Campaigns are large sandboxes for adventurers to play in. Some DMs prefer to have more linear campaign progression, but the freedom of D&D is that you can do just about anything you want. For some players, that level of freedom brings forth a need for some stability. If that player is a DM, they can set whatever rules the table needs to achieve it. Your campaign’s world is whatever your group needs it to be. Players often react by creating extremely rich backstories for their characters as a pillar to lean on. A rogue princess with a royal curse to break; a lone barbarian who scoured the land from a young age, fighting for survival at every turn; or a prodigious mage’s assistant, finally being sent out into the world to learn and use magic as they’ve always dreamt of.
Many players are used to intricate backstories because that’s largely how many fantasy stories begin. And while that’s a completely valid way of building a character, there’s another side of (many sides of) character creation to explore. Frontstory. In my endless sea of lectures I’ve found that frontstory is best explained with the examples of the fictionally consistent, Jim Sterling inspired, Chungus and Grungus.
The Timeless Epic of Chungus and Grungus
Let’s call your adventurer with the two-page backstory, Chungus. They have, for example:
- A family lineage that includes some recent direct-family death or illness
- A personal mystery that they will allude to, but don’t plan to reveal until 12 weeks in
- One powerful childhood moment that set them on the path of becoming an adventurer
Because Chungus was built on these elements, all of the reactions they have to present events will be weighed against that backstory. That’s how our player figures out who Chungus is; using their backstory as a filter and seeing what comes out. A pitfall of this is that players keep their eyes on week 12 more so than what’s happening in front of them.
One day, Chungus’ time comes to an end. A victim of DM’s critical success and a player’s critical failure, dear Chungus perishes at a time and in a place where there’s no hope for them to continue on. We’ve lost Chungus. Gone, but never forgotten. Press F to pay respects. Chungus’ player didn’t get far enough in the campaign to reach their fulfilling reveals—and thus, all the backstory that was never revealed or never paid off is lost to the wind.
After the funeral and a hero’s sending, a new adventurer must take their place. Though Chungus’s journey is over, their player still wants to be a part of the game. And so our player has some options. They could whip out an old favorite from another campaign. They could make a brand new character who is so tied into the narrative that of COURSE they’d join the party—but our hypothetical player doesn’t have the time to write a chunky, plot hook-laden backstory this time. So instead of those options, they create Grungus.
Our player didn’t have a lot of time to write a chunky, plot hook-laden backstory for Grungus, so this new character is just a strong warrior who happens to have a horse in this narrative’s race. Since this player has little history to riff off of, they use each event as an opportunity to be a fresh eye peering into the lives of a close-knit group, just to remain relevant. To this player’s surprise this works. Not just as a way to navigate the game, but as a way to have fun. Why?
It’s because Grungus is all about what’s happening in the moment. The point of frontstory is to let go of the foundations and let the present be the beginning of your epic.
Backstory isn’t a dirty word. All good characters need motivation, and a character’s backstory can be rich with motivations. They give the player a clear path forward and a clear way to react to the things around them. Backstories are a guide on where to start before players get into the rhythm of who their characters grow into later on. Grungus, however, throws the guide out the window.
Frontstory is about making those important bullet points that Chungus had and creating them all later, based in the events that happened in the game’s present, not its hypothetical past. The personality and development of the character is heavily weighed in when they begin to understand their party and the journey they’re undertaking. Here’s an example:
In two different campaigns, Chungus and Grungus both find themselves in the same situation: collecting loot at the end of a battle. They both find out that one of the rogues that they killed had only joined this band of thieves to eventually find the assassin that killed her family. There’s a hidden diary filled with pictures and notes about her entire journey. It’s a very emotional moment for the players, but how do the characters react?
