5 backstory bad habits that drive your DM nuts
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
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► Advice for DMs on how to use player backstories in the campaign: • I'm begging you to use...
► INDEX
0:00 Backstory bad habits
0:50 Not having a catalyst
3:25 Sponsored by Converse!
4:30 Ignoring worldbuilding
6:45 Having a rigid plan
10:00 Writing a novel
12:20 Ignoring character level
13:20 Mistakes that aren't mistakes
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Lots of folks sharing some incredible exceptions to these rules in the comments! The thing about "rules" is that if you understand WHY they exist, you can always break them. 🙌
Every single "bad habit" I described here COULD work, if you understand why it's a bad habit, and are clever about navigating that. You can be the last of the elves as long as your DM is on board for it. You can own a magic shop and have a husband and adventure for... I dunno, a different reason than the ones I suggested. You can slay a dragon before level 1, as long as there's an explanation for why they are NOT dragon-slaying-level-powerful AT level one.
I truly hope that y'all know me well enough by now that you know I am NOT making these videos to shut you down or tell you that you're playing wrong. As always, my goal is to provide you with information that teaches you something, makes you think, and gives you ideas. You don't have to listen to me unless you find what I'm saying helpful, and want to listen to me! OKAY BYE 💕
💜 🧝♀️
Very well said 👏
Rules are more of what you'd call guidelines, anyway. ;) For me, the only rule that's set in stone is that your character's a relative nobody. Yes, they're special - that's why they have a character class. But they haven't been involved in any world changing events unless they had a role that'd be played by an extra in the film adaptation. That, and I really try to avoid playing orphans... it's such a trope and makes it too easy to lean into becoming an edgelord, and those aren't funny unless everybody at the table is doing it for the lulz. (imagine a party where everybody's Batman....)
Thanks for being a good sport and understanding! Even when I disagreed with a point, I still loved what you gave us. The first point really helped me with thinking up a new character concept!
It's all good, your video is very helpful and I would not want to take away anything from that. We're all just excited D&D nerds here eager to share our stories.
A passion for storytelling is what we all have in common here after all!
Okay, but you've got to write an incredibly long backstory with insane feats in it, and have the character flaw "is a pathological liar" at least once
😂😂 incredible idea
😂
One of my players in my current Pf2e game is actually *cursed* to tell lies and half truth and it's been a blast to RP with so far. This could definitely be worked in with that too.
Bonus points if some elements are wildly contradictory or change constantly with each retelling.
I used the twist that my characters honestly did have all the high level skills, but came through a Relic Gate from another world with unexpected side-effects. I made my magic users have to start over with the idea that they had to learn entirely foreign systems of magic, and yanked the high-level ancestral benefits from my Paladin's sword, causing him extreme anxiety. They had no idea what the other world species were (just some close approximations of a few of them), and I even made their home world languages different enough to cause disadvantage. They can muddle through with four of them, but I nerfed Common entirely.
On the note of character investment, my wife was SO invested in her half-elf ranger that after she saved her estranged father from the underdark, she decided to retire the character so she could live with her Tiefling girlfriend and help her at her potion shop.
She loved this ranger so much she was genuinely worried something bad would happen to her. So she asked if she could retire Emelgwen and roll up a new character. Emelgwen is still in the world and can be called upon by the party. She’s just not an adventurer any more.
I've done something similar to this before!! Sometimes caring about a character can mean letting them retire or have a super heroic death in a way that's great for their story 🥰
You rolled Loyalty for your goon squad after adventures. They are not bound to you, they are also freelancers. The dude you hired to come along can decide she has all she needs. He can decide that this did not pay out enough, and he will try his luck in another crew or region. You can part on friendly terms and see them at the pub later on or re-hire them.
Dungeon Meshi had this. Namari the dwarf starts the show by resigning. We learn she did not earn enough in Laios' expeditions. Later on they meet her as part of another expedition. Not as an enemy, she helps them out when she can, but not as an loyal retainer life-sworn to Laios.
@@GinnyDiCthulhu PCs will suffer a lot of stress. Sometimes so much that they will not be functional in the field. It was expected that mentally or physically maimed PCs would retire. They were still part of the world, still had their knowledge and skills to support the active crew. The old PC who knows all about Russian history is still a telegram away.
It's the reason I like the collective or crew backstory. Individual PCs can retire, die, get jailed or become supporting people but the crew itself lives on. It's the ambition I liked in Blades in the Dark.
You can have a secondary PC if you so like. Ars Magica gives you one wizard, a couple non-wizard companions and as many spear-carrier unnamed guards as you want. If my professor is going to study a book for ten months I will play my ex-marine.
that's adorable I love your wife's ranger
i did something kind of similar in one campaign. I was playing as a warforged cleric who had been in slumber for a century after the war they were made for had ended, until they were woken up by another player. seeking a purpose, the warforged had served as a faithful companion to that player's character. so when that player's character had to retire due to the player being unable to make it to sessions anymore, the warforged had gone with them, and i rolled up a new character and similarly, both retiring characters could still be called on as NPC's, but were no longer adventuring
With the whole “I ran a magic shop, but one day the place was robbed clean” would be an incredible setup for a game in which the player went to try to find said items to return them to the shop. Cause that way you can have random enemies throughout the campaign all equipped with pieces from the collection to maybe work to tie them all together to one source to find the initial thief
stealing this idea
Interesting if some get them honest and/or need them really
Alternately you could go with "I ran a magic shop, and have discovered that Items I sold were cursed, and I now have to recover them." to borrow an idea from the Friday the 13th TV series.
@@ChristopherDunkle That sounds like an anime title
@@freelancerthe2561 "That time I ran a magic shop and accidentally sold cursed items" coming to Crunchyroll next year. 😂
My last backstory document was huge, there was a paragraph at the top that said "what you need to know" and then the rest of the document tilted "I got carried away, sorry." I'm glad I'm not alone.
Well, sounds like you did what Ginni advised, and started with a one-paragraph summary!
I love nothing more than a player who ties their character directly into the bones of the campaign setting. You want to be part of a major faction? Yes! You wanna be a cleric of an outlawed god? Interesting!! You want to be from the town where we are starting? You betcha! Sending all the Nat 20 luck to anyone who does this.
It's always great when this happens. It's also really cool when a player comes up with something for their character backstory that I then want to make part of my world.
Something I like as a player is working with the DM to flesh out your hometown (or equivalent) it really helps to give insight on the factions around you, why you maybe don't gel well with certain figures and can also give the DM some insight they may not have known otherwise.
My current DM helped me with this. I did research first then just brainstormed with them. I’m happy when a DM will help mold my backstory from rough ideas I have to one that fits well enough into the world or setting. Backstories are usually hard for me to come up with too
Brennan Lee Mulligan pointed this out once - some of the best PC's in a campaign are the ones that make you say, "Yes! Of course that person has to exist in this world!" It will inherently make the world feel more alive
My one player took the soldier background, where one of their background trinkets is "battlefield banner taken from an enemy unit" and it's resulted in so much roleplaying and story in our campaign.
I'm glad I am not the only one that writes two different length backstories, one to give to the DM and one optional to read that I did so for me.
Occasionally you find a DM who wants to read 10000 words of backstory and it's the BEST 😂
yeah, I just did that with my latest character, but that's just because writing is my way of understanding a character and getting into their initial perspective of the world... I also wrote a quick bullet-point version of the most important stuff bc I felt bad 😅
@@GinnyDiI do less of a backstory and more like a view descriptive snapshots/vignettes. At least that is how they feel to me when I write them.
