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

[Lanefan]

That's not true. Role-playing doesn't require you to abandon all knowledge you possess beyond the role you are playing.

Agreed, though it may at times require you to set aside some of that knowledge.

And playing a role doesn't mean you can't make decisions based on things outside the role, it just means that there also needs to be a fictional reason for the decision.

True, but I'd flip it around: there has to first be a fictional reason for the decision, then after that if it happens to fit in with the outside world it's benefits all round.

So I can have my PC go on an adventure because that's the game and if I stay on the farm.....a perfectly reasonable and probably desirable choice for the character....then nothing fun happens.

Which means the challenge is on you-as-player* to come up with a plausible in-fiction reason why Jane Farmgirl decides to get off the farm, take up the sword, and go travelling with (eventually) a bunch of other potentially-dangerouns people. For me, sheer boredom is the go-to here if the character has any kind of decent Intelligence.

* - usually. Sometimes the DM can find a way to bring adventuring to you.

There's no reason that metagaming and roleplaying need to be at odds.

I somewhat disagree. I think they're always at odds, in that metagaming or metaknowledge dilute the (for lack of a better term) "purity" of one's role-play.

The question is merely one of how much dilution one is willing to accept, in the knowledge that nothing's perfect.

 

[Aldarc]

True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.

The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.

(1) You are stating an aesthetic preference about books and movies rather than any actual flaw.

(2) History is rife with examples of the implausible happening nearly all the time. Life and history are a bit more implausible than you give credit. Implausibility is perfectly suited within the realm of plausibility.

(3) It's probably healthier to admit that the desire for having "the implausible happening once in a while" seeks to impose a preferred aesthetic of plot pacing on the fiction rather than serving as any actual metric of realism.

 

[Lanefan]

This is, quite literally, total gibberish. Everything exists 'external to the gameworld' and nothing exists within the gameworld. We are not observing or discovering a world. We are inventing it, the people sat playing.

True, and in that process of invention we're creating a fictional reality quite different from our own, in which our PCs live and do whatever they do when we play them.

Which means there's now two "realities" - one for us, one for our PCs. Complete immersion, which seems to be Saelorn's goal here, requires the player to in effect largely ignore one reality (ours) and as far as possible inhabit the other one (that of the PCs). It's a laudable goal, if often unattainable.

There's strong parallels with "method acting", where a performer fully inhabits their fictional character even when off-stage or off-set such that they don't have to do anything to get in character to perform, because they're already there. It's not how all actors do it, but it really works for some.

Here, the idea is that the game-player fully inhabits the fictional character while at the table (but hopefully not all week!) and think, as far as possible, like it thinks.

The fact that your playstyle depends so totally on pretending that you don't actually exist,

Seeing as the whole hobby revolves around pretending anyway, to pretend one doesn't exist for a while doesn't seem all that big a jump.

 

[Lanefan]

Well first, Boromir is clearly an NPC. He has about 3 lines and everyone just ignores everything he has to say until he gets redshirted as a plot device. So that doesnt even count.

Borimir's 100% a PC, just with different goals and motives than the rest. He can't bend the party to his goals, so he initiates some PvP; that goes wrong as well so in the end he dies heroically but not before splitting the party into three groups.

And second his "backstory" certainly doesnt come up for HIM at all for more then 30 seconds after he gets introduced.

Oddly enough, we find out far more about his backstory after he's dead than we do while he's alive. It's still important.

 

[Lanefan]

(1) You are stating an aesthetic preference about books and movies rather than any actual flaw.

(2) History is rife with examples of the implausible happening nearly all the time. Life and history are a bit more implausible than you give credit. Implausibility is perfectly suited within the realm of plausibility.

It may seem that way, because we hear about and-or remember the implausible occurrences when they happen but don't hear about or remember the many-factors-higher more frequent occasions when they don't happen.

