Different RPG systems

[Witty Username]

I mean if you have issues with the wizard you can square one them by burning their book, it's just made of paper.
Items can be gained, items can be lost.

[Anonymouswizard]

That's "power via backstory", which never flies at any reasonable table.

We clearly have different definitions of 'reasonable tables'. While a Paladin might not be able to rouse the entire order whenever they wish they might miss than easily get some benefits from being a member, a new sword, a steady supply of information and potions, being treated with a higher standard level of trust by authority figures, outer various other things.

Then when an orcish army is invading the order actually believes the Paladin and arrive in a prompt manner to help drive them off.

[Lord Raziere]

We clearly have different definitions of 'reasonable tables'. While a Paladin might not be able to rouse the entire order whenever they wish they might miss than easily get some benefits from being a member, a new sword, a steady supply of information and potions, being treated with a higher standard level of trust by authority figures, outer various other things.

Then when an orcish army is invading the order actually believes the Paladin and arrive in a prompt manner to help drive them off.

Yeah I can think of a few rpg systems where the nature of your backstory and the connections to the world and thus benefits it gives are explicitly stated and required in character creation, which is an area that DnD is unfortunately light on even in 5e. like if your playing Dragon-Blooded in Exalted, those background merits are very important to spend on specifically the relationship you have with the power structures you come from. can't be a proper Zuko hunting down a Solar Aang without Resources for a ship, the right amount of Command to have soldiers to operate it, four dots for martial arts and knowing Fire Dragon Style, and of course dots reserved for freaking five dot mentor/ally for a Dragon-Blooded uncle....

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah I can think of a few rpg systems where the nature of your backstory and the connections to the world and thus benefits it gives are explicitly stated and required in character creation, which is an area that DnD is unfortunately light on even in 5e. like if your playing Dragon-Blooded in Exalted, those background merits are very important to spend on specific the relationship you have with the power structures you come from. can't be a proper Zuko hunting down a Solar Aang without Resources for a ship, the right amount of Command to have soldiers to operate it, four dots for martial arts and knowing Fire Dragon Style, and of course dots reserved for freaking five dot mentor/ally for a Dragon-Blooded uncle....

Yeah, I really, really dislike the wandering nobody. Even if your home village was burnt to ashes your character is almost certainly going to have done kind of tie to the setting. If you actively don't have ties to the setting there has to be a reason for it.

Of course these ties matter much less if you're off to a new location in the TARDIS every few sessions. But not every game moves so far so quickly.

[Theoboldi]

Yeah, I really, really dislike the wandering nobody. Even if your home village was burnt to ashes your character is almost certainly going to have done kind of tie to the setting. If you actively don't have ties to the setting there has to be a reason for it.

Of course these ties matter much less if you're off to a new location in the TARDIS every few sessions. But not every game moves so far so quickly.

The big issue with it is that in a traditional adventuring and challenge-based context, the impact of various backgrounds can be severely imbalanced. It's something I've actually experienced first hand, in a D&D game I was apart of.

Essentially, some backgrounds, unless there is some careful balancing done between what skills and what contacts they provide, will afford infinitely more utility and power than others. Which can have unfortunate effects on the social dynamic of a party.

In the game that I was apart of, we were trying to save a nearby city from an approaching army of goblinoids they did not know about. One of the party members had a military background, which tied her more closely to the campaign at hand than the former peasant chef or the scholarly warlock I played. The information and contacts provided to her by her background solved multiple situations for us, and made her overall so valuable and capable that she ended up making almost all decisions for the party.

It was one of the big reasons that game fell so utterly apart, eventually. I think Phoenix is actually somewhat on the right track with what he is saying, though he overstates it a little. Backgrounds, for any given game (At least in the adventuring context.) should be closely balanced and not just let you get around some basic system and setting assumptions. Even if I myself prefer to keep them freeform and just keep a closer eye on their balance, I think there is absolutely value in pricing different backgrounds differently in crunchier systems, like the ones Raziere pointed out.

I'll admit I also feel self-conscious about my upcoming campaign of wandering nobodies now, though.

[Vahnavoi]

In order for power-by-backstory to be an exploit, the game master first has to do a newbie mistake and allow for arbitrary backstories in flat defiance or ignorance of other rules.

For example, if you play by the actual rules for new characters in most versions of D&D, you begin as young adult 1st level journeyman of your class with no retainers and a few hundred gold pieces to your name. Any other resources you need to pay for from those gold pieces or use your established ability scores and skills to acquire them during play. That's it. Any parents, relatives, brothers-in-arms etc. are non-player characters under the dungeon master's control and the normal character creation procress gives a player no control over them and no access to their resources.