Yeah, that occurred to me to do this current campaign I'm in. We game online with Foundry. I gave the long version to the DM, and I posted both that and the short version into the Bio section of my character sheet that other players can see. So they can read the abridged or long version.
I wrote the song my character's brother sang on their father's birthday. The story took place on a separate continent, ten years later. Nobody in the party even knew I had brothers. 😂
So yeah, didn't give the DM my full backstory.
My immediate thought about the magic shop is that she ran it while her husband went adventuring for supplies, but now he’s injured- took an arrow to the knee- and can’t bring back magic plants, monster parts, and mystical paraphernalia anymore. So now it’s her turn, but all she has is his half legible self-written guide to ingredients, and so she must seek the help of other adventurers, etc. etc.
Where are those that can decipher doctor's notes...
Honestly, I like the original one better. Breaks gender roles and expectations by having the wife be the one who risks her butt for her partner
I'm not going to lie, I'm a huge fan of somewhat comedic back stories. One of my favorite was from a few campaigns ago. A friend was a level 1 Halfling Druid whose story was that he and his family were farmers. Everyone is safe and mostly happy. His reason for traveling is to find his horse who had been "stolen," because she's been his best friend for years. What he doesn't realize is that his horse was never actually stolen. His younger sister had borrowed her, with their parent's knowledge, and the horse and his sister returned home 2 days after he had left in his search. He never bothered to ask his parents before he left, he was too embarrassed to tell them that his horse had been "stolen," instead he left a note saying he wanted to see the city and would be back before harvest. Thus began the adventure of Karl Willowbark and the search for his horse named Jenni.
omg i LOVE this sm
Meaning that, to his eyes, both the horse and the sister went missing, but he only cares about the horse xD love it.
I hate "Chosen One" tropes/characters with a passion - because they've been done to death, not because there was anything wrong with them in the first place - so I'd love to have a character who _views himself_ as the "Chosen One" - the second to last child of a farming family from whom something important (to them) was stolen and the family decided that he was the one tasked with going to find/recover that item... the elder siblings being needed to help with the farm and the youngest still being given favoured treatment as "the baby", so he's the one that _they can do without_ and thus he's the *one* who was *chosen* ...
Have him view it as a serious duty that he alone was entrusted with, rather than seeing it as him being the most expendable. Could be fun dropping hints of the truth without having the character being aware of it. "Oh, yes, Thomas is the youngest, my mum dotes on him - still views him as the baby even though he's already 16. He hardly has to do anything around the farm... my *_other_* brothers? Well, I hardly ever saw them as they were forever out in the fields or taking stock to the market. Always very busy..." with maybe a touch of arrogance that Thomas is "too young" to be adventuring and the elder kids are too entrenched in the farming life to be out in the world seeking the stolen item, so *_of course_* he was chosen....
You can be creative with giving a low-level character an illustrious backstory. In curse of Strahd, my 3rd level ranger was a major player in an uprising, but since entering Strahd's domain had become a severe alcoholic. Hence, leveling up for her isn't improving herself in a novel way, it's working past her demons to take back full control of her life and regain the skill and drive she once had
I love this idea! Very clever problem solving 🥰 Classic example of "know the rules before you break them." You clearly understood WHY it's difficult to have a low-level character with a high-level backstory, and solved for it!
Love this. I have a similiar thing going on with my character who in (now partially revealled to the party) backstory was part of this inquisition and was probably a much higher level paladin, but after breaking his oath, recieving massive injuries, and overall losing his direction in life for a few years, he sort of atrophied into a low level fighter by the time session 1 picked up (the injury also justifies his negative dexterity score since I rp it as it still affecting his leg, only really being able to move at full sprint by brute forcing himself through it.)
I dig this. A similar one I did once had my PC recently broken out of jail, and he was a sorely out of practice level 1 adventurer.
awesome, i love that!
i did a v similar w my first ever character bc i gave her the folk hero background (also speaking of cliches: she was a halfling rogue lol). she was a successful local hero w a friend of hers for a long time, but never got outrageously high level as she still mostly worked for her parents. but after her entire town, her family, and her friend all disappeared in a weird magical flood, she spent a year or so looking, then gave up and became aimless for a few years. only after a near-death scare did she meet her new party members & decide to get back into fighting shape & help them out.
Once did an elf who had been a war general centuries past, suffered a grievous injury, never recovered fully and at this point doesn't expect to. Instead, I did him as a low-level monk, and flavored it as him learning new ways to move his body that allowed him to defend himself without putting strain on his wounds.
I actually did have a character who had slain an adult green dragon in his backstory. The twist was that he was but one member of a huge hunting party that his tribe sent to do the deed; he was just the lucky sucker who happened to strike the final blow. The tribe gave him a deed-name for it and expected great things from him, while he suffered from impostor syndrome and overcompensated by projecting a tough-guy image to everyone he met.
He actually did go on to really wreck (and get the last hit on) a green dragon late in the campaign. I don't think the DM planned it for story reasons, though. That was just a reasonable boss for that adventure, and my character happened to roll insanely well in the fight. He did have a policy on our later adventures of letting the player who dealt the final blow on the boss keep the mini, so I have a cool green dragon on my RPG shelf now!
Dungeon Meshi had a bit about dragon hunting. Most people on them are logistics people to process and cart the dang thing home.
A couple of my friends and I did something similar for our shared backstory when going into Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Our dragon shaman's clan and my druid circle all ganged up together
A player at my table once had a character that had lived a long time. He'd helped slay dragons, had been rather powerful. What the DM and he did, was to write into his backstory what he had done, and then explain that after his adventuring, he'd retired. And because he spent like, 150 years not using his powers to their full potential, he regressed in levels. So setting back out to adventure, one of his goals was to become as powerful as he once had been. It was an awesome idea.
Worth pointing out to people starting with higher-level campaigns, "make sure your character's backstory is appropriate to your level" goes both ways. A 6th-level Ancients Paladin is not likely to be a wet-behind-the-ears farm girl looking for her dog that got lost in the woods, nor is a 15th-level fighter likely to be "a lowly new recruit to the city guard"!
Great advice, as per usual, Ginny!
In Classic Traveller you do not level up or gain skills. You start at the end of your career. You are old people who have brought your old space-DC-3 as surplus and now live the Bush pilot life.
I could possibly see an argument for high level/low job such as the time old "new kid stumbles onto something that makes them super" so beloved of YA media.
Still I agree that generally the pros should be have pro-level jobs.
In this job market, I can totally see a retired hero becoming a city guard, and classified as a recruit due to bureaucracy and "retraining" requirements. I'm sure many war vets ran into something like this in real life. A Mall cop that knows 4 ways to snap a man's neck, but is obviously not allowed to do that.
@@freelancerthe2561 Your typical veteran in OD&D is level one. Level 1-3 is elite in a level 0 world. A level 1 fighter with a gun can kill a level 0 townie right off.
I'd like to add one more for the cliche part: Do not shy away from playing basic setups like for example the human warrior commonfolk or maybe even with a military background as soldier. I for one think since they are often seen as basic they have also the biggest opportunities to grow and even surprise the group. I can understand the desire to play exotic characters since RP should be a getaway, but playing a Githyanki necromancer or tiefling druid you are most likely allready some kind of unicorn and super special magic awesome, which kind of lessens the opportunity for growth a bit.
