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

[gepetto]

Perhaps your distaste for the idea is due to the limited way you seem able to imagine it being employed?

Look at the post directly above yours for a pretty strong counter example of how this method can be used to great effect, with three different players going about it three different ways.

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

There were no previous sessions.

 

[Lanefan]

Over the course of the weekend, we played for more than15 hours.

I'll just crawl over into the corner and be jealous now...

I really like the harpoon bit - cool stuff!

 

[FrozenNorth]

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

Uzirath provided examples. You provided a bare assertion and denigrated other people’s examples by mischaracterizing them. I know who I find more convincing.

 

[pemerton]

It's also difficult to pre-establish or foreshadow anything when you're playing in, at the extreme, Schroedinger's Setting.

I don't know what you mean by "pre-establish" here. But it's very easy to foreshadow things without a pre-authored setting. This is more-or-less what soft moves in Apocalypse World involve.

 

[uzirath]

I'll just crawl over into the corner and be jealous now...

I really like the harpoon bit - cool stuff!

Thanks. We were up at my tiny rustic cabin in northern Minnesota surrounded by deep snow. It was an idyllic escape from the real world. We were pretty sure that this would be our last face-to-face game for a while. All of this helped fuel the immersion, I’m sure. We were in it.

 

[Sadras]

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

Just something to consider - once a background element is allowed to breath into a session of actual shared play any spring off step from that can be defined as an a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous session of actual shared play.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

Then you don’t understand story as well as you think you do.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.

You keep saying "shared play", but your earlier comments about how players can't possible have ideas better than yours, and they have to do whatever you tell them, I have to wonder if you know what shared play actually means. That's not shared play. That's just a DM dictating what happens however they want the adventure story to progress.

 

[prabe]

You keep saying "shared play", but your earlier comments about how players can't possible have ideas better than yours, and they have to do whatever you tell them, I have to wonder if you know what shared play actually means. That's not shared play. That's just a DM dictating what happens however they want the adventure story to progress.

I suppose it's possible it's one instigated event after another, followed by characters reacting, with little tie-back to character origins. There might be multiple threads going at once, but that doesn't seem likely to me.

Wouldn't be my first choice, but if everyone is enjoying it I wouldn't call it wrong, either.