I am playing in several games right now, DM'ing another. My favourite char right how had this as a backstory: "He and his cousin sell his cousin's creations in a nearby city. They were robbed one night while they had a little too much to drink in the inn. They decided to track down the thieves." That's it. No big bad trauma. No BBEG in the past of this char. We are now 7th level, after starting at 1st, said char has yet to make it back home, though he dearly wishes to, and it has not affected the story the DM has wanted to tell one iota. Oh, and we never tracked down the thieves.
I never said their had to be any “big bad trauma” or a “BBE in their past.” Did I? Nosir. All I said was three sentences with a little detail about their home life, something significant that happened to them once, and the reason they went adventuring.
But look at that: You have given three sentences that include information about home life (cousin who creates stuff that they sell), a single significant event (they were robbed once while drunk), and the reason they went adventuring (to get their cousin’s stuff back). Does it matter that any of it never came up yet in the campaign? Absolutely not. All that matters to me is that you put enough thought into who that PC is as a Character that you know a little about their home life, you know one thing that happened to them before they set out, and you know what motivated them to set out in the first place. That’s it. That’s all I ask for. (The cousin’s name would be nice, but not necessary.)
That’s all I asked for, three little sentences. So why would you crusade against three sentences?
PS- I would have read the 4 pages. I would have not been pleased about it, but I’d have read it.
This might come as a shock to Dennis and his theories about a "generational divide", but those of us who played TTRPGs other than D&D back in Days of Yore were coming up with backstories long before Crit Role ever existed.
I mean, try rolling into a World of Darkness campaign with "I left home at 18 seeking fame and fortune" as the full extent of your character's pre-game history….
[Sic]
The idea that substantial backstories are just some millennial fad, like Tik Tok or hula hoops or social justice, sullying Dennis' precious game is absolutely hilarious to me.
My favorite PC of all time was my Bruja named “Broken Eddie” Jones that I started playing around 20 years ago.
In the late 18th century, a young mane named Edward Jones, a simple man who had just finished their apprenticeship as a cobbler was eager to finally be able to marry his sweetheart. Only, he was brutally slain before the wedding. A few evenings later his fiancé was grieving by his graveside as the sun went down. A ravening, bloodthirsty creature burst forth from the grave and slaked its thirst on her blood. When the uncontrollable hunger had finally abated and young Edward realized what he had done it broke him. Eddie spent most of the next 200 years running brothels just so he could burry his pain in the drug-saturated blood of the employees and customers.
That was the basic backstory, his adventure as a PC started when a fallen named Tony Martelli found and recruited him with the promise to bring Eddie’s fiancé back to him in NYNY in the late ‘90s. Eventually Eddie did find the ghost of his fiancé, and eventually was able to bring her back to full life. It almost broke him again when she asked him to turn her, but her desire to spend forever with him convinced him.
I once wrote a 4 page backstory to justify my char being able to MC into Hexblade. I am quite certain the DM got maybe 4 or 5 lines into it, and simply stopped reading. Not a single word of that backstory ever made it into that DM's game.
Doesn't matter. Most players don't write backstories for the DM, they write those for themselves. If the DM wants to do something with it in the campaign, great; if not, who cares? Giving your DM info doesn't need to be a story. You can do that in a couple of lines or with bullet points if you want, and that's all most DMs will ever ask for (in D&D anyway, that doesn't apply to all TTRPGs). But that doesn't mean players can't elaborate on that and turn it into a story simply because they like stories.
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And because a D&D story results from a negotiation among the players, it cannot be written beforehand -- before the negotiation happens. This is why a few people have said "nobody cares about your backstory." What this means is that, your backstory is often the only part of the "narrative" that was not created by an at-the-table negotiation. Therefore, although it can add flavor or motivation to your character, it cannot add story to the campaign, because the other players did not agree to it. It wasn't part of the negotiated story, and therefore is almost (but not quite) "non-canon."
This is... gah. I'm not sure I can find a polite way to say it, and the mods frown upon gifs, so just... gah.
Backstory is a tool like any other. It can 100 percent "add story to the campaign". I mean, you ramble on about a party being a 'heroic team with no heroes in it' (which... huh?) but then leave no room for one of the best ways for characters to be heroic -- by overcoming past failures or mistakes.