Chungus can often have their reaction tied down to the personality or experiences dictated in their history. Chungus decides that, because they’re supposed to be gruff and absent of emotion due to many past family deaths, that this assassin’s note isn’t an important development. It’s still completely possible for Chungus’ player to move their adventurer in the opposite direction, to help this deceased woman on her quest, but if backstory players aren’t careful, everything gets filtered through that dense history and passed by without a second thought.
Grungus doesn’t have any large traumas or past incidents that hold them back from assessing the character choice presented before them. Thus, whatever decision they make is based on the principles that the player is being faced with rather than being filtered. Do you want Grungus to be more empathetic? Do you want them to dash immediately into this new quest, or are they going to support whatever decision is made by the party at large? Is Grungus more hopeful than the others because they’ve seen fewer horrors? Or are they cold-hearted and focused on the main story quest? Any type of character can face these questions, but frontstory characters have each and every decision they make impacted by how much character there is to build. A character that isn’t burdened by backstory is able to act dynamically, and make the most interesting decision in the moment. Grungus is a vehicle made to learn that lesson.
The Great Reflector
There are a great many uses for characters build solely from frontstory, but one of the most useful is the ability to turn pieces of the party’s identity back at the characters. Adventures take a toll on adventurers. We receive battle scars of the body as well as the mind. The longer that this continues on, the more that people begin to become accustomed to the process of scarring. Seeing a young warrior die doesn’t carry the weight that it once did, because it can’t. To journey toward one’s final destination, the normalcy of war is an inevitability.
Grungus, as someone who can join a campaign at any point in the narrative curve, is able to look at the other characters from the perspective of one who doesn’t carry that burden. They can be a vehicle to ask some big questions like, “How have we changed from where we began?” For the group of players who enjoy some deep philosophical thinking, this question can lead to some major character development.
Not all of the reflections that Grungus brings to the table have to be loaded with heavy undertones. For more mischievous players, you can use them as a way to poke at tense romances and friendly rivalries. A brand new teammate is unknowing of the “this is complicated” energy standing between your “two ladies just bein’ pals and swinging swords”. It’s a fair question to ask what that tension is about, especially at a very tense romantic moment between the two.
Not every Grungus has to be born yesterday. Being focused on frontstory doesn’t mean that a character can’t have defining ideals or experiences. Grungus can be brand new to adventures of this scale, or they can be a seasoned warrior of even higher caliber than the character they’re replacing. The core of frontstory is to let the major details of who they are and what moves their motivations be decided in the tense moments of the present to a much larger degree than in the past.
How to Build Frontstory
So we know what Grungus can do and how they can use their position in their social group to mix things up, but how does one make the beautiful, most amazing Grungus of legend? Well, it comes down to fundamental theming. Building as you go, which is the core of frontstory, doesn’t mean that you have no foundation from which to progress. The road you begin from can stand on a principle or idea.
Most players encounter a “Grungus opportunity” when their character dies, as mentioned earlier. If the campaign has been going on for some time and you’re choosing to add a brand new hero to the story, having an illustrious backstory may solve the question as to why you arrive, but it may not give you time to explore the potential value of said story in what little time the campaign has left. A new character can connect and blend into the campaign by reflecting off of the existing narrative themes.
What are those themes? If you aren’t sure, try talking to your DM or fellow players. In heroic campaigns, these themes can include empathy, the concept of good and evil, personal loss, fear of the future, or of the past coming back to haunt a world of peace. These elements of your hero’s journey are just as valuable as making an old friend, or as pragmatic as choosing to play a non-player character. The set of skills you use to bring your adventurer into the fold are focused on what the story is about, rather than what a character might have been before the story took place. The nuance of this awareness can bring about new ways to enjoy not only D&D, but roleplaying in general.
Why Would I Grungus When I Can Chungus
Or, why would I ever make a backstory-less character if I enjoy writing elaborate backstories? A fantastic question! Here’s another: how many times have you begun a campaign as someone who has yet to hold a sword, or who has never cast a spell? If that number is zero, then there’s an opportunity to experience something you never have before.
