DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?

[Panda-s1]

That's just part of the premise. There's no uncertainty involved, because it already happened. If a coin flip comes up heads fifty times in a row, then the likelihood that it has just done so is 100 percent.

Our model is only concerned with what happens after that point.

does this mean your adventures always begin with the adventurers already in the dungeon or wherever the bad guys are hiding?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

does this mean your adventures always begin with the adventurers already in the dungeon or wherever the bad guys are hiding?

They always start with the improbable event having already happened. That doesn't usually mean the party is already in the dungeon, but it does usually mean that the relevant parties are all in the right geographical area for things to (probably) resolve in an interesting fashion.

 

[chaochou]

That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.

No. That's literally your definition of roleplaying. It's an utterly crap one, but it does it for you. The fact that you're sufficiently bigoted and one-eyed to insist that everyone adopt your definition simply makes you very, very strange.

If the real reason for making a decision is based on a factor that exists external to the game world, then that's meta-gaming rather than role-playing.

This is, quite literally, total gibberish. Everything exists 'external to the gameworld' and nothing exists within the gameworld. We are not observing or discovering a world. We are inventing it, the people sat playing.

The fact that your playstyle depends so totally on pretending that you don't actually exist, again makes you very, very strange, but it doesn't define roleplaying beyond a very sad and tragic subset of exactly one.

It's always to the detriment of the role-playing process.

No, it is never to the detriment of the role-playing process.

 

[gepetto]

Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.

He could have been just another hobbit and it wouldnt have mattered much. Gollum was following the ring, not frodo. Frodo could have just dropped it and gone home and never would have seen gollum again. Gandalf didnt say to Elrond "i needed THIS hobbit. He said hobbits (plural) are tougher then they seem and can resist evil" He would have snatched up any convenient hobbit. He needed someone to carry it who wouldnt be able to use it to become a super villain. Thats why none of the more powerful, better equipped people could be trusted to carry it.

Frodo doesnt bring anything to the table from his background. Bilbo had dwarf friends. So what? Theres 1 dwarf in the main story and I dont think they ever have a conversation in the whole thing. He's an elf friend? Big deal. Again theres 1 elf in the party and they never even talk to each other. Their welcomed into Lothlorien because they have the ring and Elrond put in a good word. But ANYONE who was carrying the ring to destroy it would have gotten their help. They didnt know him. The sword he barely uses and could really have been any old sword. He could have just bought an elf sword in rivendell, or asked for one. The armor does save him, but if he had been killed Aragorn would have picked up the ring, taken it to mordor himself, not gotten lost in the mountains of shadow and quite possibly destroyed the thing BEFORE the army of evil killed all those people in Minis Tirith and the surrounding areas.

All his background gets him is 2 bumbling henchmen who he would have been better off replacing with a couple of good dogs. Even Sam was only there because Gandalf dragged him along. Frodo didnt go looking for his gardener to drag him out to mordor.

And they certainly dont go haring off any sidequests because of anything that happened in the shire before the adventure.

Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.

Well first, Boromir is clearly an NPC. He has about 3 lines and everyone just ignores everything he has to say until he gets redshirted as a plot device. So that doesnt even count. And second his "backstory" certainly doesnt come up for HIM at all for more then 30 seconds after he gets introduced.

And Gollum? His backstory is probably the most important of all, because it’s so key to the whole dang epic. Not only because he’s the one who had the ring in the first place, and not only because it allowed Frodo to show him mercy, but it’s literally the whole lesson about evil power corrupting an individual.

Gollum is not a PC either. He's an NPC plot device.

In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.

Yes NPCs do often have stories. They kind of have to in order to explain their presence in the PC's story. That has no bearing on the topic at hand.

 

[gepetto]

something tells me you don't get a whole lot of new players either lol

When no one ever drops you dont need to.

 

[gepetto]

in my experience those "regions" usually involve a lack of other available groups, they can happen anywhere

Nope, we play in las vegas. Theres about a million and a half people here. Lots of choices.

 

[Aldarc]

That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.

This is ridiculous. Playing a role does not require abandoning your own perspective, as it inherently entails playing that role from the point of your perspective. You may be attempting to guess what the perspective of that fictional character may be, but you are doing so from your own perspective and play goals.

The role does not exactly have some sort of objective reality in itself. If you asked multiple people who shared your own dogmatically-bound perspective on roleplaying to roleplay a given character to the backstory you all agreed upon, then the character would likely still be played differently because the players' perspective on how the role should be played will differ.

