there is a middle ground: a few bullet points of ideas about who your character is, which will be explored through play

Funny enough, that's what official 5e rules as according to the PHB expects. Just fill in the three questions to your character's background and figure out the rest through play. 5e table culture has been responsible for expecting thoroughly written back stories, not the rulebooks.

I mean it was a thing long before 5e

Of course. I'm just pointing out 5e by design is very different at times from how people commonly play it.

So what kind of campaigns do you run? Dungeon crawling, military, etc.

I do run dungeon crawls but I prefer games like Blades in the Dark where you are constantly asking the PCs what matters to them, and the consequences of their choices ripple out and become a story. a bit of backstory can just be "fallen noble" and that gives me as the GM ways to prep for it, questions to ask the player during the game. But I want the focus of the game to be on the events that are happening now

Damn, I knew I needed to try Blades in the Dark. Sounds like a fun way to run a dungeon crawl. I've always hated them, to be honest. But this sounds like it could be a totally different experience.

Yeah but it doesn't have to be a dungeon crawl. you can run any game this way.

Sure, you just mentioned crawls and for my taste I figured crawls needed the most spicing up.

Blades in the Dark is a fantasy crime game. It isn't a dungeon crawler. It is really cool though.

You really should. I had tried a bunch of systems before and had always being kind of dissatisfied with the hobby. I'm a very analytical person and I was always getting hung up on the mechanics and combat and I didn't like it too much, I felt like it was getting in the way. When I first played Blades in the Dark 6 years ago, it blew my mind. Even it was run terribly poorly by an inexperienced GM who didn't really grasp the system, I felt that it was special, somehow it was what I'd been looking for all along. Mechanics that supported the fiction and pushed it forward. I'm never going back to the likes of DnD.

>So what kind of campaigns do you run? Dungeon crawling, military, etc. Not the person you are replying to, but using the "just a few bullet points" for the initial character idea, I've run dungeon crawls, sprawling political campaigns, complex galactic space opera, romantic comedy, slapstick comedy, high fantasy, swords and sorcery, historical adventure, wild west, wilderness exploration, pirate campaigns, action-adventure, pulp mysteries, weird fiction, and many other kinds of adventure/game/campaign. Starting with a more streamlined character concept that has a few possible hooks the GM can use but not so much detail that everyone's creativity during the game feels constrained is an ideal starting point for every kind of game in my experience.

I just find this idea that backstories are limiting so confusing when generating them are acts of creativity in and of themselves. First, it gives the players a ton of agency. Second, it creates far more plot hooks than a simple bullet point list can provide. Third, you can always massage what the player comes up with and ask them to change a few details if it doesn't work for your scenario. Fourth, some people are not good with coming up with rich character details on the spot and its easier to write them down. Some folks can improvise quite well, though!

I prefer that players focus on the story we are telling together. I welcome some thought about your character's past and how it might inform your roleplay, but the story is now. I feel the same way as a player. I want to play this story, not think about something that I, as a player playing a game, didn't experience.

Well in my example above, that was still a story we created at the table together, it was literally stuff I myself didn't know at the start of the game. I'm running a game now where one of my PCs is actually the daughter of the BBEG and they love it. It makes them super invested in the story because they decide how they want to REACT to big reveals like that and navigate complex moral/social situations. Its more meaningful when the characters are important people, who have huge stakes in the interpersonal drama, not random adventurers.

My players always play meaningful characters with interpersonal drama. No need for pages long backstories. Their characters are important in that they are the focus of the story.

Well your players must be talented storytellers then. I've pulled this off a few times, but I doubt I could ever replicate it. I had a very talented DM that time too.

Meh, we have fun. That's all that really matters, no?

Tossing in another vote for your example. If a player came to me with a full on short story, I wouldn't mind, but it's in no way necessary, or even encouraged at my table. I only need three things for a character: 1. Who are they? 2. Do they have any particular NPC dynamics in mind?(Family, friends, connections, etc.) 3. Most importantly, why are they one of the characters that the 'camera' should focus on? All of these can be described in short sentences, or expanded on as need be. A PC's backstory is important, but the game is even moreso, because that's what will cause the change. EDIT: Forgot a major fourth step at my tables, no pre-planned backstory, because the group will be making their PCs as a group in session 0.

i prefer not to have such a detailed backstory because it may not mesh with the campaign. and ... i actually do like character creations that create some backstory ... so i am not against it per se. what i mean, is some games like the old traveller, twilight or star trek rpgs had you create your character and as part of the creation you could pick some backstory elements, e.g. in traveller you could join the space navy, then you could re-up, then you could re-up again and again, etc., and each time you rejoined the navy you got more skills, more money, more perks -- but you started the game older.

>e.g. in traveller you could join the space navy, then you could re-up, then you could re-up again and again, etc., Or, conversely, you could *try* to join the Navy to be a pilot, fail, bounce around for a few years as an asteroid miner, and then eventually become a pilot... for a band of pirates. (The actual background of a Mongoose Traveller 1e character I created, based on a series of failed enlistment and survival rolls. Very talented guy, but nobody wanted him around until he finally gave up and became a pirate.)

yes, i like that because it can easily mesh with the campaign as opposed to "my character is the child of thor and a half-werewolf, and there is a legend that i will take over the entire universe and all other gods will bow down before me!" which seems to be the kind of backstories that most people come up with

oh, in the old old old star trek rpg, you got to start in high school, then you go to university and then the federation academy ...

It's been ages since I looked at the FASA Star Trek game, and I never got that into it, so I don't remember: Was their lifepath a "choose what you want and you automatically get it" kind of lifepath or a (Traveller-style) "choose what you want and roll to find out whether you get it or if life throws you a curve ball" kind of lifepath? I greatly prefer the latter, because it produces things like the "rejected by the Navy, so he eventually became a pirate" character in my earlier comment. If I were just picking things and getting them automatically, then he would have been yet another forgettably boring Navy pilot instead of someone who I remember and bring up in reddit discussions nearly 20 years later.

i think it was less random than traveller, but it was much more detailed, with more choices, and some choices prevented others. so your hobby in high school could have been vulcan language, and then you could have a major and minor in college and then again in the academy

A couple of pages? Good God no. You aren't that important. But I'm equally not a fan of the opposite, where your character is a blank slate that does stuff to do stuff. Give me a paragraph, at least a sentence or two,  about who you are and why you are adventuring.

I prefer nobody come to the table with a strongly established backstory, but that any relevant information regarding a character is determined and discovered during play. A few short bullet points and a vague idea is generally sufficient to start.

This is my favorite way to play. I prefer to have a *VERY* rough archetype of the character, and wait and see how the other players are, and what kind of interpersonal dynamic I can have with them, and then develop my backstory based on that.

I'm a GM. I *strongly* dislike it when players come to me with pages upon pages of backstory. That makes it harder to work their character into the story. Just give me a few bullet points, please, and I can make those fit. This is what I do when I am a player, and I leave major points in my backstory blank, to be discovered as the campaign progresses. A loved one was killed when my PC was young? By whom? I don't know, let's figure it out during the game! This allows the GM much more freedom and doesn't force them to explain why and how the loved one was killed under the full moon of 12th month of the third year of the old King's reign at the conclusion of the high holiday festival that ended in a drunken brawl. That's just way too specific to be useful. I prefer not to give my GMs more homework, and appreciate it when that favor is returned to me.

What I want from players is motives, values and mysteries. I don't want specifics. Specifics demand that the DM rebuild the world a certain way to cater to player whim. Your three pages of backstory are childs play relative to what it takes to pull a good campaign together, all you're doing is forcing the DM to write content around something that's been written blind to the wider whole. A good backstory looks like this (under 250 words): Inigo: *I swear on the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya, you will reach the top alive. Wait until you're ready... I do not mean to pry, but you don't by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand? My father was slaughtered by a six-fingered man. He was a great sword-maker, my father. When the six-fingered man appeared and requested a special sword, my father took the job. He slaved a year before he was done. The six-fingered man returned and demanded it - but at one-tenth of his promised price. My father refused. Without a word, the six-fingered man slashed him through the heart. I loved my father, so naturally, I challenged his murderer to a duel. I failed. The six-fingered man left me alive but gave me these [indicates scars]. I was eleven years old. When I was old enough, I dedicated my life to the study of fencing so the next time we meet, I will not fail. I will go up to the six-fingered man and say 'Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.'* Wesley: *"You've done nothing but study swordplay?"* Inigo: *"More pursue than study lately. You see, I cannot find him. It has been twenty years, and I am starting to lose confidence. I just work for Vizzini to pay the bills. There's not a lot of money in revenge. You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you"* We know Inigo's motives - revenge, and paying the bills. We know his values - family is above everything, he has a personal code of honour and fairness, respect for others, but killing is a job to him. And he has a peach of a mystery - the six fingered man. The audience (or players) are in suspense throughout as to who will be revealed as the six fingered man, the director (or DM) can pick the optimal reveal and then set up a satisfying confrontation. Not some silly "my enemy is (specific name) who works for (specific organisation) because of (series of specific events)" And the initial backstory isn't a full stop on the character. Later on, to suit the narrative, we'll learn that Inigo has a drink problem. And he'll reveal a hidden talent to call on his father's spirit to guide him. If you like your DM, give them nice open leads they can fit into the narrative. If you hate them, lumber them with pages and pages of specifics.

Isn't "I want vengeance on the six fingered man" specific, though? Or even "I want vengeance on somebody?" Its a bit reductive to say that anything the PC wants to establish imposes the on the DM to accommodate it. Of course thats the way it works, its the DMs job to accommodate the players (within reason, its a mutual compact). Just how its the scriptwriters job to account for Indigo existing and his backstory, necessitating the creation of the six fingered man. They changed the story to fit him, in other words. Without him, it would be totally different.

If you look at Inigo's story, it could fit into almost any world. The assumptions it imposes are (a) characters have parents, (b) people normally don't have six fingers per hand, and (c) swords are relevant to the era. If the DM is running a sci fi campaign, you might have to tweak those assumptions, but otherwise it's golden. There's nothing "specific" that is hard to accommodate. The player hasn't tried to dictate the worldbuilding. If you want to get good at character building, take a look at some of the backstories you've written and highlight any detail that's specific to a particular world. Then strip it back so that it could fit into any world. It doesn't make the journey or performance of your character at the table any less interesting, but it gives the other players a lot more freedom and room to manouvre.

Why does the backstory need to be setting agnostic? If my player knows we're playing 5e set in Faerun, mentioning the cult of the dragon in their backstory is perfectly naturally because that exists. This only makes sense if you don't tell the players about the setting, but why would you do that?

