>player writes a 5 page backstory on Google docs>actually decently written, fits the world with no adjustments needed, and gives her character a clear solid motivation for adventuring>game time>does literally nothing across 9 sessions to pursue the character goal she wrote and chose for herself>basically acts like an NPC following the party around doing whatever the group thinks is best (none of which, matter of fact, ever involves any of their backstories)>only 1 of 2 PCs in a party of 5 that actually wrote a backstory with a motivation for adventuring. neither of the 2 ever try to accomplish anything related to their backstories, even with hints and connections given to them on a silver platterwhy are ployim like this
>>98319179>sheThere's your problem
Every character option available in the game should fit in without needing any external written material from the player, let alone 5 fucking pages.Why are collaborative storytelling fags like this?
>>98319369Fipper bipper
>player losing ingame argument as character>immediately starts talking like they do IRL and arguing like it's a high school debate club
>>98319179Tell us a little more about your players' party and what your campaign/plot premise is.Without knowing any of that, how are we supposed to know that it's the player's fault and not yours?>>98319434Writing a backstory forces you to solidify your character concept and can be a fun exercise. As long as they include some cliff notes, and don't use fucking AI for the damn thing, there's nothing wrong with doing this if you find it fun.
>>98319179Seems like you got AI'd anon
Refer to pic related, OP, it will help your confusion
>>98319179>I am a Viking.>I seek riches, fame, and adventure.>I already told you I want riches, fame, and adventure; leave me alone.
>>98319489There isn't any need to force anyone to "solidify" their character in a game that has internal consistency with all of its options.
>>98319522That doesn't take 5 pages
>>98319538Who said anything about forcing someone to write a backstory?I said that if the player wants to write a backstory, unprompted, they will need to make certain decisions that will solidify the concept.Being able to follow and display the level of engagement that your backstory implies you will have is another matter, and that's what the OP is complaining about. Being a bad player has little to do with writing a backstory (or not), and you can't use it as a reliable indicator for player quality.
>>98319179I think it can be a fear of having their motivations derail the game.I'm like that a little when playing since I don't want to be accused of Main Character Syndrome.
>>98319561If you like, I can fill in the details of his life story, from his conception to the present day.
>>98319610>he plays a "game" with railroads
>>98319614I would like to read this.
>>98319620Don't snow crash people man, you're gonna break someone
>>98319179Have you tried talking to her?
>>98319610It's a legitimate fear when playing with bad players or an inexperienced GM. If you trust your fellow players and GM, don't be afraid to take the spotlight sometimes. If people do call you out anyway, and you're sure that you're not acting outside of reason, encourage them to step up to the stage themselves and support them in doing so. If the game's healthy, it'll make it better. If the game's unhealthy, it'll expose that and maybe give you all an opportunity to fix it.
>>98319620Or maybe not a railroad, but anything somewhat linear.>>98319434I don't get how /tg/ doesn't understand that there is a lot of space between le epic backstory with five pages and basically nothing at all.I've always said here that not writing a thought out (not to be confused with long) backstory is doing a disservice to your experience as a player.It makes it easier for your character to have a place and history in the world and not appear as if they were popped in when the adventure started.
>>98319606>Who said anything about forcing someone to write a backstoryNobody.I said there wasn't any need to force anyone to solidify their character to the anon who said that "writing a backstory forces you to solidify your character" (>>98319489).What I'm saying is backstory is completely unnecessary for people who want to play games, and a well-designed game will have each of its aspects (player options / challenges / goals) consistently fit in with and account for all others.The character options established backstories and motivations on their own in consideration of the game's challenges and goals. Why is the fugitive princess out there fighting the monsters that are invading the world? Who knows, right? Better write five fucking pages of bullshit that doesn't affect gameplay, right?
>>98319669I see. Sure, a backstory is unnecessary. That's besides the point, though, since the player writing is is obviously doing it for their own enjoyment. My argument is that if the player actually enjoys doing it, and it increases their engagement, what's the harm? It's not like they expect the GM to cater to them in a special way because they wrote a backstory, right? If they do, then yeah they're in the wrong, but that's not the impression I got from OP.
