Roedd |
dave.gillam wrote:I still havent see a reason why, aside from the fact that it makes you the DM unhappy, I should bother making up a background for Tanky McMeatshild, who's sole purpose for existence is releasing the frustrations that I cant act out in the real world without going to prison.
Im here to play a game: kill some orcs; loot, booze, and wench like Im Charlie Sheen; Do all the things that are impossible in reality.
Why do I want to write a short story? Thats too close to work. If I was gonna bother, I'd do it right, and then send it to a publisher for bank.
If all you want to do is booze-up and kill orcs, play a miniatures game, where role-playing is left out. You aren't the center of the group, and like it or not, your decisions affect the other players. So if you only want to throw dice and keep your character as two dimensional as possible, you take away from the fantasy the other players are trying to create.
CE Chef |
Well, my story I'll relate is this; My little bro used to always play a dwarven barbarian. They would come and go, always the same. Until one day, he made Banglor, the Dwarven FIGHTER. All of a sudden, this character had a backstory, and developed a real personality. I was happy that he was finally getting into RPing, and not just power gaming. The problem now? That campaign has ended, and now EVERY character he rolls up is Banglor... Oh well. =(
Rothschild the Unforgiving |
I have a guy who is playing a paladin who is fairly new to RPG's so we/i dont harass him to badly but he doesnt rp at all really. nor does he know his character well. he's a 9th level paladin who is a under feated fighter who can lay on hands and smite........ and isnt that creative when it comes to combat or rp'ing. kind of looks at the whole thing as go hear and do this then we get xp's
loaba |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For some players, the game is more about building a character's numbers, and then interacting with the real people at the table. That's not wrong, though it's probably not the "right way" for many of you here.
If this kind of player is your friend, and you value your time with him/her, then you'd do well to overlook it. That's my opinion anyway, your mileage may vary...
Sleep-Walker |
So I run a fairly large LARP and I try to link players to the story. In order to do this I get characters to fill out the following.
· How many members of your character’s family still live?
· What relationship does your character have with his family?
· What scares your character the most?
· What is your character’s idea of the perfect lover?
· What is your character’s idea of a really fun time?
· Is your character religious or superstitious?
· What’s your character’s greatest regret?
· What accomplishment gives your character the most pride?
· What are your character’s goals?
· How old is your character?
· What kind of personality does your character have?
· Was there anything unique about your character’s childhood?
· Where does your character live? Where does he call home? Where does he sleep? Where does he keep his treasures?
· What does your character consider to be his biggest flaw?
· Do you consider your character to be a combat character, a caster, a thinking character or a social character?
When I am running tabletop games for unimaginative players I give them the same questionnaire.
loaba |
said a bunch of stuff about LARP
Aren't LARPers just a bit different from Table Top RPGers? I mean, you go into a LARP game, active imagination and getting into the character are just part and parcel of the experience. I mean, I'm guessing here (never LARP'd, don't plan to start), but I think I'm right.
The not-so-creative Table Topper probably does just fine once the minis come out and everyone goes to General Quarters.
Caineach |
Sleep-Walker wrote:said a bunch of stuff about LARPAren't LARPers just a bit different from Table Top RPGers? I mean, you go into a LARP game, active imagination and getting into the character are just part and parcel of the experience. I mean, I'm guessing here (never LARP'd, don't plan to start), but I think I'm right.
The not-so-creative Table Topper probably does just fine once the minis come out and everyone goes to General Quarters.
Depends on the LARP. Some of the exact same problems exist. Players tend to deliniate along type of game though. I know of some boffer larps that are all about hitting eachother with sticks, and any character history/backstory/personality is just baggage to the players. I don't like those games, but have plenty of friends who do. Other games are entirely about the plots and what people are doing. Some are about puzzle solving to do a task. Others are about getting into character and exploring the character.
In the end, there are lots of different types of larps for different types of players.
loaba |
Hama wrote:Well, then start harassing him to start rping...or you will be annoyed by him for a very very long time. People don't notice when they are doing something wrong, unless you point it out for them.yea. we've been on him lately to start rp'ing
You've been harassing him, because by not RPing (to your standards) he's [playing Pathfinder RPG] wrong?
