PC backstories

[Mark Hoover 330]

Do your players actually have their characters interact with their backstories? Over the weekend I was reviewing some old stuff in my megadungeon campaign and I came across the email chains showing each PC's backstory elements. I generated two obvious side plots from them which resolved over a year ago now.

Since then, these PCs have never once gone back to their former homes, checked in with their families. One player asked a couple months ago to port over some old 3.5 gem magic items for his character to craft, and I had to remind HIM that, in looking for rare gems to craft with, the dwarven half of his family mines rare minerals to the south.

Is this common, rare, or (as with most things) a little of both in other people's games? I had a character I only got to play up to 3rd level but she was a half-elf wizard from a Romani-style traveler clan. Between the end of level 1 to the start of level 3 we used the Downtime rules and started businesses.

My character purchased a Scriptorium for myself, penning scrolls or making books, paper and scrivener's kits for profit, but I ALSO created a Laundry room which I asked the GM to keep separate from my main business. Finally I generated a team of Craftspeople to run the laundry; three washer women who were, in fact, my character's "sisters" who I was helping establish themselves in the city.

The end goal was to help others of my clan settle in the city where they would develop into a merchant organization. The GM had laws in the city preventing this, so my character was using her adventuring career to earn enough fame and money to get this done under the radar.

While the main plot of the game unfolded, my PC would have had an entire background plot that in turn would've tied back to our party's adventures. The PC's clan was feeding the party info and, as they settled in the area would've become information brokers and such.

I don't know; am I the outlier here?

[Te'Shen]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Do your players actually have their characters interact with their backstories? . . . [Lots of Good Stuff]. . . I don't know; am I the outlier here?

Yes and no.

I think it's more determined by what kind of game you want to be playing, and not everybody is wanting the same thing. I think everybody wants a good story, but for some, they'd rather be playing Die Hard than Sherlock. Some games make characters a little bit more grounded with all the personal trials and tribulations that entails without the ability to just punch or intimidate enemies into submission because of social contracts or because some conflicts are with actual friends that your characters are having a hard time with. Some don't.

I remember an interview with Stan Lee talking about how he wanted Spiderman to have simple problems, to focus on being a teenager with acne and the fear of asking a girl out and curfew, while at the same time having all this power that doesn't help any of that... and how this was contrary to a lot of popular characters that came before that were their powers, that didn't really focus on their human sides like early Superman, I guess (...which I cannot remember who he was alluding to now that I think about it...).

In the WoD games I've had, interacting with family, with contacts, with allies, is a HUGE deal for the characters I've made... or at least the ones that tend to not move around a lot (Vampires and Mages, mostly), but a lot of the DnD-esque games where characters move from adventure to adventure just looking for trouble easily have less to ground them. I think I have to try harder with those characters. It feels like sort of a derail for everybody else when I try to get my elven fire elementalist to call or visit home in the middle of Temple of Elemental Evil but my human cleric in Kingmaker had a lot of investment in the town he built with his friends (...well, allies at any rate) and the bonds with a dwarven blacksmith he'd go drinking with or the medics in the hospital he sponsored and visited often. It really depends on the group and some of the subtleties, or lack thereof, for some games, I suppose... And the expectations of the group in aggregate play into it. A beer and pretzels kick in the door game is fun, but the experience can be rather shallow. And that may be all the players want. It's fun, and it's a good way to blow off steam, but they aren't necessarily engaging with the characters the same way that you're talking about here.

I've had varying degrees of depth in the games I've been able to play. The ones I remember best are the ones that I did engage with the backgrounds more to flesh out the characters, to challenge them in some sort of way other than HP, and in every circumstance, I had the GM's help and the... tolerance, at least... of the group.

[DeathlessOne]

Different people play the game differently. Some people like to do a near full dive into their character's persona and immerse themselves in the story. Others play the game more loosely and leave the story arcs and character development as something that happens in the background.

No real wrong way to play but my personal opinion is that a lot of people miss out on the real meat of the game by only playing it as a combat simulator.

So, no. You are not an outlier in the grand scheme of things, but might be in a more localized sense.

[VoodistMonk]

I had a Bard that was related to Merryweather Stokes via backstory, but that was mainly for the mechanical benefit of later picking up the Master Performer and Grand Master Performer feats.

