I am curious, because I have seen both varieties in the D&D forums and in the games I've run. Do you, as a DM, prefer to recieve a well-written story, with dialogue and evocative wording, or do you prefer to simply have a summary of facts about their backstory?

For example, making a level 5 character, you might have the story:

"Ezekiel was in a town which was being attacked by a Lich. He went to investigate, and managed to navigate the dungeon without dying. Impressed, the Lich offered Ezekiel a deal; she would leave the town alone, but Ezekiel would become her Warlock. Ezekiel accepted, and was gifted magical prowess by his new patron, Shel'mar the Unrelenting."

Or you might have a story along the lines of:

"Ezekiel could see his breath in the air ahead of him, despite it being a summer night. The dungeon entrance loomed before him like a gaping portal to an older, more hostile world. Summoning his courage, he took his first steps into the darkness, determined to rid his town of this evil or die trying..."

And so on. Same story, but much more wordy!

I can see the appeal of both - the first is to the point and easy to navigate, and the second obviously would take longer to write, and can be a lot more enjoyable to read!

The question is, which do you prefer: Written like a Summary, or Written like a Story, and why?

I usually tend to write summaries because I already write pretty long backstories. I like fitting many details into the same space, and when I do write full short story style text, its just the pivotal moments. So I usually end up writing a summary, then expanding on the important parts when I get time

Whatever the player feels more comfortable writing. Honestly, I'm happy to get anything from some players. 

But if I had to choose, I'd prefer the summary. To be blunt, most people are simply not good writers. The backstory stories they come up with aren't as entertaining to read as they were to write. They're usually overdone with flowery language that's distracting and takes more away from the story than it adds. And the intended plot hooks don't come across as clearly as they think. Summaries just give the points the DM needs to know without wading through 2,000 words to find the 35 that matter.

I have no strong preference either way, I leave the format to the player. I like to encourage the player to come up with some cool ideas that make them more invested in their character and enhance role play, and I like to have small back and forth with players to get into the story some items, NPCs, locations or events that may (but do not have to) appear in the future campaigns.

The summary is easier to work with for me as the DM, but the story imho helps players really get into the character and is a good starting point for all the role-play down the road. Also it is easier to edit the summary.

Ideally it starts as a summary that gets rewritten into a story over time:)

I'm happy with either. I will tend to probe with a few questions if I'm ever short of details. For example: how big was the house your character grew up in? What are three colours that your character likes wearing? What brought the character to the starting location?

A good story can make for great hooks and sessions for DMs to build future sessions or encounters around. Largely though that's not always necessary. So a summary or some key details can be really helpful.

I think I tend to expect more of experienced players though. I tend to expect that they will flesh out the character a little more. I tend to make clear to the players prior to character creation that the background is their chance to help shape the world and build a part of it.

Just a summary for me, please.  You don't even have to write it down.  Just give me some basic idea during session 0 or any time before the game starts.

While I fully encourage players to write as much as they want about their character before the game, I don't need to see most of it as the DM.  The majority of a character's story should be taking place in the actual game. Backstory is just to get you to the starting point.

If writing it as prose helps you, as the player, get a feel for the character, that's great.  Write stories, draw art, make mood boards, get special dice, anything that helps you.  But tell us who they are during the game.  Show the table through their actions and dialogue.  Let us share the journey together. 

When I do a session 0, it's usually one on one.  I'll ask you where your character grew up, and we can work together on adding that place to the world.  I'll ask what motivates you, why you might be joining the adventure, and what a defining moment in your life was.  Then I'll offer to play out a short scene from your past together if you want.  Or a moment that takes place just before the adventure starts.  So we can both get a feel for the character. 

That's about all I need.  You can have all the backstory you want for yourself.  Let us discover it at the table.  To run the game I only need a few major points, a hometown, a family, a career, maybe a few NPCs.  The game is collaborative storytelling.  We're making the real story together.  The past is just what got you there.   

I prefer a summary, and even then depending on the kind of game I'm running (most likely a dungeon crawl) backstory may be surplus to requirements to begin with. If it helps you enjoy the session, playing your character or you simply like engaging in that side of the hobby go for it: were I to have something like a campaign wiki I'd love to read a player's entry for their character's origins, but their efforts would be wasted if they expect me to feature it in the game.

I'm only just now, as a player, beginning to appreciate fleshing out a backstory. Playing "Mother May I" with in-character knowledge gets really tedious and is perfectly avoidable with a long list of things your character would reasonably know or perform, established in Session 0 and out-of-session discussions. Even so, that requires no purple prose.