>>98319657>not writing a thought out backstory is doing a disservice to your experience as a player• Character A is a fighter with no backstory, the player just made a name, chose a race, rolled his stats, and decided his starting equipment.• Character B is also a fighter, but the player wrote an extensive history of his family name, created a coat of arms for him, established his relationships with near and distant family members, went into detail about his character's childhood, his training, and what his hopes and dreams are.• Both characters perform decently in their earlier levels, as fighters do, drop off in performance mid level as fighters do, and fall behind at high levels, as fighters do. Neither DM gives either fighter the magic items a fighter needs to keep performing well against the magical monsters encountered.How has Character A's player "disserviced" himself more than Character B's player, given they had the exact experience PLAYING THE GAME?>It makes it easier for your character to have a place and history in the worldThe character's place and history are determined by the options the player chose to build them with, in a good game that maintains internal consistency.I'll repeat myself as much as it takes for you to get it.
>>98319657>I don't get how /tg/ doesn't understand that there is a lot of space between le epic backstory with five pages and basically nothing at all./tg/ does understand it, you're just giving (you)s to obvious trolls who last gamed when 3.5e was the new hotness, if they ever played games to begin with.
>>98319713I didn't say there was harm to collaborative storytelling, I just asked why collaborative storytellers were the type to write excessively when the activity is supposed to be a game.
>>98319720Character B can have points from the backstory become relevant in game which character A will never have.>>98319724I blame myself for assuming good faith >>98319730One of the appeals of DnD and similar games is the freedom to affect the game in any way. Backstory is the most freedom you get as a player and that'll naturally draw people who really want establish it.
>>98319657My feelings have changed a couple of times over the years, generally based on the group I'm playing with at the time. If I know the group is going to want a beer and pretzels game, I'll usually just not share the backstory or share a TL;DR and keep the rest for myself. It's rare, but sometimes a GM will feel very pressured when presented with a backstory, so I try to be aware of that possibility.Since my expectation is generally that the GM will ignore it, it's happened a couple of times that I share it and then had the concepts in it are butchered or latched onto in weird ways that I don't really want to engage with. It all gets unnecessarily complicated when people have unspoken expectations around backstories, so I can certainly understand the argument to just not use them, but I agree that it would be a loss, since they're fun.
>>98319179Players, passivity be thy name.Or to elaborate:>People make social assumptions>Social assumptions generally dictate ceding authority to the group>But everyone chose to cede authority to the group>Now people are making milquetoast party calls, as they are too scared to push for something personal amongst the groupNot a guaranteed remedy, but feel free to remind the party that their characters might care about some background story elements they have so they can pursue related ideas. Also remind them that they can actually make assertions and push ideas for the group.
Y'know on the subject of story vs. game or whatever, the last session that was spent without a single die rolled was the nail in the coffin for me and I disbanded the group. At that point you're just sitting around doing pretend silly voices.>>98319369Trans too. I should've known better.>>98319489>Tell us a little more about your players' party and what your campaign/plot premise is.Sandbox. The "plot" is built entirely around the PCs backstories, but they are free to roam the world and explore as they wish and there's plenty for them to do within the world, although much of it isn't necessarily connected to those backstories.However, for that "plot" to emerge, it requires the players to actually engage with their backstories and make reasonable efforts towards pursuing them.>>98319515My kind of game necessitates Main Character types at a bare minimum and frankly I don't cater to anything less.Unfortunately, it was pretty much exclusively wallfowers-normoids, although one of My IRL friends occasionally stepped up to tard wrangle and acted like a sandboxer for a bit, but it's not easy when 1 person is doing literally all the work to make the game fun.>>98319522Fine enough, but that wouldn't need 5 pages, nor would there be much "interesting" components from your backstory to engage with/pursue.>>98319610Can't derail a sandbox. The rail is up to you to build yourself.>>98319637I did, actually. I talked to the whole group multiple times to the effect of "hey guys you're spending a lot of game time pissing around and I find it extremely boring, I need some initiative here" and it was usually met with 2 or 3 people saying "sorry about that" with dead silence from the others. My IRL friend convinced Me to thug it out but I saw the writing on the wall from session 3 and quit for My own sanity after session 9.>>98319643Good man.
