Quote from: Omega;1046527Also what about RPGs with lifepaths? Are those bad? Those are backstories. Sometimes simple, sometimes more convoluted and overwrought than anything a player jots down.
Dragon Storm for example has background cards that the player can apply to their character during chargen. Stuff like Peasant, or Remorseful Apprentice and a sentence or two explaining what that was. You are a peasant. You are a necros apprentice who learned the truth and quit. And so on. Another would be Mekton Zeta.

Or Adventures in Tekumel which has a large lifepath section, moreso if you include the pick-your-path books that are part of the PCs backstory. Or games like Traveller and Universe.

Which brings up a good point:  So Traveler has been doing it wrong all these years?

I think, after having watched the video, that what stuck me most was the dichotomy between an emergent story and a prescribed one, If five players have all written backstories that contain NPCS, enemies, hooks and themes on which to base the campaign the best a GM can do is blend those things together, with perhaps a little room for his/her own input. It doesn't leave a lot of room for any surprises IME and can get predictable, contrived and bland.

Add a little chaos to the mix and roll your characters, roll their background and remember that less is more in some cases, because it leaves more to be discovered about your PC. Imagine the face of the player of Luke Skywalker finding out that his PC is the son of Vader, rather than writing it in a three page backstory and waiting for it to turn up.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046534Which brings up a good point:  So Traveler has been doing it wrong all these years?

No, because Traveller, like other randomly rolled life-paths are an emergent story. Your PC is "the Belter who Lived" and in CT that fkn means something. Or "crikey I'm the heir to a star-system, well fugg me" cos you rolled that, and not wrote it up like a kid writing a list to Santa and hopiing Dungeon Master Clause will green light it.

Oh and there is no badwrongfun, just as there is no goodrightfun. And that means backstories are not part of goodrightfun.

Players want to be GMs nowadays. Just check out Fate's "your tropes are your stats" design; or the pretzels EX3 twists itself into in the name of "preserving character agency".

"I wrote the backstory so I'm the GM for this character, which is mine and only does what I want"

The worst PCs are always GMPCs. That's every character to these people.

There are good reasons we draw lines in the sand between our hobby and whatever the hell these story-circle games are doing. It's not territorial pissing or gatekeeping: it's a matter of definition. I've lost count of the number of times "Well let's not play semantic games, we're all in the same hobby friends!" has become "Well ALL RPGs are about  TELLING a STORY and you're not TELLING A STORY well when you do things YOUR way...".

No, asshole, they're not stories; they don't adhere to act structure, they don't have to follow a hero's journey, they don't have the same pacing or characterization or anything like that. Good roleplaying games resist the structure we use to tell good stories because they're something different than a pure narrative. They're different then your garbage storygames. "Hard to precisely define" does not mean "whatever your heart wants it to be!" and it doesn't give you license to declare what I'm doing in my hobby, doubly so since you clearly don't comprehend it.

(This is the rhetorical "you", Pundit clearly understands how this shit works)

...

To the actual topic: There needs to be some connect between the player's character as a game piece and avatar and their existence in the setting. Yes, this is true. Backstories are a method for establishing this link.

But, and this is important, nobody is going to read your fiction. No frustrated novelists, no "main characters". You need to take good writing advice and kill your darlings. (Hell, I've done it for somebody; they handed me a novella of a backstory with a character and I accepted it, flipped through the fiction, then matter-of-factly told them that this character lived and died well in a more heroic age. They rolled their 3d6 in order, just like everybody else, and made one of his descendants as their PC. The game was much better for it)

A backstory needs to be brief, and like stats, best delivered by an agency outside of pure player choice.

"Fighter eh? Well roll on the background chart. Military veteran? Cool, that means you get to roll on the Spoils of War chart and maybe get a magic sword..." That sort of thing.

If you're opposed to the "gamey" nature of that (I pity you) and you just MUST weave them in to the setting yourself, there's a broadly acceptable and broadly idiotic way of starting that talk:

ACCEPTABLE: "What can my guy be" is acceptable to me; I can give the player a few options ("Well you might be a noble from house Manticore, or maybe you're a serf who got drafted and carved a little name for yourself in the Elf war...") and then off we go. It's only fair my stuff is brief too; I hold myself to that frustrated novelist threshold of "Don't bore them, get to the fucking dungeon"; if I have more than 30 seconds of backstory I just cut it. Bullet points man, bullet points.

YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE: "YOU tell ME what your character's backstory is!" is inviting trouble. They don't fucking know what's acceptable, or even what options exist. That's like training a spotlight on them and daring them to guess the plot of your shitty novel on stage. It's like that movie WarGames; the only winning move is to flip off the GM and find a better use for your evening.

Quote from: Azraele;1046554Players want to be GMs nowadays.

No, no they don't.

If the GM is doing a game with character backstories correctly (IMHO), then the GM is working with the Players as an Editor and not letting them run amok with the concept. Yes, a big part of a GM's job is cat-herding.