Beyond that, individual goals can become shared goals. A truly unified party, clicking on all cylinders, will absolutely rally around one member when something from their backstory comes to the fore, because they know the group would do the same for them if something from their past reared its ugly head.
Even the metaphor is flawed. If a D&D story "results from a negotiation among the players", then negotiations only work if each person at the table has a clear idea of their own needs, wants and limits. Negotiation implies give and take, compromise. Without backstories, characters have nothing to give and nothing to compromise on.
It comes down to this. There has been a generational shift in the game. Now, we have all these people who grew up being told "you are special", and who believe D&D is PLAYED how CR is PERFORMED. Well, those people who were told they are special now treat their chars as an extension of themselves, which means the char must be "special", and that means some novella describing even the char's parents' names, and of course, every char is driven by personal tragedy, and some huge enemy in their past and present.
I would take 10 people who don't care about their background but know how to be a good player in D&D, working well within the group, knowing the mechanics of the rules, working towards group objectives, over someone who thinks their char must somewhere along the line must be the prima donna of the group, who believes that their ability to theatrically act within the game trumps any lack of mechanical knowledge of the game.
Wow - The two are not exclusive. I can care about my backstory and be a good player in D&D. As a matter of fact, I do both. It helps me stay in character and react accordingly, and it gives the DM hooks if they are wanted/needed.
Again, why are you so adamant on this? If someone wants to write an epic backstory, let them... Does it hurt you if they do so?
There's nothing wrong with wanting to emulate CR or any other kind of entertainment in your home games.
This might come as a shock to Dennis and his theories about a "generational divide", but those of us who played TTRPGs other than D&D back in Days of Yore were coming up with backstories long before Crit Role ever existed.
I mean, try rolling into a World of Darkness campaign with "I left home at 18 seeking fame and fortune" as the full extent of your character's pre-game history. Try coming up with a character in Champions, or Palladium's TMNT, without some kind of origin story.
I had backstories for Rolemaster characters (where did he get those magical tattoos?) and GURPS Fantasy characters (why does he hate dwarves so much?). Not so much for BECMI or AD&D, but then, D&D in those days didn't give characters a background option either. Even then, I do recall coming up with something for some of my non-human AD&D characters to explain why they were doing what they did.
The idea that substantial backstories are just some millennial fad, like Tik Tok or hula hoops or social justice, sullying Dennis' precious game is absolutely hilarious to me.
I started playing in the late 80s and I had homemade character sheets that had you list all sorts of backstory, plus randomly rolled things like phobias, fears, commonplace skills ("you whistle well", or "cats seem to like you") long before there was anything online. I asked my players to fill this out as much as they wanted, and the other DM in our group did as well. It helped decide on what to run, how to modify it for the hooks and cool treasure.
Wow, I guess I was doing it wrong and not really having fun!
There's nothing wrong with wanting to emulate CR or any other kind of entertainment in your home games.
This might come as a shock to Dennis and his theories about a "generational divide", but those of us who played TTRPGs other than D&D back in Days of Yore were coming up with backstories long before Crit Role ever existed.
I mean, try rolling into a World of Darkness campaign with "I left home at 18 seeking fame and fortune" as the full extent of your character's pre-game history. Try coming up with a character in Champions, or Palladium's TMNT, without some kind of origin story.
I had backstories for Rolemaster characters (where did he get those magical tattoos?) and GURPS Fantasy characters (why does he hate dwarves so much?). Not so much for BECMI or AD&D, but then, D&D in those days didn't give characters a background option either. Even then, I do recall coming up with something for some of my non-human AD&D characters to explain why they were doing what they did.
The idea that substantial backstories are just some millennial fad, like Tik Tok or hula hoops or social justice, sullying Dennis' precious game is absolutely hilarious to me.
I started playing in the late 80s and I had homemade character sheets that had you list all sorts of backstory, plus randomly rolled things like phobias, fears, commonplace skills ("you whistle well", or "cats seem to like you") long before there was anything online. I asked my players to fill this out as much as they wanted, and the other DM in our group did as well. It helped decide on what to run, how to modify it for the hooks and cool treasure.
