Post/Author/DateTime	Post
hawaska 01-22-07, 02:56 AM	I've been wondering if other people feel the same way about their characters as I do. I can't play my characters unless I have a backstory written (and, thanks to my lousy handwriting) typed up about them. I just have this mental block about how to play them unless they have their own history. Anyone feel the same way?
Azegoroth 01-22-07, 03:52 AM	Yes, the worst characters I've played are those who I didn't bother writing a story for.
terracustos 01-22-07, 03:58 AM	I find that it is quite impossible to successfully roleplay a character to a well and convincing standard without a good backstory as the backstory helps define your character and gives you ideas on how they should be played and how they may react to certain situations. I never have yet and i never will play a character that i dont get to create a backstory for or atleast have the DM write up. :)
johnhansen 01-22-07, 04:23 AM	I love doing back stories for my characters and as a DM if my players did not come up with one I make a few random roles and come up with a bare bone one to make their character more than just stats. But I have seen the dark side of back stories. The rpg version of Mary-sue (characters that every one loves and can do anything). The old I saved the whole village from a invading army.
a_psh 01-22-07, 05:04 AM	The more I play, the more I see the "backstory" as irrelevant. As far as creating theme and making an interesting character are concerned, the modern descendants of HeroQuest and Over the Edge have got it right: writing down a few traits and relationships is both sufficient and ideal. A baroque 20-page background does nothing that a simple "I broke horses with my dad. I believe in God. I miss my little sister. I'm a good shot. I lost a friend in the war." can't do (that's not a list of random facts -- it's a set that you want to be bringing up in play). If you feel like setting it down in prose, give it half a page. Any more is just detail that will never matter at the table.
terracustos 01-22-07, 08:12 AM	The more I play, the more I see the "backstory" as irrelevant. As far as creating theme and making an interesting character are concerned, the modern descendants of HeroQuest and Over the Edge have got it right: writing down a few traits and relationships is both sufficient and ideal. A baroque 20-page background does nothing that a simple "I broke horses with my dad. I believe in God. I miss my little sister. I'm a good shot. I lost a friend in the war." can't do (that's not a list of random facts -- it's a set that you want to be bringing up in play). If you feel like setting it down in prose, give it half a page. Any more is just detail that will never matter at the table. I see your point but only having a list of things such as 'I'm a good shot' will only give your a handfull of things that can only really be brought up in one or two situations and doesn't give you alot to roleplay off. If you gave more detail, perhaps the rigorous training you went through, beast you came across etc you know your character better and gives you more information to bring to the conversation with other PCs. Also by knowing your character better you will know how they would react to certain situations and what they would do next. :)
RobbyPants 01-22-07, 08:33 AM	For me, backstory and alignment tend to go hand in hand. I use one to help define the other. I've also noticed that my least fulfulling characters were the ones that I didn't fully develop this way.
a_psh 01-22-07, 08:56 AM	I see your point but only having a list of things such as 'I'm a good shot' will only give your a handfull of things that can only really be brought up in one or two situations and doesn't give you alot to roleplay off.But it's personality, not history, that matter. If you're playing an embittered veteran, for example, the thing that will come up time and again is how he feels about war. What rank he held, how many years he served in the military or even in whose military he served are, in contrast, tangential. So are the names of all his dead friends. That's all color you can make up on the spot. It's irrelevant to the actual statement you make by creating that character and putting him into the shared fiction. Writing down "I'm a good shot" isn't so much a statement of fact as it is a statement of intent: "I want shooting things to be important in the shared fiction. When I shoot something, I'm not just rolling dice, I'm making a statement." This particular distinction is easily lost in a game that's all about combat as a necessary means of survival and advancement, so let's take "I believe in God." That's a pretty boring fact: most characters in a modern or fantasy setting follow a religion. But Alice wants to explore what that means in play. That could mean using faith as an inspiration, that could mean having your faith tested, that could mean all sorts of things (it probably means all of the above) -- by the time you're done, you will have all explored that theme through your shared fiction. Whereas maybe Bob's character goes to church religiously (no pun intentended) and tithes a lot and crosses himself constantly and does all this other stuff but he's not interested in the shared story being about that. No "I believe in God" trait for Bob. If you gave more detail, perhaps the rigorous training you went through, beast you came across etc you know your character better and gives you more information to bring to the conversation with other PCs. Also by knowing your character better you will know how they would react to certain situations and what they would do next.Meh. That's all Madlibs. "I shot an (animal type) in the woods with my (name of gun) one (name of month) (time of day)." Bears in the morning, cougars in the evening, rabid demonic triple-dire she-manticores at midnight during a lunar eclipse and a grand conjunction of 50 different planets that marks the turning of an age... it's all the same. That's what a writer does: figure out what a character's actually about and then add details as they come up. And that is, inherently, a lot of what you have to do. More on this last point later.
