My group just finished a 6-year, 16-level DD5E campaign consisting of Adventurers League content strung together. It was a lot of fun of course, or we wouldn’t have kept at it for 6 years, right?
Character backstory was 100% irrelevant throughout the campaign. I think few if any of my fellow players imagined their characters as having eventful backstories. We had only one adventure shaped by party dynamics, where we quested for a scroll to Resurrect our cleric after a bit of bad luck with death saves. Apparently the only friends our characters ever had were each other, and the small handful of recurring quest-giver patron NPCs in the AL modules.
As players in our late career years with other outside hobbies and interests, sure, we can’t all commit to every campaign session or sink unlimited time into story collab. But I feel like it could have been so much more immersive and special with just the slightest bit of story tailoring to the PCs, not just steering us to dungeon after dungeon to solve a few puzzles between set-piece battles. I feel like it must be possible to run a campaign where backstory and character evolution still matter within a necessarily flexible attendance policy.
By contrast, another friend ran 8 or 10 sessions of the “Tomb of Annihilation” book, with a lot of thought toward weaving characters into the setting using backstory and personality details solicited from each player. Such a different experience, and I was a little heartbroken when the campaign fizzled due to scheduling impasses.
How would you describe the importance of backstory and player-driven story direction in your group? What are your top tips/tricks to make D&D characters feel less like interchangeable plug-and-play potatoes rolling through a disjointed series of episodes?
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I have traditionally, with the player’s permission (important and key step!), tie their backstory into the plot by really just asking a bunch of questions.
Ok so you were at magic school but got expelled, why is that? Did you have friends or rivals at this magic school? Etc.
This works for them because they tend to flesh out their character more as they describe what they’ve been through. It works for me because it gives me people/places/things I can tie into my own half-written campaign. They may not have the details nailed out and this is good because you can fill in the blanks with pieces from the campaign that you have.
I usually do this as a little one-on-one while they’re doing character creation.
Now if you have a good player dynamic and you want to get fancy with it, you can tie their backstories together by incorporating details from other players backstories. Not something adversarial like one player having murdered another’s parents, but something that builds player context and allows them to flesh out their own characters naturally during the story.
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When I DM, I have only the loosest of stories in place, and they really just govern the NPCs and initial state of the world. Everything is player driven, like a video game. The most strict thing I may do, if the story is improved by it, is imposing a time limit. Like if there’s an army advancing towards a particular area, they will eventually get there even if the players are not doing anything with it. Every player already brings their own goals to the table, so that generally is what we figure out in session 0 so it can be incorporated into the overall plot and everyone will get their time to shine.
I’ve been playing Cyberpunk RED for around a year. Backstory is a huge part of the character creation process and GMs are encouraged to use backstory as hooks whenever possible.
I don’t really like it.
Some players like playing along with the backstory. Other players disengage fairly quickly.
It’s just another source for hooks and set pieces. If players like it, I roll with it, if they don’t, I let those plot lines dribble out. But it doesn’t really change the GMing or creative process.
Me, personally, I have slowly started to shift towards “bones-only” storytelling for my campaign settings – I build a loose plot, some NPCs tied to it, locations and a few bigger encounters. Beyond that, I want my players to not feel railroaded to encourage them to think creatively in each session, as it helps me as a GM enjoy the session more when players aren’t always looking to me to tell them what they should do next. I also usually stockpile a bunch of pre-baked generic encounters, NPCs, shops and such so that I can keep up with their story and choices.
I am DMing a 5+ year game with my friends. We have been running a player driven campaign where I provide options and they pick where they go next. Overall most of their directions isn’t based on backstory but things we did together. I did two or three adventures that had a backstory tie but most were things we did in game.
You want to be part of adventure show interest in things in world and try to interact with them
I always GM a custom story in my own world, and player backstories are a major source of that custom story. I enjoy trying to tie the different plots together. How much I base the plot on them depends on the player, rich backstory means a lot of content tailored for you. Lean story means the opposite.
As DM it’s exponentially more work to incorporate player backstories into campaigns. I try to do it because I think it’s more fun, even if the current adventure has no tie-ins the characters can sometimes receive updates from back home via messages or letters, telling them about their siblings taking an exam or finding work, or the leaves at home changing colours and Nanas leg is on the mend, or possible hooks for future adventures like most crops to the west unexpectedly failing or tensions building near the border. Or maybe a market in this unknown land will hold a PCs favorite type of sport/show, and going there they’ll find a clue or hook or boon or ally for the current adventure which they would’ve missed if that character didn’t insist on going (nothing story-critical of course, just an extra bit of help)… but this only works if you have players who it works for, and I’ve also had players who doesn’t really care for personalized story arcs - and have played in games where the story was intriguing enough that I could take or leave any personal tie-ins for my character.
So it depends in the DM, the players, and the story.
You can always talk to your DM about this. Ask if they are willing to work more of your backstory into the campaign and suggest ways to do so (dont make them do all the work). Check in with the rest of the group if they also want to weave into the story or are fine adventuring for the sake of adventuring, so you dont all of a sudden get “perks” because you were the only one to ask.
But remember that DMing is a LOT of extra work as it is, and if they dont have the time or energy or enjoyment to work characters into the story, it wont happen (or it will but they’ll burn out, and the campaign will fizzle out).
Long time back… A player with a player with a paladin character changed deities for whatever reason…
Oooo. I had a lot of fun with that as the DM
Well, I’m ashamed to say - not very much. Or at least not nearly as much as I would want, as the GM. And it’s nobody’s fault but my own.
The campaign is supposed to be a sandbox, but due to time constraints and procrastination, I rarely end up spending enough time to prep more than one path forward. There are occasional forks in the path at the end of sessions where I ask them what they would like to do in the next session, and then that becomes the one prepped path for the next session. I’m working on this. My goal is to start prepping earlier so that I have more time to prep different options. Also, prep is more fun when I start 10 days before the next session, rather that 3 hours before it.