My all-time favorite character, Hbob, was a Kobold raised by Halflings in Pitax. The party later "liberated" Pitax, absorbing it into the kingdom... Hbob's parents were free!

I had a highly multiclassed character that entered the game at level 9, so I included much of his class levels and multiclassing in his backstory. Variel grew up in Minata and always wanted to be a Magus, but he got in with the wrong crowd and ended up as pirate in Zo Piaobo [Inspired Blade Swashbuckler]... his parents got him out of prison and sent him to a monastery in Kyonin [Kata Master-MoMS Monk]... he joined the Kyonin Rangers [Hooded Champion Ranger] for a while. Many of the Kyonin "rangers" are multiclassed, and Variel took the opportunity to revisit his childhood dream of becoming a Magus [Kensai Magus].

Variel spent about 5 levels with the party before his thirst for adventure took him elsewhere... he departed north as part of an emissary/ambassador mission to the Kellid barbarian tribes. With him was Kundal, a former member of the tribe (an exciled werewolf, now cured), and a Bard named Ervil Pendrod.

While Variel never did return to Minata... at the end of the campaign Variel and Ervil returned from their quest to talk to the Kellids, having successfully formed an allience with Kundal's tribe. They both [Variel and Ervil] then went to Kyonin, and probably further...

I also had a Noble Drow named Vash in a homebrew campaign from an underground city called Chymdor. I secretly had every intention of returning to Chymdor and laying waste to the entire city, with everyone in it, should I ever become powerful enough. It was kind of a gamble to see if Vash could find someghing else to believe in, more than his own hatred of his home. Life happened and I sadly never got to get very far with that campaign... but if Vash ever returned to his backstory, it was going to be with apocalyptic vengeance.

[Sysryke]

With my current crew we're a bit too mixed to delve too much into backstories. Some of us like to really story tell, and develop a whole back history (like me), but we have others who are a little more bare bones in their character development. We try to keep things balanced so that everyone can have a good time/be involved, so delving too far into one PC's background rarely works.

We also take turns GMing, but the group of characters are all the same. Since some of us are more story delvers than others, the campaigns vary a fair bit in style and theme. We don't all know each others backstories as well as I might like. Some of us try to draw those details out during the rp sessions when we run, but it doesn't always bear fruit. Building a story around my own character's background, just doesn't seem to be fair if I'm the one running. Our characters stay with the group when we step up as GM's, but we're supposed to fade a bit into the background, as only a little more than NPCs.

I wouldn't mind delving in more in the future. I just need to know more about my party members, and find a way to make it organic to the group story.

[Mightypion]

It is obviously GM dependent, but I like to add one possible Ally, one who could go either way and one antagonist.
I even supply my GM with what their builds are, and oh boy, my GM had serious fun unleashing my WOTR characters PCs half brother on us.

GM:"Ahahaha, as a player, I never dared to build something that minmaxed! Vicious large sized Orc Butchering Axe go BRRRRR".
Me:"I am happy you are not using the Impact version."
GM:"Excellent idea!"
Me:"I was hoping for a fraternal rivalry into redemption arc."
GM:"He just critted you from full 51 hp to minus 29."
Me:"OK f~%& him."
GM:"He is a Nocticulan, not a Necrophile so you wont."

Its WOTR, long suffering GMs are also allowed to have fun :).

Half brothers background is that he thinks the Demons will win, and that Golarion will get better terms from Nocticula then from Baphomet, let alone Deskari.

[Kasoh]

Overall, I think my table does this regularly.

As a GM, my players give me the backstories of their PCs and I try to have them come back into relevance during the campaign.

For example, in Hell's Rebels one PC's parents had been disappeared by the Thrune establishment and during the adventure, they learned that her parents had been sent to Deepmar prison, so they went there and found out horrible things. And thanks to Cytellish poison, the PC didn't even remember the trauma!

As a player, I tend to give less elaborate backstory as I prefer the events of the adventure to be the thing shaping the character, however, in Mummy's Mask I was playing an orphaned Varisian magus who grew up on the streets of Wati, trying to be a wizard from her dad's old abandoned spellbook. The GM gave me a plot where it turns out that the character's father was a powerful wizard we'd met earlier in the campaign and when it came time to retrain from Magus into Wizard (Party had two magi) there were a lot of hooks coming back to that. Overall I was pretty satisfied with that.

