Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 75 - Better Backstories

Episode Date: May 30, 2021

You're starting a new campaign!  Yay!  Everything is so shiny and new.  Your DM has asked you to come up with a backstory for your dragonborn druid from the high deserts and you have no idea where to begin.  How do I incorporate my backstory into the DM's world?  How can I help my DM create adventures with my backstory?   Or you may be a DM who wants to incorporate backstories into the new campaign and you aren't quite sure how to proceed.  Good news everyone!  This episode can help you either way.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to episode 75 of the Taking20 podcast. This week, all about better backstories. This week's sponsor, hotel rooms. Unless you want to sleep in your car, do not bring a blacklight with you on vacation. Some rooms glow bright enough in UV that they can be seen from space. We have a winner for our contest. Cameron Beagle of, well, I'm not sure where Cameron listens from, so I'm going to say Cameron Beagle of Planet Earth. You are the winner of the $50 Amazon.com gift card. I went to random.org and had it pick a random number between 1 and 41,

and your number came up. So congratulations. I'll be reaching out to you shortly to talk about how I can deliver the card to you. I want to thank all 41 of you who entered. I was a little concerned with it about a week out when only 10 people had entered so far, but I had a flood over them over the last few days. So thank you so much for entering. I'm planning on having another giveaway in a few months. Please keep tuning in for your chance to win the next big prize. I talk a lot about backstories on this podcast, and I mean a lot. I'll admit it, I love making backstories for my characters, and I love incorporating player backstories into my campaigns. One of the groups I'm DMing isn't huge on backstories, and I really feel like something's missing as we're approaching the end of the adventure. There have been no shocking

secret reveals, no betrayals, no hidden agendas, no tragedies that revealed why a character acted the way he does, no NPCs with built-in connections to the characters, and I've really missed all of those. There was no chance I was going to force that on my players, though. They don't enjoy backstory as much as I do, so I'd rather give them the type of game they want to be in. But backstories can give a game depth, make a world feel lived in, give the impression that these people had a life before you put their statistics in your character creation program or on a sheet of paper. So why tie in a backstory to the adventure? Character's backstory can be used to introduce tension, conflict, or provide the onus for an adventure during the game.

Since I'm watching season four of Handmaid's Tale right now, I'll use it as an example. What I'm about to say is relatively spoiler-free, since this fact is revealed in the first episode, but if you don't want any Handmaid's Tale spoilers, skip ahead about 15 seconds or so. June has a daughter, Hannah, that's taken away from her when she's captured by Gilead. Hannah's fate and June's desire to reunite with her daughter is a major plot point throughout the series up to the point where I've watched. Welcome back, people who didn't want any Handmaid's Tale spoilers. So you won't feel left out of the spoiler party, I just want to remind you that

Soylent Green is people. I encourage all of my players to come up with a backstory for their characters, even if it's just one sentence long. Eganye was a hunter for his family of halflings before he was kidnapped and forced to join the circus. Qiyana is a former dwarven lord whose decisions cost hundreds of lives in an offensive against the orcs. They are now exiled from their clan and they are adventuring to reclaim their honor. Stadwin has taken it upon himself to purge the Dread King from the land and is teaming up with a group with similar motives. Rorina is the seventh daughter of the queen and stands to inherit nothing. She refuses to be a pawn for marriage and is taken to

adventuring to make a life independent of her family name. Having a backstory helps the player to establish empathy with and connection to the character. Well, all right then, Jeremy, how do I write a backstory as a player? Thank you for asking, made-up person in my head that I'm going to call David. When it comes to backstory, less is more. A backstory doesn't have to contain much to be interesting. If you're writing a backstory, I don't need eight pages of your character's history. Focus on the important events in the character's history that helped shape them into the person they are today. When my character was six years

old, he was assigned math homework, turned it in, and got a 97 on the assignment. Okay, that's great. Was that a major event in your character's life? No, I just want to include it to point out that he's good at math. If somehow the 97 in math helped shape your character, then absolutely include it. If not, then it's just unnecessary detail. Maybe that 97 caused an asshole parent to express disappointment in the character, made the character desperately crave approval from parent-type figures, and then yeah, maybe it's relevant. Otherwise, omit that and focus on the other things. Players, work with the DM to integrate your backstory into the game setting.

You don't know how your DM's going to modify published materials into his campaign world, or his campaign world could be vastly different from what you're used to. So take some time, talk to the DM about what you want your backstory to be, and let them help you connect it to the world they are creating. Players, use your backstory to show why your character became an adventurer. Remember, adventuring is a dangerous life for Mary and Michael Peasant. Chances are they're not going to become adventurers on a whim. They likely have a goal they want to accomplish.

Maybe they want to retrieve something that was lost. It could be a tangible item like a stolen sacred scroll from a temple, a plow that was symbolic to a village, or maybe a family heirloom. But it's also very interesting, and in my mind even more interesting, when what they're trying to retrieve is intangible and internal to the character. Like their pride, their self-confidence. They want to prove a parent or mentor or leader wrong. They want to regain their internal feeling of self-worth that was lost. Their family's honor is gone or their name is besmirched because they, or maybe a predecessor, committed some horrible act or disgraced the family in some way. And adventuring is the only way they can accomplish some goal in order to get their honor back

or restore honor to their family's name. Maybe they're adventuring to try to find happiness once again. They've lost everything, and they just want to kill orcs to avenge their spouse. Or maybe they're just looking for peace, finally, to get rid of the family curse, to be comfortable in themselves. They want to get rid of the ghost of a dead or wronged former lover that's been haunting them. Instead of trying to retrieve something that's lost, characters sometimes get into adventuring for financial reasons. They want to set themselves up financially for the future, open that baking business they've always wanted.

Maybe the character or a loved one owes a debt to someone in power, and so they need to adventure in order to collect enough money to pay off that debt. Or maybe they just want to gain enough money to impress someone, to prove to her family that yes, he is worthy of her hand in marriage. Third thing you need to do, players, is establish important relationships from your character's life. Memories of the connections made with other PCs or NPCs. These connections could be positive, negative, or both. Your character punched a teacher when they disagreed with them. Your character was unexpectedly mentored by a local wizard. Your character got into the military and had a drill sergeant she

respected. Or maybe your character really connected with his nana after his parents passed away. Fourth thing, if you're building a backstory, include some conflict in there. Disagreements don't have to lead to violence, but disagreements are a type of conflict. It could be a disagreement with someone who's a co-worker. It could be a disagreement with someone at home or someone within your personal life. Have conflict from rivals, someone or something that's preventing the character from accomplishing their goals and purposes. If a character's conflict is caused by a flaw in that character, definitely include that. But even if not, consider adding some flaws to your character's backstory.

Maybe your character tends to be hot-headed or short-tempered and has no patience for strategy. As you're building your backstory, the closer they feel to a real person's story, the better. People are complex. People grow and change. I'm not the same person I was 20 years ago. Thank everything that's good and holy in this world. Don't get me wrong, you're still gonna have to put up with poop and dick jokes, so I'm not any more mature, but I have grown as a person. My standard list for players for a backstory is five questions that hopefully gets them thinking. One, the basics. Where are you from? Is your family still alive? How are you connected to them?

Basics of who they are and how they're connected. Two, does your character know any other characters before the adventure starts? 3. Why does your character want to be an adventurer? 4. What does everyone know or believe about your character, whether it's true or not? And then 5. What one to three secrets is your character zealously guarding? If all else fails, use the steps from the hero's journey to build your backstory. If all else fails, use the steps from the hero's journey to build your backstory. Your character, his or her or their identity, had a problem. Identify what that problem was. They met a guide who helped them form a plan that called them to action and led to them being an adventurer. All right, so let's go to the other side of the screen.

DMs, always work with your players to formulate the backstory, preferably before session zero. Start out working one-on-one with the players in case they have a secret they want to keep from the other players. Speaking of which, two, DMs keep secrets about the character's backstory from the other players. I know you may have this juicy tidbit of knowledge that your player's given you about their backstory, that they're a secret agent, that they're really a doppelganger, that they descend from a race of fae that have infiltrated the first world and they're attempting to take it over. Great. Let the player reveal however much they want about that. Don't just blurt it out yourself. Three. If the player's having trouble coming up with any part of a backstory,

have some ideas in the back of your mind to help prod them along. Goals, motivations, what job they had before becoming an adventurer. If you're like me, you have about a dozen character concepts you've never gotten to play. Actually, I think my count's up to 27, but that's neither here nor there, because I like coming up with characters. Pull one of those out, or a variant variant if you can't think of anything. Think of a movie character's goals, motivations, and history and use that instead. Ask the player questions about their character to get them thinking about it.

How religious is your character? Do they like the current ruler of the land? Have they stopped beating their spouse? Tell us about your mother, dear character. What was she like? How long did you breastfeed? Do you have any pictures of her? Is she single? Sorry, I got derailed there for a second.

Where was I? Oh, ask player questions about their character. You're trying to get the player into the character's headspace. Fourth tip for DMs, give backstories a payoff. Not only tie in the character's backstory to the game, but give it conflict and a resolution of some sort, even if it's just a temporary one. This is hard to do well, I'm not going to lie to you. Conflict should be coordinated with the player, even if the resolution is a surprise.

