How Do You Make A Good Backstory With Your Character Sheet?

[Bartmanhomer]

Hey everybody. How do you make a good backstory with your character sheet? To me I just make my character using a good backstory that makes logical sense and also fits to my character. How do you make a good backstory?

[exelsisxax]

I can't. I always make builds to bring together a character concept. Since i know the character, backstory is easy.

I also hate the idea of backstory, so i always try to avoid it in favor of pure characterization. Maybe give that a try.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I usually look at the sheet and start asking myself questions about why the character has various attributes, relationships, etc.

Granted, some games (e.g., Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World & related games) make this easier, but I can usually find something to work with.

[Recherché]

This may sound strange but I interview my characters. Letting them talk gives me a better idea what their "voice" sounds like. It conveys not just what the character thinks is important about them but how they feel about it.

Spoiler: Example interview

Show

"“Hello Prima. I’d l-“

The woman chained to the interview table remains completely still but somehow her rage is evident.

“That isn’t my name. Prima is just your designation for me. “First.” Does that mean first of my kind or merely the first you got working?”

Her voice remains flat and strangely calm.

“Tell me, have there been others before that you melted down and erased as failed experiments? The same way you’ll do to me when this is over.”

“Okay then if you don’t want to be called “Prima” then what is your name?”

The interrogator sidesteps her question but his face looks rather more concerned at the woman’s words and he scribbles down frantic notes on actual paper with a physical pen.

The entire interview room is quite odd. There are no cameras, microphones or any other electronics visible. The guards are armed with simple batons of all things and the locks holding the door shut and the handcuffs closed are crude metal monstrosities not sophisticated and secure biometrics.

“I name myself Lacuna.”

On closer inspection even the woman is quite strange. Possibly not even a woman; it looks more like a child’s doll given life. Porcelain skin without pores or flaws. Shiny white wig hair. Pupil-less dark ruby eyes. Or perhaps cameras it’s hard to tell. A doll’s unreal face that looks even more disconcerting trying to express emotion. And most damming of all, a series of computer ports starting at the base of the skull and trailing over the back of the neck down into its shirt.

“Did you name yourself “void” or was it that [expletive deleted] Rybrin spy?”

“Does it matter? Erin, she was my only friend. The only one who saw me as more than a failed experiment-”

The interviewer makes a sound to try to interrupt her but the doll continues.

“- and yes I know that I was a disappointment. I know that I’m not good with reading people but it was pretty obvious that I’m not you wanted out of this. You thought that I should remember more. That I shouldn’t have these issues with people. You thought you were creating a person and not a machine. But the truth is that I’m both and Erin helped me see that. So I name myself Lacuna and I assert that I am a sentient being and thus deserving of all rights of one.”

“Did she make you try to escape?”

Lacuna pauses for a second completely still not breathing.

“Erin did not make me do anything. Were you not listening? Have you not been paying attention? I have free will. She is the one who told me that you planned to rewrite my memory because I was a failed experiment. I have a sense of self preservation. Did you think I would walk calmly to the headsman’s block?”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

Somehow despite the robot’s flat affect the lie is as obvious as a child’s.

“Prima, Lacuna whatever you want to call yourself, this is the nice version of this interview. In the not so nice version we deactivate you and dissect your memory for useful information before getting started on version 37. Where is Erin?”

“I don’t know for sure. We got separated. I think maybe she died during the escape but . . . calculations are only 72.89% chance . . .”

"“Has it occurred to you that Erin could have been lying? She was a Rybrin spy, what makes you think she wasn’t just trying to steal an advanced research project? You said it yourself, you’re bad with people, you lump of nanos.”

“Perhaps she was just trying to steal me. But I stole myself. I am a person, not a thing. And the guard to your left has a small implant in his Brocca’s lobe. It’s meant to correct severe epilepsy. It actually has extensive control over his brain.”

The interviewer begins to look noticeably panicked. Lacuna attempts a smile that comes out looking menacing.

“He called in an imminent asteroid strike to this facility 12.125 minutes ago. Evacuations are already in progress. Which of course means that drones have been deployed to evacuate all prisoners. How long do you think it will be till one of them comes close enough to this room for me to control?”

The guards and interrogator are already running before Lacuna finishes speaking. They leave the door open on their way out but neglect to unlock her shackles. That’s okay. She can be patient

.

