Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
So, first off, as a rule, time played isn't backstory, it's story. Sure, I've heard of people trying to "play through their backstory". The only time I tried that? My character died during their backstory.
What about prologues and flashbacks? We routinely use them. Everybody gets given a direction of (say for a Star Wars game) 'Your character hates the Empire, tell me why'. A player might say they're a Wookiee taken as slave for years before they escaped after a shuttle crash, then we'll spend the first ten minutes of the game 'playing out' their capture and enslavement.
Now Darth Beatstick isn't just an off-screen character who tormented you as a slave, he's somebody you and the other players have seen 'in-play', which we finds works better than just hating a name in a backstory. To some extent, this is moving on pre-determined rails - we already know before we start that you don't defeat Darth Beatstick and avoid captivity. But we don't know if you managed to prevent a group of other Wookiees being captured or not. We don't know if you dragged the wounded Imperials out of the shuttle wreckage or left them to burn. There can still be stakes on a dice roll and character development when playing out a 'pre-written' backstory.

We've used this several times, and it works out well for us. I've done "Tell me why you hate the Empire"; "Tell me how one of these three antagonist NPCs betrayed you", "Tell me why you trust Jackson Elias with your life and would answer his call to come halfway around the world and help him with a dangerous cult", then played out that backstory. It doesn't take up a lot of tabletime, there's usually some simplified rolls ('Give me an single attack check that determines if you win this fight or not'), and it lets other players see the backstory 'on-screen' in front of them. I've very much enjoyed it.

There are also systems out there that encourage you to develop backstory in play. Savage Worlds uses Dramatic Interludes, which is a system for when the protagonists are just sitting around having downtime by the fire. One of them tells a spontaneously-invented-by-the-player story about their past (there's random tables to help generate these if wanted) - say, a story of someone they loved but lost. The player may have never thought about their character's romantic past, but then decide on the spot that their character's suddenly-invented old girlfriend Clarice dumped them to go pursue a sailor's life of adventure on the high seas. The player gets a Hero Point, the PC now has a new NPC that can be introduced in the game, and the character might develop personality traits like hating sea travel from it.

There's more than one way to spin a backstory. I have players that show up with anywhere between 'lovingly written multi-page document with family connections' to 'in-character journal explaining my character' to 'I'm a Fighter with a Greatsword'. The third one tends to require more drawing out, but it doesn't automatically have to equal a poor character in play.