D&D General Background Vs. Backstory

[Coroc]

Functionally there is no difference between player written background and backstory from a gm perspective. Both of them will be atedious tug of war that gets worse the more into writing it the player is. For example...
Gm: this is going to be a grim dark gritty raven loft campaign.
Pc1 can I play a turtle?
Gm:yes but see grim dark raven loft
Pc1 shows up with ten pages of nonsense about how his tortle donataro is on a quest to avenge his family name after his father high king eliminated of water deep was disgraced by scheming backstabbing business partners.. oh and he wears a purple mask to match the purple grip on his quarterstaff. At every opportunity pc1 will remind someone "well on a role player and my character would.... " or try to call upon high king eliminster's name then argue with NPCs about it no matter how often the gm reminds him grim dark ravenloft so they don't exist and he was told.

Pc2 says "I'm an Everton style orc bard with cadet background. He shows up and dives into the grim dark ravenloft campaign where he discovers his character along with everyone else to fit the campaign as it progresses. . All is great.

Pc3 is also an Eberron type orc cadet bard but has four pages of msrysue fanfic about how he was wronged as a cadet and framed by corrupt superiors flto cover up their embezzling. He too says many of the same things as pc1 and never makes any attempt to join the grim dark ravenloft campaign or tie his pre written backstory to either the campaign or any other player no matter how many olive branches are extended to the party's second broken latch. Like pc1 he expects an 18 level ravenloft campaign about unethical human experimentation and the ramifications based loosely on an old racenloft module/supplement about that to significantly involve his corrupt boot camp instructors from $notbleepingravenloft

Wow
Now that is a rant if there is one.
I do not think that I could have done a similar piece so good.

Questions: Was it a hobbit teenage ninja tortle with the pirate background?
Nah sry just joking.

But I know these kind of players, especially Pc3. For them their character and its development is the most important and the top fun. They do not need superstats or crazy feets and cool magic items.
The main plot is not so important for them like their PCs emotional statistics.
They are more into whether their PC just laughs or cries or is angry at another PC or NPC because this one does not laugh or cry about whatever situation is at hand.
The upside on that: Many of them are extraordinary roleplayers.
The downside of it: As a DM you have to write a pagelong essay about your homebrew / modded official campaign world and hope that said player finds his alter ego built into that framework somewhere.
Good luck with that

I did exaggerate a bit here, but only a bit. These guys would be top of the notch players if they would try a bit to fit their RP concept to the fluff they get from the DM.

Edit: what is an everton style orc? I really feel dumb on that one.

 

[Coroc]

..., so you could easily have Donatello as an escaped experiment.....

"Hey you. You escaped experiment who looks like a tortle. Are you a pirate? "



Haha that made my day, "Omg how do you look this morning, like you were an escaped experiment ..."

 

[tetrasodium]

@Azzy Barovia is not default grimdark, Ravenloft itself has some pretty heavy grimdark elements. More specifically any setting the gm wants to use and tells his players the capaign will be a grimdark dark grusome twist on $setting is grimdark and I'm pretty sure the based on modified module was Feast of Goblyns, but it may have been one related to this lovable mother teresa type. Feast is basically horrific magebreeding unleashed on victim "patients" & could very easily be twisted to grimdark.

@Coroc your right that they would probably be great (role)players if they were willing to make some semblance of effort to fit their character to what the gm gave them/develops; but doing so would make them a dirty roll player like PC2 and that is too far beneath someone like them who is quick to replace "no offense but..." with "I'm a role player and my character would...". IME it doesn't matter how much the gm provides or tries to work with pc1 & pc3 as both will expect the world to cater to their ill fitting backstory while looking down on PC2 for being a roll player unfolding/learning her character's background based on how it can fit with the game as it develops.

As to everton orcs, I'm guessing it's probably a city or something. I was posting from bed trying to get back to sleep & my phone autocorrected eberron to everton or I typo'd it. Eberron's orc's are different both mechanically from volo's & all the lore/fluff surrounding them is wildly different

 

[Longspeak]

I used to require detailed back stories. Now I shy away from them.

I used to provide detailed back stories. Now I shy away from games that require them.

A long, detailed back story might help a player get into his character; it certainly has helped me in the past. But as a GM... I'm looking for one or two details I can hang something on. I had a player once write a back story that had chapters, for pity's sake. And many of those details contradicted facts of the world that had already been established through play.

