Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877524Also, it's been my experience that the longer the backstory, the more time the player spends bitching that the rules don't "allow them to build their true character," which in a class-based game means having a multiclass character that does everything with no disadvantages, or in a point-based system having twice as many points as the game gives.  If I say we're starting D&D at first level, don't give me the backstory for an eighth-level character.

Oh yes, the dreaded multiclass...

"dun dun DUN!!!!"

Quote from: Bren;877499I really don't get why some people get bent out of shape on this topic.

What Gronan prefers and refers to is a style of play where the only important character history occurs in play, not before play. History is what the character has done, failed to do, and survived in play not something the player made up as background.

On the other hand, you get it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877526"Backstory" is what happened BEFORE the game started.

I don't CARE.  The game isn't about what happened BEFORE the game started, it's about what happens IN the game.

A tenth level character should have one hell of an in-game character history.

Quote from: CRKrueger;877527Which was earned, unlike backstory.

Yeah, because it really helps immersion when all of the PCs are nothing but Blank Slates prior to the game. Might as well be playing Chess.....

I'll let others speak for themselves, but in my experience, someone who writes two pages of backstory for a beginning character is going to write in stuff about their character that is to a certain degree world-building or world-editing.  Most of the time, it's a passive-aggressive way of asserting player authority before the game even begins.  I've never had someone do that who wasn't an asshat snowflake. Never.

Personally, what I like is mostly random, detailed Lifepath character generation, where the GM and player find out together what this character is like, and both have a ton of hooks available to move forward.  Infinitely more interesting and satisfying than the player telling the GM how the character lived the last X years in the GM's world.

Having most of players write backstory by the standards here I can see I've had few of any asshat special snowflakes among them. Generally its been the opposite where players that didn't want invest the effort and time into fiting their character into the premise of the game and setting that wanted to special snow flakes, blank slate murder hobos or, somewhat worse for, characters with multiple choice backgrounds that are whatever gives them the most advantageous at the time.

So I don't think either preference isn't innately "better" or more prone to produce an obstructive player. Could just be cases of misaligned preferences. A heavy drama player can seem like  Special Snowflake in a more straight up adventure via dungeon crawl game with the reverse being true too.

Quote from: CRKrueger;877541I'll let others speak for themselves, but in my experience, someone who writes two pages of backstory for a beginning character is going to write in stuff about their character that is to a certain degree world-building or world-editing.  Most of the time, it's a passive-aggressive way of asserting player authority before the game even begins.  I've never had someone do that who wasn't an asshat snowflake. Never.

I have seen that behavior, but it doesn't survive long because I as GM can say, "That does not make sense in this game universe context. Redo it."

Quote from: CRKrueger;877541Personally, what I like is mostly random, detailed Lifepath character generation, where the GM and player find out together what this character is like, and both have a ton of hooks available to move forward.  Infinitely more interesting and satisfying than the player telling the GM how the character lived the last X years in the GM's world.

Now you are just talking about backstory creation best practices. Things like getting the Players together and figuring out how the group formed, what their relationship to each other is, and working together to figure out what possible skills are missing and needed by the Player Characters.

Quote from: Batman;877538Oh yes, the dreaded multiclass...

"dun dun DUN!!!!"

Nah. The dreaded "no limitations" multiclass.

This came up over on RPGG actually. Someone wanted to be a BX style Elf class in 5e. And multiclass both fighter and magic user to level 20. But levelling up like they were a single class character.

It fell apart on several levels. But alternatives more sane were suggested like just using 5e's multiclass system and accepting being level 10/10 or whatever like any other character.

Wow, I have consumed so much popcorn in this thread! Opaopajr, you can just set all the spilled popcorn on fire; no need to waste a perfectly good cart of hay.

Quote from: jeff37923;875152Also, lets face it, if you as a GM have never had to deal with a neckbearded basement dweller who insisted on playing a lesbian stripper ninja just to squick out the rest of the table with character antics then you are either incredibly sheltered in your gaming or you just haven't gamed that much.

Quote from: Bren;875158Nope. Never, ever had to deal with anyone even remotely like that in any game I ran or played in. Now in theory I suppose that could mean that I've led a sheltered gaming existence for over 42+ years of gaming in three countries and twice that number of US states, at high school and college game clubs, in game stores, at cons, and among many, many friends. But I find it far more likely that it means that I'm not a spineless idjit who chooses to spend his free time indulging morons and wackos and then whining about their awful behavior.

Bren has played with so many people he's all but lost count! And he's totally not sheltered at all so just shut up, you whiners!

Quote from: jeff37923;877184You know, your pretentious wankery borders on the idiotic. You have to start picking a better class of coffee shop to be a pseudointellectual at, the one you go to is teaching you bad habits.

I never said that they were frequent (nice obfuscation by you), but you don't need to run into too many of them to become wary. It is a Player type that exists. If you never play in public or have an open table set-up, you will probably never encounter one.

However, I know that disrupts your treasured narrative, so please continue.

Quote from: Bren;877188Earlier you claimed virtually everyone who GMed must have encountered the neckbearded, basement dwelling lesbian, ninja stripper. Now you are dialing that back to only everyone who has ever gamed in public or had an open table set up. That's some small progress at least.

Now I've personally done both. It's not my favorite style of gaming, but I've run some open game tables at a few cons and clubs. And I've sat in on some open games at cons and clubs. But even so I still haven't encountered these legendary neckbearded, basement dwelling lesbian, ninja strippers whose presence has made you so wary in your GMing. But if it makes you feel better for me to agree with you in part, sure Jeff those guys may be out there somewhere. But see they don't worry me because in my experience they are more rare than serial killers. Now I hope most of us don't spend a lot of energy being wary about whether or not the people we play elf games with are going to drug us, torture us, kill us, cut us up and stick us in garbage bags, and then toss us in the trash or bury us underneath their gaming room. Because I think spending much more than zero energy on that would be kind of crazy.

But maybe I am grossly underestimating the deadly perils of open gaming. Good thing I do it infrequently.

OK, Bren has done open gaming but infrequently. So still not sheltered and still lots and lots of players, so many that it would be impossible not to meet those players jeff37923 warns of.

Quote from: Bren;875684While some people are fine with a ratio of 1 annoying weirdo out of 6, that's not a ratio I'd find acceptable. Which is one reason I've seldom engaged in open table gaming. Frankly that one weirdo would be highly likely to ruin the session for me. I'd much rather game with fewer players than get stuck with multiple sessions per year saddled with weirdos, rejects, and annoyances.

Sure that is one approach that people use. But its not the only successful approach. I've been gaming regularly since 1974 and I've never been especially open to new gamers and have never gone to much effort to find new gamers. Yet here I am. Still gaming after all these years.

OK, Bren seldom does open gaming because he is wary of annoying weirdos (who would be "remotely like" jeff37923's stereotype). And he is not especially open to new gamers and has never gone to much effort to find new gamers, preferring to play with fewer players. But it's still totally different from that sheltered stuff! And he still would have met some of those people who are "remotely like" jeff37923's stereotype.

Now, how many who are "remotely like" jeff37923's stereotype could there be? I've actually encountered three in my gaming experience, which has mostly been open tables that sometimes transitioned to closed table campaigns. Since I've probably just been very, very unlucky, I'll just arbitrarily say 1 in 3200 could be so categorized.

Hmm. Where have I seen an authoritative discourse on the probability of meeting an equally rare subset of a population?

Quote from: Bren;876602Let's say 100K. There are about 320M people in the US. If they were evenly distributed and equally likely, I'd need to know 3200 people to expect to know just 1 person who was transgendered. I don't have anything close to 3200 people in my circle of friends or even of regular acquaintances. Being transgendered isn't like being over 7 feet tall--i.e. it isn't immediately obvious in a casual meeting. I don't find it at all surprising that I don't know anyone who identifies as transgendered. (FWIW, I don't know anyone who is over 7 feet tall. If I was involved with professional basketball the situation would be different.) That you know a lot of transgendered people (as opposed to say a handful) strikes me as far more surprising than that I don't know anyone.

(Most likely it's coincidence, but I've also gamed with three transgendered people, that I know of.) OK, so the number of people Bren knows is too few to meet someone so rare, but the number of people Bren has gamed with is enough that he would have had to meet someone so rare. Therefore, Bren knows many fewer people than he's actually gamed with.

Quote from: Bren;877161I can't imagine ever wanting to play with 3-4 random strangers about whom I knew absolutely nothing other than age, gender, education or occupation.

So Bren doesn't game with people he doesn't actually know.
=> <=.

Well, when you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be true: Bren is an idiot.

Seriously, the most wariness I've ever had for various disruptive player types was when I was planning neither to play nor to GM. Running an event with gaming and wanting not to alienate attendees or volunteers and to keep on good terms with the facility it's in and to avoid getting sued? You should be wary of lots of things, including disruptive players, and plan ahead for how to deal with them. I recall that jeff37923 ran an admirable gaming event for charity, although I don't know if that's any factor in the opinions he's expressed. I ran a number of conventions; it gives a very different perspective.

Quote from: Nexus;877546So I don't think either preference isn't innately "better" or more prone to produce an obstructive player. Could just be cases of misaligned preferences. A heavy drama player can seem like  Special Snowflake in a more straight up adventure via dungeon crawl game with the reverse being true too.

That has been my experience too. Just like mechanics. Background/lack of, race, or whatever do not cause or hinder player problems. (Except for maybe the Kinder, Tinker Gnome and Reigar.) Anything can be abused.

Quote from: CRKrueger;877541I'll let others speak for themselves, but in my experience, someone who writes two pages of backstory for a beginning character is going to write in stuff about their character that is to a certain degree world-building or world-editing.  Most of the time, it's a passive-aggressive way of asserting player authority before the game even begins.  I've never had someone do that who wasn't an asshat snowflake. Never.

Yeah.  It's never "At age eight I learned to milk cows, at age twelve I learned to make cheese, at age fifteen I started training with the local levy and now I'm seventeen and restless," it's always "At age nine I was taught magic by Morgan le Fey until she decided I knew more than she did, at age twelve I was taught to use a sword by Inigo Montoya until he decided I knew more than he did, then Fezzini taught me strategy until..."

Tone mismatch.  When I say beforehand explicitly that it's a D&D game starting at first level and you agree, don't expect me to take your WonderBoy character bio seriously.

And I might be less strident if I'd ever seen it otherwise.

Quote from: Batman;877538Oh yes, the dreaded multiclass...

"dun dun DUN!!!!"

This was covered in paragraph 2 of Post 104.

DO try to keep up, won't you, dear?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877564This was covered in paragraph 2 of Post 104.

DO try to keep up, won't you, dear?

Yeah, I remember it being dumb then too. But perhaps my experience is skewed since I really only saw multiclassing in 3e, 4e, and 5e.

Quote from: Batman;877566Yeah, I remember it being dumb then too. But perhaps my experience is skewed since I really only saw multiclassing in 3e, 4e, and 5e.

What part of "all the advantages but no disadvantages" did I spell wrong?

Quote from: jeff37923;877540Yeah, because it really helps immersion when all of the PCs are nothing but Blank Slates prior to the game. Might as well be playing Chess.....

Our immersion ends once "Brago, the brooding loner who lost his family to dragonfire and unfair taxation" reached for the bag of Cheetos.

Quote from: CRKrueger;877541g.Most of the time, it's a passive-aggressive way of asserting player authority before the game even begins.

So, it's annoying, but in no way really usurps your authority. Said player is simply a wanker?  I can get behind that.:-)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877562Yeah.  It's never "At age eight I learned to milk cows, at age twelve I learned to make cheese, at age fifteen I started training with the local levy and now I'm seventeen and restless," it's always "At age nine I was taught magic by Morgan le Fey until she decided I knew more than she did, at age twelve I was taught to use a sword by Inigo Montoya until he decided I knew more than he did, then Fezzini taught me strategy until..."

Tone mismatch.  When I say beforehand explicitly that it's a D&D game starting at first level and you agree, don't expect me to take your WonderBoy character bio seriously.

And I might be less strident if I'd ever seen it otherwise.

So, with all the tough guy bullshit you put out on the Internet, you can't go up to a Player and be adult enough to just say, "Hey, pal. I want you in my game, but your character's backstory just does not fit with the setting background. Please redo it. I'll help you."?

Your Viking Hat is revoked, wimp.