A new character isn't a venerable war veteran with two dozen fanatically loyal war buddies nor are they a noble scion with a benevolent and infinitely wealthy family. The normal character creation rules do not spit out such characters and if a dungeon master has approved a backstory with such elements, they have goofed up.

For contrast, there are other systems that build a character from ground up and the rules outright tell you who your family are, what contacts you made growing up, how to bring them to play and what resources you can squeeze out of them. Quite often, the simplest answer is: the other player characters are the available family membets and contacts and there are no others left.

[Willie the Duck]

What is a ribbon feature?

One that is acknowledged to be relatively unimportant, predominantly existing to fit theme, rather than because anyone expects it to be valuable in a given system/campaign.

[Telok]

What is a ribbon feature?

It's the bow on a present. It looks nice but doesn't really have any function for the object it's attached to. A feature of "you can wear heavy armor for long periods without penalty" in a game with no rules penalizing you for wearing heavy armor all the time would be a ribbon.

I think I just find the "nerf magic by strict rulings" objectionable because I've always been on the receiving end where it's really just a fig leaf for "I don't like people playing casters so I'll weasel word and rules lawyer your spells to not work". It never seems to apply to casters who are just blasters & heal-bots, probably because D&D simple-hp-depletion style combat is easy to understand and adjust while stuff like non-combat divinations & enchantments isn't. And it really does mostly seem to be a late/post D&D 3.x thing, possibly related to lifting the restrictions D&D casters faced and the proliferation of caster classes & spells.

[Vahnavoi]

Bah. In first edition AD&D, the dungeon master's rules outright said to rule out or destroy troublesome magic items, spells etc.. Why bother rules lawyering, when you're outright empowered to say "the game's becoming a chore to run because you have this spellbook, so it gets eaten by grue and you have to start from scratch next session"?

[Theoboldi]

What is a ribbon feature?

One that is acknowledged to be relatively unimportant, predominantly existing to fit theme, rather than because anyone expects it to be valuable in a given system/campaign.

For instance, in 5e, a dragon-blooded sorcerer starts out with two bonuses from having dragon ancestry.

1: He has a higher unarmored AC and more from his draconic scales and toughness. This is a consistently useful feature that will apply in just about every adventure.

2: He has a bonus on charisma checks when interacting with dragons. Though potent, it will rarely come up. It's given in addition to the actually consistent feature because it makes sense for the character to have and will feel very thematically appropriate on the few occasions it does come up. This is the ribbon feature.

[Anonymouswizard]

One that is acknowledged to be relatively unimportant, predominantly existing to fit theme, rather than because anyone expects it to be valuable in a given system/campaign.

Yeah, a Ribbon feature is essentially a 'freebie' because it's power is outside the inended scope of the game.


On background power, one of my issues is that until 5e D&D had no way to balance it, whereas most other games I own will charge you for established contacts or wealth (or other such benefits). 5e's Background Feature could theoretically be used to get a major contact or access to a resource, but there's still very little.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll specifically note that the "scribe spells into the spellbook" ribbon is (in 5e)

1) one sidebar. When sidebars are intentionally for things that are of minor importance and can generally be disregarded without substantial loss.[1] The only mention in the text itself is "On your adventures, you might find other spells that you can add to your spellbook (see the "Your Spellbook" sidebar).
2) modified by a highly-ribbony level 2 feature (half gold cost/time for scribing some spells) for some subclasses. Note that the newer sub-classes don't have this feature at all; their entire interaction with "can scribe in new spells" is that one sidebar. And those that do also get a meatier, more meaningful ability at that level as well.

In my estimation, that puts its intended power level at somewhere around the Ranger's Natural Explorer or the land druid's bonus cantrip (also level 2). It's a thematic ability that's just not intended to have a significant influence on play most of the time. If you get one new spell out of it, great. If you get 10, super bonus. But it's balanced around getting zero as an intended possible floor. Not that you're actively not intended to get any, but that if you don't get any, you're still within the expected power band.

So the expectation that you'll be finding tons of spells that way is, to me, significantly beyond expectations. Just like expecting that if you're a paladin you'll find a Holy Avenger. Or as any class, expecting that you'll find any particular magic item. Or as a ranger that you'll only spend time in your favored terrain or only fight your favored enemy.

Class defining it is absolutely not.

[1] random side note on that--the following are also sidebar material:
* the definitions of the schools of magic
* the entire split between arcane and divine magic
* guidance on splitting the party
* variant rules for playing on a grid (!)

[KorvinStarmast]

[1] random side note on that--the following are also sidebar material:
* the definitions of the schools of magic
* the entire split between arcane and divine magic
* guidance on splitting the party
* variant rules for playing on a grid (!)

Don't have my PHB with me, but isn't variant human also a side bar or boxed text?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Don't have my PHB with me, but isn't variant human also a side bar or boxed text?

Yup. Most of the "variant" features are (not the optional ones, but the variants). Variant encumbrance, IIRC, is one as well. As, oddly enough, is the whole "resolving stealth/hiding" part.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah, I really, really dislike the wandering nobody. Even if your home village was burnt to ashes your character is almost certainly going to have done kind of tie to the setting. If you actively don't have ties to the setting there has to be a reason for it.

Of course these ties matter much less if you're off to a new location in the TARDIS every few sessions. But not every game moves so far so quickly.

IMO, players often tend to burn their own home village to ashes in backstory, rather than waiting for what too many GMs (and authors) do -- burn it to the ground during the events of the game or story.

That is, I think the way some GMs punish PCs for having connections is a prime driver in players choosing to have no connections at all.

[Luccan]

IMO, players often tend to burn their own home village to ashes in backstory, rather than waiting for what too many GMs (and authors) do -- burn it to the ground during the events of the game or story.

That is, I think the way some GMs punish PCs for having connections is a prime driver in players choosing to have no connections at all.

I always wonder how common this is across the player base, especially recently.

What I've found to be slightly more common, IME of course, is that my background rarely matters. It just doesn't come up. So I could see that also being a reason people just go with "no family, no friends" as their backstory. Why put in the effort on something that won't matter?

[Telok]

IMO, players often tend to burn their own home village to ashes in backstory, rather than waiting for what too many GMs (and authors) do -- burn it to the ground during the events of the game or story.

That is, I think the way some GMs punish PCs for having connections is a prime driver in players choosing to have no connections at all.

Yeah, I've come to appreciate systems that give real mechanical weight & benefit to not being a homeless orphan nobody outsider. And that means actual rules & guides for the PCs getting to actively use a background. Not a passive 'your character has a note on the sheet that the dm might remember and might let you get a minor bonus once a campaign'.

[Xervous]

Yeah, I've come to appreciate systems that give real mechanical weight & benefit to not being a homeless orphan nobody outsider. And that means actual rules & guides for the PCs getting to actively use a background. Not a passive 'your character has a note on the sheet that the dm might remember and might let you get a minor bonus once a campaign'.

Got an illustrative example on hand?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I always wonder how common this is across the player base, especially recently.

What I've found to be slightly more common, IME of course, is that my background rarely matters. It just doesn't come up. So I could see that also being a reason people just go with "no family, no friends" as their backstory. Why put in the effort on something that won't matter?

As someone who tries to incorporate backgrounds, it's a bit of a circular situation, with a side helping of adventure and setting design.

If the adventure design is "you're all way out of your element" (like all being shipwrecked somewhere) or "we're just doing dungeons", then backgrounds don't matter at all. If the adventure design is "you're mostly interacting with nobles at court, no one else matters", then being an urchin means your background doesn't matter. If the setting is a flat stage with flat backdrops (or the DM treats it that way), or if you're running a pre-written adventure, chances are your background won't matter.

But even if all of those are set right, there are backgrounds that are much easier to have matter. Backgrounds that are entirely self-contained (such as the "homeless orphan with no connections" classic) are really hard to engage, as are ones that are carefully written to give the DM no hooks. IMO, backgrounds and backstories should be collaboratively written and some things should be called out actively as plot eye-bolts. Things the DM is expressly authorized to attach plot hooks to. With things set out as "this is a fixed thing" and others as more fuzzy, so that there can be twists added.

One of the things I'm loving about my current party is that many of them left their backstories wide open. One's an amnesiac and gave me full permission to define their backstory. Another has lots of nice eye-bolts for me to hook onto and build into the setting. A third has nice juicy family members marked as "go ahead and meddle". The fourth had some major elements open (now mostly resolved, but more to come).

The more inviting your backstory is to hooks, the easier it is for the DM to act. But opening up requires trusting the DM not to slash and burn. So people, once burned, tend to retract, which means DMs that want to are less able to hook on; only the grossest "threaten the family" hooks have purchase. Which leads to more people getting burned and more retraction, and down it spirals.

[Vahnavoi]

@Xervous: Amber comes to mind, and Gods of Olympus. They're god games, but more importantly for this topic, they're games where player characters are all part of the same big, dysfunctional family.

