Character background.

GameOgre · Post by **GameOgre** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 2:28 pm

I could go on and on about why character background is so important. About why it mostly gets overlooked (at least in my experiences). I pour hours and hours of work/fun into the game and often my players make up their characters in fifteen minutes and have a background consisting of three sentences.

Normally something like... Marty Squizmire is a orphan raised in the mean city streets. He became a warrior and was a caravan guard. The caravan was wiped out and so now Marty is a adventurer.

In fact this happends so much I made tables for them to roll on to spice it up a little. I created a whole slew of tables about parents, friends, enemies,loves,happy fun times and heartbreaks. Anything to add to a characters background and create strings to the past.

It actually helps a little. Also often they will use part of it and the go off on there own and come up with something differant. To me thats awsome! Anything to get there imagination engaged.

I guess I fall under the old rpg theory of"The characters should be the heart and focus of the game but they better dang well live up to it! No one wants to play a game centered around characters who don't care what happends,have no wants and desires(outside of what + sword they have) and no reason beyond because "it's what I do" to interact with the game world.

Is this a issue for you guys? One of my good friends runs a game with apparently Gods gift to Keepers because he reports that they all always have deep immersive backgrounds and never metagame. His players care very little about loot and always develop strong feelings about all his npc's. I secretly want to beat him and his players about the head and neck!

So tell me ....whats your game like?
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Buttmonkey · Post by **Buttmonkey** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 3:11 pm

GameOgre wrote:
No one wants to play a game centered around characters who don't care what happends,have no wants and desires(outside of what + sword they have) and no reason beyond because "it's what I do" to interact with the game world.

A lot of the time, that is exactly what I want. The longest PC background I ever put together was all of 8 sentences.

If a PC makes it to 3rd level, then it might be worth it to flesh out its background a little. I am much more interested in what the PC does now than writing angsty fan fiction about my PC's childhood. That's not to say there is anything wrong with players who are into that sort of thing.

CKDad · Post by **CKDad** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 3:37 pm

I'm a big fan of "start small". That is, know where the character is from, where they fit on the social ladder (merchant family? noble scion? farmer?) and a little about their family. And, of course, "Why are you adventuring?"

It's certainly arguable that more detail can provide exploitable plot hooks, but I suspect that for most games more detail turns out to be stuff that can't be used, since play time is limited. If your group only meets every 3-4 weeks for a few hours, you don't have time to follow all those threads.

An overly-detailed background at character inception also ties your hands in case you get better ideas later. Better to just set a few anchor points and build as the game progresses.

All that said, that's one of the best aspects of Traveller's character generation - the act of creating a character generated the background as you went. Sure, the results could be silly and nonsensical at times ("Wet navy sailor with Mechanic and Battle Dress 2? WTF?") but applying some creativity and common sense could yield some really cool backgrounds ("Hey, maybe he was really a deep-sea diving specialist who used powered submersible suits.")
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 4:12 pm

If a campaign is going to have an important need for a background, like, I want the players to know they're nobles and have feuds with family X and Y or they're peasants in a world set n the brink of global revolution, then I write it for them, and it'll be short. That is after I ask them some simple questions about what type of character they want to play -- this way, the "background" is guaranteed to fit the world and is in-check. I don't have to say "look, no, your father was not an all-important dragonslayer and you inherited his wealth and fame." I might... but it would have to fit with what was going to happen.
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GameOgre · Post by **GameOgre** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 4:38 pm

I had a player stop me in the middle of a adventure intro a long time ago and ask me" Why would my character care about this?".

I in turn turned to him and said "I dunno,why does your character care about this?"

This lead to a debate about who's job it is to bring a character into a story.

In that case he was of the opinion that the Game Master's job clearly fell into that area. So I told him he loved this town, he had grown up here and had many friends and familly in it. His first great love was now the town Priestess and that he had ended the relationship badly by just disappearing.

He stated that that wasn't right. His character wouldnt have done that and he wanted to have been born somewhere else.

