Crafting a Strong RPG Character Backstory - 5 Questions to Consider

hello and welcome to this week's episode of how to be a great gm it is celebrate the player month here on how to be a great gm and well that's exactly what we're going to be doing is celebrating the player and trying to make your life as a player that much easier now i remember being a player once long long long ago as a matter of fact it was last week when i had the privilege of being a player and something that we have spoken about on this channel before and we have explored the topic quite extensively but one that's worth revisiting is how to make backstories that work for you but also for your gm this is the important thing now your gm might not include your backstory in the bigger campaign because it's too daunting it's too elaborate whatever the situation is it can be done in a way that the gm doesn't even want to touch your backstory and as a gm it's like there's just too much information here i don't know where to start i don't know how to incorporate this well this is what i suggest you do to improve your pc backstory but also to plunder it for useful gm information that you can incorporate into your game later on so let's start where do we start well very simply i have a few questions that i make sure to be able to answer whenever i look at my character the very first question is where was the character born and it's not just a simple question folks this is a complicated question who were the guardians of that character where and what was the situation like in that space that they were born again this doesn't mean though that you have to write out a giant seven page or seven chapter backstory you were born in the town of ghance ghance was known as a slaver town and as a young child your terror was of being turned into a slave and dragged away from your family that's it that's enough all you then need to drop in is the name of a guardian or someone who was important to you in your early stages of child development my mother bless her soul is dead is alive it doesn't really matter but you give her a name and then that's it you then if you really want to finesse it you had and how do you feel about that birth if i look at my own personal backstory i was born in a little town in the middle of nowhere as far away from anywhere as possible it was an idyllic upbringing we lived on a farm i had friends i was able to roam around and explore the natural world and the beauty that was all around me and then we moved to a city but in my childhood i had a very good friend and uh his name was bibi and we ran around all over the place together i haven't seen him since we left that farm that's it that's as simple as it gets you don't have to do any more then you talk about your next step your education how were you educated and what was the influence of that education upon you now when i say education i'm not just talking about the notion of well here's your scholastic education where did you learn to read and write in role-playing terms we are often in a medieval setting where that wasn't necessarily what you would be taught i'm also talking about your survival skills how did you learn to make it on your own what were your pitfalls where or how did you learn to become a baker your education does not have to link directly to your occupation or your current adventure class why because those things change i remember my education i didn't know what i wanted to be when i grew up i was going to be a dinosaur hunter or sort of a paleontologist or a lawyer being a filmmaker never even entered into the equation and being a youtuber and certainly out of the realms of possibility my grandmother however always knew that i should be writing and telling stories so maybe she knew something that i didn't nonetheless my education was in a fantastic school it was incredibly demanding academically and the teachers were incredibly encouraging and nourishing i had an amazing teacher mrs matt michael who really really motivated me i had a whole bunch of teachers as a matter of fact so i had a really good experience notice how i dropped in a name i had a really good experience i enjoyed it yes all of the wonderful things about puberty were going on at the same time but i don't think that's necessarily important in this particular context or maybe it is but then you can include just a paragraph on that just a little sentence even on that once you're done with that you then have to talk about your first job my first job was a disaster and i resigned after six months um because i hated the idea of having to work and do all this work stuff it was just insane it was crazy i have to work on a saturday no i'm going to be role playing on a saturday that's what i'm going to be doing little did i know flash forward 40 years and suddenly anyway so choose your occupation what did your character do after they got educated but before they started adventuring now i know some of you want to go oh well my character started davinci at the age of 16. that's absolutely fine what were they destined to do before they became an adventure well my character was destined to become an adventurer okay why why was your character destined to become an adventurer why did your character go into the occupation that they were in before their first adventure that's in a very very important question why did your character was to make money was it the family business was it because what it was all that was available most of the time people will go into occupations especially in the medieval time period which suits one of their attributes now most of the role-playing games we have have attributes and skills so you would most likely go to an occupation that tick boxes most of the skills that you currently possess so if it is um wielding a sword possibly you would have become a blacksmith or perhaps a a page to a knight in the hopes of becoming a knight one day so there is that kind of journey but putting in your education and your occupation and how you felt about it that's important i hated it i thought it was boring it was dull i didn't want to be a a cooper i wanted to be a fletcher or this or that and always