I find it works most fluidly if the player has a vague idea of a backstory that becomes increasingly fleshed out as the campaign progresses.

Daughter of a noble fleeing an arranged marriage for a life of adventure is a fine way to begin a game.  Depending on the player and/or DM desire to integrate such backstory into the campaign, it can later be decided who the betrothed may be and whatnot.

Quote from: Old One Eye;833117I find it works most fluidly if the player has a vague idea of a backstory that becomes increasingly fleshed out as the campaign progresses.

Daughter of a noble fleeing an arranged marriage for a life of adventure is a fine way to begin a game.  Depending on the player and/or DM desire to integrate such backstory into the campaign, it can later be decided who the betrothed may be and whatnot.

No matter what the player wants with that sort of background/back story, I personally ask, and make sure they want me to use it or not.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833118No matter what the player wants with that sort of background/back story, I personally ask, and make sure they want me to use it or not.

Whether as DM or player, I have no desire to entertain a backstory that is outside of what is happening at the table.  

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833108Fair point, I'll grant, but just because you decided (let's just say for the sake of argument) as part of your back story, that does inform your choices and your personality.

The second point, it's only arbitrary if the player (you in this case) decided to effectively flip a coin, not decide that your characters personal history (the back story) has a hand in the choice.

I think you may be missing another aspect of that choice. The player may decide that, because of the circumstances leading up to the Rachni choice, that his character became xenophobic and ruthless over it. Wrex points out that the Rachni were a menace, and Kaidan makes the point that the Rachni may not have been as malicious as galactic history makes them out to be. Who does the character believe? What choice does the player make for his character, and why?

To make an even simpler and more D&D situation. A character may be wary of orcs because of their reputation, but after encountering a ruthless, savage band of orc raiders, and seeing the dead villagers that they pillaged, that may be the moment where the character develops a personal hatred of orcs.

QuoteActually, let me pick on a fictional character that's seen a lot of activity of late:  Batman.  Whether you're going by the 'original' 1989 movie, the earlier Silver Age 1960s, to Nolan's Bat-Thug, we ALL know his back story.

At around 8 years old, Bruce Wayne died.  All his hopes, dreams and childhood washed away with two clicks of a pistol's hammer.  He then spends a good chunk of his family's fortune and at least 15 years of his life to preventing such tragedies from ever happening again.

That above shapes his worldview, what he will and won't do, and generally what he feels he needs to be to people.  His personality, in and out of the suit, is determined by what he's experienced.

His back story informs his personality, and every single writer (comic or screen), comic artist and actor has to determine how their portrayal of the character is informed by his history.  Yes, Clooney's is different than Bale's but they all come from the same start point, and that start point is how they determine the Batman's personality.

That's why I personally cannot make a character's personality without knowing who or what they did before.

Let me give an example of how I work, maybe you can see my point a little better.

I have a character in the current Encounter's season.  Gurdek Skullbreaker, Dwarf Barbarian.  I took the Dwarf leaping down onto the Fire Giant image and decided that was going to be the character I played.

So I sat down and decided, why Barbarian?  What makes a normally 'Lawful' creature like a dwarf go a rather violently chaotic combat path?  I decided, that he had Anger Management issues.  His family life and the fact that there were smiths made him feel restrained, unable to 'breath'.  So he resorted to lashing out.

His family, being nice traditional dwarves, had not idea how to deal with Gurdek.  So they shipped him off as a fostering to a Mining clan, maybe being around more down to earth and violent type would straighten him out.

No dice.  In fact, he got worse, and no one, not even he knew how to control himself.  And he hated it.  He didn't want to hurt his friends, but bottling up his feelings wasn't working either, so one day, when they were close to the surface, this Mountain Dwarf ran into the open sky, into the wilderness that was the Dalelands.  And for several lean weeks, he learned how to survive, how to thrive, and he didn't have one incident where he so much as snapped at a squirrel!  (Background:  Outlander)

One day, when he was out, playing his bagpipes and scaring the living piss out of every animal in a 20 mile radius, he got snookered by a gang of Orcs.  Now, these Orcs fancied themselves as somewhat 'civilized', and so if Gurdek could survive the 'gladiator's pit' that they dug out, they wouldn't kill him.

He spent weeks in that camp, fighting for his supper against other Orcs and beasts that the tribe through at him, and when his life was on the line, his anger sharpened, focused, and HE controlled it, it did not control him any longer.  So impressed where his captors with his new ability, they gave him the name "Skullbreaker" for what he could do with his bare hands, and then gave him an Orcish great ax.

And just when he was ready to break free and escape, a group of adventurers came out and cleaned the camp, rescuing him.  They met, talked and decided to take him with them until Red Larch (the starting town this season's Adventure League) and now, Gurdek Skullbreaker was a level 1 adventurer, a Dwarven Barbarian, with the Outlander background.

