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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5212984" data-attributes="member: 2205">Me neither.  I kinda said it earlier, but I'll reiterate; it seems as if we're defending a caricaturish strawman rather than reality.  Of course if someone goes overboard, well, then they've gone overboard and that's an issue.  This discussion seems to be continually trying to frame any player involvement in setting as already overboard to begin with.Frankly, as a GM I'd find an entire group of such passive, uninterested players somewhat off-putting.  I can deal with the occasional someone who's a little excessive who needs to be reined in slightly.  Not that I have to; what is usually meant by this is that players come up with some family names and maybe a local crime boss or minor lord.  I very rarely have any conflicts with that level of detail, and if I did, neither one of us would be upset with some minor tweaking to get my vision of the setting and the player's vision of his character's backstory aligned.To use one example from a recentish D&D campaign I ran, I had one player who wanted to play a hobgoblin character, since I had specifically made a point of allowing them and postulated an expansionist hobgoblin empire to the southeast of the main campaign area.  His vision was that he was from an independent hobgoblin culture or city-state that had recently been swallowed up by this expanionist empire.  Rather than submit to foreign domination, he left town under bad conditions, and had a grudge against the empire itself.  He picked the name of one of the nearer fringe cities within the empire's borders and had that be his homeland.It was completely consistent with what I had already laid out, although of course he added a bit more detail than I had done.  Most of the detail was specific to his character, though, not to the setting as a whole.  If he'd gone on about how his city was famous for its dragonrider attack squadrons, well, then I'd have to have sat down with him and worked on it.  But he didn't.  And if we had done that, we'd have worked it out together.No big deal.Another character decided that his background was that he was essentially on the run from the mafia of another city on the northern rim of this inner sea region (we started the campaign as the ship on which all of the PCs were passengers was pulling into port at a city on the southern rim.)  I hadn't even decided that that city had a mafia, much less that said mafia lord had a young wife that could be seduced and had not only her virtue but her bedchambers pilfered by a thief who's ego was bigger than his talent.  Was it off-putting that by implication such a backdrop to the northern city was essentially implied wholly by the player?  I never thought so.  Again; that's the kind of stuff that I encourage.  Another character decided that she was the cleric of a god she made up.  She also decided that she was essentially a con-artist; she didn't really believe that this god was even real, but as a very minor deity, she took it upon herself to soclicit donations in his behalf.  Again: going too far?  I never thought so.  Heck, I think that kind of stuff is great.  I never require it, but I sure as heck encourage it.</blockquote>

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