DM "adding" to your PC's background?

[TerraDave]

@J.Marley: Ya, if you want to add some new element to the world with your background, I think it would be fair game to use it. And I don't think you should just sort of dictate to the DM how you would like that to happen.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Also, I have to say that I, personally, often enjoy having a personal relationship with the game's bad guy. In one campaign that I played in, the bad guy turned out to be my character's little brother. This was particularly galling to my character, because he had paid for the little brother's tuition for the wizard's academy. Family get togethers were very amusing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

DM: "The invading army of orcs has sent a warband through the valley of Highway. Roadkill is straight in their path; your mother will be slaughtered if you don't save her." ---> This is totally cool. I mean, it's a rat bastard DM thing to do, but I approve of rat bastard DMing.

That's not even mouse bastard. Rat bastard is your mom is the assassin who's been plaguing the community, thanks to magical or psionic domination by the real villain. Player characters spend weeks figuring out who's behind the murders and stake out the next victim and end up injuring and almost killing Dear Old Mom before she's unmasked. Thanksgiving will be awkward this year ...

I had the little sister of the ranger in my Midwood campaign -- an NPC she explicitly introduced as a foil who looked down on her woodsy sister and who dreamed of being a beautiful princess or lady in waiting -- fall under the spell of a worg sorcerer and work as a low level saboteur for a while, before things accelerated and the worg was revealed. At that point, she kidnapped the rest of the family, whom the worg intended to kill to get revenge on the ranger's father for killing the worg's family years before.

Everyone enjoyed the tween "villain" being revealed and then the creepy sequence of battling the "Big Bad Wolf" type figure and the resulting hostage situation.

Everyone had previously bought into the idea that the village was the primary setting for the early stages of the campaign and that the stakes were going to be personal for many of the adventures. That was established at the time everyone was rolling up their characters to begin with.

 

[prosfilaes]

Generally, I would rather a DM build off what I gave them. My current character was an adventurer a long time ago who retired after a near TPK, and lost family in a planar accident in the Time of Troubles. If the family of one of my fallen adventurers decides to object to how I handled it, or if part of my lost family shows up, that would be fun. Adding to it would be less fun, and adding to it without asking me would annoy me. My backup character comes from a huge family; middle child of 12, a living great-grandmother with 215 living descendents. That to me is an invitation to toss in family members. The fact that no mentor is mentioned for either means to me that I'm less happy about having my mentor show up.

 

[Stormonu]

I've often filled in the blanks on PC's past. In a lot of our earlier games (before I started playing non-D&D games), the players often didn't even have backgrounds so I could make up whatever I want.

And I have no regrets. I've done story lines with evil twins, the character being the son of a king and even a story line where the character's past was a completely fabricated lie.

 

[Thunderfoot]

That's not even mouse bastard. Rat bastard is your mom is the assassin who's been plaguing the community, thanks to magical or psionic domination by the real villain. Player characters spend weeks figuring out who's behind the murders and stake out the next victim and end up injuring and almost killing Dear Old Mom before she's unmasked. Thanksgiving will be awkward this year ...

I had the little sister of the ranger in my Midwood campaign -- an NPC she explicitly introduced as a foil who looked down on her woodsy sister and who dreamed of being a beautiful princess or lady in waiting -- fall under the spell of a worg sorcerer and work as a low level saboteur for a while, before things accelerated and the worg was revealed. At that point, she kidnapped the rest of the family, whom the worg intended to kill to get revenge on the ranger's father for killing the worg's family years before.

Everyone enjoyed the tween "villain" being revealed and then the creepy sequence of battling the "Big Bad Wolf" type figure and the resulting hostage situation.

Everyone had previously bought into the idea that the village was the primary setting for the early stages of the campaign and that the stakes were going to be personal for many of the adventures. That was established at the time everyone was rolling up their characters to begin with.

Had a similar line of thinking a while back, had a character's brother go south of the border (ie nuts) kill their dad, use magic to turn mom into a mindless killing machine and then bedded both younger sisters to progenerate the "master race". When they faced sword swinging mom, it was kind of tense around the table, when they stumbled upon the shackled "love nest" of the sisters the players howled in rage - it worked, but I was looking at the exits for quite a few moments and planning how I was going to explain to the police why, "my friends are trying to kill me..."

I think anytime you make a truly compelling BBEG out of a family member, it's going to be memorable, but you have to be sure you want your players talking about those memories

 

[Jacob Marley]

@J.Marley: Ya, if you want to add some new element to the world with your background, I think it would be fair game to use it. And I don't think you should just sort of dictate to the DM how you would like that to happen.

Hmm. I am not sure I was clear in what I meant in my initial post. Ought was probably a bad word to use.

When I write a character background, I do so as a guide to help me make decisions regarding how this particular character views the situations he encounters. For example, a character background of mine may look something like this:

Thoms, a young fighter from Furyondy. He is the youngest son of Hans, a simple farmer. An elder brother of his fought and died at Emridy Meadows, while another has made his fortune in the Wild Coast. With a twinkle in his eye and silver piece in his shoe, Thoms has arrived in Dyvers ready for adventure.

Thoms is young and naive, but capable with a sword.

From this, I can make decisions as to how Thoms would react to the situations that arise while playing the game. The background is a tool for me to use to help make those decisions.

Lately, the approach to character creation I have taken is emulating a particular personality. For example, my current character is based on various depictions of Falstaff. I don't really need to write much of a background as Shakespear did it for me.

Now, the above background is full of holes. There is no mention of a mother, possible sisters or brothers, other than the two listed. There is nothing about where in Furyondy he is from or how he got to Dyvers. Those issues are not currently of interest to me - I may add them in at a later date.

What the OP asked was "[o]f course this varies according to players, but [what] is your view? How would you feel?," in regards to filling in holes in the background, to which my reply is I don't like it. It may not be an element that I am interested in pursuing as a part of play. Should it be something I am interested in, I'll make sure to mention it to the DM and give him permission to make use of it.

For example, if the party is heading to the Temple of Elemental Evil I may mention to the DM that Emridy Meadows is where an elder brother of mine died and he is free to use that information as he sees fit.

This is what I mean when I say player-initiated rather than DM-initiated.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Which is another point: the players' suggestions can indeed make a GM's setting more exciting.

QFT.

My game has not only an inhabited moon, but also two inhabited planar moons, because I had to find somewhere for the PC tinker gnome to come from.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

There has to be a happy medium: Characters need to create characters, not anonymous loners

I've found that this is largely a reaction to a string of DMs who can't help but look at your character's history and living family members as targeting lists.

"Every time I say I've got a sister, she ends up being the one the Evil Cult tries to sacrifice, and every time I have living parents, their town gets burned down in revenge for my adventures" quickly turns into "I have no siblings and I'm an orphan."

So, as a DM, I'd be really, really careful with how I engage the PCs' histories, and will generally check with them first. Maybe it ruins the surprise, and maybe it's metagaming, but that's a net positive from my perspective when combined with avoiding lone wanderers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Requiring the DM to come up with endless compelling plots that have nothing to do with the characters themselves is just as much of a cliche as the evil general being a relative of the heroes.

I think GMs should be free to create plots that are separate from the characters. It's really hard to write a plot that's relevant for four or five completely different individuals, whose characters and backgrounds were all created separately from each other.

In return, I go with whatever interesting plot the GM comes up with. They don't need to kidnap my character's brother or something to get my character interested (indeed, my character would profess not to care if something like that happened).

To put it another way, character backgrounds are, IMO, a terrible way for a DM to solicit input. They could try, you know, ASKING the players what would interest them instead.