Assemble Your Backstory!

[strangebloke]

How do your players make their backstories?

When I first started, I was very free-range. "Write whatever you like!" I said. "Just see to it that your 'x' level and in 'y' town!" I got some reasonably creative responses, which was good, but also a problem. First guy elected to be born on an entirely different continent with a whole list of friends and family who could never interact with the story in any way. He wrote eight pages. One guy's backstory was just: "I'm the special creation of the dragon god" and that was it. No more text. Third was a thief whose backstory was half a paragraph that I'm pretty sure he had pulled directly from the lyrics of "Rage against the Machine." Final guy was a hard cop in his fifties whose backstory was a list of people he had punished with extreme prejudice.

So in other words, the party cohesion was basically zero, and working the stories of the characters into the larger narrative was... hard. Some of the people just gave me nothing to work with, and dragon god guy was bored of his character about three sessions in.

Anyway. Second campaign. I had a lot of new people, and I knew that some would probably be dropping quickly, so I kept it short and sweet. Fill out this questionnaire. What is your character's biggest regret? What do they fear? What is your biggest goal? Traits, ideals, flaws. Pick one of seven major city-states to be from.

This was better, in that I got a more meaningful response from some people, but I some of the characters were really cookie cutter, and I really still had a lot of the same problems. At least two of the characters got annoyed with me for "not facilitating their development" because I didn't bring up stuff that they saw as 'key' in their backstories.

SIGH

I've also been part of a massive cooperative backstory building e-mail chain, where we all were interacting with the main plot and each other before session 1. That was awesome but had the serious downside that when a character died, replacing them was really annoying. I've also seen campaigns fizzle if the e-mail chain goes on for too long.

All of this to say, what is a good way to get your players to build a backstory that

A: lets the DM tie the character's personal narratives into the main plot
B: lets the players have a good reason to stay together as a group
C: allows for the usual rotating cast, which I see as an important part of the genre of the game.

Things I've considered:

Tabula Rasa: Everyone's a level 0 villager in session zero, and they are allowed only one thing in the backstory that involves a party outside the village. Everyone gets a prompt from me for free-form interactions with two other another party members before the game starts. IE: the knight-in-training catches the urchin stealing grapefruits. Later characters have to be pulled from a pool of already-existing NPCs. You can play as your childhood bestie from your backstory, or as a particularly memorable guard who the party encountered 3 levels ago. This means that new characters will always have a tie to the party.
The Order: Everyone's a member of a powerful military organization, and has to spend most of their backstory dealing with their time in the order and how they joined. The Order is forcing them to work together for most of the story. This gives everyone a common thread in their backstory and keeps them together. Integrating new characters is easy under this system.

[Ganymede]

Have each of your players briefly explain one friend and one foe of their PCs. I've found that's all I really need.

[Maelynn]

I love a session 0 where all players start out with a concept of what they want their character to be. During this session, each player makes adjustments to their character depending on the ideas of the rest of the party. Characters aren't final until session 0.

Then, they need to come up with bonds to explain how come they're in the same party. A and B could be childhood buddies, C could've met up with B on a previous mission after which they were joined by A. D has once served time with A and now runs into them during a fancy soirée. This often also helps with tying backstories together.

After session 0, players fill out their character sheets and write their backstory, taking into account whatever has been decided during session 0.

[TheCleverGuy]

How do your players make their backstories?
The Order: Everyone's a member of a powerful military organization, and has to spend most of their backstory dealing with their time in the order and how they joined. The Order is forcing them to work together for most of the story. This gives everyone a common thread in their backstory and keeps them together. Integrating new characters is easy under this system.


In my current campaign (we're playing Curse of Strahd), our DM did something similar to this. She wanted us all to have a reason to be in Barovia together. So she settled on the idea of having us be a group representing a railroad company looking to expand their lines through Barovia. (The setting is a pseudo-historical 19th century earth.) To facilitate our character creation and party balance, she gave a set a handful of general roles to fill in the party--there's the Company Rep, the Engineer, the Guard, etc. The details of each character's backstory (plus race and class) were up to us, so long as we covered all the roles.

I think it worked out pretty well for the group. DM was pretty cool about letting adjust some of her original roles. We ended up with:

the Company Rep: a half-elf Stone Sorcerer who worked his way up from blue colar laborer to his current position
the Engineer: a warforged Artificer who's employed/owned by the company
the Government Overseer: a human Cleric, sent by the powers-that-be to ensure the company's dealings are fully above-board
the Guard: a human Fighter, a former soldier hired by the Company Rep as a bodyguard
the Hanger-On: a human Barbarian, an archaeologist and old friend of the Company Rep who was cursed by an ancient Barovian artifact to have a Jekyll/Hyde-type split personality
the Native Guide: a halfling Ranger and Barovian ex-pat hired to guide the party through the country


It was good to have a bit of a prompt. It's tough to just stare at a blank page and hope for inspiration to strike. Even just the general roles my DM gave out can spark something, so that you don't end up with a half-dozen amnesiac orphans.