Hama |
Pathfinder is a role playing game, not a number crunching tactical miniatures game...if you want that, play 4th edition (Don't attack me, i know it's perfectly possible to play 4th edition and roleplay, just that the rules i read remind me of tactical miniatures games, not rpgs)
If a player doesn't roleplay, he kills the group's feel of the game. How would you feel if you were totally in character talking to the big bad and getting this really cool moviesque feel, when suddenly, derrick the fighter (his only description) says something on the basis of TLDR and kills the bbeg because he was bored with your talking? Tell me you wouldnt be annoyed...
For some players, the game is more about building a character's numbers, and then interacting with the real people at the table. That's not wrong, though it's probably not the "right way" for many of you here.
That's not enough in most games...if it is a smack the door down kill the mooks get the gold and wenches, sure, but if it's a political game, that will kill all the fun...
UltimaGabe |
I had a player once who demanded, on many occasions, for me to let him play a vampire. I was trying to run a 1st-level campaign that was 3.5 Core Only, but he would complain that "all of the core races are too boring". (Keep in mind, he had never actually played in a D&D campaign before.) I explained to him every time why it would be unbalanced for him to play a vampire in a 1st-level campaign, and I tried my best to explain the concept of "re-skinning"- that is, make yourself a human, or dwarf, or whatever race you want, with all of the game mechanics of the chosen race, but as far as the campaign is concerned, you're a vampire (with none of the mechanical advantages or disadvantages beyond anything you roleplay). But no, he wanted nothing to do with it. In the end, after pestering me over and over, I finally caved (Ever-so-slightly) by allowing him to play an Eberron Changeling Monk (after he barraged me with all sorts of other unbalanced and demon-related ideas, such as playing a Fey'Ri), with the flavor behind it being that he was part demon, and thus was a grey-skinned creature that could change his form at will. So we finally started the campaign, and you know how many times over the first two adventures (that is, the entire span of the campaign) he used his shape changing ability, his stunning fist ability, or anything beyond a normal attack? Zero. You know how many times he did anything noteworthy in a roleplaying encounter? Zero. You know who without a doubt ended up being the most interesting character in the group? The human druid. She roleplayed her character as being a filthy woodsman who had a filthy disobedient dog who would try to eat goblins and often ran off into the wilderness between encounters, only to return just in time. But the Changeling player didn't see the irony at all.
Hama |
They never do. People can't see that they are behaving as idiots unless you show them a video recording of themselves behaving as idiots. So, unless you taped the session, there is no chance in hell that he will see the irony in that. And probably never will. That is the horror of noncreative players...they kill the game and the feel of immersion.
dave.gillam |
If all you want to do is booze-up and kill orcs, play a miniatures game, where role-playing is left out. You aren't the center of the group, and like it or not, your decisions affect the other players. So if you only want to throw dice and keep your character as two dimensional as possible, you take away from the fantasy the other players are trying to create.
First, there's no wrong way to play.
Second, if all I do is pay just enough attention to know when to throw the bones and kill some orcs, its more time for you to RP whatever you want. You want to devote 3 hours of gametime to shopping for purple sating doublets? peachy; wake me up when its orc killin time.That being said, there are times when I have time and info and can put together a better character.
Just dont expect masterpieces all the time. Sometimes I want to be Shakespeare; sometimes your gonna get "the Tank" and I might even get around to naming him by the third adventure
Westphalian_Musketeer |
I have players that would tell me, "Just roll something up for me." The really expected me to do almost everything except roll for them. The there is my roomate who has played the same ranger, not matter what he has named it, since 1984. He rolls up new characters, but they always end up being the same character.
Are you sure that isn't a matter that he's waiting for "That One Story Arc"? Like he's waiting for a GM to cook up a situation that if he succeeds in, he can finally go "I have done what I want with this character."
It may have to be a high level personal quest, or maybe he's looking for something more along the lines of doing something just plain awesome in a main quest. The wonderful thing with Pathfinder and other similar systems is that you can create all sorts of situations.
Maybe he's just waiting until he has a character that can say: "So I jumped off the tower onto the dragon, climbed up to his head, hacked away until he was dead, then jumped off of him onto another dragon where I killed the orcs riding it before jumping off and managing to reach the gate to help my party secure the city against the ogres that had smashed down the gate."
Thomas Long 175 |
I think it might just be as much the character being played as the person playing it.
