DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?

[hawkeyefan]

As mentioned in my post just above, there's a difference between forcing the material into the game (which is bad) and simply using it as background if the game happens to run on to it naturally (which is fine).

What’s the difference? I mean....what do the players in your game run into that you didn’t place?

What makes one thing “forced” and another “discovered”?

Depends on scale, too.

If the party happens to be passing through a PC's hometown and she takes them to introduce to her family, who cares? Roleplay it out, enjoy it, and move on. No extra work for me-as-GM whatsoever.

But when someone's backstory suggests - or forces, or causes a player to expect/demand - one or more entire adventures be centered on that PC, there's trouble a-brewing.

What trouble do you think is brewing?

When I say backstory, I mean something meaningful....a goal or a secret or something else that can contribute to the ongoing story in a meaningful way.

I don’t mean chatting with grandma.

So you think it may be troublesome to focus on a player offered but of backstory. Why? What trouble?

Heh - my problem right now is I've already got too much story* and nowhere near enough time to play through it all.

* - over and above whatever red herrings the players/PCs themselves might introduce and-or follow.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy player offered material....so I don’t have to come up with so much story myself.

Fair enough, if the adventuring takes place in the same general region as where the character's background is set.

No, the background can always matter. Maybe the PC is from a backwoods farm town....this seems to be the default assumption in many cases, and it’s a pretty common trope in fantasy and adventure fiction. Doesn’t that upbringing always matter yo thee character? They go to the big city and are overwhelmed. Then they go to the really big city and realize just how small their town was. Then they encounter entirely different cultures and so on.

Which raises another slight headache: parties of disparate races and-or cultures are quite likely to hail from widely different places - you can only use the "cosmopolitan port town" trope so many times. Which means if the adventuring tends to happen in one area it's not happening in all the others, thus only those PCs who are from the adventuring area are likely to see their backgrounds come into play.

This isn’t remotely true. Again, I’m not talking about stopping by grandma’s farmhouse for some in character banter. I’m talking about goals that can help move the story forward. Maybe the PCs are from all over the place....but maybe they’ve all been wronged by the same person.

It doesn't even need to be that specific. There’s any number of reasons you can come up with to connect a group together. Very often what I’ve seen is a natural “you help me kill the warlord who destroyed my village and I’ll help you recover the lost artifact” kind of bonding.

 

[prabe]

Sounds as though since your campaigns are sequels to prior campaigns, more or less, you already have your backstories, and enough shared background that blank space for players to add stuff is tight. Given that, your decisions make a sort of sense.

But ..

If I were a player I wouldnt appreciate the GM dragging that characters ex-wife or children into an adventure as some sort of hook. So I wont do it to them. I make my characters backstories short and relatively devoid of details but whats there is mine and i dont want it altered or screwed with. So again, I dont do something to a player that I wouldnt want done to me if the roles were reversed.

If I were a player and had ideas of my character's backstory and they were ignored, it would start to feel to me as though my character were just an interchangeable generic bundle of statistics, and it would be hard for me to stay engaged with whatever the campaign was doing. I don't ask my players for anything I wouldn't do myself as a player.

 

[Lanefan]

What’s the difference? I mean....what do the players in your game run into that you didn’t place?

What makes one thing “forced” and another “discovered”?

By "forced" I mean the game would not have gone there had there been no PC backstory tied to that place.

Let me try to explain a bit differently.

Unless a player has specific ideas (rare) we somewhat randomly determine where the PC was born, where it grew up, etc. Let's say one PC was born and grew up in the town of Tewys, a town near the frontier but not all that close to any significant adventuring sites.

If the party passes through Tewys at some point where they would have passed throuugh it anyway then I've no problem bringing in that bit of backstory, assuming the player hasn't already done so, as it adds some depth to the town and thus the setting. But if they wouldn't otherwise go there, I'm not going to force the party to Tewys just so that bit of backstory can become relevant; nor am I going to place adventures there unless that's where they already would have been.

What trouble do you think is brewing?

When I say backstory, I mean something meaningful....a goal or a secret or something else that can contribute to the ongoing story in a meaningful way.

I don’t mean chatting with grandma.

So you think it may be troublesome to focus on a player offered but of backstory. Why? What trouble?

You answered your own question: the trouble is that you're focusing on one player/PC's story instead of on that of the group as a whole. That's trouble the second any other player feels less-than-equal.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy player offered material....so I don’t have to come up with so much story myself.

Each to their own. Coming up with story has admittedly been a headache for me in past campaigns, but not (yet) in this one.

No, the background can always matter. Maybe the PC is from a backwoods farm town....this seems to be the default assumption in many cases, and it’s a pretty common trope in fantasy and adventure fiction. Doesn’t that upbringing always matter yo thee character? They go to the big city and are overwhelmed. Then they go to the really big city and realize just how small their town was. Then they encounter entirely different cultures and so on.

Sure, and that can (and I hope will) inform the player's roleplay. But for the most part it only matters to that PC's player, and not to me as DM unless the party happen to pass through or close to that backwoods farm town or unless the PC/player pulls the party there for some reason.