mathogre 01-22-07, 08:59 AM	I've played a couple of characters on a temporary basis, and for all practical purposes they're nothing more than numbers for me. They can be fun to play, but not terribly interesting. Characters I've created have a fairly extensive backstory that include a few defining events in their lives. The backstory helps determine so much about the character, and affects chosen skills, feats, and even adventuring equipment. Sure, you can play it with simple character backgrounds, and if that's fun, great! Having a deeper character background makes the game fun for me.
pres_man 01-22-07, 09:05 AM	If you gave more detail, perhaps the rigorous training you went through, beast you came across etc you know your character better and gives you more information to bring to the conversation with other PCs. Also by knowing your character better you will know how they would react to certain situations and what they would do next. Not to start an argument or anything, but ... ;) This assumes that the other players or DM even care one lick about the backstory of your character. While you might want to do a 5 minute monologue about how you learned to fire a bow from your uncle that once fought in the ... zzzzzz, 5 minutes later the rest of the group wakes up and wants to do their background thingy. And I can see some players trying to argue that they should know the weaknesses of a creature because in their background they had come across it before and defeated it (sure I know a troll has to be burn by fire or acid, I fought one as a child and defeated it singlehandedly). Background story should not take the place of knowledge checks, though they may support ranks in a particular one. Now to the actual question. No, I don't wax on characters background, mainly because I often game in homebrewed settings and don't know all of the details and don't like to screw up the DM's stuff (Well we fought orc raiders in the northern regions, oh the orcs live in the south, ok, well then we fought, what nobody lives up north, well how can I be Conan if I don't come from the north, what do you mean I can't be Conan!). So I generally create very limited backgrounds, also I don't really enjoy games where the DM slaughters my home village because he thinks it will be interesting. On the other hand, though I don't write a lot out, I do spend quite abit of time considering the characters reactions. I think of passed situations I've seen and how this character would react to those. When I see discussions on this and other sites I consider the character's reactions to those. Definitely one should think about the character's personality but I don't think writing a detailed background is necessary for that, not that there is anything wrong with that.
VrecknidjX 01-22-07, 09:11 AM	I can play a character that doesn't have a page or more of history, but I prefer to play characters with stories. Dave
Edymnion 01-22-07, 09:55 AM	Eh, I've written backstories for characters that were 20 pages long only to have them be less enjoyable than they should have been, and have a current character who's background can be summed up in a single sentence that is one of the most enjoyable I've played. Good backgrounds are important to the extent that they help you solidify the character's personality and history, but they are not prereqs to good characters.
DwarvinJedi 01-22-07, 10:04 AM	I like having at least birthday, birth year and region of origin, a stock pile of names, and a list of personality traits since I am an actor and an Improv actor at that, so I can usually come up with a character based on a few sentences.
seldom_seen 01-22-07, 10:45 AM	I believe having a good back story is essential to good roleplaying. I've played separate characters over the years that may have looked superficially the same, just with different names. But the play style, attitude, and interaction with society in general were completely different. I also think that a good back story helps when playing similar characters. If "Kyle" was a certain type of player, then I don't want to play "Reemal" the same way. A good indepth story helps keep Reemal's play style in the forefront of my mind.
Edymnion 01-22-07, 10:58 AM	I believe having a good back story is essential to good roleplaying. I've played separate characters over the years that may have looked superficially the same, just with different names. But the play style, attitude, and interaction with society in general were completely different.But see, a good back story does not necissarily mean that the character will be differant, while lack of backstory does not mean they will all be the same. My current D&D character, that has been a blast to roleplay is in Eberron. His entire background can be done in one sentece; "He's an excoriated Mourner with an abberant mark". In fact, thats basically the background I gave the DM, and that one sentence essentially wraps up his entire personality and place in the world, as well as giving the framework for everything that has happened to him. The details are something we've just been exploring as we play. A good background is a useful tool in creating good PCs, but it isn't the only one, and it isn't a make or break thing for an experienced player.