It can also be a lot of fun to be the Han Solo of the group so to speak. The regular person responding more relatable to all the crazy things happening, maybe being sceptical about prophesies and all that. Also what is more impressive: A powerful eladrin sorcerer prince with a divine bloodline slaying a dragon, or some peasant human doing that with an axe?
The more humble your background, the more amazing the same accomplishment will be to them.
one of my favorite characters ever was just a normal human fighter. I gave them one drawback, a phobia of bugs, and the whole campaign was (and I didn't know ahead of time) about giant ants being controlled by an evil wizard. A scene where I was the only one of the party able to reach a dagger and free themself, then stealth about to free the other PCs, ended up being one of the most dramatic of the whole game.
We also can see this in different forms of media. One commenter already mentioned Han Solo, but we can also look at things like Dungeon Meshi, where Laius is a human fighter. Turns out he's the weirdest one out of the whole group, while also being the heart and soul.
If you can't play an interesting human fighter, you probably can't play an interesting character in general.
As a DM, I love the final point about players caring about their characters and not punishing them for it. The problems with backstories, mechanics understanding, even gameplay styles can all be addressed and remedied so much easier if the players actually care. That is what means the most to me when I'm running a game for them
Some of the worst adventures are ones built like grinders with no reward and only the morbid curiosity of the players as motivating force.
If I'm not invested in my PC, RP just is not as much fun!
Honnestly as a DM I have got a more mitigated opinion about that. I already have a very hard time killing my players under any circumstances, and that is also because I fear they might actualy be sad IRL the caracter dies, while we are here to have fun, not to get sad!! Seeing players too invested in their caracter pushes me to hold back the punches and sometime make it feel like the PCs are steamrolling the adventure, which is not so so fun either
@@thezoru2744 A balance must be struck, this is certain. And players MUST work WITH the GM to reach that balance. But I must add that many of my memorable plays were when my PC almost died - these can be thrilling. Also, if character death, even TPK is not a real possibility, then the whole things looses something important.
Here's how owning a magic item shop could work. You parent (either mom or dad) was a famous adventurer and the shop is selling stuff they have accumulated through their adventures. However, the stock is running low and they are too old to go out to find more items. So, now player has to be the one to go adventuring to restock the shop.
I'll admit my weakest part of roleplay is reacting to how the dice fall, as I can sometimes fall into the trap of 'I wish it had rolled this, imagine how cool/dramatic/allowing for character development it would have been', rather than fully understanding that it's all about how I in-character should respond to wins and losses. This is good great advice. Also? I want those shoes, here's hoping they bring them to Australia.
PS: Five breaths, if you need it.
Looks like they do have the D&D Chucks in the converse.com.au store - although almost all the designs are sold out 😩
I think this also depends on how your GM narrates failure. responding in character to failure is hard, but it can be harder if your GM is nasty about how they narrate the failure.
I had a character who was lvl 7 cleric fighter. they had gotten decently good at killing undead and knew many languages of demons. He was distant and quiet, more of a do not tell person but honest and kind, and most of all, not one with an ego.
in their very first session he joined my very first roll was a Nat 1, The GM instead of just narrating him missing, instead narrated him swinging too hard and dislocating his shoulder and then falling face first into a pile of dung. instantly too the wind out of my sails as my Celric character was instantly reduced to a bumbling incompetent fool who no one believed his story of him stopping skeletons in his home hamlet. they all thought he was an ego maniac making it up.
I personally think GM's need to narrate failures in a way that makes sense for the character, especially if the character is new to the party.
Agreed. Nothing is worse than spewing out a great speech only to flub the social (Diplomacy) check. For some checks, particularly social ones, I generally ask to roll the check before I describe my action/interaction so that I can tailor it to the dice results. I find it to be more fun, and entertaining that way.
I once have made the coolest cyberpunk charakter, she could drive anything. Very high skills with anything driving or flying. Well, until I rolled the dice. Critical failure, every single evening I used one of her high level skills in a critical scene!
And think about the role of a rigger in story. It's driving the getaway car or other, chasing to catch the bad guys. Most often with the whole crew in the vehicle!
But what initially frustrated me endlessly slowly became funny to exciting.
It all ended at the last evening of our series, the big showdown. The escape plan A was her rescuing the crew with a helicopter. But the crew already made plan B and were carring gliders to escape from the building. And it happened as it always did: critical failure!
The charakter is epic to this day and everyone from my old group remembers her very vividly after many years.
(Still I retired those dice never to be touched again)
honestly that's my strongest area
One thing I would add: Don't be afraid to collaborate with other players at your table on backstory. The party doesn't have to be total strangers at the start of the adventure, maybe they've crossed paths before: Friends, siblings, former lovers, rivals, parents, etc. can all make for very interesting party dynamics.
My friends and I love doing this! We actually have a set of characters together that are all cousins, some that are frat brothers, etc. It makes the role play super fun
Zee Bashew did a whole video about this. The referee can ask the players questions (usually come up with beforehand) about their characters' relationship to each other. On my to-do list is an article about how to game out and RP a "noodle incident" in your party's collective backstory.
As a GM, I actually have this as one of my player demands. "I don't care who. Someone is someone's cousin. Two of you went to school together and had a kind of rivalry. One of you helped save the other's life. Two of you share the same hobby. Figure it out amongst yourselves."
My sweat has dried up because according to your tips, I did my current/first D&D character backstory correctly. I gave a summarized version to the DM, had a catalyst/reason to be from where she was, then to adventure, and while I had an idea in mind to how her character arc would go, I played along with the dice and DM's plans to see what would be the ultimate shift in her.
I just had a session where I shared her story to the rest of the party. I had a rule that she would try to keep it to herself for as long as she could because she is ashamed of what happened to her. But the session before, she died - she saved the paladin, now her adoptive father, from a lich Power Word Kill by switching places with him. We had a cleric with a diamond to save her after. Dying is a pretty big deal and it rocked my whole party.
I was pretty scared to share her story after because I was worried I went too far. Thankfully, this video just validated that I'm doing alright. 😅
I didn't do my first backstory 'correctly' so this is a no judgement zone (unless you're the last one of your kind) 😂
One of my favorite characters was the third child, out of four, of a clothier and merchant. Education was very important, so she had been attending schools most of her life. At the start of the campaign she had been corresponding with a research wizard as part of her graduate project and had not received a response to her last three letters.
oooh I love this
This! *chef kiss*
Oh that's good!
I had a ton of fun with a 3rd level character who'd slain dragons and was instrumental in defeating the Dark Lord. But he was an elf, and that was all 500 years ago. Since then he's been a teacher, a father, a grandfather, the keeper of a mystic shrine, ambassador to the Summer Court, a vintner, and, most recently, a beekeeper. The Dark Lord appears to be making a comeback, and not only has my character's old armor and weapons rusted away, but his skills are rather rusty as well. Still, he hasn't quite forgotten everything and he'll have some sage advice to dispense to this new crop of heroes as they take on the challenge of saving the world.
Mechanically, he was a 3rd level College of Lore Bard. His good advice was mechanically his Bardic Inspiration, and since he'd done a bit of everything over the centuries, he had a wide array of skills scattered across centuries of interests. It was going to take some time to knock off the rust and return to his old fighting trim, but with the example of these young new heroes to inspire him, he was certain it wouldn't be long until he was once again the champion he had been in his 200s.
One time, my ENTIRE player group joined in a kind of prank on our DM who wanted us to make LEVEL ONE characters, wherein we were all these epic villains, planes hopping terrors that have felled kings and empires, with a loyal army of soldiers thousands strong...
