PC "Back story", why is that a thing?

[Beleriphon]

Do you have your legions do cheer-offs against Lord Hater's watchdogs? Because I can totally see you trying to hire Peepers away from him.

Personally, I prefer legions of mindless undead, but there ARE advantages to loyal minions with capacity for initiative.


Also, are you in need of a...disposal service...for the bones from those Monday night roasts?

Hey man, I need those. You don't get to be the top of the heap of evil brains in jars just by dressing like a pirate thank-you-very-much.

[Segev]

Hey man, I need those. You don't get to be the top of the heap of evil brains in jars just by dressing like a pirate thank-you-very-much.

Ah, if they're already spoken for... I'll put in a bid for just the ones who were expressly betrayed by a trusted guardian figure, then. I've been working on a new variety of slaymate formed from skeletal remains alone.

[Thrudd]

I still don't know how to write a backstory, or a personality, or a character sheet that deals with roleplay. Especially when I've thrown away every inch of "what would my character do" in favor of "what should be done as not to disrupt other people's gameplay".

You need to know what it is your character is meant to be doing in the game before you decide on a background. If you are the GM, you need to inform your players of this, if you are a player the GM needs to tell you this. Are your characters treasure hunters who explore ruins? Are they special forces operatives who get sent out on impossible missions? Are they superheroes protecting a city from crime and super villains?
Once you know what the game is about, you can decide how it is your character got there and what they are like.

Conflicts often come because people don't know what the game is supposed to be about, and everyone makes a character imagining the game is going to be something different. You make a character that is a retired soldier and humble farmer who only wants to rescue his lost daughter and protect his land from monsters. Another player makes a necromancer who wants to forge his own kingdom with an undead army. Another player makes a pacifist princess who only knows divination spells and social skills and wants to negotiate peace between all the warring kingdoms. This game isn't going to make sense, and your characters are going to step all over each other's toes, unless it is a totally contrived railroad story. That is the GM's fault, they should have told the players what they are meant to be doing and that their characters need to have compatible goals and work together.

Once you know what your character is supposed to do in the game, the rest is easy. Answer a few questions. Why does my character want to do that? What does the character want from life, what are they trying to accomplish? List two or three personality traits. There you go. Built into your character's personality and background is the motivation to engage in the activities you are supposed to engage in, just like all the other characters. There shouldn't be many conflicts like: GM: "this is what the quest is", you: "but my character wouldn't want to do that!"

[wumpus]

More thoughts:
Old school vs. New school - I guess the oldest would have to be D&D (0eish) which started out with a young fighter fresh off the farm... Or maybe a not-so-young Bilbo that is a walking hobbit stereotype (and carefully keeps up the appearance). Oddly enough, it wasn't that much latter that Traveller came out. That famously lethal character generator also pretty much described (with very low detail, more like a resume) what happened to the character from 18 to mid thirties or so. Built-in backstory if you want it (in one of the oldest old-school-games).

I guess to much of the game* is based around the old murderhobo concept (to be honest, Hercules and such pretty much defined the concept of murderhobo. It is pretty much the basis of heroism as barbarism cedes to civilization). Modern tastes have trouble justifying the murderhobo lifestyle, so need extravagant reasons for delving where mortals tend to die.

* not all games, but swords and sorcery are pretty much based on legends involving murderhobos.

[RazorChain]

You need to know what it is your character is meant to be doing in the game before you decide on a background. If you are the GM, you need to inform your players of this, if you are a player the GM needs to tell you this. Are your characters treasure hunters who explore ruins? Are they special forces operatives who get sent out on impossible missions? Are they superheroes protecting a city from crime and super villains?
Once you know what the game is about, you can decide how it is your character got there and what they are like.

