Backstory - How Not To

[prosfilaes]

Wasted preparation is when you write a background, hoping your DM will do somthing with it.

A PC's background is solely a tool for a player to contribute to the game; the DM has enough to worry about without trying to weave in a load of player stuff into his game.

I don't get that at all; the DM's job is to weave a load of player stuff into "his" game. A lot of times a background is an excellent tool for a DM, because it helps him motivate the players. Even when it's not, it's a way for players to express what they want in the game; and if a player wants the church of Illmater to have an effect in the world, is that really that onerous to scatter a few churchs and priests around?

 

[Ydars]

Hi Profilaes,

Of course in an ideal world character background should help BOTH players and DMs to make the game better and to bring their character into the game.

However, the idea around here amongst most people seems to be that background is SOLELY to make plot hooks for the DM and I was just trying to introduce the idea that perhaps it might be a good idea to use your background yourself in play to give your character some life.

I say this because I have seldom found a DM who takes the slightest notice of my backgrounds when I play. I also seldom have any players who write one for their characters when I DM, even though I do use everything they give me when I am in the centre seat.

I think it is a problem with my current group more than anything else but suspect my problem is far from isolated.

 

[Haltherrion]

So what did that fighter or wizard do for those first years of their fictional lives? As much or as little as the player likes, provided there is a clear distinction between the fiction created whole-cloth by the player before the game starts and the events of the game played by all the players and the referee together at the table. My advice to players is that what your character is going to do is much more important than what your character's done - goals are great, but keep them general at the start, and let them evolve as the game unfolds - and that the most interesting things in your character's life are ahead of her, not behind her.This is why I switched the order of the posts around: if I'm understanding you correctly, your focus on story and literature makes fiction about a character as 'real' as what happens in actual play with a group of players.

As real as what happens in play? Sure, it can be as real. Any background with setting implications (such as the destruction of a town for instance or the existence of an organization) needs to be approved by the ref, I would think, but the fact that it happened pre-game as background doesn’t make it any less real.

Take an elf or dwarf who in standard settings might be 40 or 80 years old at start. That’s an awful lot of years in the world to not matter much when it comes time to start adventuring.

As for a focus on literature or other fictional media, I use those as analogies. Those are media we are all familiar with and there are few players I’ve ever met who don’t keep some of that in mind while gaming. Sometimes analogies can help extend the conversation. It doesn’t follow that I actually heavily plot my games nor do I require players be always in-character. I just find it useful when they have a clear character concept and background helps. I also find it useful when they have interesting things in their backgrounds that can be tied into the world.

But I don't equate playing a roleplaying game with literature. I don't believe that an extensive (or any, really) character background is necessary to enjoy the game; I do believe, on the other hand, that the experiences of playing the game serve to define a character better than a bit of fiction created out-of-game, in large part because those in-character, in-play experiences are 'real.'

I wouldn’t say it is necessary but I would say it helps much more often than not. Let’s say you caught my attention with the paragraph below from this post:

Over the years I've seen players write extensive backstories about their characters which are ignored or become irrelevant after only a few hours of actual play. Your character is what he does in the game. Everything else is wishful thinking.

To me, it seems to be claiming that backgrounds have no role or utility. That seems grossly overstated.

 

[Janx]

So what did that fighter or wizard do for those first years of their fictional lives? As much or as little as the player likes, provided there is a clear distinction between the fiction created whole-cloth by the player before the game starts and the events of the game played by all the players and the referee together at the table. My advice to players is that what your character is going to do is much more important than what your character's done - goals are great, but keep them general at the start, and let them evolve as the game unfolds - and that the most interesting things in your character's life are ahead of her, not behind her.

Though our styles are quite different, in this we both seem to agree.

to my logic, a 1st level PC hasn't done much of anything. With 0 XP, to my mind, they JUST turned level 1 at that moment the first session started.

it doesn't take a momentous event to go from NULL XP/0th level to 0XP/1st level.

As somebody else said, your PC's background should befit their experience level. Thus, a 0th level PC can't have been too awesome.

All the cool stuff and most dramatic stuff should happen in game. Your background should not be cooler than what happens at the table.

For that goal, I don't need much for a new PC:
where'd you learn your skills/class
why should your fellow PCs accept you into the party
what is your PC afraid/concerned of?
What motivates you to take risks

The most important one is "why should your fellow PCs accept you into the party" as that makes the player think in terms of how their PC will fit with the party. rather than obstruct the party.

 

[Sorrowdusk]

Arguably that would make them like most people in their societies, but let's set that aside for a moment.

