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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7263081" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Waaaaaaay back when I started my DM'ing carreer (circa 1981) we never put a lot of effort into backstory. Hey, we were all roughly 11 years old. Anyway, after I got my chops...about 3 or 4 years of DM'ing...I wanted a bit more my my players characters so started asking for a bit more background/history. Mother, father, siblings, all alive? Only some? Feelings towards each other? Important figures they looked up to? That kind of thing. I would say I got that info about, oh, 20% of the time.So one session I asked a player if his character had parents still alive, or any siblings. "Uh, I don't know". So I asked him to decide right then and there. "Uh, sure, I guess. Ma n' pops are still kicking. Maybe I have a brother?".  And that was that. That one little exchange of DM questions kind of got the ball rolling. I'm guessing that asking them to do it before the session probably felt like homework...but asking them in-game felt like they were "playing the game". Score one for psychology! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />After that, we sort of settled into a "If you don't have info on your characters background, I'll make it up for you". This got the background rate up to probably a good 70 to 80 percent or more most of the time. When I DM my players know (or new ones told) that if they don't have something written down for their background that specifically points to some thing or other...then I get to make it up for them. For example, if a character has "Mom & Dad both dead. Grew up on the streets. Likes rats. Hates cats" and that's about it, then I am free to embellish that or add. If I need them to have a sister, I can just decide...because they never said they didn't have any brothers or sisters...and they he was an orphan anyway; maybe he has a sister he doesn't' actually know about. Maybe he has a whole family he doesn't know about. Nine times out of ten the player is cool with my "filling in the blanks", but sometimes they don't want that and we nix it. I don't think I've ever "forced" something on a character...except when playing Hackmaster4e and the player was foolish enough to take too many flaws and quirks... :evilgrin:  But that's part of HM4 game style, so it works. <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=":)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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