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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    So, in this thread, there was discussion of using a meatgrinder to generate backstory. So I'm creating this thread to branch off that side discussion, and, as is obvious from the title, to give a few reasons why I think that this is a terrible idea.

    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.

    Yeah. Triple-botched a "stay alive" roll. Yeah. So, not a good plan.

    Further, it's a terrible investment. For 3 sessions, you get 0-3 sessions worth of Story added to your character. With emphasis on numbers less that 1. Whereas, if there isn't such terrible risk of death, it would not be unreasonable to expect 3 sessions to give, wouldn't you know it, 3 sessions worth of Story.

    Lastly, it is, IMO and IME, just about the worst bonding experience possible for the characters.

    Imagine it: You've got 4 players, playing The 9th Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and yappy dog thing. Mickey gets killed off, and replaced by Jack. The Doctor gets killed, and regenerates into the 10th Doctor. Rose gets killed, and replaced by Donna. Donna gets killed, and replaced by Martha. The 10th Doctor gets killed, and regenerates into the 11th Doctor. Martha gets killed, and replaced by River. River gets killed, and replaced by Amy. Jack gets killed, and replaced by Rory. Amy gets killed, and replaced by Clara. The 11th Doctor gets killed, passing his limit of regenerations, but the player still can't think of a new character, GM pity artifact happens, he's given more regenerations, and regenerates into the 12th Doctor. The yappy dog thing gets sent to another dimension, and replaced by Nardole. Clara gets killed, and replaced by Bill. Nardole gets killed at the end of the session.

    At start of game, yappy dog thing comes back from his extradimensional hike, and is joined by the 12th Doctor, Bill, and Jack.

    Tell me, why should they get along better because of this shared experience meat grinder than, oh, I don't know, characters that were actually designed to go together, like, say, Amy and Rory?

    Why is spending 3 sessions killing the characters up to the 12th Doctor, Bill, Jack, and yappy dog thing better for character development than spending 3 sessions playing the 12th Doctor, Bill, Jack, and yappy dog thing?

    Sure, I can see arguments for "it give players experience with the system", or as a terrible / terribly inefficient version of several other tools (like my "sample/calibration one-shots"). But what I don't see is any reason to consider a meatgrinder a good way to produce story, back or otherwise.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    I read the 'just run a meatgrinder!' suggestion as being a sort of indirect way of saying 'I don't care about backstory, just play the game already'. Which I don't entirely disagree with. I guess I'd take the position that backstory has overstated importance in general - it can be good, but I've seen players 'kill their character in their own backstory generation' (metaphorically at least) too. People make characters who will look at the campaign premise (that they were informed about before!) and say 'I'm playing someone whose philosophy means they will try to disengage with this as soon as possible' or 'I'm playing someone who is going to say no to the initial hook even though I was informed in advance what it would be'. Not every character is like that (but not every character dies when 'playing out backstory' either) - its just, I wouldn't have faith in backstory authorship alone to hold a group together even if that group is instructed to make backstory for that purpose.

    So anyhow, I'd say the underlying question that's more salient is, is it better for the thing that binds characters together to be something that existed before play, something ongoing during play, or something created during play but quickly resolved?

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    It doesn't replace a backstory for me -- but I won't claim I know how other people should play.

    Creating my PC's backstory is part of designing the character. The abilities and stats help me define the backstory, and the backstory helps me to decide on the abilities and stats. Most of my characters have some stats or skills specifically chosen to match his background.

    Obviously, what I do in play cannot be used to help me create a character before play begins.

    But other people don't have to design characters like I do.

    Using the meatgrinder to get the party together, and to help define what these people have done to become a functioning party is perfectly legitimate -- for people who don't want an actual backstory.


    And forcing a backstory on somebody who doesn't want one just doesn't work. I had a player whose backstory was always, “He’s a fighter who likes to hit things.” I once insisted on at least a paragraph. He wrote (more or less):
    Forlong grew up in a village where his favorite pastime was to watch the town guards at practice. He always wanted to be a warrior who could protect his friends and family. He considers his sword to be his closest friend, and he is always very careful about keeping it sharp and in good shape.
    I never insisted on a backstory again. I’m quite sure that if I had required a five-page backstory, he'd have handed me five pages that boiled down to “He’s a fighter who likes to hit things.”


    I write long detailed backstories. It helps me focus on who that character really is. And there's nothing wrong with that.

