Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046560No, no they don't.

More and more do though due to the antics of the Forge and other storytelling groups trying to co-opt just about every freaking thing. And there are more than a few RPGs out there specifically designed to either shackle the DM or make everyone a mini-DM. For muh storeyh!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046562Yeap, and communication is key at all times.

Very much so. I usually ask for the players to provide a sentence or two on who their character was or is within the setting. So I have a basic idea ahead of time where they are coming from. Only time I've had someone get really out of hand was in a big Rifts session.

When I was DMing Gamma World some of the backgrounds were as Id asked everyone to look ofer the setting background and then present a brief character background.
"Likes to collect old tech, has a walkman powered off his electrical mutation."
"Comes from a neighboring town and has some weapon training."
"Hunts. Good with a bow."
"plant monster. Doesnt quite understand mammals. Conceals stuff in its foliage."
"Alien from another dimension sent by elders to explore the land."
and so on. Some were about a paragraph long. Others were about a sentence.

Why not make up backstories on the fly to tie them into the current adventure? (Assuming GM and PC collaboration beforehand?) That is what television writers do all the time. If there are any inconsistencies, you can chalk it up to time travel or something.

Meanwhile we had that one player. Bob the Fighter. Bob the Fighter II. Bob the Samurai. When his character died, he'd pretty much just erase the name and write in a new one. And the heck with RP, roll the dice and move your mice. Those goblins aren't gonna murderhobo themselves.

Kill Bob and Kill Bob 2

with Katanas

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1046884Kill Bob and Kill Bob 2

with Katanas

I mean I have got the background story that was pages long. Most of them boil down to wagsty tweenage edgelord who secretly wants to be the villain. Yawn.

Sorry, my silly joke about the Bobs.

Back on topic: I think that "backstory" can easily become "foreshadowing" to the point that it becomes a laundry list for the GM and the other players too. Multiply that by five and you've got a whole heap of washing.

I mean there's nothing wrong with "her goal is to get revenge on Bargle and set up the keep New Haven". That's not badwrongfun by any means, but obviously, it might not gel with

PC number 2:"his goal is to reach Glantri and find out why he was destined to discover the secret of the Radiance as was prophesised"

and

PC number 3: "her goal is to return Rockhome to its former glory and rule wisely"

and

PC number 4:"his goal is to take his rightful inheritance as captain of the skyship Princess Ark that was stolen from his family long ago"

and

PC number 5: "his goal is to get unite the Merchant Guilds of Darokin and Minrothrad and establish a trade route across the sea to the Savage Coast"

I mean, that might be fun and all that, but you kinda written yourselves spoilers. Moreover, Colombus , Thorin, Raistlin and Prince Haldemar  might not make the best companions in one group.

Back story can end up being constipatory to the emergent story that has yet to be discovered.

I suggest keeping the PC's goals mid to short term at level one.

How about, your character always wanted to SEE a skyship? Maybe, just maybe, ride in one. And then see where things go from there.

Quote from: Omega;1046842More and more do though due to the antics of the Forge and other storytelling groups trying to co-opt just about every freaking thing. And there are more than a few RPGs out there specifically designed to either shackle the DM or make everyone a mini-DM. For muh storeyh!

Am I the only one who feels completely unthreatened by these guys? In the 1 1/2-2 decades this has been a thing, I have seen a grand total of... I'm not even sure if it has been one single person come into a group I've run or been in and make any demands that tried to shackle a DM or make everyone else into DMs. Even if they had, I'm sure the response would be somewhere between a flat "no" to a "if you want to make a background for your character, go ahead, but it isn't going to change the game world."

Now, most all of us post-initial-wave-of-gamers started as kids. And therefore we went through our teens gaming. And thus we have, at one point or another, done just about every foolhardy thing with RPGs possible. So I can't say, "I don't think this really exists in any real amount" because I've seen it. Lots of people have made super special background characters that fulfilled some internal need for uniqueness and wanted for that character special treatment... and then we turned 14. Out in the wild, as adults, I just don't see this come up and am surprised by how much hand-wringing it creates.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1046713Agree, and I think the main point was not to allow highly detailed backgrounds to overwhelm the game, not to exclude back stories entirely.

