Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="KYRON45" data-source="post: 9770934" data-attributes="member: 6994040">I think the value of a PCs backstory is directly proportional to where the player is in their life when they write it.  Obviously this wouldn't be true of all players as nothing is ever true of all players.The edgy teen wants to be seen as a bad arse from the first drop.  They want you to ALREADY think of them as awesome so their backstory will have more adventure behind it than in front of it.  Dark and mysterious usually means that they lied about their ability scores so that their  super dark and awesome skills and what not make sense.  You can't be a hardened criminal with an 11 strength after all.  Most of all the teen player just wants to roll high numbers and set things on fire.The "i'm an adult now" 20 something probably wants to be respected for what they have earned in those few years as a teen.  People trust them with responsibilities and and don't talk to them like they are children anymore. Maybe some years doing things so that the skills they chose are starting to make more sense.  They might be ready for something deeper than "you meet some strangers in a bar and 26 min later you trust all of them with your life."  After all, they don't have a solid work schedule and they want this time at the table to have more meaning meaning than just wandering the countryside stabbing things.30 somethings often want to be portrayed as the "go to" member of the group.  Responsible and respected.  The party member you can count on to know the rules and to remember to write down "rope" on their character sheet.  So their backstory will be less dramatic and more practical.  It's possible that this player wants some depth to what's going on.  How do i know these people and why do i care about the same things they care about? 40 somethings have seen some things.  Maybe they've done some things.  Their stories are going to likely be more dramatic...lost love, life gone wrong, debt.  Depth but not melo-drama.  I know who I am and I want more.  I want to use the skills i chose to matter so i chose meaningful ones to start with and i talked to my DM to let them know that.50ish are content being the...."back in my day" types.  They want to be able to remember their "edge lord" days as "better times".  They want things to make sense and they want their skills/abilities etc. to not just be random numbers on a character sheet....a character sheet that they are most likely trying to keep clean.  So they are more likely to want the whole party to have a pre-established linkage.  We should all know one another, but in the limited way that we should at 1st level.If you've made it this far I applaud you.  I doubt most of this made any sense.  I was in fact bored and this woke me up a little.Game your own game folks.  Make whatever character you want; or whatever character your DM will allow and have fun doing it.</blockquote>

Verification