Wow, I guess I was doing it wrong and not really having fun!
it’s probably a long shot, but you don’t happen to have one of those character sheets that you could scan and share do you?
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to emulate CR or any other kind of entertainment in your home games.
This might come as a shock to Dennis and his theories about a "generational divide", but those of us who played TTRPGs other than D&D back in Days of Yore were coming up with backstories long before Crit Role ever existed.
I mean, try rolling into a World of Darkness campaign with "I left home at 18 seeking fame and fortune" as the full extent of your character's pre-game history. Try coming up with a character in Champions, or Palladium's TMNT, without some kind of origin story.
I had backstories for Rolemaster characters (where did he get those magical tattoos?) and GURPS Fantasy characters (why does he hate dwarves so much?). Not so much for BECMI or AD&D, but then, D&D in those days didn't give characters a background option either. Even then, I do recall coming up with something for some of my non-human AD&D characters to explain why they were doing what they did.
The idea that substantial backstories are just some millennial fad, like Tik Tok or hula hoops or social justice, sullying Dennis' precious game is absolutely hilarious to me.
I started playing in the late 80s and I had homemade character sheets that had you list all sorts of backstory, plus randomly rolled things like phobias, fears, commonplace skills ("you whistle well", or "cats seem to like you") long before there was anything online. I asked my players to fill this out as much as they wanted, and the other DM in our group did as well. It helped decide on what to run, how to modify it for the hooks and cool treasure.
Wow, I guess I was doing it wrong and not really having fun!
it’s probably a long shot, but you don’t happen to have one of those character sheets that you could scan and share do you?
Not the person you were asking, but if that is the sort of thing you are looking for, I took some inspiration from a book I was reading and made a table for character details. This would let me think up and fill out some or all of the subjects with one word or short sentence answers to get an idea of who a character is and what they might think of certain things. The subjects all vary from ideologies and views on nature, religions, etc. to (mostly) pointless things like the character's birthday or if they are left or right handed.
Granted, unlike Merigold none of the entries are randomly rolled for from tables. Its just a way to brainstorm and organize small details on characters. Hope it helps
Edit: Copied and pasted my table from another document, so it came out all wonky. Sorry about that. I hope it still gets the idea across though.
There's no such thing as a boring backstory or character. Characters can be played in a way that makes them boring, by being shallow, uninvolved, or uninteresting (though often those are the "cringe" "edgelord" characters that you are actively trying to avoid). If your group only wants to interact with cringe edgelord characters, it's a player trait, not a character one. I find that a character who has a "normal" life can often be interesting in a way that flashy characters aren't. An elven clan crafter is certainly not edgy, but there's a story to be told about how an elf came to live and work with dwarves, who begrudgingly came to accept their differences, that has depth and nuance and can be interesting. It's not necessarily exciting, but you can develop that character very richly there- they have empathy for others who are not like them, they're adventurous and have traveled far to get where they are now, they have connections and relationships outside the party that can be explored- without needing to be cringy or edgy.
Unfortunately I don't. All of my character sheets got lost in a move. But I had sheets for every possible (at the time) character class. Playing a ranger-druid? Here is a sheet with specifics for that, including your spells, skills, etc.
You know why the "old way" hung around so long? Because it worked, and still works. The amount of decent, let alone good, novelists and actors has not changed per capita since, well forever. The talent needed to actually entertain a group of D&D players by an individual player, or actually an individual player and the DM, with some story that the player concocted has also not changed in the last 5, 10, or 40 years. It is still incredibly rare, next to zero.
There are thousands of pages written supporting the complexity of the structure of the game. There are exceedingly few on "how to write backstories like Frank Herbert or Tolkien" and "how to act like Olivier and McKellen as D&D char". And the reason for that is obvious.
I love how you state that the "old way" works and then complain when itturns out that it obviously doesn't which is why so many people have changed it up. I also think it's kind of hilarious that your only argument is basically "well I have never seen anything else done well so therefor nothing else can work" when you get a bunch of people saying that "yes, yes it does work, look at all these examples". The best thing about your rants is this little gem though:
"My favourite char right how had this as a backstory: "He and his cousin sell his cousin's creations in a nearby city. They were robbed one night while they had a little too much to drink in the inn. They decided to track down the thieves." That's it. No big bad trauma."