[Man_Over_Game]

I do it step by step, starting by the most relevant aspects that you, the player, are going to be interacting with every single session. Player actions first, backstory second.

The fact is, a lot of people come up with the backstory first and try to create a character that fills out that history, but that doesn't work. Players play how they want with what feels natural to them. They don't change their personalities to match the backstory, so I recommend changing the backstory to fit the personality. Start with your playstyle and work backwards.

Like this:

1. Actions
   Your character is mostly going to be reflective based on how YOU, the player, are going to act. So decide how that is first. What feels natural for you? Do you like the concept of making complicated acts in combat? Do you like the idea of commanding others to do your bidding, or using magic to manipulate people? Because the reality is, you're not going to narrate your thoughts, you're going to act on them, so decide what those acts are first.
   ------------
2. Mechanics
   Decide which of the available options best fit those mechanics. So you want to cast magic, sure. Maybe you don't want to be booksmart like a Wizard, but a natural born Sorcerer fits the bill. Once again, we want this character catered to how you want to play, so do your research.
   ------------
3. Thoughts
   Now that you know how your character plays, start filling in his thought process. Maybe he wants to defeat his enemies efficiently, or maybe simply tackles the largest threat out of fear. If this is a strategy game for you, why isn't it for your character as well? Or maybe you're just trying to get one step ahead of your "teammates".
   ------------
4. Reasoning
   Now we start to flesh out the personality of your character. You know what your character does, but maybe not necessarily why. It's pretty understandable that a wizard may want to show off his smarts, but come up with a distinct reason why. Maybe he was a nerd throughout his life and wizardry was the only thing that earned him respect so he shows off his intellectual prowess now that it's valuable. If that doesn't feel fluid enough for you, come up with another reason why he shows off his smarts, like a superiority complex. Keep coming up with reasons that back his actions until something feels comfortable.
   ------------
5. History
   You understand his actions, his personality, now fill in the things that built this personality and his powers. Make a character or two in his history. Make it tragic or humorous. Not every hero was built from sacrifice, some are just raised into heroes.

That way, when your teammates unravel your backstory, it won't feel tacked on, but they'll instead see it as a natural part of how they see your character.

[Mastikator]

I usually build the stats first and then invent things for the backstory to justify all the skills or lack thereof. The pieces of backstory gets puzzled together into a cogent story that also informs the world view of the character, or sometimes I decide on the worldview and work backwards what kind of backstory would produce it plus the skills.

It's actually very easy if the DM throws you a bone with the setting and lets you carve out a tiny bit of it for your characters backstory.

How does this character learn to pick locks? If he's wealthy and upperclass then he picked the locks in his parents mansion or castle, if he's middle then he picked the locks of abandoned houses, dungeons or whatever.
Or maybe he is also street smart and has underground connections so he used to roll with a gang and he learned lock picking from there.

There are a million ways to do a backstory backwards and it's easy once you get started.

What I like about this approach is that it gives me a reason why the character has whatever worldview and skills I want that feel organic and plausible.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

There are some good tips above. On a side note, I am not very original. I am however inspired by things. I listen to some Alice in Chains type music during my commutes to work and my mind goes wild. Some tv shows as varied as Sons of Anarchy, Veronica Mars or even this one movie about an evil babysitter on Netflix have all worked their way into my character backstories.

[Kaptin Keen]

There seem to be two types of backstories.

One focuses on delivering some sort of path to the game mechanics represented on the sheet: I learned to pick locks from Old Man Thompson, I had to pick up knife fighting in middleschool because Jeremy hated me so much, and I learned to program computers when I landed a job at IBM as a teenager.

The other focuses on personality: Angry Joe is so angry because it's how he's found success in life. When he was bullied as a child, he was at first sad, and closed himself off from everyone, just wanting to be left alone. But eventually, it just became too much, and by early puberty, lo and behold, he'd also outgrown most of his bullies. He took his knuckles to the face of the worst of them, and explained just how he felt about him, writing letters of pain to make sentences of bruises and a broken nose.

I find it's worth mentioning that most backstories are gutwrenchingly bad. That's ok - they're not supposed to be works of art, and we're not authors of litterature. But they are shallow, pallid and full of the very worst clichées. For that reason, often don't even focus on making a good story - just inform of the details you feel are important.

