Campaigns are large sandboxes for adventurers to play in. Some DMs prefer to have more linear campaign progression, but the freedom of D&D is that you can do just about anything you want. For some players, that level of freedom brings forth a need for some stability. If that player is a DM, they can set whatever rules the table needs to achieve it. Your campaign’s world is whatever your group needs it to be. Players often react by creating extremely rich backstories for their characters as a pillar to lean on. A rogue princess with a royal curse to break; a lone barbarian who scoured the land from a young age, fighting for survival at every turn; or a prodigious mage’s assistant, finally being sent out into the world to learn and use magic as they’ve always dreamt of.
Many players are used to intricate backstories because that’s largely how many fantasy stories begin. And while that’s a completely valid way of building a character, there’s another side of (many sides of) character creation to explore. Frontstory. In my endless sea of lectures I’ve found that frontstory is best explained with the examples of the fictionally consistent, Jim Sterling inspired, Chungus and Grungus.
The Timeless Epic of Chungus and Grungus
Let’s call your adventurer with the two-page backstory, Chungus. They have, for example:
- A family lineage that includes some recent direct-family death or illness
- A personal mystery that they will allude to, but don’t plan to reveal until 12 weeks in
- One powerful childhood moment that set them on the path of becoming an adventurer
Because Chungus was built on these elements, all of the reactions they have to present events will be weighed against that backstory. That’s how our player figures out who Chungus is; using their backstory as a filter and seeing what comes out. A pitfall of this is that players keep their eyes on week 12 more so than what’s happening in front of them.
One day, Chungus’ time comes to an end. A victim of DM’s critical success and a player’s critical failure, dear Chungus perishes at a time and in a place where there’s no hope for them to continue on. We’ve lost Chungus. Gone, but never forgotten. Press F to pay respects. Chungus’ player didn’t get far enough in the campaign to reach their fulfilling reveals—and thus, all the backstory that was never revealed or never paid off is lost to the wind.
After the funeral and a hero’s sending, a new adventurer must take their place. Though Chungus’s journey is over, their player still wants to be a part of the game. And so our player has some options. They could whip out an old favorite from another campaign. They could make a brand new character who is so tied into the narrative that of COURSE they’d join the party—but our hypothetical player doesn’t have the time to write a chunky, plot hook-laden backstory this time. So instead of those options, they create Grungus.
Our player didn’t have a lot of time to write a chunky, plot hook-laden backstory for Grungus, so this new character is just a strong warrior who happens to have a horse in this narrative’s race. Since this player has little history to riff off of, they use each event as an opportunity to be a fresh eye peering into the lives of a close-knit group, just to remain relevant. To this player’s surprise this works. Not just as a way to navigate the game, but as a way to have fun. Why?
It’s because Grungus is all about what’s happening in the moment. The point of frontstory is to let go of the foundations and let the present be the beginning of your epic.
Backstory isn’t a dirty word. All good characters need motivation, and a character’s backstory can be rich with motivations. They give the player a clear path forward and a clear way to react to the things around them. Backstories are a guide on where to start before players get into the rhythm of who their characters grow into later on. Grungus, however, throws the guide out the window.
Frontstory is about making those important bullet points that Chungus had and creating them all later, based in the events that happened in the game’s present, not its hypothetical past. The personality and development of the character is heavily weighed in when they begin to understand their party and the journey they’re undertaking. Here’s an example:
In two different campaigns, Chungus and Grungus both find themselves in the same situation: collecting loot at the end of a battle. They both find out that one of the rogues that they killed had only joined this band of thieves to eventually find the assassin that killed her family. There’s a hidden diary filled with pictures and notes about her entire journey. It’s a very emotional moment for the players, but how do the characters react?
