The Importance of Backstories.

[CubeB]

When you create a character, how much importance to you place on their backstories?

The way I see it, there are three possible "grades" of backstory.

1) The Mysterious Orphan with No Past: The Lowest Grade. These characters are basically race class combinations with names, and occasionally genders. This is usually permission for the DM to make up a backstory for you. (Of course, it is possible for a Mysterious Orphan With No Past to have a fully written backstory worked out with the DM, but then you're just messing with the rest of the party.)

2) Fill-In The Blank: A character who has a semi detailed backstory. For example: "Molik is a Dragonborn Barbarian from a tribe with an affinity to reptiles. He was converted to Bahamutism when Missionaries visited his tribe, and became a Dragonborn to escape his Half-Orc heritage. He has traveled to the Free City in search of adventure." In this case, you know who you are, and you have an idea of where you come from, but the backstory is vague enough that you just need to fill in details when they arise. Hence the name.

3) The Biography: This is where I tend to fall. When I create a character, I write a novel. For my latest character (A Half-Dragon Earth Kobold.) I started out writing a simple backstory and ended up designing a tribe of Kobolds who practiced the Sublime Way to overcome their physical shortcomings and controlled a significant portion of the Dragonshard Trade on the Karrnath side of the Ironroot Mountains. I even designed names (in draconic, no less) for all of the individual ranks of Kobold. (I stopped short of naming all the disciplines though. That would just be pushing it...)

And that was before I even started on the actual backstory. (A Illithid Fleshwarper is involved. It almost plays out like a superhero origin story, which is fitting for a Kobold with 24+ STR.)

Having a detailed backstory makes the game more fun for me. I enjoy feeling like a part of the world. It gives the setting more depth than just an "Adventure of the Week" setting.

Not to mention the fact that having a really detailed backstory gives the DM plenty of plothooks. In fact, the entire plot of one of our campaigns thrives off of player presented plothooks. (First rule of Backstory: the DM will kill off your family to make the villain seem more evil.)

So how important is backstory to you? Do you just skip it and hop straight to the combat? Do you give your characters a general backstory and let the details fill themselves in? Or are you like me with my ridiculous novels of plotfodder?

[Grimlock]

I think a back story is really important as it gives depth of character and I find it helps with roleplay...which to me is the whole point!

I'm not quite at your level of novel length character histories, but I like to write a reasonably detailed one, importantly getting in potential plot hooks for the DM to play with- either issues, NPCs etc etc, cos it makes their job easier too.

[Myth]

Since i play PBP exclusively i always go for the biography type backstory. Here is an example:

Loreen (Lora for short), a young bright girl of age 17, with exceptional intellect, a sound dexterous body and a natural beauty. She is what some would call a genius, one who is adept at both physical and mental exercises.

Born in a farm in the rural regions of Pesh, Lora had always surpassed her age in mental celerity and intellect. Her inquisitive nature and incredible memory made the girl stand out amongst the other children from their small farming community.

Lora's youth passed in games and chores around the farm, as with most agricultural communities she had to help her family in the toil during the summer, but had ample free time during the cold months of winter. As soon as she was old enough, the local Priest was able to teach the bright girl how to read with amazing success. She quickly gobbled down the family's very limited library of tomes, and by the age of thirteen, Lora had read everything worth reading in their small community, ranging from folklore legends, history, right to books on religion or ones on courtly manners, kings and their regalia.

The girl also had a remarkable talent for drawing, be it portraits, landscapes or fantastic scenes from the books of legends. She was so good, in fact, that even as a young adolescent girl, some had already paid for Lora's services as an artist, much to the pride of her parents.

Lora has an older brother - Arthur, who is six years her elder. When the shadow of war threatened their kingdom, one of the larger cities sent over experienced soldiers to establish and train the local men of age in to a potent militia force. Arthur, being strong of arm and not much adept at things like reading and writing, decided to enroll. At that time Loreen was fourteen years old, and just blossoming in to womanhood.

She would regularly accompany her brother when there were no chores to do, bringing him lunch after training practice or bringing over washed clothes and taking his laundry back to the farm. A quick learner and naturally adept at anything she undertook, Lora was allowed to sometimes practice with the men, and so she followed trough with the basic militia training nicely, despite her frail age.

Lora was a happy and carefree child, until she caught the eye of one of the senior soldiers, who took her by force one evening as she was going home from practice. The trail headed off trough a nearby glen, where she got jumped by the frenzied man.

Since this day, Lora had been blaming herself for lacking the precaution to foresee the event, and did not accuse her brother, since he had to sleep in the barracks and could not escort her that night. After the incident the local community was outraged, both Lora's father and brother wanted to exact personal revenge.

The transgressor, however, was a professional soldier of the King, and thus he was whipped, removed from the militia and sent off to be trialed by the regional magistrate. Lora, however, was never quite the same. She locked herself in and became distant, silent and lost all desire to talk and play.

Still an able child, she would continue to draw and bring fantastical landscapes and magical creatures to life on the canvas, her art a means of escaping the cruelty of reality. Lora's parents and brother were thoroughly concerned for her however, and sought out the aid of a local wise woman. The woman was both a healer and alchemist, as well as (reputedly, although never proven) a witch.

She told them that nothing short of time would heal the wound, but offered the parents to take on Lora as an apprentice.

The girl reluctantly accepted, and for several years she learned much of history, religion, ancient texts, and even magic, for it turned out that the old wise woman was an able spellcaster. Lora's bright mind helped expand her horizons beyond what was available trough reading the books her parents borrowed from the neighboring farms, and she became a full fledged Wizard, albeit without defining herself as one.

Loreen gradually became more open towards the world, as the memory of her trauma faded away, but never truly disappearing. Now aged seventeen, she had blossomed in to a fine young woman, but her shy and closed off personality put an impossible obstacle before the lads whom she interested.

One afternoon, when her mistress was away, Lora received a letter from her brother:

"Dear Lora,

I have been conscripted along with much of the militia force, to go and defend our kingdom in the upcoming war. I wish you to be brave and obedient, and ask of you to take care of our parents. Do not worry yourself about me, for we shall see each other soon, baby sister.

Love,
Arthur"

The girl panicked, as she loved her brother and couldn't let him go off to war alone, knowing he would need someone of her cunning to watch his back. Despite having read numerous historical accounts of bloody battles, that were horrendous and a very undesirable place to be, as soon as she got the letter, Lora packed her meager belongings and ran away from her tutor's house, leaving her a small note for the witch and Lora's parents...

Now, traveling trough the small community, a long glaive strapped to her back and a large backpack stuffed with necessities, the short girl raised many an eyebrow as she made her way trough with a determined look on her frozen face.

[Thiyr]

I tend to try and get some meat on my backstories, but I end up leaving a lot of dangly bits for my DMs to play with, and I -will- add things to setting to make a more interesting character.

For instance, the lycanthrope who found the dead wolf-corpse of his "mentor" in the bar the mentor owned, I gave the DM a plot thread, 'cause it'd be fun and was a good reason to explain his somber personality. It also gave me the fun of saying "Yes, I know they go back to their normal form when dead. That's the point".

Or the clan of goblin tinkerers, renown for their tendency to make amazing contraptions and get themselves blown up in the process, and the one goblin amongst them who has become quite legendary for being extraordinarily -sane- and slightly less likely to blow himself up (after having almost gotten himself killed for stealing a baby ogre and getting caught. On the downside, permanently crippled. on the upside, impetus to study wizardry harder and now he's got a best buddy ogre who dosen't mind having his best buddy goblin ride around on his back.)

I do -so- love writing backstory. Sadly, it often needs inspiration in the "how do i make this build idea make sense", but those end up being just as if not more fun.

[Zaq]

I used to write the 5-10 page backstories, but eventually I realized that 1) my GMs usually didn't care to read them, and 2) the more in-depth you get, the more fossilized your character is. Roleplaying is an active experience, and while it's important to have a solid direction in which to take your personality, half the fun is seeing how your character evolves and changes at the table until they reach an equilibrium. It's harder to do that when you have to stay true to 10 pages of fluff.

Basically, for me, personality is more important than backstory. If my backstory informs or explains my personality, then awesome, but what matters is what I'm adding to the table, not what I'm adding to my binder.

[Curmudgeon]

I'm generally opposed to elaborate back stories for characters that aren't created at starting level. They just seem too artificial to me. A story should reflect how the character got to where they are. If they got there purely by a player iterating through the level advancement steps n times, that's who they are: designed to fill a role, with nothing other than a history of advancement.

[kamikasei]

It varies a lot, but mostly I agree with Zaq. What matters is the character now and what the backstory should contain is enough information for the DM and other players to work with. Sometimes the character's past is an important part of who they are now and in that case the backstory gets more attention.


I'm generally opposed to elaborate back stories for characters that aren't created at starting level. They just seem too artificial to me. A story should reflect how the character got to where they are. If they got there purely by a player iterating through the level advancement steps n times, that's who they are: designed to fill a role, with nothing other than a history of advancement.

I don't follow. If a character starts at level 1, they have a past, family, friends, goals, dreams. If they start at level 5, they just have five levels? Eh?

[Curmudgeon]

I don't follow. If a character starts at level 1, they have a past, family, friends, goals, dreams. If they start at level 5, they just have five levels? Eh?
No, but if they started at level 1 and got to level 5 they have actual history: the places they've been, the companions who adventured with them, their triumphs and failures.

[kamikasei]

No, but if they started at level 1 and got to level 5 they have actual history: the places they've been, the companions who adventured with them, their triumphs and failures.

I don't understand at all. What backstory should a character who starts at level five not have that would be okay for one starting at level one?

[Curmudgeon]

I don't understand at all. What backstory should a character who starts at level five not have that would be okay for one starting at level one?
I'm really not comprehending your difficulty here. If you start at level 1 and get to level 5 your back story then is whatever you've experienced and accomplished between levels 1 and 5. If you start at level 5 you've got no back story.

[Jokasti]

How do you "become" a dragonborn? Aren't they born from... dragons and humans? I tend to do #2

[Kris Strife]

How do you "become" a dragonborn? Aren't they born from... dragons and humans? I tend to do #2

That's half-dragons. Dragonborn are humanoids that pledge themselves to Bahamut and get new draconic bodies to better serve their purpose.

[Delta]

I have to admit, when I was back at school, I tended to fall into the "novel" category as well, but over time, that has changed. There are some characters for which I have a lot of background, less so for others.

What's important when I'm GM, it's alright to write a novel about your character. But don't expect me to read it, I don't have unlimited time on my hands. If you want to write some 20+ pages about your character's background, that's great, but have a 1-3 (5 at the absolute most) page summary at hand.

IMHO, it's simply not polite to expect the GM to spend more time reading about your character than the rest of the party combined. And yes, I've once had a case of a player who had close to 30 pages of background written for a new character, and when I asked him for the "short version", he reacted like I had somehow personally insulted him.

[kamikasei]

I'm really not comprehending your difficulty here. If you start at level 1 and get to level 5 your back story then is whatever you've experienced and accomplished between levels 1 and 5. If you start at level 5 you've got no back story.

If I start a character at level 1, I give it a backstory that says who it is, where it came from, etc. If I then play that character until it's level 5, the adventures that take place in play are added on to the backstory to become the past-to-date of the character. If I start a character at level 5 directly then it's still going to have the same kind of backstory, though whether any specific, fictional past adventures are included is a matter of taste.

That's my difficulty. You seemed to be saying that a character that starts at level 1 can have a backstory with details like "born in Sharn, parents were merchants, was a courier in the War, fiance ran away with a higher-ranking officer", but that a character starting at level 5 cannot. Now it seems you're saying that no character should have such a backstory, that only events that happened during game sessions count as part of a character's past. I still think that's a weird view, but it's at least consistent.

Am I misunderstanding something, though? It seems very odd to me that you appear to be saying that characters can't have pasts before they started adventuring.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Mine tend to hover between fill-in-the-blank and biography. Compete enough to cover the more important events in the character's life but with a fair few blanks to be fleshed out as needed.



I'm really not comprehending your difficulty here. If you start at level 1 and get to level 5 your back story then is whatever you've experienced and accomplished between levels 1 and 5. If you start at level 5 you've got no back story.

That's not how backstory is usually understood. If you start at level 1 and get to 5 your backstory is whatever the character experienced before level 1. If start at 5, the backstory is whatever you did before level 5.

Edit: Ninja'd, and with more words.