Conflicts often come because people don't know what the game is supposed to be about, and everyone makes a character imagining the game is going to be something different. You make a character that is a retired soldier and humble farmer who only wants to rescue his lost daughter and protect his land from monsters. Another player makes a necromancer who wants to forge his own kingdom with an undead army. Another player makes a pacifist princess who only knows divination spells and social skills and wants to negotiate peace between all the warring kingdoms. This game isn't going to make sense, and your characters are going to step all over each other's toes, unless it is a totally contrived railroad story. That is the GM's fault, they should have told the players what they are meant to be doing and that their characters need to have compatible goals and work together.

Once you know what your character is supposed to do in the game, the rest is easy. Answer a few questions. Why does my character want to do that? What does the character want from life, what are they trying to accomplish? List two or three personality traits. There you go. Built into your character's personality and background is the motivation to engage in the activities you are supposed to engage in, just like all the other characters. There shouldn't be many conflicts like: GM: "this is what the quest is", you: "but my character wouldn't want to do that!"

This is a very good point and one of the reasons I get the group together for a pre-session where we discuss what we want to play and collaborate on making characters and backgrounds. This means that the players don't all show up with a mismatch characters that don't work well together.

[2D8HP]

This is a very good point and one of the reasons I get the group together for a pre-session where we discuss what we want to play and collaborate on making characters and backgrounds. This means that the players don't all show up with a mismatch characters that don't work well together.

Definitely an advantage of "table-top", which I just don't have that time anymore, I'm finding the auditioning part of PbP difficult. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since the DM does most of the work, and I presume for PbP they must quickly "weed out" PC's and players who they think will be inappropriate.
Man do I miss tabletop! It would be so nice to roll dice with friends again....

[Beleriphon]

Ah, if they're already spoken for... I'll put in a bid for just the ones who were expressly betrayed by a trusted guardian figure, then. I've been working on a new variety of slaymate formed from skeletal remains alone.

On topic, that exchange of ours is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of character background. It gives a pretty clear example of how a character behaves, but at the same time is short enough to easily remember. I mean if you really think about some very iconic characters have very straightforward backgrounds.

Superman: Alien baby crashes on Earth, and is raised by the kind Kansas farmers Johnathan and Martha Kent. He gains incredible powers under the Earth's sun and uses his powers to save people and protect the world.

Batman: A young boy's parents are murdered during a mugging right in front of him. This affects him so much that as an adult he decides to become a detective-ninja/ninja-detective to make sure no child has the same thing happen.

Spider-Man: Radioactive/bioengineered spider bites highschool student, giving him incredible spider related abilities. Highschool student tries to make money, leads to paternal caregivers death, takes paternal caregivers advice to heart: With great power comes great responsibility.

Robin Hood: English nobleman comes back from the Third Crusade to discover that King Richard has been taken captive in the Holy Land. Determines Prince John is in control and a douche and ends up being an outlaw to fight back and help the poor.

[Max_Killjoy]

Man do I miss tabletop! It would be so nice to roll dice with friends again....

Same here.

[Red Fel]

Superman: Alien baby crashes on Earth, and is raised by the kind Kansas farmers Johnathan and Martha Kent. He gains incredible powers under the Earth's sun and uses his powers to save people and protect the world.

Batman: A young boy's parents are murdered during a mugging right in front of him. This affects him so much that as an adult he decides to become a detective-ninja/ninja-detective to make sure no child has the same thing happen.

Spider-Man: Radioactive/bioengineered spider bites highschool student, giving him incredible spider related abilities. Highschool student tries to make money, leads to paternal caregivers death, takes paternal caregivers advice to heart: With great power comes great responsibility.

Robin Hood: English nobleman comes back from the Third Crusade to discover that King Richard has been taken captive in the Holy Land. Determines Prince John is in control and a douche and ends up being an outlaw to fight back and help the poor.

Dude! Spoilers! Not cool.

[goto124]

This is a very good point and one of the reasons I get the group together for a pre-session where we discuss what we want to play and collaborate on making characters and backgrounds. This means that the players don't all show up with a mismatch characters that don't work well together.

Would there be a session or two afterwards, where players get to tweak their PCs' backstories, when they realize something that sounded cool in their heads didn't work out so well in practice?