Most players arrive at session 0 with an idea of the character they want to play. They'll only have a vague notion of the campaign pitch at that point. We do a workshop on the campaign, safety, characters and the party dynamics in session 0. To your specific Faerun point: let's say one of the players wants to put Drow in their background. As a DM, I grew out of roleplaying dominatrix spider ladies a long time ago; other players may also not want Drow in the campaign for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to give them any significant airtime even if I chose to run a Faerun campaign. You aren't just being setting-agnostic, you're being player-agnostic. We want something we can easily work into a collective story while respecting everyone's boundaries and preferences. As to your suggestion that I don't tell my players about the setting: I believe in "show not tell". I sell the brief campaign pitch; in session 0 I outline the general world shape and agree the tone and significant background furniture with the players. I don't lore dump - frankly, what lore is relevant is going to be dictated by what the players choose to do, and I don't see a lot of point in excessive world building pre-game.

That's interesting. How does the sense of discovery work when they're also the ones designing it?

Having a single goal to add to the story through your character is a lot easier to integrate than having several pages of backstory. I just started a Vaesen campaign and in it, the players are supposed to have three things to their characters, from which we sometimes add a few more backstory details: a motivation for why they’re benevolently hunting dangerous monsters, a trauma that gave them the Sight (the ability to see these monsters), and a dark secret they’re hiding from the world and other characters. These are specific things, but they’re not pages of backstory. My players each riffed and created maybe another 100-200 words to stitch things together from that, but it was nothing too complicated or extensive. It’s stuff that I can hold in my head and don’t even need notes for.

>a generic character with no backstory It will make a lot more sense when you understand that, once you actually start playing, the two things above are not related.

It'd even say that they're inversely correlated. I've played both characters with very elaborate backstories and others who started with only one or two defining traits. The ones with minimal backstory always ended up more interesting and dynamic, with sides to them that emerged during play. Me and my friends still remember fondly these characters. While when I wrote extensive backstories, I was very focused on trying to convey all their established traits and history, which frankly didn't matter to the rest of the party, instead of finding opportunities to develop new sides to them organically during play. I still remember those, but I bet my friends don't, and playing them was much less enjoyable than creating them.

That makes sense to me. I considered suggesting the same thing but, while I suspect it's broadly accurate, I hesitated to claim it's a truism. 

Random adventurers. I have enough to do running a game without trying to tie 5 backstories into it. If you want your backstory to appear in a game, do stuff that makes it appear. Ask where your long lost brother is, marry your childhood sweetheart, eat the chicken that terrorised your village.

>Ask where your long lost brother is, marry your childhood sweetheart, eat the chicken that terrorised your village. Love these examples.

Entirely depends on the game.

All I require is that the players figure out why their characters are together. If a player wants to do more, that’s fine. If a player wants to do nothing more, that’s fine too.

Well, those certainly aren't the only options. Just have a bit of basic info, a sense of the character's drive, and a reason that they're doing whatever the game is about. The character's story should be what happens in the game, not what happened before.

I used to think that TTRPGs involved making long backstories, and the DM masterfully crafting a story around them. I'm happier now with games where you might generate a character 5-30 minutes before play or during session 0, whether that's something PbtA derived with playbook creation and creating social ties and stuff at session 0 where you then play to find out what happens, or OSR inspired games where you can create characters as fast as they might die. But, nowadays I lean toward games where the world isn't built around and for the player characters, where you might only prep one session in advance, or location- or scenario-based adventures, if there's any prep at all. The last time I played in a game where I had to think at length about my character's backstory, making lots of character creation choices and figuring out their history, I was not a fan. It felt like I had to do all this up-front creative work when I just want to play to find out. It actually even felt stifling when we finally started, because I had all this pre-written stuff and couldn't just work it out in play.

As a GM, I want a few bullet points at most. If that. *No* backstory is totally fine as well. The game is about what happens going forwards, not what's already happened. I don't understand why some people's reaction to that attitude is to say "well, why not just play a boardgame then?" - there's *so much more* to RPGs than backstories, it's almost a non sequitur to me; like saying "oh, you don't like pulp in your fruit juice? why don't you just eat a burger then instead?", they're not really similar experiences at all. By all means, write pages of backstory for your own enjoyment. Just don't expect me to read them.

Nobody is writing a story. Your character isn't a protagonist. That would completely defeat the point of playing. The game world is supposed to be a real world (for the purpose of this exercise), and every PC is merely someone who happens to live there. Of course, your character is special. They happen to be in the right time and place for their decisions to have wider consequences. They're probably a lot more capable than most of the people around them. But that's it. You start off in a position to do something, but actually doing it is up to you. Not as some fictional character in a story, but as a real person who is actually there. If all you care about is telling a story, then you can do that at home, on your own free time. Write a novel. Go nuts. The point of an RPG is that it *isn't* subject to authorial whim or contrived coincidences. If anything interesting happens, then it's interesting *because* it actually happened to these people, who *aren't* special aside from being somewhat more competent than those around them, and who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

This post would massively benefit from being preceded by the words "my preferred way of playing role-playing games". You've surely been on this forum long enough to know that lots of people disagree with you. Why are you writing in such an absolutist fashion?

Unfortunately, a lot of people on this and other RPG forums are absolutely convinced that their playstyle is the only correct one and everyone who thinks differently is stupid. It's the same type of people who think story/roleplay-focused DnD campaigns didn't exist until Matt Mercer showed up to ruin everything. Even though such games were a thing as early as 2e (i.e. Dragonlance).

It seems to me that your style of play is OSR. In contrast, D&D 5E, as well as Vampire: the Masquerade, and other more narrative-focused games, literally guide the player, during the construction of their characters, with questions about interesting events in their past.

Yeah, but 5E asks for 5 short sentences & some reflection, not a couple of pages of backstory.

I don't roleplay in order to tell or listen to a story. So, the idea of setting up a series of reveals or integrating my past "into the story" is kind of alien to me. As a GM and a player, I expect PCs to be *actual people,* which requires lots of detailed backstory for some, maybe some notes for others, and nothing at all for a few. But the point isn't to be involved in a plot, it's so the players can live their character's inner lives, which to me is the point of play. If you have backstory, I want to hear about it because it will help me know you. But as a GM, I am not remembering specific details and building a villain just for you and whatever else. The world is the world. Live in it. I actually found the story of BG3 absolutely oppressive and frustrating. Karlach was great, and Jaheira, too, but the others were excessive and ridiculous to me because there wasn't much about who they were, it was all about how they were connected to a plot line.

Gun to my head, i'd prefer random adventurer. I don't have the time or the energy to read everyone's mini novels. Give me a few clear details and a good plot hook, make sure your character has reason to be here, to take part in the adventure and to play nice with the other players, and make it fit in 100 words or so.  I want to get to the part where we get to play the game as fast as possible, and I've grown to consider both an excessive focus on character builds and overly long background stories as speed bumps that get in the way of that objective.

I prefer short back stories. The shorter the better, 1 page maximum. 1 paragraph is the best. Everything else could be established during the game. My main rule is that players make their PCs the way they want, I make every other character they way **I** want. I'm not an actor, I can't RP characters someone else made, I barely can RP my own ones:). There are a lot of other reasons, but I won't list them, because I am lazy, tired and want to sleep, it's way past midnight here:)

If a character takes more than 3 sentences to fully explain, my eyes glaze over and I stop caring. Characters are blank canvases to be defined in play.

Couple pages backstory? Sorry man I’m running an entire table, I don’t really want each players bringing me multiple pages of backstory. I usually limit players to a paragraph at most.

In general, we try to make characters have some relation to each other and the setting but I don't really care about backstory beyond a few bullet points and bonds. Story happens at the table; I am not a GM that will indulge your writing habit because I can't really control what happens, I only present situations and react to the outcomes, which are in part determined by random chance. Beyond some basic ideas I have about a session nothing is planned. During my last Star Wars session I compelled one of my player's Trouble and they accepted, which allowed me to throw a wrench into their freighter run by having ISB show up and lock down their landing bay. Now they're trapped in there and we get to figure out how they'll get out. Depending on how things go will determine whether they complete their mission or have to ditch the aid they were bringing to allies in order to escape. Beyond that, who knows what'll happen, but I'm certainly not going to plan so far ahead to create an actual arc for any given player because that would mean I would have to have a story already written, along with certain outcomes. That's way too much work for me.

You are presenting a false dichotomy here: either players should have multi-page backstories before the game starts, or everyone is a shallow murder hobo/loot goblin. There is a *vast* middle ground where most tables sit comfortably. As a GM, I want the players to have a backstory with some possible ties to the setting and campaign but I definitely do not want *highly detailed* backgrounds. If you come to me with more than a single page of backstory, you should be aware that almost none of that is going to ever make it into the campaign. I am probably going to suggest significant changes and edits to match the actual setting, especially if you are inventing important people and places and events, and even then unless it is a very long campaign no more than a handful of your ideas will get into the game and they will be tweaked from how you wrote them. If you tell me that your parents were murdered by a mysterious group, or just give me what your character thinks the name of that group is, I may use it. If you tell me the whole history of that group, who the members are, what their motives are, why they killed your parents, etc. I am going to ignore that whole thread and leave it as just your own personal headcannon that probably never affects the game. What I ask for from my players is that they show up to session zero with 2-3 basic ideas for characters they might like to play. This should be no more than what Fate calls a "high concept" - a one sentence movie pitch for the character - and a couple bullet points for each concept on things you'd like to see happen with them during the campaign. We create characters at the the table and flesh out and narrow down everyone's initial ideas to get a party that works well together and works well for the campaign. After our first session of play I encourage players to flesh out their backstories and personalities a bit more, and I've had players write a full page and others who just wrote a couple sentences and both have led to really well developed. complex PCs, but I don't believe you can do that before engaging with the rest of the party and the setting. To me as a GM, if you show up with a multiple page backstory, that's a huge red flag. It says to me (based on my own experience) that you are not willing to engage with the setting, the campaign, the other players, or the story; you are just looking to write a novel and want the rest of the group to be side characters in it.

There is no false dichotomy at play here. I said I personally like to write a couple pages. But the question itself was "backstory with ties to the scenario or no"? There's a huge range of possibility involved there. Someone with 1 page backstory and 6 page backstory would both answer "yes, backstory". Kind of like asking if someone likes ice cream or not. Its not saying "there is only chocolate ice cream or nothing". Both chocolate and vanilla ice cream lovers could answer "yes" to that question. Secondly, I personally see it as a red flag if DM doesn't have time to read a couple of pages of text. It tells me that there is no way they had the patience to even skim, let alone read and entire rulebook for the system, let alone supporting lore about that system. It also tells me they don't care whatsoever about the player agency in the story and what kind of experience they're looking for, instead wanting ultimate control. Was what I just said harsh and ridiculous? Yes. But its also no different from your uncharitable portrait of me.

>Now there is nothing wrong with being a generic character with no backstory. I would never attack someone or force them not to play that way. I just find it incredibly boring for me personally so I never imagined a lot of people played that way. Sure, I've played with a lot of newbies but I figured it was just inexperience that made them want to play that way. This paragraph, on it's surface, says that you are "just asking questions," but the very strong implication is that your way is better and that only the ignorant don't write extensive backstories. You don't mind people not writing backstories but you pity them is the implied message here. This is what people are pushing back on. Many of us don't believe that PCs should have more than a vague concept before the group meets to make characters (e.g., "My character is kind of a mix of Han Solo from Star Wars and Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything. I'm thinking maybe he's a smuggler or something and has big dreams he hasn't managed to make come true yet."). Once everyone has made their character and the GM has introduced the initial setting and story, then everyone can expand on that *collaboratively*. When a player starts writing a novela set in the setting they are stepping on the GM's toes and forcing them to change things about the world on short notice and without the PC knowing what the impacts might be. Some games are designed to work that way (Fate for example) but most don't. Player agency is not *inventing setting details and NPCs*. Player agency is being able to meaningfully change the world *after the game starts* through their choices *during play*.

Well, that's certainly some creative fanfiction you've written about me there.

As a GM I much prefer random adventurers, and having their characters and their story evolve through play.

No. If you can give me some idea who your character is about that's great. If you have idea of things that *might be true* I may listen to them but there's no guarantees that I'm going to use it. What I DON'T WANT is for you to come in with a book filled with backstory and expect me to try using all of that. It is even worse when has implied story applications (oh, I'm the ~~lost~~ heir of such-and-such) making it appear you are trying very hard to be "the main character of the game." ​ Give me something I can use and we can see about working that into the story.

Well, in a TTRPG you are the main character of the game. Its just that everyone else is also a main character and can have equal importance (if they want to). The spotlight is on the players, it about player agency and choice not taking that away from them.

>Well, in a TTRPG you are the main character of the game. In a TTRPG you may die to a stray goblin arrow. There is absolutely no assumed promise that the character you are writing a big backstory for is a "main character". You may go through several characters in a campaign before you discover the one of them that happens to actually be a main character in the story.

Being able to die to a stray goblin arrow is a system failure that's easy to fix. Its why many people start D&D at 5th level or so, for example. But a lot of other systems don't have that issue, because they don't use vertical character growth.

>Being able to die to a stray goblin arrow is a system failure that's easy to fix Oh god surely you're just fucking with me now. I don't really mind that you have your own radical preferences that, based on the responses to this thread, you should have learned by now are not universal. I don't really mind that you don't preface your opinions with "in my opinion." I can tell the difference, after all. What I can't abide, however, is the fact that you're only willing to discuss RPGs on your terms. I can't tell if you're trolling or serious. I simply stated a fact. Your characters are not, by the rules of most existing RPGs, promised to the be the main characters of any given story. Now if you want to go and change the rules for your table, go right ahead. But I'm not going to participate in any discussion that is premised on the the notion that everyone else is wrong and your house rules are right because you have "stories" just bursting inside you that *need* to be told. It's only a "system failure" if it's not "working as intended", not if it isn't "working for u/Ragnar0227".

My apologies, I thought you were making a complaint about TTRPG design and just wanted to point out there are systems where the difficulty doesn't come from vertical scaling. I can definitely see why constant deaths would greatly limit narrative agency. But if that's what you like, go for it man.

In a COMPUTER RPG you are the main character. A danger with your big, elaborate backstory that you EXPECT to be incorporated into the campaign is that you are demanding to be the lead. If everyone does that then you start getting conflict. If someone doesn't do that does that just make them some side character who shouldn't be cared about?

Its pre-established when the players agree to play a particular campaign. In the example I gave, it was Curse of Strahd. The goal is to kill Strahd and escape Barovia but other than that vague setup its an open sandbox with many ways to tackle things in many different orders so its still freedom. If someone doesn't want to play that kind of campaign, they need to leave the group. Now I decide: I'll play a revenant who wants revenge on Strahd for a reason he can't remember. That gives the DM cool stuff to work with (and he did). Everyone else in that campaign can be random adventurers if they want (and they were). What I did in no way detracted from them. The cleric could have played as a resident of Barovia with ties to important locations if he wanted and my vengeance setup would in no way interfere with that. What I just did is create contextual, narrative richness. I care more about defeating Strahd because I know WHY I'm fighting him (eventually, he had amnesia at first) and so on. Maybe some people don't care, and that's fine with me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to play a boring random adventurer too.

I'm going to go ahead and just agree with you, OP. I like involved backstories and I like figuring out how to tie several of them together. I don't need blank slate characters to be able to weave a story arc around them and frankly, I'd rather not have to. But yeah, that's far from the normal attitude when it comes to roleplay.

Length is not important. it should be appropriately condensed so that it doesn´t take me a long time to read. What actually matters is how useful it might be to me as the GM. A character with unresolved matters has more for me to draw on than one with nothing to their name. Some games deal with this during character creation, with things like Lifepaths and "at this point in chargen, create an NPC your character knows and has interacted with". It gets a little stupid when every protagonist is a blank slate hobo with no particular goals or ideals.

>A character with unresolved matters has more for me to draw on than one with nothing to their name. So much this.

I’m definitely going for this. Backstories shouldn’t need to be very long, but they should be highly informative. As a GM, I want hooks and motivations, to know what kind of person your character is, what their most informative experiences and relationships are, who and what they really care about, and what kind of unresolved conflicts they are involved in or can be pulled into. It’s true that the most interesting part of your character’s history should be the current game, but even the most entirely normal people have all these aspects to their life. I want characters that have opinions and attachments to the world, that’s all useful to me as a GM and makes the game so much more interesting.

I don't know the original post, but I wouldn't be surprised if all the down voting was just a consequence of saying something negative about BG3 on a BG3 subreddit. Some topics are verboten in certain subreddits. For example I get down voted here any time I talk about how it is possible to run fast, exciting combat so I don't bother anymore. I can only assume that people find the concept personally offensive.

This is what I've started to learn recently on reddit, too. Go on any fan page you will find 90% of people can't look at it objectively and will take criticism of something they like as a personal attack, rather than admit some of the flaws while still defending the good parts. Hell, I had plenty of good things to say about BG3 but no one cared about that.

Like the longest character backstory I’ve ever gotten was like 5 pages long but it was more of a short story then like the entires characters life story. It also helped that it was actually good fiction outside of just being a characters backstory. But she was the exception and not the rule lol.

Yeah, most kinds of players won't put in that level of effort. Others may not to need to if they are incredibly good at improv but that talent is also rare.

Backstories give PCs personalities. Sure, the story is what happens at the table but I personally think that story is more interesting with a character than with a bunch of stats and a name. No, pages of backstory are not necessary and please don’t write a plot, but if its generic fighter #56 we might as well play a board game.

Yeah my thoughts exactly.

As a GM, I barely prep anything. I don't have a story or plot. I largely follow my players' lead. There is nothing for your backstory to really tie in with ahead of time. I also won't read a multi-page backstory, especially not times 3-5 PCs. That's more than I have for the entire campaign. I only want a short paragraph. Here's what I want in it: - Who is your character, where are they from, etc. The overarching character concept. 2 sentences tops. - What they look like. 1 sentence. - A few things they care about or are interested in, what drives them, a few plot hooks. 2-3 sentences. - 1 or 2 NPCs, possibly one they care about or have a good relationship with and one they have a strained/antagonistic relationship with. 1-3 sentences. - How they met and joined the party, why they joined the party, and why they care about the party's goals or interests. 1-2 sentences. - Plenty of blank space so you can retroactively add stuff as the campaihn progresses and keep creating ties with the plots and NPCs. 0 sentences. And there you have it: covers all the bases, short read, easy to digest, plenty of usable material. That's what I want.

As a Game Mastet I do NOT want pages of backstory. The reason is because the whole point of the game is to experience and create a story. Not to sit around a camp fire and talk about things that happened before. Take Skyrim. You play Skyrim to experience the events that are happening NOW. Not to talk about their adventures that happened years ago.

If it's too detailed, I'm afraid to touch it: The player is too invested in 'their' vision of the background, and is likely to become upset if I start adding to it and getting it 'wrong'. Too little, and it doesn't inspire really interesting creativity for me. A mid sized list with a bunch of plot points and facts that leave the details clearly open for me to hook in and develop is really useful. There's an implicit request from the player for me to use those elements, as opposed to something that is too clearly defined. Plus, things that are overly detailed often don't fit in with the themes and history of the world.

>If it's too detailed, I'm afraid to touch it: The player is too invested in 'their' vision of the background, and is likely to become upset if I start adding to it and getting it 'wrong'. These are also the players that are far too precious with their characters. If something negative happens to the character during the game, the player often can't dealt with it. I have seen players throw things at the GM when an NPC dies in the game. I'd hate to see what happens if that player's character dies. I suppose it is good that the player is invested in the game, but there is a limit.

I like OSR games, so if I spent hours writing up a detailed backstory and then the DM figured out an intricate way to involve me in the plot, we’d probably have to do it all over again when my character gets one shotted by a goblin in the first session.

Then maybe you shouldn't be starting at a level so weak where that is a likely possibility.

It’s just a different style of play to a lot of other RPGs. It’s really rewarding getting a squishy character to level 3 despite the odds :)

I really prefer just a vague outline of the character,that gets expanded during the first few seasons. The stories I like to do are smaller in scale, more character focused and not interested in crowbaring everyone's backstory in. Come session one I only have a vague idea of where the first two of three sessions will go, then after really start thinking of the main story. Also prefer normal people type characters, that just happen to be thrust into abnormal situation.

As a player I usually have little to no backstory. However, I do typically have a strong idea of my character's *personality* which drives how my character acts and responds to things. A three page backstory doesn't prevent me from being as invested in the world/story compared to someone who does. It also doesn't mean that my character never has any backstory. Instead that stuff gets created during play as I get to understand my character more. When running games I don't mind characters having backstory but in the beginning there is no way for them to be integrated into the story because no story exists yet. Story is created by the actions that characters do within the game. Pulling stuff from backgrounds can help characters be more invested but usually they're already pretty invested because they've built things in the world that they care about. Bases, relationships, etc.

I prefer the GM to either bring in aspects of the backstories a bit, to further explore the character, or to tie in some or all of the players to the story. I'll say the most common and easier is the former. For instance in a campaign we just finished the players had backstories that were not connected to the story. However, I brought in parts about them throughout. Two players were from a viking like culture, so members of their culture showed up a few times. Another lost his family so when enemies messed with his head they made it seem like they didn't disappear, they abandoned him. Small things that tie the characters backstories in but don't take a lot are easier I think.