As a player, write whatever you want, but understand that whatever you write is for you, either to get into character, as a roleplaying aid, or just for fun. The DM is a busy person and shouldn't be required to read your story to understand your character (though many still will in their free time for fun-- just understand that that's what it is).

Outside of that, all you need really to pitch the character is bullet points on personality and class and stuff. 

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

As a player, write whatever you want, but understand that whatever you write is for you, either to get into character, as a roleplaying aid, or just for fun. The DM is a busy person and shouldn't be required to read your story to understand your character (though many still will in their free time for fun-- just understand that that's what it is).

Outside of that, all you need really to pitch the character is bullet points on personality and class and stuff. 

 You understand here that reading a character backstory can literally give you ideas for future sessions or storylines right? In one campaign the four party members gave enough on their backstory to give me nineteen different quest hooks, storylines, or even entire session plans.

The amount of time reading a player's backstory can save a DM in planning future sessions is huge and helps the collaborate part of collaborative storytelling. 

Past actions coming back to haunt players can be a great way of showing the other players why the gnomish Monk is so keen to eliminate the BBEG, or why the Elven Artificer doesn't want to visit the next town.

It's literally free session planning material most times!

I typically use summaries, but I will let my players use whatever they feel works best. A neat way of mix and matching the two is by creating a summary of your character backstory and then putting a quote that goes more in-depth on a specific part at the top.

To be honest though, when writing stories (this includes backstories) the ability to zoom in and zoom out for specific scenes is crucial. For instance, I am not going to recount every moment off my character doing choirs as a child, but I might write down a bit of what happened when their house was burned down by monsters and only they escaped alive.

If the player manages to bump into the Personality Traits, Bonds, Flaws and Ideals on their way through the character sheet and accidentally choose one or two items, I consider that a great day.  

Anything more than about three to four sentences is more microscopic than I find necessary. Writing most of the story before the game happens might lead to outcomes that won't match expectation.

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

I am curious, because I have seen both varieties in the D&D forums and in the games I've run. Do you, as a DM, prefer to recieve a well-written story, with dialogue and evocative wording, or do you prefer to simply have a summary of facts about their backstory?

 . . .

I'm DM (and player) who enjoys the role playing aspect and the story building potential of the game most of all. If the player is willing to give the character a backstory at all, I consider that a win. What kind of backstory they put together gives me insights on how they want to play it. Also, not all players are good writers.

A person who takes the time to put something cohesive together tells me that they have the imagination and the desire to do some role playing and build on that story if they can. Without a doubt, I consider their backstories when preparing a session or campaign. If that person has in effect written a novel, my typical response is, "You do know that this game will be a different story, right?"

If the player hands over a sheet with some info like: Comes from (well known town). Likes to brawl, got in trouble there a lot and had to leave. Has a twin; doesn't know where. Really likes almond cookies. . , then it's a pretty safe bet that this player is fine with rolling the dice and making a better brawler, with more stuff. I can still steer them if necessary by having an NPC mention seeing someone just like them, over in the next village yesterday. This player has even given me a great hook to get them to convince the others that they should check out the nearby market. The smell of fresh-baked almond cookies is calling to their character.

I happily accept either option.

Quote from Aquilain >>

Quote from CharlesThePlant >>

As a player, write whatever you want, but understand that whatever you write is for you, either to get into character, as a roleplaying aid, or just for fun. The DM is a busy person and shouldn't be required to read your story to understand your character (though many still will in their free time for fun-- just understand that that's what it is).

Outside of that, all you need really to pitch the character is bullet points on personality and class and stuff. 

 You understand here that reading a character backstory can literally give you ideas for future sessions or storylines right? In one campaign the four party members gave enough on their backstory to give me nineteen different quest hooks, storylines, or even entire session plans.

The amount of time reading a player's backstory can save a DM in planning future sessions is huge and helps the collaborate part of collaborative storytelling. 

Past actions coming back to haunt players can be a great way of showing the other players why the gnomish Monk is so keen to eliminate the BBEG, or why the Elven Artificer doesn't want to visit the next town.

It's literally free session planning material most times!

 Yes but those past actions can be summarized easily when pitching the character: 

"Hey DM, I want to play a human vengeance paladin that serves Konshu kinda like Moon Knight. He was a village guard captain that realized the local lord was corrupt and started taking steps against them, got imprisoned, and after years behind bars escaped after swearing vengeance to the moon god. I was thinking the local lord also killed his husband and kidnapped his daughter, turning her against him and sending her out to hunt him down. What do you think?"

I would consider that a summary pitch. It tells a condensed backstory, includes several npcs for the dm to work in, and provides the player character with a goal. Anything further can be discussed with the DM without having to send them a whole packet to read through like "I was inspired by in the comics how moon knight exists to protect travelers by night so I was hoping to make that a part of my character's oath" or "he used to follow the sun God but turned away from them when his prayers went unanswered in prison", little details like that that you can mention as they come, but the only real reason to write pages and pages of narrative backstory is for fun. 

Also, as a dm, yes it's useful to pull content from player backstories, but you also want to watch how much you pull from backstories. If some of your players put more effort into backstories than others do, then some characters are going to get a lot more time in the limelight if you're doing everything from the backstories and then suddenly your campaign has a main character. Also the backstory isn't meant to be the meat of the adventure, so while it's fine to include hooks to the backstory, you don't want the adventure to just be an extension of the players backstories, it should be it's own distinctive narrative. The meat of the story should happen after the start of the campaign, not before. 

A summary of small stories or events giving me either your goals in life or relevant past that would include the when it happened, who it involved and what has happened without enforcing/steering the game in a direction.  Then i'll be able to give you where it happens (to make it fit in the campaign and world of Faerun) and then you might learn why it has happened and how everything went to lead to this situation as we play.

For instance: I've came back to my shack outside the city of "enter city" to find my father and sister butchered.  Blood was spilled all over the place by the hot fire and i felt ill.  After gathering myself for a few hours, i've followed the tracks and it lead me to "enter city" but I've lost any leads from there.

Now it becomes very easy to work as this gives me a whole plethora of options here.  It can be anything really, how did the group met...sometimes it can lead to ideas down the road

It can be obviously a more complex text as among other events i'm going to work with involves a deity which is fine.  The first time the player wrote it, he was defining the deity's action which had someone kicked out of the realm and this is where i had to step in; the character left the realm but you don't know why.  The reasoning was simple, by writing it the way he did, he defined the deity as oppressive and that is something that i wouldn't want in a backstory; defining a known NPC's action or mindset that i'll be stuck to deal with (and thus why i said without enforcing the game in a direction).

As a whole, backstories tend to be unreliable and not useful to me as a DM. I always appreciate any time players put into thinking about their character to inform their roleplay. What helps me more though is information such as: 

• Does the character have a family?
• If the character falls into the 99% of PC orphans how did the character survive and get enough money to buy adventuring gear? Do they have a benefactor?
• Why did they choose to take on the class they chose?

Another way they can think through their character history can be about how they learned or earned the things they selected on their character sheet such as:

• How did the PC learn their extra languages?
• Why did they study the specific spells they selected as a wizard?
• How did they learn the tools they learned?
• How did your ranger, who you describe as never going into any town ever, manage to get a longbow with arrows? Are you a bowyer/fletcher?

Using the second option I often get responses from players that are more interesting to them and me. The ranger met a hermit in the woods. The hermit earns money by seasoning and bending wood for craftpersons in town. The hermit made the longbow for my character. Sometimes the ranger decides they don't have a reason they should have a long bow and goes a different more uncommon direction like using a sling.

My wizard, with the 14 Con studied Longstrider because they use it daily to get a better workout to keep up their physique. 

I personally have a backstory template I hand out to players that provides space for both - it has a few prompts for writing prose (general history and recent history just as campaign was starting), as well as places for bullet points like key NPCs from their history, significant events, brief summary of personality details at campaign’s start, etc.  I find this helps players, particularly new players, formulate their backstory while providing me with whatever information I might want to use in my campaign.

Though, if my players would prefer a different option than following the chart (or prefer just not doing any backstory work, as some choose), that is also fine by me.

As both a DM and a player I prefer summaries. I don’t DM as a full time occupation so I don’t have time to read thru pages of verbiage for your stories, nor do I have time (or interest in) writing pages of verbiage for m characters.

I prefer a shorter backstory: 1-3 paragraphs of 3-5 sentences in length for a 1st — 4th level character, 2-4 paragraphs for a 5th — 10th level character, etc. That’s usually more than enough to tell me what I need to know about a character, but by necessity leaves things vague enough for me to fill in some holes during the campaign if it works with the story. In the backstory I only ask for three things: one fact about their home life, one significant event in the character’s life, and most importantly why/how they become an adventurer.  

I prefer more fleshed out backstories both as DM and player. Even better when it somehow link to class, background or feat the character has.

XP has nothing to do with a character backstory, it's about what's before going on adventuring. 

Here's an exemple I play a LE Human Paladin of Bane (Oath of Vengeance, Soldier Background) in a Forgotten Realms  campaign set in the region of Myth Drannor.