AND THEN, we thought we were so smart and untouchable that we went to Sigil and tried to *usurp the Lady of Pain*. She didn't take to kindly to this and proceeded to turn our loyal soldiers into so much fertilizer. In a last, DESPERATE bid to escape my wizard used a kinda janky teleport spell he was still working the kinks out of but would render them untraceable, having the whole party jump through... reverting our ages and capabilities back to level 1, thought we still largely possessed our memories but with that fog of timey wimey nonsense that kept our proficiency bonus at +2, even for stuff we knew otherwise.
“We’ve all heard the horror stories.” Huh. What horror stories?
Kidding. Anyway, your point about caring about player characters hit home with me. I’ll take it a step further and say it’s a mistake for DMs to not care about PCs.
How can you build a world/story around people you don’t give a crap about?
Totally agree! It's your responsibility as a DM to care about all your players equally... but some backstories make it heckin' hard 😅
@@GinnyDi Oh no doubt. Got one guy who wanted a K-Pop star teleported into my D&D homebrew. I... didn't think that would fit.
Though, the DM is the one who's gotta let them know that what they've got isn't landing. Of course, the player needs to take that feedback and actually listen to it and... yeah that's where the horror story usually lands.
Yeah, games where your character's backstory doesn't matter isn't very fun. I played one in my local library where you just kinda came with a character and played, so of course the DM couldn't include backstories (not to mention there were over a dozen players at once) and I don't fault the DM for that. But it still definitely was less enjoyable than other campaigns I've played in
@@CrispysTavern Clearly didn't see the "Isekai-Free Zone" sign. 😄
@@digitaljanusCrispy would say I-C-K lol
One cool thing my DM did for my current campaign is, once we talked about the backstory, he sent everyone a 50 question document with things that he could help build our character and character arcs.
It included simple things like thoughts on nobility, ever been arrested(and why), thoughts on magic, what’s your party role(Comic relief, mom, leader).
But it also has harder questions like do you consider yourself hero, villain, or something else. Or if someone your character trusts/loves asks you to go against the party, who would you side with. Or what is your character’s ultimate goal.
It was awesome because it helped further develop my character and gave him potential plot hooks/story beats that he could use to keep us engaged. It was really set the campaign off to a good start.
@EStramel09 Oh man that sounds cool, wish i had such a list too..
This is awesome! I actually have a video with a similar list: ua-cam.com/video/sS2LROYk230/v-deo.html
@@GinnyDi Oh cool, i look right away :D
"Thoughts on nobility" probably would have helped us, but it is hilariously fun having one monarchist amongst a group who definitely distrusts the king. 😅
i've done this before as a paranoia GM but it was more for the bureaucratic pointless paperwork part of worldbuilding and i barely paid attention to their actual responses or gave them a role they were a bad fit for while assuring them "Friend Computer never assigns someone a task they cannot handle" when they complained. haven't considered you could actually do this sincerely in a more cooperative game
One of my favorite backstories that I've ever made was a little gnome locksmith. Helpful in the community, earnest, and hart working. One day he met a beautiful tiefling thief from the thieves guild, looking to improve her craft back in the city. So they traded techniques. He taught her more about locks, and she taught him how to sneak around to stay safe. And as they bonded, he slowly fell in love. But insecure and unsure that he could win her heart, the little gnome got a wild idea. He would use the skills she taught him to steal a fortune from a cruel noble, delve into a dungeon to find rare treasures, or even make off with a portion of a dragon's hoard! Then he would return with the riches and use them to win her heart!
A humble backstory with grand ambitions, and no tragedy in sight to spur on his transition into adventuring.
that is so lovely! ❤
As a DM who really struggles with coming up with storylines and plot hooks, the 10 page backstories are a life saver! Details for me to use and steal, NPCs pre made, its Heaven 😂
Also, well said! Especially at the end with getting attatched to characters. My Human Druid that I play in my Curse of Strahd game has become a character very near and dear to my heart, along with the rest of our party. He died a few weeks ago, and after a very tense session he was eventually revived, but the other PCs reaction to his death and tearful relief at his revival just made my heart soar. It was a truely joyful couple of sessions because I knew that even if my character didn't come back, he had an impact on the story and the other characters, and thats just made me care about him all the more. At the same time, I am fully awake to the possibility that he could go down for good next time and not come back. Still, better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.
I have up on plots and found it was much less work. Weirdo factions and people moving around the region and pursuing goals was a lot more easy.
My character also fell during Strahd 😢he only lasted four sessions, but he was the catalyst for the next character; his distraught husband hellbent on avenging his love! It was great, my dm even had npcs try to fuck with my character mentally by bringing up the death of his husband. So much fun.
The one thing I would add to the flexibility of a background is to make sure it is not so finalized that other players cannot influence it in some way.
For instance, say your shopkeep was an artificer, then maybe one of the items stolen was a holy sword you were forging for the party's paladin, leading you to request their aid. Or maybe the halfling bard was one of your childhood friends and offers to show you the shortcuts they have learned about.
This is, I think, the *actually* crucial component of most Session 0's. Giving the party some form of internal cohesion from the start makes life so much simpler when it comes to making sure all of the characters have reason to move in the same direction and, you know, remain a party. Everyone should know everyone else's characters in addition to the worldbuilding the GM's already worked on.
@@The5lacker I have made a few characters aimed to be hired by the party, and some made to be mostly veiled in secrecy. And still with them, I created links to the others. Perhaps not sharing a history, just an ideal or respect, but something to make them want to pick the party's side in a fight.
I use that last one especially in the character I am currently working on, as he's a Lawful Stupid reborn paladin who recently broke the Undead spell set upon him.
Another great video full of practical tips! I also love you calling out the mean spiritedness in those fantasizing about your grief of possibly losing something you care about. Like a tangy puree of Brené Brown and Brennan Lee Mulligan
Wow, I've never been more flattered at a comparison 😂
@@GinnyDi I sincerely think it's an apt comparison. There's a lot of people talking about mindsets while playing but not many delving into the culture of how we discuss ttrpgs. Calling out that particular behavior is especially useful because it bleeds into the playing too.
And I'm so happy I could brighten your day a bit. You've done the same for me already today and dozens of times before too!
I did the character that owned a shop and it worked out great. The character was a dragonmarked character in Eberron, but he didn't actually have the mark. That disapointed his father, and the character wanted nothing more than to win his fathers effection. As a result, the character would constantly leave his wife and daughter behind in search of greater adventures in hopes of earninig his fathers admiration.
The character was eventually eaten by a Dire Shark.
"Having a rigid plan" is actually a flaw baked into some RPG systems, like 7th Sea and Burning Wheel. Both of those feel like less role playing games than inspiration methods for writing a story, and part of it is how mapped out your character feels just from the character creation.
Yeah, as a DM, I agree with pretty much everything in this video. I do, however, have a character backstory floating around in my head that features a character slaying a dragon at level 1….
So the character was an ordinary peasant girl living in an ordinary village. However, rumor had it that a dragon had made its lair in the cave a few miles from town. The dragon hadn’t been seen for centuries, so most believed that the rumors were just that-rumors made up to scare the children. One day, my character’s friends dared her to go inside the rumored dragon cave. When she went inside, however, she found that there really was a dragon there, but the dragon was very sick and had been slowly dying for the last few centuries. The dragon, seeing her, begged her to put it out of its misery. When she obliged, a rush of the dragon’s power coursed through her body, and she found herself suddenly capable of magic no one else in the village could do. This was her origin as a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer.
