Character prologues - Going beyond backgrounds

[Jack7]

Halivar all of my (party) characters have well developed backgrounds which occasionally they explore by back-story adventures. As you suggested.

However I agree with the points made by most everyone else.

The reasons I agree are these. Prologues are of little value (except in writing) in a genre devoted mostly to action and heroism. Only after the heroism is actually established by action does the prologue make for an interesting fleshing out of behavioral motivations.

Secondly there is no real danger. In present time games the player is not assured of survival (or definitely shouldn't be). Anything he may encounter in the present or near future may be lethal. But a prologue that merely explains behavior without inflicting any real sense of danger or potential for danger doesn't really establish heroism, as much as it does detail behavior (behavior you know cannot really endanger the character). Therefore it is best written, not acted out, because when role played it feels fake. As if the outcome and survival is already pre-determined. There are also other more technical reasons but they aren't important to detail.

However there are exceptions and I think your idea can work with certain caveats. This is how we do it, and it may work for you as well.

After your characters have developed for awhile then play a backstory adventure. However I agree very much with Umbran and how and why, this is an exercise best conducted with single players or very small sub-groups.

In the backstory adventures introduce things that allow the players to train future adventuring skills, and give them things to do which are semi-heroic and dangerous, but not lethal. (They are, barring some very strange twist of fate or magic or miracle gonna survive it anyways and they are already aware of this.) However the real trick is to make the things they do dangerous not only to the character involved (as in they can be hurt badly or lose something of real value - which they may later want to recover and this is a good future adventure or campaign hook) but to friends, lovers, and family caught up in the prologue adventures.

A family member may be slain, a friend kidnapped or disappears, a chronic disease is contracted, an heirloom is stolen, a reckless decision leads to manslaughter... the possibilities are nearly endless. And nearly every possibility may lead to a future adventure or campaign while at the same time adding depth to the character.

The prologue adventure cannot be lethal, but it can still be very dangerous (in a psychological, economic, cultural, professional, or even personal/reputation sense) and therefore worthwhile to pursue. But in my opinion, for the reasons listed above, you can't really engage in a good prologue background story until the character is developed, and you can't make it really interesting unless you can edgier something important to them other than their own life.

And the prologue should be dangerous (in that sense), should add to the character's nature, it should be truly interesting and geared to that character specifically, and it should give the character interesting things to do that may be similar to but not directly related to their eventual adventuring profession. (Unfulfilled Quests are always good prologue adventures and good future adventure ideas - a kid undertakes a Quest he is unprepared for and unable to complete due to inexperience or lack of support, tools, and training, and that can be played as a prologue, then later taken up by the whole party as "Unfinished Business." Thus you have both a good adventure hook, and an explanation for past or present behavior/motivations.) Other kinds of prologue adventures can also be useful, it well constructed. For instance some of my player characters Vad.

Vadding has been an extremely good source of both prologue and especially of single-mission adventures for my PCs and is very dangerous in its own right. Plus it gives them a chance to practice survival and stealth skills, things they will later benefit from knowing as adventurers.

Anyway that is my take on the matter.

Good luck with it, and if you vary your approach a little it might work out well for both you and your players.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

At the onset of my longest and most successful campaign, I had multiple background sessions one-on-one with each player.

My reasoning behind this was that we had been discussing the campaign for nearly a year before we actually played, and it gave the players plenty of time (As we were finishing another campaign) to think about what they wanted to do, play, and accomplish. I allowed each of them to flesh out some of the areas that I had already created in the world, defined by the culture that they wanted to embody (or perhaps be ostracized from) and therefore play in.

This created an investment in the world, and when time actually came to build their characters, I sat down and worked out fairly detailed background and histories with each of them individually.

Once the characters were built, I had developed mini-adventures to bring the entirely unrelated characters together to the central point to start the campaign.

In short, it was a roaring success, and throughout the 15 month long campaign (which was played twice a week for 6+ hour long sessions) only two characters were "swapped" and both were decisions made for entirely correct reasons, and one character died. Other than that, they played their characters from level 1 to level 30 with brilliance and vigor and role-playing mastery that I had never seen before or since.

So, if your group is ready to really invest into their characters, it can be done, and it can work out, but as Kzach and others have said, if it is not what your group wants, it will be a terrible waste of time and probably end the game before it ever begins.

 

[Jhaelen]

Each ancillary character has a couple (two or three at the most) scripted responses to important events, such as characters that die, betray the main character, or perform some important sacrifice for the main character.

I'd hate that.
Playing prologues can be fun - but only as a (short) solo session for the character in question.

There may be groups that would enjoy that kind of thing, but frankly I haven't met any.

 

[Mark CMG]

Interesting plan, Halivar. As I am doing the final play through for the Medieval Fantasy Wargame and Roleplaying System, we've done something similar. It's a pared down version of what you plan but has the same intent. Character creation for this system begins with background and player options are chosen with that background in mind. It's fine with me if someone wants to reverse engineer their character with the game mechanics in mind but I find if they can justify those choices by starting with a background, they become more invested up front, have a greater propensity for roleplaying, and find the gaming experience more immersive. Granted, the first session is about half kicking around character background ideas followed by the second half with some light roleplaying, but in my experience that one session tends to be enough. The second session becomes about building the character mechanically albeit guided by the background and how that manifested in the early roleplaying. The approach strikes a nice balance between the two faces of RPGs, RPing and Ging.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I would not spend 5 sessions going through this. That is a lot.

