DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?

[Lanefan]

A movie exists primarily for the purpose of telling a story. An RPG exists primarily to facilitate role-playing, with the literary merit of the generated narrative being irrelevant.

Further, a movie has to get its story told in a very limited amount of time, sequels notwithstanding.

With an RPG, unless you're getting well on in years you've got all the time in the world to tell or create whatever story or stories you want.

 

[Lanefan]

So then there's no way to ever have the brother show up later in an unexpected way? Let's say there's a totally organic way for that to occur; do you not go through with it because it may be mistaken as a forced plot twist? Do you go through with it despite that?

If there's a "totally organic way for that to occur" then let it happen.

But if there isn't, don't force it.

What would you do in this situation? And how do you arrive at that decision considering only some kind of logical internal causality and not what's better for the sake of drama?

Well, the logic - such as it is - would consist of me-as-DM knowing at least vaguely where this brother is most likely to be, on a large scale (e.g. we've previously determined he's based in Praetos City these days but both he and the PC originally come from a village some 20 miles south where their family still resides; and he's a simple cobbler so not likely to travel much further than that). From this I now know that if the PCs are in Praetos, the village, or the road/waystations between there's at least a chance they'll meet the guy, and maybe they will; but if they're in Cyrax Town, 300 miles to the south across the mountains, there's no chance at all.

If, however, the brother was also an adventurer the PCs could potentially meet him anywhere - even in mid-adventure!

 

[Aldarc]

With an RPG, unless you're getting well on in years you've got all the time in the world to tell or create whatever story or stories you want.

Except that's not remotely true. It can be true and may be the case if we narrowly restrict our sense of RPGs to your games, but that is FAR from being a universal truth for RPGs. Sorry, but not all tables get "all the time in the world" regardless of the age of the participants. Some will only be one-shots. Some will only be 5-10 sessions. Some may get 20 sessions. There is no "all the time in the world" nonsense in the modern era. There are other games that some gamers want to try. There is a competition of attention. I think that most TTRPGs in the modern era lean into this reality instead of pretending that mega-decade campaigns that meet weekly in any way reflect the norm.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If there's literally no way to tell, and this one dramatic thing could very reasonably happen, then you could roll for it. If it was previously established that this character's brother is one of the twelve disciples of the Big Bad, and an unknown disciple would logically be messing things up in the next town over, then this one happens to be the brother on 1d12 roll of 1.

Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?

Alternatively, you could err on the side of avoiding the appearance of meta-gaming. While that does mean unlikely events will never happen (rather than rarely happening), it will still give you the right answer in the vast majority of situations.

In this instance, metagaming is just as much a factor in my choice, no? Ultimately, the decision to not have the brother show up is made because of concerns beyond the game. This is exactly your definition of metagaming.....so I don't see how one is preferrable.

It's the easiest thing in the world. Just don't meta-game, the same way that you don't meta-game when you're a player rather than the DM. You take all of your knowledge from outside of the game world, like which characters are being controlled by players rather than the DM, and you set that aside for the purpose of determining what happens.

It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.

Your logic has no way to replicate such circumstances because you're too concerned with avoiding metagaming. But you're absolutely metagaming. Your concern to avoid dramatic purpose is outside the game world. There is no feasible way to craft fiction of any kind without considering the content of the fiction.

Some times, dramatic things happen in real life. Your thinking allows no way for that to happen.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If there's a "totally organic way for that to occur" then let it happen.

But if there isn't, don't force it.

Well, in a case where the drives and goals and state of mind of the brother are all created by the GM, I don't see how you can do anything but force it, right? Perhaps the player has offered some bit of motivation or other detail for the brother as part of their backstory. "My brother got mixed up with the wrong crowd and left the farm..." or similar. In that case, it may help determine what's happened.

But it's all fiction. It can't be real.

Well, the logic - such as it is - would consist of me-as-DM knowing at least vaguely where this brother is most likely to be, on a large scale (e.g. we've previously determined he's based in Praetos City these days but both he and the PC originally come from a village some 20 miles south where their family still resides; and he's a simple cobbler so not likely to travel much further than that). From this I now know that if the PCs are in Praetos, the village, or the road/waystations between there's at least a chance they'll meet the guy, and maybe they will; but if they're in Cyrax Town, 300 miles to the south across the mountains, there's no chance at all.

If, however, the brother was also an adventurer the PCs could potentially meet him anywhere - even in mid-adventure!

So in the first paragraph, you apply the kind of reasoning that I think we would all try and follow to some extent when determining this kind of stuff. Where has the brother been, what's he thinking, what resources does he have at his disposal to enable his travel, etc. I think this is generally the approach we would all take,

Then in the second paragraph you essentially point out that all those details can be anything we want, so we can make anything we want happen, and we can justify it in any way.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?



In this instance, metagaming is just as much a factor in my choice, no? Ultimately, the decision to not have the brother show up is made because of concerns beyond the game. This is exactly your definition of metagaming.....so I don't see how one is preferrable.



It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.

Your logic has no way to replicate such circumstances because you're too concerned with avoiding metagaming. But you're absolutely metagaming. Your concern to avoid dramatic purpose is outside the game world. There is no feasible way to craft fiction of any kind without considering the content of the fiction.

Some times, dramatic things happen in real life. Your thinking allows no way for that to happen.

Yup. I can kinda follow along with the player-side metagaming arguments (not agree, but follow), but I can't even grasp that argument for GMs.

 

[Aldarc]

I honestly wonder at times how Saelorn's exceptionally narrow perspective on roleplaying actually plays out in practice and how the hobby would look if his radical views were somehow the norm.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Maybe an exaggeration, but it does seem that some people seem to think that the players are just along for the ride, and it is all the GM's show. Maybe those person should be authors instead...

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?

The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, just like real life. Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.

It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.

While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are exceedingly rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If I try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and you try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then your conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while my conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.

 

[Aldarc]

The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, just like real life. Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.

And that huge assumption is where your biggest mistake lies.

While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are exceedingly rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If I try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and you try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then your conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while my conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.

Like adventurers? One might even say that these statistically-improbable things are fantastical or magical.