the players don't exist in a vacuum. They may start out with no living relatives and no friends, but that changes as the game goes by. Soon, you have a party that, like it or not, as interacted with countless npc's, and made friends and foes alike.
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My character started out as an urchin, no family of friends, and almost no background. But he has plenty of roots.
This seems like the Conan-esque approach to me: start out rootless, and then make your mark on the world through actual play. It's also the general vibe that I get from the classic D&D books (eg Gygax's PHB and DMG).
in my era Conan was an excellent example of someone who starts off a an adventurer who hooks up with other people, starts leading groups of people, eventually ends up a king. The very kind of model which we had adventures following. It seems as though there were not so many rootless wanderers around in the books I was reading around then.
I don't know much about D&D books (I've read some Dragonlance, but that's it), but I find it interesting that you see Conan as an
alternative to a rootless wanderer. I tend to see him as an example of one. In RPGing terms, you start with no real backstory or connections, but you build them up through play.
A contrast, for me, would be LotR (or Dragonlance), where the protagonists start already connected, and those connections drive their adventures. Both Conan and Aragorn become kings, but in Conan's case it is self-aggrandisement, whereas in Aragorn's case it is the reaisation of a legacy. Both Conan and the Fellowship explore underground ruins, but in Conan's case he's hunting for treasure, whereas when the Fellowship enters Moria Gimli is looking for his cousin Balin and Gandalf is doomed to meet his nemesis.
My sense from the OP was that [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] is looking for something less Conan-esque and more LotR-ish, but maybe I misread.
Not only are the players basically playing ciphers, but, even when ties to the game world are dangled in front of them, with lots of carrot, they still don't bite and go back to being Fytor the Fighter. Getting players to buy into a setting and getting them to actually care about the setting can be very, very difficult.
<snip>
It just can be so frustrating for the DM who is trying to cement the characters into the setting and they aren't having any of it.
It would be frustrating for me also as a DM if none of the PCs bit on any of the setting-rich bait I was laying out, and preferred to remain rootless.
Well, part of the issue here is that the GM's setting is often less fascinating to people who aren't the GM! I think the best solution here is to let the
players author the relevant parts of the setting, with the GM then incorporating the things the players care about. This is what [MENTION=3587]Henrix[/MENTION] was talking about upthread.
A little story.
<snip nice actual play example?
now I am scrambling to retrofit my character with a back story and goals.
So, what changed? Why did I create a rootless vagabond at first, and now I'm writing up a back story? Simple: Now, back story matters.
<snip>
in a sandbox campaign, your character's decisions make a difference. If you want to pursue your nemesis across the earth instead of diving into the dungeon of the week, that's what you do. If you don't have goals, you're going to either sit around doing nothing, or tag boringly after the PCs who do have goals.
To get players to invest in back story, you have to give them a reason to.
<snip>
It's only worth coming up with goals if you have the freedom to pursue them.
I don't think a sandbox is the only way to make player/PC goals and backstory matter, but I agree absolutely that they are pointless if the players aren't going to be free to act on them, in a way that actually makes a difference to the campaign.
If the dungeon crawl is going to be the same either way, and the only point of my being a member of the guild of whatever is that the guildmaster will tell me to go into the dungeon to rescue the whatever-prize - whereas otherwise my motive for going into the dungeon would simply be the metagame ones of XP and loot - then what's the point of backstory? If a GM wants players to be motivated to create real characters, those characters have to make a real impact on the game, not just be a veneer of flavour pasted over another GM-chosen-dungeon-of-the-week.
Dhalia Doomfey and the Tower of Whispers
Another nice example of PC goals actually mattering to play,hence giving the players a reason to come up with some. (Also, off-topic, am I right in assuming that Dhalia Doomfey is the character who was looking for rocket ships?)
To finish off, here are some discussions around these issues of setting and characterisation that I think are relevant:
[sblock]
Ron Edwards
[W]e’re talking about a game text which includes a detailed setting, in which the various locations, problems, and NPCs . . . are easily identifiable or can easily be created once you’ve studied it in some detail. Enjoyment of
the setting’s content as such is one of the intended joys and significant features of play.
Setting therefore becomes a one-step removed education and appreciation project. There’s a big book about the setting. The GM reads the book. Then, the players enjoy the setting, or rather enjoy the GM’s enjoyment of the setting, by using play as a proxy. As one text puts it, the GM is the lens through which the players see the setting. The story is an experiential hook for continuing to look through the lens. This kind of play is often called setting-heavy, but as I see it, when playing in this fashion, the goal of having the players enjoy the setting as such is actually at considerable risk. It’s hard to parse the relationship between (1) the story, first as created, then as played; and (2) the setting both as a source for conflicts (“adventures”) and something which might be changed by them.. . .
n a way, setting is “everything” for such play in the GM’s mind, but “nothing” for play in the players’. Perhaps this is what leads to those monstrous textual setting histories in the books, with the only people who read them (or care) being their authors and the GMs.[/sblock]
[sblock]Christopher Kubasik
The rules and wargaming baggage of most roleplaying games lead to a certain kind of story: stories filled with ambitionless mercenaries who wait around in bars for employment; heroes who have no reason to get out of bed in the morning but for the vile plans of a someone they've never met . . . [W]e're discussing in this series Story Entertainments [a new piece of jargon]. These improvised stories are similar in nature to roleplaying games, but are driven by the emotions and personal goals of the characters . . . The tales of a story entertainment are based not on the success of actions, but on the choice of actions; not the manipulation of rules, but the manipulation of narrative tools.
The primary tool is Character. Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake character for characterization.
Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By "seeing" how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page.
But a person thus described is not a character. . . .
Character is action. That's a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games and story entertainments. This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character's actions.
But what actions? Not every action is true to a character; it is not enough to haphazardly do things in the name of action. Instead, actions must grow from the roots of Goals. A characterization imbued with a Goal that leads to action is a character.[/sblock]
If the players' creation of goals for their PCs is given priority, and the creation and use of the setting is subordinated to that, rather than vice versa, I think fewer rootless vagabons will be the outcome.
