Writing a background can feel a bit daunting, especially when you don’t know what to expect from the staff. At Eternal Noire, we want to encourage PCs to be as creative and thorough with their backgrounds as possible. We encourage tie-ins to the setting, and our Story Telling staff will read your background thoroughly no matter if it’s a bullet list, or a well written short story to set your PC up for how they ended up in the here and now of sanctioning. We don’t expect a ton of justification, but if you have any outliers on your sheet in terms of very high or very low dots, it’s a good chance to explain how that happened to our team here. 

Sanctioning is a conversation. Our Staff is here to help you make your creative ideas work within the game and setting we have prepared. 

OUR PROMISE: WE WILL READ YOUR HISTORY, and we will USE the story hooks and ties you give us. 

What we Require from Backgrounds: 

• Questionnaire Answers 
  
  • These are personalized for each venue, and they’re usually short questions that the STs will be looking for to assist in the sanctioning process.  
  • Check the individual Creation Pages for your venue for more information. 
  • These are the MINIMUM requirements to help flesh out your characters. 
• Character History: A Bullet Pointed List, or short story/novella about your PC.  It can be as long or as short as needed to describe your character’s history to your Storyteller team.
  
  • Required Content Warning – We understand that many people use roleplay to explore events in their lives they may have or may not have experienced themselves. Certain topics, can be upsetting to others not prepared to be reminded of them, especially for Trauma Survivors. For this reason, use of these sensitive topics in your character background/history is allowed but limited as follows:
    • The following topics must be warned about in a “content warning” at the top of your character history.
      • Abuse, Self-Harm, Sexual Assault, Rape, Suicide
    • Per our Code of Conduct, there is to be no detailed descriptions of rape/sexual assualt of any kind in character backgrounds. You may allude to it, and mention it, but it may not in any way be described in any kind of detail. This is considered breaking our Code of Conduct and is PPSable.
    • If you feel these topics are a critical part of your characters background please do keep the discussion of it as brief as possible, one word or phrase ideally, to avoid accidentally finding the line between necessary motivation and description.
• 3 “Story Hooks” for your character. 
  
  • These will help the team tie your personal character into the storyline and get you involved in the ongoing plots more quickly. 
  • These also give the story tellers a chance to give you personal story arcs, along with the overarching venue arcs. 
  • These are NOT “Role-play” Hooks, these are PLOT and SETTING hooks. 
  • No more, and no less than 3. 
  • Examples: “New to NYC”  or “Daughter of So-n-So NPC”  
• End-Game Goal(s) for your character. 
  
  • These can be IC or OOC goals for your PC.  At least 1, no more than 3. 
  • Anything from “Get to Status 5 Government” or “Find my parent’s killers”, or even “Be Batman”.  
  • These help YOU get a good idea for your Character’s direction and helps the STs know what kind of things to help nudge your towards.