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Which RPG has the best backstory or the most interesting history? might have

Edit:
Some people might have different definitions for backstory, history, a hook or maybe even a metaplot event. I don't mind what you call it. I am  just curious what you think. Of course we can always what is called what. That's interesting as well. Personally I am really fond of short backstory that sets things in motion at once. I really dig savage worlds setting lately with backstory events like the Serpent Fall, the Hellfrost and the Curse of the Seahags. Must be a phase. I also really like bigger amount of history as Fading Suns has. But I must admit most history in that setting isn't really relevant to the game.

For me, that's Earthdawn/Shadowrun.

I like the ebb and flow of magic remaking our world in fantastic ways.  It just makes a lot of sense to me on a personal level.  It's hard to explain...

When it came out, I thought Rifts was pretty cool. Main book, Vampire Kingdoms, Sourcebook 1, Wormwood, Phase World, and Atlantis were all very interesting.

Later, I thought Broken Gears (tiny sci-fi RPG) was pretty sweet.

Someone made a gigantic unofficial conversion of all the Macross anime series (except Frontier), manga, and films to Mekton, and that was/is fan-fucking-tastic.

Shadowrun and Warhammer 40K have amazing back stories.

Shadowrun.  The fantasy, cyberpunk, futuristic setting just works.  Myth-magic-technology-fantasy type races.  The whole native american reawakening thing is great.  D&D meets Neuromancer.  So much design space to be able to take it nearly anywhere you want to go.

Played so much of it 12+ years ago.  Wish I could pull it off now, but I think a) technology has changed so much since it came out that I'm not well versed enough in what's possible; b) I'm too old to use street names that don't sound too cheesy.

OVER THE EDGE is my all-time favorite backstory game.  I still like reading the book nowadays even though I doubt I could run it for my current group.

Old-school Shadowrun. Doesn't always make sense, but is UBER COOL. Newer-school Shadowrun (i.e. the post-2060 timeline) is much more bland to my taste, though.

I see a lot of Shadowrun here. That's a tricky one. A lot of history in Shadowrun is also being called Metaplot by some people. I consider it backstory, but I had a discussion about it once on another forum and people there called it Metaplot.

Is that because the Metaplot of one edition of Shadowrun becomes the backstory of the next edition?

In regards to setting back story,

My favorite is probably Tribe 8. It just grabbed me and reeled me in.

There are quite a few I like, but if I had to pick one, it is Tribe 8.

Was thinking about this, this morning.

Warp World.

Basically it is a post apocalyptic game. After a nuclear exchange killed tons of people their simultaneous death anguish ripped warps in the world. These warps allowed old Gods to rise and for elves, dwarves and creature of legend to reappear on earth. The Old Gods didn't want the world to kill it self again so they suppress technology. So it stays at a musket and low steam power era. Attempts to go higher draw the Gods attention and they blanket the area reducing the technology. So you may empty and uzi before the area is dropped back to bronze age technology. It is 300 years after the big event, Magic works again but was based off technology so you had spells that duplicated radio signals and such. And you could use it o hide some technology.


I liked the mix of technology and magic. The explanations on why everything was how it was and how technology was controlled. Tricks you could do to enhance technology or suppress it.

Never got to play but loved the idea. System was typical 80's over complicated rule set. Magic was brain numbing to try to run it seemed. Pretty realistic damage system. One did not want to get shot. And they even had magic bullets :)

Lots of post-apocalyptic love in this thread and I'm no exception.

Traveller. I'm a latecomer to the whole OTU mess, but I find the pre-TNE backstory pretty cool. I'm particularly fond of the idea of humanity's first contact with aliens being... shit, more humans? ANd the Vilani being all like "yeah, we get that a lot." :D I'm not terribly familiar with how the TNE metaplot was handled by GDW but I feel it could be made to work with the right group, especially if it happened as a catastrophic event in the middle of an established campaign.

Rifts. My original Favorite Setting. Really, the way Kevin Siembieda dovetailed the post-apocalyptic resurgence of the supernatural into the Beyond The Supernatural metaphysics is briliant. The bad guys, the Coalition in particular, are a tad more cartoonish than I'm 100% comfortable with, but that's really part of the charm. To me it's the power creep and, to a much lesser degree, the necessity to ham-handedly advance a "metaplot" (classic Palladium, jumping into industry bandwagons with a 10 year delay). I still love the old books though. If only Kevin had an editor to steer him away from writing giant arms and armor catalogues, and towards packing these books with world information.

