Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 BibboTheFirst Apr 28, 2015 15:35:34	So my DM is fairly new to DM'ing and I think he wants to try something different and by different I mean weird. He wants our characters to have no backstory at all and only "be defined by what they are currently doing" and he wants "the world building to be the focus instead of character building". It sounds to me like we are headed into "The DM's story: Chapter 1" and the players are just along for the ride. However, I am willing to bite the bullet and try it so I need some help/advice.  What is a way to make a character have character but have no backstory to support what my character is.  I suppose I can have a head-canon of what my character has done in the past but I'm trying to stay true to what my DM wants to do. Any thoughts?
#2 transcendantviewer Apr 28, 2015 16:02:12	It sounds to me like the DM is trying to build your characters into having the same backstory. I've seen it done before and it's actually quite interesting when done well. Basically, if this is a low-level campaign, it'll work. Each of your characters will be in a certain situation when the plot begins, then, they'll be bunched together by some event and become an adventuring party.
#3 vanadium322 Apr 28, 2015 17:50:17	Sounds like you need to focus more on personality, and less on history.  Give your character an odd mannerism, or an irrational fear, or some other quirk to build your RP around until your DM's plans begin to fill in the gaps.
#4 mellored Apr 28, 2015 18:12:57	amnisia
#5 Danny_Montanny Apr 28, 2015 18:17:49	Is he allowing you to pick Backgrounds? Are you waking up as a group with amnesia? What's the point? Are you allowed to still have an idea of where your PC came from? I'd definitely try to get as much info from him as to what the concept really entails. The above advice of focusing on their personality is where you definitely need to put your effort if it truly is, "you don't know anything before this point... aaand go!"
#6 AaronOfBarbaria Apr 28, 2015 18:29:55	Hopefully the DM has something like my following anecdote in mind, rather than some nefarious plot:   Once, I decided to run a campaign using a published adventure. This was back before the days of it being common that published adventures would help you make a character that actually fit into the story presented, and anything more than a quick blurb about how many characters, what level they should be, and whether any particular class would be necessary was a rarity at best.   My players had, up until then, constantly experienced issues with having their own unique vision of their character not mesh with the others in the group, and much more effort was spent during session time playing through scenes hammering out the creases, patching the cracks, and filing off the jagged bits so that the team of characters could stick together, than was spent actually moving the group towards their goals or really any kind of progress.   So I told them this: We know your characters' capabilities and equipment, their names, that they are a party of adventurers that are long-time friends and trust each other with their lives, that their current goal is to find adventure for no reason other than that adventure is their profession, and that they are currently traveling along the main road into a metropolis because it seems a likely place to find a lead on said adventure - and we will learn anything else we need to know while we are actually playing the game.   The result was that we got right into the action, and as opportunities to role-play their characters presented themselves naturally the players remembered that their characters wouldn't have any unbearable complaints about the other characters (because you don't stay friends if you really can't stand each other - and the characters are friends), and the players even ended up making up quite a few "remember the time..." stories through improv role-play. In the end, it was the single most richly detailed backstory that any of their parties or individual characters has received (to date, at least).   All because I insisted they not make up the details before they new which details would have a negative impact on their character's integration with the party or involvement in the campaign's story.
#7 Coredump00 Apr 28, 2015 18:39:17	I am not all that concerned with backstory.  Its nice to have a general outline, but much of that you can fill in or create as the game unfolds.   Hopefully Iserith will stop by, he isn't a big backstory fan either, but can probably explain it better.
#8 BoldItalic Apr 29, 2015 0:01:55	Just make things up during play, to suit the moment. Surprise the DM. For example, suppose you have just met an NPC who might be incredible useful to have on your side. Say, out of the blue, "Hello, cousin, how's Uncle Rufus?" Just by saying that, you've claimed a bit of the world and incorporated into your backstory and, if the DM is feeling generous, you may have gained advantage on a few role-playing checks to persuade or otherwise influence the NPC. Or play on your background. Suppose your character has the Soldier background. Pick on a member of the town guard and suddenly say "Corporal Bones! It's been a long time since that last battle with the orcs, hasn't it? How are you, my old buddy?" then you turn to your fellow adventurers and tell them how you and this guy fought together and so on. See what happens? You claim a bit of the world and make it yours. The DM wants you to do that.