I don't mean to say that these characters are unfun. I just recently had to give a backstory to my barbarian. I love playing him but honestly I just wasn't passionate about him in that way. It was all but impossible to make a backstory much less to give him a voice and personality.
johnlocke90 |
KenderKin wrote:Hey what is wrong with the amnesia angle?
The Borne triology atarts out that way. Why not my PC Bason Jorne....
Or ManBat have you seen my cool adventurers sash and all the great gadgets I keep in it, and check out my cape and black leather armor....
did you say grappling arrow?Archer that is green archer
you can call me "the green bee"
I have a character on a homebrew horror campaign who is an inquisitor expelled from his holy order, his name is Ben Velzing.
On a side note, I once sat at a table with three total strangers and the characters they rolled wore:
A half fiend child necromancer
A tiefling rogue noble born who's famile had made a pack with a demon that she was supposed to marry on her 16th birthday (and she could hardly wait for it)
And a serial-killer drow elf warlock who worshipped Tharizdun.
I never came back for the second session. And boy i was so sorry for that GM.
That sounds like a hilarious party to play with. You just have to have the right mindset for the game.
johnlocke90 |
Just thought of a player I once had. He could not wrap his head around the concept of RPG's. So after explaining it to him for over an hour he finally got it or so I thought.
He had no background because he took something I told him while explaining RPG's to him and ran. I said to him that he could virtually be anything and do anything he wanted. So he decided he would be a rock.
Not some sort of rock monster, but a normal run of the mill everyday rock. I explained that he could not do this because it severely limits him and besides there’s no stats for a rock other than the damage it would do if thrown. He didn’t want to hear it and was very stubborn about it. So I said fine! Then gave him a proposition. If he could tell me how he came to be an intelligent rock I would allow it. So he came up with a generic I was turned into a rock by a wizard story. I asked why did this wizard do this and he replied because I slept with his daughter. Not wanting to prolong the agony I said fine your a rock. Lets start.
I go on and set the scene. I get to the point where I ask the players what do they do. The rock player says I do nothing because I'm a rock. sighs all around. I get to one of my players who response to me is I pick up the rock and skip him across the water. The rock player angrily shouts why did you do that? The other players just says calmly Well you see my character lost his dad at a young age. You see, skipping rocks across the water is the only memory he has of him and you looked like a good skipping rock.
IT sounds like this guy didn't want to play and only came because you forced him to.
137ben |
For me, it is physical descriptions and names. I can come up with a backstory and personality pretty easily, but I can't come up with a physical appearance at all.
For NPC names, I'll use random generators between sessions (actually I will usually mix two or three generated names, to lower the chance of unintentional duplicates). Then I'll generate some "spare" names for when the players decide to talk to Unimportant NPC #23235 who becomes unexpectedly important because the PCs drag them in.
For a physical description of NPCs, I'll usually just avoid bringing it up if I can....
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On the other extreme from what has been brought up in this (newly revived) thread, I've met players who are creative, but have been 'trained' by previous DMs to avoid making any sort of backstory. There are apparently DMs out there who will look for any NPCs in a backstory that the PC cares about as an invitation to say
Ha! <family member> has been kidnapped, brought to another plane, and there's nothing you can do to save them! Also it has nothing to do with the plot, I just wanted to annoy your character!
Eventually that DM's players start making characters with backgrounds involve every family member/friend/home town being destroyed in a generic catastrophe.
And I had one player who had experienced a DM who took things one step further: that player made an orphan for whom everyone they cared about was already dead to avoid random kidnapping. Then, the DM eventually revealed that the PC's family had actually survived, but were all evil now and are out for revenge against the PC for...something the DM never specified.The player was soured off of character backstories for years afterwards
Deadalready |
I have a guy who's currently in our group who introduced his character as Seymore Butts, we asked him multiple times if that was seriously his character name and he reaffirmed it.
Because we use Lego pieces with character names to track initiative, I created a label with "Seemore" on it the next week and he got really angry because apparently his character's name was actually something else.
If you want a name to be remembered by, don't introduce yourself as something else.
Third Mind |
I know this thread is 3 years old, but I find the topic interesting so I figure I'll put in my few cents.
I personally feel I'm fairly good at being creative when it comes to background, names and to a point descriptions. More often than not they come relatively easy to me. My problem comes when I role play PCs that don't have a personality hook. That is, without a unique or specific personality built into the character to begin with, I usually tend to have little direction with how to role play the character and thus end up playing him sort of stale. At least until I find something in game that he can use to motivate a more noticeable personality.