Old World of Darkness. Fuck me if we weren't all over the metaplot back in the day, spending a goodly amount of gaming time (before a session, after a session, or during the obligatory pizza break) argüing the finer points of rivalries (a.k.a. "who would win in a fight") and the fate of obscure NPCs, with the fervor of an unwashed, cosplaying Trekkie hopped up on Mountain Dew and Cheetos in the first night at a Star Trek convention. It sure as hell wasn't haute literature but it was good pop culture, and we gobbled it up like the eager fanboys we were.

Castle Falkenstein. All right, I admit it. I liked the Tom Olam storyline. Not nearly as much as the other entries, but I thought it was a nice touch, as were the card mechanics. But I'm weird like that. And much as I love Germany and feel Bismarck was a badass, the Unseelie/Prussian alliance makes a horrifying modicum of sense when you think about it.

Delta Green. Really a setting-within-a-setting, they did a good job of transposing the X-Files vibe to one several possible Cthulhu Mythos worlds. Great set-up for a mission-based campaign.

The Day After Ragnarok. "Pulp Rifts" is the absolute best definition for this setting, ever. Nazi occultism breaks the world, smashes Europe, drowns America under a tsunami of mutagenic poison, and an ailing British Empire shares the weird new world with an aggressive, Stalinist USSR (and their mysterious frost giant allies) and a Showa Japan who Imperial ambitions remain undeterred. Add pulp supernatural and weird science horrific elements, with a side of historical and pulp characters butting heads all over the Serpent-tainted world, and go apeshit. It's Hellboy meets The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Loki take the hindmost. They've just released a sourcebook about dungeon crawling inside the corpse of the Midgard Serpent and if that's not awesome the world no longer has any meaning to me.

Here's another one.

Empire of the Petal Throne. Should be hors concours really. Kid grows up in the 1930s reading pulp fantasy and starts building his own world; grows up, becomes an anthropologist, travels the world and fleshes it out with newfound knowledge; becomes a gamer and uses it in wargames and eventually publishes it as one of the first original RPG settings.

d6 Star Wars RPG had the best backstory. Which was ruined by the time the rest of the versions of the game had come out. :D

Traveller, Day after Ragnarok, old WoD, Delta Green, we really have the same taste, The Butcher.

Empire of the Petal Throne - grabbed my imagination by the throat at a tender age.

2300 AD - Best aliens, hands down. Least obnoxious FTL handwavium. Decent future history.

Transhuman Space - Best near-future, non-FTL sci-fi setting. Never played a lick, but read every source book front-to-back and back-to-front.

Shadowrun  - honorable mention for great backstory, but doesn't quite make the cut because no instance of actual play every lived up to the promise.

Ok, maybe I should redefine this topic a little. What's the influence backstory has on your games? Which games have backstory that influence actual play a lot? In what way does it influence the game? Or does it have great backstory which never seems to come up?

Quote from: jeff37923;754262d6 Star Wars RPG had the best backstory. Which was ruined by the time the rest of the versions of the game had come out. :D

/thread

:)

Generic D&D.  You got a town, some wilderness, and a dungeon.  Go find some adventure.

My feelings are that most rpgs try too hard.

Quote from: mcbobbo;753915For me, that's Earthdawn/Shadowrun.
...

Quote from: everloss;753936...
Shadowrun ... .

Quote from: Vic99;753946Shadowrun. ...

Quote from: golan2072;753962Old-school Shadowrun. ...

Did someone mention Shadowrun?  Count me in :)

Quote from: The Butcher;754045...
Delta Green. Really a setting-within-a-setting, they did a good job of transposing the X-Files vibe to one several possible Cthulhu Mythos worlds. ...

The Day After Ragnarok. ...

Agreed, for pretty much the same reasons.

I'll add Eldritch Skies as another take on the Chtulhu Mythos to this list for me.  Mythos as Sci-Fi just works for me.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;754957...
2300 AD - Best aliens, hands down. Least obnoxious FTL handwavium. Decent future history. ...

Another Ditto.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;755139Ok, maybe I should redefine this topic a little. What's the influence backstory has on your games? Which games have backstory that influence actual play a lot? In what way does it influence the game? Or does it have great backstory which never seems to come up?

While I vastly prefer to create my own, when I do run in pre-gen setting, I try to make sure I include those elements that make it unique into scenarios as much as possible.

My last Shadowrun game (run with Savage Worlds) I had the runners trying to escort a newly found magical artifact right out of Earthdawn.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;755139Ok, maybe I should redefine this topic a little. What's the influence backstory has on your games? Which games have backstory that influence actual play a lot? In what way does it influence the game? Or does it have great backstory which never seems to come up?

2300AD and the Official Traveller Universe are both on the top of my list for this. 2300AD has a detailed background of history that is not too far into the future that we cannot see its roots in today's world. The Official Traveller Universe also hits that sweet spot right between being excessively detailed and giving too little info to be useful, it is just right to take an idea inspired by it and insert it in to the setting.

Any mundane modern or historical roleplaying game.

Our own past and present is the most complex and richly detailed game setting ever produced, or producible.

Quote from: Old One Eye;755220My feelings are that most rpgs try too hard.

Indeed.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;755139Ok, maybe I should redefine this topic a little. What's the influence backstory has on your games? Which games have backstory that influence actual play a lot? In what way does it influence the game? Or does it have great backstory which never seems to come up?

Published settings give me adventure hooks to play with. This is as true of the setting's background as it is of gazetteer entries, antagonist writeups, everything.

A secondary purpose for background is to lend depth and consistency to a setting. Some settings are better at it than others (Tékumel, Glorantha, Talislanta) but generally speaking I feel this should take a backseat to gameable opportunities.

Quote from: Brander;755225While I vastly prefer to create my own, when I do run in pre-gen setting, I try to make sure I include those elements that make it unique into scenarios as much as possible.

True. Though I usually go about it the opposite way; I run WFRP because I dig the idea of a motley of mercenary misfits savaging their way across ersatz Medieval Germany at the end of time. I run Day After Ragnarok because I want to see square-jawed heroic types punching Soviet ape-men, giant snakes, ODESSA Nazi war criminals and the Imperial Japanese sorcerers of the Black Dragon Society in the face. And so on.

Quote from: jeff37923;7553182300AD and the Official Traveller Universe are both on the top of my list for this. 2300AD has a detailed background of history that is not too far into the future that we cannot see its roots in fucking 1986.

Fixed it for you. ;)

Seriously, 2300AD feels horribly dated to me.

Quote from: jeff37923;755318The Official Traveller Universe also hits that sweet spot right between being excessively detailed and giving too little info to be useful, it is just right to take an idea inspired by it and insert it in to the setting.

This I'm 100% behind. I've been really thinking of doing something within the OTU lately. But then maybe I've been listening to the eponymous Slough Feg album (http://open.spotify.com/album/6Xu3d11bIGZWIeo0E6xdHu) a bit too much lately.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;755336Any mundane modern or historical roleplaying game.

Our own past and present is the most complex and richly detailed game setting ever produced, or producible.

Now, that's just cheating. In any debate about settings, Mother Terra should be hors concours.

News Flash: I like Traveller. I give it's history at least an honorable mention, in my campaign I have moved history ahead to 1323 vs the 1100's of the official universe. There are some nice bits there.

I LOVED Greyhawk when I was 13, thought it was the Bees Knees, plenty fun there.

I can appreciate how much work modern games have put into their setting, like Eclipse Phase.

Quote from: The Butcher;755404Fixed it for you. ;)

Seriously, 2300AD feels horribly dated to me.

Understandable, but have you taken a look at the Mongoose Publishing reboot of 2300AD that goes with their reboot of Traveller? It fixes that typo.

Quote from: jeff37923;755487Understandable, but have you taken a look at the Mongoose Publishing reboot of 2300AD that goes with their reboot of Traveller? It fixes that typo.

That's the only one I'm familiar with, actually.

But I'd be glad to read your take on it. Maybe we should start a new thread?

I enjoy the way that Greyhawk built up from the adventures that Gygax's group played.

