DM "adding" to your PC's background?

[pawsplay]

But this is the central tension of the situation: If you have your players generate backgrounds for their characters, you are, in fact, giving them narrative control and making the world pliable to their wishes.

Of course. When I said pliable, I was meaning, "a situation that would be described as pliable," not "a situation that is pliable at all." Every game includes some world-building by the players, almost universally, during character creation (some games do not allow the players to create their own characters), and, universally, during play as the characters' actions cause reactions. I was not trying to define a dichotomy, just stating that within the range of approaches, I prefer a more stubborn universe to a more pliable and spontaneous one.

If I wish to move into a more shared storytelling space, I would rather work with something like Hero Quest or Story Engine, or play a minimally invasive system (most Fudge variants, a stripped down D6 game), or go systemless. There is a whole world of storytelling games outside there, far more popular than any RPG-genre games, that are, by and large, systemless, cooperative, and based on the "Yes, and" principle plus some prerogatives about your characters' fates.

Having to spontaneously generate terrain as I go, plus provide, say, D&D stats for, which I may not use if things take a different, sudden course, just sounds like a lot of work to me. I would think my tools are working at cross purposes to my goals. Even something like Savage Worlds would have a layer of system in it that would, at turns, be quite salient, or quite irrelevant.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When I begin a campaign, I tell the players that if there are segments of their backgrounds they absolutely don't want me to muck with, they should tell me. If you specify that your dad left when you were young, and it is important to you that he not pop up as an evil-general-emperor later in the game, you ought to tell me.

Usually, I ask them to also tell me if they are including some things that they fully intend me to meddle with.

I any case, all additions or changes made by a GM ought to be consistent with everything else in the background. If they specify two siblings, you can't go adding a third that the PC should have known about. If they specify that Mom was a saintly woman, you don't go adding a third at all.

So, for example, in my Deadlands game, one character has a dark, mysterious stranger in his past. The character doesn't know the origins or goals of this stranger, and the player did not specify them in the background. So, darned tootin', those details are mine to play with. He's a kind of Checkov's gun, waiting to become relevant in the game.

This.

I tend to go with: If you're adding something the character would know about (ie. that their father vanished when they were 8) check with the player.

If you're adding something the character wouldn't know about (ie. that the father they stated vanished was killed by a ghoul, and still wonders around with the pack that killed him) that's a plot point. Be careful with it, as you would with any plot point directly impacting on a specific character, but you don't need to check with the player if the character wouldn't know.

And this.

But I would add a few things to these:

* Background is always what your character believes to be true. And, if the background meshes with the campaign setting, it usually is. Tell me your character comes from a Utopian tribe or orcs, or is closely related to the King of the World, and you are inviting me to make you wrong.

* The GM gets one chance (preferably before the first session) to add things that the PC would know the background. I.e., letters of introduction, mentors, old masters, family names, etc. The player should have a chance to discuss these additions with the GM before they are "locked in".

* Players are allowed to add details that make sense in media res; the GM then has the opportunity to use those details. If those details make no sense, the GM has the opportunity to nix them.

BUT

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."

Patryn is absolutely right. The above doesn't mean messing willy-nilly with the PCs. That background should be used mostly to ground the PCs in the campaign milieu, and to give them sources of aid and advice. Yes, family can add complications, but those complications should usually be decision points. I.e., Aunt Mildred can help us get in to see the Wizard, but we'll have to endure one of her boring dinner parties and her endless, pointless stories before she'll do it. Is it worth it?

Absolutely, contacts can be used to throw hooks. But you need to be careful.

Good: The PCs know a merchant who has often been of service to them, offering them the best merchandise for a good price, and supplying them with the scuttlebut he has heard. When he has a little problem, the players like him enough to want to help him. They actually refuse pay. AND SOMETIMES THE PROBLEM IS SO TRIVIAL IT CAN BE SOLVED WITH A MINUTE OR TWO OF GAME PLAY/NARRATION!

Bad: A town is in the way of a rampaging army of gnolls. Your mother, who has never actually come into play before now, lives in that town.

I would also like to point out/agree that PCs should be made with some form of motivation from the word Go, or be provided one by the GM. Even if the PC only wants to get rich, there should be something that makes the character move under his own volition. Apathetic loner PCs can be left in the bar while the rest of us play!