I often craft a adventure around my players characters. Doing that is much more rewarding and fun (for everyone) if I have something to work with.

Gorm Battlefield the 1st level Dwarf who is out of gold and looking for adventure is a lot harder to work with.

Gorm Battlefield the last scion of Clan Ironhammer who's life quest is to avenge his fallen brothers and sisters is better.

Add to that a Dwarven Hold deep in the now orc infeasted lands and a distantly related clan who took Gorm in as a youth and it gets better.

With every layer of background my job gets easier and his character gets more interesting. Do I need a 3 page shortstory? No. But I wouldnt mind it either.
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 4:41 pm

If I have a player say "what's my motivation" I say "to play this game."
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Maliki · Post by **Maliki** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:29 pm

Three lines of back story is three more lines than my players give me. Sometimes they will come up with two of them being related some how, but normally after the player creates their character I come up with a little background info for them, birthplace, family, adventure hooks, etc. It seems to work with the players I have now, but I would love for my players to invest a little time into what motivates their character, so I could tailor the early adventures to them.
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Buttmonkey · Post by **Buttmonkey** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 6:32 pm

serleran wrote:
If a campaign is going to have an important need for a background, like, I want the players to know they're nobles and have feuds with family X and Y or they're peasants in a world set n the brink of global revolution, then I write it for them, and it'll be short. That is after I ask them some simple questions about what type of character they want to play -- this way, the "background" is guaranteed to fit the world and is in-check. I don't have to say "look, no, your father was not an all-important dragonslayer and you inherited his wealth and fame." I might... but it would have to fit with what was going to happen.

This is what I would want as a player. It's probably the way I'll do it as a GM going forward. I'm invariably irritated when my players put together a background on their own that doesn't really fit in with the campaign, the party dynamics, or that gives the PC some sort of inherent advantage (i.e., access to resources or opportunities that a generic adventurer would not have -- my starting PCs get the gold they rolled and that's it). On the flip side, I don't want to drown my players with a 10-20 page campaign background document that would help them develop a more suitable background on their own. Much better to get some general input from the player (assuming they want input) and then give them a brief but serviceable background for the PC.

old school gamer · Post by **old school gamer** » Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:04 pm

I am of two minds on this. In one aspect I realize that the GM will usually have some campaign theme or agenda that he wants to implement. However at the same time if none of my characters background ever comes up in the game and any personal goals I may have have to take a back seat to the meta-plot than I tend to feel underwhelmed.

I think the characters, their goals, and what they want to do in a campaign should have center stage. Frankly, I don't really give a rat's ass what the King is doing tonight unless it has something to do with my character. This doesn't mean that I will just sit around wait for the adventure to come and plop down in my lap. I can definitely follow a plot hook, I just prefer when the hook has some bait that I would want to take a bite at.

This means that the GM should listen to the players and get an idea about what thier characters want to get out of a game and should work with the players to that end.

My wife did that recently when she started to run her C&C game. She took the each players aside and took about 5 minutes to explain why they were there and come up with a motivation. So far all of us are having a good time and nobody is complaining that they have nothing to do. On top of that, even though we are only about 4th level we are having an impact on the world we are on.

Hrolfgar · Post by **Hrolfgar** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:26 am

I prefer players to start with a small background, which can be expanded upon during the game. When playing I usually just have a brief rather simple background.

The game and setting influence how much background is needed. A simple dungeon crawl setting does require any background. A complex political intrigue game might need an extensive one. Some people are better at making backgrounds than others.

I have(had) 2 players in a CZ/EastMark game that started a full page of background. 2 others had basically no background and another had a background that was basically an excuse to gain advantages in game.
As the CK I basically have ignored all of it.

GameOgre wrote:
I made tables for them to roll on to spice it up a little. I created a whole slew of tables about parents, friends, enemies,loves,happy fun times and heartbreaks. Anything to add to a characters background and create strings to the past.

Sounds like you found a good solution.

gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:36 am

I start out with two or three sentences in my head too. I don't see the point of writing epics until I know what sort of game I am in and the people involved. But I can make up all kinds of stuff on the spot.
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:33 am

Yeah, some people can figure out "motivations" as they come up, but others seem stymied, so could use some help. There is a great little product that is a great background generator for people who just can't come up with such stuff, and its kind of fun to roll and see what you get. Unfortunately I am totally blanking on the name so Wulfgarn will have to read this and fill in the name, or maybe one of the others who play in his games remember the name of it.

I bet Serleran knows what I am talking about too.
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gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:11 pm

Treebore wrote:
Yeah, some people can figure out "motivations" as they come up, but others seem stymied, so could use some help. There is a great little product that is a great background generator for people who just can't come up with such stuff, and its kind of fun to roll and see what you get. Unfortunately I am totally blanking on the name so Wulfgarn will have to read this and fill in the name, or maybe one of the others who play in his games remember the name of it.

I bet Serleran knows what I am talking about too.

Paul Jaquay's Central Casting's products would work just fine for C&C
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 5:14 pm

gideon_thorne wrote:
Paul Jaquay's Central Casting's products would work just fine for C&C

There is a good chance Gideon knows what I am talking about as well.
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gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:00 pm

Treebore wrote:
There is a good chance Gideon knows what I am talking about as well.

Oh ya, the last major game group I played with before I moved from Arkansas used those extensively
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:51 pm

Same issues here. I don't care, honestly, if a player writes a backstory for a character or not. But if they do, I do try to reference at least once in a campaign. I like to think that there should be some "reward" to writing the backstory, and I think that an adventure or an NPC from one would be (and has been) a great reward for a player. But other than real basic stuff, I don't require anyone to do one up.

As far as motivation goes, I've actually had one player state out in a game, "Why is my character doing this?" And he actually left the "adventuring area" and went back to town. Now, it pissed me off and the party members as well, but I actually could understand where he was coming from, and his character went back to town and worked on some downtime stuff (crafting and the like). We talked about it later and he wasn't mad or anything - he just didn't want to help the people needing assistance (and actually had a backstory reason for doing this, ironic, considering the forum topic). I wanted to tell him that he was stuck in the adventure, but how much fun would that have been for him (and ultimately, me)?

And Ultimate Toolbox has some generation stuff for backstory, too, iirc (might be easier to get than the Jaquays stuff).
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:56 pm

Quote:
might be easier to get than the Jaquays stuff

Easier and less expensive, especially if you want all of the Jaquays stuff.
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DangerDwarf · Post by **DangerDwarf** » Mon Mar 23, 2009 3:57 pm

My players generally have a few ideas on their background and I'm cool with that. Our play style generally has levels 1-3 fleshing out the backstory and personality more based on game play.

For example, one game we had a battle against undead and the dwarf sucked it up hard core dice rolling wise. Next fight against undead went close to the same. Through that, it was seamlessly woven into his personality and background that he had a deep aversion to the undead due to a happening in his youth.

Same with all the characters in my game, the initial levels and dice rolls and adventures serve as the"building ground" and the layers feel pretty good because the background fleshing out feels mor natural to them that way.

Works for us at least.

Saarlander · Post by **Saarlander** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:54 pm

Before getting to C&C, we used to have heavy background around the table in former games, and for our first Crusade i guess we went down the same road without even thinking.

Actually, we feel great about it now as we used to, and a certain amount of luck prevented the thouroughly worked out level 1 characters to die quick and dirty.

But now, as one player changed character for actual background reasons (as he played him out, he realized his PC had no reason to go along with the party for now, and might join up with them again later on), we discovered more quick and sketchy backgrounds to start the adventure were great as well, to flesh out the thing as the game goes on (sometimes surprising everyone when they act according to some idea they just added to it).

I think, mostly as i go for sagas rather than independant adventures, we could not work without ANY character background at all, but now my players just might come into liking the quick and dirty way also.
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