# DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?



## Sacrosanct (Mar 4, 2020)

Back in the early 80s, whenever we DMd, we rarely incorporated PC backgrounds into the actual adventure. PCs were pretty generic at level 1, and it was the adventure that created and was the catalyst for the stories. Perhaps it was because the game was more lethal back then, especially at low level, so you really didn’t spend a lot of time creating a background if there was a good chance you’d die. When we DMd, we had a story and adventure in mind. Either from a published adventure or a home brew adventure and world we fleshed out, and we stuck to key NPCs, monsters, and areas as they appeared.

Now I notice I DM much differently. Sure, I have an adventure and plot all in mind, but the players spend a lot more time creating character backgrounds. And I do my best to incorporate them into the game before session one. And in between sessions, I continue to have private conversations with players about their PC specific story arcs. I’ll change NPC names, or add a few NPCs based on the backgrounds I get, and make them core to the adventure. The overall plots stay the same, but what I’ve found by doing this is that it makes no two campaigns the same, even if they are the same adventure I’m DMing.  It’s a much more collaborative approach to story telling while still maintaining control of the game world, story, and NPCs

so where do you fall?  Do you pretty much run adventures as written, without changing them based on character backstory?  Or do you fully let players dictate parts of the game to fit their story?  Or somewhere in the middle, like where I’m at currently?


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## gepetto (Mar 4, 2020)

I dont incorporate backstories at all. On the whole I find them generally obnoxious, both as a player and a gm. I tell people that right from the beginning though. Keep it generic, just explain why your character chose to involve themselves in life and death adventures instead of a 9-5 job. You can should use it to guide your characters personality and choices, not to try to co-author the campaign. The campaign develops from choices made during play not before it starts. 

But then i hardly ever run a published adventure either. So i dont need to worry about customizing generic content for the characters.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 4, 2020)

Changing the backstory of the world to account for the PCs runs perilously close to meta-gaming. It's better to just forget about these characters, in order to avoid overstating their importance.


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## Lanefan (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> Back in the early 80s, whenever we DMd, we rarely incorporated PC backgrounds into the actual adventure. PCs were pretty generic at level 1, and it was the adventure that created and was the catalyst for the stories. Perhaps it was because the game was more lethal back then, especially at low level, so you really didn’t spend a lot of time creating a background if there was a good chance you’d die. When we DMd, we had a story and adventure in mind. Either from a published adventure or a home brew adventure and world we fleshed out, and we stuck to key NPCs, monsters, and areas as they appeared.



This is more or less how we still do it.

Once a character has stuck around awhile its player and the DM will sort out a background for it - in some cases; not all players are interested.  The player is then free to pull elements of that background into play, but I-as-DM rarely if ever will, preferring instead to either use elements of setting history common to all or things that have come up during adventuring.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 4, 2020)

In a location based game involving background is a great idea. In an exploration game where the party will be sailing off all over the map maybe less so. It depends on what you're running.


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## Michael Silverbane (Mar 4, 2020)

It really depends on the campaign. In some, the player character backgrounds _are_ the campaign. In others, the player character backgrounds have no bearing at all on the campaign.


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## steenan (Mar 4, 2020)

The way we play, the game focuses strongly on the PCs, no matter how powerful and influential they are within the setting. That means that we don't "incorporate their backgrounds into the campaign", because the whole campaign is about them. It does not and cannot exist in separation from the PCs. If something does not resonate with the past, beliefs, goals and relations of at least one PC (preferably more), then it probably has no place in the game.


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## Jacob Lewis (Mar 4, 2020)

It depends on the game, and sometimes on the system. A one-shot or dungeon-crawl requires less investment and prep-work than a narrative game or plot-driven campaign. For the latter, pregens are great, especially for cons, demos, impromptu, and tutorial sessions.

But when I run something more elaborate that requires some long term buy-in, I want to make sure that the players feel that the story plots revolve around their characters, or at the very least, include them in a significant way. This is especially important if I`m using published adventures or similar materials cobbled together from different sources. The trick is to find ways to make sure the player characters become the protagonists in a script that wasn't already tailor-made for them. But rather than crossing my GM fingers and hoping the players will come up with something magically in line with details that they cannot (or should not) predict, I will often work closely with individual players to help build their character concept or background for a particular campaign.

This is usually an ongoing process that takes more than a single conversation and may require a little bit of compromise on both sides. However, my goal has always been to help produce a character that a) the player will absolutely be excited to play for more than just one session, b) will fit better into a storyline that will affect them directly, and vice versa, and c) allow me as the GM to know more about the goals and motives of the players and the characters they wish to play. In my experience, this has been a very good return on investment for the _extra work _and the additional requirement of _mutual trust_. Granted, some people are going to scoff and take offense at this level of involvement by a GM with their character ideas. But I'm very upfront about this when I invite people to play and, for the most part, everyone has been pleased with the results.


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## atanakar (Mar 4, 2020)

A favour a strong campaign concept instead of detailed PC backgrounds.

For exemple, in my current game, all the PCs are sibblings of a baron. They rolled randomly to determine the eldest. Then I extrapolated their family tree and how they relate to the King. Part of their background is that they stayed in the capital for a year while training at the King's schools for nobles. The rogue is part of the King's spy network, etc.

The players had never done this before, but once I explained it in detail and talked with them individually via Messenger they were on board.


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## Ringtail (Mar 4, 2020)

I like to incorporate them, but only slightly. This is also because I like a short background. My goal is not to make the character's personal history the source of the adventure, but to make those character feel like a part of the world and not someone removed. Featuring NPCs, Factions or Locations whether prominently or not can make the characters feel like a part of the world.

In my opinion, a Player Character should have at MAX one paragraph of backstory. Maybe a few bullet points to summarize the important proper nouns. I like the details to be vague so its easier to improvise the background connections. 

Here is an example from LMoP



Spoiler: LMOP Spoilers, but its been forever really



Player, a Fighter, was leader of a mercenary band. The lieutenant betrayed him and left him for dead on the battlefield to usurp control. I told him they were called the Redbrands and gave the leader a name. Later when he encounters the Redbrands he is upset to see they have become simple bandits. I made a couple of "old hands" sympathetic to him while the majority were new blood who were just bandits. (Hell, it reminds me a lot of the Van der Linde gang now that I think of it.) He struck down the usurper boss, chased off or converted the new recruits and then reformed the Redbrands to become the City Watch of Phandalin. He eventually became Lord of Phandalin to boot. It was a great story, thoroughly focused on the here and now and consisted of a brief paragraph about the mercenary company and 4-5 names for NPCs within it. 

Another player in the same group was a Dwarf brewer with a disgraced father who was actually innocent. I had him be framed by the Black Spider so it was very satisfying for that player. Another player was a refugee from Thundertree from the Hotenow eruption. He eventually became a vassal of Player 1 (Who became the Lord of Phandalin) and rebuilt Cragmaw Castle and Thundertree.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Changing the backstory of the world to account for the PCs runs perilously close to meta-gaming. It's better to just forget about these characters, in order to avoid overstating their importance.




Perhaps it would help if I gave an example.

A few years ago, I was rerunning a group through ToEE.  One of the PCs backgrounds was that he worked in a circus, and he and an orc rival both wanted to be with this one person  The orc was evil, violent, and overall not good news, but convinced everyone else he was not a problem.  In a fit of jealously, the PC ended up getting into a fight with the orc and killing him (albeit accidentally).  He was forced to pay for the Resurrection costs and be exiled from the circus.

In the temple, there's this bandit leader general.  So I changed the bandit leader to be this half orc (who left the circus to fulfill his desires of crime and violence).  The orc ended up running into the PCs a few times throughout the adventure but didn't reveal himself until later in a typical "big reveal" trope.

In another example:

The PC's background was that their mother will killed by a rival warlock cultist and are hunting him.  The adventure main plot is around a bunch of cultists rising a lost god (very Lovecraftian feel).  So it was very easy for me to make _those _cultists responsible for his mother's death and hunt for him, and change some of the NPCs around to fit his background more closely.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 4, 2020)

steenan said:


> The way we play, the game focuses strongly on the PCs, no matter how powerful and influential they are within the setting. That means that we don't "incorporate their backgrounds into the campaign", because the whole campaign is about them. It does not and cannot exist in separation from the PCs. If something does not resonate with the past, beliefs, goals and relations of at least one PC (preferably more), then it probably has no place in the game.




Yeah, that's pretty much how we play. The story is the story OF the PCs. Our next campaign will be about other characters. 

I have only a very loose idea of what I'd like to include in the game prior to character creation. It's only once the players have made their PCs that I commit to the setting and incorporate as much of what they've offered as I possibly can.


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## TwoSix (Mar 4, 2020)

I pretty much base all of my campaigns around the PC's initial choices.  (Replacement characters, I try, but there's only so much I can change mid-stream.)

Like, in my current Ravnica campaign, I let the players make their PCs, and then decided to focus on the first major plot line around guilds that would be antagonistic to the bulk of the PCs.  It helps that my games are primarily improved, and I don't run pre-published adventures.  The setting constraints help in that I can improv material without having to explain everything via exposition.


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## Li Shenron (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> Do you pretty much run adventures as written, without changing them based on character backstory?  Or do you fully let players dictate parts of the game to fit their story?  Or somewhere in the middle, like where I’m at currently?




Dictate, no. But I do pick stuff from character sheets to "connect" the PC to the fantasy world sometimes. I actually think I should do it more often...


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## Ralif Redhammer (Mar 4, 2020)

For the longest time, I loathed extensive backstory as a DM. A first level character showing up with pages of history guaranteed I'd ignore it. 

These days, sure, if a player feels that passionately about their PC that they're going to craft some awesome story, I'll totally draw from that into the campaign.

The one thing that old me and current me still agree on is that the backstory needs to keep in mind that your PC is only first level - there's only so much you can justify based on that.


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## dragoner (Mar 4, 2020)

This is not for DnD, as I don't play it much, even though when I do, I usually try to create some sort of back story as character development. I'm fine with character back story as it can help craft the setting, on the gripping hand it also has to get woven into the bread of the game with everyone else's back story. A game with a life path style chargen, you need some sort of back story as to why this person is going on an adventure vs some kid.


