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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7599515" data-attributes="member: 42582">How do players in your game establish backstories for their PCs - things like the clothes they own/wear, the names of their friends and family, place and date of birth, etc?My impression from reading the Basic PDF is that these sorts of fictional elements are features of 5e D&amp;D as much as of many other RPGs, including past editions of D&amp;D. But they are not generally established by way of action declarations; yet their truth as part of the shared fiction has the potential to be relevant to action declarations.A player can even attempt to establish fiction as part of an action declaration: eg the GM narrates the PCs arriving at a town gate, and describing the guard at the gate, and player A says, in character and addressing the other PCs &quot;I recognise that guard - she's Frances - the two of us were raised in the same orphan's hospice but I haven't seen her since I left to fight in the Dales Wars. She'll let us in for sure!&quot; and then adds, in the playter's voice, &quot;I approach the gate and call out, Frances, remember me!&quot;If the player's posited fiction is true, then that has to be relevant to assessing the success of the approach vis-a-vis the goal. But who gets to decide whether or not that fiction is true?And if the GM stipulates that it's not true, is s/he - in effect - stipulating that player A's character is delusional and suffering from radically false memories of his/her childhood? And if so, how does that fit with the idea that it's the player who gets to decide what the character thinks and feels?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7599515, member: 42582"] How do players in your game establish backstories for their PCs - things like the clothes they own/wear, the names of their friends and family, place and date of birth, etc? My impression from reading the Basic PDF is that these sorts of fictional elements are features of 5e D&D as much as of many other RPGs, including past editions of D&D. But they are not generally established by way of action declarations; yet their truth as part of the shared fiction has the potential to be relevant to action declarations. A player can even attempt to establish fiction [I]as part of[/I] an action declaration: eg the GM narrates the PCs arriving at a town gate, and describing the guard at the gate, and player A says, in character and addressing the other PCs "I recognise that guard - she's Frances - the two of us were raised in the same orphan's hospice but I haven't seen her since I left to fight in the Dales Wars. She'll let us in for sure!" and then adds, in the playter's voice, "I approach the gate and call out, [I]Frances, remember me![/I]" If the player's posited fiction is true, then that has to be relevant to assessing the success of the approach vis-a-vis the goal. But who gets to decide whether or not that fiction is true? And if the GM stipulates that it's not true, is s/he - in effect - stipulating that player A's character is delusional and suffering from radically false memories of his/her childhood? And if so, how does that fit with the idea that it's the player who gets to decide what the character thinks and feels? [/QUOTE]

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