Having players create character back stories together? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Having players create character back stories together? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
PainTrain
02-02-07, 02:01 PM As a DM sometimes I really struggle figuring out how a diverse group of individuals who have almost absolutely in common suddenely find themselves traveling together. What gets more annoying is how many times I have to deal with the "I'm a rogue, I don't trust anybody, and only work alone types" that constantly need to be individually motivationally pampered to stay with the group, sometimes at the sacrafice of game integrity from my perspective.

I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to DMing, I give players the freedom to make characters as they *reasonably* please. As Players their character is them, and they should be able to excersize total freedom over that character. As the DM the world is me, I made my own world, not just because I had to as a DM but I found it to be kind of a fun and creative pass time. But the world is mine just like the character is the players, and I loath, to modify it and twist it around into something that conflicts with my image of it.

I was thinking next time I start a campaign I want the players to figure out why their characters are traveling or why they will be traveling together. Are they brothers, childhood friends, or what? Why do they need to be absolute strangers when our stories start, why can't they develop their relationships before the game actually starts? I'm thinking of trying this, espically for groups that start off a higher level than 1. That way they create their characters individually but the group collectively. Why does my adventure or ordeal I'm going to eventually confront them with be the first thing they've dealt with? I just don't see why the players create the characters but the DM has to create the group. The sum of the parts belongs entirely to the players, I think they'd enjoy it more if they were given that freedom, and I'd enjoy not having to deal with that responsibility.

Sorry if this doesn't make a whole ton of sense, stream of conciousness writing, no real structure to it.
Radijs
02-02-07, 02:17 PM Having players create their characters together and in cooperation with the DM can have some wonderful results.
I made a BG like that once, the campaign never started unfortunately but the background was solid and the pre-game interaction between the two characters already created a solidity that would do the party good.
gimby
02-02-07, 02:18 PM I'd suggest always doing this (I do), rather than relying on "you all met in an inn". Frex, my current campaign revolves around a family (two brothers, a bastard half-brother, an adopted brother and a brother in law) who have inherited their fathers barony. Another (abortive) game had them all starting as convicts in a prison camp.

There are a number of major advantages - one of which is that any intra-party conflict is very clearly IC only, as both players will have agreed to the conflict before the start of the game. It also allows for the insertion of background hooks that they can all care about, rather than all of them having different foes and motivations.

The one issue I am forseeing with this comes with death and introducing new party members - however the linked backstory means that they are more likely to go all out to get a rez (unlike a particularly fun game I played, where our major source of income was the kit of fallen collegues, sorry Paul ;)).

IIRC there is a decent section on this in the DMG2 -it may be worth checking out.
_zx75
02-02-07, 02:33 PM My players started off as full-time residents in a seasonal town. All told the town had *maybe* 150 permanent residents, and the rest were seasonal workers that stayed for the summer months and left to go home during the winter.

As such it was easy to start off as everyone knew everyone else, and had for years. And so when adventure cropped up, they were the kind of people that simply had the inclination to follow where it went.

Along the way they've lost one of their original companions, but have gained a couple new ones that they picked up through circumstance.
Alex_
02-02-07, 03:34 PM What gets more annoying is how many times I have to deal with the "I'm a rogue, I don't trust anybody, and only work alone types" that constantly need to be individually motivationally pampered to stay with the group, sometimes at the sacrafice of game integrity from my perspective.

Don't forget the "I'm a manipulative arse-hole who only travels with other because it's convenient for me." guy, who's usually a LE wizard or necromancer. :P

I was thinking next time I start a campaign I want the players to figure out why their characters are traveling or why they will be traveling together. Are they brothers, childhood friends, or what? Why do they need to be absolute strangers when our stories start, why can't they develop their relationships before the game actually starts? I'm thinking of trying this, espically for groups that start off a higher level than 1. That way they create their characters individually but the group collectively. Why does my adventure or ordeal I'm going to eventually confront them with be the first thing they've dealt with? I just don't see why the players create the characters but the DM has to create the group. The sum of the parts belongs entirely to the players, I think they'd enjoy it more if they were given that freedom, and I'd enjoy not having to deal with that responsibility.