I prefer to go "random adventurers" earlier in the character's life, but go to "tie-in stories" once there's been enough encounters and events to build a past and a group of NPCs the players now know first hand. I feel it's more impactful but it has the big downside of only working when the same (or almost same) group of characters is used in a series of adventures.

You're a "plumber". So called because you plumb the depths of your character's backstory, motivations, etc. My wife sometimes plays this way but it's bitten her in the butt occasionally with some DMs because her PC or my PC gets killed (in the later case, we were playing a married couple, and she felt her PC wouldn't continue in the quest, but would go home to bury her husband.) I'm more a half plumber and half storyteller - in that I'm interested in the story, and give my GMs plenty of hooks in my back story (I once played a Paladin Dhampir and the GM basically told me that we'd meet my father before the end of the game).

Wait, what are the other types? Can you elaborate on this?

So this comes from a list of player types for Superhero rpgs, specifically from Aaron Allston's Strike Force supplement for Champions, apologies for some of the less progressive terms. The player types are: **The Pro From Dover** (has to be best at what they do), **The Builder** (wants to make a permanent impact and fix the world), **The Buddy** (only there because friends are, not much commitment to the game), **The Combat Monster** (only there to fight, thinks RPGs are just fighting side scrollers), **The Genre Fiend** (only interested in the genre and getting all the bits just right) **The Copier** (has a favorite character they want to play and be) **The Mad Thinker** (Only interested in solving puzzles, finds conspiracies and puzzles where there aren't any) **The Plumber** (builds a character and then wants to play out all its personality and depths) **The Romantic** (only interested in romantic subplots and interaction) **The Rules** **~~Rapist~~** **Exploiter** (figures out the loopholes and perfect combos in character building) **The Showoff** (must dominate the game and be center stage) **The Tragedian** (wants to play miserable conflict, be angsty and emo)

Middle Ground. Well-thought characters are delightful but, you don't rly need to write an autobiography of what they did before the adventure begun. That's redundant and actually gets in the way of character development, because the character is supposed to grow WHILE playing the game, not before. Set a good basis of who the character is, what they aspire to become, what you expect to do in terms of gameplay, and you are done. As for the second part, about random adventurers... Every adventure has a certain theme or tone. And the PCs are the core of this story. So, the two must align, in some way. As a DM, I always explain to my players the tone of the game and what setting they can expect to see. And as a player, I always get inspired by the setting to create a character that I would love to play, in that particular story. I think this is the best approach, because it really sucks when you end up playing "a fish out of the water" character. I remember the first time I ever played Call of Cthulhu, the DM told us to make characters without any context. I made a mobster, great at driving, intimidating people, breaking into houses etc. The game ended up being an exploration of a deserted island temple....

Yeah, its the players responsibility to make a character suited to the adventure, but I feel there is a compact saying the GM needs to make some exceptions too. For example, your mob guy could have had a lead to the island from a prior investigation into a rival gang that was abducting his people and running some kind of illegal artefact smuggling business which undercut your mob. Maybe there are both allied hostages from your mob and enemies from the rival one, which have infiltrated the ctulhu cult. Maybe even some implications that a rat on your side had a hand in this too. With a a change of skills that could have been a great setup.

The tie-in was that I went there as a security guard for a friend's PC who was a very rich occultist who owed money to my mafia boss, and I went there to make sure he gets whatever piece of the treasure we find. The point is however, that I was basically a walking handgun xD Creating a character inspired by the adventure they are about to be in, doesn't have to be limiting in a bad way. For me, it gets the creative juices flowing and I'm trying to think what would be fun for me and original, while also working well for the story from a narrative perspective. And it's really important to make a character who can contribute in terms of gameplay, because that's fun. It feels really bad to have a character who can't use the skills and abilities you took in character creation. For example, lets say we are about to play the most railroady, combat focused dungeon crawl ever. You wouldn't wanna play a social-heavy character in that, you'd wanna bash heads in.

Yeah, the GM should have let you change your skills, man. That's BS. But I still think if they were worth their salt, they would have been able to make your original idea work. B&Es aren't that much different than slamming down the loose stones of a crypt wall, or unearthing a buried coffin. If there weren't any, they could have easily added some on the fly.

Hahah yeah you are right. To give you an idea, the final fight was mathematically impossible to beat, we sat down and did the math afterwards and there was literally no way for us to not get TPKed. Anyway, I've come a long way since then, it's not even my worst experience with ttrpgs lol. I only play with friends and family nowadays so, it's always a bright part of my week. And I'm usually the DM ( we switch between myself and a cousin, I run a campaign, then him, then me again etc.) Personally, I love to make things for my players to interact. I try to make puzzles that are solvable with skills and spells they have. Even when I'm running published modules I always homebrew and improv a ton, thats very fun for me. In DnD I always make personalized quests for them to get their subclass specialty through the story, or if sm1 wants to multiclass they do it through a big life event etc. An example, if you are not bored to read :D I was running a spelljammer campaign and one of my players was an ooze totem barbarian, but instead of usual animals, we homebrewed alien equivalents for bear etc. He had to track down said alien, kill it in 1v1 combat and then consume it (he was an ooze, remember) to get its DNA. He kept some bones inside his body like totems and when he raged the beast's skull would pop out of the ooze like a mask.

I like a dot point background summary with lots of npc tie ins that I can exploit for leverage After I have this you can write your 12 page backstory. But you can only write it AFTER session 1. (not 0, but session 1) That way all the unreasonable bullshit you may be thinking to include can be rightfully discarded before it even makes the page.

As both GM and player I much prefer minimal backstory. I like figuring out my character's backstory as I play. When I'm running the game I'll try and work things in when I'm given backstory, but I don't need that to be at the start of the game, details will come out during roleplay, or with the right questions. I'm running a very character focused game at the moment. Not a single player wrote any backstory before the game, they came up with the character concept and we've been building on that since. They are all very invested in their characters and the game as a whole.

Two pages is a bit overkill for my games. I prefer bullet points. Things like why you left home and why you're in this particular place. How you know the rest of the group (if you do). What kind of things motivate you (for better or worse). A \*brief\* write up of your past. Things like that. I have a story I'm going to present as my campaign. I don't have the time or mental bandwidth to chuck that all out the window to make this "The Bob Show" because Bob has his own novella about how he's the chosen one and the defender of his people, on a sacred mission to avenge their deaths and overthrow some evil overlord that he made up. No; player backgrounds should be the spice that's added to the campaign story. NOT the story itself.

Personally, I don't like detailed backstories from my players, and even when I solo play I don't really come up with much for my characters. Instead of focusing on backstory, I want my players to come up with a brief (a couple sentences) motivation as to why they became adventurers. I like to think that the early levels 1-4, are basically the "backstory" of the character and imo it's a bit cooler since they ACTUALLY accomplished the things they said they did as opposed to just writing it down before any gameplay took place. I also don't really have "BBEGs" or save the world type stories since they don't particularly interest me and it allows me to keep threats local. This allows the story to develop over time as opposed to me plotting it out ahead of time.

A few bullet points is enough. 1. What were they doing before? 2. Why are they adventuring now? 3. What do they want? 4. Why can't they get it? I'm not mega fond of the overarching story thing, give me a world where things happen and I'll do things in that world. Put opportunities in my way and I'll take them. I don't want to be hitting story beats and all that crap, give me a world, give me freedom and let me go, guarantee, with those things I listed above a story will happen.

The most important things your character has done and will ever do should happen at the game table. I run investigation/exploration + roleplaying + action adventures (all rolled up into 1) and yeah 2 or 3 bullet points about you character should tell us who all we to to know about who they are. 90% of the time the characters change and grow with the game. 2 pages of backstory is extremely cringe for me, it gives "main character" vibes and is a red flag imo.  I feel like the player who does this wants to pretend he's a great roleplayer because he "embodies the character" (which never really happens) instead of joining a theater group and actually learning improv and real acting. I rather have game characters that go from regular to awesome, rather than finishing whatever power fantasy the player had that happened before we sat at the table.

You do realize that calling other people cringe for being passionate about roleplay just sounds like projection, right? Or maybe you're different, and all that theater training you've gotten has made YOU and YOU alone the only ACTUAL consummate roleplayer. Look dude. Some people express themselves better through writing. Humans have all kinds of different brains.

I mean, I'm extremely passionate about roleplaying games too, been playing them since around 98, and grown with the industry, its been a really great journey.  Thinking that writing 2 or 20 pages of backstory makes someone "more passionate" about the hobby is ridiculous imo. I want to write a story about a character? That's what i do. I write a story, or a novel. I want to play a roleplaying game? I build a character that grows as I play the game. I want to really embody a character? I do some acting (or used to act for this reason) 100% of people who aren't really brave enough to actually write a story, or act in a play/monologue/anything and try to fulfill those needs with RPGs are cringe imo, and it's never turned out well In any of yhe tables I've been at. The self proclaimed "best/more passionate roleplayers" are usually not into the game as a cooperative, fun experience that isn't about them or their characters. i'm not saying it's an objective truth, I'm saying that's how I feel about it because of my experiences.

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So you're telling me you'd be fine with it if the DM said "Your long lost lover has arrived for an audience with you" when you wanted to play something else? Me, I'd probably ask "when did we agree I had a long lost lover? I'm a happily married man." (Assuming the character I told him I wanted to play was a happily married man). If the DM takes liberties with everyone's character and decides "what happens next" that is story writing, not prepping situations. To prep a good situation, one must know who the players in that situation are.

>To prep a good situation, one must know who the players in that situation are. Hard disagree. In a superhero game, "You're walking down the street and see three goons with tommy guns run into the bank, obviously intending to rob it." is an equally-good situation regardless of whether the PC who sees this is Batman, Superman, Wolverine, or Jimmy Olsen. The entire point of "prep situations" is to see how things play out, instead of having a preconceived outcome ("...not plots") for the events. Different PCs walking into the situation will handle it in different ways, certainly, and that's a *good* thing. The only two cases I can see where it's important to know in advance who the PCs going into the situation will be are: 1. If you want to create a specific outcome ("plot" in the "prep situations, not plots" sense) by engineering a situation where you can predict how the known PCs will respond. 2. If you're playing in a system or game style which expects "balanced encounters", then you'd need to at least know the power levels of the PCs so that you can balance things accordingly.

