Honestly, the only time I've run into trouble so far is when someone plays a Thief. The ones I have run into thus far have all done exactly what I and they say a Thief should do; they lie, cheat, and steal. What else would a Thief do? Every single time, they do it to the party. Money seems to be the worst motivation of all of them. Nobody should be payed to play D&D but the professionals.
It's a legitimate occupation, but I remember a comment many years ago about someone who was thrilled to be hired by TSR, and after a while, playing D&D for a living made them stop playing outside of work. They gave up on their favorite hobby, and that's sad.
I don't like the idea of a backstory giving the DM "knives" to use against them. I've never personally been stabbed with one, but I imagine that they hurt, and I'm pretty sure it hurts more when it's twisted.
Don't twist things about anyone's player character and expect them to appreciate it.
More and more thread sounds like some actor asking their director "what is my motivation in this scene?", which is an utterly silly way to play D&D.
You go on an adventure as a group because you simply want to play D&D. You don't pick the other char's in the group, as each player makes their choices within the guidelines provided by the DM. So in the same vein, player's motivation is simply to play the game, and their char's choices for in-game activity is whatever options (or they may be no option at all) provided by the DM. Especially in brand new campaigns, or modules, indepth character backstories are totally irrelevant. If a DM wants to dive into that later in the campaign, that is fine. But there is zero need for some fleshed out backstory at the beginning.
And there is one issue that is highly problematic, and has not been discussed. The only point for some DM to weave their campaign around char's backstories is if the DM and players assume no char ever dies. Which is NOT how D&D is played.
You're making a lot of assumptions about how D&D is, and isn't played. A good rule of thumb for any DM is: there is no right or wrong way to play D&D.
If you've never DM'd for a group of players who were all strongly focused on individual character motivations to the extent that they would ignore plot hooks, didn't want to get involved in quests, refused to fight in combat, or any of the other stuff that comes from poor character motivation choices then that's fortunate for you. You should return to this thread and have a read if ever you do.
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.
Being motivated by money doesn't have to stop at just "I want to be rich."
I want to send money home to my family
I want to live a rich lifestyle because I will never go back to being poor!
I'll show those that doubted me that I can be greater than any of them
If I raise enough money, I can resurrect the brother I accidentally killed
and so on. So the money is the easy thing to offer the character so that they have a reason to go out and adventure, even if they have deeper ties to the world.
. 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.
Each to there own and I know some DM's and players love developing long backstories. The big difference between an author and a roleplay group is that an author has a beginning, middle and an end sketched out. In many cases an author will work backwards defining an end and sculpting a story to get the characters there. They define dialogue and main character reactions and interactions.
In Roleplay games of any type as a DM if you are not running a railroad the best you can plan out is your beginning. The moment your players get involved then all bets are off as to where and what the story is that you will tell. I have a campaign I am running now and is early days, because of player actions about 20 potential plot points have opened up that the party have picked up on, 15 of them entirely in their own heads, 13 of them I love. These story threads are divergent and individual and so whichever they pull will mean the others may well fade into nothing, including the 5 I originally sketched out as a potential story. The BBEG I had planned out may now fade into nothing because the players are telling their own compelling story forged by combinations of good and bad dice rolling, good and bad decisions and becoming obsessed with things in the world that I initially described simply for colour. This is the most amazing and most fun type of story telling and really is not boring because as a DM I am barely keeping ahead of the players and I truly have no idea at this moment where they will lead the story. once we settle down a little bit then I can forge the next part of the story but, right now, I don't see any of the player backstories playing any part in any of it.
As for players having to have some intricate backstory for a character, as long in their own mind they have the vaguest of ideas of a characters motivations and ideals then we can play. I don't need to know and over the course of a campaign that will change anyway. Yes a compelling character background can be interesting and fun to play with, but it can also hamstring a player early on making them roleplay a character they actually realise they don't like early on. I have seen that happen, a character wrote out a deep back story that was open enough for me to run with, they put thought into the family, motivations and important points in the characters upbringing. Suddenly after session 4 they pulled me aside and told me they really hated the character, it wasn't fun to play and the detailed backstory was hamstringing them, stopping them from creating a character organically while playing.
They wanted me to kill them off and start again, same profession, same subclass, but a new character, I explained that the other players had no idea of that backstory so they could just scrap it, I got rid of the plot ideas around it and they just started roleplaying with a blank slate. Working out the important thing, how do I behave how do I think. The what is far more important then the why. I feel superior to those around me and I will always talk down to people I see as poor, that does not need a deep and meaningful why to be fun to play.
If you have never done it I really suggest playing a scaled back campaign in terms of pre prepared info. Ask your players to give you the barest minimum of information, explain you will work it out as a group during the game. Start with a session 1 and work out how and why the party are together and give them a challenge to face up against and then just flow from there session to session letting your world reveal itself to them and to you as you progress. Have ideas, have thoughts and plans, but keep everything bare bones until the players need to know it and it is revealed to them. Let players evolve character backstories as they wish during the game, and just enjoy a shared storytelling experience.
There will be moments you feel out of control, times you will be improvising entire sessions and story threads thinking seconds ahead of the players, and there will be moments you will be able to breathe and think through 2-3 sessions ahead, only to have the players throw that into confusion as well. Run a campaign like that if you never have before and just let the experience flow over you it is the most liberating thing I ever did as a DM and ever since I have really dialed back on how much info I need in order to make a compelling, interesting, unpredictable and exciting story.
Honestly, the only time I've run into trouble so far is when someone plays a Thief. The ones I have run into thus far have all done exactly what I and they say a Thief should do; they lie, cheat, and steal. What else would a Thief do? Every single time, they do it to the party. Money seems to be the worst motivation of all of them. Nobody should be payed to play D&D but the professionals.
It's a legitimate occupation, but I remember a comment many years ago about someone who was thrilled to be hired by TSR, and after a while, playing D&D for a living made them stop playing outside of work. They gave up on their favorite hobby, and that's sad.
I don't like the idea of a backstory giving the DM "knives" to use against them. I've never personally been stabbed with one, but I imagine that they hurt, and I'm pretty sure it hurts more when it's twisted.
Don't twist things about anyone's player character and expect them to appreciate it.
I played a thief who was lawful good, he stole only from bad people and then gave his proceeds to those more needy. in all my years of playing DnD I have never known a player play a thief the way you define it, yes they have the abilities of a thief but that does not mean they have to be a kleptomaniac. One character I had in a campaign made a living making places security prrof, he would be paid to try and break into places to find the weaknesses and find ways to make them thief proof. He actually never stole a thing.