Chungus can often have their reaction tied down to the personality or experiences dictated in their history. Chungus decides that, because they’re supposed to be gruff and absent of emotion due to many past family deaths, that this assassin’s note isn’t an important development. It’s still completely possible for Chungus’ player to move their adventurer in the opposite direction, to help this deceased woman on her quest, but if backstory players aren’t careful, everything gets filtered through that dense history and passed by without a second thought.
Grungus doesn’t have any large traumas or past incidents that hold them back from assessing the character choice presented before them. Thus, whatever decision they make is based on the principles that the player is being faced with rather than being filtered. Do you want Grungus to be more empathetic? Do you want them to dash immediately into this new quest, or are they going to support whatever decision is made by the party at large? Is Grungus more hopeful than the others because they’ve seen fewer horrors? Or are they cold-hearted and focused on the main story quest? Any type of character can face these questions, but frontstory characters have each and every decision they make impacted by how much character there is to build. A character that isn’t burdened by backstory is able to act dynamically, and make the most interesting decision in the moment. Grungus is a vehicle made to learn that lesson.
The Great Reflector
There are a great many uses for characters build solely from frontstory, but one of the most useful is the ability to turn pieces of the party’s identity back at the characters. Adventures take a toll on adventurers. We receive battle scars of the body as well as the mind. The longer that this continues on, the more that people begin to become accustomed to the process of scarring. Seeing a young warrior die doesn’t carry the weight that it once did, because it can’t. To journey toward one’s final destination, the normalcy of war is an inevitability.
Grungus, as someone who can join a campaign at any point in the narrative curve, is able to look at the other characters from the perspective of one who doesn’t carry that burden. They can be a vehicle to ask some big questions like, “How have we changed from where we began?” For the group of players who enjoy some deep philosophical thinking, this question can lead to some major character development.
Not all of the reflections that Grungus brings to the table have to be loaded with heavy undertones. For more mischievous players, you can use them as a way to poke at tense romances and friendly rivalries. A brand new teammate is unknowing of the “this is complicated” energy standing between your “two ladies just bein’ pals and swinging swords”. It’s a fair question to ask what that tension is about, especially at a very tense romantic moment between the two.
Not every Grungus has to be born yesterday. Being focused on frontstory doesn’t mean that a character can’t have defining ideals or experiences. Grungus can be brand new to adventures of this scale, or they can be a seasoned warrior of even higher caliber than the character they’re replacing. The core of frontstory is to let the major details of who they are and what moves their motivations be decided in the tense moments of the present to a much larger degree than in the past.
How to Build Frontstory
So we know what Grungus can do and how they can use their position in their social group to mix things up, but how does one make the beautiful, most amazing Grungus of legend? Well, it comes down to fundamental theming. Building as you go, which is the core of frontstory, doesn’t mean that you have no foundation from which to progress. The road you begin from can stand on a principle or idea.
Most players encounter a “Grungus opportunity” when their character dies, as mentioned earlier. If the campaign has been going on for some time and you’re choosing to add a brand new hero to the story, having an illustrious backstory may solve the question as to why you arrive, but it may not give you time to explore the potential value of said story in what little time the campaign has left. A new character can connect and blend into the campaign by reflecting off of the existing narrative themes.
What are those themes? If you aren’t sure, try talking to your DM or fellow players. In heroic campaigns, these themes can include empathy, the concept of good and evil, personal loss, fear of the future, or of the past coming back to haunt a world of peace. These elements of your hero’s journey are just as valuable as making an old friend, or as pragmatic as choosing to play a non-player character. The set of skills you use to bring your adventurer into the fold are focused on what the story is about, rather than what a character might have been before the story took place. The nuance of this awareness can bring about new ways to enjoy not only D&D, but roleplaying in general.
Why Would I Grungus When I Can Chungus
Or, why would I ever make a backstory-less character if I enjoy writing elaborate backstories? A fantastic question! Here’s another: how many times have you begun a campaign as someone who has yet to hold a sword, or who has never cast a spell? If that number is zero, then there’s an opportunity to experience something you never have before.
When you create a character with a dense backstory, you partially answer a great deal of questions on your own that you may wish to explore together with your party. How did I learn to fight? Who were my mentors or teachers? What difficulties arose that made me venture out into this grand world of fantasy? Sometimes a backstory is used as a way for players to set a checkmark next to these questions to signify that they’re answered rather than letting the campaign be the host for those answers.
In early editions of Dungeons and Dragons, non-player characters that don’t have stat blocks or character sheets are level 0. They don’t have skills to check or scores to modify. They are normal, everyday people. Your character was likely just like them, until one day they weren’t. You begin the journey that will one day become a story better than you could have written alone.
So if you’re from the land of backstories, try piloting a Grungus around in your next oneshot. And for those living for each moment to moment engagement, give backstory a try and see what it brings out of you as a player.
Whatever happens, new experiences help freshen up old skills. So take the leap and see what’s on the other side.
Have you ever created a character with no backstory, and whose personality developed exclusively through frontstory? Tell us about them in the comments!
DC is an independent game designer, and the creator and author of plot ARMOR, as well as a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast. You can find them assisting the tabletop roleplaying game community’s growth on Twitter @DungeonCommandr.
Good read!
I think this pretty much sums up how I created a character once upon a time, and it's been a blast playing him (a 12 year old fighter, but the DM's subclass of fighter which is actually pretty awesome).
Unfortunately, that campaign probably isn't going to continue, but I still love the idea of a 12 year old hauling a collection of weapons with him everywhere he goes because he thinks they're cool.
Not at all. The entire concept of Front Story is that the players are engaged and choosing how to act. Just because you don't know that both of my parents were brutally murdered by the Death Eaters, I'm the boy who lived, and I'm secretly the nephew of Asmodeus and a Jedi doesn't mean you can't relate to me. At 1st lvl we're nobodies, we're commoners, so run the game as you would and we adapt. That's what Front Loading is, us choosing in the moment who we are based upon your world. You tell us what is happening, we tell you how we respond, that is the very essence of D&D.
I liked this article, it was a good read. Ive had mixed results with non-Backstory characters, but some good results. One of my favorite one-shot Characters was a no backstory guy, and I had a blast playing a normal person that unfortunately got swept along with the party. Litterally just a blacksmith who made horse shoes for a living, and the only weapon he had the entire game was his forge equipment he had in his hands at the time.
I think it’s definitely worth experiencing at least once in a shorter campaign.
The only time I tried this with a longer campaign wasn’t as successful, just because the number of times were they could jump ship and stop risking their lives for money was a bit too abundant. Too many times of “what makes this worth possibly dying for?” that I couldn’t really justify beyond “cause it’s what you need to do to be part of the party.”
Still, recommend trying it at least once.
As a commoner were you a farmer, a carpenter? Did you have a big family? I mean you already started giving me a backstory by saying you're a nobody commoner. Are you from a big city? Have you ever travelled? Is this your first time away from home? Even at level one you have some proficiency. There is no level zero. What class are you? A fighter? Well then you're most certainly no longer just a commoner, yoy learned real martial skill somewhere. Did an adventurer shack up at your abode? Did your father serve in the army and pass down his knowledge?
Why does everyone assume backstory has all these bizarre connotations. As a dm, I just want some idea of where you come from to give both of us some perspective on what life experience your character is drawing from and possibly what motivates the character as a person.
Why did your character take up the life of adventure. What is it they are looking for? What would cause them to retire from adventure? Just give me as a dm SOMETHING. I don't want some being from limbo or even worse pandamonium with zero grounding that just reacts to shit on the whim of the player.
I get the idea is to improv yourself into having a character and allowing you to find your character by creating it as plot and interractions demand. Been there, done that. It can work out. But as a dm I like having something to go on, even if just a little bit.