putting that little sentence and a name always adding in a name my my first job i was working in a hardware store is a paint consultant what color people should paint their houses the night to go and mix the paint it was awful but i had a friend there hugo who he really got stuck in and really did all that handiwork stuff which i admired him for that but like i said six months and i was out of there way too much real life for me anyway and then finally finally it's only five questions that you have to ask what caused you to become an adventurer why are you leaving this job that you hate or that you love but which you have as opposed to all of the homeless beggars out there who don't have jobs and have to wait for adventures to come along and bribe them some coins so they can tell adventure the top secret information that's not a real yeah i mean that's not an occupation really that one aspires for anyway so why did you leave was it for money was it for love was it because you were disgraced was it because you just wanted a change of scenery bearing in mind picture yourself as this character going oh i live in quite a nice town i had quite a nice upbringing i have a fairly decent job that pays well i have a guardian i have friends from school i have you know a work colleague and we barbecue on the saturdays give all of that up to pick up a sword and go into some grimy old basement to kill monsters why would i do that and it could very well be that there's wanderlust nonetheless there has to be a reason for your initial decision and after you have had your first adventure i would strongly advise you to come back to your character sheet and then to say how you feel and by you i mean your character how your character feels about their first adventure it was amazing i was terrified i was so scared i was this i was that but we overcame this thing and we killed all those giant rats and the bar keeper was so so so appreciative he gave us five gold it would take me three months to earn five gold etc etc etc and so what then happens is your backstory becomes a living document you don't have to fill out again giant giant pages of notes and things just just a paragraph just a sentence dropping a name here dropping a name there trust me after the campaign wraps up you've got this backstory but it's this wonderful story of your character and all it's done is taking you a few moments now there's a huge benefit to doing this by the way is that you can then look back at your backstory which originally was this dead document that you created and then forgot about now you can look back and remember oh remember when that first adventure where we went and killed the knolls and you've got a little note in there on how you felt about it that's really powerful now if you share that information with the gm the gm can go hey i can use this oh i remember that i i see here that the player really hated that adventure because it was so tough and so difficult and they were glad that it was over i can use that to not ever do it again so you end up with this wonderful living document rather than a dead document as well as the capacity to remember and recall the adventures but also how you felt about those adventures and that creates a really really well-rounded space as far as i'm concerned not only for the gm to pull out those names to pull out some feelings to pull out some locations from that particular backstory that you've created but to continuously use that document moving forward as well that's my thought on how to improve your backstory and create a living story which continues to grow adventure after adventure your task this week is to do exactly that start creating a living diary of your experience you sit around the table for four hours you walk away with that wonderful warm glow of what happened is it going to kill you to take 10 minutes to just jot down your notes on how you feel about your session well let's find out make your make your mark leave us a comment down below if it did kill you after writing 10 minutes please just leave us a comment so we know to warn others not to do it but if it didn't kill you write a comment and say i am still alive i am still here i did not die from writing this down i promise you it will make your experience that much better nonetheless let's check out who today's sponsor is this week's video is brought to you by incan lies stargazers guide to aurora it's a beautiful kickstarter that is currently running and in its final days as of the recording of this video so if you need to get into this you need to get into it now and why would you want to get into this well apart from the fact that it's a beautiful beautiful campaign setting it has some really unique features which i have to say i absolutely like using the 12 zodiac symbols you can create your character so we've got amazing artwork amazing book layout and then the zodiac character build system i have to say it's a lot of a lot of fun to to use the system and then 12 subclasses and three races it's it it's a complete package this is what you want from a campaign setting i have to say personally and you need to get in there use the link in the description down below get in there soon because this kickstarter is coming to a very successful conclusion i might add so that's star geyser's gate to aurora check them out another big thank you of course to uh all of you for watching all the way through until the end and until next week and all i have to say is goodbye i couldn't remember what it was gonna it's like all i have to say is goodbye i mean how difficult is it to finish it anyway bye

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 62,952

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, campaign creation, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, rpg campaign design, rpg campaign ideas, rpg campaign, role playing campaign, campaign design, fantasy campaign, running the game, gm tips, dm tips, epic guide to creating campaigns, player backstory dnd, player character backstories, dnd backstory help, dnd player tips, rpg player tips, ttrpg player tips

Id: 6eTMYqQoqg0

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021