Don't worry about backstories, everyone will have amnesia!

This. Backstory should be something that's explored in the game. Not a bad secrit fanfic you wrote for the DM.
The next time a player writes me one, I'm going to have some NPC come up and explain the keynotes of it in the form of "wait, aren't you the guy who...?"

>People who want their characters to be more than statblocks with the bare minimum backstory to qualify them as human
>People who are happy writing fluff for their characters despite knowing it won't be used in game
>People who have fun - God forbid the word - designing the fantasy people who's shoes they will fill for the rest of the game

whose*

whom'st*

>Not fleshing out your character by showcasing how they react to the things happening around them.
>Not treating your backstory as a seed to help the GM figure out how to properly challenge your character's ethics, motivations, and fears.

Have everyone write up 2 different backstories. Then cut up everyone's story into different segments and randomly create each PC backstory out of parts of everyone else's. Then, throughout the campaign, they learn bits and pieces of their past.

Okay. Whatever.

Writing detailed backstories for level 1 characters is fucking stupid. Being anything other than a dumb 18 year old farmhand who recently picked up a sword or some young apprentice invites a huge dissonance between fluff and crunch.

Your 45 year old grizzled veteran with twenty pages of war background and a list of jilted lovers the size of the book of grudges will get mauled to death by a housecat and your experienced wizard knows one spell.

"Have you tried not playing DND" in more story focused games amnesia is a perfect reason for a group of strangers who woke up together with no memories to stick together and investigate their collective pasts.

>pages
I find it works best when I write maybe 8 sentences worth of backstory in bullet points.

It helps keep me focused on what we actually need to know about my PC, so I don't end up slamming my GM's head into a textwall while he's busy trying to make a game.

whom'st'd've'll'nt's

I personally like the way PbtA games do it. You have specific mechanics for having history with other players and questions/hooks that require (or at least encourage) you to do so

>there’s only one way to have fun!

>game 1
Everyone has backstories, and the people with backstories in common get bonuses. There's no mana potions and everyone has the same amount, regardless of class, race, or level. Casters can get access to more mana by mana linking to someone they know.
>game 2
I ripped off that old Veeky Forums worldbuilding thing where adventurers are dragon-souled people with no morals. The party could have found out quite a bit about their backstories if they had gone back up to their rooms at the starting inn before they left.

double amnesia!

Hey man, if you wanna masturbate into a word document and show the GM your smelly creative load, you go right ahead. But I speak for literally all GMs when I say that I don't care about the backstory itself, all I care about is some simple plot hooks to harvest from that. The more words you write in your novelization reject, the more bullshit that gets between me and the hooks I want.

I partially agree, but rather I just ask the PCs to give me a hook to tie them into the world and the existing PCs (if they are a newcomer), and I give them the suggestion to keep their real backstory vague and welcome them to retcon in some details later as we get playing. A few sessions in, they've done actual adventuring in real dungeons and they can crystallize a backstory in the context of the experiences they just had.

I have done this for Don't Rest Your Head, they were also all in an asylum. It hit all the cliches and was grand!

The point is to get the player invested in their character you roll20 millenial shitter

>Hey guys, the adventure is going to begin at a massive family reunion. You guys can be as closely, distantly, or tangentially related as you want, so feel free to make your backstories close if you'd like.

My favorite method of designing a backstory is someone whose life path has recently been completely changed. A fisherman into a fighter, an actor into a warlock, a blacksmith into a wizard, etc.

Mechanically, it gives me a cool reservoir of knowledge/skills that are distinct from my infantile class features, and narratively, it explains why this "fighter" is only just starting out.

As a DM I encourage fairly complex backstories just because I love it when characters have bonds out there in the world.

I get disappointed when someone's family is dead because then I can't have their brother, passing through town on a tip for an adventure of his own, run into the players while carousing and invite them to get in on his latest scheme for loot.

I use a Dwarf Fortress world to run my adventures. My players gave me a list of things they wanted as part of their backstory, and I found them a historical figure that met those criteria. They all have extended families, places they've visited, people with grudges, the works.

I love how the house cat meme, which originated in OWoD, has morphed to the point people actually take it seriously and apply it to another system entirely.

I love it even more knowing that the cat can not even seriously harm starting players in the system of origin for it.

