Quote Originally Posted by Herobizkit View Post
I have a similar running gag in games I've run over year, stemming back to my earliest DM days. We always had one player who wanted to roll a Barbarian and hit stuff for damage and his backstory was always "ALL MY FAMILY IS DEAD!" I've since carried this to my new groups as a way to NOT do backstory (as I mine the player's characters for story ideas, from their skill choices to their weapon preferences to their age and race).

In D&D 5e, for example, choosing Urchin or Hermit is KIND OF lazy in that it doesn't REQUIRE much thought into a backstory but still gives you some very important/useful skills. Not everyone is great at backstory and, ultimately, it's just backstory - it's not relevant to the game in front of you unless you or your GM MAKES it relevant somehow.

The easiest answer to this is the same as the answer for most creative processes - keep asking "Why?" until you don't have an answer.

ALL MY FAMILY IS DEAD.
"Why?"
ORCS KILLED THEM.
"Why?"
ORCS ARE EVIL.

This (ORCS ARE EVIL) becomes a defining point in the character - they see orcs as evil because a tribe/hunting party killed their family. The DM now has some meat to work with: what tribe, are there/what are the other tribes, where are these tribes located, where are they right now? Who leads them? Who/why did the Orcs actually attack?

Then the DM can ask the player some questions (what did they look like, did they kill everyone or just your family, where were you when this happened, how old were you) and voila, character enrichment.
Maybe a parent killed an Orc's pet doggie and wanted to do something to return the favorite. Perhaps an irate member of the Orcmane Society Against Cruelty to Animals.