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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5215137" data-attributes="member: 2205">So what?  The player character never saw that in her mother.  That doesn't change her backstory.  Her backstory is still intact, word for word.I'm talking specifically about the examples posted earlier in this thread.  If you agree with both, then it looks like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.  That's not "DM dickery" that's wandering into prima donna player territory.  PlayerZilla, or something.  "I want everything I want, and I want it my way.  Everything I don't want, yeah, you can have that."For that matter, the entire concept of staking out "territory" is already indicative of that, IMO.  Isn't gaming supposed to be a collaborative effort, after all?That question sounds rather disingenious.  Setting design is a collaborative effort at the personal level like this.  The player can tell me what her character knows about her mom.  Anything that she wouldn't know is fair game for the GM to elaborate on.  In this case, her mom turning into a lich is a natural (if extreme) evolution of the player's own concept of the mom as bitter and disillusioned about her family.Actually, no.  It doesn't mean that at all.  I have no idea where you even got that idea.  Mom was bitter and disillusioned last time the PC saw her, she's a power-tripping undead a few years later.  Absolutely nothing needs to be rewritten to accomodate that.  Clearly the PC just underestimated the depth of mom's anger.  As my out of context quoting of Ironwolf, who already said it, so I won't repeat it:Who cares?  It doesn't change anything that player envisioned for the character which is where your statement is flat-out wrong, nor does it change what the character would have thought about these NPCs before coming back and seeing the dramatic evolution that happened to them in her absence.Which is why I asked the question.  I admit, I find it astounding that so many players are so against what is clearly a great, unexpected and yet potentially very rich and deep use of a background element.  If that's not the whole point of backgrounds in the first place, then I also admit I find the idea of creating them kinda pointless.Which, granted, several of you who have a problem with this scenario have also said that you're not big fans of player backgrounds anyway, so at least you're consistent there.The other side of the insulting refrain of "DM dickery" though is the player dickery of refusing to involve himself except shallowly in the campaign, of taking the GM's efforts at making the villains a bit more interesting than just generic statblocks who are conveniently placed in the players path so at least some semblance of a game can actually happen.  Of players who claim to be from a town, but then balk at being asked to commit to actually knowing any NPCs at all in the town where they freakin' supposedly grew up.  Those players are unengaged and unengageable ingrates, for whom I wouldn't waste my time trying to run a game for very long.Now.  I don't really hold that opinion nearly that strongly, but if you're going to continue to toss around terms like "DM dickery", that's the true flipside of that.  Pure player dickery.Then keep your background to yourself.  It's just a tool for you as the player.  I'm not as a GM even interested in seeing backgrounds that players want to "protect".</blockquote>

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