Earlier in the Roleplaying 101 series, we looked at how to create a compelling character without an extensive backstory. I’ve found that D&D players who consider roleplaying as a key facet of their gaming experience, myself included, tend to get hung up on backstories. Some backstories are so detailed that they shut down any chance of organic character growth through the events played out at the table, while others are so potent that they threaten to re-center the entire campaign around one single character, like a spice drowning out all the other flavors of an otherwise delicious meal.
We explored last time how these problems can be short-circuited by eschewing a complicated backstory all together. This week, however, it’s time to take a explore how to make a rich, full-bodied backstory that enhances your campaign—and that can improve the game for your fellow players, too.
What Goes into a Detailed Backstory?
Whenever I create a backstory for a playable character, I try my best to include three specific elements. These items are inspired by my study of theater and storytelling, but I have to fight back against that training, too; even though my friends and I love roleplaying together, RPGs aren’t novels or plays. For example, a D&D character needs to be capable of being part of a group of adventurers, and there are ways to make that need congruent with your backstory and the character traits which it informs.
Backstory as Inciting Incident
A character’s backstory is the unified record of the most significant events that caused that person to become one of the main characters in this campaign. If not for one (or perhaps several) significant events in your backstory, your character would never have become an adventurer. What was this event? Was it traumatic, like the murder of your parents? Was it mystical, like the discovery of an ancient and enigmatic magical talisman? Was it patriotic, like a summons from the queen to become a royal knight? Or was it aspirational, like inheriting a suit of armor and finally being able to live out your life-long daydream of going on grand adventures?
The best inciting incidents dovetail with the outline of your Dungeon Master’s campaign. If your DM says that this campaign will be focused around Indiana Jones-style archaeological expeditions, do your best to create a backstory that doesn’t make it challenging for your character to want to investigate ancient tombs and put their artifacts in museums.
Backstory as Tinted Glasses
A character’s backstory is more than a starting point: it’s a lens through which all of their future experiences are viewed. The traumas and joys that set your character on the path of an adventurer will inform their behaviors throughout the campaign. For example, in campaign 2 of Critical Role, Liam O’Brien’s wizard Caleb Widogast had a traumatic event in his childhood that shattered his trust in people and institutions which he admired. Now, he views all people and hierarchies with suspicion, if not outright mistrust.
If you’re having a hard time finding a personality for your character, or you feel like you’re leaning too heavily on tropes, return to your backstory. No one’s personality develops in a vacuum, and everyone reacts to joyful and traumatic events differently. A person whose family was slaughtered by a band of marauding humans and orcs, for example, might react in many different ways. They might swear vengeance against all bandits, or they might cower in fear at the sight of orcs. They might even adopt a twisted philosophy of “might makes right” to justify their loss, and perpetuate the cycle of cruelty that they were a victim of.
Backstory as Character-Defining Choice
Most importantly, however, a backstory is something that a character can either choose to embrace or reject over the course of the campaign. If you’ve ever felt like your character’s backstory was a straitjacket that, over time, prevented you from playing your character the way you wanted to, then you may have needed to have your character reject their past. Most characters in games and stories aren’t actively aware of the way that their backstory has shaped them as a person. However, as a character grows and learns more about themselves and about other people, they may realize that they have the power to change their future.
This sort of self-actualization, whether it’s affirming or denying their past, can be an incredibly powerful character moment if played authentically. The moment a character seizes or rejects their past as a defining element of their personality moving into the future is the moment that character takes control of their destiny. The character transforms from a passive onlooker in their own life into someone who takes an active master of their own self. Some characters start as active, transformative people, which is great! But any character has the potential to grow out of a confining backstory, no matter what their personality is like.
What Stays Out of a Detailed Backstory?
A detailed background can pose problems when it makes it difficult for your own character to grow organically as new events shape their life. That is, when your character lives in the past rather than in the present, their narrative inertia can cause the campaign to lose forward momentum. An excessively complicated backstory can also steal the spotlight from other players, and create unpleasant drama at the gaming table.
As a player, you can use these suggestions as a diagnostic tool to help you make sure that your character’s backstory won’t get in the way of your friends’ fun. As a Dungeon Master, you can also use these suggestions to help get all of your players on the same page, so that they can avoid these pitfalls.
Material that Contradicts the Campaign or Setting
When preparing a D&D campaign with a significant roleplaying element, the best DMs send out a campaign primer to their players beforehand. This doesn’t have to be long—and it could be the subject of a future article—but it gives the players just enough details about the setting and tone of the campaign for them to create characters that mesh with the campaign the DM wants to run. It also lets the DM and the players have a conversation about any elements that they find disagreeable, or absent elements that they think might enhance the campaign.