>>98319749>I blame myself for assuming good faithPeople who play games don't feel the need to state the obvious, while the contrarian trolls like to get attention by saying nonsense.
>>98319179Man, I recently had this from the other end. I was pushing really fucking hard for engaging the evil empire and fighting them, leading operations and pushing for resolutions in a game which was starting to overstay its welcome. But the GM was constantly delaying things and encouraging us to pursue goals from our backstories, including things our character had expressly chosen to give up on in favour of pursuing the greater good and doing what needed to be done. They'd grind stuff to a halt to force backstory and drama stuff on us when all we wanted to do was kill the fucking lich. Everyone was so worried about him when we figured out he was behind the deaths of like hundreds of people before the campaign started, but somehow he's just taking it easy now until we've had months to RP the mage's transformation into a vampire (unrelated to the lich), resolved the fighters' tragic past, and while the thief does everything in their power to avoid talking to the other party members.Just run the game, if your players aren't engaging with something, that's their choice.
>>98319770You write in a reasonable way so I think you're probably in the right. Good call to end the game, if it's not finding it's flow after the honeymoon phase, it wasn't going to work. I exclusively run very short games when playing with a new group of people. Always preferable to want more, rather than want less, and that way you can pull the good ones into a longer game.
>>98319730Oh, sorry. I had read your post as implying that a 5 page backstory actively detracts from the game. Sure, it's longer than you'd expect, but doesn't take meaningfully more energy to read than a 1 page backstory. Unless it's badly written, in which case at least the red flag is upfront.
>>98319749A good game will have everything relevant to it included from the start.Do I need to repeat myself yet again?
>>98319770You need to recognize that your group needs a bit of a push and start feeding them plot hooks. It is a easy to think that they're just being lazy or whatever, but you have to remember that the players have far less information about the world and do not have nearly as clear a mental image as you ought to.
>>98319720sounds like Character B's player is probably going to be more emotionally invested and therefore have more fun. i'm not sure why you think the end goal of playing a game is to minmax stats or collect items. it's a game. the end goal is for the players to have fun retard
>>98319967Because he's a basic contrarian troll that /tg/ can't seem to stop feeding.
>>98319813Interesting to hear the opposite perspective of it.>Just run the game, if your players aren't engaging with something, that's their choiceI absolutely agree. However, the problem stemmed not just from a lack of them following their backstory goals, but from a lack of them following ANY goal. Even side quests/objectives/etc. that you could say were spoon-fed to them often got ignored or only half-finished before they'd go somewhere else.The serious wake-up call for Me was the last session where I brought in a new guy to fill in for somebody who had to drop from the game, and during the session I could tell he was trying to tard wrangle the group into doing SOMETHING - whether it was related to their backstories or not was irrelevant, he was just trying to get them on track to do ANYTHING, but instead pretty much the entire rest of the crew sat back and farted around for 2 hours before finally coming to "okay maybe let's investigate that crime we heard about" and then spending the next 2 hours doing nothing to actually investigate the crime. I wish I was exaggerating, they spent pretty much the whole 2 hours going back and forth like "do we want to investigate this?" "something bad might happen if we investigate this" "we are peasants who have no authority and the guards told us not to interfere with their investigation, maybe we shouldn't investigate".And it wasn't just that last session that was like that. The majority of the other sessions were practically identical until/unless My IRL friend would say "Hey guys, we said we wanted to go hit that dungeon, let's go hit that dungeon" but still that usually took at least an hour for him to get everyone on board with it and I don't blame him for not wanting to carry 3-4 other people like that.
>>98319967Sitting around making retard voices and listening to stories isn't fun and it isn't playing a game.