You don't want to surprise them with, ha ha, you have a brother and they just showed up at your door, when that may clash with their character concept. How you do this will vary widely depending on what the character's backstory is. For example, say the character's a runaway slave. The conflict could be that the character's owner keeps sending people to try to recover the fugitive character. So how you resolve this? The resolution could be that the character eventually defeats enough of the former owner's goons

that it stops being worth it to the owner to try to recover the character. Or you could have a whole adventure path around the character returning to his former owner and freeing all the slaves that are there. What if the character is trying to make her fortune? She's the third daughter of Duke Big Pants from South Hidderton and isn't keen on being married off to secure a political connection. She strikes out to make her fortune independent of her family name. Well, the conflict could be that the family's having trouble back home, financial, political, or otherwise. The family's lost money.

Family's been arrested. Family will lose honor or standing if a suitable marriage candidate isn't found in the character's stead. This could be a whole side quest where the party has to return to the character's home and navigate the dangerous political waters, problems that can't be solved with a sword and shield. One more example. Your character's older and their long-term roommate and friend has died.

Your character strikes out on one last adventure before being sent to the old folks' home. The conflict could be that the roommate was discovered to have passed away under suspicious circumstances. Police want to question the character and the murder has to be solved before the adventure can continue. Maybe the secret is that the character actually killed their former roommate. Fifth tip for DMs. Practically, unless you're on an adventure together that spans multiple years a la Critical Role, I'd only dive deep into one, maybe two characters' backstories. Backstories that add a large number of side quests can really bog down a campaign, and too many will bring it to a screeching halt.

So choose carefully. There's nothing wrong with sprinkling the other characters' backstories in, but pick only one or two to really deep dive into. Six. but pick only one or two to really deep dive into. Six, DMs, leave gaps in your adventures and stories and campaigns big enough to plug backstories in. Fill with characters and personnel and organizations from those characters' backstories. You want the big bad Luesco the Destroyer to be connected to a couple of the characters,

but you just don't know how. Leave those gaps until you find out what the backstories of the characters are. Once a player discusses their character backstory with you that would fit, you as the DM can decide how Luesco was involved. He disguised himself as a healer, but instead poisoned the brother of the character who passed away quickly. Luesco was once one of the character's mentors. He was the original person that started the character down the road to a life of crime. He was the cause of, or a major player in, one or more of the major events in that character's life. Try to work those connections into that backstory. If you do have a big reveal that the big bad's been tinkering in the character's backstory before

the adventure ever began, it doesn't really matter whether you reveal the identity of the Big Bad, then the connections, or reveal the connection, then the identity of the Big Bad. Revealing the Big Bad first is great for that sudden moment of realization when the characters realize old Master Tibbins was Luesco all along. Or, if you reveal the connection first, then the players do need to be paying a little bit more of attention. The big bad needs something distinctive about their appearance or mannerisms. The blacksmith who accused the character of thievery had a distinctive facial tick, and then the first time they see Luesco, he has that same facial tick. You may have to help the PCs put two and two together, by the way, otherwise this could get missed by the players not focusing on connections to your world.

In order to do this well, DMs, you need to know your campaign world, or at least aspects of it that you can connect up to their backstories. When your character suggests their background, either know of or research what areas of the world would be conducive to that background. If your character was an escaped slave, they need to have come from an area where slavery is prevalent. Be flexible when it comes to what you allow in your player character's backgrounds. One of the things I strongly limit in character

backgrounds is anything that would indicate previous adventuring experience. I'm the head of the thieves guild in Cliff's Cove. Really? Why the hell are you a level 1 thief then, unless the town is like nepotism central? Even if you were placed in that position because you have a rich relative, you wouldn't live long. I don't prohibit a previous adventuring experience, but the player needs to come up with a really damn good reason why the former lieutenant of Wolf's Dragoons is now a level 1 mech warrior. Are backstories needed for a game? No. Do they add context, depth, and build empathy towards the characters? Absolutely.

Backstories lead to more dramatic moments and can help you build your role-playing ability as a player. Consider adding a small backstory to your next character and keep it in mind when you need to respond in character in-game. DMs. Consider asking your players to create a brief backstory for their characters and tie it into your game world. It brings

verisimilitude to your world and it makes it feel more alive. Pick one to two characters' backstories to tie closely into your campaign. Let the players reveal their characters' secrets or work with them before you do so. Give them some ideas to fill in the gaps in their stories and have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening to my thoughts about better backstories. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, leave a rating and review, or go to ko-fi.com and buy me a coffee. Tune in next week where we'll discuss lessons I've learned customizing pre-written campaigns.

This week's sponsor, by the way, was hotel rooms. Next time you get a luxury hotel room, you should immediately fart in it. Toot sweet. This has been episode 75, all about better backstories. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.