I was gonna say, I find it weird to acknowledge that works that have plots that are very much tied to the characters' stories will inspire new people to play d&d, but then expect new players to totally accept the idea that their character's stories don't actually matter in d&d.
DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?
FrozenNorth
Hero
It's funny. I can start from your first premise and conclude that incorporating the characters backstories, what you call "speculative implausibility", is more important in an RPG than in a movie or a novel.
IME, a player finds it a lot easier to get into a quest and will take it more personally, if as a DM, I have included something from his backstory so that his character cares about the outcome.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Only if your goal is to have players engage with plot elements, rather than treat the world seriously as an objective reality. Only if you're trying to act out a story, rather than role-play as a person.
Of course a player will take it personally if the DM tries to mess with them. The DM is supposed to remain objective and impartial. If the DM is making it personal, then they have failed.
FrozenNorth
Hero
To respond to the original poster, I incorporate a character's Background (I mostly play 5e) and backstory into the game all the time.
First, I incorporate it into the adventure in the manner that has already been discussed in the thread. If a rogue character used to run with a gang led by a mysterious red-haired halfling, the halfling is going to appear in the game. Your character is a noble? That's going to be directly relevant, whether from family asking you to defend their interests or political intrigue.
Second, background and backstory are going to come up in the game in a lot of other ways as well. I sometimes gate checks behind backgrounds and skills. The enemy is flying a distinctive banner? Characters who have the Noble background or training in History can try to identify it. If you have both you get advantage.
Sometimes it goes the other way: you don't have to roll if you have an appropriate background: You have the Sailor background? I'm not going to make you roll to do regular work around a ship.
You're a rogue from Neverwinter? Yeah, you don't have to roll to find the black market. You know that Dagult Neverember is in charge, and you probably have a pretty good idea of the laws as they pertain to your activities.
Incorporating a character's backstory improves immersion, by giving the impression of a living world. It also improves player engagement: the choices players make tell you what they want to see in the campaign, and, unless it is unreasonable somehow (in which case it should be brought up with the player in advance), as a DM, you should try to accommodate what a player finds interesting.
Finally, there is also the fact that on the fiction layer, a character's backstory is not independent of the world, it is part of it. If my background is "Sole survivor of a gnoll raid", it is going to be weird, immersion breaking and implausible that there don't seem to be any gnolls don't seem to appear in the world, or in any relevant numbers near where I grew up.
First, I incorporate it into the adventure in the manner that has already been discussed in the thread. If a rogue character used to run with a gang led by a mysterious red-haired halfling, the halfling is going to appear in the game. Your character is a noble? That's going to be directly relevant, whether from family asking you to defend their interests or political intrigue.
Second, background and backstory are going to come up in the game in a lot of other ways as well. I sometimes gate checks behind backgrounds and skills. The enemy is flying a distinctive banner? Characters who have the Noble background or training in History can try to identify it. If you have both you get advantage.
Sometimes it goes the other way: you don't have to roll if you have an appropriate background: You have the Sailor background? I'm not going to make you roll to do regular work around a ship.
You're a rogue from Neverwinter? Yeah, you don't have to roll to find the black market. You know that Dagult Neverember is in charge, and you probably have a pretty good idea of the laws as they pertain to your activities.
Incorporating a character's backstory improves immersion, by giving the impression of a living world. It also improves player engagement: the choices players make tell you what they want to see in the campaign, and, unless it is unreasonable somehow (in which case it should be brought up with the player in advance), as a DM, you should try to accommodate what a player finds interesting.
Finally, there is also the fact that on the fiction layer, a character's backstory is not independent of the world, it is part of it. If my background is "Sole survivor of a gnoll raid", it is going to be weird, immersion breaking and implausible that there don't seem to be any gnolls don't seem to appear in the world, or in any relevant numbers near where I grew up.
FrozenNorth
Hero
One does not exclude the other.
hawkeyefan
Legend
Impartial how?
I mean, I can understand the idea of impartiality as it applies to the rules and the dice. That part I can get.
But impartial in what is introduced to the fiction? I don’t know if that’s quite what you mean, but if so, I’m not even sure it’s possible.
I don’t think that a DM is “messing” with a player when they use elements of the fiction in which the PC is invested. Quite the opposite, really.
It sounds like the PCs in your game would never have goals that are more personal in nature. And if so, that’s fine, but if we’re talking about plausible worlds...well I think one where people pursue personal goals and interact with people with whom they already have relationships is more plausible than a world where that doesn’t happen.
If I’ve misunderstood, let me know.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
There's a difference between having the PC's known brother as a recurring NPC, because the character has reason to be where their brother is; and having an unknown NPC turn out to actually be the PC's long-lost brother, as a plot twist, because it would be dramatic.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Actually, it does. There can be only one true reason for why something happens. If the true reason for an in-game event is that it makes for a better story, then the reason isn't due to purely in-world causal processes. The two are completely mutually exclusive.
As a player, you can't direct a character as though they were some character in a play, while also inhabiting their mindset and making their decisions as though they were a real person. It's a logical impossibility. Either you're role-playing, or you're story-telling. If you think you're doing both, then you're wrong.
These claims are false.
The reason things happen in the real world is real-world causal processes. That extends to events of authorship, incuding someone saying (eg) "There are Red Wizards in Thay - shall we go check 'em out?" It also extends to imagining things, which is a real world event.
The reason imaginary things "happen" in imagined worlds is whatever we imagine them to be. Because it makes for a better story, I might decide to imagine that Conan's jailer is the brother of someone he once killed, who recognises him and tries to kill him. (This, or something close to it, happens in The Scarlet Citadel.) But that doesn't mean that my real-world motivation is part of the fiction. The fiction is whatever I imagine it to be, and unless I'm choosing to be self-referential/fourther-wall-breaking, I don't need to imagine my motives as author as part of the fiction.
As far as the activity of roleplaying is concerned, there is a whole body of work, both commentary and RPGs (mostly originiated at the Forge, but not confined to there), that identifies and explains techniques whereby, at various stages of the overall process of play, various authors can have various responsibilities for establishing various bits of the fiction.
For instance:
* The player, at time A, decides that his/her PC has a brother. The player does this because s/he thinks it will be interesting.
* The GM, at time B, decides that the next person that player's PC encounters will be said brother. The GM does this because s/he thinks it will be interesting.
* The GM, at time C, says to the player "As you come round the corner fleeing the pursuing guards, you bump into someone. It's your brother!" The player then decides what his/her PC does in reponse to that situation by inhabiting the mindset of his/her PC and deciding as if the PC were a real person.
What I've just described is not logicall impossible. In fact, it - or things like it - happen quite routinely in RPG sessions the world over.
FrozenNorth
Hero
That is incorrect. In the real world, most events have multiple causes. Suggesting that there is “one true cause” is both artificial and arbitrarily reductive.
Moreover, the example you give doesn’t track with the situation described: if I, as the DM, incorporate something from a player’s backstory into the campaign, then at no point is the player acting as a storyteller. He is solely inhabiting his character as he reacts to the world, including events that he, as a character, has a personal stake in, as they involve elements from his backstory.
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