This isn’t remotely true. Again, I’m not talking about stopping by grandma’s farmhouse for some in character banter. I’m talking about goals that can help move the story forward. Maybe the PCs are from all over the place....but maybe they’ve all been wronged by the same person.

It doesn't even need to be that specific. There’s any number of reasons you can come up with to connect a group together. Very often what I’ve seen is a natural “you help me kill the warlord who destroyed my village and I’ll help you recover the lost artifact” kind of bonding.

Ah, you're looking at something on a different scale than I am, then. I'm looking at material that exists purely in the background of whatever group story is taking place, where you're looking at material that determines what the story will be, in whole or in part.

There's tons of ways to get parties together, even including ye olde "you all meet in a tavern"; and once in the field their experiences there will either bond them into a group or they won't. I don't feel I need yet another layer of bonding; never mind that even were I to use such things it'd become largely moot after two adventures when 3/4 of the party lineup has turned over - maybe twice!

 

[gepetto]

Sounds as though since your campaigns are sequels to prior campaigns, more or less, you already have your backstories, and enough shared background that blank space for players to add stuff is tight. Given that, your decisions make a sort of sense.

Yes. In fact when I say campaign I mean the entire chain of events that involves those same players and the same group of adventurers roughly. I've noticed people seem to mean what we used to call adventures when they say campaign now.

Like if its lord of the rings. ALL of the books, hobbit to Return of the king is what I mean by our campaign. Seems like a lot of other people would call each individual book its own campaign. Which might by the source of some of the disconnect here.

If I were a player and had ideas of my character's backstory and they were ignored, it would start to feel to me as though my character were just an interchangeable generic bundle of statistics, and it would be hard for me to stay engaged with whatever the campaign was doing. I don't ask my players for anything I wouldn't do myself as a player.

Thats sort of illustrative of the problem. Your backstory is not who you ARE, its who you WERE. A character shouldnt stay frozen in the past, and those things shouldnt matter for very long. Part of the point is that all those things that happened before you became an adventurer were small potatoes. Your world expands exponentially as an adventurer, everything gets bigger and more important the further on you go. What mattered on day 1 of your adventurer career is nothing by day 30. Much less a dozen levels and possibly years of game time further in.

Real people dont stay frozen. At least your not supposed to. If your the same person at 21 as you were at 15 something is wrong. And if your still that person at 30 after you've left home, built a career, seen parts of the world and had some ups and downs all on your own then something is very definitely wrong. Who you started life out as really doesnt matter very much after a few years into independence and adulthood. And thats not even talking about a world full of magic, alternate planes of existence and a dozen intelligent species all living in close proximity.

If backstory has some effects on the game for level 1, maybe level 2 characters, eh I can live with it I guess. I wont be doing it, because I have lots and lots of ideas for low level adventures and dont need any co-authors there. But it should be all done and much bigger and more important things should be happening after that.

 

[prabe]

Yes. In fact when I say campaign I mean the entire chain of events that involves those same players and the same group of adventurers roughly. I've noticed people seem to mean what we used to call adventures when they say campaign now.

Like if its lord of the rings. ALL of the books, hobbit to Return of the king is what I mean by our campaign. Seems like a lot of other people would call each individual book its own campaign. Which might by the source of some of the disconnect here.

Just to be clear about my own campaigns, both of mine are running every other week. One just had Session 46; the other just had Session 13. I didn't start either with much more than an instigating event, involving all the PCs.

Thats sort of illustrative of the problem. Your backstory is not who you ARE, its who you WERE. A character shouldnt stay frozen in the past, and those things shouldnt matter for very long. Part of the point is that all those things that happened before you became an adventurer were small potatoes. Your world expands exponentially as an adventurer, everything gets bigger and more important the further on you go. What mattered on day 1 of your adventurer career is nothing by day 30. Much less a dozen levels and possibly years of game time further in.

Part of what I specifically ask for in backstories is why the characters are adventurers. Or at least, why you're at the instigating event. Call-backs to previous events happen from time to time; sometimes they're to things from backstories, sometimes they're to things from previous sessions.

Real people dont stay frozen. At least your not supposed to. If your the same person at 21 as you were at 15 something is wrong. And if your still that person at 30 after you've left home, built a career, seen parts of the world and had some ups and downs all on your own then something is very definitely wrong. Who you started life out as really doesnt matter very much after a few years into independence and adulthood.

I think of people more as onions. I am not the same person I was at nineteen, but I contain that person, and I would not be who I am now without having been that person.

If backstory has some effects on the game for level 1, maybe level 2 characters, eh I can live with it I guess. I wont be doing it, because I have lots and lots of ideas for low level adventures and dont need any co-authors there. But it should be all done and much bigger and more important things should be happening after that.

Heh. The longer-running campaign is still actively pursuing threads from at least one backstory, and they're level 11. They had a thread from another backstory that didn't get resolved until Session 31, and the resolution got them to level 8. Your campaign/s work for you and your players; my campaigns work for me and my players. Broader takeaway is there's no single right answer on this, as with many gaming-related things.

