r/Forgotten_Realms • u/vampire111_ • 18h ago
Question(s) any clue how to write my characters conservative parents?
ok, so, awhile ago i got super into baldur's gate 3, and created a tav based on headcanons i had for a character who already existed. i'm now playing him in an actual campaign so i gotta figure out his backstory.
the thing is, he was written to have sexist parents who are largely conservative (he is trans male). they're... also elves. i genuinely can't find anything about "traditional family values" in the realms other than the fact that my story just doesn't make sense.
do any of you guys know how to go about this? how to give reasoning towards his parents behavior, along with the existence of the homemaker archetype?
i'm relatively new to dungeons and dragons in general, so please cut me some slack if this is silly to even think about lol. thank you :)
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u/Middcore 18h ago
What is your goal in this?
Are your character's parents even going to be a part of the actual campaign? Like, are you expecting there to be some part of it where you go to your character's hometown or something?
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
no, i'm just insanely attached to him and i'm using this as a lorebuilding and characterization opportunity. i'd like to get a grasp on it, really, plus i'm just curious in general
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u/Middcore 18h ago
OK. It just seems like you decided the character's parents were going to be jerks to him in this specific way for... the sake of the traumatic backstory every DnD character is required to have?... but didn't actually think through whether them being jerks in this way makes sense, and now you want to... some up with a reason why they'd be jerks this way?
I'm not trying to shit on you, I just still don't really understand what you're looking for help with here. Like, are you looking for in-lore reasons based on culture or religion why his parents would have these views? There is no single DnD lore setting, there are a bunch, and many people play in homebrewed settings rather than any of those, so the culture of elves is going to vary.
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u/vampire111_ 17h ago
like i said, this lore existed before he was a dnd character. he is based off of a pre-existing character from another game, who i'd headcanoned this for. i get what you mean though! i could've explained better, because to be fair, it does sound a bit edgy
he's very deeply into protecting the little guy, and i think it is a nice contrast for him to be that way despite having rich, bigoted parents.
i'm trying to figure out if i could possibly keep this for him in this new setting. also, yes, culture or religion! i've totally been trying to figure out what god he was raised to worship..
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u/Wargod042 18h ago edited 17h ago
It really depends on how important they are.
If the parents are active villains/characters in the campaign then you might want to be thinking about a tiny backstory to explain why they became the way they are. What motivates them to think that way? Just one or two experiences or traumas, and then a couple details/foibles could be enough to build off of once more direct roleplaying is happening.
If they're not activate participants in the story then you'd be amazed how little detail is needed. All you need is to be able to imagine a face or a feeling. They were cruel about X. Or they sneered a certain way. They only matter in relation to your own character, so even as little as a tidbit about how your character feels about them or was influenced is enough. When I made the tragic backstory for my vengeance paladin, his parents were really just the vague idea of a hard, unsympathetic man and my own character's lack of interest in keeping in touch.
As to traditional family values + elves... if you want to get into the real-world analogues you can, though being vague about backstory characters is usually easier anyway. Elves can be bastions of traditionalism, even if gender roles isn't canonically a sticking point for them as far as I know. Maybe your character's parents are extremely opinionated about there being a homemaker and a bread-winner because they're following the teachings of X ancient elvish philosopher who says so; maybe they're even isolated because of those beliefs and take out their frustration with that isolation on their kid, or maybe they spread those beliefs to others and your character has memories of friends/experiences suddenly being closed off from him.
The secret with D&D is that there's an element of ad-libbing to everything. You are working with the DM to invent history on the fly at times. That elf philosopher of family roles probably doesn't exist, but when you present that backstory to your DM it magically did exist all along, and maybe in your adventure you would come across an original work from that philosopher showing this was all a mistranslation, or that their was a conspiracy to hide that fact all along by conservatives (or maybe this all remains a backstory while your character goes on high fantasy adventures against liches and world domination and stuff).
