"What's your character's backstory?"

>What's your character's backstory
>I don't know, I came here to play a game, damnit. I'll think of that shit later.

Also why are you putting quotation marks in your greentexts? The whole purpose of greentexts is quoting.

>"What's your character's backstory?"
He's the illegitimate lovechild of a hekatonkheires and a dwarf, basically a four foot hand with a face in its palm with some noodly legs where its wrist should be.

>TFW starting level 3 campaign
>TFW player wants to play a demon-hunting paladin
>TFW I'm like "Demon Hunter? So he's killed some imps and other minor fiends then?"
>TFW the player tells me he's talking about arch-demons.
>TFW level 3 campaign.

>What's your character's backstory?

Well, if we look at, say, Dervish of 2D shadowrun storytime fame, having zero social skills for him would be very much acceptable due to his pre-amnesiac history.

>>"What's your character's backstory?"
>>"he IS amnesia."
There fixed

I actually had a new player do this. It enabled me to seamlessly add him into the campaign and create a fun backstory I knew the party would enjoy, letting bits of it come back to him session by session. He was so impressed he completely rolled with it. He ended up being one of my more consistent and entertaining players.

>everythingwentbetterthanexpected.jpg

>"What's your character's backstory?"
He's just a mountain troll that fell off a cliff and hit his head on the way to the bottom, Survived obviously, but now he thinks he's some human by the name of Grace Poppincooler.

>What's your character's backstory
>He's a member of the town watch who is tired of the tedium of village life and wants to see things worth telling stories about
>Eventually he wants to have kids and grandkids to tell those stories to.

>>"What's your character's backstory?"
>>"he's the god of memory, also, he has amnesia.

Character backstory isnt some fanatasy about being the best at everything at level 1
List of impossible tasks instead
>His mother abandoned him before he was born
>By the age of one he was already 2 years old
>he raised wolves who then raised him
>he shot a man in reno, just to watch him die, it was himself
Tell me that wouldnt be the tightest shit

>working at milliways was too stressfull, became an adventurer for an easy life

>"What's your character's backstory?"
>He's a gnome necromancer piloting an undead barbarian warlord from inside his chest like some grotesque flesh power armor.

>"Here GM, have a blank check to give my character whatever background you want."

>plot twist the character is really old and retired and he just took up this last quest to prove to his old bones he still has it.

Top tier GMing there user.

I've been thinking about playing a Half Orc Warlock and i'm worried i'm doing this shit too.
He basically made a pact with a extremely powerful entity to escape his tribe, as he was a failed subject of a eugenics program where orcs captured humans and elfs and had as many kids as possible in the hopes of having better strategists and mages in their ranks. After leading a mutiny with the help of this eldritch abomination he's been leading a horde 21 strong, more than half of them Half Orcs, some captured humans who see him as a liberator and 2 or 3 orcs who think he's much stronger than he actually is. The horde is nothing to look at as most of these humans are already over 40 and weak from captivity and the Half Orcs are all young and unexperienced, their trump card is the full blooded Orcs but he's bullshitting them really fucking hard and if they notice it they would kill him.
His pact makes it so he has to destroy and take weapons and artifacts for his entity, as armies wielding them would be able to stop him when it reaches earth. Anything he doesn't destroy is to be wielded by him and others who like him made pacts with it. Other than that he's free to do as he pleases.

Would you allow it Veeky Forums?

Oh, we're starting at level 1, that's why i'm worried, i think i may be getting way ahead of myself with this.
I didn't hand the backstory to the GM yet so i still have time to fix it.

This is a "complaints about dumb backstories" thread.
You do not belong here.

To be completely honest, yeah, that's a bit bloated (and not because of length), sorry. Backstory should be relatively mundane stuff, with the actual action happening in the game itself.

I've run games in which everyone was required to be an amnesiac. Once they got into it, everyone started working together like nothing I've ever seen before.

I participated in a group like that once. Every character was this badass in some way or another that already had overarching plots, and everytime I tried to engage with the party, they replied with what basically amounts to "It's too personal" to question like "How did your party meet each other?".
Fucking left that game and the DM got pissed off at me for quote-unquote "Not even trying".
I'm really glad I left it.

Hmm...
I see.
Thanks!

Keep this storyline for when you're DMing. It's too involved for a level one character.

