D&D 5E Players railroading dungeonmasters

[Oofta]

So part of what I'm seeing here is also the methods of how some DMs treat their games and their worlds... especially with regards to how game mechanics reflect the characters and the world. And that appears to be impacting whether or not backstories are encouraged and/or used for plot fodder going forward.

Some DMs here seem to suggest that characters who are 1st level mechanically are also essentially "1st level" in terms of who they are and what they've done. They are "new" adventurers. There is a direct line between their power and how much impact or control they have (or have gained) in the world the DM has put forth. Which is certainly one of the ways to play (and I think personally is probably the default way that most people have played the game over the decades.) You're 1st level, you are a newb adventurer. And thus you barely have anything you've done as a character that could be considered a backstory. And that's why a long or overly involved backstory isn't necessary nor desired, because your character shouldn't have anything much worth in their history to begin with. Anything of importance will occur once the game gets underway.

But then... there also seems to be those of us who don't necessary align game mechanical power to character standing in the world. I personally am one of those DMs-- I find game mechanics to be absolutely horrendous at actually representing ANYTHING within a game world. To me... the "board game" of D&D is merely that... a board game I and my players will play in fits and spurts in and around the story we are creating. And that board game can give us hints at what is narratively happening in the world, but is in no way a "1-for1" representation of what actually is going on. Because to think of the mechanics in that way makes for such illogical leaps in most adventures that I don't even bother anymore.

Case in point... some elf character has lived for 200 years up until "this campaign I've started" has begun and for some reason is only 1st level. Nothing they have done over those 200 years has given this character any power whatsoever. But now... they go off to "adventure"... they go with a bunch of people to delve in a couple dungeons, kill a couple monsters, and now suddenly they are 2nd level. And soon 3rd. And then 4th. They gain power exponentially... all quite possibly in a matter of weeks or days of "in-world" time (depending on the scenario being run)... for no other reason that the game mechanics allow for this gain of power to happen. For someone like me who DMs using modules and adventure paths... narratively, that's all a bunch of hooey. To me, I find it all stupid and exceedingly unfulfilling. But for other DMs? It's part and parcel for their game and always has been. And neither of us is right or wrong.

So I have absolutely no issue personally with a character's backstory seemingly giving rise to a character who should be higher than 1st level when a campaign starts. Because for me... "1st level" is merely where all players start the board game at and has little to do with the narrative. If your Eberron character was a former officer during the last 10 years of The Last War... great. But you'll still start at 1st level because the board game is easier and faster to play when you are there. And we will all be happier progressing through the board game by that start. And that's why I have no problems and encourage players to come up with stuff that they'd like to see reflected in the game. Because I care much more for how the players interact with the story we are all telling, and don't care if it is reflected mechanically. Cause mechanics to me NEVER do it justice.

Right now I have a player with a 250 year old dwarf, that started as a level 1 cleric. We simply explained it that he was in effect a priest without any special powers granted by his deity. Now he's serving in a different fashion and gaining levels as a chosen of his god.

Doesn't ignore his background it's just that not every cleric is granted spells, or at least not spells granted to a 1st level cleric. Another party member has also been around for a while but before they were pulled into the adventuring life they were just a blacksmith. There are plenty of careers that don't involve adventurer levels.

 

[Mort]

I prefer a paragraph or less in backstory and that's what I tell players to provide. Whenever a new campaign starts, we have a session 0 where everyone brainstorms how they got together and what the current schtick is (recent ones have been: employees of a university, knights of the silver flame, and the current one occupants, employees and contractors of the Green Dragon Inn). The backstory is just enough to get them to that point.

I've been DMing the same group for many years and we've found that's what works for us.

 

[Maxperson]

I prefer at least a half-page of backstory. I don't set requirements, but if it's at least a half-page, I can get a much better idea of what the PC is about and where he came from. If it's more than a page, though, it starts dragging on and generally includes a lot of minutiae that don't add a whole lot.

I also am not railroaded by it in the least and fail to see how it could railroad a DM.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I always ask the same thing of my players: a backstory of one to two pages, depending on their inspiration. It doesn't have to be well-written or anything, but I'm looking for the basics. Where are you from? What was your education like? Did you travel? Who's important to you? What's important to your character? What has his life been like in the few years before the start of the campaign? I also tell them what's going to be the starting situation and location of the campaign, so that they can find out why they're there: is the group already formed? Are they meeting for the first time during session 1? Where is it starting?

