As a concrete example my character in WFRP is a Mercenary Dwarf who fought in Tilea and so being a war veteran I had this idea of giving him some mental issues, you know the kind that vietnam veterans seem to suffer (at least in tv), well the thing is that I use this little piece of background quite often to roleplay how my character behaves and makes decisions, which is quite funny almost all the time.
I know this has nothing to do with the original thread but I thought it would be something cool to share on the subject of backgrounds.

That's one of the cool things about HackMaster.  The character generation process almost guarantees you will have relatives and it gives you some details about them.  Also, the game is built to make you actually want to have relatives and friends.  They can function as proteges which you can give xp and money to.  Then when your pc dies, you can play the protege as your new character instead of starting over at 1st level.

Quote from: DrewNot quite. Backgrounds in many games are the province of player creativity. NPC's that sit redundantly on the sheet are of zero use in an actionable sense.

Redundant to what?

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIf family members are entirely detrimental to a PC, then they probably won't have any. I suppose the trick is to make the family members an interesting part of the story that can benefit or harm the PC without attempting to predetermine either one.

QFT, although I don't think predetermining is a bad thing, so long as it's not written in stone. "You brother is kidnapped, murdered, and fed to the pigs" is bad predestination. "Your brother is kidnapped and you get a ransom note, what do you do?" is better.

Amber usually does a great job of teaching you how to incorporate a family and family issues into an RPG (it isn't ALL backstabbing, you know! There's the Love! Backstabbing and Love! The two pillars of family).

Anyways, as a rule family should be both:
A. an advantage you can draw upon for help.
B. an annoyance that interrupts and complicates your plans.
C. a potential means by which to extend your contact network
D. A liability as something that could potentially be targetted by your enemies.

So in short, there should be just enough good sides to family that (in a campaign where family is significant), its more advantageous to have one and its really too big of an ultimate drawback to be a "loner with no name" or whatever.

Mind you, I'm still very much of the opinion that family has no place in a fucking dungeon crawl, or a lot of other campaigns.  Its not, as the OP seemed to be suggesting, something that needs to be incorporated if you want to have a meaningful game or some shit like that.  Its a staple of many genres that family just don't enter into it (or very rarely do, or the PC group itself is a kind of substitute for family).

RPGPundit

I actually wish that more GMs would kidnap and torture members of my character's family.  I haven't had a good rescue mission in ages.

Yes, this is an unambiguous negative for the character.  But, in terms of entertaining and challenging gaming, it's usually an unambiguous positive for me, the player.

But then, I generally think that GMs these days spend too much time trying to make characters happy, in the hopes that it will make players happy.  I may be in the minority on that.

Quote from: RPGPundit[...] family [...]  Its not, as the OP seemed to be suggesting, something that needs to be incorporated if you want to have a meaningful game or some shit like that.  

I didn't say that. It's just that things seem to be like this.
   GM: "Shit, have you created another Loner Badarse? Those guys are boring, why doesn't anyone have any background?"
Player: "Alright, Jim Bob XXXI has got a niece that he really cares for. She's thirteen years old, and a bit messed up, she tends to steal things just for kicks. He tries to take care of her, she doesn't have a mother, mum had drug problems, and he's worried how he's going to explain to his niece all the girl stuff of boyfriends and periods without having her explode in embarassment."
GM: "Excellent. So you go into her room one day and see a note from her kidnappers -"
Player: "My next character will be a Loner Badarse."
GM: "Why? I don't understand! Stupid unimaginative players!"
I don't say that you can't have a meaningful rpg session without character background. That would be stupid. I simply say that a GM who uses every part of the character's background to make their life miserable should not be surprised when the player creates a character without one.

Come up with your own plots! If I wanted to play Jack Bauer Has Another Family Member Kidnapped or Killed, Again I'd have asked for it.

What it basically is, is that the GM is asking for creativity from the players, so the GM should respond with their own creativity.

Y'know, JimBob, I wouldn't object so much to a GM who did kidnap that niece as I would to a GM who didn't follow up on the bleedingly obvious, juicy, wonderful cues you're giving about other ways to use the niece (in this case to make the character miserable in even more pointed ways).

Like, if she got kidnapped one week, and got a steady boyfriend that the PC didn't think was trustworthy the next, and then there was a whole episode where she was hiding something from her uncle and he thinks it's drugs, but it turns out that she's gotten her period, and they both make a whole mess of communicating ... well, in that context I think the kidnapping would be fine and dandy.

I'm totally with you that the people who think that they're done when they've kidnapped the DNPC are missing out on a whole lot of fun, and it often feels like it's not worth even trying to set up that world of fun for them.