    Some people don't want a backstory at all. It doesn't help them at all. And there's nothing wrong with that, either.

  4. - Top - End - #4
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    So anyhow, I'd say the underlying question that's more salient is, is it better for the thing that binds characters together to be something that existed before play, something ongoing during play, or something created during play but quickly resolved?
    Well it depends. One key question is whether or not the group was deliberately assembled for some objective - ex. a group of special forces soldiers put together by a ranking officer for a series of missions - or the group formed more or less organically and now finds itself forced to pursue whatever objectives the campaign has - ex. a vampire coterie suddenly facing a major crisis in their city.

    In the former case, the binding factor is ongoing, the PCs are all members of some organization and they are expected to fulfill that organization's wishes (willingly or otherwise). It can be resolved quickly, if the campaign is uninterested internal organization tension, or it could be a source of ongoing plots if the campaign wishes to go down that road (consider how in some police procedurals the main team gets along fine with their superiors and focuses on solving crimes and in others departmental politics are a far greater source of impediments than anything the criminals do).

    In the latter case, it's much better if the group resolved why it exists before play, because there's not going to be anything in the campaign that fosters ingroup solidarity and there may not be any actual in-game reason why the characters can't just say 'screw it, I'm out' and have their PCs leave, especially since it might be entirely in-character for them to just do that (especially since the reason people don't spontaneously quit their jobs a lot in the real world - money - may not be operating as a constraint in the fictional one).

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R
    And forcing a backstory on somebody who doesn't want one just doesn't work.
    Some games demand at least a modicum of backstory. D&D is unusual in that it tends to take place in a vacuum. A PC can just be some guy who wandered into town heavily armed and why that happened isn't particularly relevant while you're delving through the ruins outside of town. However, many other systems and settings have significantly higher demands. In particular a setting that either imposes inherent traits upon a character - ex. you're character is a vampire, how you became one is a question that requires an answer - or has universal historical events that touched literally everyone in the setting - ex. in Eclipse Phase the hard takeoff rendered Earth uninhabitable during your characters lifetime, and you can't not have a 'what happened to you during the Fall?' for any PC.
    Last edited by Mechalich; 2022-06-08 at 08:37 PM.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    For the OP: while your taking the initiative to get that discussion out of the thread it was bogging down is appreciated, telling other people that what they do is badwrongfun is bad form.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-06-08 at 09:25 PM.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Even if you run a meatgrinder you still need a backstory (assuming backstory is relevant to the campaign). Unless you are all identical clones with identical training each potential PC still has individual skills, abilities and personality traits that are explained by their backstory before they entered the meatgrinder. So all the meatgrinder does is create a shared experience for the characters.

    Where I see a meatrginder being possibly kind-of useful is where you run 2 or 3 sessions to introduce the players to the setting and ruleset and then use the surviving PCs as NPCs for the main campaign which starts after the meatgrinder.q

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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    Even if you run a meatgrinder you still need a backstory (assuming backstory is relevant to the campaign). Unless you are all identical clones with identical training each potential PC still has individual skills, abilities and personality traits that are explained by their backstory before they entered the meatgrinder. So all the meatgrinder does is create a shared experience for the characters.

    Where I see a meatrginder being possibly kind-of useful is where you run 2 or 3 sessions to introduce the players to the setting and ruleset and then use the surviving PCs as NPCs for the main campaign which starts after the meatgrinder.q
    I guess this is where the philosophical difference might occur for some people. For some people, I don't think its necessary that everything have a pre-existing explanation. E.g. if all the backstory is doing is justifying something they were already willing to accept as a flat out choice, then that justification can be improvised at need but otherwise isn't really worth getting too worked up about. Yeah, this guy is a 1st level Fighter with the Weapon Finesse feat, like thousands of other people - if its because they got bullied by a musclehead as a kid and trained to prove their attitude stupid, or because they hung out with someone who gave them adventuring pointers and turned out to be a master thief, or because they were a noble and court etiquette favored formalized duelling with rapiers over hitting things hard, or - well, the game itself isn't harmed if that detail doesn't exist yet, so its up to the individual player to decide whether to care about that or not.

    For other people, the idea that those details could be unimportant clashes with what they're actually trying to get out of game because e.g. it trivializes the stuff that they're actually there for, or because of the way their sense of verisimilitude works, or ...

