DnD Backstories

One of the most important aspects of an RPG is to create a character with a compelling personality and backstory. If you can make a good backstory, you will become invested in the story and your character.

Yenzin Tealeaf

Yenzin is one of my favourite characters to play because I’ve developed her and her backstory with care. While her backstory is not long, it has all the details it needs, and her personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws were carefully thought of.

Yenzin Tealeaf is a Lightfoot Halfling and a Cleric of the Knowledge Domain. How this came to be is as follows:

As the youngest of her family, Yenzin was always compared to her older brothers and sister. Everyone expected her to turn out the same way.

She did not.

This, it turns out, was a good thing. Her sister, being the oldest, was born to be the heir to her family’s business. However, her sister had no social skills whatsoever and was not the swiftest. She often embarrassed her family, when her mom, dad or nanny was not around to check her behaviour.

Her brothers, the twins, were very charismatic and made friends easily. Because of their (possible) potential, Yenzin’s parents spoiled them to no end. That was a mistake. As the twins grew, they became lazy, spoiled brats. They never did anything for themselves and if they made trouble, there would be no consequences… Ever.

By the time Yenzin was born, everyone thought she would need to be coddled, just like her sister, or she would be spoiled and bratty, like her brothers. No one thought she would be very successful or intelligent.

Yenzin proved everyone wrong. She was charismatic, intelligent and wise beyond her years. During lessons, she would actually pay attention while her brothers goofed off and her sister daydreamed. Yenzin loved to learn and absolutely adored books and reading. She soaked up knowledge like a sponge soaks up water.

One night she had a dream, in which she realized the purpose she had been born for. In the dream, she was sitting at a desk, with a thick tome in front of her. As she opened the book, it seemed to never reach an end. Anything she wished to know appeared in the book as if by magic, before fading after she read it.

When she woke, she remembered the dream with extreme clarity, and from her lessons, she recognized the book as the symbol of Illumater, the God of Knowledge.

She was alive so that she could spread knowledge across the world and unearth ancient secrets, buried long ago.

Yenzin knew that she would have to leave her family, at least for a little while if she was to fulfil her true purpose. When she broached the subject with her parents, they were surprisingly supportive. They could see that she was different from her siblings.

Although her parents, of course, wanted her to stay and take over the business, they agreed to let her go adventuring, stipulating that she must return every few years (at the least), so that she could eventually run the business after their deaths.

By creating this backstory, I can better connect with the character and I become more invested in the campaign.

To develop the character further, I specially created her Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws, which you can see in this Twitter thread.

Once her personality and history were all set, creating a character sheet and assigning stat and proficiencies became easy. For a quick tour of her character sheet, check out this Instagram post.