An explanatory note: Ultimate Campaign is a relatively recent release from Paizo Publishing for their Pathfinder Game, a 256-page hardcover book. It's not the first supplement to the system they've done, but I personally think it's the most significant, as it really extends the system into areas that most Fantasy RPGs often don't cover, or don't cover well. This makes it particularly interesting, as it has the potential to dramatically change the shape and tone of your games. I could have done a straight review of it, but I feel that short-changes the book. It's worth examining what it does in a bit more detail. So, assuming Life doesn't interfere, this is the first of five essays on various aspects of the book. A lot of it will be a standard review and description of what's in the book, but occasionally – I hope – it might go a bit deeper.
Where does your character come from? It is this question that the first chapter of Ultimate Campaign attempts, not to answer, but to allow you to come up with answers that will fit your campaign.
It's a fairly meaty chapter, weighing in at 66 pages. It begins with a discussion of aspects to consider when determining your early life. It must be said that I find the writing style of Pathfinder books to be informational but rather dull to read, and this is no exception. However, the advice it gives is really good.
One of the best bits of advice it gives concerns originality: basically, it's really hard to come up with original ideas, but everyone is unique; uniqueness comes from how they have different experiences and attributes to everyone else. The more definition you give a character, the more you can move away from the stereotypes of RPG characters.
The second part of the chapter has a number of random tables that make up a "Background generator" for your character. As Ultimate Campaign (as opposed to Quests & Campaigns) is setting-agnostic, it doesn't make a lot of assumptions about where you might come from in the world, instead settling for more general descriptions such as "Hills or Mountains" or "Non-Gnome Town or Village".
It begins with a set of tables for Homeland, Family and Childhood which are differentiated by race, with Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Halfling and Human being the races covered. These tables cover your homeland, your parents and their occupation, and your siblings. Possibly the most significant is the Major Childhood Event table, which has 20 possible events for your past.
The second set of tables cover Adolescence and Training, and the tables you roll on here are determined by your class; the classes covered are Alchemist, Barbarian, Bard, Cavalier, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Gunslinger, Inquisitor, Magus, Monk, Oracle, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch and Wizard. Each table has ten entries and takes up a page, so this is where a lot of the page count goes. These tables give reasons as to why you ended up in the class you chose; there's also a 20-entry table that details an Influential Associate who had a major effect on your life.
Finally, there are a set of tables that allow you to randomly determine your alignment; you have a conflict that you experienced, your motivation and finally you can choose the resolution (the one table that does not have random rolls). Tables for romantic relationships, relationships with your fellow adventurers, and one for character drawbacks round out this part of the chapter.
It's with these last set of tables that I become really uncomfortable about the process. The fact is, having random die-rolls tell me what alignment my character is (even if ameliorated by the decision of what my character's reaction was), sits poorly with me. it feels quite intrusive, and it's made even more so by the conflicts listed. They posit a world of failed and conflicted characters, not the heroes that I – and I assume others – prefer to play. The other tables give a lot of good suggestions, but this one, with no possibility of avoiding the moral failure, feels like a major misstep to me.
To expand on this, the major moral dilemma your character faces (according to this system), he or she fails. He can then repent, try to make amends, or say "that was cool!" There's no option to actually face the dilemma and succeed. The example I immediately thought of from novels is of Rand al'Thor in The Eye of the World, where his first major dilemma comes during the Trolloc attack on the farm. His character is defined at the beginning by the fact he doesn't abandon his father. In the world of this system, he would have, and that approach feels extremely problematic to me.
The third section of the chapter covers the topic of Traits, which were first introduced in the Advanced Player's Guide. Indeed, it reprints all of the traits from the APG and adds a few new ones. The major difference from their presentation in the APG is that several traits are called out in the Background Generator (sometimes allowing you take traits you normally would not qualify for).