He doesn't much like orcs, hates being underground for too long, and plays his bagpipes to scare...  Well, everyone.  But underneath it all, his heart is true, loyal and wants to help others, perhaps even make some new friends along the way.

This is all fine and good, and I'm not necessarily opposed to character backstory, especially if it helps the player get a handle on playing their character. I just don't think it's necessary for a player to make decisions. For example, making a decision that isn't relevant to backstory. My character may have no preference between allying with the elves of greenwood, or the halflings of burgershire, but the choice might have to be made anyway.

To bring this back to the OP's contention. I may have a gruff mercenary type of character in mind, but I really don't have a backstory to go with it. I just want to play a gruff mercenary, or a greedy alien, or a stoic dwarf, or whatever. My backstory may become relevant, but I don't think it's absolutley necessary. It might be fun to outline how my gruff mercenary got gruff, and how he took up the life of a mercenary. Or it might be fun to play it as that's just the profession he took up, and his personality, and there's no life event that defined it.

And, what I think might be most relevant, I might be interested in developing the specifics of my character's personality during play, instead of before.

Quote from: Old One Eye;833122Whether as DM or player, I have no desire to entertain a backstory that is outside of what is happening at the table.  

I tend to improvise, and some sessions I come to the table with nothing for my players to do that I've created.  And if a player has a back story with hooks, and they're OK with me abusing it like my favourite books, I'll make something up involving it some how on the spot.

I'm lucky that I can do that, it's saved me many a time of sitting around and doing nothing, but it's not every campaign I can do it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833051I have a legit question:  How do you form a personality without a sense of character history that helps inform how they will react to any given situation?

Chickens and eggses.  You can just as easily start from the personality and work backwards to reverse-engineer a history which would plausibly produce that result, as you yourself (arguably) demonstrate with your "this dwarf barbarian has a chaotic personality; what backstory would justify that?" example.

You also cited Batman's backstory as an example, but I really doubt that Bob Kane sat down one day and said, "You know what would be really cool?  An 8-year-old kid's parents get murdered in front of him and then he becomes a superhero!  So what kind of personality would that event create..."  It seems much more likely that he started off with an idea for what Batman is, in the present, and then came up with the backstory to explain it.

Once you're starting from the present personality and reverse-engineering from there to get the backstory, I think it's more a matter of taste how much of that backstory you want to reverse-engineer in advance (writing it up at character creation) vs. how much to delay until the moment it's actually needed (making it up on the fly during play).  Did Kane know that Batman's parents had been murdered leaving the theater when he was 8 when the first Batman story was published?  I don't know, but strikes me as unlikely.  I would expect that those things were decided later, as the character was gaining popularity.  And. even if the core of "murdered parents" was known from day 1, the other details may well have been added later.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833118No matter what the player wants with that sort of background/back story, I personally ask, and make sure they want me to use it or not.

That's where I sit too. I find the back stories and games with Disadvantage systems help allot in steering that conversation. I like to work the characters into the campaign as much as possible and those are two great tools for doing so.

Ah! I remember those salad days, when I had the time to not only write a 12-page backstory on my character, but to read them as well.  

I don't think it's an either or proposition. A personality gives the player and GM a reference point, but depending on how it is determine it can also be a stronger straight jacket than alignment.  DL5A did it best (imnsho) with demeanor and nature, which allows for a lot of nuance.

Rather than a backstory, I'm a fan of the 20 questions approach. Amber diceless RP offered an extensive list of optional questions. 7th Sea formalized it a bit more. For my game, I stripped that down to 13 questions, with the 13th taking a page from Dread, asking how the character reacted in one if three possible (all bad) scenarios. The beauty of the questions list is that it gets to the point fast, is easy to reference in the future, and gives you an easy framework to create scenarios in which the player has a personal stake. Granted, how useful this is depends on the type of GM you are and how you use the information. I can see it not being very useful for some sandbox games.

Tom

Yeah, I don't see how this could be either or. While I am all for character backgrounds that help inform and put personality in context, it is pretty easy to just start with personality and go from there. If you've met enough people and seen enough movies, you have plenty of character types to draw from without worrying about the history of the person.

Another thought: a friend of mine played in an old school AD&D campaign where the DM instructed him not to even name his character until 3rd level. This was a few years back before the whole 5e play test, but I really liked the idea. So what if, for the first few levels, the GM offered promps. Could be as simple as:

Level 1: race, gender, alignment (SOP)
Level 2: social class, birth order, contact, mentor or patron
Level 3: nationality, homeland, second contact, personality, name

That gives the player plenty of time to not only invest in the character, but learn the campaign too.  It doesn't overwhelm them from the start by asking them to make all sorts of decisions for a character who could easily fail a save at any minute.

