7 Critical Mistakes When Thinking About Player Character Backstories

we all make mistakes but sometimes we make more mistakes than we should and sometimes we make mistakes when we shouldn't and sometimes we make mistakes that are just unforgivable hello and welcome to today's episode of how to be a great chair my name is guy and we're going to be looking at seven common player failures when it comes to creating backstories what does this have to do with being a great gm well as a gm you have to guide your players you have to give them ground rules in which to operate it's very important that you do this as a result the burden of educating your players falls to you that's just what it is accept it and move on so how do we do this how do we educate our players in terms of of backstory anyway well backstory is something that a lot of gm's fail to utilize and if you're one of them shame so how do you how how how do we look at backstories well it's how you handle backstories that's most important if you don't include backstories then you shouldn't watch this video just move on and go sit in the corner over there with average gm's okay backstory is where the players are telling you about their character they are showing you their characters thoughts and ambitions and drives and motivations they are also showing you hey i see that you've built a world for us to play in here's my contribution to that world it's important that you read the backstories of your characters so if you if you don't do that then that's something that you should start doing from now but what do you then look for how do you educate your players to make those backstories work for you and for them first one up it is immutable this backstory is all that was written and is all that can be and all that shall be so be it no backstory is immutable no backstory is complete and don't challenge your players to give you a complete backstory because you'll get a six volume backstory on your character which by all right should put them at level 25 and in charge of several kingdoms no backstory is immutable no backstory can not not be changed everything is subject to your approval as the gm but at the same time even once you've gone yeah i like this backstory halfway through the game you are reading the backstory and you're like you know what there's that moment where the aunt says something to the character that's very important i'm going to have that on now be in trouble and the player is going to try and rescue that haunt and i'm going to have that aunt have a large castle that she owns because it kind of fits here and there and there the player might interject and say oh but um actually my aunt lived in a cottage and you go what yes you see on page 42 here it says that my aunt lives in a cottage uh yes yes it says that your aunt lives in a cottage that was at that time it's now five years later and she married a duke who lives in a castle so the backstory is not immutable it can always be adjusted and changed and importantly as the gm you are allowed to give feedback that may or may not alter that backstory so how do you educate your player about an immutable backstory yeah let them know yes simply say hey guys give me back stories for your characters but we're gonna discuss them and we might make changes so just let them know that that's gonna happen okay number two you don't need one okay princess you don't need a backstory great your character is completely devoid of personality your character is useless if a player doesn't want to create a backstory for their character that's fine don't include their character in terms of a story adventure later on again we spoke about trying to have a balance between plots adventures character adventures and then emergent adventures you you try and have that balance going on in your game that player's character will just not have one and what do you say to the player to prepare them for this guys i will be using your backstories in this campaign it is something that i will be doing if you don't give me a backstory i won't have anything for you and that is the consequence you will have to face some players will actually like that they don't like being the center of attention they don't like having an adventure dedicated just to them so bear that in mind they might actually elect to do that voluntarily that's fine we can't force people to write back stories that's not a rule it's just general courtesy and common sense i think i think uh you could you could say that um can it develop over time says a player i want my backstory to develop over time so at the moment i've just got i was born and the rest will fill in as i go along you know yeah no that's great but no no i'm not going to let you do that because i know what you're going to do oh we really need someone who speaks ancient elvish oh well my character's backstory which i'm writing right now is that i went and studied ancient elvish at the library as a hobby no no no that's not going to happen that's that's not fair because now suddenly the script is no longer ancient elvish now it's ancient dwarvish ah but you see i've also studied ancient no nope you didn't no you didn't now but it's in my backstory now yeah so you can develop your backstory over time yes absolutely fine no problem with that but you have to have a starting back story already that's just the rule you have to tell me where you were born you have to tell me how you grew up what kind of circumstances you grew up in you need to tell me what kind of education you had and then you need to tell me what you were doing before you became an adventurer that is stuff that i need to know and that is not something that can be developed later you need to develop it now just pull up your pants and do it properly okay thank you moving on right so that's that's what you you need to do you need to shepherd and guide them to do that uh character backstory that is more than one page is useless it really is unless you are the type of gm who loves reading books it is useless you are never going to use that information not all of that information never in a million years are you going to use all that information i could give you my personal biography of my life as a 40 year old adult male it would be either one pager or it could be a thousand pages or it could be a thousand books you will only get information of value from one page or maybe if you're really interested from 300 pages no more than that there's a reason why we limit the number of pages that biographies can contain it's because there's just too much information that is absolutely useless and it has no value so if your player says um i want usage here's my character backstory volume one you go thank you but now i need a one pager and that one page is going to tell you certain information and this is information that i need to have where were you born how did you grow up what education did you have what were you doing before you became an adventurer and why did you become an adventurer answer those five and i will let you go in a single page not one page each a page for all five i know it's going to be tricky but you can do it and i need some names in there just give me basic names your best friend your mother your father your wife your sister your brother your guardians your parents whatever you want to call them that's what i need okay thank you bye-bye all right so you need to prep your players to say you can write whatever backstory you like it is subject to change and i need a one-pager that's what i need i need a summary give me the elevator pitch okay so