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

[pemerton]

Well, I'm confused. If you as GM want/allow the PCs to have backstories, then you should run as session zero where the players create their characters and integrate their backstories into the campaign. All aspects of caharacter integration should be a joint effort between the players and the GM.

My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there.

In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.

 

[Fenris-77]

My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there.

In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.

This does work, and can work very well indeed if you have the right player buy in. What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D. That's not a criticism at all though. It's not the standard to the extent that some people don't even really seem to grok what it means. That's also not a criticism. I like the approach, but I find it's a tough sell for more traditional DMs and tables.

 

[prabe]

My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there.

In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.

I agree, though I'd be more inclined to say the campaign will take care of itself. The players have their characters; I have the world. Obviously, not everyone works that way.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This does work, and can work very well indeed if you have the right player buy in. What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D. That's not a criticism at all though. It's not the standard to the extent that some people don't even really seem to grok what it means. That's also not a criticism. I like the approach, but I find it's a tough sell for more traditional DMs and tables.

This is very true. I think that what happens a lot of time is that these topics come up in the General RPG Forum, but references “DM” instead of “GM”, and so half the folks wind up discussing according to D&D and the other half are discussing RPGs generally.

In this case, I think the approach is fairly well understood, except at its most extreme. But as is often the case in these discussions, when folks assume the worst and most degenerate form of play, we don’t get very far.

I mean, we could assume that GM driven play consists of the GM writing a novel in game form with the PCs as protagonists, and they progress exactly as pre-ordained. But I don’t think anyone who’s advocating for the GM as sole arbiter of the fiction is going to that extreme.

It’d help if others did the same.

 

[pemerton]

LoTR is driven by people not wanting a tyranical force of evil to win and enslave/murder all the good guys. The only backstory that matters in the slightest is Aragorns

I think this is a very weak reading of LotR.

Start with Frodo and Sam (who are probably the two most inter-twined characters in the story):

* Frodo taught Sam his letters; Sam starts out on the adventure as Frodo's loyal sidekick; by the end of the adventure Sam has become an autonomous person able to pursue his own vision of personal and social good (everything from defeating Shelob, to carrying the ring, to replanting the party tree, to becoming Mayor of the Shire effectively for life);

* Frodo was "meant to have" the ring, because he inherited it from Bilbo, who was meant to find it; Frodo suffers as a result of his burden, literally as a ring-bearer, and in various other ways (Morgul blade, Shelob's sting, betrayal of and by Gollum, etc);

* Frodo is Bilbo's heir in other ways too: he wears the mithril coat, which establishes his affinity with dwarves; he can speak and read in Elvish, which establishes his affinity with elves (we first see this when he meets Gildor and friends in the Shire, but it is reiterated throughout Books 1, 2 and 3); he is master of Bag End, which provides a focal point both for the opening of the adventure (when Gandalf tells him the story of the ring) and its conclusion (when the Shire is scoured).​

There's no doubt more that could be said, but those are some of the obvious ways in which Frodo and Sam's backstory matters to the story. And the story is obviously far more powerful and evocative as a work of romantic fantasy (or "fairy tale", to use JRRT's nomenclature) because it is Gollum who proves to be the vehicle of Frodo's redemption, and Sam (not an elf-lord) who rescues Frodo from Shelob and Cirith Ungol, and the Shire (not, say, Bree) that has to be saved from Saruman's final work of "mischief in a mean way", etc.

The same sort of account could obviously be given for Aragorn and Gandalf (the other two main characters). Pippin, Merry, Boromir, Faramir and Eowyn also have meaningful backstories the inform their place and actions in the story, but they are a little more secondary.

Gimli and Legolas are probably more secondary still - there most straightforward contributios are to be the dwarf and the elf - but even then their backstories are hardly irrelevant, as begins to come out in the Moria sequence, comes out more fully in Lothlorien, and then plays out in the encounter with Eomer, at Helm's Deep, and when they take the Paths of the Dead with Aragorn. You can't just plug a dragonborn and a half-orc into the story and have it remain much the same.

You dont get a strong character or anything interesting from a couple paragraphs about back when you were a turnip farmer.

In that case, why would someone choose that as their PC's backstory?

Luke Skywalker is the son of a great pilot and Jedi killed by the evil wizard henchman of the evil emperor.

