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Player Character Backgrounds
16 Plays3 days ago
What makes a good player character backstory? This week we discuss the ways backstory can open up new story possibilities and begin character journeys through your campaign. Backstories are about balancing the need for hooks that bring characters into the narrative with mysteries that are left open for the GM to build on with new surprises in the length of the campaign. Join us for a helpful discussion of the art of the player character background!
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Transcript
The Burden of a Cursed Existence
00:00:01
Speaker
This life follows you.
00:00:07
Speaker
It clings to you, infecting everyone comes close to you. We are cursed, you and I. And then we agree.
Returning to Gaming
00:00:27
Speaker
People keep asking if I'm back, and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinking I'm back.
00:01:06
Speaker
Wow, that is as heavy as it gets. Mark Lehman, we're back. We're back. You know, speaking of back, Ben, i think when last we talked, we had mentioned that are both our games had kind of winded down and we were looking at maybe not having a game for a while, at least running the game, right?
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we said. Yeah, but for work we're kind of back, right? I think we're back. what are you What are you doing now? I think it lasted all two weeks. Yeah. I didn't think you were going to stay away. I didn't think you can stay away.
00:01:41
Speaker
No. What do you, what do you ah tell everybody what you're running right now?
Session Zero Experiences
00:01:45
Speaker
Well, I'm not running anything at the moment. We're we're trying to get something ah up and started. We've had a session zero. Yeah. Yeah, it was kind of an interesting conversation about that, to be honest with you.
00:01:56
Speaker
I had ah session zero I ran for another group of friends. And um we had been kind of sitting around with our our Monday night crew without a game. And so I was like, you know what, I'm kind of running this other game. I could i could run it but for you guys as well, since I'm doing all the work, right?
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah. so So in other words, you already have the maps, you already have the enemies set up in the counters. So why not run a second party? Might as well. That's what I was thinking. So I ran this game for this other group and I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding you, Ben. It was probably the worst session zero I've ever ran in my life.
00:02:31
Speaker
Why was it a bad session? It felt like I was talking the whole time. Like I couldn't get anything out of them. I would set up scenarios and it was like crickets.
00:02:44
Speaker
I felt like a comedian just bombing on stage. And I, at one point i I swore a tumbleweed just went by and I was like, well, this is, this is as bad as it can get.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I ran the same, almost the same scenario for you and a few other friends and it could not have been different. Could not have been more different. Yeah. No, it was like, you guys were, you guys were running the table.
00:03:14
Speaker
I just threw some stuff out there and you guys were running with it. And I just kind of had to sit back and ah enjoy it. And that's, I was just, it was so wildly different.
The Collaborative Game: Roles and Involvement
00:03:24
Speaker
I couldn't, I couldn't believe it.
00:03:26
Speaker
Well, we've always said here on Tabletop Tune Up that what is really the kind of the core of this thing is this three part interaction between the players and the GM and the dice. And so, ah you know, the players have to kind of step up and and they've got a lot to contribute to these things. So yeah.
00:03:45
Speaker
Interestingly, you've had these two different kind of session zeros, but they're not exactly the kind of session zero a lot of people might be thinking of, right? Where you get people together and you talk about what you're going to do in the game. Mark, you ran session zeros that were narratives that were like mini adventures, dare I say. Talk about that.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i was kind of I wanted everybody to have like an experience together before they actually get to the table to play. Something they could kind of, as as a memory, draw upon and then build their backstories from that that point on.
Crafting Player Backstories
00:04:21
Speaker
like So basically what I did in this game is I...
00:04:25
Speaker
I ran like a little narrative adventure from, from ages one through 10. And you guys all met at age 10. And the idea was you guys would have like a little shared experience.
00:04:36
Speaker
And then from that point on, wherever that story left, you would then create the backstory from that point forward. Right. And this is my clever way of getting to our topic for today, which is on player character backstories. Backstories. And kind of like, as we're talking about this, we want to talk about like,
00:04:54
Speaker
What makes for a good backstory, both for a player and also for a game master? Like what makes a game master excited when he reads your backstory?
00:05:05
Speaker
And what completely doesn't work? This is one of those things where it's so rare that you get just exactly the right kind of, I think about this in terms of like the density, so rare that you get the right kind of length or detail in it.
00:05:19
Speaker
um I've had games where I've had players who, they were like, I am a halfling thief or something like that. I'm like, cool, what's your backstory? Well, I'm a thief. Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
Well, what's your background? I grew up as a search, a street urchin. Okay, great. So you're a street urchin, you're a thief. Do you, do you have any interesting characters your background? I don't know. Did you have a mentor somewhere that, that helped you gain all this craft that you have?
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah. And the player already can hear that you're searching for hooks for adventures for them. So that's one whole kind of category is the people who are like, this character is to them a set of mechanics.
00:05:55
Speaker
um And I've had people crafting backstories that ran multiple pages and had highly detailed origin stories and all of these accomplishments. And had to be like, b listen, dude, that's all great stuff, but that's level one, 10 levels from now.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah. You're level one, dude. You haven't done anything. Let's, let's let's start real quick talking about like, why we might want a good backstory ah versus what is this? What is this? Yeah. Okay.
00:06:25
Speaker
yeah Well, that's interesting actually. So we'll tell you in, in the why, make sure you tell us about what, when you don't need a good backstory. Well, you don't necessarily need a big backstory. if If you're not having any sort of intention to play a long campaign.
00:06:40
Speaker
Right. Okay. You might be playing ah a three shot or a four shot and it might be nice to, but the DM is not going to be drawn upon your backstory for, plot hooks for the, for the campaign. Cause we're not running the campaign. We're running an adventure.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. When we talk about broken compass coming up, that's a game that is all about action adventure. It's forward looking, it's going fast and whatever kind of backstory you want, you kind of just drop it in bit by bit here and there.
00:07:05
Speaker
You do not need to write up a biography of this person before they started adventuring. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really you're, you're, you want to get the the the points back. If you do have a backstory, the backstory should only inform your character as far as how you're going to play it at the table.
00:07:22
Speaker
Not necessarily like inform the GM of like what he should be looking for when crafting this game. Cause he's already, let's assume that if we're running a small adventure, that game is already crafted.
00:07:35
Speaker
yeah There's not a whole lot of room for improvisation for some good, he's long lost backstory. Okay. So that's when you don't need a backstory is you're doing sort of like a high action, short run, something that doesn't really reward a lot of layering in of the character story into the narrative.
00:07:49
Speaker
So when we do want backstories though, tell tell me about more of that. Like what is it that we're, but what what are we doing with the player backstory as a GM?
Utilizing Backstory 'Seeds' in Campaigns
00:07:57
Speaker
So if we're running the campaign, let's say we're going to have any length of a campaign. It could be anywhere from, I would say one to 10.
00:08:03
Speaker
It could go one to 20, whatever length that's going to be. usually a pretty long running game that might run a year or two. You're going to want to have a backstory to which you can draw ideas from.
00:08:17
Speaker
You want a character, each character should have their own story arc within the overall campaign story arc. And you want to pick those little seeds that they've given you in their backstories so that you could plant those so they can grow later in the game.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. So now you're talking about these seeds. I want to come to that in a moment, but one of the things I wanted to revisit just for a second was the thing you were talking about of like how many levels or how long the campaign needs to be.
00:08:42
Speaker
I think the relevant thing here, um i don't think I'm disagreeing with you, but I think the relevant thing here is that you've got to have enough time to have a beginning, middle, and an end. I think you could do that if you had three to five levels even, but obviously the shorter it is, the less time you have to develop that and the more of a kind of a pain it is to try to squeeze everything in. So- And if you have four or five players, you know, each one of those are going to have their own moments. And it's really difficult to do that if you're only running a game for a short period of time.