So the article covers this, a Front Story with nothing behind it is as bad as a Back Story created in a vacuum. Why do you need "something to go on"? I say "I'm a carpenter", what does that give you to add to the story? Now we're fighting wood golems? One parent is dead, now you're free to make it a Disney adventure (because I qualify as a princess)? I have a brother...now we both know he'll be the villain, or a hostage? Back Story is all tropes, it's all done. It's a crutch, literally a crutch, "I get to be an ******* because of *THIS* element of my backstory".
Now, I'm another player in your party, your back story represents all of the stuff you did...by yourself, away from the party and game. Why does it matter to me? It's not "real" in the context in the game, it's all pretend. As a GM, I am solely interested in who you are right now and what you're doing in the game, not what fiction you wrote on your own and shoved in my face, saying "put this in your world". Been running for 40+ years and the best characters I've run have very thin backstories and are all about "the moment", the game we're in right now, not the 1st chapter of their backstory novel they wrote on their own.
Taking backstories to extremes does not make for viable discussion. A good backstory can fill one to three paragraphs, and most reasonable backstories can fit in any setting.
I can even use your minimal crap carpenter background where you gave me nothing else and add to the game.
I can point out details others who aren't carpenters might miss, I can offer solutions to problems that a carpenter might know. I can tailor some plots to deal with your profession, making your character's background relevant to the plot. I can introduce an old coworker from your days as a carpenter. I can even with carpenter and nothing else implement things into the game tailored to you and make your character stand out as a unique individual seperate from the group. I could have a plight of the carpenters plot where some carpenters are being treated unfairly or have gone missing and pull on your character's past as a hook to draw you in.
I look at the game as a mutual storytelling experience, and I enjoy having my pcs give me real tools to work with. I enjoy crafting and tailoring plots to the character and finding ways to make them stand out as individuals. To do that I need something to work with. Otherwise it's just random plot.
I'm in it for collaboration, not to just toss random plots and see what sticks. I want to tell a deep amd meaningful story, and is hard to do when a character comes into the game with no goals, nothing to lose, no dreams, and not a single thing they cherish, and no past to draw on.
Very well written! I look forward to gettin' my Grungus on!
Sometimes you just have to recognize how willing your DM is to implement your backstory into their plans. I've been part of two campaigns now with a DM on Roll20. He's a nice guy and the time is weird but works well for me as it's a weeknight and later in the evening. In any case, I've written backstories for a character in each campaign. Nothing big at all. They mostly explain where they get their talents from, via some personal connection.
The first character was a goblin rogue who was part of a traveling carnival. They were good at ripping people off and he would wander the crowds pick pocketing people. Well, they got caught red handed in one town and the ring leader, his father figure, took the fall and went to prison. The carnival was forced to disband and he had to leave as there was too many eyes on him.
Mostly all I expected was to hopefully run into the ring leader again for a reunion, or potentially the named individual who caught us to enact revenge. No such thing ever happened. The DM in fact kept forgetting my background story altogether and would insist I knew stuff about goblins I wouldn't know because I lived with them. The character never did because he was picked up as an infant by the ring leader to initially be a side show in the circus.
The current character of mine is a Great Old One Warlock kobold. His backstory is that he always wanted to be a hero, but kobolds are generally a bunch of cowards. He wishes for this so hard though, that he got. He just didn't know how or why. He was content to go on his adventures and save people and fight bad guys, shooting Eldritch blasts and casting other dark and terrifying things, not knowing that a Great Old One tricked him into a pact during a dream he couldn't really remember.
For him, I simply wanted there to be an intervention where the patron reveals himself. For the sweet, sweet internal conflict of this kind hearted little kobold boi. I got nothing. I tried to force the issue when my kobold got an opportunity to have any question answered truthfully. He asked where his powers came from. The DM ignored my backstory and made something new up, saying that there had been a pact made with something far back in my lineage for power, and it was manifesting.