RC

 

[Janx]

Contrariwise, I find a world a little less realistic if I always know from a meta perspective that nothing in my character's life before Game Night One will ever prove relevant in the greater world. To me, it's a very meta presence to have that cut-off point always sitting right there, knowing that everything that happened to the left of the line "didn't really happen" but everything that happens to the right of the line did -- which isn't at all the perspective my character would have. Sure, he'll look back at the events of Game Night One and say "that's where everything really changed," but it just feels strange that only the faces he talked to after that point will ever be at all relevant to his life going forward.

I concur.

it doesn't make sense to write on my character sheet where I grew up and trained, and then have the adventure end up in that town and completely disregard that my PC knows people there and may even have a history (the girl I left behind), solely for the sake of respecting that the only things that count are what happens when the game starts.

Bear in mind, I have said on this board that for the most part, the important stuff that matters for your PC are what happens in my game.

Taken to an extreme limit, that policy is dumb. Taken to the extreme limit of always using PC's pre-history as motivational leverage is stupid.

I don't want to see a background that implies entitlement for the PC or other gross liberties with my campaign world.

I don't want the GM to force my PC into actions by threatening his background NPCs all the time.*

I want the game world to incorporate what I've written about my PC's background, giving my PC a bit of familiarity with the environment

I want the telling of my adventure to make a good story. It should not be a boring or meaningless chain of things my PC did. That doesn't mean a scripted story by the GM, but a deep world where the motivations of PCs and NPCs intertwine to be interesting and not just about killing monsters and taking their stuff.


*Threats to PCs and their interests should be used sparingly, more as a change of an initiator if things get slow or consequence to other PC action, not as a constant and multiple cattle prod. One reason is that this can be abused as a railroading technique as the player doesn't FEEL like they have a choice (watch your mom die or save her is not a Choice, the decision is predictable by looking at the player and their portrayal of the PC). A good Choice is one where the GM can't guess what the player will do.

 

[Janx]

Coming from a background in roleplaying games, let me offer you another possibility.

3) I'm not interested in telling a story, grand or otherwise, but rather experiencing the game-world through the presence of my character-avatar, and the more meta in the game the less I'm able to do that. This means that instead of asking, "Is there anyone I know in this town?" my character will actively seek out people in the town he wants to meet, learn something about them, introduce himself, earn their trust - which is far cry from passively moving my game-piece around the board and waiting for my next turn to roll the dice.

And why can't a player say, "Ah, we're back in Paris, where I spent a summer. I go look up my old friend who ran a bakery (says so on my sheet) and ask him about the cardinal's recent behabior. His customers are always telling him stuff, maybe he'll know something."

The player has utilized a name he already referred to on his sheet (or even if he only mentioned spending a summer there), and it really isn't that game breaking.

Paris SHOULD have a bakery, with a man who owns it, and it isn't abusive that the PC COULD know him, or that he MIGHT know something. Had the player claimed to know the king, that's abusive. But in my example, there's no harm, no foul.

In Improv, this seems like it'd be OK. Is it OK in Shaman's game?

Is it mostly OK, except when it becomes excessive (I know everybody in every town at level 1)?

If Shaman's answer is "Absolutely NOT! Your PCs will NEVER know anybody in my game until they've met them." that would be pretty extreme. And that just seems wrong.

My limited understanding of Shaman's game is that it has a lot of NPCs with lot of relationships. I don't see what's wrong with priming the pump a little with the PCs having some relationships, too. At least to some junior NPCs. Or to let them invent (and the GM incorporate) some junior NPCs (which can lead to bigger stuff).

Clarifying note for Shaman:
I'm not fond of my concept of sandboxes. Shaman's "social sandbox" (my term) however fascinates me as it sets up a dynamic framework for NPC/PC interaction leading to story-able non-scripted adventures. In short, I think his idea is cool, so when he has this stance about PC background, I feel like he's hobbling it. So, read my statements as somebody who thinks your sandbox is very clever.

 

[JoeGKushner]

When I'm a player, I try to leave some wiggle room for the GM. Few are the ideas created in isolation that couldn't be tweaked to fit the game and mood better.