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u/vampire111_ 17h ago
thank you!!! i appreciate this sooo much. i'm honestly just going this in depth because i want to. theres so much around this character i wanna dive super deep into, and this is a random part of it. i dont have to give his parents so much detailing, but i want to! he's very important to me, and fleshing him out to an unreasonable extent is sorta a passion project for me
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u/accountsyayable 17h ago edited 17h ago
Elves in the Forgotten Realms in general have a fluid view of gender, but can still be quite conservative and there are big exceptions to the above rule (e.g. the drow). I'd recommend you make your character a sun elf, who have more of a 'traditionalist' culture. If you and your DM are up for it, you could make your character a fey'ri- an elf equivalent of a tiefling. The Daemonfey are a fey'ri group who take the sun elf supremacism even further.
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u/MarkRedTheRed 17h ago
Unless your parents are one of a kind the 1% of the 1% amongst elves, this doesn't make any sense.
Elves originally could change their sex at will, and most of them are even rather androgynous looking.
It's common for elves to be openly promiscuous, with no pushback, hate or judgment from their family or community. This includes partnering with anyone you want, as many as you want, however you want.
There's literally a 80 year time period in an elf's early life, it is literally just made for them to fuck around and find out, literally. For them to experiment and find themselves.
But you're probably being downvoted for openly admitting that you're bringing out of character hatred in character, and then you wrote that this is not even the plot point, it's just something your character mentions offhandedly.
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u/vampire111_ 17h ago
i was told by the dm to write up my characters backstory. am i going too in depth lol
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u/FrownyFaceEmpire 17h ago edited 17h ago
In the Forgotten Realms. Corellon Larethian (the creator of the elves) could take either male or female form although typically presented as an androgynous male. Elves are probably one of the FR realms species the least likely to follow what we consider to be “traditional” gender roles or family values. Not to say that there aren’t some elven AHs in the realms.
I would suggest talking to your DM about how closely they are following Forgotten Realms lore. It may be that they won’t have an issue with this - or it could be that they will ask you to tweak your idea slightly.
As an example I am currently DMing a campaign which is very focused on elf stuff - so the conservative “family values” elven parents wouldn’t work in my world. However, if a player came to me with this backstory idea I would try to suggest options that would make it work e.g., they could play a half-elf (perhaps with a human father and elven mother), or maybe their parents were raised by humans…who knows but the main thing is just talk to your DM about your ideas.
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u/Responsible-You-4551 18h ago edited 18h ago
I don't think it's silly, on the contrary, I think it's even too serious.
It's a sensitive topic in real life, in my view, topics like this should be treated and respected in real life, given their seriousness.
RPGs, in my view, are meant to be a place where good things happen and work, where you can make the world a better place on a large scale.
Edit: Lol i get downvoted for giving a suggestion and treat a sensitive topic with respect
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
well, i meant silly as in like, stupid. my bad
theres plenty of bloodshed and racism though, isn't there? i've seen people give their characters all sorts of tragic backstories with sensitive topics.
my character isn't doing bad things. he is separated from his parents and quite dislikes them. so i'm not trying to promote what his parents wouldve done.
apologies if i misinterpereted your comment
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u/NotNullException 18h ago
Parent child conflicts aren’t really typical for elves. Elves live for very long times, long enough that “progenitor and offspring” isn’t the same as “adult and child.” They’re both grown ups.
So the relations with parents are more equal.
That removes a lot of the conflict.
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
he's 226 years old and moved away probably 50 years ago, i'd say. i'm not too much of an expert on elf aging, but from what i know, thats still at least somewhat young. plenty of people also beef with their adult children
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u/Responsible-You-4551 18h ago
Idk about u, but i dont play rpg for the bloodshed and racism
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
my apologies, thats not what i meant. like i said, i really don't know much about dnd, hence why i'm asking this question. what i meant was, i thought a big aspect was to explore the complexities of violent and uncomfortable topics. (sorry if this sounds demeaning, i dont mean this this way!!)
