Life Statement
“I haven’t had much opportunity to be a player, but over the years I have studied thousands of back stories. There is a clear distinction between newer players and long term veterans of table top. Veterans come locked in with a support system, or a simple high quality life statement.”
The Life Statement
The back story is so important. It is your character’s history. Starting off with the Life Statement, also known as the Status Quo, gives us a strong point of reference to work backwards.
A strong Life Statement should set your character’s Status Quo and open the back story by answering only a few questions.
The Life Statement should include name, species, occupation, birthplace, location, and motivation.
A few notes on these specific items are welcome. The basic statement of who they are and one solid motivation is all we need to get off to a strong start.
The Perfect Status Quo
Name
Species
Occupation
Birthplace
Location
Motivation
If you know the setting well, and know which city, town, or village the table will start, you can fill all of this out without much direction from your Story Guide.
If you don’t know these facts, ask your Story Guide the Location and Date you will be starting. Usually Location and Date is enough for you to look into published settings and figure out some good notes.
If your Story Guide doesn’t have these answers, feel free to make something up on your own, and then let the Story Guide edit or fill in the data relevant to their setting.
In highly collaborative campaigns this ground work can serve as player contribution to worldbuilding. A hidden village near the town, or a neighboring city which suddenly becomes a part of the world creates Plot Directives.
Sample Life Statement
“Kimo is a Mescrit Dock Hand from the lower docks of Ravinfal.”
The Partial Life Statement here already states an incredible amount of information. It includes Name, Species, Birthplace, Occupation.
When you are running in the Vorcrux Campaign setting, or any other setting for that matter, there is lore built in. For example, the Mescrit Species has a general set of lore, a Dock Hand has a certain set of responsibilities and a ton of possibilities because of day to day access to locations already established in the setting.
Being a moving part of the lower docks of Ravinfal makes Kimo a figure who may have contact with any of the thousands of supporting characters from the same area, especially those who live and work around the lower docks of Port Ravinfal.
Walks of all life will be in and around the port. Port Ravinfal, being such a large city, will also have many one time travelers coming through the docks, giving ample opportunity for Kimo to meet literally anyone who is travelling.
A strong sentence for location & motivation
“He is currently on the run from Halliday Corporation for dropping and breaking a very expensive crate which came off a ship.”
Now we have a an open location driven by motivation. Kimo can hit the ground running from here.
The Story Guide doesn’t have much work to do to start this player off in the moment. The rest of the back story we will work on in chunks. ‘He is currently on the run’ is a valid location, a clean pin which the Story Guide may drop anywhere on the map, even a thousand miles away. Kimo has been running for months? However long it has been since this has become Kimo’s Status Quo is irrelevant, it is still a motivation Kimo is dealing with today.
Two Sentence Life Statement
“Kimo is a Mescrit dock hand from the lower docks of Port Einier. He is currently on the run from Halliday Corporation for dropping and breaking a very expensive crate which came off a ship.”
Deeper Yet, The Lordock
The Life Statement puts your character into the setting with a sense of location, history, and purpose. For all those big moments in the past or supporting characters, allies and enemies, faction connections, we work on the Lordock.
The Character’s Lordock will cover everything related to your character. In a well made character lordock we will work on and track the support system the character can use to navigate the world from a home base and frequently visited locations. In the real world we have our home and work and third places or some mix in between.
This includes keeping up with the Supporting Characters who are familiar faces.
As our character explores or you come up with fresh ideas to flesh things out for your character, keeping your Lordock updated will let you walk into the future to a place you found in the past. This tool is is part of the Plot Directive, the most powerful tool in both your and your Story Guide’s handbooks.
The Story Guide’s Notes
The Life Statement is a tool we can use as well. These two sentences stamped on our Supporting Characters is all we need to put them on the ground running as well. Though SCPs (Supporting Character Panels) need a bit more work, this same Status Quo and Life Statement helps us during play to keep our dominos standing in order.
Rambling Story Guide
At my campaigns I don’t start where all the party members meet. Remember, at my tables I keep my party split most of the time, only having them come together for big moments, usually by desynchronized timescale. Their individual stories make the shared moments strong. Keeping the party together all the time is like constantly fighting a hydra. It gets more exhausting the longer it goes on.
