Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
I don't. If an elf shows up at age 76, or a dwarf shows up at age 60, they've been doing stuff for most of a human life span. Heck, twenty to twenty five years is a pretty long time: quite a bit can happen in that amount of time.

And the 'long character history' is not a requirement for a back story. Summarizing what the character has become at this point (level 1, entry into adventuring as a career) can take from a few sentences to a few pages. The key is to end up with "Why am I here doing this now? I was {there} and now I am {here} about to do {something}."

One can do what Traveller (original) did and make the character background / backstory mechanically relevant, but that depends on the game system.

FWIW, a nice post about funnel/meatgrinder can be found here.
To me adventuring is a result and not a goal. Being an adventurer is not a profession. Going on an "adventure" is because **** needs to be taken care of. One of the parties I play in now is setting up a roof tile business. But to prevent that our transports get robbed all of the time we decided to take care of the local bandit issue. Before that we were sent out to do chores for the Legion (an organization that takes care of delinquents, a kind of foreign legion). Once we paid our debt to society we were on our own, a roof tile business seemed like a good idea. So then we had to raise money, and get permits to start a business (guild). So that meant do more jobs for the locals powers. etcetera etcetera.