There's something very cool that happens when you don't lock down who your character is and allow space for inspiration to strike. There's a lot to the idea so I created a post with the reasons behind why this can be a good idea and what you should do to implement it.
There's something very cool that happens when you don't lock down who your character is and allow space for inspiration to strike. There's a lot to the idea so I created a post with the reasons behind why this can be a good idea and what you should do to implement it.
TLDR: By letting your reactions to the world be organic, you can discover who your character is instead of deciding ahead of time.
I like to get some basis to work from but leave other parts open. I'll usually work from Xanathar's Guide to Everything's tables to get that information. I'll usually create roll on the information for the parents, any additional parent figures that the table might generate, any siblings, other figures that might be mentioned from the tables or personality quirks, and then one ally and one rival. The info isn't super detailed, but I'll weave that info into a broad narrative that still has room for exploration but also had hooks that the DM can pull from to motivate the character. It worked pretty well for my half orc barbarian and informed some of the decisions that I made while letting him grow. The DM didn't pull a lot from the character's background because he was sticking close to the adventure. However, it did give me some ideas about what his motivations would be that helped develop some of his personality quirks and even his subclass (which wasn't anything close to what I was envisioning for him at the start).
Yeah, I also like to go minimalist and intentionally hold back to grow the character during the game. I have trouble skipping it altogether because I use backstory to inform spell/skill/weapon/feature choices. But overall certainly not a fan of people showing up with a 10 page backstory that makes our current adventure seem like the most boring phase of the character's life.
In this case, it depends on how much detail you put into your campaign in the early stages of development. If you like to define your character arcs before you start playing then this will definitely not work for you and that's fine.
If a player did want to choose this discovery approach, they would have to understand how that would affect their personal arcs and your prepwork. It's not that their backstory connections won't ever exist, it's just they evolve over time. This may be a non-starter for your table and there's nothing wrong with that. It sounds like you know your group well which is great.
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I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Backstory doesn't lock down your character's actions, it informs then, even when you chose to do something contrary to such.
In much the same way your adolescence helps guide your future choices but doesn't either predict or predetermine them.
Making it up on the fly seems like a good way to create a great deal of incongruity and contradictions (e.g. Wait, are my parents dead or not? I forgot what I said six sessions ago. What was the name of the tavern my father owned? I can't remember because I made it up on the spot then forgot to write it down).
You're absolutely right that you have to keep track of your discoveries. In most cases, once you've decided something about your character it's fairly easy to recall. Remembering the new information isn't any different than if you wrote them down wholesale when you created your character. But as you point out, it's best to write things down.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
This is right on. Characters who come in without expectations and let their story develop in the game, who are focused on the present and not the past, are often the best ones in my experience! That said, while more people should try not writing a backstory, it’s still good to have a background (where did you come from, how did you learn your skills, why do you adventure). It just doesn’t need to involve any plot points: there’s enough of those in the game already!
"Discovering" characters versus "creating" characters is a stylistic choice. Neither way is bad, neither way is "worse", but each method does have a sharp influence on the campaign one plays.
A game in which players "Discover" their characters is a game that looks forward. The characters are almost ancillary - any set of Legendary Heroes would do, these are simply the ones we happen to have available right now. Character backstory rarely, if ever, comes up during the course of gameplay, and when it does come up at all it only ever has a minor impact at best on the story. Characters have little connection to the world until they forcibly make one in the game. The events of the campaign are the only events of any worth or note in the characters' lives. In a sense, this is recreating the "Amnesiac Protagonist" trope common in many stories, save that the amnesia is applied to the players. "Discovering" your characters in a campaign is a collective agreement that only what happens in session matters.
Despite the common idea that this is Advanced D&D, franklyt this approach works best for a new table full of novice players and especially an inexperienced DM. It eliminates the need to account for character backstories when developing a campaign plot thread, simplifying the DM's work, and it keeps the action focused on the single chain of events happening right now, in the current session. It eliminates story clutter and forestalls a lot of inconsistencies that can sometimes bog down a game. If the PCs are nothing but shadows propelling the plot, then the game is much easier for the DM to keep on track and moving.
