Developing character backgrounds

[NewJeffCT]

I am a big advocate of the K.I.S.S. method of character background – Keep it Simple, Stupid. I have found too many players (both, in person and online) will make up these hugely complex backgrounds that are more appropriate for a character that already has several levels than one that is just starting out at first level… A sample would be something like “my character started out as a pirate for a year, but was then kidnapped while in port by hobgoblins who used him as slave labor for a year, he then led an uprising against his hobgoblin masters and escaped into the nearby forest where he, and some of the other escaped slaves, have waged a guerilla war against the hobgoblins of the area for the last two years. Among the escaped slaves, he has been smitten with an attractive young female with a fiery attitude, who is secretly the estranged daughter of a local noble. Etc, etc…”

Rather than crush the player’s dream background, I would rather they have something simple that can be built upon. You can include a plot hook or two in there (inspired to become a ranger to fight the constant goblin raids into his village…or, a chance encounter with a swashbuckling fighter with a woman on each arm led said PC to have the dream of becoming an adventurer…) If the background gets too complex, the DM will feel constrained to get all of the plot hooks into his or her campaign in the hopes of not disappointing the player.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Here is a two-part article about player questionnaires:

http://www.roleplayingtips.com/archives.asp

The issues in question are #67 and #68.

And the Ultimate Character Questionnaire with 384 questions to choose from to help build your own questionnaire:

http://www.roleplayingtips.com/character_questionnaire.zip

The zip file is only 9k.

And I'll throw in a hearty recommendation of the Roleplaying Tips e-zine in general. Subscribe today.

 

[Harlock]

. However, this player insists that every character should have their own plots, and that they should follow them regardless of what the campaign is about. Obviously I disagree.

Anyone else had players like this? What do you think?

I don't think any of my current players are like this, but I have seen a great deal of that sort of thing in other groups and on various messageboards when people post up character backgrounds.

As for what I think of it, well, I am not a fan of a player that creates a "build" before the first RP session, complete with PrC planning, all skill points accounted for, and every feat planned out well in advance. While I do recognize that people do this in real life to an extent (When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut) I also recognize that very few people in life end up doing exactly that. Also, I don't mind trying to accommodate someone who really wants to try a particular PrC, but people that hand in a background and build that have more than one PrC with roleplaying requirements would irk me to no end.

I am from the school of thought, both as a player and as a DM, that a character should be allowed to evolve. Just like in real life, characters can be affected by all kinds of things and should be mutable. If a character has been planning on going the Duelist route, for instance, what if the character fell in with some secret organization later and liked it better?

At any rate, I like a character that has some generic plot hooks, but having a character "follow them regardless of what the campaign is about" is just not how I envision character growth. I'm certain it works for other folks, but maybe I'm just too chaotic myself for that style of play.

 

[Dirt]

Wasn't there an awesome list in a thread a few months ago? I tried searching for it but I couldn't find it. It was a list of questions for the individual characters background, as well as how that character came to meet up with the others.

I remember that thread! I started that thread when I was compiling my own list to distribute to my players. Here was the final product. I've edited out some of it (because they were references to my own campaign world, which I doubt would be helpful examples for your players). Hope that it helps. Here it is:




FATHEAD'S GUIDE TO PERSONALITY

I put this together to help players develop interesting and unique characters during play. A player who really enjoys playing their character is almost always enthusiastic during play and has more fun at the game table. It's important that the character's personality is prepared before the first session in which it is used, and more importantly, its traits must be made clear in that first session.
Above all else, I’d like your character to be someone that you are interested in and want to see develop.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

There are many ways that a character can be defined. Physical appearance is the first, although seldom is it the most prominent. Think of how YOU dress. How you dress and look is indicative of your personality.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE QUESTIONS

1. How does the character wear his or her hair? If male, how does the character wear his beard?
2. Does the character have a distinctive style of dress?
3. Does the character have any distinguishing marks? Tattoos? Scars? Where and how did the character get them?

If you have a scar or tattoo, ask yourself where your character received those. Was the scar from the six-fingered man, on whom you’ve sworn revenge? Did you receive the tattoo in the shady “Nighting Ward” when you joined a small band of thieves?

PERSONALITY QUIRKS

Have each PC give at least 3 personality quirks. Something like: loves seafood, never sleeps in a room with a north window, and obsessively cleans under his fingernails with a dagger

AMBITION QUESTIONS:

1. What are the PCs ambitions?
2. Why do you adventure?


This section is one of the more important defining characteristics – what is your character’s driving force? What do you want to do? Why did you become an adventurer?