It works fairly well because in my case at least, I was able to give the GM some 'hooks' to throw new players and characters into the campaign.

I also find, that in fiction, it works well. Stan Sakai with Usagi Yojimbo, has been able to reveal more and more about Usagi's background and events that happened before being 'on stage' that fit seemelessly into the game.

Will it work every time? No. But then again, in those instances, it might not work at all due to the player's resistance about any changes to 'their' character, thinking that their creation is isolated in its own world.

 

[Heathen72]

"Yes, and..." improv is a fun and powerful way of crafting stories. However, it is defective when applied to an RPG focused on exploration and dealing with external challenges. Not moving board pieces around and being a passive observer, but making difficult, meaningful choices.

Also, you can't write Shakespeare using improv. The product of improv is its own thing. Really, part of the reason it works is because of the spontaneity. Watching and rewatching improv on video does not have the same impact. Knowing that nothing has been decided in advance is what makes it work. Movies written with improvised dialog feel rather different than traditional poetics.

Same thing for an RPG; the undecidedness defines the genre. However, the method of making events significant in the moment is different. "Yes and..." is one possible technique, but "There is a gaping 10' pit in front of you, deal with it," is another. I can appreciate games where the adjudication and storytelling are widely distributed, but I do not prefer it. Whether as GM or as a player, I prefer an imaginary world that is stubborn, not pliable to a player's wishes.

I will start by saying that I humbly disagree with some of your points regarding improvisation techniques. You say you can't write "Shakespeare" using Impro? Well, I can't speak for how Shakespeare did it, as I am not him, and I can't write Shakespeare for the same reason (no one can)*. However, I have written many plays, some of them based in part on improvised work with other actors. All of them my writing incorporated many of the impro techniques I had learnt on some level. Just because I am not getting up on a stage and acting it out doesn't mean I am not improvising. I am just improvising with a pen and paper. That is not to say I don't edit and refine later on, when it becomes the script, but the core of the piece is there.

The same goes for Role Playing Games. I am not saying you should put away your dice and maps and just improvise everything. We are not playing "scene from nothing!" I am saying that some of the techniques might well work for your players and the style of game you are trying to achieve. Naturally not all the tools will be appropriate for every situation (or every group) and you don't have to improvise everything.

DEFCON1 was just offering one tool from the improvisation toolkit that can be used by GM's and demonstrating one way of implementing it. It's easy to show how that implement as described does not apply to all situations and then dismiss it as somehow defective. But I think it is more robust a tool than that. I would disagree that it doesn't have a place in games based on 'external challenges and exploration" unless you are suggesting that the GM uses the "Yes, and" tool to the exclusion of other approaches and without exercising his better judgement. Which would indeed be silly. After all, "Yes and..." is just a training exercise to get improvisers to understand that you need to do more than just accept an offer. You need to build on it, too.

I am not sure I get your point about shuffling pieces etc - I think you are referring to chessboard theory and commenting on the metagame level at which DEFCON1's example is pitched(?) All I can say in response is that I think that "Yes, and..." as a tool can be applied with various degrees of subtlety to different gaming styles. (Also, frankly, I have seen many meaningful and difficult choices played out in games that were strongly impro based)

Obviously, a single rote response can't apply to all situations, but IMHO "Yes, and" is a lot better as a default position to have than "No", until the point where you meet an obstacle. Despite what DEFCON 1 said about most GM's being comfortable saying yes, all too many GM's have "No" as their fallback position. And it is often not because they have determined the facts earlier to be otherwise, but because they are afraid that saying yes will take them into territory that they have not planned for.

I do agree that it is important for there to be at least the illusion that the world is not just a solipsistic reflection of the player characters, and that it is good when that there is more going on in the world than what the players are going through. I also acknowledge that gaming is a different art form to pure impro, and that the synergies can only take you so far. However, there is also a lot that can be drawn from good impro training ** that can significantly improve one's game, even if it isn't entirely improvised. There is no reason why you can't prepare your game, establish immutable facts about your game world and, yes, even say "no!" when you need to (constructive blocking) while managing to incorporate solid impro techniques.

