Lanefan
Victoria Rules
You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes after that all you can do is drown it, 'cause it ain't gonna drink.
Getting people to write up a backstory (particularly if they don't wnat to and-or have no ideas for such) is probably more headache-inducing than it's worth. Sometimes, I'll dream stuff up on the fly for my characters (have I ever been to this town? ::roll:: nope, never even heard of it), erring on the side of bland and inocuous. But "what do you fear" type questions just annoy me.
That said, if anyone *does* come up with a back-story you've got something to build on.
Sometimes, the DM will have dreamed up some tables to determine roughly where you're from, whether you have any siblings, whether your parents are still alive, whether any of those people are significant somehow (being Dwalin the Dwarf is one thing, being Dwalin brother of Balin the Thunderer, Smiter of Giants is another thing entirely!), and that right there can lead a player into back-story ideas.
My 3e Illusionist, it turned out, came from a family of farmers and - according to DM roll - had an identical twin sister. It took a couple of pages of small type to explain how she ever wound up as an Illusionist (the sister went into Necromancy), but it was fun to do.
Lanefan
Getting people to write up a backstory (particularly if they don't wnat to and-or have no ideas for such) is probably more headache-inducing than it's worth. Sometimes, I'll dream stuff up on the fly for my characters (have I ever been to this town? ::roll:: nope, never even heard of it), erring on the side of bland and inocuous. But "what do you fear" type questions just annoy me.
That said, if anyone *does* come up with a back-story you've got something to build on.
Sometimes, the DM will have dreamed up some tables to determine roughly where you're from, whether you have any siblings, whether your parents are still alive, whether any of those people are significant somehow (being Dwalin the Dwarf is one thing, being Dwalin brother of Balin the Thunderer, Smiter of Giants is another thing entirely!), and that right there can lead a player into back-story ideas.
My 3e Illusionist, it turned out, came from a family of farmers and - according to DM roll - had an identical twin sister. It took a couple of pages of small type to explain how she ever wound up as an Illusionist (the sister went into Necromancy), but it was fun to do.
Lanefan