Only reasonable way I see for a lvl 1 PC to have alrdy killed a dragon is if they did it as part of a large militia force. Maybe of the few survivors from said raid on the dragon's lair, the PC is the only one still alive as the others have since died under suspicious circumstances n now the PC needs to get stronger n ally themselves with strong people to protect themselves from whomever is getting vengeance for the dragon.
I want to both thank you and apologize, because now I really have to use this idea... Amazing! Thank you! I'm sorry!
@jackdeth8769 Nothing to apologize for! Feel free to use my idea!
@@T4N7 ...Did you read what they said? That's a perfectly logical level 1 killed a dragon origin.
@@T4N7The dragon had been sick and dying for centuries and allowed itself to be killed.
Pretty sure Ginny Di has the best ads on UA-cam!
I don't know, Sam Riegel might have raised the bar pretty high. But she's certainly up there. Now I kind of want to see them do an ad together.
Do ads by the companies themselves count? Cuz then idk if she can beat lucidchart meme charts and manscaped pool table ad
Game Grumps turning their ads into a continuing telenovella is def up there
We had random event tables when I entered the hobby. A friend of mine rolled and got 'your family was killed by orcs' three times in row. That was all the backstory a fighter fresh out of service in the imperial army needed.
3 times different characters or 3 times to the same character?
@@kereymckenna4611 the same character. His real family, the adoptive family, and the orphanage.
@@HeikoWiebe That's incredible!
Did your character consider finding out what they did to piss off Gruumsh so much?
I'm a big fan of light-touch backstory, with details filled in if and as needed. It's not for everyone, but especially for new and young players has the advantage that it's fairly easy on the attention span.
My daughter (who is 10) just created her first full D&D character who wasn't 'I want to be this character from this picture.' (Not saying that's the worst method, but she never engaged much with them, while currently she's having a tonne of fun creating her new character's parents in Hero Forge and trying to decide if the one exotic but mechanically harmless pet I've allowed her should be a tressym or a displacer kitten.)
We did a session 0 where characters were created through discovery, and she decided she wanted to be a pashak (off-brand tabaxi) who was size small with the noble background, who lies a lot and had been arrested for petty theft (we started out in a prison cell.) Her backstory is that her parents are the first son of a minor house, who brought property to the match, and the 12th in line to a major house who brought the status, thus she has enough to enjoy the side benefits of nobility, without really being a somebody yet (and if a 10 year old is okay playing a character who isn't individually important yet, I'm pretty sure anyone can.) Her parents also belong to the coastal pashak lineage who are based off the leonin, so they're both strapping tigerfolk while she's the gnome-sized foundling they adopted when it turned out they couldn't have their own children.
I have to say, I believe that that was your *BEST* sponsorship video to date! I think the most intricate backstory I ever did was for my Waterdivian Nobel bard, with her catalyst being that after excelling at all sorts of musical instruments and storytelling, she wanted to go out and find new stories to tell, including her own. No, she wasn't already a famous bard in Waterdeep, but she did dream of being one one day.
(I'm used to writing concise backstories. The superhero MMO I once played only had exactly 1,024 characters in the biography section. Yes, there was one time I had to build two more characters just so I could finish the backstory for all three of them, but that was the exception.)
A character limit for your backstory is actually such a great idea 😂 I'm gonna start giving myself a limit for the version of my backstory that I deliver to my game master, haha!
I’m currently playing a cleric in the curse of Strad game. I went in with a fairly minimal backstory and I’ve been surprised at the things I’m learning about her week on week for example a few sessions ago I discovered that she’s actually a bit of an alcoholic not in their original backstory. Recently I’ve discovered that her and her husband have an open relationship also not in the original backstory. I definitely agree that the more room you leave to play with your backstory and the more room you let the DM have the more fun it can be discovering your character.
Reacting to weird stuff in the region is the fun part. It's a lot of work to try and pre-make that. Often the wonders out there are grander than any amateur short story I could make.
My alchemist artificer character's backstory was literally that she helped her father run their potion shop. 😂 my excuse for why she went adventuring was that she was searching for rare plants for their potions. but her goals changed after my dm revealed that her father had been involved with the bad guys and did some pretty messed up stuff. this revelation gave her some mixed feelings about her father, whom she had looked up to before that, and motivated her to go after the bad guys to protect her family. it was a very welcome surprise and i jumped at the chance to give her some character development.
The statement about cliché characters is really important to me. My first character was an elf archer with flowy blonde hair. Sound familiar? It was fun, though! That's what matters most in the end.
My simplest character starting place was having my newbie wizard be from an isolationist island kingdom in the existing campaign setting. He left to find adventures because he was bored there. He would often get excited about a presented danger and say “it could be fun!”
When he was more seasoned he would still wryly bring back that phrase to annoy his best friend during planning sessions.
I think the key is that any backstory (or goal) explains why you are now an adventurer. It shouldn't explain what adventures you will go on! Play a "lone wolf" if you like, but only if you always want to come up with the reason to adventure with your fellow players' characters. Have some goal you want to reach if you like, but hold it lightly enough that you will always find a way that the adventure the DM prepared will somehow seem to you a way to reach that goal.
I made prophecy once for one of my character that I was being cheered and adored by a large crowd (typical main character syndrome). My merciful gm had me when a pie eating contest and steel the crown from one of the rude townsfolk. Prophecy fulfilled.
The worldbuilding one is really important to me as a DM! I actually gave the players direction as the prior campaign was ending to not go too far into character building until we were ready to do it together, and I sat down with a bunch of questions and we hammered out a backstory to make sure the characters really *lived* in the world.
I love when GMs do this. I've played in so many campaigns where information on the world was either nonexistent or restricted because of "spoilers". It's so hard to make a character in a custom setting when you have no clue what the world is like.
I'm a newer player. My DM has me just make a basic framework of a character to game with, and told me to take my time fleshing the character out. I'm really glad he said that, because I missed a lot of the common traps you list! And now that you've made me aware of some other Important Things, I'm going to continue writing my charactercs full story slowly, and with the overarching story of our adventure in mind, specifically - leaving ways it *might* be able to tie in to our party's story.
You're a treasure, Ginny! 😘
Glad it could help!! Hope you enjoy playing your new character 🥰
@@GinnyDi I do! I'm a 5th lvl elf druid. Funny thing... She just died! *But* we happened to be taking the local lord to an Abbey to be resurrected. Guess who else was resurrected?! So, now I get to think about what this will do to her emotionally, and if it changes her outlook spiritually!
@@cindabearr I hope the resurrection goes well! Great example of it being more fun to experience these things rather than putting them in your backstory though - now your get to play through the resurrection and character development 🥰
Not this video coming out right as I'm working on a new PC and me drawing blanks on the backstory. Thanks for sharing Ginny. ❤
Overly attached is something I see as unwilling to roll with the die. Not accepting that their character perished, or that a story beat didn't go as they wanted to just failing a skill check.
Yeah, like I mentioned in the point about not having pre-determined arcs - it's really important to come to an improvised game using random number generators with an open mind 😜 But when people tell ME I'm "too attached" to a character, they're not even witnessing my gameplay - they are literally just responding to me being passionate about character development.
You may associate those two things! But they are not the same. You can be invested without being inflexible.
I love to write fleshed-out backstories that have specific details left deliberately vague so that the DM can expand them into plot hooks if they so desire.
