No one likes being railroaded and/or having no say in the world they exist in. But as a DM I always hate having players who decided to have some "epic" multi page backstory that I now 'have' to fit within my world. Now i'm having a bit of difficulty finding a good balance between the two. Like clearly i don't want to have to write in a "World War" with a (renowned) hero who did X/Y/ and Z (all of which took place 10-30 years ago). Or have my players 'decide" for me that City X is the capital of kingdom Y in the land of Z (none of which existed, before the player brought up their backstory) But i also don't want to have to create all aspects of Fantasy England, from Big Ben to the pebbles the players can skip across (name)'s pond.
So when building your world and dealing with you players, how much freedom do you give them? Can you think of any examples where your players brought something to the table that really helped make your world feel more "real"?
I want to be clear this is more about the players creating people/places/ events that already exist/existed (and you have to figure out how to work them into your story) and less about the players taking actions during the story and how those actions effect the world moving forward.
Epic backstories tend to skip past the part where the new level 1 adventurer has little to no combat prowess or experience in encountering the different powerful denizens of the world. "Epic" is reserved for adventures well above backstory level or NPCs. I might suggest tempering your players' expectation with some more reasonable input. That is, of course, unless you are starting your PCs off at say level 15-18. That might explain the world renown and the fact that your "new" PC is aged by 10-30 years in game. Otherwise, that player just wrote the first NPC to their own homebrew campaign.
DMs don't *have* to accept a PC backstory in whole, or in part. A DM might work with what the player has given them, and change the pertinent bits to fit the campaign setting. A DM could assist and guide the player to help them fit their character idea into the game world. At this point the player has the requirement to accept or reject the opportunity to play that game with the PC as amended or provide a different PC backstory. DM has final say in what is, or is not in the game world. Period. Full Stop.
Every time my players engage with the game world it makes it feel more real. They are literally building the world with their actions or inaction.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I have a player who ran a Warlock whose backstory involved questing to destroy 13 cursed artifacts. I did not think too much of it as I was just getting back into DMing so I was more focused on the rules than the character development. Throughout the year the character played correctly about his drive to move on with his quest the adventures just did not create the opportunity to have that story. It was by then I realized that as the character becomes more 'in-game angry' and looking at the adventure I wanted to tell that backstory just did not line up. His backstory was more in line with an Urban game which in the game I was running was this big sprawling adventure with various locations that was not always a city. To fit the player backstory I would have to create special games tailored to the Warlock backstory and that would force the rest of the party along. One year later, a discussion out-of-game where the player realized that his backstory is not going to fit in with the game I was running. Instead of adjusting his backstory-- and there were ideas-- he decided to create a new character that would be more of a fit for the game.
I used backstory as a lite flavor to the world around them if it is a special location-- like the Wizard is a member of Blackstaff Tower in Waterdeep which I changed to an Academy-- to leverage resources and interact with the instructors. Other times if the players do nothing in a pretty dire situation I'll develop the consequences around what their inaction had caused to a city. I've created a whole side quest around because the party decided to 'wait things out' then jump into the fray which turned out to improve my storyline immensely than what I had originally planned.
In general, I'll let characters help define the world around them but mostly by their actions, or in some cases their inactions.
Part of session zero for me is world creation. The players have a lot of input on building the world, not as part of their backstory, just as part of building the world.
I have a broad idea of my world but I create much of it as I progress in line with my players ideas and backstories, how the adventure progresses and what they are enjoying about it, really the only bit of works that needs to be detailed is the bit the players are looking at right now. Everything else can be sketched out and broadly thought through but I try and avoid nailing anything down until the players absolutely need to know it and generally in the moment I will tweak and make adjustments based on inspiration in that moment.
One of my players' choice to play a Lurker in the Deep warlock determined my BBEG and the cosmology of my world (the importance of a watery abyss).
Another player created his own paladin subclass and an associated cult. I already had plans for a cult in the plot, so I just made some adjustments to fit the theme he defined.
In your case, it is entirely reasonable that your world should have a kingdom and a capital city, and a war that occurred sometime in its history. You can either ask the player to modify their backstory to use similar elements from your world, or you can incorporate their ideas into your worldbuilding.
As a general rule, I'll create the major events, places, and landforms. The players can create smaller events, places, and landforms. In the portion of the world that I have been running campaigns in, I have the major kingdoms and city-states already mapped in, but, there is rooms for numerous towns and villages that I have done nothing with as of yet.