Instead, let's consider this: nothing you write into your character's background ever happened, either. Nothing happens to your character until the game starts.No, but for purposes of playing a roleplaying game, does it really matter? The experiences of 'Bob the Fighter' during the game become his background. His personality develops in play as a result of reacting to his adventures, his backstory begins with a recounting of what happens to him after he sets out on his adventures.It's not an arbitrary point at all. It's the point at which a group of people sat down to play a game together. It's the point at which playing the game becomes a shared experience.Many referees are fond of citing Helmuth von Moltke - ". . . [N]o plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force," paraphrased almost a century later as, "No plan survives contact with the enemy" - to explain what happens when the adventurers actually interact with the game-world, but I've heard very few players express similar sentiments about their characters. The thing is, in my experience, it's no less true for players and their characters than it is for referees and the game-world, and in my opinion that's exactly how it should be, which is why I highlighted the passage in the quote above.

Over the years I've seen players write extensive backstories about their characters which are ignored or become irrelevant after only a few hours of actual play. Your character is what he does in the game. Everything else is wishful thinking.

I like characters which develop in play because they are, like Tennyson's Ulysses, 'a part of all they have met.' More importantly, they are a part of all everyone at the table meets. Too much emphasis on what happened in a character's completely fictional 'past' can work against this, in my experience.

(A corollary to this is one of the reasons I stopped playing d20 games: too much planning for what a character will be twelve levels from now, which can work against responding to the events of the game right now.)

So, there's that.

I will play Devils Advocate for a moment, because there is ONE example in my history (A Call of Cthulhu Game, non-d20) that somewhat resonates with what you have been saying.

OKAY. Let me tell you about Altair. Altair Qasim was supposed to JUST be a pulpy action-style gun guy, he was wealthy, stylish, English born-but not "white" and for a twist, a big game (and monster hunter) who was greatly inspired by THIS

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ipL58N75c"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2ipL58N75c[/ame]



My LAST three characters in that campaign were occultists focused investigators whom I had hoped would one day learn a few 'real' spells, but they all died off without seeing any of that, so I decided to create a 'heavy' to support the party. It was great.

But then...it got better.

That character ultimately only fired that Elephant Gun ONCE at some zombies, and that whole aspect became signature, but secondary to his character. He was educated in classically greek and latin and LOW AND BEHOLD. We find a book. You know what they say about the books in Call of Cthulhu. He became a black magician, that even ex-cultists turned drunkards would go "Wha'tha hell ya foolin' wi'tha'guy EEE'S A GORRAM BLACK MAGICIAN!"

He was handy and the party liked having him around, plus he was rich so he financed a lot of things. At the same time though...he was dangerous. The number of people that died in that campaign (by the standards of less lethal games) was INSANE. But a lot of odd things were connected to him as well. Things like...

* A School Fieldtrip to a public library being slaughtered by a summoned creature that went rogue. (Blamed on a Mountain Lion-my character was an 'expert'. )

* Several miscellaneous people going into comas for weeks due to him "testing" things on them.

* Several dozen people being killed in a hospital duel with the BBEG, including multiple summonings ala Poke'mon. And prior to the duel? The BBEG didnt know I knew magic and used a spell to melt my big ass gun. Waste of spell.

"Was supposed to impress, sunny-jim?"


* Followed by A Mass Traffick incident injuring some 40 odd people.

I did enjoy cutting him up into pieces with my machete waaay too much (although the rest of the party lost some san over that). Albeit-HE DID eventually come back anyway.

(*police sirens*) "....blast!"

* A Few dozen people drained until unconsciousness in a ritual disguised as a play audition as planned by him to facilitate a ritual that needed POW when the party wouldnt be enough.

* Handwritten Occult Books mysteriously changing (he made fakes and switched them to keep the info to himself-though he also shared with an early FBI/Deltagreen who ahd heard of his monster hunting exploits on the side).

And most of this went unknown until the end of my character after he had been killed during an encounter (he was my longest living character, AND he got all the way down to 1 San.) The general weirdness of the setting seemed to mask this. Only then did I tell of how he practiced magic. They assumed he knew what he was doing, when really, he didnt at all. He just figured some meditations and some words and gestures, and tried things to see what would happen. And since our GM didnt like telling what the actual POW point cost was, or ANY of the actual mechanics for spells...my charcter just sort of 'experimented' a lot and stumbled his way through. He wasnt afraid to...try things on people from his window. And he only tried his first botched summon/bind in a public place because he didnt want to do it alone in some forsaken place where he would be far from help (they were quite resistant to conventional weaponry, so he was concerned for cover and first aid....that and maybe yeah there might be more things for it to vent its wrath upon.) He negotiated with the strange entities we learned to contact that seemed helpful in our endeavours to stop the BBEG.