[Segev]

Dude! Spoilers! Not cool.

He is evil. And Rosebud was his SLEDDOG.

[gooddragon1]

Why backstory? Because it's one of the best tools for determining how my character's actions would come down, and how they would differ from my own.

My character's actions never differ from my own. They're like the avatar from avatar the last airbender. They know everything any of the others knows and anything I know. Even the ones that are going to have selective amnesia if necessary. Especially the ones that are going to have selective amnesia.

[Beleriphon]

Dude! Spoilers! Not cool.

Bwahahaha, I will ruing everything ever for you: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, Snape kills Dumbledore, Harold and Kumar get to White Castle, Frodo destroys the One Ring, Thorin Oakenshield dies, the movie Gladiator is about gladiators, and the Titanic sinks at the end of the movie.

[Pyron]

Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father ...

How is that possible? They have different last names.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

My character's actions never differ from my own. They're like the avatar from avatar the last airbender. They know everything any of the others knows and anything I know. Even the ones that are going to have selective amnesia if necessary. Especially the ones that are going to have selective amnesia.

So... Nothing like the Avatar?

[RazorChain]

Would there be a session or two afterwards, where players get to tweak their PCs' backstories, when they realize something that sounded cool in their heads didn't work out so well in practice?

Last time I gave them WHOLE 6 sessions to change their characters around. No fun being stuck in a long campaign with a character you don't like.

[gooddragon1]

So... Nothing like the Avatar?

Well at least kind of like the avatar?

[Balmas]

Personally, I don't like writing massive backstories, but I need to have at least a little bit of knowledge of why my character is adventuring and why he does the things he does. It just makes things have more meaning and more entertainment. For me, at least, Druz the Hale, who adventures to bring home money to his poor crippled mother, means more than Druz, level 4 Dwarf Fighter who wants gold. And it makes people feel different and unique. When each character has backstory, they feel unique.

Examples: Harold and Starlight Glimmer are both Hardholders, which means that they run a town with their army of gangsters. However, they feel completely different because they have different backstories. Starlight Glimmer is paranoid, a narcissist, and has turned Our Bunker from a facility devoted to science to a Paranoia-ish friendship training exercise, but she actually cares about the people under her care. Harold, on the other hand, knows that he's old and can't keep running New Bellevue forever; as such, he's started to carefully sabotage the city in the hopes that someone who can do the job better than he can will notice and take him out. Same class, same abilities, completely different feel and motivation.

[2D8HP]

Personally, I don't like writing massive backstories, but I need to have at least a little bit of knowledge of why my character is adventuring and why he does the things he does.

O.P. here.
@Balmas, your examples of "backstory" seem great, though I would label them more as character "descriptions" than "histories". My puzzlement (and "beef" really) is I guess I'm used to a time when you'd "roll up" a PC that would be on paper just stats, a name,.and maybe a physical description, and/or an illustration, then the GM would start narrating what the PC perceives at the adventure site, and only sometimes narrate what brought your PC there (I don't remember anyone "back-in-the-day" using the phrase "rail-roading, but I guess that's what it was, we just accepted it as the price of the ticket).
What I find unsettling and upsetting is the new (to me) requirement that as part of an audition to play the game, I must now write increasingly long histories of what brings my PC to the adventure site.
Having been a DM and experiencing how much more work it is than just being a player, I realize that "beggars can't be choosers", and that if I "want to dance, I need to pay the piper", but still I dislike the experience of instead of my PC being "railroaded" to the adventure, I as the player am being required to write content that I have no interest in, if I want to play. I'm used to the GM narrating a scene, and then thr player narrates their PC's reaction to the scene.
This new (to me anyway) RPG style of "you tell me your story, and then I'll tell you mine", just isn't as fun for me.
Maybe I just don't fit in with RPG'ing anymore, the increasing realization of which first made me angry, and now makes me sad.

