D&D 3E/3.5 Character in conflict with DM - RP question

[Greenfield]

I'm taking my turn as DM, and by chance the overcontrolling DM was out not feeling well.
Each DM in our way of running things gets to design, define and run their part of the world. The overcontroller tried to do that for everyone else, so I made it a point to reach outside his world view. The rest of the table liked.

He had described his territory as Venezuela, and was trying to limit others to South American geography. I turned the body of water he thought of as the Gulf of Mexico into "The Inland Sea"

I'm also reviewing my PC. Changing a PC is hard for me, but I'm working on it. This one has some grit and depth, and I hate to give that up. So I'm looking t her mindset to see what cn change without changing who she is.

Since it's been two or three years, in the life of a fourteen year old, since her life got turned upside down. She could have acclimated and adjusted to her new life at least somewhat.

So maybe she can stop being so sad or angry. We'll see.

 

[Imaculata]

Yesterday I used an important piece of backstory of one of the player characters in the plot (who plays a pirate captain), but before I did so, I checked with the player to make sure I got everything correct. He hadn't worked out every last detail of his youth, so I wanted to make sure that he was okay with what I was writing to flush it out a bit more. He really liked what I did with it, and especially how the rest of the players responded to it all.

Basically his character came from a poor family. His father was a weaver, and sold him to the captain of a whaling vessel when he was very young. Something the character has felt bitter about for a very long time.

What I added were the reasons he was sold away as a child: During the war his village was flooded by the crown to stop the approaching enemy army. This left everyone in his village homeless, and being barely able to take care of himself, his father decided that he'd have a better future with someone who could provide him with work, food and a place to eat. I also provided a bit of backstory regarding how he might have decided to become a pirate, although never confirming it explicitly.

We picked up the campaign right after this player had performed a great heroic deed that had him heralded as a great hero. As he helt his speech to a huge crowd of onlookers, his father was quietly among them watching his son, before returning back to the harbor without speaking a word to him. One of his party members knew that his father was there, but had to make a difficult choice. Should he leave this be, or intervene? How would his friend react to seeing his father after all these years?

It was an excellent bit of roleplaying, and I could tell that the player loved how I integrated a bit of his backstory into the plot. But this just shows how important it is to involve your players in this process.