    I guess its kind of contained in that 'assuming backstory is relevant to the campaign' bit...
    Last edited by NichG; 2022-06-08 at 11:26 PM.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    The only time I can think of that "meatgrinder as backstory" works is if the system is designed around it, eg. Only War. Like 90% of the first wave of characters are expected to die, and the 10% that survive have enough plot armor to become real PCs instead of mostly faceless goons.

  9. - Top - End - #9
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    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.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Time played isn't story, it's experience. Backstory is, by it's very nature, a story. There's a difference between the two, and table shared experience with the other players > story for establishing who a character actually is. Backstory may or may not matter for a given session or campaign, but what happens in play always has some level of impact. Of course, it might be "got chewed up by a meat grinder and died" ... which is a mighty short 'character development arc'.

    Meatgrinders have the potential to create a bonding experience for the players, and since player-character separation is a myth, that trickles down to the surviving characters. Of course, they also have the potential to leave a sour taste in the mouths of the players, even if they thought they knew what they were signing up for.

    Meatgrinders / character funnels can work to establish why otherwise low personality / history characters work together, and gives some opportunity prior to the main adventures to establish personality and maybe even a bit of winging-it-sharing-a-character's-history for the survivors 'at the table', which is the most important place it can happen. Or it might not work. But for a higher investment character (be it character build time, significant advance development of personality, or writing a story about their history), it's obviously a terrible idea, because of the chance of character loss.

    The long and short of it is anything written down about a character in advance of bringing them to the table doesn't actually 'exist' yet. It's only once it's revealed or impacts a player decision at the table that it 'exists' and is actually a part of that character. Before then it's all just theoretical.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    As I mentioned in the original thread, whether or not starting with a meatgrinder is a good idea (I'm not sure it'd be for me, but I can see some of the appeal) I don't see how it could possibly be replacing a backstory or somehow providing a reason for the party to stick together any more than any other intro adventure.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Time played isn't story, it's experience. Backstory is, by it's very nature, a story. There's a difference between the two, and table shared experience with the other players > story for establishing who a character actually is. Backstory may or may not matter for a given session or campaign, but what happens in play always has some level of impact. Of course, it might be "got chewed up by a meat grinder and died" ... which is a mighty short 'character development arc'.

    Meatgrinders have the potential to create a bonding experience for the players, and since player-character separation is a myth, that trickles down to the surviving characters. Of course, they also have the potential to leave a sour taste in the mouths of the players, even if they thought they knew what they were signing up for.
    Or you could just take a regular introduction adventure and get the same bondingexperience out of it. Even more as you don't need any "trickle down attachment".

    Meatgrinders / character funnels can work to establish why otherwise low personality / history characters work together,
    How ? Meatgrinders are notorious for the characters having not well thought out reasons for being there or working together. They tend to be just some other random warm bodies to each other and usually stay that way. It is not unheard of players not evenknowing the names of the current PCs that belong to other players. Why care for some other poorly thought out mayfly PC who was made in 5 minutes more than about some random NPC hireling ?
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-06-09 at 02:15 AM.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Frankly, this is a strawman argument. You can't expect a meatgrinder to somehow magically solve all of your problems with backstories ever - it's a tool, and like any tool, it has a time and a place and can be used badly. If you use it badly, well, of course it doesn't work. You can hammer a nail in with a screwdriver, but it won't be easy and will leave you frustrated and your screwdriver cracked.

    If you want to run a meatgrinder, all of the people thrown into it need to have a barebones backstory - this is usually "well, I was a carpenter and got conscripted" and left at that. Does that count as backstory? Technically yes, in the DnD sense of two pages with a short novella on them, not really.

    Is it just story? Technically yes, but in the sense of "these are the characters I got attached to as a player and want to see their story through", not really. Everyone is just a random gremlin, and it is their survival in this grinder that will at least start to build player attachment. Provided the players are on board with the idea.

    It's like complaining that skill checks are a terrible idea because you need to roll them for everything all the time - if you are using them that way, you are using them wrong and shouldn't be surprised they don't work.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    I do agree meatgrinder scenarios are bad for creating backstory, but that's because the entire concept is oxymoronic. Backstory for a game is is story of events that happened before a game starts. It exist to explain the initial position and to hint at follow-up positions.

    If you start up a scenario not knowing that the end result will be, that's not backstory, that's just playing the game. To say you're "creating backstory" is just a fancy way of saying you're looking to build future events on results of game play, same as any other time. The scenario itself needs its own backstory and it's turtles all the way down until you just accept some initial position as the premise without further questions.