[Balmas]

DCC uses the strangest dice of any system that I know of, and it's pretty retro.

D&D is the original "funny dice" game.

What, exactly, is wrong with degrees of success? It's hardly a new concept, and not really tied to "narrative" games.

Well, you might want to try out this awesome system called Apoc--

What are your thoughts on Apocalypse World (and AW-based games)? The player declares an action, the GM decides if the action is possible for the character and helps the player figure out which move to use. The player rolls 2d6 and add the appropriate stat. A 6 or lower is a failure and means the GM is going to make bad consequences. A 7-9 is a partial success - the player succeeds, but either has to pay a cost, make a decision, or the GM adds some sort of complication to that or a future scenario. A 10+ is a total success with no drawbacks.

Yeah, that! I've quickly come to enjoy Apocalypse world as one of my favorite systems, both as a player and as the GM, and partial successes are a large part of that. Partial successes mean that there's a bit of leeway in how you respond to the player characters.

That sounds somewhat better than "yes, but..." and "no, but..." on almost every roll.

AW is not a system I've had a chance to pull apart in detail.

Well, you're in luck. Apocalypse World is a system that can be picked up and learned in fifteen minutes, tops. And all you need to play as a PC is contained in the free ref pages, of which 90% is different character playbooks.

As I said before, partial successes are a large part of the reason I love Apocalypse World. They give the player a lot of power in how they want to handle a scene, and the GM gets leeway in how to answer the PCs in their various schemes.

Spoiler: A*W Stuff

Show

Let's take a hypothetical scenario, shall we? Shoeless Bill is trying to sneak into The Immortals' stronghold so his group can know how to get in with the full army.
D&D: Bill adds up all his skill points and bonuses, etc, for Sneak and Move Quietly. Both of these checks are binary checks; failing either of them means that you're detected.
A*W: Bill tells the MC how he's sneaking in. The MC rules that since this is probably a stressful situation, Bill should roll Act Under Fire, which is 2d6+Cool.

10+, sweet. You're in, no issues.

7-9, you get in, but there's some complications--you know how Old Gumshoe has been missing for the past few weeks? Well, now you know where he went. He's strapped to the rack, and one of the Immortals is standing over him; if you get the plans, Gumshoe might not be alive by the time you get back.

6 and under, well, I guess I get to make one of my MC moves, These can be as simple as Announcing Future Badness--while creeping through the vents, you find out that the Immortals have struck an alliance with Tundra Town to get better weapons. Or maybe I choose to Capture Someone; you join Gumshoe on the rack. Or I Take Away Their Stuff--that fancy knife you got there? Yeah, while you shimmied up the wall, it slipped out of its sheath and fell into the moat. That was your only weapon, wasn't it? Damn.

And after every move, "What do you do?" Apocalypse World is all about what the players want to do, what their actions mean. While D&D is about can you do this, IE, Can you vanquish this army of gnolls come to kill your town, Apocalypse World says, "Of course you can. You walk through the valley of death and fear no evil, because you are the baddest mother****er in the valley. What's that mean to you? What do you do with that power?"

Apocalypse World starts each player out at with a high ability to screw with the world and each other in various ways. The Brainer is that weird freak who can reach into your soul and make you his puppet. The Hardholder runs the town, mostly because he's got an army at his beck and call. A regular doctor might be able to fix you up if you get shot up, but the Angel can raise you from the dead if need be, so don't piss them off. Again, what do you do with that power?

Angel, Henderson staggers into your clinic; he looks like he was on the wrong end of an assault rifle. Remember, this is the same person who screwed you over a week ago. Do you help? If so, what price do you extract? What do you do?

Gunlugger, the Hardholder is threatening to evict you from your home if you don't lead his army against your home town. As the Gunlugger, you are effectively every action hero in the world combined; if needed, you could probably shoot your way out of the Hardholder's entire army, though you'd get shot to hell and back again. What do?