>>98319369Holy FPGOATP
>>98319836>I exclusively run very short games when playing with a new group of people. Always preferable to want more, rather than want less, and that way you can pull the good ones into a longer game.Yeah, I assembled a new crew through discord (same place I found the others except My 2 IRL friends) and made sure to hammer it in that they need to be very proactive in this sort of game. I feel like a lesson was learned, considering I knew where things were going after just 3 sessions with the last group, so now if I end up in that position again I can call it when I need to.Granted, a huge part of why I pushed to 9 is because My tard wrangler friend kept saying "nah bro they'll get it soon trust Me" whenever I'd bitch to him about it and tell him I didn't think they understood the kind of game I was running. Both he and I have learned from this.>>98319947>start feeding them plot hooksTrust Me, I tried to meet them sort of in the middle by being way more obvious and ham-fisted about the available "things to do", and it resulted in >>98320148. I couldn't count the amount of times I explicitly said "House Macara was supposedly responsible for the crime that just happened" last session, with nobody ever asking to follow up, look for House Macara or it's agents, etc.>>98320161NTA but I agree, however I also agree that a backstory can add another element of fun to the game for players who want it and GMs who'll accommodate it.
>Playing BITD>You get half your experience points for expressing your goals, drives, heritage, background>We've been playing the same characters for 3 months>Leech player is trying to justify why he deserves exp, and he just can't do it>Ask him point blank what does his character believe in other than doing scores>"I'm not prepared to answer this question."Honestly felt hopeless in this moment, and I'm not even the DM
>>98320172Never played the game, but you're telling Me a nigga can get XP just for saying "I want to do x", and this guy couldn't answer that??
>>98320556Basically.
I have a player that has always written over extensive backstories before the session began, and I've found him to be the least flexible when it comes to actual play at the table. I think it's because when you write something yourself you have control of the direction and scope, but at the table, things happening might not perfectly fit that feeling you had in mind. the person may not be as flexible as is ideal for tabletop.
>>98319179Oh it's almost like the conventional play acting game sucks shit and only works for tv shows.
>>98320148Your players long for the railroad, all the live long day. Rail them anon. Rail them hard.
>>98320556"I want to do X where X is not stealing." In a game where what we're doing is stealing. Can't bro just want to Steal in a game about being Ocean's 11 in an average neighborhood in Milwaukee?
>>98320788A trick I've been using for years, but it only works if you start doing it from session 1 is to say:"The premise of the game is that you're a dude who is going to rob Old Mr. Plinkett's house. Tell me WHY you are going to do that? Are you in debt to the mob or desperate to pay for your gandma's cancer treatment or what?"And just never back down, the premise of the game is you steal shit, if you don't like that, GTFO. I have never once had a player leave, and honestly I've only a few times ever had to push harder than just the "tell me why" line.
>>98319179I've found that (pre-written) backstories are generally overrated, and it's more important to define a character's personality and general motivation since those will influence how the character is played at the table.>>98319657>It makes it easier for your character to have a place and history in the world and not appear as if they were popped in when the adventure started.The big hurdle I've experienced is that unless the GM is running a published setting with lots of established lore, there usually isn't enough information available about the world to figure out how the character fits in before the game starts. Writing an elaborate backstory in those situations is bound to produce something that clashes with whatever the GM has in store. The way I've adapted is that now I'll add details to a character's history during gameplay, should the inspiration strike me. That way I'm more satisfied with something that seems appropriate in context, and no one needs to know that I'm actually improvising.
>>98320788>"I want to do X where X is not stealing." In a game where what we're doing is stealing.We're not actually stealing, we're playing Vigilantes, and he has no character beyond "Some people just gotta die".Our characters all agree that some people gotta die, but there's more to life than that.
>>98319179Backstories are gay. Narrative gameplay is gay. My name is Frizbo the Wizard, I am adventuring because I want money and power, I functionally have no family or friends outside of the party, I don't want to play theater kid with your gayass AI generated NPCs, I want to roll dice to hit a goblin with a lightning bolt.
>>98320148Sounds like they were bad players, yeah. You've got to have some initiative. Would imagine that the backstory you got was probably AI
>>98319179Let me explain what's going on, OP. You can pay people on fiver to write a backstory for you. Some of them are pretty good writers, can adapt to the setting and DM prompts. write with the play experience in mind, and so on. Obviously the player barely has a clue of what it says.