[Tim Emrick]

In my experience, it depends on the group and the campaign. Some players crave the role-playing hooks that a detailed backstory gives, some just want to bash monsters after a long week of mundane crap, and some like to mix up the two from time to time. And even if a group as a whole leans mostly one way or the other, most mature players like variety, so will sometimes be open to trying different approaches in different campaigns.

In my last home game, I encouraged my players to work out connections to the setting, and those ties drove many of the party's actions. Two characters had strong ties to the families who raised them in the desert, another was a fugitive from the elf forests to the north (and planned to return to drive out the conquerors once he had enough power and friends), and another had left home to live more freely than she could at home with her overprotective wizard father. The players all had a great deal of fun getting to know each others' characters and what made them tick, and working out how to best help each other achieve their own goals--all while dealing with the exterior plot stuff I was throwing in their path.

On the other extreme, something like Pathfinder Society isn't really set up to cater to PC subplots or background, pretty much ever. Even playing an Adventure Path in Society mode severely limits how much you can do in that vein, because everything is so focused on the main plot--and the sanctioning documents tend to have you skip the early investigative steps of the adventure to get to the action faster. Campaign mode is much more flexible, because the GM and players have more freedom to explore the story in its entirety, and embroider their own little touches into it. And the campaign traits (for those APs that have them) encourage at least a little investment in the background.

OTOH, even in PFS, I've been able to work in details of my characters' backgrounds from time to time, even if the GM had no way to reciprocate. I always have an eye out for adventures that revisit characters or places that my PCs have experienced. There may be only a perfunctory "oh, thank you for coming to help us again" scripted into those, but that is often enough to keep my PC invested in those NPCs' storylines. I played all the 1E Valais scenarios with the same sympathetic paladin (and Valais is my favorite 2E faction leader as a result). My Exchange witch became obsessed with rooting out Aspis operations in western Garundi and profiting from their losses. And my first 2E PC was a goblin champion because I played the 1E Farheavens scenarios with a cavalier who acquired a squire immediately afterwards (and the amount of Sarkoris and Iobaria content in Season 1 was very rewarding!).

[Saffron Marvelous]

I once did a dungeon for a fresh PC group that was very pointedly videogamey (an ancient king wanted a cool tomb, but he didn't have the resources or support for massive public works, so he sank what he did have into a cheapo malfunctioning demiplane that worked like a bethesda game). One stretch of it had the players cross over tiles that activated different traps. One of the "safer" types of tiles would hit them with a will save which, if failed, forced them to reveal an embarrassing secret out loud and then flipped all the tiles to something different, which caused chain reactions. It was an extremely entertaining way to get everyone talking about their backstories right out of the gate.

[Heather 540]

For me, it depends on the character. Lurog's backstory is that he runs away from his home with his little sister so he can avoid the highly likely chance of her being killed as an apprentice to an orc shaman. He has no desire to ever return home or see the rest of his family.

On the other hand, Alester very much wants to return home so he can clear his name of the murder he was framed for. He wants to see his family again. And some day I hope I get to see that happen.

[Senko]

I think it also depends on the campaign. If your playing pretty much the whole thing around your home city with occasional trips you'll have a lot of opportunities for interaction with your characters backstory. On the other hand if your playing something like Jade Reagent or Reign of Winter your going to be moving so far away from most reasonable backstories for a low level character it'll be almost impossible to call back to them. "Why yes I am but a simple hobbit from the Shire in Middle Earth but I believe my weird uncle moved to this planet on the other side of the galaxy. Lets ask around his name's Frodo Baggins. It should be easy to find him as the native species look nothing like hobbits so he'll stand out."

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

As always, it depends on the players and type of game. Some settings expect far more interaction with backstory and family than others. D&D can, as noted, happily be played with the PC essentially being a blank slate at creation. This is harder to do in something like L5R where clan and family are immensely important to the setting and characters.

In my current Mystara game two of my players went back and claimed their homeland as their own domains, and the stuff going on there is of great importance to the characters and the story. Other players have less backstory. It all works out.

[Andostre]

A backstory requires buy-in from three parties: The player, the GM, and the rest of the table.