Comus 01-22-07, 10:59 AM	I usually give my characters some amount of backstory, but almost never more than a page of text. One of the most important things in writing is knowing how to cut clutter. If something isn't important to the backstory, get rid of it. As an example, one of the characters I'm currently playing is a Beguiler. His backstory? He born into slavery, eventually killed his master and assumed the man's identity. Now he poses as a wandering nobleman and strikes back at the slave trade using an alter-ego. Simple enough, yes? But you can see that that is more than enough to give you a good grasp on what the character's past is like.
pres_man 01-22-07, 11:21 AM	I wonder how people feel about this quote from the article "Writing Your First Adventure": http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ab/20060728a Simple Backstory: Most DMs and designers hate to hear it, but much of the time lavished on history and background is wasted energy. Players never find out who dug the tomb, how the wizard was betrayed by her apprentice, or why the assassin guild changed sides and disappeared. Working on backstory doesn't improve the gameplay experience for anyone but the bards and scholars obsessed with legends or lore. Unless it connects directly to action in the current timeframe (and the PCs have a way of learning it), skip the involved history. Save that for sourcebooks. Do you think that only applies to DMs or should players consider this as well?
Nived 01-22-07, 11:40 AM	The characters I've had the most fun playing had brief backstories. Never more than a paragraph or two, not detailing their history so much as who they were, personality wise. However a key to what I've always felt was fun about my characters was giving a connection to other characters. He and another party member might be old friends... there's the old 'brothers' cliche.... whatever, and then together in game building their history. Stampeed in the marketplace "This reminds me of that time back home." "Yeah but you have your pants on and there's less fire." "Hey I'm not the one who set the barn on fire." My friends and I like to ad lib and try to stump each other with wild tales or set ups. "Why don't you tell them about that time you got the mayor's horse ontop of the courthouse." Then see if we can't run with it and turn it around on each other. In this way I start with a brief story but fill it in as we go, the mythology builds organically. Why? Because these are what my friends are like in real life bringing up strange stories randomly. "Hey tell them about that time you got attacked by a lion." ... which actually happened to me... but is less impressive than it sounds. I was helping out at a place that takes in exotic animals that the police confiscate and a lion cub decided to pounce at me and got my jacket.... But with those teeth he could have taken a chunk out of my side..... but I digress... I just didn't think I could leave the lion comment unexplained. I llike to provide hooks in my brief back story... usually at least three for the DM to use if he chooses, major events or unresolved stuff but it doesn't matter if he does or not. Mostly I like to build them up as I go along.
Lethanic 01-22-07, 04:40 PM	I wonder how people feel about this quote from the article "Writing Your First Adventure": http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ab/20060728a Do you think that only applies to DMs or should players consider this as well? IN, for example, Tolkien, most people never find out most of the detail that was written up within the stories, nonetheless, its presence helps make things have a certain level of versimilitude. And besides which - in a well developed world with a well developed backdrop, or a well developed story - you know how they will react to unexpected events. With a good background, I'll sometimes find the player playing themselvbes. Irritations at some things that never occured to me do, because of the background. .et al> MUCH of it probably won't be used - but the game is, you don't know what PIECES won't be used ahead of time. Besides which, when I write out a long backstory, it helps me have a good feel for the character. Although my OTHER method is what I call the "Quote collection" method. I look around at quote books and quote sites and collect quotes about which I could say "MY character woudl say that" . Once I haver a fairly large sheet of quotes, I have a pretty good idea of how the character feels on a wide range of topics. Makes him or her easier to play.
SeptimusMagistos 01-22-07, 05:31 PM	Sometimes I like backstories. Usually, I just have my characters act the way I would act (if I had their abilities and didn't fear death as much.)
CCS 01-22-07, 09:06 PM	My characters have almost always had at least some sort of backstory. For me it just happens as I initially create the character- afterall, the #s on the sheet aren't the be-all/end-all of things. At least not in a RPG.... But wether or not I write it down in detail varies upon the DM and what type of game we're playing. In any case I always have a few background notes in mind for the character right at the start. Over the years though I've found most of the best backgrounds to be those where the DMs & I have collaberated to some degree. Either I start with a general background & then we work to make it fit the world/story needs, or they present me with some basic info & needs & I build off that frame work. For the most part I create backgrounds for my characters that not only describe who they are & (briefly) how/why they're as they are now (1st game), but that also provide potential hooks for furure stories. And in all the years, I've yet to write more than a page for any D&D characters initial background.
seldom_seen 01-22-07, 10:26 PM	Most of my characters... no, make that ALL of my characters have had a back story. But this does not mean that they had a page long story, or even one that was written down on paper. But they did all have stories that helped me to play each and every one as a separate entity. It was just something in my own mind to keep things straight.
allenchan 01-22-07, 10:36 PM	what I call the "Quote collection" method. I look around at quote books and quote sites and collect quotes about which I could say "MY character woudl say that" . Once I haver a fairly large sheet of quotes, I have a pretty good idea of how the character feels on a wide range of topics. Makes him or her easier to play. This is what I do, and I tihnk it makes me get a better feel of the character's interpersonal traits better then a long background. I still write a background of course, normally about three paragraphs. Though personally, I disagree with the article pres man mentioned earlier as a PC. I cant make a good character in a world without a solid history and world I can draw from. This, combined with some "on the fly" dms, have really turned me off of playing in homebrew settings.
