I created a backstory for my Halfling wild magic sorcerer. At a young age he had nightmares and spontaneously cast spells and caused great damage to the village. He was arrested and sent to a magic asylum called Covens Reach. It was a fort on a small island off the coast. In theory it was a place where people with magic power or abilities could be treated and trained to control their power and then released. In reality it was a dumping ground for unwanted things (the prisoners). He escaped the island and became a drifter before joining a party of adventurers. I thought that was it for my backstory, but the DM had other things in mind. He created a secret order that hunted escapees and "fleshed out" the corrupt Baroness that ran the island. My character was hunted and unsure why so much effort was being put on finding one low level sorcerer. I always had to be careful to disguise myself, never knowing when the hunters might be about. The other players helped protect me. It was a fun mystery for all.
Unfortunately I have never played in a game long enough to really get to much out of backstories. We typically were plateauing our GM homebrew system. We kept on breaking the game and rather than tweak the system for our current game we would start a new game with the tweaks and balances. The games were great though and everyone had a lot of fun. I will say that the small moments when the GM did use our backstories we always had fun.
@@BeyondTheScreenRPG Exact same problem my GM had. He was bashing his system off of Rolemaster and Fantasy Dice systems. The main issue that kept creeping up was that we were encouraged to power game not because the game was deadly (on the contrary the GM was loathe to kill PC's), but because we wanted to keep seeing how fast we could become over powered at the GM encouragement.
I based a campaign around the players backstories and while I think it was one of the most fun game I've ever Dmed. However, out of the 6 players only like 1 of them had a clear character goal so I kinda got too wrapped up in one character's backstory.
That's very relatable. I used to do the same with the players who wrote the best content.. I was just excited to explore it, and it ended up taking more spotlight. These days I try to do more work with my players before the first session, but I still tend to spend more time on certain backstories than others.
@@BeyondTheScreenRPG I wanted to do a season 2 to focus on some of the other players but all my players would wanna do is take from the player that got the most attention which a. isn’t fun for anyone and b. Isn’t what I want to encourage
Did the GM ever use your story in a satisfying way? Tell us about it!
I created a backstory for my Halfling wild magic sorcerer. At a young age he had nightmares and spontaneously cast spells and caused great damage to the village. He was arrested and sent to a magic asylum called Covens Reach. It was a fort on a small island off the coast. In theory it was a place where people with magic power or abilities could be treated and trained to control their power and then released. In reality it was a dumping ground for unwanted things (the prisoners). He escaped the island and became a drifter before joining a party of adventurers. I thought that was it for my backstory, but the DM had other things in mind. He created a secret order that hunted escapees and "fleshed out" the corrupt Baroness that ran the island. My character was hunted and unsure why so much effort was being put on finding one low level sorcerer. I always had to be careful to disguise myself, never knowing when the hunters might be about. The other players helped protect me. It was a fun mystery for all.
@@bennieperritt2819 Nice! You really had the experience of a wanted person like that.
Great chat about backstories. It gave me much to think about for the future. Thanks!
Thanks for having me on the channel Aviad.
Good video again guys thank you!
Thanks for jumping by Scott!
Unfortunately I have never played in a game long enough to really get to much out of backstories. We typically were plateauing our GM homebrew system. We kept on breaking the game and rather than tweak the system for our current game we would start a new game with the tweaks and balances. The games were great though and everyone had a lot of fun. I will say that the small moments when the GM did use our backstories we always had fun.
Constant tweaks are necessary, I'm running a long running campaign and I feel the implications of imbalance in high level play
@@BeyondTheScreenRPG Exact same problem my GM had. He was bashing his system off of Rolemaster and Fantasy Dice systems. The main issue that kept creeping up was that we were encouraged to power game not because the game was deadly (on the contrary the GM was loathe to kill PC's), but because we wanted to keep seeing how fast we could become over powered at the GM encouragement.
very interesting chat and stories, thank you
Happy you liked it!
I based a campaign around the players backstories and while I think it was one of the most fun game I've ever Dmed. However, out of the 6 players only like 1 of them had a clear character goal so I kinda got too wrapped up in one character's backstory.
That's very relatable. I used to do the same with the players who wrote the best content.. I was just excited to explore it, and it ended up taking more spotlight. These days I try to do more work with my players before the first session, but I still tend to spend more time on certain backstories than others.
@@BeyondTheScreenRPG I wanted to do a season 2 to focus on some of the other players but all my players would wanna do is take from the player that got the most attention which a. isn’t fun for anyone and b. Isn’t what I want to encourage
I agree with your reasoning. It's probably better to start a new campaign if that's the case