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<blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2071343" data-attributes="member: 7240">I think there are real problems with centring the character on backstory and making personality and behaviour a consequence thereof. First of all, this suggests a kind of lay determinist developmental psychology approach to character. In the real world, developmental psychology is not what it was when Freudianism still dominated the mental health landscape. We now have genetic determinist theories, cognition-based theories, etc. One of the things that I find annoying in the standard backstory-based character creation in which so many players engage is that they assume that in order to explain why their character is weird or prejudiced or whatever, there has to be some trauma in their past to explain it. Most of the people on this board are weird and/or prejudiced (me included) and most of us didn't need any dramatic past trauma to make us this way. So, my assumption is that people will define what kind of person their character is and then will work together with the GM to generate a backstory supportive of this nature. However, that backstory does not need to answer this &quot;why&quot; question any more than any of our individual &quot;backgrounds&quot; explain why we are the way we are in real life.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="fusangite, post: 2071343, member: 7240"] I think there are real problems with centring the character on backstory and making personality and behaviour a consequence thereof. First of all, this suggests a kind of lay determinist developmental psychology approach to character. In the real world, developmental psychology is not what it was when Freudianism still dominated the mental health landscape. We now have genetic determinist theories, cognition-based theories, etc. One of the things that I find annoying in the standard backstory-based character creation in which so many players engage is that they assume that in order to explain why their character is weird or prejudiced or whatever, there has to be some trauma in their past to explain it. Most of the people on this board are weird and/or prejudiced (me included) and most of us didn't need any dramatic past trauma to make us this way. So, my assumption is that people will define what kind of person their character is and then will work together with the GM to generate a backstory supportive of this nature. However, that backstory does not need to answer this "why" question any more than any of our individual "backgrounds" explain why we are the way we are in real life. [/QUOTE]

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