Do you prefer your character to be connected or unconnected to the adventure hook?

Saelorn said:

A soap opera is purely fiction for the purpose of telling a story, where an RPG primarily presents a believable world that we can interact with as though it was real.

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The One True Wayism is tiring. How about you leave room for people to like things you don't? Me, I'm not a fan of anchovies, but is someone else wants it on their pizza, I'm cool with that. I see no need to define pizza as having no anchovies.

Plus, your argument is "realism" in a game with fireballs and flumphs. "Realism" is the lacy Swiss cheese of RPG arguments.

Try this - different people have different things they can comfortably interact with, "as if they were real". What breaks your suspension of disbelief is particular to you, not universal to all players. Others can be more flexible on coincidence than you seem to be. I am sure there's something that doesn't bug you that may throw others off.

They key is to not try to define other's good game out of existence just because you can't have fun with it.

I think you want both. But my experience, at least with my players, has been it is helpful to be cautious about hooks connected to PCs. I use those sparingly and try to be as fair about them as possible

You'd think a lot of people would get work through their contacts. We typically hand wave that in D&D with mysterious strangers in taverns hiring rough looking well armed groups to perform some task. But it seems to me that it's more likely someone would hire the PCs for important tasks because they've developed a reputation.

Sir Nigel McBritishface: "I have bandits stealing from my peasants which means they are stealing from me. But with most of my fighting men devoted to the king's war, I require your assistance in resolving the situation. Sir Butterbean spoke highly of your effectiveness in dealing with the Berry Queen. Might I count on you to assist me with this issue?"

Of course another way to personally involve the PCs in an adventure is to play to their personal values. If you have a player in your campaign who wants to protect the innocent, well, maybe several children are missing and family members have asked the PCs for help. Of course avarice is the most common motivator for PCs in fantasy games.

MGibster said:

You'd think a lot of people would get work through their contacts. We typically hand wave that in D&D with mysterious strangers in taverns hiring rough looking well armed groups to perform some task. But it seems to me that it's more likely someone would hire the PCs for important tasks because they've developed a reputation.

Sir Nigel McBritishface: "I have bandits stealing from my peasants which means they are stealing from me. But with most of my fighting men devoted to the king's war, I require your assistance in resolving the situation. Sir Butterbean spoke highly of your effectiveness in dealing with the Berry Queen. Might I count on you to assist me with this issue?"

Of course another way to personally involve the PCs in an adventure is to play to their personal values. If you have a player in your campaign who wants to protect the innocent, well, maybe several children are missing and family members have asked the PCs for help. Of course avarice is the most common motivator for PCs in fantasy games.

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Bingo!

I am utterly sick and tired of players who create characters that have zero ties to the campaign. I've just had a run of three straight campaigns with a group where almost all the players gave me pretty much zero to work with for backgrounds - all strangers with no name type characters from far away, just looking for adventure. It's unbelievably frustrating. I finally had had so much of it that I had to walk away from the group.

My new players, now, have actively attempted to embed themselves into the setting and the campaign as fast and as hard as possible. Making contacts with NPC's, making plans, actually giving a naughty word about the setting. It's been such a huge breath of fresh air after years of beating my head against the wall. I'm actually enjoying DMing again and, for the first time in a long time, I'm homebrewing rather than just running canned adventures. ((Well, that's a bit of a lie, I'm adapting the Chaos Scar adventures to 5e, but also bringing in lots of my own goodies too))

It's so refreshing to be actually looking forward to running games again.

Characters with no ties (which is not what the OP was talking about since the bounty hunter actually does tie into the adventure, just not on a specifically emotional level) to the campaign are the bane of a game. They're just dead weight being dragged around by the better players at the table. If the DM is making the effort to actually build the campaign for your characters, then the least you can do is bite onto what's being offered once in a while.

OTOH, if you're just running a linear adventure path, then, well, who cares. play whatever and it doesn't really matter.

I think a lot of it has to do with how much effort a DM puts into incorporating the background into the campaign.

