I wrote yesterday on the GM complaints I’ve seen regarding backstories. Something tangential I hadn’t really touched on is what makes a good backstory for tabletop play, and where too much really is too much. “Doesn’t this contradict what you said earlier about long backstories being acceptable?” – well, no, because my focus in that article was that if somebody writes you 30 pages you shouldn’t complain about it, not that a 30-page backstory is always going to be good or particularly useful. While I encourage fiction writing of backstories, in terms of efficiency and providing something to your GM, the more light bullet-point method of DailyDice‘s very reasonable ‘don’t write stories, focus on information‘ is definitely a lot better for use as a toolkit, and it’s something I usually include when writing my characters.
However… what I don’t like about that article is the point on how including certain more detailed information in a character’s backstory becomes “a spot of bother for the GM, who had a fantasy epic to tell”. I feel like this is saying ‘the GM’s story they’re writing is important, but the players’ is not’. Both of these things, the players’ story and the GMs story, can co-exist (I would even argue that they’re the same thing) – the important thing is you communicate and work on these things together. there’s no reason you couldn’t include those aspects in the story you’re experiencing together. You can write a whole bunch of really fun anecdotes and information so long as you’re communicating it and I don’t think it is going to ruin the overall narrative of the game – especially if that game is one driven by character backstories and created collaboratively.
I honestly propose that you do both things – provide the informative toolkit version and then let your creative mind fly with whatever nonsense you want to come up with. This also solves the GM-doesn’t-have-time-to-read-this problem of having a quick referencable summary of the background. It also doesn’t matter if you’re a good writer or not. Do long backstories ‘cage’ your character? Maybe, there’s some merit in the fact you can write yourself into a corner here and there, but the good thing about writing your own fiction throughout play is that it’s fiction, and can always be changed. So long as you keep the work malleable I think it’s fine to write a prequel novel you can then add and subtract from until their story is over. Be open to changes, have players and GMs work together to refine the details, and have fun with it.
I think Rich, the author of that DailyDice article, agrees with me, based on his remark of “if you enjoy writing backstories, do it more“, but I do wish he had included it in the article formally instead of as a side anecdote! There is an odd angle of separation between the two methods; where I think outright promoting both of them would be better.
Slice of Beef 