TheRPGSite

i will have more to say on this matter in the morning but i will start the conversation early

im still not sure i used that , right in the topic

I agree.

While I do appreciate a good backstory, none of my players have presented me one that would be more than few sentences. Well, one time I got a full page of text, but almost none of it got into play, aside from the fact that the character had a brother.

I'd like think that how the character is portrayed aside from personality traits, also quirks and mannerisms matter, but those often develop through play. For example next week I'll start playing HackMaster  for the first time in my life, I rolled on some table that my ranger character has a very poor short term memory, requiring Int rolls to remember anything that has happened within last 4 hours or so. That (physical?) disability does bring personality to that character.

On Sunday I made a character for classic Deadlands, but that personality is still work in progress. Basically he is an english snob who's a member of a Hellfire Club which has decided to get their kicks from monster-hunting. He barely has any skills, but he has access to wealth and contacts, so I'll probably play him as your basic condescending twat.

Well, I like backstory, whether set up front or discovered in play, but personality is essential for me.

-clash

Backstory should inform and support personality.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832488Backstory should inform and support personality.

This.

YOUR personality didn't just form out of the ether.  Your life experiences decided what you like, how you treat others and what makes you tick.  Those are your backstory.

Why are Characters different?

I would say that, most times, they don't even need a personality. They just need to ACT (and not in the theatrical sense). Personality can be filled in at the table, even if it's just 'This is what Joe Bob would do if he worshiped Ilmater for reals'. Especially in class based games; which give you short hand ideas for what your character is like while you work on what they're really like. You're either an exemplar or an exception to your class. Fighter's fight (or just want to be left alone to brood on their farm). Thieves do sneaky shit and are greedy (but might have a Heart of Gold or are in it for the challenge). Clerics pray (or he could be a man of action!). Wizards are all mystical and learned (Well, I guess you could be more Indiana Jones than Gandalf. But wizards pretty much wizard). These are all perfect hooks that can sub for an undeveloped or underdeveloped character personality. At least for a while.

As for Backstory: I don't want to know what your character DID, I want to know what they're DOING NOW.

I also see a difference between background (The barebones. I'm from X, I have X living parents/siblings, and maybe at the outside I apprenticed to X) and backstory (These are my awesome adventures I've already done before the game started! Aren't I awesomely awesome!)

My gut reaction was to attack you. I'll refrain. :)

You're right.

However!

Some players, anecdotally, I've found this more commonplace when I've acquired players from the 3e/4e era that consideration of the characters personality just never entered the equation of playing an RPG. Most of these players were just playing themselves.

I often use backstory to help these guys/gals to get to considering where their characters might be different in perspective from their own personalities.

I confess, even in an Eberron game if a player comes at me with more than two sentences of backstory I tune it out. It's usually second-rate special snowflake drama cliches that they'll forget about soon enough. Once in a while a single backstory detail will actually end up mattering a great deal in play, and that's only because the player pushed it as an issue, making it "real" enough for me to care.

What was that Gygax quote again?
"Backstory? The first three levels are your backstory."

Quote from: Gabriel2;832488Backstory should inform and support personality.

Bingo. An intrinsic part of coming up with a distinct personality for a character, for me, is working out where they came from, and how those experiences shaped them.

Every good character needs a MOP. Good for both NPCs and PCs.
 
Motivation: Why is the character here willing to help or at least tolerate the group to achieve their mutual goals?

Objective: What is the character's overall arching goal?

Personality: What does the character act like?

Backstory and History help to define the character and can help answer these questions. As already said in this thread, the backstory can help shape a character's personality as well. Motivation/objective are crucial elements though. They define the character's desire to be here essentially.

Classes can help shape a character's personality arc as well, as stated in the thread already. So can a character's race at times.

I like Savage Worlds because of the Hindrance system, giving the character three flaws to roleplay in order to gain Bennies, which also helps guide the character's personality.

When I build a character I make about a paragraph of backstory to help me define the character's past. But usually the character's overall personality is grown over time in actual play from this base.  NPCs though need one now at creation because they may or may not be a longterm part of the game. If they are interesting to the players at first contact, they might be a recurring character as well.

This though is great advice, 11 ways to be a better roleplayer. #2 is especially relevant to this topic:
 http://lookrobot.co.uk/11-ways-better-roleplayer-safe-work-version/

The story is that when Dustin Hoffman was involved with the movie Marathon Man, his character was depicted as looking like he had stayed awake for three nights. Dustin, being a method actor, decided to stay up for three nights in real life in order for it to look more realistic. When he came to the set, Laurence Olivier (An actor some consider one of the greatest in the world) asked him why he looked so tired and Dustin told him. Then Olivier pauses for a moment, then makes the famous statement, "Try acting, dear boy...it's much easier."

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832489This.

YOUR personality didn't just form out of the ether.  Your life experiences decided what you like, how you treat others and what makes you tick.  Those are your backstory.

Why are Characters different?

I disagree, and I disagree with ... several others, it seems:

Your backstory affects your opinions, but not your personality to the same degree, and personality may also affect your backstory a bit, including opinions.

I think background stories are good, but not necessary, and while personality is necessary, the player always brings that to the table, bland or not.
Something that often seem to get overlooked though, is Opinions.
What the character feels and thinks of not just characters, but also about different classes, professions, races, riches and poverty, and so on.

Quote from: tuypo1;832474i will have more to say on this matter in the morning but i will start the conversation early

im still not sure i used that , right in the topic

I got an idea from Metal Wars. The NPC writeups included a decriptive word in their name, like "Heroic Transbot Warrior" or "Cowardly Warbot Spy". I thought, if I ever did  a Transformers RPG again, I'd have every player pick one word to describe their character, and make name standees for them. So Bob would have a name standup in front of him with "Clutch: Obesssive Autobot Mechanic" on it.

