Quote from: Haffrung;968556Is there any evidence most people who play RPGs are especially interested in moving outside that narrow conceptual band? I know lot of DMs and game designers are eager to explore that space. But we know that DMs and game designers aren't representative of players as a whole.

At the outset of our latest campaign, our DM asked us to submit some background about our characters. Of the six of us players, myself (who is also a DM) and one other gave him a background. The other four couldn't be bothered. Their interest in devoting any time, energy, or imagination to the game beyond what happens organically at the table over beer and pizza is nil. They just want to explore a fantasy world, clobber monsters, and have some laughs.

Speaking from my own experience there's plenty of players that desire something else. But I don't play D and D fantasy so maybe its a preferred genre issue that makes a difference. But if that's what yout group is looking for its cool and its fair to say, IMO, that it is what a significant number, perhaps the majority of gamers seem to be looking for.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Haffrung;968556Is there any evidence most people who play RPGs are especially interested in moving outside that narrow conceptual band? I know lot of DMs and game designers are eager to explore that space. But we know that DMs and game designers aren't representative of players as a whole.

In D&D you're an adventurer, often wandering, but in a lot of popular games you're playing a guy who's a much more integrated part of society with a stable place you're operating from and enough history and connections to make sense.

Superhero characters often have a secret identity and usually have an "origin" story -- they also have various aunts and girlfriends who need saving and enemies hunting them and so-on around.  A lot of games encourage the players to flesh that stuff out by giving points for it.

Investigators in Call of Cthulhu games have jobs and live in (usually) communities, academic or otherwise with significant connections to people, places, things, and enough of a history to define those things. Same is true, to one degree or another for a lot of fundamentally investigative games.

I'm not a fan of extensive back-ground stories, and I think a lot of this stuff can be invented during-play, as the situation warrants it (i.e. as it becomes relevant to in-game action), but the idea that popular games don't care about the PC's backgrounds or connections seems to be excluding a huge swath of games and play styles that are manifestly popular.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Nexus;968456But these things are not mutually exclusive and can often feed into each other. A good backstory generates motivation as well as other positive things like connecting the character to the setting and the world. Even if the GM isn't actively using backstories to guide the game the player may find it easier to determine what a person with some grounding 'wants to do'. I know I do.

A player can write as much backstory as they want, but as referee, I will not read more than 25 words.

Maybe it's because in Minneapolis, a lot of the RPG players came from the science fiction fandom community, which really is full of frustrated authors.  Through sad experience, "backstory" to me means "15 single spaced pages that the player will expect the referee to memorize and care deeply about and get highly indignant if he doesn't."

Also, and more harmful, people who write long backstories in my experience wind up with a backstory where their character has already been the Chosen One, become the world's greatest everthing, and saved the universe.  And then they complain when the game doesn't spotlight their character's awesomeness as well as their fanfiction does.

Yes, I still have the farting awfuls over this.  Other people may have had different experiences, and I envy them.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968780...as referee, I will not read more than 25 words.

If you can't describe your character to me in one sentence, you haven't sanded it down enough for me to care to listen. It will emerge in play anyway, I hope.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968780...people who write long backstories in my experience wind up with a backstory where their character has already been the Chosen One, become the world's greatest everthing, and saved the universe. And then they complain when the game doesn't spotlight their character's awesomeness as well as their fanfiction does.

Beware the player whose PC has a secret past or prophesied future, I always say.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968780A player can write as much backstory as they want, but as referee, I will not read more than 25 words.

My most recent Traveller character has more than 25 words of back story, but it's a few paragraphs interpretive writeup of his 5 terms of merchant service. But it's also nothing that is necessary for play. If the GM chooses to draw on it fine, if not, well, I just spent a few minutes writing it up.

QuoteMaybe it's because in Minneapolis, a lot of the RPG players came from the science fiction fandom community, which really is full of frustrated authors.  Through sad experience, "backstory" to me means "15 single spaced pages that the player will expect the referee to memorize and care deeply about and get highly indignant if he doesn't."

Also, and more harmful, people who write long backstories in my experience wind up with a backstory where their character has already been the Chosen One, become the world's greatest everthing, and saved the universe.  And then they complain when the game doesn't spotlight their character's awesomeness as well as their fanfiction does.

Yes, I still have the farting awfuls over this.  Other people may have had different experiences, and I envy them.

Yea, I've seen that kind of stuff. Like you say, the worst is the back stories that "finish" the character before play. Some of this comes from players encountering jerk GMs who have their story to tell and will shove the players around to achieve their story, totally not allowing the player to have their story. But some you're right, is just frustrated authors. Or players who see the volumes of background for the setting and think that all that verbiage is what role play is all about.

And of course those players would be horrified to have their PC done in by a random wandering monster 30' into the dungeon...

But if someone wants to play that way and they don't force me to play that way, all the more power to them... Just don't ram your 15 page backstory down my throat...