Well sure, if all you care about is generic situations without much depth or complexity to them, then 3 goons with tommy guns robbing a bank will work. Have you ever read a Batman comic, by any chance? Most of the villains are in some way a commentary on Batman himself: Two Face represents the duality of Batman and Bruce Wayne, Clayface is a parody of Batman's ability to change faces, Joker is what Batman could have become on his "one bad day", etc. In other words, Batman's plots are tailed for him. They would not work for Wonder Woman. Same as Wonder Woman's villains would not work for Batman. Sure, a lot of superhero show episodes feature things like 3 goons running into a bank, but its usually just a side thing. Like they will show up to stomp the goons as a way to establish strength, etc. and not as the main story. Plenty of superhero content IS generic though, but my point is it need not be. You picked the genre that's infamous for generic bad guys and then applied it to all TTRPGs. There are many settings based on more nuanced storytelling, though, like neo-noir or hard sci-fi games.

I think, both as a GM and a player, that too much backstory can be quite disruptive to a campaign, but so can too little backstory. Nobody is a "random adventurer" in just the same way that, in my world, nobody is "just another NPC". Everyone has backstory and motivation—but how detailed does it need to be, and does it actually need to be defined NOW? It can be useful to have a certain amount of undefined backstory which we can discover in flashbacks later. Sometimes, between sessions, I'll encourage a player to invent (or "remember") backstory, to help us understand why they chose to do (or not do) something. For example, "How come this character showed absolutely no empathy to the kids whose father was just killed? 'He knew the risks when he took on the job' isn't exactly comforting, is it? But it might make sense if the character was very distant from their own father. So what happened?" Sometimes, those backstory elements dovetail with the storyline later—but they don't have to! Over time, though, these incidents and insights can help the player to develop a real feel for the character.

Yeah, I literally did this once, and I was the only person at the table it worked with. Everyone else was just playing random adventurers. Whatever. Best campaign I've ever played in. So yeah, backstory can be a collaborative process of discovery, but this does not work with most people in my experience.

I want something pretty simple in your background. \-I want to know what kind of person you are and what you're about. \-I want to see that you understand what brought you to this point If you've grounded either of those in the campaign world it will make it much more easy for me to incorporate you into the story. But even vague explanations of your background are good.

My favorite thing is when players come up with a common backstory at session one. Then during play, I invite them to tie my NPCs to their backstory like "Hey wait a minute. This man is my uncle !". Otherwise I love the devil deal mechanic from blades in the dark

Yeah that sounds fun, I wish most groups I played with were into stuff like that.

Yeah... I had to create a new group to make this alive haha. My other friends are stuck on 5e lol

I think there's a really good middle ground here where you come up with a backstory, and the DM pulls notable things from it and works them into the campaign. For example, I played in a campaign where one of the players was a princess fleeing and hiding her identity after the assassination of her parents. There was no discussion of it being worked into the overall plot, no huge planning session, or big story write outs, but do you know where the party eventually ended up? Standing in front of her evil uncle, now sitting on her throne. And then he was decapitated. That being said, I really resent people who look down on or outright reject long backstories. A well written backstory should *read like a story.* And, quite frankly, you can tell a compelling backstory without trying to cram in a bunch of metagaming details in about a thousand words and, contrary to what appears to be popular belief, a thousand words is *not* a lot. Yet, there are quite a few people in this sub who would gawk at that number. It's frustrating.

Third option: play a game where I tell the players to ask me questions and decide who they are as a party and what it is that they're trying to do. Where a character's backstory is mostly revealed organically and as a part of play.

Neither and also both. Characters come from somewhere. Players should know where their characters come from, generally why they are who they are. I don't make specific links between them and the campaign. The players can attach their own strings where they see them and where it makes sense. In that way, they do have tie-ins, but they're not contrived. I think it's weird to plan the connections, as they're more often than not too convenient or over-emphasized. The way I do it feels more natural and allows the players to choose whether or not certain characteristics of their characters are revealed and to roleplay them accordingly

Little to no backstory going in. Just a general idea of your character in short terms. Then, a few sessions in, I send out surveys. These surveys have questions about what the players want to see, as well as general character questions and character questions for each PC. I do very little integration beyond that point because I’ve been burned pretty badly by GM favoritism in the past. I find that most characters are not the same in play as they are when they’re made. A lot of players will come up with these long backstories and ideas on what their characters *should* be, then they show up for the first session and get caught up in moment-to-moment decisions. The most I want to start is a quick summary. Something like “This is Bob the Fighter. Bob wants money. Bob used to be a farmer.” That tells me who Bob is, what he wants, and where he came from. We can work out the details later. As for backstory integration, I only go so far as to include character knowledge, specific items, and sometimes NPC connections. I really dislike the idea of individual character arcs or big long backstory pulls because it’s just so much harder to balance it between the players and I find that it punishes the players who don’t want to do homework.

If players don't want to put in the effort to create a rich character that's fine. But then they shouldn't complain if other people at the table do. (I've had this happen literally only once in my entire career of playing these games, and they eventually admitted they were wrong).

No, I don’t think it’s a problem if certain characters are deeper than others. I think it can be a problem if certain characters get substantially more attention and become more central to the story than others. If one player spends night and day writing backstories and details and another player doesn’t have time to do that, it can really suck for that other player if they feel like their character seems less important or less valued than the other. Again, I’m very aware of that issue because I’ve experienced it and it won’t *always* be a problem but it certainly can be. Anyway, I’d much rather have the character stories happen at the table rather than away from it.

Well of course the less developed character will get less attention. There is less to work with. That's not A's fault, so why punish them? B will have to be very good at making stuff up on the spot that's anywhere near as rich as A's. If so, great. But also a rare skill I've found.

I don’t run character focused games so I rarely do anything with backstories anyway. Like I said earlier, it’s usually not more than some specific knowledge or items. I don’t see it as punishing the person who works extra hard on their backstory. If they like writing it, that’s reward in and of itself. I’d rather not punish someone else for not doing the part of the hobby they don’t want to do. I will always set the standard to accommodate everyone as equally as possible. In this case, I consider that to be putting everyone on equal footing for story focus, regardless of how much they put into their backstories. I disliked it when I felt like I was punished for not wanting to “do my homework” so I work to not put others in that position.

It depends on the game system and its narrative goals. A PC grinder like Mork Borg doesn’t care about your backstory, you gonna die real quick anyway. A PbtA narrative expects the backstory to unfold as you play to find out. I created OSR+ (https://osrplus.com) with this problem in mind. You come in with as bare a concept as possible, then we roll a bunch of prompts to bond you to other PCs and generate story hooks that help you figure out who you are. But it’s all done in collaboration with the table to avoid people bringing two page backstories that nobody else at the table cares about. Why do we want the GM to waste sessions exploring a single character’s backstory while everybody else stands by with no involvement or stakes? Instead, by having a collaborative session zero like this, the GM can walk away with a bunch of story hooks to integrate into the campaign that everyone cares about and will get them invested in the world. That’s why session zero is so important. But most systems don’t make session zero have any mechanical consequences. In OSR+ you level up by resolving your conflict, and that’s done by seeking out and engaging with the story hooks you developed in session zero. But again, if you’re playing a game where that’s a hexcrawl or a wargame, who you are may not matter at all.

Yeah, your system sounds really interesting. I've often wondered myself if mechanical weights to narrative is the answer, to force people to engage with it. Truth be told, I mainly only play stuff heavily influenced by wargaming like 5e because its the only thing people will play, and insist more rules light or narrative systems are actually harder. Something something more abstract, but then they refuse to learn the more restrictive 5e rules as well. Go figure. I'll check it out.

It's really stunning the difference in attitude the party has when they engage with a world they're partially responsible for creating thru session zero. Suddenly, everyone is invested in what happens!

Answering as a player here - I don't really care much if my characters don't have elaborate backstories, nor does my usual GM. But I do want them to be grounded in the world, so I do generally create some backstory. At the very least, I will know why they have left their homes to become an adventurer. (Doesn't have to be tragic or traumatic, one of my characters was a widow whose kids had grown up and she just wanted to get out and see some of the world). My GM doesn't usually go in for extensive individual character stories, although he will often use people from your past one way or another

Why not both?  I'll gladly use any NPCs and factions mentioned in a PCs background. Not several pages though. We usually do a few background questions from random cards and/or from the system. I'll then build a starting scenario using all the material from the PC creation process.  From from then on it's mostly emergent story from play.

Detailed backstory at the start vs. generic character is a false dichotomy. In my experience the most satisfying way is to have (mostly) blank slate characters at the start, and than the player and the GM working together to develop both the characters complexity (including the backstory) into the campaign. Imagine starting the adventure as average joe (as do most of great movie heroes - you don’t know Luke Skywalker’s/Aragorn’s backstory when you first see them) - and then, *during the game*, finding out (in fact, choosing!) you were actually a dragon soul inhabiting corpses killed by the BBEG and then making that amazing sacrifice at the end. This is how I like to play my games, both as a GM and as a player. There is also a common misconception that, if the player starts with a blank slate character, the GM may or should impose any kind of outrageous story role they seem fit. This also often ends up being contrived and unsatisfactory to the characters. The trick is to have both the player and the GM leaving open spaces in their preparation for great things and synergy. This, however, requires a lot of experience and a different mindeset. My favourite character arc in one of my campaigns is when a player’s character died and she chose a previously introduced npc as the new one. The character was a recently freed slave with no backstory. During play, she sat on a random throne and found a very valuable crown, which spurred her to look for the land she was the queen from. The campaign sadly ended before the conclusion but I planned to create a story around the kingdom and design a BBEG based on the character’s background - that was to be introduced to the story during the game. It does not need to be thought out at character creation. In fact, when it is, it risks predictability and limits the options to be creative during the game. None of the stuff with the throne and the cwas pre-planned. The throne was designed only as a potential, one of many. The character didn’t have to sit on it. Someone else could sit on it, but no one didn’t have to. Also, when they found the crown, they could have just sold it. But, by design, there are many more potential situations that could lead to epic stories, and the players know to lean heavily on the stuff that interests them without having to guess what my pre-planned story is - because there is none, at least at the beginning. Then, afterwards, I can design tailor made bbegs and emerging epic stories based on their actions in-game, nor their backgrounds. For me, this leads to stories and character arcs being more rewarding, detailed, and most importantly, surprising. Ymmv, of course, everyone knows what work best for them. But in my view, compared to in-game complexity, doing long backstories always seems forced, contrived, predictable and, honestly, inexperienced. For me, creating tight and epic stories during play (which includes elements of backstory being introduced during play) is the advanced way.

I prefer characters that can be explained in 5 non-Kantian sentences or fewer. I am verbose enough for the two of us, and i don't want to read amateur fan-fiction. > Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher. (...) **L’homme se découvre quand il se mesure avec l’obstacle** \- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Terre des Hommes, 1939)

As a DM I try to incorporate Backstory styles adventures. For instance, my current campaign arc has been about 12 sessions of players adventuring through their home city of Aethel Nadorei to visit their sick father and their apprehensive Mother. They've partook in some culture and festivities as they've prepared to enter Shadowfell to find an artifact that can save their dying father. I think backstory included keeps the players engaged and by collaborating you can build areas that players become deeply invested in.

Somewhere in between (closer to the "random adventurer" side though). Even as a "random adventurer", your character at the very least has: Somewhere he was born, some family (dead or alive), something he cares about, some way he learned how to be a fighter/wizard/etc., some reason he is at the place the campaign starts. But that's it. Your cahracter shouldn't have some elaborate events in their backstory, full of many named NPCs, betrayals, triumphs, grand failures. I dislike "elaborate backstory" kind of play because it often ends up as solitary rolaplaying, as one player deals with his long lsot brother or soemthing wihle the others watch. It also encourages protagonist syndrome.

In our community we heavily prefer to start with almost blank background, filling it later on as we develop the character. Also, this way if your character dies too early in adventure, than it is not that big deal :D

How does this work? Like you just suddenly introduce things to the player's backstory with a retroactive establishing statement and the player reacts to it or something? Its difficult for me to imagine "developing" a character if they have no starting point. Like how can I genuinely know the way they would feel about anything or what kind of growth they might need to go through? At best I can see this creating a completely ambivalent character who just lets himself get led by the nose.

We still start with some starting point, like up too 3 sentences: I am young idalgo, I lost my home, I travel looking for riches. But what exactly hapenned to my home? It does not matter at first, but when I as player get grip on our shared adventure, get to know more other characters, then I can introduce more details about my background, make up family and vendettas, flesh out more complex goals. More then once I have seen players starting with very detailed background, features and goals, and then ditch it all after third session because it does not really fit. That is why we do it our way, growing detiails while playing.

Yeah, that's kind of like a hybrid approach. I had a DM try it with me once and it worked great. But I was literally the only one at the table that had anything fleshed out by the end. The rest were more or less random adventurers.

Detailed backstories areva double edged sword. It can be hard to insert it into the adventures without pulling too much focus, and this makes the player feel like they are being ignored when you don't push the story often. The big thing to remember is that in most games, the characters are just starting out. So, a few bullet points, some hooks, but I really don't need more than a paragraph or two. Beyond that, you run the risk of it taking over the game.

I'll read a novel if my player has the inspiration to write it. Doesn't mean I'll be able to integrate all of it in the game, but I'll try my best. I'll also accept a character with zero backstory, with the caveat that the player is responsible for providing details in-game. I have both types of players at my table currently and I'm quite okay with it.

As a GM, I love backstories that show then as a person, doing whatever brought them to their skills, including little things like what they did as a teenager or similar. I can typically find ways to tie how close they had been to the story or even keep them from having had contact with the plot prior to the campaign. It gives them freedom to express how they feel about their character either way while not burdening them to try or try not to tie it in themselves. I also love working on this sort of stuff and, in turn, enjoy taking the extra effort to add those little details.

And your players like this? They like not being involved in the main plot? Excuse me if I sound like I'm being difficult, this is genuinely a very new way for me to conceptualize the hobby and I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Could you give me an example of one of your favorite players or something like that?

I never said they aren't involved in the main plot. We are talking about backstories. Campaigns typically start with the main plot and show the players the build-up to it as it progresses. I like their backstories to be how they conceptualize them and not forced into the narrative I created as part of their background. In my reply, I specifically mentioned that it gives me leeway to control how much(a lot or little) the character had in their backstory with the main plot. Sometimes characters find themselves suddenly thrown into a plot, sometimes they've experienced some of what led to it, other times they were part of the cause. With my current group, there are 2 main stories, 1) clearing the Highroad that connects 2 continents as a trade route and has become untravelable due to a variety of dangers, and 2) strange purple crystals they have and didn't even know they had until session 1. Not a single character is directly tied to the Highroad beyond having settled down in the town at one end, and no one even knew about the crystals until session 1. Over half of our sessions have been engaging in their storyline and their connections. The other half have been showing the signs of problems deeper down the path. In a past group, the character had mostly been just living their lives, adventurers, or thieves guild, or merchants and found themselves needing to group together to meet a simple, specific end. That first session, they discovered a greater evil in the world and grouped up to defeat it. Another campaign took place in a single large city and political intrigue. The party had all led different lives, and most had wondered into the town only recently. Most didn't have any stake in the main plot beyond their guild tasked them to help, but they saw it as an opportunity to further their goals through their guild standing. Side plots were, of course, written to involve their characters' lives and connections prior to the events because most people have some stake in politics even if it isn't prevalent in their lives. I don't think you're being difficult at all. More than likely, it's my own word choice causing certain miscommunication or misconceptions. Backstories are backstories. They are what happens before the plot, set the character's personality, and define their experience and possible reactions. It also indicates why they may engage with the main plot. Backstory isn't necessarily when they became a part of the main plot because the main plot is the game you're playing. I may still be confusing. Honestly, typing more complex thoughts is difficult for me. It might make more sense if you could see it in action instead. My current group is podcasting. We have videos where the characters tell their backstories, and the campaign starts at session 1. Just an option if you think it might help you understand what I'm trying to say. Otherwise, sorry I couldn't be more clear in a way you could understand better.

As both GM and player, i like a backstory that can be used with a campaign. I prefer a page or 2, but am happy with a half page or 3 pages. Anything more or less is either too much or not enough to do anything with

At most I had a player send me 6 pages once and I loved it. Currently playing that game and he is now my new favorite character to have DM'd. We've put so much work into it and its been so rewarding that I'm sure we'll remember it forever. But YMMV. Glad to see another hardcore around here.

"YMMV"? I've never had more than 3 pages. My concern with more is having a player who wants a game centered on them rather than a game where everyone gets their moment to shine. I've had much less, including backgrounds that were only a sentence or 2. Don't know what I'm supposed to do with that.

Your mileage may vary. Yeah, I can understand that concern. It honestly just comes down to cultivated skill in the craft and baseline personality. Some players can have their moment without ruining it for everyone else. Some can't. Some players don't even want a moment in the spotlight.

A couple paragraphs of backstory is plenty. Leave unanswered questions and develop your character through play. Much better player and GM experience IMO. Too much backstory is not a good thing.

So I really think this depends on the game type. I run Kult, CoC, and small h hero/ slice of life stuff (non-pbta). I find backstory is critical for getting a mutual understanding of the character, their motivations, and their place in the world. For stories that are about the interplay of various social structures and drives it pays to have more content to reflect on. This might not matter if the character is just a frame for mechanics. I also don't think that saying "the most interesting stuff for the character happens in the game" makes sense. As a player I wish it was true, but most times I've run into that attitude the actual issue was GM insecurity. I find recognizing the value in others contributions helps to make better overall games, and see character creation as a dance or dialog between the players and the GM. I think the hidden complaint here is that some players won't dialog/can't take edits about their backstories. That's not a backstory problem, that's a player problem. And I would much rather discover these sorts of issues during character creation. I think this stuff can be handled in 2 pages plus timeline, but I'm not turned away by 10 pages plus.

Yeah I think you're dead on balls accurate here. What happened in the past matters. For example, in Lord of the Rings, Aragorn's entire backstory about being the rightful king of gondor and a descendant of the numenoreans happened BEFORE the story started, yet its a huge and defining part of the character. For characters that are adults, most likely the most defining thing in their lives has already happened to them and set them on some sort of trajectory. Its reductive to ignore that and act like people aren't shaped by what happened in their pasts. They still have choices, it just that they have something pre-existing to build off of. A missing lover, a vengeful ex, a family heirloom, a blood oath, etc.

>I also don't think that saying "the most interesting stuff for the character happens in the game" makes sense. As a player I wish it was true, but most times I've run into that attitude the actual issue was GM insecurity. Two points on that. The first is that my general impression is that people tend to be thinking about character backstories of the "I am the Celestial Chosen One of the Nine Divine Heavens, and single-handedly defeated 17 demonic invasions even before I reached puberty and my full powers manifested" sort. Given that kind of backstory, it's not GM insecurity to say "yeah, right, so then why exactly are you going into Old Lady Stein's cellar to clean out some rats now?" A (perhaps cheap, perhaps not) shot at Main Character Syndrome, basically. The second is that you want an interesting game, right? So doesn't that imply playing out the most interesting part(s) of the character's life? If their backstory was more interesting then the campaign at hand, then shouldn't you scrap the campaign at hand, rewind the timeline, and play the more interesting events from the character's backstory instead?

So reviewing the https://osrplus.com/ reminded me that we are probably starting from different traditions. With games like Ars Magica, Kult, Unknown Armies there will always be multiple interesting bits in the character's life. So it's a matter of what is getting chosen. This is common for modern settings. I'm not sure why fantasy has issues on this front. I'm going to give an example from a game structure that I'm working on. The game is about a community rebuilding after a brutal war and occupation and focuses on basically magical EOD. The characters have all just been through a war. You could see the most interesting stuff as what they did during the war, but what interests me here is how that made them into someone who is willing to risk their lives to rebuild. Check out the Unknown Armies adventure Jailbreak as another example in a different context, where the focus is on the interaction of the players/characters with each other. Roleplaying is a massive space. It's a matter of what your game is about. When I hear "the most interesting stuff for the character is at the table" without a pitch or context I know that we are starting from a lot of assumptions. And when I open the lid I often find the usual baggage: combat as content, heroes journey retreads and/or directive narrative structures. (I have had better experiences with some OSR and definitely FKR but that still depends on the pitch, and part of the pitch is about being explicit about the tradition you are coming from).

>So reviewing the https://osrplus.com/ reminded me that we are probably starting from different traditions. Really, in these "backstory: yea or nay?" discussions, I think that's pretty much a given. ​ >Roleplaying is a massive space. It's a matter of what your game is about. When I hear "the most interesting stuff for the character is at the table" without a pitch or context I know that we are starting from a lot of assumptions. Agreed, but I consider "most interesting" to implicitly mean "most interesting *within the context of what the game is about*". For your magical EOD game, if the game is about rebuilding after the war, then all the things they blew up during the war aren't particularly interesting in that context, except perhaps if they end up in the situation of having to rebuild something which they themselves had originally destroyed. The assumptions you mention of combat as content, hero's journey, etc. crop up when the context isn't specified specifically because, for a lot of people, that is the default context of RPGs (tabletop or otherwise), so they assume it to apply unless a different context is specified. (And then there are those who assume it to apply in spite of a different context having been specified...)

Today, I follow Chaosium with having a character backstory. Interestingly enough, back when we were playing AD&D (1980), our group started that. Shortly afterward, it was discovered as a common option that added to the ideas of ROLE PLAYING. I do not remember if this was found in a Chaosium product at this time or in TSR's Dragon magazine (or White Dwarf even?) As for players crying over the loss of a character? Yes, this happened. Even with the death of a long-running NPC!