Perhaps you are a mage that searches out creatures for interesting spell components. Maybe you are a druid that wishes to find unusual woodland creatures to both preserve their species and provide protection for their future druidic grove. If you are a fighter class, perhaps you wish to raise an army to take back his family’s homestead that was usurped by a local baron, or simply wish to purchase land and title for your impoverished family. If you are a thief class, perhaps you horde gold so that he will never have to scrounge for food in alleyways or steal to eat, ever again…

Maybe you just adventure for the excitement and the chance to visit exotic lands – the sort that bards tell tales about or despise the mundane laborers, and instead desire the glorious (and often tragically short) life of an adventurer.

In the end, your character’s ambition is up to you, but make it something that would be interesting.

PERSONAL LIKES/DISLIKES QUESTIONS

1. What are the PCs personal likes/dislikes?
2. What are the PCs attitudes towards other races?
3. Do you have any superstitions?
4. What is the character’s favorite food? Least favorite food?
5. What is the character afraid of? Is there a reason for this fear?


Do you have a particular liking for drinking elvish red wine that has been aged for a 100 years? Perhaps you even enjoy collecting particular vintages of wine, and aspire to have your own wine cellar or vineyard.


CHARACTER HISTORY QUESTIONS

1. Where is the PCs family, who are they, what to they do?
2. Who are the major figures in the PCs life that shaped his desire to adventure?
3. Is the PC religious? If so, what deity does he revere?
4. Does the character have any siblings? Where are they? What do they do? Are they married?
5. What has the character done in the last five years?
6. Was the character born in a rural or urban environment? Where did the character grow up?
7. What was the most important event in the character’s life? Why?
8. Who is the most important person in the character’s life? Why?
9. How did your character survive/earn a living BEFORE becoming an adventurer?
10. Does the PC have any known enemies or competitors?


Where you came from helps to define the person that you are.


If you were born to a noble family, perhaps you have haughty notions of other social classes. If you were born to a low class, you probably had many times when your family went without food or proper warm clothing.


YOUR EQUIPMENT

Your ideas on providing background for your items is a great idea. Maybe the fighter's cloak (with blood stains on it) is a hand-me-down from his deceased father. Even if the history is mundane, it can be interesting:

"as a child, my character was given a colorful strip of cloth from a travelling gypsy during the festival for the Season of the Winter Usher, which she now wears in her hair"

Perhaps the stories of the world that the gypsy woman told were part of the reason why this character adventures.

A player of mine had a character, Shaldatha, who owned a horse named Fabersholl. Fabersholl was the oldest, slowest, and most cantankerous horse that anyone could own…but Shaldatha loved that horse, and refused to go anywhere without his companion (even if the old mage could NEVER pronounce the horse’s name correctly). Shaldatha would actually cast protection magics (such as stoneskin) on his horse. The horse itself had a personality and because of that, it made it more interesting.

So, be sure to give the same attention to 2 items. Your character starts the game with several items, it would be nice for some of your equipment to have meaning for you. It’s less interesting to say:

“I have a longsword”

as opposed to

“I refuse to part with this longsword, because it was my great uncle’s – who was also an adventurer and a great swordsman”

 

[Altalazar]

I also agree with the sentiment that it is best to let characters evolve - just use the background to set the starting point, but then let things grow organically from there. Some of my more enjoyable characters grew quite a lot from relatively blank slates.

On the other hand, I've also had a blast with characters that were very well thought out in advance in terms of personality, and the fun in playing them was in discovering how that pre-created personality reacted to the situations we found ourselves in. I liken it to the experience many writers have of certain characters just writing themselves as they go.

 

[bubbalin]

I am a big advocate of the K.I.S.S. method of character background – Keep it Simple, Stupid. I have found too many players (both, in person and online) will make up these hugely complex backgrounds that are more appropriate for a character that already has several levels than one that is just starting out at first level… A sample would be something like “my character started out as a pirate for a year, but was then kidnapped while in port by hobgoblins who used him as slave labor for a year, he then led an uprising against his hobgoblin masters and escaped into the nearby forest where he, and some of the other escaped slaves, have waged a guerilla war against the hobgoblins of the area for the last two years. Among the escaped slaves, he has been smitten with an attractive young female with a fiery attitude, who is secretly the estranged daughter of a local noble. Etc, etc…”

Rather than crush the player’s dream background, I would rather they have something simple that can be built upon. You can include a plot hook or two in there (inspired to become a ranger to fight the constant goblin raids into his village…or, a chance encounter with a swashbuckling fighter with a woman on each arm led said PC to have the dream of becoming an adventurer…) If the background gets too complex, the DM will feel constrained to get all of the plot hooks into his or her campaign in the hopes of not disappointing the player.