Sorry if this doesn't make a whole ton of sense, stream of conciousness writing, no real structure to it.

I agree whole heartedly. It makes things so much easier for the DM and fosters team work, so games are more likely to last and in-party fighting is lessened.

The problem is that I don't see the same level of enthusiasm from players. For some, creating any kind of character back story or motivation of any kind is hard enough. Trying to make one within the continuity of the campaign world is even harder. Trying to make one within the continuity of separate, but specific character? Impossible.

Of course one of my DMs kind of bypassed all of this. Most all of his campaigns started off, "You've all been working together for the past few years as adventurers and know each other pretty well. This is just picking up where you last left off." and that's the end of it.

And it worked fairly well.
khalual
02-04-07, 02:52 PM I was in a campaign where we all started off as childhood friends, lvl 0, lvled them up to 12 or 15. Of course one was an apprentice of a mage and two brothers were very religious (one ended up a cleric one a paladin). Was a lot of fun.
elsajeni
02-04-07, 03:44 PM I think it's absolutely something you should at least consider. Ask your players to do it; if they find it too difficult, maybe it's not ideal for your group, but hopefully it won't be too hard. Honestly, just starting from something like "You all live in the same town", you can come up with a lot of easy connections. For instance, in my current campaign, the only restrictions we started with were that we were all playing youngish adults with no real adventuring experience, and we were all raised in the city where the game takes place. Three characters are extremely involved in the major church in the city (including a cleric and a paladin), so know each other through that; the rogue owns a locksmith shop, and has another character as his apprentice; the wizard took lots of ranks in Knowledge skills and decided he acts as an advisor to various artisans around the city. Easy enough to get those three sets of characters integrated: the locksmith is one of the shops the wizard sometimes advises ("Hey, this lock keeps biting me and I think it's magic. Can you do something about it?"), and his shop is successful enough that it's reasonable for the three church-going characters to have used his services on and off in the past, especially the one who works in an orphanage/school ("Timmy lost the key to his locker AGAIN").
KingSpoom
02-04-07, 04:08 PM 1: Good idea
2: In the system I made, it's the default creation method
3: What took you so long?
BadCatMan
02-04-07, 07:17 PM I let my PCs brainstorm their characters together, and it turned out with... interesting results.

One problem is that a joke/novelty idea might start that snowballs into the entire party theme that everyone goes along with. You start to suspect that the players are only making their characters to fit the novelty rather than out of a true interest in the character(s). Or a lot of your campaign ideas go out the window as the party goes in a whole other direction.

Or maybe one player has a good character idea they truly want to play, but abandons it for another that suits the theme and the other players better. Or they do play it, but feel like a spare wheel.

This is how I wound up DMing for an all-girl entertaining troupe, plus one halfling druid (half the girls are real). Which should be interesting, if entirely not what I'd expected.
the_Conqueror_Worm
02-04-07, 08:34 PM If everyone can agree on a basic premise for the party it can work out spectacularly. It allows people to create characters that have a reason to be together, and that will generally be able to avoid the types of personality conflicts that so often create stress and frustration in a game. And it allows characters to have pre-established relationships, which can make from some very fun roleplaying. People have to be into it though. Not just to prevent any theme-breaking outliers, but even just to get things started.