The first game that I tried to run was with my Significant Other, and we were playing online. She had a long, complicated tragic backstory. I can sum up about two pages of information as this:
"She was a Tabaxi. Her father died shortly after she was born, and she was raised by her mother. They went for a walk in the woods, got too far away from their village and were attacked by some nasty critter. They climbed a tree, but it didn't help, and her mother died to protect her. She was there weeping in the tree when a guy found her. He took her under his wing and they went to the local Thieves' Guild, and she was trained as a Thief. Everything was fine until her adopted father asked her to be part of a plan to seduce a rich guy and give him a sleeping poison from a little vial once she'd worn him out. She wanted to know why he didn't just have her steal the item directly and he didn't answer. She went along with it, she wore the guy out, but he knew about the plan somehow and had drank an antidote before hand. They tried to catch her, she escaped. She ran off to a city she'd never even seen or heard of before and left the item in the top of a tree."
That's where the story stars. She's first level. She tells me that she's looking for a surrogate family. That's a great motivation to join a party of adventurers. What does she do? Well, what else would a Thief do? Steal things, her character takes every opportunity to find a way to steal things. Everywhere she goes, no matter how nice the people are, she's casing the joint. They went way up into the area where wealth people shop for expensive items with some junk gems. They were pretty much worthless. They knew that. They had them appraised before. The guy had to stop working and look at the stuff, and he offered them two gold for it. She was furious, the moment the guy turned his back she started trying to figure out how to penetrate his security. The only reason she didn't try it was because I pointed out that he'd have guards and magical traps. I ought to have let her try.
The story goes on and eventually the reach the capital city of the most powerful nation in the world. As a society, they are pretty much lawful neutral. They have a strict code of law, and they tend to harsh punishments. Off she goes to steal things. The party pretty much has to ignore her, because any time they are trying to do something, she's off stealing things. She was off picking pockets when they set up a meeting with the Archmage of the Empire. They dragged her along, and once again, the moment the man turned his back, she stole a keepsake of his. She was third level at the time, he was 20th.
The next Thief I ran into was an Arcane Trickster, but she almost never used Mage Hand. Once again, her focus and purpose in life was getting loot. The DM tells her that she hears some bad guys in another room. She goes off to check some crates for loot. In combat, she plays like an Assassin. She goes all out for using stealth in combat and does her best to kill anything that moves. We keep making the mistake of sending her out as a scout, she'd be good at that, but she invariably gets into a fight rather than reporting back to us.
The next Thief I run into has expertise in Deception. She tells lies every chance she gets, and feels free to grab anything not nailed down.
They all play their characters beautifully. I don't need to make them better, they do just fine on their own. While the may not steal directly from the other members of the party, some do, some don't, they steal their time and mine. They steal my fun when I'm trying to run an adventure. I think they steal everyone's fun really.
The saying goes "Money is the root of all Evil." It's really not like that. "The lack of money make people desperate and they do whatever they have to to support themselves and the others they care about." People who specialize in that, no matter what class they chose, Rogues are just good at it, are a nuisance.
I'm glad other people have had good experiences with that sort of thing. I wish I could say I have.
No, I have never DM'ed a group where they refused to go on a quest, let alone fight in an encounter. I had a Grave Cleric that refused to negotiate with a Lich, which with that subclass made perfect sense, and what I expected. That is about as far as it has gone. My players actually want to play D&D, not discuss their char's family backgrounds, and their motivations to adventure.
I definitely gotta agree with the sentiments that people all play D&D in different ways, and that the weight of narrative that people prefer varies. OP was mentioning how to bring out more interesting plot points and narrative elements from PCs, not necessarily how to convince PCs to play in the first place. Most people can tend to agree to enter a game of D&D intending on playing with the core mechanics and devices of things like quests and encounters, but I think OP has an added interest in doing more with HB, RP, and general narrative instigation. I'm always going to be a supporter of trying to get people to use the most of all of the elements of play that TTRPGs have to offer! : D
So no, not everybody needs to have a rich story or compelling impact on the players- some people just wanna hit things, grab loot, and make awesome characters and adventures together! I encourage OP and others to try to explore what they want to though and make the most out of whatever they feel they can!
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.
Being motivated by money doesn't have to stop at just "I want to be rich."
I want to send money home to my family
I want to live a rich lifestyle because I will never go back to being poor!
I'll show those that doubted me that I can be greater than any of them
If I raise enough money, I can resurrect the brother I accidentally killed
and so on. So the money is the easy thing to offer the character so that they have a reason to go out and adventure, even if they have deeper ties to the world.
None of those is motivation for a character to help poor villagers defend themselves against orcs (well, maybe #2, but not because of their stated motivation.)
At some point, the player has to meet you halfway. "My character wouldn't go on that adventure" is just another way for the player to say, "that doesn't sound like fun", because otherwise they'd be saying, "My character will go that adventure, even though it doesn't directly help them accomplish what their backstory says they want, because..."
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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)
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.
Being motivated by money doesn't have to stop at just "I want to be rich."
I want to send money home to my family
I want to live a rich lifestyle because I will never go back to being poor!
I'll show those that doubted me that I can be greater than any of them
If I raise enough money, I can resurrect the brother I accidentally killed
and so on. So the money is the easy thing to offer the character so that they have a reason to go out and adventure, even if they have deeper ties to the world.
None of those is motivation for a character to help poor villagers defend themselves against orcs (well, maybe #2, but not because of their stated motivation.)
At some point, the player has to meet you halfway. "My character wouldn't go on that adventure" is just another way for the player to say, "that doesn't sound like fun", because otherwise they'd be saying, "My character will go that adventure, even though it doesn't directly help them accomplish what their backstory says they want, because..."
This is my experience players using character motivation not to follow a story arc is generally because they don’t want to tell the DM your story really isn’t fun I want to go over here and play with this instead. As DM’s and I have been so guilty of this, we blame players but actually it comes down to that connection, that cooperation generally has broken down and in those occasions when I look at it in detail in the past about 60% of the time it was because me as a DM was trying too hard to show off my shiny new world and the really cool, detailed multi layers that lots that I was running in it. Look I have made your character a key part of the story over here, to which the player goes, nope that looks boring I want to go investigate that stone circle and see if it is important.
What I ended up doing in that instance was get the hint and run with the players for a bit and get them engaged with the simple stuff, by then my 120 pages of detailed notes where largely ignored, I knew my world so I could create on the fly. That stone circle, became a recurring point the characters returned to, nothing major ever happened there related directly to the circle but it seemed a nexus for an encounter or an adventure. In the next campaign, set 50 years on, that stone circle had a small villiage growing next to it. Adventurers from all over the land would come to rest their strength against each other. All brought about by the tales of the precious adventure party. That is cooperative storytelling defining a world. I miss that stone circle :)
This is all truly the curse of DMing open world campaigns I suppose... It's a very tricky balancing trick of trying to figure out what responsibility we have in engaging our players vs. what responsibility they have in paying attention and suspending their disbelief. I often try my hardest to look for the common ground between characters' backstories and then try to run my own plotlines through the middle of those, synthesizing something that involves an interest out of every involved party.
That "stone circle" that Scarloc mentioned is something that a party as a whole- DM included- needs to find together. : ) It just so happens that the DM can be a better guide for the rest of the party by having an overarching view of the entire narrative at hand. A lot of it all just comes from listening to each other and figuring out what everybody at a table likes and wants to deal in. I.e. a DM might like to play wargames that nobody else at the table does, but if everybody can agree that fighting dragons is cool, then write a setting that emphasizes dragons as a prompt for writing unique plots around!
(I realize that the more this thread goes on, the more we start to just sorta go into general themes and topics of character writing and creating engaging gameplay, but that is such a broad topic so I think we can all agree to disagree on anything if things seem to just devolve into discussion of personal interests and experience :P)
This is all truly the curse of DMing open world campaigns I suppose... It's a very tricky balancing trick of trying to figure out what responsibility we have in engaging our players vs. what responsibility they have in paying attention and suspending their disbelief. I often try my hardest to look for the common ground between characters' backstories and then try to run my own plotlines through the middle of those, synthesizing something that involves an interest out of every involved party.
That "stone circle" that Scarloc mentioned is something that a party as a whole- DM included- needs to find together. : ) It just so happens that the DM can be a better guide for the rest of the party by having an overarching view of the entire narrative at hand. A lot of it all just comes from listening to each other and figuring out what everybody at a table likes and wants to deal in. I.e. a DM might like to play wargames that nobody else at the table does, but if everybody can agree that fighting dragons is cool, then write a setting that emphasizes dragons as a prompt for writing unique plots around!
(I realize that the more this thread goes on, the more we start to just sorta go into general themes and topics of character writing and creating engaging gameplay, but that is such a broad topic so I think we can all agree to disagree on anything if things seem to just devolve into discussion of personal interests and experience :P)
Quite. As I mentioned, I do fully-homebrew settings and campaigns exclusively (that's where I shine the brightest and have the most fun, and where my players have the most fun as well based on many rounds of anonymous feedback throughout the past 3 years). They're not all 100% open-world, but they easily could be and can evolve into such depending on what the party does, their decisions, desires, and where the campaign naturally flows based on their reactions to the initial plot hooks.
Mind, I'm definitely not here to discuss "How do I get a player who doesn't want to give me a backstory actually give me a dang backstory?" - rather, "How do I help a player who already wants their character to have a good backstory have a better backstory than they know how to come up with on their own?"
Part of good table cohesion is everyone having the same, or at least similar, expectations. Knowing what you're going into in a game is important. If the table all wants hack and slash without much story, cool, fine - but that's not my realm of fun, so I would be an inappropriate DM for such a game. I exclusively recruit people who want good character arcs and narrative storytelling, and who appreciate their background coming up in the course of play. My job therein is to make that character arc engaging to the whole party so no one gets bored, rather than just engaging to that PC.
A side note is that, as a result of playing with these folks for awhile - and as a direct result of having these backstories and understanding not only player motivations but also character motivations and general ideas of where the player might want to take their character (no guarantees, of course!) - I can also much better predict what sort of actions the party will take, and thus much better prep for games. I always have options ready, of course, and I'm always ready to improv something completely off the cuff, but I genuinely have a very good grasp on what the PCs will do in most situations - at least in very broad strokes. I don't need to know what they'll say to whom precisely, but I know "If NPC A is even slightly shifty, PC 1 will distrust them instantly and not heed their advice; thusly, they might guide the party towards doing the opposite, or doing the same thing in a different way - so, knowing that, do I want to make them shifty on purpose, or not?"
That said, my players aren't jerks, and I don't railroad (although the world absolutely continues moving on with or without the party, meaning what they choose to ignore now may come bite them in the tail later). My groups (generally) don't go off the rails like lunatics, no matter how chaotic their characters (and boy do we have some chaotic ones). They're very respectful. I'm a bit spoiled, I suppose.
... that said, there was one time where the party was split in two different planes for a couple hours, and I had to go frequently back and forth between the groups until they reconvened, and had to make up enormous swaths of story and plot on the fly to make the game even continue working, but that was because of a bag-of-holding-inside-another-bag-of-holding incident. Heh.
It at least seems like you've got a good grasp on how to handle your party at least, so that's a great core skill to have. It seems like you have a good party on your hands that's looking just for ways to improve the game alongside you, which is awesome! I think if they're that involved and invested, I'd consider seeing if there's any way you could trust them with doing a little worldbuilding in your setting themselves to get them even more integrated into things. I've had my group with various changes here and there for many years now, and permitting people to do some world dev bit by bit and trusting them to make their mark on the world not only has helped shape my setting in a way that I couldn't do alone, but has also gotten them to think critically about the content they're putting in. I like to think that people are productive opportunists when given these sorta roles, and that they're thinking about investing their time spent on crafting these sort of things so that they can enjoy and appreciate them further down the road. (I may just be an optimist, though. :P )
It at least seems like you've got a good grasp on how to handle your party at least, so that's a great core skill to have. It seems like you have a good party on your hands that's looking just for ways to improve the game alongside you, which is awesome! I think if they're that involved and invested, I'd consider seeing if there's any way you could trust them with doing a little worldbuilding in your setting themselves to get them even more integrated into things. I've had my group with various changes here and there for many years now, and permitting people to do some world dev bit by bit and trusting them to make their mark on the world not only has helped shape my setting in a way that I couldn't do alone, but has also gotten them to think critically about the content they're putting in. I like to think that people are productive opportunists when given these sorta roles, and that they're thinking about investing their time spent on crafting these sort of things so that they can enjoy and appreciate them further down the road. (I may just be an optimist, though. :P )
I have done this, actually! It's great. Although this does remind me that I need to discuss with one of my players the political and law impacts of their PC (and their NPC spouse) having become the Monarch of their country of origin, and having been ruling for about 300 years.
It at least seems like you've got a good grasp on how to handle your party at least, so that's a great core skill to have. It seems like you have a good party on your hands that's looking just for ways to improve the game alongside you, which is awesome! I think if they're that involved and invested, I'd consider seeing if there's any way you could trust them with doing a little worldbuilding in your setting themselves to get them even more integrated into things. I've had my group with various changes here and there for many years now, and permitting people to do some world dev bit by bit and trusting them to make their mark on the world not only has helped shape my setting in a way that I couldn't do alone, but has also gotten them to think critically about the content they're putting in. I like to think that people are productive opportunists when given these sorta roles, and that they're thinking about investing their time spent on crafting these sort of things so that they can enjoy and appreciate them further down the road. (I may just be an optimist, though. :P )
I have done this, actually! It's great. Although this does remind me that I need to discuss with one of my players the political and law impacts of their PC (and their NPC spouse) having become the Monarch of their country of origin, and having been ruling for about 300 years.
That's awesome! (Also same- we love it when that kinda stuff happens :D)
Honestly, it seems like you're doing most things alright already! I think frankly at this point, if you and your players have a keen interest in narrative writing, I'd recommend that maybe it's a good point for y'all to expand your horizons and start picking up extracurricular materials if you're that invested in worldbuilding and character writing. There are so many great resources out there on workshopping these sort of creative processes and there are infinite points to begin. You're at a really great time in a D&D career where the narrative value of a game starts to become so full of potential and intrigue; it makes writing meaningful and exciting campaigns all the more fun! My best recommendation from there otherwise would be to keep challenging players to step out of their comfort zones and writing things that subvert common tropes and expectations- see how far you can push each other and the game and you'll find that things connect far more easily when you're willing to reach further across different realms of interest!
It at least seems like you've got a good grasp on how to handle your party at least, so that's a great core skill to have. It seems like you have a good party on your hands that's looking just for ways to improve the game alongside you, which is awesome! I think if they're that involved and invested, I'd consider seeing if there's any way you could trust them with doing a little worldbuilding in your setting themselves to get them even more integrated into things. I've had my group with various changes here and there for many years now, and permitting people to do some world dev bit by bit and trusting them to make their mark on the world not only has helped shape my setting in a way that I couldn't do alone, but has also gotten them to think critically about the content they're putting in. I like to think that people are productive opportunists when given these sorta roles, and that they're thinking about investing their time spent on crafting these sort of things so that they can enjoy and appreciate them further down the road. (I may just be an optimist, though. :P )
I have done this, actually! It's great. Although this does remind me that I need to discuss with one of my players the political and law impacts of their PC (and their NPC spouse) having become the Monarch of their country of origin, and having been ruling for about 300 years.
That's awesome! (Also same- we love it when that kinda stuff happens :D)
Honestly, it seems like you're doing most things alright already! I think frankly at this point, if you and your players have a keen interest in narrative writing, I'd recommend that maybe it's a good point for y'all to expand your horizons and start picking up extracurricular materials if you're that invested in worldbuilding and character writing. There are so many great resources out there on workshopping these sort of creative processes and there are infinite points to begin. You're at a really great time in a D&D career where the narrative value of a game starts to become so full of potential and intrigue; it makes writing meaningful and exciting campaigns all the more fun! My best recommendation from there otherwise would be to keep challenging players to step out of their comfort zones and writing things that subvert common tropes and expectations- see how far you can push each other and the game and you'll find that things connect far more easily when you're willing to reach further across different realms of interest!
Yep! That's kiiiinda what I was going for with this thread, though perhaps that wasn't explicit; I'm interested in the ideas of how other DMs do what I'm already doing to see if I can pick up any methods I hadn't yet considered, as well as sharing my methods with anyone interested. (I definitely wasn't aiming to start a debate about whether it's even a necessary or even good thing to do what I do, heh.)
I'm definitely interested in outside sources. Worldbuilding is my jam, bread, and butter, and I spend no shortage of time working on it. I've looked up a goodly amount of other resources in the past 20 years on the subject, as well as plenty of writer's resources in general, but I've been a little leery of applying too many "writing rules" to D&D since so much of it is focused on building a story around a single protagonist and a linear story that is already pre-plotted and plays out exactly how the author wishes it to, versus the interactive medium of this format.
This is all truly the curse of DMing open world campaigns I suppose... It's a very tricky balancing trick of trying to figure out what responsibility we have in engaging our players vs. what responsibility they have in paying attention and suspending their disbelief. I often try my hardest to look for the common ground between characters' backstories and then try to run my own plotlines through the middle of those, synthesizing something that involves an interest out of every involved party.
That "stone circle" that Scarloc mentioned is something that a party as a whole- DM included- needs to find together. : ) It just so happens that the DM can be a better guide for the rest of the party by having an overarching view of the entire narrative at hand. A lot of it all just comes from listening to each other and figuring out what everybody at a table likes and wants to deal in. I.e. a DM might like to play wargames that nobody else at the table does, but if everybody can agree that fighting dragons is cool, then write a setting that emphasizes dragons as a prompt for writing unique plots around!
(I realize that the more this thread goes on, the more we start to just sorta go into general themes and topics of character writing and creating engaging gameplay, but that is such a broad topic so I think we can all agree to disagree on anything if things seem to just devolve into discussion of personal interests and experience :P)
Quite. As I mentioned, I do fully-homebrew settings and campaigns exclusively (that's where I shine the brightest and have the most fun, and where my players have the most fun as well based on many rounds of anonymous feedback throughout the past 3 years). They're not all 100% open-world, but they easily could be and can evolve into such depending on what the party does, their decisions, desires, and where the campaign naturally flows based on their reactions to the initial plot hooks.
Mind, I'm definitely not here to discuss "How do I get a player who doesn't want to give me a backstory actually give me a dang backstory?" - rather, "How do I help a player who already wants their character to have a good backstory have a better backstory than they know how to come up with on their own?"