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## Umbran (Mar 4, 2020)

Michael Silverbane said:


> It really depends on the campaign. In some, the player character backgrounds _are_ the campaign. In others, the player character backgrounds have no bearing at all on the campaign.




It is similar for me - sometimes I use the PC backstories a great deal, sometimes I don't.


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## Ulfgeir (Mar 4, 2020)

I haven't GM'd that much, but when I ran Daring Comics, I did use the background enemies from the players. One caused extensive damage to a shopping-mall  (Spatial distortion + illusions = messy stuff)..

As a player, I do like if hooks from the background is included.


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## Jer (Mar 4, 2020)

Depends on the group and the game.  For the tables with newer players they don't really want to create much in the way of backgrounds because they're learning how to play.  So we mostly they pick some backgrounds, use those traits to figure out "why are you all together and why are you in this adventure" and move forward.

My long-term table (where we're currently playing 13th Age but have previously played 3e, 4e and a few other games) we'll have a session zero where folks will decide what kind of character they want to have and we'll figure out what the world is like based on that.  Most of them won't come up with extensive backgrounds, but just enough to motivate "why is your character involved in this group and going on 'adventures'".  And then I'll make some improvised changes to the starting scenario I've picked (something generic enough that any set of motives can be made to work with it - low level site-based adventures without much plot around them are perfect for this).

Typically though they'll come up with NPCs and ideas that I will mine for plot hooks for later adventures as well as for the immediate motivation of why they're in that first adventure.  NPCs that they come up with become important motivators for exploring various areas or interacting with other NPCs, or the personal goals that they have for their characters will become major plot threads instead of just one-offs.  I've been able to improvise whole adventures based on bits of character backstory, for example, which is nice when you've got designer's block. ...


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 4, 2020)

I suppose I should have put this caveat at the beginning.  I'm imagining that for one-offs, short campaigns, and AL, backgrounds are probably not incorporated as much.  But long running campaigns, they might be a lot more, and we as GMs may be more apt to adjust NPCs, areas, and subplots to fit those backgrounds.


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## prabe (Mar 4, 2020)

Like many of the others here, I sometimes use the backstories, and I sometimes do not. I like having the option, though. I'm running a homebrew setting, and there are blank spaces in the map where it's easy to put things if a character's backstory calls for it. I'm willing to fit events in, if needed, too. I do not, however, allow players to "dictate" what goes into my world. I'll work with them, but I have the final say.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 4, 2020)

Let's keep in mind that background and backstory aren't the same thing. The latter could be part of the former, but it's not the whole enchilada.


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## Maestrino (Mar 4, 2020)

Wait, some people _don't_?

Current campaign:

One PC was involved in a business deal that went bad with a cousin. Killed his cousin, ran away, became a pirate for a bit. This is definitely going to come up later on. Cousin was saved through a pact with some strange entity and is now going to be a warlock big bad for later in the campaign. They'll start getting hints about it next time they pass through that city.

Another PC was squire to a paladin who got banished to another plane while fighting minions of Yan-C-Bin. They're secretly looking for a means of planar travel to try to find their former lord while not letting on to the rest of the party that they're just _pretending_ to be a paladin. This is going to get fun when the PC winds up taking a seemingly meaningless oath that powers up a bunch of paladin abilities for them...

Yet another PC is a stowaway from a distant continent who became basically a retired Dread Pirate Roberts type. There's going to be some surprise connections with PC 1's pirate background and - of course - a surprise twin. (There's already a tabaxi rogue NPC coming in the story. Now the NPC is going to be identical to the PC, but with their "eyepatch" fur marking across the opposite eye so it's like looking into a mirror...)


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## Talltomwright (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> Back in the early 80s, whenever we DMd, we rarely incorporated PC backgrounds into the actual adventure. PCs were pretty generic at level 1, and it was the adventure that created and was the catalyst for the stories. Perhaps it was because the game was more lethal back then, especially at low level, so you really didn’t spend a lot of time creating a background if there was a good chance you’d die. When we DMd, we had a story and adventure in mind. Either from a published adventure or a home brew adventure and world we fleshed out, and we stuck to key NPCs, monsters, and areas as they appeared.
> 
> Now I notice I DM much differently. Sure, I have an adventure and plot all in mind, but the players spend a lot more time creating character backgrounds. And I do my best to incorporate them into the game before session one. And in between sessions, I continue to have private conversations with players about their PC specific story arcs. I’ll change NPC names, or add a few NPCs based on the backgrounds I get, and make them core to the adventure. The overall plots stay the same, but what I’ve found by doing this is that it makes no two campaigns the same, even if they are the same adventure I’m DMing.  It’s a much more collaborative approach to story telling while still maintaining control of the game world, story, and NPCs
> 
> so where do you fall?  Do you pretty much run adventures as written, without changing them based on character backstory?  Or do you fully let players dictate parts of the game to fit their story?  Or somewhere in the middle, like where I’m at currently?




Exactly like you are describing, my favourite part of DMing at the moment is taking a published adventure and the backstories my players come up with and meshing them together till it feels like the adventure was written for them. It doesn't take a lot of work (well, not true, I spend ages thinking about it, but only because I enjoy it, I'm sure I could blast through it if I was pushed for time) and the players seem to appreciate it. I recently replaced a boss in Descent Into Avernus with a nemesis from one PC's backstory and the look on their face at the surprise reveal made my week.

And yes, I did that less in 2e when they were dying more often! Feels like in 5e they'll be around for a while (as discussed on other threads) so it's worth investing some time in those characters. 

It was really interesting listening to Dice, Camera, Action in the early days, having read Curse of Strahd, and seeing how Chris Perkins adapted it to his players and their backstories so they felt part of the world and connected to the action. He did everything from bringing in characters from their backstories to tailoring encounters to appeal to their ideals and fears and it was pretty great.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> In the temple, there's this bandit leader general.  So I changed the bandit leader to be this half orc (who left the circus to fulfill his desires of crime and violence).  The orc ended up running into the PCs a few times throughout the adventure but didn't reveal himself until later in a typical "big reveal" trope.



That's the sort of twist which is much more common in a novel, and inserting those elements can make the world feel more like mere fiction rather than a believable place.

While coincidences do happen in real life, that's rarely a satisfying explanation, and it's as important to avoid the appearance of meta-gaming as it is to avoid the actuality of meta-gaming.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's the sort of twist which is much more common in a novel, and inserting those elements can make the world feel more like mere fiction rather than a believable place.
> 
> While coincidences do happen in real life, that's rarely a satisfying explanation, and it's as important to avoid the appearance of meta-gaming as it is to avoid the actuality of meta-gaming.




They players enjoyed it , and were much more engaged than if it was still just random bandit captain Bob #13*.  So while I agree metagaming _can _lead to issues, it doesn't have to and can be a good thing, leading to greater player enjoyment.  It is a game after all. 

* Doesn't matter how much I flesh out Bob behind the scenes, the players don't care because they have no connection to Bob.  Make a connection, suddenly the players take more notice


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## Talltomwright (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> They players enjoyed it , and were much more engaged than if it was still just random bandit captain Bob #13*.  So while I agree metagaming _can _lead to issues, it doesn't have to and can be a good thing, leading to greater player enjoyment.  It is a game after all.
> 
> * Doesn't matter how much I flesh out Bob behind the scenes, the players don't care because they have no connection to Bob.  Make a connection, suddenly the players take more notice




Yup 100% this. Believable or otherwise, if not over-used, players, or at least my players, seem to enjoy these connections.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 4, 2020)

Talltomwright said:


> Yup 100% this. Believable or otherwise, if not over-used, players, or at least my players, seem to enjoy these connections.




I think a really good example of what this looks like in practice is how Matt Mercer DMs.  For those who have seen even a dozen episodes, you can see how PC backgrounds pop up at certain times during the campaign.   I think it's pretty clear he inserts NPCs and areas at certain times into the game that are related to a particular players' backstory.

But as you say, and as @Saelorn warns, too much metagaming can ruin a campaign because it strips immersion.  Going back to CR, look at how frustrated the rest of players and Matt became with Orion and his constant meta gaming.


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## ccs (Mar 4, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I dont incorporate backstories at all. On the whole I find them generally obnoxious, both as a player and a gm. I tell people that right from the beginning though. Keep it generic, just explain why your character chose to involve themselves in life and death adventures instead of a 9-5 job. You can should use it to guide your characters personality and choices, not to try to co-author the campaign. The campaign develops from choices made during play not before it starts.
> 
> But then i hardly ever run a published adventure either. So i dont need to worry about customizing generic content for the characters.




So what would happen if I made choices during play based off my background?  Let's say it's something as simple as "My character became an adventurer because he wants to visit the island of _____.


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## ccs (Mar 4, 2020)

Ringtail said:


> In my opinion, a Player Character should have at MAX one paragraph of backstory.




Ok, but it might look like a wall of text written by a Krynn Gnome....


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## Sabathius42 (Mar 4, 2020)

In my current game I am running a modified XP system.  10 XP gets you to the next level.  XP is gained by achieving something noteworthy (not just random combats or traps).

One of the primary ways I am trying to get the players to use to get XP is by creating personal goals tied to their backstory and making bite sized increments towards those goals, which earn them an XP.

So, the answer is "More than normal for this campaign."


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## Numidius (Mar 4, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Let's keep in mind that background and backstory aren't the same thing. The latter could be part of the former, but it's not the whole enchilada.



Can you please elaborate on that?


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 4, 2020)

Numidius said:


> Can you please elaborate on that?



Background can encompass a lot of things. It includes a lot of what you might call character concept, the mechanical rules background (incl flaw, bonds etc), plus NPCs the character might know, plus things like drives, motivations and whatnot. Some of that might be present in a back story, or it might not. Some of those things are also present regardless if a backstory is written or not, which is a solid pice of evidence that they aren't the same thing.

More generally, I would characterize background as the whole set of things that make the character who they are, both in the fiction and in the rules, whereas backstory is a story of things that happened to the character. There are a huge range of variations on this from table to table so it can be tough to really separate the two, and I've taken the liberty of some pretty broad generalizations to do so.