[Grimlock]

As in all things it has to be balance. As Delta said, you can't expect someone to give up 2 or 3 hours to read a backstory. At the same time however, I think no backstory shows a lack of thought. It doesn't have to be loads of detail, but does have to give an idea about why your character behaves as they do and how they fit into the world the DM is creating. It is then the game itself which allows you to shape your character further!

[ZeroNumerous]

(Of course, it is possible for a Mysterious Orphan With No Past to have a fully written backstory worked out with the DM, but then you're just messing with the rest of the party.)

I do this far more often than is healthy.

[Terraoblivion]

So backstory is solely something that happens through ingame experiences, Curmudgeon? But why then allow a character starting at level one to have a background written? I'm really not certain what it is you mean with not allowing a background for characters starting above level 1. For that matter, level is just an artificial game construct to classify power, it is not like the characters experience leveling up or anything, so a 5th level character at the start of the game can just as much enter the world of adventurering as a 1st level character.

[Nero24200]

I'd say mines are between Fill In the Blanks and Biography. I tend not to wrtie too much if I'm rushed, but always try to write enough to give

A home or place of origin
Reasoning behind his/her fighting style/choice of spells/choice of skills
Any interactions between significant groups, just on the off-chance it might be relevent if the group is featured in the campaign


Once I have those covered, everything else is just gravy....mmm....gravy

[Scorpina]

I usually answer a few basic questions about my character, like where they're from, what their life before adventuring was like and what their motivations are and build a few details around that, but leave my backstory open enough that both I and the DM can tinker with it when the need arrises, thus I'd be a 'fill in the blank'. If I'd figured out every details of my characters life beforehand, and rolled highly on my Knowledge check, I wouldn't be able to explain to my fellow party-members that way back when I was a kid I ran into X and learned Y about it, which is why I know it now.

[Raistlin1040]

I write long backstories. My current character (who isn't even a PC. He's a major recurring NPC in my best friend's campaign) has 11 pages of backstory. About 7 are important to him, but I was asked to include things for other important NPCs as well. The last two characters I wrote that were intended as PCs had 6 pages of backstory for one, and around 4 and a half for another.

[mikej]

I put a lot of importance in backstory. The game after all is a heroic fantasy with in depth character design and motivation. I would describe myself as the "Novel" type but also been lazy and went the "Orphan" route. I write like 2000 word backstory for my character. What they wish to achieve and the motivation behind that desire. I have vivid ideas of what my character is like. I hate the common mentality in my group of "I just want power." With little reasoning on way. On the other hand, I must say I actually enjoyed the "Orphan" route more, as my DM was very creative with it.

[Heliomance]

Backstory (noun):
1: A means for the DM to screw you over.
2: A document detailing your character's emotional weaknesses.

[ShadowFighter15]

My backstories tend to be a sort of Biography-Lite. This is the backstory I did for a human warblade I made for an Eberron game on Myth Weavers (which sadly died due to the DM disappearing):

Anya was born and raised is Wroat, in one of the neighbourhoods near the Lightning Rail station. Her father was a member of the City Watch and both she and her older brother learned swordsmanship from him. Specifically, it was a style that was passed down in the family that focussed on speed and using a pair of longswords for both offence and defence.

As she got older, she began to grow bored with the city. She would sneak peaks at documents her father would bring home and would track down the criminals they indicated and once she found them, she would alert the Watch with an anonymous note. As one would expect; much of her early tracking ended up drawing the attention of her targets and having to fight them. To avoid any unnecessary headaches from her father or the rest of the Watch; Anya would often try to leave them alive and merely unconscious for the Watch to find.

Her father didn't know who was hunting down criminals and when he found who; it had been Anya's decision to show him.

When she was 17, she heard of a smuggling ring that was set up in the city. From what she gleamed from her father's documents and from asking in the right areas of Wroat, she learned where their main storehouse-slash-headquarters were. Armed with a pair of finely crafted swords and a chain shirt of mithral her grandmother had owned, the young girl entered the storehouse with the intent of bringing the network down while causing enough of a commotion for the Watch to be called.

The fight was little more than a blur in Anya's memory but when the Watch team burst in, led by her father, she stood surrounded by wounded or unconscious smugglers (as well as a few who hadn't been as lucky), holding a document listing the identities of the smuggler's contacts with a triumphant grin on her face. Right before she passed out from shock and her injuries.

The people on the document were quickly arrested and searches of their properties produced more than enough evidence to put them away. Anya's family weren't all that happy about what she'd done, but her father had trouble condemning what she'd done as he'd been tempted to do the same thing gods knew how many times. He did ask that she not be as reckless in the future, and even offered her a place in the Watch. Anya declined; saying that she'd had enough of Wroat and wanted to see what the rest of the world had to offer. Her family tried to dissuade her, but her mind was made up and in the end, her father got her a ticket on the Lightning Rail to Sharn, knowing that there would be plenty of work there for someone with her skills. Anya's mother also made a modification to the chain shirt she'd worn to the storehouse; disguising it as a sleeveless, high-collared black dress with a flowing, silver design on the chest.

Two years later, Anya found herself in Green Leaf; a stop on her way to Varna. She was hoping to find work on the way so that she could afford a Rail ticket to Wroat and see her family again The last letter she'd received had mentioned that her older brother had become a member of The King's Shields and Anya was headed home to congratulate him.

She was sleeping peacefully in one of the town's inns when shouting and some other commotion woke her up. "And I was hoping to sleep in, too." Anya muttered to herself, not moving from her bed for a moment before finally hauling herself out and pulling her dress/armour on to see what on Khorvaire was going on.

Some of the latter stuff was to explain how she was fifth level (the starting level of the game) and why she was in the village the game was starting in. The last paragraph I based on stuff other people were working out in a thread for background-sharing (namely that one character would be mistaken as an assassin by another and starting a fight in one of the rooms).

[Arakune]

I fall on the second grade, and my characters background usually become very large (with improvised, non-contradictory, background as the plot or funny demands).

As an example of my last wizard, starting with:

Apprentice of a mid (8~12) level wizard;
Have a huge amount of scars in the body by different sources;
Went to abyss and got captured, spending a good chunk of time there as a slave of four succubi sisters;
Got a succubus girlfriend (nobody believe in him);
After being rescued is dumped in a city to learn about alchemy;


... and end with:

Discovering the hard way why being a succubi slave isn't pleasant;
His succubi girlfriend got killed because of him (there is a reason you DON'T hear much about CN~CG succubus in the abyss, despite the fact they are terribly rare);
He is a father of a 12 year old girl with said succubus (time travel and prophecy are involved);
Got chewed by a bear;
Beaten to half dead by a bunch of Orcs (and discovering that bad beer, gratuitous amount of painting and awful food solves a lot of problems);
The method of "taking the apprentice to the wild, see if he survives and dump him somewhere after teaching the basics" is a 'tradition' started with a certain prophet;

[balistafreak]

Personally, I think that an interesting backstory for the players involved and the GM is one that looks towards the present and future, not the past.

No one wants to hear about all the cool things that your character has done in the past. They're here to play a game about doing cool things right now. Backstory should reflect and foreshadow a character's reactions to the present, not glorify the past.

If your campaign involves a lot of, say, dragons, then it's appropriate (and probably expected) to discuss your character's history with dragons, or at least events that affected his thought process on dragons, not the time his high school girlfriend broke up with him because he was a jerk. That's the sort of information you leave to reveal as needed in the middle of the game when prompted or provoked - otherwise you're just whining about it.

Alternatively, if your campaign involves courtly intrigue and romance, then the girlfriend backstory is pertinent, and discussion with your history with dragons is natter at best.

It's fully appropriate and not at all a bad thing to write out a backstory down to your character's favorite color, so that when you sit at the table you know exactly how your character thinks. It is completely inappropriate and terrible to try and bring these things to the forefront of the gaming table - not only does it waste people's time, but it's not even realistic.


Backstory (noun):
1: A means for the DM to screw you over.
2: A document detailing your character's emotional weaknesses.

Trust is a weakness? :smalltongue:

[Kol Korran]

i too follow what Zaq and Kamikasei rescribed- the backstory is importent for the personality, and integration into the story. i do like to make up more at times for my character (though i fall short of a lengthy detail of others in his/her life), but that is for my own amusement. i don't expect the DM to be beholden to that.
with my characters i aim to get a good feel to who they are when begining play, and let them evolve and create stories and connection to the world in play, with the rest of the players. i found it kind of offensive to have the others have to relate to my backstory. this is a cooperative game- a game/ plot hook should most ideally interest all of the characters, not just one.

[Yuki Akuma]

After playing a game over Skype, I have discovered that backstories don't matter one single jot. :smalltongue:

[Snake-Aes]

They don't "have" to be long. For example, my character backstories are all short enough that I can speak them out loud before the game starts, like
Ennael is the daughter of two Swords of Glorienn, being educated in their philosophy and a minimum of martial training. Until age 98, she wanted to be a singer, but the Black Alliance invaded and her family had to flee.
Then the caravan they were in was attacked, and in the middle of the chaos both Swords left with their group to detain the attack and let the caravan flee. The last thing she remembers is a horde of goblinoids overwhelming their group. Later she wakes up bound and chained to a pair of strangers, who tell her she's captured by the slavers of Tapista. In the following year she didn't kill herself only because of her parents' teachings, and fled on the first opportunity she found. After weeks wandering on the wilderness she was saved by a group of fugitive slaves. Finding peace of mind there, her contributions to the camp came in the form of a teacher of both combat and life, thanking her parents for teaching her to be who she is. After a couple years, it was decided better to disband the camp and have everyone find other camps to keep spreading her teachings.
There is enough nods to canon there for everyone to quickly realize exactly how screwed she was, and a reason for her to be wandering around. It also gave the dm a hook in the form of the fall of Glorienn and the future of her faith.
It gives little on the side of motivations past "find family, do not get captured again, for me to come up with personality traits, quirks and other reasons to walk around.
The actual backstory? Since I had a lot of time I kept writing a diary of Ennael in the bus trips over the course of a couple months. It has a complete report of what she did and thought of each day over the course of a few years. And I write a longer story in book form, which I complement with each adventure. 2200 pages so far XD That's what a 2 years long campaign does to you.

[Tengu_temp]

Basically, for me, personality is more important than backstory. If my backstory informs or explains my personality, then awesome, but what matters is what I'm adding to the table, not what I'm adding to my binder.

Oh yeah. Having an interesting backstory is good, but what's much more important is having an interesting personality. And interesting doesn't mean long: "I got possessed by a demon and forced to kill my parents. He's still within me, waiting. Must find a way to get rid of him." is just three sentences, but it's a backstory that reinforces your character's personality and gives the DM an instant plothook to work with you. Much better than 10 pages of purple prose nobody but you will even read.

[Myth]

Or the clan of goblin tinkerers, renown for their tendency to make amazing contraptions and get themselves blown up in the process, and the one goblin amongst them who has become quite legendary for being extraordinarily -sane- and slightly less likely to blow himself up (after having almost gotten himself killed for stealing a baby ogre and getting caught. On the downside, permanently crippled. on the upside, impetus to study wizardry harder and now he's got a best buddy ogre who dosen't mind having his best buddy goblin ride around on his back.)This is straight out of Warcraft 3, the Goblin Alchemist riding on the ogre's back, goblins blowing themselves up... Dude try to be at least semi-original.

[Ingus]

Loving to write, I usually put down around 20 pages of backstory.
My usual purpose is to underline who my PC is, why is he adventuring (usually, I like when the DM give me some hint of setting/location/starting of a campaign) and underline his basic personality. I usually include fluffy information for roleplaying sake. For example, my dwarven paladin was totally untouched by dwarven greed, but he liked well crafted weapons so much that he was fond to risk big to protect them - not to pillage them, since a paladin is always honourable.
I usually, intentionally leave blank spots. As a DM, I like when my fantasy is fascinated by an untold story and I like to give other DM the same feeling.
It is also useful to fill in good ideas I had during roleplaying. Often, you find what a PC really is only when you play it. So closing all your spaces with a overdetailed backstory can cut you other roads.
Besides, you have to respect the DM work too. He already works alot for the campaign - it is said that, for a single hour of meaninful play, your DM has to prepare it for three hours - and adding a BS monstre would only slow his pace.

[Delta]

Loving to write, I usually put down around 20 pages of backstory.

Just out of honest curiousity, what would you do if your GM told you "Sorry, I don't have time to read and remember all of that, maybe I'll get around to it some time later in the campaign, but can't you just give me a shorter summary of your character background?"

[dr.cello]

These days, I usually write a reasonably extensive backstory. The intention is to have some NPCs that have connections to the character, to give the character some goals, and to give a decent idea of where they came from.

