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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7115288" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Depends. In my current campaign, I spend a lot of time with my players going back and forth on their character backgrounds. There were good an bad reasons for this.Good reasons:1. Many of the players were new, I had never played with them before. This was a good way to start to get a sense of each others styles and make sure we really wanted to play in the same game before the first in-person session. 2. I built a home brew world and wanted to create build customize story lines around their backgrounds.  If I were running a published AP, I think backgrounds would be less important. 3. Some players love to go into great detail building and discussing their backgrounds. I want to encourage and reward that without turning the first session into a creative writing read-your-work session. Bad reason1. I wanted to control the backgrounds to fit them into the campaign I wanted to run in the home brew world I spent a lot of time created. In hindsight, I would have given them more free reign and found a way to work with what they came up with. Now, if I were running a published AP, I think background is mostly for the players. Background can also give skills and such, but beyond that I don't make much use of the inspiration mechanic in my games. It is too easy to forget about and is too arbitrary a carrot.</blockquote>