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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAlkaizer" data-source="post: 8216144" data-attributes="member: 7024893">I always ask the same thing of my players: a backstory of one to two pages, depending on their inspiration. It doesn't have to be well-written or anything, but I'm looking for the basics. Where are you from? What was your education like? Did you travel? Who's important to you? What's important to your character? What has his life been like in the few years before the start of the campaign? I also tell them what's going to be the starting situation and location of the campaign, so that they can find out why they're there: is the group already formed? Are they meeting for the first time during session 1? Where is it starting?My goal is to be able to extirpate what I call hooks; key elements of the character's past and motivation that I can use to make the campaign more personal.  The steps of my whole process are generally the following:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I give them a short document (1-3 pages) that gives an overview of the setting: what's interesting about it, the main regions, any important details about it. This is generally enough to spark a link in my players head between their character concept and some part of the setting: "Oh, it'd be neat if my elf ranger grew in this desert region".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">With their interest in mind, I dive deeper in the parts of the world that interest them. I might only have had two or three sentences or ideas for that desert region, but now I'll go get inspiration and detail maybe a page or two about it and maybe a crude map. I give them that to give them fuel for their backstory.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Then I expect what I was describing earlier: 1 to 2 pages of simple backstory. If, because of their lack of knowledge of the setting, they want to leave blanks, they can.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I go over their backstory, I fill in some blanks. For example, if a player said "my character grew in a hidden monastery far away in the mountains of that region", I'll send back a version with a named and shortly described monastery.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">They approve my additions, or not and we do one more iteration.</li> </ol>This process generally takes about two to three days of back and forth (a day for each step) and doesn't take more than about an hour of their time.There's so many possible examples, but here are some for the campaign that I'm prepping for when COVID restrictions ease a little bit:One of my player said he wanted to play a Goblin Fighter (Psi Warrior) that has red skin. I checked with him if he wanted the red skin to be something special about him,  he said that wasn't his intention. He looked at my setting overview document and said he wanted to have grown up in the region called the Wildlands. I expanded on that region, specifically with Goblins in mind, and sent him back about a page of information about it, with a crude map. He also knew that the adventure would be starting just north of a large city south of the Wildlands called Suthcaester.The next day, he sent me about two pages of backstory. It included his family members, his best friend, a traveller that he took interest in and that became a mentor for him. In also included a funky idea about how he got his psionic powers (something with a meteor), what motivated him to leave his tribe and make his way towards Suthcaester.I filled in some details he had left blank: name of his tribe, name of the place they were, name of his mentor (developed a character personality, etc for my DM notes) and a name, description and notes for the meteor area. What I gave him was an updated version of his backstory, but that produced about four pages of notes and ideas for me.At this point, I've got:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The character already heading or present to where the campaign starts.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I know what is his goal.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I have a list of characters important to him. I can include them in the game anytime, they can receive letters, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I have a list of hooks (a mysterious ring he found, he left home because the chieftain of the tribe wanted to kill him) that I can exploit.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I also have a solid idea of what knowledge or lore he would realistically have or not.</li> </ul>It makes my job much easier to motivate the character, I know what to foreshadow or lead them towards. I can also use their goals (one per character) to lead the party in any direction that I want. Oh, one of the character has been looking for a lost friend and I want them to be heading east, I'll throw in some rumors that he was seen east. Then it becomes an internal motivation, my player gets excited and convinces the other to move east.The part where it becomes harder is that I have to juggle with one arc/storyline per character. It's always a big knot to untie in the days before the start of the campaign. I have to give them all a reason to hook them in the adventure. I also have to make sure I give enough foreshadowing, or clue to each player frequently to nourish their interest in their character's motivations.Obviously, this works best in a longer campaign, with players invested in their characters and that enjoy doing all of this. I wouldn't do any of this in a hexcrawl of shorter campaigns. But I'm not fond of these, I like long campaigns where my players travel to far away region, etc.</blockquote>

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