Part of good table cohesion is everyone having the same, or at least similar, expectations. Knowing what you're going into in a game is important. If the table all wants hack and slash without much story, cool, fine - but that's not my realm of fun, so I would be an inappropriate DM for such a game. I exclusively recruit people who want good character arcs and narrative storytelling, and who appreciate their background coming up in the course of play. My job therein is to make that character arc engaging to the whole party so no one gets bored, rather than just engaging to that PC.
A side note is that, as a result of playing with these folks for awhile - and as a direct result of having these backstories and understanding not only player motivations but also character motivations and general ideas of where the player might want to take their character (no guarantees, of course!) - I can also much better predict what sort of actions the party will take, and thus much better prep for games. I always have options ready, of course, and I'm always ready to improv something completely off the cuff, but I genuinely have a very good grasp on what the PCs will do in most situations - at least in very broad strokes. I don't need to know what they'll say to whom precisely, but I know "If NPC A is even slightly shifty, PC 1 will distrust them instantly and not heed their advice; thusly, they might guide the party towards doing the opposite, or doing the same thing in a different way - so, knowing that, do I want to make them shifty on purpose, or not?"
That said, my players aren't jerks, and I don't railroad (although the world absolutely continues moving on with or without the party, meaning what they choose to ignore now may come bite them in the tail later). My groups (generally) don't go off the rails like lunatics, no matter how chaotic their characters (and boy do we have some chaotic ones). They're very respectful. I'm a bit spoiled, I suppose.
... that said, there was one time where the party was split in two different planes for a couple hours, and I had to go frequently back and forth between the groups until they reconvened, and had to make up enormous swaths of story and plot on the fly to make the game even continue working, but that was because of a bag-of-holding-inside-another-bag-of-holding incident. Heh.
Ok I think to give a bit more context to when I say I don't need reams of backstory and instead of getting drawn into posts midway through answer your question as to how to help them make better back stories. The fact is I don't not before the campaign, I very much believe in writing the campaign as it progresses so let the players get into the character and then tweak and change and work with them on details as we progress.
In my current campaign one of the players came to me with the following for her satyr sorcerer at session 0 (I do individual session 0's so each player can talk through character stuff with no other player hearing, players only know what characters know then).
Abandoned at a brothel as a baby, raised by escorts, decided to join the profession, high class, not cheap. doesn't care about real family because they abandoned me, gives most of what I own to help the other women, always looks out for anyone who has been abandoned, fiercely independent, been hiding her powers on the advice of her "mother" the madame of the brothel, wants to explore them more.
That was it those bullet points and for me that is more than enough for a player to get into a character. It gives me a pretty big potential plot hook for the future, who are her parents, what happened, one that I pulled the trigger on early to give her character the reason to continue with the party after the first adventure. But I don't fully know the answers to any of that, we hadn't named her "mother" the madame that raised her or given her a race until session 5 despite the campaign starting in the same town she lives in. I didn't know how old the character was until session 4, she told me 120 and that then made me think through and decide an elf would be the women that raised her, and she moves town every 30-40 years because she doesn't like seeing her regular clients and her human girls getting old and dying. but she also does that to lay a false trail for the people still looking for a little satyr baby left with her to keep safe120 years ago.
So when you ask for more input from your players what exactly is it your looking for? I also have an approach I have always applied to my TTRPG games, if the character doesn't know it nor does the player and that feeds into backstory. That doesn't mean that I dismiss a players ideas for the dark family secret they are trying to uncover out of hand, but, if a player knows what the end is going to be before the campaign has even begun what is the fun in exploring that plot line? So I might take the players idea, tell them thank you, and then twist it slightly, or take half of it, or, if I know they trust me and have played with me before, ignore it for an idea of my own I might have. I would much rather have a player come to me and say I an trying to uncover my family's secret and leave it at that then, this is the secret of my family, but my character has no idea and is trying to find it out.
An example of that, again my current campaign Minotaur Barbarian came to me with the following.
Father head of russian mafia style crime family, is in prison, was arrested for a mistake I made and took the time for me there was a negotiation with a rival family and a fight broke out and I killed someone, father claimed it was him, I have been given a message to deliver to him,
Again that was his back story before session 1. I spent about 20 mins with him and we changed it slightly to the following.
Father is in prison, where your from and where you are starting the campaign are about 2 months travel time, so you took a message to your uncle to give to your father, your father replied telling you to get out of the country until the heat dies down and you can return and your uncle will run things.
Now I know the father is not imprisoned by the law, in reality Barbarian was poisoned, that should have triggered a psychotic murderous rampage that killed everyone at the meeting between the 2 families, and then killed him but he is path of wild magic and so the magical poison didn't have that effect. Uncle did the poisoning, is trying to take over the family, lied to the barbarian. Father might be dead, or just held imprisoned not sure yet on that. But the player has no idea on any of that yet he thinks his dad is in prison and he is waiting on his uncle to send word it is safe to return (uncle has sent assassins after him) and yes, that is basically the lion king :)
So when it comes to working with players to make a better story for me it is something that I engage with through the game session by session, if there are facts about a characters life that will help me flesh out part of an idea I will ask the player for them, in one campaign one player was 50 sessions in before I needed to ask him his parents names for a thread. Sometimes players will say they are rubbish with names, you come up with it, but here are some details about them. But I only ask for the information that is important to the story now, or in the immediate future. So I don't push for more details in session 0 because it is fine if we find this stuff out as a group in session 100.
Another great thing I once saw in a different system I played in was a player who got his other players to help him, he was rubbish with names so a character would say, whats your mums name and he would look to the other players and ask them for name ideas. It worked well for that group and after a while we all started doing it, sharing in the creative experience.
Honestly, the only time I've run into trouble so far is when someone plays a Thief. The ones I have run into thus far have all done exactly what I and they say a Thief should do; they lie, cheat, and steal. What else would a Thief do? Every single time, they do it to the party. Money seems to be the worst motivation of all of them. Nobody should be payed to play D&D but the professionals.
It's a legitimate occupation, but I remember a comment many years ago about someone who was thrilled to be hired by TSR, and after a while, playing D&D for a living made them stop playing outside of work. They gave up on their favorite hobby, and that's sad.
I don't like the idea of a backstory giving the DM "knives" to use against them. I've never personally been stabbed with one, but I imagine that they hurt, and I'm pretty sure it hurts more when it's twisted.
Don't twist things about anyone's player character and expect them to appreciate it.
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You're making a lot of assumptions about how D&D is, and isn't played. A good rule of thumb for any DM is: there is no right or wrong way to play D&D.
