Rich Officer / Poor Officer

 There are times when where you come from matters.  Like what?  Let’s imagine two young officers in the military.  One is 29yo and grew up poor.  But he fought to earn a place within the military.  He is the type of officer the soldiers will follow, tough when he needs to be; a coach when he needs to be.  He is now sharing quarters with a young officer.  He is 24yo and a nobleman.  He was commissioned in the military because he and his father thought he would look good in the dress uniform.  That’s not to say he can’t fight.  He has had fencing lessons his whole life and has won two duels.  But his bunk mate - that guy has seen some stuff.

The first officer gets up in the morning and starts shining his boots.  He wants them to be perfect.  He remembers when he couldn’t afford a pair of boots and he takes pride in making his boots shine, because he is proud of what he has earned.  But his wealthy bunk mate pays someone to shine his boot s for him, and he isn’t all that concerned.  After all, what he wears while on active duty isn’t what he would wear to parties and ceremonies, so they don’t really matter.

These two show something that can happen in our world relatively easily - in most first world countries, people can rise above the social status of their birth.  This is often the case in our fantasy worlds too, but maybe a little too often.  At different times in some places, it was possible for a hard worker to get noticed and be promoted.  Militaries are often known for being one of the few places that allowed for this, at least to a point.  It isn’t entirely inconceivable that the poor officer pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it to where he is today.  He absolutely could be paired with a young nobleman.  Depending on who they report to, it might have been purposefully, maybe hoping to teach the young fop something he does not yet know.

But they are going to go about their lives differently.  The wealthy officer may assume he can buy his way out of everything, from losing equipment to insulting some young lady.  The poor officer is going to walking on eggshells in many circumstances, knowing that he doesn’t have the family connections to get himself out of trouble should he break some rules and get caught.  We would often think that he would be far more worried about his gear, either because he cannot afford to replace it, or because it means more to him having had so little as a boy.

A lot of this is stereo-typing; we know!  Their personalities wouldn’t necessarily turn out like this.  There are rich kids who appreciate what they have and act responsibly, but those stereo-types often have that pesky kernel of truth to them.  This is why knowing the character history (whether it be PC or NPC) is so often important.  How they got here, often tells you why they are who they are.

Do Lifestyles Matter?

 Board Enterprises has spent a lot of time working out “Lifestyles”.  To us, a Lifestyle is the details about how a character lives.  Where do they live?  How do they eat?  How do they dress?  What kind of stuff do they have at their home?  The point is, we think we are giving you a whole bunch of this type of information, while only asking the player to make a few decisions based on some charts.  Easy is a HUGE part of this!

But do they matter?  Some players think they are just a device for the GM to pull money off the character sheet.  Because, yes, you need to pay rent, and for food, and to replace worn out clothing.  Yes, there is a cost to it.  There is also supposed to be a payroll to it if the character has a part-time job between adventures.

We all know there are a lot of players out there who would prefer it if their characters were put into cryogenic sleep immediately after every adventure, and then woken on the doorstep of the next dungeon.  That isn’t all that crazy, because it is how some of our most famous action heroes live.  The first time we saw James Bond’s home was after like 30 years of books and movies, and then they blew it up.  Not a lot of home life there!

But we do think it matters.  It is difficult to lay out reasons without just getting into examples, so let’s at least start there.  You are an adventurer.  Your party has been eradicating the city’s assassins’ guild for the last three months of game time.  Now you have won, and they are gone.  Really?  None of them escaped?  Come on, some of them escaped, and they are now looking for the people who killed all their buddies.

How does the GM handle the assassins coming after the PCs?  Does he just decide how they live?  That is going to cause huge arguments, because the players will insist all sorts of harebrained things.  “No, my character lives at the top of a 20 story tower and you have to teleport to get up there.”  “No, my character never goes to the market.  I have a service where the imps/fairies bring all my groceries to me.”  “No, I have never been in a tavern before in my life, unless I was dressed in my most powerful armor, with my ten most powerful weapons, and my pet hellhound.”  Yeah, we wish we were just making this stuff up.

Knowing where and how the player lives, the Lifestyle, allows the GM to know what is going on in the player’s life.  This gives everyone the fair chance of spotting a tail on the way how from the bar, granting the PCs contacts in the marketplace, and knowing what would be available if a fight erupts in the PC’s home.  Not knowing these things makes urban adventures nearly impossible.  Even urban adventures in another city, still require knowing about the PCs’ hotel.

For that matter, how would a party fight against an assassins’ guild on the guild’s home turf without knowing these types of things.  Did the assassins really sit in their headquarters like it was a dungeon setting?  There were several in each room and they waited patiently to be slaughtered by the invading adventuring party, just like good little monsters.  We know there are players who don’t think they care about any of these Lifestyle issues, but isn’t it time to bring a little reality into a role-playing game?  We’re not pre-teens anymore.