character historys

[Virel]

Usually, wait on that history stuff until we see if the character will live long enough to make it to 3rd level. Also getting a feel for the character first, seems best for us most of the time before doing the back story.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

From ME, posted elswhere on these boards:

One of the favorite things I've done in the past is give out goodies based on a well-written/conceived PC history. The "Origin Story" doesn't even have to be completely original if it suits the PC.

I don't reward obvious ploys for superior gear, but if the PC's history sounds good, they might have something passed down from their Grandfather (a Weapon of Legacy, perhaps?), extra starting wealth, some political pull in the town in which the PC is based, favors owed, a powerful patron, and so forth.

The reason I like it is that it makes the Players get inside their PCs, and it gives me material for future plot hooks.

They get something, I get something...Win/Win.

And of course, if they don't even try, they get nothing.

 

[Digital Archon]

Without context, the characters might as well be interchangeable chess pieces.

So what you're saying is that what the character did before the game even started is more important than what they are doing after the game started? What's happening in the game is the context. Before the game starts, the character is static.

Take a look at mhacdebhandia's players' histories as he's posted them. These are awesome. All of them are acceptable in length, and each of them also contains a bunch of stuff that is useful. On the other hand, getting a three page single spaced typed short story where the character did this, and did that, and did the other thing over there, and then did a whole bunch of other stuff, traveled all over the world, made friends with Elminster, and killed a demon lord, all because his family died (because families always die ) my eyes glaze over and i start wondering "why is this character first level after having done all this stuff, and why is this character even hanging out with the rest of the characters in the first place? How did a first level character kill a demon lord?" If it's filled with stuff like "Rogar the Demonslayer has blue eyes and likes bananas", well, frankly, i don't care what color your character's eyes are and what his favorite food is. That's up to the player to roleplay.

A long character history is generally indicative that the player wants their character to do a whole bunch of cool stuff, and so has their character do all that cool stuff before the game even starts, possibly because they're afraid their character will never get to do anything cool again, or possibly because they just enjoy writing. Who knows? There could be any number of reasons for a person wanting to spend that amount of time writing up a long, involved backstory that usually excludes the other PCs. At any rate, all the cool stuff has been done before the game has started, and i'm left asking "Well, if you did all this cool stuff, why is your character willing to go into sewers and whack rats with these other guys?"

Every person in my group is a published author, with real books with our names on them. I know what we come up with could hardly be catagorized as that.

I counter your comment of my anecdotal experience with my own comment of your anecdotal experience. The vast majority of people who play are not published authors. Also, source, or it never happened.

 

[Stormborn]

So what you're saying is that what the character did before the game even started is more important than what they are doing after the game started? What's happening in the game is the context. Before the game starts, the character is static.

Take a look at mhacdebhandia's players' histories as he's posted them. These are awesome. All of them are acceptable in length, and each of them also contains a bunch of stuff that is useful. On the other hand, getting a three page single spaced typed short story where the character did this, and did that, and did the other thing over there, and then did a whole bunch of other stuff, traveled all over the world, made friends with Elminster, and killed a demon lord, all because his family died (because families always die ) my eyes glaze over and i start wondering "why is this character first level after having done all this stuff, and why is this character even hanging out with the rest of the characters in the first place? How did a first level character kill a demon lord?" If it's filled with stuff like "Rogar the Demonslayer has blue eyes and likes bananas", well, frankly, i don't care what color your character's eyes are and what his favorite food is. That's up to the player to roleplay.

A long character history is generally indicative that the player wants their character to do a whole bunch of cool stuff, and so has their character do all that cool stuff before the game even starts, possibly because they're afraid their character will never get to do anything cool again, or possibly because they just enjoy writing. Who knows? There could be any number of reasons for a person wanting to spend that amount of time writing up a long, involved backstory that usually excludes the other PCs. At any rate, all the cool stuff has been done before the game has started, and i'm left asking "Well, if you did all this cool stuff, why is your character willing to go into sewers and whack rats with these other guys?"

I counter your comment of my anecdotal experience with my own comment of your anecdotal experience. The vast majority of people who play are not published authors. Also, source, or it never happened.

I completly agree my group in anecdotal. It was simply brought up to illustrate that not everyone who games need come up with pages and pages of garbage. As most other people have pointed out PC backgrounds can be great things for both the player and the DM. You seem to be making the point that it has to be either short and therefore good or long and therefore unreasonable garbage. You seem to have had no experiance with anything in the middle, it doesn't have to be either 100 words or three single spaced pages. The long background you give as an example in not bad because its long, its bad because it was created w/o the input of the DM/other players or concerns for the realities of the campaign. Short backgrounds can be just as bad, as in the above "parents killed by orcs" example. Good PC backgrounds have nothing to do with length and a good DM can incorporate all kinds of detail. I would far rather say "The winsom red haired girl at the shop tells you that she has never seen such striking blue eyes" than "The owner's daughter seems to be flirting with you."

And only because you seem to want to make an issue of it:

The current DM's list of works,a list of my works,and a brief selection of my wife's works (under her maiden name) from Amazon.