    The actual purpose of "playing your backstory" is to add in detail to a framework that's already known. F.ex. you know your character is last survivor of a village destroyed by goblins, your choosing to play that event to show who the goblins killed, how & in what order. This doesn't apply to meatgrinder scenarios where it might not be known beforehand which characters come out alive.

    All of this is completely separate from the question of "do meatgrinder scenarios serve as a bonding experience?" Almost any shared experience can work as a bonding experience and that's why you'd want to play out dramatic (or traumatic) shared character events, because it isn't actually a shared experience for the players before they play it out (duh). Expecting a perfect success rate is daft, for the most part you're hoping to beat a coin flip. (As a corollary, you have to try a method more than once before passing final judgement on it. This very basic principle seems lost on many people.) Creating unit cohesion is even more specific and I laught at the assumption that it is necessary or even desired end result of the method. Abandon performative group play and embrace individual characters trying to kill each other today.

    *Ahem* What I mean is, meatgrinder scenarios & other trial-by-fire deals are good for testing if players and their characters are capable of cohesion. Actually building cohesion takes considerable time, a safer environment and some trial-and-error. In plainer terms, the actual bonding more likely happens in the group therapy or rebuilding session after the horrible disaster all the characters underwent. If you want an actual idea for how to make people function well as a small group, forget roleplaying games and get your hands on a Scout Master's guide or something.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I do agree meatgrinder scenarios are bad for creating backstory, but that's because the entire concept is oxymoronic. Backstory for a game is is story of events that happened before a game starts. It exist to explain the initial position and to hint at follow-up positions.

    If you start up a scenario not knowing that the end result will be, that's not backstory, that's just playing the game. To say you're "creating backstory" is just a fancy way of saying you're looking to build future events on results of game play, same as any other time. The scenario itself needs its own backstory and it's turtles all the way down until you just accept some initial position as the premise without further questions.

    The actual purpose of "playing your backstory" is to add in detail to a framework that's already known. F.ex. you know your character is last survivor of a village destroyed by goblins, your choosing to play that event to show who the goblins killed, how & in what order. This doesn't apply to meatgrinder scenarios where it might not be known beforehand which characters come out alive.

    All of this is completely separate from the question of "do meatgrinder scenarios serve as a bonding experience?" Almost any shared experience can work as a bonding experience and that's why you'd want to play out dramatic (or traumatic) shared character events, because it isn't actually a shared experience for the players before they play it out (duh). Expecting a perfect success rate is daft, for the most part you're hoping to beat a coin flip. (As a corollary, you have to try a method more than once before passing final judgement on it. This very basic principle seems lost on many people.) Creating unit cohesion is even more specific and I laught at the assumption that it is necessary or even desired end result of the method. Abandon performative group play and embrace individual characters trying to kill each other today.

    *Ahem* What I mean is, meatgrinder scenarios & other trial-by-fire deals are good for testing if players and their characters are capable of cohesion. Actually building cohesion takes considerable time, a safer environment and some trial-and-error. In plainer terms, the actual bonding more likely happens in the group therapy or rebuilding session after the horrible disaster all the characters underwent. If you want an actual idea for how to make people function well as a small group, forget roleplaying games and get your hands on a Scout Master's guide or something.
    Right. The "meatgrinder" is the first adventure, not a backstory. It's a "funnel", as DCC puts it, that adds another random element to the character(s) you end up playing longer term. You would wait until you see what characters survive, at least to level 1, before you bother thinking too much about their past. You can control it somewhat- you can choose to put some of your level 0 characters in more harm than others, do your best to protect the ones with the best stats. Since there would be significant down time in between level 0 and level 1 to account for training in a class, one could use the events of the level-0 adventure to explain the "backstory" of why this character chose or was pushed into the class the player ends up choosing for them, and possibly why they want to keep adventuring. This sort of game is just not the sort where you'd expect the GM (Judge) to craft a detailed plot and setting based on combining elements of backstories that the players wrote. You don't need backstories in this game, and any player who bothers to write them would be doing it only for their own pleasure, and not because they know or expect it to have any bearing on what happens to the character in play.

    As for the debate about whether characters coming out of such a situation would ever want to see each other again, that others have brought up - the characters obviously must all be motivated to become adventurers, which is why they ended up in the meatgrinder in the first place, however unprepared they were- and there is just no place, here, for players who don't want to engage with the premise of the game. Players are expected to decide that their characters do, in fact, want to team up with the other survivors and continue seeking adventure (possibly following up on some of the mysteries likely introduced in the meatgrinder). So, just decide that your character is not suffering from extreme PTSD, and does, in fact, want to join the other characters in more adventures, for the sake of gold, glory, magic powers, knowledge, etc., even if they aren't best friends with all the other characters yet. That's what the game is about.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    Even if you run a meatgrinder you still need a backstory (assuming backstory is relevant to the campaign). Unless you are all identical clones with identical training each potential PC still has individual skills, abilities and personality traits that are explained by their backstory before they entered the meatgrinder.
    Paranoia sez "Hi!". Well training is random rather than identical, but you do have your six pack of clones and making a new character is under 5 minutes (may vary by edition a bit but not too much).
    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    Frankly, this is a strawman argument. You can't expect a meatgrinder to somehow magically solve all of your problems with backstories ever - it's a tool, and like any tool, it has a time and a place and can be used badly. If you use it badly, well, of course it doesn't work. You can hammer a nail in with a screwdriver, but it won't be easy and will leave you frustrated and your screwdriver cracked.
    Pretty much just this. Meatgrinders aren't really set up as backstory generators and aren't universally applicable. Life path character generation is a backstory generator (and I'd still pay real money for reverse life path generators that work backwards from a completed character for certain game systems & settings).

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Yeah, I'm glad that it was stipulated that this was coming from another thread. Otherwise, I would be wondering who on Earth the OP saw making this argument, such that they felt the need to refute it.

    As a trend (so, not an immutable rule), I tend to see meatgrinders/funnels being used by gamers who don't want much of gameplay to be guided by character backstory. Leaving home for a life of high adventure is the first interesting thing that the PCs do, and the goals and motivations of said characters are supposed to evolve naturally as play progresses.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    Using the meatgrinder to get the party together, and to help define what these people have done to become a functioning party is perfectly legitimate -- for people who don't want an actual backstory.
    The prequel to the first Dragonlance book was IIRC a short story/vignette in Dragon Magazine that described Raistin's trial in the towers of high sorcery. (And it was a great tease for the first book, I'll admit). It was a trial that could have ended in his death. There's a meatgrinder for you, but, it wasn't a whole party who went through that, it was Raistlin.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    The prequel to the first Dragonlance book was IIRC a short story/vignette in Dragon Magazine that described Raistin's trial in the towers of high sorcery. (And it was a great tease for the first book, I'll admit). It was a trial that could have ended in his death. There's a meatgrinder for you, but, it wasn't a whole party who went through that, it was Raistlin.
    lol, how is that a meatgrinder, by any stretch of imagination? A meatgrinder backstory would have involved the entire party of the novels, along with at least a dozen other characters, involved in a horrible and dangerous scenario in which most of them perish, and in which the narrator doesn't give the reader any hints regarding who is going to survive- we don't know who the "main" characters are until the end of the story. If I were writing a "meatgrinder" origin story, I'd likely have described a small party of heroic adventurers as the "mains", leading a larger number of low-level followers into a dungeon. The heroes get the most description and character in the beginning, and they all get killed off, one by one. Drama ensues between the followers as they break into factions, disagreeing about what they should do. By the end, most of the followers have fled or been killed as well, possibly a few of them at the hands of the others, and the survivors are those who worked as a team and stuck together to escape the dungeon. There's the party, stitched together by necessity. In the next story, we find out that they've probably separated for a while, but then seek one-another out when one of them is drawn to pursue an adventure that might require the skills of some of their survivor-acquaintances...

    This is not an epic heroic adventure...it might start out looking like that, but this is a misdirect. It's a horror movie full of jump scares, crazy creature VFX, gore and body horror of all manner. Scene after scene of people getting torn apart, eaten, melted by acid, exploded, burned, mutated by magic, killed by all manner of weapons, etc. The soundtrack is stoner/doom metal, not orchestral scores or symphonic or power metal.
    Last edited by Thrudd; 2022-06-09 at 11:11 AM.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    For the OP: while your taking the initiative to get that discussion out of the thread it was bogging down is appreciated, telling other people that what they do is badwrongfun is bad form.
    If you tell me that you enjoy stabbing your eye with a pencil, I might look at you oddly, ask “are you sure?”, etc. But if you tell me that you’re getting smarter, and it’s because of your hourly regimen of pencil eye stabs, if you state that there is a causal relationship between stabbing yourself in the eye and getting smarter, then you can expect some “citation needed” pushback on that “because”.