It's a lot easier to make backstories for characters with a few experience levels on them, though with 4e the advent of low-level characters who don't die when a cat sneezes has helped that significantly.

(I'm more likely to use extensive backstory for PbP games than real-life games, but that's more due to my group's play style.)

I shoot for no more than a page or three though--brevity is the soul of wit and all that.

[Ingus]

Just out of honest curiousity, what would you do if your GM told you "Sorry, I don't have time to read and remember all of that, maybe I'll get around to it some time later in the campaign, but can't you just give me a shorter summary of your character background?"

You're welcome :smallwink:

Usually, I play with the same players and we rotate in the role of DM. [Modesty OFF] My backstory are passed hand by hand and usually very well liked.
Once I did the mistake of double the lenght and it happened what you're asking. So now I know that 20 pages are maybe the limit for my fellow players and DM.
That time I resumed all the backstory in a bit more of 60 seconds speech, syntethizing it alot. The story not read didn't bothered me much, since I liked to write it down, and now (believe it or not) I'm expanding it, even if that character died long ago.

This is why I told not to write too much. And, by the way, since then I always do a resumé, to grant my DM the choice between the "piece" and the useful informations. It is also useful to ask the DM if he likes an expanded backstory.

[blackseven]

I tend to hover between 1 and 2. I have like one or two sentences that nail down a basic "BIG THEME" in my character's history, and I fill in the details as I play the character.

I don't start with a good idea of the quirks of my character, and I find trying to make one up before getting bouncing him off others and the campaign to be too hard.

However, after a few sessions, my characters naturally evolve tendencies and quirks that I can plug into crafting a more detailed backstory. I still do not write too much (I'm with the crowd that prefers to use backstory to point forward) but it's usually around 1.5 to 2 pages.

[Knaight]

I tend to hover around 2. Usually my back stories are very succinct, and just detail why the character is where they are now; I consider establishing a personality far more important than establishing a backstory. For instance, the last character I played had this back story.

Keso was a military sniper in his early adult life, and served under a superior officer who had a habit of getting his men killed. Eventually he got fed up with this and killed the officer, then left the army. He has since traveled around, a step ahead of the various mercenaries and military police sent to kill him for his crime.

Its short, it explains why he keeps moving around, it explains why he is able to adventure, it even explains the combat style (kind of, I made him a dart thrower, but its completely appropriate in the genre even from a military perspective), and it serves as explanation for several personality traits. It also leaves enough there for the GM to pull contacts, enemies, whatever out of.

[Morty]

I fall into the 2nd category. I write enough stuff to give my characters some ties to the world they live in and an explanation for their biases, sympathies, personal opinions et cetera, but I'm not overly elaborate. I find backstories less important than what my character is doing during the game.

[Ranos]

Really depends on the system and the DM. With a new DM, I give a minimum of backstory, with a few plot hooks. If they are used at some point in the campaign, later characters with that DM will have a more in-depth backstory. If not, I really don't bother.
Some systems also have mechanics that promote backstory (beliefs, goals, intimacies, motivations, contacts, you name it). I tend to work a bit more on my backstories when playing those.

[Strawberries]

I fall somewhere between 2 and 3. Usually I keep my backstories short (unless explicitly asked otherwise), but have other notes on hand, in case the DM decides to ask or I decide to make some in-game reference to (a list of npcs close to my character, for instance - or other, minor events that happened to the character and I didn't feel were important enough to include in the backstory).
Since I play only pbp I'm sometime hesitant to write huge, detailed backstories - I'm afraid I'm taking control of the world too much by detailing places and npcs, and some DMs might not want to. So I keep it private unless asked.

[PersonMan]

I never actually write up backstories. Usually I have a fairly vague idea of their origins, and make stuff up later. However, some character concepts come with backstories, like one I'd like to play soon.

Otherwise, I don't usually bother much with hammering out the details of the backstory. For example, in one campaign I recently switched characters. I added something to both their backstories to tie them together, and now one has a near-complete backstory while the other has an outline, like most of my characters.

A common theme among my characters is that they want to become more powerful. One of them wants to become a powerful wizard to protect his village, another wants to gain power just because someone told her to, and another wants to get stronger for her "brothers"'s sake. If I want to twist a common concept or whatever, I sometimes add on other goals. For example, one half-dragon I played wanted to avenge the death of her dragon mother.

As a whole, my backstories vary greatly. Almost every character I come up with is made with a full personality, but they rarely have more than an outline for a backstory. Other concepts come with backstories attached. It depends on the concept and the character.

[Kris Strife]

I tend to hover between 1 and 2. I have like one or two sentences that nail down a basic "BIG THEME" in my character's history, and I fill in the details as I play the character.

I don't start with a good idea of the quirks of my character, and I find trying to make one up before getting bouncing him off others and the campaign to be too hard.

However, after a few sessions, my characters naturally evolve tendencies and quirks that I can plug into crafting a more detailed backstory. I still do not write too much (I'm with the crowd that prefers to use backstory to point forward) but it's usually around 1.5 to 2 pages.

Same here. Its easier to write a detailed background once I've gotten to know the character.

[Mr.Moron]

I generally find an in-depth back story and evenly overly defined personality descriptions tend to feel constraining. At the point I'm writing something like that I've never actually played the character. While I may think know how I want them to turn out, how they actually wind up playing out always winds up being different. If I keep the backstory and other details a bit on the shallow side I don't feel like I have this complex straight jacket I have to wiggle my way into.

[RufusCorvus]

If I was DMing and someone handed me a twenty page backstory, I'd be sorely tempted to break out the red pen and start critiquing (if I didn't just hand it back to them and tell them to shorten it). Sure, it's great that that much thought is being put into a character, but how much of it is actually relevant? If it's not likely to come up in play, I see no reason in including it.

Think of it as an application of Hemingway's Iceberg Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory): you only need to show the tip of the iceberg--not the whole thing.

I believe that if I give only enough to create the illusion of the character (in other words, motivation and personality--the latter of which I find works better when it emerges from gameplay), the other players will begin creating their own ideas about my characters' histories; those ideas will always be more effective than twenty pages of prose.

[Optimystik]

I'm squarely on 2, though it might drift towards 3 as I play and think of things to add.


After playing a game over Skype, I have discovered that backstories don't matter one single jot. :smalltongue:

They're a great way to qualify for regional feats, affiliations etc. :smallwink:

[Calemyr]

Personally, I go for "choose your own adventure" style biographies. Basically, I lay out who the character is, but leave certain key points intentionally vague (with some options ranging from mundane to epic in nature) so that the DM can control decide to dial up or down the character's importance to the plot as they see fit.

[Totally Guy]

I always feel like a good backstory is bittersweet because none of the story got to happen at the table. Imagine how awesome that would have been if it could have come about in play...

[valadil]

When you create a character, how much importance to you place on their backstories?

It depends on the GM. Some of them won't even read your backstory. Others read it and promptly ignore it. In my experience, this is the majority of GMs. Others (and as a GM, I consider myself to be in this group) read the backstory, extract plot hooks from it, and put those in game.

I try to do an appropriate backstory for each GM I have.

My favorite GMs are the ones that incorporate my lengthy backstories into the game. I want my character to leave a mark on the world and this is the best way to do that. For these GMs I write 15 pages.


If you start at level 5 you've got no back story.

The start of game isn't necessarily your first adventure. Just because the game begins at level 5 doesn't mean you don't have 4 levels of adventuring under your belt. In this case maybe backstory is the wrong term and your character's background should be thought of as a prequel.

[Curmudgeon]

Am I misunderstanding something, though? It seems very odd to me that you appear to be saying that characters can't have pasts before they started adventuring.
In game terms, there's negligible value to these stories. A story should reflect how the character got to where they are. If they got there by a player just creating a character sheet, that's all they are: purpose-built to serve the player's interests, with nothing to back that up. The player may have goals and an idea of how they'd like the character to develop, but any character story at this point is unsupported and artificial.

The real story of a character's existence is built by role-playing and using the game system to try to achieve the player's goals for the character. Here the fanciful imaginings of the player's creator are constrained by what they can actually accomplish in the game world. Stories constructed in this fashion are going to be less artificial than those built of unchecked imagination, and much more compelling because they reflect both the limitations of what can actually be accomplished, and the collaborative input of all the people (players and game master) involved in creating and enriching that history.

As a GM, I never do more than skim through those artificial back stories, and that's purely to see if the player is trying to concoct some fanciful way of skirting game rules. (An actual example submitted to me for a 1st-level D&D character: "Raised in a rich and cultured home; given +5 Tome of Clear Thought by wealthy parents"!)

The thing I find most interesting is that the players who spend a great deal of time writing these single-author back stories frequently stop writing when their characters actually enter the game world, just when they've finally got something to write about.

[ShadowsGrnEyes]

In my opinion a backstory is very important. i feel that if you dont know who your character was, you have no standing to create who he will become. . . no matter what you do to your character or have them do. . . they have no growth if they had nothing they came from.

there is one guy in my ususal group who ALWAYS says "Well im not gonna write a backstory i'll just see how he develops and go with that." he doesnt write backstories because he feels that they dont matter to who his character will be.

He is ALWAYS the guy who ends up talking to the GM about how he's not having any fun because his characters not getting the roleplay that everyone else is and his character isn't what he thought it would be and can he roll somthing new. . .

in pure hack n slash, the backstory is pointless. . . if you tend to play in games that have less than 70% hacknslash and or dont use modules, you REALLY need at least a vague backstory

This is both my opinion and my experience and I am positive that some groups would do just fine without any backstories. it's a matter of the groups playstyle.

[Optimystik]

In game terms, there's negligible value to these stories.

The value (crunchwise) of a backstory depends on the DM. I can use my backstory to qualify for the Education feat, or qualify for a PrC like Blood Magus, Paragnostic Apostle, Ruathar... anything with a fluff requirement can be satisfied via backstory if the DM allows.

[valadil]

In game terms, there's negligible value to these stories. A story should reflect how the character got to where they are. If they got there by a player just creating a character sheet, that's all they are: purpose-built to serve the player's interests, with nothing to back that up. The player may have goals and an idea of how they'd like the character to develop, but any character story at this point is unsupported and artificial.

That makes sense, but that's not how I (or my other backstory friendly GMs) handle backtories. I see it as more of a transaction. The player is given leave to add whatever they want to the game story. The GM can veto or alter any of it. The story passes back and forth between PC and GM until they're in agreement and then is canonized as part of the game.

I do it this way so I can use things the players came up with in game. Players are a lot more enthusiastic about the game if you're using their ideas. I hooked a total non roleplayer by taking the nemesis he wrote for his backstory and turned it into the villain for my campaign. And why wouldn't I? He'd already built up emotion towards this NPC he wrote. Why would I make up some other villain when I already have one that a player hates?

[Terraoblivion]

So in short that since the people you play with don't use stories for actually informing who their characters are, all prewritten stories are terrible. As such the traumatized engineering student and mad scientist in my steampunk game can apparently never complain about how he spent five years on the run from alien invaders on a diet of "roots, rats and rivers" or suffer from nightmares of when his homeland was destroyed. Better tell his player that before he get any wrong ideas about referring to these past events or even make them important to him! I should probably also stop writing sarcastic comments about my character's social climbing uncle in her diary, as well as forget anything about her disgust at the policies her government espoused before the aliens invaded. Or any real thought to the first five years of the war against the aliens. I need to keep that in mind, because i wouldn't want to use a terrible, artificial story for informing where my character develops from.

[Strawberries]

Curmudgeon, I see your point, but I disagree. While it might be true that some players might use the backstories as a way to obtain free equipment or similar things, I still maintain it doesn't feel right to bring in a world a character (expecially a somewhat high-level character) as a complete tabula rasa, without ven a hint of who they were before.

It might simply be that I don't feel a character is complete if I don't give some hint about where is s/he coming from and what made him/her the way they are.

Two examples of backstories for my characters (those are the longest I ever submitted to a DM, but like I said before I have other pieces as personal character notes)

A human rogue. This one I made a "short version" of, which is the first paragraph, and added the rest when I was given permission to elaborate.