Quote from: golan2072;753962Old-school Shadowrun. Doesn't always make sense, but is UBER COOL. Newer-school Shadowrun (i.e. the post-2060 timeline) is much more bland to my taste, though.

I find the same thing about Shadowrun, strangely.

A good backstory set things in motion, doesn't it?

A good blueprint of the setting with some backstory makes or breaks to the game to me. That's why I am not really that fond of building block setting, because there is not plot in those ones. Makes it less interesting.

The Morrow Project's backstory is a simple, not too overwrought and quite interesting setup for a gonzo post-apocalypse game.  Don't use Prime Base because it fucks it all up.

Skyrealms of Jorune's backstory is a flawed masterpiece.  The business with Iscin and his furries does need going through with a big red pen before you start playing, and the implied objective to become a citizen needs re-thinking, but there's a lot of good there too.  Quivering trid-nodes!

2300 AD has been mentioned a lot in this thread so I'll just say I think it's got some excellent aliens and some interesting sci-fi concepts but I wouldn't use it as-written nowadays.

But my call for the winning backstory is Glorantha, because it's got about 400 mutually contradictory backstories all of which are true and it also has several ways in for people who haven't read the backstory.  That makes it the gold standard of backstories as far as I'm concerned.

I want to like Greyhawk more but, and I know I commit sacrilege here, its always seemed a bit slapdash to me.  I'm not saying that a lot of it isn't great, but its also never struck me as a case of "excellent backstory".

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;756848I want to like Greyhawk more but, and I know I commit sacrilege here, its always seemed a bit slapdash to me.  I'm not saying that a lot of it isn't great, but its also never struck me as a case of "excellent backstory".

RPGPundit

I pretty much agree, but with the caveat that I never expected anything more out of Greyhawk than a polishing of some dude's generic homebrew campaign setting.

On a semi-related note, I may be the only person who likes the 4E cosmology revision far better than any previous incarnation. Despite the hokey results brought on by a perhaps unnecessary symmetry (e.g. The UnderShadowDarkBad) it just all hung together better for me.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;756910I pretty much agree, but with the caveat that I never expected anything more out of Greyhawk than a polishing of some dude's generic homebrew campaign setting.

On a semi-related note, I may be the only person who likes the 4E cosmology revision far better than any previous incarnation. Despite the hokey results brought on by a perhaps unnecessary symmetry (e.g. The UnderShadowDarkBad) it just all hung together better for me.

I actually liked 4e's cosmology just fine. Though I have no particular leaning to either TGW or 4e's take on cosmology.

Quote from: RPGPundit;756848I want to like Greyhawk more but, and I know I commit sacrilege here, its always seemed a bit slapdash to me.  I'm not saying that a lot of it isn't great, but its also never struck me as a case of "excellent backstory".

RPGPundit

Back in 1979 or whenever I bought it, it was great; but I was 12 also.

Quote from: P&P;756167But my call for the winning backstory is Glorantha, because it's got about 400 mutually contradictory backstories all of which are true and it also has several ways in for people who haven't read the backstory.  That makes it the gold standard of backstories as far as I'm concerned.

I wanted to like Glorantha, and I've played Runequest through Hero Wars in various groups over the years and I still don't.  Except the Dururlz, I think they are great, including those following Humakt.  I appear to like the one thing a lot of people hate about Glorantha.  Though I've mostly been lucky that the world seems to attract people who are fun to game with, else I wouldn't have played in Glorantha much at all.

Ironically, given that it was designed in stages and fairly nuts, I always found Mystara more consistent than Greyhawk.

In my experience, a great setting background is less a question of overflowing creativity and unique weirdness for the sake of weirdness, but for the most part lies in the execution of the setting. A rather mundane, but well written and sufficiently complex setting, say HarnMaster, is definitely preferable to something that's just weird for the sake of weirdness (like the atrocious setting of Reign).

Well, I'm not sure about all of that, but I would say that for a "Gonzo" setting to be truly great it needs to be internally coherent/consistent.

What is actually your definition of backstory?

My definition is a plot that explains the setting.
A plot that changes the setting is what I call metaplot.

Quote from: BeagleIn my experience, a great setting background is less a question of overflowing creativity and unique weirdness for the sake of weirdness, but for the most part lies in the execution of the setting.