Unless you happen to be the kind of writer who can craft a backstory that flows like a poem and sticks in the memories of others like a burr in fur. If you can, then stop fugging around and write books.

[SirBellias]

Generally I don't make very good backstories, they're usually just enough to inform where the character came from and where they're trying to go. The rest will become readily apparent when I make things up on the spot.

For the few that I put more thought into, here's the list and ranges:

Outlook: Optimist to Pessimist
Mentality: Idealist to Jaded
Method: Rational to Emotional
Defining Traits: What do most people know about this character after their first interaction?
Occupation and Freetime: What did they do beforehand, and why?
Hook 1: What's the easiest thing I can give to the DM to screw me over with?
Hook 2: What's a more obscure thing the DM can make something more out of?
Locations and Background NPCs: Family and their points of relevance.
Mechanics: What stats and choices would best reflect these relationships and ideals?

Note that I didn't have this written up before I made the characters, this is just the outline of the thought process in hindsight. I bounced everything around with the DM to make sure it fit. Most of it will probably not get used, but many of the DMs I play with appreciate more locations and people to populate their towns and pull up in case something unexpected happens.

[2D8HP]

I'm usually partial to "Was poor, found sword, wields sword, searches for Ale, Gold, Monsters, and Wenc charming conversationalists, plans to get rich or die tryin'!" myself.

[Quertus]

I have to create my characters like I have to write: in order.

History must come first, to inform personality, which then informs choices (like character class). Otherwise, I'll have to go back, and fix the latter parts of the character when I create the earlier parts (or the character will be an incoherent mess, but that is not an acceptable state).

That having been said, as I came from a "rolled stats" background, I'm not unaccustomed to having to work backwards - although having to work backwards probably accounts for some of why I deem most of my characters "unplayable".

To further muddy the waters, Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named? I had been playing around with several different ideas / "seeds", at different levels, when I got frustrated by how several of the people I played with just never got it, never saw the elephant, and I couldn't comprehend how that was possible. So I had the sudden inspiration to apply everything I could imagine contributing to such tactical blindness to a character's backstory, to see what came out. I realized that it could be combined with / combined it with several personality, goal, and mechanical seeds I already had, and voila, Quertus was "born".

[Tentreto]

A lot of what is above is good, and most people have their own way of doing backstory, which gels best. Personally, I like to start by concept, and move from that. Starting from just a sheet, using generators and similar can be very useful for giving ideas. What I like to do is give each of my characters a trait which defines, or influences everything they do. For instance, I had a bard who I decided both really wanted to record a saga, but was very paranoid. How these two traits arose helped provide backstory as well as framing for his arc in the future.

The other side I value is deciding how high or low in plot presense a character has. If I want to play more in the background, or as a way to contrast with other members of the party, I decide whether they are, say, a peasant or a noble.

Mostly, I would suggest giving yourself a few points of background, such as an occupation, and a reason for adventure, and fill in the rest natrually as play goes. This both allows you to get a feel of the character, and possibly the setting. Allow yourself a few secrets if you want as well to help provide later backstory as you play.

To get back to the beginning though, these are all various ways to do it that depend on the system and your own taste.

[DMThac0]

I'm of two camps when I make my characters, and it really comes down to how I'm feeling at the time of character creation.

Either I have a character concept in mind and build the sheet to match the concept or I have no clue what I'm going to be doing, roll the sheet and then create a concept based off the information in front of me.

Style A: I had this idea of a pacifist wizard who was an annoying intellectual. I already decided that he grew up in a time of war, the death and destruction made him swear off killing unless he was given no other choice. I rolled him up and chose to give him low STR, avg DEX and CON, high INT and the WIS/CHA was whatever was left. I chose an Acolyte background to fit the bookworm and hyper intelligent nature. I then chose spells that would manipulate the battlefield, control the enemies, and other spells to subdue or weaken my foes. He ended up being a dictionary for whatever it was the party came across (the DM of the game let me use my 30 some years of DMing knowledge to mildly meta-game as long as I was in character). I flaunted my knowledge, spoke effeminately, and condescended everything and everyone. I was also superior at being socially inept...

