i need a little help dealing with backstories as a DM

[JestingManiac]

hi. could i get some advice from a more experienced DM? My playgroup has, until now been very munchkin-esque and action oriented, and i knew to expect that, but im watching the most ridiculous powergamer i know write a 4 page backstory as i type this post. this is my first time seriously DMing for longer than a 1 shot so i would like to get some advice before starting in on whatever hes doing.
thanks

[Man_Over_Game]

hi. could i get some advice from a more experienced DM? My playgroup has, until now been very munchkin-esque and action oriented, and i knew to expect that, but im watching the most ridiculous powergamer i know write a 4 page backstory as i type this post. this is my first time seriously DMing for longer than a 1 shot so i would like to get some advice before starting in on whatever hes doing.
thanks

After he's done, have him make a cheat-sheet of the main characters and important plot items. Something you can fit on a notecard, made out like notes for a test.

Something like this:

Avana: Mom, a cook in Whitehelm
Jorben: Dad. Dead in Whitehelm graveyard, murdered by the local mafia, for witnessing a crime.

Callun: Father's murderer. Killed Jorben for a cover up. Then lied to the player's character about it and said the father was drunk and attacked him first.
College of Opened Minds: Suspicious school that the player's character went to, has ties to the mafia.


That way you know what major items and events exist, what NPCs to add in, and what places already exist. If you need specifics, you can always just read the full backstory, but it's more important to have a shortened summary on hand.

[JestingManiac]

thanks i really appreciate the help.

[strangebloke]

I want to reiterate what man_over_game said. If you dont' get a cheatsheet from the player, write one yourself.

Then write up a sequence of how you're going to work it into the main plot. Going off of Man_over_game's post, make some characters from the mafia show up at some point as an employer for the party. They need the party to guard a warehouse. Totally legit work. Then it turns out Somebody the PC knew from school is there too, and from his face and actions it looks like he's in trouble. They investigate further, but then the mafia starts making threats against the PCs mom.

Tons of potential here.

Typically, I give them this form to start their backstory out. Make them fill out the cheat sheet ahead of time, so to speak.

Front-Facing Backstory
This information will be available to everyone, and represents how your character would be seen by most people in the starting village.

Race:

Age:

Appearance:

Family/Guardians:

Background/Occupation:

Associations(groups or persons you would be known to associate with):

General/Other:

Secret Backstory:
This information represents stuff that not everyone would know about your character.

Greatest Fear:

Greatest Regret:

Something your character doesn’t know about themselves (IE, who their father is or a prophecy or a curse that's upon them):

History:



Some stuff I've done:

a PC had as a 'greatest fear' that he'd be discovered as a having been a thief when he was young, trying to steal bread to feed his family. Another PC listed under 'regret' that as a member of the watch he had once taken a finger from a young thief who had just been trying to steal bread to feed his family. The thief had aged and disguised himself, but when the party met up... he knew the policeman immediately. Made for some fun character interactions, though of course I had to get buy-in from them beforehand.
A rogue was a member of a demon hunting organization that relied on repeated divine intervention to continue fighting their enemies. I made it so that this organization had been coopted by a devil, who led their forces from the shadows. The devil was actually benign however, having been granted a mortal soul of his own in one of the many acts of divine intervention.
I had the slavers that had traded one of my PCs as a child show up as an ally for a mission. His reveal and betrayal of the slavers was delicious.


You don't have to immediately use their backstories, but take these notes down right away so that you can easily work them in later.

One note: beware of powergaming backstories. "Why I'm friends with the king and the archmage and the archdruid" is not a kosher level 1 backstory. "Why I have a Holy Avenger" is also not an acceptable level 1 backstory. Give them some guidance here.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Lol. Yeah, about 4 newspaper paragraphs are plenty. That said, this guy really cares.

Be careful that his super detailed novel doesn't derail the world.

Make some notes about what is important.

Get a bit in your story.

[Sigreid]

I'd be up front that I'm not going to read a long backstory.

[KorvinStarmast]

here are two good threads with lots of good advice about back stories.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570189-Backstory-how-much-is-too-much-little&highlight=backstory
I like the first one better than the second one.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572178-PC-background-why-you-re-WRONG-if-it-s-too-detailed&highlight=backstory

From that, I'll offer an example of comparing to different styles.
Style 1:
A bit more "narrative" in that I tried to fold in the background and flaws/bonds/traits into a story.

Korvin Starmast(life domain cleric):
Mother died in the violet plague. On my third trading voyage, Father was killed by the pirate Rustbeard while defending the good ship Windbreaker from attack. Rustbeard took our ship, since his had burned during the battle.

Salted Bart and Steelfinger mutinied, feeding Rustbeard to the sharks. It was justice, of a sort.
They put ashore those of us who wished to leave piracy to them.
I watched my seven shipmates slowly die from poisoned wine, which was Steelfinger's parting gift. I had no taste for wine; I prefer ale or grog.
I made for Mother's temple, the one in Scornubel where Father had met her. The high priest said I had potential, and so enrolled as a Cleric of Lathander. It was four long years of prayer and learning.

I felt a sailor's restlessness. I left the cloister to spread the Light.
Maybe I can heal a small part of this sick world.
Maybe I can find justice.
How I'll do any of that in this mad city of Waterdeep I'm not sure -- I'm not even sure how I got here. If a few other people are as restless as I am, there's no telling what we can change ...

