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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 9375925" data-attributes="member: 32740">On the limited occasions when I've been asked to write a backstory it has either gone completely ignored by the DM, or it's only been used to screw my PC over in some fashion.  Anything a DM has ever done with backstory I write simply disrupts whatever I had envisioned for that PC for nothing more than a session or two of free adventure fodder at the expense of MY character concepts.Left to my own devices I most likely don't write A SINGLE WORD of backstory.  Maybe I'll list a few family members and an uneventful life up to when the game begins.  However, on a couple occasions I've ended up with a couple pages of something that plugs into WHATEVER setting the DM may have already cooked up, and which gives the DM no reasonable way to use it against me if they even see it.  Usually it's LESS rather than more, with it mostly being none at all.Is it uncreative if many of my PC's are orphans?  No.  At least it's deliberate as opposed to a DM turning my backstory friends and family into convenient bad-guy-of-the-moment victims, or into monsters not otherwise different than any of the other hundreds of monsters our PC's will kill. I'll save the DM the trouble and myself the irritation and just have my PC be yet another loner orphan.  Whatever my PC achieves on their own or with the other PC's at their side - that's enough for me.  Always has been.  Chances are they'll be dead or the game itself will shut down LONG before my PC sees the fruition of their fondest dreams.  If they simply live to reach a comfortable retirement of some kind they've most likely succeeded in achieving their dreams.The more I write for any PC of mine as a truly involved backstory, the more it is for MY EYES ONLY.  I write it because it provides ME with motivations and experiences to base my character's beliefs and attitudes on when IN ACTUAL PLAY.  I'll trust the DM that they are creative enough to NOT NEED me to create past events and characters.  If they've made a creative game setting then -I- don't need to invent specialized ways for my character to be linked to it.  My PC is right here in the game right now.  Whatever is happening in the game NOW - my PC is up to their neck in it as it is.  That's why I agreed to play - so that my PC would be involved in WHATEVER the DM has happening in their game world whether it ever revolves specifically around my PC, or other PC's, or just happens apropos of nothing because our PC's are simply THERE.</blockquote>

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