Quote from: tuypo1;832474i will have more to say on this matter in the morning but i will start the conversation early

im still not sure i used that , right in the topic

Mad Max has just enough backstory and personality for his character. If a player can role-play just that much, that's golden for my group. If he's just a bingo card player, staring at his character sheet to see how he can win the game for each move, there are other tables he can join.

I think that having an objective, a drive, is the most important thing.  Followed closely by values.

Personality is good, but personality can quickly become overdone and obnoxious.

Backstory is useful in that it often creates the previous items.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832488Backstory should inform and support personality.

Agreed. For me, some form of backstory is needed to have a personality that feels coherent and, for lack of a better word, real. It doesn't have to be a novel but some understand of where the character came from before the opening credits (so to speak) helps for me. As a gm I like backstories. They help tie the characters into the setting and premise, give me some clue what the players might find interesting and engrossing while allowing to them contribute to the creative process of generating the setting by adding their own personal bits of history, plot hooks, npcs and general stuff.

I've seen more players succeeding with a small backstory than a long one.

What always happens when someone gives me like a 20 page backstory is that they get overly attached to it and the character itself becomes calcified, too defined already to bend enough to fit with the whims of the party.

You need wiggle room when you play to end up justifying your character going on whatever quests turn up. But you can't do that if 100% of that room is already set in stone.

Quote from: Michael Gray;832492I would say that, most times, they don't even need a personality. They just need to ACT (and not in the theatrical sense). Personality can be filled in at the table

I'll sign on to this. To make an interesting character think of a few stock situations for the sort of campaign this character is going to be in and brainstorm what that character would do in those situations. If you can come up with interesting answers to those questions you're good to go if you can't you need to brainstorm a bit more.

Also staying open to having your character's quirks and personality be shaped by what happens at the table is really important as having their actions be based on stuff that happened at the table feels a lot more real than having their actions be based off of stuff you made up before the gave ever started.

For example one of my dwarf character's goofy affectations was a giant golden cow bell he wore because TWICE he was on guard duty and got jumped by ghouls and knocked out so he vowed to get a cowbell big enough that him being knocked out would always alert the party in the future and we wore the damn thing everywhere.

oh wow i was not expecting this much of a response i will make sure to take some time to write up a proper full length statment.

I think it's obvious that how the character is played and presented at the table -- what I take to be what the OP meant by personality -- is more important than any backstory.

That said, as long as it's not too extensive, I actually do prefer, when I GM, for the players to have at least some backstory elements established. My go-to when I ask for it are the following, though I will modify the list if any of the questions aren't relevant to the current game/setting/genre. But more often than not, this list serves me well.

1. Family and home life. Not the entire family tree, of course. Just a few relatives of particular importance to the character, if they're on good terms with those relatives, and if not, why not.
2. A couple debts/obligations/ambitions outside of the PCs. This may or may not intersect with #1.
3. How you relate to some of the other PCs. Not all of the details, and not all of the PCs(unless it's a very small group), but at least something that ties you to 1 or 2 of the other PCs. And if it's a party-focused game, I usually want to know why you're working together. If the players haven't worked this out before the first session, I'll generally spend a few minutes on getting them to do so together.

But as I said, the list isn't perfect for every game/setting/genre, but in general it serves me well. The last part of #3, for example(and perhaps the entire thing, depending), wouldn't be useful in a game where the party is brought together by a third party at the beginning of the adventure. I wouldn't run such a game, but I've played in that sort before, so I know my list has limits and exceptions.

Quote from: Michael Gray;832492I would say that, most times, they don't even need a personality. They just need to ACT

I agree with some reservations. Action is certainly more important that just about anything else, but I don't think it trumps personality so much as to make the latter unnecessary. I can only take so much of a blank or super passive character before I have to let someone know that I don't think they mesh with me.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;832594What always happens when someone gives me like a 20 page backstory is that they get overly attached to it and the character itself becomes calcified, too defined already to bend enough to fit with the whims of the party.

Amen. I actually have a gaming friend who has a couple of go-to characters with extensive backgrounds already written up, which leads to certain kinds of inflexibility, definitely. It doesn't always come up, but when it does it can be a little frustrating.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;832601Amen. I actually have a gaming friend who has a couple of go-to characters with extensive backgrounds already written up, which leads to certain kinds of inflexibility, definitely. It doesn't always come up, but when it does it can be a little frustrating.

I have one player who loves writing backstory. He roleplays in good faith, but he ends up getting caught on "my character wouldn't do that" legitimately because he fleshed out so much of the character and he just ends up not fitting with what the party's goals are. Even though he WANTS to go with the party, he can't figure out a way to justify it. So he has this problem every time, and his character always dies in like the first fight or leaves the party because he can't get his character to associate with the group.

I've a standard rant (http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/2014/02/so-backstories.html) about backstories, but I can summarize.

For my part, I love them.  From a new player, it tells me that he or she is likely to be a strong roleplayer, certain to view the character as more than a piece on a chessboard. They provide plothooks, they provide motivations, they make it easier to introduce NPCs, they're good for getting past the awkward "Why in the heck do these people want to adventure together?" They aid me in helping the players create their characters - standards like "I'm an ex-gladiator who bought his freedom" and "The king ordered the murder of my parents" suggest skill sets, advantages and disadvantages obvious to many.

What's that you say, what happens in play is more important?  I agree.  But of how many of us can't that be said, in real life?  That we're changed by our experiences doesn't mean our pasts don't matter. If we were to sit down at a coffee house and get to know one another, how many of you would respond with "What I've done, what I've seen, what's happened to me, who I am; none of that matters worth a damn. All any of you need to know about me is what you observe from this moment forward."  

To which I'd likely respond with an "Ooookay" and back slooowly towards the exit, hoping that the next new person I met wasn't quite so much of a whackjob.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;832604I have one player who loves writing backstory. He roleplays in good faith, but he ends up getting caught on "my character wouldn't do that" legitimately because he fleshed out so much of the character and he just ends up not fitting with what the party's goals are. Even though he WANTS to go with the party, he can't figure out a way to justify it. So he has this problem every time, and his character always dies in like the first fight or leaves the party because he can't get his character to associate with the group.

Okay, but so what?

I don't mean to pick on you, since this is one of several "Some gamer I know did backstories wrong so that means the concept sucks" posts.  But seriously: just because there are morons who react to every stimuli around a table by swinging a sword doesn't mean that combat is screwed up.  Just because someone you know plays mages "wrong" doesn't mean we shouldn't have magic systems.  Just because there's that tool who always wants to play a LSN doesn't require a blanket ban on cross-gender characters.  

And so on.  We should all be grown up enough to recognize that there's a difference between a concept and a concept done badly.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832488Backstory should inform and support personality.

That was always my understanding of why characters had backstories.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;832497What was that Gygax quote again?
"Backstory? The first three levels are your backstory."

This makes sense when characters have a high mortality rate for the first few levels, so the first few games will be played before a player decides to be invested in the character. Games where characters are competent from level 1 do benefit from having some idea of personality from the start, if the group cares about that kind of thing.

PC orphans with no family, no friends, no home, and no past don’t thrill me. Neither does reading pages of fiction.

I would like players to know a bit about where their PC comes from and how their PC connects to the other PCs. Usually that can be done in at most a few sentences. One format that works for me is a paragraph or two of text that bolds or underlines the significant people, places, or events in the PC’s backstory so that I can quickly key in on what is supposed to be important.

It shouldn’t need to be said, but it does. The character’s backstory should fit with their current capability. You aren’t writing bad fan fiction so don’t make your PC the hero of Thunder Pass if his stats don’t support him being a hero. The expectation is that better or more interesting days are ahead for the PCs, not that their greatest actions were all in their past before play even started.

Spoiler

Backstory: Gaston Thibeault was born in Amiens, Picardy in 1592, Gaston is the only son of a cloth merchant Hugo Thibeault. His mother was killed during the Spanish capture of Amiens in 1597. After this his father moved Gaston and his sister Marie to Paris. In 1607 Gaston ran away to find fortune and glory as a soldier. He joined the Picardy Musketeers (one of the Regiments that retook Amiens) where he met Jehan Legrand, a fellow Picard. After the death of the old King, the Picardy Musketeers were demobilized and Gaston headed to Italy to become a mercenary where he gained his love of poetry and first learned the Italian dueling style, from Maestro Giovanni Cantigliare.

In 1618 he joined the 2,000 men sent by the Duke of Savoy under Ernst von Manfeld to aid the Bohemians – to victory at the Siege of Pilsen and to defeat at the Battle of Zablati (Sablat). Gaston continued to serve the Bohemians after von Mansfeld’s departure – to victory at Wisternitz and to disastrous defeat at White Mountain against the Spanish-Imperial forces led by the Count of Tilly. Gaston’s main gauche is actually a vizcaina taken from the body of a Spanish Don that he killed during the battle. After White Mountain, Gaston returned to France and rejoined his regiment where he was reunited with his old friend Legrand. Together they fought for the young Louis XIII in the First Huguenot Rebellion where, as a sergeant-in the Picardy Musketeers, Gaston took a brave young cadet, Lucien DeBourges (a PC), under his wing. While briefly under the Duc d’Elbeuf’s command, Gaston met Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan and found that he and de Racan shared a love of poetry. Now back in Paris, Gaston works as a sword for hire, continues his study of the Italian or Florentine style at a dueling salle, Fraternity Sainte-Didier, under the tutelage of Maitre St. Pierre, and, in his spare time, he writes poetry – Gaston thinks of himself as a warrior-poet.

Personality: His years as a soldier throughout Europe have made Gaston somewhat cynical and hard-bitten though he still cannot resist either a pretty face or the siren call of glory. In combat, Gaston is an unshakeable, tenacious soldier. Despite his common birth, he aspires to one day become an officer and to lead men in battle. Gaston is arrogant – looking down on those cowards and popinjays have not been soldiers as well as on those unfortunates who were not blessed by God to have been born French. Gaston has a prickly sense of honor and is possessed of a fierce temper – which often causes him trouble. He can be said to be neither too honest nor too religious though his loyalty to his friends and comrades is unquestioned.

I think that sometimes a back story can help a player develop their character's personality better but I agree that personality is more important than a back story.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;832604I have one player who loves writing backstory. He roleplays in good faith, but he ends up getting caught on "my character wouldn't do that" legitimately because he fleshed out so much of the character and he just ends up not fitting with what the party's goals are. Even though he WANTS to go with the party, he can't figure out a way to justify it. So he has this problem every time, and his character always dies in like the first fight or leaves the party because he can't get his character to associate with the group.

I had a former player who did the "my character wouldn't do that" thing all the damn time, and his character didn't really have a backstory.

And on the flip side, I've had players who wrote long-ish backstories who never caused issues like that.

In my experience this is more of a player problem than a backstory problem.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;832767In my experience this is more of a player problem than a backstory problem.

And the excuse might be backstory or alignment.

Quote from: Ravenswing;832728Okay, but so what?