In Star Wars Luke's father had been killed in the past, and it develops into he was a Jedi killed by Vader (according to Obi Wan). In Empire it turns out Luke's father WAS Vader. Leaving gaps and vagueness in a background leaves room for the GM to create these kinds of developments.

It is like some want to play the game before it even starts.

This is really my only real argument against or reason to dislike backstory. I prefer things to arise organically from gameplay with just the bare bones of background. Not because background is inherently bad, but just to leave space for developments like these.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046569So 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.

You've made statements like this before. And it is one of the reasons why I feel you really want a cartoon boogeyman version of old-school gaming as a perpetual personal nemesis, rather than the one that really exists. And the thing is, this only benefits you helping re-convince you. Everyone of us who have played these games can think back, and realize that that wasn't what our games were like at all, and that isn't what went down, and the argument falls flat. So I am still unclear on why repeating this benefits you. It never moves the needle.

Characters from 'the old days' weren't one dimensional, they were simply forward looking -- their most exciting traits are those developed once the adventure begins. It makes sense in a game as lethal as early D&D and the like since you only know retroactively if a character is going to make it to the more survivable plateau. I am not going to say that it is a preferable system, only one of many valid ones. And every time you call it things like one dimensional or monopoly pieces, you hurt your own argument that it is you and your preferred playstyle that is being badmouthed.

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

Yes, and/or they're just going off on weird side-arguments as they usually do.

Pundit, I have to say that you come across to me as rather reasonable and having opinions much like my own in this and the other videos of yours I've chosen to watch, which is surprising to me given how often I get a different impression from some of your forum comments... I expect it's both the topics I'm choosing, and that you take the time in the videos to present a whole coherent and qualified presentation, whereas in the forum comments something else much more curt/snarky/exaggerated is often going on (as I do, too), as well as side-argument focus.

Anyway, I really appreciated this one.

I liked your point about how a campaign tends to become something more real in a unique way after a year or so of play.

It was at about a year of one PC having survived my first campaign that the player offered me some background, which was 2 pages or so listing 1-3 sentences about each of his relatives, where they lived, profession, etc. Up till then, the PC's written backstory was "from Bendwyn" and written personality description was like: "Friendly towards dwarves. Likes to build things. Likes hot food." (which I thought meant warm, not spicy) and a few similar sentences that were later declared wrong by the player. The player had been playing the PC as a person to everyone's satisfaction and amusement with no problem even with nothing written down about them, just by natural intuition & make-believe play powers - we did have many years of non-RPG make-believe play experience at that point.

Even then, the background he offered has some issues. I was concerned about the fairness of a player being able to specify relatives with social positions, wealth, skills, spells, etc., (as well as the player then knowing the stats and details of NPC relatives in more detail than the PC probably would) even though I think he was mainly trying to be fair, detailed and interesting. I had to invent/learn the skill of revising player-submitted content at that point. I think it works to review such things for appropriateness and fairness and what the PC would know, and then tell the player which parts (of the parts their PC would know) I'm revising (keeping them guessing as to why exactly so as not to reveal what conflicts their suggestions might have with things the player doesn't know about), and revising but not telling them about changes to things their PC wouldn't know about (so if they show up to take advantage of some details of an NPC they suggested, they may find out those details aren't actually accurate).


Re: cats

Quote from: RPGPundit;1046595Not this time. I didn't put them in on purpose before, they just came over. Anyways, if they were always in it, there wouldn't be the element of surprise.

Yes I find natural cat appearances (or not) adds to the immersion quality. Railroad cat videos are no good...

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

I'm not sure if you guys were talking about the video or a side-topic at this point, but Pundit does mention in the video that random background stories can be nice, and are sort of the opposite of what he's arguing against in the video.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1046494One of the reasons you get in game texts from games that require player input for world-building (whether before session zero like in Dresden Files Accelerated or Unknown Armies 3e) or during (PBTA games where you "ask questions") is that it reduces the work for GMs. I'm not 100% sure it really does that, because none of those games require the players to spend an hour detailing thing they just made up, so the work for using and integrating that newly made up element on the GM.

However, I do get the concern for gm workload. The amount of effort required to build a usable sandbox game seems prohibitive and require a very high level of GM skill.

I started at age 11 with zero experience and the two pages of notes and two maps included with TFT's In The Labyrinth. It did grow to more like 100 pages of maps and a chest-full of paper over the years, and there were some potential continuity issues and weirdness and later some retcons, but it was quite playable right off the bat. A bit like PCs with no backstory...

Quote from: Cave Bear;1046837What if you just gave all the PC's the same backstory?

Giving them at least partly the same backstory really helps them all have a reason to be around each other and/or be in a "group".

Quote from: Krimson;1046887I mean I have got the background story that was pages long. Most of them boil down to wagsty tweenage edgelord who secretly wants to be the villain. Yawn.

I tend to play with people who if/when they write a long background story, it's actually rather nice and they're even capable of playing it well.

I have had some awful and/or overdone backstories and character concepts submitted (which is part of why I and many GMs I know prepare setting-intro packets for their players that explain/limit where their characters can have come from). I have either rejected these outright, or edited/hacked/rewritten them to be something workable for the campaign. The times I haven't done that, it has tended to lead to issues.

I've also always played games with decent levels of actual danger, especially for inexperienced starting characters... (Whoops! Looks like you failed to dodge that battleaxe! I guess that 25-page backstory is a bit less relevant now..." ;-)

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1046898Am I the only one who feels completely unthreatened by these guys? In the 1 1/2-2 decades this has been a thing, I have seen a grand total of... I'm not even sure if it has been one single person come into a group I've run or been in and make any demands that tried to shackle a DM or make everyone else into DMs. Even if they had, I'm sure the response would be somewhere between a flat "no" to a "if you want to make a background for your character, go ahead, but it isn't going to change the game world."

They were never a thing.  I think I know of one person who doesn't frequent forums who picked a Forge game, and he's never run it.  Other than that, I don't think anyone who wasn't on a forum back in the day, actually did anything with it.  Hence why most people Roleplay, they PLAY.  They don't care about rewriting a setting mid-game, even when given the option to.  There's a reason D&D and it's ilk are still the most popular game of its type in the world.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1046898You've made statements like this before.

Yes, I have.  Because of stories of how fragile characters were, how players should NEVER get attached to their characters because they can die at ANY moment.  How a lot of adventures tested the player's ingenuity, where most of the stats don't generally mean anything beyond some mechanical bonus, like spell casting/resistance, system shock, XP Bonus in favoured class...  That doesn't foster attachment to any character, no real impetus to create anything other and a sheet of paper with number values on it.

Very similar to a playing piece in Chess or Checkers.  I just use Monopoly because it's the only one I remember easily off the top of my head.  And like I said, nothing wrong with that sort of game style.  But it also doesn't promote any investment, even if you get lucky and survive to level 2+ with said original character sheet.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1046898Characters from 'the old days' weren't one dimensional, they were simply forward looking -- their most exciting traits are those developed once the adventure begins. It makes sense in a game as lethal as early D&D and the like since you only know retroactively if a character is going to make it to the more survivable plateau. I am not going to say that it is a preferable system, only one of many valid ones. And every time you call it things like one dimensional or monopoly pieces, you hurt your own argument that it is you and your preferred playstyle that is being badmouthed.

You just validated my very argument.  Because very early D&D was very lethal, no one cared about their characters beyond what happened at the table.  Why bother with even a single sentence of a character's history when Bargle could be around the corner?  And let's not forget that this originally based off a War Game, with miniatures and terrain, and small bands of skirmishers with Hero units.  Again, playing pieces like Chess or Monopoly.  I probably should use Chess more, because like in Chess D&D characters all have specific 'moves' that only they can do (typically) like Combat, Magic, Healing and Traps.  At least since the 80's.

Again, it's not a bad way to play.  It's just not MY way.

I know this triggers CRKruger from some odd reason, but MY way was 'New School' back in the mid-80's, because my original two DMs were a pair of 12 year old girls (I was 10?  11?  I forget, it's been 30 years) and they were using D&D to re-enact 'stories' or more accurately the style of roleplay from the novels they liked, mostly what's been termed Romantic Fantasy from authors like Mercedes Lackey and Tanith Lee among many others.  So to ME (and this is a personal anecdote) what people are terming 'old school' isn't, and frankly, I think that all the play styles we have now have probably existed for a lot longer than the Old/New School war that this site sometimes seems to promote.

It's all D&D, play it as you want.  There's no BadWrongFun, no matter what some people want to promote.  If I'm railing at something, it's the stupid tribalistic division that some MUST have, that their game is superiour because it was around longer and they played it X way, thus making it even more superiour.