The reason for that character to go on adventures is literally the trauma of being robbed. Sure, it's not as big a trauma as, say forced marriage or a dead family (or both) but if your "favourite" backstory of all the characters of all the games you are in is literally "trauma happened, need to fix that" then maybe you should take a moment to think things through?
In any case, you are completely off topic with your rants.
Seems to be a lot of back and forward about the "Right" and "Wrong" way to do things, and frankly that's not how backstories work.
You could, if you were inclined, write a bigraphic of the entire life of an apple farmer, from their birth to the day they were hit on the head by an overly large apple and started hearing whispers from their soon-to-be patron Is'aac N'w'ton. It could be a feature length novel, entirely about apple farming, and it would be incredibly boring, but it would not be Wrong.
Rather than declaring one way right and other ways wrong, focus on the consequences and allow people to draw their own conclusions from them.
If you write many pages of backstory, people will not be inclined to read through it, so it may not end up being expanded on in the game.
If you write a lot of backstory before the game, don't be upset if other players don't actually care too much about it, as they weren't involved in making it.
If you write a load of story about your character being the greatest swordsman and a hero of the land, destined by a prophecy to rid the world of evil, this will not match your level 1 fighter with 10hp and a high chance of entering an early grave.
If your character has no motivation for going adventuring in their backstory, it will be difficult for the DM to make plot hooks which will attract your character.
If your character has no backstory (EG "I forgot") then it will be difficult for you to pin down their character for roleplay.
If your character has enemies or relatives left behind in their backstory, they are fair game for the DM to use and abuse.
If your character "works alone" or is a Lone Wolf, who doesn't trust anyone and all that edgy stuff, don't expect them to work well with the party, making the game more strained and with less comraderie. Friendly characters, even if ruthless to enemies, integrate better into games than surly mistrustful types.
If you build your character around an item (EG a magic sword gifted to you by a dying hero, or an amulet which whispers to you of adventure) get it cleared with the DM before you even start writing about it, or accept that it will be a mundane item at the start which, if the DM allows it, may manifest powers later.
If you don't work with the DM when writing a backstory, it can make it harder for them to integrate into the world. If you say your apple farm was destroyed by bandits, the DM may request that be changed to marauding gnomes, as they are prominent in the game ahead, and it will make the plothooks easier.
If you are not prepared to change or adjust your backstory to fit the game, you are better suited to writing novels than preparing a character for adventure.
If you put big adventures in a characters past, it will make the adventures ahead of them feel less, so it can improve things to keep your backstory mild - sya "the gnomes destroyed the apple farm whilst you were away", rather than "you fought off all the gnomes single handedly with nothing but a sharpened stick but the farm was still burnt down". Keep old achievements low!
If you keep your backstory short and sweet, with just 2 things - why are you here, and why can you do what you do - then it will make things simple for you, but may leave a lack of explorable avenues for the DM.
If everything is wrapped up behind you, there will be no plothooks to help your personal storyline. Saying "a bandit band of awakened chickens killed my family, but I hunted them down and killed them ,then joined an adventuring party" leaves less open than "A bandit band of awakened chickens killed my family, so I joined an adventuring party to improve my skills so I would never be helpless again" leaves it open to revisit by the DM, and gives you similar motivations.
If you make your backstory such that your motivations are not in line with the adventures, then it can cause issues for the party. Better to make an adventurer who wants adventure than a pacifist who wants to find an catalogue every type of bird in the world. Birdman isn't going to go into a dungeon, or be worried about answering a summons from a king.
1) No other players care about the backstory of another player's char, no matter how much you say otherwise.
2) ... the vast vast majority of people simply do not have the talent to write a good story, no matter what they think of themselves.
3) So when a DM demands a story from the players, ...
4) ... or when a player forces such a thing on the DM, both of those actions are completely unreasonable.
1) Doesn't matter. Most any player who writes backstories does so for themselves, not anyone else.
2) Anybody can learn to write and learn to write better. It takes practice though, like any other craft. Telling people they shouldn't write is asinine.
3) No DM asks for more than something short and to the point.
4) No player can force a DM to read anything. What's unreasonable is arguing as if this is a thing, when it's not.
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You know why the "old way" hung around so long? Because it worked, and still works. The amount of decent, let alone good, novelists and actors has not changed per capita since, well forever. The talent needed to actually entertain a group of D&D players by an individual player, or actually an individual player and the DM, with some story that the player concocted has also not changed in the last 5, 10, or 40 years. It is still incredibly rare, next to zero.
There are thousands of pages written supporting the complexity of the structure of the game. There are exceedingly few on "how to write backstories like Frank Herbert or Tolkien" and "how to act like Olivier and McKellen as D&D char". And the reason for that is obvious.
I love how you state that the "old way" works and then complain when itturns out that it obviously doesn't which is why so many people have changed it up. I also think it's kind of hilarious that your only argument is basically "well I have never seen anything else done well so therefor nothing else can work" when you get a bunch of people saying that "yes, yes it does work, look at all these examples". The best thing about your rants is this little gem though:
"My favourite char right how had this as a backstory: "He and his cousin sell his cousin's creations in a nearby city. They were robbed one night while they had a little too much to drink in the inn. They decided to track down the thieves." That's it. No big bad trauma."
The reason for that character to go on adventures is literally the trauma of being robbed. Sure, it's not as big a trauma as, say forced marriage or a dead family (or both) but if your "favourite" backstory of all the characters of all the games you are in is literally "trauma happened, need to fix that" then maybe you should take a moment to think things through?
In any case, you are completely off topic with your rants.
Hey, if you have some need as an unfulfilled novelist, write some long involved backstory that nobody will ever read or care about, by all means. No other players care about the backstory of another player's char, no matter how much you say otherwise. And if you hand your DM some monster document describing the motivations and risks your char faces, well, said DM will smile wanly, then more than likely ditch the whole thing. You may also look up the term "executive summary".
But you want to get back on point with the OP's about how to make backstories less boring? Easy: Don't write one, or keep it to less than 3 lines. Like I said, the vast vast majority of people simply do not have the talent to write a good story, no matter what they think of themselves. That is simple reality. You can say otherwise, but the amount of manuscripts that are are actually published each year, compared to the amount created, that says it all. So when a DM demands a story from the players, or when a player forces such a thing on the DM, both of those actions are completely unreasonable.
I like how you avoid any attempts at rqplying to criticism and instead mirror other people's replies and try to pass them off as your own.
Getting a story from the players is what roleplaying games is all about, btw. Creating a story with your friends. Ever tried it?
1) No other players care about the backstory of another player's char, no matter how much you say otherwise.
2) ... the vast vast majority of people simply do not have the talent to write a good story, no matter what they think of themselves.
3) So when a DM demands a story from the players, ...
4) ... or when a player forces such a thing on the DM, both of those actions are completely unreasonable.
1) Doesn't matter. Most any player who writes backstories does so for themselves, not anyone else.
2) Anybody can learn to write and learn to write better. It takes practice though, like any other craft. Telling people they shouldn't write is asinine.
3) No DM asks for more than something short and to the point.
4) No player can force a DM to read anything. What's unreasonable is arguing as if this is a thing, when it's not.
Points 1 and 4 support my comments about no backstory, or one of only a couple lines, being all that is needed. Point 3 is simply a matter of degree. My "short and to the point" is likely different than your idea of "short and to the point". As I said, if writing some long backstory fills some a need for some unfulfilled novelist or short story writer, hey, go for it. Just don't expect anyone else to read it.
I expect backstories to be written as Hemingway would. Most people want to write them as Martin would.
Who cares about doing just what's needed? Players can have some fun with a story about their character that otherwise has no impact on the campaign whatsoever if they want. It's fine. Nobody's worse off because someone's having a bit of fun on their own. And who said anything about expectations with regards to anyone else? You bring that up as if it's pertinent. It's not, because (for the umptieth time) players write backstories for themselves. Which coincidentally means nobody gives a fig about how you expect them to be written. They're not for you.
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Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
DM: "Wait, what happened to your character's mother?"
Hemingway: "She got eaten by an owlbear."
DM: "That's not in your backstory."
Hemingway: "Yes it is. Right here, the line about him wearing black as the sun set behind the steeple of the church."
DM: "He's a rogue, they all wear black."
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Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
DM: "Wait, what happened to your character's mother?"
Hemingway: "She got eaten by an owlbear."
DM: "That's not in your backstory."
Hemingway: "Yes it is. Right here, the line about him wearing black as the sun set behind the steeple of the church."
DM: "He's a rogue, they all wear black."
Hemingway: "And now you know why. Woe is me, hand me the bottle."
Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
DM: "Wait, what happened to your character's mother?"
Hemingway: "She got eaten by an owlbear."
DM: "That's not in your backstory."
Hemingway: "Yes it is. Right here, the line about him wearing black as the sun set behind the steeple of the church."
DM: "He's a rogue, they all wear black."
Hemingway: "And now you know why. Woe is me, hand me the bottle."
Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
And that, in a nutshell, encapsulates the typical "new" D&D player. "I don't want to think, make it easy for me."
You keep setting up your strawman in different parts of the thread, but it remains a strawman all the same. Just gotta take any opportunity you can get to say "darn those young folk" dontcha?
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Seems to be a lot of back and forward about the "Right" and "Wrong" way to do things, and frankly that's not how backstories work.
You could, if you were inclined, write a bigraphic of the entire life of an apple farmer, from their birth to the day they were hit on the head by an overly large apple and started hearing whispers from their soon-to-be patron Is'aac N'w'ton. It could be a feature length novel, entirely about apple farming, and it would be incredibly boring, but it would not be Wrong.
Rather than declaring one way right and other ways wrong, focus on the consequences and allow people to draw their own conclusions from them.
If you write many pages of backstory, people will not be inclined to read through it, so it may not end up being expanded on in the game.
If you write a lot of backstory before the game, don't be upset if other players don't actually care too much about it, as they weren't involved in making it.
If you write a load of story about your character being the greatest swordsman and a hero of the land, destined by a prophecy to rid the world of evil, this will not match your level 1 fighter with 10hp and a high chance of entering an early grave.
If your character has no motivation for going adventuring in their backstory, it will be difficult for the DM to make plot hooks which will attract your character.
If your character has no backstory (EG "I forgot") then it will be difficult for you to pin down their character for roleplay.
If your character has enemies or relatives left behind in their backstory, they are fair game for the DM to use and abuse.
If your character "works alone" or is a Lone Wolf, who doesn't trust anyone and all that edgy stuff, don't expect them to work well with the party, making the game more strained and with less comraderie. Friendly characters, even if ruthless to enemies, integrate better into games than surly mistrustful types.
If you build your character around an item (EG a magic sword gifted to you by a dying hero, or an amulet which whispers to you of adventure) get it cleared with the DM before you even start writing about it, or accept that it will be a mundane item at the start which, if the DM allows it, may manifest powers later.
If you don't work with the DM when writing a backstory, it can make it harder for them to integrate into the world. If you say your apple farm was destroyed by bandits, the DM may request that be changed to marauding gnomes, as they are prominent in the game ahead, and it will make the plothooks easier.
If you are not prepared to change or adjust your backstory to fit the game, you are better suited to writing novels than preparing a character for adventure.
If you put big adventures in a characters past, it will make the adventures ahead of them feel less, so it can improve things to keep your backstory mild - sya "the gnomes destroyed the apple farm whilst you were away", rather than "you fought off all the gnomes single handedly with nothing but a sharpened stick but the farm was still burnt down". Keep old achievements low!
If you keep your backstory short and sweet, with just 2 things - why are you here, and why can you do what you do - then it will make things simple for you, but may leave a lack of explorable avenues for the DM.
If everything is wrapped up behind you, there will be no plothooks to help your personal storyline. Saying "a bandit band of awakened chickens killed my family, but I hunted them down and killed them ,then joined an adventuring party" leaves less open than "A bandit band of awakened chickens killed my family, so I joined an adventuring party to improve my skills so I would never be helpless again" leaves it open to revisit by the DM, and gives you similar motivations.
