oh sure, but a lot of people like how the starter game that's going to introduce a lot of people to 5e encourages this sort of behavior instead of fostering the idea that PCs are just completely independent entities to the story.I've heard good things about it, so I'm not surprised. I gather it's more the exception than the rule, even among 5E Adventure Books, though.
man I don't see how that's "undue". it's like giving out xp to the player who wrote out a backstory, if you want your character to be tied to the story you can write one out. if a player doesn't want to do something that they would get rewarded for then that's kind of on them imo.I run homebrew, but trying to get some players (past and present) to do backstories would be largely similar to trying to squeeze water from a stone.
This would leave me-as-DM in the unpleasant position of either having to ignore the backstories that did get done, or unduly favouring/focusing on those PCs with backstories over those without. Never mind some players tend to go through characters at a rather rapid rate...
If everyone was willing and enthused about doing backstories that'd be different.