Greetings!

In ancient and medieval times, family members and extended families--the immediate family--but also cousins, nieces, nephews, as well as spouses, in-laws and more--were all very important in everyone's lives, whether they were rustic farmers or prominent nobility. People did *everything* with family members--working, traveling, school, attending church, socializing, dancing, festivals, and more besides, including fighting, participating in rebellions, and warfare. The only real exceptions seemed to be outlaws, criminals and slaves. Those at the most bottom-rung of society were often socially ostracized and cut off from family connections, or such connections had been uprooted and destroyed, with most such family members being killed or sent off far away into oblivion.

For everyone else, though, family and extended family were very important and influential.

How involved are families in your campaigns?

In a general sense, throughout various modules and in many other groups--the wide social environment--family members and family connections seem often to be invisible or non-existent. Why do you think that is such an existing dynamic?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

My current PC is the eldest child of my previous PC and his wife. They have seven younger brothers and sisters, two of which are old enough to become adventurers if they chose. Their paternal grandmother is also still alive and their maternal grandfather has an entire family of their own, but does not acknowledge the PC's mother even exists due to cultural issues (the grandfather and his other family are full elves, the PC's mother is a half-elf).

Five of the six other PCs are also legacies and some are even cousins in addition to having NPC brothers and sisters.

So, families are quite important in our campaign.

Quote from: SHARK on April 28, 2021, 06:58:02 PMHow involved are families in your campaigns?

In a general sense, throughout various modules and in many other groups--the wide social environment--family members and family connections seem often to be invisible or non-existent. Why do you think that is such an existing dynamic?

Families weren't much involved in my games when I was still actively gaming, and I suspect the reason why is the same reason many groups don't use them: Families tend, more than anything else, to be the source of responsibilities and obligations that make peregrinatory adventures very difficult to carry off.  Someone sufficiently unimportant to the family that the rest of the clan doesn't care if he goes risking his life on wild adventures is also not likely to be important enough to be able to fall back on them for as much help as he might like.

Also, in general the most important relationships in a PC's life tend to be with the other PCs, and most PCs are different enough from each other that justifying them as coming out of the same family is seldom plausible.

For Pendragon they are critical as you are expected to die in game eventually and need a heir to continue playing.

For most games it may just be considered an annoying hook the DM uses to rope you into an adventure against your wishes.

Most RPG games embrace the fantasy of not being beholden to your family.

Most of the players I've had believed that a family was a disadvantage and bait for sinister GMs. Unless they were nobles and then family was awesome.

Did a DM kidnap a family member, or otherwise bring out a player's family as a liability?

Pepperidge Farm may not remember, but the player does. Forever. It's similar to the way a single NPC ally turning out to be a doppleganger can make it so a player never trusts another NPC, even many campaigns (and DMs) later.

Usually not too much.  There was this one time in a Rolemaster game where we had a new player fresh from D&D who was playing a knight.  The party decided to go abuse the free room and board at his family's castle where they learned that his mother was sleeping with the chamberlain, his father had a peasant girl in the village on the side, and his sister was really only his half sister.  The look of shock on his face as these things went on was priceless.  Then they murdered a messenger (I didn't mean to jar him so hard) in the castle's chapel and discovered that it pleased the gods who had been missing proper blood rights for hundreds of years.  heh...then of course the players took to trying to lure targets into churches.  The look of shock and horror continued to amuse.

Quote from: S'mon on April 29, 2021, 02:13:14 AM
Most RPG games embrace the fantasy of not being beholden to your family.

Usually because in short order the PCs are tens or hundreds of miles away from home and sometimes never return.

Bemusingly in Dragon Storm the game starts off for new players with them having to flee their home town and all friends and family once it is revealed they are really the hated shifters. Everyone and their brother might turn on them and report them to the Necros.

Meanwhile over in Orpheus all those family and contacts you generated in chargen can and WILL become a massive liability later as they are either turned against the PCs or targeted by one of the threats and killed.

Part of the reason family get targeted is because the PCs make enemies. Sometimes those enemies try to hurt the hero by indirect means. This is particularly true in the pulp and superhero settings. But also can be a factor in fantasy or even sci-fi ones.

This is not a 100% thing. But if you are in a more grim setting, or one that can be, then family and even contacts can end up being targets for foes.

And if not those. A foe might target your place of employment, your works/creations, deeds, reputation, etc.

We usually play that adventurers are somewhat out of the normal social order.  Not having a family or close ties to one is another way in which it manifests.  That is, the family connections are important to the PCs by their absence.

I have run an occasional campaign where the PCs were all members of the same family or close associates.  Typically, a core set of PCs that are close family, and then their various friends.

Quote from: S'mon on April 29, 2021, 02:13:14 AM
Most RPG games embrace the fantasy of not being beholden to your family.

Lol yup!

However I really want to run the AiME Murkwood Campaign due to it spanning 30 years of in-world time.  Seems like it'd be so much fun to have all that family and heirloom stuff come up.  Just have to find a way to convince my players to a) try it, and b) not all roll up Elves and Dwarfs (or those pesky halflings).