We all carry some.

As I sit to write this, I start thinking about what burden means, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed. There are many places I can go talking about this, but I will stick to two, let’s say.

Giving a burden to your character doesn’t mean you have to burden your GM and players with it. Alright, that’s all, thanks for coming by today.

Fine, I will elaborate a bit. A burden for a character is a tool you can use to shape their backstory, mannerisms, etc. It can even help you work some of the mechanical elements into their story. For example, the wizard I mentioned on day 1 has two main burdens. The first one is that his great-grandmother, and previous diviner of the family, is missing. She went missing while he was studying with her, so he feels the need to find her, or what happened to her. Since she went missing while he was still an apprentice wizard, he became an apprentice under another wizard, a friend of his great-grandmother. Thanks to him, he got the opportunity to visit a local monastery for a year, which had a very rich library. I used this as a reason to give him the Magic Initiate feat, using the Cleric spell list. I didn’t want something specific from this spell list; I just liked how the story linked with the mechanic.

My character’s second burden is the one I mentioned on the first day. There are political shenanigans taking place within his family for the role of the diviner. He needs to prove himself capable of the role and also stay alive, as it’s not unprecedented for a candidate to mysteriously have a tragic accident inside his own home.

Now, do these two burdens necessarily need to appear in the campaign? Not really. These were my own mechanisms that helped me shape my characters. I don’t want to force my character’s backstory into a campaign. In the end, I even worked the backstory to be independent of the campaign. My character has taken a break from the family shenanigans and is out there adventuring to hone his skills.

Maybe I am seeing it from the perspective of a GM, who may have some trouble incorporating many backstories into a pretty much chill campaign. Especially the one I am in, since it has six players. But I won’t feel offended if my character’s backstory won’t play a role in the campaign.

And that’s all for now. Today I did a mix of what is suggested (talking about a character) and doing my own thing. I can’t promise the same thing will happen tomorrow, because tomorrow’s prompt is Reach. I will have to battle with myself a bit tomorrow because Reach is a Magic: The Gathering mechanic, and that’s all I can think of at the moment. Especially since it’s the Hobbit set pre-release on Saturday. But more on that in the Dude, where’s my mana column that will drop later in the month.

And until next time, have fun!

P.S.: Speaking of Magic: The Gathering, did you know we post weekly pack openings on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok?