this is another example of the Mercer effect striking again
If only Critical Role hadn't invented role-playing, D&D would be so much better.
Honestly, the "Mercer Effect" is kind of insulting. He's a fantastic DM, in my opinion, and I do adore CR, but the idea that everyone wants to emulate him and his table can be a bit degrading. I don't want to be Mercer, I want to be my own highly-capable DM whose players have fun at her table doing what they want to do, not doing what they think emulates a popular and "successful" monetized game.
I'm of the mind that backstory need not include plot hooks unless the player really wants it to. There's definitely something to be said for "blank slate" characters that are explored and developed during the adventure. If your players are satisfied with that style of play then I wouldn't push plot hooks. It's actually a good thing if they're satisfied with the adventure they're playing without needing something extra to tie them in, because that means they're engaging with your content and your world through their characters rather than the other way around.
I honestly disagree with this in part. No one exists or comes out of a bubble (with very rare exception), even if they have amnesia. They come from somewhere, they were raised by someone, they had a past, and those things are going to influence that character's characterization. In one of my campaigns, I even have a PC to whom those statements are all actually false - a concubus forged in the Nine Hells - and she still has a really good backstory with plenty of space for hooks that I can draw on.
I find that "blank slate" characters tend to become more chaotic and unpredictable, and not in good ways for the game.
That said, if a player can be invested in a world without having anything to tie them in - more power to them. I personally find that impossible, myself, both as a player and as a DM.
By "blank slate", I don't mean that they come from nowhere and have no past. Merely that whatever is behind them is not more exciting than what is in front of them.
You see a lot where people get carried away writing backstory where their level 1 character is an expert arena combatant who was betrayed by the king himself and rescued from prison by literal divine intervention and now has an angel ally and...etc. Like, no, if we're talking a level 1 character, you're mostly talking about someone who was a farmer or a coal miner like a week ago, who hasn't gone on all these fantastic adventures yet because that's what the game is for.
The characters should definitely still have backstories, and you can definitely still include them in the game, but this style of play it would be used more for roleplay purposes rather than mining your character's backstory for plot hooks. Plot hooks and romance and betrayal are all cool things that can happen in game that characters can experience in real time, is all I mean.
This I do agree with. I think that what lies behind shouldn't be more interesting than what lies in front - but it can pave a road, IMO. For example, In my opinion, I think it is much more engaging when a story hook involves an NPC from a character's backstory then one they have never met before. You can't do it all the time, certainly, but doing it at key times can really make a difference, I believe.
Mind, my background is with a table full of PCs who thoroughly enjoy having complex backstories that get intertwined with the plot. I haven't really had PCs that are as you describe, so I just simply don't have the experience of catering to them. That's part of the point of this thread, actually, is figuring out "If they're that way, how do I get the most out of them?" And the most might be very precious little, if anything. To be quite honest, I've just never yet in my experience (only about 3 years mind! So am baby!) someone who doesn't want their backstory intertwined at least a little, and/or at least a small character arc related to their history.
I do so hate when people try to be utterly incapable of failing, or otherwise huge heroes, at level 1. It works for my "Starts at level 10" games, but not for level 1 games.
Some players just aren't really into it, and I'm fine with that. Or maybe they like to explore who their character is in the moment rather than painting themselves into a personality corner before the game has even started. Perhaps that tends to make them feel chaotic, but chaos a huge chunk of the alignment table for a reason - life is often chaotic. For me, bringing in backstory hooks feels like me as the DM trying to sell that player's story to the party. If that player's backstory is not that interesting or applicable, it doesn't need to take up space in our game.
Backstory hooks can be nice, but in their absence you can always use hooks from previous adventures/encountered NPCs etc. I like these better anyway because the whole party is in on it and it reinforces the memories you have collectively made throughout the campaign.
A fair point! I think I worded myself poorly before. What I really meant by "chaotic" was more... Unpredictable? Insofar as that they'll act literally however benefits them in the moment (or even counter-intuitively!) instead of how it should make sense for that character to behave in that moment. Mind, of course, there will sometimes be examples of "nearly blank slates," or ones that do behave erratically! I'm not talking about the outliers, to be honest, but the average. And it's quite possible that my "Average" is skewed by some exceptional players at my table.
Regarding "if that backstory isn't applicable" - I agree somewhat but not entirely. Specifically, I think that the party should, at least on some level, want to be closer to each other, to bond as a team. And helping each other accomplish goals is one of the key ways to do that IMO, at least through this particular medium. I do agree that something entirely unrelated shouldn't necessarily come up, though. So my perspective cumulates to the idea that if I, as the DM, bring in a part of the story arc that applies to everyone/the overarching story, but also happens to touch on a PC's backstory, all the better. I'm not looking to force things down anyone's throats that doesn't make sense to the narrative.
I think it is much more engaging when a story hook involves an NPC from a character's backstory then one they have never met before.
Well, the question is... engaging for whom?
If I, as a player, have my long lost sweetheart as part of my backstory, and I am searching for her and hope to find her some day, it'll probably be super interesting for me, to meet and interact with that NPC. I'm not sure why anyone else in the party would find it more interesting to focus RP on her, than on the dozens of other NPCs the party has met together, as a group, over the course of play.
It isn't D&D, but I find the Wildcards ETU game on the Saving Throw channel highly instructive in this regard. All 4 players made up characters who had clear, distinct backstories, but they were also backstories, in episode 1, that could be stated in a few sentences. To illustrate:
Calvin is the son of divorced parents. His mother is lower middle income, lives in Atlanta, and has struggled to raise him. His father, a rich lawyer, lives in New York, and only sees Calvin on certain holidays. He compensates for his low parental involvement with money. Calvin wants to major in Media Arts and after graduating, go to Hollywood and become the next Michael Bey.
That's it... I was able to do it in 3 sentences. To be honest, after watching all but the final episode (4 seasons, 50+ sessions), I'm not sure how much of that was actually in episode 1, or how much of it I just know now from having watched so much of it. Most of the background stuff was made up, by the players, on the fly. Hell, in the 2nd to last episode, it was graduation and all the PCs' families were there, and the GM asked, "So did we ever establish whether Sawyer has any siblings?" 50 sessions in, and they made it up on the spot -- yes, a younger sister, college freshman, highly competitive with Sawyer, and the GM just started RPing her right then and there.
This sort of thing happened a lot on that show, and it illustrates that you don't need a long and involved backstory to have "character hooks." In fact, the most interesting and detailed PC-NPC interactions have happened with NPCs who have appeared in play, not who came from PC backgrounds. The annoying roommate, Barret (a Hindrance for Calvin) ended up being so fun that the GM had to make his own fictional YouTube channel for Barret, the audience liked him so much. Sawyer got into a sanity-threatening romance with the roommate of another PC. Jackson, a T.A., helped the PCs a lot in season 1 before something happened and he vanished, and the PCs have never forgotten him or stopped wondering where he is. One of the other grad students developed a relationship with Addie, another PC. These characters were the ones the players got invested in interacting with, not the ones from their backgrounds. Calvin's parents appeared only once for a few minutes in the show -- on graduation day, at brunch. In 50 episodes, that is all we have seen of them, or that Calvin's player, Gurav, has seen. He's spent way more time RPing with Barret, or with Rosa, the ghost that haunts his car (another invention of the GM, not a background character), or with Jackson, or the girl from the one LARP the PCs went to, who was cosplaying an elf, and who became Calvin's g/f for a season. Heck, in the opener for Season 3, a girl no one had ever seen before named "Liv" was with them and upset that no one remembered her. Best we can figure, Liv (Olivia) was from an alternate universe in which Calvin and she were dating. In the 2nd to last episode, the GM asked, "What one question would you most like to have answered?" and Gurav said, "What is the real story with Liv?" This NPC made up for one session, affected him that much. He asked about her, not about something from his background.
And the thing with these NPCs is -- everyone at the table was invested in Liv, because she saved all their lives in that season opener, and then vanished. Everyone was invested in Barret, and Calvin's LARP girlfriend, because they knew those characters, and had interacted with them. Addie (one of the other PCs) on leveling up took an ability that let her see ghosts, and she enjoyed interacting with Calvin's car's ghost, Rosa, when no one else but Calvin could see her. NPCs that come up on play are characters everyone cares about. Most of the time, NPCs from the background are characters only that one player cares about.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
So one slightly frustrating thing I've come upon a few times is when players write characters with little to no backstory, or if they do have backstory, it doesn't include very many "knives" (or potential hooks) for me to work with to either use against them or otherwise utilize to plan and build personalized character arcs for them.
(Note that I solely do homebrew everything so writing character arcs and backstory into my world and interweaving them with the main plot is critical for my style of DMing.)
I'm curious to learn how other DMs encourage or assist their players towards making more engaging and interesting PCs. What sort of background information do you require, if any? Do you have them fill out little surveys? (I've done this to mixed results.) How much world information do you feel the need to provide to help your players make more informed characters? How would you encourage a player to give you more hooks after submitting to you a sub-par or hookless backstory?
I didn't read the thread yet but it isn't the job of the players to create hooks for you. It's your job to create hooks for them.
As your campaign world is all custom, how do you expect players to make a fully fleshed out backstory? With more well known campaign worlds it is easy due to familiarity with the material but if you require that players read your multi-page essay on your world before creating a character to tie into it, that's pretty rough.
I suggest they pick traits, ideals, and flaws and suggest they write a backstory but I don't need it. If a person wants to play, that's enough. If they just make a vague "my character was born into a rich family and was raised to be a knight." is good enough. Getting angry at them for not meshing into my made up world is silly. I'll take enthusiasm and desire to play over the best written backstory ever.
Most of my players are/were new to D&D so I didn't ask for any kind of backstory at all. I asked the players themselves what they want to do, and what they want to see. Nothing to do with their PC, only what they want to experience as a player. One person said they want to see a dragon. Another said they want to rescue a princess. That is plenty of material right there.
I’m currently playing a few characters in different campaigns. One of them I picked her background and clicked 3 Traits & 1 ea. Bond, Ideal, and Flaw. I’ve been making her actual backstory up as we play. Another character I wrote a fleshed out backstory and at the end made a reference to an organization. That DM read it and asked what that organization was. My response was “you tell me.”
Back in the day a lot of characters started at 16ish (or racial equivalent). Many backstories were 3 brief paragraphs (up to 9ish sentences) of nuclear family, significant childhood events, and what inspired the character to go adventuring.
As a DM, that last part is the one I personally ask for. “Why?” Why did they leave behind whatever life they had and decide to go be freelance, independent mercenary superheroes. Happy, well adjusted people don’t typically decide to arm themselves and go fight monsters for a living. Either they’re broke, desperate, miserable, bored, angry, driven, delusional, or whatever. So I like to know what the spark was because if they can tell me, then that means they know too. (To be honest, the 2 Traits, Bond, Ideal, Flaw all combined basically give you a good idea of that already.)
The backstory itself is less important than the current story IMO. Yea, DMs can mine backstories for ideas to create hooks for their players’ characters, but if I have 1 NPC’s name (parent, sibling, friend, etc.) and a “why,” I can invent a hook. But the point of the hook is to get them to go on the adventure. If they’re already doing that, then yer golden.
An additional point to the conversation, new players may not necessarily understand what a backstory can do during the game so it won't bother them at character creation, they want to get stuck in a hit stuff with a sword and cast spells. I played with some brand new players, and had to really squeeze out some info from them prior to starting, and that was done by me asking for where they came from and why they left. Then I tailored 5 or some questions to get some additional info and see if I can get something that can be used as small hooks in side quests. Not all of the players gave me detailed info.
Then during the campaign they are on a ship, and come across a ghost ship. It was the very ship that one of the players used to be a sailor on, it's not an important story item, but the player liked hearing a link to his past and it prompted him to ask questions or go off to seek answers "so why is my ship dead? What happened to it?", well there's a potential side quest right there.
After playing through this campaign, if they join another they might be encouraged to flesh out their backstory a little as they can see what part in the overall game is plays. Obviously none of this reply is relating to experienced players, but I think everyone has covered off that aspect pretty well so far.
This is taken from the document I run through with my players in session zero:
Epic Personal Storylines
Characters must have a clear motivation to be part of the story, and we should base these around the overall story concept. Players will know in advance what the storyline concept will be. Characters who have no tie to the central story will need to be rethought.
Characters who are ‘broody loners’ are discouraged. They are not fun for the rest of the party.
Avoid using a mental health issue as a prop for roleplay
Characters should not be excessively rude to everyone. They can have personal beef, but NPCs will act appropriately to your actions.
Think about a character arc that is not likely to result in your allies turning on you. Group cohesion is important. If your character is a murderous a*****e, then the other players may not want them around.
Your character goals must be ones that will keep you adventuring. Settling down in a cottage is not a goal. Your character must be motivated either by money, by a desire to help those in need, or a desire for fame/power. If your character is not motivated by one of these things, it is unlikely that they would be an adventurer at all.
Each character may choose to begin the adventure with a mystery to be solved. The mystery should be of a magical or epic nature, and is something that you as the player does not know the answer to (but the DM does). This epic storyline is intended to last at least 10 levels of gameplay, with slow reveals, and requires the players to achieve certain things to unlock new powers, magic items, or other types of progress for their character. Players should expect that their characters, whether through items, special abilities, physical changes, rank or otherwise, should become truly awesome and unique.
For the last bullet point, these were what some of my players came up with:
Our barbarian went out hunting one day, and saw a deer with glowing blue eyes. He shot the deer, but in doing so his Goliath body markings disappeared. He doesn't know why.
Our rogue had a long time rival at his fencing school. One day their fencing master disappeared. Looking for him, the rogue and his rival discovered a strange book in the master's residence. The book leapt into the air and exploded, knocking rogue and rival unconscious. When they awoke, there was no sign of the book, and they could both speak Infernal.
Our dwarven cleric was found washed up on the beach as a baby, wrapped in a piece of red cloth and with a burn on his face. He has no knowledge of how or why he was found that way.
You don't have to rely on the players for plot hooks. The module itself can be the hook.
For example at the start of our last campaign (0 level characters), pirates on a slave ship captured the PCs (and bunch of npc). And the PCs "rose to the top" and worked together to get off the ship, and free the others - and that's how the group formed.
One thing about requiring an extensive background - If you make people go through all the effort to create a hook filled background, and then only use one players hook, the others will be less motivated to go through the trouble the next time.
So one slightly frustrating thing I've come upon a few times is when players write characters with little to no backstory, or if they do have backstory, it doesn't include very many "knives" (or potential hooks) for me to work with to either use against them or otherwise utilize to plan and build personalized character arcs for them.
(Note that I solely do homebrew everything so writing character arcs and backstory into my world and interweaving them with the main plot is critical for my style of DMing.)
I'm curious to learn how other DMs encourage or assist their players towards making more engaging and interesting PCs. What sort of background information do you require, if any? Do you have them fill out little surveys? (I've done this to mixed results.) How much world information do you feel the need to provide to help your players make more informed characters? How would you encourage a player to give you more hooks after submitting to you a sub-par or hookless backstory?
I didn't read the thread yet but it isn't the job of the players to create hooks for you. It's your job to create hooks for them.
As your campaign world is all custom, how do you expect players to make a fully fleshed out backstory? With more well known campaign worlds it is easy due to familiarity with the material but if you require that players read your multi-page essay on your world before creating a character to tie into it, that's pretty rough.
I suggest they pick traits, ideals, and flaws and suggest they write a backstory but I don't need it. If a person wants to play, that's enough. If they just make a vague "my character was born into a rich family and was raised to be a knight." is good enough. Getting angry at them for not meshing into my made up world is silly. I'll take enthusiasm and desire to play over the best written backstory ever.
Most of my players are/were new to D&D so I didn't ask for any kind of backstory at all. I asked the players themselves what they want to do, and what they want to see. Nothing to do with their PC, only what they want to experience as a player. One person said they want to see a dragon. Another said they want to rescue a princess. That is plenty of material right there.
I disagree insofar as that the player does have a job to do as well. Their job is to give the character reasonable and realistic motivations to propel that character forward. It's not my job to tell them why their character goes adventuring, although I'm more than happy to help them figure that out in the character creation process. As other posts here have discussed, a PC needs a reason to become an adventurer. Now, the opening hook in some cases might prompt that - ie, a dragon burning down an entire city - but the player still needs to understand "Okay, well if the opening hook to the game is that a dragon is going to burn down the city, then I'd like it if character X from my family dies/is wounded in the attack to prompt my character to truly seek revenge." That's an immediate goal. However, a longer-term goal is necessary, too, because what does the PC do once they've found that revenge, only to learn that it's part of some bigger world-ending plot to summon Tiamat? Go back to their surviving family? There needs to be something a little juicier there. In this case a good idea that I might suggest is that their family line somewhere had an order of dragon slayers, and finding out about Tiamat will spur them to take on their family's old goals and continue forward. And in some cases it could be a reveal that I make up that the PC didn't know about their own family history (one we may or may not have discussed in creation). But ultimately it's on the player to have their character say, "Okay, I need to continue adventuring."
Extremely simple motivations are fine for shorter games, but that's not what I run, personally.
As far as new players go, I've never DM'd for brand spanking new players before, or at least anyone new to RPing (ie written RP), and I don't DM for anyone under 18. Additionally, my games are all epic, running the gamut of anywhere between levels 1-20 and usually ending at 20. They're long-term games, and ones where every PC has at least one personal story arc interwoven into the main plot in a way that everyone can engage with. So perhaps that dictates my approach to this whole thread's topic.
As for building a character in a homebrew setting, that's fairly easy. I always give good primers on the immediate area the game starts in, ask questions about what kind of place they think their character concept would be from, and help them figure out where in the region or even the world they'd be from, giving them as much information about that area as I can. It's worked quite well for me so far. Hence why I asked how others approach this issue to see if there are any ways I might improve upon my methods.
I don't require backstories at the start of the campaign, I have found both as a player and as a DM that a lot of players like to get into their character and let the backstory flow as they get to play them and, as with any part of a story, if it isn't required right now then it probably isn't required. Right now I have a party of 8, 4 of them have developed a sort of backstory, bullet points that I can have fun with, the rest are just there to roll dice, hit monsters and enjoy the adventure. It works fine, the story is developing in its own way. The 4 with a backstory I have weaved that story into the world but I may never actually explore them, or they may never explore them, I run a fully open world campaign the sandbox is the entire world and events are always happening players can decide which ones they want to get involved with.
So most of my players over the years have developed things session by session, why do you need to know your parents names until your asked, why do you need to know your home town until it is important, you don't. I have had players write out reams of backstory ahead of the game and then 3-4 sessions in come ot me telling me they want to rip it all up because the way the character is playing is different to the character that backstory is written for so if my players want to create a background I encourage them ot commit only the barest details to paper, by all means have the rest in your head, but don't commit to it until you need to.
This is taken from the document I run through with my players in session zero:
Epic Personal Storylines
Characters must have a clear motivation to be part of the story, and we should base these around the overall story concept. Players will know in advance what the storyline concept will be. Characters who have no tie to the central story will need to be rethought.
Characters who are ‘broody loners’ are discouraged. They are not fun for the rest of the party.
Avoid using a mental health issue as a prop for roleplay
Characters should not be excessively rude to everyone. They can have personal beef, but NPCs will act appropriately to your actions.
Think about a character arc that is not likely to result in your allies turning on you. Group cohesion is important. If your character is a murderous a*****e, then the other players may not want them around.
Your character goals must be ones that will keep you adventuring. Settling down in a cottage is not a goal. Your character must be motivated either by money, by a desire to help those in need, or a desire for fame/power. If your character is not motivated by one of these things, it is unlikely that they would be an adventurer at all.
Each character may choose to begin the adventure with a mystery to be solved. The mystery should be of a magical or epic nature, and is something that you as the player does not know the answer to (but the DM does). This epic storyline is intended to last at least 10 levels of gameplay, with slow reveals, and requires the players to achieve certain things to unlock new powers, magic items, or other types of progress for their character. Players should expect that their characters, whether through items, special abilities, physical changes, rank or otherwise, should become truly awesome and unique.
For the last bullet point, these were what some of my players came up with:
Our barbarian went out hunting one day, and saw a deer with glowing blue eyes. He shot the deer, but in doing so his Goliath body markings disappeared. He doesn't know why.
Our rogue had a long time rival at his fencing school. One day their fencing master disappeared. Looking for him, the rogue and his rival discovered a strange book in the master's residence. The book leapt into the air and exploded, knocking rogue and rival unconscious. When they awoke, there was no sign of the book, and they could both speak Infernal.
Our dwarven cleric was found washed up on the beach as a baby, wrapped in a piece of red cloth and with a burn on his face. He has no knowledge of how or why he was found that way.
Love these, those are great, thank you!
I'd argue that there are a few more solid motivations out there than those listed (I've some of my own PCs that wouldn't fit neatly into money/glory/charity/fame/power and work very well), but they're definitely great motivators.
On the note of "washed up on a beach without any knowledge of why" - I actually ran my first ever campaign on that exact premise for the entire party (sans the burn and red cloth). That was the opening plot hook, along with the tag of "with nothing more than basic gear and a strange mask on your person." The game started at level 10, and the PCs were missing memories from the past 3 years (and, mechanically, 2 levels). This was before I had any real experience or understanding of how to actually start a game, made tons of mistakes, but my players were very patient with me and we saw the game to its end about a year and a half, 100 sessions, later. I learned a lot.
When I was helping my players construct their first characters for our LMoP + DoIP campaign, I tried to help tie their characters into the world. The best example of this is one of my player's Rock Gnome character, Frug Fiddlefen. When they chose Rock Gnome, I brought up Gnomengarde, which is a clan of Rock Gnomes in the Neverwinter region. We decided that this player's character could be from Gnomengarde, which made for some fantastic role-play when they visited the location in the campaign.
If you help your players tie their characters into existing world lore, or you specifically ask them to develop "Knives" in their backstory, then it help your players become invested in the story and be more open to role-play.
So one slightly frustrating thing I've come upon a few times is when players write characters with little to no backstory, or if they do have backstory, it doesn't include very many "knives" (or potential hooks) for me to work with to either use against them or otherwise utilize to plan and build personalized character arcs for them.
(Note that I solely do homebrew everything so writing character arcs and backstory into my world and interweaving them with the main plot is critical for my style of DMing.)
I'm curious to learn how other DMs encourage or assist their players towards making more engaging and interesting PCs. What sort of background information do you require, if any? Do you have them fill out little surveys? (I've done this to mixed results.) How much world information do you feel the need to provide to help your players make more informed characters? How would you encourage a player to give you more hooks after submitting to you a sub-par or hookless backstory?
I didn't read the thread yet but it isn't the job of the players to create hooks for you. It's your job to create hooks for them.
As your campaign world is all custom, how do you expect players to make a fully fleshed out backstory? With more well known campaign worlds it is easy due to familiarity with the material but if you require that players read your multi-page essay on your world before creating a character to tie into it, that's pretty rough.
I suggest they pick traits, ideals, and flaws and suggest they write a backstory but I don't need it. If a person wants to play, that's enough. If they just make a vague "my character was born into a rich family and was raised to be a knight." is good enough. Getting angry at them for not meshing into my made up world is silly. I'll take enthusiasm and desire to play over the best written backstory ever.
Most of my players are/were new to D&D so I didn't ask for any kind of backstory at all. I asked the players themselves what they want to do, and what they want to see. Nothing to do with their PC, only what they want to experience as a player. One person said they want to see a dragon. Another said they want to rescue a princess. That is plenty of material right there.
I disagree insofar as that the player does have a job to do as well. Their job is to give the character reasonable and realistic motivations to propel that character forward. It's not my job to tell them why their character goes adventuring, although I'm more than happy to help them figure that out in the character creation process. As other posts here have discussed, a PC needs a reason to become an adventurer. Now, the opening hook in some cases might prompt that - ie, a dragon burning down an entire city - but the player still needs to understand "Okay, well if the opening hook to the game is that a dragon is going to burn down the city, then I'd like it if character X from my family dies/is wounded in the attack to prompt my character to truly seek revenge." That's an immediate goal. However, a longer-term goal is necessary, too, because what does the PC do once they've found that revenge, only to learn that it's part of some bigger world-ending plot to summon Tiamat? Go back to their surviving family? There needs to be something a little juicier there. In this case a good idea that I might suggest is that their family line somewhere had an order of dragon slayers, and finding out about Tiamat will spur them to take on their family's old goals and continue forward. And in some cases it could be a reveal that I make up that the PC didn't know about their own family history (one we may or may not have discussed in creation). But ultimately it's on the player to have their character say, "Okay, I need to continue adventuring."
Extremely simple motivations are fine for shorter games, but that's not what I run, personally.
As far as new players go, I've never DM'd for brand spanking new players before, or at least anyone new to RPing (ie written RP), and I don't DM for anyone under 18. Additionally, my games are all epic, running the gamut of anywhere between levels 1-20 and usually ending at 20. They're long-term games, and ones where every PC has at least one personal story arc interwoven into the main plot in a way that everyone can engage with. So perhaps that dictates my approach to this whole thread's topic.
As for building a character in a homebrew setting, that's fairly easy. I always give good primers on the immediate area the game starts in, ask questions about what kind of place they think their character concept would be from, and help them figure out where in the region or even the world they'd be from, giving them as much information about that area as I can. It's worked quite well for me so far. Hence why I asked how others approach this issue to see if there are any ways I might improve upon my methods.
As a DM I am perfectly happy with a player telling me, my characters motivation is they want money end of, or they want to hit stuff. Once the adventure starts and the sessions tick along if I am doing my job correctly they will then discover and flesh out the bits of the character that are important, but I have run entire 4-5 year long campaigns taking characters from level 1-20 where I couldn't tell you why any of the characters started out the adventure, in one they where a group of players who wanted to play, and we started a campaign I forged a reason for the party to form (framed for a thing they didn't do). Some backstory stuff got fleshed out as time progressed but at no point did we ever explain why they where in that town in that inn at that moment in time we didn't need to, the adventure just started. I have done that multiple times in all sorts of game systems over the years, this myth that a TTRPG campaign needs reams of backstory and notes for characters is really just that, a myth that puts a lot of new players off playing. Think about your fav novels, they dont come with a 60 page backstory that explains everything, well Fellowship of the ring does and as great as tolkein was Concerning hobbits is the worst intro to any book lol. The best camnpaigns just begin
I'd argue that there are a few more solid motivations out there than those listed (I've some of my own PCs that wouldn't fit neatly into money/glory/charity/fame/power and work very well), but they're definitely great motivators.
There an infinite variety of character motivators, but D&D typically asks for the characters' motivation to meet the following requirements:
The motivation must cause them to want to go on adventures
The motivation must cause them to be willing to risk their life repeatedly
This must be true even when the adventure has no relation to the character's backstory in any way. It may even be that most of the game will be spent doing things that are not related to the character's backstory
The motivation must be repeatable. So if you finish solving the level 1-2 problems of the village, then it must be possible to offer you a motivation to go on the level 3 adventure, then again for the level 4-5 adventure.
The motivation must be such that it is possible to motivate the character reliably, and generically - that means that the DM can offer one plot thread and all 4 or more characters in the party can easily agree that it's something that they want to do. The DM should not have to plan something specific for each character at the plot-hook of every side-quest.
If the motivation is too specific then the character often ends up refusing to do things. "I fight to avenge my family's honour... Why should I help those druids? I don't care about the reward money either! I am happy to work in the shadows... but only when my mission is specifically about my family. I'll just stay here."
Most other motivators that fall outside of money, helping, and fame are unlikely to meet the criteria. For example, you might be playing an elven linguist who wants to enter ancient ruins to learn more ancient languages. Ok, sounds great - but wait, they are really that obsessive that they're willing to go up against a Beholder? After the second time they get knocked unconscious, or when a friend died, do they really feel this is such a good career choice? What happens when the DM has planned a game which doesn't involve any ancient ruins to explore?
So basically, if your character goes into a village and a hapless villager says "Please help us, the orcs have kidnapped some of the townspeople. We can pay you X gold pieces to rescue them" and your character isn't automatically going to throw themselves into the adventure... then they don't have a good motivation for adventuring. Typically therefore it's money, a desire to help those in need, or a desire for personal fame and glory that will cause them to risk their lives.
So basically, if your character goes into a village and a hapless villager says "Please help us, the orcs have kidnapped some of the townspeople. We can pay you X gold pieces to rescue them" and your character isn't automatically going to throw themselves into the adventure...
...that sounds more like a player problem ("I'm chaotic! I'm-a do what I want!") than a character motivation problem, to be honest.
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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)
Most other motivators that fall outside of money, helping, and fame are unlikely to meet the criteria. For example, you might be playing an elven linguist who wants to enter ancient ruins to learn more ancient languages. Ok, sounds great - but wait, they are really that obsessive that they're willing to go up against a Beholder? After the second time they get knocked unconscious, or when a friend died, do they really feel this is such a good career choice? What happens when the DM has planned a game which doesn't involve any ancient ruins to explore?
One of my Things is that if a character's motivations, backstory, etc, don't lean towards sounding like they're going to be the right fit for the adventure, I'll outright tell that player, "I don't think this character is the right fit for this story, let's try again." Because you're right - if someone approached me with an archaeologist character looking to go ruin delving, and I don't plan on any ruin delving, I'm not going to have them play that character in that story. It just would end up with disappointment and a want to switch characters later on, which is it's own set of problems.
So basically, if your character goes into a village and a hapless villager says "Please help us, the orcs have kidnapped some of the townspeople. We can pay you X gold pieces to rescue them" and your character isn't automatically going to throw themselves into the adventure...
...that sounds more like a player problem ("I'm chaotic! I'm-a do what I want!") than a character motivation problem, to be honest.
I think the gist of it is that people tend to have a universal value for things like currency (and usually "the common good" and general glory in most cases), so it's an easy motivator to use- though not necessarily the strongest or most reliable. I think it's also worth considering things like this of "how can an adventurer plausibly keep their adventures going and be okay with it." I.e. "I need money to pay for room and board, or people need to hear my name in order to recruit me to higher quests, or generally I need to be morally okay with my actions to have the will to keep going on."
Taking Sanvael's example of an archaeologist, a player of mine was really into books and research, but realized that they didn't have a specific enough area of interest within written information to really put themselves at risk to go recover such materials. They started the campaign thinking that knowledge was foresight and foresight was power, but sorta realized that gathering knowledge was more of a hobby than a character motivator, and with that learned soon enough that what really motivated them was ensuring a future for their loved ones- and THAT, to them, was worth risking their life for.
I think another thing to take from all of this isn't just the idea of the hook, but also understanding what's being hooked into. A hook is only as effective as what it's attempting to catch onto- in other words, making sure that your players have some tasty concepts to dig their claws into, whether that comes from the system or from the setting that you're providing. If I'm making a character without a specific setting in mind, one of my favorite things to do is to consider a hook that comes from within the class/subclass/race/background and how to make that as compelling and applicable as possible (i.e. taking Djinnilock and figuring out some sort of relationship with their vessel and what they may want to do with it). You'll definitely need to expand it from there though, because nothing's more boring than the Paladin that follows their oath and does nothing more than that. It's times like that where I like to try to think about specific ways that characters enact the things that make them themselves and how that can come more to fruition in a campaign setting (i.e. the stereotypical Vengeance Paladin seeks to avenge a fallen comrade- who killed them, what will it take to avenge them, who else is culpable, is there any mercy or forgiveness to be had, why or why not, etc.).
TLDR; I think making a good hook and a good character just comes from figuring out what's important to them and expanding from there to figure out what makes them unique and worth playing out as compared to playing anything else. The more we delve into the topic, I think a general thing to be asking to understand if a character is meaningful/impactful is just... "So what?"
. Think about your fav novels, they dont come with a 60 page backstory that explains everything, well Fellowship of the ring does and as great as tolkein was Concerning hobbits is the worst intro to any book lol. The best camnpaigns just begin
I honestly disagree whole-heartedly. The best novels don't need huge amounts of backstory, but the author knows the characters' backstory going into writing it. They don't tell you the backstory, they show it to you in ways the character acts, speaks, and makes decisions, though they might include brief flashbacks as necessary. As a lifelong writer myself (20+ years writing and written RP), I know very well that if you try to write a book without knowing your characters' motivations, giving them external and internal conflicts, building up their personality, etc, it's going to fall flat - if you even get past the middle point at all.
Just because the medium of storytelling is different - and just because it's a multiplayer game instead of a single-protagonist-centered story - doesn't mean that good characterization no longer applies.
That said, it sounds like some other DMs here have claimed success without, and good for them. To me, that sounds both boring and uncompelling, and the DM has the right to have fun with their game, too.
Taking Sanvael's example of an archaeologist, a player of mine was really into books and research, but realized that they didn't have a specific enough area of interest within written information to really put themselves at risk to go recover such materials. They started the campaign thinking that knowledge was foresight and foresight was power, but sorta realized that gathering knowledge was more of a hobby than a character motivator, and with that learned soon enough that what really motivated them was ensuring a future for their loved ones- and THAT, to them, was worth risking their life for.
That's why I tend to view backstory motivators as just the thing that gets them out the door and into the world -- characters should evolve and develop other reasons for adventuring over time, even if it's just through the bonds they form with the rest of the party.
Even the basic, more generic reasons can fall flat. "I wanna be rich" as a motivator isn't going to get a character to sign up for a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven/that one episode of Mandalorian kind of scenario where those farmers bothered by the orcs can only scrape together a few gp, unless you literally borrow a plot point from the western version and have them be convinced the others in the party aren't as altruistic as they seem and know of some secret treasure.
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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)
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Honestly, the "Mercer Effect" is kind of insulting. He's a fantastic DM, in my opinion, and I do adore CR, but the idea that everyone wants to emulate him and his table can be a bit degrading. I don't want to be Mercer, I want to be my own highly-capable DM whose players have fun at her table doing what they want to do, not doing what they think emulates a popular and "successful" monetized game.
This I do agree with. I think that what lies behind shouldn't be more interesting than what lies in front - but it can pave a road, IMO. For example, In my opinion, I think it is much more engaging when a story hook involves an NPC from a character's backstory then one they have never met before. You can't do it all the time, certainly, but doing it at key times can really make a difference, I believe.
Mind, my background is with a table full of PCs who thoroughly enjoy having complex backstories that get intertwined with the plot. I haven't really had PCs that are as you describe, so I just simply don't have the experience of catering to them. That's part of the point of this thread, actually, is figuring out "If they're that way, how do I get the most out of them?" And the most might be very precious little, if anything. To be quite honest, I've just never yet in my experience (only about 3 years mind! So am baby!) someone who doesn't want their backstory intertwined at least a little, and/or at least a small character arc related to their history.
I do so hate when people try to be utterly incapable of failing, or otherwise huge heroes, at level 1. It works for my "Starts at level 10" games, but not for level 1 games.
Thanks for the video rec, I'll check it out!
A fair point! I think I worded myself poorly before. What I really meant by "chaotic" was more... Unpredictable? Insofar as that they'll act literally however benefits them in the moment (or even counter-intuitively!) instead of how it should make sense for that character to behave in that moment. Mind, of course, there will sometimes be examples of "nearly blank slates," or ones that do behave erratically! I'm not talking about the outliers, to be honest, but the average. And it's quite possible that my "Average" is skewed by some exceptional players at my table.
Regarding "if that backstory isn't applicable" - I agree somewhat but not entirely. Specifically, I think that the party should, at least on some level, want to be closer to each other, to bond as a team. And helping each other accomplish goals is one of the key ways to do that IMO, at least through this particular medium. I do agree that something entirely unrelated shouldn't necessarily come up, though. So my perspective cumulates to the idea that if I, as the DM, bring in a part of the story arc that applies to everyone/the overarching story, but also happens to touch on a PC's backstory, all the better. I'm not looking to force things down anyone's throats that doesn't make sense to the narrative.
Well, the question is... engaging for whom?
If I, as a player, have my long lost sweetheart as part of my backstory, and I am searching for her and hope to find her some day, it'll probably be super interesting for me, to meet and interact with that NPC. I'm not sure why anyone else in the party would find it more interesting to focus RP on her, than on the dozens of other NPCs the party has met together, as a group, over the course of play.
It isn't D&D, but I find the Wildcards ETU game on the Saving Throw channel highly instructive in this regard. All 4 players made up characters who had clear, distinct backstories, but they were also backstories, in episode 1, that could be stated in a few sentences. To illustrate:
Calvin is the son of divorced parents. His mother is lower middle income, lives in Atlanta, and has struggled to raise him. His father, a rich lawyer, lives in New York, and only sees Calvin on certain holidays. He compensates for his low parental involvement with money. Calvin wants to major in Media Arts and after graduating, go to Hollywood and become the next Michael Bey.
That's it... I was able to do it in 3 sentences. To be honest, after watching all but the final episode (4 seasons, 50+ sessions), I'm not sure how much of that was actually in episode 1, or how much of it I just know now from having watched so much of it. Most of the background stuff was made up, by the players, on the fly. Hell, in the 2nd to last episode, it was graduation and all the PCs' families were there, and the GM asked, "So did we ever establish whether Sawyer has any siblings?" 50 sessions in, and they made it up on the spot -- yes, a younger sister, college freshman, highly competitive with Sawyer, and the GM just started RPing her right then and there.
This sort of thing happened a lot on that show, and it illustrates that you don't need a long and involved backstory to have "character hooks." In fact, the most interesting and detailed PC-NPC interactions have happened with NPCs who have appeared in play, not who came from PC backgrounds. The annoying roommate, Barret (a Hindrance for Calvin) ended up being so fun that the GM had to make his own fictional YouTube channel for Barret, the audience liked him so much. Sawyer got into a sanity-threatening romance with the roommate of another PC. Jackson, a T.A., helped the PCs a lot in season 1 before something happened and he vanished, and the PCs have never forgotten him or stopped wondering where he is. One of the other grad students developed a relationship with Addie, another PC. These characters were the ones the players got invested in interacting with, not the ones from their backgrounds. Calvin's parents appeared only once for a few minutes in the show -- on graduation day, at brunch. In 50 episodes, that is all we have seen of them, or that Calvin's player, Gurav, has seen. He's spent way more time RPing with Barret, or with Rosa, the ghost that haunts his car (another invention of the GM, not a background character), or with Jackson, or the girl from the one LARP the PCs went to, who was cosplaying an elf, and who became Calvin's g/f for a season. Heck, in the opener for Season 3, a girl no one had ever seen before named "Liv" was with them and upset that no one remembered her. Best we can figure, Liv (Olivia) was from an alternate universe in which Calvin and she were dating. In the 2nd to last episode, the GM asked, "What one question would you most like to have answered?" and Gurav said, "What is the real story with Liv?" This NPC made up for one session, affected him that much. He asked about her, not about something from his background.
And the thing with these NPCs is -- everyone at the table was invested in Liv, because she saved all their lives in that season opener, and then vanished. Everyone was invested in Barret, and Calvin's LARP girlfriend, because they knew those characters, and had interacted with them. Addie (one of the other PCs) on leveling up took an ability that let her see ghosts, and she enjoyed interacting with Calvin's car's ghost, Rosa, when no one else but Calvin could see her. NPCs that come up on play are characters everyone cares about. Most of the time, NPCs from the background are characters only that one player cares about.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I didn't read the thread yet but it isn't the job of the players to create hooks for you. It's your job to create hooks for them.
As your campaign world is all custom, how do you expect players to make a fully fleshed out backstory? With more well known campaign worlds it is easy due to familiarity with the material but if you require that players read your multi-page essay on your world before creating a character to tie into it, that's pretty rough.
