Quote from: estar;1117954In my experience most hobbyists play a version of themselves, with the abilities of the character, with a different personality trait or two, and a background element or two that encompasses a sentence or at most a short paragraph.

This is the sweet spot, for me.  And IME for most casual players.  Telling a newb to act as someone radically different than themselves cuts out a fair number of people who might be willing to roll dice otherwise.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1117939Okay, then I've been out of the loop for a while because I thought roleplaying was akin to improv theater. Even when characters die and replace according to deadly old school standards the replacements are still the same meta-character like Doctor Who. Did I get that wrong?

RPGing has some relation to improv theater, but much less than LARPs.

As for PC replacements, that's up to individual GMs and players. Some players will just create a nigh-clone of their last PC, often because they really play RPGs to play "that one dude". It's where the meme of Bob the Dwarf IV and 2nd Cousin of Bob the Elf comes from. Most players however take the opportunity to try out a new class and/or race, often with a different persona. A few players relish creating wildly different characters each time.

There's no right answer. For my table, I encourage players to create new characters, but I'm fine with 50% "new" because the importance is just everyone have fun and return to immersion in the game.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117604Focusing excessively on backstory to the detriment of the game is the current and long running paradigm.
Just as "story" i.e. script, is a detriment to the game and is the current and long running paradigm

Quote from: estar;1117953The two are not equivalent. Having a past at the start of a campaign is not doing it "wrong". It is a preference. RPG campaign work fine with either extreme in terms of character backstory. There could be issues but those are not the same as trying to conform a campaign to a set of predetermined events.

My experience has been that the two are equivalent.  No one is saying that having a backstory is "wrong," what I am saying is that focusing excessively on backstory is (often) detrimental to the game. The reason is that the shark jumping backstories are usually the province of the very worst of the min-maxers, if you go with their backstories you might as well say, "Thanks for writing up that 10th level local Earl of the House of Zorgburg NPC for me, but this game is starting with all 1st level characters, now what are you going to play today?"

Excessive backstory is the SAME as trying to conform your home brew campaign with someone else's set of predetermined events. I prefer no more than a paragraph of backstory, you may be happy with 1-2 small font single spaced pages, but when you get to the 10-20 page backstories surely you can admit that it can be seen as an attempt by a problem person to high jack the game from the DM and the other players and render them irrelevant to the Rif Raf saga.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1117939Okay, then I've been out of the loop for a while because I thought roleplaying was akin to improv theater. Even when characters die and replace according to deadly old school standards the replacements are still the same meta-character like Doctor Who. Did I get that wrong?

Quote from: estar;1117954Roleplaying is pretending to be a character. It could be one with a detailed background and a distinct personality that the players acts out. Or it could be basically you with the abilities of the character and no backstory. Or anything in between.

There is a lot of improv on the part of the DM, after all he brings all the NPCs to life. For the players it depends on the player. Some are only comfortable playing themselves with all the limits that entails, but if that makes them happy that is fine. A very few will play the same distinct character, but not themselves, every time. Others (the majority in my experience) will play anything except themselves, with every PC they create being completely different. Some of them write a short backstory and some do not. Personally I like to roll up a character and then let it surprise me as I play it as it tells me who it is during play. I don't like to shackle myself before play starts, but create something as we go that is unique and (at least to me) memorable. For me personally backstory is a shackle of heavy chains, for you they may be intangible wisps of gossamer.

Quote from: EOTB;1117956This is the sweet spot, for me.  And IME for most casual players.  Telling a newb to act as someone radically different than themselves cuts out a fair number of people who might be willing to roll dice otherwise.

No one that I know of is telling newbs that they cannot just play themselves, in my experience very few want to do that though. In practice I tell people about the game and the gist of how it works and I tell them you can play yourself, your ideal self, imitate your favorite fictional character or work up something completely new, your choice. Most people in my experience go for the last option.

Most newbs can't keep it up. Because ultimately when they do try to imitate a fictional character, they tend to not have a good understanding of what that fictional character is and what makes them tick, they only think they do because of (in)famous moments where the character did something and nothing else.

Learning to roleplay your character is a bit of a skill that comes with practice. But you know that.

I wanted to chime in - I've done christmas adventures before. I kept it up for a few years back when I ran D&D - I'd make the Grinch a demon... and all the PC's loot was in his bag and if they didn't down him, they got BUPKUS.

Of course I made him intensely difficult to kill. But my murder-hobos never failed to get themselves killed trying for that wonderful bag of gear.

Quote from: ElBorak;1118017No one that I know of is telling newbs that they cannot just play themselves, in my experience very few want to do that though. In practice I tell people about the game and the gist of how it works and I tell them you can play yourself, your ideal self, imitate your favorite fictional character or work up something completely new, your choice. Most people in my experience go for the last option.

The irony is that all the characters you assume are transparently the same person.

RPGs should be less like improv theater and more like improv history.

Quote from: ElBorak;1117273I see this more this way,

Back Then -- make a character, backstory gets created as we play.

Today -- make a 10 page backstory as you create the character, so that the DM is forced to swallow your claim to the 110 skills that you have mastered so that you can have an Über character.

If the character generation system lets you roll up a character with 110 skills then that's fine or it's an issue with the design of the game mechanics - all the other players could roll up a character with 110 skills using the same system.  If the system doesn't allow 110 skills then redirect the player to use the actual rules for generating their character.

FATE, for example, is pretty free-form in what you can do with a character, but all characters get the same skill pyramid plus 5 aspects and 3 stunts.  You can make up any back story you want but if you don't design trouble into the aspects then you don't get any delicious FATE points from compels or invoke-against.  Mary-sue characters are bad by design.  D&D is even more prescriptive in what skills you get for what class and you can make it even more egalitarian by using point buy for stats.  Traveller only gives you coarse-grained control over your character to begin with.

There is, of course, a social contract here not to be a dick.  Some folks observe this more than others.

I've found DMs pretty much universally appreciating back stories if you put in some decent hooks; I even had the DM requesting them from other players.  You can shake the back stories down and fit them further into the game as you go.  In one case recently the DM took one of the hooks and turned it into a major side-quest for the party.

Hi! Happy new year!
Totally agree with the title's concept, that sounds like a fun gamenight!

As for the discussion of backgrounds, ever since I discovered BoL it's the system I prefer, you're a new adventurer, your background can't be that vast nor encompass vast skills. But you get to have some starting points to roleplay your character.

Say you are the blacksmith's son, ergo his apprentice, you have some expertise in roll related to that. You left your home and became a greenhorn sailor for how long? then you get some expertise on that, and so on up to 4 past careers with a fixed number of points to allocate among all.

You get some backstory and some skills but you can't min-max the system.

I find it's very easy to houserule this in any game and system you're using, only work for the GM is to settle on what careers to put that make sense for the setting. Something Simon has solved for you with his Everywhen book. Worth your time and money even if only to steal the careers for your houserules.

Well, I mean, that's the way I've set it up with background skills in Lion & Dragon, as well as the prior history table.