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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9432939" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I guess my only problems with this approach are (1) As Charlaquin said on the first page, it feels like this...is no longer actually about the character's background, which makes it hard to feel like I'm "learning to love the background system," and more like I'm treating it as an alternative "first choice" for what mechanics to build a character around.(2) This feels like the bad kind of constraint, rather than the good kind. That is, people love to say "limitations breed creativity," but what they actually mean is the right kind of limitations will breed creativity. If all limitations always breed creativity equally, then clearly we should always play blindfolded, after all, that's a significant limitation so it will surely breed significant creativity! Except it doesn't work that way. Yes, hardship can produce truly ingenious solutions. But it can also just suck and not having to deal with that suck would be way better than any creativity benefits gained. Hence, you need the right kinds of limitations--those that only prohibit obvious-best-choice approaches, but still grant substantial freedom otherwise. I don't feel that these backgrounds do that. Instead, it's like ordering your food from a fixed chef's menu. You...really can't exert any meaningful creative force over that. Either you eat the food, or you don't.Actually forcing creativity would have been something like...forcing trade-offs between great skills (e.g. Perception) and powerful bonuses (e.g. Alert's bonus to initiative checks) when customizing your background. Have it be a build-your-background process, with the existing backgrounds as various pre-worked applications of that process. That way, choice is actually involved.As it stands, it just doesn't feel like I can exert any creativity over the background. Either I use it as a seed to start from, or I start from something else and begrudgingly accept whatever I'm forced to take to not suck, or (as I suspect most DMs will do) I ask my DM to pretty pretty please let me just pick what stuff I want so long as it's semi-reasonable.</blockquote>

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