Character backstories
How much backstory is too much for a character? Or too little? Most of role-playing is about actually playing the game, and a character’s personal history impacts that — but how much? Backstory can add a lot, a little, or it can cause problems. So let’s talk about it.
Let’s start off with characters that have no backstories. A player’s got an idea, like I’m going to play a banished knight. Or even just a knight. That’s it, but it’s enough to fill out a character sheet. Strong person with a sword plus a few accessories, and you already have a playable knight. They’re ready for game!
Is this knight character very interesting? Well, not until the player does something with them, but not having a detailed backstory doesn’t mean that the player isn’t going to play a nuanced character who will grow and develop as the game goes. It simply means they’re starting from scratch when the campaign does. I once ran a game where I did everyone’s backstory as a series of flashbacks, so everyone began not knowing their whole history. We learned during play, as we went through the flashbacks, and the characters developed accordingly. Any character has the chance to be interesting every session of the game.
But let’s roll this back to the banished knight concept. That’s got a little more meat to it before the campaign even begins. There’s a backstory there. Who banished the knight? What or where are they banished from? What happened that led to banishment? Maybe the knight failed in their duty, and now they’ve given up on their former principles. Or maybe they are dedicated to proving themselves and their principles are more upright than ever.
A knight without a banishment in their background could play either way in game, so putting it in the backstory just means that the player planned it out. That they thought ahead to how they wanted to play and gave their character the motivation to do it. A knight with no background might not be able to answer the rest of the party when asked why they no longer follow the code — or they may have to make up a story on the spot. Any of those are fine, just a choice of how to play.
Personally, I prefer to make my characters with a little backstory to guide me in playing them. I’m not much of an actor, but like most nerds, I took a couple of drama classes and it doesn’t take an MFA to understand that knowing your character helps you to portray them. A character with abandonment in their past may see party dynamics in a very different light than a character who comes from a huge and loving family.
A list of traits could give me a guideline for playing, too. Be angry all the time, perhaps. Okay, now my character is aggressive and frequently starts fights. But I prefer to know why my character is angry. Maybe he won’t just start fights with everyone, but he can’t stand clerics because he was betrayed by faith somewhere in his backstory. Now there’s a reason for the anger, and that reason informs my play.
Backstory also gives the Storyteller some hooks to play with. They can help engineer that betrayal of faith or the banishment from the holy order, and make sure that it comes back around during game. Having a bit of a character’s backstory tie into the campaign somehow — even if it’s just a side quest — helps that player feel tied to the story. It helps them invest in the game because their story is a part of it.
I highly recommend taking some element of a character’s backstory and finding a place for it in the game, or planting a hook of your own creation in their backstory. I like to be closely involved with my players when they make their characters for that exact reason. Say that my game is going to center around a certain powerful family and how their issues threaten to crack the world in two. Then I may encourage my players to make sure their characters have families. I may drag their parents, siblings, or children into the story to resonate with my overall theme. I might add that the captain of the character’s first ship was Captain Howel — because Captain Howel is going to show up in the game. And now he’s not just some random villain, he’s one of the player characters’ old captains! Now that player is personally invested.
So is there such a thing as too much backstory?
Yes, it can happen. But how? I mean, I love role-playing and can talk about it all day. I adore dreaming up stories and creating characters, and I’ve gone down the rabbit hole more than once… And there are a few problems with going overboard on a backstory.
Just for starters, I’ve had issues with players creating elaborate backstories that I then had to throw away, and send them back to try again. They may have hinged their backstory on stuff that doesn’t exist in my game! I mean, if the world doesn’t have elves and a player hands me a backstory about a character raised by elves, then we have a lot of work to do.
This only comes up when one of my players goes off without me. If I’m kept in the loop as the backstory is being devised, I can nudge and edit. Then they can write eight pages of prose for it all, if they want.
But maybe a Storyteller just doesn’t feel the need to nudge and edit. They can take any player’s character backstory and slot it into their game seamlessly. It’s an amazing skill, and if you can do it, then you rock.
There might still be a few bumps though, and the bigger the backstory, the more bumps. I wrote a massive backstory for one of my earliest formal RPG characters. (As opposed to a bunch of kids playing only slightly structured pretend.) I littered his backstory with former romances, a nemesis and tons of tragedy, then jumped into game with my anti-hero. I spent the whole game waiting for the Storyteller to have any of my huge cast of backstory characters show up. Some did — I got to rescue my character’s daughter that he thought was dead, and be a family again — but I couldn’t help feeling a little bummed out that so many of the plot hooks I offered up didn’t get a bite.
But looking at it from the other side, it’s obvious. I mean, I had created dozens of characters and then what? Expected my Storyteller to integrate them all into his cast? Then role-play them exactly as I had written them? Played out the ending of the stories that I had written for myself? The Storyteller had his own story to tell — he was the Storyteller, so that should have been obvious. He had his own cast of characters for the plot that he wanted us to meet or defeat.
Big backstories can also create big expectations. A player that gives their character a hundred past duels and dozens of amazing adventures will be measuring my game and their performance against that. How will that player feel when their level one starting character can’t win as often or as easily as they did in their backstory? There’s a reason that my character in their backstory versus my character in play memes exist. A starting character rarely lives up to anything in a background that doesn’t tell the story of a starting character.
The backstory can collide with the game, too, and that might even be more tragic. If a player has given their character a backstory with heroic deeds and amazing villains, the Storyteller’s game may or may not live up to that. It may just not be that kind of game, and I couldn’t blame a player for being disappointed.
But we could have prevented it.
I’ve got a game on deck for my group as soon as we finish our current D&D campaign. A player has already made his character and handed me a long backstory. Because he’s playing an “older” character — 35 years, making me feel very old indeed — he’s a pilot who’s gone on more missions than I have planned for the actual game, which covers a very specific arc of jobs. Can I even live up to everything that he’s already put into his character’s background?
Maybe it won’t bother this particular player, but it’s something to look out for. If a backstory starts getting too large in scope and cast, be aware that tying it all to the story and living up to it in play might get hard.
In the end, I think you only need a few things in a backstory to give you and the Storyteller something to work with:
- A scene or event that shows what your character does. If you’re playing a rogue, what kind of rogue are they? A cutpurse or a cutthroat? A con artist? Come up with something that defines your character, an event that stands as a good example of what they do.
- Something that shows who the character is. Are they a drunken, broken wreck? Are they upbeat and kind? However you’re going to play the character, come up with something that explains why they’re that way. Maybe an assassin rogue is upbeat and kind because death is their job — living it up is what they do when they’re not working. Maybe a con artist is tormented because their true identity is wanted on false charges and they grift out of survival.
- Show how the character got their skills. Not many people just get bored and then become an expert thief. Whether they’re jovial or all business, a rogue has to get their skills from somewhere. Did they have a mentor that taught them how to be a rogue? Did they learn the hard way, in prison? What turned this person into a main character for a role-playing game?
All three of these might be a single defining moment for your character, or they might be individual events, and you can always add more. But try to leave yourself and your Storyteller room to set up for success — save some of that character development and awesome adventures for playing during the actual game.