Though this is a thing that is borderline trivial to solve on the level of scenario design. Nothing actually stops a dungeon master prefacing a game with "all your characters are parts of the same noble family, GO!". Or, if a dungeon master is silent on the issue, nothing stops the players from agreeing with each other "hey, lets all play members of the same family!". Nevermind that in BECMI and AD&D, hiring retainers and henchmen and getting land to your name was codified part of the game progression, so all characters you played in a campaign after the very first one naturally came to exist in a framework where they had allies and other characters to rely on for support...

[Anonymouswizard]

IMO, players often tend to burn their own home village to ashes in backstory, rather than waiting for what too many GMs (and authors) do -- burn it to the ground during the events of the game or story.

That is, I think the way some GMs punish PCs for having connections is a prime driver in players choosing to have no connections at all.

Bah, GMs who can't wrong dreams out of a destroyed home aren't being creative enough. Who do you think the survivors are blaming fort the disaster? That's right, the disparity m suspiciously wealthy person going about the peace with no cares...

In more seriousness, yes there is definitely a historical problem with GMs using backstories as punishment (or motivation). I'll throw my hat in the ring that says the current trend is for it to not matter. Bit of a shame, considering I did once z ask for my backstory to primarily provide obstacles.

But there more of a blank slate you have the more the GM can just slot in as needed. Oh sure you can burn down your village just before the game starts, but how many players who do that then roleplay their character's grief? Won't the NPCs get suspicious?

To me burning down your home doesn't justify not having connections. It turns the question to 'what connections did you establish in the aftermath'.

[NichG]

If backgrounds are something a player feels like they need to try to escape, making escape hard is pushing in the wrong direction. Instead make it so that having a meaningful background is something players actively want and benefit from, rather than seeing it as a primarily a DM tool. And yes, that means letting players gain some power or advantage from their backstory. If that means letting them bypass normal meta-currency costs of things or progression-skip to some degree, that's fine. If that means attaching meta-currency costs to backgrounds so that you would buy your background just like you would buy your Strength score, that can also work. But in general, it's going to work better if players specifying an integrated and detailed background viscerally feel like doing so is to their advantage, in any and all ways that a player might decide to count their advantage. E.g. 'allowing that player to influence the genre and scope of the story from a meta point of view' is good for some players but others won't care, and 'gaining mechanical power' is good for some players but others won't care. So if its only one or the other, some players are going to feel like not bothering with backgrounds. But if whatever you want to achieve is better achieved if you also make use of backstory, then you're more likely to get everyone involved.

[KorvinStarmast]

To me burning down your home doesn't justify not having connections. It turns the question to 'what connections did you establish in the aftermath'.

Yes, and a few of those connections ought to be the party members.

[Telok]

Got an illustrative example on hand?

Exalted, the WoD games, DtD40k7e, potentialls supers games, maybe-kinda Shadowrun, others. Followers, allies, contacts, fame, status, mentors, etc.

When the rules define these as mechanics in the player's hands they can choose to do stuff like have the followers spread rumors, call on contacts for info, trade favors with allies (need a thief for next adventure but nobody rolled one? ally & future plut hook all at once), use your status as a famous hero to get an audience with the king.

Really its just putting mechanics the players get to actively use onto things that are usually fuzzy rp rewards. Part of it is offloading rembering some stuff from the DM and putting a reminder to the player on their sheet. Then the game can use them like skills, proficiencies, or characteristics. You can also make them part of the reward structure, kill more cult X to get more status with cult Y, take credit for stopping the demon invasion and get fame instead of being a nobody.

Some people will say they already do all that. But its work and you can be sure most players don't track this sort of stuff. Even those that remember it often won't try using it because they don't have a good feel for how useful it might be. It also helps if the game goes in an unexpected dire tion and the DM dosen't know if something should apply or be relevant. If a PC famous enough to be known to someone? DM can still rule zero or ass pull, but now has the option of rolling if theyre undecided.

[Cluedrew]

On Ribbon Features: I think I got it, thank you everyone who gave an explanation.

On Empty Backgrounds: The one issue that contributes to this is the hard dividing line between character and setting. I'm actually against the characters completely the domain of the players- and setting is completely the domain of the GM. (The GM & other players affecting characters is about social rules so I am going to drop that end.) But I think the (semi-common) format that the GM pitches the campaign, draws a big box around the possible PCs, a couple random ones are made, then the campaign starts and people start looking for ways to tie them together. I think tying them together should be done as part of set-up. You know maybe I'm framing this the wrong way, maybe its not so much a cause of empty backgrounds as a way to start filling backgrounds? Maybe.

