D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

[Remathilis]

i mean i suppose it's like, i don't think that most GMs are flat out not interested in character backstory, but when a player brings a backstory to the table that they've premade, i think there's a tendency to be a little overinvested in a specific manifestation of the pre-prepared ideas, so they want the world to fit around their character concept rather than fitting the character into the world, and at that point it's the character that's the odd one out in the scheme of things.

you may complain that the GM doesn't care about your character's role in the world, but equally, in designing that character preemptively, how much are you showing you care about how they fit into the GMs world?

As with everything, the ideal situation is that the player comes with a set of ideas and the GM comes with setting expectations and the two work out the details. Maybe the evil warlord who attacked my family long ago is the leader of city state that the campaign is supposed revolve around. Of course, both sides can be unreasonable in their expectations, but my experience has been it's DMs more unwilling to interact with a PCs origin than the opposite. (Once you control for the outliers, which the Internet loves to include to prove their point).

 

[Incenjucar]

Generally the DM only needs to actively weave in PC backgrounds a few times per PC over the course of the campaign unless they want to make the campaign heavily about the PCs. If you're just running a module or something you can sprinkle in "Hoy you like a bit like the duke but hawww that's a coinkeedink ahm shore anyways bout that dragon" etc.

 

[Marc17]

Session zero is by definition before play actually begins.

Well, unless they are playing a unix based system, then all discrete numbering begins at 0.*

I prefer for my players to have some sort of backstory. I'll even offer XP for it. However, I have had issues with large backstory packets that the player is way too much into. This pretty much also has me giving a speech about how I may not include their personal plot or even read their backstory and otherwise won't have any affect on the game unless I decide to include it, right after asking them to write one. Still, how much things might be integrated along with how the PCs met is dependent on the game I want to run and part of the elevator pitch I have for it. Typically, I just say everybody knows each other because they grew up together, and they converse and make their characters accordingly at Game 0. That wouldn't work for my magical school game, so they all had very different backstories that I wove into the game at least somewhat as that determined greatly how their characters acted. In that case, they ended up meeting each other on arrival and then as roommates.

*I suppose I have had a game -1. We all got together and played a game of Microscope which created the setting for the game we got together for game 0 to make characters for.

 

[Bae'zel]

...Of course, both sides can be unreasonable in their expectations, but my experience has been it's DMs more unwilling to interact with a PCs origin than the opposite. (Once you control for the outliers, which the Internet loves to include to prove their point).

My good faith interpretation is because DMs have a lot more work to do managing the campaign than a player does (the latter just has to show up and respond to the DM's narrative triggers).

When a player comes to the table with "can you please incorporate my character's backstory, NPCs, locations etc into your pre-existing setting and plans" it can be overwhelming. Cognitive overload.

I know that it's happened to me before. Sometimes it works out and I can manage to make changes. Other times I have had to say no.

Like in my before-mentioned Ancient Greek Argonauts game. I ultimately said no to the player who wanted to be a viking, and the other who wanted to be an Egyptian cat person. We worked things out eventually, but it took some negotiations. I just was NOT willing to adjust everything for them (one pantheon was enough).

But yeah, some DMs are just control freaks, sure. I know that I come across as a bit dick-ish when I get the players to vote on the campaign pitch that they want, everyone agrees on a premise, and I STILL get cyber ninjas for Arthurian Knights Adventures.

 

[Chaltab]

In my experience, worthwhile players are happy to work within my stipulations as a DM and choose ancestries that fit the setting, so if you have a bunch of players who insist on making characters that don't fit the setting... that's not a problem with their being options, it's a problem of the players being a bad fit for your table.