My current character was originally envisioned as a noble daughter, who happens to be an Aasimar, that was abandoned by her guide partway through an adventure he told her to go on. I wrote some basic family drama and told the DM that the family’s rank was up to him and that I’d fill the rest in once I knew what the family title was, expecting it to be “count” or “duke” at the highest.
Next thing I know I’m the heir to the throne of one of the major kingdoms on the continent, giving me direct control over a substantial amount of the world building. I’m surprised that he was willing to trust a player he’d never met before with that much power. Maybe he was just looking to outsource.
Now I have a basic family history going back five generations, several branch families that work in conjunction to run the country, traditional dress wear with cultural oddities, a failed coup that happened before my character was born with lingering loose ends and also the ankylosaur is the family’s guardian animal because that’s awesome.
Due to certain plot developments, I was forced to kill my uncle and take the throne from him meaning that my character is now officially a head of state, which is something that would terrify me if I were the DM.
We now have a running joke where my character, who is the queen of the country with the highest mineral wealth (DM’s decision, not mine), is consistently the poorest member of the party.
One of my favorite questions to ask when it comes to writing a story (for a D&D character or otherwise) is simply, "Why?" With everything, every new idea, every character trait, every event, ask yourself, "Why?" Digging into the motivation and the reasoning behind everything I write helps to fully develop the story and the character and to recognize when certain things simply don't fit or make sense. Everything happens for a reason, and it's crucial to understand those reasons in order to understand your story and your characters.
Funny story about one of my characters. He spent most of the campaign with his only backstory being "He's been framed for the arson of his shop and the murder of a witness and was sent to the undead kingdom to be used as food stock. He escaped and was fighting to survive." It was minimal because he was a temporary character where I was getting a feel for if I wanted to join the campaign long term. I joined but the backstory never moved beyond that because my character was pardoned then hired as the bodyguard for some of the party and no one dug into his history. Recently due to changes in team dynamics he could no longer be a bodyguard but still had reason to adventure with the party. It was at this point I started fleshing out his character then got the dastardly idea of giving him a tragic backstory fitting for the rogue that he wasn't, and the DM approved. There's a sweet irony that the calm bedrock of the party holds a past that runs contrary to his sunny disposition
I write like a big acomplishment and note behind it
'Made up to get into the party'
and then act like it was real and dubble down when called out.
The "Kidnapped husband" one is golden, not gonna lie. I sincerely hope that becomes canon.
Also, you knew full well what you were doing, repeatedly stepping on the camera.
i love those lists of "don't"s for backstories, because i find that right on the edge can be some interesting or fun ideas.
best thief in the cities' thieves guild? said city is actually a village with about 10 inhabitants, the character might even be the only member of the thieves guild.
slain a red dragon? something they manage to claim convincingly perhaps, or everyone knows they're full of it. or they confused a kobold for a dragon. or they imagined it alltogether. maybe the memory was put into their head for some reason.
a great and bespoke hero? actually, everyone is just making fun of them and they don't realize it. that's really mean, come to think of it.
massively wealthy, perhaps a powerful noble? there's some potential for kahoots with the DM here; the character is like this, but very early into the campaign, they end up in a place where all of that is worthless. or this has happened before the campaign, for a little turning point. perhaps they come from a different plane or sphere, maybe by accident or exile.
turns out they're the last of their kind or royal bloodline? a lie, placed in their head by the BBEG. or a false belief. maybe they're the only child of an extremely minor noble house and think themselves far more important than they are.
the classic super tragic backstory, all friends and family dead? they made it up.
admittedly, some of those work better than others and there seems to be a bit of a through-line of the character thinking themself greater than they are.
I had a character with a different take on the "noble bloodline." She was Varja Liberi of Clan Liberi, descended from a long line of the kinda sorta elf analogues of the setting. People a continent away, so you'd have to be extremely knowledgeable to know that she was being truthful, but House Liberi was an exceedingly minor and unimportant house.
So people would react to her like Star -Lord: "Who?" But as she advanced and had done actual important things, the title became useful, as title and accomplishments seemed to fit together better.
I love the idea of subverting these mistakes. They can be really creative and it's fun to surprise your fellow players with twists on tropes.
As long as you're comfortable sitting through the initial eye roll, go for it! 😂
i always write at LEAST 6000 words of backstory for my character but i always always always start with bullet points. not only is it helpful to write the thing but it's helpful for the dm and future me who doesn't want to search a billion paragraphs to remember what my fathers name was
I do the bullet point thing too. Useful for the DM as well as for you to be able to find information easier than scanning through text.
I agree so hard on all of these, but especially your last point about not being ashamed or embarrassed to adore the characters you create. When we design a character that’s fun to play we put a bit of our heart and soul into it. As you play the game and learn more about that character it’s very natural to grow attached. You’re creating and guiding a person in a world that you can touch and bend in a way that we can’t do to our real lives. And when done well I’ve seen those characters not just create amazing stories but help the people playing them to realize things about themselves. It’s a wonderful and powerful process. I’ve personally worked through depressions by playing and cannot recommend enough the amazing feeling that putting your heart into a character brings.
As usual, here's a video of Ginny doing it right, and inviting everyone else to join in the fun.
9:20 I'm playing a character like this now (their family died a year back, very sad), and the way my DM and I kept it from becoming stale was, "what if the family isn't dead?" Now my Amazon worker monk/druid has gone from mourning his family to searching for his faenapped father, finding a way to give his ghost sister a body again, and.....well, the mother stuff hasn't been revealed yet, but basically she's a gold dragon that was stuck in human form on Earth for the past thirty or forty years.
Draconic sorcerer?
@@AFLoneWolf nope, full-on dragon,.although she's set up as a cleric (FR) or Psychiatrist (Earth) when she takes human form, which is often....and even though my character isn't dragonborn, he was dragonmarked.(by a different former dragon) and has a weredragon arc coming up that I can't wait to spring on my fellow players.😄
Another wonderful video, great stuff! One thing I would add as a DM, because it keeps happening to me and drives me to want to quit, is a player playing a character who, due to their backstory of being betrayed or abandoned, trusts NO ONE, including their fellow adventurers. How is a DM supposed to work with that, and why should the other players have to deal with it?
I usually keep my backstories simple. How I learned the skills I have at the start of the game, how I got to the place the game is starting, and why I'm going out on an adventure. I like to keep it under two paragraphs. One of my DM's likes to work with the players on their backstory. My other DM never uses anything from our backstories and I'm not sure he even reads them.
At most I can think of knowledge PCs with certain backgrounds might have, and if they might know people in a certain regional community. Not named specific ones, but an ex-cop could reasonably know a detective and a former deckhand in a national navy could know other sailors or the names of officers. And small things like flag signals and ports.
Mine are generally simple as well. Usually it's just a short story about how they came about their powers or skills and abilities. With a couple plot hooks for the DM to tie into the campaign.
One of my favorite characters was created with the initial intent to undercut the other players and steal artifacts that they were searching for (like Indiana Jones style adventure), but the other characters were so inclusive and wholesome that he went from planning on backstabbing them to becoming close friends and faking his death so he could avoid his boss and continue adventuring with his new buddies.
I've never really had a DM that took character background into consideration.
From what I've seen all the best characters I've played have initially been intended as quick throw-away characters that had overcome that fate of being quickly cast aside. Their adventure becomes their background. Slap together a 3rd son of a poor farmer whose parents tossed them out when they were old enough, it's pretty easy to see why they'd go seek a life of adventure and there's no tedious questions about how to incorporate the character into a party.