For me, there's a kind of hierarchy (note that the examples are all totally subjective and some may disagree):

Best

- Well-executed novel/unique settings (example: Dark Sun, Numenera, Planescape)

- Well-executed mundane/cliched settings (example: Warhammer World, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms)

- Poorly executed novel/unique settings (example: Spelljammer)

- Poorly executed mundane/cliched settings (example: Points of Light)

Worst

So I'd rather have weird, unexpected, exotic settings full of new ideas and creativity, but only if the execution's good, otherwise I'd rather have a really well-made mundane setting.  But the absolute worst settings are those that take no creative risks at all and aren't well executed.  I'd rather play in a crazy but sloppy setting than a hackneyed and poorly made one.  In other words, particularly excellent execution makes up for a dearth of original ideas.

Quote from: RPGPundit;757767Well, I'm not sure about all of that, but I would say that for a "Gonzo" setting to be truly great it needs to be internally coherent/consistent.

Internal Coherence and Consistency are  pretty much the only truly important criteria for the quality of a setting; anything else is a pretty much matter of taste and preferences, but when the cracks in the world-building concrete are more visible than usual, the illusion of a cleverly cconstructed fictional world is harder to maintain. Actually, unique and truly novel settings are therefore a lot harder to write, and much easier to completely ruin than a more mundane one, because with a mundane setting, you always have "realism", "verisimilitude" or  "historical accuracy" or however you want to call it, that offer a safe retreat from the pressure of dramaturgical logic and genre conventions. The more 'unreal' the setting becomes, the more pressure it shifts onto the author(s).

Quote from: BeagleActually, unique and truly novel settings are therefore a lot harder to write, and much easier to completely ruin than a more mundane one, because with a mundane setting, you always have "realism", "verisimilitude" or "historical accuracy" or however you want to call it, that offer a safe retreat from the pressure of dramaturgical logic and genre conventions. The more 'unreal' the setting becomes, the more pressure it shifts onto the author(s).

Totally agree with this.  Producing good and useable but unique and novel settings requires a particularly skilled creator.

As a result, the thing about generic settings is that there are just more of them - which is partly, of course, why they're "generic" in the first place.  It's relatively easy to produce a decent generic setting that hangs together well and functions as a good platform for a game.  But that's precisely why it's really not worth the effort to create new ones.  There's already an abundance of mundane, generic settings of great complexity, verisimilitude, and richness.  Creating new ones that, by their very nature, don't attempt anything especially novel or unique is kind of pointless - it's just adding another redundant, homogenous setting to the pile.  A new setting has to provide a compelling reason for its use above its competitors.  Novel settings can always answer that question, because their content is new and original.  Mundane ones have to be incredibly well-fashioned to justify their use over the wealth of other, preexisting settings, I think.

I mean, if a setting is really, really well executed but still generic it's definitely worth creating, but for the most part I think it's better to try and perfect the execution of strange new ideas catering to a wider variety of tastes than to spend a great deal of time and effort creating yet another superfluous faux-medieval setting.

Yes.  A game setting can be completely insane and irrational from the outside point of view, so long as it makes sense INSIDE the setting itself.

In theory yes. In practice I have serious doubts that any RPG enthusiast  can effectively manage to create an internally consistent setting without heavily borrowing from his or her personal experiences and environment to create this consitency. The track record for setting that is both actually good (i.e. cosnsistient, interesting and has a minimum level of depth) and truly, outstandingly innovative and a clear deviation from reality, is accordingly low. As in: I'm pretty sure they are as common as unicorns. In Sheffield.

Quote from: Beagle;758469In theory yes. In practice I have serious doubts that any RPG enthusiast  can effectively manage to create an internally consistent setting without heavily borrowing from his or her personal experiences and environment to create this consitency. The track record for setting that is both actually good (i.e. cosnsistient, interesting and has a minimum level of depth) and truly, outstandingly innovative and a clear deviation from reality, is accordingly low. As in: I'm pretty sure they are as common as unicorns. In Sheffield.

Oh, I'd say I generally agree with what I think you're saying, which is why its important not to go Full-Weirdo. The idea would be to bring in weird stuff within a context of sufficiently-relatable stuff, and that is also consistent internally speaking (that is, that the weirdness has a reason, even if its a reason never understood by the players).