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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5538032" data-attributes="member: 14159">This.  Seriously.In all my years of gaming, the only DM's who insisted on dictating a characters backgrounds (other than one-shots games for club meetings or convention games) were ones that had a nice big railroad built for you in advance.  Only exceptions being where the setting is so strange or unusual that it's just easier to do this than to explain to players the various backgrounds available.The social norm in gaming is that for ongoing/recurring player characters, the players create a background for their character, with input from the GM.  The GM retains a veto power over things that are impossible or would strongly conflict with what the GM wants (like a background that would let a character know a big secret of the setting before it is revealed or strongly influence the direction of the game in a way the GM doesn't want it to go).  The background varies anywhere from a couple of sentences, to a couple of pages depending on how detailed the setting is and how seriously the players and GM take the plot and roleplaying aspects of the campaign.</blockquote>