Cats deal 1 damage per hit and have a respectable +4 attack modifier. A 3.5 housecat needs to scratch a level 1 wizard with average constitution just 4 times to render him unconscious.

>Don't worry about romance, everyone will be homosexual!

Cats have 1/2 of an hp and mages magic missle, an automatic hit that deals at least 1 hp. Even in an ambush, a mage not gimped by bad stats can five foot step away and zap the cat with hp left.

That’s cool but having some experience under your belt isn’t totally unrealistic. Even a level 1 fighter arguably has more skills and knows his way around the battlefield better than a random peasant. So having fought in some war or for a mercenary group still makes sense

In what way does getting the player to write fanfic about their own character "get them invested" in a way above and beyond what just ordinarily playing the game cannot, you autistic sperg?

>Don't worry about backstories, we're playing an isekai

It takes it beyond a fucking character select screen where hurrr ima elf ranger named slash now put me in your mmo and gimme loot

>It was the Cat Lord in disguise this whole time.

Megumin (aka Best Girl) does actually have quite a bit of backstory though.

Kazuma doesn't though

You're trying too hard

>Konosuba, one of very few isekai where backstories actually matter

>people that like role-playing a written out character
>people enjoying thongs I don't like
Fucking gas them all.

But I'm a forever gm and I love reading backstories so you obviously dont

as long as it's everyone and not just one character who wants a really cliche backstory, that's find with me

>there are people who don't like thongs
I don't believe you.

Once played a Halloween one-shot where we all woke up with amnesia in a weird facility under ground above lava or something. We slowly regained memories as the night went on and realized that there were crazy experiments going down and that one of the other players had been trying to protect the abominations from being destroyed, and he had killed my character's wife in the process. As soon as I had that info and the knowledge that the place was filled with monsters who would escape if we let them, I dropped the whole place into lava. I did this through texts to the gm so nobody would know what I was up to while they were all fighting and running from monsters. Then the gm just tells them that an alarm is going off, the whole place is shaking, then everyone dies a fiery death.

Was pretty good ending to that one. So you see, sometimes it can work out.

Having a backstory is very important when you have amnesia. Who you were affects quite a few things.

I played a character with amnesia who was wanted supposedly for warcrimes he was positive he would never had committed, but he was never quite sure if he did or not.

Wow, really showed me. Fucking punk. Acting all tough. "No u! No u! LOL" What a fucking joke. Why don't you just get the fuck outta here? *Pushes you* Huh? Don'tcha like that? *Pushes you harder* That's right. Leave. Go on, out. *Shoves you to the ground* Aw, did the widdle baybe fall down? *Kicks you* You want some help? Does baybe want a bottle? *Laughs at you* What a fucking joke. *Laughs at you harder* Fucking pathetic. *You start to cry* Oh, wow. Are you fucking serious? You're crying? *You pee yourself* Fucking gay. I knew you were a loser, but I didn't think you were THIS much of a loser. *I get on my knees and crawl towards you* Oh? Didn't you know I have a piss fetish? *The rape begins and a few hours pass* Ah, well. Time for me to go. *Stands up* Oh, and also, enjoy your aids. Or as I like to call it, GAYIDS. See ya around, chump boy.

>Some fanfic is the only difference between your p&p games and World of Warcraft

I pity your players.

You're not trying hard enough. Convince me that your fanfic has any value whatsoever in a game that I have not already described, IE getting plot hooks. Explain what purpose it serves and how it achieves that purpose.

You're presently arguing that some five page deviantart writeup about the trials and tribulations of your character's past improves the quality of the game, and I am telling you that it does not, because A: other players have zero investment in your backstory, B: the GM only cares about it insofar as he can harvest it for plothooks, which is better served via some sort of power-point presentation of major events of the character's life, and C: it doesn't matter *anyway* because the game isn't about what your character was back when it was some nebulous concept in the back of your brain, it's about what he does when faced with circumstances posed by the GM. At best, it's harmless masturbation for the player's creative spirit. At worst, it actively gets in the way of the GM's attempt to wrench something useful out of your retarded fanfiction.

And make no mistake, that's the only value that backstory adds to the game; potential subplots for the GM to work with. Even the argument that it helps draw the players into the characters' mindset and thereby improve RP is false because no character concept survives contact with the game. Every character evolves from what the player imagined to what the character *is* once it interacts with the gameworld and the other PCs. Trying to reconcile with this inevitability is putting the wheel before the horse.