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## Talltomwright (Mar 4, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> I think a really good example of what this looks like in practice is how Matt Mercer DMs.  For those who have seen even a dozen episodes, you can see how PC backgrounds pop up at certain times during the campaign.   I think it's pretty clear he inserts NPCs and areas at certain times into the game that are related to a particular players' backstory.
> 
> But as you say, and as @Saelorn warns, too much metagaming can ruin a campaign because it strips immersion.  Going back to CR, look at how frustrated the rest of players and Matt became with Orion and his constant meta gaming.




I haven’t watched much of season 1 but season 2 of CR really feels like Matt Mercer had a loose over-arching plot and then built everything else around the offers the players made him in their (evidently very detailed) backstories. As ever, whatever is fun at someone’s table is great for them, but I do really like this sense that they are making a story together and I try to incorporate it into my games.


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## Lanefan (Mar 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's the sort of twist which is much more common in a novel, and inserting those elements can make the world feel more like mere fiction rather than a believable place.
> 
> While coincidences do happen in real life, that's rarely a satisfying explanation, and it's as important to avoid the appearance of meta-gaming as it is to avoid the actuality of meta-gaming.



As with many things, moderation is the key.

Doing this once or twice in a long campaign is fine, and done right it could really be cool.

Doing it all the time would ruin the effect.


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## Lanefan (Mar 4, 2020)

ccs said:


> So what would happen if I made choices during play based off my background?  Let's say it's something as simple as "My character became an adventurer because he wants to visit the island of _____.



That'd be cool for roleplay as your next challenge would be to talk the rest of the party into going with you, if your intent was to continue running with them.

And here's a place where player input and DM intention could handily meet in the middle, whether intentionally or not:

You-as-PC: "Hey guys, we're between missions now and you know, I've always wanted to head on over to Paradox Island and check it out.  _When I was a kid I heard people talk about a tower there, full of gold!_"
Other PCs: "Gold?!"  "Sounds cool, when do we leave?" [etc.]
DM: <caught off guard, starts quietly rummaging through modules looking for something involving a tower on an island> "It's a six-day walk to the south coast..."

The italicized bit is something you just made up off the cuff which may well be total BS, just like your PC might make stuff up in order to convince the party to join you.  The DM might decide (or already know) that no such tower exists, in which case it'll be on you to explain this to your party once you get there and can't find it; or the DM might find or dream up an adventure that to some extent reflects what your PC heard as a kid.


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## Nytmare (Mar 5, 2020)

It depends on the game, the system, and the players for me, though I think that I prefer games where a character's backstory emerges through game play as an explanation and reaction to events.


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## The Green Hermit (Mar 5, 2020)

I let my players know the basic gist of what the campaign will be about and help them come up with a background that ties into our campaign in some way shape or form. The part that I find us using less and less is the ideals/flaws. I think next time somebody has to re-roll, we will ignore that and let it emerge naturally.


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## Shiroiken (Mar 5, 2020)

It really depend on how much effort the player takes into incorporating the background into the campaign. My current campaign, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, has 6 players. One of them is from Saltmarsh, so his background (smuggler) has become a major aspect of the campaign so far. One player's second character needed to be introduced, and she took the knight background, as the party had just found the body of a Knight of the Watch (she was looking for him). One player who played a triton in exile needed to be introduced in the second session (Haunted House), so I had him living with the sea elves that sent him near Saltmarsh looking for Oceanus. One player basically has no real background, while two others have backgrounds that are basically impossible for me to incorporate without drastically changing my campaign concept, so likely none of these will really impact the game at all.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 5, 2020)

The Green Hermit said:


> The part that I find us using less and less is the ideals/flaws. I think next time somebody has to re-roll, we will ignore that and let it emerge naturally.



Oh yeah. This should have been a _fantastic_ new mechanic for the game but it's ... just meh. It's not awful, it just doesn't matter. People forget to use it, they forget to use the dice, it just isn't tied into the basic mechanics of the game in any kind of interesting way. I want very badly to replace it for my games with something similar but, you know, cool and useful. I think I'm leaning in the direction of something PtbA flavored. There's a bunch of ideas in _The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power_ that look like they could be very cool if I can figure out how to port them over properly.


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## THEMNGMNT (Mar 5, 2020)

I've incorporated PC backstory into my two current campaigns. To me it's really important to make the stakes of the adventure as personal as possible. I'll be even more aggressive in using backstory in future campaigns. 

It takes practice to get players (and DMs) to make actionable backstories. I think to use backstory properly you need to do two things. 

First, backstories need to be concise and evocative. Ideally that means 3 to 5 single-sentence bullet points. Players don't need to write a short story about their mercenary legion's betrayal on the battlefield; "lone survivor of a betrayed mercenary company" is enough. 13th Age's backgrounds and One Unique Things are great examples of this. 

Second, assuming you're not co-authoring the campaign with players ala 13th Age or Blades In The Dark, you need to give players strong prompts to tie into your storyline. Don't be afraid to use leading questions. For example, if I was playing Descent Into Avernus, I might ask players to build their backstories off of questions like: "For what are you willing to sell your soul? Name a person, place, or thing in Elturel that you would kill (or die) for. Is your relationship with the authority figures in Elturel positive, negative, or in some way conflicted?"

As a default, I may ask players to write a single sentence each on an interesting and exciting aspect related to their class, race, and background. That should result in three sentences which, hopefully, have great story hooks. Example: "I'm a warrior, like my father before me, and his father before him. The shaman of my clan told me I was destined to betray someone I loved. I was kicked out of the brewer's guild after refusing to pay off a Zhentarim protection racket."


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## Dannyalcatraz (Mar 5, 2020)

For me, it depends on the campaign and the player buy-in.  I make an effort if the players do.  I have found it to be a tool that can really help, but its use or disuse also isn’t a guarantee of quality.

For example, the best campaign I ever ran, I had 100% player buy-in, and the PC’s backgrounds definitely helped shape the world.

OTOH, one of the best D&D adventures I ever cooked up was a Dark Sun one-shot, and the backgrounds were irrelevant.


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## S'mon (Mar 5, 2020)

Michael Silverbane said:


> It really depends on the campaign. In some, the player character backgrounds _are_ the campaign. In others, the player character backgrounds have no bearing at all on the campaign.




Yeah, it varies a lot. In my Primeval Thule sandbox 5e game the PC backgrounds & Heroic Narratives are central to the campaign. In my Princes of the Apocalypse AP game only backgrounds tied in to the AP matter much, the PCs mostly just have a basic Fight Elemental Evil motivation though a couple PCs have special background issues with a particular elemental cult - one PC the Fire Cult burned her monastery, another PC was a member of the Shadowed Chain dwarf secret society who oppose the Earth Cult.


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## Ringtail (Mar 5, 2020)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> These days, sure, if a player feels that passionately about their PC that they're going to craft some awesome story, I'll totally draw from that into the campaign.
> 
> The one thing that old me and current me still agree on is that the backstory needs to keep in mind that your PC is only first level - there's only so much you can justify based on that.




Yeah, I'm not likely to ignore or turn away a large backstory. If you made the effort I'm going to at least give it a look, but my preference for shorter more usable backstories still stands. That also tends to agree with what you say about first level. Not much adventuring you can do before 1st Level and justify not being a higher level!


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## Blue (Mar 5, 2020)

I only run years long homebrew campaigns.  I haven't run a module in decades.  I don't do one shots.  With that context in mind...

*I freaking love character backstories.* They are strong signalling what the player is interested in. They are instant buy-in whenever details of it hit the table. They are hooks I don't need to expect effort to make the players care about. It's world building I don't have to do, organizations and settlements and NPCs.

I will go as to say that _*every DM running a homebrew campaign that doesn't incorporate backstories is ignoring valuable tools*_ and making their job harder. You don't need to use them, but why wouldn't you use them when they are full of help for the small price of reading a few pages per charactrer, much less time then you'd spend prepping a single session but with long term payouts.

Because really, "winning" in RPGs is having fun, and this is a low-work shortcut to providing fun to your players that can come up again and again.


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## Maestrino (Mar 5, 2020)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> For me, it depends on the campaign and the player buy-in.  I make an effort if the players do.  I have found it to be a tool that can really help, but its use or disuse also isn’t a guarantee of quality.
> 
> For example, the best campaign I ever ran, I had 100% player buy-in, and the PC’s backgrounds definitely helped shape the world.
> 
> OTOH, one of the best D&D adventures I ever cooked up was a Dark Sun one-shot, and the backgrounds were irrelevant.




Now, I agree 100% that in a one-shot you don't have time to do character development. The backstory isn't important there. Much more fun to have a tight (actually pretty railroad-y) scenario cooked up and let the players use whatever crazy nonsensical character they have. Want to run that gnome artificer? Sure! Want to play that always-_just_-too-late battlefield medic-turned-necromancer? Go for it! A grappler monk that's basically Hulk Hogan? Right on, brother! A paladin who's one week from retirement and "getting too old for this sh**?" Great!


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## Ralif Redhammer (Mar 5, 2020)

On the rare occasions when I get to play, my backstories are generally a paragraph long. But I try to make them flavorful.



Ringtail said:


> Yeah, I'm not likely to ignore or turn away a large backstory. If you made the effort I'm going to at least give it a look, but my preference for shorter more usable backstories still stands. That also tends to agree with what you say about first level. Not much adventuring you can do before 1st Level and justify not being a higher level!




This, definitely. A backstory should ground your character, and give the DM plenty of things to hook into. As a DM, for example, if the PC has a sworn enemy in their background, you can pretty much use that to get buy-in from them on any adventure you want by including them.



Blue said:


> I will go as to say that _*every DM running a homebrew campaign that doesn't incorporate backstories is ignoring valuable tools*_ and making their job harder. You don't need to use them, but why wouldn't you use them when they are full of help for the small price of reading a few pages per charactrer, much less time then you'd spend prepping a single session but with long term payouts.