With the long backstory one of my favourite things to engage with (as a GM) is the idea of "This is what my character thinks happened". It's a wonderful way to write backstory and learn your character, while still giving the GM a lot of room to play with.
For example, although I usually honor most of it, for one of my players I had a spark of inspiration that caused me to end up rewriting the majority of their backstory. The observations they wrote down still make sense, but the conclusions are out of whack - which makes for really interesting RP moments where both the character and player are genuinely surprised and confused when breadcrumbs of new information present themselves.
I like the phrase, "From a certain point of view," so much I stole it from Star Wars.
Very good points! I found an amusing way to incorporate the 'My 5th level character killed a huge monster' into the my backstory in a way that the GM absolutely loved. I was playing a Fire-domain cleric named Blaze (this was in the 3.5 days). In his backstory, he had three powerful nemeses: An efreet, an evil mage, and a specter--far more powerful than any 5th level character should ever be encountering. In the backstory, he finally had an epic showdown with his three enemies on another plane of existence as they battled over the MacGuffin. While my character got some good hits in (killing the efreet and wounding the mage), the specter landed several blows on Blaze, draining his levels. Eventually, Blaze was so weakened that he had to flee the fight, leaving the MacGuffin with his nemeses.
So I was playing a 5th level cleric, that USED to be 15th level, drained all the way back to 5th level. And was NOT happy about having to level up again in order to challenge his foes! I was rather proud of that backstory, and my DM thought it was amazing.
It wouldn't work now, as permanent level drain is gone--and good riddance to it! But I quite liked that PC!
P.S. The three enemies were named Llaberif, G'nimoc, and Enilio. Spelled backwards, that reads 'Fireball coming online'. Man, that was fun! This was back in, I'd say, 2002-3 or so.
I actually tend to write out three versions of my characters backstory 😊 1. Short version to hand my gm 2. Longer version with more details about the backstory and 3. A journal/diary written by my character that describes what happened but from their personal pov.
Its a really nice way for me to really get to know my character.
I usually ask for 2 sentences from a player besides their race and class: one sentence to describe their character's appearance, and one to summarize their background. nothing more, nothing less. The rest of their background usually unfolds naturally throughout the adventure/campaign
Bless the players who keep a succinct point form back story that's easy to reference.
Absolutely loved this video. It was so useful to me as a GM to break down "developing a backstory" into dot points with good examples, so that I can help the first-time player at my table turn a vibe he's feeling into a fully realised character - heck it'll even help the more experienced players!
Okay so, that last rule about "not getting too attached" to your character...I really needed that. I recently had a character (whom I LOVED) die quite tragically in game, and I was feeling pretty upset and silly that my pretend barbie was gone. Thank you for saying that it's perfectly okay (and encouraged!) to be invested in your characters; they are a little part of you! THANK YOU!
Really good advice and as always communication is key!
You couldn't be more right about not caring if your character is cliche. I love playing human "sword and board" fighters. Sorry for having fun wrong, haters!
👍
This was one of my favorite videos of yours. Excellent advice with very solid reasoning behind everything. Also I LOVED the commercial!
Those are really good points! The third one especially is something I need to consider with playing my old combat medic. He has gone on a an adventure to find a cure for a plague that killed his wife and essentially cut out the whole city from kingdom. I should be prepared that maybe the city will be destroyed or the plague will be cured by some other measure. But my character can still go and find the guy who did it or discover some other plot. Thanks, you helped me a lot!
One small addition: Make characters that WANT TO ADVENTURE.
I would also add - make players who want to be on teams. Lone wolves are so passe.
Yeah! The... the catalyst! I talked about it! 😅 It was a whole section!
Tabaxi = Catalyst "§^_^°;'
@@GinnyDi Not really, because that can mean you make a reluctant or scared hero as well! And that trope almost never works in TTRPGs: You can "get going" without really wanting to, then be scared of every little challenge and might need convincing for every heroic deed or entering a dungeon.
Unless you and the rest of your party and your DM are *really* good at roleplaying. Imho its a really big difference between books/movies and TTRPGs.
This is why "small addition". I dont doubt examples of perfectly executed reluctant heroes will come in now, but that's not the point. It's difficult and different from books and movies.
You'd be surprised how many characters have a catalyst to force them into adventure and then refuse the call when it actually comes from the DM or act really aloof from the rest of the party like the whole thing is a massive waste of their time
It can be grating
Can we acknowledge the fact that ginny did a tiefling cosplay for just a few seconds of sponsorship?
Like, she didn't have to, all the cosplays could have been human (which is still a lot of work).
This woman puts too much work in her videos
Becoming a tiefling is like 80% of my workload 😂 Thank you!
@@GinnyDi i wish i could get paid to cosplay a tiefling.
Still hard work though
@@GinnyDi I have the book, but I'm still not at all what a tiefling is supposed to be, except for your work.
Such an awesome video, Ginny! Loved it, and you presented great backstory insights! 😊
I've gotten into the habit of making my backstory an actual narrative story, inclusive of dialogue. I don't make it exhaustive in length, but I do try to weave in some of the personality of the character so the DM knows what to expect. I also always, always am sure that there are lots of open questions, plot hooks, and narrative conclusions in the history which even I don't know the answer to just so the DM can weave in his or her own narrative and make my character's backstory partially their own. It's almost always super fun to learn things about my character's past that I myself didn't even know. And I've ended up with some really unexpected outcomes.
My satyr bard backstory is she was in the feywild (born) and her older brother was holding the back of her shirt and was doing the teasing bit, he let go she started running and a portal opened up took her and she appered in her offical home where she was raised by an older human woman in an orphanage/foster home deal where she then grew up. She met and fell in love with a mysterious high elf? On the day of our first session it will be her birthday of which shes late too, she currently works at an Inn/Tavern and plays music when its slow. My DM and i came up with a lot on the fly, but im so exicted to play her! ❤ shes also dedicated to the lliira goddess of joy as a little bonus and she has a small pet snake named leviathan!
Update after playing session 1, had a player drop out after talking for the 2nd time about bad behavior, but we plan to game on at another place 😅
"If you're level one, you haven't already slain a dragon." But, hear me out, what if you did but it was entirely by accident and now you're fleeing the consequences?
I usually hate sponsored segments, but that one was epic as hell! loved the music and different costumes!
You're so good at coming up with specific examples of how to apply what you're discussing.
There is nothing wrong with cliche's. Every story you love is filled with ideas taken from elsewhere and woven into a new tale.
Dm of 22 years gonna weigh in.
#1: Player doesnt need a catayst if the DM isnt trash. It just means that a Catalyst has to happen, handin that to the DM at least for me is fun to figure out what horrible tragedy is going to befall them to push them over the Edge. Many great stories like Wheel of Time, start of in whats called the "Ordinary Life" stage of Heroe's Journey. This is a great place to start for session, getting the players into the SLice of Life mode, before dropping a plot hook.
True!
I mean, I certainly wouldn't call a DM "trash" in this situation lmao but I can agree that, IF it's communicated clearly between players & DM, it can be really fun to put that catalyst in-game! But imo it's crappy for a player to show up to a game with a character who has no motivation to adventure, unless it's been discussed. It's not the DM's job to convince the PCs to... you know, play the game.
@@GinnyDi I mean, if the player is resistant to adventure that's a bit different.
Lets take your magic shop with husband.
The Lord in the area claims you owe an extreme debt, the husband is taken to prison till the debt is paid, and your store is claimed by a sniveling rival that rubs it in.