A game in which players "Create" their characters is honestly Advanced Mode D&D. It requires the players to know how to create a character, and not just mechanically. Crafting a backstory for your character that makes them a concrete person, anchored to the world, rather than a plot-propelling shadow requires you to know enough about the world you're going to play in to know what to anchor to, and it requires you to know exactly how much backstory is 'enough'. Even the best DMs will struggle with a forty-page manual of nonsense that involves a triple-digit NPC count. Knowing how to create a backstory that empowers your DM to use your history to help drive the game, rather than a backstory that drowns your DM and the game both before it gets vetoed and tossed out, is a skill. And on the DM side, being able to use these disparate stories to create something that ties your party to the world, draws them in and makes them feel like they are essential to the tale and not simply the most convenient bags of well-armed HP in reasonable proximity to the plot, takes a lot more work and stands a higher chance of suffering continuity issues.
I know a lot of DMs love the "DISCOVER" method and tout it as automatically superior to the "CREATE" method. But as with most things, the true road to gaming perfection is found in the Between - create enough of a character that your PC feels like a living piece of the world, like this place they're fighting to defend is truly their home, without creating so much that your backstory becomes a cancerous growth that must be cut free to allow the patient your campaign to live.
In the few groups I have DM'd for, we started at level 3 with the understanding that each character has a backstory of motivations and adventures to account for the advanced level. During down-time or social encounters, I prompt a player to tell some small bit of their story to the other party members or to an NPC.
In one session, some characters were struck with a charm of sorts that forced them to relive some moment of great fear. The player had to describe what the character was experiencing in the horrifying flashback, knowing it contributed in some part to the backstory.It was fun... one character had a bad experience in brothel which terrified all of us...
Over time and many social encounters, a full idea of the character can be developed rather than making it all up while rolling stats
I respectfully disagree with the OP. My first character had a backstory that wasn't particularly lengthy but had enough to it that couple with the personality traits and flaws gave the DM something to work with. And I should point out our DM wanted us to create backstories. We started with Lost Mines of Phandelver and worked into Tomb of Annihilation but the DM worked in minor personal stories for each of our characters because he wanted to. My character was a Dragonborn Barbarian who was a former lord but how he came to power was a secret known only to a lost friend whose spirit occasionally guided him. Friends and family meant the most to my Barbarian. That was it. In the first module my character's only motivations were to care for his friends. He also had a flaw that he remembered any insult and harbored a silent resentment. At one point he couldn't stay silent anymore and burned a tavern down (not on purpose, just forgot in the moment that a fire breath inside a wooden building with tons of alcohol is a bad idea).
And my character's alignment changed repeatedly. It got to a point where I was in a cult and though I had convinced myself it was to be a double agent and report back to my friends, I got in too deep and started making poor decisions. Even after jumping continents my character has found himself working with what is essentially a mafia. My barbarian eventually multiclassed into a Warlock which I know many people find "bad." But it worked for my character. In one particular fight our party was struggling and I couldn't do anything because I couldn't reach the bad guys. I was toying with the idea of multi-classing Warlock for Eldtritch Blast as well as a few spells like Armor of Agathys that I can cast before raging. My DM thought it would be a good idea to make my "spirit friend" my patron. By that time we were into ToA and my family had been kidnapped. So we also talked about my character missing his family and not being around any other Dragonborn, and decided we would make my patron a Dragon of my choosing and my spirit friend put me on a quest to make that happen. We used a homebrew Dragon patron.
My character has had plenty of growth with a fairly limited backstory. If he had nothing and I was a new player, I'd have no idea how to react to the world.
As a DM I never worried too much about back story. I start all my groups off a level 1 their first day out of the academy. They will have basic back stories such as they left the farm at 17 to become an adventurer. I have the write what they can on an index card and try to incorporate a little in.
But must of their back story is built while adventuring.
As a minimum, having the Background along with Personality Traits, Ideal, Bonds and Flaw filled in for a character would give a basis for further development.
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There's something very cool that happens when you don't lock down who your character is and allow space for inspiration to strike. There's a lot to the idea so I created a post with the reasons behind why this can be a good idea and what you should do to implement it.
