How much back story for a low-level PC?

[Vurt]

Through lots of experience, I find that Players/PCs are more interested in and attached to that little girl they rescued from the goblins during an actual game session than they are to any little girl they are supposedly related to through their pre-game back story.

Sure, because at the table, it "happened".

The little girl in the backstory, it didn't "happen", someone just wrote about it happening. It may be important, but maybe not.

But if the DM does something with it, at the table, then it has a good chance to become important just like the little girl rescued from the goblins. If the DM shines his spotlight on it and weaves it into the ongoing story, then they have another way in which their players are anchored into his game.

 

[Hand of Evil]

It all starts with the 10 to 20 questions, you know them:

1. Where are you from?
2. Family alive or dead?
3. Do you have kids?
4. Provide a family tree of two levels?
5. Who was your best friends as a kid?
6. How did you meet the other party members?
7. What put you on the road to adventure?
8. Who did you learn your trade from?
9. etc...they are posted somewhere here.

As a DM I provide the questions and the players provide the answers, this is done the first game session. The results are looked at and I will then add stuff. As a DM, what I provide is in house rules, my defining of evil in the game and general knowledge information of the area and its history (who is king, the major city in the area, whats to the north (orcs), what is to the east (the sea), who the last war was with, etc.

 

[Chainsaw]

As a player, few sentences, maybe a paragraph. Don't want to invest too much in a fragile level one guy. Real story is what happens as he adventures. As survival time lengthens, backstory can be expanded as appropriate. Same as a DM. I don't want anyone crying because they wrote a novel for a guy that didn't make level two.

 

[Stoat]

I don't want much background from my PC's, and I rarely give much background when I'm a PC.

IME, PC background is usually boring, rarely fits the campaign, and is often hard to work into the game when it does fit the campaign.

OTOH, I've always been interested in a mechanic similar to the Torg drama deck. Something where a player could drop a card or spend some points and declare, "I've got an ex-lover in this town, maybe she can help us out!" or "I know this guy, its the evil Baron Fug, who ran over my dog when I was a kid!"

 

[Barastrondo]

I feel like I should vote for the "------" divider line in the middle of the poll because my answer is Other.

Since I game with people that I hang out with in non-gaming contexts, a lot of backstory that emerges is done over mealtime conversations or the like. I guess if you were to write it all down, then it might fit into a paragraph or two. But it depends on who's running, who's playing, what the character is like, and so on. When I run, sometimes I'll get a writeup of a page or so, depending on the player, and I enjoy that, so I don't "prefer" something shorter. Sometimes it's just a few sentences like "Then the vault that he was assigned to guard fell off the side of the building, so he went looking for something new to protect and wound up joining the Battlemen," and that's fine with me too, so I don't "prefer" something longer. I use backstory, though. It's not required of my players, but I look at it as a way for them to tell me what they think is interesting, and we'll go from there.

Also, playing through preludes: I'm not sure how that would count as a vote. It's a WoD trick that I will also use elsewhere: get together with individual players ahead of time if feasible, play through an hour or two of various backstory events prior to the game. Again, not required, but I do enjoy it when it seems appropriate, and I'm not sure how it counts.

 

[Crothian]

The more backstory the better. As a DM I will use the PCs backstory in the game. Some more then others it depends on what the player gives me and what they want. Some players don't like to see their backstory matter so those people it won't. But for the ones that do it can help shape the campaign and bring in a lot more depth to the situations and complications that can happen in game.

 

[BrokeAndDrive]

For me, "back story" is what happened in the previous game sessions. Back story that supposedly happened before the first game session is of no interest to me.

Through lots of experience, I find that Players/PCs are more interested in and attached to that little girl they rescued from the goblins during an actual game session than they are to any little girl they are supposedly related to through their pre-game back story.

You posted my exact thoughts before I had a chance to think them.

In my experience, "back story" as never been anything more than, "Look at me! I'm NOT a power-gamer! Because min-maxing is BAD [for some reason]! Filthy roll-playing heretic, how DARE you do math!? Off with character optimizer's head!"

 

[Bullgrit]

For me, "back story" is what happened in the previous game sessions. Back story that supposedly happened before the first game session is of no interest to me.

From the DM perspective, player or both?

Both.

Bullgrit

 

[Desdichado]

As both a DM and a player, when I'm working with "grow into power" type games, the focus is on developing the character during play. A few tidbits that tie the character to the world are OK, but not strongly required.

How much backstory can a 16-18 year old have anyway?

16-18 years, plus a family legacy, potentially. Quite a bit.

That said, I prefer to keep backstories on the lighter side--couple three paragraphs or so, and then develop the characters personality as we go. I frequently don't have a really strong idea of who the character is when I start rolling him (or her) up and playing; often it's just a hook or caricaturish ham, but that will usually develop into a stronger character over time.

It also depends on what kind of game you're going to have. If you're going through a series of modules, then backstory isn't as important, and may not be anything more than just for your own satisfaction as a player anyway, since nothing in it may ever come out in game.

 

[Desdichado]

You posted my exact thoughts before I had a chance to think them.

In my experience, "back story" as never been anything more than, "Look at me! I'm NOT a power-gamer! Because min-maxing is BAD [for some reason]! Filthy roll-playing heretic, how DARE you do math!? Off with character optimizer's head!"

LOLwut?! Chip on your shoulder much?

To add to my previous post, the most useful backstory I've seen is what ties the characters in the group together. Traditionally, backstory is something that the players do off on their own, and it has the opposite effect; it creates wedges between the characters that makes it more difficult for them to play well together. Of late, I've been using a method that creates short backstory vignettes that create ties between characters, and I've been so impressed with the results that it's now a requirement of all chargen sessions I ever run from now until forever.

Also, I really liked weem's (at least I think it was his) idea of focusing more on the foreground than the background. I.e., not yoru family and your whole past life. What were you doing last night? What were you doing a couple of hours before the session starts?

If you think about it, plenty of beloved characters in literature and film don't really have much backstory when they get started, and for that matter, plenty of them never really get that much developed for them over the entire course of their careers, except in vague, handwavey terms, and it doesn't make those characters any less enjoyable or fun to read about and watch. Why wouldn't the same principle apply to RPG characters?