I also have the major conflicts described, but, there is ample room for smaller conflicts. One character had as their backstory, a battle between kobolds and the town he grew up in. That creation fit in well with the world I'd already built up. But, if someone tried to incorporate a previously unknown war between two of the kingdoms, that would not be acceptable. I have some political machinations that can play a role in future plots (depending on the actions of the PCs). Having a major war could impact those plot lines.
One of the major geographical features (and, possible plot lines) in my world is a large, evil forest. In one campaign, a player wanted to have his character come from a village in the evil forest. Currently, legend says very few people who enter the forest return and the few who do, are insane. Having a village in that forest would contradict that legend. Together, the pc and I came up with another village that we could fit into his backstory and what I'd created for my world.
For Zhule (in the original post), maybe there was a small conflict between a town and a goblin village, which the townees view as a world war (because their entire world revolves around their town). But, for most of the world, they are unaware of that war ever happening. Make that suggestion to your PC, and, maybe he can come up with a backstory that is more consistent with what you've already created, but, still give him some agency in building the world.
I usually have a framework of my world anchored by the map.
By framework I mean, all states, villages, cities... etc, with major cultural references. (E.g. one of the states is a Theocracy named X, and its main political views and diplomatic relations are Y). I, also, lay down the major history of the land - wars, major shifts on political landscape and the major organizations.
I give freedom for players to build anything on any of the cities that are not the capitals (if they want X village to be a fishing village inhabited by bullywugs, that's fine), any events that are not world changing (But might have deeper impacts on a local level) and, also, they can build minor organizations in or out of the ones already existent (e.g one player created a training spot and a elite force in my main church out with his backstory).
And I always listen to ideas of players - even about things that usually don't change, but I think sometimes a fresh perspective can complement mine.
If the ideas are wanky, you can simply say no and move on, anyway.
So when building your world and dealing with you players, how much freedom do you give them? Can you think of any examples where your players brought something to the table that really helped make your world feel more "real"?
Of my current five-player party, all five of them have elements to the character they wanted to play that forced me to add something, and in most cases a significant something, to the world -- the ranger has a background that makes her a member of a semi-secret organization that didn't exist before she started talking about her character, the paladin has a homebrew oath that also makes her a member of another brand-new, more official organization, and the warlock has a homebrew patron that ties to the world's prehistory in ways she hasn't really explored yet. The sorcerer also has a homebrew subclass that's a family thing, and if it comes up she might discover that some of her ancestors did some adventuring too. Even the fifth, a swashbuckler rogue pirate, came up with a list of ships she'd served on previously which has already come in handy, and I whipped up a Brief History of Pirating so she would know which waterways and cities and such she was likely to have the most experience with, which informed language choices etc. This was essentially a brand-new world though and fairly tabula rasa, and I was encouraging them in those directions to help fill it out.
I have no problem adding stuff to accommodate a character's story, but it's a back and forth process. If a player says "I want to be from this kind of place", I'll add that kind of place in or re-tool some existing place that until then was probably just a name on the map, and let them know, "OK then, being from here would make the most sense, or maybe here if you wanted to put this slant on it." They give me the broad strokes, I supply some details based on what I've already come up with, and then they can round it out with NPCs, local politics, whatever.
If they instead came to me with something fully formed, like "I am from X in the land of Y and here's a thousand years of history for that kingdom", I'd suggest maybe they might want to save all that for their own game rather than trying to shoehorn it into mine.
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)
One of the struggles for a DM when it comes to just interaction with the players during character creation is coming to some sort of conclusion about what it means to write a back story and what purpose that back story has in the adventure, setting and campaign. I don't think most DM's actually define for their players what is expected to be in a character back story's, nor do DM's typically place any limits because of the general acceptance that it is a sort of game culture political correct thing to do (aka, don't tell players what kind of character they can have). I mostly agree with that, but there is one caveat.
To me a back story is primarily a guide for the player to understand who their character is so that they know how they will role-play that character.Back stories are not written for the GM and they are not an opportunity to invent things your character has done in the past. You're a 1st level character, the default requirement for a 1st level character is that you have not accomplished anything worthy of note. Past experiences described in background should only be created to try to encapsulate who a character is, or perhaps more specifically to define why they as as they are. It is not there to inject story into the campaign and attempt to force the DM to somehow tie aspects of this previous life before the D&D campaign into the story. This I find to be one of the most common mistakes DM make when starting a campaign.
