In the late 1970's when I first started gaming and opened up my first Arduin Grimoire, I stumbled across something unique in my world perspective. It had a series of charts that provided small (and sometimes large) impacts to game play. Most were little more than an edge here and an edge there but they all added to game play. It was my first experience with putting some bite behind the colorful backgrounds I envisioned for my characters.
Who hasn't desired to emulate a character from a book or movie and found their chosen system to fall short? In those days my system was add&arduin, usually mixed as the two were heavily dependent on one another. It fell short, powerfully so.
Still that thought never left me and I went on to further in my games experiments on how to implement the idea without overwhelming the mechanics or roleplay.
In the end, after 30 years of game play I have found the best way was to build in colorful options to allow the player to create something unique each time. Sometimes it would be cultural or social and other times it would be via some unique ability that only they could do.
In fact, my gaming history and the hundreds of players I have gamed with have provided a rich panoply of choices for people to select from. Not to mentioned played tribute to the characters that birthed those unique backgrounds.
It provided the means to make this idea bear fruit. The fact that they do not seek to convey superpowers or replicate abilities built elsewhere is their strength. Just like how they revolve around a role playing idea stimulates the mind and player.
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