In fact, I would argue that the definition of "role-playing" as a term literally entails meta-gaming as part and parcel of the process. A "role" is a meta-textual construction that only has meaning outside of the fiction for the participants, while "playing" entails an inherent awareness of the recreational purpose that drives the participation in the process. Likewise, "role-playing" as a process involves the player playing an imagined role that exists in distinction from the player themselves and that one cannot actually assume the role of a fictional role without bringing one's own cognition and perspective to bear. The player will be aware - assuming here that they are not sociopaths - that the game is being played with a recreational purpose, a tacit social contract (of some sort or another, likely including at the least not being a wang-rod to other participants at the table), and an attempt to making sure the actions of the character in the fiction do not disrupt play in a manner for other players in a manner that would disrupt their own desires for recreational enjoyment.

But let us also consider something else here for a second. Let's take the sense of "metagaming" from the wikipedia article on the same name:

Metagame, or game about the game, is any approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game.

If we apply this to what Saelorn is advocating, then it becomes fairly clear that Saelorn's "definition" isn't so much what roleplaying is about, but, rather, the metagame that he seeks to impose on the roleplaying process. In effect, Saelorn is just wanting people to play by his metagame rather than the range of other metagames that others may use for approaching roleplaying.

Sometimes, there are situations where meta-gaming is the lesser of two evils, but it's never good. It's always to the detriment of the role-playing process.

You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true.

If you disagree, then make some sort of logical argument to support your claim, rather than Appealing to Authority.

You're appealing to non-existent definitions that have not been agreed upon and that you have not sourced and treating these definitions as an authority. You're appealing to truth statements that have not been verified. You're making highly-charged, unsubstantiated ethical claims about these things. I don't think that you realize how hypocritical and hollow that your argument sounds when you use the sort of language that you are choosing to use here, Saelorn.

WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE DEFINITIONS?????

His preferred metagame.

 

[Lanefan]

What does this mean, though?

I mean....do you whisper to the PCs "this is sooooo farfetched" as if you're sitting next to them in a movie theater?

I'm joking, but it's to make a point. What is plausible is, usually, a pretty wide range of things. Some are less plausible than others, but still fairly plausible in and of themselves.

True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.

The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.

So my PC who was a farmer might have a brother who is a nobleman?

Yeah, bad example; sorry. But your PC who's a farmer (and 1st level Fighter) might well have a sister who's already a 7th level adventuring Thief.

Do you do this for every family member at the time of character creation? Or only with ones that may be relevant to the PCs story? If the latter, why potentially eliminate or reduce that relevance?

The only thing that's always rolled at char-gen is secondary skill, as it can materially affect a character's abilities (e.g. non-mage characters are by no means guaranteed to be literate, but if your secondary skill comes up as Author then you're guaranteed literacy no matter what). If you're going to be related to a noble, or be one yourself, this is where it'll happen.

Other than that we don't usually bother with character history-family stuff until it's clear the character's going to be more than a one-hit wonder, with very rare exceptions if-when something in the plot tells us we need to know it now.

Once the character's established, at some point the player and I* sit down for an evening with some dice and beer and determine where the PC's from, what else it might have done in life, where it might have been, what is has (left) for a family, and so forth. For family we usually just worry about parents, siblings, and - very rarely - children of the PC; along with ex or current spouses if relevant.

* - if the player wants to. Not all do.

 

[Lanefan]

Again, who says this is the premise of an RPG? Who claims this? I can't think of any tabletop RPG that demands this in the rules.

One could argue the demand is implicitly - and somewhat universally - made by the use of the words "role-playing" in the name of the game-type.

To play a role means, to whatever extent works for the person so doing, inhabiting the character you're trying to portray and then looking out through its eyes. It's this way in theatre, and in films, and pretty much any other situation where you're trying to act as someone who isn't you - which is the very definition of what playing a role means.

If you've ever done any drama classes or halfway-serious acting you'll know this already. If you haven't, I can see how it'd perhaps be a slightly foreign concept when looked at from a distance.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I couldnt disagree more. DL was actively damaged by that bit of unlikely and unbelievable cheese and would have been much better without it.

And LoTR is driven by people not wanting a tyranical force of evil to win and enslave/murder all the good guys. The only backstory that matters in the slightest is Aragorns, and thats exactly the kind of "this guys a special snowflake and your all his sidekicks" adventure thats fine in a novel but a problem in a group activity. No one wants to be the sidekick to your fated hero.

You’re objectively wrong about lord of the rings. Laughably so.