If you've never DM'd for a group of players who were all strongly focused on individual character motivations to the extent that they would ignore plot hooks, didn't want to get involved in quests, refused to fight in combat, or any of the other stuff that comes from poor character motivation choices then that's fortunate for you. You should return to this thread and have a read if ever you do.
Being motivated by money doesn't have to stop at just "I want to be rich."
and so on. So the money is the easy thing to offer the character so that they have a reason to go out and adventure, even if they have deeper ties to the world.
Each to there own and I know some DM's and players love developing long backstories. The big difference between an author and a roleplay group is that an author has a beginning, middle and an end sketched out. In many cases an author will work backwards defining an end and sculpting a story to get the characters there. They define dialogue and main character reactions and interactions.
In Roleplay games of any type as a DM if you are not running a railroad the best you can plan out is your beginning. The moment your players get involved then all bets are off as to where and what the story is that you will tell. I have a campaign I am running now and is early days, because of player actions about 20 potential plot points have opened up that the party have picked up on, 15 of them entirely in their own heads, 13 of them I love. These story threads are divergent and individual and so whichever they pull will mean the others may well fade into nothing, including the 5 I originally sketched out as a potential story. The BBEG I had planned out may now fade into nothing because the players are telling their own compelling story forged by combinations of good and bad dice rolling, good and bad decisions and becoming obsessed with things in the world that I initially described simply for colour. This is the most amazing and most fun type of story telling and really is not boring because as a DM I am barely keeping ahead of the players and I truly have no idea at this moment where they will lead the story. once we settle down a little bit then I can forge the next part of the story but, right now, I don't see any of the player backstories playing any part in any of it.
As for players having to have some intricate backstory for a character, as long in their own mind they have the vaguest of ideas of a characters motivations and ideals then we can play. I don't need to know and over the course of a campaign that will change anyway. Yes a compelling character background can be interesting and fun to play with, but it can also hamstring a player early on making them roleplay a character they actually realise they don't like early on. I have seen that happen, a character wrote out a deep back story that was open enough for me to run with, they put thought into the family, motivations and important points in the characters upbringing. Suddenly after session 4 they pulled me aside and told me they really hated the character, it wasn't fun to play and the detailed backstory was hamstringing them, stopping them from creating a character organically while playing.
They wanted me to kill them off and start again, same profession, same subclass, but a new character, I explained that the other players had no idea of that backstory so they could just scrap it, I got rid of the plot ideas around it and they just started roleplaying with a blank slate. Working out the important thing, how do I behave how do I think. The what is far more important then the why. I feel superior to those around me and I will always talk down to people I see as poor, that does not need a deep and meaningful why to be fun to play.
If you have never done it I really suggest playing a scaled back campaign in terms of pre prepared info. Ask your players to give you the barest minimum of information, explain you will work it out as a group during the game. Start with a session 1 and work out how and why the party are together and give them a challenge to face up against and then just flow from there session to session letting your world reveal itself to them and to you as you progress. Have ideas, have thoughts and plans, but keep everything bare bones until the players need to know it and it is revealed to them. Let players evolve character backstories as they wish during the game, and just enjoy a shared storytelling experience.
There will be moments you feel out of control, times you will be improvising entire sessions and story threads thinking seconds ahead of the players, and there will be moments you will be able to breathe and think through 2-3 sessions ahead, only to have the players throw that into confusion as well. Run a campaign like that if you never have before and just let the experience flow over you it is the most liberating thing I ever did as a DM and ever since I have really dialed back on how much info I need in order to make a compelling, interesting, unpredictable and exciting story.
I played a thief who was lawful good, he stole only from bad people and then gave his proceeds to those more needy. in all my years of playing DnD I have never known a player play a thief the way you define it, yes they have the abilities of a thief but that does not mean they have to be a kleptomaniac. One character I had in a campaign made a living making places security prrof, he would be paid to try and break into places to find the weaknesses and find ways to make them thief proof. He actually never stole a thing.
The first game that I tried to run was with my Significant Other, and we were playing online. She had a long, complicated tragic backstory. I can sum up about two pages of information as this:
"She was a Tabaxi. Her father died shortly after she was born, and she was raised by her mother. They went for a walk in the woods, got too far away from their village and were attacked by some nasty critter. They climbed a tree, but it didn't help, and her mother died to protect her. She was there weeping in the tree when a guy found her. He took her under his wing and they went to the local Thieves' Guild, and she was trained as a Thief. Everything was fine until her adopted father asked her to be part of a plan to seduce a rich guy and give him a sleeping poison from a little vial once she'd worn him out. She wanted to know why he didn't just have her steal the item directly and he didn't answer. She went along with it, she wore the guy out, but he knew about the plan somehow and had drank an antidote before hand. They tried to catch her, she escaped. She ran off to a city she'd never even seen or heard of before and left the item in the top of a tree."
That's where the story stars. She's first level. She tells me that she's looking for a surrogate family. That's a great motivation to join a party of adventurers. What does she do? Well, what else would a Thief do? Steal things, her character takes every opportunity to find a way to steal things. Everywhere she goes, no matter how nice the people are, she's casing the joint. They went way up into the area where wealth people shop for expensive items with some junk gems. They were pretty much worthless. They knew that. They had them appraised before. The guy had to stop working and look at the stuff, and he offered them two gold for it. She was furious, the moment the guy turned his back she started trying to figure out how to penetrate his security. The only reason she didn't try it was because I pointed out that he'd have guards and magical traps. I ought to have let her try.
The story goes on and eventually the reach the capital city of the most powerful nation in the world. As a society, they are pretty much lawful neutral. They have a strict code of law, and they tend to harsh punishments. Off she goes to steal things. The party pretty much has to ignore her, because any time they are trying to do something, she's off stealing things. She was off picking pockets when they set up a meeting with the Archmage of the Empire. They dragged her along, and once again, the moment the man turned his back, she stole a keepsake of his. She was third level at the time, he was 20th.
The next Thief I ran into was an Arcane Trickster, but she almost never used Mage Hand. Once again, her focus and purpose in life was getting loot. The DM tells her that she hears some bad guys in another room. She goes off to check some crates for loot. In combat, she plays like an Assassin. She goes all out for using stealth in combat and does her best to kill anything that moves. We keep making the mistake of sending her out as a scout, she'd be good at that, but she invariably gets into a fight rather than reporting back to us.