Short version
Kitra was just one of the many street kids of . While her father was probably a passing soldier, her mother was a prominent attraction of one of the local brothels. Kitra grew up on the streets, learning bits and pieces of languages and lore wherever she could, but mainly learning to survive in the city. She was on her own very soon, and joined a gang of kids who mostly resorted to pick pocketing and petty theft to survive, and she still makes use of the skills she learned then. Growing up she realized that the injustice she experienced every day as a child are rooted in the very society she lives in, thus she has no respect for laws and rules, but lives according to her personal code. She is reluctant to kill people if she has a choice and will always fight for those she perceives as weak and deserving of protection

------------

[I]Full backstory
Kitra was the daughter of one of the prostitutes at the Red Rose. Her mother died when she was just a little girl, by some nasty disease probably related to her job (incidentally, that's where her refusal to worship the gods and mistrust for the temple's clerics originate-if they had cared a little bit about the slumfolks, she probably could have been saved).

Kitra and Jen were raised togheter by Jen's mother, another of the workers in the Red Rose. That means they were mostly left to raise themselves, which for Kitra translated in joining a kid's street gang. She was in for the money, but also for the sense of belonging that being a part of such a group gave her.

But when she wasn't a little kid anymore, she realized that keeping that kind of lifestile would have inevitably gotten her to be recruited as a thug for one crime-lord or the other, and that would have meant be forced to do things she didn't want to. She decided it was time to start make an honest living - or as close an honest living she knew how. Which meant working at the Red Rose.

It worked for a couple of weeks, but of course it didn't end well. One evening one of the clients, from the looks of him a noble, or at least upper class, decided it would be fun to up the ante a bit, and got violent, trying to bash Kitra's head against the wall (that's where the scar she keeps rubbing when she's under stress is from, in case you were wondering).
Even if bleeding and probably concussed, Kitra kept her wits enough to stab him with an hidden dagger. It was Jen who helped her to clean the mess, hide the body and make the evidence disappear. That was of course the last client Kitra took.

She is now working as a sort of freelance mercenary. She however realizes how difficult it is to remain independent and not fall prey to one of the many factions that make up the delicate balance of the slums.


My latest character, a paladin (the DM requested a detailed backstory on this one)

The day Pelia, Audric's mother, discovered she was pregnant again, a serious discussion was held in the household. His family couldn't afford to raise another child - their only income was from Audric's father, Laer, who worked as an assistant for a tailor, and there were two older sisters to consider. The only solution seemed, at the time, to commit the child to Aldaran: the temple would provide a small sum for raising the kid for the first years of his life, and, at the right age, the boy would enter the temple and begin training as a champion of good. He would still be permitted of visiting his family from time to time, but his education would be entirely decided by the proper authorities.

That was exactly what happened – for the first six years of his life Audric was raised by his family – his fondest memories of that time are teaming with his youngest sister, Naara, only a year older than him, against their older sibling, who fancied herself a proper little lady already, being a full five years older than her sister.

Those carefree years come to an ending when Audric entered the temple. Then the studying began, and the teaching of the faith that was supposed to be the children’s guidance for the years to come. The first period was the tougher: Audric chafed under the restrictions that were placed on him – he was disrespectful, made irreverent questions, and in general demonstrated himself ill-suited to the life of a paladin. But he wasn’t a stupid boy: he soon learned that there was more gain in keeping his head down, do as the rest of the children were doing, and make his teachers happy… and if sometimes happened that he slipped outside past curfew, and none was the wiser, what harm could there be?

It was in one of those escapades that Audric met the man who would then become his mentor – or rather was caught by him. Audric was twelve at the time, and Kalan was one of the paladins at the temple. When asked what was he doing outside at that hour of the night, he thought quickly and then answered that he wanted to be outside to be closer to the gods. The boy fully expected a formal punishment, or at the very least a harsh reprimand, instead Kalan just laughed, gave him a sweet roll that he kept in his pockets (the gods only know why) and send him back to bed. But from that day on he took a special interest in his progress, and sometimes helped him with his studies: without even knowing how, Audric had found a guide and a friend.
With Kalan’s help, Audric made good progress in the path that would bring him to paladinhood – he liked his training and his studies, and didn’t question the doctrine that he was imparted: being raised among those belief since he was of such a young age sorted its effect. However, a bit of a restless streak hadn’t been completely driven out from him. When he was fourteen, in fact, he became infatuated with a girl his age.

Her name was Raeann, she wasn’t very beautiful, but had a nice laugh and the prettiest eyes Audric had ever seen. At that age, all the boys made big talk of wooing the girls (even if, at the temple, such activities were prohibited). Audric didn’t brag about how he was going to conquer the….heart of the girl he liked, but one early morning her father, who was a farmer, found them both in one of his fields, with very little on in term of clothing. There followed a big scandal at the temple, which was going to end with Audric’s ousting…if Kalan hadn’t intervened, putting in a good word once again – after all, a young man being naked with a girl was nothing unheard of… Audric’s mistake was only getting caught. At the end, the scandal was hushed, the girl was sent to some parents in another town, and Kalan sat down with Audric and gave him an ultimatum: he had to decide, then and there, if he wanted to commit to the path of paladinhood. If he decided to, no more escapades were permitted; he would dedicate himself heart and soul to his responsabilities. If he didn’t feel up to it , he was free to go, but he had to decide.

Audric can’t tell why he decided to stay – maybe he was scared to lose the friends he had, or to delude Kalan, or maybe it was just that the temple’s life was almost all he had known since he was more than a toddler, but he stayed, and when the day came, he proffered the vows and became a paladin.

One of his first assignments was a disaster. He was with a patrol, investigating the reports of unnatural magic in the area, when he saw the person people were saying was responsible: a skinny lad, who run away as soon as he saw the paladins. Audric was young, and hotheaded, and chased him without thinking of calling the others, but when he managed to corner him, he looked in his eyes and saw just a frightened boy. They stood still for a second, looking at each other, both with her hands half-raised – the paladin to smite, the lad probably to cast some sort of defensive spell, before Audric lowered his weapon and told the lad to run away, which he promptly did. The paladins returned to the temple empty-handed, and as of this day, Audric never told anyone the truth about that mission.

A couple of years have passed, and Audric has raised a bit in the ranks. Not too much, as the most shining careers are made by the zealots, and he is far from one, but he is content with what he has. He is currently on a solo assignment, investigating reports of strange happenings in the sewers of the nearby city…..and that’s where the story begins.

[Optimystik]

Example to my point above:

At an early age, one of my human characters lived on a small firm near the woods, where his family would herd sheep. He met and befriended an elf child and they would play together, far from the strict rules and chores of their elders. He realized he had a talent for minor magic tricks from a hedge magician that would ply his trade for the farms in the area.

One night, my boy left the farm to meet his childhood friend for some moonlight games - the only time he had to himself with all the work that needed doing on the farm. However, he could not find his friend until he heard sounds of a struggle further into the woods; following them, he found his friend being abducted by a Drow slaving party on the surface. They tied my friend up and prepared to head back to their entrace to the surface. Pinching off some wool from his sheepskin cloak, my child character cast Ghost Sound (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ghostsound.htm) to distract the Drow, so he could sneak up and untie his friend.

He was successful, and the two pelted into the forest - but one Drow, angered to see their quarry escaping, loosed an arrow after the two boys. My character was struck, and the injury was serious. Luckily, the elves from the youngsters village arrived and drove off the Drow just when things looked grim. My character awoke in a grand treetop house, having been treated for his injury, and discovered the elven child he had befriended was actually the chief's rebellious son. He had done the elves a great service by risking himself for the young prince's rescue, and they urged him to return for a suitable reward when he came of age.

With that one backstory, I've satisfied the fluff requirements for both Ruathar and Blood Magus. I can tack on some feats and another PrC simply by adding more details.

[Curmudgeon]

So in short that since the people you play with don't use stories for actually informing who their characters are, all prewritten stories are terrible.
I didn't say that (though I did provide one example along that line). Single-author character stories are unedited and not integrated into the game world. It really doesn't matter if the character is supposed to be in perpetual fear of creatures inhabiting the angles of time if the game system has no way of including that concept and the GM has a scenario unrelated to the back story that player concocted. Even if the player is another H.P. Lovecraft, their character's back story may be irrelevant to the real story that gets told collaboratively in the game.

[Terraoblivion]

Which is why the GM actually needs some idea for what he plans on doing. After all just saying "go make a character" without even stating the system is liable to lead to some very strange groups. While stating the system, but nothing else it is still liable to add up to a fairly random bunch, even without backgrounds. That's where the whole "planning" thing comes in to ensure that the players are actually able to make a meaningful character and to ensure there will be an actual story once play begin, as opposed to just random events happening in succession. In my personal experience games without some planning of plot and some basic information before character generation tend to just be aimless affairs that fail to engage the players.

[valadil]

their character's back story may be irrelevant to the real story that gets told collaboratively in the game.

Is the story so set in stone that you can't incorporate elements from each back story? I treat the story of my game as Iron Chef, but for story telling. Each player gives me some story elements and I work them together into one cohesive tale. That's the fun part of GMing for me - working those different sources into one concrete entity.

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'm a #2. Anything more is just a waste, IME.

[Alleine]

While I may think know how I want them to turn out, how they actually wind up playing out always winds up being different.

This, so much this.
If I try to make a real detailed character I'll end up acting completely out of character. I can usually make a basic personality, but trying to make a story will end with things the character wouldn't actually do.

Of course, backstories tend to be less important in the games I'm in.

[MarvisSahad]

Backstories are optional, yet recommended. They help assist the players decide what general path they will take as characters, and may also help the GM decide what adventures will further their enjoyment/progression.

As a GM I highly encourage my players to have at least a few sentences worth describing their character's origin and long-term goals. Its more for their sake than for mine.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So how important is backstory to you? Do you just skip it and hop straight to the combat? Do you give your characters a general backstory and let the details fill themselves in? Or are you like me with my ridiculous novels of plotfodder?

I try to use the KISS principle in backstory creation, but it always ends up spiraling into a huge story. For instance, my most recent character was originally just intended to be a missing scion of an ancient empire, who would eventually rebuild said empire over the course of his adventuring days and rule it upon retirement. It spiralled into a much more grandiose story, with elements of the Human Noble origin story in Dragon Age: Origins, The Odyssey and Celtic mythology, as well as some minor historical facts and some Fire Emblem references.

[Kylarra]

I start out at number 2.

[Strawberries]

I try to use the KISS principle in backstory creation, but it always ends up spiraling into a huge story

Forgive a newbie, but I've never heard of it. Could you elaborate?

[Quincunx]

English acronym: Keep It Simple, Stupid! :smallwink: A useful self-reminder not to ramble on for too long.

I prefer 'bare-bones paragraph now, make details up on the spot later'. That, when yoked onto one of the archetypes of motivation, is enough material to get going. It takes a strange group to fall to talking about one another's pasts.

[EDIT: Another way to look at it--should your backstory take up more time than a song, when a song can be such a great inspiration for a character? (Good fun, that. Bonus points if you can find a matching music video which makes your GM's eyes bug out.)]

[CubeB]

Well, I admit that my biography backstories are never too detailed. There are blanks to fill. They've just got a ton of plot hooks for the DM to torment me with use for entertaining stories.

I think part of the reason I like backstories is because I'm also a budding DM, and being able to know who my players are allows me to tailor make adventures for them.

In one game I'm in, the character's backstories are the entire reason for the current plot.


Two characters (The Warlock and the Rogue) are overtly connected to Shadow.
The Ranger's home was destroyed by a Necromancer.
Two characters are descended from black dragons, though we only know who one of them is.



The BBEG? A Half-Black Dragon Kobold Necromancer who used "Stolen" Shadow Magic to become a Lich without a phylactery.

Not to mention (as others have stated) backstory can allow you to qualify for feats and classes.

Simply seeing my Warlock use his blast qualifies you for any of the Shadow Magic classes, because his Blasts are Shadow Magic.

My Kobold? I convinced the DM to let him have a Dragonmark because the Fleshwarper put one there as part of his experiments. It's an ugly Mark of the Sentinel, but it's there, and it works. There are probably better feats to take than a Least Mark of the Sentinel, but I liked the Flavor, Shield of Faith is useful, and I get feats every other level anyway because it's Pathfinder.

In fact, any PrC that requires you to have a certain story element can be backstoried in, though sometimes it's more fun to play it out. :)

[TurtleKing]

Keep It Simple Stupid.

The first time I actually got into playing D&D I created a Biography type backstory for a sandbox game. My backstory took over the party, and became the focus of campaign. Even though my character was a laughing stock who should never have been able to amount to anything. He did however manage to pull off awesomeness toward the end of the campaign. Becoming a deity at level five is pretty awesome.:smallbiggrin::biggrin:

Edit: Dam I was ninja'd

[Strawberries]

English acronym: Keep It Simple, Stupid! :smallwink: A useful self-reminder not to ramble on for too long.


