Childhood...

Gertrude slowly trudged across the tavern, bearing a bottle of wine for the customers. The precocious young girl with freckles and pigtails navigated through the crowd. Such a collection of varied persons might shock the uninitiated but for Getrude such strange visitors had become commonplace at her father's tavern. Mercenaries, dwarfs, wizards, elves, clerics, and halflings all of them have come and stopped for a drink - and most even left on their own volition rather than being hauled out by the bouncers and tossed in a drunken pile in the street outside. For all their talk of gold, blood, and glory they never seemed to pause to notice her, to thank her for her service, or to spare her as much as a simply copper or schilling as a small gesture of gratitude for her prompt delivery. "Cheap bastards" she thought to herself as she slipped away from their table while the spoke of acts of courage and foolhardiness. They inspired nothing but contempt in the young girl.

It's only appropriate to begin this column with where we most begin: childhood. Childhood, if such a thing can be said to exist in the Old World, is either brief or a luxury. For most living in the Old World childhood passes away quickly and is not necessarily something fondly recalled, because life in the Old World is difficult and everyone in the family is expected to help make ends meet. Those raised on farms are to assume duties inside the household and outside in the fields as early as possible, for the welfare of the family depends upon the hard work of all. Among the pastoralists children are expected to watch the flocks and carry food, water, and messages from the pastures to the homestead. The children of artisans or the urban poor are apprenticed and taught a trade at an early age, often laboring in menial chores long hours for no or little pay. Children of domestic servants are brought along to assist their parents with household chores. Even the poorest families will send their children out to scavenge, beg, or even pickpocket. As would be suggested, most children begin their lives of labor long before they reach the age of ten.

Those families that are well off can afford to give their children a childhood of play and indulgence. Even under such circumstance a happy or prolonged childhood is not guaranteed. The children of nobles are often sent to other families of similar stature to the gentle arts and the ways of war, or like the students of many noble and merchant families they are placed under the guidance of tutors, schools, and collegiums and taught the arts, sciences, and humanities. For the wealthy, childhood may offer little joy for all too often they are cared for by distant and stern nannies or hired help and schooled in the stuffy art of propriety and seemly behavior suitable for little lords and ladies.

"For all his greatness he couldn't transcend his haunted and humble beginnings. Five, that is to say all, of his siblings died before they saw their fifth birthdays. His mother died giving birth to him and thereafter was cared for by his deeply saddened father. And when he turned his back on the farm for a life lived by the sword, his father, it is said, died from grief. And I suppose that it was this sadness from his childhood - that despite his wealth and fame - is why he leapt off that bridge into the waters of Reik below."

Would a happy, well adjusted child who received everything that needed in life ever become an adventurer? Possibly one of the rootless adventurers with no ties anywhere, a thirst for fame and fortune, and a propensity for violence? What drives adventurers, or for that matter villains?

A GM should encourage the players to expand their own childhood to help explain in part the way the character is as an adult. Not all of a person's personality can be directly attributed to a handful of significant events in a childhood, but creating such events can flesh out a character.

Let's look at some of the seedier aspects of adventuring in relation to childhood:

Wanderlust and Rootlessness

Adventurers wander all about the countryside, unable to settle down or engage in meaningful relationships with others. They save a community and move on, forever in search of the next adventure.
Why? Was their own childhood turbulent? Are they running from something in the past? Are they ashamed of their past? Were they lacking significant relationships with others in the community? Were they abused? Have their ties with their own community been severed? Did they commit a crime? Are their parents dead? Did they flee their community in shame? Was their entire community destroyed and they the lone, haunted survivor?

Self Important

Adventurers could be perceived as entirely self absorbed and self important. They believe that they must get involved and if they don't, the world will come to an end. The world revolves around them. Just because a bunch of adventurers show up with lurid tales of cults and foul sacrifices (with little evidence to support such outrageous claims) they demand interviews with the towns' most prominent members, and those that don't give in to their absurd demands are proclaimed as conspirators or accused of the most heinous crimes.

Why are they so self absorbed? So self important? Did they not get enough attention as a child? Were they neglected by their parents? Beaten up by other children or siblings? Shy? Quiet? Ignored by the community? Perhaps they crave attention and get it now by parading about a small town or village in full armor and heavily armed, carrying with them mementoes and trophies of their various victories. Adding silly nicknames to their names. Let's be honest, adventurers are very often self promoting pompous asses with little concern about the peacefulness of the community and overly concerned about the reputations as heroes and paragons of virtue.

Accepting of Violence as a Solution

A man runs down the street. The adventurers immediately assume that this man is running from them, one raises a crossbow and fires at the legs, another prepares a spell rapidly. Yet these adventurers truly have no idea why this person is running, they're just assuming, being as self important as they are, that it must have something to do with the burglary of their room in the inn.

Adventurers resort to violence routinely. A man in a mask. Strange sounds at night around the campfire. Someone reticent in revealing details. Adventurers are comfortable with infilcting pain and maiming and killing others. What has made these adventurers so borderline psychotic or sociopathic? They investigate a warehouse of a suspected cult member. The elderly guard catches them and is ran through, for no reason other than he was doing his job.

One can assume that many adventurers had violent childhoods. They were bullies, or they were bullied. Their parents fought and bickered. Maybe the player, at a young age had to resort to violence to save their family. Perhaps little Hans returns to his home from wood cutting in the forest to discover that the front door is burst in and an orc is hacking up his mother and siblings, and Hans slams the wood axe into the back of this monster. Whenever Hans, now an adventurer gets angry, something snaps and he intuitively resorts to violence when under any pressure.

The point is, that people who are normally socialized find violence abhorrent. Adventurers, who wallow in this stuff, might be predisposed to violence in a way that many townsfolk and even countryfolk aren't. So was there a series of events in childhood that made the character different in regards to how they view violence in contrast with the rest of the populace?

The Magistrate glared at the accused before him. The orphan stood there frightened, awaiting the verdict. The magistrate hid behind an expressionless mask that betrayed not the tide of bile rising from within. Not even 8 years of age and caught stealing apples from a merchant! Surely it must run in their blood after all! The commoners were like vermin, spreading their contagion of unwanted children, licentiousness, drunkenness, and crime… but this rat had not gotten away - and here it was, cowering beneath the cat's paw. "You are hereby sentenced to three days in the pillory and ten years in prison. Remove the sentenced from my sight." The full weight of the law must be used to crush these snot nosed little brats!

Even the players can be victims of crime. A money purse is stolen, some 15 crowns are taken, and a small child, no more than six years of age is running with it? Are the 15 crowns worth so much to the adventurer? Perhaps the adventurer pursues the child down an alley, into a basement where a group of small, hungry, dirty looking children cower.

People who commit crimes are not necessarily amoral, lazy, or evil, they may simply be needy. And in a world where disease or some other misfortune can result in a child living on the streets, much of the crime may be committed by children who seem to have little future.