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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 5895647" data-attributes="member: 1165">I would avoid backstory. Seriously. This is especially true if you're starting at 1st-level. You don't want the PC's most exciting adventures to have happened before they start playing, nor do you want them writing about their boring background being raised as a dyemaker ("... and that's why they call me Lommy Greenhands".) It's also a problem for players who don't know how to write, and they're fearful their publisher, well, DM, might "reject" their fiction.You can start in the adventure and work on backstory later, if necessary. That's frequently done in good fiction.Backstory used to be about setting plot hooks, but now it seems more like short story writing. The competitive kind, as now you have one set of completely independent plot hooks per PC, all of which are expected to be followed up. The DM could be easily overwhelmed, or if they're not the players are now competing for his time to resolve their backstory instead of someone else's.FATE has a great backstory/personality mechanic. The versions I'm most familiar with, Spirit of the Century and Harry Dresden, both assume experienced characters though. Each has five phases of character building (not counting the numbers). Each player writes a short section about their character. I always find the "starting out" part the hardest. There's also an "on my own" part which is your player becoming a professional at whatever they do. These are both short and designed to explain why your character has certain skills or stunts.The third part involves writing the blurb of a book your PC featured in. (A blurb, of course, is short.) Then the next two parts involve adding your character as a "subplot" to two other characters' blurbs.Each phase gives your PC an "aspect" or two, depending on the exact ruleset used. A blurb is a character description like "ladies' man". A character with this aspect could tag it (using a fate point) to gain a bonus to seducing a woman. However, a woman could tag that aspect to distract him, or a man could tempt him with an invitation to a beautiful lady, etc. As you can see, these personality traits are both positives and negatives. Each PC gets 5 or 10 aspects.The DM could "bribe" a PC to act foolishly with a fate point; if the PC accepts the fate point, they must roleplay the aspect. However, they can refuse by paying a fate point. A PC low on fate points pretty much must accept the bribes, and act accordingly. This is a real problem if the PC has an aspect such as "Sobbin' in my Drink" or something like that.</blockquote>

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