Party Building

I want to run an adventure, set in Lenay, on it's south-east, across a large bay from the city of Bayport. I see this starting in the same place we started in when we played in July - with a bit more detail. WE start in the town of Whelker's Deep, on the coast; this is 5-6 miles south of Clamdigger Cove, which has been sacked by pirates, and is now something of a lurking place for various bands of troublemakers - smugglers, pirates, orcs and goblins and kobolds, wandering monsters, bandits, etc. The part can meet at something called the Gypsy Arms, just outside Whelker's Deep, a little inn, and go from there.

What I want to do now is start to put a party together, so we can be set up to play when I get up there again. So I hope we can pick characters and work out their backgrounds, and so on, before we start to play. (If I could find a way, I'd try to play some non-combat stuff now, over the internet - not sure it works, but who knows.) Anyway - I'd like to set up characters now; work out backgrounds, and so on. For a couple reasons - to start thinking about D&D and see if there are ways to advance campaigns remotely like this - that's part of it... but also to get the party set up. People can use what characters they want - they don't have to be the same ones we played in July (though if you want to, go for it; those characters all hit second level, so I can see it...) But I know that one we put together kind of quickly, and with limited rules, so other characters make sense.

I want to set up the party ahead of time, with some care. I want to come as close to everyone playing one character as possible - and try to make it so everyone is playing the character they want to play. I am trying to make this more of a role-playing and exploration type of adventure (though with plenty of mayhem - I'm inclined to make it a dungeon crawl), and that works better with fewer characters and without multiple characters. And - if we all decide what we want to play ahead of time, we can figure out how to balance out the party if we need to. No harm in adding an extra character or two - someone playing two, or adding an NPC or so - but this is easier if we decide what we want, then fill in the blanks. So if we get a thief, a fighter, a barbarian and a wizard, we'll know we need an extra cleric - but better to add an extra cleric than to saddle someone with a cleric because they picked last...

And finally - I also kind of want to try to work out more of the background details of things, both the characters and the setting. even if it's just at the level of the old days in Waynesburg and Farmington, I want to try to relate where characters are from to where they are - involve them more in the world, etc. Backgrounds have some promise on this - and it's something we could work out ahead of time and online like this. (Here, through Facebook, email, IM, something.) It's also (and this might be very metagamy, but I don't care) a way to know how to pull the characters into the adventure - the kind of characters people play might change the purpose of the adventure - I haven't done this in a long time, and I don't trust myself to come up with a hook impromptu....

So I think this is what we need to do before hand:

1) Decide what we are playing - name, class, race, and so on.
2) work out backgrounds from the game - pick them, and the details (bonds and flaws and so on), etc. (These can be expanded maybe, if people like.)
3) add some additional background details related to the setting - where people are from, how they got to Whelker's Deep, and why they're sitting in this tavern with these other people.

For the third: I think we want to decide where our characters are from, broadly speaking; this information could lead to benefits or disadvantages - I'll try to note some as I think of them. Options might be:
1) strictly local - somewhere within 20-30 miles of where they are. This might give you extra knowledge about the area - might also give you enemies or entanglements to complicate matters. This is stuff to think about, I think.
2) Somewhere in Lenay, but not local - west coast, highlands, far south, capital city - again, this might let you know things; might create ties and so on - some of these details might fit with the book's bonds and flaws and such too.
3) A neighboring area - such as Oceanside (to the south) - or Bayport or its environs (to the east) - maybe the fjords and high mountains to north of the bay, etc.
4) Somewhere more remote - Waynesburg or Hillsburg maybe; the southern Kingdom; the south seas.

Again, these choices can influence the specifics of the backgrounds.

And so, this is an example - this is the character I want to play, with this kind of info built in:

I will play Bono - human, male, fighter. He has a soldier's background; he's from the west coast of Lenay. He is a pole-arm specialist. Basic story is - he was a soldier in some lord's army; but as Lenay's troubles mounted (the king is being held for ransom abroad; his brother is raising money to ransom him - or maybe not - and causing unrest), this lord's force broke up. Bono headed to the east coast to establish himself as an independent adventurer.

That's the basics, and the starting point.