#9 Rya.Reisender Apr 29, 2015 0:10:35	I do like that occassionally, because a backstory could disturb the flow of the adventure I created. It really really depends on the adventure.   In Lost Mine of Phandelver, I rather have the characters use the background story of the starter set characters rather than making up their own, because it works REALLY well in the adventure if everybody plays exactly those roles.   When I think of my own short adventures, a real background story usually doesn't fit, because there would not be time to explore it at all. So the general outline might just be "An adventure guild is recruiting new adventurers and you decided to join it" and there really isn't much of a background on the characters other than they decided to become an adventurer and just joined the guild. The whole adventure might play only in a single mysterious village or in a strange dungeon and consequently doesn't really allow an adventurer to follow personal goals based on a background he made up, so a background story for each character would rather be counter-productive.   The other thing I can imagine is amnesia as the others mentioned already. Sometimes you really want to have the adventurers go into an adventure blind, because you have this really cool and deep mystery story in mind that only works that way.   Not all adventures are based on a big open world where the DM could read background stories of characters and incorporate them into the world (not to mention that it can be a lot of work).   BoldItalic wrote:
#10 Imaculata Apr 29, 2015 2:03:05	I've played a campaign before where all players started as children, and we played out what their childhood was like. Together they went on their first adventure, and gradually discovered what their classes would be. Encountering a zombie is pretty scary when every player is only half a level, with the stats of a child.   As the campaign progressed, we would occasionally skip a few years, so now the player characters are around 16-18 years old. But because we played out our background, all the characters have a very strong bond with each other.
#11 SterlingRat Apr 29, 2015 5:15:05	Best game I ever played in was set up similar - no backstory, but we had a couple RP personality traits instead. I was a stuttering conspiracy theorist. We also had an overly-polite optimist and an Always-Hungry theologan, plus someone who talked in Michael Jackson's voice and someone else with an accent that I don't remember both traits for... but it was a lot of fun.   On the other hand, that particular DM was outstanding in a lot of ways. I don't know if I would want to play in that kind of game with a new DM. Might make it harder... or maybe it would make the DM job easier... I don't know. All I can be sure of is that it absolutely can work, but if you go into the game with a pre-determined assumption that it won't work, then it won't. Give the game a chance and have fun with it.
#12 Razintarr Apr 29, 2015 6:00:40	I've played with a DM who is very fond of starting off a campaign by dropping the players in an unknown region (by a magic event or a shipwreck) and left to explore. A characters backstory gets nullified in that kind of campaign. You can have an elaborate family in your backstory, a list of friends, maybe a house....well, all that is on the other side of the portal or the sea. Now you are here with the others and you need to find out a way to survive here.    For new DMs, that kind of campaign would actually by a good starting point. You don't have to develop whole regions of land beforehand, just the areas that the players visit. And you don't have to worry about the players backstory and how it effects the campaign.
#13 mellored Apr 29, 2015 6:01:23	I kinda want to make an momento character now.   Doesn't remember anything from more then 15 minutes ago.
#14 BibboTheFirst Apr 29, 2015 8:04:25	Thanks for all the good advice. I'm feeling much better about the whole situation. Great ideas!
#15 iserith Apr 29, 2015 10:58:34	Flumph back stories.   Try summarizing your character in a phrase no longer than a Tweet. Give them elements that speak to who they are or were on the sheet - background, traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws are the easiest way in D&D 5e, but equipment and appearance is also a good place to make a statement. Then flesh that out during the game as you are inspired by the events of play. You encounter some orcs, now you establish that they are from the tribe that razed your village as a child, for example. The same can be applied to character bonds. Say you and the fighter seem to work well together during fights. Now you can establish some element of shared back story that explains why. Perhaps you trained together at the same academy or the like.   I tell players not to worry about back stories. I don't want back stories created outside of collaboration with other players because this can lead to players making incompatible situations. As well, I'm sure we've all seen the player who writes pages of back story and then barely says a word during play. Or the guy who constantly says "It's what my character would do" when he does something boring or annoying and then points to his back story as a defense. While these dysfunctional forms of play aren't because of back stories, not having a back story can help alleviate them.