Ooooh. :smallamused:. Thanks for the explanation. It was less a case of "being a D&D newbie" and more a case of "being a non native speaker" :smalltongue:.


I prefer 'bare-bones paragraph now, make details up on the spot later'.

I agree. My character backgrounds tend to start like that too (and that's usually what I give the DM). But then inspiration strikes, and I end up with those side-notes...

[Megaduck]

I think a good back story is vital to roleplaying. I've found that if the group comes in with just the character sheet and the idea that "They're a cleric" the game quickly devolves into roll playing.

Writing the backstory is a lot about getting the players to think about what sort of character they're going to play. What their quirks are, how they see the world. While the plot hooks are useful to the DM the real point is getting the characters to know they're not there because of immaculate conception. They're actual people.

We tend to start each new game with us reading our backstories to each other.

Below is an example of the pilot Stark Konteraste from our Serenity game.
History

To hear him tell it, Stark was born to the Grand Duchess of Sihnon, grew up on a pirate ship, his mother is the queen of space, he was a frontier rancher, and voices speak in his head. His crewmates aren’t sure what to believe as Stark has also stated that history is much more fun when it’s multiple choice. Except of course for the voices in his head, the crew is pretty much convinced they exist.

What is known is that Stark loves to fly, that he was born to fly. From the earliest ages of being able to reach the controls from his father or uncle’s lap, he’s been flying something. Assuming he was not born from Immaculate Conception, something else he’s claimed in his time. He received a small shuttle from somewhere and Small skimmers and postal routes eventually became a self‐run courier agency. Mostly he just enjoyed the fun of zipping around from planet to planet and getting paid for it.

When the war broke out he was drafted into the Alliance military and parked his shuttle in a landing bay, the rent paid in advance for the next three hundred and fifty years.

He was assigned to the Alliance Destroyer Hegemony where he served with distinction. Not necessarily honors, but very distinct. The most memorable incident was when he left a pair of sock puppets to fly the ship, while in battle with three browncoat destroyers. They won that battle, mostly due to Starks incredible flying skills from the auxiliary bridge. Hegemony’s XO, Commander Bower, was surprisingly calm about the whole affair and who protected Stark from official censure.

Both Stark and Bower fought in the Battle of Serenity Valley where they were sent on detached duty in one of Hegemony’s skimmers on the orders of a Major Heaton, over the protests of Hegemony’s captain. These protests were well founded as the Skimmer was hit by antiaircraft fire and crashed. Stark’s piloting skills saved their lives but both he and Bower were injured, and Bower received a permanent scar on his face.

After the war, Stark was discharged from the alliance, his official papers say it was for ‘Excessive Weirdness’ but scuttlebutt states a certain admiral’s daughter was also involved. Regardless what happened, Stark didn’t mind. With the end of the war there was less need for skilled pilots he probably would have been bored anyway. He simply went back and picked his shuttle up, and, with the aid of a watermelon and a pair of talking hamsters, was able to negotiate the return of the unused rent. Several uneventful years followed that included a few assassination attempts, a couple senator’s daughters, and a pair of female lawyers. Pretty much par the course really.

This all ended when Commander, now Captain, Bower reentered his life with a job offer. Bower has recently come into position of Firefly Class transport, through methods he was not entirely clear about, and wanted an expert pilot to fly it. The offer came at a perfect time for Stark, as he had recently been involved in a contest of ‘Who can give the most creative insult’ with a Blue Sun Executive after a memorable incident at a dinner party that involved, wine, mushrooms, and several young ladies dresses.

Current Sketch

At 44, Stark has been around the block a few times and “knows” some things; some more useful than others, some even, that are accurate. Stark knows how to keep an eye out for things to go wrong, knows when people are going to pick a fight and when they are bluffing, knows that it’s handy to have the right tools on hand, and knows that the ‘Verse has a sense of humor. He wears overcoats with a lot’s of pockets full of useful, sometimes, equipment in order to prepare for this.

Stark has a thing for woman and will go out of his way to flirt with one, even when the situation doesn’t quite call for it. Like when her fiancé is standing next to her or when he’s being shot at, strangely the two seem to quickly follow each other. The result of this experience with women is enough to know they are trouble, and if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile; or the house, the daughter, and everything but your favorite shuttlecraft. But Stark knows that boobies are such wonderful things, so while every pair should be thoroughly enjoyed, he “knows” no single set is worth getting attached to.

Because of his vast experience Stark is nearly impossible to shake, rattle or otherwise roil. He can remain relaxed and laidback in even the most tense situations, and even if he’s shouting and hollering he often doesn’t mean it. The other thing that’s never shaken is his smart mouth and sense of humor; he’s always ready with some quip, or practical joke. The rest of the crew put up with it as his ability to turn the most innocent practical joke into something that distracts, confuses, or otherwise rattles the enemy. Can be a mite wearing though.

The other thing that can be wearing is Starks irritating habit of telling the truth exactly as he sees it. He can’t lie worth a damn and simply say the first thing that comes to his mind, letting the chips lie, or the bullets fly, where they will. It’s this fact that makes the rest of the crew think that he might actually believe all the crazy stories he tells. The truth is, Stark doesn’t live in the same ‘verse as everyone else and even he isn’t fully aware of when he’s simply being silly or actively delusional. He doesn’t really care either.

Fortunately, Lady Luck smiles on fools and madmen, else Stark has been seducing her too. Life can get turbulent, but a quality pilot can always make it though. Stark “knows” there’s no problem too big that you can’t just out‐fly it and start again somewhere else. For now, he flies it out about Captain Bower’s ship, Twin Coins which he named himself but he still lives out of his own personal shuttle Second Wind in the docking bay, in case the day comes to part ways once more.

[kamikasei]

A story should reflect how the character got to where they are. If they got there by a player just creating a character sheet, that's all they are: purpose-built to serve the player's interests, with nothing to back that up.

...How does any character get to the start of a game except by someone creating their character sheet? Seriously, you're saying that no thought should be given to how a character got to the point where the game begins?


Here the fanciful imaginings of the player's creator are constrained by what they can actually accomplish in the game world. Stories constructed in this fashion are going to be less artificial than those built of unchecked imagination...

Perhaps you just have an odd way of creating backstory. I know when I'm working on a character I pester the DM endlessly for information about the setting so I can make the character fit in. Or in other words, exactly what Terra said; the character's past is something that should be run by the DM and checked for suitability, just like the character's build, in-character and leveling aspirations, etc. Asking someone to write up an entire history for their character with no information on the game or setting nor any feedback from the DM is as much a time bomb as doing the same for the character's mechanical abilities.

[Lord Vampyre]

The thing I find most interesting is that the players who spend a great deal of time writing these single-author back stories frequently stop writing when their characters actually enter the game world, just when they've finally got something to write about.

I will have to agree with Curmudgeon on this one. A good backstory is really a collaboration between the Player and the DM. Specifically, because the player needs to fit their character into the DM's world. Often times players may come with great concepts that just don't work in the current image of the world the DM has created. With this in mind if the player and DM are going to collaborate on the character's backstory, they might as well roleplay the events that occurred.

Most characters I play are just numbers on a page until I get in the game. This allows me to adjust the character personality to fit within the group dynamics. If I choose to play a necromancer and someone else brings a holier than thou Paladin to the table, somebody needs to figure out how these two characters are going to be able to work together. By leaving gaps in the backstory or even coming to the table without a backstory, allows me to adjust the necromancer's personality to be able to work along side the Paladin.

Often times I find the backstory to be a hindrance to the actual game. It seems to allow players to justify the stupid things they do that cause the party to die or worse disband.

Now, I will give this one caveat. I will write a backstory when I'm inspired to play something off the beaten path. This is only to help the DM to integrate the character into the current world, and I always check with the DM to make sure there isn't something that will break the game.

For the most part, if I'm playing a general Fighter, Thief, Cleric, or Wizard concept, the backgrounds are simple and don't go past the fill in the blank stage of production. I really don't like starting a character beyond 1st level. I may take a concept that I have progressed beyond 1st level and modify him for another game, but his personality was already defined in the first group and his background was established there as well. All I need to do at that point is describe how he got from one point to the other.

[OMG PONIES]

I think it depends on the type of game being run. If you bring a character with a deep backstory to a one-shot dungeon crawl, you may or may not get a chance to relate any of it. If it helps you roleplay, so be it, but I would be frustrated.

Usually, I use method number two. It gives me some basis for the character, while allowing the DM enough wiggle room to throw in little surprises. However, we did once have an epic Dragonlance campaign where each of us played 3 different characters over the course of the thing (one at a time, of course). I created an in-depth backstory for all three characters, and had them be siblings. Because I had fleshed out the family so much, it actually allowed me to play them better, and it gave the DM enough to toss in other family members as NPCs.

[Curmudgeon]

...How does any character get to the start of a game except by someone creating their character sheet? Seriously, you're saying that no thought should be given to how a character got to the point where the game begins?
No, I'm just saying firming up the character's story at this point is premature. It's best to keep things vague until the game starts, since that's the first time characters have a chance to interact and really only then can the players figure out how to forge a compatible group dynamic.

[kamikasei]

But that doesn't mean the characters don't have backstories, it means you sort out the details in discussion with the rest of the group.

Yes, writing a full biography in one pass that's set in stone before the DM or any other players see it is often a bad idea. But the alternative to this is not simply "characters don't have backstories". I'd expect discussion with at least the DM and probably the other players before the game actually begins on a number of issues, one of which would be the outline of the characters' pasts.

[oxybe]

i see no reason to go on and on... i'm no writer and any attempts to try to craft a long backstory will end up looking like bad fanfiction. i generally try to explain the character's personality, what he looks like, how he learned his skills and what brought him to the game's start.

this (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=191779) is my current character in our wednesday game.

born as a slave & sold at the age of 10 to the Alkenstar Gunworks for cheap guard labor, he found their use of firearms fascinating. they noticed his interest & ability to quickly grasp the basic concepts of math & science and thought that he would better serve mixing gunpowder then guarding it (considering his small frame, he's only 5'3" with a Str of 8, this was a good choice).

after sustaining several injuries due to sub-standard hand-me-down protective gear, he finally got the hang of correctly mixing the different ingredients needed to make good gunpowder. the head designers & builders decided to have him try his scarred hands at making the various firearms & ammunition.

though it took a bit longer due to the complex techniques used, he managed to achieve some success at the trade. he used the money he earned from his crafting & his secondary job as errand boy to pay for learning materials and learned proper engineering during his spare time with help from the others.

at the age of 20, while on a delivery to a client in the neighboring nation of Nex, him & his group of couriers were ambushed by thieves wanting the valuable gun for themselves. though he valued the time spent with the machinists & alchemists he saw this as a chance for real freedom and during the scuffle he took the revolver for his own and ran off to Quantium where he set sail for Totra in Osirian. from there he took a Caravan to Merab in Thuvia, pawned the rest of his possessions and goods he stole during the fight & crossed the Inner Sea to Westcrown in Cheliax.

for the next 6 years he lived in the basement of a hedge mage's alchemy shop learning the basics of magic (something he never really saw before in the dead magic zone of Alkenstar) & helping him brew potions & making scrolls, where during this time he bonded himself with his firearm, using it to cast his spells. his view of magic is more of a practical one: magic can be used to quickly & inventively solve problems where physical limits could stop normally you.

Carlos is scarred from mishandling chemicals during his youth so he often wears thick gloves. he wears a pair of glasses to supplement his bad eyesight. when about the town he's usually in his poncho, stetson hat and thick leather boots & gloves. his revolver is held in a side holster inside his jacket and he carries 20 rounds on himself, 18 in his spell component pouch and 2 loaded in the revolver.

while he generally keeps to himself, he can be a bit chatty when the subject of science or magic are brought up, especially alchemy or manufacturing of equipment & machinery.


nothing fancy and i stick to the important stuff. the finer details are hammered out in the first pre-game session when we meet up to discuss the party & the story.

[Strawberries]

No, I'm just saying firming up the character's story at this point is premature. It's best to keep things vague until the game starts, since that's the first time characters have a chance to interact and really only then can the players figure out how to forge a compatible group dynamic.

Oh, ok. That's a different thing that what I thought you were saying. I thought you were saying you didn't like any backstory at all. But if you meant that backstory is best decided togheter with the DM, that I can agree with. I prefer to do it before the game begins rather than in the first sessions.

