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

[doctorbadwolf]

He could have been just another hobbit and it wouldnt have mattered much. Gollum was following the ring, not frodo. Frodo could have just dropped it and gone home and never would have seen gollum again. Gandalf didnt say to Elrond "i needed THIS hobbit. He said hobbits (plural) are tougher then they seem and can resist evil" He would have snatched up any convenient hobbit. He needed someone to carry it who wouldnt be able to use it to become a super villain. Thats why none of the more powerful, better equipped people could be trusted to carry it.

Frodo doesnt bring anything to the table from his background. Bilbo had dwarf friends. So what? Theres 1 dwarf in the main story and I dont think they ever have a conversation in the whole thing. He's an elf friend? Big deal. Again theres 1 elf in the party and they never even talk to each other. Their welcomed into Lothlorien because they have the ring and Elrond put in a good word. But ANYONE who was carrying the ring to destroy it would have gotten their help. They didnt know him. The sword he barely uses and could really have been any old sword. He could have just bought an elf sword in rivendell, or asked for one. The armor does save him, but if he had been killed Aragorn would have picked up the ring, taken it to mordor himself, not gotten lost in the mountains of shadow and quite possibly destroyed the thing BEFORE the army of evil killed all those people in Minis Tirith and the surrounding areas.

All his background gets him is 2 bumbling henchmen who he would have been better off replacing with a couple of good dogs. Even Sam was only there because Gandalf dragged him along. Frodo didnt go looking for his gardener to drag him out to mordor.

And they certainly dont go haring off any sidequests because of anything that happened in the shire before the adventure.



Well first, Boromir is clearly an NPC. He has about 3 lines and everyone just ignores everything he has to say until he gets redshirted as a plot device. So that doesnt even count. And second his "backstory" certainly doesnt come up for HIM at all for more then 30 seconds after he gets introduced.



Gollum is not a PC either. He's an NPC plot device.



Yes NPCs do often have stories. They kind of have to in order to explain their presence in the PC's story. That has no bearing on the topic at hand.

You...don’t understand storytelling in general, or The Lord of The Rings in specific.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior.

Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality outside of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality inside of the game world. If the player reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably doesn't exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their character.

It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term outside of the hobby. If you want to establish it as some sort of special jargon, aside from that, then you should do that from the outset. But there's also no reason why anyone should buy into your special definition, given your obvious ulterior motive.

This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.

That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.

Meta-gaming is okay. The idea that it is “cheating” is absolutely preposterous.

Have fun however you want, but your obsessive adherence to some sort of “pure roleplaying” to the point of disparaging people who don’t play like you do is insulting BS of the most obnoxious order.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.

That is quite literally not the definition of roleplaying. I searched, and couldn’t find any definition of roleplaying that looks like what you claim.

You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

One could argue the demand is implicitly - and somewhat universally - made by the use of the words "role-playing" in the name of the game-type.

To play a role means, to whatever extent works for the person so doing, inhabiting the character you're trying to portray and then looking out through its eyes. It's this way in theatre, and in films, and pretty much any other situation where you're trying to act as someone who isn't you - which is the very definition of what playing a role means.

If you've ever done any drama classes or halfway-serious acting you'll know this already. If you haven't, I can see how it'd perhaps be a slightly foreign concept when looked at from a distance.

I’ve acted a good bit, and literally only method actors (and not all method actors) try to pretend they, the real person, don’t exist. Roleplaying, like acting, doesn’t require abandoning ones own perspective at all, and many experts on both argue that the activity is enhanced by what some call metagaming, or consciously bringing your own perspective and knowledge to the role.

 

[Aldarc]

Which means there's now two "realities" - one for us, one for our PCs. Complete immersion, which seems to be Saelorn's goal here, requires the player to in effect largely ignore one reality (ours) and as far as possible inhabit the other one (that of the PCs). It's a laudable goal, if often unattainable.

Going back to this point: IMHO, the desire for "complete immersion" immediately stops being laudable when it's being used for gatekeeping purposes, telling other tables that they are having badwrongfun, or adhering to supercilious notions of "bad RP."

Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior.

Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality outside of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality inside of the game world. If the player reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably doesn't exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their character.

The idea that the only way for players to roleplay their characters is to pretend that the outside world does not exist is psychotic. The game world is fictitious. It has an outside world that no degree of "complete immersion" or "roleplay purity test" will erase. If one even hopes to roleplay with "verisimilitude," the player will and must draw on outside knowledge of what it means to be real. The GM is drawing upon outside materials, sources, inspiration, and other things when generating the world and its inhabitants. The outside world will most definitely influence what goes inside, because that is the only way for the inside world to exist. Its fictions and content exists only through input from the outside! If the contents of a newspaper article has personally adversely affected the mood, behavior, or attitude of my player (or even myself) - and I will not speculate why that may be the case - then it would be absolutely bonkers to say that it has no influence on how the player may roleplay their character. It isn't just illogical to think that it won't have no effect on the behavior of their character, it's pure lunacy to argue otherwise!

It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term outside of the hobby. If you want to establish it as some sort of special jargon, aside from that, then you should do that from the outset. But there's also no reason why anyone should buy into your special definition, given your obvious ulterior motive.

Source? Wikipedia, which is a fairly decent source for common denominator understanding, does not evidence your stringently narrow understanding of the term, its definition, or usage. So it appears that you have not only created a false definition of the term, but also imprinted it on a false past too. Impressive.