I had tried to arrange this sort of thing for an Eberron campaign that we'll be starting next weekend. I was hoping we could whip together a Silver Flame strike force (for lack of a better term). I figured it would have given us a decent amount of common ground, as well as a respectable reason to be out adventuring even if we didn't have any specific "mission." Also, I rolled ridiculously well and figured I could balance it with a less than optimized half-orc 'face'-oriented paladin, though I'd have been glad to fit into any theme we agreed upon.) In the end, nobody but me cared if we had a coherent raison d'etre for the party and it was looking like a paladin would be a poor fit in terms of personality, so it didn't work out for me. Maybe next time.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
PainTrain 02-02-07, 02:01 PM	As a DM sometimes I really struggle figuring out how a diverse group of individuals who have almost absolutely in common suddenely find themselves traveling together. What gets more annoying is how many times I have to deal with the "I'm a rogue, I don't trust anybody, and only work alone types" that constantly need to be individually motivationally pampered to stay with the group, sometimes at the sacrafice of game integrity from my perspective. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to DMing, I give players the freedom to make characters as they reasonably please. As Players their character is them, and they should be able to excersize total freedom over that character. As the DM the world is me, I made my own world, not just because I had to as a DM but I found it to be kind of a fun and creative pass time. But the world is mine just like the character is the players, and I loath, to modify it and twist it around into something that conflicts with my image of it. I was thinking next time I start a campaign I want the players to figure out why their characters are traveling or why they will be traveling together. Are they brothers, childhood friends, or what? Why do they need to be absolute strangers when our stories start, why can't they develop their relationships before the game actually starts? I'm thinking of trying this, espically for groups that start off a higher level than 1. That way they create their characters individually but the group collectively. Why does my adventure or ordeal I'm going to eventually confront them with be the first thing they've dealt with? I just don't see why the players create the characters but the DM has to create the group. The sum of the parts belongs entirely to the players, I think they'd enjoy it more if they were given that freedom, and I'd enjoy not having to deal with that responsibility. Sorry if this doesn't make a whole ton of sense, stream of conciousness writing, no real structure to it.
Radijs 02-02-07, 02:17 PM	Having players create their characters together and in cooperation with the DM can have some wonderful results. I made a BG like that once, the campaign never started unfortunately but the background was solid and the pre-game interaction between the two characters already created a solidity that would do the party good.
gimby 02-02-07, 02:18 PM	I'd suggest always doing this (I do), rather than relying on "you all met in an inn". Frex, my current campaign revolves around a family (two brothers, a bastard half-brother, an adopted brother and a brother in law) who have inherited their fathers barony. Another (abortive) game had them all starting as convicts in a prison camp. There are a number of major advantages - one of which is that any intra-party conflict is very clearly IC only, as both players will have agreed to the conflict before the start of the game. It also allows for the insertion of background hooks that they can all care about, rather than all of them having different foes and motivations. The one issue I am forseeing with this comes with death and introducing new party members - however the linked backstory means that they are more likely to go all out to get a rez (unlike a particularly fun game I played, where our major source of income was the kit of fallen collegues, sorry Paul ;)). IIRC there is a decent section on this in the DMG2 -it may be worth checking out.
_zx75 02-02-07, 02:33 PM	My players started off as full-time residents in a seasonal town. All told the town had maybe 150 permanent residents, and the rest were seasonal workers that stayed for the summer months and left to go home during the winter. As such it was easy to start off as everyone knew everyone else, and had for years. And so when adventure cropped up, they were the kind of people that simply had the inclination to follow where it went. Along the way they've lost one of their original companions, but have gained a couple new ones that they picked up through circumstance.