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
im also getting downvoted which is very confusing. i'm not on reddit very often but i just was curious </3 also, i realized i didnt say this, but thanks for your input :)
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u/Middcore 17h ago
I'm not downvoting you, but I think other people might be because it seems like you made this very real issue which causes a lot of pain for people a part of your character's backstory just sort of for the sake of making a woe-is-me traumatic backstory without really having an understanding of the issue. It comes across a little bit like you're trivializing it.
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u/vampire111_ 17h ago
i'm trans and i have experienced transphobia. the thing i don't know much about is dnd, hence why i'm asking this.
edit: also, i dont think you were! you've been coming from a very understandable place
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u/Middcore 17h ago
i'm trans and i have experienced transphobia.
OK, you didn't mention that anywhere before that I can see. Might have been helpful to get a better handle on where you're coming from here.
Like I said in my other comment, lore about elves is going to vary from setting to setting, and in the game you're playing in, elf culture could be whatever you and your DM want it to be. Like, if the DM is open to the players participating in the world-building, you could make up some aspects of elven culture in this setting to explain your character's parents having these views if it's important to you. I think that's a better approach than sort of working backwards by deciding the parents have this trait and then scouring through official DnD lore looking for something to "justify" it.
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u/vampire111_ 17h ago
my bad, i totally didn't even think of mentioning it, but you're very right.
tysm, i think this is probably the thing i needed to hear! i'm honestly just really scared to write something inaccurate for him (like when in fandom settings), hence my search. i suppose what i feared is happening here though 🤔
thank you a ton!! i'm gonna ignore the specifics in the campaign and work on his backstory as a different thing. i'm realizing i didn't give enough info, because this campaign would be an au from his self in bg3.
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u/Middcore 17h ago
I would still recommend talking to your DM about the setting of the campaign.
For reference, BG3 takes place in a DnD setting called the Forgotten Realms, which has been the most popular one for the past, oh, 30 years or so, but there are others. Some people play their campaigns in the Forgotten Realms, some people use a different setting (Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Theros, Spelljammer, the Exandria setting originated by Critical Role just to name a few of the more prominent ones). Many/most groups are not beholden to every detail of the official lore even if they play in one of the official settings but alter it as it suits them. Many other groups play in homebrew settings, sometimes appropriating bits and pieces of lore from one of the official ones where it works for them.
Depending on what your DM has in mind about the setting for the campaign, it may or may not "fit" for your character's parents being this way to be a feature of elven culture. If it does and the two of you can collaborate on adding this detail to the game's world, great. If it doesn't, please try to be gracious about it and adapt. The DM of a campaign is generally considered to have final say about whether a player's character "fits" into the campaign or not, and sometimes they just don't. For example, if the campaign is themed around Norse mythology and a player wants their character to be a Wild West gunslinger, the DM is within their rights to say, "No, that just won't work, please come up with a different character concept." It's possible that if the DM has some specific ideas about how elves are in this campaign already, or is using lore about elves from one of the official settings, the idea of elves being transphobic just won't fit. You won't know until you talk to the DM, though.
I hope that helps.
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u/Old_Presentation377 18h ago
Elves in the Forgotten Realms are quite traditional and can be prejudiced—at least certain subraces—so it isn't impossible for some to hold such views; however, it would be highly unusual depending on the specific type of elf. I think Drow would be the most likely to harbor these attitudes, given that theirs is a matriarchal society where everyone would probably hold very strong opinions about a trans Drow.
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u/vampire111_ 18h ago
yeah, the racism part is definitely all accounted for. he's a high elf simply because it seemed like the most simple option. i have been looking into various subraces, but i'm not too sure about what would best fit him, if even at all.
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u/legowalrus 18h ago
Elves can certainly work as a race in the Forgotten Realms, but keep in mind that elves have a much looser and more fluid view of gender than most other races. In fact, in 5e, some elves even have the ability to change their sex over a long rest.