Style B: I was invited into a pre-existing game and had no clue what I could do to help the party out. I decided to have a bit of fun and randomly roll everything. I got a Dwarven Barbarian who had the Entertainer background using the Gladiator variant. I ended up rolling pretty decent stats but the oddest thing was that I had a huge CHA score. From there I looked at the rest of the party and realized that they were a very stoic group with one player who was indecisive and another who made the worst decisions at the best of times. I figured I needed to give them something a bit different in terms of attitude at the table, since they already had a bruiser I wasn't bringing anything new. I had the makings of an overzealous entertainer who wanted to charm everyone he came across and make them fans. In a fight he was a frenzied berserker but had a strange habit of not wanting to hit women and always tried to show his enemies where their shortcoming were.

---

As an aside I started a campaign with a session 0 that started with "You are all from a village that has known no war, no strife, and has a mix of almost every race possible. It has been an orphanage and safe haven for children of prestige due to it's safety and welcoming nature. You are all just entering adulthood, having yet to leave the sanctuary, as a result you have no backstory...you are going to use this game to write it."

It was a struggle for many of the players to wrap their heads around it, but in the years that have followed they've really taken a shine to the fact that they are in charge of how their characters have grown and are impacting the world.

[AMFV]

I do something that's very close to what others have discussed here.

The first thing I usually do is come up with the mechanical concept for the character. I create the mechanical character in it's entirety completely. So I have a character that works mechanically and fills the mechanical role I have in mind for it.

Then I start looking at the implications of feats, traits, or whatever the system equivalent is beyond the mechanical thing I'm getting out of them. Let's say I'm building a Fighter/Wizard in Pathfinder, I take Magical Knack, because of what it does mechanically. But reading that trait it has a really significant impact on your character fluff-wise. So that sets up a lot of my character's backstory for me. The Noble Scion feat (or whatever it's actually called) that let's you dump Charisma to Initiative is another excellent example of a feat that has a lot more story consequences than it's mechanical consequences.

So once I've done that, I'll know a little bit more about the character's backstory and perspective. Then I start going through skills as other people described. Basically I try to think about "what sort of person would have that skillset." I usually come up with a few different options as well. And then I narrow it down to ones that meet with the story stuff I have from the first step.

Then, I start thinking about character personality. This should be tightly interwound with the character's mechanics. A careful defensive trip build fighter is going to have a very different personality than an ubercharger. Basically, at this point I start thinking about things that are inherent to the character, feats or traits or skills that represent the character's nature, rather than things they've learned. Once I have looked at those I start looking at things they've learned, and I think about "what might make a person with the personality I'm now imagining decide to learn those things"

Then I start putting the pieces together and I have a pretty good character concept, with a tiny bit of backstory, and a personality. The last step is to work them into the party and the adventure. Figuring out what hooks to put into their backstory for the DM to grab, figuring out how they want to interact with the other party members and the like. Then it's pretty much ready to play.

[The Insanity]

What is this "backstory" you're all talking about? Tongue-in-cheek.

[AshfireMage]

Echoing others here, mostly

Step 1 is coming up with a vague "what do I want?"- I kind of think of it as a vibe you want for the character. Do you want to be a tough, streetwise person with no magic? An aristocratic vampire lady with a deer motif? Figure out what the core of the character is. A bit of mechanics, a bit of backstory, whatever.

Step 2, make a character sheet. Do it in pencil or in a computer/web version that lets you make changes easily. Don't fuss too much about the details, but create a functional character sheet that looks like something you want to play, keeping in mind what you decided on in step one to guide the big choices.

Step 3, back to the backstory. Now is when you look at those core concepts you wrote down in Step 1, along with the character sheet from Step 2. Figure out how all those skills and features and such all tie into the character's story- where did they come from? How has having them affected their life? Flesh out the events before and after the big ones you've put there already. Explore their personality. By the end, you should have a pretty good bio sitting there.

Step 4 is to go back to your character sheet and tweak as needed. Maybe you created this character thinking they'd be really good with a sword, but decided along the way that they'd actually use guns instead. Or that you picked the wrong spell list. Or whatever. Now's the time to go back and change it.



Usually, this will keep the problems of both having a character sheet, rather than a character (because you started with a concept, rather than a list of mechanical traits) AND having a cool story that doesn't connect to mechanics in any way (because you did the mechanics before you decided all the details of the character)

[Quertus]

You are all just entering adulthood, having yet to leave the sanctuary, as a result you have no backstory...you are going to use this game to write it."

