Writing a Memorable Backstory for DnD 5e: A How-To Guide

Last Updated on November 15, 2023

Creating a character in a roleplaying game can be incredibly exciting and incredibly daunting. Like any creative activity, it’s something we can put as little or as much effort into as we want. 

In this article, we’re going to help you in that process. We’ve brought in all the tips in our arsenal so that you can create the most exciting backstory for your next character.

This article goes over a lot of important topics, but I understand that sometimes we just want quick answers.

So just for you, the person who wants to skim through and learn everything in a minute or less, here’s the short-and-quick of how to write a character backstory.

• Create conflict that motivates your character’s actions.
• Connect them to the world.
• Give them flaws, but don’t make them a painful cliché.
• Use your character sheet to come up with key details.
• Interview your character, and ask them questions about their life.
• Remember that it’s all about making the character that you want to roleplay.

Character backstories are an interesting category of fiction. They give you the opportunity to say anything about who your character has been.

Anatomy of a Backstory

The following sections will help you outline the adventurer you want to build.

• Early life
• Conflict
• Connection to the world
• Goals
• Flaws

You may notice as you start to answer some of the questions below that these sections start to blend together a little bit.

Your early life may be the source of your conflict, and your flaws may be related to your connection to the world.

This is all great; the more interwoven the answers are, the more this begins to look like the tapestry of a real life.

Early Life

Your character came from somewhere. Even a warforged that was built yesterday has a past, if an admittedly short one.

We really just want to know what made them who they are.

Important Questions

• Where do you come from?
• What was your childhood like?
• Are there any traumatic events in your past? How did these affect you?

Conflict

Conflict can be something terrible, like your tribe being slaughtered, or something mundane, like getting fired from an apprenticeship.

A great thing to remember about conflict is that it can be either external or internal. We are just as capable of causing our own problems as we are of being victims.

Important Questions

• What conflict drives you?
• How do you cope with it?
• How could the conflict be solved? 

Connection to the World

No character exists in a vacuum. Your character, be they a hermit or a prince, has some connection to the world outside themselves.

Being tied to the world allows things happening around you to have more impact, and that’s where good roleplaying really begins.

If you want to create a character who is 5th in line to the throne of Kaar’n Agiea, talk to your DM about how to incorporate this kingdom you’ve created into their world. 

This can be such a fun process for both you and your DM. It helps them with their worldbuilding, gives them story hooks that will be meaningful to you, and lets you feel like more than just someone rolling dice at a table.

Important Questions

• Whom do I care about?
• How do I feel about strangers?
• Whom do I dislike?
• For your DM: How can I fit into the world?

Goals

Normally a direct result of your conflict, a goal is something your character hopes to accomplish. 

It’s not uncommon for a character to have one overarching goal and nothing else to support it. “I seek revenge on the man that murdered my father,” is pretty basic.

A healthy amount of side goals is great for putting together a believable character. You can break these down into quests, aspirations, and hopes.

Important Questions

• What goals do I have?
• Why do I have these goals?
• What can I do to achieve them?

Flaws

All great characters have flaws, something that makes them less than perfect. 

Giving your character weaknesses is more than just making them believable, it’s simply necessary.

Flaws are so important that all 5e backgrounds even include a table of them so you can make your life a bit easier.

We’ll talk more about backgrounds later, but you can definitely use them as a jumping-off point to come up with your flaws. 

Important Questions

• What sort of flaws do I have?
• Do I see my flaws as coping mechanisms, is it a problem I seek to overcome, am I unaware that I have flaws, or do I have some other relationship with them?
• What influenced these flaws?

Using Your Character Sheet

A great character in D&D is built with balance between who they are and what they are. Your class, race, and background should all have some sort of influence on your backstory, and vice versa.

Class

If our backstory is how we lead up to becoming an adventurer, then the details of that backstory are how we lead up to the details of what kind of adventurer we are. 

I won’t try to explain what backstories work with which classes – that’s a job for our class and subclass guides.

Understanding how the class you want to play works should allow you to come up with a compelling backstory that feels fitting.