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## uzirath (Mar 5, 2020)

I'm planning out my next campaign right now and I'm eagerly awaiting backstories from the players who haven't written them yet. Whether a page, a paragraph, or a sentence, they give me a lot of material to work with. At this point in my gaming life, I can't quite imagine how I would start a campaign without them.

I agree with others who have said that a campaign is different from a quick one-shot. In an ongoing campaign, I'd like the players to feel as if their characters are truly a part of a living setting.


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## pogre (Mar 5, 2020)

I don't require backgrounds except a reason the PC is motivated to work with the group. 

If the player provides background I'm happy to incorporate it and even use it as a focus for the campaign. This is particularly true for my homebrew stuff.

Many of my players prefer not to lay out too much background and let their goals develop organically through play.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

I mean can you really get away with not addressing background or backstory in a campaign? every character has a place in the world, no matter how small, and unless they literally came into existence right as the campaign started it would follow they have a history in the world. 

it doesn't need to come up obviously, but if you're in a place that a character has a history with it shouldn't be out of the question for that history to become relevant to the game.


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> I mean can you really get away with not addressing background or backstory in a campaign? every character has a place in the world, no matter how small, and unless they literally came into existence right as the campaign started it would follow they have a history in the world.




Run an adventure path. At least the Paizo ones I've played in, the characters basically don't matter as more than bundles of statistics. Part of that might be that at this point I'm about done with PF 1E, of course.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

prabe said:


> Run an adventure path. At least the Paizo ones I've played in, the characters basically don't matter as more than bundles of statistics. Part of that might be that at this point I'm about done with PF 1E, of course.



I disagree. I know at least the early adventure paths had player's guides that had stuff like background feats to help incorporate your character into the setting.


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> I disagree. I know at least the early adventure paths had player's guides that had stuff like background feats to help incorporate your character into the setting.




And I've chosen them, and no part of any character's background or backstory (of mine, anyway) has ever come up, in the four-ish APs I've played any of. The things that happen in the APs happen regardless of which characters are being played, so of course the character backgrounds/backstories are at least less relevant than in a homebrew campaign where the DM is connecting available stories to the characters' backstories.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

prabe said:


> And I've chosen them, and no part of any character's background or backstory (of mine, anyway) has ever come up, in the four-ish APs I've played any of. The things that happen in the APs happen regardless of which characters are being played, so of course the character backgrounds/backstories are at least less relevant than in a homebrew campaign where the DM is connecting available stories to the characters' backstories.



I mean is it still out of the question for the DM to change things a little to make PCs better connected to the story?


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> I mean is it still out of the question for the DM to change things a little to make PCs better connected to the story?




It's not out of the question at all. It's not the way the APs are written, and it's not the way they've been run. Even though the one GM is frantically re-writing the one he's running us through so it makes some amount of sense, he's not particularly doing so to make the characters more involved. He's been trying to solve internal-logic problems more than anything else, as I understand it (and I still might have blown up the AP, by asking one question).


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

prabe said:


> It's not out of the question at all. It's not the way the APs are written, and it's not the way they've been run. Even though the one GM is frantically re-writing the one he's running us through so it makes some amount of sense, he's not particularly doing so to make the characters more involved. He's been trying to solve internal-logic problems more than anything else, as I understand it (and I still might have blown up the AP, by asking one question).



remind me why people think adventure paths are great okay but really even lost mine of phandelver gives better incentives and hooks for players to be directly involved with the npc's from the beginning.


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> remind me why people think adventure paths are great okay but really even lost mine of phandelver gives better incentives and hooks for players to be directly involved with the npc's from the beginning.




Might do. I haven't played or run anything published for 5E. My experience with APs is with Paizo's. I struggle to make enough sense of published adventures, so I don't run them, and the lone 5E campaign I'm in is a homebrew setting.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

prabe said:


> Might do. I haven't played or run anything published for 5E. My experience with APs is with Paizo's. I struggle to make enough sense of published adventures, so I don't run them, and the lone 5E campaign I'm in is a homebrew setting.



the pre-generated characters in the starter kit had backgrounds that would tie you directly to the setting. the dwarf fighter was explicitly related to some of the plot-relevant dwarf npc's as well.


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> the pre-generated characters in the starter kit had backgrounds that would tie you directly to the setting. the dwarf fighter was explicitly related to some of the plot-relevant dwarf npc's as well.




I've heard good things about it, so I'm not surprised. I gather it's more the exception than the rule, even among 5E Adventure Books, though.


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## Lanefan (Mar 5, 2020)

Blue said:


> I will go as to say that _*every DM running a homebrew campaign that doesn't incorporate backstories is ignoring valuable tools*_ and making their job harder. You don't need to use them, but why wouldn't you use them when they are full of help for the small price of reading a few pages per charactrer, much less time then you'd spend prepping a single session but with long term payouts.



I run homebrew, but trying to get some players (past and present) to do backstories would be largely similar to trying to squeeze water from a stone.

This would leave me-as-DM in the unpleasant position of either having to ignore the backstories that did get done, or unduly favouring/focusing on those PCs with backstories over those without.  Never mind some players tend to go through characters at a rather rapid rate... 

If everyone was willing and enthused about doing backstories that'd be different.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

prabe said:


> I've heard good things about it, so I'm not surprised. I gather it's more the exception than the rule, even among 5E Adventure Books, though.



oh sure, but a lot of people like how the starter game that's going to introduce a lot of people to 5e encourages this sort of behavior instead of fostering the idea that PCs are just completely independent entities to the story.


Lanefan said:


> I run homebrew, but trying to get some players (past and present) to do backstories would be largely similar to trying to squeeze water from a stone.
> 
> This would leave me-as-DM in the unpleasant position of either having to ignore the backstories that did get done, or unduly favouring/focusing on those PCs with backstories over those without.  Never mind some players tend to go through characters at a rather rapid rate...
> 
> If everyone was willing and enthused about doing backstories that'd be different.



man I don't see how that's "undue". it's like giving out xp to the player who wrote out a backstory, if you want your character to be tied to the story you can write one out. if a player doesn't want to do something that they would get rewarded for then that's kind of on them imo.


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## prabe (Mar 5, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I run homebrew, but trying to get some players (past and present) to do backstories would be largely similar to trying to squeeze water from a stone.
> 
> This would leave me-as-DM in the unpleasant position of either having to ignore the backstories that did get done, or unduly favouring/focusing on those PCs with backstories over those without.  Never mind some players tend to go through characters at a rather rapid rate...
> 
> If everyone was willing and enthused about doing backstories that'd be different.




Some players are better at it than others. Some don't want to be the center of the campaign that way. Whether putting a specific character in the center of an arc is unduly favoring or disfavoring that character might depend on the nature of the arc, and the player.

Rapid character death is an entirely different thing. Bug? Feature? Kinda a matter of taste/preference. I'll agree that the closer your campaign is to a meat-grinder the less important/useful character backstories are.


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## aco175 (Mar 5, 2020)

I try to tie things in if the players are into it.  In a recent game the fighter's backstory was that he was a soldier and taken prisoner and now owes a life-debt to someone, which is why he is adventuring.  A few times in play he mentioned that he was saving his gold or almost there with his debt.  Finally around level 8 the PCs were heading to Waterdeep and I introduced his person whom he owed 1000gp.  I was able offer an adventure to offset half the payment and spin another module out of it.  

Another example that only partially came into play was the thief was a guild cartographer sent to Phandalin by some noble families in Waterdeep to look into lost ancestor lands around the new community.  I had an adventure where some old maps and books surfaced sending the PCs on another quest to an old tower to see if anything was around from these noble lands.  When the group got to Waterdeep there was some roleplay and a party in their honor.

I like to play around the periphery of the back story and not the direct events.  If orcs killed the whole village and that's why I hate orcs.  This is just meh to me and I most likely not have the same tribe of orcs come into play unless the PCs went looking for them.  I may have one orc from the tribe be discovered half dead or all dead and offer some clue to another adventure.  I would not take a brother or parent and make them a bad guy in some twist.  Maybe an old frenimy from the old days.  

I'm sure there is some one-page background information that could help the DM tie things in.  Maybe a few NPCs that the PC knows or grew up with.  Something like a traveling merchant or the person that trained the PC.  A few sentences that the DM could take and draw out.


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## Nagol (Mar 5, 2020)

For me, it depends very much on the game system/campaign.  It's an obvious thing to do in Pendragon, Hero System, or the like since it is baked into the game.  For D&D specifically, it'll depend on what the campaign is about more than anything.  

If the campaign is expected or "allowed" to be wide-ranging (typical D&D exploitation adventure, operating a privateer along a wide stretch of coast, or exploring a newly discovered map area) then I'll incorporate very little of anything volunteered (and I won't require any) since the campaign conceit is the PCs are away from home.  If the players specifically go to a PC's background area then there will be some nods towards it.

If the campaign is expected to take place in a more narrow geographic focus (adventuring in an patron's or owned territory, adventuring inside the walls of a single city, or operating a reasonably stable trade route) then the backgrounds will take more prominence if the players want it (and I'll mention the possibility to make sure players consider giving me something).


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## Lanefan (Mar 5, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> man I don't see how that's "undue". it's like giving out xp to the player who wrote out a backstory



Which is something else I would NEVER do.

Xp are not and never will be awarded for things done in the metagame.

No matter how much beer you bring me.



> if you want your character to be tied to the story you can write one out. if a player doesn't want to do something that they would get rewarded for then that's kind of on them imo.



Flip side: if a player doesn't have time for or interest in coming up with a backstory, why should I punish this?


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## Blue (Mar 5, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I run homebrew, but trying to get some players (past and present) to do backstories would be largely similar to trying to squeeze water from a stone.
> 
> This would leave me-as-DM in the unpleasant position of either having to ignore the backstories that did get done, or unduly favouring/focusing on those PCs with backstories over those without.  Never mind some players tend to go through characters at a rather rapid rate...
> 
> If everyone was willing and enthused about doing backstories that'd be different.




It is not an unpleasant position. Request backstories, tell them why. If they do not wish that, they don't need to participate. If they see how it's affecting the characters that did and want to submit it, let them - there's no due date - this is all fun.

It's as if someone only shows up every other session and you're worried your favoring the players who are left with more attention. It's really a false position that people voluntarily not doing somethings means that you can't pay attention to the ones that were willing to put in the effort.


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## Blue (Mar 5, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Flip side: if a player doesn't have time for or interest in coming up with a backstory, why should I punish this?




You aren't punishing it. 

What you _are_ doing is rewarding the players who do have an interest in enriching the game.

If two students are given an opportunity for extra credit and one does it, it is not punishing the other one to not award them extra points.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 5, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Which is something else I would NEVER do.
> 
> Xp are not and never will be awarded for things done in the metagame.
> 
> No matter how much beer you bring me.



I mean same, at least I find the idea of xp as an extra reward kinda bad, but some kind of reward is nice?


Lanefan said:


> Flip side: if a player doesn't have time for or interest in coming up with a backstory, why should I punish this?



I'm not sure this is really "punishing" them. I can't make a meaningful story hook related to someone's background if I'm not given one. and not everyone is into that sort of thing. also if you focus on one player's story it's not like the other players don't get to participate anymore.


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## gepetto (Mar 6, 2020)

ccs said:


> So what would happen if I made choices during play based off my background?  Let's say it's something as simple as "My character became an adventurer because he wants to visit the island of _____.




Dont tell me. I play with big groups, chances are the other 5 players at the table dont want to show up and watch you play out your background story or follow along while you shoot " bobs travel documentary the D&Ding." If that island happens to come up anyway in the course of the campaign and people are trying to decide whether to go there or not then sure feel free to bring it up to the other players as a reason for them to agree to go or not. 

But if the rest of the group doesnt want to go there then its not happening. And ya know thats okay. People set off on certain paths in life for reasons that are never fulfilled all the time. Just ask everyone with a job that has nothing to do with their college major (theres a lot of us).


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## Blue (Mar 6, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Dont tell me. I play with big groups, chances are the other 5 players at the table dont want to show up and watch you play out your background story or follow along while you shoot " bobs travel documentary the D&Ding." If that island happens to come up anyway in the course of the campaign and people are trying to decide whether to go there or not then sure feel free to bring it up to the other players as a reason for them to agree to go or not.
> 
> But if the rest of the group doesnt want to go there then its not happening. And ya know thats okay. People set off on certain paths in life for reasons that are never fulfilled all the time. Just ask everyone with a job that has nothing to do with their college major (theres a lot of us).




Nothing in a background requires anything to happen.  If you are looking at it like that no wonder you dislike them.  Luckily, that's not the case at all.

But if your plan involve the characters traveling to an island, you can get some instant buy-in if it's Bob's Island.

Just like if you had a plot that needed a horde of low CR monsters, and one charater's village was wiped out by gnolls - picking gnolls instead of hobgoblins or whatever is no skin off your nose, and can get the player invested. If gnolls never comes up there's no harm, no requirement that you must use them. Just a way that you can get the players more involved with a fantastic return for the work involved.

Need to come up with a trustworthy questgiver, maybe the mentor of one of the characters? It is the less work for you since you already have a name and some details, and establishes it immediately and gives the character a reason to want to do the mission.

A background literally doesn't detract anything or require anything, it's nothing but bonus for the DM if they have a place to fit some of it in.


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## Nagol (Mar 6, 2020)

Blue said:


> Nothing in a background requires anything to happen.  If you are looking at it like that no wonder you dislike them.  Luckily, that's not the case at all.
> 
> But if your plan involve the characters traveling to an island, you can get some instant buy-in if it's Bob's Island.
> 
> ...




And so long as the DM treats it as such, great!  Those players that want that sort of buy-in get an opportunity and those that don't lose nothing.

Some DMs don't treat it as such. 

I've had some DMs that claimed falsely that any player that didn't provide a background just wanted to be psychotic murdering hobos and would attempt to force players into providing them via in-game punishment (unluckiest PC), metagame punishment (reduced xp), assigning a background without consultation (because that makes everything better!), or dropping the non-conforming player.

Other DMs use the opportunity to inject extra advantages and privileges for PCs that catch their fancy.  So providing a background is akin to buying a lottery ticket.  Sometimes it pays off handsomely.

Still other DMs feel the need to 'fiddle' and implant secrets and drama inside of any background provided to the point the players become exhausted and unwilling to trust anyone from their past.  "Hey Bob!  I'll bet your doting mom is actually the centuries-old lich bent of erasing all life this time!  Nah!  My bet is she'll turn out to be the daughter of a devil/demon hybrid that's hiding on the Prime until she can gather the forces to usurp both her parents and will need to use me as a sacrifice for the final acquisition!"


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## prabe (Mar 6, 2020)

Nagol said:


> And so long as the DM treats it as such, great!  Those players that want that sort of buy-in get an opportunity and those that don't lose nothing.
> 
> Some DMs don't treat it as such.




Your examples have a distressing air of "voice of experience." I'd call them three examples of Bad DMing, personally.


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## Nagol (Mar 6, 2020)

prabe said:


> Your examples have a distressing air of "voice of experience." I'd call them three examples of Bad DMing, personally.




That's because they all are true-to-life examples.

As for whether their bad DMIng, I think the first is absolutely.  Using the DM's power to attempt to coerce  a player or to dump an otherwise perfectly acceptable player is unwarranted.

The other two depend strongly on player reaction.  There was one Runequest game where the GM acted like the second example and the player were perfectly fine and happy to get 'given' stuff because of their backgrounds.  Once the players caught on, there was an explosion in 'secret princes' and 'wizard experiment' origins.

As for the third, some players thrive on that crap.  The real problem comes when the DM provides it for a player that does not.  This one is also the main horror story players reluctant to provide backgrounds have given me over the years.


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## prabe (Mar 6, 2020)

Nagol said:


> That's because they all are true-to-life examples.
> 
> As for whether their bad DMIng, I think the first is absolutely.  Using the DM's power to attempt to coerce  a player or to dump an otherwise perfectly acceptable player is unwarranted.
> 
> ...




The second example smacks of favoritism to me. I prefer the detailed backstory to be optional, and if it's optional I don't feel super comfortable giving strong bennies to the players/characters that opt in. Feels too much like punishing (by comparison) those who don't. Obviously, that might work out differently, based on the table.

As for the third, I'm happy not to have any edgelords at my tables. Also, if someone gives me a background that seems to beg for that, that just means I absolutely won't do it. (The masochist says, "Hurt me." The sadist replies, "No.")


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 6, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Dont tell me. I play with big groups, chances are the other 5 players at the table dont want to show up and watch you play out your background story or follow along while you shoot " bobs travel documentary the D&Ding." If that island happens to come up anyway in the course of the campaign and people are trying to decide whether to go there or not then sure feel free to bring it up to the other players as a reason for them to agree to go or not.
> 
> But if the rest of the group doesnt want to go there then its not happening. And ya know thats okay. People set off on certain paths in life for reasons that are never fulfilled all the time. Just ask everyone with a job that has nothing to do with their college major (theres a lot of us).




I always find this kind of reply interesting. Why would the other players object to a potential adventure simply because it's tied to one of the PC's background? Yet, if the GM introduced the idea of a mysterious island, they'd all likely be on board. 

The objection seems to be the connection to one character. Why is that?


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## prabe (Mar 6, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I always find this kind of reply interesting. Why would the other players object to a potential adventure simply because it's tied to one of the PC's background? Yet, if the GM introduced the idea of a mysterious island, they'd all likely be on board.
> 
> The objection seems to be the connection to one character. Why is that?




My best guess is that it feels to the other players as though the player whose character's background is being spotlighted is being more central to the adventure? Which might be literally true but doesn't have to matter (though if it matters at a given table it matters).


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 6, 2020)

prabe said:


> My best guess is that it feels to the other players as though the player whose character's background is being spotlighted is being more central to the adventure? Which might be literally true but doesn't have to matter (though if it matters at a given table it matters).




Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of, but I'm curious if that's the case. I'm also curious why that matters.....seems like no big deal to me. I mean, if I choose not to offer any background material for my PC, then I probably should expect that my background isn't going to come up. 

I mean, as with most things, table expectations are key. But this seems like such a non issue to me. I've played in plenty of games where the focus was on another PC's goals or background. Didn't diminish my enjoyment at all. I really don't get it.


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## prabe (Mar 6, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of, but I'm curious if that's the case. I'm also curious why that matters.....seems like no big deal to me. I mean, if I choose not to offer any background material for my PC, then I probably should expect that my background isn't going to come up.
> 
> I mean, as with most things, table expectations are key. But this seems like such a non issue to me. I've played in plenty of games where the focus was on another PC's goals or background. Didn't diminish my enjoyment at all. I really don't get it.




Yeah, not something likely to matter to me, either, if it's another character's backstory being used. Different tables are different.


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## Blue (Mar 6, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I've had some DMs that claimed falsely that any player that didn't provide a background just wanted to be psychotic murdering hobos and would attempt to force players into providing them via in-game punishment (unluckiest PC), metagame punishment (reduced xp), assigning a background without consultation (because that makes everything better!), or dropping the non-conforming player.




That's a quirk of the DM.  A rather zealous quirk.  Unless it was part of Session 0 that backgrounds were mandatory.   It doesn't really have anything to do with the concept of backstories, it's about that DM.



gepetto said:


> Other DMs use the opportunity to inject extra advantages and privileges for PCs that catch their fancy.  So providing a background is akin to buying a lottery ticket.  Sometimes it pays off handsomely.




Depends what you mean.  If you are talking about DM favoritism, that again is part of the DM and they will find a way to justify it no matter what.

If you are talking about something like "we can trust this person, they are my long time mentor" so you know a questgiver isn't trying to screw you over, then yes - tying a character into the world has given the DM a method to not be distrustful.  By the same token, that mentor can easily act as a hook if kidnapped or whatever.



gepetto said:


> Still other DMs feel the need to 'fiddle' and implant secrets and drama inside of any background provided to the point the players become exhausted and unwilling to trust anyone from their past.  "Hey Bob!  I'll bet your doting mom is actually the centuries-old lich bent of erasing all life this time!  Nah!  My bet is she'll turn out to be the daughter of a devil/demon hybrid that's hiding on the Prime until she can gather the forces to usurp both her parents and will need to use me as a sacrifice for the final acquisition!"