00:09:07
Speaker
Right. That's a good point, too, is everybody's got to get some screen time. And by the time you've done servicing all the screen time that everybody needs in that game, well, you probably already just got two or three levels.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of what why we're developing a backstory. That's why we're asking for a backstory because we want the players to, this is an opportunity for them to tell the GM what they'd like in a game.
00:09:29
Speaker
So talk about that. When you talk about like seeds, what kinds of things, let's imagine that we're going to build a backstory for a moment. I'm going to make up a PC character here and you tell me what kinds of things I need to get into this to story to make it a good backstory. let's um Let's just borrow a little bit from this current game that we're working on.
00:09:48
Speaker
I am going to create a Ganassi. He is going to be a wizard and we need to build a backstory for him. He's going to live in a kind of, you know, kind of an exotic desert-y place. Think Arabian Nights or something like that, right?
00:10:02
Speaker
um What kinds of things should I be trying to get into his background to make him, to give him something that you as a GM can work with later? Well, there's a few things I would always recommend every player start with start by looking at the class they want to play.
00:10:18
Speaker
In your case, you want to play a wizard. Right. but that's not just a wizard at some level, like a level three in D and d you get to select a subclass. I also want to know what your subclass that you're thinking of is going to be. And I want you to be thinking of what that subclass is going to be, because I want you to be pointing in the direction of that subclass because something should be guiding you to choose that subclass.
00:10:44
Speaker
And if you're not thinking about it at level zero, I want to be thinking about it. I want to be planning for that that moment when you select whatever subclass that might be.
00:10:55
Speaker
Right. So there should be narrative elements in my backstory that maybe start to pick out that stuff. If I'm going to be an abjure, that is to say a wizard specializes in defensive magic, then I probably want to have some experiences where I felt
The Role of Mystery in Backstories
00:11:09
Speaker
vulnerable or unprotected.
00:11:10
Speaker
And maybe magic is a way that I'm trying to. Why would you select that class? You know, because I at one point felt vulnerable. So your backstory should should reflect that. There should be something in there that points in that direction.
00:11:24
Speaker
So part of its career, um i think another thing would be relevant here would be like key relationships, right? I should have mentors or parents or ah childhood friends, or um maybe even somebody who did me wrong early in life that maybe then we can develop later. Talk a little bit about what what kinds of things you're looking for as a GM in those cases.
00:11:44
Speaker
Well, you could have, i mean, i'm I'm thinking about like, I'm thinking about one of the characters I i made, and I always wanted to kind of see this grow and through a ah port of through the through a campaign.
00:11:57
Speaker
It never actually happened, because...
00:12:01
Speaker
It never came to be. and didn't take off. But I had this character that had ah this thing about his, he had rivals. He didn't have enemies, but he had rivals that he was competing with to, to be the best in his guilt.
00:12:16
Speaker
And it was kind of a little bit like Indiana Jones and Belak. Oh, okay. He had a rival. And i always thought that it would be fun to have a rival and not somebody who was a villain to me.
00:12:27
Speaker
um And so I wrote in his backstory that he had these rivals out there, people he was jealous of, people he he was ah he was convinced they were stealing his technology and stuff.
00:12:40
Speaker
I thought that would have been, as a player, I thought, man, that would be a fun thing to have happen in the game or or grow in that direction. and So that was the meat I left for the GM. That was the little breadcrumbs I gave to the GM to follow. um so those kind of Did the GM pick them up? Well, you said you never really got a chance to develop them too much, but did did any of that start to appear? No, the GM didn't pick them up.