As a player, once you have a campaign primer, take note of the setting—where and when and in what world the campaign takes place—and the tone; that is, if the campaign seems like it will be lighthearted and airy, or grim and gritty. You don’t have to go out of your way to match your character to the setting or the tone, but you should do your best not to contradict anything that your DM has presented to you.
Backstory Mismatch
Just like wealth inequality, backstory inequality can cause tension at the gaming table. This occurs when some players at the table write long and complicated backstories, while others keep their prose short and sweet. Neither style is better than the other, but there are times when an overlong backstory can hog the DM’s attention, and even steal the spotlight from other players during gameplay. A concise backstory that sufficiently explains your character’s motivations and idiosyncrasies is fantastic, but an epic-length tale complete with genealogies and replete with NPCs for the DM to steal has the power to enchant a DM. It might be sunk-cost fallacy (“I spent so much time reading this backstory that I’d better make use of it!”) or it might be actual usability (“Look at all these NPCs and plot hooks my player provided me with!”), but it can make players whose backstories are shorter and more utilitarian feel underappreciated.
If you have this problem as a DM, you can try to solve it by requesting that all backstories be of a specific length, just as if you were an English teacher asking for an essay. One page is a pretty good length. Alternatively, you could ask for everyone to provide one NPC and one character-based plot hook related to their backstory. And if someone doesn’t deliver what you’re asking for, turn it back and ask action. If you find that this tactic isn’t working with one or two of your players in particular, they may not be looking for the same type of game as you are. This is a good point to see who actually wants to play a roleplaying-focused campaign, and who wants something else out of their D&D experience.
Overfilling
Likewise, your backstory shouldn’t be an exhaustive history of your character. For one, it takes an excessive amount of time to write all that. Second, leaving space in your backstory is a boon to your friends, and your DM. The benefit to you is that it allows you to improvise new backstory elements if you need to. Or, if creating entirely new backstory elements mid-game isn’t appealing to you, it can allow you to add new details to your back-historical events that help smoothly integrate your backstory into the current events of your campaign.
Leaving room for further elucidation in your backstory is helpful for your fellow players and for your DM because it gives them opportunities to link their stories to yours. Allowing events from one character’s backstory have some significance in another characters’, or in the larger plot your DM is weaving, helps the story of the campaign feel like a united tapestry, rather than a patchwork quilt of different characters.
What guidelines do you follow when creating your characters’ backstory, or when asking your players to create one for your campaign? What’s the best backstory you’ve ever created? Share it in the comments below!
James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of Worlds Apart, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their feline adventurers Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.
I tend to prefer building my backstory collaboratively, ideally with the GM involved. I'm a huge fan of the idea put forth in Matt's video here (https://youtu.be/eswaBOK1pAs?t=117), it is imperative that the GM like (preferably love) my character. If he doesn't, then I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the game wondering why everyone gets more play time than me. Ideally the other players should enjoy my concept as well, it helps with party engagement down the road.
In the end, the purpose of the backstory is two-fold:
I have incorporated this system (well, from the FATE system) into my session 0s. Having the group come up, on their own, with a shared history, makes the rest of the game so much easier because they already have reasons to work together. Also, as a lazy DM, any work off my plate is great.
FATE is a perfect example of characters built by their back story and collaboratively. Run more than a few of those, tons of fun for Dresden fans :)
I disagree that it's "lazy". The entire goal of a group of people sitting down to play a game is to play it together, so if the party is built together, that adds so much value to the game.
Regulars have seen me post about my character Celiel already, so I won't talk about her. I love what you have to say about characters viewing their world through the tinted lens of their experience. I feel too few players consider that, which makes their backstories just feel like a short story with no connection to the present of the game. Whatever happened the character is over it, and while they might bring it up it didn't obviously affect their worldview. Whether I'm playing or DMing I don't want to see the epilogue of your character. I want to be part of the catharsis.
Nice. I'm coaching players (some new, some rusty) through character creation... and backstories are the hardest part. Well timed article and so important!
I'm a new DM dealing with a couple backstory-obsessed players. It's been more of a problem for me than a help--not because they're bad at making backstories, but because they're bad at turning a backstory and character description into an answer to the question, "why am I here?" that they find satisfactory. I finally had to make them stop writing and just freaking go on a quest--the point of the game is to play, not agonize about why you should play. To players, I say: trust your DM to hook you--take that first step, even if you're not sure where you're going or why. You'll figure it out. And also: if you've written a character that doesn't want to go adventuring, you've done it wrong. (Had one player write a really paranoid wizard--who ended up just wanting to stay home. It was dumb.)
Another backstory-related issue I had was a player writing a history for a character that we were introducing as a level 4, but that had a backstory more commensurate with...say a level 12 character. He was a police officer, and the player wrote him as a veteran with a pretty broad-ranging investigatory mission--which made plot sense, but made no sense with his abilities. Really screwed things up until we agreed he should be killed. =P Was not an issue I'd really anticipated, especially since this is my most experienced player.
Mostly I just write my name, place that was home, job(class or back ground) general information and mayby some family or friends when asked.
Some character personality or what the purpose of the char is in campain (currently playing a lore bard who specialising In healing, stealing and sneaking.)
I just like it simple and open.
That and I always forget my back ground apart from the key aspects of my char so ye :P
I have one rp-heavy campaign I play where the couple of characters I've created have pages of epic backstory that include NPCs, settings, etc. I have a combat-oriented game with a ton of players where my characters have about 3 lines so they don't slow down the game. It really just depends on the feel of the campaign.
Awesome guide, I've had a heck of a time getting some new players into their characters I feel like after showing them this they'll have a better understanding what I as a DM am looking for.
Thanks!
Nez
I would love to see an article about what a DM should include in a background primer. What other types of preparation and documents can/should a DM give to players before starting the game?
The only requirement I have for my player's backstories is to write an unresolved arc to be played out during the campaign. Examples:
If I may, I like to ask of my players to provide me with a home town in addition to this unresolved personal goal. This just allows me to anchor them to the world a little easier. Some take the initiative to give me a family lineage or immediate family others simply say "I'm from this place here".
My current character's backstory is something i've worked on through the years, with each iteration integrating the elements of the game.
Started with 4th Ed, gone on for some while, then we switched to Pathfinder, and i reused the character's background( but he was a MAgus, since there was no Warlock/Hexblade in PF).
Then we switched to 5th Ed, but his backstory always evolved and incomperated elements from the previous games/incarnations and so devlopped naturally over time.
Here in the group i'm noiw, playing on Discord, the Dm and I are the two left from the original group, and since the world he made and the plot was all homemade ande we both had a deep attachement to it, we decided to let it live, just fast forwarding the timeline, so that we could instill changes to the world.
While in the first iteration my Character who was lvl6( lvl3 Oath of Vengeance Pally/lvl3 Hexblade) , He was a Mercenary with an edgy past, but he kinda worked through it( with past campaigns events) and became an officer/ Training Sergeant, with a team( the other players) we accepted a job (the theme was kinda A-Team of Dark Fantasy), the job led to chaotic events, that later would tie to World Changing stuff.
Unfortunatly the group disoluteted because or IRL issues for everyone, so the DM started a new group and fast forward the story thousands of years in the setting, where the World CHanging events took place, and our group had an active part in it( so the party's members kinda became heroes) and he contacted me to reprise my Character, where the plot was that i was set up in a magical slumber by my Patron for some Overarching plot purpose, and was left in a dank crypt somewhere in a "Cryopod" for millenia's, where i would emerge ( at lvl8) and help out the new characters.
And there was a 2nd fats forward after that, since the Dm had real life issues( broke up with his Girlfriend) so he wasn't really in the mood for DMing, and another guy of the group started a campaign set in Midgard( who's still runing) after a while the first Dm came back and decided to fast forward again( cause he had plans for the setting, and he was too excited and impatient to wait till we got there).
So after discussing with the others they all made new characters, while the Dm said that i could keep mine( he still had plans for it).
After other World Changing events( ALL of the planes kinda merged togheter after a cataclysmic event, and the setting was thrown thousands of years in the futur, and we're now in a Starfinder kinda setting; a mix of Spelljammer, 40k, Diesel/+Cyberpunk and Fantasy) where my Character and the previous party where involved with the Cataclysm( they tried to prevent it, and kinda succeeded since all the Mortals races are still there, even if some where deeply affected-Halflings and Gnomes becames cannibalistic Marauders and Psychos-).
So the second party also became Legendary Heroes...
And my Character was trapped in a SPace-Time paradox when the Cataclysm went off and was thrown 1000 years in the futur, with no knowledge of what happened afterwards and of what the world is now.
But he keeps earing tales of the "Legendary Dark Knight" (my character) and his party, and each time he presents himself and people look at him and see the "likeness" with the Legendary Hero, they think he's and hardcore fan that tooks things too far, to the point of havin the same name etc.
So my character is in a constant state of frustration cause he gets commentaries and people of course don't believe him when he says that HE is the Legendary Hero, and off course they all laugh at him...
So yeah( sorry for the long post) but all of this contributed to further grow my character's backstory in some unexpected ways that i really like.
We are about to start Tomb of Annihilation, and although the timeline doesn't always match up, here is my backstory.
After years of study under the finest bladesong wizards his noble family could afford. It was time for Aldritch to make a name for himself. Though his family had great wealth, they used to have great influence as well. His grandfather had tainted their name when he made a deal with a demon in an attempt gain power. His father had gone to great lengths to distance the family from those events and restore the family name. That duty now fell to Aldritch, great bladesong wizards where held in high regard, and ones with great accomplishments even higher. So when elves that had been resurrected began fading, his father did everything in his power to get Aldritch into the adventuring party that was formed to find answers. After weeks of traveling the group of 5 were set upon by trolls. Though they fought valiantly, only Aldritch survived. Figuring it wouldn't look good to return alone, he decided to continue on with the mission. He started in the great library of Silverymoon, but soon realized he wouldn't find anything there, as the sages who had searched every tome in the library twice over the last few months trying to find answers. From there he set out for Waterdeep, hoping that he might find some info there, at least a direction to head as going home empty handed was not an option. After a week of travel he stumbled upon the camp of a drow and a dwarf. Worried at first, he decided to trail them as they where heading in the same direction as him. After a few days he was pretty sure he had heard of this drow, but not wanting to be seen as a creeper, he didn't approach. The next morning he awoke to the 2 standing over him, no weapons drawn, just curious grins on both their faces. They were friendly and ask where Aldritch was heading, and welcomed him to journey with them til they reached what they were looking for. Though he ask they were very secretive about the name of the dwarf and what they were looking for. The drow confirmed his name as Drizzt. After watching his morning workouts, being so impressed, he ask to train with him for there brief journey together. Drizzt obliged, and after 3 weeks of getting his ass handed to him, they parted ways. Soon after he arrived in Waterdeep. Though it was quite the culture shock, he did manage to find some info. It wasn't much to go on but he knew he needed to head to the jungle of chult, so he spent most of what the group had set out with on booking passage on an airship headed south.
Balzembu, the demon my grandfather made the deal with. The order I'm apart of was able to banish him, but that was 400 years ago.
The encounter with Drizzt and the dwarf takes place after Bruenor faked his death to search for Gauntlgrym.
This is a really great article, and as a DM who loves backstory's this will help the PC's develop their characters without over doing it... and myself as well!
Matching backstory to character level is often overlooked.
You're a war veteran? Master spy? Chosen guardian of the sacred forest? So why are you 1st level?
If you're starting a campaign at 1st level it could help to remind players they are only beginning their real journey. The campaign is the story of how these characters become the heroes/anti-heroes/villains of their world.
In the chosen guardian example, maybe they are the heir to the title but must undergo 10 years of labours in the wider world to become ready to perform their duty. Maybe the war veteran was seriously injured in the opening days of the war and spent years recovering from their injuries, losing their strength and skill. Maybe the 'master spy' is a young charlatan who dreams of becoming a notorious saboteur, but greatly exaggerates his experience and ability to win jobs.
I might try and use those techniques. Thanks!
Anyone got any ideas on how to improve this backstory for a Half-orc Druid? All I’ve got is that he grew up in a village of barbarians but didn’t fit in because of his bookishness. His uncle encouraged his reading, unlike everyone else in the village. One day, something led to him fleeing / being banished from the village, and becoming a Druid/archaeologist. Open to suggestions.
You have the bones of it, flesh it out.
Who was/is his family? are they still alive? did they encourage his studies or discourage/demean him for it. Come up with the reason to his fleeing or banishment. Maybe the orc in him finally had enough of the constant belittlement and he snapped accidentally harming or killing someone?
What does he seek in adventure? redemption? meaning? a place to call his own? acceptance?
As many here have pointed out you do not need a massively flushed out backstory, in fact that can end up hindering your game. Take a moment and put yourself in his shoes, try to feel how he would feel. Having an unfinished arc as many have put it gives you a goal to strive for and reason to be out in the danger.
my 2cp
Thank you! I will take these into great consideration.