Savvyhead, you've been working on that death ray for a while now. I don't want to say that it's been stolen, but when you wake up, some of your schematics have gone missing. Tell me, who took them? What do?

O.P. here.
@Balmas, your examples of "backstory" seem great, though I would label them more as character "descriptions" than "histories". My puzzlement (and "beef" really) is I guess I'm used to a time when you'd "roll up" a PC that would be on paper just stats, a name,.and maybe a physical description, and/or an illustration, then the GM would start narrating what the PC perceives at the adventure site, and only sometimes narrate what brought your PC there (I don't remember anyone "back-in-the-day" using the phrase "rail-roading, but I guess that's what it was, we just accepted it as the price of the ticket).
What I find unsettling and upsetting is the new (to me) requirement that as part of an audition to play the game, I must now write increasingly long histories of what brings my PC to the adventure site.
Having been a DM and experiencing how much more work it is than just being a player, I realize that "beggars can't be choosers", and that if I "want to dance, I need to pay the piper", but still I dislike the experience of instead of my PC being "railroaded" to the adventure, I as the player am being required to write content that I have no interest in, if I want to play. I'm used to the GM narrating a scene, and then thr player narrates their PC's reaction to the scene.
This new (to me anyway) RPG style of "you tell me your story, and then I'll tell you mine", just isn't as fun for me.
Maybe I just don't fit in with RPG'ing anymore, the increasing realization of which first made me angry, and now makes me sad.

Part of me wants to put it down to different strokes for different folks. If I'm honest, I give reasons and histories to even characters that I make in things like Skyrim and New Vegas; my Courier, for example, is an ex-Legion slave who hasn't figured out the VATS function, while my Dragonborn hails from Orsinnium and came to Skyrim to learn of the clans there.

What about backstories don't you like? Is it the difference between what you're used to and what the group wants you to do? The extra effort beyond "This is my character, let's go kill things?" Am I misunderstanding?

[Cluedrew]

(I don't remember anyone "back-in-the-day" using the phrase "rail-roading, but I guess that's what it was, we just accepted it as the price of the ticket).

I don't think it is railroading if you are on board with it.

Personally I avoid the whole audition thing by running games with people I know. Even when I did a lot of online stuff it was mostly friends and friends of friends who became friends. Of course even then we tended to have more verbose start up/introductions than in a table top game, but that is because what your character was doing was the easy bit, it was the conversations that are hard in play-by-post.

[2D8HP]

If I'm honest, I give reasons and histories to even characters that I make in things like Skyrim and New Vegas;

Sorry, I had to Google those. I'm pretty much out of the loop when it comes to most pop culture after the 1980's.

What about backstories don't you like? Is it the difference between what you're used to and what the group wants you to do? The extra effort beyond "This is my character, let's go kill things?"

Yes, all those reasons.
I want to experience fiction, not write the prologue.
But it's also that I just don't see as much utility in a character history as in a character description (which may be my bias in that a character description is easier for me to write than a history). To hopefully illustrate what I mean:

"Two horsemen cantered leisurely along a narrow, dusty road. They presented a sharp contrast. The larger wore a tunic of unbleached linen, drawn tight at the waist by a very broad leather belt. A fold of linen cloak was looped over his head as a protection against the sun. A longsword with a pomegranate-shaped golden pommel was strapped to his side. Behind his right shoulder a quiver of arrows jutted up. Half sheathed in a saddlecase was a thick yew bow, unstrung. His great, lean muscles, white skin, copper hair, green eyes, and above all the pleasant yet untamed expression of his massive countenance, all hinted at a land of origin colder, rougher, and more barbarous than that of Lankhmar.

Even as everything about the larger man suggested the wilderness, so the general appearance of the smaller man—and he was considerably smaller—spoke of the city. His dark face was that of a jester. Bright, black eyes, snub nose, and little lines of irony about the mouth. Hands of a conjurer. Something about the set of his wiry frame betokening exceptional competence in street fights and tavern brawls. He was clad from head to foot in garments of gray silk, soft and curiously loose of weave. His slim sword, cased in gray mouseskin, was slightly curved toward the tip. From his belt hung a sling and a pouch of missiles.

