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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6426600" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why is player input not requested? Who gets to decide the sex of that mentor? His/her name? Where s/he lives? Why s/he took in the apprentice? Why s/he has now sent the apprentice out to find fame and fortune?The DMG doesn't address those questions. The PHB suggests that the player or the referee might decide these things.In What is Dungeons &amp; Dragons?, published 1981, the authors - who knew the UK RPG scene pretty well - assumed that it was the player who got to decide thse aspects of backstory, in their example of desigigning a 1st level magic-user PC.The last time I had a player design a 1st level magic-user with a mentor who had sent him out to find fame and fortune is a long time ago now, but on that occasion the player decided that his PC's mentor was a fugtive hermit who lived inside a large hollow tree-trunk in the forest near the PC's home village. (I can't now remember how much of this was worked out in advance, and how much during play.) I, as GM, filled in further detais about why this reasonably powerful wizard was a fugitive, who his enemies were and what they wanted, but not until later in the campaign when I brought those enemies in as a source of antagonism.Nothing in the approach I've just described contradicts, or is at odds with, anything in the 1st ed AD&amp;D rulebooks.To th extent that this is true, I don't think it supports the claim that permitting player authorship of backstory, and allowing player desires to infuence GM authorship of backstory, is at odds with the rules of D&amp;D as written.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6426600, member: 42582"] Why is player input not requested? Who gets to decide the sex of that mentor? His/her name? Where s/he lives? Why s/he took in the apprentice? Why s/he has now sent the apprentice out to find fame and fortune? The DMG doesn't address those questions. The PHB suggests that the player [I]or [/I]the referee might decide these things. In [I]What is Dungeons & Dragons?[/I], published 1981, the authors - who knew the UK RPG scene pretty well - assumed that it was the player who got to decide thse aspects of backstory, in their example of desigigning a 1st level magic-user PC. The last time I had a player design a 1st level magic-user with a mentor who had sent him out to find fame and fortune is a long time ago now, but on that occasion the player decided that his PC's mentor was a fugtive hermit who lived inside a large hollow tree-trunk in the forest near the PC's home village. (I can't now remember how much of this was worked out in advance, and how much during play.) I, as GM, filled in further detais about why this reasonably powerful wizard was a fugitive, who his enemies were and what they wanted, but not until later in the campaign when I brought those enemies in as a source of antagonism. Nothing in the approach I've just described contradicts, or is at odds with, anything in the 1st ed AD&D rulebooks. To th extent that this is true, I don't think it supports the claim that permitting player authorship of backstory, and allowing player desires to infuence GM authorship of backstory, is at odds with the rules of D&D as written. [/QUOTE]

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