The Carnival Performer Background
To the outsider, the life of a carnival performer has a romantic quality that few other occupations can match. Whether it’s the freedom that comes with never staying in one place very long or the adoring crowds that flock to see your act, your life is anything but mundane. Or at least that is how it seems to people on the outside.
The reality is your life is filled with its own set of unique challenges that the masses never see. Where should we stop next, how long should we stay, how big will the crowds be? Not to mention having to deal with angry parents with crying children, moody performance animals, and corrupt lawmakers looking to line their pockets before they allow you to pitch your tents. Life in the carnival is hard, but the truth is you wouldn’t change a single thing. You live through the good times and the bad with your carnival family and that makes everything just a little better.
So let’s take a brief look here at the Carnival Performer Background. Your life on the road as a traveling thespian has just begun.
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What is your Role in the Carnival?
When you decide to take the carnival performer background, the first item to resolve is what job you will hold within the carnival itself. Each comes with its own set of skills you have learned to fulfill that particular job.
Animal Trainer/Rider. You should probably make sure you train the lion before you go and stick your head in its mouth on a nightly basis. You have proficiency in Animal Handling.
Acrobat. Running, tumbling, and jumping off stuff is your forte. You have proficiency in, you guessed it, Acrobatics.
Fairway Game Vendor. It takes a special kind of person to work the three-ring toss or the Whack-a-Kobold game. You have proficiency in Sleight of Hand.
Fortune Teller. It’s not so much telling someone’s fortune, but getting a read on a person and telling them what they want to hear. You have proficiency in the art of Deception.
Clown. Making balloon animals is harder than it looks. You have proficiency in the Performance skill.
Singer. Whether a happy song about love or a sad song about loss, your melodic words always garner an emotional response from the audience. You have proficiency in the Performance Skill.
Strongman. Those warriors in their shiny armor wish they had the natural strength you possess. You have proficiency in the Athletics skill.
Barker. It’s your job to get the masses to the show. Without you, the rest of the troupe may not eat tonight so you use your silver tongue to weave a picture of a spectacle that cannot be missed. You are proficient in the Persuasion skill.
Feature: Well Travelled
You are so well-traveled that rangers ask you for directions. You’ve gained an encyclopedic knowledge of roads, trade routes, and shortcuts across the world. This also means you know the best towns and cities to perform in, have the most honest tax collectors, and the best taverns to drink in. You are friendly with many of the regular caravans that move along the trade routes, traveling with them for an extra measure of protection when going through dangerous areas. You gain an advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to determine the route to a town or city if it is within the region you have traveled in before.
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