A player giving a backstory should absolutely expect it will be mined for hooks.  That's one of the biggest reasons why you create a backstory.  You are creating NPCs, locations and organizations and giving them to the DM to use.  Just like any other ones, that does mean that they are things you may not know about them.

Thoguh it sounds like a DM is being too heavy-handed in doing that in your example above, especially if they are not trying to true it with what was written about the character's mother.


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## gepetto (Mar 6, 2020)

Blue said:


> Nothing in a background requires anything to happen.  If you are looking at it like that no wonder you dislike them.  Luckily, that's not the case at all.
> 
> But if your plan involve the characters traveling to an island, you can get some instant buy-in if it's Bob's Island.
> 
> ...




A. If I need to delve into a backstory for motivation then I've done a terrible job building up the adventure in the first place. There should be a reason in the here and now why they want to go there. 

B. Still doesnt help with the other 4 players at the table. Its not their background after all. So the problem of buy-in still exists for 4/5ths of the table. Not a good ratio. 

C. This means its actually MORE work for me, not less. Because I need to plan on the backstory AND something to interest the rest of the group (which reason i would have needed anyway) AND somehow make those two things make sense together.


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## gepetto (Mar 6, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I always find this kind of reply interesting. Why would the other players object to a potential adventure simply because it's tied to one of the PC's background? Yet, if the GM introduced the idea of a mysterious island, they'd all likely be on board.
> 
> The objection seems to be the connection to one character. Why is that?




Because it seems like your catering to one person more then the rest for one thing. And because that characters backstory has nothing to do with anyone else. So why should the other characters risk their lives for it and put their other goals on hold to chase after one guys past? 

When your playing a sandbox campaign theres usually lots of things the party can choose to go do at any point in time. So why put the goals of the whole group behind the goals of one person? 

If that player can sell the rest of the party on chasing down their personal demons then by all means sure. But I'm not making that sales pitch for them and I'm certainly not forcing anyone else to do it.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 6, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Because it seems like your catering to one person more then the rest for one thing. And because that characters backstory has nothing to do with anyone else. So why should the other characters risk their lives for it and put their other goals on hold to chase after one guys past?
> 
> When your playing a sandbox campaign theres usually lots of things the party can choose to go do at any point in time. So why put the goals of the whole group behind the goals of one person?
> 
> If that player can sell the rest of the party on chasing down their personal demons then by all means sure. But I'm not making that sales pitch for them and I'm certainly not forcing anyone else to do it.




I'm not saying you have to put one thing ahead of any other. If the party has multiple goals already, then I don't see the problem with adding this one to the list. 

Or you could combine goals. The party wants to find the lost Amulet of MacGuffin....hey, it turns out it's on the Mysterious Island that the PC wants to visit. Or something similar. 

I suppose I'm used to my PCs having their own motivations, and with them helping each other with those that I don't see this concern about catering, or spotlight. I mean, as a player, I'm usually as down for one adventure as I am another.....it doesn't really matter to me if we hear about the adventure from a NPC, or find a map or other in game cue, or if it's something that a player introduces through PC goals and/or background. Either way, my character is going along.


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## prabe (Mar 6, 2020)

Obviously, what works at one table isn't necessarily going to work at another, but ...



gepetto said:


> A. If I need to delve into a backstory for motivation then I've done a terrible job building up the adventure in the first place. There should be a reason in the here and now why they want to go there.




I see using the backstories as a way to tie the PCs to the campaign and the setting. These characters came from somewhere before campaign started. Once they've done some things together, I start having their backstories lead to adventures, and they get to choose the order. Note the plural, there.



gepetto said:


> B. Still doesnt help with the other 4 players at the table. Its not their background after all. So the problem of buy-in still exists for 4/5ths of the table. Not a good ratio.




Did you note the plural above? Here's where it pays off. There are multiple backstories paying off at different levels at once. Also, since the backstories start cropping up as adventure hooks after the party is actually a party, they're tied-enough to each other that they're willing to work to help with one another's backstories.



gepetto said:


> C. This means its actually MORE work for me, not less. Because I need to plan on the backstory AND something to interest the rest of the group (which reason i would have needed anyway) AND somehow make those two things make sense together.




If they're tied together, and they're choosing the sequence in a way that makes sense to the party as a whole, these two things are one thing, and away you go. It's not less work, but it doesn't feel like more work to me, either.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 6, 2020)

gepetto said:


> A. If I need to delve into a backstory for motivation then I've done a terrible job building up the adventure in the first place. There should be a reason in the here and now why they want to go there.



uh, not exactly sure how these are mutually exclusive.


gepetto said:


> B. Still doesnt help with the other 4 players at the table. Its not their background after all. So the problem of buy-in still exists for 4/5ths of the table. Not a good ratio.
> 
> C. This means its actually MORE work for me, not less. Because I need to plan on the backstory AND something to interest the rest of the group (which reason i would have needed anyway) AND somehow make those two things make sense together.



it's not like everything ever needs to center around one character either. giving just one character personal motivation is as simple as "the bad wizard is going to DESTROY THE KINGDOM O: also he kidnapped the fighter's dad or something." some people don't feel like they need personal motivations for their character other than there's loot involved, no everyone's gonna get offended one party member got some sort personal tie in to the campaign, and some don't even care at all.


gepetto said:


> Because it seems like your catering to one person more then the rest for one thing. And because that characters backstory has nothing to do with anyone else. So why should the other characters risk their lives for it and put their other goals on hold to chase after one guys past?
> 
> When your playing a sandbox campaign theres usually lots of things the party can choose to go do at any point in time. So why put the goals of the whole group behind the goals of one person?
> 
> If that player can sell the rest of the party on chasing down their personal demons then by all means sure. But I'm not making that sales pitch for them and I'm certainly not forcing anyone else to do it.



I really don't get how this is an additional hurdle for character motivation. if one player says "oh hey let's do X 'cause my village is about to be destroyed" that should be enough for other players to go along with it so long as basic rewards are still involved.


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## aco175 (Mar 7, 2020)

I have my next campaign starting in Phandalin for the Essentials box.  I'm planning to have each PC list one NPC in town that they know.  It won't be their whole back story, but someone they know that I can take and feed information through, or place in trouble, or use for adventure.  Maybe a new person in town or a miner or such.  Not sure if splitting the back story like this make a difference on the discussion.


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## Nagol (Mar 7, 2020)

Blue said:


> That's a quirk of the DM.  A rather zealous quirk.  Unless it was part of Session 0 that backgrounds were mandatory.   It doesn't really have anything to do with the concept of backstories, it's about that DM.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Somehow you attributed my quotes to Geppeto.  I have no idea how.

And that prior mining is the primary complaint from players that are reluctant to provide backstories.  Their histories were modified, sometimes quite heavily by DMs without their knowledge or consent.  And the DMs changed things that for the DM seemed appropriate, but which impacted how the players felt about their PC and backstory.

It's not that shocking that if you ask for me to produce X and I in fact produce X and expect that X is true with respect to my character, changing it to Y may meet with resistance.  The greater the introduction/change associated with X and by necessity the ripples those changes should cause, the greater the resistance.


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## Tonguez (Mar 7, 2020)

I set up the game premise and then give the PCs a place in it

You are all working for the  Holy Church ...
you are members of Orbrils Travelling Circus ...
you are all gathered in the City of Makwembo to honour the coronation of the Rain Queen ...

Then its “okay, now telll me how you got to be there and what you do...”
as they talk it might identify signifigant NPC contacts, subgoals and connections which can be used


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## Blue (Mar 7, 2020)

gepetto said:


> A. If I need to delve into a backstory for motivation then I've done a terrible job building up the adventure in the first place. There should be a reason in the here and now why they want to go there.




Please, replace the word "need" with "have the opportunity to".

You acknowledge in the same sentence that you build up the adventure in the first place to motivate the characters.  It is just flat out wrong to say "I can have all my normal tools for doing this" or "I can have all my normaal tools for doing this plus one more" and prtetend that the second one is inferior.  It may be the same or better, but it is never worse.



gepetto said:


> B. Still doesnt help with the other 4 players at the table. Its not their background after all. So the problem of buy-in still exists for 4/5ths of the table. Not a good ratio.




Which unless all fo youor characters are so generic that they all have the same motivations is a factor anyway.



gepetto said:


> C. This means its actually MORE work for me, not less. Because I need to plan on the backstory AND something to interest the rest of the group (which reason i would have needed anyway) AND somehow make those two things make sense together.




See my answer to the previous one.  Unless all of the characters you run are bland cookie cutters that haqve exactly the same motivations, you are already doing this.  Claiming "I have to do the same thing I do now" isn't more work.


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## Blue (Mar 7, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Because it seems like your catering to one person more then the rest for one thing. And because that characters backstory has nothing to do with anyone else. So why should the other characters risk their lives for it and put their other goals on hold to chase after one guys past?
> 
> When your playing a sandbox campaign theres usually lots of things the party can choose to go do at any point in time. So why put the goals of the whole group behind the goals of one person?
> 
> If that player can sell the rest of the party on chasing down their personal demons then by all means sure. But I'm not making that sales pitch for them and I'm certainly not forcing anyone else to do it.




Please stop trying to twist it.  Getting player buy-in because you are including something from their background is not and never was ignoring the rest of the players and their goals.

Read what the heck we are saying, instead of skimming it and answering as if we had coughed up your preconceived biases that you had already decided against.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of, but I'm curious if that's the case. I'm also curious why that matters.....seems like no big deal to me. I mean, if I choose not to offer any background material for my PC, then I probably should expect that my background isn't going to come up.
> 
> I mean, as with most things, table expectations are key. But this seems like such a non issue to me. I've played in plenty of games where the focus was on another PC's goals or background. Didn't diminish my enjoyment at all. I really don't get it.



As long as there some sort of implied guarantee that each PC's goals or background will get a chance at vaguely equal airplay, all is good.