He tried to get some others of the party to learn one or two things, but seeing what it had done to others including the BBEG and his (undead) 'Dragon' (<- see Tvtropes), they didnt want to touch the stuff. He also tried to get them to offer corpses as offerings, seeing as the party's patron liked human flesh (he reasoned 'HEY-we already shot these guys up, we can hide the bodies from the cops. And besides, if we do it this, dont we gain something in return?' Despite that they were too reluctant, and went for conventional methods. We did that a lot.) Probably the most bad thing the party was aware of was him shooting a wounded gangster who talked back to him (which would make the chemist who picked up a hypereligious derangement believing the 'monsters' NOW not only to be real which he had denied, but also to be 'demons' his adversary. )

Furthermore, he was the first character, I'd ever wrote character journal's for on a regular basis-to actually think about what my character thinks about and put it to paper. (The GM and the party also liked reading them-albeit, I left SOME things off paper...so they would not know...but he was in on it).

In the end? He was THE most BAD-ASS I have ever played or had the ejoyment of playing. EVER. And it all happened by chance that he actually became what I had wanted/hoped/intended my prior characters to be. And the funny thing is, looking back, I dont think the prior ones would have been as good at it. I will never forget that character.

So YES-what happens during gameplay does have an affect. Albeit that is a rare example in my gamepaly history, where something IC had a huge an effect on 180'ing the direction of a character. It was an exceptional moment. Still, I DID develop ideas and the DM was willing to talk with. We talked a LOT out of game about potential scenarios and twists, and things I might like my character to be involved in-although it seriously didnt begin until that unexpected "turn" in events with my 4th character.

ALTHOUGH one could argue it was just a case of me jumping at the chance to do what I had WANTED to do in the FIRST place, what I had been trying to set up my prior characters for but just not found the chance. I suppose part of what made him so interesting was that he seemed atypical or against the archytype. Everyone expects the occultist/spiritualist to get sucked into the vortex of madness like that, but not a sporting big-game type, who while he had SOME interest in the occult given his cryptozoological hobby and interest in trophies. The GM liked my character so much, the way I played him, and the way I wrote IC he would sometimes run extra sessions before or after regular game so I could do stuff or look into stuff.

At the end of it all, he died like the rest of my characters-FAR less than sane with a slew of derangments and surrounded by horrible things that should not be. But DAM did I feel it meant something and at once was happy to see him go out like that, his soul consumed by his patron and at once sad that I would have to pick up another character sheet.

HE BRIEFLY CAME BACK THOUGH-during a seance performed by the (mostly) new party on members of the old party, he spoke (voiced by me for a moment) before his partron possesed the medium wrestling control and was all "HE BELONGS TO US NOW" and that was scary crap cause the medium got killed and my NEW character ended up in jail for a lil while trying to prove his innocence to the authorities.

 

[Haltherrion]

I don't get that at all; the DM's job is to weave a load of player stuff into "his" game. A lot of times a background is an excellent tool for a DM, because it helps him motivate the players. Even when it's not, it's a way for players to express what they want in the game; and if a player wants the church of Illmater to have an effect in the world, is that really that onerous to scatter a few churchs and priests around?

As a ref and a player, I wouldn't go quite that far (but agree with the sentiment ). I think it is a bonus when the ref uses character background material but for some types of games (the more plotted, story-arc type) or when there are a lot of characters with good backgrounds, it can get hard to 'visit' all the relevant stuff in a background.

I like to think of the background as:

1. helps firm the player's conception of the character and perhaps affects some of your in-game decisions.
2. provides the referee with possible story or plot-hook ideas as it works into the game.

On point 2, nothing says the player can't remind the ref of an item in their background in hopes of getting it worked in at some point.

In our current campaign, one of the PCs was exiled from the elven forest. This ties in with her tiefling blood which, in this setting, manifests itself around maturity and caused her to become outcast by the elves. On point #1, she has a big chip on her shoulder regarding elves, doesn't like them and will try to thwart them. On point #2, she would really like a way to prove that they were wrong to kick her out.

This second point might be resolved without ref intervention but most likely requires the ref to make situations that might lend themselves to proving herself.

In the terms of our campaign, the players have shown interest in a long standing plot-hook (now a full blown arc) that, among other things, supposes some demonic types trying to break through from the underworld into the surface world. Thanks to the tiefling's background, I chose to make one of the entry points in the elven forest. The party has learned of this and the tiefling is interested in thwarting that attack as a way to prove herself to the elves. Time will tell if they can pull it off (they don't know where the egress is in the forest; it hasn't actually broken through yet so they need to follow it through from the underworld side and then will have to finesse how they thwart it- defeat the threat before a break through and the elves might not think the tiefling actually did anything for them.)

This is an example of a background affecting things already in the works. Just one way to use a background.

 

[Haltherrion]

it doesn't take a momentous event to go from NULL XP/0th level to 0XP/1st level.