On top of that... a lot of people aren't great writers. I've read some god-awful back stories. I felt like getting out the red ink and grading the paper.

Finally, a detailed story locks those details into place, at the very least in the mind of the player, but often in the GM if he lets the detail go unchallenged.

But a brief backstory gives room to grow, room to create and improvise in play. In a recent game I played, I began with a two sentence story. In play, we backfilled enough detail that I could now give you all a ten page background, just of stuff that happened before the first session, including my characters relationships with the other established PCs and the NPCs associated with our band of brothers and sisters.

Now, in this case, I was rolling up a character for what I thought would be a one-shot, with about 20 minutes to prepare, so two sentences was all there was time for. But having a brief back story let me build on it with the others in a way I never could if I just wrote all that in advance.

 

[Chaosmancer]

@Azzy Barovia is not default grimdark, Ravenloft itself has some pretty heavy grimdark elements. More specifically any setting the gm wants to use and tells his players the capaign will be a grimdark dark grusome twist on $setting is grimdark and I'm pretty sure the based on modified module was Feast of Goblyns, but it may have been one related to this lovable mother teresa type. Feast is basically horrific magebreeding unleashed on victim "patients" & could very easily be twisted to grimdark.

@Coroc your right that they would probably be great (role)players if they were willing to make some semblance of effort to fit their character to what the gm gave them/develops; but doing so would make them a dirty roll player like PC2 and that is too far beneath someone like them who is quick to replace "no offense but..." with "I'm a role player and my character would...". IME it doesn't matter how much the gm provides or tries to work with pc1 & pc3 as both will expect the world to cater to their ill fitting backstory while looking down on PC2 for being a roll player unfolding/learning her character's background based on how it can fit with the game as it develops.

As to everton orcs, I'm guessing it's probably a city or something. I was posting from bed trying to get back to sleep & my phone autocorrected eberron to everton or I typo'd it. Eberron's orc's are different both mechanically from volo's & all the lore/fluff surrounding them is wildly different

Again, you seem to be ranting about specific players and specific ideas. Nothing about writing a backstory means you think you are better than other people.

And, I want to take a side note to say that "Sorry, but my character would..." isn't always this grand sin against gaming. Yeah, "Sorry, but my character would totally stab you in the back and steal all the treasure." is a jerk move by a jerk player who is trying to hide that fact. But, I've also seen, "Sorry guys, my character wouldn't be able to kill him, he still loves his brother." Which can be an incredibly powerful moment in the story. Or, "Sorry, but my character would grab the kid and run, saving the life of an innocent is more important than saving the king right now."

Absolutes are never actually absolute. "Bad players say this" doesn't mean that "All players who say this are bad."


Also, to the point of GrimDark, I think you aren't fully understanding the point that Azzy was making.

The original usage of Grimdark was for the purposes of parody, when things were so dark, so drenched in violence and blood, that it almost became funny. I think the original Robocop had this, where it was so over the top violent that it was more comedic than terrifying. It's taking things far far beyond where they can still be taken seriously.

For a lot of people, Ravenloft doesn't fit that. And even what you are saying about escaped human experiments doesn't push it that far. IT could, you could rachet it up and up and up until it was Grimdark, but normal horror and grittiness is not Grimdark.

Or to put it in visual language

This is Grimdark

This is not

 

[tetrasodium]

@Chaos in stand corrected on the grim dark troe I'm not interested in arguing over Darker and Edgier - TV Tropes

As to your specific players rather than something else assertion, there is a reason that certain stereotypes traits and behaviors tend to be associated with each other. Its behaviour I've seen again and again over my decades of GM'ing for various groups including AL and similar ones. If someone like you likes to write long involved backstories for your characters and thinks they don't do those things then condemn those things as a problem some people should work on instead of defending those people by saying it's not everyone

 

[Chaosmancer]

As to your specific players rather than something else assertion, there is a reason that certain stereotypes traits and behaviors tend to be associated with each other. Its behaviour I've seen again and again over my decades of GM'ing for various groups including AL and similar ones. If someone like you likes to write long involved backstories for your characters and thinks they don't do those things then condemn those things as a problem some people should work on instead of defending those people by saying it's not everyone

I'm going to try and understand what you mean by this, because I see two possible meanings here.

