D&D General Background Vs. Backstory

[Doug McCrae]

In my experience, half my player's character fail to surpass 1st level, and even fewer make it to 3rd.

I started rpg-ing in 1982 with B/X and I've almost never experienced games this deadly, the only exceptions being a few oneoffs of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia (which is intended to be a parodic satire of old school D&D). It's very rarely the norm these days, and probably wasn't by the mid-late 80s.

 

[hawkeyefan]

For those of you who expect players to provide a backstory, how deadly is your game?

Mine is no where near as deadly as what you describe. We’ve been playing 5E since it came out in one long campaign (with veeeery slow progression) and three PCs have died. Two others died but were Revivified before it stuck.

Those PCs who died were then replaced. And we’ve also had a couple players join along the way. I started these new PCs at a level that fit with the rest of the party. So in those cases, especially, a backstory was kind of needed. Doesn’t have to be incredibly long or detailed, just kind of “what have you been doing and where have you been” kind of thing.

With such a high lethality rate in your game, how do you handle replacement characters? Do they start at level 1? Or join at party level? If so, do you and/or the players come up with any ideas to explain these latecomers?

I’ve never understood the bolded bit. Lethality level is whatever the DM sets it at, regardless of edition.

Lethality is in the eye of the beholder. Especially the disintegrate ray eye.

Well, while I agree that the DM can indeed control the lethality of his or her game, how much work is needed to turn it up will vary greatly by system.

Old school death at 0 hp and a cleric who didn’t even get any healing until second level? Pretty easy to kill those PCs.

5E short rest healing and death saves and an abundance of healing sources makes it a bit tougher. You really have to go out of your way to kill PCs at a high rate, or they need incredibly bad luck with the death saves.

 

[Lanefan]

If it doesn't come up during play it doesn't exist.

Which makes it a chicken-or-egg situation, as backstory can't come out in play very well without there first being something to base it on...

We're not writing novels. I expect back stories to be 1 paragraph.

...which often doesn't have to be much if any more than this.

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe I'm explaining it poorly, I'm distracted by a lot of things today, but trying to picture a game where most of the characters die before level 3 makes me wonder what the point even is. I'd stop running the game, my players would leave, because we couldn't advance a story beyond the opening act.

This assumes the (or a) story requires higher-level characters in order to advance, which isn't necessarily true; you can get a prefectly decent story out of a series of 1st-2nd level adventures, while at the same time laying some groundwork for other stories that may or may not come to fruition later.

Who cares why the goblins kidnapped the merchant and stole her jeweled necklace, half the party died in the fighting and the other half died when we headed out to try and get to the next town. Only one person made it through both fights and as the most senior party member they decided to get us all killed going somewhere else.

Heh - my current campaign started close on 11 years ago with Keep on the Borderlands. One starting character made it through while watching the rest of the party membership turn over three times - and the players loved it!

That one starting character then died in the next adventure, but most of the rest of 'em made it through.

But yes, a true TPK puts a rather hard stop to proceedings. Fortunately, even at very low level adventuring parties are extremely resilient things, although their individual members might not be.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This assumes the (or a) story requires higher-level characters in order to advance, which isn't necessarily true; you can get a prefectly decent story out of a series of 1st-2nd level adventures, while at the same time laying some groundwork for other stories that may or may not come to fruition later.

Heh - my current campaign started close on 11 years ago with Keep on the Borderlands. One starting character made it through while watching the rest of the party membership turn over three times - and the players loved it!

That one starting character then died in the next adventure, but most of the rest of 'em made it through.

But yes, a true TPK puts a rather hard stop to proceedings. Fortunately, even at very low level adventuring parties are extremely resilient things, although their individual members might not be.

They can be, it just puts undue pressure on it I think.

 

[Lanefan]

With such a high lethality rate in your game, how do you handle replacement characters? Do they start at level 1? Or join at party level? If so, do you and/or the players come up with any ideas to explain these latecomers?

In my games players are always allowed to play up to 2 PCs at a time, so if they lose one they've still got something to play.

Replacement characters can be brought in whenever it makes sense to do so, At the type of party level we're talking, they'll come in at raw 1st; later on as the average level advances I'll set a 'floor' at which new PCs come in, and this floor slowly rises as the campaign goes along (but is always lower than the average party level).

As for explaining the replacements, my assumption in any game is always that the PCs aren't the only adventurers out there by any means; and thus a new PC is simply someone who has done its adventuring elsewhere up till now (if not coming in at raw 1st).

Well, while I agree that the DM can indeed control the lethality of his or her game, how much work is needed to turn it up will vary greatly by system.

Old school death at 0 hp and a cleric who didn’t even get any healing until second level? Pretty easy to kill those PCs.

5E short rest healing and death saves and an abundance of healing sources makes it a bit tougher. You really have to go out of your way to kill PCs at a high rate, or they need incredibly bad luck with the death saves.

Yeah - 0e to 3e it's pretty easy to kill 'em off particularly at low level. 4e-5e not so much.

 

[atanakar]

I favor a strong campaign concept instead of detailled PC backgrounds*. For exemple, in my current campaign all the characters are sibblings of the same noble family. They rolled for age and the oldest (female fighter) is next in line for succession. She is the leader of the group. Add to that 5e backgrounds and it is enough to get the dice rolling.

(*I'm tired of orphans who's parents were killed in a violent manner, or mothers who died giving birth to PCs or half-assed and illogical backgrounds writtent to justify abusive builds.)

Edit:typos

 

[Vigdisdotter]

As a player, I've come up with back stories that were written down and referred to. I've also had character with no set back story. And I've also had characters where the DM handed me a print out of the back story.

Now that I'm starting to DM my own game--and I'm trying to get me players to do more then hack and slash--I'm going to get them to write up a short back story. Nothing too involved since they are first level and will be going through characters like tissue paper. But something to get my players thinking about WHO their characters are and HOW they tick.

It also gives ME something I can mess with if they start deviating from what they come up with ~_^

 

[aco175]

I like to see something, maybe a paragraph or two. Maybe not even written down but told at session one. I also like to see more of things that can help me make stories and adventures. Maybe the whole village was killed and the PC was taken away and forced to push a wheel around until he was big and strong, only to be pushed into a fighter pit. That's great, but tell me you have a vendetta against Thulsa Doom and now I have something. Tell me that your grandfather told you about a magical sword that his father once held that could defeat the dragon that terrorizes the village every 25 years and I have something.

 

[abirdcall]

Which makes it a chicken-or-egg situation, as backstory can't come out in play very well without there first being something to base it on...

...which often doesn't have to be much if any more than this.

This is why I like the background system a lot.

Traits, ideal, bond, and flaw can all come up during play and have an impact.

Tell the character's backstory during play through their actions.