My goal is to be able to extirpate what I call hooks; key elements of the character's past and motivation that I can use to make the campaign more personal. The steps of my whole process are generally the following:

1. I give them a short document (1-3 pages) that gives an overview of the setting: what's interesting about it, the main regions, any important details about it. This is generally enough to spark a link in my players head between their character concept and some part of the setting: "Oh, it'd be neat if my elf ranger grew in this desert region".
2. With their interest in mind, I dive deeper in the parts of the world that interest them. I might only have had two or three sentences or ideas for that desert region, but now I'll go get inspiration and detail maybe a page or two about it and maybe a crude map. I give them that to give them fuel for their backstory.
3. Then I expect what I was describing earlier: 1 to 2 pages of simple backstory. If, because of their lack of knowledge of the setting, they want to leave blanks, they can.
4. I go over their backstory, I fill in some blanks. For example, if a player said "my character grew in a hidden monastery far away in the mountains of that region", I'll send back a version with a named and shortly described monastery.
5. They approve my additions, or not and we do one more iteration.

This process generally takes about two to three days of back and forth (a day for each step) and doesn't take more than about an hour of their time.

There's so many possible examples, but here are some for the campaign that I'm prepping for when COVID restrictions ease a little bit:

One of my player said he wanted to play a Goblin Fighter (Psi Warrior) that has red skin. I checked with him if he wanted the red skin to be something special about him, he said that wasn't his intention. He looked at my setting overview document and said he wanted to have grown up in the region called the Wildlands. I expanded on that region, specifically with Goblins in mind, and sent him back about a page of information about it, with a crude map. He also knew that the adventure would be starting just north of a large city south of the Wildlands called Suthcaester.

The next day, he sent me about two pages of backstory. It included his family members, his best friend, a traveller that he took interest in and that became a mentor for him. In also included a funky idea about how he got his psionic powers (something with a meteor), what motivated him to leave his tribe and make his way towards Suthcaester.

I filled in some details he had left blank: name of his tribe, name of the place they were, name of his mentor (developed a character personality, etc for my DM notes) and a name, description and notes for the meteor area. What I gave him was an updated version of his backstory, but that produced about four pages of notes and ideas for me.

At this point, I've got:

• The character already heading or present to where the campaign starts.
• I know what is his goal.
• I have a list of characters important to him. I can include them in the game anytime, they can receive letters, etc.
• I have a list of hooks (a mysterious ring he found, he left home because the chieftain of the tribe wanted to kill him) that I can exploit.
• I also have a solid idea of what knowledge or lore he would realistically have or not.

It makes my job much easier to motivate the character, I know what to foreshadow or lead them towards. I can also use their goals (one per character) to lead the party in any direction that I want. Oh, one of the character has been looking for a lost friend and I want them to be heading east, I'll throw in some rumors that he was seen east. Then it becomes an internal motivation, my player gets excited and convinces the other to move east.

The part where it becomes harder is that I have to juggle with one arc/storyline per character. It's always a big knot to untie in the days before the start of the campaign. I have to give them all a reason to hook them in the adventure. I also have to make sure I give enough foreshadowing, or clue to each player frequently to nourish their interest in their character's motivations.

Obviously, this works best in a longer campaign, with players invested in their characters and that enjoy doing all of this. I wouldn't do any of this in a hexcrawl of shorter campaigns. But I'm not fond of these, I like long campaigns where my players travel to far away region, etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

While said with a mastery of snark, I have to agree - exposition from the DM over the campaign will greatly exceed even an overgrown three or four page background. The players are expected to understand that lore as it applies and to care about the world. A DM rejecting doing that in return if it's more than two paragraphs, a tweet, or three words show no reciprocity - it's a DM showing with their actions "my story is important and yours is not".

DM & players need to work together. If that means spending ten minutes per player once a campaign reading a backstory and discussing it with the player to make it fit, so be it. Especially if that gives the DM hooks and ideas - it's not the generic townsperson that has been kidnapped, it's your sister.

I thought about saying this in reply to that same post from @ccs last night but couldn't decide if he was using sarcasm to play devils advocate & give an example of those players or voicing actual outrage so left it. Whatever his goal, the sympathy and attaboys it garnered shows why it's so difficult to address as a gm without coming off as the bad guy so I went back through old conversations to find an example from one of these problem players.

In this case the players asked me to send out the doc when the campaign old wrapped up before the new one started so they could plan a bit for session zero. Everyone was sent the same rules for character creation and house rules that would be used in the next campaign after one ended (this was precovid) and minus the expletives I got this back after sending it to everyone via the group chat we used for organizing and "bob are you on your way?" type stuff
"####### dont call me out on the last part of the group patrons thing it makes me sound like an #######". The whole doc was about a page and pretty reasonable stuff like we are playing in this setting these sources are allowed use these stats tiny hut is a tent etc... the part he found so objectionable & slanderous was this.

Spoiler: no doubt an example of totally unreasonable overreach from a massively imposing DM

"Group Patrons will be used. The group will choose a patron during session zero. Players will choose one as a group & their background will be tied to that patron rather than some divergent side quest they really want to leave the group to accomplish but never do because… reasons."

