Greetings!

Hyperbole aside, yes, I think that character backgrounds can be important and very useful in a campaign. Yes, I know. I also loathe how so many of the younger players, Millennials, and SJW's seem to all think their character's backgrounds are super-snowflake special and that they need to constantly be the focus of everyone's attention. *Groan*

However, in a good group, with mature players especially, having some detailed and thoughtful background development for their characters provides superior immersion in the campaign, enhances verisimilitude, and supports and cultivates the importance of family, friends, and other social relationships for the character in their home society.

The brevity and efficiency of insisting on just a few sentences on background has some merit, but come on. It doesn't provide family, relationships, or highlighting other important events, knowledge, or values for the character, which also help the player with immersion, and can contribute to future adventures and relationships.

There is some merit to the critique that "Old School" characters were often little more than "Game pieces" to be dispassionately thrown into the dungeon meat-grinder. I'm not a fan of the "Storygame" people, but I do recall many essays and commentary back in the day--I'm thinking of many European commentators, especially British--that routinely blasted D&D character styles as shallow, crude, and meaningless. Cue the European gamers broad development of games, systems, styles, and modules that emphasized skills, stories, culture, and background development. HARN, Warhammer, Runequest, Pendragon, Ars Magicka, there's probably many more.

I regularly have players that want to know who their parents and family members are, what kind of environment did their character grow up in, what kind of relationships does their character have with their parents, siblings, and other family members? What kind of relationships do they have with early friendships, mentors, family-friends, and other people in their neighborhood? And yeah, the women often are also keen to know about any early romantic relationships their character had, and with whom? And what is the current status of such a relationship? If it has changed or ended, they typically want to know all the details of why and how. Different players of course, depending on their class, profession, background--also often want additional information on their mentors, their school, guild, church, witch coven, or barbarian tribe.

So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:52:47 AM
I regularly have players that want to know who their parents and family members are, what kind of environment did their character grow up in, what kind of relationships does their character have with their parents, siblings, and other family members? What kind of relationships do they have with early friendships, mentors, family-friends, and other people in their neighborhood? And yeah, the women often are also keen to know about any early romantic relationships their character had, and with whom? And what is the current status of such a relationship? If it has changed or ended, they typically want to know all the details of why and how. Different players of course, depending on their class, profession, background--also often want additional information on their mentors, their school, guild, church, witch coven, or barbarian tribe.

So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

If the player can fit it on 1 side of A4 paper for review by the GM, they can provide that stuff for me. They should not try to give themselves special benefits. I still have PTSD from the guy with the 100 page, 120 year backstory that he later revealed made his PC heir to a Duchy. 

As a GM I ask for something brief, but don't mind if someone insists on putting more into it. Not a science, but I know it when I see it if someone goes overboard.

As a player I will request to go in pretty bare bones. I tell the other players if they have questions to simply ask my character. Same for the GM. Anything that could be material later on to the GM's planning I will preclear, which I've done maybe three times.

My policy is you can write as much background as you want.  Just don't expect anyone else to read it.  If writing an extensive background helps you play your character, and you can accept that the background is what your character believes, not necessarily what reality is, then sure, go ahead. 

If in the course of writing your background you are able to organize the general drift into a few key sentences that establish who you are and how you fit into the campaign suitable for something that can be described on introduction of the character or shortly thereafter, all the better. 

Oh, don't expect everyone else to do it that way even if you do.  It's all optional.  I'm much more interested in what happens in play. 

I always am rooted in whatever setting I'm running. I walk around in it, I know where the starting point is. I know who the major NPC's are, what their motivations are. I know if there are outside threats that matter, and if there is some timeline where those motivations will get kicked off in a *very* general sense.

The players will *never* know more than me. But what I'm interested in from them is letting them play and explore whatever it is that interests them AS a character. My job is to curate whether or not the concept they want to play will fit in my sandbox. I literally don't care if they have 100-page background. Hyperbole aside, my goal is not allow a player to have his 100-page jack-off fantasy be the goal of my campaign, my goal is to trim that bush until it fits in the garden.

