How much back story do you allow/expect at the start of the game?

[Desdichado]

[MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION], the discussion was for a DM who just tossed out character backgrounds unread if they were too long. So my whole point here is players who are engaged to write vs. DM discarding with no warning.

Sure, if the DM has put guidelines out there that's a different story. I don't understand them but it's your table. But throwing caveats on afterward does not change the initial discussion point - just throwing out a player's 10+ page backstory unread is a di-dastardly move.

Do you really need to understand it? Can you not just accept the fact that the way you play isn't the OneTrueWay™ and that if you have a different preferred playstyle and can't be flexible enough to work with the needs of some other gamer, that it's OK just to not play with them?

I require no backstory, but what I prefer to see isn't backstory anyway—I'd prefer to know something about what your character did in the last 24-48 hours or so before play starts than what his childhood was like. Also; I like little one-paragraph vignettes that players can come up with together wherein their characters had some kind of past interaction and actually know each other. This can be as formal as the Phase Trio minigame from FATE (which I like MUCH better than "backstory"), or more informal, but either way, it's likely to be more useful to both the player himself and the GM than a character biographical short story.

 

[Blue]

Do you really need to understand it? Can you not just accept the fact that the way you play isn't the OneTrueWay™ and that if you have a different preferred playstyle and can't be flexible enough to work with the needs of some other gamer, that it's OK just to not play with them?

Wow, nice personal attacks. When you need to attack the poster instead of discussing the ideas, it doesn't provide a lot of support for your viewpoint.

Especially when you don't actually address the point you quoted. Let me try it again: Player goes through the trouble to write a backstory. DM throws it away unread.

Please address that. Or, well, please address that if you can keep it civil and not do personal attacks.

 

[Desdichado]

Wow, nice personal attacks. When you need to attack the poster instead of discussing the ideas, it doesn't provide a lot of support for your viewpoint.

Especially when you don't actually address the point you quoted. Let me try it again: Player goes through the trouble to write a backstory. DM throws it away unread.

Please address that. Or, well, please address that if you can keep it civil and not do personal attacks.

Don't be absurd. That is in no way a personal attack, and calling it one doesn't change reality. And if you can't tell that I did absolutely address exactly your point, and in a civil manner too, then you're not tall enough for this ride. You're acting too emotionally incontinent to have this discussion; you clearly are too emotionally invested in doing things your way to be respectful of anyone else's playstyle.

Your post is reported.

 

[Ovinomancer]

[MENTION=2205]Hobo[/MENTION]! How's tricks! Cantankerous and lovable as always.

 

[ART!]

I never ask or expect my players to read more than one page of normal-sized text in a standard font, so I would ask that they give me no more than that, or if they do to not expect me to read it all at once or soon. My players don't write up much of that sort of thing, so I'm safe for now!

 

[Mort]

I require no backstory, but what I prefer to see isn't backstory anyway—I'd prefer to know something about what your character did in the last 24-48 hours or so before play starts than what his childhood was like. Also; I like little one-paragraph vignettes that players can come up with together wherein their characters had some kind of past interaction and actually know each other. This can be as formal as the Phase Trio minigame from FATE (which I like MUCH better than "backstory"), or more informal, but either way, it's likely to be more useful to both the player himself and the GM than a character biographical short story.

This is a good approach and one I gravitate to more and more myself. I haven't done one paragraph vignettes, but the players do come up with a shared history. In our current campaign and just happened right before the first session, but it has had a nice effect of adding to group cohesion.

 

[Nytmare]

I've recently fallen in love with Blades in the Dark, and part of the idea for the game is that your character's backstory isn't something you deal with beyond a one word answer as to where your family is from, a 3 or 4 word answer as to what you used to do before you became a no good scoundrel, and descriptions of 3 NPCs from your past (a friend, a rival, and a purveyor of whatever your bad habit is). Beyond that, everybody (players and GM alike) paint a picture of each character as the game progresses and you answer more and more questions about why, what, and who they are by roleplaying flashbacks.