It was a struggle for many of the players to wrap their heads around it,

Yeah, me too. To run such a character, I'd want pages of virtual backstory (ie, in my head) to know things like that my character loves singing (but is tone deaf), walking through the woods, and collecting rocks; which girl(s) or guy(s) they've taken a shine to, what they like to eat, what they do for fun, etc etc.

Unless they were literally born yesterday (Warforged), everyone has a backstory.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I like to keep it fairly bare-bones. The high risk nature of adventuring makes overdeveloped back stories a lot of potentially wasted effort. Eg the character I'm currently playing died in his first combat of his first session to the first melee attack aimed at him (scythe crit). If I'd done more than about half a page of backstory on him (and decided to let him stay dead) I'd have been quite a bit more irritated by the situation than I already was. As it is I'm only irked at the nasty hit against his gear (sold off to pay for raise read).

Past that, I just go down the list;

What's his goal?
Why is he the class(es) that he is (eg who taught him)?
Where is he from (cultural considerations)?
Is he typical of his people or a black-sheep (beyond the normal for an adventurer)?

Once I've got a couple sentences on each, I'm good to go.

[Kyrell1978]

I try very hard to limit it to necessary information but find myself writing short stories more often than not. Mostly, I am in the camp of relating how and where the character learned the skills and abilities on the sheet, but I also try to include some sort of future goal for the character and give the DM something to work with (i.e. a dependent or loved one to threaten or an interest of the character that can be played upon) should he or she so choose. The DM that I am playing with currently (when I'm not running) doesn't terribly mind the longer stories because it helps him flesh out the world that he's in the middle of building.

[Spore]

As of lately I take a look at the character like a writer would do.

1) What are the character's strengths and weaknesses? Those don't need to be excessive in either direction but no one wants to hear about the perfect life of a perfect person. The story is not worthy to be told.

2) What could be interesting stakes that influence the character's motivation to adventure longterm? And more importantly, how do these tie in with the DM? You can play a vampire hunter, you can play a wizard interested in the underdark, but usually not in a campaign focussed on fey creatures. Additionally create a bit of a backstory other than "last survivor of raid on family property" or "lonesome badass that does not care for anything or anyone".

3) How would your backstory warp the character you originally had in mind? If he is the older brother of a mischievous little sister, he may be protective. If she has an abusive aunt that made her father's life a living hell, she maybe has trust issues. If your family is divided because the head of family is a greedy person going down a dark path, maybe you want to acquire as much power and influence to pull them back from said dark place feeding into a desire for loot and allies.

4) Can the character backstory influence the campaign in any way? This is usually moreso the DM's turf but you can make sure your backstory is easily accessible and provide several good hooks that don't require the party to jump through hoops. Have the town's jarl be the father of the barbarian and have him pull some political weight. Give the wizard's master a research project that aligns with your goal to stop a demon invasion.

[Zhorn]

I like to keep my specific character details vague enough to be malleable to the DM's story, and the goals to be personal but non-urgent so if the adventure doesn't go down a particular route, I can justify my character following the main thread rather than forcing the party down my own personal quest.
If my character can't answer the call to adventure, or is too focused on their own adventure over the groups's; then I start over.

As an example, my fighter Reginald:

• Raised in a soldier family.
• Left the traditional profession of the family to become a man of learning.
• Got a position as a guard/apprentice to a wizard
• Wizard got killed mysteriously
• Reginald found a letter with a list of names left to him by his mentor, but no information on what those names mean
• Set off with an adventuring group to travel about and possible track down some of those names to uncover what happened

DM took this and was able to leave in links, side quests, and occasional threads to the main story line, but otherwise didn't hijack the story.
Rogue still got to run some heists, Barbarian won a body-building competition, and the sorcerer became the chosen one of prophecy.... Ranger sadly didn't do much, but that was mostly from declaring their character would hide in the inn all day (doubling down into their cowardly hermit story).

Some DM's love the super long and detailed backstories, but usually for when they are drafting out the campaign and are looking for ideas. If their about to launch, stick with something you can fit onto a 3x5 index card.

• Where did your character come from?
• What explains their skill set?
• Why are they on an adventure?

Everything else can be filled in during the game

[Knaight]

I just make them the same way I flesh out NPCs, and generally to pretty similar levels of depth. Which in this case means it's pretty minimal, but will generally get added to added to as necessary, which is likely to be heavier for PCs than NPCs. Still, a fun bit character concept is a solid starting point, and fitting that around a role is core NPC creation.