This isn't to mean or to exclude creativity, but to ensure that the focus of the game is on the story the group creates together, as an adventuring troupe the course of the game. That is what an RPG is about. What do your characters do together. This becomes impossible to achieve if every character has their own history/past they want to pursue. Trying to tie a story together with 3-5 players who all have their own pursuits is very difficult and can often become impossible to tie into a workable story on top of that.
The OP asked for some examples and I think that is a good way to present the difference between a WHO and a WHAT.
For example, a character might describe their characters as a Chivarlous Knight who is on a quest for Justice up holding the laws of the Empire of Thyatis. That is a good example of a who. This describes a character that a player understand who they are, but it does not define a "story" that must be injected into the game.
The same character might be described as a Chivarlous Knight who is looking to bring a powerful Necromancer to justice who killed all the people of his order. This is a WHAT. Its a similiar character, but now the DM must build into the game a story about a powerful Necromancer (where are they, who are they, how powerful are they, how do they fit into the story etc etc..). This is the sort of back story you don't want because it actually says very little about how the character behaves (who they are) and instead defines WHAT the character will do during the adventure, what their motivation for being in the game world is and in turn, what you must create to fit the character into the story.
This is out really well and describes how I run my campaign.
I am I running an 8 player campaign right now. I had a concept for a nation brewing in my head so I created a very rough map on paper, straight edges and shapes, sketching out that nation and then putting in nations around it and forming part of a continent.
I then formalised that map and wrote a few bullet points about the main nation (where the campaign will start) and sketched out some ideas about the surrounding countries.
Then I got my players involved. As each one decided the race and class I filled out a little more detail, for instance my pantheon I only bothered thinking about that when one player said they where playing a cleric.
Another player said they would play Minotaur and come from a Siberia type land where there family where a criminal Russian mafia type organisation, that then fed into one of the surrounding nations. He was running after being sent away by his uncle as his father had been caught for something he had done. That gives a seed of an idea for backstory.
I had a satyr, so had to decide how prevalent where fey creatures, how much would she stand out. She told me she had been abandoned as a baby and raised by the women she was left with who was a madame running a brothel, she herself was a high class escort. So that makes me think about the role the sex industry plays in my world, is it illegal, how are sex workers thought of. I also had a seed of a backstory opening, who are her parents, why did they abandon her.
A warforged made me consider how or where was he made. Is he rare or common, the player said he was found buried by dwarves with no recollection of his time before then. He himself has then been working in a forge for 3 years. So I populate my dwarves on the map. My players don’t bring me long detailed backstories they bring me a brief description leaving enough scope for me to then play with it. I believe that a player should know only what the character knows, so they might know there family are killed and by who, but won’t know the why, and will know they are far to weak right now to fight them.
This continues for each player, their choices then feeding into my world, helping to shape small details, or even name and define lands. At campaign start, session, 1 that big map I had was still full of TBC’s after 6 months it still has many, some have been filled out either through NPC conversation with the players imparting knowledge, or me having ideas for future potential. Alongside that I have started completing lore. My pantheon is probably 1/3 complete, as I have populated towns with temples, or created NPC priests I might never truly complete out all my gods.
I have fleshed out one of the bordering nations, an expanding empire who has been ruled by an emperor for 400 years. They believe in the power of racial purity, so half races are considered non people. The Emperor might be a beholder (need to decide that) or might be linked to the Gith. The Wizards of this nation have created a magic item that allows them to enslave and tap into a sorceror as if they are a battery of additional magic. The nation believes in slavery, and when conquering a town, city or nation they operate the rule of 1/3rds. If there is armed reisitance then 1/3 of the population are killed and another 1/3 enslaved. If there is no armed resistance and they are accepted in then just 1/3 are enslaved.
I have then focused locally, just on the area the party are in what is taking place the how and why.
One of the struggles for a DM when it comes to just interaction with the players during character creation is coming to some sort of conclusion about what it means to write a back story and what purpose that back story has in the adventure, setting and campaign. I don't think most DM's actually define for their players what is expected to be in a character back story's, nor do DM's typically place any limits because of the general acceptance that it is a sort of game culture political correct thing to do (aka, don't tell players what kind of character they can have). I mostly agree with that, but there is one caveat.