I don't mean to pick on you, since this is one of several "Some gamer I know did backstories wrong so that means the concept sucks" posts.  But seriously: just because there are morons who react to every stimuli around a table by swinging a sword doesn't mean that combat is screwed up.  Just because someone you know plays mages "wrong" doesn't mean we shouldn't have magic systems.  Just because there's that tool who always wants to play a LSN doesn't require a blanket ban on cross-gender characters.  

And so on.  We should all be grown up enough to recognize that there's a difference between a concept and a concept done badly.

I never said the concept sucked. My anecodate was to point out some traps you could fall into when writing your backstory so you could avoid them.

Quote from: Bren;832781And the excuse might be backstory or alignment.

Hell, the number of times a player's been troublesome with "My character wouldn't do that" because of alignment has to outnumber the times it's happened because of a backstory about a thousand to one.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;832767I had a former player who did the "my character wouldn't do that" thing all the damn time, and his character didn't really have a backstory.

And on the flip side, I've had players who wrote long-ish backstories who never caused issues like that.

In my experience this is more of a player problem than a backstory problem.

I am quite sympathetic to "my character would not do that" issues. Sure it can be used in bad faith, but it can also be a sign the players getting into the spirit of things. If a  player cares enough about this character's motivations to make risk an ooc social faux pas surely that's a good sign?

The "my character wouldn't do that" issue can also be a GM issue. If players have created incompatible characters the GM bears some responsibility for not communicating the campaign premise and guiding the players towards a more cohesive concept.

I've encountered a lot of GMs who at character generation say "just create what you want" and then act surprised when the characters don't bite at any of their adventure hooks or end up with a group of characters with nothing in common and no shared goals, values or reasons to stick with each other.

Sure the individual players can self-organise and frequently do, but the buck stops at the GM.

Quote from: Soylent Green;832798I am quite sympathetic to "my character would not do that" issues. Sure it can be used in bad faith, but it can also be a sign the players getting into the spirit of things. If a  player cares enough about this character's motivations to make risk an ooc social faux pas surely that's a good sign?

I don't think the problem was that this happens at all, but rather that with the one player it's habitual to the point of being disruptive.

Quote from: Ravenswing;832794Hell, the number of times a player's been troublesome with "My character wouldn't do that" because of alignment has to outnumber the times it's happened because of a backstory about a thousand to one.

Given the millions of quickly rolled up characters in the seventies and eighties that probably aligns with the ratio of D&D characters who have little to no backstory but have alignment to D&D characters with fuller backstories.

Quote from: Soylent Green;832798I am quite sympathetic to "my character would not do that" issues. Sure it can be used in bad faith, but it can also be a sign the players getting into the spirit of things. If a  player cares enough about this character's motivations to make risk an ooc social faux pas surely that's a good sign?

No that isn't a good sign. It also isn't a bad sign.

I think characters should have things they would not do. But the intersection between the set of annoyingly disruptive players and the set of players who have concerns about committing social faux pas during a game is pretty close to a null set.

I've had players say something like "my character wouldn't do that" lots of times. With one exception, I don't recall that ever being a problem in game. The exception was one guy who created a character in D&D who didn't want to venture into the dungeon. Since the party was setting out from town and traveling a couple of days specifically to go to the dungeon and venture inside it, that was a problem. I'm not sure what he thought was going to happen, but clearly there was some problem in communicating expectations. I don't recall the exact details, but I believe I told him his character could sit outside alone essentially doing nothing until he perhaps got eaten by something, he could decide that this character actually did want to venture into the dungeon with the rest of the group, or he could roll up a new character who would venture into the dungeon with the rest of the group. Unstated, was the other choice of not letting the door hit him in the ass on his way out. I don't actually recall which choice he made.

Also sometimes "my character wouldn't do that" is actually a very poorly worded request for help in finding a motivation for their character to do that. It would save a lot of needless sturm und drang at the table if the wording was more clear.

QuoteI've encountered a lot of GMs who at character generation say "just create what you want" and then act surprised when the characters don't bite at any of their adventure hooks or end up with a group of characters with nothing in common and no shared goals, values or reasons to stick with each other.

Probably one reason I have less trouble with "my character wouldn't do that" is because I never, ever say "just create what you want."

Quote from: Soylent Green;832798I am quite sympathetic to "my character would not do that" issues. Sure it can be used in bad faith, but it can also be a sign the players getting into the spirit of things. If a  player cares enough about this character's motivations to make risk an ooc social faux pas surely that's a good sign?

The "my character wouldn't do that" issue can also be a GM issue. If players have created incompatible characters the GM bears some responsibility for not communicating the campaign premise and guiding the players towards a more cohesive concept.

I've encountered a lot of GMs who at character generation say "just create what you want" and then act surprised when the characters don't bite at any of their adventure hooks or end up with a group of characters with nothing in common and no shared goals, values or reasons to stick with each other.

Sure the individual players can self-organise and frequently do, but the buck stops at the GM.

This is one of the reasons I like back stories -- it's an opportunity for the player to tell me about their character: who they're playing, how they want to play, and why. I think in this case it actually might have helped us communicate. I always ask for at least a little backstory (a paragraph or two doesn't seem like too much to ask) but some players just don't like to write. So if it's going to ruin their fun, I don't press the issue.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;832830This is one of the reasons I like back stories -- it's an opportunity for the player to tell me about their character: who they're playing, how they want to play, and why. I think in this case it actually might have helped us communicate.

I like short backstories to help remind me about the character. But I'd rather have the player tell me about their character verbally because that can be a conversation and the back and forth lets me understand the character much better than a backstory ever will.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;832830This is one of the reasons I like back stories -- it's an opportunity for the player to tell me about their character: who they're playing, how they want to play, and why. I think in this case it actually might have helped us communicate. I always ask for at least a little backstory (a paragraph or two doesn't seem like too much to ask) but some players just don't like to write. So if it's going to ruin their fun, I don't press the issue.

