The Ten Families

A couple weeks back, I wrote about the idea that I had had about creating a list of famous families and then having human characters roll on that table during character generation to see which bloodline they’re part of. I’m skimming Herodotus’ The Histories again for something I’m writing, so it seemed like a good time to put that plan into action while the inspiration for the idea was in front of me. I started sketching out ideas and very quickly compiled a list of ten families. I figure that’s a good number to start with and I can always add to it later. The table is a bit too big to reproduce here on the blog so I’ve settled on a screen grab of the first page. You can click the image for a larger version. If that’s still not enough for you, you can check out the complete .pdf here.

The table’s pretty self-explanatory. The only thing that might need clarification is the “Bloodline trait” column, which is rolled for after the character’s family has been determined. On a 1 in 6, the character has especially strong family blood and possesses the trait - either positive or negative - which is commonly associated with that bloodline. Originally, I had the chance at a 1 in 4 but I’m currently of the mind that that may be too much. I want to add a little randomness to the process but not have it become a tremendously common occurrence.

In sticking with my ethos of the illusion of depth, I’ve got very little clue as to what most of the events mentioned in the table actually are, nor am I worried about it. If a player sees something that catches his interest though, I’d be eager to sit down and think more on the subject, perhaps if only to produce a few threads for the character to follow.

It’s a germ of an idea and I like it in concept. I’ll need to take it out for a test run before I decide if this is something that will be a boon or a bane to the shared world experience, however.