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

[shawnhcorey]

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.

Ideally, the setting and the backstories should mesh together. The GM comes up with rough strokes of the campaign and during session zero, everyone adds in details.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Why?

I understand this is your approach to gaming. And as your preference, it's certainly fine. But it is not essential as you describe here.

The game world can be whatever we want. Why must it be neutral?

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.

I don't think there's really much chance of crafting a Middle Earth ahead of a game. I mean, it took Tolkien nearly his entire life to slowly craft and revise the setting and then ultimately create a story that used that setting in a satisfying way. He also was crafting a novel, not a game.

What makes a game different from a novel? The fact that the protagonists are not controlled by the author, but instead by individual players. That's a pretty fundamental difference and requires a different approach to crafting the world.

Another fundamental difference is that Tolkien was able to revise his setting and characters as often as he needed prior to publication. He was free to alter the history as needed in order to support the current events of his tale. He was not restricted by what he had previously written....he was able to revise it however it suited the actual story he wanted to tell.

Imagine if that was not the case. Imagine if his audience was privy to every idea or concept as it was first introduced to the fiction. He'd have to change his approach, don't you think? Maybe not commit so strongly knowing that he couldn't revise.

Having said that, I think it's actually okay to proceed with a RPG in this manner. I just know that it's no better than any other approach, and is just as subject to paradox and conflicting details and other flaws. In some ways, even more so.

 

[pemerton]

(1) "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it (2) gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.

Re (1), Are you sure? My understanding is that JRRT's earliest work was the lay of Earendil and the Fall of Gondolin. From these episodes grew the whole corpus!

(2) Evidence? I've got actual play threads a-plenty on these boards. Where's the vacuum?

 

[Sacrosanct]

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.

I disagree, because unlike LoTR, an rpg campaign hasn't been necessarily written yet (or read yet). What the players don't know, they don't know. So with an rpg, we have the luxury of creating the setting as we go along. I.e., a book is written before people read it. An rpg is a living document, changing as players experience it, because their actions impact what's going on. Well, except for gepetto apparently...

For example, I recall a campaign we played back in 1982 I think with Moldvay's expert set. There was only a smattering of info on Karameikos, but one of the player's PCs had a background from there. An illegitimate son of a noble. As the game progressed, we fleshed out that area, and NPCs, and plot hooks, and story drama, etc. By the end of the campaign (which culminated in him taking over and ruling the Isle of Dread as a lord in the name of the kingdom), it was a pretty rich setting with stories that rivaled the adventures in Middle Earth. It was literally starting with a strong background and that molded the setting to take care of itself in large part.

 

[uzirath]

I tend to be in a hybrid space myself. I consider the characters as protagonists and use them to develop the central stories of the campaign. This doesn't necessarily mean that the world revolves around them. That depends on the genre and the types of stories the group wants to engage in. I've run LOTR-style avert-the-apocalypse campaigns and others where the PCs are involved in smaller stories that are significant to them but have little impact on the broader world.

I also enjoy tinkering with the fictional world—thinking up histories and religions, geography and architecture, magic and monsters—and am still quite fond of dungeon maps with hidden traps and things of that sort. I don't overdo it, though, and I no longer see the background work as essential to a satisfying game. I like to have enough compelling NPCs and scenery to make the world feel like it exists beyond the PCs. I'm not comfortable with zero prep, but it is not the obsessive endeavor that it once was.

I also leave lots of room for player authorship. If a player has a backstory element that is important to their character, I'm happy to let them flesh it out. I'll do my best to integrate it with my preexisting material. This was a significant and not-entirely-comfortable step for me as a GM. I used to be very particular about my world; now, I like to think of it as our world. I am, perhaps, the lead author of an excellent creative team.

 

[FrozenNorth]

While coincidences do happen in real life, that's rarely a satisfying explanation, and it's as important to avoid the appearance of meta-gaming as it is to avoid the actuality of meta-gaming.

I know what you mean. When Darth Vader told Luke he was his father, I rolled my eyes since it completely shattered immersion.

I hear it got even worse in the third movie, which I didn’t watch for obvious reasons.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It's not out of the question at all. It's not the way the APs are written, and it's not the way they've been run. Even though the one GM is frantically re-writing the one he's running us through so it makes some amount of sense, he's not particularly doing so to make the characters more involved. He's been trying to solve internal-logic problems more than anything else, as I understand it (and I still might have blown up the AP, by asking one question).

This is the complaint I have about the 5e adventures “Curse of Strahd”, “Out of the Abyss” and “ Tomb of Annihilation”. Each of them takes steps to ensure your background is irrelevant by transporting you to a place where you are unlikely to have any ties to anyone.

On the other hand, I also own the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path and that AP makes it relatively easy to incorporate backstories while also integrating players without a relevant backstory.

 

[prabe]

This is the complaint I have about the 5e adventures “Curse of Strahd”, “Out of the Abyss” and “ Tomb of Annihilation”. Each of them takes steps to ensure your background is irrelevant by transporting you to a place where you are unlikely to have any ties to anyone.

On the other hand, I also own the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path and that AP makes it relatively easy to incorporate backstories while also integrating players without a relevant backstory.

I think it's a problem with the idea of the adventure path. Published single adventures--the sort that used to be just one location and assorted stuff--can often be dropped into whatever setting the GM is running. Adventure paths don't work if there's no reason for the PCs to keep on the rails (or, if there's a reason for them to actively want to leave said rails).

 

[gepetto]

There was a lot I could have replied to, like the numerous factual errors you have. But really I only need to reply to this one.

Hate to tell you this, but if you DM the way you describe you DM, I'm pretty sure they do game without you. But they never tell you or invite you so you never know.

Nope. We've been at this for 25 years now. I know whats going on. thx for playing though.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I know what you mean. When Darth Vader told Luke he was his father, I rolled my eyes since it completely shattered immersion.

That's a movie. It's just a story, unlike in an RPG, where we want to maintain the premise of speculative plausibility.