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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ydars" data-source="post: 5410537" data-attributes="member: 62992">I have no idea how anyone roleplays without a backstory, but if you are, then please continue enjoying yourself and don't worry. For me, backstory literally IS the character, and without one, I usually just end up playing 'myself in funny clothes' as it were. Most people I have roleplayed with are like this and if I filmed them playing 5 different 'characters' and mixed the shots up, no-one would be able to tell one 'character' apart from the others, except by mechanics.For me to be interested in playing a character, I have to know how they think and react and what happened to them to shape them. Most of all, they have to have emotional ties to something or someone. That thing does not have to be present in the game; indeed I DON'T write my backstory for my DM, I write it to influence how I PLAY.An example; I am just about to start playing in a D&D3.5 campaign with a group of players whose characters have been defending a worn-torn village against monster incursions. I know nothing else about the campaign, except that my character can be 2nd level.I have rolled up a Swasbuckler 1/Wizard 1 character called Selka.She is a young gypsy woman whose people have a long and ancient history of folk beliefs, many of them centered around ancestor worship. I know that Selka's people follow 'wandering stars' through the night sky to guide their travels and that there are thirteen such stars. The original twelve clans of Selka's people never followed the 'thirteenth star' because it is a symbol of death.Selka's people also believe that at the end of this world, the gods will cause all the dead to rise up and inhabit new forms; when they do, all those who are buried together will be a part of the same tribes or clans. So Selka's people are all buried together in huge burial mounds in the hope that they will all be together in the next world.Since Selka is the last of her people, she is a Gatherer; one who seeks out and find the bones of those who died without being interred with the rest of the clan; all their names are written in the 'Book of the Dead' kept by her people for centuries. She feels a strong obligation to do this, as if she fails then those souls will be 'lost to her clan in the next world'. One sad part about this is that when Selka dies, there is no-one left to place her bones with her people.Another irony of all this is that Selka was a rebel and left her people to live normally in a city for part of her life, angering her father Jacob by doing so. They were in fact never reconciled and an older and wiser Selka now feels completely inadequate to the task of 'saving' the dead and does not know if she even believes half of the old stories (most of which I have invented already so that I can drop in references to them when I am playing her). So I plan to have Selka explore her people's beliefs as we adventure and eventually work out who she is and what she believes.Selka also has her own wagon, which is over a hundred years old and belonged to her grandfather and was actually built by her great grandfather; her horses are called Mishka (mouse) and Magnus and that the former is a coward and the latter has a heart of a lion. So even Selka's equipment list is 'living and breathing'.So now Selka is actually real to me; she is not just in the game to 'kill the monsters and take their stuff'. I don't need the DM to alter one tiny grain of their world to take my character into account as the 'old stories' of Selka's people don't have to be true; she just has to half believe them.So how do I fit into Selka into the game; well the village the other characters are defending is close to a burial mound of 'the clan of the fourth star' and some of he people of the village might be related to Selka because they may have inter-married with her folk (some of the clans abandoned the wandering life in ages past).So Selka will now defend the village, even though she can hear 'the song of the dead' at night; a kind of lament sung by her ancestors, calling her to them.I will not reveal all this to the DM or other players as a huge 'info dump'; I will allow it to emerge, little by little, as we play. For example, one night when we are close to the village doing something else, I might play a scene where Selka is crying because she can hear the voice of grandmother on the night-wind. Then I will reveal a tiny, tantalising piece of her backstory.Well it beats most 'in character discussions' that usually comprise arguing about how to divide up the loot!</blockquote>

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