 

[SirMoogle]

I recently created a character in an upcoming game that unbeknownst to me has the same surname as another PC's. The game I'm playing confers backgrounds based on dice rolls, and the two characters have radically different ones (one comes from a life of decadence while the other works a menial job), so there had been some discussion of how the two are related.

My style is give them enough of a backstory to anchor them to the world, but not so much that it prevents them from moving anywhere else if story developments in the campaign arise.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

So part of what I'm seeing here is also the methods of how some DMs treat their games and their worlds... especially with regards to how game mechanics reflect the characters and the world. And that appears to be impacting whether or not backstories are encouraged and/or used for plot fodder going forward.

Some DMs here seem to suggest that characters who are 1st level mechanically are also essentially "1st level" in terms of who they are and what they've done. They are "new" adventurers. There is a direct line between their power and how much impact or control they have (or have gained) in the world the DM has put forth. Which is certainly one of the ways to play (and I think personally is probably the default way that most people have played the game over the decades.) You're 1st level, you are a newb adventurer. And thus you barely have anything you've done as a character that could be considered a backstory. And that's why a long or overly involved backstory isn't necessary nor desired, because your character shouldn't have anything much worth in their history to begin with. Anything of importance will occur once the game gets underway.

But then... there also seems to be those of us who don't necessary align game mechanical power to character standing in the world. I personally am one of those DMs-- I find game mechanics to be absolutely horrendous at actually representing ANYTHING within a game world. To me... the "board game" of D&D is merely that... a board game I and my players will play in fits and spurts in and around the story we are creating. And that board game can give us hints at what is narratively happening in the world, but is in no way a "1-for1" representation of what actually is going on. Because to think of the mechanics in that way makes for such illogical leaps in most adventures that I don't even bother anymore.

Case in point... some elf character has lived for 200 years up until "this campaign I've started" has begun and for some reason is only 1st level. Nothing they have done over those 200 years has given this character any power whatsoever. But now... they go off to "adventure"... they go with a bunch of people to delve in a couple dungeons, kill a couple monsters, and now suddenly they are 2nd level. And soon 3rd. And then 4th. They gain power exponentially... all quite possibly in a matter of weeks or days of "in-world" time (depending on the scenario being run)... for no other reason that the game mechanics allow for this gain of power to happen. For someone like me who DMs using modules and adventure paths... narratively, that's all a bunch of hooey. To me, I find it all stupid and exceedingly unfulfilling. But for other DMs? It's part and parcel for their game and always has been. And neither of us is right or wrong.

So I have absolutely no issue personally with a character's backstory seemingly giving rise to a character who should be higher than 1st level when a campaign starts. Because for me... "1st level" is merely where all players start the board game at and has little to do with the narrative. If your Eberron character was a former officer during the last 10 years of The Last War... great. But you'll still start at 1st level because the board game is easier and faster to play when you are there. And we will all be happier progressing through the board game by that start. And that's why I have no problems and encourage players to come up with stuff that they'd like to see reflected in the game. Because I care much more for how the players interact with the story we are all telling, and don't care if it is reflected mechanically. Cause mechanics to me NEVER do it justice.

I played a game where we were all servants/staff advisors to a princess that was heiress to the most powerful throne on the continent. The princess was one of the players. We were all 1st level because, living in a household doesn’t net you combat experience. But we did have resources to call on. The adventure began with us escaping from an attempted coup and having to go into hiding and try to retake the throne.

 

[el-remmen]

I think the video's use of the term "railroad" is the real sticking point here. Despite agreeing with their approach (kinda - I prefer a sentence or two to a word or three, but prefer either to a multipage background at this point), I would not call it "railroading."

For me it more about spreading out the work, so as DM I don't need to frontload all those hooks and motivations (the motivation for the game we've discussed should be in that background - see my examples above - those couple of sentences should explain why you are where we've agreed the game begins) and providing an in-game space for developing things overtime, not just a session #0 and not just one character at a time, but collaboratively and ongoing.

 

[iserith]

I think the video's use of the term "railroad" is the real sticking point here. Despite agreeing with their approach (kinda - I prefer a sentence or two to a word or three, but prefer either to a multipage background at this point), I would not call it "railroading."

Right. I have no objection to what they're saying other than calling it "railroading" or implying the DM is forced into doing anything with a character's backstory. Some DMs use player backstories to build a campaign around. I don't. But either way, that's the DM's choice. Nobody's coercing them.

 

[turnip_farmer]

I just ask them to tell me their greatest desire and their greatest fear.

That way, they are fooled into thinking I give a crap about their stupid character ideas, and I know how to narrate spells like Fear.