I don't have a problem with players wanting to be of Noble lineage, or part of secret societies, or believe they're the Hero of Destiny. My goal is to thread those needles if I'm willing to allow those needles to exist. "Are you the Hero of Destiny?" Am I willing to entertain that in my sandbox that this one player is going to solve "all the problems" and be the "One True Hero of Destiny"? Is that even a thing?

Sometimes if our starting themes is not appropriate - I'll work with them to curb their expectations. I mean if I tell everyone we're starting on board the pirate ship "Dreadwake" - captained by a human named "Steel-Eye" for the oiled shot he uses as a fake eye, and a player upon hearing this asks "Can I play an Elven Prince of noble blood from the Blessed Isles?" - is a bit of a stretch.... BUT we can talk about the reasons why he'd want to be that concept. And maybe I can work with him on contextualizing his concept with our starting point.

It's a negotiation. But the thing I'm not going to do is change the context of my sandbox to accommodate some wildly desired thing that changes the goal of the starting point. Afterwards - sure anything goes.

My chargen process is a series of negotiations with my players based on what they wanna play, which is contextual to what I'm interested in running. Case in point, i'm going through this process right now with my current group, and we're about to fire up Savage Pathfinder (but I'm using Greybox Realms as my setting) and I need to figure out where I'm setting up the starting point (right now I'm considering Neverwinter... but I'm tempted to go straight up Cormyr). So that alone sets some constraints on what people normally can play. If someone has some weird ass concept - like a "Good Drow"... they can bet their ass life will *SUUUUUCK*. And even if I were to allow it, we'd have a lot of contextualization required as to WHY they're even there, and how in the fuck did they get there? Some players can't handle Snowflake concepts, but I'm very open to those that can as long as they understand I don't fuck around when it comes to social responses.

You can be as Good as you want, but being a Drow *means* something to the cultures that have any understanding about Drow at all. And it's usually Kill on Sight. So if the player is willing to play with that hanging over his/her head until they can convince others NPC's they're not "typical of their kind" - they'll be living on the edge of town in a cave, just like Drizzt.

Another thing that is important is I contextualize everything - your class matters, your background matters, your siblings, significant others, parentage, your social class, and I make sure everyone understands that. Social hierarchies are a thing and it's always a big part of the game for me to make my PC's navigate those things. And smart players that don't enjoy that kind of friction will make characters *accordingly*. If not, then expect any degree of deviation from the social norm to be one more thing to deal with.

I'm pretty open about giving my players as much rope as they pretend to want to hang themselves with. The World will respond accordingly.

Honestly, I've seldom found any backstory that a player creates really helpful in the actual campaign.  I can create hooks without needing a character's "cousin" to be the object of the hook (and many of those character "relative" hooks fall flat because the player really doesn't have any emotional connection to the fictional relative they've created, anyway).  Most good hooks come from player desires filtered through the characters.  And for pure sandboxes, the character backgrounds always seem to degenerate into short-cuts ("My uncle is a nobleman.  Can he get us out of trouble?").  Honestly, I'm a huge fan of randomly rolled backgrounds.  No one gets to choose their parents, place of birth, economic situation, siblings, etc.  Why should the players?  Elaborate character backstories just seem to skew the focus from what happens in play to what the player "envisions" for his character.  Well, no one envisions their character impaled on the end of a spear, but that's what happens sometimes...

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:52:47 AM
Greetings!

Hyperbole aside, yes, I think that character backgrounds can be important and very useful in a campaign. Yes, I know. I also loathe how so many of the younger players, Millennials, and SJW's seem to all think their character's backgrounds are super-snowflake special and that they need to constantly be the focus of everyone's attention. *Groan*

However, in a good group, with mature players especially, having some detailed and thoughtful background development for their characters provides superior immersion in the campaign, enhances verisimilitude, and supports and cultivates the importance of family, friends, and other social relationships for the character in their home society.

The brevity and efficiency of insisting on just a few sentences on background has some merit, but come on. It doesn't provide family, relationships, or highlighting other important events, knowledge, or values for the character, which also help the player with immersion, and can contribute to future adventures and relationships.

There is some merit to the critique that "Old School" characters were often little more than "Game pieces" to be dispassionately thrown into the dungeon meat-grinder. I'm not a fan of the "Storygame" people, but I do recall many essays and commentary back in the day--I'm thinking of many European commentators, especially British--that routinely blasted D&D character styles as shallow, crude, and meaningless. Cue the European gamers broad development of games, systems, styles, and modules that emphasized skills, stories, culture, and background development. HARN, Warhammer, Runequest, Pendragon, Ars Magicka, there's probably many more.

I regularly have players that want to know who their parents and family members are, what kind of environment did their character grow up in, what kind of relationships does their character have with their parents, siblings, and other family members? What kind of relationships do they have with early friendships, mentors, family-friends, and other people in their neighborhood? And yeah, the women often are also keen to know about any early romantic relationships their character had, and with whom? And what is the current status of such a relationship? If it has changed or ended, they typically want to know all the details of why and how. Different players of course, depending on their class, profession, background--also often want additional information on their mentors, their school, guild, church, witch coven, or barbarian tribe.

So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Burn the heretic! 

Seriously tho I agree with S'mon.

Quote from: S'mon on August 03, 2021, 07:15:51 AM

If the player can fit it on 1 side of A4 paper for review by the GM, they can provide that stuff for me. They should not try to give themselves special benefits. I still have PTSD from the guy with the 100 page, 120 year backstory that he later revealed made his PC heir to a Duchy. 

Sure, but the Duchy is in debt up to the ears and the barons are firmly in charge having made a direct connection to the sovereign and trying to keep the whole mess afloat on his behalf and with his aid, and are not going to play vassal to some recently returned wandered off kid of some distant branch of the family carelessly sown by some cousin the frivolous moron who wrecked the house finances and left the whole duchy in the lurch with an ignoble death after a visit to Cork. So by claiming his or her estate the player gets a new suit of clothes, a meal, a place to stay and firm instructions not to bother the steward and his staff else they grow unfriendly and shut their doors to the player. Maybe you get an advisor and a bodyguard who check in on you. You want that Duchy for real? You're gonna have to earn that, and make sure the barons feel well rewarded for their extraordinary efforts and convince the king you are made of better stuff yet loyal and not ambitious to be more than a source of income and troops once you do take over, otherwise the important people will make sure that at best AT BEST your station gets you a dink allowance to stay out of trouble and access to court here and there, with a minder at your side. Perhaps they will find you a consort to tie up some alliance or other. At worst you risk being unmade or being given an important but no win task by the king like keeping poachers out of the woods he just decided to move you to.

That's assuming they are civilized about noble blood and they don't just give a man with a garotte some eye brows and a flick of their head towards the player so they can put someone they like in that duchy as a reclaimer in the name of the throne.

Quote from: S'mon on August 03, 2021, 07:15:51 AM
...
If the player can fit it on 1 side of A4 paper for review by the GM, they can provide that stuff for me. They should not try to give themselves special benefits. I still have PTSD from the guy with the 100 page, 120 year backstory that he later revealed made his PC heir to a Duchy. 

So much this...

Anything more than a page and it is straight into FRATS territory for me.

Even if the campaign revolves around the machinations of PC's being members of a noble house, there is no reason a paragraph and a list of bullet-points that fit on a single page will not suffice.

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:52:47 AM
...
So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?
...

Well, I thought we were getting along just fine; then you had to go and post BLASPHEMY!!!

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 03, 2021, 03:17:28 PM
...
Burn the heretic! 
...

Hear, hear!

"...detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits..." Indeed...

That's the devils talk!

Conversely, if the players REALLY, REALLY, want those backgrounds...

Have them roll on Sword of Cepheus character generation mini-game (I assume it has such thing since it's based on Cepheus Engine?)

I like the way Pathfinder does backstories.  Nice,. simple, gives you a small bonus that supports your backstory, done.

Quote from: S'mon on August 03, 2021, 07:15:51 AM

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:52:47 AM
I regularly have players that want to know who their parents and family members are, what kind of environment did their character grow up in, what kind of relationships does their character have with their parents, siblings, and other family members? What kind of relationships do they have with early friendships, mentors, family-friends, and other people in their neighborhood? And yeah, the women often are also keen to know about any early romantic relationships their character had, and with whom? And what is the current status of such a relationship? If it has changed or ended, they typically want to know all the details of why and how. Different players of course, depending on their class, profession, background--also often want additional information on their mentors, their school, guild, church, witch coven, or barbarian tribe.

So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

If the player can fit it on 1 side of A4 paper for review by the GM, they can provide that stuff for me. They should not try to give themselves special benefits. I still have PTSD from the guy with the 100 page, 120 year backstory that he later revealed made his PC heir to a Duchy. 

Greetings!

Hey S'mon! Yeah, I don't mind backgrounds, but I don't typically allow any crazy benefits from such backgrounds.  100 Pages! OMG!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 03, 2021, 09:18:04 AM
My policy is you can write as much background as you want.  Just don't expect anyone else to read it.  If writing an extensive background helps you play your character, and you can accept that the background is what your character believes, not necessarily what reality is, then sure, go ahead. 

If in the course of writing your background you are able to organize the general drift into a few key sentences that establish who you are and how you fit into the campaign suitable for something that can be described on introduction of the character or shortly thereafter, all the better. 

Oh, don't expect everyone else to do it that way even if you do.  It's all optional.  I'm much more interested in what happens in play.

Greetings!

Good stuff, Steven Mitchell! I agree. I generally expect maybe a page. If they write more than that, well, that's ok, but it is always supervised by me and eligible for veto. No crazy benefits! And, of course, no one is expected to write huge backgrounds for their characters.

I tend to use a large selection of random background tables, background events, family-connections, that kind of thing, so the players just collate and write down the details of what they roll from the tables. The tables are generally benign, so there's no worry about any kind of stupidity going on.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Jaeger on August 03, 2021, 04:43:50 PM

Quote from: S'mon on August 03, 2021, 07:15:51 AM
...
If the player can fit it on 1 side of A4 paper for review by the GM, they can provide that stuff for me. They should not try to give themselves special benefits. I still have PTSD from the guy with the 100 page, 120 year backstory that he later revealed made his PC heir to a Duchy. 

So much this...

Anything more than a page and it is straight into FRATS territory for me.

Even if the campaign revolves around the machinations of PC's being members of a noble house, there is no reason a paragraph and a list of bullet-points that fit on a single page will not suffice.

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:52:47 AM
...
So, yeah, I think some detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits to the individual character, the player's immersion, and the campaign in general.

What do you think, friends?
...

Well, I thought we were getting along just fine; then you had to go and post BLASPHEMY!!!

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 03, 2021, 03:17:28 PM
...
Burn the heretic! 
...

Hear, hear!

"...detailed backgrounds for characters can provide significant social benefits..." Indeed...

That's the devils talk!

Greetings!

Love it, Jaeger! BURN HIM!

I tend to use a set of background tables that generate random events, family-members, and so on, in an interesting and comprehensive way. The players write it all up from what they roll from the tables. The random background tables provide depth, detail, and strong variety, without including anything that is stupid or over-powered.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on August 03, 2021, 05:36:48 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 03, 2021, 09:18:04 AM
My policy is you can write as much background as you want.  Just don't expect anyone else to read it.  If writing an extensive background helps you play your character, and you can accept that the background is what your character believes, not necessarily what reality is, then sure, go ahead. 

If in the course of writing your background you are able to organize the general drift into a few key sentences that establish who you are and how you fit into the campaign suitable for something that can be described on introduction of the character or shortly thereafter, all the better. 

Oh, don't expect everyone else to do it that way even if you do.  It's all optional.  I'm much more interested in what happens in play.

Greetings!

Good stuff, Steven Mitchell! I agree. I generally expect maybe a page. If they write more than that, well, that's ok, but it is always supervised by me and eligible for veto. No crazy benefits! And, of course, no one is expected to write huge backgrounds for their characters.

I tend to use a large selection of random background tables, background events, family-connections, that kind of thing, so the players just collate and write down the details of what they roll from the tables. The tables are generally benign, so there's no worry about any kind of stupidity going on.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetings SHARK!

I would be interested in those tables!