Frank

Quote from: -E.;968734In D&D you're an adventurer, often wandering, but in a lot of popular games you're playing a guy who's a much more integrated part of society with a stable place you're operating from and enough history and connections to make sense.

Sure. I assumed we were still talking about sandbox play -adventurers wandering around interacting with the setting.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968780Yes, I still have the farting awfuls over this.  Other people may have had different experiences, and I envy them.

I'm sorry you've had such bad experiences with backstories. I can see how that will shape your opinions quite strongly. I've had the same type of experience with "sandbox" and D and D in general so I won't touch them either. I guess it also partially comes down to difference of system choice too. In the ones I use if a player expects to be the "chosen one" wealthy influential, etc they have to invest character resources in it so it tends to keep things more grounded unless the game is intentionally high end (but there are exceptions, people being people). I've had players some submit bad backstories over 30 yrs. But the good have outweighed the bad. And even its come to the bad its mostly been a matter of talking to the player in question.

Quote from: ffilz;968812My most recent Traveller character has more than 25 words of back story, but it's a few paragraphs interpretive writeup of his 5 terms of merchant service. But it's also nothing that is necessary for play. If the GM chooses to draw on it fine, if not, well, I just spent a few minutes writing it up.


Yea, I've seen that kind of stuff. Like you say, the worst is the back stories that "finish" the character before play. Some of this comes from players encountering jerk GMs who have their story to tell and will shove the players around to achieve their story, totally not allowing the player to have their story. But some you're right, is just frustrated authors. Or players who see the volumes of background for the setting and think that all that verbiage is what role play is all about.

And of course those players would be horrified to have their PC done in by a random wandering monster 30' into the dungeon...

But if someone wants to play that way and they don't force me to play that way, all the more power to them... Just don't ram your 15 page backstory down my throat...

Frank

I specifically tell my players not to write long backstories because it's too frustrating to spend hours and hours writing up a story just to end it with, "And then a goblin critically hit him and rolled boxcars on the third round of his first combat when he had only 2 hp left, and he died. THE END."

Quote from: fearsomepirate;968835I specifically tell my players not to write long backstories because it's too frustrating to spend hours and hours writing up a story just to end it with, "And then a goblin critically hit him and rolled boxcars on the third round of his first combat when he had only 2 hp left, and he died. THE END."

Campaign style definitely impacts on the validity of detailed backgrounds just like anything else really,

Going to start a separate thread about character backstories:)

Quote from: Haffrung;968815Sure. I assumed we were still talking about sandbox play -adventurers wandering around interacting with the setting.

Sandbox PCs can be integrated with the setting. A Babylon 5/Deep Space 9/Deadwood type setup works fine for sandbox, better than wandering hobos IME. For one thing it means the sandbox can be a lot smaller. The Western sandbox I played then ran was basically one town, with PCs its inhabitants (I was the schoolteacher!). That worked great.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;968780A player can write as much backstory as they want, but as referee, I will not read more than 25 words.

Maybe it's because in Minneapolis, a lot of the RPG players came from the science fiction fandom community, which really is full of frustrated authors.  Through sad experience, "backstory" to me means "15 single spaced pages that the player will expect the referee to memorize and care deeply about and get highly indignant if he doesn't."

Also, and more harmful, people who write long backstories in my experience wind up with a backstory where their character has already been the Chosen One, become the world's greatest everthing, and saved the universe.  And then they complain when the game doesn't spotlight their character's awesomeness as well as their fanfiction does.

This is a major major problem for me when it happens. I don't handle it very well. I had a player, a young English teacher, last year submit a backstory for a PC he'd already been playing for a year or so. It started 135 years in the past, and I think the whole thing was 60 pages - I read the first few pages then gave up.
Player: "Is that ok?"
Me: "Eh, yes?"
Turns out I'd just agreed that his PC was the true heir to a major Duchy... For the rest of the game he then kept asking me when she'd become Duchess.... It really drained my desire to keep running that campaign. I ended it last month after several years, the backstory thing still leaves a sour note.

Of course I should really have manned up and demanded a 1-page version of the backstory before I'd consider it. But he had this puppy dog devotion to his character and his work, I didn't have the heart to do what I should have.

Quote from: Haffrung;968815Sure. I assumed we were still talking about sandbox play -adventurers wandering around interacting with the setting.

... what about sandbox specifies that it has to be adventurers?

In the last supers game I gave the characters a map and various crimes and super bad-guys.

I ran an investigative horror game with a similar map (and encounters off the map).

Sandbox is a mode of gaming, not a genre, I think

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;968432The problem with this attitude is that it kind of wipes out the majority of actual human experience.

But we're not talking about "actual human experience" - we're talking about playing a game, and in my (actual human) experience, interacting with npcs to develop resources and achieve goals in actual play is more fun than, 'oh, my character knows this guy I totally made up full-cloth before the game started who can help us.'


Aaaaand start to the clock for the half-wit who replies, 'But having Contact: Whatever doesn't preclude roleplaying!'