Backstory definitely helps with this. I'm torn on the "My character wouldn't do this"

Quote from: Bren;832832I like short backstories to help remind me about the character. But I'd rather have the player tell me about their character verbally because that can be a conversation and the back and forth lets me understand the character much better than a backstory ever will.

Of course, there's no reason you can't do both. :D

I think you need some backstory, both to inform the personality but also so you have a sense of where the character came from and how the character fits into the setting. The danger is too much backstory. There is only so much you can easily remember so I think its best to keep the background simple, stuff you don't necessarily need to write down.

Let me restate that a bit. You don't need backstory. Technically you don't really need anything to play your character. But I think having one helps. It just isn't everything. I've seen well thought out backstories that were great, but without a personality or sense of what the character wants, it doesn't really help you play the character. Still things like knowing whether your character is the son of a black smith rather than a castle lord, is helpful. A key event or two can be handy as well.

What a lot of people lose sight of, and what I think the OP may be alluding to, is a lot of what people consider background, can happen during the campaign. You don't have to hash out all the major personality and history details at the start of the game.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;832856I think you need some backstory, both to inform the personality but also so you have a sense of where the character came from and how the character fits into the setting. The danger is too much backstory. There is only so much you can easily remember so I think its best to keep the background simple, stuff you don't necessarily need to write down.

Let me restate that a bit. You don't need backstory. Technically you don't really need anything to play your character. But I think having one helps. It just isn't everything. I've seen well thought out backstories that were great, but without a personality or sense of what the character wants, it doesn't really help you play the character. Still things like knowing whether your character is the son of a black smith rather than a castle lord, is helpful. A key event or two can be handy as well.

What a lot of people lose sight of, and what I think the OP may be alluding to, is a lot of what people consider background, can happen during the campaign. You don't have to hash out all the major personality and history details at the start of the game.

All true. Another point I'd add to this: a great backstory isn't much help if it's not relevant to the campaign the character is in. The responsibility of making it relevant is shared by the player and the GM.

I'm in the camp that believes that the backstory should inform and support the character personality.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;832863All true. Another point I'd add to this: a great backstory isn't much help if it's not relevant to the campaign the character is in. The responsibility of making it relevant is shared by the player and the GM.

Yes. That's one of the reasons I like to start with a conversation with the player rather than a document. I'd love the player to give me a document afterwards that captures the agreed part of the conversation about their character.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;832594I've seen more players succeeding with a small backstory than a long one.

What always happens when someone gives me like a 20 page backstory is that they get overly attached to it and the character itself becomes calcified, too defined already to bend enough to fit with the whims of the party.

You need wiggle room when you play to end up justifying your character going on whatever quests turn up. But you can't do that if 100% of that room is already set in stone.

Yup, agree 100%. A half page backstory can be great, but 5+ pages is a detriment to the game IME.

Quote from: Ravenswing;832727If we were to sit down at a coffee house and get to know one another, how many of you would respond with "What I've done, what I've seen, what's happened to me, who I am; none of that matters worth a damn. All any of you need to know about me is what you observe from this moment forward."  

To which I'd likely respond with an "Ooookay" and back slooowly towards the exit, hoping that the next new person I met wasn't quite so much of a whackjob.

But if you met in Basic Training that might well be the expected attitude - as a new soldier you're a cypher to be molded by the instructors.
So I think it depends a lot on the campaign - is it Coffee House or is it Boot Camp.

Quote from: Bren;832829Also sometimes "my character wouldn't do that" is actually a very poorly worded request for help in finding a motivation for their character to do that. It would save a lot of needless sturm und drang at the table if the wording was more clear.

This has happened to me as a player on occasion. A single plot thread would get dangled in front of the characters with nothing to make following it actually enticing from an in-character perspective. I'd end up saying something like "Ok, I as the player realize this is a plot thread you're hoping we'll follow, but in-character, what reason are we being given to care about what was just mentioned beyond just the fact that it was mentioned?"

This has thankfully become much less of an issue over time, but I'll never forget that feeling of frustration when your character is just expected to drop everything for something just because it was mentioned. I'm not expecting the perfect motivation or anything, but come on, if the GM has been paying attention to my character at all, they can come up with something.

And I agree about the poor wording. I'm sure I wasn't as articulate when making my concerns known when I first started as I am now. New players in particular might just end up with a vague sense that something's off without being able to pinpoint it, much less knowing how to communicate it to the GM.

Quote from: S'mon;832909Yup, agree 100%. A half page backstory can be great, but 5+ pages is a detriment to the game IME.

If it's unsolicited, yes.

I played in a campaign where everyone participated in the world-building, and played a character from a continent/society the GM hadn't really developed yet. I showed him where I was going with the character and he liked it. Then I wrote up 6 pages of back story, which explored lots of his homeland's history, and the GM loved it. Enough to make that stuff become "canon" for the campaign setting.

Quote from: GeekEclectic;832912This has happened to me as a player on occasion. A single plot thread would get dangled in front of the characters with nothing to make following it actually enticing from an in-character perspective. I'd end up saying something like "Ok, I as the player realize this is a plot thread you're hoping we'll follow, but in-character, what reason are we being given to care about what was just mentioned beyond just the fact that it was mentioned?"

If nothing about the dangling plot thread is enticing for any of the characters, then that's a lame thread. One of three things should happen: (1) the GM comes up with a better rationale, (2) the GM and players together come up with a better rationale, or (3) those characters ignore that thread and the group grabs onto some other thread or decides to spin their own. I've seen all three work. Any of those choices are better for me (as player or as GM) than just going along with a lame thread.