>He basically made a pact with a extremely powerful entity to escape his tribe, as he was a failed subject of a eugenics program where orcs captured humans and elfs and had as many kids as possible in the hopes of having better strategists and mages in their ranks. After leading a mutiny with the help of this eldritch abomination
This part is all fine.

> he's been leading a horde 21 strong, more than half of them Half Orcs, some captured humans who see him as a liberator and 2 or 3 orcs who think he's much stronger than he actually is. The horde is nothing to look at as most of these humans are already over 40 and weak from captivity and the Half Orcs are all young and unexperienced, their trump card is the full blooded Orcs but he's bullshitting them really fucking hard and if they notice it they would kill him.
His pact makes it so he has to destroy and take weapons and artifacts for his entity, as armies wielding them would be able to stop him when it reaches earth. Anything he doesn't destroy is to be wielded by him and others who like him made pacts with it. Other than that he's free to do as he pleases.
This part is all baggage that probably won't work well in a team-based game because it's not something that can easily be inserted into a plotline involving everyone.

Case in point, see Pic-related, it's a long-ass wall of text, but at the end of the day it boils down to "My character's goal is to get someone back and the party can help me do that." It's not weighed down by an entire band of followers or invasion by an eldritch demon or the assumption that ancient weapons and artefacts are going to be part of the campaign.

At the end of the day, what does your character want, and why does being part of a party help them get it? Everything else should be background details, not plot details.

Got it.
Thanks mate.
Going to fix it later.

...

I like how this topic went from stupid bitching to actual discussion.

Well make him fight an arch-demon

I mean, at level 3, I might as well just say "rocks fall, everyone dies".

I'm running a game with a guy who had his character start off with Amnesia, so what I did was have him write down 5 questions that are key to working out his history. Not to create a story based on them, just to write down the 5 questions that the character themselves has that are important. It gave me room to work out a backstory for them with them getting some input while it was still a surprise.

>Who is The Puppeteer and why do I fear them?
>Who was supposed to be there when I woke up, and why weren’t they?
>Who did I leave behind when I left?
>Who are they, and why haven’t they contacted the authorities yet?
>What is this key to?

These were the five they gave me and I had a ball working out a backstory for these (It's a DtD game).

Just slap his shit and tell him that's unreasonable given his level. It's going to cause problems down the line if this translates into suicidal overconfidence.

Or make him an initiate in an order of paladins that do that. Not every guy is on the front lines fighting the demon lord personally, some are stopping his cults and others are investigating leads, performing research or just training the next generation.

Great up to the point where you said you were leading a band.
I would suggest that you have escaped your tribe and intend to go back and free some of the slaves as soon as you are strong enough, which is why you are adventuring.
It also frees you from having to look after your mooks from the word go, and gives you something to work on.

You may also want to rethink the destroying all weapons bit, as others have said it would be inimical to party play. If you want to go with something similar why not tone it down to he is required to sacrifice silver weapons to the entity regularly, and you don't know it's because they are the only weapon which can hurt them. Eldritch horrors are not going to share their secrets vulnerability with every acolyte.

Definately outside the capabilities of a starting character. At level 1 you are more likely to be one of the rescuees than the rescuer, even with a class level.

But they don't know. They have amnesia.

The fool has given you a carte blanche for plot hooks. He's going to find out he pissed off a lot of people in the past.

>mfw my D:tD game is still on a level of hiatus that would make Hunter x Hunter jealous.

>What's your character's backstory?
>He's an assbaby

What do you want from me DM?
If I list living family, you kill them.
If I list dead family, you ressurect them as undead villains.
If I list a hometown, you raze it.
If I don't, he's suddenly an ex-slaver that absolutely everyone in the world knows and hates.
So no. He has no family, town or life before this moment. Spawned from the air itself without a single memory before this very moment.

How proficient should a lvl 6 character be compared to a lvl1 in terms of backstory?

>explain the setting to players
>explain how each of the available races fits in the setting
>one particular race is rare and has a backstory directly related to major events in the setting
>only one player expresses interest in that race
>proceed to flesh out a character with that player
>they're super excited to jump into the game
>game starts
>proceeds to be a bland boring fuck and never mentions anything about backstory, let alone act on it

Sure, it can be easily worked into the story, but that's not why players do it. Nine times out of ten it's because they're too fucking lazy to come up with an actual character narrative.