Rogue Elendae 01-24-07, 07:17 PM	This might just come from my background (I'm an English major and a bit of a writer), but I find that it helps me to further develop a character's personality if I give them a bit of history. If I decide that they dislike magic users, I give them a reason why, even if it doesn't necessarily get revealed during the roleplay. I need to know why this is so about the character for my own personal reasons, as it gives me a degree of how to show it. If a character is so violently opposed to Rogues that they won't even let one out of their range of sight while adventuring with them, I'd like to know it was because of the thieves' guild that kidnapped her for ransom when she was five, so that I know why it's a violent dislike that I couldn't see coming from just having her pockets picked a few too many times. Then again, I am prone to giving at least some background to even minor characters in my own writing, so I know how they'll behave in a given situation, and who will react favorably or not to them. So as I said, it might just be my writer's nature showing through. I have also found, however, that just as much of a character's backstory can be further developed through the game itself. My haughty Rogue was revealed to be the heir to a noble bloodline (the DM's idea; I helped flesh it out), which explains some of her more refined attitudes. However, if the meeting with her family had not been called for, it might not have shown up. That doesn't mean that it might not have become part of her story anyway, just that it wouldn't have been immediately revealed. So personally, I find backstory helpful to my characters, simply because thinking of this information beforehand saves me the trouble of creating their behaviors completely on the fly. Lets me spend more time playing the game, rather than worrying about what makes my character more than just me.
Mister_Sinister 01-24-07, 11:27 PM	Character histories are important: where we come from defines what we are, after all. However, not everyone's history was interesting/impressive/amazing/worth writing down all the time. More to the point, there are certain key points which are essential to consider, but at the same time, you should not need to chronicle the character's entire life. This is inflexible and can cause inconsistencies unless you know the setting like the back of your own hand, which is likely something even the DM cannot claim. What I feel is important, however, is seeing your character as a real person. My definition of roleplay is literally the ability to think like, and hence become, someone else. I'm a big fan of mentalities history, and it is likely from this that my thinking on the matter stems. Real people don't necessarily remember every event in their lives, nor does every event shape them. Consider your own life: why do you remember what you remember? Why do you choose to retain the memory of any given experience at a certain age? It is because this experience shapes you somehow, gives your 'self' more definition as unique. Now, attempt to list these events for yourself. I'm sure that more than half a page would be hard to manage for almost anyone who hasn't led a truly amazing life. Thus, character histories which are 25-odd pages long can actually be stifling, as they leave no room for innovation and improvisation. Furthermore, a 25-page history does not make your character anymore real by necessity. It is fairly easy to combine a set of events into a story: it is not easy to determine how these events would affect any given individual, particularly if you have not lived through them. This is one of the reasons that some stories are good: they have a versimillitude that is hard to attain without actually living through said events. In order to create a real person out of a character, one has to play the counter-factual game inside one's head. Effectively, you have to set aside YOU in terms of experiences, beliefs and so on, and become someone else, effectively creating another human being inside your head. This human being must be real enough to make decisions without consultation from 'you'. This is how I approach my characters. This 'mental space creation' to my mind is far more vital than any amount of backstory. Of course, some sort of continuity reference helps, but then again, would your character really remember the amount of detail a 25-page story would entail?
SilverFoxKnows 01-25-07, 12:28 AM	I have a hard time playing a character without some kind of back story. I don't usually write more than a page, sometimes half a page is plenty. Enough to give me some kind of framework. Quirks and sayings just come about in play. Here's the one for my Dwarven Barbarian... "Kovax was never a mean spirited boy. Undisciplined. Unruly. Wild. But not mean. When he was fifteen I sent him to live with his grandfather on the outskirts of our lands. If I couldn’t teach him discipline maybe his grandfather would at least be able to teach him to control his rage. If all he learns is to focus it at more appropriate times I would consider that a small victory. Only time will tell at this point". – Lomax Redrock "He was just a boy when my son sent him to me. Dirty. Hair all over the place. Full of p!ss and vinegar. I liked him right away. I had to thump him a couple of times before he’d listen to me but he was a bright kid. Not stupid, just wild at heart. And once he realized the rules out here were simple he settled down quite a bit". – Kendrik Redrock "I didn’t visit him for a while. My father sent word but the letters were always the same. “We’re doing fine. Don’t trouble yourself. Talk to you soon”. Soon, I learned, meant once every ten years". – Lomax Redrock "Once I got it through my son’s thick head to stay away I could get down to teaching the kid the survival skills he was going to need to make it out here. How to get juice from a cactus, which snakes you can eat, how to use an axe, how to make shelter from the sun. And I couldn’t do that with the kid’s dad leaning over him". – Kendrik Redrock Like I said, not a novel but enough to give me something to go on.