For example:

In a previous campaign, the DM wanted to run Primeval Thule...a very low magic campaign. Most of the players weren't really inclined toward no magic, but I remember making the effort to ask if the game would have any urban elements. I recall the DM said that there would be, so I decided to make a mastermind Rogue, one who depended on disguise. I created a background for him; he was an orphan who wished to gain wealth so that he could create his own "guild" of thieves that would take in other orphans. The DM did absolutely nothing with it. In fact, the rest of the group even got bored with it, so we ended up dropping the campaign.

Then again, this particular DM was always more inclined to blame things on the players. He was a decent player, though.

Hussar said:

I am utterly sick and tired of players who create characters that have zero ties to the campaign. I've just had a run of three straight campaigns with a group where almost all the players gave me pretty much zero to work with for backgrounds - all strangers with no name type characters from far away, just looking for adventure. It's unbelievably frustrating. I finally had had so much of it that I had to walk away from the group.

My new players, now, have actively attempted to embed themselves into the setting and the campaign as fast and as hard as possible. Making contacts with NPC's, making plans, actually giving a naughty word about the setting. It's been such a huge breath of fresh air after years of beating my head against the wall. I'm actually enjoying DMing again and, for the first time in a long time, I'm homebrewing rather than just running canned adventures. ((Well, that's a bit of a lie, I'm adapting the Chaos Scar adventures to 5e, but also bringing in lots of my own goodies too))

It's so refreshing to be actually looking forward to running games again.

Characters with no ties (which is not what the OP was talking about since the bounty hunter actually does tie into the adventure, just not on a specifically emotional level) to the campaign are the bane of a game. They're just dead weight being dragged around by the better players at the table. If the DM is making the effort to actually build the campaign for your characters, then the least you can do is bite onto what's being offered once in a while.

OTOH, if you're just running a linear adventure path, then, well, who cares. play whatever and it doesn't really matter.

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I am confused by the last sentence. You complain about players not biting into the campaign, but then state: If the adventure has an end goal where only one or two paths take you there, they do not need to bite? How is this even a thing? It does not matter if it is linear, sandbox, or hex crawl - an invested player is an invested player. The modality of the adventure has nothing to do with anything you complained about in the beginning.

I don't know. Maybe I am wrong. But they seem very separate to me.

Scott Christian said:

I am confused by the last sentence. You complain about players not biting into the campaign, but then state: If the adventure has an end goal where only one or two paths take you there, they do not need to bite? How is this even a thing? It does not matter if it is linear, sandbox, or hex crawl - an invested player is an invested player. The modality of the adventure has nothing to do with anything you complained about in the beginning.

I don't know. Maybe I am wrong. But they seem very separate to me.

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Isn't it part of the DM's job to keep the players engaged/invested??

Scott Christian said:

I am confused by the last sentence. You complain about players not biting into the campaign, but then state: If the adventure has an end goal where only one or two paths take you there, they do not need to bite? How is this even a thing? It does not matter if it is linear, sandbox, or hex crawl - an invested player is an invested player. The modality of the adventure has nothing to do with anything you complained about in the beginning.

I don't know. Maybe I am wrong. But they seem very separate to me.

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I read it as "if we're doing something long term where you'll have choices and the ability to interact with NPCs and the like, it would be nice if your character had some motivations and reasons to investigate the world and be involved so I can make it interesting for you and make it feel like we're building a world together" on the other hand if it's a dungeon crawl "make sure you're character is the kind that's set to do a dungeon crawl to the end, that's what we're doing!" doesn't need or use much.

This really makes me appreciate games like Blades in the Dark, and Torchbearer all the more.

In Blades, character histories are built as you play the game, with flashbacks explaining how, as an example, the guy guarding the door to the private club you want to get into just happens to be a childhood friend who owes you a favor.

In Torchbearer, an integral part of character creation is choosing home towns as well as friends, families, mentors, and enemies; all of which give you different mechanical benefits and bonuses, and which run the risk of becoming parts of the emergent chart driven storyline and fail-forward resolution systems.