Instead, have each character do a 5 minute talk about their character, with no game mechanics allowed. And let the other players ask questions. Or something like that.

In my last game, I used the old earthdawn cards (I think) that had tarot-like cards with a positive and negative idea on each end of the card. Each character drew three of them and had to work the ideas into their backstory, somehow. It was good, adding a bit of randomness to the backstory, but not a lot. The characters were a bit off the beaten path that way, and it only took a half hour to do four characters.

 

[delericho]

I wouldn't do that, but if you and your players want to, then go for it.

In general, I think my current group have found a decent balance when it comes to character backgrounds. At the start of the campaign, we have a single character creation/party formation session, during which we go through the mechanics of building the characters, and then spend some time working out both a brief character background and the details of how the group got together.

If players then want to detail their background beyond that then they are free to do so, but it certainly isn't required, and there's no in-game benefit to doing so. In actual fact, I discourage overly detailed character backgrounds - tying too much down can actually reduce fun later in the campaign because it's harder to then pull in the "long-lost brother" or other previously-undefined detail.

It hasn't happened so far with the current group, but if we had a player who wanted to play but couldn't make that first session, then I would expect a four-sentence background for the character:

The first sentence is the anecdote, some aspect about the character's past. It could be almost anything. A classic example would be "I used to be a Jedi, the same as your father." The second sentence is the quirk, something about the character's present. "He's a card player, a gambler, a scoundrel. You'd like him." The third is the goal, something about the character's future. "I want to come with you... I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father." And the fourth is the secret, which can either be something the character wants to find out, or something the character hopes other people don't find out. "Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father..."

Obviously, when it comes to putting the group together, the absentee player really has to just go along with whatever the rest of us agree on!

 

[Halivar]

My new tack is to make it opt-in and run separately.

Based on you guys' feedback I am not quite so enthusiastic about forcing anyone into this idea.

 

[Rune]

I think it would be fun as long as none of it was pre-scripted.

 

[Umbran]

Prologues are of little value (except in writing) in a genre devoted mostly to action and heroism. Only after the heroism is actually established by action does the prologue make for an interesting fleshing out of behavioral motivations.

I think this may depend upon what you mean by "devoted to", but I'm pretty sure I disagree.

It is my experience that players feel far more connection to things they've played through than things that are just written in a couple of sentences in an e-mail. If the past is supposed to motivate the present, if the player is to feel invested in the character's past, then playing through some of it can pay off.

Secondly there is no real danger.

There is no real physical danger to the body of the character, at least in bog-standard D&D. But heroism isn't just about facing death - it is about facing fears and taking risks for a good cause. As has often been discussed, there's no reason why character death should be the only meaningful risk.

Yes, there are some few players who only react to risk of death, but for many that may well be because GMs don't establish early on that there are other things to lose. And prologues are very good for doing just that.

Now, getting back to "devoted to" - you seem to suggest that if the game is "devoted to" action and heroism, then that's the only thing of value. I think that's hardly the case. First off, there's the simple tutorial. There's value in getting players acquainted with the mechanics of their particular character before setting them into a scenario when not knowing them can get them killed.

Next, a prologue isn't necessarily about just what the player has written down about his past. It can also include setting elements that the GM has in play that the player hasn't yet seen.

Then, if the GM himself is good at role-play, a prologue allows the player to establish some of the character's personality a bit more strongly before getting mixed in with everyone else. Starting group sessions are generally about getting to know others - a prologue can be about getting to know yourself.

The best prologues I've ever been involved with did all these things, and I think helped make the associated game far more successful than if the GM had just dumped the characters together with each having only some paragraphs of background in e-mails.

 

[KidSnide]

I've done a number of things kind of like what you describe, but I'd agree with the general advice that this particular approach doesn't sound ideal.

• Handing out NPCs for players to play for a session is a very useful technique. It lets you put the camera on an interaction that is important to the story, but doesn't involve all the PCs, and it's a fun way to let the players pilot different race/class combinations.
  
  That said, it is important to let the players play their characters. Playing alternate characters is a fun change from a regular game, but players mostly want to play their characters. Starting off playing alternates for the first 4 out of 5 sessions is too much, too soon.
  
• Playing out a scene that happened a long time ago can also be good fun, but it can also be deadly boring. Because the scene has already happened, the players know that they aren't changing anything (barring some strange time mechanics). Because there is no "effect" at stake, it is important that the prologue scene provide a crap load of information. Presumably, some of that information will be about the character (which is a lot more interesting after you've adventured with the character for a while), but you will engage the other players more if you provide useful, actionable information on the current game.
  
  So, I'd say that - if you want to have these prologue adventures - do them later, once the characters are established. And time those adventures so you can provide useful information about an existing setting/problem/situation that the players care about.
  
• As a lighter-weight alternative, may I suggest dividing your group in half and running a pair of short sessions in which subsets of the party meet and have some sort of formative experience together? That way, the players get some extra spotlight on their first adventure (because they have to share it with fewer other players) and some relationships already exist when the party meets as a whole.
  
  As an added bonus, this approach takes a lot less work than designing a formative adventure for each PC.

-KS