"If someone like you likes to write long involved backstories for your characters"

So, yes, I do enjoy writing backstories. I'm not sure all of them are long or involved, but that is a matter of degree not intent.

"and thinks they don't do those things"

And I do think that I don't act like a jerk, trying to make the story all about me, ruining everyone's fun, or ect.

"Then condemn those things as a problem some people should work on"

So, first off, condemn is some harsh language. It's a game, I don't tend to "condemn" people for being annoying while playing a game... okay, sometimes I do but beside the point.

I am in fact saying we should point out the actual problems and work on group communication and learning not to be jerks, so that is exactly what I am saying.

"instead of defending those people by saying it is not everyone."

See, this is where you lose me. Because I am defending "people who write backstories" and you are condemning "people who are jerks".

Do jerks write backstories? Sure, they can. They also drink monster energy drinks. I do not condemn all players who drink monster energy drinks because the only player I have had at my table who did so was also a jerk at times.


So, are you saying don't defend jerks, or don't defend backstory writers? Because they are two different groups

See, despite your decades and decades of GMing for multiple groups across a wide spectrum of play, you seem to be missing that not all stereotypes are true. For example, I live in Ohio.

I am not a football fan
I do not hate Michigan
I have never done the majority of farm based things like cow tipping or other nonsense.
I enjoy more condiments than Ranch and Ketchup
I listen to more than Country and Pop music

Why do I mention these things. Because a quick google search showed that these are some steroetypes about Ohioans. Is there some truth to these steroetypes? Probably. I know a lot of football fans, have quite few friends who grew up on farms, lot of people I know like Country and Pop music.

But steroetypes aren't truth, and assuming they are is just bad practice. Assuming everyone who writes more than two sentences for their backstory and creates some npcs from their past is trying to be a jerk, ruin the game, and wants to see the world burn so their special snowflake can rule the ashes, is just plain wrong. Because on this very thread we have quite a few people who have admitted to writing backstories, liking backstories, and none of them seem like the self-entitled jerks who would do that sort of thing.

 

[tetrasodium]

@Chaosmancer You chose to defend the group you seem to want called "people who write backstories". I don't care if you are part of that group or not, but your choice to defend them without attempting to address the issue by dismissing a problem common enough within that group for @Coroc to mock it with his "good luck with that " comment in post 101 along with others from other posters over the last six pages of this thread makes it very clear that the problem in question of sheltering "self entitled jerks" (as you put it) within the group of "people who like to write backstories" is something that group should acknowledge within itself & put more effort into addressing rather than dismissing as an aberrant observation of specific individuals.

Given your desperation to find offense and continued insistence on dismissal rather than addressing the problem it looks like we are done here @Chaosmancer

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

@Chaosmancer You chose to defend the group you seem to want called "people who write backstories". I don't care if you are part of that group or not, but your choice to defend them without attempting to address the issue by dismissing a problem common enough within that group for @Coroc to mock it with his "good luck with that " comment in post 101 along with others from other posters over the last six pages of this thread makes it very clear that the problem in question of sheltering "self entitled jerks" (as you put it) within the group of "people who like to write backstories" is something that group should acknowledge within itself & put more effort into addressing rather than dismissing as an aberrant observation of specific individuals.

Given your desperation to find offense and continued insistence on dismissal rather than addressing the problem it looks like we are done here @Chaosmancer

What is the issue then?

And please keep it to as close to three sentences as you can.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Aside from your senario being utterly ludicrous, I feel the need to point out that Ravenloft is not "grimdark" and that "grimdark" isn't something that would be applied to any setting that takes itself seriously. "Grimdark" is parody, like Warhammer 40K *where the term comes from) and Judge Dredd (which is a huge source of inspiration to WH40K)—not only do you turn things up to 11, but you go past that to the point where you're "wink wink, nudge nudge"-ing to the audience.

Whatever it used to mean, now it just means "dark".

Source

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So first up, a definition. The term grimdark was originally a pejorative derived from the description of Warhammer 40k description (“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.”)​

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And then the writers of this subgenre took the “insult” and made it their own. By claiming their own work as grimdark, they striped [sic] the term of its ability to be an insult...​

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In fantasy, it usually means you have a dark fantasy setting (more on that later, but we’ll call this necessary but not sufficient) where the rose-colored paint has been scraped off your glasses.​

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