Basic impro tools can give you have a better understanding of spontaneity, narrative etc, and when you have a command of the basics you are are often more able to create details on the spot, dramatically improving your capacity to GM 'on the fly' (pun unintended). The extent to which you allow the game to be a free flowing collaboration of ideas between you and your players vs a more traditional gaming experience where the GM decides most things, mostly in advance and is the sole arbiter of everything is up to your gaming group. There is obviously a wide ranges of gaming styles in between, and naturally YMMV, but that goes without saying, n'est-ce pas?

*btw, it's actually not that hard to rhyme in iambic pentameter after you have been practicing for a while. People in movies don't because they think it is more 'realistic'. Whether or not they achieve that goal is another discussion
** I am thinking more Keith Johnstone than Viola Spolin here.

 

[The Shaman]

Contrariwise, I find a world a little less realistic if I always know from a meta perspective that nothing in my character's life before Game Night One will ever prove relevant in the greater world. To me, it's a very meta presence to have that cut-off point always sitting right there, knowing that everything that happened to the left of the line "didn't really happen" but everything that happens to the right of the line did -- which isn't at all the perspective my character would have. Sure, he'll look back at the events of Game Night One and say "that's where everything really changed," but it just feels strange that only the faces he talked to after that point will ever be at all relevant to his life going forward.

Well, like d'Artagnan you'd miss out on things like the time Rochefort kidnapped his sister and forced d'Artagnan to go on a secret mission to Rome in exchange for her freedom, or when d'Artagnan and Athos freed d'Artagnan's father from the Bastille, or when d'Artagnan's best friend from childhood became the captain of the Cardinal's Guard . . .

. . . except none of that ever happened, of course, and somehow the Musketeers saga managed to be pretty epic anyway, with a bright line between "d'Artagnan leaves home" and "everything else."

This, BTW, is actually a pretty strong indictment of the position that characters from the PC's background should never be a part of play. I think you're generally right that relationships forged in play generally feel stronger for the player. In many cases they're the only relationships that have any reality to them at all. But that means that if you never involve their parents or their siblings or their childhood friends in the game, then those relationships will never exist.

For example, the PCs in the game your describe are effectively either orphans or completely estranged from their parents. That's a very limiting palette.

Or they could actually have a very normal relationship with their parents, write home often, send little gifts at birthdays and holidays, and still not involve them in their adventuring careers, provided the referee has enough forebearance to not go scrounging around the adventurers' backstories for 'gotchas!' to spring on them.

(And I'll skip a discussion of anachronistic inclusion of modern nuclear family dynamics into fantasy, sci fi, and historical settings.)

I'm actually all for characters having families; one of these days I'll finally get around to adapting the Pendragon family rules for Flashing Blades. The difference here is between backstories which are player-fiction, and a backstory which is bounded by the rules mechanics.

Traveller characters, for example, each come equipped with extensive backstories, but those are generated in actual play, one of the most innovative and enjoyable features of the game, in my experience.

In the game I'm running now, the characters may begin with Advantages and Secrets, many of which originate in the character's past. They provide the adventurers with many different sorts of resources and complications, but the nature and scope of those resources and complications are bounded by the rules of the game.

I'm not sure why getting away from the player-passivity of, "Do I know anyone in this town?" and moving toward the player-engagement of, "I'm going to get to know the captain of the watch," is so controversial to some people.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm curious - do you let players, in the middle of an adventure, declare that they are well known and respected in a town if they hadn't already written it in their background....or create at the spur of the moment an associate who will be willing to hide them in a town when running from the BBEG's men?

I wouldn't in my D&D* game. There are a lot of indie games that are much more collaborative-on-the-fly that would be a better fit for it, in my opinion, but YMMV. (If the group established this kind of on-the-fly narrative creation model for the game since the beginning, I wouldn't have an issue with it.)

But, on the other hand, if they were already part of a thieves guild, for instance, they could certainly ask if there were any associates or safe houses around, or the bard, for instance, could try to leverage his fame. (I'm not sure what I'd roll for that, probably bard level + Charisma modifier.)

(I've also had the characters discover that their fame/infamy is already increasing over the course of the campaign, through the vehicle of the "town song" (they're from a village known as "The Town Where Heroes Are Born," and famous incidents are featured in verses of a tavern song of the same name) and people hearing about their past adventures. Given that growing fame is explicitly part of the Midwood campaign, players seeking to leverage that on their own is a pretty obvious move, IMO.)