Once this campaign finishes in around 5 months or so, we're starting another and I'm taking this approach. Getting nothing even when you're only expecting a little is a downer. I'm also planning to start my own campaign next month so hopefully my players won't encounter this problem.
I think the biggest problem is different people have different expectations. I think most players and DMs need to sit down and have a long honest talk about what they enjoy and expect from a game so they can all get on the same page. I think, quite often, since the hobby isn't that wide spread, that most people end up in groups of varying expectations, and since they know few others, and are friends with these people, tend to stay even though, not completely satisfied, in the same group. We tend to be timid and never really talk out our problems with games with each other.
I certainly agree that this is a good rule of thumb, except that even when everyone is on the same page, those expectations may still not be met. In my case, the backstory was a required piece for character creation. We discussed them at the start and discussed what we'd like to see from them. But in the end, it meant so little that in both instances the DM did not even remember what it was and just made new things up instead of referencing it or asking me in a sidebar.
This really is a minor annoyance in a bag of other minor annoyances. No DM is going to be my perfect DM <3 <3 <3. But he's a nice guy. He's dedicated, he's fair, he doesn't cancel, and he holds a game when I am able to actually play. Over all I enjoy my time.
Having read the article, I kind of feel this is a key part of the Frontstory, and all you really need to get it going as a DM, at least for a few sessions. Motivation is what creates the Frontstory, not the actual details about what was behind the character.
The way I did it for my last campaign (an Eberron campaign) basically ask each player the following basic questions:
1) In what way has your upbringing (country of birth and family) effected you?
2) In what way has the Last War effected you?
3) What have you been doing the last few years of peace?
4) Why would your character go on an adventure?
Short answers to those 4 questions was all the background I needed, some players did a lot more than that but others, including the current 'face' and most active character of the entire party, basically only decided the following for his Gnone Necromancer.
1) He became a Necromancer and in an accident lost his brother
2) His faith (Blood of Vol), got a really bad name, and he wants to show people that it is in general a good faith
3) He has been exiled from Karrnath because they believe he caused the accident that killed his brother
4) To gain the knowledge and power needed to bring his brother back to life, and to show the world the good side of the Blood of Vol and Necromancy
That was literally his background, Totally focused on what he is doing now with 2 key aspects of background: Dead brother, and an accident he may or may not have caused. That is all I needed and he is the most settled character of the group right now simply because he put all his effort into the now. When others were still trying to 'find their character' for 3 or 4 sessions, because he focused on the now and not the past, he was ready to play from minute one and that caused the whole group to be a bit centered around his character as the driving force.
As a seasoned DM (not just tabletop but large LARPs) I do encourage players to have the least backstory possible. Think two or three bullet points at most (D&D helps with this with how they provide example backgrounds, flaws, etc. even if the examples are not always the best, it gets the job done). Anyone who spends a lot of time writing their background better hope to have the storytelling chops required to motivate the DM and the other players to get entangled with their story, because most player's won't on their own.
In fact I think writing an elaborate backstory is a way to be lazy on itsown: rather than putting that energy into the game itself, they create a rigid structure that they can fall back to. They don't want to improvise, which is IMHO the point of the game, so they have a cheat sheet. And often the cheat sheet is wrong, because it doesn't fit with the story at hand, or the backgrounds of the other players. Worse, the more elaborate the backstory is, the more mad they get when the other players and DM fail to take it into consideration.
So, if you write an elaborate backstory, that's great as long as you are prepared to discard those parts of it that hinder or limit you during play (reject the notion of "my character wouldn't do this because of backstory element"), and adapt to the other players. If you cannot easily do that, save yourself some time and don't do it.