>>98319470I hate that one so much.I'd be fine if they kept that going, I prefer a player playing themselves with some tweaks over not playing at all because they can't imagine their character doing the things they want it to do. But then they go back and pretend the discussion they were desperate to win never happened.>>98319522You could make it a bit more fun. Like you want to show your asshole farmer dad that you're better than him or you want to bang exotic women. It doesn't have to be deep, just more interesting than a piece of cardboard that will be ignored whenever you can't come.>>98319720Character B gives me tools to adress him directly when rolling on a rumor table and if he has more ideas if he wants to do something that a chatbot wouldn't do. I'd expect Character A to eventually decide on something, but usually it will be a lol random player that doesn't care too much about other people.It's like self grooming. No one likes someone who only thinks about that, but that doesn't mean you can skip of taking a shower. Neither extreme affects the mechanics, but it affects the people at the table.
>>98319770>"hey guys you're spending a lot of game time pissing around and I find it extremely boring, I need some initiative here" and it was usually met with 2 or 3 people saying "sorry about that"In my experience, and this is a very personal solution that might not work for everyone, you kinda have to teach them to act. Like those white ladies teaching music class in the bronx and fixing the black population in the movies. You're pressenting demands, but you're not telling them how to fulfill them. Which they don't know. What works for me is a mix of short railroads, like 10 minutes of no control so I can push them to something the same way you'd set up the start for a one shot, and heavy spot lighting, adressing them directly and asking them to do something with vague descriptions of options available for them (nothing defined enough that could be replied with "I do that"). A few people stay a wallflower no matter what and I accept that's all I'll get from them, if they're cool outside of the game I might be fine as long as they are the minority. Most people eventually start taking action once you give them a bit of inertia.
>>98320556Yes.It's half a reward for people who remembered to play the archetype they chose and half a reward for people who chose to make shit harder for them on purpose.>>98320788did you watch the movie? the characters that didn't have other shit going on were NPCs, the main characters had to deal with shit that got in the way of the heist. That's how the genre works. You also get XP for playing into the archetype so you probably didn't play the game either.
>>98319179They're afraid of criticism and/or looking stupid. They don't want to risk being called out or making a fool of themselves. I've seen it a thousand times. It's difficult to fix. Some players respond well to being put on the spot by me asking them "alright, X, what do you do?" But some don't and just retract further. Some solve this on their own with time. When they feel their position and inclusion in the group is unthreatened, they'll come out of their emotional hidey hole. I can't tell what kind your player is though.
>>98319179>shethere are no girls on the internet you retard
>>98319179My best guess? It was a sandbox game that you ran, which requires a specific type of autism to get into. I (sort of) understand the appeal, but you have to understand, 99% of players *want* to be have bumper rails on, even if they don't want the illusion of "complete freedom" to be broken. Give them a goal to accomplish out the gate or at least after the first dungeon, and these types will rabidly engage with your prepared storyline even more so than the sandbox players with their own ideas that they came up themselves.It doesn't have to be straightforward in the least, and it can be modular, changing with the player's choices and actions, with success and failure states, but you have to recognize that (successful) sandbox games require a specific type of player that you're unlikely to find casually. There's also the passivity for some sandbox GMs when it comes to making things actually happen. I've been in five different sandbox games as a player myself (all of which died natural deaths of zero interest by all parties), and only one of the three GMs I had for those sandbox games actually put in any effort in changing the world state beyond what the players do.It's not that my characters were ardent defenders of the status quo, and just sat on their asses, but without complications arising naturally from the world around the game, I could see the arc of the game- inevitable success after success due to my character's prep and tactics, or frustrating, boring failure, which is the fault of the dice game mechanics more than anything else. It is as played out as progression fantasy, which is ironic, because sandbox players are usually the ones to tell the GM with a plot to their game to write a book.
>>98321656Reading through the thread, yep, it was sandbox problems, as expected. The real skill involved with sandbox games isn't even managing a whole living world, it's managing to suss out the type of player who actually wants to play a sandbox game to begin with. (What they say doesn't matter, no one knows what they want and words are useless in determining such.)