 

[Janx]

I'm not sure why getting away from the player-passivity of, "Do I know anyone in this town?" and moving toward the player-engagement of, "I'm going to get to know the captain of the watch," is so controversial to some people.

Because what you see as Player-Passivity, I see as one player's method for trying to create hooks from his PC background into the current situation.

True Player-Passivity is the player never trying to relate his PC at all.

If I was in your game, would you allow me to say (as in not reject or negate my proposal):
"I go lookup my old fencing partner Marcel Dumas, who last I knew was overdue for a promotion in the watch."

I've proposed an NPC, that doesn't contradict my backstory (assuming I used to fence). I also leave the GM an out. While I've declared what he USED to be, I've allowed for the GM to determine his current status. I may fail to find him (he's missing), I may find that he has recently risen to the rank of Captain of the Watch.

I get the feeling, when the example player asks "Do I know anybody in this town?", he'd rather do what I just did, but isn't sure the DM will let him.

I think a good GM should accept a reasonable content proposal from a player. A GM should have the right to reject content proposals when it makes sense to do so. A good player should formulate content proposals that don't unbalance or contradict the GM's campaign.

Bonus Explanation:
I use the term loosely, but Normal People don't spontaneously decide to "get to know the Captain of the Watch" if they haven't met him. Stalkers do (or people researching a mark). Normal People get to know people their paths intersect. I may bump into an officer of the Watch, and we may strike up a conversation while waiting for something. He might invite me to some event, or I might run into him again, reinforcing our meeting. That new relationship, forged through initial contact, may result in me being somewhere to being introduced to the Captain of the Watch.

Find me examples where I am commonly wrong (not just the one friend you have who actively befriends mayors, sherrifs and anybody else who will hold still). Normal people don't act that way. They do not actively seek out full strangers, just to get to know them and create a true relationship. Excepting people who are fishing for information, thus targetting (stalking).

Thats why players start with relationships they HAVE and work their way from other initial contacts.

 

[Barastrondo]

Well, like d'Artagnan you'd miss out on things like the time Rochefort kidnapped his sister and forced d'Artagnan to go on a secret mission to Rome in exchange for her freedom, or when d'Artagnan and Athos freed d'Artagnan's father from the Bastille, or when d'Artagnan's best friend from childhood became the captain of the Cardinal's Guard . . .

. . . except none of that ever happened, of course, and somehow the Musketeers saga managed to be pretty epic anyway, with a bright line between "d'Artagnan leaves home" and "everything else."Or they could actually have a very normal relationship with their parents, write home often, send little gifts at birthdays and holidays, and still not involve them in their adventuring careers, provided the referee has enough forebearance to not go scrounging around the adventurers' backstories for 'gotchas!' to spring on them.

This is true -- but you also would have missed out on some pretty choice interactions if the DM had told Athos' player that it was all well and good that he had been betrayed in love in the past, but that if he wanted romantic drama going forward he should actively court a new woman and see what happened from there. Or if the DM for Andre-Louis Moreau were uninterested in the ideas for friends and family the player was kicking around.

I simply have players who enjoy playing Athos, is all I'm saying.

I'm not sure why getting away from the player-passivity of, "Do I know anyone in this town?" and moving toward the player-engagement of, "I'm going to get to know the captain of the watch," is so controversial to some people.

For my part, it's the concept that "Do I know anyone in this town?" precludes "I'm going to get to know the captain of the watch" -- that's what I have issues with. I have players who do both. If there's any controversy at all, it's the idea that the former is a waste of time and the latter is meaningful: and that's controversial because it's a personal opinion rather than objective fact, and opinions tend to be that way.

Also, I don't think it's fair to describe players who are looking for connections as being more passive and less engaged. Some, maybe: but for many, when they ask if they already know someone, they're asking for an opportunity to ad-lib old memories and play a convincing bond without preamble, which is a different experience than the usual round of introductions and building of acquaintance that happens when they meet NPCs. That's immediately engaging -- and if it's not engaging for the other players at the table, then the player is not doing it correctly.