[Sliver]

I tend to have some basic background, but I don't write much about it. It's more important how you play your character than a story about what it did before you played it. If I write a lot of background, the character inherits certain personality traits that I might find later I do not enjoy playing, making the character seem detached from her background. I prefer to set my character's background and personality through actually playing it.

[arrowhen]

If a player tries to hand me a 20 page backstory, I'll threaten them with a 150 page campaign history - with their starting gold based on their score on the quiz at the end. That's usually enough to make the run off and write a reasonably sized summary.

[amuletts]

I don't go overboard on backstory, for a start I'd rather not have it more interesting than the campaign! I kind of consider that the characters are living the most important parts of their lives in-game. Of course I do tend towards long-running campaigns.

What I want to get straight is the character's motivation to go adventuring, to lead that kind of life. Then I will pick a personality trait that is very 'me' though a little exaggerated, and one which is outside my comfort zone. I'll work on backstory as I play the character and get more of a feel for them. I find role-playing a charater different from simply writing one. I'm really not sure what'll come out until I start. And I keep most of the backstory in my head.

I have an annoying habit of rping scenes where characters sit around the campfire getting to know one another. I ask clerics 'Tell me about your God?' and they whimper at me!

[Curmudgeon]

But if you meant that backstory is best decided togheter with the DM, that I can agree with. I prefer to do it before the game begins rather than in the first sessions.
No, I'm really saying to do it not with just the GM but with all the other players as well. Otherwise it just ends up being a huge amount of back-and-forth if the GM has to try to work out some way of keeping characters from being at cross-purposes individually. FRPGs are a collaborative storytelling effort. Let that process work to flesh out backgrounds as well as the story going forward.

A single-author story is the way you write a novel. It's not the way you tell a story in a fantasy role-playing game.

[Dairun Cates]

I always plan out at least some connection to another player's backstory when I do get to play instead of GM. Honestly though, you don't need MUCH of a backstory, just an idea of character personality. Here's pretty much everything anyone knows about my character in the recent campaign right now (myself included).

1. His name is Oyashiro Torumiba, but most people call him Yashiro.
2. He's a healthy 16-ish year old boy.
3. He lacks the common sense to survive as a regular human being (as in forgetting to eat, being baffled by why he passes out when stabbed, walks in the middle of streets, etc.)
4. He's an absolute genius in the fields of history, arcana, and hidden lore.
5. He has a sweet and kind demeanor and can see other people's nature's very well.
6. He's a God that's sealed himself in human form for some reason or another.

That's the entire backstory we had for the character at first, but that allowed for a wealth of character development. I actually left it up to the GM to determine which God he is and agreed to run with it. I've given him a few suggestions though.

[NeoVid]

Backstory is a necessary tool for the GM to have a way to connect your character to the setting and campaign.

Note that you don't need very much backstory to do this. All I needed to tell my last GM in Hunter was that my character was divorced with two kids and he had all the hooks he needed for the rest of the campaign.

[Ravens_Wing]

Yeah i am usually somewhere between fill in the blank and Bio. Then again most of my concepts start off as story telling fluff and then evolve into functioning beings with in the rules...

[Jyokage]

I always try to have a decent backstory, if only because playing a bunch of stats isn't fun for me. I also use backstory to explain odd things, such as one my characters abyssal heritor feats. An entire backstory isn't always needed or wanted by a dm, but sometimes a snapshot from the character's life is enough to get the dm's old creative juices flowing. Like so:
Don't read if you can't stand amateur story telling, or longwinded descriptions!

The soldier that would eventually be known as Nerris Sthyrgix was born as Nerris Silversmith, on a brightly lit winter night, to a very happy couple. Frax and Pressia Silversmith had been excitedly awaiting the arrival of their first born child. However; when Nerris finally came, no one was prepared for the unusual child’s appearance. Maybe it would be best to describe the progenitors of the soldier Claw.
Frax was a large lump of a man, with features that could be only described as stone like. It looked like the man had been hewn then chiseled from the very rock of his homeland. His one redeeming feature were his eyes; they were the palest green, with a spark of intelligence that belied his brutish appearance. Pressia, on the other hand, was a figure of great beauty. Slim, vivacious, and exceedingly charming, few people could understand her attraction to the quiet, plodding metal worker.
Now on to the boy; when Nerris was born, the only outward sign of his unique heritage were his eyes. Though he initially appeared no different than any other babe; as he let out his first infantile cries, a phenomenon occurred. Lightning struck the statue in the town center, and instead of thunder there was a shockwave of air that silently swept through the small village, putting out all candles in the city. As the midwife struggled to relight the suddenly dark room, the infant opened his eyes for the first time. An unearthly red glow suffused the child’s eyes, shining forth into the darkness like the embers of a dying fire. Without hesitation the young child fixed those eyes on each of the adults in the room, as if the darkness was of no hindrance to his unearthly pupils. As the sputtering midwife relit the candles in the room, the glow disappeared, and all could see the young child already reaching for his terror stricken mother.

-Critics be Kind-

[Knaight]

I always try to have a decent backstory, if only because playing a bunch of stats isn't fun for me.

You do realize that a character with a backstory and no personality is way closer to a bunch of stats than a character with a personality and no back story, correct?

[Optimystik]

-Critics be Kind-

I can't tell what the child is supposed to be. Tiefling Sorcerer? Air Genasi?

[Jyokage]

Granted, but a character with no personality is not a flaw of the character's (well maybe it could be, but good luck getting that to fly with your dm). I'd have to say that a character with no personality would be the fault of the roleplayer. After all, the player is his character's voice, he determines how his character acts, reacts, and all that jazz.
A backstory is often times used to help establish a personality, it shouldn't hinder it.

[Ormur]

I usually start out with a really simple idea of what kind of a character I'd like to play. But it's actually pretty long since I made an actual character intended for long-term play. My current ones started out with hardly any backstory, just "wizard", or "roughish caster". I've run the wizard through 13 levels and I acknowledge that he doesn't really have much of a personality but the backstory I made up for the DM after a few sessions of play was thoroughly ignored by him and as a consequence, me too. The other character was made later and has more of a personality and even a relevant backstory, written later, which the DM has helped me flesh out.

Still, what I'd consider a long backstory is what other here have posted in spoilers. As I gain more role playing experience I want to make more interesting characters but I think a backstory isn't that useful unless the DM really intends to use it. Otherwise thinking of personality traits and quirks, maybe with some relevant references or causes in the past for context, is far more important. I wouldn't want to be bound to a detailed biography from session one since it usually takes a few sessions to get a feel for the campaign and the party and for the characters to be fleshed out.

The longest backstory I ever made was written for a pretty dishonest reason, to justify (for myself, the DM didn't care squat) the incredibly convoluted high-level gestalt build I made for a cheesy dungeoncrawl.

So while I've been mostly in #1 I'd strive for #2 in most serious campaigns.

[Jyokage]

Meh, even I have no clue what the character is honestly. (I sit higher towards the fill in the blank model) I just wanted to give the DM something to think about. Characters human, he just has random scales, glowing red eyes and clawed hands, (courtesy of the feats).
The character is slowly transforming into something else, and has no clue why. (Ta-da, insta unresolved mystery that can be used as a character motivator)
That and I like surprises. :smalltongue:

[Kris Strife]

Backstory is a necessary tool for the GM to have a way to connect your character to the setting and campaign.

Note that you don't need very much backstory to do this. All I needed to tell my last GM in Hunter was that my character was divorced with two kids and he had all the hooks he needed for the rest of the campaign.

How many times did the kids get kidnapped, threatened or actually die?

[Dairun Cates]

How many times did the kids get kidnapped, threatened or actually die?

Oh come on. Why kidnap kids when you can just use a party's overall morality against them? It's slightly less cliche and you can get the whole group in on it. They actually failed to kill a demon swordsman sent to end the world in the Pirates vs. Ninjas Beta campaign, and all because said swordsman happens to take the form and personality of a 16 year-old human ninja girl 99% of the time.

[Mnemnosyne]

If a player tries to hand me a 20 page backstory, I'll threaten them with a 150 page campaign history - with their starting gold based on their score on the quiz at the end. That's usually enough to make the run off and write a reasonably sized summary.
Heh. I would take that and read it in a day, assuming you've written it well enough to make for good reading. Then I'd adjust my backstory to fit as well as I can. This is one of the reasons I far prefer published campaign settings, because I can look up details for my character's backstory - I rarely get enough information out of DM's for homebrewed campaign settings.

My longest one ever was 60-something pages, but of late I have cut back a lot, partly because I've found a lot of flaws in my writing style and haven't found a good way to fix them yet. Re-reading some of these old stories I have laying around is...tedious, at times, because I didn't write them very well. When I get to the point that I can write a mini-novel and have it be interesting to read, maybe I'll go back to writing that way.

[Delta]

This is one of the reasons I far prefer published campaign settings, because I can look up details for my character's backstory - I rarely get enough information out of DM's for homebrewed campaign settings.

Well that's why I'd tell my players to make up something themselves when they feel they need more information about a homebrew setting, of course I have to approve it afterwards, but I think they players are usually much more involved in a setting when they have created parts of it themselves.

And regarding the 60-page backstory... well, as I've said before, great for you if it helps you play your character, but if a player ever tried something like this, he'd better have a 1-3 page summary at hand, or my reaction would probably be "Nah, I think I'll wait for the movie" :smallwink:

[Ossian]

Detailed, but not too much. No point in describing and statting every taverner, squire and merchant the PC ever spoke to in his adolescence. Where possible, a detailed family story, and the story of the place he was raised in, will do. That can give you plot hooks for the future, but can also be adjusted to fit in new ideas that either the player or the Master have during the course of the campaign.

I'd say, give me 70% of it, and let the other 30% be a buffer , a margin to add long lost brothers, conspiracies, lovers and haters, artifacts and whatnot....

[Mnemnosyne]

Well that's why I'd tell my players to make up something themselves when they feel they need more information about a homebrew setting, of course I have to approve it afterwards, but I think they players are usually much more involved in a setting when they have created parts of it themselves.

And regarding the 60-page backstory... well, as I've said before, great for you if it helps you play your character, but if a player ever tried something like this, he'd better have a 1-3 page summary at hand, or my reaction would probably be "Nah, I think I'll wait for the movie" :smallwink:
Yeah, at the time, that would have annoyed the crap out of me, but having gone back and read them after a lot of time has passed and realized that they really weren't all that great, I'd entirely understand someone not wanting to read it. Spending a couple hours reading something tedious like that isn't much fun, and well, most of us really aren't that good writers, even the ones that think we are.

Edit: At least, rarely good writers to tell that kind of backstory. See, the trouble with telling backstory is that it winds up less of an interesting story and more of a summation of events, which is functional but not very much fun to read. To make a backstory fun, it'd have to read more like an actual book or novel. A summation of 15-150 years of backstory is just dull.

Curmudgeon's point also helps to make this a more entertaining way to tell your backstory too. In most books, for instance, one rarely gets the main character's backstory early on. What is told tends to be exposed throughout the course of the book, either in conversation or flashbacks or some other exposition device that doesn't require dumping a summation of events on the reader right at the start.

To that end, I'd say that backstories might be something we should write out for ourselves more list-style, and write just a few paragraphs initially for the DM, then each time something comes up at a point that there is a convenient vehicle for exposition, go into detail about it with the entire group.

[Project_Mayhem]

Here's an interesting variation that we tend to run with - the player comes up with as much preliminary story as they like (I tend to have a loose concept, my friend writes short novels). Then, the player sits down with the DM for a solo session and they talk/play through the whole thing, changing and solidifying as they go.

For example, my current Mage the Awakening character started as Space focused Mastigos - Traceur, thief, Cockney/Italian Jack-the-Lad with Lust as a vice.

From that, I sat down wit my DM, we bashed out ideas, and got to a rounded backstory, with some gaps left to develop on the fly.

[Kurrel]

As a rule, I try and ensure that everyone has some backstory. It's important, as I tailor scenes to players.

That being said, I think there's a fourth category here.

Absurd Background
Whether it's the WoD vampire who was born werewolf kin, who was also once possessed and was rescued by mages, spending years studying with them before returning home, and has a changeling girlfriend
or the DnD half demon, half god, all prophesied, rootin' tootin', been-to-hell and was too hard core for them, already seduced eleven elven princesses,
or the Star Wars character who IS a surviving jedi, who taught Leia when she was a kid and ran with Han Solo for a few years before meditating on the force with Obi Wan before bring McDonalds round to Yoda...
There are backgrounds that make me cringe AND roll my eyes as a story teller.