The player now has extreme motivation. I think it is the DM's partial responsibility to bait players, I mean thats why they are called plot hooks (Fishing) and not plot rails.
It is usually best to Yes/and or Yes/but as a DM. For the player, they may not feel a connection through just a back story. To have those moment really weigh on a person you need to make them experience it. That's my 2 cents.
Completely fair! This is why I think it's so, so important for players and DMs to communicate around expectations. For me, as a GM with significantly fewer than 22 years of experience 😜, I feel like I already have enough on my plate without having to provide an individualized backstory hook to each player. I personally prefer if they give me SOMETHING that I can work with, rather than handing me a character who is happy with their life and expecting me to upend it. But that's me! Obviously you have a different style, so we'd each need to communicate that to our players.
DM of just 5 years:
This works, but in my experience only on the rest of the party or how willing the player is to work with the DM. There have been times I've worked with a player to either describe their catalyst in game, or just before they meet up in our hook session, and the player either decides to reject it, completely forgets it, or decides they aren't actually motivated by it. Or the party will decide to actively do something that thwarts the catalyst moment, leaving both me and the player scrambling to get them connected with the party. Sometimes it is my players being dipshits, but other times it's because handing something to the DM is the cheating way for them to not do backstory, instead of engaging in it. I think of a lot of it is up to the players themselves and how engaged they are with interacting with me and the game, rather than just good DM habits.
My little brother started a campaign a few months ago with an entirely original world and pantheon, and one of the best things about it was the fact that he let us (the players) create our hometowns and even the main gods of the world from scratch! It's been so much fun seeing what he's done with all of our contributions, and everyone rushes to take notes when we hear something about the gods or the hometowns that he expanded from the foundations we made
You do a great job as an instructor, storyteller, and cosplayer. I appreciate the advice you give.
I love your framing, its always very clear (to me) that all of these things are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. And the empheisis on communication with the people you play with is excellent.
I really love when players care about their characters and also get to articulate that with the campaign story! When we're able to find a way to merge their backstories with the context of the campaign and a motivation for their characters to join, there's so much room for new twists and important events to happen that all stories and adventures end up being close to their origins, making it all purposeful and meaningful.
Ginny. You are fabulous and I LOVE that you’re so passionate about your characters. Your example has encouraged me to continue to create characters with meaning and to play *as* them rather than just piloting a token around a battle map. Thanks so much and don’t let the haters get you down.
Playing in a campaign that the worlds water supply is tainted, so that is the Arc that drives everyone to work together, But working with the DM we came up with an event that Tabaxi(such as my Bard) called "The Wandering", when they reach 18 leave their clan to go check out the world and generally try to return before , or by the time they are 25. Being from a small village they know very little about the world, but seeing the world, along with running into allies and trying to save the world, along with helping them with some of their personal quest, drives us all.
Really good video!! The point about engaging with plot hooks even though they're not your character's direct goals is a great one. I'll mull over that one for sure
My catalyst for my current character is that her goddess Istus has not been seen in a long while, and 2 weeks and 5 days ago she was brought to her garden in a dream, and gay panicked so hard that they woke up in a sweat, immediately thought "the tapestries dont do her justice at all" (cause collective errors during restoring art over a couple hundred years happened,) sketched as much as they could remember and started preparing, they have been on the road a total of 5 days and was introduced to the party by falling out of a bush by their campsite and spitting out a leaf, their class is a paladin, but i dont think they have reached that point yet, so they introduced themselves as a painter... wearing full armour... i love her
I always create an image of my new characters. Usually I search the internet, but I have had friends draw a character for me. I always look at it just before the campaign session starts to help me get into character. I also share it with the DM and other players to see who they’re interacting with.😊
I was friends with my DM for years before we started playing D&D, and we're all really good at building our party before we start a new campaign. The DM will tell us what setting he wants to run, then we each say what class of character we want to play, and he'll say "All right, here are some suggestions based on the world and the story," then we pick our races and names and sub-classes, and he gives us more suggestions for our starting powers and kits.
I showed your character journal video to my friend, and she said it was so adorable.
I really appreciate this video. Many players come to the table knowing how they want the campaign to go, when I tend to run an open world. It makes it really hard for me to be flexible if the players aren't flexible.
I only have 1 character as I just started to play D&D about a year ago, and his backstory definitely fell into a few of these holes (specifically lots of lore my DM had to read) so this hit the right notes. Luckily, I have an incredible DM who went above and beyond to take what I had and weave it into their game in an amazingly surprising way that I have LOVED and the rest of the table still enjoyed. But also, yeah, I totally got too invested in him, so I'm glad you added a part about how sentiment to the character can be so wonderful
I had a player one time who did something fun with the "badass backstory for a Level 1 character" trope. She took the "folk hero" background and explained that her character, a bard, had spun a grand tale of having killed an Orc warlord based on having killed him by accident while drunk
I feel like the last point is the biggest take away from the video: Loving your characters is wonderful. Love them. Protect them. Advocate for them. And mourn them if they fall. The whole part of the fantasy is to make that connection with the imagination. To feel the rush of the story and the characters. But it's also important to try and share that and understand the other PCs when they do as well.
Thank you for this! I love creating characters with the group, and the dm presents, and this gave me words as to why. It shows respect for the rest of thr table, the GM and the work put into making the game (and I find it more rewarding). Overall great video that I will share around!
Awesome post. Going to share this with my group!
honestly i kinda already had most of this internalised for a while. for example, one of my favourite races is the plasmoid, but since they don't tend to fit outside of spelljammer campaigns. i usually reflavour them as a typical slime, or a water elemental. in one campaign there was a specific plothook where the planet had this system where when you die, your soul travels to the planet's center, and escapes back out from select locations, breathing life into the first thing it can. with a homebrew companion that was a pet rock who had been given life from this method. so i had worked with the game master to suggest that maybe that plasmoid was at one time an inanimate puddle given sentience this way, and who joined the party as she believed them to be responsible for her creation.
alternatively if the campaign hasn't got much lore surrounding it, or it has extensive lore on the material plane that would forbid a plasmoid from being from there, maybe the plasmoid was a water elemental, sent to the material plane from the plane of water for whatever reason.
whenever i've done fey druids (changelings, fairies, etc) i suggested that maybe as a rite of passage, they've been sent to learn about the material plane, and joining an adventuring group is how they can help keep themselves safe while doing so
Magic professor that's part of an underground initiative to keep their traditions alive sounds absolutely rad though.
My favorite D&D character ever had an absolutely insane backstory: he was so angry about the state of the world he had been born into (a post-apocalyptic homebrew setting, but still fantasy - the apocalypse had been magical in nature) that after the senseless death of the best person he had ever met, he decided to find a way to force the gods to fix it. He hated the gods and lived with absolute disregard for his own survival - he knew his plan was probably pointless, but he figured if he just threw himself at the world hard enough, there was a small chance of success. And if he failed, hey, at least he didn't have to live in that terrible world any more.
He finished the campaign as a Horizon Walker 19/Arcana Cleric 1, one of the world's preeminent experts on planar geography, a minor lord in his home kingdom, and a loving husband and father. To say things did not go according to his plan OR my plan would be a serious understatement.
as always: love your video! the costumes are so good! my group started a new campaign this year and we all worked together in worldbuilding with giving ideas and wishes to the GM, it was so much fun! I also had to "invent" a whole island and civilization for the elves..but that was on me for playing one ^^
“...I invite you to ignore them.” Exactly! Don’t look to others for approval and enjoy life more as a result.