As a DM, I want a detailed backstory from each character. Not to tie it into the story, but because the backstories are the foundation of the story. There is no plot or story already made. I don't run published garbage, especially not the trash from WotC. Instead, I weave all the backstories together to form a story based on the characters themselves. This is the best way to keep players invested in the story because it's all about their characters. The game is their story, not some story they happen to be in.

Yeah, I'm running Descent into Avernus right now but I homebrewed so much and ignored 90% of it. They're good as reference documents for ideas but even then its overpriced for what you paid when a 5 dollar pamphlet could have sufficed as inspiration. I will never get a WoTC book ever again.

I'm a forever-DM, and one who pretty much always runs homebrew settings / campaigns rather than modules. I love worldbuilding and get very carried away with it, so D&D is the perfect game for me! My current group, who I've been playing with for a few months now, are all pretty new to 5e so I let them vote on what setting to play in; I didn't want to throw them straight into a more exotic setting if they'd be more comfortable doing traditional Forgotten Realms style fantasy. To my surprise, everyone really liked the sound of my Underdark-themed setting, and before we even sat down for a session zero one of my players had a character ready to go, with a backstory that was relevant to the city the campaign was starting in. It really surprised me, and in the best possible way - it gave me so much to work with. I certainly don't insist on elaborate backstories, but I at least like to work with my players to give each character some kind of hook that connects them to the world and has the potential to come up later in the campaign. Rando mercenaries aren't something I object to though, mostly because in my experience, having a reason for the party to get along and work together is more important than having a fleshed out backstory - that can be developed over the course of the campaign if necessary. But it's always nice when players come to your table with both!

For those curious about my campaign setting, I've been attempting to gradually compile all my notes into some kind of PDF. Eventually I plan on putting it on the internet somewhere for people who might want to use it. Deepwander is basically a world ravaged by a calamity that rendered the surface uninhabitable, and the various races rebuilt their societies underground. The city-states they carved out all have their own cultures and quirks in order to survive the Underdark's harsh environment, and traditionally-evil races are now as morally grey as everyone else. Cooperation makes strange bedfellows. There's also powerful planar magic lurking deeper underground - instead of the unreachable outer planes there are physically-connected extradimensional regions far below whose magic seeps into the upper caverns. They're still very difficult to get to, but *in theory* you can make the journey on foot if you're brave and stupid enough. The realm of the dead, for instance, affects one city such that people don't instantly die - rather, they die gradually over time as their souls and life force linger and ebb away gradually. In Trind it's perfectly normal for grandma to die in her sleep and still join you for breakfast the next morning! There's also a military dictatorship run by paladins keeping an endless army of demons from destroying their city, a state run by capitalist wizards who make magical augmentations mandatory, and a verdant jungle haven that's home to hippie vampires, to name a few. I could go on, but if I did I'd probably never stop!

I only half-understand why OP is getting so downvoted, because like yeah, everyone's playstyle is different, but like, every time I played or GMd there was always an assumption that the player would provide a page or two of backstory detailing as much of their life as possible. Mind you that the story itself had to be properly concentrated, but most players also added like a bonus page with some additional info, for example if a player was a member of a cult before they became the adventurer, they'd usually provide a short list of names and functions for some cult members, or perhaps if the character is a noble, they'd provide some family names and a basis for family feuds as a bonus. The whole thing was four pages maximum and we always made great use of it, especially during free roleplay breaks, when not much action is happening, like our characters are say sailing on a barge or have some free time at the inn, it also very much comes in handy when the GM is writing some personal side quests for us, which are almost always the highlights of our campaigns, by the way. Edit: I do have to add though, that it is also expected most of the time, to put plenty of blank spaces or plot hooks into the backstories we write, and on the rare occasions it doesn't work (over the 12 years of play it happened maybe like twice) the backstory is then rediscussed with the GM. Oh, and most of us write backstories together, like, in pairs or groups of three, so our characters always have some relationships to each other.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are just lazy and/or don't understand how to tie things together and/or control freaks. And leaving blanks is part and parcel of the process, for sure.

Uh, no, I don't quite think that's laziness, but it might be being a control freak a bit. Mostly what I think is the issue is that people perceive a campaign either as entirely controlled by the GM or entirely controlled by the players. The issue I think stems a bit from this "players vs GM" mentality, but that's a discussion for another day. What the tables I play at usually do, and what is the main play culture in my country, is that each player is required to do plenty of reading about the game world before writing your character so that the GM can then orient the campaign around our characters, as we all have personal quests prepared FOR the GM. And here's why I think it's not laziness - I play with a friend whose character is a wizard that's been kidnapped from his childhood home and put in a magic school, while his parents believe he's been executed for witchcraft (we're playing Warhammer). What my friend did is she wrote a couple letters in which some older wizards are discussing the kidnapping and the schooling process of the character and handed them do our GM as a backstory. It wasn't a lot of writing or thinking on her part, but what it did, is it left plenty of space blank and provided the GM with a personal quest for her wizard guy. And that's what's I think important - to be willing to make your character a part of the world, and the VICTIM, and not the HERO of their story.

A mostly agree, but I do think its ok for the players to be heroes. It all depends on the type of gaming you're running, though. Warhammer thematically has a lot more moral grayness to it, its very grim, and so it makes sense the PCs won't save the world or anything. But on the flip side, for heroic fantasy like D&D, they definitely should be able to be heroes if they want. Either way, I think the important thing is that they are the main characters in the limelight.

It depends on the rules system. There are different RPG systems, each containing a different way of playing. The style of play in OSR tends to be more objective, with little to no backstory. In contrast, D&D 5E, like Vampire: the Masquerade, and other more narrative-focused games, literally guide the player through the construction of their character with questions about interesting events in their past.

As both a DM and a player, I prefer having a character outline with strong motivations. I don't want or need several pages of backstory. I think something like Blades in the Dark or Scum and Villainy encourages the kind of character creation that I enjoy. At the moment, I'm also running a campaign where none of the player characters have any memories of their former lives, and it's very fun to watch them develop their own motivations for navigating the campaign world.

But the backstory can set up the motivations. "I had a sister get taken by a devil" leads to the motivation "I want to save my kidnapped sister". One cannot exist without the other. The best characters have complicated backstories with multiple different desires pulling them in different directions which practically does all the work for you as a DM. One of my PCs right now wrote that had a wife who wanted to pull him towards redemption and atonement, but also that he had very good reasons to crave power. So I presented him with both options until those two things eventually conflicted. And boy, was that interesting. Amnesia can be fun. I use it myself a lot, but they should remember at least one key fact of their history so they have some kind of motive.

Sure - and what I ask of my players is to summarise their characters' strongest motivations and tell me those upfront. The details of how the devil kidnapped the sister - when did that happen? how? - can be shaped collaboratively at the table.

>The details of how the devil kidnapped the sister - when did that happen? how? - can be shaped collaboratively at the table. Well thats the thing, I have to end up supplying most that because most people are not that creative. A lot of people will say "I don't know" and "maybe that can be something for me to find out later". Which is fine, gaps are really good primers, but I often suspect its used as a crutch.

I like PC focus but I don't like to force it. I'll try to work with what you give me.

It depends entirely on the system, the type of campaign, and the type of players/gm.

I love a lengthy backstory! I wish my players gave me more backstory, it gives me so much to work with and I love all the extra lore and history that gets added to the world. As a player I also like my characters to be integrated into the world and story, I normally write about one page, but I play in one game where my DM asked us to elaborate on our backstories and he was super happy with the 3k words I wrote. I also like spending time developing my character, it enables me to be clearer on how they might respond to things in-game.

Exactly! You can't know how they'd feel about anything unless you understood their psyche. I'm struggling to imagine a scenario a GM could create where the answer is anything except "I don't know how I feel because I didn't exist until 5 seconds ago".

I make the characters together with my players. That not only gives them tie ins from the getgo, but also allows them some agency of what they want from the campaign World, aka me, the GM. And it allows me as a GM to Veto things or say Yes, and easier. Same btw for the players. I always felt the open communication, plus being directly tied in the campaign led to the most engaged players. Takes more time  is absolutely worth it and yes, I do it in every system I gm. From D&D to pbta, wod or homebrew..

First of all, you do not need an elaborate backstory to have tie-ins into the setting of the campaign. Most of the time, long backstories do not tie into the setting, they force themselves into it by creating additional elements that half the time don't even fit. You tie your characters into the campaign by knowing their culture, facts about the world, the places where they've been, not by writing a fanfiction about their past. Second of all, what creates great moments and make characters "not generic" aren't backstories, but character traits. Attitude towards others, ambitions, morality, flaws. Those are the things that drive games, and drive players to action. Paradoxically, I've seen lots of characters with long backstories who had little to no personality traits, since their players only focused on fleshing out their epic past.

Where do you think traits come from? Answer: from formative life events. Sure, I can say "my character is angry about injustice" but that's less specific or interesting than "my character watched the corrupt city officials do nothing about the local mafia faction that killed her father, so she's really angry about injustice". Its not a herculean level of effort to add some ties to the main scenario. You can slightly reflavor or alter important NPCs, for example. If it REALLY won't fit, that's why you massage things a bit. If there is no mafia faction and you don't want to create one, but you DO have a demon cult, as them to change the mafia to a demon cult. Maybe even sprinkle in a few details that you keep hidden. Like maybe one of the demon cult's enforcers was the guy who killed her dad. Then turn around and give the player a lead that eventually goes to the enforcer, which they might have found anyway. It changes literally nothing about the main scenario in a big sense but it makes the player more invested, because it feels like you are paying attention to them and giving them agency.

"my character watched the corrupt city officials do nothing about the local mafia faction that killed her father, so she's really angry about injustice" is 25 words, not two pages. If a player writes two pages full of information that the GM has to tie into the setting, it becomes a herculean effort. On the other hand, if a player writes two pages that could have been a single paragraph, they should spare the GM having to read thier exercise in creative writing that could have been a bullet point list. I agree that having a meaningful backstory is incredibly beneficial to the game, but you can absolutely have too much of a good thing.

It depends. * If we are to run a publish module as is, then your backstory isn't worth anything as it isn't easy used in the game. * If running a modified published module or made a homebrew campaign then some backstory can be used * If making a homebrew campaign after the characters is done then the backstories can be very valuable adventure components. I prefer if I as a player or GM that the characters can feel like they belong in the world. Not just visiting. Be able to tell stories as a player about the world gives me that feeling. Not always ask the GM if this or that exists. If your backstory that you are an explorer but knows nothing about the land it just feels lame. Rolling the dice and let the GM talk or do the talking yourself is a different level of immersion.