I speak for all GMs who value their time/aren't blessed with professional writers for players*

Sorry, amended.

Being a cynical jaded asshole on purpose doesn’t make your argument friend. You’re trying to assign concrete value to an abstract process. The characters being more developed and having more personality adds to the total experience of building an engaging, creative adventure

>The characters being more developed and having more personality adds to the total experience of building an engaging, creative adve

No it doesn't, for all the reasons I just described. Do you feel like addressing them or continuing to shitpost with buzzwords?

(You)

>Shitposting

Not an argument.

You speak for no one faggot

Patrician

Ok.

I'd love to play a game like that for a change.

It always takes me a lot of effort to come up with at least a half-decent backstory, and often it never comes up during the game at all.

That’s what I do too, the call to Adventure is exactly that, a call. Not an inevitability. Best part is it often lets you play the straight man, or the party rock.

I entirely agree with this and the naysayers all obviously have deviantart accounts and post pages of bad fiction and have never gm'd in their life.

He speaks the truth. Less is more for backstory. I don't give a fuck about your backstory. What matters is what transpires at the table and your backstory is only important insofar as it directly influences the game; either by GM manufactured hooks, collaboration with the GM, or introspective character growth, none of which require a fucking novella.

I also agree that a character's background should be delibetatly kept largely nebulous, because while you can envision how you'll play a character beforehand, you don't really *know* a character until after you've spent some actual time with them. Actual time, not fanfiction writing time. Ideally, you fill things in retroactively with your GM, and you work together to develop the character through the game by creating new plot points in the characters previously blurry past and bring relevant things into focus out of the ether. That's a collaborative, fulfilling experience right there.

Nothing is worse than a player who shows up with 8 pages of backstory, and after going through the fucking agony of reading it it's like "yeah this is awful; I can't generate hooks out of any of this, because everything interesting is resolved or runs completely opposite everyone else / the themes of the game / is way too solo-questy bullshit

>"Fleshed out characters are bad for games."

Are you just mad that you can't have everyone play a bunch of generic archetypes that you can mold in any way you want? Tabletop roleplaying is cooperative and by taking away creative input from your players you just turn it into YOUR fanfiction user. It sounds like you'd be better off just writing a book instead of playing control freak and burning players at the stake for having visions of their own and wanting to explore their characters to an additional degree. I don't expect DMs to bend over backward to incorporate my history into the game, but there's a difference between that and them sperging out because I wanted to do something other than Faceless Wanderer From Parts Unknown™. Your reaction would be an immediate red flag to me and almost all the people in my group -- and our DMs actively play in campaigns other than their own that are run amongst the group, so don't try to give me some "N-word privileges" shit to justify your mindset.

I slightly less aggressively agree. I get that some folks actually do like writing, and reading, fiction about D&D characters. But that's NOT playing D&D, they are separate activities.

If I have players who want to write backstories, I will read them, but I make it a point to emphasize that I do not consider their backstory automatically canon as far as the rest of the setting, and I also don't intend to hold them to it. You can't 'fuck up' the character you've played at the table by accidentally conflicting with a story you wrote in isolation. If the two don't match up, don't try to revert to what you've written without a damn good reason.

If you wrote a story about a character who is incredibly bold and brave, and you play a character who shies away from violence and attempts to retreat when things go even slightly against plan, then either your story was a lie the character has told himself to cover up his guilt, or something HAPPENED and the current character is what's left after your courage finally failed. Either is good.

But don't tell me, and the other players, that your character is still bold and brave, just because that's in the backstory.

>"Fleshed out characters are bad for games."

I will address this and only this because your entire argument hinges on a strawman of my argument.

I am telling you that writing a novel prior to the game does not serve to "flesh out" the character. This plays into my argument against the falsity that "writing about your character helps you get into the mind of your character." It doesn't, because your character does not exist in a vacuum, it exists in the gameworld, IE primarily directly interacting with the other PCs and the GM. Sure, you can say you're interacting with the game world by reading some handouts and writing your backstory based on that, but people never truly settle into their character until the game actually starts. Literally anyone who has played p&p games understands this truth. People settle into a party dynamic they may not have expected, the GM emphasizes some things over other things, all sorts of things that merely writing stuff prior to the game will not account for.

