How to Avoid Dumb Character Backstories - Player Character Tips

[Applause] [Music] all right I'm just I'm just sorting out my character's backstory so I've got it here it's I've whittled it down it's only about 40 or so pages long and you'll see here that well once he defeated the demon lord showed ACK at the Battle of the 12 armies he then went on to take on the gods Massa ffice to ensure that the twin worlds were kept safe all right then after that oh yeah you'll like this part this part I'm particularly keen on when he destroyed massive as he discovered the ancient artifact of long and that artifact opened up a dimensional door which allowed him to go back in his past to discover his mother's in adultery which let him then slay the 2-headed ogre known as Moloch who was as a matter of fact a rather nasty tyrant and by doing that he freed up the city of thickens and so became this ultimate power and that's your backstory for level one character yes hello and welcome to this episode of how to be a great player my name is guy and today we're looking at the contentious issue of backstories now I am a huge advocate of backstories I love players to create backstories so that I can then take them and weave them into the overall narrative of the game that I'm running I like to explore my characters backstories with my GM as he or she unfolds this world and I discover more about the backstory that I have written for my character I like to explore backstories of my fellow players find out where they were born all those sort of wonderful things that have no real mechanical relevance to the game but which makes each character feel real the challenges then when you're writing your backstory now on the other channel bacon RPG there are many many videos on how to create an effective and a good backstory and there are videos on this channel on how to write a good backstory but something that we haven't looked at is the balance of backstory versus the character now if you're playing in a system that has levels or that has skills or that has abilities or that has any means of quantifying character experience so they have a +1 skillet cooking or a +5 skillet cooking they have a percentage chance to drive a motor car they can computer use if your character has any kind of ability that has a numerical value attached to it or a dice value whatever it is you get the point your backstory has to make sure has to make sense and you have to make sure that it doesn't exceed the bounds of a character leveling experience whether the game has character levels or milestones or add more dice or whatever you want to call it point by systems if the system has that and you've got this backstory that is epic in nature where you've slain beasts and had dinner with kings and queens and have written from one side of the planet to the other you also happen to have single-handedly repaired a starship whilst you were 12 and continued to do so until you were 20 which is when you started adventuring if you have that that is life experience that is narrative experience you shouldn't then start as a level 1 character and I remember reading in in the the month at Dungeon Master's guide or in books somewhere many many times why is the general population of your setting whether it's science fiction or fantasy while their levels their abilities not concomitant with their age or with life basically in other words a 20 year old has less life experience than a 40 year old a 40 year old has been driving a car for 20 years and so should have a better car driving experience than a 20 year old statistically they should have more numbers or should be better at it theoretically so these books would then postulate well the background the little grey people the extras in your story they haven't had significant life-changing moments or experiences that have warranted them going up in level gaining an extra died gaining more experience so that woman who's been driving for 20 years and has never hit anything has never had a slight moment where she had to swerve or veer off of the road and who is driven from point A to point B has in theory the same amount of experience as a 18 year old who's just started driving for the first time that's the idea behind why people don't level up according to their age rather according to the experience now there is a big argument to be made in terms of if you've got lots of experience in a certain field you will have more experience than someone who is simply older than you absolutely without a doubt and all you need to do is look at the computer generation of the planet earth where those that were born without it are slower than those who were born with it and those who were born with basically a mouse in the womb are much faster at it than those of us who've had to adapt to a mouse over time so yes experts people who've focused on certain things should have better skills than those that have lived longer anyway this is not a video on breaking apart the experience point system this is a video on when you write your backstory to look at it and to make sure that you don't exceed what would be expected of achieving a level now this can be really tricky in some cases making a level is killing a basement full of spiders and suddenly on level 2 so does that mean for most of your junior life you may be killed a spider it's difficult and you can have people who got really elaborate backstories well I was the princess of castle vist for well my entire life and it was only when I eventually threw in the towel at the age of 16 and realized that I was never going to get married off to a Duke or a Dutch Duchess modern times I realized that I should go adventuring so I've had dinner with kings and queens and Dukes and lords and ladies and it's all frightfully boring so you can have an interesting back story but just not a very busy one and if it has been a very busy one then you need to make sure that your character was the passive in that so in one of the videos I think it's 8 questions to ask your character we have this individual who's got a rather robust backstory most of it focuses on the relationships with her family and on her growing very early years and on her initial decision to become an adventurer and to go off and explore the world so when you're writing your backstory don't focus on the actions that your character has taken focus on the relationships that your character has built over that time those relationships and a few experiences within those relationships speak to a character who now has an interesting background but who doesn't have a background that has got them to level 10 and now they have to dumb it back down again if you're kept playing a character who is starting the game at say the age of 45 you're going to have to look at some very interesting ways of making a very boring character Bex the person grew up in a quiet village became a farmer and had great crop seasons never had to fight off wolves and things alone they had 20 farmhands to help them they led a pleasant and comfortable life they got married they had two children who went off and did their own thing and now they've decided to start adventuring now they've decided to pick up that axe have they been using to chop wood very carefully with and now they've headed off I'm being too extreme as usual but the idea is you want to keep it fairly straightforward keep it fairly simple now there's nothing worse than having a very enthusiastic player who sends you 20 pages of backstory and you read it and it's just too much it's an entire campaign on its own and you go well that's great but there's no ways that the fifteen-year-old would have done well maybe they did all of this stuff because we were all playing but they wouldn't be level one when you start it's just not possible just from reading what they've experienced the reason why I'm saying this is not because it is to stunt your creativity it's to redirect it instead of writing as I said events write down emotional bonds write down those kinds of histories that don't necessarily lend themselves to leveling output that lend themselves to a rich character if you write these overly complicated backstories there might be better than the story the GM is actually trying to tell which would be even worse as well so think about that if you're telling this fantastic backstory how are you then going to tell that to the rest of the party without sounding like this amazing being which then on your next role can barely hit a door rather than take the eye out of that dragon that you shot with a single arrow while standing on a burning buildings roof that would seem a little bit ridiculous let me know what you think about the backgrounds of our videos I I'm still working on this light reflecting in my glasses they if I didn't have glass with me problem but the backgrounds we've changed them up and I've received a comment or two that people don't like the backgrounds do you like the backgrounds let me know in the comments below and of course let me know about some back stories that you've read that you think are overly complicated or that are maybe too simple there is always that risk as well where the character has nothing for the GM to work with anyway until next time I wish you and yours the very happiest plane [Music]

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 369,331

Keywords: dnd 5e, player character tips, character backstory, dnd character creation tips, Dungeon master tips, rpg character creation, dnd character building, Dungeon building, World building, Dnd gm tips, dnd, d&d, dnd gm tips, game master tips, Great game master, GM, How to GM, How to be a great game master, Game Master, Great Game Mastering, How to, How to be a great dungeon master, DM Tips, Dungeon Master, RPG, Game Master Tips, Dungeon Master Tips, GMing Tips, DMing Tips

Id: BugFN73U71w

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Thu May 24 2018