As both a DM and player, the amount of backstory I want is based on the nature and depth of the campaign. Usually as a DM I like players to have a really strong rooting in their history and setting. But sometimes I don't want them to bother, such as my playtest campaign which was episodic, jumped around to different places and different levels rather than following any chronological order, and had absolutely nothing happening between actual adventures.
As a player my natural, and probably unconscious, reaction is to make the amount of backstory that makes my character feel real to me, and probably go just a little bit beyond what is actually needed for the campaign. So I tend to do things like make up a sibling or two, decide what my parents' professions are/were, etc. But I'm not going to try to go into any detail tying them to specific organizations or a bunch of NPCs unless the DM gives me the impression that that would be relevant to the campaign. In that case, I'll go hog wild on it.
It would be rather annoying to make up a lot of information, only to find out that none of it actually comes up in the campaign. So a lot of this has to do with exactly what type of campaign I'm going to be playing in. If it's going to be an exploration campaign (and I enjoy these) where the party basically is a bunch of vagabonds, then I'm unlikely to waste my creative effort making a detailed backstory that has no connection to or bearing on the campaign. On the other hand, if it's a campaign where all the characters are related or connected to the same family, or is a primarily site-based campaign, I'm going to want to go into quite a bit of detail, maybe even writing a pre-game narrative (with DM approval) about my character's "story so far..."
As a DM, I think it's important to give players--especially new players--enough direction on exactly what I'm expecting, and now that we're talking about it, I'm going to have to start giving them examples of how it might interact with the campaign rather than just saying, "this stuff might matter."
As an example, an upcoming really, really, ridiculously old-school long campaign that I'm planning to start next year is going to have multiple elements that will impact this. First, every character needs a
really strong backstory and awareness of their place of origin. Each character will be coming from an entirely different campaign setting/world, and I will expect them to have a basic knowledge of what their in-character experience would be. I'm actually planning on writing a sales pitch for each of the D&D campaign settings that I'm familiar enough with to do so, so they can get excited about them and pick the one that most appeals to them. (In a different campaign, I might do the same thing on a smaller scale. Perhaps a sales pitch for different cities or organizations or other places of origin.) Then, once we know who they are in a very rough draft form, I'm going to write up a personal "What You Know" document for each individual character. Based on a character's race, class, background, ability scores, languages, skills, region, and any other traits, I will explain to them the basic things they know about "the world." This includes things like what's over them thar mountains, or how much they know about the king (I might not go into actual details, but I could say, "you are well versed in the lineage of the royalty and major nobility of your land"). It also includes things like how much they know about planes, worlds, the deities, etc. Everything from, "You know that you should go to the church of Pelor and be a good person, so you can go to that good heaven place (you can never remember the name the priest uses), and not get dragged into some hellish place with fiends," to "You are familiar with the major deities of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and goblinoids, their places of dwellings, and what their general characters and inclinations are commonly believed to be. You know about the 17 Outer Planes and both their colloquial and formal names, as well as the Inner Planes, including the little know quasi and para elemental planes, as well as the transitive and other planes. You understand the societies of the major inhabitants of these planes, and the major magical traits common to them..." While any character can make an ability check during the game to know various information, those who are described as knowing the basics in their "What You Know" will be automatically told anything it says they know when it is relevant or when they ask.
I want them to really feel that they are part of their world. And then, once the campaign starts they will find that they are rarely on their own world, since the characters will be traveling around the multiverse. However, when they do return to their world, they will have automatic tie-ins and that feeling of being the party MVP for that portion of the campaign, since they are the only one who has any idea what is going on--and this is really going to be played up. I'll also allow and encourage characters to form connections and start laying down roots (whether on their home world or elsewhere) as the campaign continues, partly through strongly encouraged extensive downtime.
So, back to the point, even in an campaign of exploration and travel, if the players know that their backstory is going to be important and relevant during the campaign, and if the DM puts extra effort into making sure they have what they need to properly connect with it, I think it will work out. And that's something that just occured to me. I think they need sufficient known options. Most people are better at multiple choice than fill in the blank.
As somewhat of a tangent, I've decided that I need to provide more direction than I used to think I did. In my playtest campaign, for instance, most of the players had little if any D&D experience, sometimes only peripheral (D&D video games). So I'm having them make characters and I end up with 2 players wanting to play 6'+ elves, and another wanting a towering half-elf. I just went with it, because it was a playtest, but that aint' (any sort of traditional) D&D. So I'm going to be very clear about the different races and subraces and where they are found. Sure, if an individual player wants to be an extremely tall elf in a land where most elves are 5'3" (or whatever) I'm not likely to say no, but I want them to be extremely aware that this is an extremely odd aberration and everyone is going to act like it. They can't just pretend that their giant elf is normal because they like giant elves and don't want to think about it. (On the other hand, I'm willing to let them make their own planet and have 6' elves be the norm if they want to--it's a very "geographically" open campaign.) Same thing goes for any other odd relations relative to the campaign world. Players can do it, but they need to know what the norm is and how far off of the norm they are, and be okay with it.
So my current thoughts on getting them involved would be that they need to to have multiple background options presented in an exciting sales pitch, the DM needs to help by fleshing out the information they would know based on their character choices, and they need to know that it will be relevant in the campaign in proportion to the amount of work they are asked to do on it.
On the other hand I've seen backgrounds where I couldn't accept this was a 1st level PC just starting out they had some much stuff in their past already.
I do think that is an issue that can arise. I tend to be rather direct in telling the players about what assumptions they need to know, including what 1st level represents in this campaign.
Even the "path of least resistance" leads to SOME world info. I wonder if it would be possible to do this a little more formally, meaning even your most casual player has something you could hook into, and limiting the amateur fantasy authors to something concrete and relevant in play that I don't have to dedicate a week to reading about. Maybe just being a dwarf fighter means you have to pick up some hooks just as part of that? I wonder what that would look like, if every rules element you took came with a world hook of some sort....
Yes!