The next Thief I run into has expertise in Deception. She tells lies every chance she gets, and feels free to grab anything not nailed down.
They all play their characters beautifully. I don't need to make them better, they do just fine on their own. While the may not steal directly from the other members of the party, some do, some don't, they steal their time and mine. They steal my fun when I'm trying to run an adventure. I think they steal everyone's fun really.
The saying goes "Money is the root of all Evil." It's really not like that. "The lack of money make people desperate and they do whatever they have to to support themselves and the others they care about." People who specialize in that, no matter what class they chose, Rogues are just good at it, are a nuisance.
I'm glad other people have had good experiences with that sort of thing. I wish I could say I have.
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I definitely gotta agree with the sentiments that people all play D&D in different ways, and that the weight of narrative that people prefer varies. OP was mentioning how to bring out more interesting plot points and narrative elements from PCs, not necessarily how to convince PCs to play in the first place. Most people can tend to agree to enter a game of D&D intending on playing with the core mechanics and devices of things like quests and encounters, but I think OP has an added interest in doing more with HB, RP, and general narrative instigation. I'm always going to be a supporter of trying to get people to use the most of all of the elements of play that TTRPGs have to offer! : D
So no, not everybody needs to have a rich story or compelling impact on the players- some people just wanna hit things, grab loot, and make awesome characters and adventures together! I encourage OP and others to try to explore what they want to though and make the most out of whatever they feel they can!
None of those is motivation for a character to help poor villagers defend themselves against orcs (well, maybe #2, but not because of their stated motivation.)
At some point, the player has to meet you halfway. "My character wouldn't go on that adventure" is just another way for the player to say, "that doesn't sound like fun", because otherwise they'd be saying, "My character will go that adventure, even though it doesn't directly help them accomplish what their backstory says they want, because..."
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 my experience players using character motivation not to follow a story arc is generally because they don’t want to tell the DM your story really isn’t fun I want to go over here and play with this instead. As DM’s and I have been so guilty of this, we blame players but actually it comes down to that connection, that cooperation generally has broken down and in those occasions when I look at it in detail in the past about 60% of the time it was because me as a DM was trying too hard to show off my shiny new world and the really cool, detailed multi layers that lots that I was running in it. Look I have made your character a key part of the story over here, to which the player goes, nope that looks boring I want to go investigate that stone circle and see if it is important.
What I ended up doing in that instance was get the hint and run with the players for a bit and get them engaged with the simple stuff, by then my 120 pages of detailed notes where largely ignored, I knew my world so I could create on the fly. That stone circle, became a recurring point the characters returned to, nothing major ever happened there related directly to the circle but it seemed a nexus for an encounter or an adventure. In the next campaign, set 50 years on, that stone circle had a small villiage growing next to it. Adventurers from all over the land would come to rest their strength against each other. All brought about by the tales of the precious adventure party. That is cooperative storytelling defining a world. I miss that stone circle :)
This is all truly the curse of DMing open world campaigns I suppose... It's a very tricky balancing trick of trying to figure out what responsibility we have in engaging our players vs. what responsibility they have in paying attention and suspending their disbelief. I often try my hardest to look for the common ground between characters' backstories and then try to run my own plotlines through the middle of those, synthesizing something that involves an interest out of every involved party.
That "stone circle" that Scarloc mentioned is something that a party as a whole- DM included- needs to find together. : ) It just so happens that the DM can be a better guide for the rest of the party by having an overarching view of the entire narrative at hand. A lot of it all just comes from listening to each other and figuring out what everybody at a table likes and wants to deal in. I.e. a DM might like to play wargames that nobody else at the table does, but if everybody can agree that fighting dragons is cool, then write a setting that emphasizes dragons as a prompt for writing unique plots around!
(I realize that the more this thread goes on, the more we start to just sorta go into general themes and topics of character writing and creating engaging gameplay, but that is such a broad topic so I think we can all agree to disagree on anything if things seem to just devolve into discussion of personal interests and experience :P)
Quite. As I mentioned, I do fully-homebrew settings and campaigns exclusively (that's where I shine the brightest and have the most fun, and where my players have the most fun as well based on many rounds of anonymous feedback throughout the past 3 years). They're not all 100% open-world, but they easily could be and can evolve into such depending on what the party does, their decisions, desires, and where the campaign naturally flows based on their reactions to the initial plot hooks.
Mind, I'm definitely not here to discuss "How do I get a player who doesn't want to give me a backstory actually give me a dang backstory?" - rather, "How do I help a player who already wants their character to have a good backstory have a better backstory than they know how to come up with on their own?"
Part of good table cohesion is everyone having the same, or at least similar, expectations. Knowing what you're going into in a game is important. If the table all wants hack and slash without much story, cool, fine - but that's not my realm of fun, so I would be an inappropriate DM for such a game. I exclusively recruit people who want good character arcs and narrative storytelling, and who appreciate their background coming up in the course of play. My job therein is to make that character arc engaging to the whole party so no one gets bored, rather than just engaging to that PC.
A side note is that, as a result of playing with these folks for awhile - and as a direct result of having these backstories and understanding not only player motivations but also character motivations and general ideas of where the player might want to take their character (no guarantees, of course!) - I can also much better predict what sort of actions the party will take, and thus much better prep for games. I always have options ready, of course, and I'm always ready to improv something completely off the cuff, but I genuinely have a very good grasp on what the PCs will do in most situations - at least in very broad strokes. I don't need to know what they'll say to whom precisely, but I know "If NPC A is even slightly shifty, PC 1 will distrust them instantly and not heed their advice; thusly, they might guide the party towards doing the opposite, or doing the same thing in a different way - so, knowing that, do I want to make them shifty on purpose, or not?"
That said, my players aren't jerks, and I don't railroad (although the world absolutely continues moving on with or without the party, meaning what they choose to ignore now may come bite them in the tail later). My groups (generally) don't go off the rails like lunatics, no matter how chaotic their characters (and boy do we have some chaotic ones). They're very respectful. I'm a bit spoiled, I suppose.
... that said, there was one time where the party was split in two different planes for a couple hours, and I had to go frequently back and forth between the groups until they reconvened, and had to make up enormous swaths of story and plot on the fly to make the game even continue working, but that was because of a bag-of-holding-inside-another-bag-of-holding incident. Heh.