I've found that the GM coming clean and just saying out of game, "Look people, I thought your characters would (investigate the mystery, look for the McGuffin, help the lost child, protect the heir, want to show up your rival, protect the village from bandits, or whatever). Can you help me figure out reasons why your characters do that?"

Sometimes the thread works for some PCs but not all. In that case the other players and their PCs should be actively working to get the reluctant PC on board. That situation is one reason I want the PCs to know why they are together as a group. The reluctant PC may bow to peer pressure, agree to help out a friend, intend to earn a favor to be redeemed later from the other PCs, owe the other PCs a favor that they just called in, is just following orders, is unwilling to turn down a challenge or a dare...if none of those reasons can apply to your PC then I submit that the group has an odd dynamic, especially in regards to your PC, and I'd start to wonder why the PCs do hang out together or the player of the reluctant PC's player just isn't trying hard enough to cooperate with the group...or you know...both.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;832497I confess, even in an Eberron game if a player comes at me with more than two sentences of backstory I tune it out. It's usually second-rate special snowflake drama cliches that they'll forget about soon enough. Once in a while a single backstory detail will actually end up mattering a great deal in play, and that's only because the player pushed it as an issue, making it "real" enough for me to care.

What was that Gygax quote again?
"Backstory? The first three levels are your backstory."

I really don't get this attitude. When I'm GMing a game, getting that level of engagement from a player, enough that they care to write something down about their character that they don't have to, is a good thing. Why would you piss on the effort of your friends by dismissing anything they're trying to contribute to the game?

As for Gygax, he was full of shit, on this as well as other issues. Backstory is what you write to get your character oriented in the gameworld and connected to some people and things before it begins.

Quote from: Kiero;832945I really don't get this attitude. When I'm GMing a game, getting that level of engagement from a player, enough that they care to write something down about their character that they don't have to, is a good thing. Why would you piss on the effort of your friends by dismissing anything they're trying to contribute to the game?

I have to agree with this.

Quote from: Kiero;832945As for Gygax, he was full of shit, on this as well as other issues. Backstory is what you write to get your character oriented in the gameworld and connected to some people and things before it begins.

He was a wargamer first, and even D&D had a lot of war game influences at the start, the less he got involved, the more that aspect waned.

A good backstory weaves the PC into the setting.

I am not interested in more than 1/2 page (250 word) personality and backstory. I use the 250 word limit because it focuses players to the core concepts for their character. Also, since I run lethal RPGs, who knows if that PC is going to be around in a few weeks or months.

In my OD&D game, PCs begin at 4th level so I guess their 1st-3rd levels would be their backstory.

So Fate's kinda cool because you do the backstory generation together, which also helps people get on the same page as far as "what's the game about".  That of course only works if you're doing "the Big Four Heroes on their Big Damn Quest", and it'd be a bit silly for an open table game.

5 page backstories?  Cool, I guess?  I'd take them as something of a flag.  Nothing wrong with them inherently, but they often go hand-in-hand with people that expect things will go a certain way and already have "their story" in mind and will get upset if things don't go the way they want.

One problem with backstories is with a lot of them you get stuff like "after the orcs killed my family I swore vengeance against the orcs and dedicated myself to protecting my people from them...and them promptly got an a boat and spent years tangling with dwarven pirates and trying to loot the lizardmen infested ruins in the jungles. Orcs? Um, I think I saw a half-orc once?"

Often there`s a limited amount of headspace that a player can dedicate to a character so if there`s a lot of big picture stuff it can sometimes distract players from interacting with whatever is in front of their character`s nose in an interesting way.

Quote from: robiswrong;8329595 page backstories?  Cool, I guess?  I'd take them as something of a flag.  Nothing wrong with them inherently, but they often go hand-in-hand with people that expect things will go a certain way and already have "their story" in mind and will get upset if things don't go the way they want.

That's certainly my experience. It tends to be a warning indicator of selfishness - this player isn't interested in contributing to the group and making a fun game for everyone, and they're not interested in forming strong relations with the other PCs, or NPCs who weren't created by them in their backstory.

OTOH a player who is working closely with GM and other players may create a long backstory that is brilliant. Even then it's rarely over a page or so. The Thief Claudia Morrigan in my Mentzer campaign has a cool lengthy backstory tied to the setting, the hints I gave, & the other PCs - her story is maybe 1.5 to 2 pages - http://www.meetup.com/London-DnD/messages/boards/thread/48852155/40#128042374

Quote from: Kiero;832945As for Gygax, he was full of shit, on this as well as other issues. Backstory is what you write to get your character oriented in the gameworld and connected to some people and things before it begins.

It's been several decades since I've regarded a Gygax quote as generally indicative as to how the game ought to be played as opposed to something at which to roll my eyes.

And for how many pastimes do we want to do things exactly the same as in the beginning?  We don't play baseball by the 1860s rules, we don't pay to hear bands to do concerts in plainchant, boxing matches don't allow eye-gouging or kneeing in the groin, we don't sun ourselves at the beach wearing 1920s bathing costumes, TV shows don't go by 1950s-era formats and morals, and movies these days are usually in color and have sound.  Gaming's advanced since 1974.

Quote from: Bren;832829Probably one reason I have less trouble with "my character wouldn't do that" is because I never, ever say "just create what you want."

Yep.  It's one of the many, many problems that boil down to the GM not having the guts to say "Nice try, but no."

And that's what's missing in much of this conversation.  5+ page backstories aren't responsible for players refusing to embody character change § ‡; players who refuse to embody character change are responsible.  Backstories aren't responsible for players balking at the way a GM plot is going; GMs refusing to require that characters be designed to conform with the rest of the group and the plots he plans on running are.