[valadil]

Edit: At least, rarely good writers to tell that kind of backstory. See, the trouble with telling backstory is that it winds up less of an interesting story and more of a summation of events, which is functional but not very much fun to read. To make a backstory fun, it'd have to read more like an actual book or novel. A summation of 15-150 years of backstory is just dull.


For that reason I like to make my backstory into a series of little stories. At the very least you can tell the story immediately leading up to game, if only so you have some momentum at game start.

[Project_Mayhem]

Whether it's the WoD vampire who was born werewolf kin, who was also once possessed and was rescued by mages, spending years studying with them before returning home, and has a changeling girlfriend


Heh. My backup mage character has a werewolf girlfriend. That count?

[Umael]

It honestly depends, although my gaming group swears I always go for the detail biographies.

*shrug*

I've done characters with just a few quick words and thoughts (a gay dwarf fighter) that were interesting, and I've got characters that ARE the 30-page backstories (and no wussy 150-page campaign history would scare me - but you might get your history critiqued from a writing AND a gaming persceptive).

However, I do understand compromise.

I have a drow concept I am working out that is 75,000 words of so.

So I wrote a three paragraph summary, a six-page synopsis, and the 75,000 word story.

In other games, for other characters... why bother? I wrote this long backstory because I liked the character idea and I wanted to do some writing. Other characters... *shrug*... don't interest or require so much.

[Theodoxus]

As a DM, I've started making the PCs Living Constructs. They can be more than just warforged - basically using a Living Construct template at +0 LA that grants them everything but the attribute modifiers of a warforged to any race they prefer.

Every single player has thanked me for essentially railroading them past the whole backstory / party meet up stage as well as removing any potential internal party strife (at least at the start).

[Umael]

As a DM, I've started making the PCs Living Constructs. They can be more than just warforged - basically using a Living Construct template at +0 LA that grants them everything but the attribute modifiers of a warforged to any race they prefer.

Every single player has thanked me for essentially railroading them past the whole backstory / party meet up stage as well as removing any potential internal party strife (at least at the start).

Works for you.

*shrug*

Wouldn't work for my group. Or for me.

[John Campbell]

The way I figure it, there's a difference between a background and a backstory. A broad and deep background is a fine and fitting thing, and can be very useful for informing the behaviour of the character and showing the GM where the buttons that motivate you are. (And, yes, that's a good thing. The GM is going to be throwing stuff at you anyway. Plot hooks in your character background are hints to the GM as what kind of things you want the GM to throw at you.)

Writing more than a couple of paragraphs of backstory for a starting character, however, seems to me to be a sign that the writer has missed something fundamental about the difference between a role-playing game and less collaborative forms of storytelling... and, IME, is often disappointed when their character, in actual play, doesn't live up to the standards it set when it was constrained by nothing more than their flights of fancy.

For my current character, my DM gave me a lot of leeway in writing background for the orc tribe he comes from, so I have pages and pages about their culture, religion, traditions, and general behaviour, even language, and more in mind that I haven't actually written down... but for character backstory, I've got only a few paragraphs outlining his adolescence and motivations for riding away from the clan and setting out on his own (basically, he got tired of defending his spot in the bully-or-be-bullied social structure of the tribe). That background makes him what he is, but his story starts with the beginning of play, not after twenty pages of bad gaming fic.

[Thajocoth]

I try to give the DM places & NPCs to work with that my character might care about... For plot hooks and stuff. Unfortunately, I lack that with my current char, as I didn't see a way to fit any in.

[Umael]

Writing more than a couple of paragraphs of backstory for a starting character, however, seems to me to be a sign that the writer has missed something fundamental about the difference between a role-playing game and less collaborative forms of storytelling... and, IME, is often disappointed when their character, in actual play, doesn't live up to the standards it set when it was constrained by nothing more than their flights of fancy.

Wow...:smallconfused:

Considering I DO write more than a couple of paragraphs for my character background and I do it in story format, then by your definition I write more than a couple of paragraphs of backstory.

And in my experience, I neither miss the difference between RPG and other storytelling activities, nor does my character fail to live up to my standards.

But thank you for painting with a broad brush. It was an interesting experience.

[FallenWarriorIV]

I can recognize the importance of a backstory, but going into novel form always seems too much for me. Personally, I like to set a few things down and leave the rest up to RP to bring out. I'm a big believer in improv.

[Capt Spanner]

There's a ruleset called "Don't Panic" around, based on the H2G2.

In that format you are given "probability points" (which are very multi-purpose, serving as HP, XP and WoD style willpower...excellent flavour but probably the game's biggest mechanical fault along with no good combat system, but I digress...)

In lieu of writing a backstory at character generation, you simply fill out stats. At any point where a skill is required that the party don't have, you fill in the relevant backstory for your character as to why you have that skill. The GM then decides how likely it is that your character does have that skill and charges you the appropriate number of probability points for that skill. (Same applies to items: because who hasn't said "Hang on! I've been carrying around a 10' ladder all this time!" during a D&D session at some point?)

It's a really fun mechanic. Games get going quicker, backstories become wackier and more unique and there's the implication that the backstory is all there even if it's not written down.

[Knaight]

Granted, but a character with no personality is not a flaw of the character's (well maybe it could be, but good luck getting that to fly with your dm). I'd have to say that a character with no personality would be the fault of the roleplayer. After all, the player is his character's voice, he determines how his character acts, reacts, and all that jazz.
A backstory is often times used to help establish a personality, it shouldn't hinder it.

Yes, and a backstory isn't much other than personality grounding. A character with a backstory and no personality is a bunch of stats, a character without a backstory with a personality (which is where most improvised NPCs start I should add, with 2 lines or so tops) isn't.

Let me put it this way. If the GM is playing a system where stats can be made fast enough to not need them before hand, an NPC with no backstory is a bunch of stats, without stats under your previous point. This is absurd.

[Curmudgeon]

For my current character, my DM gave me a lot of leeway in writing background for the orc tribe he comes from, so I have pages and pages about their culture, religion, traditions, and general behaviour, even language, and more in mind that I haven't actually written down...
Gee, that would never fly with me as DM. I don't allow much more detail than "comes from a coastal city" before the players get together. That way we avoid conflicts where some of those orc tribal traditions happen to match the taboos of some other character's back story. None of that stuff is allowed to be fixed until the players get together and hash out viable common interests so their characters can work together. Don't worry: I'll provide enough external conflict that in-party squabbles won't be missed. :smallwink:

[Knaight]

That way we avoid conflicts where some of those orc tribal traditions happen to match the taboos of some other character's back story. None of that stuff is allowed to be fixed until the players get together and hash out viable common interests so their characters can work together.

That sounds pretty fun to me, let the taboos clash a bit. Common interests need to be there, but some conflict inside the party is a good thing.

[Terraoblivion]

Not to mention that it is entirely possible to discuss things in advance. It is not like the players are isolated in jail cells and only brought out to meet each other for the very first session. Spending time working out the general idea behind the campaign and the starting situation at the very least is pretty much expected. Often it can be expected that the players will communicate with each other on what they make.

And this is not to mention that it is generally considered common courtesy to not start fights over incidental details. You'd be surprised how much conflicting information can be dealt with by players and GMs just going with the first version of something incidental that comes up. And if it is not incidental the GM could probably be expected to catch it when reviewing sheets before the game started. I don't think i have ever experienced a game where you were supposed to show up with a completely finished character that the GM had never seen before and then start right there, rather than having to turn in characters in advance so the GM can check for things to veto or demand clarification. That just seems like something utterly bizarre and counterproductive to me, not to mention a whole lot of extra work for the GM in having to improvise without some kind of indication of what to expect.

[Curmudgeon]

That sounds pretty fun to me, let the taboos clash a bit. Common interests need to be there, but some conflict inside the party is a good thing.
Trust me: I've seen this go very bad. I had a TPK because one strong character wouldn't help another, weaker character haul a downed spellcaster out of the line of fire, because the strong character wouldn't risk even accidental contact with the weaker one due to some taboo. Instead the strong character insisted that the weaker character move away before the strong character would go in and take over the hauling job solo. Three straight rounds doing nothing but arguing and shifting about during combat meant the fourth character (the Cleric) was the only one fighting. After she succumbed to a massed attack the other characters didn't last much longer.

[Terraoblivion]

Then the problem is not about background, but about you playing with some of the most stubborn, uncompromising people on the planet. Not to mention that they also seem to focus on some rather bizarre aspects of their characters and again that they seem to be making them in total isolation.

[PersonMan]

That doesn't even make sense. Even if there was that situation, one move action from the weaker character would put them out of the way and solve the problem.

[Knaight]

Trust me: I've seen this go very bad. I had a TPK because one strong character wouldn't help another, weaker character haul a downed spellcaster out of the line of fire, because the strong character wouldn't risk even accidental contact with the weaker one due to some taboo. Instead the strong character insisted that the weaker character move away before the strong character would go in and take over the hauling job solo. Three straight rounds doing nothing but arguing and shifting about during combat meant the fourth character (the Cleric) was the only one fighting. After she succumbed to a massed attack the other characters didn't last much longer.

In this case, the problem is not that they are playing characters with taboos that conflict, its that they are playing stubborn morons. Lets say we have two characters, one is from a cannibalistic tribe, one hates cannibalism. That would allow for party conflict, but unless the one who hates cannibalism is a complete moron as played, they aren't going to let that come up in a life or death situation.

[molten_dragon]

For me, it very much depends on who I'm playing with and what kind of game is being played. For games that I know will be pretty combat heavy with little RP, I don't bother. For others I come up with a pretty detailed backstory, since I know it'll be important.

[Ozymandias9]

How many times did the kids get kidnapped, threatened or actually die?

That would be a bad thing? A bit hackneyed, sure, but I don't see what's wrong with it otherwise.

[chiasaur11]

Trust is a weakness? :smalltongue:

Darn right. Ain't you played Uplink?

[John Campbell]

Gee, that would never fly with me as DM. I don't allow much more detail than "comes from a coastal city" before the players get together. That way we avoid conflicts where some of those orc tribal traditions happen to match the taboos of some other character's back story. None of that stuff is allowed to be fixed until the players get together and hash out viable common interests so their characters can work together. Don't worry: I'll provide enough external conflict that in-party squabbles won't be missed. :smallwink:

That was actually me you were quoting; Umael screwed up the tags.

The assumptions you're making here give me the impression that your group dynamics are very different than any I've ever played with. In my group, when we have a new campaign coming up, we talk about what we're going to play, kick around ideas for weeks or months beforehand. That way we know we've got all the necessary party roles covered, and know that there aren't any fatal conflicts between the PCs. If they aren't, or there are, well, we change, or we live with them. No DM intervention required. (My current character is actually one I was going to play in our last campaign, but didn't because of too much role overlap, which kind of gave me precedence when we were figuring things out for this campaign.)

Except for That Guy Who Can Never Decide What To Play, who made and discarded at least three characters before the campaign began (and then got the character he finally settled on killed about session #3 and made another new one, who is actually the cause of most of our intra-party squabbling... I think he just defaulted to his usual Generic Elven Blaster #527 without actually considering how it'd fit into the group, or giving it a personality beyond Generic Elf, which, predictably, doesn't play well with my half-orc barbarian, the dwarven warrior-priestess, or the racist human rogue, which is 3/4ths of the other PCs), we all had our basic character concepts nailed down six months before our last campaign ended and we started this one, and we all knew what everyone else was going to be playing.

[Lord Raziere]

I always try to go for a Biography, I want my character fully fleshed out, a full person with a good full story, that is how I do it, and how I will always do it.

[kamikasei]

Gee, that would never fly with me as DM. I don't allow much more detail than "comes from a coastal city" before the players get together. That way we avoid conflicts where some of those orc tribal traditions happen to match the taboos of some other character's back story. None of that stuff is allowed to be fixed until the players get together and hash out viable common interests so their characters can work together.

Why are you assuming any of that stuff is fixed before the players get together? There is such a thing as editing and first drafts, you know.

[Lycar]

Hm... how about a (one-time) example for a 'biography', detailing how a character got to the level above 1 he starts at...


Bren Blackshield started life as the son of a well-to-do artisan.

His name isn't really blackshield by the way. But that is how he introduced himself to the pirates when he asked to join. More about that later.

Bren's father was (or maybe even still is) an accomplished mechanic. He made a living crafting crossbows and other weapons for the army and militia. But mostly crossbows. He had also broadened his horizon to learn about siege engines, figuring that, in times of war, his skills would be in high demand and thus very valueable.

