You're overselling the "GM was present" angle, here and trying to make it seem like the GM was actively engaged with whatever character creation the players performed. However, when you present specifics, there's nothing here about discussions with the GM, or the GM providing hooks for characters. Instead, you present the rather anodyne statement that GM involvement was telling you the generation method and races/classes available and then providing instruction to not create characters until session zero. That you ignored this and did so anyway does not indicate the GM was okay with that.
If the DM was present, heard the entire conversation the players were having where they designed their characters, and disapproved of that action... why did he wait until the next session to raise objections?
Because it was pre-zero that this conversation happened. So, if he disapproved, this was within plenty of time to say so.
If you are in the habit of making characters beforehand, so what? In what way does that actually excuse not paying attention to the GM? I mean, you certainly don't have to, but you can't claim a moral high ground in the discussion by effectively saying you ignored him because it wasn't what you were used to.
Just to make sure we are clear, it was not only "it was habit for this player" it was additionally "habit for this group with this DM."
Not sure if that changes your opinion, but if I'm the guy who brings pepsi to the game, and I always bring pepsi to the game. And the DM asks me to not bring Pepsi... It is fairly likely that if I bring it, it is because I'm in the habit of doing so, and forgot, rather than choosing to purposefully ignore him.
Perhaps my understanding of connected is different from yours, and perhaps the GM's. I don't see anything in there that suggests actual connection. Your story is utterly generic -- it works in any town -- and doesn't give you any motivation to actually do anything except for money, which, presumably, if the task is too dangerous or too onerous then you just move to the next mark of a town. The connection to another PC is mercenary -- he's your hired hand. No loyalty, no personal connection, nothing. The NPC connection is similar -- a NPC thinks I swindled them? That's not a connection, it's an accusation -- there's no motivation to do anything for or against this NPC.
Maybe that's what the GM thought was a good connection, although, given his posts, that seems unlikely. It seems more like that was the maximum extent to which you were willing to accommodate, and seems in line with many stories where a player doesn't actually want levers on their PCs the GM has access to. As such, none of the hooks you're touting for your character have a barb -- they're pain free to ignore.
Wow, again, we seem to be shifting gears a lot here.
The DM wants a connection between the two characters.
Players: "I hired him to protect me"
You: "That is nothing, no connection, no loyalty. There is no way for me to leverage this against you."
I mean... you didn't ask them to have a personal, loyal connection and deeply held feelings for each other. You just asked for a connection, and a contractual connection is an connection. If you want them to be secret lovers or something, you need to ask for more than "just have a connection"
And.... how is "it works in any town" a criticism? I made a character who was a town guard once. He could have been a town guard in any town. I could have made it work if the setting suddenly shifted, does that mean I'm not connected to the town I'm in? I mean, what if a player came with "I'm the former mayors son, and I grew up in this town helping the people through many difficult times?" That could be any town. Does that somehow make this less of an embedded story?
And attacking that his motivation was money? Are we now demanding that the PCs have not only the proper proficiencies, and the proper connections, but also the proper motivations?
You've moved into wanting such highly specific things, do you truly demand so much from your players?
Look, I hate pregen adventures for precisely the reasons shown in this thread -- they work best with strong direction of PC generation by the GM. I don't like that. I do, however, insist that players work within the themes we've decided to play. My current 5e game is a Planescape game, and so anything goes PC wise. However, I did insist that the PCs must be ones that would seek adventure and that they would be willing and able to work in a group and to not finalize characters until the first session of play (session 1/2, as it was a mixture of 0 and 1). In the first part of that session, we ran a mini-game where I had the first select player select another player and tell me what they were doing together when they met or became friends -- ie provide the scene. I then provided a setting NPC or organization that complicated things and we rolled a die to determine how that scene went, and the second player narrated the result of what happened. This way, each character had a story binding them both to the setting and to each other. We repeated this for each player selecting a different character and then reversing the result of the first die roll. So, each character had close connection and shared stories with two other characters, the group as a whole was tightly interconnected, and each character has a positive relation with a setting NPC or organization and a negative one. This set the scene for the game, and we finalized PCs (one player made a large change because he thought it better fit with the fiction generated) and proceeded to play. The first adventure was pre-done, but also not very consequential, and was used to set up campaign themes more strongly, but since then it's been character backstories and the rogues gallery we created together to see what happens next.
I say this because if you followed what you've outlined you did here, we'd probably have strongly clashed, especially given your position that you were correct to do as you did because that's how you always did it.
I've read through your little mini-game three times. Do you know what I don't see?
Any reason at all that it can not work with characters that have partial backstories already created. I see no reason that what you describe could not have been done with characters that are more than 85% completed. In fact, having mostly finished characters would seem to make that game easier, since they have hooks and connection points in their stories already.