I tend to disagree with this, though I always build my backgrounds with the knowledge of what level my character will be. i find it helps in establishing motivations and 'what would my character do in this situation' questions. I also tend to develop things that any character would have, such as family details, childhood friends, first love, pets, stuff that would affect skill selection sometimes, but not really things that would affect their experience level.
I also tend to develop backgrounds and motivations for NPCs when GMing, then I wing it, taking the situation as it is and playing it out as I think the character would do.
But thats just me. I love backgrounds, and I guess it shows.

 

[Emiricol]

Hi,

I was wondering what methods people used to help their players build a character background when starting a new campaign or introducing new PCs.

<snip>

I have a pretty simple rule. I just write a few paragraphs, which then act as a framework I can add detail to as inspiration strikes me. Partly this is because I have a hard time writing uber-detailed backgrounds, and partly because, as we all know, PCs take on a life of their own as they are played.

To start with, I decide a basic personality (but one that can change as the game progresses.) Then, based on that, I detail his childhood environment, his young adult history, anything special that needs detailing, and something that covers why his personality is the way it is and why he chose to take up adventuring. Then, I add a secret somewhere in the mix.

Usually, this takes 3-5 paragraphs. I expand it as I make up or discover details during game play.

 

[fusangite]

My gaming group was sort of separated from the rest of the gaming community for about a decade and when we re-joined the world, we found that players used to playing in other campaigns would come forward with backgrounds that they just "made up." Often, these backgrounds were based on assumptions that were not true in the campaigns I ran; so my initial impression of these typed-up backgrounds was pretty negative.

A DM should, first and foremost, provide players with a proper world background. After the player has reviewed the background, he should develop some rough ideas about character ideas and the meet with the DM to find out the feasibility of these ideas, how they fit into the world system and what additional campaign material the DM needs to generate in order to make the background viable.

Background creation is not the exclusive responsibility of the player; creating a background is a bilateral process between the DM and the player. A good meeting and discussion is worth far more than 3-5 paragraphs written with insufficient information.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Another group was a mercenary band.

Heh.

A friend tells a story about a game he played in once.

The DM wanted to run a gritty campaign. "Roll up a band of mercenaries," he told the players.

So they all filled in their sheets and handed them to DM to okay.

"... but... every one of these characters is a bard! I said you were a band of mercenaries!"

"That's right - we're a band. The Mercenaries."

-Hyp.

 

[Hypersmurf]

On the other hand, I've also had a blast with characters that were very well thought out in advance in terms of personality, and the fun in playing them was in discovering how that pre-created personality reacted to the situations we found ourselves in. I liken it to the experience many writers have of certain characters just writing themselves as they go.

Have you ever tried explaining to a non-roleplayer about having a character you're playing do or say something that surprises you?

You get the weirdest looks...

Anyway.

The background for the most recent character I've started playing (a PbEM game) was interesting.

I decided to revive a character I'd played a year earlier in another PbEM game with the same DM, that had eventually ground to a halt (as PbEMs are wont to do). Since both games are set in a slightly-modified Realms, it was a reasonable choice.

However, the two games were set fifty years apart, game time, and the character (an elf, fortunately) was coming in at the same level he had been in the first game.

So I needed to account for why he hadn't levelled in fifty years. Since he'd been just embarking on a romantic subplot when the first game folded, I figured that some time between then and now, she'd left him... and he'd subsequently spent thirty or forty years moping about it, until one of his best friends finally gave him a kick and made him sort himself out.

So while the character is the same, he's a little older, a lot more bitter, and generally a little more jaded than he was first time around.

I've also done the reverse - used the same character in a second game, only this time younger, and at a lower level. Taking a character played at 5th, and playing her again at 1st. Discovering along the way which parts of her personality resulted from nature or nurture, and which from her experiences as an adventurer after beginning her career.

Second time around, the younger version, was a much more naive, excited, wide-eyed character than when I'd first played her.

And both those characters were essentially the blank-slate method first time around... they began with very broadly-defined personalities and a one-paragraph back story, and evolved from there into very definite individuals.

Second time around, there's a lot more "to" them, since I already know "who they are".

Both ways - nebulously defined, and very clearly laid out - are fun to play, in my experience.

(I've also had characters change completely between drawing board and actual play. I once put together a druid in preparation for joining a game that had alrady been running for some time. She was originally a ditzy blonde valley girl... but once I saw the chaos and internal bickering that went on with the party in question, I figured throwing a ditz into the mix would be suicidal. I did a 180 and made her a no-nonsense practical type before she hit the table...)

-Hyp.