If you make your backstory such that your motivations are not in line with the adventures, then it can cause issues for the party. Better to make an adventurer who wants adventure than a pacifist who wants to find an catalogue every type of bird in the world. Birdman isn't going to go into a dungeon, or be worried about answering a summons from a king.
Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
And that, in a nutshell, encapsulates the typical "new" D&D player. "I don't want to think, make it easy for me."
You keep setting up your strawman in different parts of the thread, but it remains a strawman all the same. Just gotta take any opportunity you can get to say "darn those young folk" dontcha?
LOL...I am only using the material supplied.
I mean, Ernest Hemingway = "millennial" is a weird take, but whatever floats your boat I guess
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I never said their had to be any “big bad trauma” or a “BBE in their past.” Did I? Nosir. All I said was three sentences with a little detail about their home life, something significant that happened to them once, and the reason they went adventuring.
But look at that: You have given three sentences that include information about home life (cousin who creates stuff that they sell), a single significant event (they were robbed once while drunk), and the reason they went adventuring (to get their cousin’s stuff back). Does it matter that any of it never came up yet in the campaign? Absolutely not. All that matters to me is that you put enough thought into who that PC is as a Character that you know a little about their home life, you know one thing that happened to them before they set out, and you know what motivated them to set out in the first place. That’s it. That’s all I ask for. (The cousin’s name would be nice, but not necessary.)
That’s all I asked for, three little sentences. So why would you crusade against three sentences?
PS- I would have read the 4 pages. I would have not been pleased about it, but I’d have read it.
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My favorite PC of all time was my Bruja named “Broken Eddie” Jones that I started playing around 20 years ago.
In the late 18th century, a young mane named Edward Jones, a simple man who had just finished their apprenticeship as a cobbler was eager to finally be able to marry his sweetheart. Only, he was brutally slain before the wedding. A few evenings later his fiancé was grieving by his graveside as the sun went down. A ravening, bloodthirsty creature burst forth from the grave and slaked its thirst on her blood. When the uncontrollable hunger had finally abated and young Edward realized what he had done it broke him. Eddie spent most of the next 200 years running brothels just so he could burry his pain in the drug-saturated blood of the employees and customers.
That was the basic backstory, his adventure as a PC started when a fallen named Tony Martelli found and recruited him with the promise to bring Eddie’s fiancé back to him in NYNY in the late ‘90s. Eventually Eddie did find the ghost of his fiancé, and eventually was able to bring her back to full life. It almost broke him again when she asked him to turn her, but her desire to spend forever with him convinced him.
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Doesn't matter. Most players don't write backstories for the DM, they write those for themselves. If the DM wants to do something with it in the campaign, great; if not, who cares? Giving your DM info doesn't need to be a story. You can do that in a couple of lines or with bullet points if you want, and that's all most DMs will ever ask for (in D&D anyway, that doesn't apply to all TTRPGs). But that doesn't mean players can't elaborate on that and turn it into a story simply because they like stories.
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Wow - The two are not exclusive. I can care about my backstory and be a good player in D&D. As a matter of fact, I do both. It helps me stay in character and react accordingly, and it gives the DM hooks if they are wanted/needed.
Again, why are you so adamant on this? If someone wants to write an epic backstory, let them... Does it hurt you if they do so?
I started playing in the late 80s and I had homemade character sheets that had you list all sorts of backstory, plus randomly rolled things like phobias, fears, commonplace skills ("you whistle well", or "cats seem to like you") long before there was anything online. I asked my players to fill this out as much as they wanted, and the other DM in our group did as well. It helped decide on what to run, how to modify it for the hooks and cool treasure.
Wow, I guess I was doing it wrong and not really having fun!
it’s probably a long shot, but you don’t happen to have one of those character sheets that you could scan and share do you?
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Not the person you were asking, but if that is the sort of thing you are looking for, I took some inspiration from a book I was reading and made a table for character details. This would let me think up and fill out some or all of the subjects with one word or short sentence answers to get an idea of who a character is and what they might think of certain things. The subjects all vary from ideologies and views on nature, religions, etc. to (mostly) pointless things like the character's birthday or if they are left or right handed.