Of course, as his son, Bren learned the trade himself. But as young boys are wont to, shooting stuff with crossbows is more fun then building them. On the other hand, learning how to tear down castle walls with modern siege artillery is also fun stuff for a boy. And when you want to learn how to tear down walls, you first need to learn how to build them.

The net result: While Bren turned into a skilled artisan himself, he also turned into a pretty neat shot with all sorts of crossbows. But while the most impressive weapon in his father's arsenal was the Great Crossbow, Bren was mostly fascinated with the repeating heavy crossbow. There was just something oddly fascinating about it. The way the mechanic worked, the sheer coolness of sending bolt after bolt down range when others had to pause to awkwardly rec0ck their weapons.

More important though: As a true master of the craft, Bren's father was skilled in making weapons which were just better then what an ordinary artisan would churn out. His crossbows were of exquisite quality, making them shoot accurate at longer distances.

This made sure that his contract with the army got renewed regularly.

###
Spoiler


*Stats: Str 13, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 16, Wis 13, Cha 13 = 39 BP

*Feats gained: Armour Prof. (all), Artisan Craftsman (bowmaking), Ballista Proficiency, Crossbow Sniper, Exotic Wpn. Proficiency (Great Crossbow, Hv. Rep. Crossbow, Spring-Loaded Gauntlet, Broadblade Shortsword), Weapon Focus (Hv. Rep. Crossbow).
* Flaw: Shaky (to pay for Ballista Prof.)

*Skills Gained: Appraise (cc): 2, Craft (bowmaking) 4, Climb (2), Craft (weaponsmith) 4, Jump (2),Know. (Architecture & Engineering) (cc) 2, Profession (Mechanic) (cc) 2, Profession (Siege Engineer) (cc) 2, Ride (2), Swim (2)
###

Bren grew up and became a pretty good craftsman. And he picked up the skills as siege engineer, as his father wanted him to.

When the war came, Bren's father was ready. But he didn't expect that his lord would demand he stays behind to supply the troops with weapons while Bren would be required to serve at the front line.

Bren, young and patriotic as he was, was thrilled to join the war effort. Surely they would return victorious even before the campaign season would end!

To be fair, life in the army wasn't so bad for Bren. As a skilled engineer, his life was valuable after all. So being sheltered from the grim realities of frontline warfare, Bren kept his upbeat spirit even when it became clear that the war would not be over before winter.

But when the armies marched back for winter retreat, Bren came into contact with the people who had actually fought for the first time. The casualties of war. The maimed and wounded. It was pretty sobering.

Bren spent the winter back at home with his family. But he could not help but feel bad about having been save and sound at the back when his fellow countrymen had fought and died in the muddy fields.

Spring came and with it the new campaign season. The war was still on and it needed to be won. So Bren volunteered himself for frontline duty.

His commander had other ideas though. He knew about Bren's skill with a crossbow. He also knew who Bren's father was. It would not do to send Bren off to the slaughterfields. Instead he arranged for Bren to receive special training to make most of his talents (and make sure he'd stay away from the action for a while).

And so Bren was trained in the art of the commando soldier. Sneak past enemy lines to disrupt supply convoys, sabotage key installations, tear down bridges or assassinate key enemy personnel.

###
Spoiler

Get a rank of Rogue (wilderness variant)
*Skills gained: Craft (bowmaking) +1 (5), Hide +3 (3).Knowledge (Geography) +1 (1), Knowledge (Nature) +1 (1), Move Silently +2 (2), Profession (Siege Engineer) +1 (3), Spot +3 (3), Survival +2 (2)

###

Bren finished his training. The war was still going on.
And so he moved with a team of veteran soldiers, deep into enemy territory to perform acts of sabotage.

They had a spellcaster with them, who would cast spells to communicate with the headquarters to receive orders and send status reports.

Their first assignements were to burn down some storage facilities and sbotage a bride. They just moved in at night, torched the sheds holding the supplies. They weren't even guarded. The bridge was another matter though. A small squad of soldiers had been posted there to guard it.

While the other commandos would go in, Bren and the mage were to provide support. He didn't need to do so however. As he watched, the hapless enemies were cut down before they even knew what hit them. It was a chilling sight for Bren. His first time to see someone actually die.

They filtered back into the woods to avoid detection afterwards.

A few days later, order came to waylay and ambush a detachment of cavalry that was reportet to be moving through their are of operation. So they set up a position at the edge of a forest, overlooking the road the troops were supposed to travel. They were to try and kill as many officers as possible.

So they set up pit traps down the road to catch the vanguard and prompt the main body to halt. That way, they would be easier to hit.

The plan worked. When the scouts encountered the pit traps, the cavalry captain halted his troops. He was dead from crossbow bolts before he could even give another order.

In the chaos that ensued, Bren and his fellows fired off a few more bolts, killing and wounding some more enemies before running off into the woods where the cavalry could not follow them.

It had been a success, but then they came upon a couple of woodsmen. The commando leader decided that they had to kill them, else they would help the enemy to find their tracks and catch them. And as commandos, they would not be taken prisoner but killed on the spot as spies.

The woodsmen begged for mercy but received none. Bren didn't feel good about this. But certainly, the exact same thing was happening in his own home counrty at the exact same moment. This was war. All the more important to strive even harder to help to bring it to an end!

Weeks turned into months and Bren became a veteran himself. He had experienced war from it's most dirty side. This was not the war of gallant knights in shining armour, clashing with shield and lance. That wasn't even the war of engineers tearing down the walls of an enemy fortress to allow the brave footmen to charge the breach and the stalwart defenders to make a stand.

This was a was of highly trained killers, moving in and out under the cover of night and darkness, never showing themselves, never offering their foes a fair fight, never leaving witnesses behind.

It was brutish, inglorious and yet it was utterly neccessary to win the war for king and country. And so Bren did what he believed had to be done.

###
Spoiler

Bren gains another level of wilderness rogue. Yay him.
*Feats gained: Able Sniper
*Skills gained: Craft (bowmaking) +1 (6), Hide +3 (6),Knowledge (Geography) +1 (2), Knowledge (Nature) +1 (2), Move Silently +2 (4), Spot +3 (6), Survival +2 (4)

###

One day, the wizard approached them with news: The war was over. There was an armistice. Apparently neither side had truly won.

It took them a few weeks to make their way back home. By then, the regualr troops had long since returned and any parades were long over.

Their return went unnoticed. Bren's family was overjoyed to have their son back, they bombarded him with questions. But he didn't feel like celebrating or telling tales.

And what would he tell his parents? That he had been sneaking through the woods like a bandit? That he had shot people from ambush? Killed hapless peasants who just had the bad luck to run into him and his fellows? That he had burned down grain silos, sabotaged bridges and even poisioned water supplies?

Bren evaded the questions as good as he could. But he could not evade his own conscience. The war wasn't even a victory, it had become a stalemate and countless had died before the higher ups on both sides finally decided that continuing the war was pointless.

He returned to his job as his father's asistant, went back to making crossbows. At least he found some solace in his art.

Bren started to drink. A glass of stout made finding sleep easier at night.

One day, Bren was approached by a man. The man told him that his deed, while unfortunately of a nature that required secrecy, had not gone unnoticed by the powers that are.

The man made Bren an offer: Use his skills learned in the war, to fight the countries enemies in peacetime. While the glorious army remained undefeated in the field, they could not achieve victory because certain elements of the society had saboatged the war effort. They had gone protesting in the streets, demanding more food for them while the troops fought at the frontlines and needed all the support they could get.

They had cost the fatherland the victory, now their treason would cost them their lives!

Bren was hesistant. But the man insisted and Bren fianlly gave in. And such, one day Bren received a message to find an excuse to leave home for a few weeks to receive some 'special training'.

And Bren went.

As an expert sharp shooter, Bren didn't need to so much learn about breaking and entering as reaching a good shooting position and how to remain hidden until the time to strike came. He would learn how to decode the secret orders he would receive from his superiors. How to scale a wall and navigate rooftops. To use camouflage.

But sometimes one would need to get close to a mark to place the mortal blow. And such Bren was familiarized with hidden weapons. Swordcanes, blades hidden in boots and bracers. But his favourite was an ornate bracer that contained a spring that would launch a crossbow bolt at short distance but to deadly effect.

And then, for a while, nothing happened. Then the first encoded message arrived. And Bren went out and did the deed.

He had agreed to do this after all, go forth and punish the enemies of the state. But it all felt hollow to Bren. He didn't even know about the peole he was ordered to kill. He didn't knew what their crimes were. He wasn't supposed to know, much less care.

But more often then not, his deeds would come to haunt him in his dreams.

Bren started to drink more. Sometimes, weeks, even months would pass without a message for him. But eventually, another one would arrive. And Bren would find an excuse to leave home for a week or two, to travel to another town, to take another life.

Bren always tried to hit his mark without witnesses. But he could not always afford the luxury. To shoot a man in the chest, while he sits at the table, dining with his family... it is harsh. But if it is the only way to get the job done...

By and by, Bren started drinking more to keep the bad dreams away. A glass of stout became two, then three. And then the shakes started.

At first it was only a slight trembling. Bren would have to pause with working on his latest work order for a while. Or just drink a stiff one.

But it didn't get better. The shakes came more often, stayed longer. And they needed even more alcohol to drown.

And they could no longer keep the dreams away either.

Bren was still an expert marksman, but his performance suffered from the shakes. He decided that it was time to quit his job as an assassin. Yes, that what he was, a professional murderer. It would not help to delude oneself that his deeds were somehow less murderous, even though he did what he did for the good of the country.

So Bren sent a message, asking for a meeting.

He got his wish. Another man met him in a dark alley and Bren told him that he could no longer do the work he had been doing, that he had to quit. Bren told the man about the shakes, his drinking problem. He didn't tell him about the dreams. But somehow, Bren had the feeling that the man knew.

"Just one last mission, and you can retire. Deal?"

Bren agreed. Just one last job. The hairs on his neck stood on end as he did so. He had a bad feeling about this.

And so, Bren found another excuse to leave home for a while. He took his savings with him, hidden away in his clothing in large coinage. He didn't really know why.

Bren followed the instructions he had been given. The target was supposed to be a rich merchant, living in a mansion outside a village. It should be easy to pick him off on his morning ride. There was even an ideal spot, a large rock overlooking the path the man was supposed to be taking on his morning ride.

He approached the site and found the rock as described. But he also noticed that anyone up there would have no cover whatsover. And there were tall trees around...

Bren ignored the warnings his sense of self-preservation sent him and approached the rock.

If the sniper had have enough discipline to wait for Bren to get into position, he would certainly have hit him squarely in the back. As it was, Bren even heard the 'twang' before the bolt flew past his head.

The years of training and experience made him act on instinct rather then intellect. Before he had even fully realized how closely he had escaped death, he had pulled back the lever on his crossbow and fired at a position in the crown of a tree.

Maybe Bren had subconsciously spotted some movement. Maybe it was just dumb luck. But when he investiageted, Bren found a man in a camoflage net, nailed to the tree trunk by his bolt.

Bren never returned home. He kept on moving, eventually reaching a port city. He found a ship full of pirates. Bandits and professional murderers, just as himself.

And yet, these people at least had the decency to fight their prey face-to-face.

###
Spoiler

And Bren makes his last level of Rogue.

*Stat gained: Dex +1 = 17
*Skills gained: Balance +5 (5), Craft (bowmaking) +1 (7) Climb +4 (6), Hide +1 (7), Profession (Sailor) +2 (2), Spot +1 (7)


Lycar

[Umael]

Gee, that would never fly with me as DM. I don't allow much more detail than "comes from a coastal city" before the players get together. That way we avoid conflicts where some of those orc tribal traditions happen to match the taboos of some other character's back story. None of that stuff is allowed to be fixed until the players get together and hash out viable common interests so their characters can work together. Don't worry: I'll provide enough external conflict that in-party squabbles won't be missed. :smallwink:

As John Campbell pointed out, I screwed up the tags. That quote was from him, not me.

I have no problem with a game where the GM has everything written up beforehand (as long as the players know this), nor where the GM improvises, nor where the GM allows the players to contribute. Just a different style of gaming.

[The-Mage-King]

Eh, for backstories, I mostly make a quick framework, and fill it in as I play my character. It works for me.

[GenPol]

I think my problem is that more often than I would like, I get an awesome character concept that I would love to play, so I write the whole backstory, sometimes draw a picture (often with an Oots style equivilent :smalltongue:), and put too much time into choosing into the equipment, feats, and other things. When the game actually starts however, I have thought up a different character concept that I of course just have to get out there....:smalltongue: