Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
Ouch. You've been lucky to find DMs that like that. I've never liked long back stories, more than a summary paragraph. They go in the round circular short-term storage device.

Now with 5e's personality traits showing how to do it right, when a player tries to give me a backstory, I tell them to go back and write me 5 motivations instead.
I won't even read a paragraph and advise players against writing such things :p

I don't even read their personality traits, I just ask them to bring them up in play when appropriate. If it doesn't occur in play it doesn't exist.