it might be a lot or very little. But always, the focus should be on the relationship between the named individual and the focal character.

11. A couple of family legends

Lastly, there are all those forebears who came before get represented in some family myths and legends. The accuracy of these is dubious, to say the least. For example, my family is supposedly related (extremely distantly) to both English and Irish nobility, back in the 16th century sometime. These relatives even went to war with each other at one point – or so a family legend has it.

I have another ancestor who supposedly abandoned his English wife and children and traveled to Australia, where he bigamously remarried and became a vital link in my family chain – or so another family myth represents.

This approach doesn’t focus on identities within the family structure, for the most part; it focuses on relationships and anecdotes. I hope that I have demonstrated that these can be far more informative than the dry and factual structures that most players and GMs put together, while leaving more room for the GM to make the family information relevant. There may be more writing in this approach, but it’s easier writing – it’s a lot easier to tell a story, perhaps a fanciful one, than it is to create and populate a family tree – and the results are a lot more realistic, to boot.