    Same thing here.

    I’m questioning - or, having questioned in the parent thread, I’m rejecting - the notion that a meat grinder can *cause* backstory.

    If the discussion of “party cohesion” carries over to this thread, then I’ll reiterate/revise my reasons for believing that a meat grinder is a suboptimal tool for those purposes, as well.

    Quote Originally Posted by Reversefigure4 View Post
    What about prologues and flashbacks? We routinely use them.

    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.
    Requirements on what characters you can bring, like “you all hate the empire”? Perfectly reasonable, even if they do get a bad rap from GMs who expect inadequate or even unrelated requirements to do all the heavy lifting of adventure buy-in and party cohesion.

    Flashbacks? If you want, I’ll wax on for hours about Quertus’ past. During a blizzard, when most of the players were wise enough to skip the session, I once spent a whole session just roleplaying characters on watch having a conversation. Existing characters with long histories with other groups, who has never really talked to one another before. Good times, no post hoc invention required.

    “Why” questions? One of the best groups for roleplaying I’ve played with was big on (to paraphrase) “the version of your character who lives in my head would have done X. You did Y. Why did you do Y instead of X?”

    Developing backstory in play? Really not my cup of tea.

    However, imagine if, every time you say down around the campfire at end of session, half the PCs dropped dead, and then the (other?) players told backstory events. Would that add to the value of the post hoc backstory generation?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Time played isn't story, it's experience. Backstory is, by it's very nature, a story. There's a difference between the two,

    The long and short of it is anything written down about a character in advance of bringing them to the table doesn't actually 'exist' yet. It's only once it's revealed or impacts a player decision at the table that it 'exists' and is actually a part of that character. Before then it's all just theoretical.
    Although I liked the juxtaposition of “story vs backstory”, I think that your wording of “backstory vs experience” is more accurate.

    As to the myth that backstory doesn’t exist until it comes up, I can only say that, if I’m roleplaying Batman, the fact that his parents died in front of him blah blah blah almost certainly informed the nuisance of every decision, from the moment that the curtain rises, and he answers (or has Alfred answer) his front door. The moment I take my first action - or my first inaction - my backstory is already “in play”.

    Quote Originally Posted by Batcathat View Post
    As I mentioned in the original thread, whether or not starting with a meatgrinder is a good idea (I'm not sure it'd be for me, but I can see some of the appeal) I don't see how it could possibly be replacing a backstory or somehow providing a reason for the party to stick together any more than any other intro adventure.
    That’s… pretty much my stance, in much more accessible language.

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Or you could just take a regular introduction adventure and get the same bondingexperience out of it. Even more as you don't need any "trickle down attachment".
    Yeah, I agree that “meat grinder” and “attachment” aren’t usually used in the same sentence the way that line of thought requires.

    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Greywolf View Post
    Frankly, this is a strawman argument. You can't expect a meatgrinder to somehow magically solve all of your problems with backstories ever - it's a tool, and like any tool, it has a time and a place and can be used badly. If you use it badly, well, of course it doesn't work. You can hammer a nail in with a screwdriver, but it won't be easy and will leave you frustrated and your screwdriver cracked.

    If you want to run a meatgrinder, all of the people thrown into it need to have a barebones backstory - this is usually "well, I was a carpenter and got conscripted" and left at that. Does that count as backstory? Technically yes, in the DnD sense of two pages with a short novella on them, not really.

    Is it just story? Technically yes, but in the sense of "these are the characters I got attached to as a player and want to see their story through", not really. Everyone is just a random gremlin, and it is their survival in this grinder that will at least start to build player attachment. Provided the players are on board with the idea.

    It's like complaining that skill checks are a terrible idea because you need to roll them for everything all the time - if you are using them that way, you are using them wrong and shouldn't be surprised they don't work.
    Citation needed on what using the tool right looks like. (For clarification, that’s “playing through a meat grinder” “to create backstory”)

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    (As a corollary, you have to try a method more than once before passing final judgement on it. This very basic principle seems lost on many people.)
    I’ve got a new method for increasing productivity that involves chopping off limbs. You sure you want to try it a few times before passing judgement?

