Never forced backstories or demanded them, but a backstory is such a worthy tool to help create an adventure campaign that evolves around players as much as they themselves must adapt to an ever shifting storyline.
I like when backstories leave room for mystery.
You tell me you haven't seen your baby sister since you were ten? And that your father published the only penny dreadful within five hundreds miles but was lost to a fire? What? Searching through the ashes you discovered and pocketed a tiny blue opal that glows before every rain just before hopping on a wagon to find your fortune in the big city? By the time you reach twelth level... loogout! All will be revealed.
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I require a one to two page backstory from my players.What do you do when someone writes a backstory that's completely incompatible with the world/campaign/another character's backstory?
For the first two, i sit down with the player and fix the backstory to fit the setting.
I have gotten into a habit of providing a condensed campaign setting to my players...a 5-10 page document with a brief history, names of countries and some common knowledge. It goes a long way of reducing backstory incompatibility with the setting.As for another character's backstory, i sit the two players down, and tell them in which ways i see their characters clashing in the future. Then i ask them if they can act as adults, and if they can be a team regardless of those backstories. If the answer is no, a rewrite is required.
I have no tolerance for inter-party conflict that spills over into combat. As long as it is harmless pranks, I'm fine with it.
I require a one to two page backstory from my players.What do you do when someone writes a backstory that's completely incompatible with the world/campaign/another character's backstory?
A. re-write the campaign. The player just told you what he wants to play, and apparently its incompatible
B. Tell him to pick something else. This works better with off the wall ideas. Usually these get stopped before they start coming up with any backstory though. IE "I want to play a boar with a gnome animal companion" - sorry, wait till Adam's GM.C. Work with the player on the few details that are out of place/still need to be fleshed out. If you gave the players a decent view of the game world, its likely that only 1 or 2 details don't fit well and need reworking. I tend to go through 2-3 revisions of my character with my GM as a player, and, as a GM, I fill in gaps in the player's character sheets as I work with them.
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Two pages is not an essay.
Not that it really matters, as you can require your players to wear silly party hats if you so chose, but the writing assignment you give your players is the definition of most high school essays here in the US...
When i game a tabletop RPG i game a tabletop RPG
I too play table top RPGs to play table top RPGs (otherwise, I suppose I wouldn't be playing a table top RPG)...
But this does NOT preclude me from having fun with my friends while doing so...
In my near 30 years of gaming, I have seen very little evidence that requiring an extensive back-ground equates to more commitment on the part of the player, nor have I seen it to produce a better role-player...
But it's your game, and if you have players willing to jump through your hoops in order to join in, more power to you :-)
-That One Digitalelf Fellow-
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I always thought that an essay would have to be ten or more pages...dunno...different education systems i guess.
An essay should be the length to reasonably cover the topic, be that a half-page or a hundred. Demanding more results in useless fluff that detracts from whatever point the essay should be trying to make.
The last guy wants to play a duelist. I was leery of that at first but didn't want to tell anyone no for anything and I thought I could make it work. But his backstory made NO SENSE where that was concerned. He was supposed to be a bodyguard for some big-time criminal, but he found out about some bad thing this criminal did so he killed him when the opportunity arose and fled.
This could make sense, depending on the details. I mean there's bank-robbery-bad, and there's cereal-rapist-bad. And then there's summon-an-elder-evil bad. Dare I ask for details?
I usually ask people to pitch me their characters and then work through it as best as I can. I usually get with the players and work out their backgrounds so that they're both intertwined in the campaign and set up with a villain.
Works great with adventure paths, which is what I've been running for a while. It's also good to be able to help the PCs connect the dots to places and in the campaign setting, because it means that the PCs will be able to get a much better grasp of their character by reading the books instead of having me second-hand-spoon info to them. For example, instead of worshipping "Razafalarnus" they're worshipping Sarenrae-- and will read about her and her ministry. Instead of being from Foopscampus, they're from Korvosa, and will read about it. Instead of being an apprentice wizard, they're from the Acadamae and can read about it.
cereal rapist
I'm very sorry.
This could make sense, depending on the details. I mean there's bank-robbery-bad, and there's cereal-rapist-bad. And then there's summon-an-elder-evil bad. Dare I ask for details?
The player voiced his opinion that we should play an urban intrigue game, and I vetoed that because I'm just not good at it. I don't know that kind of stuff. I told them all it would start in a big city, but would quickly become a high adventure campaign.
The PC is from a different continent, in a middle-eastern inspired country. There he worked for what was essentially a mob boss who was a "big Norse-like dude" as a bodyguard. The character is a duelist - far from a bodyguard - who dumped Con and put his second lowest score in Str. I'm not an expert on the middle-eastern culture as a whole, but I don't think any of them used rapiers (scimitars?), nor did the vikings (axes?). But that's his weapon of choice, whatever.
I imagine that a rapier finessing duelist is going to have come from some kind of school, or have learned it somewhere, especially if that is his goal (and it is, to be come the best duelist evar!). This character has no mention of learning to fight with a rapier anywhere in his story.
