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<blockquote data-quote="Longspeak" data-source="post: 7909869" data-attributes="member: 7019284">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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Longspeak, post: 7909869, member: 7019284"] 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 [I]chapters[/I], 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. [/QUOTE]

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