Yes, that's marvellous, Tony. Well, really, I don't see a need for the kidnapping anymore after those other ideas, especially the untrustworthy boyfriend.

Kidnap that fucker, not the niece. Then have her tell the PC she'll hate him if he doesn't do anything.

James,

Quote"Your brother is kidnapped and you get a ransom note, what do you do?" is better.

Better, still not great. Because even if the PC should care, and really isn't being excessively messed with (the brother is perfectly rescuable if the PC just takes appropriate action)--well, neither of those guarantee that the player gives a damn. "Huh, I really didn't want to get into a rescue mission, let alone angsting over whether I should rescue my brother. Can you please point me to the dungeon?"

This is the argument in favor of method of giving points for relatives, but only if you understand that this means they're fair game for being messed with.

The next question, if you go that path, is how to give the points. At chargen? Or in play. If in play, what do you give points for? Rescuing successfully? Trying to rescue? Deciding not to rescue?

Quote from: JimBobOzCome up with your own plots! If I wanted to play Jack Bauer Has Another Family Member Kidnapped or Killed, Again I'd have asked for it.

What it basically is, is that the GM is asking for creativity from the players, so the GM should respond with their own creativity.

Ok, I get where you're coming from now. I agree that there's probably too many GMs out there who make family members only exist to be put into danger.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen[...] the untrustworthy boyfriend.

Kidnap that fucker, not the niece. Then have her tell the PC she'll hate him if he doesn't do anything.

Or he could be untrustworthy for a reason - he's a petty criminal. "Uncle, Bobby is at the police station assisting them with their enquiries. He needs a lawyer and also to be bailed out."
"Doesn't he have parents of his own to help?"
"His dad is already in prison and his mum is just on a single parent's benefit they don't have any money or know anybody."
"What about Legal Aid?"
"Legal Aid only helps you if you take their advice, their advice to him is to plead guilty but since he wants to fight the charges..."
"You have really bad taste in boyfriends. You should find a nice law-abiding boy."
"No! Bobby is a good person really. He just gets into trouble sometimes. And anyway this time he is innocent."

Then, of course, just to shake the PC up, it'll turn out that Bobby really is innocent. Who's framing him? And why aren't the police interested? And what happens when the PC is in a seedy bar asking around about this, and corners some guy who's a really dodgy nasty little fucker and deserves a beating, plus he won't give up the information the PC needs without the beating, and the niece follows him there and sees him doing this beating? How will the PC explain the "need" for brutal violence to their niece? Will the PC tell the niece to lie to the police? "But didn't you say it was wrong to do this sort of thing, Uncle? Didn't you say Bobby was bad because he went to places like this and lied to the police?"

Or the GM could just have the niece kidnapped. Oh, yeah, that's really so much more interesting. :confused:

I've seen the GMs who ream over a characters family as well.  I usually choose not to game with them because if they are bad about that then they probably have more faults.

Now I've used a characters family against a player at times.  One was taking care of his younger teenage brother, so when the game was getting busy and characters were getting stuff done he gets a call from the police.  The brother had gotten caught shoplifting and they need to talk to him down at the station.  It added a little more crunch to the time situation they were on and added some flavor as well.

Now I have gone after a family member in long running campaigns if it makes sense.  Playing cops and getting really close to bust the mob boss who takes everything REALLY personally.  Sure it fits there.  

That's the real big thing some GM's don't get it seems.  It's gotta fit in the storyline of the game.

That's why Galaxies in Shadow automatically gives you family and friends.  As a GM I'm sick of characters that have none to kill off.

No I'm not schilling, it's hardly a finished project.  Just commenting on my preferences as revealed by my choices in game design.

Most of my players have "dead parents"  or "captured by the secret police parents" in their backgrounds.
 One player had a fiancee of 10 years that she lost contact with . (Its space , it REALLY big you know) SO, I introduce that character into the game ..in a coma with parts of his legs and one arm missing .  When their ship's doctor revived him - he still wanted to marry her.

 We wound up having a Zhodani wedding in the campaign. It was all very lovely and you should have been there and it  almost got intererupted by a firefight.  The reception party  led to many characters getting drunk and laid - so to speak.

- Ed C.

It's kind of silly to design a familial relation for the sole purpose of having bad things happen to them. I find family and friends work best when they appear as characters, not just McGuffins, in the game. What I mean by that is that you should invest them with a bit of agency and let them run around helping and hindering the PCs as appropriate for the character. All too often, family members seem to fade out of existence except when the DM wants to use them to stir up shit.