§ - Even as a GM who strongly encourages backstories and welcomes written ones, in the 37 years I've been doing this, I've had exactly ONE player write a backstory longer than 4 pages, just the once.  I'm having a hard time picturing this sort of thing as an ongoing problem with any GM in creation.

‡ - While we're at it, can someone tell me what's wrong with a PC refusing to change his or her opinions, views or morals?  Lots of people are like this.  Hell, the entire concept of alignment involves the player locking in an ethical and moral code for the character at startup, permanently.

I 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?

Now this is MY perspective on this, but there are something I can claim are from my parents, like the fact that I'm the oldest child, one of two brothers.  And that informs how I think and react to certain things.

That is part of my personal backstory, so for me, even that tiny detail changes how a character I'm playing is also a older sibling will view the world, and how that changes the personality to a certain bent.

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?

Through play. I've been meaning to post this example from Mass Effect.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Rachni_Queen

For those who haven't played Mass Effect, spoilers.

Spoiler

The Noveria scenario culminates in a decision to either destroy the Rachni Queen or let it escape. I think it's one of the best decision points in the ME series, because either decision can (and has been) argued to be the "correct" one.

Now, a player can make that kind of decison with or without any backstory. But after that point, we'll know a little more about the character. That decision will tell us how ruthless or pragmatic or optimistic or empathetic that character is.
How would a player make that kind of decision without backstory? I'd argue that like in Mass Effect, it's emergent from the decision itself. I decided to kill the Rachni Queen? Maybe I decide from that point that my character is ruthless and has a xenophobic streak, and that's how the character justifies the decision. Though the player made it on a whim.

Quote from: Ravenswing;833049
‡ - While we're at it, can someone tell me what's wrong with a PC refusing to change his or her opinions, views or morals?  Lots of people are like this.  Hell, the entire concept of alignment involves the player locking in an ethical and moral code for the character at startup, permanently.

I've never seen a D&D game not run by a 12 year old where alignment was used in a prescriptive rather than descriptive way.

I still think old-school, open table games are fun.  But they're not how most people play these days, and the techniques that work for them are not necessarily the same techniques that work for "the Big Damn Heroes on their Big Damn Quest."  So I think we agree on that.  I don't necessarily consider it "advanced", though, any more than I consider cake more advanced than pie.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;833060Through play. I've been meaning to post this example from Mass Effect.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Rachni_Queen

For those who haven't played Mass Effect, spoilers.

Spoiler

The Noveria scenario culminates in a decision to either destroy the Rachni Queen or let it escape. I think it's one of the best decision points in the ME series, because either decision can (and has been) argued to be the "correct" one.

Now, a player can make that kind of decison with or without any backstory. But after that point, we'll know a little more about the character. That decision will tell us how ruthless or pragmatic or optimistic or empathetic that character is.
How would a player make that kind of decision without backstory? I'd argue that like in Mass Effect, it's emergent from the decision itself. I decided to kill the Rachni Queen? Maybe I decide from that point that my character is ruthless and has a xenophobic streak, and that's how the character justifies the decision. Though the player made it on a whim.

That's problematic though.  Simply because that's not a personality choice, that's a PLAYER choice.  Because until that sequence in the game, the only way we (the player) know anything about the Rachni is if we'd bothered reading the lore.

Our 'Sheppard' doesn't actually have any investment until WE the PLAYERS decide he or she does.  In fact, I would argue (without facts) that most people who played Mass Effect 1, didn't even have any feelings about the choice, other than something that happened immediately.

It's like me saying, "I hate ice cream." No context, no reason as to why.  That's not personality to me, that's just an arbitrary exclamation.

Your past (the general not any one poster specific) defines who you are today.  Whether or not you want to be tied to it, or are trying to get past it, it's part of who you are, and it defines how you see the world.

Again, though, I want to stress this is my belief, and it's also why I'm having a hard time seeing how someone can suddenly sprout with convictions and desires whole cloth, without having any sort of knowledge of their own parents, siblings or even city block they grew up from.

I once ran a character in AD&D 2e who was an Orphan with no parents.  Who ended up in a state run orphanage.  And it burnt down, almost everyone died, removing any 'ties' he might have had.  I decided, that during the time he was there, he got attached to a few of the fellow orphans, and when his best friend there died in the fire, that he was going to live his life the way his little friend would have wanted him to:  Being a hero.

That experience shaped him, it informed me as to how I should run the character.

This is how I see back story.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833067Your past (the general not any one poster specific) defines who you are today.  Whether or not you want to be tied to it, or are trying to get past it, it's part of who you are, and it defines how you see the world.

For real people? Sure. For RPG people? Sometimes.

I don't find it difficult to think of a character's persona sans family backgrounds. I don't think I am unusual in that sense. Sometimes I add family info, which adds details to my characters. But I'm vastly more likely to add a family background that fits a persona I invented than I am to invent a family background and then contemplate what sort of person would result from that background. For an RPG character, the family supports the persona, but causally it does not determine personality.

QuoteAgain, though, I want to stress this is my belief, and it's also why I'm having a hard time seeing how someone can suddenly sprout with convictions and desires whole cloth, without having any sort of knowledge of their own parents, siblings or even city block they grew up from.

Because I have lived life, read books, watched plays, TV shows, and movies for over 5 decades, I have a lot of character types, real and imagined, that I can draw on to create personalities and convictions for my characters.

To use examples from fiction, we remember Hamlet's mother and father because they are central to his story. I can't recall who Othello's parents were or even if they are mentioned at all. Same for his nemesis Iago. And yet both have memorable personalities. To use a more contemporary example, Captain Alatriste (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Alatriste)'s family is never mentioned. By the author's explicit intent. Alatriste has a backstory, a fairly extensive one that is mentioned throughout the various stories. But so far as the reader knows, Alatriste's history starts after he leaves home to join the Tercios. A lot of people play their PCs just like that.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;833067That's problematic though.  Simply because that's not a personality choice, that's a PLAYER choice.  Because until that sequence in the game, the only way we (the player) know anything about the Rachni is if we'd bothered reading the lore.

