The Mirrorball Man
Aventurier
In my opinion, if a character has no backstory at all, no past, no distinctive personality and he is just expected to die quickly in combat, I wouldn't call him a "character." It's a unit, a pawn.
A character can have a distinctive personality without having a predetermined backstory.In my opinion, if a character has no backstory at all, no past, no distinctive personality and he is just expected to die quickly in combat, I wouldn't call him a "character." It's a unit, a pawn.
I like to do a brief backstory for my PCs, no more than two or three paragraphs. If I was playing in an OD&D style game (Gary Gygax's group apparently didn't name their PCs until 4th level, the death rate was so high) I wouldn't do this. But then I wouldn't want to play Gygaxian D&D, except as a videogame.
I usually ask that my players supply either a short backstory (no more than 200 words) or complete a short character quiz that answers some key details (where do they come from, why are they their primary class, are they a leader or a follower, etc.). This is to be supplied by the end of the third session their character is in, to give them time to find their character through play. If they are having trouble with it I'll help them come up with something suitable.
So far it's worked quite well - enough information to give me some hooks for them but not so much that I have to agonise over how to fit their character into the ongoing campaign.
For those of you who expect players to provide a backstory, how deadly is your game?
In my experience, half my player's character fail to surpass 1st level, and even fewer make it to 3rd. Only a true master of the game manages to reach 5th and a 9th-level character is almost unheard of.
As such, writing a 2000 word backstory in one of my games will probably be waste of time. But if characters in your games are expected to survive for the entire campaign (arch?), I can see why you might be more demanding.
What if players don't know the setting very well. How do they write a backstory that fits? How do they write a backstory that's relevant?
Almost every game I've ever played in has had the players backgrounds created on the spot during character generation, and sometimes they get further detailed in play. We talk about what the setting is and about what type of characters we want and then we make them to fit.
I would be a little shocked if a player handed me a written backstory. What am I supposed to do with it?
If the entire party dies, we reset shortly before the deadly incident.
Would you mind sharing your questionnaire? Some of my players (i.e. my kids) struggle with character creation.
For those of you who expect players to provide a backstory, how deadly is your game?