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/2021/01/27/skip-the-backstory-for-your-next-character/
TLDR: By letting your reactions to the world be organic, you can discover who your character is instead of deciding ahead of time.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
I like to get some basis to work from but leave other parts open. I'll usually work from Xanathar's Guide to Everything's tables to get that information. I'll usually create roll on the information for the parents, any additional parent figures that the table might generate, any siblings, other figures that might be mentioned from the tables or personality quirks, and then one ally and one rival. The info isn't super detailed, but I'll weave that info into a broad narrative that still has room for exploration but also had hooks that the DM can pull from to motivate the character. It worked pretty well for my half orc barbarian and informed some of the decisions that I made while letting him grow. The DM didn't pull a lot from the character's background because he was sticking close to the adventure. However, it did give me some ideas about what his motivations would be that helped develop some of his personality quirks and even his subclass (which wasn't anything close to what I was envisioning for him at the start).
Yeah, I also like to go minimalist and intentionally hold back to grow the character during the game. I have trouble skipping it altogether because I use backstory to inform spell/skill/weapon/feature choices. But overall certainly not a fan of people showing up with a 10 page backstory that makes our current adventure seem like the most boring phase of the character's life.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
In this case, it depends on how much detail you put into your campaign in the early stages of development. If you like to define your character arcs before you start playing then this will definitely not work for you and that's fine.
If a player did want to choose this discovery approach, they would have to understand how that would affect their personal arcs and your prepwork. It's not that their backstory connections won't ever exist, it's just they evolve over time. This may be a non-starter for your table and there's nothing wrong with that. It sounds like you know your group well which is great.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
I like to have some detail about the character background, but I never go in with a fully never-change-attitude mentality for the character.
Backstory doesn't lock down your character's actions, it informs then, even when you chose to do something contrary to such.
In much the same way your adolescence helps guide your future choices but doesn't either predict or predetermine them.
Making it up on the fly seems like a good way to create a great deal of incongruity and contradictions (e.g. Wait, are my parents dead or not? I forgot what I said six sessions ago. What was the name of the tavern my father owned? I can't remember because I made it up on the spot then forgot to write it down).
You're absolutely right that you have to keep track of your discoveries. In most cases, once you've decided something about your character it's fairly easy to recall. Remembering the new information isn't any different than if you wrote them down wholesale when you created your character. But as you point out, it's best to write things down.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
This is right on. Characters who come in without expectations and let their story develop in the game, who are focused on the present and not the past, are often the best ones in my experience! That said, while more people should try not writing a backstory, it’s still good to have a background (where did you come from, how did you learn your skills, why do you adventure). It just doesn’t need to involve any plot points: there’s enough of those in the game already!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
"Discovering" characters versus "creating" characters is a stylistic choice. Neither way is bad, neither way is "worse", but each method does have a sharp influence on the campaign one plays.
A game in which players "Discover" their characters is a game that looks forward. The characters are almost ancillary - any set of Legendary Heroes would do, these are simply the ones we happen to have available right now. Character backstory rarely, if ever, comes up during the course of gameplay, and when it does come up at all it only ever has a minor impact at best on the story. Characters have little connection to the world until they forcibly make one in the game. The events of the campaign are the only events of any worth or note in the characters' lives. In a sense, this is recreating the "Amnesiac Protagonist" trope common in many stories, save that the amnesia is applied to the players. "Discovering" your characters in a campaign is a collective agreement that only what happens in session matters.
Despite the common idea that this is Advanced D&D, franklyt this approach works best for a new table full of novice players and especially an inexperienced DM. It eliminates the need to account for character backstories when developing a campaign plot thread, simplifying the DM's work, and it keeps the action focused on the single chain of events happening right now, in the current session. It eliminates story clutter and forestalls a lot of inconsistencies that can sometimes bog down a game. If the PCs are nothing but shadows propelling the plot, then the game is much easier for the DM to keep on track and moving.
A game in which players "Create" their characters is honestly Advanced Mode D&D. It requires the players to know how to create a character, and not just mechanically. Crafting a backstory for your character that makes them a concrete person, anchored to the world, rather than a plot-propelling shadow requires you to know enough about the world you're going to play in to know what to anchor to, and it requires you to know exactly how much backstory is 'enough'. Even the best DMs will struggle with a forty-page manual of nonsense that involves a triple-digit NPC count. Knowing how to create a backstory that empowers your DM to use your history to help drive the game, rather than a backstory that drowns your DM and the game both before it gets vetoed and tossed out, is a skill. And on the DM side, being able to use these disparate stories to create something that ties your party to the world, draws them in and makes them feel like they are essential to the tale and not simply the most convenient bags of well-armed HP in reasonable proximity to the plot, takes a lot more work and stands a higher chance of suffering continuity issues.
I know a lot of DMs love the "DISCOVER" method and tout it as automatically superior to the "CREATE" method. But as with most things, the true road to gaming perfection is found in the Between - create enough of a character that your PC feels like a living piece of the world, like this place they're fighting to defend is truly their home, without creating so much that your backstory becomes a cancerous growth that must be cut free to allow
the patientyour campaign to live.Please do not contact or message me.
In the few groups I have DM'd for, we started at level 3 with the understanding that each character has a backstory of motivations and adventures to account for the advanced level. During down-time or social encounters, I prompt a player to tell some small bit of their story to the other party members or to an NPC.
In one session, some characters were struck with a charm of sorts that forced them to relive some moment of great fear. The player had to describe what the character was experiencing in the horrifying flashback, knowing it contributed in some part to the backstory.It was fun... one character had a bad experience in brothel which terrified all of us...
Over time and many social encounters, a full idea of the character can be developed rather than making it all up while rolling stats
I respectfully disagree with the OP. My first character had a backstory that wasn't particularly lengthy but had enough to it that couple with the personality traits and flaws gave the DM something to work with. And I should point out our DM wanted us to create backstories. We started with Lost Mines of Phandelver and worked into Tomb of Annihilation but the DM worked in minor personal stories for each of our characters because he wanted to. My character was a Dragonborn Barbarian who was a former lord but how he came to power was a secret known only to a lost friend whose spirit occasionally guided him. Friends and family meant the most to my Barbarian. That was it. In the first module my character's only motivations were to care for his friends. He also had a flaw that he remembered any insult and harbored a silent resentment. At one point he couldn't stay silent anymore and burned a tavern down (not on purpose, just forgot in the moment that a fire breath inside a wooden building with tons of alcohol is a bad idea).
And my character's alignment changed repeatedly. It got to a point where I was in a cult and though I had convinced myself it was to be a double agent and report back to my friends, I got in too deep and started making poor decisions. Even after jumping continents my character has found himself working with what is essentially a mafia. My barbarian eventually multiclassed into a Warlock which I know many people find "bad." But it worked for my character. In one particular fight our party was struggling and I couldn't do anything because I couldn't reach the bad guys. I was toying with the idea of multi-classing Warlock for Eldtritch Blast as well as a few spells like Armor of Agathys that I can cast before raging. My DM thought it would be a good idea to make my "spirit friend" my patron. By that time we were into ToA and my family had been kidnapped. So we also talked about my character missing his family and not being around any other Dragonborn, and decided we would make my patron a Dragon of my choosing and my spirit friend put me on a quest to make that happen. We used a homebrew Dragon patron.
My character has had plenty of growth with a fairly limited backstory. If he had nothing and I was a new player, I'd have no idea how to react to the world.
Thank you for respectfully disagreeing. It's a lot easier to discuss an idea when no one is yelling. Thank you for considering the idea.
I might have buried this a bit but I do mention this in the article.
I spend way too much time thinking about D&D. So much that I had to start writing it down.
Dungeon Master, Blogger at That Hits, Roll Damage!
https://thathitsrolldamage.com/
As a DM I never worried too much about back story. I start all my groups off a level 1 their first day out of the academy. They will have basic back stories such as they left the farm at 17 to become an adventurer. I have the write what they can on an index card and try to incorporate a little in.
But must of their back story is built while adventuring.
As a minimum, having the Background along with Personality Traits, Ideal, Bonds and Flaw filled in for a character would give a basis for further development.