Despite their many dissimilarities, it was obvious that the two men were comrades, that they were united by a bond of subtle mutual understanding, woven of melancholy, humor, and many another strand. The smaller rode a dappled gray mare; the larger, a chestnut gelding."

There you go! Two characters, that are to me well established! That's what I'm talking about!
Did you notice how very few words described what they did in the past? It's all about who they are not were!
I like reading history, and fiction that reads like history (or an entry in a travel guide book) when I'm alone.
But when it comes to role-playing in a game with others, I'm impatient to get get to the action that's in the scene.
I'm certainly not patient enough to want to write how: "Sir Schmoe grew up in a manor overlooking the valley of zzzzzz.....", when I just want to get to the part were the GM says, "The road is blocked by trees that looked like they had been felled by lightning. You can hear the sounds of approaching horses. What do you do?".
And I guess it is missing the style of RPG'ing that just didn't make these kind of creative demands on players.
And that may be because the style of RPG'ing that I learned is obsolete now that there these fancy new video games you referenced that (may) provide a narrative experience that guys like me used to get from friends, dice and paper. I doubt that I will.find out because I simply have too many demands on my time and wallet (a newborn to take care of for one) to want to become charmed into getting any.
But from what I'm reading I"m guessing that "tabletop" RPG's are now more like improvisational theater practice than how I remember the games being played. Which means that my desire to have the fun I used to get playing what.were called FRP's will go unfulfilled because I am not a good enough actor and writer.
I get some hints reading this forum that.some still.play the way that I was familiar with, but I can't find a way for me to, and for all I know soon a "writer's workshop" experience will be all that's left.

[gooddragon1]

As you may have guessed from my previous posts: I hate having to write a backstory. Of any length greater than none.

But why play D&D 3.5 then? Why not play an mmo or something?

Because an mmo cannot attain the flexibility that pencil and paper has since any story it has must be programmed in. Also because I am too lazy to make my own stories in computer games (such as skyrim's editor for example).

Why 3.5 in particular? Because some of the other recent editions sacrificed things for balance and/or speedy play. If I wanted speedy play I'd play an mmo.

However, tying this back to the backstory, I am too lazy to write a backstory, but I want a nice slow game that isn't strictly tied to the inflexibility of computer coding with hard defined walls. A good DM can let you go outside the "walls" of a forest that you are traveling through. The computer game will make your character moonwalk in place. None of that should require a backstory. Sure it helps a DM to tell their story by putting your character into it, and maybe it's selfish to make them work harder since they have less to use, but they still get to tell their story. If I have to make all my characters with selective amnesia then that's what I'll do. But I don't want to do the writing, that's why I'm not a DM.

Note: I used to play at a D&D club at school. I almost never had to make a backstory.

[Milo v3]

I require my players to create a backstory for their characters. Though, that backstory might just be two sentences long and I generally help my players brainstorm ideas.

[goto124]

Going by the description, I would much rather play DnD over AW. DnD seems less... frightening for the novice. Somehow...

I'm used to the GM narrating a scene, and then thr player narrates their PC's reaction to the scene.
This new (to me anyway) RPG style of "you tell me your story, and then I'll tell you mine", just isn't as fun for me.

Does the GM not give info on the game and setting inside the pitch of the game?

Part of me wants to put it down to different strokes for different folks. If I'm honest, I give reasons and histories to even characters that I make in things like Skyrim and New Vegas; my Courier, for example, is an ex-Legion slave who hasn't figured out the VATS function, while my Dragonborn hails from Orsinnium and came to Skyrim to learn of the clans there.

I feel that doing that is rewardless - the game doesn't know you gave them a backstory, and there's not even any sort of acknowledgement from other players when you act in a non-optimal way.

I sometimes act in non-optimal ways even in a video game, but not for roleplay. Instead, it's for a 'hard-mode' thing, or a 'I'm just really curious' thing. Sometimes I would reload at a save point over a hundred times just to poke at a rock in over a hundred different ways and see how the game's reaction changes. I can't do that when there're other players waiting for me to move on with THEIR stories.

To be honest, I've learnt from some painful experiences () that I vastly prefer the other type of freedom that video games give me. I take my time to poke the world, then share my experience with others on forums. All the benefits of interaction with like-minded players, and none of the drawbacks of actually having to deal with them during gameplay itself.

[PersonMan]

I feel that doing that is rewardless - the game doesn't know you gave them a backstory, and there's not even any sort of acknowledgement from other players when you act in a non-optimal way.

In general, it can be nice to have a general guideline for what to do when there is no optimal choice (or at least no visible one) and it can feel good even when it is just an "only for me" thing.

[Âmesang]

As a bit of an off note I'm reminded of the character creation mode in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and its ability to give your character an ending text crawl… and then being %&#$'n annoyed that, unlike the ending text crawls for the regular characters, yours would always be in capital letter and there was no carriage return/line break option.

Or maybe a "page break" option; I can't recall, I just remember wanting to have a little pause at the end before finishing with "Have a Nice Day!" in reference to MK Raiden's and MKII Shang Tsung's endings.

[Jay R]

Bwahahaha, I will ruing everything ever for you: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, Snape kills Dumbledore, Harold and Kumar get to White Castle, Frodo destroys the One Ring, Thorin Oakenshield dies, the movie Gladiator is about gladiators, and the Titanic sinks at the end of the movie.

I like the way you mixed in a couple of false ones here, to throw people off. [Frodo doesn't really destroy the One Ring, and the Titanic sinks 80 years before the start of the movie.]

---------

Back to the topic. Rich Burlew wrote:

... in any gaming group, there is the guy who writes 34 pages of background information for his 1st level fighter, and then there is the guy who writes nothing for a character starting at 15th level. Evert player has a different idea about how much backstory is appropriate or even desirable.

I've given up trying to explain why a long backstory is both appropriate and desirable as part of my character creation and later role-play. The people who don't feel that aren't going to start feeling it after I explain.

Similarly, I don't care why some people don't want a back story.

Create your characters your way, and I will create my characters my way, and we will all have fun.

[Quertus]

, and only sometimes narrate what brought your PC there (I don't remember anyone "back-in-the-day" using the phrase "rail-roading, but I guess that's what it was, we just accepted it as the price of the ticket).

Even if it's, "having slaughtered the mayor and his family, your paladin finds himself on the road out of town", I'm not sure it qualifies as railroading.

Or I Take Away Their Stuff--that fancy knife you got there? Yeah, while you shimmied up the wall, it slipped out of its sheath and fell into the moat. That was your only weapon, wasn't it? Damn.

And after every move, "What do you do?" Apocalypse World is all about what the players want to do, what their actions mean. While D&D is about can you do this, IE, Can you vanquish this army of gnolls come to kill your town, Apocalypse World says, "Of course you can. You walk through the valley of death and fear no evil, because you are the baddest mother****er in the valley. What's that mean to you? What do you do with that power?"

Savvyhead, you've been working on that death ray for a while now. I don't want to say that it's been stolen, but when you wake up, some of your schematics have gone missing. Tell me, who took them? What do?

What happens when the character's response to dropping their favorite dagger in the moat is to bail on the inflation, and go retrieve their dagger?

How did the Savvyhead lose his schematics, if the NPCs can't take actions?

I've ran D&D as what do you do. Oddly, IME, it worked better at low levels. What makes AW different, that this works at "high level"?

[Bohandas]

Spider-Man: Radioactive/bioengineered spider bites highschool student, giving him incredible spider related abilities. Highschool student tries to make money, leads to paternal caregivers death, takes paternal caregivers advice to heart: With great power comes great responsibility.

Ostensibly spider-related