Han Solo owns the fastest ship in the galaxy that he won in a dubious bet.

Ged is known to be a powerful wizard in waiting, if memory serves correctly given his true name by Ogion, the most powerful wizard on Gont. As a boy he conjures up a mist to defeat the invaders of his village, and he goes on to be the strongest pupil in his wizard shcool.

Stephen Strange was a great surgeon who lost the use of his hands and travelled to the "mysterious east" in search of a cure, where he learned wisdom and the magic of the Ancient One.

In my first Rolemaster campaign, Franklin of Five Oaks spent his youth hanging out with the trader (name now forgotten, but I think it's in the City of GH boxed set) and checking out the trinkets while being trained by a mystic who lived in a great hollow tree outside the village, living as a hermit lest his enemies track him down.

In the Burning Wheel game I GM, the wizard Jobe's brother was possessed by a balrog, and Jobe's ambition was to free him from possession. (In play, it ended up that the brother was killed by another PC, who had studied under the possessed brother and been mistreated, even tortured, by him, and was finally able to get her revenge.)

In my current Classic Traveller campaign, Vincenzo von Hallucida won his yacht by cheating at cards (service: noble; DEX: 12; skills: not much, but includes Gambling; mustering out: one roll, giving him an interstellar yacht) - and was hospitalised by the resulting beating that he took (near-miss survival check leading to forced mustering out). That was why the (renegade?) Marine Lt Li needed to approach him for he mission - because her original crew had lost their ship! How to make contact? Well, a former shipmate of hers was working in the hospital where Vincenzo was being treated (another PC, with service in the Imperial Navy and whose skills included Medic-1).

From the initial PC gen, starting world gen and random patron gen in that Traveller game we've got a whole campaign.

 

[pemerton]

What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D.

Sure. And there's a lot of variation too.

For instance, depending on details - of system, of table expectations, of mood, etc - it is possible to integrate a reasonable amount of situation prep (locations, antagonists, and the like) with a high degree of player-driven events. This is how I approach Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant, and to some extent 4e D&D. It relies on the players - via their narration plus their action declarations - being able to evince their PCs and do their thing in a way that is at least somewhat independent of the minutiae of the current situation. (The "literary" analogue of this is the supehero comic - it's not a coincidence that Cortex+ Heroic had its origins as MHRP, and that Prince Valiant is also inspired by a continuing comic strip.)

In the approach I'm describing here, PC relationships will tend to be less prominent (because obviously they're not indepedent of current situation) and (at least in my experience) play will generally be lighter, even a bit more frivolous, than one sees in a relationship-and-belief-heavy system like Burning Wheel.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.

Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.

And Gollum? His backstory is probably the most important of all, because it’s so key to the whole dang epic. Not only because he’s the one who had the ring in the first place, and not only because it allowed Frodo to show him mercy, but it’s literally the whole lesson about evil power corrupting an individual.

In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.

 

[MGibster]

For a game like Vampire, absolutely! In my last campaign, one of the PCs was a veteran of the Sabbat War of the 1990s. I had planned as part of the campaign to have a Lasombra come to the city, ask the Prince for asylum, and make himself useful. I made him part of the PCs background. “You remember this guy from the 90s when he threw you out the window and you plummeted 4 stories onto the pavement.”

 

[Lanefan]

I would answer your (rhetorical) question the opposite way from you: if I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the players' individual PCs then I'm not doing my job as a GM.

I completely disagree.

If I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the player's individual PCs then I'm doing exactly the job I should be doing as GM.

The setting is neutral, as am I when I present it. It's up to the players/PCs to decide how to deal with it, and then do so.

Just because I prefer sunshine over rain doesn't mean the rain's gonna stop when I go for a walk because the world realizes "Oh, that's Lanefan out there, better turn the taps off". The real world is neutral that way. The game world should be also.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.

Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.

And Gollum? His backstory is probably the most important of all, because it’s so key to the whole dang epic. Not only because he’s the one who had the ring in the first place, and not only because it allowed Frodo to show him mercy, but it’s literally the whole lesson about evil power corrupting an individual.

In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.

Completely agree.

However, all of those backstories are intertwined with a very VERY solidly and thoroughly built setting that has a deep rich detailed history that the author could then mine to help create these characters' stories.

Which is the part that's being left out by some here. "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.