00:13:03
Speaker
Oh, no. Okay. You can't blame every GM's got different styles, things they do, yeah things they don't do. um But if I'm running the game from one to 20, I'm going to be looking at stuff like that and and thinking about like, that's going to be the stuff I'm looking at and developing.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a kind of a nice point here is that all kinds of relationships are relevant in a backstory because let's say that you want to set up a horrible enemy in the future. It doesn't mean that that enemy has to show up on their children.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah. But it might be really helpful if you have a strong bond with a sibling or a friend or an uncle or somebody who then that villain can later get in trouble and then that's going to bring your characters into the game.
00:13:44
Speaker
So there's a lot of different things you can do with relationships. We're talking about career. We're talking about relationships. What other kinds of things occur to you as good backstory and material? I think there should be a little bit of mystery and open-endedness to it. Like don't write it in such a way that it closes the door behind you.
00:14:01
Speaker
You know, you want to leave avenues, as many avenues open as you can. i'm One of my players in the current game wrote what I would call a great montage.
00:14:14
Speaker
And I told him that I said, Hey, this is a great montage. It's, it's, it's awesome. It's like, you're watching Rocky train. and You know, he's getting stronger and he's, it's really cool. It's a great scene. The music's going. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:27
Speaker
And, but what, but the backstory is missing is that his trainer has a bad heart could die. You know, if he gets too intense in his next fight, his wife is pregnant.
00:14:40
Speaker
Like it's missing all these elements that make that montage good. So in other words, it's missing the other parts of his life, not just him getting stronger. It's missing everything that a GM could use to flesh out and and expand on that character.
00:14:56
Speaker
All it is is a montage. I take it that the point here, right, is that a good backstory is one that gives the GM places to go with story. And and importantly, it doesn't answer all the questions that might be present.
00:15:08
Speaker
The backstory i wrote for you for this Ganassi, I actually had a little moment where a genie inscribes a tattoo on his back and he doesn't see it and he doesn't know it's there. And so he might not actually discover what that is, who put it on him, what it means.
00:15:23
Speaker
I frankly don't even know what it amounts to either. But that's something that you as a GM can then work with and go, ah, that identifies him as a member of an order or that is a secret spell that will go off when he turns 25 whatever.
00:15:35
Speaker
whatever You only wrote like maybe three sentences of it. There was just very vague, which is great. It gives me a lot of knowing that that you wrote it vague, probably intently, because I know you could go into depth if you really want to, but leaving it kind of vague allows me to kind of fill in gaps that may not be there.
00:15:55
Speaker
allows me to go places with it that could be exciting or it could be horrible. but Or both. Yeah. The idea is that you're aware that you're leaving it vague and open so that it can be explored.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah. I think a good player backstory is going to have... strangers that come by through town and we don't know who they are. They're going to have, um you know, weird things that you saw in the sky when you were six and that we don't know what they were, or maybe they were portentous omens people interpreted in different ways. And we're not really going to find out what they are until your character is in adulthood.
00:16:31
Speaker
There may be weird artifacts that pass through town and changed somebody and then we're lost again. There's so many things you can do. The trick here is to Create enough open space that when those things are explained in the game, your character is
Player-GM Collaboration Through Backstories
00:16:47
Speaker
hooked.
00:16:47
Speaker
You have a character who is invested in finding out what that thing is, rescuing the person, taking revenge on some other person, something that gets them the traction that you need to pull them into that story.
00:17:01
Speaker
And for players, I really want to encourage you take that opportunity to make that backstory, kind of direct the GM into what kind of game you want, what kind of experience you want from this character.
00:17:14
Speaker
It's your real first opportunity to really kind of let them know what kind of game you want to have. Yeah, I think this is one of those first moments where GMs and players collaborate and you start to learn a little bit about what the game is going to be.
00:17:27
Speaker
I think GMs, you should be looking at all these player backstories and kind of figuring out, are these all compatible? We've talked a bit before about balancing players' ah character capabilities so they're balanced, but it's also important to kind of balance
Balancing Character Tones
00:17:43
Speaker
tone.