Obviously the player has to want to develop and utilize a rich background. If it's a requirement for the game, but the player isn't into it, it will fall flat.

The GM has to want to utilize a character's rich backstory. If the player develops one, but the GM is only interested in the adventure and world they want to run, it feels like a lot of wasted potential to the player.

And then even if the GM and the player are utilizing a character's background, if only one PC has a rich history and the other players are only interested in their PC's stories point forward, the first PC's backstory could feel out of place or it could feel like that PC is hogging the limelight.

So... all that is just a longer way of saying what most people are already saying: it depends on the group and the campaign.

[Neriathale]

There's a time issue to consider, which gets exacerbated if all of the players have busy real lives and linited game time. If my character is the son of a disgraced noble who is trying to clear his father's name and restore the family estates, or going with the simple option, a trader who likes to make a profit on the road and take the results back to the family merchant house then doing that is going to take up a certain amount of play time - say a couple of sessions worth.

Multiply that by four PCs and potentially you have 20-30% of the campaign that half the part aren't really invested in because it's another PC doing their thing off in the corner with the GM.

Hence I have plenty of PCs with detailed backstories which really only come out in snippets because the backstory can't take over the main plot.

[Mightypion]

In our current WOTR, we originally had several PCs (A Kellid, A Pathfinder, a teleport mistake mage apprentice whose dad is a powerful wizard in Absalom) who would provide possible inns with not yet involved neutral faction to support the crusade against the demons, so that can be done quite organically.

I also provided the GM with antagonists, who just happen to have at least one piece of loot that would be really good on another player character.

[Ryze Kuja]

I always create an overarching story that I gradually push towards throughout a campaign, but throughout the campaign there will be a slough of "non-campaign-relevant" villains that have their own goals and machinations that the PC's will/can interfere with, but I also make it a goal to have the PC's backstories come back to haunt them several times throughout all of this, and in the worst possible way. And I don't do this to be some sort of punishment either, it's meant to make the world feel visceral and that their character actually lives in this tangible world.

Good example; one of my PC's was playing a Bard and part of his backstory was that he was an illegitimate prince (dad-king had an affair with the maid sort of thing, and the PC's existence was a threat to his good name), so the dad-king didn't want to kill the PC, but the PC had to leave, so he was given a massive inheritance and unofficially banished. The PC became a world-traveler and spent his money on wine, women, and song like it was going out of style, and eventually turned to loansharks when his trust fund went empty, so by the time our campaign had started, the PC had debts all over the world. Anywho, around level 8-9ish, the party of PC's flushed a Mind Flayer out of the sewers and it became a chase scene through the main streets of a major city. Lo and behold, our PC's backstory comes back to haunt him at the worst possible time, because a small group of bruisers in the city streets recognized him. They roughed him up, turned his pockets inside out, and then figured they could make a quick bounty off turning the PC Bard over some random kingpin that the PC owes money to, and the other PC's had to let the Mind Flayer go in order to save the Bard PC. They eventually tracked the Mind Flayer down to his lair two sessions later.

[Mark Hoover 330]

RK, I do something similar. I don't know that I create an entire "story" for my character but I give them goals, often based on the backstory I create. These goals have a point, both physically and morally.

I make a goal to give my Romani traveler "sisters" a home, if they want it, and a job to lift them up out of poverty. Game wise its a goal of operating a Business in the Downtime rules. Personally, for the character, this represents two things: selfishly missing the people who raised her and wanting to surround herself with them once more, but also giving voice and hope to a marginalized people demonized as thieves, beggars and vagrants in a society that oppresses them.

For my players, an evil mentor isn't a morally bankrupt monster that used defenseless children to improve his own comfort at the cost of their innocence and in one instance, their life. No, that's a plot point meant to generate an amount of GP and XP. Some people play like that, and that's fine, but it's not how I do. Yet another red flag reminding me that I've got to reevaluate the folks I game with.

[PFRPGrognard]

I picked up the RPG Party Backstory Generator a year or so ago and have started using it during Session Zero to help build backstory links between the party, their settlements and each other. It has helped give us a few recurring characters.

For example, in my Rise of the Drow campaign, we have a running gag about a love triangle involving two party members and a local barmaid. She tends to pop up whenever they are back in town and causes hijinks for everyone.

