Have you decided on what kind of character you'd like to play?

Have you decided on what kind of character you'd like to play?
>Oh yes! My character is a [race][class]. He has [funny accent] and a [trivial distinguishing feature]
Does he have a story? What did he do before he became an adventurer?
>Oh yes, he was a [occupation directly related to class]
How does his race fit into the story, what effect did that have on his upbringing?
>Well it gave me a +2 to [desirable stat]

How do I get my players to create interesting characters, Veeky Forums?

Have you tried giving them reasons to get invested? Because in most campaigns, writing a backstory of any complexity whatsoever is a waste of time and won't matter at all.

>Here DM, have my 15 pages long fanfiction-tier story about his previous life, his relatives and ancestors, as well as a collection of short stories about his daily routines that will never come up in any session!
Here, have fun. Backstories are overrated

Building characters should really be a sort of cooperative process between player and DM. If they're reluctant to give details, make suggestions based on your ideas for the world, rather than just asking questions.

characters need three things to be interesting
>a goal (preferably one they can't achieve as they are, requiring development and/or teamwork to achieve)
>a motivation for why they want to achieve said goal (one that makes sense to everyone at the table)
>a personality (how they prefer to go about achieving their goal, in most systems this will be decided by their stats)

Play superior chad point buy instead of weak beta virgin class systems.

This. My suggestion is to have session zero and declare the start of the adventure before they start making characters together.

>"In this game your characters will begin in the Rusty Goat tavern in Redbridge and be tasked to drive back the horror from the thundermountains."
And then create characters that came to said tavern and are willing to go against horrors together.

Definitely this. I mostly play CoC and I've given up on the "create whatever you want and I'll manage to realistically bound everyone together". Thats just a mess if you want to get everyone involved directly... (except several specific start like passenger on a boat, a party...). I did it one time with individual sessions, it was great but it took a lot of time...

Now I'm just giving the start of the scenario/campaign, context, eventually several npc's and sometimes a guidance toward the characters ("it would make sense to have at least one scholar in the group", "art-related characters should work pretty well in this campaign"...). I also emphazise on pre-linking the characters : being family members (a old professor and his niece), a hired detective, a couple, war buddies...

>wasting time on backstory when you can lose the character due to random chance at any time during play
One paragraph of backstory and one motivation/goal is enough. The rest can be fleshed out during the camaping.

>not having your players use dice to roll up characters

You're missing out on so much fun.

Seriously, it really depends on the campaign/DM : if it's combat-heavy with truly strategical fight where optimizing your character is important, rolling the dice is just bad. But if it's more focused on rp, I think it can be great. Also, random character are really fun for short scenario, but for a really long campaign, it can be boring, having a low roll character (seriously, I had this DM for a long time, I rolled a truly bad mage (best stat : int, at 14, D&D 3.0), hoped that I might be able to reroll later "Well your character are essential for the plot, so you basically can't die or retire" (well, this was another issue with this DM...))

>character building must meet the following requisites:
>include three notable character traits
>include one character motivation/goal
>include two friendly npcs
>include one hostile npc
>explain source of skill proficiencies in backstory
>include one hobby the character spends downtime on
>include one secret you keep from the other players
There. Half the time they'll end up writing your campaign for you.

If playing any sort of D&D, ban humans.
It's actually shocking how nearly every metagaming fuckwads will ragequit your party when they learn that they won't be able to get their free feat.

Your players play numbers, so they dont interested in the character. They are either newcomer from videogames or their dm gives them tactical puzzles instead of adventures.

May as well play FATE at that point.

May as well play notdnd at that point.

Well user sounds like he's trying to rp in a wargame, perhaps he should convert to an actual rpg

That was kinda my point in so many words.

I play both - Wednesdays we have a FATE round with a lot of character play and barely any OT talk, saturdays we kick in doors and bash dragons in D&D, roleplaying mostly consisting of high-fives both at the table and in game. I don't get it when people want to introduce deepest lore into a fightan gaem like D&D, that's not what it's good for, you can have so much fun if you just cut out that shit.

5E has this almost built in with its chapter on backgrounds. Everyone selects two traits, one bond, one ideal, and one flaw, and gain proficiencies from their backgrounds. Goals are probably related to either your bond or your ideal, or both. That leaves hobby and secret, really.

This 100%

It also allows you to push the characters you want in the story.

5e is shit

I find that it's better to gloss over the details of a character's backstory at the beginning and to solidify it more as time goes on in the campaign, as it actually becomes relevant. It's a sort of reversal - often, a character's backstory explains what motivates them and explains why they have certain personality traits. I usually get a feel for what personality I want to give a character by having them react to things that happen in the game, then make a backstory to explain why they behave a certain way and what motivates them.

