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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 7277753" data-attributes="member: 32740">I posted on this subject just a few days ago at GitP forums I think.I guess I react badly to DM's placing participation requirements upon players beyond simply bringing dice, their character sheet, a PH, and their own snacks.  And I can generally provide dice and a PH if they need.  I encourage players to think about SOME kind of background that their character comes from.  Something with more imagination than, "He was an orphan, lived uneventfully until now, and is now a murderhobo."  Come up with elements about your character that can and will affect how they interact with the game world and people in it (PC or NPC).  I encourage that because it helps bring a character to life BEFORE play actually begins and provides an initial direction for players to take their character other than, "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"But all that is ultimately for the player themselves.  I require nothing in the way of background.  In particular, some players are gifted in creating backstory and enjoy the process of that.  Others are utterly uninterested in that as a creative exercise, or lack any ability to WRITE creatively even if they want to.  I once did, but will no longer seek to put players in a position where a creative author gets lots of plot hooks and attention devoted to their character because they can write a great backstory, while another player, who may even want more hooks and attention for their PC gets vastly less simply because they lack the skill to set it up with written backstory.  I don't want to set myself up as DM to fall into that kind of favoritism.Furthermore, I DO NOT NEED your backstory plot hooks to get your PC involved in the game world.  If I did I would not be a very good DM and I feel like _I_ would be a worse one for choosing to lean on the creativity of the players to make up for it.  If you can stay above that as a DM, more power to you.  Guess you're just better than I.  I will rely on MY OWN ideas for how to involve ALL player characters in the plots and adventures that I present.  If I can't do that without your PC's detailed backstory then the campaign was likely doomed in the first place to be fairly uninteresting.  If I CAN do that without your backstories then... I don't need your backstories.I've played in enough games where one PC was some kind of chosen one, or inheritor of a rich and powerful noble title/estate, or simply was made into the focus of the game because the DM fell in love with one or two characters in particular and made them the focus of the game as a result.  I've played and run PLENTY of games with gamers who simply DO NOT HAVE THE ROLEPLAYING SKILLS to support more than limited attention to their PC.  Are they unworthy of attention?  Because other players are better roleplayers are they to be given all the attention and glory at the cost of always relegating other PC's to token importance and easily replaced by any other disposable character?I play AD&D.  Ultimately ALL characters are disposable.  I can't guarantee their importance or survival and don't want to.  If I make one character overly important to events in my game then I can't be as neutral as a DM SHOULD be - the PC becomes critical to my ongoing plots and adventures and if they die those plot and adventures suffer or die along with the PC in question.  Not at all fair or desirable.Lastly, I've also occasionally seen players take the opportunity of required background to give their PC's wealth, titles, skills, contacts, knowledge, and more requiring myself to then become a hatchet man, to edit their wishlist down to an acceptable level.  Regardless of the time it takes to do that, it isn't supposed to be the POINT of asking for background to be presented with a pre-game wishlist or pumped up character build by backstory fiat.  And then there's the player who decides they're going to create the game world for me, inventing cities, organizations, historical events, important NPC's, artifacts, deities, yada yada yada.  I appreciate the creativity of that - I DO - but that's MY job, not the players job, and I again don't want to have to be in the position of red penciling half of a players backstory because it won't fit the game world _I_ am supposed to be creating to provide TO THEM.Backstories are useful and as a player can be an incredibly fun and creative ADDITION to the fun of actual gameplay.  But they need to be kept in their place.  If a DM actually desires, as a creative exercise for themselves, to craft an entire campaign from the individual backstories made up by players for their PC's, go for it and enjoy.  But as a rule for the vast majority of general game play they should not be made a requirement for a player's participation.JMOAddendum: I haven't actually been a player in a long time so it's been even longer since a DM actually asked for a backstory for a character of mine.  If a DM were to make anything more than a simple paragraph of basic description/introduction a requirement then I'd immediately begin to question whether I want to be a player in that game or not and would have to talk to the DM at length about just what it is they think they want from me before the game even begins and what they expect to do with (or more likely TO...) my character backstory after the game begins.  My knee-jerk reaction would be to simply provide no more than the aforementioned simple, superficial paragraph, or just refuse altogether.  ...And then I'd go home and write 10 pages of backstory, bring it to the next game, wave it around and tell the DM that he'll NEVER be permitted to read it.  Just for spite.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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