Family Connections in TTRPG

By: Jared Biti

So it is February, people think of romance, love, and overconfident bards. Right? Oh, just me? Ok. What I am going to discuss in this article is family connections. More specifically, how family, biological, and chosen of your players’ characters (PCs), and how that can be used in the story and possibly the plot of your campaign or adventure. 

We are going to start with a few examples from my own games as well as from more public games that can be found on YouTube and the like, then I will talk about how these can be used and how they can be abused. Our examples will be from a particular Critical Role short campaign and from one of my long term campaigns I am in the middle of running. I will also cover some ideas that I do not have examples of firsthand, but make sense for drawing the players into being personally and emotionally involved with a campaign or adventure. 

So, for our first example, I am pulling from the Exandria Unlimited: Calamity adventure, DMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, that was aired by Critical Role back in 2022 (Link at the end of the article). In my opinion, the first 2 hours of that adventure, where they accomplish the character introductions, are a really nice, top-tier playbook for how to integrate characters into a setting. In this intro, we learn that the paladin of the party, Zerxus Ilerez, First Knight of Avalir (played by Luis Carazo), has a child and is a widower, so a single parent to the little one. His backstory is connected to Guildmaster Nydas Okiro sorcerer (played by Lou Wilson), whose brother was entrusted with the care of Zerxus’ son. This created a point of emotional investment for the character as calamity unfolded within the game. I will make a note here that this shows a lot of trust between the player and the GM. We will get into how this can be abused later. And we learn that the party’s rogue, Cerrit Agrupnin, Guardian of the Seventh (played by Travis Willingham), has a wife and two kids, from whom he is somewhat estranged due to the nature of his work in Avalir. In a particularly heart-wrenching scene toward the end of the campaign, Cerrit is faced with a reflection as old as time: “Was I a good father?” So again, that is a massive attachment for the character and must be handled with care so as not to break the trust between the player and the GM.

These examples give the classic position of a PC having children and/or a spouse who can be used as a liability or an asset for the party. In this example, they used them not as something that is threatened, but as a motivation for the PC to want to survive and conquer the ordeal they are in so that they can return to them safely. This is a great way to do this while keeping the players’ trust. The player does not have that threat looming in the background that the GM will kidnap or endanger their “loved ones” for plot. Rather, it is an encouraging tool for survival rather than a threat from a villain.

In my own campaign, I really only have one PC that has significant “family” to pull on. This is mainly because he jumped into tying his family name and character into a noble house in the campaign, and gave me fleshed-out siblings, parents, and such. This is great if you can use it, but a small novel of information can also feel overwhelming. It is a fine line, and it is something that warrants a detailed conversation with your players about at the time of character creation. 

Now back to the task at hand. This player gave me an older brother, an older sister, a younger sister, and parents. With this information, I wove a betrayal line of the older brother as the heir to remove the parents from the picture and take over the estate. I had gotten the vibe from the player that the eldest brother was a bad apple anyway, so that is why I decided to take that direction. Now, this is where I am able to use the liabilities but not abuse them. He is concerned for the safety of his sisters and their parents, as they are still unknown. I think I did eliminate one as a sacrifice of power by the older brother, but I have not ironed out which one. What this does is give him the drive to try to find and secure their safety. How to use this while, again, trying not to break the trust of the player? Carefully, very, very carefully. I have to place clues that drive the player and their PC forward rather than spiralling in despair. This could include news from NPC staff of the estate, or comments from the evil brother, etc. In this case, I am relying on the news from NPCs. They have found that the parents were sent to the capitol but there has been no other news since they have been there. I have not revealed anything about the sisters, but I will soon. One is being held by a loyalist to the elder brother in preparation for a sacrifice, and the other has managed to escape the estate entirely. That will come up much later. This all works because the player trusts me, and we have discussed some of this, but not in great detail. 

So the obvious way this is abused is by leveraging the PCs’ dependents in purely plot-driven ways. Specifically, if friends and loved ones are always used for kidnapping and threatening the old perverbial homestead to motivate the players, then the players will not give you anything to work with because they do not want to go through the in-character anguish of dealing with that over and over. This also goes to a thorough and transparent session zero. Communicating what you are and are not willing to do to the PCs and what the players want out of the campaign. With that, you build trust so that your players feel comfortable giving you relational fodder to help with the plot. 

Thank you for reading, and I hope this helps your next use of Family Connections to be memorable and enjoyable for all the people at your gaming table! Game On!

Link to Excelsior | Exandria Unlimited: Calamity | Episode 1