>that moment when you realise that between four characters there is one surviving parent, and they are an abusive father the character would rather see dead...

>That moment when I have literally never had a DM kill my character's parents for any reason other than old age and have never written a character backstory in which they're dead at the start of the game.

Does this actually happen?
I'm going to be perfectly honest and tell you guys that I don't find the mechanics of these games to be particularly engaging. Isnt't creating fun characters with your friends the only appeal?

I was DMing that one, the closest I have ever created was a founding. Lived happily with his parents untill about level 6 when he had enpough ready cash to set them up in a nice little cottage farm. Only did that because I wanted to paly a race that was extremely uncommon in the area, but GM wanted us all to be from the region.

The only time I have ever killed parents was when the players fucked up and caused their home town to get attacked by an orc warband.
I asked them what their priorities were, were they going to try and get everyone out, try to hold up the warband while the town evacuated, lead the town defence etc.. They said they would be escaping with as much of their stuff as they could gather, and without telling the town it was about to be attacked, so they got a better deal on buying the wagons.
I gave every parent a 50/50 chance of survival and rolled it in front of them. One survivor.
To be fair it did actually act as an incentive to fight back against the invasion after that...

Hey user why is your character on an adventure?
>Fell asleep on guard duty and was chased out of town after hobgoblins kidnapped 30% of the town's children.

I've actually played characters with amnesia before. With a GM you trust, it can be a fantastic and fascinating roleplaying experience.

It can't just be a blank slate, of course. I always start with something, their lingering personality, what they think is true, or their more recent experiences. But I love just handing the GM a blank slate to play with for my characters history, and discovering it through the course of play was an amazingly fun experience.

I've only ever done it with two GM's, both of whom are excellent and who I'd trust with a lot of things. I don't think I'd want to put that burden on a less experienced GM, and I wouldn't trust one I didn't know as well with that much influence over my character, since I need to be confident the GM understands both my tendencies as a a player and the defined elements of the character as I play them, making whatever the forgotten past turns out to be fit with it all.

>he's an x who thinks he's a y

I too think myself as the hero.

>He seeks fame and fortune and can't do it alone.
Is that enough of a reason to join the party? I'd say so.

No, you should say "I thought you had some clever plan to defeat the arch-demon, since your character pulled off that feat in their backstory", then play dumb when the player complains. Try not to look too smug.

Oh shit. This is good

>undead
>barbarian

enjoy your morale bonuses, fagget

Man, how the heck do brains even work that this is possible? It's like reality was designed specifically so that amnesia plots where they remember how to function and fight and stuff but not their own history were plausible. The human body is crazy.

It's to do with the different ways different elements of memories are stored in our brains. Although I think the exact mechanics by which memory functions are still kinda fuzzy, it's bizarrely fucking complicated.

>So that's it, huh? We're some kinda Amnesia: The Dark Descent?

I kind of like that, actually. Maybe not for a PC, but it feels like the kind of irony all the good myths about gods have. Sort of a Sheogorath/Jyggalag situation.

That's a brilliant way to handle it. He gets to ensure that his character doesn't go completely off the rails and that the backstory still falls into a certain area he wants, but you still get freedom to intergrate it into the campaign as you please, and still surprise him.

Sounds like an issue with your DM, not with your characters.

I think this kind of thing makes sense, really. People with a happy and stable home life probably aren't as likely to become wandering killers for hire.

I had someone in my group like that
>old guy, last survivor of the previous crisis of a big bad about to take over the world
>roleplays a mentor role
>finds potion that allows him to power up again at the cost of burning through is remainder years quickly
>quickly becomes godly again
>final battle the effect starts to run out and he turns into a decrepit old man while tracking through the final dungeon to face the big bad

>player rolls up a tiefling fighter from a noble family
>successfully plays couple adventures with it
>switch DMs and campaigns for variety
>CoS
>player rolls up a dragonborn fighter; bodyguard of the tiefling, she was looking for her after she fled home but before she could find her she got whisked into Barovia
>ok, sure, if it keeps him engaged
>dragonborn dies
>rolls up another dragonborn (barbarian this time)
>a bounty hunter hired by the noble family to go and kill the bodyguard because she didn't find the tiefling fast enough (???)
>oh god, whatever we're almost at the BBEG anyways
>CoS over
>back to previous DM and campaign
>Tiefling chick dies
>rolls up character
>drumroll
>Tieflings sister

Fun fact about the DB barbarian; the player tried to insist on the character gives all his victims the "good ol' rape and kill" as his signature move, saying it in character and having it on his sheet. Suffice to say, it never came up again after a DM to player talk.