It usually doesn't matter too much in the context of the story if you don't have a background from the beginning, since you're usually following some thread laid by the GM instead of actually following some motivation the character has. It's easier to determine a motivation if you can just make one up to fit the story.

In my experience, the characters with the most backstory determined before play begins often end up being the ones with the least motivation to keep following the story, and the ones for whom still following the story makes the least sense.

...

Can confirm this, again can also (much to the large majority or most vocal at least, of posts in Veeky Forums) confirm that stopping playing the shit system known as D&D and it's retarded horde of little brothers, will in fact improve your gameplay, fun and general enjoyment leap and bounds.

>>Roll Dex save
>I failed
>>You take *rolls* 20 damage
>I'm dead
>>Make a new character

This this a thousand times this

Players shouldn't show up tp the first session with a character you know nothing about. Both character and world creation should be a (somewhat) collaborative effort.

D&D is a dungeons crawler, backstory is and should be optional

>I don't get it when people want to introduce deepest lore into a fightan gaem like D&D, that's not what it's good for, you can have so much fun if you just cut out that shit.
Some people prefer porn with a story, as the more they know or care about the story and people, the more they care about the fucking, even though storytelling is not what porn is good for.
Different strokes for different folks, man.

those folks should be lobotomized and chemically castrated

See

I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. Its a shame they usually are.

>we are playing D&D so lets forget story and make generic shit for kill
wew
kill yourself my lad

"Okay DM, here's my new character"
>0 pages backstory
>0 character
>pure stats
"you seemed to like killing off players so I didn't put much backstory into him. And I also have some replacement characters in case this one dies"

>How do I get my players to create interesting characters, Veeky Forums?
Make the story with them.
Or get better players.

OP here, perhaps I should have clarified that the system is 13th Age. Mechanics like skill checks depend on character backgrounds, and the icon system means that adventures are heavily influenced by the PC's relationships with important NPCs or factions. It's got all your d&d hack and slash, but the adventures are frequently driven or influenced by the PC's stories.

that's more than my players do
class, race, name (name kinda optional, usually something funny like fatter shrek, snork, testiculio the rogue...)
though I'm pure shit too, I run basically pen and paper diablo

1 or 2 levels of fighter rarely disrupt many builds, and feats aren't that grand

Just let your player play his statline archetype. It's a game.

Have you tried not playing shitty games with class systems?

Real talk, any DM worth a damn apppreciates backup characters, because it means if your character bites it, you don't spend half the night sulking or put the game on the brakes for an hour while you scribble up a new one.

First off, try using a system that doesn't give easy outs like classes to define the characters. Possibly also restrict players to only humans for a while so that they don't go "I'm a dwarf, I do dwarfs stuff."

Secondly, try using a system that incorporates the backstory into the character creation, by having the player either rolling in tables or answer some kind of questions to determine where they're from and what they've been through. It won't write the entire backstory for them, but it will give them a place to start.

In my experience, it doesn't matter if a character has a detailed backstory or not. The things that make a character interesting or fun are all done during play, so give your players opportunities to have their character's personalities come out, give them NPC's that they'd like to actually interact with, make stories related to their characters in some way. It's also much easier to join in on roleplaying than it is to start, so have NPC's talk to them, whether they be random characters, allies, or antagonists.

But if you insist on them having interesting backstories in particular, just keep asking them questions, and help with fleshing out their backstories. If someone doesn't show any motivation to do it on their own, try doing it together. Talking about and creating your backstory is much more fun if you do it with someone else.

Exactly.

When the adventures are never driven by the character's and their personal motivations and lacks impact on their backstory or vice versa, why have a back story?

I've joined a handfull of groups online the past month or two and it's pretty clear some games are just "roll some dudes to follow the story the GM gives you games" and there is no reason at all to have a back story. Interestingly, some GM's who run these games insist on backgrounds, which I just don't understand.

Well for starters you need to pull that dick out your ass and stop rage-banning everything that falls one inch outside your narrow and autistic comfort zone. Then stop making players reroll a dozen times until they luck into what you want them to be.

This shit happens because garbage DM's want to control literally everything but can't actually say it so they resort to autism

Before you even write up your campaign (or at least 2/3 bullet points that can be easily changed depending on your players sheaningans) make a session 0 and have all your player create their character together, at the same it, they will often combine their backstory and it can make them roleplay their interaction between eachother more easily .
You can also ask them questions during the creation process, I had a big list but I lost it...

you seem to be projecting pretty hard my autismal friend

You're pretty good.

They know characters with backstories make for engaging play but are too narcissistic to interrupt their own vision to include them in any significant way