---------------------------------
Style 2: That same back story can be presented with less detail with a focus on "what are the motives of this character"


Went to sea with father after mother died of horrible disease {sailor background} & {motive to later be life cleric} & Ship taken by pirates, father killed, castaway. Journeyed to temple {family connection} and was enrolled to study as cleric/priest. {Class / domain}. Left temple (background/sailor/restless) to adventure; hopes to one day avenge (or get justice for) death of Father {pirates Steel Finger and Salted Bart, if DM likes them as future plot hooks)}.

Weaving the ideals, flaws, bonds, and traits into that is fine, or Just List Them.

I've also done three page stories. And longer.

[EggKookoo]

One thing I've learned over the years is that player backstories sound like great ideas, but they seldom work out. Instead, I encourage my players to pick a small handful of questions to answer in interesting ways. I don't discourage or prevent them from coming up with backstories, but it gets too hard to work in everyone's personal quests all the time.

Batman's backstory is that his parents were killed in an alleyway by violent criminals. If a player had this background, I would want it to manifest in how they hunt down and punish criminals in general, not that they are looking for the specific criminals who killed their parents. The former is easy to weave into the game and provides ongoing roleplaying motivation. The latter is too focused on a single event in their character's history.

So with your player's backstory, try to distill out some general ongoing threads that you can keep going throughout the entire campaign. Maybe create some simple examples or questions about them that the player can come up with answers for -- not so much for you to use for plotting but for the player to use for roleplaying.

[LordEntrails]

Don't make the player make the cheat sheet, read the story in its entirety, make your own cheat sheet. And remember, you do NOT have to incorporate anything from their backstory into your game, but you should make a few tie ins as appropriate.

[KorvinStarmast]

A couple of other good thoughts from another backstory thread:
wildabeast (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23462126&postcount=42)

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23462126&postcount=42
-Think of a defining moment/environment that shaped the character and understand how that might affect them.

-Give them a reason to adventure and connect that to some overall aspiration. Do they want to be a master swordman, have songs sung about their heroics, or do they want to take over the world?

-Ideally connect them to another party member in some way. At the very least give them a reason to travel with a party.

-Think of an arc this character can take. How might adventuring change them?

As a DM, I don't mind if the backstory is long (2 of my players gave me 4 pages), I care primarily how easily I can connect that backstory to the overall campaign. If it's too specific and self-contained, it's going to be a challenge to incorporate it into the overall story. Details allow me to tailor character specific handouts like a letter from their family or have them run into someone from their past in a place that makes sense.

And then there's this from Beleriphon.


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23462324&postcount=43
If you can't sum up a character backstory in the same space it takes to write a novel synopsis on a dust jacket, its not worth using.

[RedMage125]

Back on the old WotC Gleemax boards, there was a long running thread called "10 Minute Backgrounds".

Edit: someone copy pasted it back then. The thread is old, but use it as a model, if you like.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?91813-10-Minute-Background

I like that model as it gives a DM some things to work with, without burdening him with a novella.

[EggKookoo]

Don't make the player make the cheat sheet, read the story in its entirety, make your own cheat sheet. And remember, you do NOT have to incorporate anything from their backstory into your game, but you should make a few tie ins as appropriate.

Right. Don't feel like you need to take the player's backstory into account wholesale. Use it to come up with some key concepts -- questions that you can then ask the player, which they should answer based on the character's background. The questions should be something useful for your session planning, and the answers keep them in line with the character. Really, you could use the same set of questions for all players and have a set of different responses, from which you could build some fun encounters.

[Sigreid]

The This is your life tables in Xanathar's are pretty good.

[noob]

You can also have some ordinary backstories such as "As a kid I liked to set stuff on fire and then I left my family home because it was on fire then I decided to explore new horizons to set on fire"(works for almost any adventurer)
Short backstories have the advantage of not needing the players and the gm to spent tons of time writing them and reading them and so allows to start adventures earlier and possibly to have some verification that the backstories are coherent while with longer backstories it is harder.
In fact if some people asks for long backstories the player might sneak in Les Misérables and a dozen of other books and nobody will notice because nobody will read entirely.

[Man_Over_Game]

Right. Don't feel like you need to take the player's backstory into account wholesale. Use it to come up with some key concepts -- questions that you can then ask the player, which they should answer based on the character's background. The questions should be something useful for your session planning, and the answers keep them in line with the character. Really, you could use the same set of questions for all players and have a set of different responses, from which you could build some fun encounters.

I find that having someone write their own cheat sheet lets them recognize how important it is to keep information succinct, as well as letting them identify the key points that they want to stand out. Otherwise, you write your own notes, forget about the little sister that died who you thought was no longer relevant, and be surprised when the player mourns over her grave for a day, or something.

We are not trying to get the players to match our expectations, we should be trying to match theirs.

[EggKookoo]

We are not trying to get the players to match our expectations, we should be trying to match theirs.

You have to manage that, though. In my experience, players who are motivated to write backstories tend to stuff them with plot and detail (edit: I include myself in this on the rare chance I can play). They need to understand that the game has to accommodate all the players at the table. What the player comes up with has to be able to turned into something general-purpose enough to serve everyone. Players tend to not want to spend session after session playing someone else's subplots.

[Sigreid]

We are not trying to get the players to match our expectations, we should be trying to match theirs.

I disagree with this. The table needs to come to common expectations. It needs to be a game/campaign that the DM wants to play too.