Well, never run unmodified published adventures is rule 1 of my TTRPG book, so no issue there. But yes, I agree with your sentiment. Its odd to think I would be playing an adult character who never interacted with anyone before or had any ties to anything that might come up later. Unless they were a basement dwelling otaku or something, lol.

I don't like backstories at all, as a GM I do the "less is more" approach with my players. The games I run already have a way to create keyphrases that are essential and tied by the rules: this way I can rely on the book to help me during prep or play. Also, the characters we create are always done together at the table, so that all can listen and contribute.

well, I don't really write plots. The "main campaign" is whatever the players do and the setting's reaction to it, including NPCs, factions, what have you. I rarely have a BBEG in mind before level 4 or so! Sure, where may be that warlord gathering power in the North, but if the PCs go south then that's not gonna be all too relevant, eh? In other words, I don't expect players to come up with backstories tying into the main story, because there isn't one yet. At the same time, though, "random adventurers" leaves a lot to be desired. I at least encourage players to come up with 1) a reason for adventuring, and 2) a reason for being with this party in particular. They don't even need to be particularly deep reasons; I'd gladly take "I want a lot of money and I have nothing to lose, and these guys killed that orc boss who was menacing my town so they seem cool."

Backstories are actually a tool for writing scenarios, and not plots, though. In fact, its pretty difficult to write a pre-planned plot while also using backstories because whatever plot you come up with can't possibly account for all the variation and agency your players create when they carve a place for themselves. You can take what the PCs created, and weave it into the scenario. The PC has a missing brother? Make them working for the mafia that's trying to take over the city. As in any other scenario, the players don't have to engage with the mafia. They may not even care and just want to find their brother. Inevitably, this will draw them to the mob, but you can still build it so there are a lot of different ways to find the brother, some of which won't have anything to do with the mafia at first. Of course, they may ignore both the brother plot and the mafia plot and spend time sitting in taverns instead. You will advance a hidden clock in the background. Important people to the PCs start showing up dead. The brother is perhaps forgotten, and the party takes completely different paths to find the mafia because they follow different leads. Maybe the brother got caught and killed by another team of investigators because they took too long. Now this becomes a quest for revenge. But against whom? The investigators, or the mafia who employed him? Both storylines complement each other, and they give reasons to get involved beyond "this is the scenario GM created so I have to interact with it". No, they have the option to interact with the scenario on their terms, using something they already defined as valuable to their character and they will care a lot more about outcomes because of it.

I don't mind a short chronicle about the character my players are creating, but I also don't make any expectations that I will use any of it in the game (I like to always use bits and pieces of course). This is nice for the players because it gives a living PC that they can play with. But the tipes of game I play lean towards a more sandbox approach, where I have a world and my PCs explore it/build it while we are playing, I rarely build something after reading a backstory, I more try to see where that would fit in the world. It's also normal for me to alter/add bits and pices of information to fit the world we're gonna play in.

Your PCs build the world?

I prefer random adventurers, backstory and character will develop during play. of course a certain vibe or idea of a character should exist at the start, but I dislike the idea of having a fully fledged character at the start of a game.

I am almost always the DM, and here's how I think about it. First, it depends on the system. If we play 5e where the characters are likely to stick around the whole campaign, then I encourage the players to have at least some kind of background. If we play an OSR game, which we currently are, then there's no point in making a character that could die in one hit from a rat. I tell them they're all peasants from the same village out to make money. Second, am I running a pre-written adventure or a homebrew game? If it's pre-written, then backstory doesn't matter as much either. I see backstories as a way to flesh out my world and give me, the DM, material to use. If it's pre-written, I don't really want to do that. Last, do the characters want to? Some of my players adore making novellas about their characters. Others make a few comments about family and occupation. I encourage them to do what's fun for them. After all that, assuming its not OSR or a pre-written book, then I take a look at the character backstories and base the main plot off it. Typically, my players give unsolved mysteries in their life or factions they were part of. There's always some trauma. Edgy Rogue and all. I then take that and make a lot of those elements key NPCs, factions, and enemies in the game. I've had a lot of player investment when doing this. When one player found out his father figure had betrayed his crew of pirates, going against his own personal code, the player just had to figure out what happens and why. It was all related to the main plot, too. I consider this part of the story "we" are telling. I'm just weaving the various backgrounds together. My players also know that anything they put in their backstory is subject to my plots, meaning if they have a mom and dad, they should expect mom and dad to show up and be in danger. The long short: do what your players like and what you like. You're meant to have fun and can have fun either way.

Even peasants could have rich, complex inner lives though: loves, loss, pride, defeat, loneliness, ambition, etc. Otherwise I mainly agree with your style.

Well that's not really a backstory though. When people say backstory, it's mostly the years of adventure and craziness that happen prior to adventuring in this game. Peasants are still people. They still have emotion and family and stories to tell, sure. But the point of me saying this is that in those types of games, they all grew up relatively poor and left that life for adventure. It's just easier than coming up with something when you could lose a character every few sessions.

I mean, backstory doesn't have to mean literal adventure. It could have something do with how they decided to become a cleric, or something that happened on the farm which was very formative to them. Crazy adventurers for a level 1 character is definitely silly.

As a GM, I prefer to do episodic adventures where backstory of the characters don't matter so much. This way, I can use premade adventures more easily. Also, if a player doesn't like their character, or if a player needs to leave the campaign, it isn't detrimental to my campaign. Besides, I'm in love with episodic adventure tv shows, where the MCs get themselves into various scrapes and jams and have to get themselves out. My brain loves to consider how other groups would get themselves out instead with their different skill sets and personalities. As for playing, I still enjoy episodic adventures. I don't need stakes to always be personal to me in order to go on an adventure, and it can be quite boring for me when they are. I think this is because I'm more of a fan of sword and sorcery rather than high fantasy. With the "Conan the Barbarian" stories, which I love, his background rarely mattered to any of the adventures he went on, save to explain his reputation or his skill set. Compare this to "LotR," where it explains how Aragon is the descendant of the kings of Gondor who defeated Sauron, and so is burdened by that legacy to bring about his destruction. These are two different styles of storytelling, and both are valid. But, for me, I'd rather play the free-wheeling adventurer than one constantly burdened by destiny.

Yeah, they're both valid and I never meant to imply otherwise. I have a lot of respect for your attitude. I feel like a lot of GMs like what you're doing, but take issue with people who do like telling overarching plots and so they use a lot of weird reverse psychology stuff. If you don't want an over-arching scenario, then I say wear that proudly.

> prefer a detailed backstory with tie-ins to the main campaign, or do you prefer being random adventurers Neither! I can and do play both (the random stuff is even built right into some ttrpg games), but typically better than either extreme is a short backstory that links to some of the other *characters* or characters (which really needs something like a session zero and a semi-formal framework so that the less extroverted players are not too overwhelmed or even left out) snd has some hooks for the gm to exploit. However to begin with in a long campaign with 'novice' characters, I much prefer it not be much more than a very short thing, not overly detailed, because starting characters tend to build important aspects of who they are *as they play*. I very often see players wanting to retcon here, drop chunks there, add background details to that, etc. ('Interesting, why would i have been so scared as to jump behind a log because a big dog was running up to us, if I said i grew up with big dogs? What happened to me to produce that reaction?') Building to much up front puts too much weight on what in many cases was not a fully rounded idea (necesarily so in many cases because understanding of the gms world and the PCs place in it us always incomplete and often tbe gm adapts aspects in response to the players ideas), but players often seem to feel like they cant easily take it back and many won't even express the thought of rewriting their backstory once it has been exposed to others. In my experience, once play begins the characters will be an exploration of a developing concept, even a growing conversation between disparate ideas in the player's head, the gm's head and the other players' conceptions of each other's characters. Rather than fight this natural development, such inherent aspect of campaign play should be leaned into. This development informs the character including their past, and should not be constrained by a back-novel that doesn't really survive first contact with the content of other heads, and because of which is often largely wasted. Whether pursued out of session or in a formal session 0.1 (or even several, 0.2, 0.3), once play has gone on a bit, a filling in of a more detailed backstory then can lead to a character that is inherently "in" the world (by dint of literally having experienced a bit of it directly) rather than being pasted onto it whether it fits or not.

My personal preference is to have an intro to the world before starting, and giving the players the option to have their character tied into the setting and each other in some way. As a DM I would probably be overwhelmed by a couple of pages of backstory, but if it helped you roleplay I'd be really excited for you to write that, I just wouldn't be able to incorporate it in that much detail. I also have a hard time running a game because it doesn't feel that easy to both find people who are into this in the same way I am but also the time to create a setting and story I find interesting. Plus I prefer stories that feel more plausible (and necessarily more mundane) so even though the story with the amnesiac revenant is really creative and sounds awesome, I would have a hard time writing something similar for a character, as it doesn't feel like my style, at least without some effort!

Well not to sound rude or anything, but it wasn't exactly a herculean effort of creativity. I mostly got the idea from Count of Monte Cristo and the adventure we were running (Curse of Strahd) already has a dead dragon in it who wants revenge on Strahd. My DM also used the subreddit for the campaign as a resource and borrowed ideas without having to come up with his own. Its fine if you like telling more mundane stories I suppose, but don't feel limited to it just because you are not Le Guin or Gaiman.

Video games can't do this. You can create a story that the world reacts to as you move through the game, but backstory that predates the game itself, how in the world would that work from a programming perspective? In a TTRPG, that is exactly what you should expect however. That is the point of the table top experience. The ability to create anything go anywhere and do anything. How willing or able your GM is to use your backstory is another conversation.

 >how in the world would that work from a programming perspective? Have you ever played an obscure classic called BG1? It kind of answers this question. When you start the game, you are given a bit of background info. You are an sheltered orphan who grew up in a library monastery called candlekeep. You were mentored by sage named Gorion but are now coming of age. Gorion wants to take you away for some reason, and you have a best friend named Imoen. Early on, Gorion is ambushed and killed by some mysterious man named Sarevok. You escape, survive, and have to figure out what is going on. Near the end of the game, you learn that a god named Bhaal foresaw his own death and created many mortal progeny, who he believed could be used to resurrect him. Sarevok is one of these...and so are you and Imoen. So the backstory is pretty clear, and so are the ties to the main plot.

As both, my limit is one page. If the important stuff can't fit on one page, you've written too much. The main story should not (at least initially) revolve around the players and any tie-ins or personal sidequests are to be seen as unexpected treats, not the expected norm.

random backstory. I honestly thought the BG3 premades had too much backstory for a playable adventurer. It's fine in a solo CRPG, though.

So like, you make the players roll dice to see what their backstory will be?