Granted, unlike Merigold none of the entries are randomly rolled for from tables. Its just a way to brainstorm and organize small details on characters. Hope it helps
Edit: Copied and pasted my table from another document, so it came out all wonky. Sorry about that. I hope it still gets the idea across though.
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There's no such thing as a boring backstory or character. Characters can be played in a way that makes them boring, by being shallow, uninvolved, or uninteresting (though often those are the "cringe" "edgelord" characters that you are actively trying to avoid). If your group only wants to interact with cringe edgelord characters, it's a player trait, not a character one. I find that a character who has a "normal" life can often be interesting in a way that flashy characters aren't. An elven clan crafter is certainly not edgy, but there's a story to be told about how an elf came to live and work with dwarves, who begrudgingly came to accept their differences, that has depth and nuance and can be interesting. It's not necessarily exciting, but you can develop that character very richly there- they have empathy for others who are not like them, they're adventurous and have traveled far to get where they are now, they have connections and relationships outside the party that can be explored- without needing to be cringy or edgy.
Unfortunately I don't. All of my character sheets got lost in a move. But I had sheets for every possible (at the time) character class. Playing a ranger-druid? Here is a sheet with specifics for that, including your spells, skills, etc.
I love how you state that the "old way" works and then complain when itturns out that it obviously doesn't which is why so many people have changed it up. I also think it's kind of hilarious that your only argument is basically "well I have never seen anything else done well so therefor nothing else can work" when you get a bunch of people saying that "yes, yes it does work, look at all these examples". The best thing about your rants is this little gem though:
The reason for that character to go on adventures is literally the trauma of being robbed. Sure, it's not as big a trauma as, say forced marriage or a dead family (or both) but if your "favourite" backstory of all the characters of all the games you are in is literally "trauma happened, need to fix that" then maybe you should take a moment to think things through?
In any case, you are completely off topic with your rants.
Seems to be a lot of back and forward about the "Right" and "Wrong" way to do things, and frankly that's not how backstories work.
You could, if you were inclined, write a bigraphic of the entire life of an apple farmer, from their birth to the day they were hit on the head by an overly large apple and started hearing whispers from their soon-to-be patron Is'aac N'w'ton. It could be a feature length novel, entirely about apple farming, and it would be incredibly boring, but it would not be Wrong.
Rather than declaring one way right and other ways wrong, focus on the consequences and allow people to draw their own conclusions from them.
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1) Doesn't matter. Most any player who writes backstories does so for themselves, not anyone else.
2) Anybody can learn to write and learn to write better. It takes practice though, like any other craft. Telling people they shouldn't write is asinine.
3) No DM asks for more than something short and to the point.
4) No player can force a DM to read anything. What's unreasonable is arguing as if this is a thing, when it's not.
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I like how you avoid any attempts at rqplying to criticism and instead mirror other people's replies and try to pass them off as your own.
Getting a story from the players is what roleplaying games is all about, btw. Creating a story with your friends. Ever tried it?
Who cares about doing just what's needed? Players can have some fun with a story about their character that otherwise has no impact on the campaign whatsoever if they want. It's fine. Nobody's worse off because someone's having a bit of fun on their own. And who said anything about expectations with regards to anyone else? You bring that up as if it's pertinent. It's not, because (for the umptieth time) players write backstories for themselves. Which coincidentally means nobody gives a fig about how you expect them to be written. They're not for you.
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Hemingway would've written terrible character backstories. His stories are all connect-the-dots puzzles -- an image here, a scrap of dialogue there -- and forced the reader to do all the work, rather than spelling things out clearly.
DM: "Wait, what happened to your character's mother?"
Hemingway: "She got eaten by an owlbear."
DM: "That's not in your backstory."
Hemingway: "Yes it is. Right here, the line about him wearing black as the sun set behind the steeple of the church."
DM: "He's a rogue, they all wear black."
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Hemingway: "And now you know why. Woe is me, hand me the bottle."
Better lock up the absinthe.
You keep setting up your strawman in different parts of the thread, but it remains a strawman all the same. Just gotta take any opportunity you can get to say "darn those young folk" dontcha?
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100% agree.
I mean, Ernest Hemingway = "millennial" is a weird take, but whatever floats your boat I guess
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