Ultimately, it just depends on the player, how they like to play and whether or not the campaign gives them any sort of opportunity to return to their hometowns/homebase and interact.

[Kimera757]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Do your players actually have their characters interact with their backstories? Over the weekend I was reviewing some old stuff in my megadungeon campaign and I came across the email chains showing each PC's backstory elements. I generated two obvious side plots from them which resolved over a year ago now.

...

I don't know; am I the outlier here?

I don't think you're an outlier. In my experience, the biggest problems with backstories are two-fold:

1. GMs expect so much detail that characters starting at 1st-level makes no sense. (I find this a barrier to working with new GMs.)
2. Different PCs want different things but the campaign is about all the PCs wanting to work together to accomplish a common goal. Different goals starts to split the party, even if not in a combat sense, just in a spotlight sense.

The second problem can be "fixed" but it helps if players cooperate not just on picking appropriate builds but on their individual goals.

[Senko]

Kimera757 wrote:

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Do your players actually have their characters interact with their backstories? Over the weekend I was reviewing some old stuff in my megadungeon campaign and I came across the email chains showing each PC's backstory elements. I generated two obvious side plots from them which resolved over a year ago now.

...

I don't know; am I the outlier here?

I don't think you're an outlier. In my experience, the biggest problems with backstories are two-fold:

1. GMs expect so much detail that characters starting at 1st-level makes no sense. (I find this a barrier to working with new GMs.)
2. Different PCs want different things but the campaign is about all the PCs wanting to work together to accomplish a common goal. Different goals starts to split the party, even if not in a combat sense, just in a spotlight sense.

The second problem can be "fixed" but it helps if players cooperate not just on picking appropriate builds but on their individual goals.

The difference between

"I am the daughter of the town mayor and I have to take the place of a dead adventurer who ate poisonous mushrooms or the king will destroy the village as he'd summoned them"

and

"I am a genius strategist who defeated 7 attacks on my homeland due to my sheer brilliance and personal skills. In fact I personally stopped the entire enemy army fighting off their forces on the lava plains of Xian Sha without them ever managing to scratch me. Then I revolutionized my countries agriculture by introducing the 3 field system and a new aqueduct irrigation system before leading the dragons I'd convinced to ally with us in an attack on the empire of Tol shattering their remaining forces and marrying their princess subjugating their . . ."

I think part of it is the shifting of classes with 3rd ed back in 1st ed a 1st level character was a fairly skilled individual in terms of the world. Now a 1st level character only differs from a 1st level NPC by normally having a better class. So while the world's shifted to bring 1st level fighters down from seargent in the army to city guard the storytelling hasn't. Similarly I don't recall any actual section dealing with how the levels and characters should be presented. A starting character has 1 to 20 strength but what does that actually mean in terms of the world? Is 14 strength superhuman the kind of thing only seen in monsters or is it what any farmer working in the fields would have? Is a 1st level wizard a skilled spellcaster earning a level or an apprentice out to get some real world experience before being given official rank? There isn't any guide to that kind of thing in the core book and I think it could be useful. It'd tell characters and GM's would kind of story to make around a character, same with city demographics we get spell casting and the like but we don't get told if that 3rd level spells available means a temple with lots of 5+ level priests or one grumpy wizard? How common are 5th level characters, 2nd, 12th? It can even differ between GM's as each applies their own opinions see the debates of 18 strength being Hercules level or olympic weightlifter level.

[Peg'giz]

I had this in my homebrew games A LOT - basically the whole campaigns were build around the characters backstories.

But I realized that with the official APs this sort of storytelling went more and more to the background, to a point where in my last campaign the character backgrounds were not mentioned once (simply because the DM run the AP "by the book").

For me, as a DM, it's a vital part to include the characters backstory to the game as this make the story more personal, more intensive and the stakes are higher. (unfortunately I have to admit I failed at this in my SF AotS round).

In my current campaign I went a step further and we are currently playing the characters backstory (which is a lot of fun).
They all play as teen versions of their characters (planned for levels 1-3) in one backwater town on a desert/wild-west planet.

It's very fun, but also difficult for me as a DM as I have to plan the session more like "Three Investigators" episodes then the normal SF game (we played ~8 sessions now and they had exactly one fight (which was forced onto them and they only tried to escape)).