Race

I don’t buy into the idea of a xenophobic fantasy world where all the races are constantly at odds with each other, but it should at least be a given that the races are different.

Some races have some pretty easy hooks, like how tieflings are often rejected by society, while others can be a bit more nuanced.

A wood-elf can set you up for some great connection to nature, but what that means is entirely up to you.

It’s important to understand the race we choose while also allowing our backstories to be flexible.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are layups for your backstory. They provide you with personality traits, flaws, bonds, and ideals, all of which you can use to make your character more convincing. They also give you, well, a background. 

While a backstory and background may reflect one another, they are not the same. Your character is more than a Guild Artisan, Noble, Bounty Hunter, or whatever you may have chosen.

Putting Together a Backstory

Knowing what makes a great backstory sometimes still isn’t enough to actually make one. In order to do that, you’re going to have to start somewhere. The question is, where should that be?

Character Generators

Here are a couple of character generators that will give you some form of backstory as a jumping point.

• Tetra-cube Character Generator – This is a great tool that can let you generate whole characters, down to the subclass and background traits. It also gives you plenty of “hook” information that serves as an excellent skeleton for your backstory.
• Kassoon’s Backstory Generator – Here we have one generator that hits all of my questions and some more. You can even choose your class or background to have something more tailored to the character you’re trying to build.
• Xanathar’s Backstory Generator – This generator uses tables from XGtE’s “This is your Life” section for an authentic 5e randomized experience.

Cliché Backstories

There are a lot of clichés in character building, and D&D backstories see a lot of this.

The definition of cliché is a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought. So, on average, using these is pretty frowned upon.

Here’s a brief list of clichés to keep an eye out for.

The Chosen One

Making your character the prophesized hero is a pretty cheap move. It takes away agency from every other player who’s trying to be a hero at your table.

Avoid this by making them think they are the one spoken of in prophecy, only to quickly find out that’s not the case. 

You can have a lot of fun with this by acknowledging how absurd it is.

Tragic Orphan

I get it, you like Batman. We all get it.

Characters that use their parents’ death as an excuse to be an absolutely awful person to everyone around them aren’t fun for, you guessed it, the people around them. 

Forever the Victim

A character that was kidnapped/enslaved/brainwashed/etc. and went through (insert traumatic suffering) here. This character is now ever-so hardened to the world around them and absolutely refuses to let anyone in.

These characters aren’t team players, and that is only helpful if it’s a flaw you acknowledge and have your character actually attempt to work on.

This is another backstory that longs to be the center of attention. Don’t wave the “woe is me” flag at every opportunity you get, and you’re probably off to a good start.

I’m Insane!

People trying to play crazy characters often completely miss the mark and end up with characters that are off-putting and unrelatable.

What you need to remember if you want to do this right is that crazy people don’t think they’re crazy.

What I want to get through is that building a character should further the purpose of making a great role play experience for everyone at the table. It shouldn’t be making it all about you or annoying and unrealistic. 

You can make a stereotypical character without having them be a cliché. That’s just called an archetype.

Bringing Your Backstory to the Table

Once you have a backstory, you’re good to go sit down and have a great time with friends.

Of course, we want that to be a good time for everyone involved, so incorporating our backstory artfully is something we’ll want to make sure we do.

No one wants to hear you read out a five-page backstory. Okay, well I do, but I’m a writer and an avid reader, can you blame me. Still, that’s not the point of D&D.

If you want your backstory to be really impressive, don’t tell it all at once.

A backstory is for you to know and your party to find out. 

If this is confusing in any way, think about a few relationships in your life. Maybe choose a close friend, a new friend, and a work colleague.

Consider how your relationships developed with those people, how much they actually know about your life, and at what points you told them things that were truly important to you.

Use this as a baseline for roleplaying, and you are using a character backstory to its fullest potential.

I truly hope this has helped you. Creating characters is something that I love so much, and I want that experience to be shared with you.

My wish for you is that this process isn’t scary but exciting and that you end up with a character that you’ll treasure for years to come.

My typical sign-off feels very fitting for this article, so as always, happy adventuring.