#the Avengers can kill sometimes if they're angsty about it

[bronzemettle]

How do your big teams like the Justice League or Avengers work? Do they have set rosters at any given time (ie, "in 2016, the Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Captain America, She-Hulk, Iron Fist, Doctor Strange, Thor, and Hawkeye"), or is it a Justice League Unlimited situation where just about everybody is a member and they get assigned into little squads for their missions?

The Avengers is a single team with fairly high turnover of people joining and leaving or taking extended breaks. You could give a set roster for it, which would usually be under 40 heroes in total, but what that roster is would vary every few weeks, not year-to-year. That being said, it wouldn't be a faux-pas to call someone "an Avenger" who has been on the team frequently but isn't currently, so the boundary isn't totally hardline, and it's all treated p. informally. The Avengers like to think of themselves as a family.

The Avengers is usually based out of the Avengers Mansion in outer NYC, but they often work closely with SHIELD and will sometimes use Helicarriers as mobile headquarters, as they were doing in Sokovia when the Terrigen Reactor exploded in early 2014 ("A-Day") leading to the temporary disbanding of the team and creation of the Sokovia Accords and Nonhuman Registration Act. The Justice League started out p. similar, but after the launching of the Watchtower station in 2011 they expanded drastically with other new infrastructure into a formally much larger and more organization-like entity, with a triple-digits number of heroes, supported by a large and well-paid staff of mostly unpowered specialists in various fields, deployed into operation squads of usually under a dozen per mission (unless things get really hairy), and of course able to call on each other for backup as needed.

The Justice League does not by default trade intel with or operate alongside any goverment organizations or law enforcement. It's not a rule against it. They will contact authorities (such as Jim Gordon) often. But it's always case-by-case judgement and need-to-know.

As a result of this autonomy and their large membership roster, the Justice League operates multiple bases scattered in different places besides the Watctower, including the Gotham Clocktower (home of the Birds of Prey), the Hall of Justice, the Detroit compound, Happy Harbor, the Secret Sanctuary, and Mars Refuge. These bases are connected via Zeta Tubes, and a combination of that and the fleet of Javelin spacecraft on the Watchtower can quickly deploy squads nearly anywhere on the planet (and a few other places).

There is also an even larger collection of heroes and some civilian allies designated as Justice League Associates, the JLA. This includes other teams like the Titans, Outsiders, and Birds of Prey, sidekicks and supporting heroes to JL members, and some standalone heroes who just don't quite fit. Helena Bertinelli, for example, was kicked out of the Justice League proper for starting to kill again, but once she stopped killing again was in time allowed back under the wider JLA label instead. John Constantine has never been on the Justice League, but is recognized as JLA.

[pawsitivevibe]

I've decided I'm going to develop my new D&D character's backstory by rolling for it.

Every time Tom introduces a character who could potentially be relevant to her backstory, I will roll a D100 for:

Ally (1-10)

Enemy (10-35)

Family member (35-40)

Childhood friend (40-50)

Ex-lover (50-70)

Child (70-75)

Unrelated (75-100)

And then there will be a roll table for each result:

Ally (d6):

Owes favour to

Owed favour

Former member of her army

Mentor

Other

Enemy (d10):

Betrayed her

She betrayed

Grudge against her

She has grudge against them

She captured/defeated/imprisoned

They captured/defeated her

They killed someone important to her

She killed their relative/friend/lover/child

She burnt down their village

Family Member (d10):

She hates them for causing dead relative's death

They hate her for causing dead relative's death

They hate her for other reasons

She hates them for other reasons

She betrayed them

They betrayed her

She thought they were dead

They thought she was dead

They're on good terms

Secret sibling/parent/niece or nephew

Childhood Friend (tba)

They know some detail about her backstory

Need to fill in more?

Ex-Lover (d6):

On okay terms

On bad terms

Still has feelings for her

She still has feelings

Betrayal

Child (some of these are THIS or THAT questions, so perhaps some amount of flipping a coin?):

Secret child

She abandoned them

They were taken from her

She thought they were dead

They know she's their mother

They don't know

They're good

They're evil

She recognizes them

She doesn't recognize them

And then we gotta fill in a table of random backstory angst events to periodically roll for! So far we've got:

Dead father

Dead mother

Dead parents

Dead sibling

Dead lover

Dead child

Secret (living) child

Abused as child

(other) Childhood trauma

Village attacked by bandits/army

I feel like this is a fun way of giving a character whose supposed to have a dumb angsty backstory a bunch of backstory stuff lol. I told Tom that I wanted my character to basically be Xena. So uh. We're having fun with Backstory Angst for Zeleska.

Not every D&D character should have a significant backstory! Sometimes players get waaaay to into giving their character one, and then want it to be significant to the campaign in some way, which often can uhhh not be the most fun for the other players. But I'm the only player in our solo campaign so I can do what I want lol. And it's appropriate in this case! I've definitely fallen into giving characters an overly complicated backstory in the past, and I wouldn't do it again for a group campaign unless it was part of the plot that we had personal reasons for being involved or something. I mean, it's fine to give your DM some plugs for quests/adventures like "my brother was murdered" (cool, here's his killer, wanna avenge his death?) or "I was trained by So-and-So" (cool, your mentor is in danger, wanna rescue them?). Or even silly things like your character has an ex-wife and six children, that can appear as a funny encounter. BUT .... Overly complicated/long backstories that feature adventures that are more exciting than your current Level 1 exploits with your party? Nah, not super appropriate for group campaigns.