Quote from: jeff37923;1046561If the GM is doing a game with character backstories correctly (IMHO), then the GM is working with the Players as an Editor and not letting them run amok with the concept. Yes, a big part of a GM's job is cat-herding.

Yeap, and communication is key at all times.

Quote from: Herne's Son;1046519For a long time, I tried to let my players run rampant with backstories. I seriously would get things of 25+ pages. Then after three or four campaigns ground to a halt because I couldn't tie all the threads together, I told my players I wouldn't accept backstories longer than 100 words. That was still a pain in the ass.

The last campaign I ran, I told the players essentially that "your backstory is your race and class. Give me -one- reason why you're adventuring." and we ran with it. Best campaign I ever ran (lasted 4 years before life intervened and we had to put it on hold).

This certainly fits my experience. Randomly rolled lifepath systems can work ok, but the best default is definitely 'no backstory'. Which is to say, nothing written down by the player prior to starting play. The GM can certainly set start conditions - "You are all members of House Martigan" or "You are all wandering adventurers", and it's fine to discuss ideas - "Can I be an exiled member of House Martigan?" - but I've grown sceptical of even single-paragraph backstories; multi-pagers tend to be disastrous.

Quote from: S'mon;1046565This certainly fits my experience. Randomly rolled lifepath systems can work ok, but the best default is definitely 'no backstory'. Which is to say, nothing written down by the player prior to starting play. The GM can certainly set start conditions - "You are all members of House Martigan" or "You are all wandering adventurers", and it's fine to discuss ideas - "Can I be an exiled member of House Martigan?" - but I've grown sceptical of even single-paragraph backstories; multi-pagers tend to be disastrous.

So you want monopoly pieces?  Single dimensional 'characters' that only have one thing in mind:  LOOT!  It's a valid play style, especially given how some of the old timers talk about 'the old days'.  Not my thing, but I have no say in anyone else's fun but my own.

Then again, that's how I play most Diablo style Action RPGs on my PC.  So who am I to talk?

Quote from: Herne's Son;1046519For a long time, I tried to let my players run rampant with backstories. I seriously would get things of 25+ pages. Then after three or four campaigns ground to a halt because I couldn't tie all the threads together, I told my players I wouldn't accept backstories longer than 100 words. That was still a pain in the ass.

The last campaign I ran, I told the players essentially that "your backstory is your race and class. Give me -one- reason why you're adventuring." and we ran with it. Best campaign I ever ran (lasted 4 years before life intervened and we had to put it on hold).

You got it in one.

Also, I get the feeling certain people are commenting here without having actually watched the video.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1046576Also, I get the feeling certain people are commenting here without having actually watched the video.

I totally watched it. I'm just a bad writer.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1046576Also, I get the feeling certain people are commenting here without having actually watched the video.

Were your cats in it?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1046576Also, I get the feeling certain people are commenting here without having actually watched the video.

Probably got scared a inute and a half in when they saw your big ass pipe.

I forbid them entirely. They're irrelevant. Your man is there; deal with it. Why he's there is irrelevant and doesn't mean shit once the campaign is underway.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1046460Seconded. This ain't improv class, guys. "Yes, and" is irrelevant.

To use hipster speak: "For your world to remain en flique you, the GM, must be able to curate contributions according to your desired primary lens, lest the audience is disconnected from the material's resonance... plus 'paradigm' for the triple word score."

Quote from: Antiquation!;1046466:eek:

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1046469:mad::mad::mad:

Yes, I mad doggone it, even parody newspeak makes me fume.

"Oh stewardess! I speak jive..."

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046464Bullshit.  If players want to give me things to use against them, the less work it is for me and added bonus of players knowing they added a little something to the game, which invariably makes them happy.  And if your players are happy, they play along with you, than against you.  (and don't start on 'coddling' players, that's boring.  Give them a challenge, but don't TPK them because you feel the need to swing the e-peen around.)

OK boo-boo, you showed that mean strawman the excluded middle.

See, there's a difference between the presumption of "must use PC background content" vs. "when to say 'no,'" vs. "always say 'no' to PC background content." It's pretty easy: always v. judicious v. never. They operate in different spheres.

And 'to curate' means to be selective, such as knowing 'when to say no'. This is also known as part of the process of editing, which is crucial for managing competing desires into a functioning coherency. It is about managing people, power, and expectations so things don't rapidly fall apart.

This is an 'adulting' goodrightfun thing.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046464If this is 'Doing it wrong' (But, but, but I thought we didn't do that here...) then fuck you, and I'll keep having my 'BadWrongFun'.

So... you are committed to using *everything* your players dream up for their PC without editorial control? Sounds like a strange abdication of Master of Ceremonies responsibilities, being a doormat people pleaser at your table for the sake of 'showing those grognards' online. But if that's the hill you want your campaigns to die on... :rolleyes:

Using judgment seems like a better use of one's time.