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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ccs" data-source="post: 7262398" data-attributes="member: 6803664">Yes.Ex: One of my players almost never gives me/us a background beyond a sentence or two.  It's a bit irritating.So in one PF campaign around 5th lv he ends up needing a replacement character.  He rolls up a bard he calls Simms and describes him as wearing a KISS style costume & make-up ala Gene Simmons Bat costume.  Fine.He also neglects to spend any of his starting wealth (30-some K if I recall).  All he has is non-magical studded leather, a mundane rapier, a guitar & some extra make-up + whatever spell components he'll need.  He doesn't even write the rest of the $ on his character sheet.And this time he has zero background.The next session:ME: Did you finish your gear?  Do you have any kind of background, even why Simms is here?Him: Not yet.  The next next session:ME: Did you finish your gear?  Do you have any kind of background, even why Simms is here?Him: Not yet.The 3rd next session:  Because it'll matter in the next week as the party, now with Simms, will return to town....ME: Did you finish your gear?  Do you have any kind of background, even why Simms is here?Him: Not yet.OK....The 4th next session:The party returns to town from their successful dungeon crawl & learns that a traveling band of bards known as KISS is in town for a few nights worth of shows.  Everyone thinks that's pretty funny.  Especially as I have Lego figures of them (including a custom Pharoh).  The party goes about their business throughout the day - selling loot/whatever.Of course the band soon learns that Simms is in town.  And ambushes the party.  The party gets their asses completely stomped - by 4 bards.  By the rules, by dice rolled in the open. Turns out that they have a bone or three to pick with Simms.Something to do with him having absconded with almost 30k worth of loot after he was kicked out of the band....  (in RL KISS kicked a member out for undisclosed reasons)They want it back.  + interest.Well, Simms doesn't have it.  Nor can they pry it out of him via torture/magic - because the player doesn't have even a sentence of backstory.So they do the next best thing a group of evil bards can do.  They rob the entire party, drug them, & sell them into slavery to some pirates!And that's how a group of (formerly fully geared) 5th lv characters came to be playing the Skull & Shackles AP starting with book 1. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The other players have never let Simms player forget that his lack of backstory screwed them all.Simms player now always gives me something.   My one DM read my backstory.  And then just tried to arbitrarily overwrite it.It wasn't anything elaborate on my part, other than my entire reason I'd become an adventurer....See my human wizard/bard came from a wealthy family & was estranged from them.  They'd spent a great deal of $ & influence getting me into a very prestigious Elven magic academy.  I'd been there since I was a 6 year old child.  My parents visited me twice a year.When I was 22 I quit & hit the road (as a 1st lv bard - you know, a partially trained wizard that incorporates the elven prof with swords etc)).Reason?  Elves live a really really long time.  They might not have a problem spending 30 years to graduate just to Wizard lv1.But I'm a human.  By the time I reach lv2 in this system I'll be over 60.  And likely dead before 3rd lv!You know why you see OLD low lv human wizards?  Because they were trained by *&%# elves....  No thanks.So I quit.  Before ever reaching lv 1.This caused my family a great deal of embarrassment/scandal & essentially threw away a fortune in the form of 16 years worth of tuition.To put it mildly I was disowned & wasn't welcome at home.  There's no love lost between my characters parents and him.Now this background is discussed at the table amongst the group, both in & out of character, since day one.  All of our backstories are.  With the DM participating.These details are IMPORTANT to what we're doing & why we're doing it the way we are.So it came as a pretty big surprise when one session, about 5 months in, the DM just decides to completely ignore pretty much everything in my background - because he'd thought up something he thought would be a cool arc but required me & my family to want to have always gotten along and my father to have taught me the family magic....This wasn't the DM forgetting something.  It wasn't "Oh, the bards been lying about his past all this time".  It wasn't mind-control, dopplegangers, illusions, or even encroaching alternate realities.It was just the DM being an ass & deciding to change something because otherwise he couldn't run x scenario.Not only did I not go along with this change, none of the other 3 players did either.</blockquote>

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