When I hear people say in #ttrpgs that they like to make up the character’s backstory and personality as they play rather than beforehand or at a session 0, I think they must have players that are far better at improv than the ones I play with.
In my experience, if a character doesn’t have a backstory at the beginning, they never will have one.
@Kokirimuscle In my experience there are two observations.
I have so rarely had a background actually used by a GM that I generally don't write one unless I'm moved to do so. (It happens often, but I rarely share them except IC in play.)
I came to gaming from the drama flake side of things so the people I tend to play with are excellent at improv.
@Kokirimuscle
I play with one guy who never writes a backstory. I explicitly told our group that I needed them for the game I'm currently running. After two weeks, I wrote it for him and told him it was canon. Surprisingly, he was ok with that, but I hated having to do it. He is more of a puzzle player than a role player, so it does make some sense.
@zdl@Kokirimuscle
I get that. He says it's because bsckstories only allow the GM to mess with your character. He actively doesn't want the hook, I guess.
@DejahEntendu@Kokirimuscle Ah, yes. Me, personally, I love a good GM messing with my character. (I obviously don't like a bad GM doing so, but I tend to not like anything a bad GM does so I don't stick around those games.)
Of course this pin summarizes my whole approach to RP, so I probably am not like that player.
@DejahEntendu@zdl@Kokirimuscle I've heard stories of GMs just announcing that the bad guy has killed a PC's family, so you should care about the plot. That sounds bad, disempowering & off-putting; but on the other hand I like the idea of finding your home town is under threat and your next mission is to defend it. That sounds empowering and could be lots of fun. More role-play opportunities, too
@trantion@DejahEntendu@Kokirimuscle Another good one is that an old, but dodgy, friend of the family tries to get the PCs to do something that turns out to be very not-good. But "family obligation".
@Kokirimuscle There's a middle ground. I can start a game knowing roughly what my character's occupation was, some vague idea of his home life, plus one significant event from his youth.
But then details about the trajectory of his education, the types of con jobs he ran, where his grandparents came from, etc... those are things that come spur of the moment in light of play at the game table.
So like @SJohnRoss said, a basic backstory that gains depth and detail at the table.
@jendefer@SJohnRoss what you said as a middle ground is still a backstory and something to work off of as opposed to a blank slate like I hear many people prefer.
@SJohnRoss@Kokirimuscle "frontstory" - I like that. Yeah, some TTRPGs build that into the game to ensure players have such touch points. I play a lot of #Genesys and so my characters always have at the very least a desire, fear, strength, and flaw that can provide hooks.
@SJohnRoss our play wouldn’t be impossible without backstories pre-determined. The problem is that then when given an adventure hook, rather than the player finding a reason why their character would engage, they will sometimes just check out because “their character isn’t really interested in that” but this was never communicated to the DM (because no backstory, duh).
You can either give me hooks you will be interested in, or you have to find a way to be interested in what I give.
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