To me a back story is primarily a guide for the player to understand who their character is so that they know how they will role-play that character.Back stories are not written for the GM and they are not an opportunity to invent things your character has done in the past.
You're free to run your game however you want.
However, "things your character has done in the past" is literally the definition of backstory.
"The previous life and experiences of a person, especially a character in a dramatic work, but also a real-life person"
Rather than try to redefine backstory, just say that for your game you don't want backstories. The rest of what you're describing is just character creation.
You're a 1st level character, the default requirement for a 1st level character is that you have not accomplished anything worthy of note.
No. You should not have accomplished anything worthy of 300 XP.
The soldier background implies you have been in an army. You might have even fought in a battle, considering that the average soldier kills fewer than one enemy. (If the average was more than one, then the total number of soldiers killed would be greater than the total number of soldiers.)
You can be a notorious assassin, as long as you have killed fewer than 12 Nobles.
A warlock has already acquired a patron. There's a story behind how they made their pact. A wizard has studied. A bard can be famous, as long as they're famous for performing and not adventuring.
The sage background says, "You spent years learning the lore of the multiverse." The noble background implies at least family members who have noteworthy accomplishments, if not yourself. The Folk Hero background says, "Already the people of your home village regard you as their champion". Maybe you killed two goblins worth 100 XP and the rest of the small band ran off.
So when building your world and dealing with you players, how much freedom do you give them? Can you think of any examples where your players brought something to the table that really helped make your world feel more "real"?
I manage this in two phases of campaign creation.
I build out a setting and it's backstory in a way that is fun for me as the DM.
I share this setting with my friends and as them if it feels fun for them to create characters and adventure in.
I don't want to run campaigns or settings that won't be fun for me as the DM. I don't want to share a lackluster performance for my players so I have to be excited about the game before I share it with them.
When I share it, I start with a one page document that is a high level overview and share that with friends. If enough of them are interested I'll call a Session Zero and go deeper into the setting so they get a very clear picture of what kind of characters make sense. We go over that together, make sure they think they can make fun characters in the framework, and then set about making the characters.
I reserve the DM's ability to give some things a hard no based on what fits the setting, but I also flex a lot for inventive backgrounds inside the setting.
As an example, the game I just launched with friends is in a human nation that has one official religion and is ruled over by a despot. Anyone who practices arcane magic or openly worships another deity is a heretic and punished accordingly. The nation is kept on a constant state of pre-war alert that switches to war every few years - against an undead horde that the despot's forces keep at bay.
All characters need to be humans, worship the one god, and built within a specific list of classes and subclasses that are approved for the campaign. The setting speaks to the (initial) restrictions. Instead of having every race and class option available, I have fewer than a dozen class options and one race.
My friends bought into this setting and it's story (an evil overlord who keeps the undead at bay. That's his obsession) and made characters. In the process we've flexed a little for good character backgrounds. One of the characters became a paladin after an evil necromancer attacked his farming village of birth. He's an orphan, has a bit of a vengeance streak against the undead - and that necromancer.
I didn't have a necromancer attack as part of the history but I liked it. Undead are bad and the necromancer is a double heretic for what they did. That was easy to work in for the character and it's background. I get the added DM bonus of having that necromancer out there somewhere in the hinterlands plotting more evil. That's a good compromise.
tl;dr: Before I talk to players I spoil myself. When I talk to them I give them clear guidelines and limits and then say yes to everything I can within them.
I usually approach the problem described by the OP before I get a X-page backstory that I "have" to fit in. After/before/during Session 0, I like to talk to my players individually about what and why they want to play a certain concept/character. Then I can give suggestion where such a character fits into my world and the story I have invisioned. From my experience, most players liked that and their characters felt to be an integral part of the story without changing what the players loved about their initial ideas/concept.
I also like my player to have ties to some aspects of my world/institutions/organisations/story and ideally to other characters beforehand. It does take time and you need to make sure that the players end up with a character they would love to play. Don't tell them what their background "should" be but give suggestions or ideas. Don't be too specific but let your players fill out the blanks and inspire them to be creative. In the end, it is their character, so don't be mad if they didn't include your suggestions (although from my experience, many were happy to do so).
As I said it can be time intensive at first but after that it is quite easy to make every character feel special and make it so that all have integral roles in the campagne.
I usually approach the problem described by the OP before I get a X-page backstory that I "have" to fit in. After/before/during Session 0, I like to talk to my players individually about what and why they want to play a certain concept/character. Then I can give suggestion where such a character fits into my world and the story I have invisioned. From my experience, most players liked that and their characters felt to be an integral part of the story without changing what the players loved about their initial ideas/concept.
I also like my player to have ties to some aspects of my world/institutions/organisations/story and ideally to other characters beforehand. It does take time and you need to make sure that the players end up with a character they would love to play. Don't tell them what their background "should" be but give suggestions or ideas. Don't be too specific but let your players fill out the blanks and inspire them to be creative. In the end, it is their character, so don't be mad if they didn't include your suggestions (although from my experience, many were happy to do so).
As I said it can be time intensive at first but after that it is quite easy to make every character feel special and make it so that all have integral roles in the campagne.
PS: Don't do all that for a Oneshot :-D
Yes.
For example I had a player rejoining with a character she used earlier in the campaign before switching to a different character. At this level I let players join with a magic item. She chose a Ring of Mind Shielding. This item has narrative potential, as it can house the soul of its wearer after death. But the soul in the ring need not be the PC's. I suggested it came with the soul of a fallen comrade. She suggested it was someone who found out about a corrupt general, and wouldn't depart for the afterlife until he helped the PC bring him to justice.
I give the players the general backstory to the campaign - what the world is like, and what the initial adventure hook will be, and then they develop backstory around it. When they need places, we work those out together. If they want to worship a deity, they get to create the initial part of the religion. So for example:
General campaign outline: The world suffered a huge cataclysm 80 years ago. You live in a remote kingdom struggling to get by. A week ago, a ship of strange creatures came and stole the magical stone that brings prosperity to the agriculture of your kingdom. You have been selected to go on an expedition to find it.
Player: I want to be a Tempest Cleric.
DM: Ok, let's create a storm god, and the temple that you trained at. We'll locate it here on the map. Do you have any rituals that you perform daily? What is the god's symbol?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
No one likes being railroaded and/or having no say in the world they exist in. But as a DM I always hate having players who decided to have some "epic" multi page backstory that I now 'have' to fit within my world. Now i'm having a bit of difficulty finding a good balance between the two. Like clearly i don't want to have to write in a "World War" with a (renowned) hero who did X/Y/ and Z (all of which took place 10-30 years ago). Or have my players 'decide" for me that City X is the capital of kingdom Y in the land of Z (none of which existed, before the player brought up their backstory) But i also don't want to have to create all aspects of Fantasy England, from Big Ben to the pebbles the players can skip across (name)'s pond.
So when building your world and dealing with you players, how much freedom do you give them? Can you think of any examples where your players brought something to the table that really helped make your world feel more "real"?
I want to be clear this is more about the players creating people/places/ events that already exist/existed (and you have to figure out how to work them into your story) and less about the players taking actions during the story and how those actions effect the world moving forward.
Epic backstories tend to skip past the part where the new level 1 adventurer has little to no combat prowess or experience in encountering the different powerful denizens of the world. "Epic" is reserved for adventures well above backstory level or NPCs. I might suggest tempering your players' expectation with some more reasonable input. That is, of course, unless you are starting your PCs off at say level 15-18. That might explain the world renown and the fact that your "new" PC is aged by 10-30 years in game. Otherwise, that player just wrote the first NPC to their own homebrew campaign.
DMs don't *have* to accept a PC backstory in whole, or in part. A DM might work with what the player has given them, and change the pertinent bits to fit the campaign setting. A DM could assist and guide the player to help them fit their character idea into the game world. At this point the player has the requirement to accept or reject the opportunity to play that game with the PC as amended or provide a different PC backstory. DM has final say in what is, or is not in the game world. Period. Full Stop.
Every time my players engage with the game world it makes it feel more real. They are literally building the world with their actions or inaction.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I have a player who ran a Warlock whose backstory involved questing to destroy 13 cursed artifacts. I did not think too much of it as I was just getting back into DMing so I was more focused on the rules than the character development. Throughout the year the character played correctly about his drive to move on with his quest the adventures just did not create the opportunity to have that story. It was by then I realized that as the character becomes more 'in-game angry' and looking at the adventure I wanted to tell that backstory just did not line up. His backstory was more in line with an Urban game which in the game I was running was this big sprawling adventure with various locations that was not always a city. To fit the player backstory I would have to create special games tailored to the Warlock backstory and that would force the rest of the party along. One year later, a discussion out-of-game where the player realized that his backstory is not going to fit in with the game I was running. Instead of adjusting his backstory-- and there were ideas-- he decided to create a new character that would be more of a fit for the game.
I used backstory as a lite flavor to the world around them if it is a special location-- like the Wizard is a member of Blackstaff Tower in Waterdeep which I changed to an Academy-- to leverage resources and interact with the instructors. Other times if the players do nothing in a pretty dire situation I'll develop the consequences around what their inaction had caused to a city. I've created a whole side quest around because the party decided to 'wait things out' then jump into the fray which turned out to improve my storyline immensely than what I had originally planned.
In general, I'll let characters help define the world around them but mostly by their actions, or in some cases their inactions.
Part of session zero for me is world creation. The players have a lot of input on building the world, not as part of their backstory, just as part of building the world.
I have a broad idea of my world but I create much of it as I progress in line with my players ideas and backstories, how the adventure progresses and what they are enjoying about it, really the only bit of works that needs to be detailed is the bit the players are looking at right now. Everything else can be sketched out and broadly thought through but I try and avoid nailing anything down until the players absolutely need to know it and generally in the moment I will tweak and make adjustments based on inspiration in that moment.
One of my players' choice to play a Lurker in the Deep warlock determined my BBEG and the cosmology of my world (the importance of a watery abyss).
Another player created his own paladin subclass and an associated cult. I already had plans for a cult in the plot, so I just made some adjustments to fit the theme he defined.
In your case, it is entirely reasonable that your world should have a kingdom and a capital city, and a war that occurred sometime in its history. You can either ask the player to modify their backstory to use similar elements from your world, or you can incorporate their ideas into your worldbuilding.
As a general rule, I'll create the major events, places, and landforms. The players can create smaller events, places, and landforms. In the portion of the world that I have been running campaigns in, I have the major kingdoms and city-states already mapped in, but, there is rooms for numerous towns and villages that I have done nothing with as of yet.
I also have the major conflicts described, but, there is ample room for smaller conflicts. One character had as their backstory, a battle between kobolds and the town he grew up in. That creation fit in well with the world I'd already built up. But, if someone tried to incorporate a previously unknown war between two of the kingdoms, that would not be acceptable. I have some political machinations that can play a role in future plots (depending on the actions of the PCs). Having a major war could impact those plot lines.
One of the major geographical features (and, possible plot lines) in my world is a large, evil forest. In one campaign, a player wanted to have his character come from a village in the evil forest. Currently, legend says very few people who enter the forest return and the few who do, are insane. Having a village in that forest would contradict that legend. Together, the pc and I came up with another village that we could fit into his backstory and what I'd created for my world.
For Zhule (in the original post), maybe there was a small conflict between a town and a goblin village, which the townees view as a world war (because their entire world revolves around their town). But, for most of the world, they are unaware of that war ever happening. Make that suggestion to your PC, and, maybe he can come up with a backstory that is more consistent with what you've already created, but, still give him some agency in building the world.
I usually have a framework of my world anchored by the map.
By framework I mean, all states, villages, cities... etc, with major cultural references. (E.g. one of the states is a Theocracy named X, and its main political views and diplomatic relations are Y). I, also, lay down the major history of the land - wars, major shifts on political landscape and the major organizations.
I give freedom for players to build anything on any of the cities that are not the capitals (if they want X village to be a fishing village inhabited by bullywugs, that's fine), any events that are not world changing (But might have deeper impacts on a local level) and, also, they can build minor organizations in or out of the ones already existent (e.g one player created a training spot and a elite force in my main church out with his backstory).
And I always listen to ideas of players - even about things that usually don't change, but I think sometimes a fresh perspective can complement mine.
If the ideas are wanky, you can simply say no and move on, anyway.
Of my current five-player party, all five of them have elements to the character they wanted to play that forced me to add something, and in most cases a significant something, to the world -- the ranger has a background that makes her a member of a semi-secret organization that didn't exist before she started talking about her character, the paladin has a homebrew oath that also makes her a member of another brand-new, more official organization, and the warlock has a homebrew patron that ties to the world's prehistory in ways she hasn't really explored yet. The sorcerer also has a homebrew subclass that's a family thing, and if it comes up she might discover that some of her ancestors did some adventuring too. Even the fifth, a swashbuckler rogue pirate, came up with a list of ships she'd served on previously which has already come in handy, and I whipped up a Brief History of Pirating so she would know which waterways and cities and such she was likely to have the most experience with, which informed language choices etc. This was essentially a brand-new world though and fairly tabula rasa, and I was encouraging them in those directions to help fill it out.
I have no problem adding stuff to accommodate a character's story, but it's a back and forth process. If a player says "I want to be from this kind of place", I'll add that kind of place in or re-tool some existing place that until then was probably just a name on the map, and let them know, "OK then, being from here would make the most sense, or maybe here if you wanted to put this slant on it." They give me the broad strokes, I supply some details based on what I've already come up with, and then they can round it out with NPCs, local politics, whatever.
If they instead came to me with something fully formed, like "I am from X in the land of Y and here's a thousand years of history for that kingdom", I'd suggest maybe they might want to save all that for their own game rather than trying to shoehorn it into mine.
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)
This is out really well and describes how I run my campaign.
I am I running an 8 player campaign right now. I had a concept for a nation brewing in my head so I created a very rough map on paper, straight edges and shapes, sketching out that nation and then putting in nations around it and forming part of a continent.
I then formalised that map and wrote a few bullet points about the main nation (where the campaign will start) and sketched out some ideas about the surrounding countries.
Then I got my players involved. As each one decided the race and class I filled out a little more detail, for instance my pantheon I only bothered thinking about that when one player said they where playing a cleric.
Another player said they would play Minotaur and come from a Siberia type land where there family where a criminal Russian mafia type organisation, that then fed into one of the surrounding nations. He was running after being sent away by his uncle as his father had been caught for something he had done. That gives a seed of an idea for backstory.
I had a satyr, so had to decide how prevalent where fey creatures, how much would she stand out. She told me she had been abandoned as a baby and raised by the women she was left with who was a madame running a brothel, she herself was a high class escort. So that makes me think about the role the sex industry plays in my world, is it illegal, how are sex workers thought of. I also had a seed of a backstory opening, who are her parents, why did they abandon her.
A warforged made me consider how or where was he made. Is he rare or common, the player said he was found buried by dwarves with no recollection of his time before then. He himself has then been working in a forge for 3 years. So I populate my dwarves on the map. My players don’t bring me long detailed backstories they bring me a brief description leaving enough scope for me to then play with it. I believe that a player should know only what the character knows, so they might know there family are killed and by who, but won’t know the why, and will know they are far to weak right now to fight them.
This continues for each player, their choices then feeding into my world, helping to shape small details, or even name and define lands. At campaign start, session, 1 that big map I had was still full of TBC’s after 6 months it still has many, some have been filled out either through NPC conversation with the players imparting knowledge, or me having ideas for future potential. Alongside that I have started completing lore. My pantheon is probably 1/3 complete, as I have populated towns with temples, or created NPC priests I might never truly complete out all my gods.
I have fleshed out one of the bordering nations, an expanding empire who has been ruled by an emperor for 400 years. They believe in the power of racial purity, so half races are considered non people. The Emperor might be a beholder (need to decide that) or might be linked to the Gith. The Wizards of this nation have created a magic item that allows them to enslave and tap into a sorceror as if they are a battery of additional magic. The nation believes in slavery, and when conquering a town, city or nation they operate the rule of 1/3rds. If there is armed reisitance then 1/3 of the population are killed and another 1/3 enslaved. If there is no armed resistance and they are accepted in then just 1/3 are enslaved.
I have then focused locally, just on the area the party are in what is taking place the how and why.
You're free to run your game however you want.
However, "things your character has done in the past" is literally the definition of backstory.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/backstory
"The previous life and experiences of a person, especially a character in a dramatic work, but also a real-life person"
Rather than try to redefine backstory, just say that for your game you don't want backstories. The rest of what you're describing is just character creation.
No. You should not have accomplished anything worthy of 300 XP.
The soldier background implies you have been in an army. You might have even fought in a battle, considering that the average soldier kills fewer than one enemy. (If the average was more than one, then the total number of soldiers killed would be greater than the total number of soldiers.)