On Mechanical Backgrounds: Building of Telok's list: Also quite a few Powered by the Apocalypse games, not universal but some playbooks are actually largely defined by the character's background.

[kyoryu]

But I think the (semi-common) format that the GM pitches the campaign, draws a big box around the possible PCs, a couple random ones are made, then the campaign starts and people start looking for ways to tie them together. I think tying them together should be done as part of set-up. You know maybe I'm framing this the wrong way, maybe its not so much a cause of empty backgrounds as a way to start filling backgrounds? Maybe.

I tend to agree, at least for certain types of games.

One of the things is knowing if your background actually matters. If you're going through some preplanned story, it probably doesn't. If the GM is planning on molding things around your characters, it totally does.

And doing the wrong level of background for the wrong game absolutely will cause contention in a game - if you make a background and you're just going through the prewritten story, then your attempts to insert your background will often be seen as distracting. And if the GM is expecting to mold the game around the characters, and you present a blank sheet? Again, you're not contributing what's asked for.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I tend to agree, at least for certain types of games.

One of the things is knowing if your background actually matters. If you're going through some preplanned story, it probably doesn't. If the GM is planning on molding things around your characters, it totally does.

And doing the wrong level of background for the wrong game absolutely will cause contention in a game - if you make a background and you're just going through the prewritten story, then your attempts to insert your background will often be seen as distracting. And if the GM is expecting to mold the game around the characters, and you present a blank sheet? Again, you're not contributing what's asked for.

I agree with this.

Another thing that causes contention isn't just "wrong level" of background, but "badly fitting" background. The one guy who brings "I'm the only heir to the throne, in good standing" to a game where you're all scrabbling for survival as minor bandits? Yeah. The guy who brings "I don't know anybody, don't want to know anybody, not from around here, don't talk to me" to a social-heavy game of politics in the noble world? Yeah. Etc.

Backgrounds should be collaborative. I'm currently working with my players on their backgrounds for our upcoming second campaign. And we don't expect to start the second campaign for at minimum a month (have to get through the current arc of campaign 1 at least, probably more). I'm providing the world context and helping shape the backgrounds, but their contributions actually help shape the world as well. They're planning to have "we all know each other from 'school'" as part of everyone's background.

I'm not a fan of the "everyone rolls up to session 1 with characters they made in isolation, without talking to each other or the DM" style. As a DM, I want to be involved, because that will give me ideas on what to include (or not) and how to find hooks that match their eyebolts.

[KorvinStarmast]

They're planning to have "we all know each other from 'school'" as part of everyone's background.

But I didn't get to go to the prom ...

[kyoryu]

I agree with this.

Another thing that causes contention isn't just "wrong level" of background, but "badly fitting" background. The one guy who brings "I'm the only heir to the throne, in good standing" to a game where you're all scrabbling for survival as minor bandits? Yeah. The guy who brings "I don't know anybody, don't want to know anybody, not from around here, don't talk to me" to a social-heavy game of politics in the noble world? Yeah. Etc.

Backgrounds should be collaborative. I'm currently working with my players on their backgrounds for our upcoming second campaign. And we don't expect to start the second campaign for at minimum a month (have to get through the current arc of campaign 1 at least, probably more). I'm providing the world context and helping shape the backgrounds, but their contributions actually help shape the world as well. They're planning to have "we all know each other from 'school'" as part of everyone's background.

I'm not a fan of the "everyone rolls up to session 1 with characters they made in isolation, without talking to each other or the DM" style. As a DM, I want to be involved, because that will give me ideas on what to include (or not) and how to find hooks that match their eyebolts.

For sure. And part of that is the frequent game-pitch of "let's play D&D!". Which tells players nothing about what the game is actually about. At the minimum, a game pitch should probably contain the level of information in a movie trailer. An additional conversation to make sure the concepts fit together is also useful, but that much is the minimum in my mind.

[Anonymouswizard]

I suppose the other option is to pull a Fate, and explicitly make the character's backstory useless for connections, but vital for the way a character acts. But that's Annie levels of commitment and not most players' cup of tea.

Unrelatedly I've had a burning itch to run an Arthurian game for some time. But in addition to backstories needing to fit together we'd have to agree on what era of the mythos we're playing. I foresee many issues where I say 'Arthurian' and instead of a bunch of Celts ready to kill some Saxons I get a set of knights in shining armour (one being shiny leather, of course). It doesn't help that I own three King Arthur RPGs with very different takes.