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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5216034" data-attributes="member: 18280">As a GM, you can determine how well you dealt with PC background material by a simple expedient:  After you reveal your take/twist on the background material, do the other players immediately provide you with more material in the hopes that you will do the same thing for them/to their PCs?If so, you are doing it right.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />But, I still feel that a couple of paragraphs to a page is adequate, and that the PC background should offer potential hooks and reasons to adventure, rather than reasons why that PC should get special treatment in the game world (princess syndrome).It is fun to riff off of background material, and to use the same to give the PCs connections to the game milieu.  It is another thing entirely to have a party consisting of hidden/displaced/unknown royalty just waiting for the GM to uplift them to their "rightful" positions of ultimate power in the campaign world.Also, I would add that a background should be what the PC knows/believes -- if the PC introduces a "mysterious stranger" in his background, he should not also include the actual identity of that stranger, unless it is also known to the PC.  It is okay for the PC background to include a mysterious stranger the PC believes to be Odin wandering the world; it is not necessarily going to turn out to have been Odin, however.  As GM, I reserve the right to tie all PC backgrounds into the milieu in a way that makes sense with the milieu as established.  As a player, I automatically grant any GM running a game I am in the same right.EDIT:  One other note:  Before dropping a bomb, it is good to foreshadow said bomb and pay attention to player feedback.  First off, foreshadowing means that the players get to experience the fun anxiety of knowing something is happening without knowing exactly what.  Secondly, it gives the players a chance to acclimatize to the idea that something is going to happen, so it isn't completely out of the blue (although the details can be hidden, and thus shocking).  Finally, it gives the GM a chance to look at player feedback, and thus present the bomb without having it explode in his face.RC</blockquote>

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