It at least seems like you've got a good grasp on how to handle your party at least, so that's a great core skill to have. It seems like you have a good party on your hands that's looking just for ways to improve the game alongside you, which is awesome! I think if they're that involved and invested, I'd consider seeing if there's any way you could trust them with doing a little worldbuilding in your setting themselves to get them even more integrated into things. I've had my group with various changes here and there for many years now, and permitting people to do some world dev bit by bit and trusting them to make their mark on the world not only has helped shape my setting in a way that I couldn't do alone, but has also gotten them to think critically about the content they're putting in. I like to think that people are productive opportunists when given these sorta roles, and that they're thinking about investing their time spent on crafting these sort of things so that they can enjoy and appreciate them further down the road. (I may just be an optimist, though. :P )
I have done this, actually! It's great. Although this does remind me that I need to discuss with one of my players the political and law impacts of their PC (and their NPC spouse) having become the Monarch of their country of origin, and having been ruling for about 300 years.
That's awesome! (Also same- we love it when that kinda stuff happens :D)
Honestly, it seems like you're doing most things alright already! I think frankly at this point, if you and your players have a keen interest in narrative writing, I'd recommend that maybe it's a good point for y'all to expand your horizons and start picking up extracurricular materials if you're that invested in worldbuilding and character writing. There are so many great resources out there on workshopping these sort of creative processes and there are infinite points to begin. You're at a really great time in a D&D career where the narrative value of a game starts to become so full of potential and intrigue; it makes writing meaningful and exciting campaigns all the more fun! My best recommendation from there otherwise would be to keep challenging players to step out of their comfort zones and writing things that subvert common tropes and expectations- see how far you can push each other and the game and you'll find that things connect far more easily when you're willing to reach further across different realms of interest!
Yep! That's kiiiinda what I was going for with this thread, though perhaps that wasn't explicit; I'm interested in the ideas of how other DMs do what I'm already doing to see if I can pick up any methods I hadn't yet considered, as well as sharing my methods with anyone interested. (I definitely wasn't aiming to start a debate about whether it's even a necessary or even good thing to do what I do, heh.)
I'm definitely interested in outside sources. Worldbuilding is my jam, bread, and butter, and I spend no shortage of time working on it. I've looked up a goodly amount of other resources in the past 20 years on the subject, as well as plenty of writer's resources in general, but I've been a little leery of applying too many "writing rules" to D&D since so much of it is focused on building a story around a single protagonist and a linear story that is already pre-plotted and plays out exactly how the author wishes it to, versus the interactive medium of this format.
Thanks for all the feedback!
Ok I think to give a bit more context to when I say I don't need reams of backstory and instead of getting drawn into posts midway through answer your question as to how to help them make better back stories. The fact is I don't not before the campaign, I very much believe in writing the campaign as it progresses so let the players get into the character and then tweak and change and work with them on details as we progress.
In my current campaign one of the players came to me with the following for her satyr sorcerer at session 0 (I do individual session 0's so each player can talk through character stuff with no other player hearing, players only know what characters know then).
Abandoned at a brothel as a baby, raised by escorts, decided to join the profession, high class, not cheap. doesn't care about real family because they abandoned me, gives most of what I own to help the other women, always looks out for anyone who has been abandoned, fiercely independent, been hiding her powers on the advice of her "mother" the madame of the brothel, wants to explore them more.
That was it those bullet points and for me that is more than enough for a player to get into a character. It gives me a pretty big potential plot hook for the future, who are her parents, what happened, one that I pulled the trigger on early to give her character the reason to continue with the party after the first adventure. But I don't fully know the answers to any of that, we hadn't named her "mother" the madame that raised her or given her a race until session 5 despite the campaign starting in the same town she lives in. I didn't know how old the character was until session 4, she told me 120 and that then made me think through and decide an elf would be the women that raised her, and she moves town every 30-40 years because she doesn't like seeing her regular clients and her human girls getting old and dying. but she also does that to lay a false trail for the people still looking for a little satyr baby left with her to keep safe120 years ago.
So when you ask for more input from your players what exactly is it your looking for? I also have an approach I have always applied to my TTRPG games, if the character doesn't know it nor does the player and that feeds into backstory. That doesn't mean that I dismiss a players ideas for the dark family secret they are trying to uncover out of hand, but, if a player knows what the end is going to be before the campaign has even begun what is the fun in exploring that plot line? So I might take the players idea, tell them thank you, and then twist it slightly, or take half of it, or, if I know they trust me and have played with me before, ignore it for an idea of my own I might have. I would much rather have a player come to me and say I an trying to uncover my family's secret and leave it at that then, this is the secret of my family, but my character has no idea and is trying to find it out.
An example of that, again my current campaign Minotaur Barbarian came to me with the following.
Father head of russian mafia style crime family, is in prison, was arrested for a mistake I made and took the time for me there was a negotiation with a rival family and a fight broke out and I killed someone, father claimed it was him, I have been given a message to deliver to him,
Again that was his back story before session 1. I spent about 20 mins with him and we changed it slightly to the following.
Father is in prison, where your from and where you are starting the campaign are about 2 months travel time, so you took a message to your uncle to give to your father, your father replied telling you to get out of the country until the heat dies down and you can return and your uncle will run things.
Now I know the father is not imprisoned by the law, in reality Barbarian was poisoned, that should have triggered a psychotic murderous rampage that killed everyone at the meeting between the 2 families, and then killed him but he is path of wild magic and so the magical poison didn't have that effect. Uncle did the poisoning, is trying to take over the family, lied to the barbarian. Father might be dead, or just held imprisoned not sure yet on that. But the player has no idea on any of that yet he thinks his dad is in prison and he is waiting on his uncle to send word it is safe to return (uncle has sent assassins after him) and yes, that is basically the lion king :)
So when it comes to working with players to make a better story for me it is something that I engage with through the game session by session, if there are facts about a characters life that will help me flesh out part of an idea I will ask the player for them, in one campaign one player was 50 sessions in before I needed to ask him his parents names for a thread. Sometimes players will say they are rubbish with names, you come up with it, but here are some details about them. But I only ask for the information that is important to the story now, or in the immediate future. So I don't push for more details in session 0 because it is fine if we find this stuff out as a group in session 100.
Another great thing I once saw in a different system I played in was a player who got his other players to help him, he was rubbish with names so a character would say, whats your mums name and he would look to the other players and ask them for name ideas. It worked well for that group and after a while we all started doing it, sharing in the creative experience.