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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 5477449" data-attributes="member: 6957">No, in fact Mr. Ex Dungeonmaster, it says I was born in Hansor, and you went and wrote in Scaramouche, in crayon, with a smiley face in the 'o'. And now you have no players, have cement blocks on your feet and are looking up from the bottom of the Thames. (Hey, if you feel free to rewrite what I said then I am perfectly at home returning the favor.) I have no time for DMs who try that sort of crap.Capiche?If you are the kind of DM who rewrites my character's history because you think that it will fit better into your game then you will never have to worry about my ever wanting to play in your game. I had my fill of 'storytelling' DMs who felt that rewriting PC histories was fine, since it told a 'story'. They did not stay DMs very long. What is in my backgrounds is what I put into them, not what some DM who wants to write plays feels should be on the sheet. If I write 'Hansor' then I mean 'Hansor', not 'Scaramouche' and I don't want that changed because the DM wants all the PCs to take the railroad to Scaramouche.If, on the other hand, I had written Scaramouche then we can dance the Fandango - it will have been written in for a reason. It is when the DM rewrites the PC histories that I have complaints. If the DM is building on what I wrote then it is perfectly reasonable - no complaints.If I wrote that my parents were traveling players who left me on the stairs to the Church of St. Beadle in Hansor then it perfectly fine to discover an aged bard who claims to have been my father, even if the scoundrel is lying through his teeth and cut down my parents in cold blood - it builds on what was written, neither made from whole cloth nor changing what I wrote.Finding out that I am fourth son of the Baron Scaramouche, fourth of that name, and raised to be his trained assassin, when my character sheet says that I was the child of traveling players and born in Hansor, on the other hand, gets you a character sheet jammed in your craw.If it turns out that the traveling player who was my father was actually Baron Scaramouche in disguise, who then abandoned both me and my mother, who left me on the church steps.... I will probably look at you funny, but not complain over much, it still builds on what I wrote in my background, though it is reaching, more than a bit.It is perfectly reasonable for the DM to give input on what he wants to see in my background - if he tells me before I write my background that he wants me to come from Scaramouche, and tells me a bit about why and about the town itself, then we can deal. He is being courteous, I can be the same.It is reasonable for the DM to look at my sheet and say 'I don't want your character to come from Hansor, there are plot reasons, and I don't want you to know too much about the town', then I will be willing to cross out Hansor and put in another town, one that the DM has no plot reasons to deny.Not reasonable would be the DM changing my background without my permission.The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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