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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9788098" data-attributes="member: 58172">As DM, working with a player to create a personal background, is a "lure" to encourage the player to care about the setting.Even for something like swapping an ability score boost! The DM can ask the player how does this background experience develop this ability. Say the background and feat relate to being a burglar. How did being a burglar make the character tougher with a higher Constitution? How did this increased stamina and survivability happen? Did the character grow up living on the streets? How did the character eat? How did the character stay healthy? What kind of burglar was this character? Where did the burgling happen? Already the player is thinking about their own character life story − and how this character is a meaningful part of the setting. Who are the social contacts that character gained from being a burglar? How did one meet them? Are there victims of burglary who are out to get the character? Etcetera. To explain a +2 Constitution score.Also, there may be players who want the old school ability boosts that come from the species. The way to resolve this today is to make sure there are a few backgrounds that relate thematically to the old school species descriptions. Even if not every Dwarf is a high-Constitution high-Strength miner, surely there is some group of miners somewhere that the Dwarf player character can be a member of.</blockquote>