D&D General It's Session Zero! How Much Backstory Do You Give Your Character?

[DarkCrisis]

My characters assuming they start at level 1 are all akin to: “I was a nobody who took up the sword for treasure and glory.”

D&D is your characters backstory IMO

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Eh, it depends.

Sometimes I like to dig deep into something for my own research in order to "get" a character. I don't put it all down in the backstory, but I write down a bit to get the feel for the character. No, not like one of my thread starters. Just enough to get the voice.

Other times, especially when I'm playing more old school games, I don't. My backstory is, "He was strong. He found a sword. A big sword."

 

[Art Waring]

How much backstory do you give a brand-new character?

Let's say you and your buddies are starting a new year-long D&D campaign. You've all rolled up your characters, bought your equipment, and filled out your alignment and ideals/traits/bonds/flaws. You're about to begin, and your DM has asked you to share your character's backstory.

Do you pull out a sheaf of paper and dive into a half-hour PowerPoint presentation? Do you skip the backstory altogether? Or are you somewhere in the middle?

I voted for "other" as the game I am currently designing is built for "emergent storytelling" as in the story evolves as play progresses.

However, I have personally played a lot of characters in various games, and I unfortunately often avoided long backstories for my characters as our home games were pretty deadly and there was not much incentive to write a long-winded history. I do think that in the right game having a good backstory makes for a more compelling character, but I don't think that its a requirement for enjoying ttrpg's.

Not to mention, I have seen a few cases where a player brought a long backstory, but didn't coordinate with the GM, so it ended up becoming sort a hindrance for that player as they were heavily invested in their character, and the GM was hesitant to say no in the spirit of friendship.

P.S. Kupo!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I get where you're coming from, but allow me to present an alternate perspective:

You will run into bad guys in the course of the game. It's the DM's job to present you with challenges. Would you rather have those challenges tie into your backstory, thereby making them more relevant to your character, or would you prefer they come out of nowhere?

But they ARE relevant to my character. My character IS THERE, fighting that bad guy and whatever it is they're doing that's bad. It doesn't ever need to tie to my backstory to make it important or not to my character. And it didn't, as such, come out of nowhere, but became something the entire adventuring party sought out, or at the least DIDN'T actively choose to avoid as unimportant to them. And if it's directly tied to MY PC that sorta suggests that it's NOT tied to anyone else's. Why is it suddenly NOT important that the challenges are "tied to them or their backstory" while it's tied to mine? If there's 4 PC's in play then if EVERY challenge is directly tied to one PC or another then it's only ever going to tie to MY PC's 25% of the time. 75% will be tied instead to someone else's PC and that percentages gets worse the more PC's there are to divide personal relevancy among.

 

[Seramus]

But they ARE relevant to my character. My character IS THERE, fighting that bad guy and whatever it is they're doing that's bad. It doesn't ever need to tie to my backstory to make it important or not to my character. And it didn't, as such, come out of nowhere, but became something the entire adventuring party sought out, or at the least DIDN'T actively choose to avoid as unimportant to them. And if it's directly tied to MY PC that sorta suggests that it's NOT tied to anyone else's. Why is it suddenly NOT important that the challenges are "tied to them or their backstory" while it's tied to mine? If there's 4 PC's in play then if EVERY challenge is directly tied to one PC or another then it's only ever going to tie to MY PC's 25% of the time. 75% will be tied instead to someone else's PC and that percentages gets worse the more PC's there are to divide personal relevancy among.

Is it fair to say having those personal ties in a story reduces your enjoyment, instead of increases your enjoyment? Like it breaks your immersion?

 

[CreamCloud0]

Is it fair to say having those personal ties in a story reduces your enjoyment, instead of increases your enjoyment? Like it breaks your immersion?

It can make sense for things to be related to a character’s personal background stuff every now and then but if every quest is something personally related to one of the party it can all begin to feel contrived and fake, like the world only exists to facilitate their adventuring.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Some, but really it depends on how complex my concept is. I need enough to explain how I learned all my class features and why I'm out adventuring. Obviously more complex builds/exotic classes may take more explaining.

If I'm connected to some specific part of the setting, I may ask to worldbuild that portion so it's fleshed out and I (the player) am familiar with it.

 

[Staffan]

But they ARE relevant to my character. My character IS THERE, fighting that bad guy and whatever it is they're doing that's bad. It doesn't ever need to tie to my backstory to make it important or not to my character. And it didn't, as such, come out of nowhere, but became something the entire adventuring party sought out, or at the least DIDN'T actively choose to avoid as unimportant to them. And if it's directly tied to MY PC that sorta suggests that it's NOT tied to anyone else's. Why is it suddenly NOT important that the challenges are "tied to them or their backstory" while it's tied to mine? If there's 4 PC's in play then if EVERY challenge is directly tied to one PC or another then it's only ever going to tie to MY PC's 25% of the time. 75% will be tied instead to someone else's PC and that percentages gets worse the more PC's there are to divide personal relevancy among.

Yes? It's a group game. You don't get the spotlight all of the time.

I don't know if you've watched Critical Role, particularly campaign 1. One of the characters is the son of deposed nobility, whose ancestral lands were conquered by some unsavory folks when he was a young lad, and he managed to escape. Eventually, these unsavory folks make an entrance in the actual campaign, leading to the PCs liberating the ancestral lands from said unsavory folks. Would this have been more or less satisfying if the group had been leading a rebellion without any connection to one of the PCs?

Or look at the TV show Babylon 5. In the early seasons, there were many episodes that started with a figure from someone's past coming to the station. Doing that means that this character has a built-in relationship to that PC, and you don't need to spend a whole lot of time developing it. This works best with characters that start out experienced, without necessarily having their backstory written out in great detail. For example, if a character "grew up in the circus", you don't have to write up everyone else who worked at the circus in order to introduce a friend from back in the day.

Of course, not every NPC (be they villain, rival, or ally) will be connected to anyone's backstory. But the ones that are feel a lot more satisfying.

 

[payn]

Aside from them being ignored or used to make a PC’s life a living hell, I also prefer a slim profile because of emergent character development. I don’t often have all the details of a character laid out. My experience is discovering the character through play. I don’t really know them until they have been out in the wild, living, being challenged, becoming actualized. YMMV

 

[steeldragons]

I'm "a bit" but almost definitely, whether I write down anything or not, a sketch/drawing of them is definitely going to be done by/for session zero.