Tom

Quote from: Blusponge;833190Another thought: a friend of mine played in an old school AD&D campaign where the DM instructed him not to even name his character until 3rd level. This was a few years back before the whole 5e play test, but I really liked the idea. So what if, for the first few levels, the GM offered promps. Could be as simple as:

Level 1: race, gender, alignment (SOP)
Level 2: social class, birth order, contact, mentor or patron
Level 3: nationality, homeland, second contact, personality, name

That gives the player plenty of time to not only invest in the character, but learn the campaign too.  It doesn't overwhelm them from the start by asking them to make all sorts of decisions for a character who could easily fail a save at any minute.

Tom

Or make an out of context choice that they later regret. Musing about Planescape, for example, where alignment and faction can be pretty damn important, I don't think I'd require a player to decide on either until at least level 3, if not later. I also had a thought, to have them just pick one axis of alignment at 3rd level, and the other axis at 6th. That way their alignment can be a bit more in tune with how the character is playing out.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;833198Or make an out of context choice that they later regret. Musing about Planescape, for example, where alignment and faction can be pretty damn important, I don't think I'd require a player to decide on either until at least level 3, if not later. I also had a thought, to have them just pick one axis of alignment at 3rd level, and the other axis at 6th. That way their alignment can be a bit more in tune with how the character is playing out.

Great idea! Completely agree!

Some games, starting with Traveller in rudimentary form, turn chargen into a kind of game that generates backstory as part of defining the mechanical elements of the character. Harnmaster has a concept of the "pregame" to get the character from basic origin to campaign-ready through interactive roleplay with the GM. More recently Mongoose Trav and various Mike Pondsmith games have life events as part of chargen.

To use something like this I would suggest that the player explicitly submit to the ontogenic procedure and accept the end result as "character with a running start". I.e. an accelerated version of becoming-through-play. I suspect that many people who write extensive backgrounds aren't really interested in this, though, as robiswrong implied above.

(Just drank most of a venti latte, please excuse the way I am typing.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833118No matter what the player wants with that sort of background/back story, I personally ask, and make sure they want me to use it or not.

Mm, there's where I differ: if you want to guarantee that I won't use an element of your backstory in play, don't tell me about it in the first place.

Backstories are tools and plothooks for both players and GMs.  While I won't change objective facts (if your backstory states that you saw your parents murdered by Shardra the Castrator, then that's what happened), I don't warrant that anything the character believes is true -- if you didn't actually see Shardra do the deed, then that's just your opinion.

Quote from: Blusponge;833175Ah! I remember those salad days, when I had the time to not only write a 12-page backstory on my character, but to read them as well.

Well ... let's be reasonable here.  A lot of people claim that reading backstories is some hideous imposition and a giant time-suck.  Seriously?  Quite aside from that I'm eternally bemused at the concept that in a hobby where GMs routinely need to master several hundred pages of core rules, asking someone to pore over a few pages of backstory (or background material) is an insult ... look.  A slow reader takes as much as twenty minutes to go over 12 typed pages.  It takes me less than five, and I doubt I'm the only fast reader out there.  Given that 12 pages equals the longest backstory I've been handed in 37 years (and no one else ever gave me more than four), how is that a problem?  What was I going to do with those couple minutes, screw around on Internet gaming forums some more?

Quote from: Ravenswing;833269Mm, there's where I differ: if you want to guarantee that I won't use an element of your backstory in play, don't tell me about it in the first place.

Backstories are tools and plothooks for both players and GMs.  While I won't change objective facts (if your backstory states that you saw your parents murdered by Shardra the Castrator, then that's what happened), I don't warrant that anything the character believes is true -- if you didn't actually see Shardra do the deed, then that's just your opinion.

Well ... let's be reasonable here.  A lot of people claim that reading backstories is some hideous imposition and a giant time-suck.  Seriously?  Quite aside from that I'm eternally bemused at the concept that in a hobby where GMs routinely need to master several hundred pages of core rules, asking someone to pore over a few pages of backstory (or background material) is an insult ... look.  A slow reader takes as much as twenty minutes to go over 12 typed pages.  It takes me less than five, and I doubt I'm the only fast reader out there.  Given that 12 pages equals the longest backstory I've been handed in 37 years (and no one else ever gave me more than four), how is that a problem?  What was I going to do with those couple minutes, screw around on Internet gaming forums some more?

Reading the backstory is not that onerous to me. It is weaving that into the campaign that requires the skull sweat.

Which reminds me that I have to get copies of the backstories from my current Players so I can mine them for......stuff. :jaw-dropping: