D&D 5E Adventure Design: Backstory and History

[Rod Staffwand]

Man, those are some depressing and formidable text-walls. One of the reasons I don't run published adventures is that it's faster and easier for me to jot down 1-2 pages of notes than to read and comprehend 30-100 pages of dense backstory and extraneous details.

I used to write elaborate backstories, NPCs and settings myself, but I stopped after I realized the vast majority of it was going unappreciated by the players.

Most players don't have the ability or desire to visualize intricate details about NPCs and places. Anything more than "Middle-aged man, cruel face, shaved head, scarlet tabard over plate mail, wicked battleax" is often too hard to parse in the context of a game, what with the need to imagine and visualize EVERYTHING that's going on. The brain needs to focus on the essentials and then fill in the rest as need. Anything more is overload.

The same goes for NPC histories. Players are primarily interested in knowing: Are you friend or foe? Can you be trusted? Can you help us? Do you need help? What will you give us to help you? As a DM I need to answer for the NPC's presence in the adventure (why are they there, what are they doing). Other than that, some broad character tags (gruff, obsequious, pious, spiteful, etc.) are helpful. As for a recounting of their life experiences? Nope. I can add that stuff in if it becomes a topic of interest.

I also hate elaborate adventure backstories that require reading 5-10 pages just to understand the adventure. It's especially bad when the adventure is about the party uncovering the backstory and, of course, applauding its every twist and turn. Please keep your frustrated fiction writing out of my adventures, thank you very much.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think most adventures miss a lot of crucial information necessary to actually run them, and instead have a lot of... waffle. I don't need information about where an NPC grew up unless it gives me insight on what makes him tick.

The absolute, most important information I need about every NPC is what information they have to impart. If you're not going to tell me how they're going to answer obvious questions, I may as well have adlibbed them entirely.

Similarly for obvious lines of investigation. Running murder in baldur's gate, there's a lot of points where an obvious investigation path just stops having information on how to follow it, without actually being ended.

Yup. Long winded backgrounds for NPCs could be cut and replaced with useful facts relevant to the adventure. For the vast majority of important NPCs the important bits I include consist of a name and description, a motivation and/or desired goals, knowledge they possess, and resources at their command (this includes combat stats. Their own abilities are a resource). It helps if these values are presented in an easy to use format such as series of bullet points rather than being buried somewhere in a wall of text.

Extra back story might be created for often recurring long running NPCs but not most folks.

 

[werecorpse]

Way too much irrelevant information.

In the third or fourth Curse of the Crimson throne there is about two pages of information about how the leader of a group of assassins started off good but her evil assassin mother geased her and turned her evil and now she's evil... But she doesn't like to talk about it.

Then the strategy for the assassins is just sneak up, attack and fight to the death.

 

[steeldragons]

I'll just add my voice to what seems to be a modicum of consensus. The backstory for the adventure is, of course, always enlightening/nice for and from the DM perspective. How much of that gets used during the adventure is not usually much. How much of it gets shared (and then retained) with players is another matter entirely.

I, personally, don't think any story that needs more than a paragraph to half a page of "set up"/backstory is necessary. The Village of Hommlet background comes to mind with the few hundred years of background with the Temple of Elemental Evil and it was destroyed and came back and destroyed again and then and then and then...unnecessary.

There is a degree of depth to help with immersion. Sure.

But the 64,000 gold piece question becomes, where is that line where you cross over from being a "description" to become a "prescription"? When does it no longer assist in the set-up of the adventure, lending some context and flavor, and become a definition for where/how/why/when the adventure "should" happen.

For NPCs, a few sentences about anyone: what's unique about them or not, general mood or outlook, motivations (with or without actual alignments) is always welcomed. Makes interactions immeasurably easier to use/RP for the DM. Major players, villains, authority figures, and the like that have a good chance to become more involved/interacted with than, "I get a room and buy a pint", obviously, deserve a more thorough treatment. I would say no more than paragraph or two should ever be necessary. Anything more than that is the purview of the DM to create and flesh out.

So...yes, please and thank you, for a small amount of backstory. For a gist. An outline of what's happened/currently going on. Some guidelines of what's at stake/might happen in the near [if not immediate] future. Please and thank you for anything from "sketched out" to "nicely rounded" NPCs.

But make sure everything remains DEcriptive and ceases before it becomes PREscriptive.

 

[Roger]

This sort of information can be useful, if it's presented the right way.

An additional character background or two goes a long way in conveying this sort of information, but it's not always the right answer for every adventure.

Rumour tables are really great for this sort of thing. A clever thing from some old adventure(s) which sadly I cannot exactly recall the name of right now is to include false rumours (of course) but to use italics to indicate what part of the rumour is false -- so you get things like 12. (F) An evil unicorn lives in the nearby woods.

Generally speaking, a lot of the One-Page Dungeons get this more right than not; as a self-serving example, here's the entire backstory from my own Tomb of Oddli Stone-Squarer:

Even in the days before the arrival of Man, the tomb of the great dwarven king Oddli, called the Stone-Squarer, was ancient. Carved into the very hillside, it was once larger, but much of the tomb was cleaved away, leaving only a sheer cliff. The erosion of the original burial mound has exposed several new entrances into the complex. It is now known primarily as a roost for stirges, which re-infest it as quickly as they can be killed.

Cheers,
Roger

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

For important NPCs I want backstory. For villains, I want their backstory. For the campaign setting, I want the backstory.

For everything else, a few words about their personality and their motivations are fine.

As a DM I basically want all the details that 'set the stage' and then everything else I just need:
How does this character act - racist, heavy eater, dismissive to the PCs
What does this character want - to gain control over the town's mine
Is there anything important to know - has hired mercs to steal the original deed so he can forge a new one

And then MAPS. VTT DMs always need maps yo! And not just ones with keys; I need 'player maps' to slap down.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

I strongly dislike it, and it seems to have become the norm for most adventures that are written today. Sometimes I feel like these writers should get busy writing their first fantasy novel, rather than continue writing adventures. They seem to get too caught up in the story they want to tell and forget completely that they should be providing us with a shell to work with. The best adventures allow huge amounts of room for organic play to fill in the details.

Lost Mine of Phandelver had the format down pretty perfectly. Brief descriptions and a focus on the action, not backstory. It allows DMs all the room they need to use the adventure more freely, rather than force me to read through oceans of font so that I can better understand the motivations and strategies of NPCs.

One need only bust out White Plume Mountain or Against the Giants to get a firm grasp on what great adventure-writing should look like.

My preferred style would be for authors to approach adventure-writing in the same way that screenwriters approach their trade: minimalist.

White Plume Mountain, regarded as one of the best adventures of all time, is 16 pages long. The Introduction is about 5 paragraphs, and by page 2 or 3 of the adventure you are into keyed encounters, which are themselves short and to the point.

 

[Celtavian]

I prefer the Pathfinder method. Then I can sift the bits for something to expand upon or play around with. If I'm going to spend money on an adventure, I like having bits to read as well. Feels more like the adventure writer put some effort, thought, and creativity into the adventure. It makes for a more interesting read as well.

I don't often use much of the material. I find that an adventure with well-developed characters provides more inspiration than an adventure with flat, uninspired characters. Same as any story I imagine.

 

[S'mon]

I hate it when some random mook gets a 2-page exposition. With Paizo stuff it can easily become a running joke. Conversely major characters do need some detail to understand their motivation; WoTC traditionally fails the other way by giving little more than a stat block even to major villains, notably the 4e HPE series is appalling that way.

 

[Celtavian]

I strongly dislike it, and it seems to have become the norm for most adventures that are written today. Sometimes I feel like these writers should get busy writing their first fantasy novel, rather than continue writing adventures. They seem to get too caught up in the story they want to tell and forget completely that they should be providing us with a shell to work with. The best adventures allow huge amounts of room for organic play to fill in the details.

Lost Mine of Phandelver had the format down pretty perfectly. Brief descriptions and a focus on the action, not backstory. It allows DMs all the room they need to use the adventure more freely, rather than force me to read through oceans of font so that I can better understand the motivations and strategies of NPCs.

One need only bust out White Plume Mountain or Against the Giants to get a firm grasp on what great adventure-writing should look like.

My preferred style would be for authors to approach adventure-writing in the same way that screenwriters approach their trade: minimalist.

White Plume Mountain, regarded as one of the best adventures of all time, is 16 pages long. The Introduction is about 5 paragraphs, and by page 2 or 3 of the adventure you are into keyed encounters, which are themselves short and to the point.

White Plume Mountain is considered a great adventure because of the items in the module.