Then, there are pirates. His kills the Norse guy for some ambiguous bad-thing and skips the country. He boards a pirate ship as part of the crew, meets all of these guys, among them a 13th level sorcerer (I warned them against arcane casters unless they wanted to join what is essentially an omniscient cult that keeps tabs on arcane magic). He winds up in the starting city, moping around, with no explanation for why he decided to end up there in the first place.
After seeing that he had rolled up some 10-15 character sheets for those pirates I was disarmed and couldn't say "Scrap all of that, it's garbage to me. Consider this instead." I told myself I could make it work, and I make a huge mistake in that.
When I put him in a position to fight other duelists one-on-one he acts like I'm patronizing him and still gets upset.
Sorry for the rambling. I could go on all day about this guy - this has been going on for the better part of a year. Nothing I do fixes the situation; the entire group has tried talking to him, and nothing works. We can't do anything about it because four of the five of our group live in the same apartment (my g/f lives a few blocks away). It is extremely frustrating, and I've brought it to the boards before... and I'm still rambling. Shutting up.
cereal-rapistI always wondered how the flakes got their frosting.
Ah! Bad Kthulhu! BAD!
This could make sense, depending on the details. I mean there's bank-robbery-bad, and there's cereal-rapist-bad. And then there's summon-an-elder-evil bad. Dare I ask for details?The player...
Yeah, that's a dysfunctional player.
(Though I was really just asking after the details of why he killed his mob boss. For example, that particular part of his story would have been reasonable if he had found out that his boss was a serial rapist. But whatever; not a player I'd like to have in my game.)
** spoiler omitted **
Rochester is a lovely town. I've stayed with a friend twice.
As for backstory: I enjoy writing one for the GM to read and use if he wishes, but as a player, it's primarily for ME to get to figure out where my character is starting out ... before the adventures during gameplay change him.
I think the best thing for players to do who are writing one is to assume that there's a good chance none of it will ever come up during a plot ... and to just be pleasantly surprised when any of it does.
But I still think players who are aware of their character's backstory are able to develop those characters more easily than players who never bother with one.
As a GM, I enjoy when my players write a back story. It shows that they have at least done some research into the setting, and have taken the time to nail some things down that most people tend to miss, and I end up having to explain. I also do my best to work that story into the campaign when I can. Whether it be an adventure that spawned from it, or NPCs helping out from the past...whatever. If someone writes me some lines, I'll do whatever I can to make it worth their while.
As a player, I enjoy creating a short back story. I've never felt the desire to write more than a page, but having a couple paragraphs about past helps me get into things a bit more. Is it necessary? No, not at all. I just enjoy it.
I don't think I'd ever require players to write a background for themselves. But I love it when they do.
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I like when backstories leave room for mystery.
+1 I always try to do that with my characters.
Our Crimson Throne group cashed in on that in a big way when the Varisian half-elf and Shoanti half-elf had "never met their elven father" in their backstories.
Curse of the Crimson Throne spoilers;
Group was even tighter after that.
I think if a DM is going to require more than a few sentences of backstory, he is required to sit down and hash that story out with the player.
This.
On so many levels.
(Though I was really just asking after the details of why he killed his mob boss. For example, that particular part of his story would have been reasonable if he had found out that his boss was a serial rapist. But whatever; not a player I'd like to have in my game.)
Ah, sorry for the text dump, then. To directly answer that question, he never came up with any details about that. Not that he told me anyway.
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Either way, I have only one genuine requirement, before characters are even created. Backstory or no, they must be the type to answer the call to adventure, and work as a team. They can be evil, ugly, temperamental or strange, but when that plot hook drops they must be the type to say "yes please" and take it up. I am not running a game for boring coward PCs. It's an adventure game, and PCs must be adventurous, if not adventurers outright.
I'm stealing this for my House Rules Doc. Thank you!
I like when backstories leave room for mystery.
+1 I always try to do that with my characters.
Our Crimson Throne group cashed in on that in a big way when the Varisian half-elf and Shoanti half-elf had "never met their elven father" in their backstories.
Curse of the Crimson Throne spoilers;** spoiler omitted **
Group was even tighter after that.
Very nice!
When a character shows up with no backstory, I let it ride for a few sessions. Then I start pointing out things that happened in the previous sessions that should motivate the PC. "That guys screwed you over, remember?" "You wanted to go back and dig up that gold, right?"
Over time, gameplay makes for the best backstory. Anything you bring to the first session is meant to tide you over until the campaign has legs of its own.
I certianly agree that back stories are great for having the players tell the DM what sort of thing they are looking for in a game. As a DM my tendency is to look for more of a back story in sandbox games (where the back story really is likely the main thing providing direction) and less back story where the adventure is an AP and back story can be dangerous in that it has the potential to derail the game.
I also tend to demand more back story from characters the further toward evil they are headed. Nothing more disruptive to a campaign then 'self centred evil' as a characters motivation. If your good then I know your going to follow the plot hooks - if your heading for evil then you need to convince me that everything about your character is going to be about following the main plot line of the campaign.
As a player I have had a lot of success, in APs, with having pretty close to a blank slate as a character and then adding to that as the campaign progresses. In other words my background becomes both something fun for me to play but also something that is meant to forward the DMs plot. I also tend to really like the idea of characters growing because of the events that have taken place in the campaign beyond just 'ding - level up'.