Beyond that, and what I usually prefer to do when I'm running a D&D campaign is to have a lengthier, but broad-strokes conversation about a character's background while a person is making said character; but if anything, to only have a written, paragraph-length Cliff's notes snippet of what the other characters would know. Basically what you'd expect a person to have if they were playing a character in a one-shot game.

 

[Desdichado]

[MENTION=2205]Hobo[/MENTION]! How's tricks! Cantankerous and lovable as always.

Some things never change. And shouldn't.

Can't complain. I don't frequent these parts all that often anymore, but an unrelated search brought me to a page here, and I thought I'd pop in and see what people are talking about briefly.

 

[Desdichado]

I've recently fallen in love with Blades in the Dark, and part of the idea for the game is that your character's backstory isn't something you deal with beyond a one word answer as to where your family is from, a 3 or 4 word answer as to what you used to do before you became a no good scoundrel, and descriptions of 3 NPCs from your past (a friend, a rival, and a purveyor of whatever your bad habit is). Beyond that, everybody (players and GM alike) paint a picture of each character as the game progresses and you answer more and more questions about why, what, and who they are by roleplaying flashbacks.

That's not terribly different than the White Star serials idea; which is another one I like. The way that they do it is randomized and comes with modest mechanical implications, but I still like the notion of a simple form-fill background creator. Each line gets little more than a sentence or even sentence fragment.

• Home(world)—White Star is space opera, so it has options like "high gravity world" or "Between the stars" for people born in mobile star fleet environments rather than a "world" per se. But the idea can be easily adapted to fantasy.
• Family—ranges from "You have a strong relationship with your family" down to "You have an antagonistic relationship with your family" and at the end "You have no idea who your family is and were raised as an orphan."
• Youth—presumes that you had a more adventurous than normal childhood; ranging from "You were sold into slavery as a child" to "You are a graduate of a military boarding school."
• First Adventure—everything from "Captured by Outlaws"; "Your home planet was destroyed" to "Hired as an assistant"
• Adversaries—I love this one; a built in nemesis who can show up (or have minions who do so) to try and thwart your plans during the campaign. The flipside of this is...
• Allies—everything from a loyal street rat who can give you information to a wise old space wizard (Old Ben Kenobi) who pops in and checks on you every so often.
• Critical Event—a more risky proposition (from both the player and GM's perspective); everything from "You won a starship in a game of chance" to "Your character died during chargen a la Traveller. Start over!"

I'm not suggesting that this exact method is desirable, but I do think that both that and the Fate Phase Trio systems are optimized for coming up with stuff that's actually useful and interesting in game and tends to avoid the drawn out fan-fiction-like nature of character backgrounds that, honestly, both players and GMs aren't quite sure what to do with.

All that said; I'm not against players writing up lengthy character bios if they want to. Like some posters have said here earlier, though—I can't guarantee that I'll read them, and even if I do, that I'll remember anything substantive from it after the fact. And don't come crying to me if you put all that work into it and your character gets killed by a flubbed roll half an hour into the first session (honestly; that isn't very likely. But it could happen.) I just prefer backgrounds that are more useful and interesting than a short story. While in general, I'm not necessarily a fan of coming up with more rules, I have seen a few systems that actually work very well to create character backgrounds that are useful. The Phase Trio works great at generating role-playing opportunities between players, and the White Star system is chock-full of actual, usable things that a GM can really sink his teeth into to create interesting, character-specific campaign elements.

 

[Sunseeker]

Sounds like a lot of people have experiences with terrible DM's.

Not surprising, there are plenty of terrible DMs.

I don't mind putting friends and family in peril, directly, indrectly and so forth, but only if the adventurers are people worthy of note. Sure, the bad-guy might slaughter your home town, but not because of you and even then only because he's the sort of type to do that anyway, and the town was in his path.

But really if I can't motivate players with my plot hooks, killing their friends won't help any.