bhu 01-25-07, 01:24 AM	I kinda go both ways. I want some backstory, but I dont have the patience to write a long one, and no one I play with will give a damn anyway. A lot of it depends on the DM too. Some demand I have one, usually to mess with me using it somehow. Some give it a 5 second glance, toss it back and say "whatever" regardless of whats written. If the DM doesnt care about your backstory and doesnt intend to use it why bother with anything other than a brief outline? Especially if he's a killer DM and the odds of your PC dying before he makes another level are pretty high. If i was playing with a DM and a group that cared id go all out, but the group im with kinda prefers to make up their backstory as they go along because they feel that writing it out in the beginning will hamstring them if they want to change something later.
ORC_Paradox 01-25-07, 01:52 AM	Eh, I've written backstories for characters that were 20 pages long only to have them be less enjoyable than they should have been, and have a current character who's background can be summed up in a single sentence that is one of the most enjoyable I've played. Good backgrounds are important to the extent that they help you solidify the character's personality and history, but they are not prereqs to good characters. I agree. Really now, 20 pages? For a 1st level character? The point of D&D is to PLAY and create that history. If you want to write a novel, go ahead and write one. But to realistically have as much happen to some of these 1st level characters (as I've seen them done) with complete back histories is not realistic or fun. Based on how much "back story" there is, the character could be level 15 or something.
Jareth_dTalrys 01-25-07, 03:54 AM	While I can appriciate the idea of "backstory" I don't see it as nesseccary. Personally, I prefer to let the characters I play develop organically. To me, the idea of having the long, detail oriented back story is far too limiting. You write it and, generally speaking, 90% of it is never even mentioned or even aplicable to whatever is happening in gameplay. But, you've already written this story and now you feel like you HAVE to use it, you stick to it without any room for flexibility. You have written so much of a history that your characters path is already well set in place with little room for deviation (and trying to keep the history AND change that path is difficult to say the least). This can be confining for the player AND the DM. An example: I was DMing a game and one of the players wrote out a long history to a character about how she was tossed out of her tribe because her "markings" were "unlucky." Because of this, she decided that she would roll to see if those markings had changed periodically. Long story short (too late), as a character, she had no real reason to stay with the group once they changed (and they DID) and so that left the player to wonder WHY she should stay with the group at all. My example (organic): i was playing a dwarven Battlerager (a Gutbuster). He had a class, a name, a race, a religion and stats. He also had a simple philosophy, if it's needin to be killed, I'll kill it. That's pretty much it, no backstory to speak of, other than a great admiration for Thibbledorf Pwent. As the adventure progressed, I decided to start collecting the heads of the creatures I killed, which lead me to think I needed to show them off.... crazy stuff on the walls... my own tavern!! I would open my own tavern after the adventure was completed. And that was my focus from then on. Now, if you've read THIS far into this disjointed rambling of mine, I will finish by saying this... backstory- overly DETAILED backstory- is non essential to game play for ME. Having fun with friends and enjoying the game, however, IS essential, no matter how you do it. Backstory or none. --Jareth d'Talrys
pres_man 01-25-07, 07:08 AM	While I can appriciate the idea of "backstory" I don't see it as nesseccary. Personally, I prefer to let the characters I play develop organically. To me, the idea of having the long, detail oriented back story is far too limiting. You write it and, generally speaking, 90% of it is never even mentioned or even aplicable to whatever is happening in gameplay. But, you've already written this story and now you feel like you HAVE to use it, you stick to it without any room for flexibility. You have written so much of a history that your characters path is already well set in place with little room for deviation (and trying to keep the history AND change that path is difficult to say the least). This can be confining for the player AND the DM. --Jareth d'Talrys Interesting perspective. I wonder if this is compatable with someone who decides on a 20 level build prior to starting to play. They seem to have some similiarities.