Example: I forgot to throw in a specific personality hook to play off of for my current wizard in kingmaker and until we got around to figuring out which position we'd take (king, warden, spymaster etc...) I played him rather normally. At least to me. It wasn't until I figured out that he'd be the kingdom's spymaster (luckily a bit ahead of time before he actually became it) that I found something I could use to bring out more personality. I guess it's just something to keep in mind when building a character to RP.
Raymond Lambert |
I find it really odd that just a little thing can lead into a bunch of background and character acting. My problem is that often, I can come up with something for organized play campaigns where we frankly don't have time for such and half the people you never play with often enough for them to pick up on it. Then when playing in a home group with extra time available since we can pick up where we left off last time, then I can.almost never come up with anything. I really play the game for war gaming though.
I wish people.would realise that despite role playing being on the cover of the book that does nit stop the game from being a tactical miniatures game, at.least not for the people who want to play it tbat way.
AbsolutGrndZer0 |
Actually, I can use myself as an example. Now, first of all I've been playing RPGs for about 20 years (I am 36, started when I was around 16).
At first I was pretty creative. Then in early 2000's when I was playing a lot of White Wolf (Werewolf the Apocalypse and Mage the Ascension) I made a few characters, two of which dominate all the rest so I'll speak of them just to explain my "non-creative player" story
One was a werewolf (Lupus Glass Walker Ragabash) who was even as a lupus (born as a wolf and learned she was in fact a werewolf around two years old, if you don't know the game) fascinated by humans and their technology so she took to computer hacking like a duck to water. Her name was Ashley "Moongrrl" Jacobs (werewolves in that game take usually Native American style nicknames, but the tech-savvy Glass Walkers go for more modern names that do well as hacker handles)
The other was a mage (Order of Hermes House Flambeau, which again if you don't know the game, the Order of Hermes the best "quick" explanation is think D&D/Pathfinder sorcerers, in her case with a fire-related bloodline) who was very outgoing, cheerleader type but also very in with the geek crowd (after all, she was a frickin' D&D sorcerer in her real life, which even if they didn't know she could relate to them.) Her name was Jennica Sarah Carlson-Fortune bani Flambeau, Ninth Degree Magister Mundi, and a long line of other titles I could but will not type out (The Order of Hermes is like that, they love to pile on crazy title and such that usually make sense only to fellow Hermetics...)
Ever since then, I've made other characters but... in every game I always want to play them, and in a lot of games I do.
I know my friends get sick of them, but it's so hard to leave them behind... I don't know why. Most of my other characters that I can't leave behind though are friends, family, or enemies of them.
I think I am getting better, but sometimes it feels like I take one step forward with a new character, but then I go two steps back and toss Ashley and Jennica into a game.
Desidero |
I wish my players weren't so damn "creative" I think that they feel they are somehow being "bad roleplayers" if they don't write grand two page back stories and make small talk with every cabbage vendor they see. Honestly, I don't think that s&+! is worth the time. I don't care what grand history your character had, I care what they do now.
In fact I think this whole back story phenomena is really telling of a greater problem in the roleplaying culture. There is this obsession with who the characters are, rather than what they actually accomplish. Yeah you're a half fiend half orc half angel darkfondle dragonlicker prestige class alternate archetype but what have you done? I'm reminded a lot of Skyrim which really terribly feeds this need to be special and unique. In Skyrim it's a trivial issue to become a vampire werewolf archmage inner circle companion head of the thieves guild. All at once. On top of being the amazing special unique chosen cool awesome dragonborn.
This is getting super off topic but I think this is due to this culture created by modern marketing wherein everyone is brought up believing they are special and unique without ever having to accomplish anything to earn it.
Honestly I'm fine with people coming up with simple characters like "I'm a farmer who got bored with farming" or "I'm a hunter who's looking to make a little more money off his skills" or "I'm a northern barbarian looking to see the world". Then I also won't feel so bad if they die to a kobold 30 minutes later.
Corvino |
I pretty much agree with you Desidero. It seems some people focus on *what* their special snowflake character is, rather than *who* they are. If the character is a half-orc, half-dragon then evidently their parents were interesting, no evidence of that from the character yet. An unusual race/class combination is no substitue for the actual character being original.