You can be a notorious assassin, as long as you have killed fewer than 12 Nobles.
A warlock has already acquired a patron. There's a story behind how they made their pact. A wizard has studied. A bard can be famous, as long as they're famous for performing and not adventuring.
The sage background says, "You spent years learning the lore of the multiverse." The noble background implies at least family members who have noteworthy accomplishments, if not yourself. The Folk Hero background says, "Already the people of your home village regard you as their champion". Maybe you killed two goblins worth 100 XP and the rest of the small band ran off.
I manage this in two phases of campaign creation.
I don't want to run campaigns or settings that won't be fun for me as the DM. I don't want to share a lackluster performance for my players so I have to be excited about the game before I share it with them.
When I share it, I start with a one page document that is a high level overview and share that with friends. If enough of them are interested I'll call a Session Zero and go deeper into the setting so they get a very clear picture of what kind of characters make sense. We go over that together, make sure they think they can make fun characters in the framework, and then set about making the characters.
I reserve the DM's ability to give some things a hard no based on what fits the setting, but I also flex a lot for inventive backgrounds inside the setting.
As an example, the game I just launched with friends is in a human nation that has one official religion and is ruled over by a despot. Anyone who practices arcane magic or openly worships another deity is a heretic and punished accordingly. The nation is kept on a constant state of pre-war alert that switches to war every few years - against an undead horde that the despot's forces keep at bay.
All characters need to be humans, worship the one god, and built within a specific list of classes and subclasses that are approved for the campaign. The setting speaks to the (initial) restrictions. Instead of having every race and class option available, I have fewer than a dozen class options and one race.
My friends bought into this setting and it's story (an evil overlord who keeps the undead at bay. That's his obsession) and made characters. In the process we've flexed a little for good character backgrounds. One of the characters became a paladin after an evil necromancer attacked his farming village of birth. He's an orphan, has a bit of a vengeance streak against the undead - and that necromancer.
I didn't have a necromancer attack as part of the history but I liked it. Undead are bad and the necromancer is a double heretic for what they did. That was easy to work in for the character and it's background. I get the added DM bonus of having that necromancer out there somewhere in the hinterlands plotting more evil. That's a good compromise.
tl;dr:
Before I talk to players I spoil myself. When I talk to them I give them clear guidelines and limits and then say yes to everything I can within them.
I usually approach the problem described by the OP before I get a X-page backstory that I "have" to fit in. After/before/during Session 0, I like to talk to my players individually about what and why they want to play a certain concept/character. Then I can give suggestion where such a character fits into my world and the story I have invisioned. From my experience, most players liked that and their characters felt to be an integral part of the story without changing what the players loved about their initial ideas/concept.
I also like my player to have ties to some aspects of my world/institutions/organisations/story and ideally to other characters beforehand. It does take time and you need to make sure that the players end up with a character they would love to play. Don't tell them what their background "should" be but give suggestions or ideas. Don't be too specific but let your players fill out the blanks and inspire them to be creative. In the end, it is their character, so don't be mad if they didn't include your suggestions (although from my experience, many were happy to do so).
As I said it can be time intensive at first but after that it is quite easy to make every character feel special and make it so that all have integral roles in the campagne.
PS: Don't do all that for a Oneshot :-D
Yes.
For example I had a player rejoining with a character she used earlier in the campaign before switching to a different character. At this level I let players join with a magic item. She chose a Ring of Mind Shielding. This item has narrative potential, as it can house the soul of its wearer after death. But the soul in the ring need not be the PC's. I suggested it came with the soul of a fallen comrade. She suggested it was someone who found out about a corrupt general, and wouldn't depart for the afterlife until he helped the PC bring him to justice.
I give the players the general backstory to the campaign - what the world is like, and what the initial adventure hook will be, and then they develop backstory around it. When they need places, we work those out together. If they want to worship a deity, they get to create the initial part of the religion. So for example:
General campaign outline: The world suffered a huge cataclysm 80 years ago. You live in a remote kingdom struggling to get by. A week ago, a ship of strange creatures came and stole the magical stone that brings prosperity to the agriculture of your kingdom. You have been selected to go on an expedition to find it.
Player: I want to be a Tempest Cleric.
DM: Ok, let's create a storm god, and the temple that you trained at. We'll locate it here on the map. Do you have any rituals that you perform daily? What is the god's symbol?