If you think I'm attacking a play style, I'm sorry, but I'm not.

Oh, as for not commenting on Pundit's mention of Traveler, I won't because I know what he's trying to go for, but the Lifepath system completely invalidates his argument.  Making the Video a waste of time.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046905Yes, I have.  Because of stories of how fragile characters were, how players should NEVER get attached to their characters because they can die at ANY moment.  How a lot of adventures tested the player's ingenuity, where most of the stats don't generally mean anything beyond some mechanical bonus, like spell casting/resistance, system shock, XP Bonus in favoured class...  That doesn't foster attachment to any character, no real impetus to create anything other and a sheet of paper with number values on it.

Very similar to a playing piece in Chess or Checkers.  I just use Monopoly because it's the only one I remember easily off the top of my head.  And like I said, nothing wrong with that sort of game style.  But it also doesn't promote any investment, even if you get lucky and survive to level 2+ with said original character sheet.



You just validated my very argument.  Because very early D&D was very lethal, no one cared about their characters beyond what happened at the table.  Why bother with even a single sentence of a character's history when Bargle could be around the corner?  And let's not forget that this originally based off a War Game, with miniatures and terrain, and small bands of skirmishers with Hero units.  Again, playing pieces like Chess or Monopoly.  I probably should use Chess more, because like in Chess D&D characters all have specific 'moves' that only they can do (typically) like Combat, Magic, Healing and Traps.  At least since the 80's.

Again, it's not a bad way to play.  It's just not MY way.

But this really isn't how it was, sure many PCs started the game off after materializing in the back corner of a smokey bar, but the back story developed as the game went along. If a PC died in the first session, yeah they were pretty insignificant just like the dozens of redshirts in Star Trek. If they survived for a bit they usually developed, as the player got a feel for the character, or the GM wanted to use something from their background (made up in the present) to provide a way to introduce the PCs to something important.

I want to use my Ranger bonus against Ogres, because my PC's family was killed by ogres.

Sir Cannonfodder, your father served in the Badger Wars with the Duke of Nowheresville. The Duke recognized your family name and is now asking for your help.

This is much how it works in fiction as well. Robert E Howard didn't provide a resume for Conan at the beginning of his writing, Conan's life story was revealed through the tales.


It doesn't matter how long you play Monopoly, or Chess I don't know anybody that starts to give the Thimble or a Bishop a life story.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1046905Oh, as for not commenting on Pundit's mention of Traveler, I won't because I know what he's trying to go for, but the Lifepath system completely invalidates his argument.  Making the Video a waste of time.

Pundit uses lifepath systems in the games he has written. Seems odd that he would argue against something he uses himself.

Lifepaths that players don't control are great and are THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF PLAYER-WRITTEN BACKSTORY.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1046927This is much how it works in fiction as well. Robert E Howard didn't provide a resume for Conan at the beginning of his writing, Conan's life story was revealed through the tales.

The first story The Phoenix On The Sword pretty much laid out his background, a Barbarian from the land of Cimmeria who took the crown of Aquillonia by force.

That's his backstory.  That's it.  But he has one.  And a GOOD writer has a backstory for their character before they start writing because it allows them to make choices based on a set 'rules'.  Conan is a killer because his society survives by killing, he was raised to be chivalrous (because it was the 1930's and women have always been respected) and he has a blunt honest because the hills of Cimmeria and his religion demand it.  All that inform his choices in all his adventures, his unwillingness to play the 'civilized' game, the inability to understand why civilization works the way it does.

Every character needs a back story, or else it's flat, one dimensional and boring.  Maybe the DM doesn't ask for them, but often, players will have a backstory in their heads.  And sometimes, no one ever hears of them, because said character died too quickly, or did something cooler and is remember more for that.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1046927Pundit uses lifepath systems in the games he has written. Seems odd that he would argue against something he uses himself.

Almost like he has an agenda to push...

Chris, mate. You're all over the shop. I don't know where you're comimg from.

D&D 5e gives us Backgrounds. Mostly they exist for a pair of skills and a few other fairly minor mechanical bits, but they also guide the choice of a few characteristics (two personality traits, one ideal, one bond, and one flaw). This seems like just about the right depth to start a PC to me.