When you create a character with a dense backstory, you partially answer a great deal of questions on your own that you may wish to explore together with your party. How did I learn to fight? Who were my mentors or teachers? What difficulties arose that made me venture out into this grand world of fantasy? Sometimes a backstory is used as a way for players to set a checkmark next to these questions to signify that they’re answered rather than letting the campaign be the host for those answers.
In early editions of Dungeons and Dragons, non-player characters that don’t have stat blocks or character sheets are level 0. They don’t have skills to check or scores to modify. They are normal, everyday people. Your character was likely just like them, until one day they weren’t. You begin the journey that will one day become a story better than you could have written alone.
So if you’re from the land of backstories, try piloting a Grungus around in your next oneshot. And for those living for each moment to moment engagement, give backstory a try and see what it brings out of you as a player.
Whatever happens, new experiences help freshen up old skills. So take the leap and see what’s on the other side.
Have you ever created a character with no backstory, and whose personality developed exclusively through frontstory? Tell us about them in the comments!
DC is an independent game designer, and the creator and author of plot ARMOR, as well as a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast. You can find them assisting the tabletop roleplaying game community’s growth on Twitter @DungeonCommandr.
Honestly it is a delicate balance between front story and back story. I always require my players to give me some kind of back story. I don't require anything huge. It is just a really good way to get the player to start the process of loving their character and begin thinking about who the character is going to be. Making a completely blank slate character can be fun but what I've found with most players is that they end up focusing more on the mechanics of the game and the character is one dimensional. Sure this is fine the first few sessions but if after a while the player doesn't actually try to flesh anything out then you end up with kind of a flat campaign or that character falling into the background.
Exactly.
This seems... odd to me.
The idea that having a backstory colors your characters view on things happening around them... Yes. That's called having lived up until that point. You can't not have your views colored by who you were before today. You can only try to change and move forwards. Having "no backstory" and just having a "frontstory" is basically your character existed in a vacuum until they just popped into reality right before they're needed for the adventure.
A backstory doesn't need to be dark and gritty, parents are dead, grew up alone, raised by wolves, etc. Explain who your character is. Everyone has a backstory. If you don't want to have your characters view (in your example) so skewed that a death right in front of them has no effect on them, then... don't make your character have a backstory that is full of death right in front of them.
A backstory can be boring. Most lives are. Having a boring/normal life backstory is not the same thing has just not having one.
The problem with most peoples backstories are that they're written in a vacuum. In my games I sit down with each player and we do their backstory together so they're intimately plugged into my world but most folks just show up with 30 pages of assumptions and then try to shoe-horn that into the world. "My drow is different, he worships Inorruuk, the god of hate (who doesn't exist in your game world), and is married to a vedelken (the game world is faerun)."
The strength of a front story vs a back story is that, by definition, the front story is developed live, while in the world. If I'm a 1st lvl plebe, precisely how much "back story" can I honestly have? I can't tell you how many 1st lvl "son of asmodeus, nephew of mephistopheles and rightful ruler of the world" backstories I've read in 40+ years of DM'ing. Show me someone whose parents are happily married, they had a great childhood and now are going out to adventure, THAT is a fun character to play because all of the awesomeness is AHEAD of them. If you've written a 30 page backstory, just go home and finish your novel, no need to actually try to play the character :)
I sincerely apologize.
I've only known a couple players with such crazy backstories. One of my favorite characters was Harney McDowell. He was a simple farmer who got pissed about how poorly the common folk were treated and simply had enough. So he packed up, left home and became a champion of the people. During down time he'd help out on various farms getting to know the other common folk and thier problems. He always pushed to help people even if they couldn't afford it, and had issues with nobles who abused their power. As a result of his travels and time amongst the people I had an excuse for why his profession farmer skills hit silly levels, he was actually using it and learning from farmers all over the world. A background easily inserted into every world. He even eventually made friends with another pc who was a noble in time, both learning from each other and had many debates. Eventually they became a team seeking to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Noble and peasant. It was an amazing story as they started off hating each other.
I think that's a thing. We all have different experiences. I went through a long period where too many players were clumps of stats with nothing to work with. I've also seen the opposite where people over defined everything and had convoluted backgrounds to explain stats and make excuses to do whatever crazy thing the player wished by calling in character but never showing any character growth or ability to change from new experiences.
Is why I think like in all things, balance and moderation are key. Too muxh either way and you have a disaster or at least something mediocre.
Love this article - 2 (?) items from DC so far and I find both to be very thought provoking. WOuld like to see more contributions like this.
At the risk of over simplifying, I might describe this in 2 parts:
"Yes, and..." - a classic improv approach. How to take an event or another person's concept and be additive. Totally agree with that.
Backstory - I do not feel like this attacks backstory but it might be a call to greatly simplify it to a small set of bullets which are almost all open ended hooks. It is what I am trying to do with my characters now.
if this resonates there is parallel work which does not overlap but I think is great. Sly flourish and his lazy DM content is great and I find super helpful in quickly wrangling my long and often unfinished ideas into something coherent as a DM.
That and it's 100% situational between the GM, the players, and the world.
I wrote an article over on Reddit about how I handle offers, maybe you'll find it helpful.
I work with my players to make their backstory and guide them into picking something that will fit in the world I've prepared. I let them come up with what they want and then go back and forth to tweak it to fit.
My only point is that the idea of ONLY having a front story is strange because your character has had a life before the adventure starts. It doesn't have to be super dark and epic especially if they're level one, but that's on me as the DM to work with them to explain the setting of the world before they create their backgrounds, explain the level they'll be starting at. Going "Hey, we're gonna play D&D, make your character and backstory, k thanks." is going to get you the incorrect assumptions about the world that you have yet to explain to them.
But, my point is, obviously the "front story" is going to be developed live, as it should. The front story is simply how your character reacts to and changes from the events they come across "live".
I just think the idea of foregoing a backstory leaves your DM with little to work with. I love when players give me backstory so I can relate them into the world and make them invested. I'd rather have a world they're involved and invested in as opposed to dropping them in from out of nowhere and seeing how they develop. They're obviously going to develop as the story goes on, the fun of characters is changing them. Evolving. Growing. Seeing how much your character has changed and evolved is more fun to me, as a player, than having a character that is JUST the story being played.
Again, I'm not saying I need a monumental history of the changes to the world caused because of actions in your past, just tell me who your character was before today. Do they have parents? Siblings? A childhood friend? What did they do yesterday? Give me something I can add to the story to invest you and your character in the world.
I do as well. Got a bit defensive and was a bit rude. Article just hit a nerve with some game issues I've been having lately.
Understood, but not every character needs to be completely plugged into every campaign. I've a group of 6 characters, if everyone of them is completely plugged into the world through their backstory, then 75% of the NPCs you meet are related to the players in some way. It's tedious and gets tiresome quickly. "Oh, wait, let me guess, the villain is my 2nd cousin twice removed's room mate?"
Not everyone had an epic life before the game started. My paladin in my latest campaign has both parents, happily married. She went to school, studied her craft, and is now adventuring. BORING, which is fine, because that means EVERYthing she experiences from here on out is EXCITING! She views the world through that pane and every experience she has shapes her going forward. The difference between backstory and forestory is who is involved and engaged.
Backstory: Just me, maybe the GM. We have a private little session, we plug me in, then that's it, everything is an inside story going forward.
Forestory: Everyone in the party knows everything what we've done, everything that shaped who I am. My character is afraid of spiders. Why? Because of that thing that happened at 2nd lvl that everyone remembers and was involved in. We're building my "backstory" as we go forward so everyone is involved, vs I write some fiction that no one is apart of and then read it to them, or behave in a weird way that no one understands because no one was there when I decided it.
There is no right or wrong, better or worse, but I've been playing for decades, have used both heavily (1000s of characters), and Forestory builds the better characters overall because of the organic nature of it.
Exceptional article. This is the kind of stuff I'd love to see in a vol 2 Players Handbook.
This makes a lot of sense to me - definitely things to think on as a DM and as a player :-)
I've Grunged a Chung once. Wrote out a backstory for a street urchin growing up tough on the streets before being beaten half to death by the guard, saved by a kindly old knight and instructed in the ways of the ancients. He then set out to quest for a grail which restored the body as it destroyed the mind only to abducted to an island adrift in limbo.
John awoke on this island with NO MEMORIES save for his name and vague understanding of his powers. Unable to rely on backstory wholeheartedly due to some failed (nat 1) int save at the start of the campaign I ended up playing more a gangster than a paladin. Beatings and intimidation tactics kept the party alive in the ruined city that lay in the middle of the island as we struggled amongst the other lost souls. John was mercurial; seeming to flip from righteous do-good, to cold hearted street tough based on convenience. Alas we all know how rarely what is right is also convenient and John slowly trended downwards until a chance encounter with a caged Intellect Devourer.
One of the more naive party members brought the "Cute Brain Cat" to John and it promptly did as was in it's nature. John was saved by hermit in the forest and as his memories of his time on the island flooded over him tinted with half remembered faces of noble knights he broke. Ashamed he wandered into the forest who's branches carelessly flogged him until he came bleeding to a great tree. There he fell to his knees and in a foreign tongue swore an oath that rolled so naturally from his lips he believed he had sworn it once before but the feeling of power that washed over him was brand new. HE TOOK THIS POWER AND WOULD WIELD IT IN MIGHTY BATTLES before dying unceremoniously in bed. DM scrapped the campaign.
"Why would I Grungus when I can Chungus" is quite possibly the best and most cursed sentence I have ever read.
Dude! I want to try this now!!!
I really enjoyed your article, brother. Thank you for taking the time and sharing this bit of wisdom with me.
I have never made a character with no backstory, but never made a character that relied on backstory reveals.
I recently encountered a Chungus vs. Grungus moment in a campaign I am playing in. I was invited to join the group when they were level 4; I didn't have the same "life experience" as everyone else getting from level 1 to where they were. The whole party were flavors of Good alignments. We were playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen and thru skill, luck and benevolent dice the group managed to capture 3 black dragon eggs. The rest of the group knew about the Cult of the Dragon and they knew that the chromatic dragons are universally evil; as they prepared to make scrambled eggs my character stepped in front and gave a speach about slaughtering unborn children who had not had the chance to decide to be evil. My character was fully prepared to die in PvP glory defending the eggs and I could have been a 1-shot guest in their campaign. But the paladin in the group listened and got the others to pause long enough to consider other possibilities. We eventually decided to turn them over to the Temple of Bahamet in Baldur's Gate. IMO the DM RPing the high priest of the temple was a defining moment for the entire group. I do not claim to be the group's conscience because my chaotic nature has certainly created many more interesting developments but my character's backstory created so much more frontstory for everyone that my permanent place in the group was cemented.
The issue I have with the concept of Frontstory is that, as a DM, it virtually eliminates my ability to relate to these characters in the early stages of a campaign... which is exactly what I need to be able to do so with a new group of players. If every PC is such a tabula rasa, they are just a directionless group of individuals. They have no common ground except "dur... we want to adventure."
It's like someone who refuses a vaccination--that plan only works if enough of the rest of the group chooses differently. If everyone does it, the entire party falls ill.
It also implies that backstory dictates choices. That because of my backstory, I can only do one thing in a given situation; which is of course silly. I can make either choice--but because of my background, I may pay a higher personal price for one rather than another. Something that seems to be avoided with idea of a Frontstory.