there you are another mistake that players make the npcs and their backstory are theirs and they get to control and determine exactly how and what they do yes whilst they're writing their backstory once they have handed that backstory over to you as the gm those npcs belong to you those npcs do not belong to anybody else because they're yours the gm is responsible for npcs only the player character singular is what the player is responsible for the player character singular is not responsible for the player character npcs there's no such thing so yeah the npcs belong to the gm so if the player writes that he had a wonderful upbringing with his father and his mother and then the gm decides that the mother although she's going to be kind and caring towards her son is snarky and sarcastic towards anyone else that's the gm's prerogative and the player cannot say um excuse me if you reference page 52 in chapter 12 you'll see that i said that my mother's a very kind and caring person i didn't read that far thank you norman it was not in your one page brief and i'm in charge of npc's deal with it sit down shut up and listen to your mother prep your players that the npcs that they create in that backstory do not belong to them they belong to you it's very important they must understand this and then finally one of the big mistakes that players make is that the gm is not allowed to add extra events to their backstory wrong you as the gm are allowed to go to the characters backstory before the game starts during the game as well and say okay so this bridge incident where you went fishing and you did this and you did this and you did that i want you to also know that you caught a golden fish that afternoon which when you took home your father confiscated from you because he thought you'd stolen it from the jewelry shop how that resolved is up to you you can still have animosity towards your father or perhaps your father eventually agreed that yes the golden fish was actually something that you did catch the river he apologizes and everything moves on you are embellishing you are adding to you are developing that npc that uh characters background i would advise that you ask the character what would you have done if you had caught a golden fish on that bridge that afternoon and your father had said that you'd stolen it from the local goldsmith ask the player how they would have reacted to the situation they are of course in charge of their own player character that is one thing that they're in charge of but they are not in charge of saying no well actually i didn't write that event in so it didn't happen [Music] how do you prep your players for this well very simple yeah can you literally say listen folks once that story's in my hands it's mine in as much as it's yours this means that we're being reciprocal because when i create an adventure you guys change it up all the time so you know what it's a two-way street i can change you can change we can all change everyone can change within the parameters and the rules within our game so those are the common seven player mistakes or misinterpretations when it comes to backstory and at the same time it's also seven gm oversights that they seem to crop up from time to time we forget that we're in charge um but we also forget that it's collaborative and we also forget that it's contributive the players are contributing to our world just as much as we're contributing to their player characters so it's a it's a it's an interesting one so your challenge so your challenge so your challenge i'll say it three times halal said four times so your challenge this week is to look at your players backstories for their characters and to decide if they're giving you enough information or not you are then to take those backstories and work with the players to add in an extra incident or an event somewhere along the line into those back stories you don't have to use it in your current campaign but it will show the players that you are invested you also talk to the players about their backstories and say to them well listen we're going to be using backstories from now on and if you're not yes should we're going to use them from now on so please uh make sure that you have one and that it's up to snuff and if necessary show them this video so they can see what they should and shouldn't be doing you don't have to say anything in the comments because well that's a conversation between you and your characters player characters anyway i would like to hear from you though in terms of whether or not you feel that it's important to include backstories do you feel that your players want backstories included or not have you polled your players to see whether they want you to use their backstories or not it's an interesting insight sometimes the answer is yes sometimes it's no and sometimes it's i don't care either way it's going to be giving you insight into how to run your game better and that ultimately is what we're all after people often don't believe me when i say that i use dungeon fog almost every single day i really do i absolutely absolutely adore dungeon fog and as you can see they keep bringing out new updates new versions new things and if you look at these shared maps some of them are absolutely absolutely spectacular now dungeon fog of course if you use the code great gm you will get a discount uh on a subscription to dungeon fog why do you want to subscribe well quite frankly if you're like me and you make you make maps you make you make lots of maps really really lots and lots and lots of maps and that's that's the stuff not on the folders you then go in and you yeah make some more maps and uh got nice little previews here of the maps that you have created um there are there are there are ways and means of using dungeon fog to do all kinds of phenomenal things whether you're building ships or whether you're building dungeons whether you are building uh hellscapes uh whether you've got backups of backups it really doesn't matter dungeon fog is absolutely versatile what i love about dungeon fog is not only do you make um let's say for example castles and things but you can also make science fiction settings you can make modern day settings there is really absolutely no limit to what you can and can't do with dungeon fox so if you're not a dungeon fog user you should be if you use battle maps in your game dungeon fog now exports all their battle maps to most um decent uh vtt uh systems so if you have a favorite vtt you can import those maps in there and they work well with foundry vtt and the lighting solutions import directly across so really useful if you are making maps online or maps to print out for that matter we print them out in a book that is coming out fairly fairly soon so uh really really first rate piece of software thoroughly recommend you go and get it dungeon fog sponsoring today's episode big thank you to my patrons to make the channel possible thank you you are all heroes and massive thank you to you for watching all the way through to the end until next time i wish you and yours the very happiest of gaming

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 35,409

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, role playing campaign, fantasy campaign, running the game, game master guide, dungeon master guide, gm tips, dm tips, dnd mistakes, player character, player backstory, dnd player mistakes, common dm mistakes, dnd dm mistakes, player tips, rpg tips and tricks, roleplaying tips dnd, roleplaying tips

Id: 5FczZry-_Ac

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021