Just as an example: the city I live in is, by all standards, not very big. There's someone I knew who I lost touch with many years ago, but who I know has been living in town the entire time, yet the implausible has only happened once where by sheer chance we bumped into each other. That was a memorable event - far more memorable than the nearly-infinite number of times it didn't happen.

Drama likes implausibile occurrences. It thrives on them.

In reality, however, their relatively extreme rarity is what makes them implausible.

 

[Aldarc]

It may seem that way, because we hear about and-or remember the implausible occurrences when they happen but don't hear about or remember the many-factors-higher more frequent occasions when they don't happen.

Drama likes implausibile occurrences. It thrives on them.

In reality, however, its their relatively extreme rarity which is what makes them implausible.

Here I would say instead that "Roleplaying likes implausible occurrences. It thrives on them," largely because tabletop roleplaying is an intentional exercise of recreational dramatic play rather than an exercise of reconstructing reality to its "proper" dimensions of plausibility.

 

[chaochou]

Plausibility is an aesthetic preference linked to playstyle.

In a game which involves learning what the GM has planned and thwarting it, predictability is necessary so as not to cheat the players of the 'cleverness' of antipating the script. This leads to a narrow tolerance for 'plausible'.

In a game which involves finding out what happens as a result of character-driven conflicts, predictability is the very thing you don't want. This leads to a very wide tolerance for 'plausible'.

 

[FrozenNorth]

True, but I'd flip it around: there has to first be a fictional reason for the decision, then after that if it happens to fit in with the outside world it's benefits all round.

Which means the challenge is on you-as-player* to come up with a plausible in-fiction reason why Jane Farmgirl decides to get off the farm, take up the sword, and go travelling with (eventually) a bunch of other potentially-dangerouns people. For me, sheer boredom is the go-to here if the character has any kind of decent Intelligence.

I somewhat disagree. I think they're always at odds, in that metagaming or metaknowledge dilute the (for lack of a better term) "purity" of one's role-play.

I want to highlight these 3 quotes because they are precisely why the DM should make ample use of character background in the adventure.

Yes, it is possible for a PC to come up with a fictional reason to go on any adventure or sidequest. But it is a lot easier (and less “metagamey”) if it already ties into that character or their friends.

 

[FrozenNorth]

True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.

The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.

You won’t get any disagreement from me that many modern books and films lazily employ coincidence rather than good writing (though my initial example was Star Wars, so modern is relative).

However, certain points remain:

1) there is no reason to assume “DM uses character backstory” means “DM uses character backstory in an excessively implausible manner”. “You run into the gnoll who killed your parents as the chief of a gnoll tribe somewhere else in the same kingdom” is different from “you are actually the son of the BBEG’s lieutenant and this was never alluded to anywhere else previously”;

2) while bad writers (and bad DMs) tend to rely excessively on implausible coincidences, it is possible to use implausible coincidences to very good effect. To put it differently, if you remove bad coincidences from the repertoire of a bad writer, what remains is still a bad writer. Removing coincidences from the repertoire of a DM is removing a tool that can be the proper tool for the job, if used sparingly;

3) to get back to a point I raised earlier, I do this for fun in my spare time, yes, I take pride in my work and try to do the best job I can, but it is a little ridiculous to compare me to a professional screenwriter;

4) the DM who completely ignores your backstory is worse from both an immersion perspective and a “plausibility” perspective. In a 4e game, I rolled up a Rogue with a Soldier background. He was a farmboy who had been conscripted at the end of the war and trained with other locals who knew the area as a scout and a skirmisher. I provided a short background to this effect to the DM. The DM began the adventure with my character trying to break into an archeological dig as part of a Thieves’ guild initiation, and the climax depended on my character reading a note in thieves’ cant, despite my character neither being a thief nor literate.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Oddly enough, we find out far more about his backstory after he's dead than we do while he's alive. It's still important.

Not really odd. The DM had a great arc for him planned once they reached Gondor and didn’t want that work to go to waste.