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Okay maybe that's a tad strong. Certainty I don't want anyone to come to a game with zero idea of their character. However I definitely don't want anyone to come with an extremely strong or complex idea of their character. Let me tell you why.
Bullshit Post-hoc Justifications For The Backstory Hate Deep In My Soul
No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength.
- Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
I cannot count how many times I have come to a game where another player has a bunch of details about their character. A whole panoply of facts which almost immediately go out of the window when the game gets underway. People in general are bad at knowing what they will enjoy ahead of time. Knowing what you like is a skill gained only through trial and error. Most people aren't spending enough time doing improvisational acting to really know what kinds of characters they would like to play in a table-top role-playing game. And at the least, this is definitely true of my players.
Having too much of a character nailed down at the outset of the campaign also makes them rigid. Player characters need a certain amount of fictional flexibility. If you write down too much of what the PC thinks and feels it can be tempting to think that what is written is true forever. This makes it hard for them to change.
In a recent game I wrote to a player of mine some details pertaining to their PCs backstory. I loosely sketched the experience their character would have had at war in the Nightlands. Those three paragraphs were great by the way, but you'll just have to take my word for that. I then spent a not insignificant part of my prep for the next few sessions assailed by the thought "That thing I wrote to PlayerName was really cool, I wish I was playing that story instead"
Dungeons & Dragons has an inbuilt zero to hero feel. Characters level up. They get harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. They go on to fight greater and greater foes until some orgasmic climax of heroic violence. When approaching the end of a long campaign it is natural to reminisce about how far you've come. For me putting something extremely interesting in the backstory shoots this in the foot.
Having too much of a character nailed down at the outset of the campaign also makes them rigid. Player characters need a certain amount of fictional flexibility. If you write down too much of what the PC thinks and feels it can be tempting to think that what is written is true forever. This makes it hard for them to change.
This story is going to be the most interesting thing to have happened in your life.I have a problem when I prepare things for D&D games. Sometimes I make the backstory too interesting.
- Me
In a recent game I wrote to a player of mine some details pertaining to their PCs backstory. I loosely sketched the experience their character would have had at war in the Nightlands. Those three paragraphs were great by the way, but you'll just have to take my word for that. I then spent a not insignificant part of my prep for the next few sessions assailed by the thought "That thing I wrote to PlayerName was really cool, I wish I was playing that story instead"
Dungeons & Dragons has an inbuilt zero to hero feel. Characters level up. They get harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. They go on to fight greater and greater foes until some orgasmic climax of heroic violence. When approaching the end of a long campaign it is natural to reminisce about how far you've come. For me putting something extremely interesting in the backstory shoots this in the foot.
Well If You're Going To Write One Anyway At Least Do It Properly
Lots of people do backstory wrong. I don't mean that these people don't come up with interesting characters, I mean that they present them to the GM in the least useful ways. I don't want a page or more of lore about your character that I have to mine for details. Just give me the details without the fluff. Don't focus on what happened in the past, focus on how the character as they are today has been shaped by the past.When you write a backstory I think it should contain things like.
- Basic facts: Name, Age, Brief description
- A place of origin (for the sake of completeness)
- One of:
- A person in their life and how they feel about them
- An event in their life and how they feel about it
- A few things they find distasteful
- A reason to be in the campaign
- How they feel about the other PCs
DO NOT WRITE OUT A HISTORY IN PROSE.
I will not read it. More likely I will read it begrudgingly to be frank with you, but I just need to convey how much I do begrudge it. I don't like homework just as much as you, and having to critically read your prose to find key information is work. If you are playing in my games you are probably not a professional writer and the last time you wrote any fictional prose was probably years ago at the minimum.
Instead please be succinct, mark it down in bulletpoint form, preferably in something close to chronological order. Let me give you an example
- Hilde, Human, Female, Rogue
- Age: 25
- Idolises her father as the embodiment of a perfect hardworking craftsman. He taught her how to work with clockwork since she was little. He died in a beating by mafia thugs several years ago
- Her brother inherited the business. He doesn't deserve it, he doesn't care about the craft, he only humoured father. She still loves him though, he's family after all, what would Dad think if she didn't ?
- With Dad gone and a rift between her and her brother she had no living. She fell in with a gang. Turns out small hands and knowledge of small mechanisms makes you good at picking locks as well as fixing clocks.
- Won't steal from any hard working craftsmen like her father, at least not without a very big payday or other extenuating circumstances. Prefers to target aristocrats, people who make money from rent, lazy parasites.
- Hates mess and messy people. The mere idea of how farmers and the truly poor live gives her the shivers.
- [Something campaign contingent to get her into the game]
There we go, less than half a page. She has a relationship with a living relative, she has opinions and prejudices, she needs money (a venerable motivation), and we can tell without it being stated that if she makes enough money she might try to go straight by opening her own shop (long term motivation, but not one so strong as to be a straight-jacket).
That's literally everything I want as a GM. Anything else written about Hilde in her initial biography would be self-indulgence, we can introduce more about her later if we want to.
That's literally everything I want as a GM. Anything else written about Hilde in her initial biography would be self-indulgence, we can introduce more about her later if we want to.
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