Ye Olde Fantasy: Family Matters

Here is a series of tables to generate an immediate family for your player character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. This assumes you are using Ye Olde Fantasy: Social Status, but if not, replace any social modifier roll with a character’s Charisma modifier or any equivalent the table deems appropriate.

Parentage

Roll a d20 on the following table(s) to determine the character’s parentage status.

d20	Parentage
1-10	Both parents raised the character.
11-14	One parent is missing. Roll on the Cause of Absence table. Also, roll on the Single Parent table.
15-17	One parent is dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table. Also, roll on the Single Parents table.
18-19	Both parents are dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table, optionally twice. Also, roll on the No Parents table.
20	Roll on the Unusual Circumstance table.

Cause of Death

Roll on this when you need to determine a cause of death for a family member.

d20	Cause of Death
1	Heart attack or other heart disease
2	Common illness, such as the flu
3	Infection
4	Work-related accident
5	Battle-related wounds (either by participating in combat, or being mugged)
6	Starvation
7	Weather
8	Plague or uncommon disease
9	Drowning
10	Poison, such as accidental ingestion or contact
11	Fire
12	Fall from heights
13	Domestic accident or manslaughter
14	Childbirth (reroll if not appropriate)
15	Execution
16	Animal-related, domesticated, or wild
17	Alcohol poisoning
18	Suicide
19	Murder, most likely by a rival
20	Roll on the Unusual Cause of Death Table

d20	Unusual Cause of Death
1	Blasted by magic
2	Teleported to the underworld
3	Cursed by a witch or warlock
4	Magical or rare beast attack
5	Sacrificed to a Chaos cult
6	Fell into a magical rift
7	Transformed into a frog, eaten by a dog
8	Killed by spirits
9	Mistook a Mimic for an ordinary item
10	Turned to stone, shattered
11	Died from Potion Overdose
12	Fell into the sky
13	Murdered by humanoid monsters
14	Contracted lycanthropy, executed by monster hunters
15	Suffered magical backlash from a nearby Wizard’s failed spell
16	Absorbed by a magical artifact, such as a mirror or soul-eating sword
17	Drained by a vampire
18	Spontaneously combusted
19	Aged in reverse until ceasing to exist
20	Dropped dead for no apparent reason

Cause of Absence

Roll on the following table to learn why a character’s family member was absent.

d12	Cause of Absence
1	Unknown, just went missing
2	Affair related departure
3	Imprisoned
4	Seeking a cure for a disease
5	On a long religious pilgrimage
6	Exploring unknown lands
7	Disappeared during a natural disaster, such as a flood
8	Seeking a cure to a disease
9	Exiled for political reasons
10	Banished for religious reasons
11	Joined a religious order
12	Roll on the Unusual Absence Table

d12	Unusual Cause of Absence
1	Lost in the Realm of Fairies
2	Kidnapped by humanoid monsters
3	Enthralled by a vampire
4	Abducted by a flying monster, such as a dragon or griffin
5	Joined a Chaos cult
6	Sucked into the amulet of a warlock or witch
7	Fell into an enchanted, unending slumber
8	Caught in a time loop, continually relives the same period over and over but unable to break out of it
9	Attained some form of religious enlightenment, taken fully formed into the heavens
10	Spirit separated from the body, either through magic or permanent astral projection
11	Turned to stone
12	Transformed into a toad

Single Parent

Roll on the following table to determine if your parent remarried:

d20 + SOC	Parent Remarriage
1-12	Parent did not remarry
13-20	Parent remarried

If the parent remarried, treat the character’s background as if both parents had raised them.

If they did not remarry, roll on the following Single Parent table:

d20	Single Parent SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent
6-8	Fostered by a family member or neighbor	Fostered by another family member	Fostered by another family member	Raised by parent
9-11	Adopted by another peasant family	Adopted by another family	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered by another notable family
12-14	Adopted by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered in a religious institution	Fostered by a high-ranking clergy member
15-17	Adopted by a social institute, such as an orphanage	Fostered by a village or town official	Fostered by an academic or notable village/town official	Fostered by an important town official or notable academic
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Fostered by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered as a page or squire with a bachelor knight	Fostered as a page or squire with an honorable knight

Note that fostered children are highly likely to know their birth parents, while adopted children are unlikely to.

No Living Parents

Roll on the following No Parents table to determine the status of your character’s upbringing:

d20	No Parents SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family
6-8	Adopted by an orphanage	Adopted by a guild member	Adopted by an important guild member	Adopted by another family
9-11	Adopted by a monastery	Adopted by an honorable knight	Adopted by a notable monastery	Adopted by a prestigious religious institute
12-14	Adopted by a traveling group, such as roaming actors	Adopted by a merchant	Adopted by an academic	Adopted by an important scholar
15-17	Communally raised in a community	Adopted by a village or town official	Adopted by a notable village or town official	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Adopted by a low ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by an important town official

Unusual Circumstances

Roll on the following table to determine your character’s particularly notable upbringing. Many of these get pretty fantastical, so feel free to restrict it to just the first six or so if you are playing a more grounded campaign or don’t want the PCs starting with more fantastical upbringings.

d20	Unusual Upbringing
1	Bastard of a higher-ranking noble
2	Bastard of a notable religious figure
3	Adopted by the community’s wise person
4	Raised in a religious cult’s commune
5	Raised by wild animals
6	Adopted by a wandering adventurer
7	Adopted by a wizard
8	Magically aged to an adult
9	Wandered into a haunted location, raised by ghosts or spirits
10	Immaculately conceived
11	Was a spirit or fae-being who was condemned to live as a mortal
12	Descendent of divine or spiritual lineage
13	Sired by a human and a demon
14	Transported from another reality, likely ours
15	Crawled out of a shallow grave with no memory
16	Born with an ominous birthmark, such as a religious symbol or a daemon’s sigil
17	Born under an astrological anomaly.
18	Willed into being out of someone’s dream
19	Was a monster, polymorphed into mortal form
20	Sprung out of a natural disaster, such as a fire, floor, or comet strike.

For the above, you may have to reroll on the Parentage table to determine conditions beyond the unusual circumstances or ask your Referee to work with you on the details.

Siblings

Roll d6 + SOC modifier to determine the number of siblings the player character may have lived with. To determine the character’s sibling rank, roll a die equal to or greater than the number of siblings plus one, rerolling any results greater than the total number of children.

The character has a SOC modifier of +0, so they roll a d6 and get 4. Since the total number of children is 5, the player rolls a d6 to determine where they fall in the birth order, rerolling if they get a 6.

To determine how many siblings survived until the current game, roll a d20 per sibling on the following table, adding in SOC modifier unless a natural 1 is rolled.

d20	Sibling life status
1-4	Dies in childbirth
5-6	Dies within three years of being born.
7-8	Dies within the second year after birth.
9-10	Dies within three years of being birth.
11+	Survives, hurrah!

Relationships

You will likely want to establish relationships with your parents and siblings. Using your game’s notion of Reaction Rolls works fantastic for this. In the future, I will post my rip-off take on Pendragon and BRP’s Personality Traits for running Crusader Kings-esque reactions, but in the meantime, 2d6 + CHA mod, higher is more favorable works.

Ye Olde Fantasy © 2024 by Justin Hamilton is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0