00:17:43
Speaker
you know If you've got one person who is super dark and has this super dark background. and You've got another person who is bright, happy, idyllic, and you know a fairytale folk hero. Those may not be easy to serve in the same game. And you might need to help those players kind of talk to each other and figure out in your session zero, is this is this what we want to do?
00:18:03
Speaker
It's kind of one of the reasons why i started the game a little bit in the way I did. Number one is we were kind of in a new type of terrain or or kind of experience that we're going be doing.
00:18:15
Speaker
Probably not quite like what we've done in the past with this kind of maybe um
00:18:25
Speaker
English fantasy style game. A little bit more, this is the Pike got a little bit more influences with Mesoamerican kind of stuff. So I really wanted to set the scene a little bit.
00:18:37
Speaker
So you guys weren't all kind of like all making characters for something that was in your mind that wasn't there. So this allowed me to to do little bit of storytelling in the beginning to kind of show you guys the realm and what it's like.
00:18:50
Speaker
And then let you guys have that first experience with it and then create once you've had that. Yeah. Yeah. Importantly, if you're going to have um Frodo and Sam go to the Aztec empire or something, you know you better like warn your players so they're not really filling out of their element. And they thought, you know, I would have made something else if I'd known that's where we're going. So yeah.
00:19:11
Speaker
Another good reason to have a good session zero. Real quick, Ben, do you have a favorite character backstory that you've ever made? Like one that really sticks out for you? Boy, that's a great question.
00:19:21
Speaker
um Yeah, actually. um But not what's funny is it kind of breaks some of the rules that we've we've talked about here.
Amusing Character Backstories
00:19:30
Speaker
I knew I was going to go into a Curse of Strahd game. This is one of my...
00:19:34
Speaker
rotations through that module. So I had never played a necromancer and I thought, all right I'm going to play a necromancer. I want to I'm kind of working my way through all the wizard types. So in this case, I played a necromancer because I thought, what better place to go into, uh, the Demi plane of dread, you know, what better character to have than somebody who's ah kind of familiar with the local color in that respect.
00:19:55
Speaker
So I made this character named Max Orlov von Goole, who is, He's every bit the kind of vampiric looking, Nosferatu looking guy. And I kind of had it in his backstory that he was basically dropped off at the doorstep of an arcane library of a kind of a candle keep, if you will.
00:20:13
Speaker
And he was raised there. He took care of the library. He started reading the books. Eventually, he started reading a lot of the books. He spent a lot of time indoors. So he didn't have a big tan, lost his hair early. Okay. So he's kind of bald.
00:20:26
Speaker
So imagine this kind of tan, pale person who's read all kinds of stuff and didn't really have the social life to tell him that like necromancy is kind of a forbidden thing. So he kind of read it the same way he read everything else. Ultimately then you've got somebody who looks for all the world, like this kind of cadaverous character who is so confused as why people are, uh, you know, shocked by him or think he's, he himself may be undead or anything like that.
00:20:52
Speaker
And, uh, so he was kind of fun to play as a little bit of an innocent character in that respect. And, uh, We had a great time with him, but he was definitely more of a humor character. And the purpose of that backstory was to make, was to give him a kind of a gimmick in the game.
00:21:05
Speaker
You know, he would also talk with a kind of Dracula style accent, but he was always wondering why it was. Everybody thought he was undead. I'm not, I'm leaving. I'm alive. What's why do you guys keep talking this way?
00:21:17
Speaker
Another great, like Ben making character solely so he can play an accent. That's exactly right. but So i love it anyway, yeah, no, it was a great time. And we had a great time with Orlov and, and that was a fun backstory, but that that's a different kind of way of thinking about why you want to put these kinds of characters together in this way. It gives you a great character hook.
00:21:37
Speaker
Interestingly, there were maybe some elements of this that like, you know, if he's kind of like not clear about why it is that necromancy is not something that most people are willing to trifle with or, or countenance, like,
00:21:48
Speaker
He's, he was kicked out of town, you know, were like, we don't want that anywhere near us. And so he was kind of on the outskirts of town and little shack that was kind of his house. And, uh, and it gave us a lot of places to go with the story.