Well this is a fundamental truth and, in my honest opinion, the #1 reason games fail. Up front, everyone needs to establish their expectations, GM and players, or the game is going to crash and burn. For example, I'm high RP as both player and GM. When I run a game we may see 2-3 sessions in a row with absolutely no combat, depending upon what the players want. I get a combat monster in there and they're going to hate me and think my game sucks. I've had a player say "I murder the next NPC we see, it's been an hour since I've rolled initiative, this SUCKS!" There is no good or bad, right or wrong, but there are absolutely expectations and if they get mismatched, things go all wonky no matter how well anyone's backstory is :)
This was a great read my guy, I've tried both methods, and while I can't say I prefer one over the other in-game, writing a nice backstory is always a good time for me. Either way, I learned something interesting and I think I'll try frontstories a bit more now.
Huh, I kind of did this for my latest character without even realizing it. I mostly just came up with their stats, a basic personality, and just ran with it because I was dropping in to an in-progress campaign. Came up with a couple of backstory points for flavor later, mostly just based on what I'd rolled up and experienced that first session, then pretty much settled in to being the jovial, helpful, somewhat drunk forge cleric helping out a trio of stoic inquisitors.
That's more you creating a backstory for them to deal with though, which I think you can avoid by creating a unique empathetic npc the player can choose to empathise or not empathise with in the moment. Don't lane your players into a backstory if they don't have one create a new, in the moment, character defining experience that the whole group remembers for months after, which was the whole point of the article.
This. The things you create in the game that impact the players are *FAR* more important than whatever fiction they came up with before sitting down to the table.
Why do you guys argue like it’s one or the other only? Tabula rasa characters are lazy builds. No one suddenly appeared as an adult with skills and abilities. Something brought the character to this point. What the future holds for this character is what’s going to further shape him, her, or it. They both are required for a good character. Backstory may affect the character’s initial decisions, but all good characters are dynamic and will change over time.
This is exactly why I dislike this particular article. People are actually thinking there's two different ways when both are only half a character. There is a third option that combines aspects of both and it's far superior to either option by itself.
There's balance in all things. There's too much backstory or backstory that puts too much emphasis on the wrong things, or takes too many liberties with the dm's game world, or is absurd and has your character doing absurd things a character does not even begin to have the skills to accomplish. They might live entirely in the past and have left themselves so well defined the player is too invested in what they created to allow it room to grow.
At the other end is characters who are just stats, that exist to simply play out whatever whims the player feels like they can get away with. They have no real motivations or goals, they aren't people, they just do things and react to things. They have no investment in the world, no reason to care about what happens to it or anyone in it. They live entirely in the moment. They might have room to grow and eventually become people, but in the beginning they are flat and give the dm nothing to go on and there's no guarantee they'll ever make that leap and might forever stay a choatic unpredictable mess who's motivations stay forever shrouded in mystery.
Both extremes suck. I like a character with just enough backstory to be invested in and care about it, thier character and where they come from, as well as give me the DM some help coming up with rich meaningful plot. A proper background with goals and dreams tells me about your character and the kind of plot you're interested in. Give me nothing and I'm left guessing entirely and doing all the work. At the same time I want a character able to grow, not one who's backstory is so meaningful it's an obsession that your character cares about and nothing else.
Then again I run a more open game, where players live in a world and lot more of the plot depends on the players motivations and goals, with the occasional nudge now and then, or external plot when things get stale. Though I try to keep such grounded in things their characters would actually care about. I absolutely enjoy a game whether a combat occurs or the players have fun just roleplaying the whole night. I've had games that could be described as playing house with monsters, castles and magic.
If it's a module game, I guess a stat block that agrees to just blindly follow the plot is fine. I wouldn't know, I don't run modules, they've been boring in the past in the few I've played. Prefer open worlds and plots where a game can go in any direction.
I've never heard of frontstory but I love it! I love a good backstory, but I think it's important to get to know who my character is in relation to the other party members too. In between games, I write up little vignettes featuring my character, usually to try to make sense of what they would be thinking or feeling in reaction to a major cliffhanger. I think in so doing, I've started giving my character frontstory that makes me invested in the campaign on many levels. I think it's a super fun way to play D&D. Thanks for this really interesting article!