The other new innovation here is the idea of Drawbacks: basically, negative traits that allow you to take an additional positive trait. Here, Paizo step into dangerous territory. Drawbacks, great as they are for the role-playing side of things, can prove rather less of a drawback in actual play, thus giving power for no penalty. The flip side to that is the benefit for taking a drawback – an additional trait – is hardly going to break the game. In fact, Pathfinder has far more serious balance issues than the addition of drawbacks, and, even if the drawbacks prove to be less of a hindrance than originally planned, the potential benefit of making the character more interesting is worth it.
Paizo finish the chapter with the new mechanic of Story Feats. The concept behind this is fantastic: you have a story goal, and a mechanical bonus when fulfilling that goal. When the goal is completed, you gain an additional bonus. It's a really fantastic way of allowing the goals of a character to be reflected in their mechanics.
In some ways, the concept is too big for the mechanics. Most feats have become part of a sprawling plain of inconsequential effects. The really important feats are just too good for most players to forsake, and they take up a lot of the potential design space available for the others.
However, there are some really good story feats here. I'm very fond of Prophet, where your goal is to convert an "appropriate" number of creatures to the worship of your deity. While fulfilling the quest, you get a +1 sacred bonus to AC when you cast spells on your friends; the completed quest makes the bonus a +2 and applying to saves as well. Liberator, with the goal of freeing 200 slaves, gives a +1 to all weapon attack, damage and saves when acting to free slaves, with a completed ability to inspire slaves and freed slaves (+1 saves and temporary hit points). I like the story and mechanics of these feats.
Of course, I'm baffled by the inclusion of some of the others. For instance, Battlefield Healer gives you a bonus on the Concentration Check DC when taking damage when trying to cast healing spells. The completion bonus is that you automatically succeed on these checks. The question I have is this: why bother? 99% of the time, you'll be taking damage because you provoked an attack by casting the spell, which makes Combat Casting a better choice. Of course, I also think the "story" behind the feat is rather weak as well.
The one bit of rules text that really makes me wonder is at the very start of this section, which explains that while most of the feats give untyped bonuses, these bonuses don't stack with other story feat bonuses. Really? What reason is there for not just writing that these bonuses are "story bonuses", and thus letting the normal rules of stacking come into effect?
Do We Care?
Ultimate Campaign is a particularly unusual book in Paizo's core book line because it is entirely optional. More than just optional, there are campaigns that will never need anything in the book. I'd like to explore those campaigns and players in this part of the essay.
This chapter caters to those players who like to define their character and explore its background before they ever start playing. The other tradition – and it's one I squarely belong to – are the players who come into the campaign with a nebulous idea of their character's background and then develop it during the course of play.
This approach of character development can be seen in terms of the show Doctor Who. When we meet the Doctor in his first episode, An Unearthly Child, we don't know who he is. Ian and Barbara don't know who he is. But, more crucially, the writers don't know who he is. There's no plan saying, "He's a Time Lord, he has too hearts and he stole a TARDIS". All we know is that he can't go home and he has a magic box. In terms of 13th Age, his One Unique Thing is "Has a Box that travels in Time and Space". Everything else we know about the Doctor was invented as part of the storytelling as the series went on.
Conversely, you can examine the case of Babylon 5, where the writer had set up several character backgrounds in the first episodes. In particular, Sinclair can't remember what happened on the Battle of the Line, but Laurel Takishima is also set up as a mole for the Psi-Corp (even if that particular instance never came to pass). This is far more of the approach that designing backgrounds for your characters support.
Ultimately, both these approaches work; use the one you're comfortable with. (And yes, they both have drawbacks). In the case you prefer to make things up as you go along, Ultimate Campaign's Backgrounds have a number of good ideas that you can steal, and Story Feats are great because you can add them to your character as the campaign moves in that direction. I can't see anything wrong with adding traits because that's how your character acts or needs rather than using them during character creation to define the character.
So, I see this chapter working for all role-players, though not always in the same way. Although I have some problems with its material, on the whole it's pretty good, and probably can be used by players of most fantasy role-playing games.