Nathal
Explorer
General question:
How important is "backstory" to your D&D campaign? Do you closely integrate NPC goals and motivations with current or past events, political, religious or otherwise? To what extent do you allow backstory to determine the mood, spirit or overall theme of the game? By backstory I mean events which were not precipitated by PC action, nor narratives born of adventures wherein the PCs were involved.
In many published campaign worlds backstory seems very important, especially in Dragonlance, or Forgotten realms where there are a ton of books depicting events of great importance (War of the Lance, Time of Troubles, etc.) But how many DMs, I wonder, ignore such time-lines and background events when constructing new adventures?
To rephrase the question: Does campaign background material provide more general "flavor" or does it prove a more solid foundation on which to build adventure material? If it "depends", then what are the factors involved?
It's an interesting question, isn't it?
How important is "backstory" to your D&D campaign? Do you closely integrate NPC goals and motivations with current or past events, political, religious or otherwise? To what extent do you allow backstory to determine the mood, spirit or overall theme of the game? By backstory I mean events which were not precipitated by PC action, nor narratives born of adventures wherein the PCs were involved.
In many published campaign worlds backstory seems very important, especially in Dragonlance, or Forgotten realms where there are a ton of books depicting events of great importance (War of the Lance, Time of Troubles, etc.) But how many DMs, I wonder, ignore such time-lines and background events when constructing new adventures?
To rephrase the question: Does campaign background material provide more general "flavor" or does it prove a more solid foundation on which to build adventure material? If it "depends", then what are the factors involved?
It's an interesting question, isn't it?