The examples you give as "simple characters" aren't necessarily simple though. Just because they're not the last scion of noble dynasty with hereditary magic and a family sword doesn't mean they are any less multilayered or nuanced as people. Sometimes I can see that to keep fluff and crunch in alignment things need to be a bit special - Fey Foundlings and so on, but in general why is a human fighter inherently less interesting than a Drow-Blooded Half-Elf Sorcerer/Evangelist?
Alex Smith 908 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it has less to do with any cultural change and more to do with a specific mindset. That being the mindset wherein one self-identifies and defines themselve by labels. This is itself dangerous given how it often time leads to isolationist or tribalist mindset, but it has another less important but more directly irritating problem. It leads to the idea that more labels equals more depth because all that one defines themselves by are labels. Hence the desire behind a lot of fanfiction OCs and similarly styled characters.
Velix Okah |
I had a really gullible GM running a Kirthfinder game once, and one of our players wrote a completely nonsensical, truly amazing backstory. It was 26 pages long, and he alternated between different styles of writing throughout, switching from sonnet poetry to Dicken's long sentence structure to quotes from the Quaran.
He kept on rewriting the backstory too, to fit the situations he was in (he happened to be a former pilot for an airship for 10 years, as soon as we found one).
I never found out until I read it after our GM moved away. Then he told me his whole story, and I thought it was brilliant. Said he got his inspiration from reading old Call of Cthulu stories at 4 in the morning.
StrangePackage |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wish my players weren't so damn "creative" I think that they feel they are somehow being "bad roleplayers" if they don't write grand two page back stories and make small talk with every cabbage vendor they see. Honestly, I don't think that s@@& is worth the time. I don't care what grand history your character had, I care what they do now.
In fact I think this whole back story phenomena is really telling of a greater problem in the roleplaying culture. There is this obsession with who the characters are, rather than what they actually accomplish. Yeah you're a half fiend half orc half angel darkfondle dragonlicker prestige class alternate archetype but what have you done? I'm reminded a lot of Skyrim which really terribly feeds this need to be special and unique. In Skyrim it's a trivial issue to become a vampire werewolf archmage inner circle companion head of the thieves guild. All at once. On top of being the amazing special unique chosen cool awesome dragonborn.
This is getting super off topic but I think this is due to this culture created by modern marketing wherein everyone is brought up believing they are special and unique without ever having to accomplish anything to earn it.
Honestly I'm fine with people coming up with simple characters like "I'm a farmer who got bored with farming" or "I'm a hunter who's looking to make a little more money off his skills" or "I'm a northern barbarian looking to see the world". Then I also won't feel so bad if they die to a kobold 30 minutes later.
Two whole pages!?
However do you find the time to read all that?
chaoseffect |
I'm actually quite fond of coming up with low level characters with epic back stories; they "used to be somebody" but are now passed their prime, alone, penniless, drunk, etc. Montages of said character pushing it to the limit are assumed to take place as he regains his former levels.
Corvino |
I like the idea that a character can be summarised in two sentences, but has enough backstory to fill a page or two if you put your mind to it. If you can't summarise the vital stuff it in two sentences, it's too complex. If you can't fill a single side of paper with where they're from, what they're like and why they're an adventurer then it's too simple.
Mark Hoover |
I have a player who makes no backstory. I flat out tell my players to make one and send out a questionaire; he just doesn't do it. I've tried several motivators: extra traits, bonus xp, etc. No amount of bribes have worked.
This carries through to his roleplaying too. He rarely speaks in character and basically makes a roll for everything. He doesn't participate in many RP scenes.
Once in a while though there's some little flicker of RP that comes out. However I get the feeling like he's doing it more to not be bored rather than an actual desire to RP.
His current character is a NG male dwarf cleric (Saranrae)1 (oh yeah, and he always plays dwarves). I got one piece of backstory: the hall his PC was a part of was destroyed by kobolds in search of mithril. However that left me with no contacts, no really meaty plot hooks OTHER THAN the kobolds which were already an understood part of the game.
Rather than penalizing him though, I've played into it. I only write up fight scenes or dungeon crawls. My game is a homebrew and has become a massive sandbox with a megadungeon in the middle. This player is having fun with the hack n slash aspect of the game while the other players have begun creating their own RP scenes to fill the void.
Its still frustrating though. It's frustrating when, in one of these scenes where my other players have gone out of their way to talk to an inkeeper I look over and see this player on his iPad or leafing through books, but I've learned to take the good with the bad these days.