    But that misses the… subtleties of my statement of having a character die once in backstory. The trick was, everyone can, in theory, imagine how bad it was to have a character die in backstory, even if it only happened once. Now expand that to a meat grinder, where the *expectation* is that it will happen repeatedly. And the question becomes, what can a meat grinder possibly do for backstory that makes it worthwhile? If I told you to bring 4 characters, because we were going to play through their backstories, and, even then, only about half the players will end the “backstory” session(s) with a surviving character, would you really say, “this sounds like a great way to make backstory!”?

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus
    I’ve got a new method for increasing productivity that involves chopping off limbs. You sure you want to try it a few times before passing judgement?
    Yes, just on other people first. You're trying to refute a very basic point about empiricism by a bad faith argument - an idea can be phrased in a way that makes it sound absurd, while leaving the question of whether it can be functionally implemented entirely open.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Batcathat View Post
    As I mentioned in the original thread, whether or not starting with a meatgrinder is a good idea (I'm not sure it'd be for me, but I can see some of the appeal) I don't see how it could possibly be replacing a backstory or somehow providing a reason for the party to stick together any more than any other intro adventure.
    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    Or you could just take a regular introduction adventure and get the same bondingexperience out of it. Even more as you don't need any "trickle down attachment".

    How ? Meatgrinders are notorious for the characters having not well thought out reasons for being there or working together. They tend to be just some other random warm bodies to each other and usually stay that way. It is not unheard of players not evenknowing the names of the current PCs that belong to other players. Why care for some other poorly thought out mayfly PC who was made in 5 minutes more than about some random NPC hireling ?
    You could just do an introductory adventure that's not fatal. But extreme stress is a bonding moment for many players.

    In-so-far as the OP, meatgrinders specifically do have a disadvantage over an introductory adventure if they're the model "reroll a new character when the previous one dies, only one character at a time". The party you end up may have only been together for the very tail end of the meatgrinders session(s).

    A character funnel version, or the all guardsmen party version, doesn't have that. Character funnels each player controls multiple characters, and some number survive to the end. The all guardsmen model didn't kill all the characters ... a number were incapacitated due to wounds and evacuated. The resulting group was put together from the evacuees.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    As a comment on NPC hirelings, those have always been a natural pool of replacement characters. The idea that you wouldn't care about them is a result of multiple passes of de-emphasizing them as a player resource and as people.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    lol, how is that a meatgrinder, by any stretch of imagination?
    It's the same pattern. You go in: if you die, you are done.
    You come out, and you go on an adventure (and through the trauma come out stronger).
    The distinction, which I mentioned, is that Raistlin did this alone not as a part of a group.
    See Dragon magazine 83, The Test of the Twins.
    Quote Originally Posted by excerpt from the prologue
    Raistlin heard Par-Salian sigh wearily.
    "I should be the one to apologize, old friend," he said. "Forgive me. There is trouble coming upon us that the world may well not survive. This choice has been a heavy burden upon me. As you know, the Test may well prove fatal to the young man."
    "It has killed others more worthy," the master murmured. Raistlin crept away.
    -----------
    "Your brother cannot stay," the Mage admonished softly.
    "I am aware of that, Great One," Raistlin replied with a hint of impatience.
    "He will be well cared for in your absence," Par-Salian continued. "And, of course, he will be allowed to carry home your valuables should the test prove beyond your skill."
    What happened during that Test - the traumatic thing - had ripple effects on the rest of the stories/adventures.
    As a comment on NPC hirelings, those have always been a natural pool of replacement characters. The idea that you wouldn't care about them is a result of multiple passes of de-emphasizing them as a player resource and as people.
    Yes. As those incremental changes were adopted, it relieved players of having to think about someone other than themselves. (And it also removed that pool of ready to go and narratively valid replacements).
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-06-09 at 05:17 PM.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Yes, just on other people first. You're trying to refute a very basic point about empiricism by a bad faith argument - an idea can be phrased in a way that makes it sound absurd, while leaving the question of whether it can be functionally implemented entirely open.
    Perhaps splitting hairs (but this is the Playground, do we expect anything but the highest levels of pedantry? ), but I'm not refuting the idea per se - I think it's fine in the general case, but it happens to be of questionable value to my absurd example, or (as I explained) to the example from the OP. I agree that a single example of playing through backstory does not give me experience with the wide range of outcomes possible from playing through backstory; however, it does give me the portion of the experience specifically relevant to using a meatgrinder to generate backstory.

