Characters and their families

It’s December 30th, the day before New Years Eve / Hogmanay. In this household it’s my mother’s birthday. Ever had a character have to shop for a parent’s birthday? Or a friend’s wedding anniversary? This kind of day-to-day activity can make an unusual feature in long-running campaigns, and is easiest in modern-day games where we can draw that kind of minutiae from real life. Making an adventure out of going to a cousin’s wedding is easier if you know what weddings are like in a given culture. It can all make a change from the common pitfall of using PCs’ families as hostages, which leads to PCs with no attachments in the first place.