But if it's the same PC, or the same few PCs, whose backgrounds keep coming up in play and-or even driving play, that's not good for the long-term health of the game; particularly if other players' PCs have goals and backgrounds that aren't getting any airtime, or they feel they have to fight for said airtime.

Favouritism is bad.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

Blue said:


> It is not an unpleasant position. Request backstories, tell them why. If they do not wish that, they don't need to participate. If they see how it's affecting the characters that did and want to submit it, let them - there's no due date - this is all fun.



Still leaves the players on an unequal footing, and I-as-DM am bound to end up eventually torquing someone off - either those who submitted backstories if I don't use them, or those who didn't submit backstories if I do use them.



> It's as if someone only shows up every other session and you're worried your favoring the players who are left with more attention.



Unless there's a good reason for it, someone who only shows up every other session eventually >_punt_< won't be showing up for any sessions at all.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

gepetto said:


> *If that player can sell the rest of the party* on chasing down their personal demons then by all means sure. But I'm not making that sales pitch for them and I'm certainly not forcing anyone else to do it.



This is the key thing right here.

It's on the player to roleplay the PC's attempt(s) to convince the rest of the party to go along, and then on the rest of the party to decide in character whether they'll do it now, do it later, or not do it at all.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

Nagol said:


> And that prior mining is the primary complaint from players that are reluctant to provide backstories.  Their histories were modified, sometimes quite heavily by DMs without their knowledge or consent.  And the DMs changed things that for the DM seemed appropriate, but which impacted how the players felt about their PC and backstory.
> 
> It's not that shocking that if you ask for me to produce X and I in fact produce X and expect that X is true with respect to my character, changing it to Y may meet with resistance.  The greater the introduction/change associated with X and by necessity the ripples those changes should cause, the greater the resistance.



Try this one on: after playing a character for years and slowly building up her backstory, the DM and I finally got around to rolling up her family (he has tables for this).

Little did I-as-player know that he, via the unknowing actions of the party, had already long since set the wheels in motion for a complete reset of the world's history via some sort of alternate-universe schtick.  Three or four real-world months later the reset took effect, wiping out her entire backstory and family history as her homeland was punted 250 years backward in time.  Other areas were less affected, and some not at all; but if you're from one particular southern continent - as it happens, the continent of my henchperson's homeland and the place where I hired her - it's now under an ocean.

A few other PCs were affected to some extent but only one other - from the same homeland as I and with an even more elaborate backstory than mine - got hit like I did.

Lessone I learned: I will never play poker with that DM.  He kept a straight face the whole time we were doing up my PC's family.

Side benefit: I guess I don't need to worry about my backstory being used against me.


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## gepetto (Mar 7, 2020)

prabe said:


> Obviously, what works at one table isn't necessarily going to work at another, but ...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Yes it is more work. Much, much more work. And annoyance. And requires enough cheese to choke a packers fan. And I'm entirely lactose intolerant when it comes to my campaigns. 

No ridiculously unlikely coincidences, no nonsensical forced relationships, no cliched C list plot devices, and definitely no clearly forced meta interactions to shoehorn in some players fan fic story about why he's not a turnip farmer. 

After seeing everyones ideas about what it supposedly ads to the game I am not only utterly unmoved, but having thought about it more now I'm even further entrenched in my position not to incorporate these things one second beyond the first 20 minutes of game time. When I run a game I have a particular story scenario in mind for it and I'm not interested in twisting it into a pretzel to cater to some minor nonsense in the characters background.  

I dont want to read them and if you need more then 90 seconds to explain it I've already drifted off to the next player. Like alignment, keep it to yourself. Its part of your roleplaying choices not part of my campaign arc.


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## gepetto (Mar 7, 2020)

Blue said:


> Please, replace the word "need" with "have the opportunity to".




No its need. If its not built up then no one cares, its not fun and we're all wasting our time sitting around the table doing it. Because the only point to playing a game is to be having fun.




Blue said:


> You acknowledge in the same sentence that you build up the adventure in the first place to motivate the characters.  It is just flat out wrong to say "I can have all my normal tools for doing this" or "I can have all my normaal tools for doing this plus one more" and prtetend that the second one is inferior.  It may be the same or better, but it is never worse.




Except that its NOT a tool. Its a complication. In the same way that a screwdriver is a tool and a having to use it to ram in a nail is a complication. Its an added factor that makes the original job harder rather then easier and results in an inferior final product.







Blue said:


> See my answer to the previous one.  Unless all of the characters you run are bland cookie cutters that haqve exactly the same motivations, you are already doing this.  Claiming "I have to do the same thing I do now" isn't more work.




No its not like that at all, and NO i do NOT need to think about anyones backstory to get them invested in an adventure. Many adventures are mainly dealing with the consequences of past adventures, that the whole WHOLE GROUP was in on. Its not episodic in most cases with distinct beginnings and ends. Its a continuation of life. Which very, very quickly becomes much bigger and involves much more important things then the do nothing villagers of your boring little town, that had so little going on that you left it for life on the highway.

For instance I'm running a modern horror game right now where the players were members of ghost hunting group that met on the internet to do the stuff people on TV shows do. They eventually discover a lovecraftian conspiracy and a hidden world of real supernatural. All of which is far above their heads and dangerous in ways they arent prepared for.

The campaign is about a group of people who had a lighthearted hobby in common being thrust into dark and dangerous doings that are beyond their control and how they try to cope and survive a world they werent prepared for.

I dont need to know about your sick aunts diabetese, why you got fired from your last job or anything about how your first crush went wrong (newsflash, they all do eventually. its not that interesting). I can invest you in not getting murdered by the supernatural horrors who are hunting you or in trying to control the dark and byzantine politics of the inhuman world thats drawing you in one way or another just fine without any of that information.

Nor would knowing all about how you always wanted to find the daddy who ran out on you and momma many years ago measurably ad anything to the drama of the situation.


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## Imaculata (Mar 7, 2020)

It kind of differs from campaign to campaign how much I do with character backstories. With large scale campaigns, character backgrounds mostly serve for the players to flesh out their own characters. But bits and pieces of the character's background may eventually make their way into the story. However, I don't bend over backwards to force backstories into the plot. I tend to discuss my plans for a characters' background with the player. I respect my players and their agency over their own characters. I don't want to be the annoying DM who kills off characters from player backstories, or transforms them into villains, without the players themselves having any say in that.  Nor do I want to add things to their backstory that the players don't agree with. It is kind of a given that details will need to be added, in order to make the backstory feature into the campaign plot, but I always talk this over with the player.

On the other hand, I also have shorter campaigns that put a heavy focus on character backstories and plot. With these sort of campaigns I inform my players up front that their backstory will be featured in the campaign, and ask them to write their backstory accordingly. For example, if I'm running a Call of Cthulhu campaign, I ask my players to come up with fears and shocking secrets that can mess with their characters during the campaign.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 7, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> As long as there some sort of implied guarantee that each PC's goals or background will get a chance at vaguely equal airplay, all is good.
> 
> But if it's the same PC, or the same few PCs, whose backgrounds keep coming up in play and-or even driving play, that's not good for the long-term health of the game; particularly if other players' PCs have goals and backgrounds that aren't getting any airtime, or they feel they have to fight for said airtime.
> 
> Favouritism is bad.




It depends, I think. I agree that you don’t want to exclude anyone else. But if one player opts to create some material I can use as GM and another doesn’t...why shouldn’t I use the material given? 

It doesn’t mean that everything has to revolve around that one PC to the exclusion of the others. It’s not about punishing anyone.

Now, I understand this may not work for every group. Some may see it as more work for the GM, or they don’t like how it implies there’s something meaningful or unique about the PCs or something....okay. I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. It makes my job easier as GM by giving me some avenues for story ideas and material to draw from. It helps make the PCs a part of the world instead of these man-with-no-name types who wander from place to place and get involved in adventures.

My group has this expectation built in that they should craft some details about their PC. I don’t need a novella worth of detail or anything, and it doesn't have to be elaborate....just a few details that give a sense of where they’ve been and what they might’ve gotten up to until the start of the game.


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

gepetto said:


> No ridiculously unlikely coincidences,



I actually don't mind the occasional ridiculous coincidence, in fact sometimes I'll play it up for the amusement.

Me-as-DM: "Your party is down a Ranger, and Bob, you're down a character, but OH LOOK Bob, your retired Ranger JUST HAPPENS to be in town right now even though when last seen she was 1500 miles away!  What are the odds of that?!"



> When I run a game I have a particular story scenario in mind for it



Absent any qualifiers this is a bit of a red flag, in that what if your players decide, in character during play, to take things completely off-story?  Would you let it happen?



> and I'm not interested in twisting it into a pretzel to cater to some minor nonsense in the characters background.



You don't have to.



> I dont want to read them and if you need more then 90 seconds to explain it I've already drifted off to the next player. Like alignment, keep it to yourself. Its part of your roleplaying choices not part of my campaign arc.



I'm somewhere in between.

I don't ask that players develop backgrounds for their characters but if one does so anyway I'd like to have at least a vague idea of what's in it; not so I can bend the game toward it but so I can incorporate it if the game otherwise happens to run on to it:

<_party has to travel through a somewhat-dangerous mountain pass en route to their next adventure_>
"Aloysius, you did time in the 7th Legion before you took up adventuring, didn't you?  They were stationed in this pass for a few seasons during that time, meaning you know the area at least a bit and probably have a few local contacts in the villages.  The 9th hold the pass these days..."


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## Lanefan (Mar 7, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> It depends, I think. I agree that you don’t want to exclude anyone else. But if one player opts to create some material I can use as GM and another doesn’t...why shouldn’t I use the material given?



As mentioned in my post just above, there's a difference between forcing the material into the game (which is bad) and simply using it as background if the game happens to run on to it naturally (which is fine).



> It doesn’t mean that everything has to revolve around that one PC to the exclusion of the others.



Depends on scale, too.

If the party happens to be passing through a PC's hometown and she takes them to introduce to her family, who cares?  Roleplay it out, enjoy it, and move on.  No extra work for me-as-GM whatsoever. 