This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.

That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.

See? For me, if a fraction of the fanbase are giant douche-nozzles who go around thinking that it's okay to police others about metagaming and the need to police others about OneTrueWayism roleplaying or telling them that they are doing badwrongfun at their tables, then I not only can't trust them, but I will fight them tooth and claw because they are far more toxic to our hobby than metagaming.

 

[pemerton]

Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality outside of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality inside of the game world. If the player reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably doesn't exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their character.

Fictions are imagined. Whatever it is that (in the ficiton) "infuences" a PC is something that is imagined. Reading the newspaper might influence how a player authors his/her PC; but no one (except in a 4th-wall breaking game - eg Over the Edge can be played like that) is going to imagine that one of the fictional causes of the PC's behaviour is a newspaper in the real world.

The same thing is true if the player decides to make an action declaration for his/her PC because inspired by something in the newspaper.

Everything in the fictional world is made up. Including the reasons for any decision made by any character. They're fictitious.

How can you judge what is a valid decision versus an invalid decision when people can be quite mercurial?

Logic still operates in d&d.
Your character is a person.
People are subject to psychology.
You can therefore have a general sense of when a character is being played very unrealistically and non-self-consistantly.
So yeah. Pretty easy to tell that not all actions are reasonable.

What @hawkeyefan says here is absolutely correct.

In the real world, all the time, people do things that others - even others who know them very well - don't expect and don't see coming. Relatioships end; old friendships bust up, or surprising new ones are made; people change which political party they vote for; sadly, sometimes people do things that hurt themselves or others.

The amount of information generated about the typical PC in the typical RPG session is so far from being sufficient to establish any sort of personality it's ridiculous to think that it provides any practical constraint on "reasonable" action declaration.

 

[chaochou]

...to influence the reality inside of the game world.

There is no reality inside the gameworld. It's total nonsense.

It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term outside of the hobby.

This claim is totally false. It's an appeal to an authority that has never existed. More laughable nonsense.

That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.

The entirety of the player base is metagaming, by virtue of playing a game in this world (the only one available). It's you who are in denial about it.

The fact that no players are welcome at your table is... well I'd call that a stroke of good fortune, for them.

 

[pemerton]

Against my better judgement (ie implausibly!) I'm currently watching Wrath of the Titans on TV.

About 5-10 minutes ago, just as the heroes were about to enter the secret way to Tarterus, with the help of Hephaestus, one of them prayed to Ares despite Perseus having earlier directed everyone not to do so. The result was that Ares showed up, killing half the team and requiring Hephaestus to valiantly sacrfice himself so that the heroes could go throw the secret entrance and thereby both escape Ares and continue on their quest.

Now this is definitely a B-grade film but its not partiuclarly bad by the standards of fantasy RPGing. And the particular contrivance I've just described is nothing out of the ordinary for an adventure story.

The way I would establish such a situation in a RPG is if one of the players' Command (or similar leadership-type) checks failed, the failure being narrated as the NPC praying to Ares. The idea that a GM who establishes such a situation is doing something wrong in having the consequence of the failure manifest in such a way as to maximise the drama and pressure is just aburd.

@Saelorn has referred upthread to the distinction between establishing the "implausibilities" before play starts, and doing it during the course of play. There are some playstyles - most notably Gygaxian skilled play - where the contrast between establishing material in prep and establishing material during play is important. But that has nothing to do with plausibility or "metagaming". It's about fairness in refereeing, and allowing the players to "beat the dungeon". In such play, it would be tantamount for cheating for the GM to alter the dungeon as part of the process of refereeing the players' attempts to beat it.

It is a category error to suppose that this principle of fair play has anyting to do with ensuring the integrity of the shared fiction. And it is sheer fetishisation of a rather narrowly applicable technique to generalise it across RPGing as such.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Fictions are imagined. Whatever it is that (in the ficiton) "infuences" a PC is something that is imagined. Reading the newspaper might influence how a player authors his/her PC; but no one (except in a 4th-wall breaking game - eg Over the Edge can be played like that) is going to imagine that one of the fictional causes of the PC's behaviour is a newspaper in the real world.

The same thing is true if the player decides to make an action declaration for his/her PC because inspired by something in the newspaper.


What @hawkeyefan says here is absolutely correct.

In the real world, all the time, people do things that others - even others who know them very well - don't expect and don't see coming. Relatioships end; old friendships bust up, or surprising new ones are made; people change which political party they vote for; sadly, sometimes people do things that hurt themselves or others.

The amount of information generated about the typical PC in the typical RPG session is so far from being sufficient to establish any sort of personality it's ridiculous to think that it provides any practical constraint on "reasonable" action declaration.

Fiction still has logic within it. The more information there is about a character the more easily patterns of behavior become predictable.

This is basic. If you dont agree then at this point i dont think it can be explained to you.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

There is no reality inside the gameworld. It's total nonsense.


This claim is totally false. It's an appeal to an authority that has never existed. More laughable nonsense.



The entirety of the player base is metagaming, by virtue of playing a game in this world (the only one available). It's you who are in denial about it.

The fact that no players are welcome on your table is... well I'd call that a stroke of good fortune, for them.

well arent you just an arrogant ray of sunshine.

Was that really necessary?

Also there are clearly things that the members of the hobby have long commonly thought of as meta gaming and things they have not. How do you think the term began to be used in such a way in the first place and in those contexts? Because there was a problem that a very large number of people identified and have avoided for a long time.