I love the background tables found within Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. If it wasn’t already clear by the fact that I devote Fridays to tables, I like some good tables. I just enjoy the rolling of dice to let something random happen. It’s one of the main aspects of D&D and tables encapsulate it. I love all typre of tables, but the background tables of Xanathar’s are my favorite of those found within official D&D books.
I love this collection of tables because it helps both new and experienced players flesh out parts of their character that they normally wouldn’t think about (the examples of which will be discussed further in this post). These tables give you further insight into your character as it sets off for adventure, and if you are a DM, it helps your players take a closer look at their characters and give you more to work with before the campaign gets under way.
Note: From this point on I will write as if talking to a DM, since that is who is most likely to read my stuff. This does not mean that this is not for players (I welcome you read any of my stuff no matter what), but the advice will be for DMs more than players within this piece.
Extra Note: These tables can be found beginning on page 61 of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
General Overview
The background tables of Xanathar’s are broken into three sections: Origins, Personal Decisions, and Life Events. In the following section I will go over what you will find within these tables and why I think they are important. While this section will include an overview of Origins and Personal Decisions, Life Events will get its own section later on.
Origins
Within the Origins tables you will find an assortment of tables that are focused on the family of your character, the situation they were born in, and the type of childhood they lived through.
The tables focused on birth or those of your parents and birthplace. The parent tables allow you to roll for whether or not you know your parents. They also allow you to roll for where your parentage came from in the case of Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, and Tieflings. The birthplace tables are really fun as a player could be born anywhere from a temple to another plane of existence.
The family tables are focused on number of siblings and their birth order, what your family situation was (lifestyle and who your family was), and a table that answers why a parent may be absent. The number of siblings and absent parent tables are straight forward, so I will focus on the family table. This table tells you who took care of you growing up. This could be an adoptive family to none at all. You also get to roll for the lifestyle you lived through during childhood. This table uses the known lifestyles of wretched to aristocratic.
The final tables within this section are focused on your childhood home and memories. The childhood home table is affected by the lifestyle table found earlier, which results in those with a higher lifestyle being more likely to have a better home. The childhood memories table is more based around your general perception of those times within your live instead of specific memories.
This section of tables is great because many people, when they are making their characters, don’t think about this stuff. I also like that it stops the players from going my parents are dead. While they should have control over that it can be fun to try something new, and I bet they would give it a try if you asked them. One example of these tables being put to use in one of my games resulted in a player having 8 siblings, being born in prison, knowing both parents, and a parent in prison. I, personally think this is much more interesting than I don’t have a family, or they are all dead and some players would enjoy add such things to their backstories.
Personal Decisions
The personal decision tables are broken down in to two sets: the reason you ended up with the background you took and the reason you ended up as the class you chose.
The background tables have a table for all the tables found within the Player’s Handbook. Each one has 1d6 reasons for a player character to have ended up with that background. The same can be said about the class tables.
I think that these are the weakest tables of Xanathar’s Background Tables. This is because these sections are what players think about the most when it comes to the creation of their characters. Most players know why they are a wizard or while they are a hermit. These tables are by no mean bad, just not needed for most players. Though if a player chose a background or a class for the mechanics or they have no concrete backstory reason for such decisions, I highly suggest you tell them about these tables. They have some really interesting items within them that I think are quite fun. I personally have not seen these tables in use due to my players for having reason for these choices, but when I get the chance, I well use them.
Life Events
I think that the Life Events Tables are the best of the bunch when it comes to Xanathar’s Background Tables. It was basically the reason for why I decided to make this piece to begin with. This section of tables contains a main table that connects to the many supporting tables.
The main table is a d100 (what the best of tables roll). A player will roll on this table and if necessary, will go to the corresponding supporting table. This table contains random things that a player character could have gone through before their adventuering days, or at the very least before the campaign has started. This table contains items on marriage, supernatural experiences, and tragedy (and what is a good adventurer without a little tragedy). That was just a little sample of the many things that this table contains.
I love these tables the most because all players could roll on it and possibly add something to their character. Despite this there are some problems with these tables. Number one is a nitpick that I have with them. The tables state that the number of life events you can roll for is determined by your characters age. While this makes sense it gives advantage to races with longer lifespans, as the prompts max at 61 years up, it also punishes players for having younger characters. I think that it is better to give your players a set number of life events, determined by the DM (I go with 3). Second, the tables give players some items that you may not be ok with. An example of this is a player gaining a potion of healing or more gold. This stuff isn’t game breaking, but you should be aware of it when allowing your players to roll on them. The final problem is that some of the life events may not align or even clash with a player’s backstory. In these cases, I allow the players to roll again for something that could be incorporated within their backstory. I know I just spent a large time pointing out the problems of these tables, but they are genuinely fun and can lead to cool things for your players and their backstories, I just can’t give a listing of all the fun things, so you should go check them out.
Conclusion
You have reached the end of this piece. I just have a few more things to say before you leave. If it wasn’t already obvious from this entire piece, I like these tables, and I would really think that it would benefit your game to ask your players to roll on these tables. I think that if your table is having a problem coming up backstories or distinct characters this is where I start and would be a good starting part for many. Though one note: DO NOT force your players to use these tables. When I write I try not to tell people outright to something or another, I just try to suggest what I find helpful, but this is one thing I will stand by. Your players should not be forced to do things to their characters backstories without their consent, so don’t force them. The best you can do is suggest or ask them to give the tables a try. Well, ending on a sour note isn’t the best, so go make yourself happier by rolling on some tables (preferably the ones that I just spent a lot of time writing about).