1 Tip for Better Backstories

new dnd players struggle with writing backstories for their characters which is why i always give out this one tip that i think makes backstories 10 times better and that tip is write character concepts and not events let me see if you recognize this pattern you are writing a character backstory and you're centering it around an event maybe your parents die maybe you're looking for an item an artifact whatever this can lead to problems when you are going down a longer campaign because for me as a dm if you're wanting me to incorporate like something from that character's backstory into the campaign i'm almost shoehorned into having it relate to that particular event and we got two problems here the first option is that you just handle whatever the event in your character's backstory is in a normal amount of time but when that event is solved your backstory has run out of fuel that big driving force that you've written in for your character is not really there or two i artificially extend the length of that backstory event so that it gets solved close to the end of the campaign but for large portions of the campaign you are just going to be hopping from one point to another not really making much progress on the event obviously you can write backstories using events as their basis but you run into these problems that's what i'm saying so that's why i encourage players writing their backstories off of concepts like a concept being what would happen if i took a character and made it so that they could not feel let's say joy how could i role play that character how could i interact with them throughout 20 levels potentially of a campaign maybe i want to play a warlock that is indebted to an evil patron but they're lawful good and i want to explore that dynamic that concept because as a dm when i see concepts in your backstory i can more easily play with those like let's take the lawful good warlock in their chaotic evil patron i'm gonna be putting situations down moral dilemmas where the warlocks gonna have to choose between appeasing their patron or doing what they know is morally right and you know what i as a dm can play off that dynamic and you as a player can play off that dynamic for far longer than if you just wrote events and you know what here's the secret sauce when you mix both backstory writing methods create a character that has both events and concepts in it so that then after you mix everything together that character has like hard concrete things that you can accomplish and that your dm can use but also these concepts so that when you're not handling your events within your backstory your dm can still interact with it because there are concepts littered throughout the backstory basically just remember that putting concepts in your backstory is ten times more powerful than an event and if you want more tips like this may i suggest this video right here and thank you for entering the dungeon

Channel: Enter the Dungeon

Views: 17,916

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Id: OqKvIe7XkoQ

Length: 2min 56sec (176 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022