I repeat this for emphasis; writing your character does not help you get into the character's head, does not help you 'flesh out' your character, and does not help you do anything other than jerk your creative boner off, because without the direct interaction with situations posed by the GM and a party dynamic provided by the other players, all you are doing is creating fanfic in a vacuum, and P&P games are not played in a vacuum. It is fundamentally not helpful.

I mean, if the GM feels like writing my backstory for me and not even have it impact how I play the character then he's welcome to?

>I repeat this for emphasis; writing your character does not help you get into the character's head,
Thank you for clearing that up, here I was thinking that I knew how my own thoughts worked but it appears that you know how I think and act better than I do, random internet stranger. I should probably go tell every playwright in the world that they've never actually gotten into their own character's heads because they didn't act out every character with a bunch of other people, and that no amount of writing they've done gives them any right to act like they have even the slightest amount of insight as to how their characters should act.

Your vapid sarcasm aside, do you have a rebuttal or are you back to shitposting? I have very clearly explained why fleshing out a character by writing by yourself is not equivalent to sitting with a group and fleshing out your character through actual play. You can feign ignorance and pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about if you'd like, and that whatever six page long Kawaii Elf Princess character you made is *exactly* what actually appeared when it came time to interact with the Dashing Rogue and the Dickish Wizard and the Daring Knight plus whatever scenario your GM put you into, but you're not fooling anybody, least of all me.

I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly believe that you know my inner thoughts better than I do. After all, you objectively proved that your opinions are hard coded reality, and aren't just acting superior to everyone. How could I possibly refute objective facts that are so expertly researched, sourced, tested, and not at all just a collection of anecdotal observations mixed with clear and willful misunderstandings?
Thank god people like you are here to set people like me straight on their own life experiences and opinions.

>"I know what is and isn't best for you. Now eat your veggies user because I'm the omniscient DM and if you say that something helps you get into playing the character than you're only right if I agree with you, otherwise it's badwrongfun."

All your arguments rely on making vast sweeping assumptions of what will happen in every single game and fail to point out any meaningful downside of making a backstory. If it's pointless and exists in a vacuum then why does it bother you when someone wants to do it? Why does it rustle your jimmies for someone to do something they find fun and worthwhile if it's ultimately irrelevant and holds no detriment to the overall experience?

Also, you assumed earlier that the party must by necessity be strangers (which is unsurprising given your argument relies on ingrained stereotypes of players). This too is false. Arguing that your background holds absolutely no relevance to the other PCs ignores the fact that the players might already have a preexisting relationship in mind; it ignores the fact that by having a well-defined backstory they have more to learn about the character ingame and come to understand why they act the way they do, why they do the things they do, why their worldview exists in the first place. By assuming preemptively that the PCs have no reason to care about the other characters in the game you make it a self-fulfilling prophecy where you actively encourage them to give a less of a shit about the characters they journey around with.

Flexibility is the key mark of a DM. You've demonstrated that you're anything but that by having such a rigid stance on something that you yourself describe as menial and not with concern.

You disagreeing with me doesn’t make my arguments buzzwords friend. I’m not even sure what your definition of buzzword is to bring that word into it. If the DM wants to pull plothooks out of my backstory then he can. That doesn’t devalue the rest of it. It gives me an idea of how my character would react to a situation based on his past. Or what skills or stories he might have when we sit down to camp for the night. You’re being purposely obtuse just to argue that only part of a character’s backstory is relevant

You'll collaborate. Neither of you should work in a vacuum.

But that's exactly what having amnesia means.

>[Shitposting intensifies]

k... keep me posted

That's my preferred type of GM.

(OP)
>GM wants at leat 5 pages of backstory, friends, family, goals, etc
>TPK in the first session
>GM wants 5 pages of backstory for the 2nd char too
>TPK in the second session
>GM wants 5 pages of backstory for the 3rd char aswell

>Invited to a game
>DM ask for backstory
>Send him like 4 lines
>Not enough
>1 page?
>Not enough
>2 pages?
>Not enough
>Rinse and repeat till 10 pages
We reach 11th level through the course of 8 months or game and backstory was never mentioned, in fact I bet he never passed from the 2nd page