Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CF07" data-source="post: 9741888" data-attributes="member: 7052262">I like a mix of both but more on the side of vicarious adventure. Call it 65%/35%. All smash and grab isn't interesting to me but I don't want to play a telenovela, either. I'm going to highlight the backstory aspect, though. In my view backstories can become a real burden and like a lot of GMs, I've had players who seem to write an entire telenovela script and expect me to read it, as if I didn't have enough to do already. I have found that I want the following for a PC. I'll use 5E as an example, though the principles apply to other games easily enough. In 5E there are four tiers of play, levels 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, and 17-20, corresponding to increasing degrees of importance in the game world from local, regional, national, and worldwide (more or less). As a DM, I want a shot paragraph about the character's background and then one to highlight enough of who the PC is for each tier. What is the most notable thing to happen at each tier? What is their call for adventure now? It gives the player and GM enough to work with to get the game rolling without piling on irrelevant details that just end up being a pain. If you're creating a starting character, all that's needed is a few sentences, maybe a paragraph. Starting characters (at least in a game like 5E) are not the king's champion. Maybe your father was before he died in battle, leaving your family impoverished, and you're trying to get out from under his shadow by adventuring in the Borderlands? That's great for a starting character. It leaves enough loose ends for the DM to work with. Maybe you find out later that your father wasn't actually killed in battle but was killed by treachery? Now there's an enemy! For a higher level PC this can get trickier. Surely a higher level character has done something notable. As an example, I replaced a longtime PC in a Tier 3 game (levels 11-16) on the cusp of Tier 4. My previous PC had reached a point where it made sense to retire from the campaign and go on a divine quest. We were oriented in Sigil, so I made my new PC from the Sigil aristocracy, rooted in an old aristocratic family there. In Tier 1 she joined the Transcendent Order, one of the factions of Sigil. In Tier 2 she fought a duel with her brother that became fatal. Not too long before joining the party, she had a famous match in the arena solo against a Fire Giant which was still buzz in Sigil. I added a bit more fluff and some family connections because that was relevant to the game but not a lot. Her motivation for joining the party had to do with a test imposed by the Transcendent Order to become the successor to the Factol and the backstory gave enough reason for the party to recruit an otherwise unknown quantity. The DMused this background and filled in some relevant events when it fit with the rest of the campaign. For example, family connections became important at one point. Anyway, what I find is that this gives some character background to work with, without getting in the way of the adventure.</blockquote>

Verification