Alex_ 02-02-07, 03:34 PM	What gets more annoying is how many times I have to deal with the "I'm a rogue, I don't trust anybody, and only work alone types" that constantly need to be individually motivationally pampered to stay with the group, sometimes at the sacrafice of game integrity from my perspective. Don't forget the "I'm a manipulative arse-hole who only travels with other because it's convenient for me." guy, who's usually a LE wizard or necromancer. :P I was thinking next time I start a campaign I want the players to figure out why their characters are traveling or why they will be traveling together. Are they brothers, childhood friends, or what? Why do they need to be absolute strangers when our stories start, why can't they develop their relationships before the game actually starts? I'm thinking of trying this, espically for groups that start off a higher level than 1. That way they create their characters individually but the group collectively. Why does my adventure or ordeal I'm going to eventually confront them with be the first thing they've dealt with? I just don't see why the players create the characters but the DM has to create the group. The sum of the parts belongs entirely to the players, I think they'd enjoy it more if they were given that freedom, and I'd enjoy not having to deal with that responsibility. Sorry if this doesn't make a whole ton of sense, stream of conciousness writing, no real structure to it. I agree whole heartedly. It makes things so much easier for the DM and fosters team work, so games are more likely to last and in-party fighting is lessened. The problem is that I don't see the same level of enthusiasm from players. For some, creating any kind of character back story or motivation of any kind is hard enough. Trying to make one within the continuity of the campaign world is even harder. Trying to make one within the continuity of separate, but specific character? Impossible. Of course one of my DMs kind of bypassed all of this. Most all of his campaigns started off, "You've all been working together for the past few years as adventurers and know each other pretty well. This is just picking up where you last left off." and that's the end of it. And it worked fairly well.
khalual 02-04-07, 02:52 PM	I was in a campaign where we all started off as childhood friends, lvl 0, lvled them up to 12 or 15. Of course one was an apprentice of a mage and two brothers were very religious (one ended up a cleric one a paladin). Was a lot of fun.
elsajeni 02-04-07, 03:44 PM	I think it's absolutely something you should at least consider. Ask your players to do it; if they find it too difficult, maybe it's not ideal for your group, but hopefully it won't be too hard. Honestly, just starting from something like "You all live in the same town", you can come up with a lot of easy connections. For instance, in my current campaign, the only restrictions we started with were that we were all playing youngish adults with no real adventuring experience, and we were all raised in the city where the game takes place. Three characters are extremely involved in the major church in the city (including a cleric and a paladin), so know each other through that; the rogue owns a locksmith shop, and has another character as his apprentice; the wizard took lots of ranks in Knowledge skills and decided he acts as an advisor to various artisans around the city. Easy enough to get those three sets of characters integrated: the locksmith is one of the shops the wizard sometimes advises ("Hey, this lock keeps biting me and I think it's magic. Can you do something about it?"), and his shop is successful enough that it's reasonable for the three church-going characters to have used his services on and off in the past, especially the one who works in an orphanage/school ("Timmy lost the key to his locker AGAIN").
KingSpoom 02-04-07, 04:08 PM	1: Good idea 2: In the system I made, it's the default creation method 3: What took you so long?
BadCatMan 02-04-07, 07:17 PM	I let my PCs brainstorm their characters together, and it turned out with... interesting results. One problem is that a joke/novelty idea might start that snowballs into the entire party theme that everyone goes along with. You start to suspect that the players are only making their characters to fit the novelty rather than out of a true interest in the character(s). Or a lot of your campaign ideas go out the window as the party goes in a whole other direction. Or maybe one player has a good character idea they truly want to play, but abandons it for another that suits the theme and the other players better. Or they do play it, but feel like a spare wheel. This is how I wound up DMing for an all-girl entertaining troupe, plus one halfling druid (half the girls are real). Which should be interesting, if entirely not what I'd expected.
the_Conqueror_Worm 02-04-07, 08:34 PM	If everyone can agree on a basic premise for the party it can work out spectacularly. It allows people to create characters that have a reason to be together, and that will generally be able to avoid the types of personality conflicts that so often create stress and frustration in a game. And it allows characters to have pre-established relationships, which can make from some very fun roleplaying. People have to be into it though. Not just to prevent any theme-breaking outliers, but even just to get things started. I had tried to arrange this sort of thing for an Eberron campaign that we'll be starting next weekend. I was hoping we could whip together a Silver Flame strike force (for lack of a better term). I figured it would have given us a decent amount of common ground, as well as a respectable reason to be out adventuring even if we didn't have any specific "mission." Also, I rolled ridiculously well and figured I could balance it with a less than optimized half-orc 'face'-oriented paladin, though I'd have been glad to fit into any theme we agreed upon.) In the end, nobody but me cared if we had a coherent raison d'etre for the party and it was looking like a paladin would be a poor fit in terms of personality, so it didn't work out for me. Maybe next time.