>"What's your character's backstory?"
>"he fell into the world through a portal from not!"

I feel a mild amount of shame for having actually used this backstory to justify low-grade poorly functioning sniper rifle in a medieval fantasy setting.

>Character has amnesia
>but has a letter of his past self explaining in detail who he was and what he did, written in secret script
>has to learn linguist feat to understand what he wrote
>regaind memories after able to read the letter, actually kicking off his personal plot

Amnesia isn't a problem when you intend to actually do something with it and make it part of your character's, well, character instead of just a convenience.

Are you a writer for Xavier renegade angel?

...

>Why does he wear the mask?

>mfw this is viable in your low fantasy setting as long as the setting is Western

It's LISA but every man except one scientist who created the portal is Brad. The sniper is a salvaged military carbine painstakingly juryrigged with scrap and pocket watch parts to at least partial function.

My first character I ever made was a random murder hobo with amnesia and no background.
It started off where "accidently" cleaved a royal guard in twine.
That game lasted a couple of years and by the end he was a full fledged character with two adopted children.
He became the moral compass of the party and was known as a hero throughout the lands.
The only reason I had to retire him was because a dragon ate his arm.

>"like really bad amnesia"
>"Like on par with a goldfish"

If done well (uncommon) there is nothing wrong with a dynasty of inter-related characters

He's a big guy

So you're saying only idiots believe he has a bad memory?

Also I love how some people don't understand the thread, and are using this as an excuse to just tell everyone about their character.

"What's your character's backstory?"
>"I'm the son of an angel and a demon, but I was raised as royalty."

I'm DMing Anima. You'd be a-okay, maybe a bit weak.

>Character has been slowly losing his memories for years and will lose more over the course of the campaign
Y/N

...

Is 15 years old the most likely age of an entry-level adventurer/soldier?

Shit
I should probably actually play 8 at some point

...

Off by one. It's 16.

Historically, yes. However, you would be expected to work from the age of 7 or so.

Meh.

I did once make a cleric woke up in the sigil with amnesia. He had forgotten who his patron god was and so he carried around a neck full of holy symbol and tried to appease every superstition he could as to not step on any divine toes as he was trying to remember

I like this idea.

I’m just picturing the scene with Benny from the Mummy everytime the cleric tries to do his job. Pulling out as many symbols as he can and rattling off multiple prayers

Player of those games here. There is so much more to the story here that it would have to be several posts long. The characters were pretty much xeroxed copies of each other. Also, his overall roleplaying was cringey as fuck and he tried to insert his fetishes into our games with absolutely zero subtlety. Examples:

>characterssettle in for the night, DM asks what we do before, player says schlicks off... every... friggin time.
>character description section for barbarian: 13" cock, hates bisexuals (no context given)
>Dragonborn gets into argument with party's healer, says they're going to kill them.
>Obtains the ability to die and be reborn limited times
>during a encounter, healer is downed, dragonborn fighting giant eagle in the sky.
>Jumps of eagle, some how aims and succeeds to land directly on healers head, killing herself and perma-killing our healer because he no longer has a fucking head... All over a petty argument.
>We leave her to find her way back to the Abbot's, in which she beats herself up, pisses herself and tries convince the Abbot to take pity on her and accuses us for her hardship... It doesn't work.

I could go on and on, but I've gotta get back to work. Maybe I'll make a proper narrative in a future That Guy thread in collaboration with the DMs.

That's fine. I believe you have to be a cut above the rest to be a level one player character. NPCs are shit tier nobodies or else we wouldn't need the players to be there. I mean, why adventure when all the town guards are at least level ten fighters and kings' courts are all filled with people with wizard levels?

I had a character in a shadowrun game with implanted memories of living life as a struggling mechanic and eventually he took up running as a wheelman. I asked the GM to write his true past for me so I could be surprised as it was revealed in fragments.

It was a fun way to do the whole amnesia trope.

Even for high level characters, this shit is dumb.
The part you're playing should be the most interesting part of the character's life. If it isn't, why aren't you playing that part?