 

[haakon1]

For me, it depends on what the player's give me to work with. Because I run very long campaigns and often start with folks who either haven't played in decades or never played, I've rarely seen players with elaborate backstories at the start (often I provide more than the player did). Some players will flesh out the backstory as the campaign goes on, or start new stories with NPC's (romance, etc.) that can become a springboard for more stories.

What I definitely don't like to do is "use backstory" (original or "revealed" later) as a cudgel against the player. I don't want it to be like "24" where Jack Bauer having a daughter means she's going to be kidnapped several times. I like it more like "Hawaii Five-O", where the backstory of say, Junior Raines is built out over time, and only rarely is about action, but leads to character-driven stories.

 

[pemerton]

I would say it's 30 years, maybe more, since I've run a game where the basic narrative drive didn't come from the motivations/aspirations/relationships etc the players have built into their PCs.

Some of this will be established as part of PC build. A lot of it emerges during play.

(For a one-shot, during play can take place within that single session. There's nothing special about one-shots as far as backgrounds are concerned.)

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Enough for players to feel like their PC's did indeed come from THIS campaign world rather than drop in out of the sky from another parallel dimension, but I've come to believe strongly that character backgrounds are for PLAYER usage, not DM usage. By the time my campaigns are beginning I've already built them sufficiently to run the entire campaign. I don't need player input to then rearrange the campaign setting for me just so that they can have a special snowflake niche in the adventures that are about to happen. The adventures are about to feature them exclusively anyway, I don't need (or want) to build the world around them as such.

Backgrounds are for players to use to get a handle on their characters [where they came from, where they are when the game starts, where they as players plan on taking them PRIOR to finding that their plans may change as they begin interacting with the setting and ongoing game], not for ME as DM to use to make adventures revolve around them as individuals in particular. Such occasions to use particular PC's and their personal backgrounds to develop SPECIAL adventures LATER as time and opportunity permits will undoubtedly arise, but I don't need that information to build the world and adventures around even before play begins. In fact, if I am not prepared as DM to run a campaign without ever having a word of background from any player about their individual PC then I haven't actually done my job as DM, have I?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Ah, you're looking at something on a different scale than I am, then. I'm looking at material that exists purely in the background of whatever group story is taking place, where you're looking at material that determines what the story will be, in whole or in part.

There's tons of ways to get parties together, even including ye olde "you all meet in a tavern"; and once in the field their experiences there will either bond them into a group or they won't. I don't feel I need yet another layer of bonding; never mind that even were I to use such things it'd become largely moot after two adventures when 3/4 of the party lineup has turned over - maybe twice!

Yeah, I am talking about something more...hefty is probably a good word for it. The PC already has a Background as part of character creation (in 5E anyway) so that should help give them a sense of character history and outlook.

But what I’m talking about is something more from that history. Some kind of goal or motivation for being an adventurer. It doesn’t have to define them in every way like Batman’s origin story, although it could. Alternatively, depending on the backstory of the character, I may lift elements of them for play. These need not be written before hand....they may come up as the player shapes the character in play. Perhaps a PC with the Soldier background decides that he spent time in a mercenary company. Okay cool....what company? What was the company like? Why did he leave?

Those questions suggest all manner of stories.

In fact, if I am not prepared as DM to run a campaign without ever having a word of background from any player about their individual PC then I haven't actually done my job as DM, have I?

I don’t think that’s true, no. It may be true, depending on how you like to run a game. But considering I do exactly what you’re describing as my default mode of DMing, I would have to say that it is not universal.

 

[Maestrino]

This whole discussion seems to come down to whether you're the kind of DM that plots out an entire campaign and doesn't want any player backstories derailing "your" campaign, or whether you're the kind of DM that comes up with major plot hooks that can be dropped into pretty much any situation to steer your campagn while still letting your players feel like they're in a wide-open sandbox.

EXAMPLE:
Scenario 1: You have a plot set up to take place in Neverwinter. Come hell or high water, these events will take place in Neverwinter, no matter how you have to get the party there. It's a cool plot

Scenario 2: You have a plot hook that the PCs will find out one of their informants has been captured and thrown in prison. Could happen pretty much anywhere. Wait, one of the characters has some backstory in Neverwinter? Left their cousin for dead in Neverwinter and ran away to become an adventurer? The characters are going to be on their way to Luskan and pass right by Neverwinter anyway? The NPC is now in prison in Neverwinter. The PCs now want to stop to break her out on the way to Luskan. Now one PC reluctantly comes along, but is on edge the whole time because they're worried someone will recognize them. What if that cousin isn't dead? What if the cousin has a position of some power in Neverwinter now, and has been dreaming about revenge for years? This could turn into a dozen game sessions in Neverwinter.

In Scenario 2, is the rest of the party "bored" because this plot hook only ties in to one PCs backstory? Hell no, they're planning a prison break, which is what they would have been doing in Scenario 1 anyway, but now they have extra reason to be sneaky and avoid detection.