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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3475729" data-attributes="member: 22779">And that's fine.  You are creating for an audience of one.  Do whatever makes you happy.A writer, OTOH, has to be aware that his works are intended for a larger audience.  A player or DM as well.  Sure, it's fine to write up a six page backstory for your character, but, if it never comes up in play, who cares?  You just forced the DM to read it, which he may not want to do for one.  I've actually had players complain that I hadn't wrapped my adventures around their backstories.  My response is invariably to ask how they expected me to do so when they themselves have made no effort to make their backstories important.  When a player hands me a backstory longer than a paragraph, I don't even usually read it anymore.  I have better things to do than plow through fan fiction.  That may seem cold, but, I've made it abundantly clear that character motivations are the player's job, not mine.  I have adventures that I intend to run - usually more than a few with plenty of hooks to motivate the players in one direction or another.  What I'm not going to do is rewrite my entire evening's plans to accommodate a single player.Really, and I think RC and I agree on this point, the problem is one of scale.  There's nothing wrong with spending hours and hours on world building in and of itself.  However, if the adventure suffers because the DM spent that time detailing trivia rather than focusing on the adventure, then it is wasted time.  If the rest of the players are snoring in the corner because someone wants to have special treatment based on their five page fanfic, that's a problem.</blockquote>

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