Talk:Governess (5e Background)

This is incredibly detailed and specific, making it very inflexible. There's only a handful of characters this could reasonably apply to. If anything, it contains too much detail- this is almost an entire backstory, rather than a character background! Backgrounds are really meant to be backstory writing tools, not a complete replacement for a backstory. Is there any way to abstract it a little so it could work in more situations?

• should work for any gender.
• should work for any core race.
• should be justifiable with any core class selection.

If I were to play a male halforc barbarian governess, that would be very hard to justify. --Kydo (talk) 11:25, 9 September 2016 (MDT)

The part of the design was to give a player a detailed and specific background, there are already enough flexible background in the SRD and supplement materials for the game. (Notice that the Noble background from PHB would already cover this concept if you mould it so.) Saying that I did not make the design to fit a specific gender, race or class, I simply used the term Governess to illustrate the concept of a specific sociometric/socioeconomic situation of a particular noble. This is simply a background, nothing states that there would be any disturbance for any race or gender that could become a noble and still carry their training towards their class.

On the abstracting topic, it would be possible for the player to think for themselves for a reason to becoming a teacher in the first place, perhaps not forcibly as well. It would be possible to have the player to come from a different social background than a noble, though it would undermine the word "Gorverness". I think it would be possible to state that, quite pushing it too, all things concerning their class might have originated from the connections developed during this part of their life. At this point I can't think of anything other that could be changed without getting further away from this concept. Berzul (talk) 12:52, 9 September 2016 (MDT)

I have added {{stub}} since the issues deal with parts of this page. Can you please give your advice to the stub template now, since its more detailed? --Green Dragon (talk) 14:07, 9 September 2016 (MDT)

Well I was fine with it being really specific, I just wanted to know if it was intentional, and whether it was within the original intent to become more open-ended with it. I've updated the 5e Background Design Guide to more adequately represent this example. --Kydo (talk) 15:23, 9 September 2016 (MDT)

I know I going to regret asking, what is the difference between the governess background and the noble background? --209.97.85.48 18:26, 12 October 2016 (MDT)