I suggest they pick traits, ideals, and flaws and suggest they write a backstory but I don't need it. If a person wants to play, that's enough. If they just make a vague "my character was born into a rich family and was raised to be a knight." is good enough. Getting angry at them for not meshing into my made up world is silly. I'll take enthusiasm and desire to play over the best written backstory ever.
Most of my players are/were new to D&D so I didn't ask for any kind of backstory at all. I asked the players themselves what they want to do, and what they want to see. Nothing to do with their PC, only what they want to experience as a player. One person said they want to see a dragon. Another said they want to rescue a princess. That is plenty of material right there.
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I’m currently playing a few characters in different campaigns. One of them I picked her background and clicked 3 Traits & 1 ea. Bond, Ideal, and Flaw. I’ve been making her actual backstory up as we play. Another character I wrote a fleshed out backstory and at the end made a reference to an organization. That DM read it and asked what that organization was. My response was “you tell me.”
Back in the day a lot of characters started at 16ish (or racial equivalent). Many backstories were 3 brief paragraphs (up to 9ish sentences) of nuclear family, significant childhood events, and what inspired the character to go adventuring.
As a DM, that last part is the one I personally ask for. “Why?” Why did they leave behind whatever life they had and decide to go be freelance, independent mercenary superheroes. Happy, well adjusted people don’t typically decide to arm themselves and go fight monsters for a living. Either they’re broke, desperate, miserable, bored, angry, driven, delusional, or whatever. So I like to know what the spark was because if they can tell me, then that means they know too. (To be honest, the 2 Traits, Bond, Ideal, Flaw all combined basically give you a good idea of that already.)
The backstory itself is less important than the current story IMO. Yea, DMs can mine backstories for ideas to create hooks for their players’ characters, but if I have 1 NPC’s name (parent, sibling, friend, etc.) and a “why,” I can invent a hook. But the point of the hook is to get them to go on the adventure. If they’re already doing that, then yer golden.
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An additional point to the conversation, new players may not necessarily understand what a backstory can do during the game so it won't bother them at character creation, they want to get stuck in a hit stuff with a sword and cast spells. I played with some brand new players, and had to really squeeze out some info from them prior to starting, and that was done by me asking for where they came from and why they left. Then I tailored 5 or some questions to get some additional info and see if I can get something that can be used as small hooks in side quests. Not all of the players gave me detailed info.
Then during the campaign they are on a ship, and come across a ghost ship. It was the very ship that one of the players used to be a sailor on, it's not an important story item, but the player liked hearing a link to his past and it prompted him to ask questions or go off to seek answers "so why is my ship dead? What happened to it?", well there's a potential side quest right there.
After playing through this campaign, if they join another they might be encouraged to flesh out their backstory a little as they can see what part in the overall game is plays. Obviously none of this reply is relating to experienced players, but I think everyone has covered off that aspect pretty well so far.
This is taken from the document I run through with my players in session zero:
Epic Personal Storylines
For the last bullet point, these were what some of my players came up with:
You don't have to rely on the players for plot hooks. The module itself can be the hook.
For example at the start of our last campaign (0 level characters), pirates on a slave ship captured the PCs (and bunch of npc). And the PCs "rose to the top" and worked together to get off the ship, and free the others - and that's how the group formed.
One thing about requiring an extensive background - If you make people go through all the effort to create a hook filled background, and then only use one players hook, the others will be less motivated to go through the trouble the next time.
I disagree insofar as that the player does have a job to do as well. Their job is to give the character reasonable and realistic motivations to propel that character forward. It's not my job to tell them why their character goes adventuring, although I'm more than happy to help them figure that out in the character creation process. As other posts here have discussed, a PC needs a reason to become an adventurer. Now, the opening hook in some cases might prompt that - ie, a dragon burning down an entire city - but the player still needs to understand "Okay, well if the opening hook to the game is that a dragon is going to burn down the city, then I'd like it if character X from my family dies/is wounded in the attack to prompt my character to truly seek revenge." That's an immediate goal. However, a longer-term goal is necessary, too, because what does the PC do once they've found that revenge, only to learn that it's part of some bigger world-ending plot to summon Tiamat? Go back to their surviving family? There needs to be something a little juicier there. In this case a good idea that I might suggest is that their family line somewhere had an order of dragon slayers, and finding out about Tiamat will spur them to take on their family's old goals and continue forward. And in some cases it could be a reveal that I make up that the PC didn't know about their own family history (one we may or may not have discussed in creation). But ultimately it's on the player to have their character say, "Okay, I need to continue adventuring."
Extremely simple motivations are fine for shorter games, but that's not what I run, personally.
As far as new players go, I've never DM'd for brand spanking new players before, or at least anyone new to RPing (ie written RP), and I don't DM for anyone under 18. Additionally, my games are all epic, running the gamut of anywhere between levels 1-20 and usually ending at 20. They're long-term games, and ones where every PC has at least one personal story arc interwoven into the main plot in a way that everyone can engage with. So perhaps that dictates my approach to this whole thread's topic.
As for building a character in a homebrew setting, that's fairly easy. I always give good primers on the immediate area the game starts in, ask questions about what kind of place they think their character concept would be from, and help them figure out where in the region or even the world they'd be from, giving them as much information about that area as I can. It's worked quite well for me so far. Hence why I asked how others approach this issue to see if there are any ways I might improve upon my methods.
I don't require backstories at the start of the campaign, I have found both as a player and as a DM that a lot of players like to get into their character and let the backstory flow as they get to play them and, as with any part of a story, if it isn't required right now then it probably isn't required. Right now I have a party of 8, 4 of them have developed a sort of backstory, bullet points that I can have fun with, the rest are just there to roll dice, hit monsters and enjoy the adventure. It works fine, the story is developing in its own way. The 4 with a backstory I have weaved that story into the world but I may never actually explore them, or they may never explore them, I run a fully open world campaign the sandbox is the entire world and events are always happening players can decide which ones they want to get involved with.
So most of my players over the years have developed things session by session, why do you need to know your parents names until your asked, why do you need to know your home town until it is important, you don't. I have had players write out reams of backstory ahead of the game and then 3-4 sessions in come ot me telling me they want to rip it all up because the way the character is playing is different to the character that backstory is written for so if my players want to create a background I encourage them ot commit only the barest details to paper, by all means have the rest in your head, but don't commit to it until you need to.
Love these, those are great, thank you!
I'd argue that there are a few more solid motivations out there than those listed (I've some of my own PCs that wouldn't fit neatly into money/glory/charity/fame/power and work very well), but they're definitely great motivators.
