Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877567What part of "all the advantages but no disadvantages" did I spell wrong?

Well the rules for the past 16 years pertaining to D&D doesn't even come close to that, so I think it's you that needs to keep up.

Quote from: Batman;877460Survives what, 1st level? 3rd? 10th? At what point in a character's level-span is he/she considered important enough for a more articulated backstory?

It's all retrospective. If a PC survives such that you have months-to-years of gaming with them, then having worked out a backstory for them will have been a good investment. If not, it was foolish.

Quote from: Batman;877596Well the rules for the past 16 years pertaining to D&D doesn't even come close to that, so I think it's you that needs to keep up.

Fuck the rules.  I play the game I want to play.  Fuck "modern rules".

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877600Fuck the rules.  I play the game I want to play.  Fuck "modern rules".

Ok, color me confused. You say multiclass character want ALL the benefits and none of the drawbacks. But then you "fuck" the rules. So which is it?

As for "modern rules", I don't know what you mean? Like I said in my experience with multiclassing, as it pertains to 3e/Pathfinder - 4e - and 5e, the Multiclass rules weren't problematic at all, at least power-gaming and "wanting all the phat powerz" was concerned. Maybe in previous editions it was different? Fuck if I know as I don't (nor could be coerced) to play by play them.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;877453The older style treats characters like glorified Monopoly pieces.  They're expendable, and a lot of the old adventures (if you used them) challenge the player's skill of deduction and reasoning.  The stats were just there for mechanical reasons, not personality ones.

Remember, we're from the 'New School' (Whatever the fuck that means) which OG loves to remind us about, over and over and over, about how the game is meant to be played, because he was there.

I have to remind myself that that is the dominant perspective on this board. Its very different from what I'm used too so its hard to find much common ground.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;877600Fuck the rules.  I play the game I want to play.  Fuck "modern rules".

Old Fart has spoken!

Quote from: Nexus;877611I have to remind myself that that is the dominant perspective on this board. Its very different from what I'm used too so its hard to find much common ground.

No, his character just got touched by Old School in a bad way.

Quote from: Nexus;877611I have to remind myself that that is the dominant perspective on this board. Its very different from what I'm used too so its hard to find much common ground.

Christopher Brady and I have, from appearances, similar experiences from what he'd consider "older style" games. Characters were straight up more fragile back then. This isn't a bad or good thing, it just IS.

From what I remember as a 1st level Fighter in AD&D you rolled d10 + Con for your starting hit points. This, on average, gave you something around 8 to 10, maybe 12 (if you rolled really well) hit points to go out and fight monsters with. 3e you started at max HD + Con for your first level. So every fighter was at least guaranteed 10 off the bat. For wizards you were automatically granted 4 + Con in starting HP. And back then, taking things like the Toad familiar (+3 more HP) and the Toughness feat (+3 more HP) helped out A LOT, giving most average Wizards something like 10 - 13 HP at 1st level!!

So the idea of quick-to-die characters drastically declined as the edition rolled on, thus giving players a reason to create a more long-winded backstory. Now I still require a backup for my players since death happens quite regularly, even in games like 3.PF, 4e, and 5e.

Quote from: Batman;877596Well the rules for the past 16 years pertaining to D&D doesn't even come close to that, so I think it's you that needs to keep up.

And neither Gronan or I are talking about multiclassing within the rules. We are noting players wanting to jettison or bypass a rule to allow themselves more power than the rest of the group.

Neither of us cares about multiclassing if the player accepts the inherint limitations such as levelling slower, some armour/weapon restrictions, etc. Or the fact that in 5e you have a limited pool of 20 levels to spend. Assuming the DM even allows it as it is an option. Not a core.

Quote from: Omega;877628And neither Gronan or I are talking about multiclassing within the rules. We are noting players wanting to jettison or bypass a rule to allow themselves more power than the rest of the group.

Then that's not really Multiclassing, that's just being an ass and cheating. So yeah I agree that ass-hats that cheat are bad.

Quote from: Omega;877628Neither of us cares about multiclassing if the player accepts the inherent limitations such as leveling slower, some armour/weapon restrictions, etc. Or the fact that in 5e you have a limited pool of 20 levels to spend. Assuming the DM even allows it as it is an option. Not a core.

Cool, so then NOT multiclassing. Glad we cleared that up.

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.

Really?  Never had this.

A backstory in the 30 years of my gaming experience has always been about WHY they adventure and how the entire party knows each other.  Childhood friends, goals they want to achieve, encounters that made them '1st level' (the quotes are there for games that don't use a level system, but still start you off as a less than skilled adventurer) little things and notable events.  Reasons that make them more willing to adventure, than stay at home in the farm, the guild, the mountain.  What drives to run into danger instead of the normal human response of keeping their head down and hoping the danger would pass.

Maybe it's because of my generation's willingness to actually read and try to emulate bits of the fantasy novels we loved.  We never wanted to be Conan, or Gandalf, or Gord of Greyhawk, we wanted to be LIKE THEM, but have our own 'stories' or more accurately adventures.

I'm really sorry you got these 14 year old sounding powergamers at your table, who only looked for advantages and edges and constant oneupsmanship.  I guess it's normal from those who come from a competitive gaming background?  Iunno, but it's something I hear often from those who compete, rather than cooperate.

Quote from: Nexus;877546Having 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.

I don't think I've ever had anyone giving me a backstory of any length who turned out to be any more of an asshat than any other player.  They've proven to be engaged roleplayers who are unusually interested in the intricacies of the setting, and not one whit more prone to murderhobodom or snowflakehood than anyone else.

I also don't get some of the criticisms:

Quote from: CRKrueger;877541... 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.

I've got the densest setting I've ever seen.  But even with that, I haven't come up with everything: I haven't named every village or every noble house or every institution or every clash of arms in the Serpentwar.  I'm fine with players filling in some of the blanks.  This takes some of the creative heat off of me, never mind the benefits of having more brains than mine on the job.  

And if a player comes up with a detail I don't like or which contradicts something already in place?  C'mon, folks: since when do we lack the power to say "No?"  Any time someone wants to hand me a backstory, I wave a red pen in the air and make it clear that all details are up to me to decide if they're true or not ... even if the PC believes them to be true.

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.

So stipulated, but not every one of us plays a game system (or plays the game system in that fashion) where beginning characters are fragile schmucks.  Beyond that, you're not seriously suggesting that a player unhappy that the rules only allow building lightweights is only unhappy if there's a backstory involved?  In any event, this is another issue well handled by a nine-second speech about how beginning PCs are more like Luke Skywalker picking sand out of his teeth on the farm than Jedi Master Luke taking down Darth Vader mano-a-mano.  (Hell, it didn't take me as much as nine seconds to type that.)

Yes, I get that some people were touched in bad places by players who wrote backstories.  But it's not as if we neuter combat because there are players who are combat-obsessed, or eliminate loot because some players go completely over the top in treasure-grubbing, or eliminate religion because some players RP priests or paladins poorly, or ban character creation -- here, here's your pregen -- because there are a lot of munchkin mini-maxers out there.

As a GM, I love backstories. They provide plothooks, they provide motivations, they make it easier to introduce NPCs, they're good for getting past the awkward "Why in the heck do these people want to adventure together?" They aid me in helping the players create their characters -- certainly even the one-line stories that imply Greater Coolness than some of you prefer -- like "I'm an ex-gladiator who bought his freedom" and "The king ordered the murder of my parents" -- suggest skill sets, advantages and disadvantages obvious to many of you.

Am I intimidated by them? Certainly not. Some are good, some are crap, some are too long, some don't tell me anything I couldn't have figured out from the character sheet ... yeah, I figure that someone with Farming skill and five weapon skills probably was a farmer who decided to go off to become a warrior, thanks ever so.

Quote from: Batman;877460Survives what, 1st level? 3rd? 10th? At what point in a character's level-span is he/she considered important enough for a more articulated backstory?

For me, it's at the beginning of the second session of play.  Their backstory is whatever happened in the first session.

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.

I tend to agree.  "Develop at Start" vs. "Develop in Play" is more a matter of preference than anything else.  I think those of us who prefer Develop in Play just tend to be a bit defensive due to years of being told that Develop at Start is the One And Only Way To Truly Roleplay and anyone who creates a character without at least a novella's worth of backstory is a filthy munchkin powergamer who treats their so-called "characters" as nothing more than checkers on a board.  (Note:  Extreme exaggeration in the preceding statement is deliberate and intended for humorous effect, not to create a strawman of any participants in this thread.)

Quote from: Omega;877556This 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.

Did their concept of "B/X-style Elf" at least include doubling the XP requirements for each level?  (I assume that would still be broken, given that D&D5 apparently has a cap at level 20, but at least it would be less broken.)

/dumps oil and popcorn into cauldron in the center of flaming topic.
/clutches cauldron atop flaming self while screaming.
"Bring your own salt, motherfuckers! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Aaaaaagh!"
:popcorn:

Quote from: CRKrueger;877469By the time the character is 10th level, they should have had such a rich adventuring life, that the backstory (whatever it was) would be meaningless.  Hell, that should be true at 5th.  What was Conan's backstory (authored by Howard)?

25 words doesn't mean sentences of 25 words.  You can fit a lot of description in a list of 25 nouns/adjectives.  If you have a detailed backstory, keep it to yourself and tell it in game if a PC or NPC ever asks you "So, how did you wind up here?" while you're on night watch.

Try leaving the GM/author hat on the shelf when you play.

In my experience it's the most immersive players who come up with the least elaborate backstory. 25 words is plenty.

Quote from: Batman;877536Ok? All I'm saying is that if the player wants to invest in a sheet or two of history and doesn't expect it to affect the current game or somehow give him/her an advantage, whats the problem? I'm certainly not going to discourage a player who wants to get more involved in the setting to establish his/her character.

Me neither, but they shouldn't expect me to actually read their backstory novel.