Justin Sane |
Kerney |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think it has less to do with any cultural change and more to do with a specific mindset. That being the mindset wherein one self-identifies and defines themselve by labels. This is itself dangerous given how it often time leads to isolationist or tribalist mindset, but it has another less important but more directly irritating problem. It leads to the idea that more labels equals more depth because all that one defines themselves by are labels. Hence the desire behind a lot of fanfiction OCs and similarly styled characters.
Agreed. There's a huge difference between writing two pages on writing growing up half elf on a farm,seeing your human parent and friends age faster than you, feeling isolated as a result and having a love of whatever that fills the void and which motivates you to adventure that can fill two pages versus two pages on being a half dragon/half drow lost princess with cool sun glasses and a friendly cute vampire poodle.
thaX |
My first PF Character is a gnome with a really long name
You see, he is not named as a typical gnome, gaining his name as he goes through lifes adventure, but has had his since birth. The reason is because of his Grandfather... or what may turn out to be his Grandson?
See, Senior was/is/will be a Time Mage, but he wasn't/isn't/will not be very good at it. About ten years ago, in our reletive understanding of the time stream, there was this... incident. It envolved an errant paperclip. The last word spoken (we think) by Senior was "No, no, wait.. don't touch tha..."
Third sees Senior every once and a while, he tries to figure out when he is.
StrangePackage |
I wish my players weren't so damn "creative" I think that they feel they are somehow being "bad roleplayers" if they don't write grand two page back stories and make small talk with every cabbage vendor they see. Honestly, I don't think that s@+~ is worth the time. I don't care what grand history your character had, I care what they do now.
In fact I think this whole back story phenomena is really telling of a greater problem in the roleplaying culture. There is this obsession with who the characters are, rather than what they actually accomplish. Yeah you're a half fiend half orc half angel darkfondle dragonlicker prestige class alternate archetype but what have you done? I'm reminded a lot of Skyrim which really terribly feeds this need to be special and unique. In Skyrim it's a trivial issue to become a vampire werewolf archmage inner circle companion head of the thieves guild. All at once. On top of being the amazing special unique chosen cool awesome dragonborn.
This is getting super off topic but I think this is due to this culture created by modern marketing wherein everyone is brought up believing they are special and unique without ever having to accomplish anything to earn it.
Honestly I'm fine with people coming up with simple characters like "I'm a farmer who got bored with farming" or "I'm a hunter who's looking to make a little more money off his skills" or "I'm a northern barbarian looking to see the world". Then I also won't feel so bad if they die to a kobold 30 minutes later.
Imma have to pick on this a pit, because... well, I disagree with it. All the stuff you mention in Skyrim, apart from being DragonBorn, are actually things that your character must achieve through participation in quests. It somewhat undercuts your entire argument to suggest that people want to be special snowflakes without doing anything when your prime example of this is a game where to accomplish that level of specialness required dozens of hours of gameplay. If anything, I think this would be endemic of power-gaming, as opposed to roleplaying.
Your larger point, that backstory is a problem in roleplaying culture, strikes me as rather counter-intuitive. Your character performs deeds, but absent a backstory to provide some context into which to put those deeds, they have absolutely no significance to themselves, other than a mechanical accumulation of XP.
The dichotomy that "It's not who you are, but what you do, that defines you" is a false dilemma. I went to college, to law school, and became a lawyer, but is that all I am? Is my existence defined solely by what I do? Who am I am provides context to what I do, and what I do provides a means to express who I am. They are not mutually exclusive, they are integrally connected. This is absolutely true of backstory and RP.
That whole part about the culture, though, makes you come across as an angry old man standing on his porch wanting all these damned entitled kids to get off his D&D.
Mark Hoover |
@Des and SP: moderation here is the key. I ask my players to create a backstory, not a LIFE story. Their backstory might be as simple as "I was born the son of a laborer and when I was 6 I got lost in a crowd. A mysterious stranger found me and told me I'd be the chosen savior. I grew up my father's son until at age 30 I felt this strange urge to wander." Then as the game unfolds the laborer's son becomes the chosen of Aroden and his martyrdom is heralded as a new birth of religion.
If however I get one of 2 extremes (a couple sentences of generic fluff or a 60 page short story) I will basically ignore it.