[NorthernPhoenix]

It's always really fun when people write a lot of stuff freeform, but for people who can't or don't (for completely valid reasons!), the existing mechanics in 5e for background, bonds, flaws and so on let someone create a decently fleshed out character simply by picking questions from each list and then answering them. One of the reasons i love 5e! Books like XGtE add more by giving similar grids for class. Stuff like "Druid: Object: A golden sickle from my mentor", so you ask, who was your mentor? And most people are likely to be able to give you at least a few sentences about who they imagine their characters mentor is/was.

[Astofel]

Typically I ask my players two questions.
1. What kind of place did you come from?
2. Why are you here as opposed to there?
And that's how I get a sense of the character's history and their motive for adventuring. I also work with players to help craft their backstories, to find out what they want/expect from the game but also to make sure that the party is capable of working together. I don't fancy the 'dynamic' of a CN kleptomaniac rogue and an LG paladin who cuts the hands off thieves. For new characters entering during the campaign I just ask that their backstory ties into whatever the current adventure is, so they have a reason to start working with the party even though they might not know each other.

[strangebloke]

Have each of your players briefly explain one friend and one foe of their PCs. I've found that's all I really need.
I feel like this would encourage cardboard-cutout PCs who are basically just player avatars with no real differentiation from their previous characters other than aesthetic.

And that's a fine way to play, it's just generally not the sort of thing that you're going for if you're bothering with a backstory in the first place.

I love a session 0 where all players start out with a concept of what they want their character to be. During this session, each player makes adjustments to their character depending on the ideas of the rest of the party. Characters aren't final until session 0.

Then, they need to come up with bonds to explain how come they're in the same party. A and B could be childhood buddies, C could've met up with B on a previous mission after which they were joined by A. D has once served time with A and now runs into them during a fancy soirée. This often also helps with tying backstories together.

After session 0, players fill out their character sheets and write their backstory, taking into account whatever has been decided during session 0.
This is somewhat like my A option. Or at least, its somewhat like what I intended in the A option. The tricky part is getting the replacement characters into the game.

It's always really fun when people write a lot of stuff freeform, but for people who can't or don't (for completely valid reasons!), the existing mechanics in 5e for background, bonds, flaws and so on let someone create a decently fleshed out character simply by picking questions from each list and then answering them. One of the reasons i love 5e! Books like XGtE add more by giving similar grids for class. Stuff like "Druid: Object: A golden sickle from my mentor", so you ask, who was your mentor? And most people are likely to be able to give you at least a few sentences about who they imagine their characters mentor is/was.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the background system, although some of them (like the far traveller) just sort of tend to lead to bland characters.

Typically I ask my players two questions.
1. What kind of place did you come from?
2. Why are you here as opposed to there?
And that's how I get a sense of the character's history and their motive for adventuring. I also work with players to help craft their backstories, to find out what they want/expect from the game but also to make sure that the party is capable of working together. I don't fancy the 'dynamic' of a CN kleptomaniac rogue and an LG paladin who cuts the hands off thieves. For new characters entering during the campaign I just ask that their backstory ties into whatever the current adventure is, so they have a reason to start working with the party even though they might not know each other.

The issue I've had with this in the past is... players who aren't honest in their backstories. "I love my little sister" translating to "I will do anything to protect her, up to and including genocide."

[Corpsecandle717]

My latest game is pretty much a 'build your own back story' situation. The DM gave us an idea of where we would start out, and why we might be there, then let us have free reign. Then we all submitted our backstories for review and he basically told us what he could possibly incorporate into the story and what he couldn't, and nip any OP background nonsense in the bud. When a player had a weak story, he would provide prompts and help them with the creation of a more fleshed out character.

[MrStabby]

I have done a game with no connections. It worked but it was only a short, high level affair for about 6 sessions.

The party were all legendary heroes resurrected or gated in to save the world. The playing of people from different places, cultures, races and times made for some fun sessions.

[Ganymede]

I feel like this would encourage cardboard-cutout PCs who are basically just player avatars with no real differentiation from their previous characters other than aesthetic.


This is advice on what information to get from your players in order to work them into the larger narrative. When you have two NPCs (a friend and a foe) out in the open, it is way easier to pop them into the game and give the player a foil to work their background magic.



Of course, players still come up with backstories on their own; they don't stop with a friend and a foe.

[Maelynn]

This is somewhat like my A option. Or at least, its somewhat like what I intended in the A option. The tricky part is getting the replacement characters into the game.

Not necessarily. I've got a player who felt his character didn't fit in the party (the only LN, emphasis on L, in a fully CG party) and asked to reroll. He knows the other characters and their backstory, so all he had to do was come up with one that would have an overlap. He chose to hail from the same hometown as one of the other characters, and together they (as in, the players) decided they're buddies from back then. So the new character will be invited to fill up the empty slot when the old character leaves, as a "hey I know a guy who'd be great to come with us".

Only thing you'd have to change if the player is also new to the party: give them a blurb on every character with basic info and a bit of backstory. Then let them find a nice spot to nest their character in (if necessary with a nudge from you if they run out of ideas).

[bc56]

One of my GMs asked us to use this to create backstories and I rather enjoyed it. It allowed me to tie my character into the world more closely.

https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1315058/10-minute-background

[GlenSmash!]

I prefer to choose my background traits, decide why I became an adventurer, then in a session 0 establish ties to the other members of the party. Something more than we all met in an inn, but no need to make a deep inter-connected backstory.