00:22:00
Speaker
And I think that's really what player backstories are about is where can you take the story? Yeah. i had one, um, years ago that I, I really enjoyed. It was a guy named Tony and we call him Toothless Tony.
00:22:13
Speaker
He worked as a bouncer at one of the the bars. Okay. And Tony was kind of, what game was this? Is this so game a game of D and d Okay. and he He was a bouncer and he worked at one of the taverns and and stuff. And he was this kind of really dumb, dumb guy.
00:22:28
Speaker
Those are some my favorite characters to play. He was really dumb. He was really fun, but he he had ah kind of a bit of a he had a problem. He was just always one of those guys that was down on his luck.
00:22:40
Speaker
He had a dollar, he would lose it. You know, he'd always try to like gamble it away, see if he could, you know, strike it big. And he always failed. He failed at life. And he ended up adventuring because he just needed some money.
00:22:54
Speaker
And he he kind of ran himself out of every job in town. And, but he had a daughter and he had to like raise money so he could give to you know his ex. He had to kind of like, so he had this kind of mission of like, I'm going to do good by this, by this girl of mine, you know, even though he wasn't like really a big part of her life.
00:23:13
Speaker
So he had a heart of gold. and But he had no money. He had no gold. He had just had a heart of gold. So that was this whole point
Ensuring Backstory and Game Tone Fit
00:23:20
Speaker
of adventuring. And it kind of like, what I liked about it is it informed everything he did.
00:23:25
Speaker
He didn't really like punching people, like but he just he would do it because like that's how he made his money. That's how it works. Yeah. So it was it was a great character idea, and it could have gone in a lot of different areas as the campaign would have progressed with with his daughter and things like that. But it had a lot of good hooks for a GM.
00:23:46
Speaker
And it had a lot of good things for the players to kind of like around the table to kind of rally around this heart of gold dumb guy. That's excellent. Well, okay. So friends, we've talked about things to do, why you need these great backstories, maybe not keeping them too long and not answering all the questions, giving your GM some hooks and some story elements.
00:24:07
Speaker
Give your GM some room to play. Yeah. yeah I'm keeping tuned with the ah theme of the game, guys. don't Don't go making a backstory for something that's not, you know, appropriate for that ah storyline or that ah campaign.
00:24:20
Speaker
Be mindful. Save that one for another game. Yeah. Yeah. I will say this. There's, there's so many games we're going play that if you don't get it this time, you will get it some other time. And and it's a good idea at this early stage. i mean, you're making backstories for your session zero for your very first adventures.
00:24:37
Speaker
And if it if it doesn't quite fit at first, don't try to force it, right? Find the thing that works with the ensemble, with the GM's vision that you've got. You're going to have a better time if you do something that fits with that.
00:24:49
Speaker
then you will if you get your way and then you feel like you're sort of plowing uphill through this whole thing as you try to serve this backstory that doesn't really fit with that group.
00:24:59
Speaker
And that doesn't mean just don't do dark. If you're in a group where everybody's doing dark stuff and you don't want to be that way, and I've been that guy, then you know what? You're going to have to kind of make that adjustment too. So you think this is the DC universe, Ben?
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Well, it's not the DC universe, but I liked Superman. I thought that was a good movie. I got to go check it out. Yeah. Hey, ah we're going to come back in a couple of weeks and talk about crafting.
00:25:25
Speaker
We've got some thoughts about that. It's going different from our episode on items because in this case, we're really focusing on the making and how it works and why it's interesting and why you might want to do it and other things like that. So stay tuned and we will see you in a couple of weeks for another episode of Tabletop Tune-Up.
00:25:41
Speaker
Until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:26:00
Speaker
Tuna! Tuna! Tuna!