#1. Technically, aren't all character choices player choices as well?

#2. The event in the game does give an infodump at the choice event. I suppose a player could skip that convo, and just choose RED or BLUE, but then, I don't have to have a backstory or make any choices in table top RPGs from a role playing standpoint either.

https://youtu.be/IymgIxeRskw

QuoteOur 'Sheppard' doesn't actually have any investment until WE the PLAYERS decide he or she does.  In fact, I would argue (without facts) that most people who played Mass Effect 1, didn't even have any feelings about the choice, other than something that happened immediately.

I would disagree. I've seen a lot of internet discussion on the choices made in the Mass Effect games. I'd argue that's what made them so compelling and sucessful.

QuoteIt's like me saying, "I hate ice cream." No context, no reason as to why.  That's not personality to me, that's just an arbitrary exclamation.

Your past (the general not any one poster specific) defines who you are today.  Whether or not you want to be tied to it, or are trying to get past it, it's part of who you are, and it defines how you see the world.

Again, though, I want to stress this is my belief, and it's also why I'm having a hard time seeing how someone can suddenly sprout with convictions and desires whole cloth, without having any sort of knowledge of their own parents, siblings or even city block they grew up from.

I once ran a character in AD&D 2e who was an Orphan with no parents.  Who ended up in a state run orphanage.  And it burnt down, almost everyone died, removing any 'ties' he might have had.  I decided, that during the time he was there, he got attached to a few of the fellow orphans, and when his best friend there died in the fire, that he was going to live his life the way his little friend would have wanted him to:  Being a hero.

That experience shaped him, it informed me as to how I should run the character.

This is how I see back story.

Let's say for argument that I'm playing ME as a table top RPG.

If I say my character is a xenophobe and ruthless about it because of my run-in with the Rachni Queen before the game started that's backstory.

If I say my character is a xenophobe and ruthless about it because of my run in with the Rachni Queen during an adventure, how does that make it arbitrary compared to saying it because of backstory?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;833098Let's say for argument that I'm playing ME as a table top RPG.

If I say my character is a xenophobe and ruthless about it because of my run-in with the Rachni Queen before the game started that's backstory.

If I say my character is a xenophobe and ruthless about it because of my run in with the Rachni Queen during an adventure, how does that make it arbitrary compared to saying it because of backstory?

Fair 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.

What I'm trying to say is that how Sheppard in the RPG game deals with the Rachni Queen, is often dependent on how the player wanted to go for in terms of how their history, their story led up to it.  Whether or not Sheppard (to continue this example) had personal experience with the Rachni would inform his/her choice on how to deal with it, in terms of a character.

Often people cite actors and how they somehow create characters/personalities whole clothe, but that's not how a lot of actors work.

Actually, 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.

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:

Depends on the DM and the arrangment of the start.

In some cases a backstory can help solidify or explain the characters personality. In other cases there isnt really much need of a backstory as the characters are pretty much fresh out the gate.

Personally I prefer to keep it short though. Like one, maybee two or so sentences.

example 1:  Jan has a background of about a paragraph explaining how she trained archery with one of the local woodsmen who also doubled as part of the militia and did not hold it against her that she was a half-orc where others ridiculed her. From that then she sees her character as looking up to professionals who are open minded. But being distrustful of the general populace. Prefers the outdoors over the city.

example 2: "Trained under the local wizard." Character develops as they go.

I like the 5e background system. Neet and simple. Gives you as much as you want to use to flesh out the character before they became an adventurer. Use just the title for an idea, or use the system to generate an idea to frame off of.

Different types of games require different approaches to backstory. In the political/player-driven sandbox campaigns for HarnMaster, where the PCs are very clearly a part of the political landscape, with extended family connections and inherited alliances and rivalries, a character without a backstory wouldn't be playable. This is a setting-based campaign style, and it is almost mandatory to weave the character into the world to make sure that he or she is a true part of it.

The backstory also creates an opportunity for the players to engage in a specific part of the world-building process; they create a part of the setting and make it their own. It is clearly a minor part, but one that might carry significant weight for the player in question. So that can be rewarding as well, as long as the backstory is integrated in the overall setting (which requires the gamemaster to read and use it).

In a different campaign style, more focused on exploration, adventuring and so on, that interconnection between setting and character isn't as important. A brief idea of the character  is enough to get the game started, and eventual blank spaces can easily be filled during game. A minimal backstory is still necessary, but a very brief concept description is usually enough during character creation.

Of course, in both cases, it is strictly recommendable to use some sort of random events or lifepath to generate a few outside inspirations, if only to prevent cookiecutter clone characters.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832488Backstory should inform and support personality.

I'll second this. Obviously our origins shape our personalities.

They also shape our abilities. There are different reasonable inferences about people who grew up in different places and had different careers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the past provides relationships, which are what make personality relevant. Relationships can provide motives and conflicts that produce interesting adventures.

That is a big help in giving a role-playing game momentum. As a gm, I find that NPCs situated in and engaged with more than themselves are a great asset; and this holds for player-characters as well. A "nobody from nowhere" figure doesn't give much on which to build.

Of course its true that a backstory can add to a character's personality.  However, if you create too much backstory you end up with a character that can feel pre-fab, fake and not really vibrant.  In my experience, the real essential key to personality developing in a PC is what you actually do in the first three or four sessions.  A little backstory is good, but what you really want to do is leave some space to see what the PC turns into from the first few sessions of actual fucking roleplay.