    Or, you know, that's my claim.

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    It's the same pattern. You go in: if you die, you are done.
    You come out, and you go on an adventure (and through the trauma come out stronger).
    The distinction, which I mentioned, is that Raistlin did this alone not as a part of a group.
    See Dragon magazine 83, The Test of the Twins.
    What happened during that Test - the traumatic thing - had ripple effects on the rest of the stories/adventures.
    Yes. As those incremental changes were adopted, it relieved players of having to think about someone other than themselves. (And it also removed that pool of ready to go and narratively valid replacements).
    I think my dumb brain misunderstood the sort of "trial" you were talking about, I was imagining Raistlin sitting in court, answering questions, with a possible death penalty hanging over his head. lol I'm assuming, instead, the trial was some form of adventure against dangerous magical traps, etc. (of course). I read the first six Dragonlance books like 28 years ago, but I never had Dragon magazine. I can see how that relates to a "meatgrinder in the backstory".

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    I think my dumb brain misunderstood the sort of "trial" you were talking about, I was imagining Raistlin sitting in court, answering questions, with a possible death penalty hanging over his head. lol I'm assuming, instead, the trial was some form of adventure against dangerous magical traps, etc. (of course). I read the first six Dragonlance books like 28 years ago, but I never had Dragon magazine. I can see how that relates to a "meatgrinder in the backstory".
    I think that some years later Weiss wrote a prequel novel {1} that may have folded that little short story into it. But I have not bought any Dragonlance books in a long time so I can't be sure. I read a load of them when I was at sea in the 80s and 90s.

    {1} OK, it's called The Soulforge and I suspect that Weiss embellished on the short story/vignette a great deal since she now had novel length to work with. It was published in '98 long after the the books released as trilogies were.

    PM me, I may be able to get it to you in readable form with a little messing about.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-06-09 at 07:50 PM.
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    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    I think that some years later Weiss wrote a prequel novel {1} that may have folded that little short story into it. But I have not bought any Dragonlance books in a long time so I can't be sure. I read a load of them when I was at sea in the 80s and 90s.

    {1} OK, it's called The Soulforge and I suspect that Weiss embellished on the short story/vignette a great deal since she now had novel length to work with. It was published in '98 long after the the books released as trilogies were.

    PM me, I may be able to get it to you in readable form with a little messing about.
    Oh, thank you! but don't go through the trouble. I'm just laughing at myself for having pictured the "trial court" meatgrinder - one after another, level 0 characters go in and must defend themselves against withering arguments from unscrupulous lawyers - which of them will be lucky or talented enough to evade their accusations and summary execution? Those who survive will, of course, establish their own firm as level 1 barristers and begin pursuing class-action suits of their own. Or maybe they want to become ambulance chasers? It's a sandbox, you can have your own goals!

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    Quote Originally Posted by Thrudd View Post
    Oh, thank you! but don't go through the trouble. I'm just laughing at myself for having pictured the "trial court" meatgrinder - one after another, level 0 characters go in and must defend themselves against withering arguments from unscrupulous lawyers - which of them will be lucky or talented enough to evade their accusations and summary execution?
    The bards will all walk, is my guess.
    Avatar by linklele. How Teleport Works
    a. Malifice (paraphrased):
    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
    Gosh, 2D8HP, you are so very correct!
    Second known member of the Greyview Appreciation Society

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    Default Re: Why meatgrinders are terrible for creating backstory

    The only meat grinder I thought sounded fun was from a storytime post called the All Guardmen Party. It was a long gaming weekend (3 days straight) at the beginning of a new campaign. DM gave them the Only War handbook, and they made a regiment. DM tossed them in a trench against an army of orcs and said hold the line. They played out 3 days of trench warfare, with characters dying regularly and new ones being written up between turns. Occasionally someone would take a non-fatal and get rotated out, but most of them died. Eventually things cycled over to a fight against Traitor Guard in a city, then to fighting more orcs, then to fighting tyranids, always with the same brutality. By the end, there were only about 40 soldiers from the regiment who survived. Then the Inquisition picked them up, executed half of them for being infected by genestealers, and recruited the rest as inquisition goons.

    DM hands them the Dark Heresy core book and tells them to pick their characters from the 20 survivors, and throughout the campaign new characters had to be pulled from those 20.
    I follow a general rule: better to ask and be told no than not to ask at all.

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