On the note of "washed up on a beach without any knowledge of why" - I actually ran my first ever campaign on that exact premise for the entire party (sans the burn and red cloth). That was the opening plot hook, along with the tag of "with nothing more than basic gear and a strange mask on your person." The game started at level 10, and the PCs were missing memories from the past 3 years (and, mechanically, 2 levels). This was before I had any real experience or understanding of how to actually start a game, made tons of mistakes, but my players were very patient with me and we saw the game to its end about a year and a half, 100 sessions, later. I learned a lot.
When I was helping my players construct their first characters for our LMoP + DoIP campaign, I tried to help tie their characters into the world. The best example of this is one of my player's Rock Gnome character, Frug Fiddlefen. When they chose Rock Gnome, I brought up Gnomengarde, which is a clan of Rock Gnomes in the Neverwinter region. We decided that this player's character could be from Gnomengarde, which made for some fantastic role-play when they visited the location in the campaign.
If you help your players tie their characters into existing world lore, or you specifically ask them to develop "Knives" in their backstory, then it help your players become invested in the story and be more open to role-play.
As a DM I am perfectly happy with a player telling me, my characters motivation is they want money end of, or they want to hit stuff. Once the adventure starts and the sessions tick along if I am doing my job correctly they will then discover and flesh out the bits of the character that are important, but I have run entire 4-5 year long campaigns taking characters from level 1-20 where I couldn't tell you why any of the characters started out the adventure, in one they where a group of players who wanted to play, and we started a campaign I forged a reason for the party to form (framed for a thing they didn't do). Some backstory stuff got fleshed out as time progressed but at no point did we ever explain why they where in that town in that inn at that moment in time we didn't need to, the adventure just started. I have done that multiple times in all sorts of game systems over the years, this myth that a TTRPG campaign needs reams of backstory and notes for characters is really just that, a myth that puts a lot of new players off playing. Think about your fav novels, they dont come with a 60 page backstory that explains everything, well Fellowship of the ring does and as great as tolkein was Concerning hobbits is the worst intro to any book lol. The best camnpaigns just begin
There an infinite variety of character motivators, but D&D typically asks for the characters' motivation to meet the following requirements:
Most other motivators that fall outside of money, helping, and fame are unlikely to meet the criteria. For example, you might be playing an elven linguist who wants to enter ancient ruins to learn more ancient languages. Ok, sounds great - but wait, they are really that obsessive that they're willing to go up against a Beholder? After the second time they get knocked unconscious, or when a friend died, do they really feel this is such a good career choice? What happens when the DM has planned a game which doesn't involve any ancient ruins to explore?
So basically, if your character goes into a village and a hapless villager says "Please help us, the orcs have kidnapped some of the townspeople. We can pay you X gold pieces to rescue them" and your character isn't automatically going to throw themselves into the adventure... then they don't have a good motivation for adventuring. Typically therefore it's money, a desire to help those in need, or a desire for personal fame and glory that will cause them to risk their lives.
...that sounds more like a player problem ("I'm chaotic! I'm-a do what I want!") than a character motivation problem, to be honest.
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)
One of my Things is that if a character's motivations, backstory, etc, don't lean towards sounding like they're going to be the right fit for the adventure, I'll outright tell that player, "I don't think this character is the right fit for this story, let's try again." Because you're right - if someone approached me with an archaeologist character looking to go ruin delving, and I don't plan on any ruin delving, I'm not going to have them play that character in that story. It just would end up with disappointment and a want to switch characters later on, which is it's own set of problems.
I think the gist of it is that people tend to have a universal value for things like currency (and usually "the common good" and general glory in most cases), so it's an easy motivator to use- though not necessarily the strongest or most reliable. I think it's also worth considering things like this of "how can an adventurer plausibly keep their adventures going and be okay with it." I.e. "I need money to pay for room and board, or people need to hear my name in order to recruit me to higher quests, or generally I need to be morally okay with my actions to have the will to keep going on."
Taking Sanvael's example of an archaeologist, a player of mine was really into books and research, but realized that they didn't have a specific enough area of interest within written information to really put themselves at risk to go recover such materials. They started the campaign thinking that knowledge was foresight and foresight was power, but sorta realized that gathering knowledge was more of a hobby than a character motivator, and with that learned soon enough that what really motivated them was ensuring a future for their loved ones- and THAT, to them, was worth risking their life for.
I think another thing to take from all of this isn't just the idea of the hook, but also understanding what's being hooked into. A hook is only as effective as what it's attempting to catch onto- in other words, making sure that your players have some tasty concepts to dig their claws into, whether that comes from the system or from the setting that you're providing. If I'm making a character without a specific setting in mind, one of my favorite things to do is to consider a hook that comes from within the class/subclass/race/background and how to make that as compelling and applicable as possible (i.e. taking Djinnilock and figuring out some sort of relationship with their vessel and what they may want to do with it). You'll definitely need to expand it from there though, because nothing's more boring than the Paladin that follows their oath and does nothing more than that. It's times like that where I like to try to think about specific ways that characters enact the things that make them themselves and how that can come more to fruition in a campaign setting (i.e. the stereotypical Vengeance Paladin seeks to avenge a fallen comrade- who killed them, what will it take to avenge them, who else is culpable, is there any mercy or forgiveness to be had, why or why not, etc.).
TLDR; I think making a good hook and a good character just comes from figuring out what's important to them and expanding from there to figure out what makes them unique and worth playing out as compared to playing anything else. The more we delve into the topic, I think a general thing to be asking to understand if a character is meaningful/impactful is just... "So what?"
I honestly disagree whole-heartedly. The best novels don't need huge amounts of backstory, but the author knows the characters' backstory going into writing it. They don't tell you the backstory, they show it to you in ways the character acts, speaks, and makes decisions, though they might include brief flashbacks as necessary. As a lifelong writer myself (20+ years writing and written RP), I know very well that if you try to write a book without knowing your characters' motivations, giving them external and internal conflicts, building up their personality, etc, it's going to fall flat - if you even get past the middle point at all.
Just because the medium of storytelling is different - and just because it's a multiplayer game instead of a single-protagonist-centered story - doesn't mean that good characterization no longer applies.
That said, it sounds like some other DMs here have claimed success without, and good for them. To me, that sounds both boring and uncompelling, and the DM has the right to have fun with their game, too.
That's why I tend to view backstory motivators as just the thing that gets them out the door and into the world -- characters should evolve and develop other reasons for adventuring over time, even if it's just through the bonds they form with the rest of the party.
Even the basic, more generic reasons can fall flat. "I wanna be rich" as a motivator isn't going to get a character to sign up for a Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven/that one episode of Mandalorian kind of scenario where those farmers bothered by the orcs can only scrape together a few gp, unless you literally borrow a plot point from the western version and have them be convinced the others in the party aren't as altruistic as they seem and know of some secret treasure.
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)