Games?/tg/ - Gossip
>>98320967I don't actually see a problem with this kind of backstory, but if your character motivation is:>I want gold, glory, and goth bitchesThen when we get around the table and I ask what you wanna do, and between sessions while I'm preparing, I expect you to tell Me:>"I'm going to seek out gold, glory, and goth bitches.">>98321286It was definitely cliche and unoriginal (noblewoman who's entire family was murdered) but it was written well enough that I doubt it was AI, and if it was, it was cleaned up very well.>>98321310Honestly it was a really weird disconnect between how invested she seemed in writing/building it up, we even fleshed out a couple NPCs together, and then when we actually sat around the table just got straight nothing.>>98321347>you kinda have to teach them to actY'know what's funny back when I was a teenager I was the main DM for our IRL group but I quit for about a year after these guys spent also about a year straight pissing around in our 5e game and going through characters every 3 sessions. During that year, other people took My spot, during which I'd make proactive characters and tell them to take notes. It's the only reason My one IRL friend who was with us was able to tard wrangle them as hard as he did, but I don't blame him for finding it tiresome since nobody else was putting in that effort.>You're pressenting demands, but you're not telling them how to fulfill them. Which they don't knowNo no, I made it pretty clear to them. I was just paraphrasing. "Tell me what you want to do between games and I will prepare accordingly to give you that thing to do", "it's your responsibility to actively follow-up on/pursue your character goals, nothing will be handed to you, take notes and stuff", etc.. I would agree that it's pretty impossible to complain about a problem if you know how to solve that problem but won't take a step to do so. But with this particular problem, the onus was on them to act in order to solve it.
>>98321656>99% of players *want* to be have bumper rails onYes, but it's frustrating to explicitly advertise "sandbox game" and be met with people who, by their own admittance only a few sessions deep, had no idea what that was and no idea what they were getting into and even after explaining to them still made no active effort to participate.>>98321667Agreed. I've got a new group I assembled, and I've learned enough that I can smell whether they'll be a good fit in <3 sessions. If I feel they're not gonna work, I'm gonna find new people again. Rinse and repeat until I get the group I need.
>>98319179It just proves backstories should be as spartan as possible if they exist at all, and gameplay should dictate character development
>>98322397>people who, by their own admittance only a few sessions deep, had no idea what that was and no idea what they were getting into and even after explaining to them still made no active effort to participate.players are desperate to get a table, even more in 5e, so you have to check they read the premise at all.I ran a MCC funnel once and had to double check they knew what they were getting into and only then they aknowledged that it wasn't 5e, that they would have 5 pregens per player, and that it was post-apocaliptic scifi. One of those signed up anyway, cool dude that ready to try shit out, another one kept me like 20 minutes answering questions that felt obvious before ghosting. I like the huge pool of players the internet offers, but you'll find dozens of the worst player you could find irl.
>>98322397>Yes, but it's frustrating to explicitly advertise "sandbox game" and be met with people who, by their own admittance only a few sessions deep, had no idea what that was and no idea what they were getting into and even after explaining to them still made no active effort to participate.This is largely due to how wherever you look, you see people constantly decrying railroads and saying sandboxes are better for giving players freedom.And so every player concludes that they should want a sandbox game, even though they have no actual desire to exercise that freedom or player agency and would much rather just be strung along a series of setpieces.
>>98319496This shit happened to me in the early 2000s so unless AIM chatbot was may more advanced than I remember, it's probably not ai
>>98319179I've dealt with this before - what you have here is not a player character, it's an OC. Your player froze when it was time to actually play because her character was created to be an object of worship, not a person whose story actually advances. Not all female players do this, but every player who did it at my table was female.
>>98319369>>98319179I find it hard to believe that any woman player wouldn't be trying to make the campaign about her particular backstory.
>>98319369yeah
>>98319369>>98319443Fucking retards trying to push instagram tier trolling on this board. Fuck off.
>>98322935>so you have to check they read the premise at allLearned that lesson the hard way. When I was putting together the new group, I treated anyone who obviously didn't read the post (such as asking questions that the post answered) as automatically disqualified.>>98323549A great tragedy.>>98324072Unironically explains a lot.
>>98324072PS to >>98324254There's a nicety of being a GM in that there's more players than GMs and thus an abundance of players looking for games. It's relatively easy to assemble players for a game as a GM, compared to finding a game as a player. However, the twist on that blessing is that as a GM you have to do a lot to find THE RIGHT players for your table.