It need not take a momentous event but must all level 1s have non-momentous backgrounds?

The following are so common as to be cliche'd yet they do provide other paths to level 1 that can affect the PCs. And cliche'd as they are, they do tend to show up in RPGs, books, movies...

1. The character's elven village was destroyed by goblins. A wizard took the orphan in and raised and triained him. Character has a profound hatred of goblins and wants to defeat them.
2. The character was a waif living on the streets where he learned the arts of the rogue. Character has a dislike of the wealthy, a keen desire to steal his way to fortune and is amoral (neutral depending on your views). Solidly grounds the rogue, cliche as it may be.
3. Gorrak was a dwarven prince and heir to the throne. As a prince, he was pampered and kept from any real harm (0 XP) but received basic martial training (level 1 warrior). His younger brother framed him and got him banished. He is burning to reclaim his birthright. Heavy motivation here. And yes, I stole that from Dragon Age.
4. Ilana was a beautiful maiden claimed by the temple, ostensibly for the priesthood but in fact was abused. She did get trained as a level 1 cleric but recently could take no more abuse and killed the high priest in his sleep. She is now on the run.

You could replace the wizard, rogue, cleric and warrior with 4 of the same class who did nothing in their life but I like to think even the cliche'd backgrounds are more interesting. As a ref, I have 2 PCs with a grudge, one with at least clear motivations for being the pita he is likely to be and one on the run. Lots to work with.

But that's just me, I suspose...

 

[Ydars]

I entirely disagree with Janx; why should every PC be inexperienced?

I once played a very old swordsman, inspired by Druss the Legend from David Gemmell's books, who was very experienced. He was just first level because he had not adventured for many years.

Similarly, a friend once played a mage whose background stated that he was a disgraced wilder wizard and every time he went up a level, he was merely breaking through the magical barriers placed upon him by a guild of mages for his past misdeeds.

Background is central to any character; how many actors or writers start the first scene of their new TV series or film without any idea of the identity of their characters? Yes an RPG is a different medium but players need to do some work occasionally, just like DMs.

I am not saying good characters cannot evolve in play, but for every time I have seen this happen, I have seen ten times where a character remains colourless, underdeveloped and identical to the player in motivation for entire campaigns, when all it would have taken to make the character interesting was a bit of thought.

I also find it quite confusing as a player, when a character someone else is playing starts off insipid and 'develops' a strong character suddenly, after weeks or months.

 

[The Shaman]

Again, please forgive me for re-ordering your reply - any introduced errors are unintentional.

Let's start here.

Let’s say you caught my attention with the paragraph below from this post . . . . To me, it seems to be claiming that backgrounds have no role or utility. That seems grossly overstated.

It's too bad my earlier post didn't grab your attention the same way.

A player in my games should write as much or as little backstory as she wishes as a personal tool for running her character, but she should not expect me to draw from it during the game.

If writing a background helps you get into the headspace of your character, have at it, but the game we're all sitting down to play together isn't about your personal fan-fic - it's about what happens while we sit around a table and play the game, so what happened to your character in Vegas stays in Vegas.

[Is character background fiction a]s real as what happens in play? Sure, it can be as real. Any background with setting implications (such as the destruction of a town for instance or the existence of an organization) needs to be approved by the ref, I would think . . .

At the very least.

. . . but the fact that it happened pre-game as background doesn’t make it any less real.

What it's not is a shared experience among all the players and the referee, and to the greatest extent practicable, I want the game to be centered on that shared experience.

Take an elf or dwarf who in standard settings might be 40 or 80 years old at start. That’s an awful lot of years in the world to not matter much when it comes time to start adventuring.

An elf of dwarf of forty or eighty years begins with same ability and experience as a human of fifteen or twenty-five years in every iteration of D&D with which I'm familiar - the implication for me was that demihumans spend their time differently than humans.

As for a focus on literature or other fictional media, I use those as analogies. Those are media we are all familiar with and there are few players I’ve ever met who don’t keep some of that in mind while gaming. Sometimes analogies can help extend the conversation.

In my experience, using literature and plots and stories as analogies for roleplaying games isn't beneficial; for me it distracts from what I find to be the best feature of roleplaying games, which is the shared imaginative space created each time the players and referee play the game.

I just find it useful when they have a clear character concept and background helps. I also find it useful when they have interesting things in their backgrounds that can be tied into the world.

I find it helpful for the characters to think about doing interesting things in the world, not writing fiction about them.

 

[Glade Riven]

In my experience, using literature and plots and stories as analogies for roleplaying games isn't beneficial; for me it distracts from what I find to be the best feature of roleplaying games, which is the shared imaginative space created each time the players and referee play the game.

What of literature based on RPGs? Okay, except Salvatore's stuff...but still...