But when someone's backstory suggests - or forces, or causes a player to expect/demand - one or more entire adventures be centered on that PC, there's trouble a-brewing.



> Now, I understand this may not work for every group. Some may see it as more work for the GM, or they don’t like how it implies there’s something meaningful or unique about the PCs or something....okay. I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. It makes my job easier as GM by giving me some avenues for story ideas and material to draw from.



Heh - my problem right now is I've already got too much story* and nowhere near enough time to play through it all. 

* - over and above whatever red herrings the players/PCs themselves might introduce and-or follow.



> It helps make the PCs a part of the world instead of these man-with-no-name types who wander from place to place and get involved in adventures.



Fair enough, if the adventuring takes place in the same general region as where the character's background is set.

Which raises another slight headache: parties of disparate races and-or cultures are quite likely to hail from widely different places - you can only use the "cosmopolitan port town" trope so many times.   Which means if the adventuring tends to happen in one area it's not happening in all the others, thus only those PCs who are from the adventuring area are likely to see their backgrounds come into play.


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## gepetto (Mar 7, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I actually don't mind the occasional ridiculous coincidence, in fact sometimes I'll play it up for the amusement.




Sometimes we'll do more lighthearted campaigns. They're short though. I like a good 6-8 session space opera for that sort of thing. Not in my regular serious game though. 




Lanefan said:


> Absent any qualifiers this is a bit of a red flag, in that what if your players decide, in character during play, to take things completely off-story?  Would you let it happen?




Not usually no. When i start a new campaign I tell the group what the theme and general shape is going to be and usually I dont want to get too far off of that. Not every session is story either though. There are pauses where theres nothing really related to the overall plot going on and the PC's have a little breathing room to try to take control of their own destinies again. Kind of like how a season of a tv show will have a general theme and a climax in mind for the finale but not every episode involves that plot. Some of them are just random monster of the week type stuff. 

There have been exceptions where they came up with an idea that seemed really cool at the moment and I went with it. But thats rare. An example I can think of was my last changeling game. First time any of us had played that one and the theme is generally kidnap victims of the fey find their way back to the mortal world and deal with their new altered life circumstances. 

Most of the time you start after the characters return to the real world. But I decided for this one it would be fun to have them meet up in fairy and escape together. Unfortunately they threw a wrench in the works by deciding to cut a deal with their fairy master to go be hunters for the fey in the mortal world capturing slaves and working their will. Here I'm thinking they plan to break the deal and I've just been handed a BBEG. Nope. They honored the deal and went through a 9 month campaign as evil fey kidnappers and spies manipulating mortals into being part of the feys insane plans. 

Not at all what I had in mind and I had to improv a ton in every session. But it was a group mainly of friends that I had played with for years and the new people seemed like good players so I trusted their direction and went with it. It was a fun campaign until they all got killed by the men in black, but I still kinda miss the original idea I had. 

That was a rare exception though because I knew the other players well and we werent deep into the campaign. They put it off the rails right in the first session and when i told them that meant I was going to have to make up a lot of stuff as we went they were okay with that. 

The challenge seemed kind of fun for me. Its not something I want to do every time though. 







Lanefan said:


> I'm somewhere in between.
> 
> I don't ask that players develop backgrounds for their characters but if one does so anyway I'd like to have at least a vague idea of what's in it; not so I can bend the game toward it but so I can incorporate it if the game otherwise happens to run on to it:
> 
> ...




I want your elevator pitch. Sort of a cross between what you would put in your intro paragraph on a dating site and a job interview. 

" I'm 37, divorced, have some kids, did a few years in the army and then was a traveling sales consultant for 15 years. Grew up a little rough but got straightened out in the service and now I'm a socially conservative Asatru pagan whose a recovering workaholic and whose kids are old enough not to want to hang out with dad on the weekends so I'm back on the road". 

Tells a GM all sorts of things about how they can expect my character to react in various circumstances, and why I'm out searching for adventure. If they wanted to use me for various local info like you said then sure, i traveled around a lot and talked to people for a living. I'll play exposition tool for your narrator if you want. But I'm not filling out who all these people were or where i went ahead of time. And if someone did I wouldnt feel obligated in the slightest to use those details as a GM. Or to reshape one of my towns compositions because you wrote down that your buddy buddy with the mayor of said town. 

If I were a player I wouldnt appreciate the GM dragging that characters ex-wife or children into an adventure as some sort of hook. So I wont do it to them. I make my characters backstories short and relatively devoid of details but whats there is mine and i dont want it altered or screwed with. So again, I dont do something to a player that I wouldnt want done to me if the roles were reversed.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 7, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> As mentioned in my post just above, there's a difference between forcing the material into the game (which is bad) and simply using it as background if the game happens to run on to it naturally (which is fine).




What’s the difference? I mean....what do the players in your game run into that you didn’t place? 

What makes one thing “forced” and another “discovered”? 



Lanefan said:


> Depends on scale, too.
> 
> If the party happens to be passing through a PC's hometown and she takes them to introduce to her family, who cares?  Roleplay it out, enjoy it, and move on.  No extra work for me-as-GM whatsoever.
> 
> But when someone's backstory suggests - or forces, or causes a player to expect/demand - one or more entire adventures be centered on that PC, there's trouble a-brewing.




What trouble do you think is brewing? 

When I say backstory, I mean something meaningful....a goal or a secret or something else that can contribute to the ongoing story in a meaningful way. 

I don’t mean chatting with grandma.

So you think it may be troublesome to focus on a player offered but of backstory. Why? What trouble? 



Lanefan said:


> Heh - my problem right now is I've already got too much story* and nowhere near enough time to play through it all.
> 
> * - over and above whatever red herrings the players/PCs themselves might introduce and-or follow.




This is one of the reasons I enjoy player offered material....so I don’t have to come up with so much story myself. 



Lanefan said:


> Fair enough, if the adventuring takes place in the same general region as where the character's background is set.




No, the background can always matter. Maybe the PC is from a backwoods farm town....this seems to be the default assumption in many cases, and it’s a pretty common trope in fantasy and adventure fiction. Doesn’t that upbringing always matter yo thee character? They go to the big city and are overwhelmed. Then they go to the _really_ big city and realize just how small their town was. Then they encounter entirely different cultures and so on. 




Lanefan said:


> Which raises another slight headache: parties of disparate races and-or cultures are quite likely to hail from widely different places - you can only use the "cosmopolitan port town" trope so many times.   Which means if the adventuring tends to happen in one area it's not happening in all the others, thus only those PCs who are from the adventuring area are likely to see their backgrounds come into play.




This isn’t remotely true. Again, I’m not talking about stopping by grandma’s farmhouse for some in character banter. I’m talking about goals that can help move the story forward. Maybe the PCs are from all over the place....but maybe they’ve all been wronged by the same person. 

It doesn't even need to be that specific. There’s any number of reasons you can come up with to connect a group together. Very often what I’ve seen is a natural “you help me kill the warlord who destroyed my village and I’ll help you recover the lost artifact” kind of bonding.


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## prabe (Mar 8, 2020)

Sounds as though since your campaigns are sequels to prior campaigns, more or less, you already have your backstories, and enough shared background that blank space for players to add stuff is tight. Given that, your decisions make a sort of sense.

But ..



gepetto said:


> If I were a player I wouldnt appreciate the GM dragging that characters ex-wife or children into an adventure as some sort of hook. So I wont do it to them. I make my characters backstories short and relatively devoid of details but whats there is mine and i dont want it altered or screwed with. So again, I dont do something to a player that I wouldnt want done to me if the roles were reversed.




If I were a player and had ideas of my character's backstory and they were ignored, it would start to feel to me as though my character were just an interchangeable generic bundle of statistics, and it would be hard for me to stay engaged with whatever the campaign was doing. I don't ask my players for anything I wouldn't do myself as a player.


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## Lanefan (Mar 8, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> What’s the difference? I mean....what do the players in your game run into that you didn’t place?
> 
> What makes one thing “forced” and another “discovered”?



By "forced" I mean the game would not have gone there had there been no PC backstory tied to that place.

Let me try to explain a bit differently.

Unless a player has specific ideas (rare) we somewhat randomly determine where the PC was born, where it grew up, etc.  Let's say one PC was born and grew up in the town of Tewys, a town near the frontier but not all that close to any significant adventuring sites.

If the party passes through Tewys at some point _where they would have passed throuugh it anyway_ then I've no problem bringing in that bit of backstory, assuming the player hasn't already done so, as it adds some depth to the town and thus the setting. But if they wouldn't otherwise go there, I'm not going to force the party to Tewys just so that bit of backstory can become relevant; nor am I going to place adventures there unless that's where they already would have been.



> What trouble do you think is brewing?
> 
> When I say backstory, I mean something meaningful....a goal or a secret or something else that can contribute to the ongoing story in a meaningful way.
> 
> ...



You answered your own question: the trouble is that you're focusing on one player/PC's story instead of on that of the group as a whole.  That's trouble the second any other player feels less-than-equal.



> This is one of the reasons I enjoy player offered material....so I don’t have to come up with so much story myself.



Each to their own.  Coming up with story has admittedly been a headache for me in past campaigns, but not (yet) in this one. 



> No, the background can always matter. Maybe the PC is from a backwoods farm town....this seems to be the default assumption in many cases, and it’s a pretty common trope in fantasy and adventure fiction. Doesn’t that upbringing always matter yo thee character? They go to the big city and are overwhelmed. Then they go to the _really_ big city and realize just how small their town was. Then they encounter entirely different cultures and so on.



Sure, and that can (and I hope will) inform the player's roleplay. But for the most part it only matters to that PC's player, and not to me as DM unless the party happen to pass through or close to that backwoods farm town or unless the PC/player pulls the party there for some reason.



> This isn’t remotely true. Again, I’m not talking about stopping by grandma’s farmhouse for some in character banter. I’m talking about goals that can help move the story forward. Maybe the PCs are from all over the place....but maybe they’ve all been wronged by the same person.
> 
> It doesn't even need to be that specific. There’s any number of reasons you can come up with to connect a group together. Very often what I’ve seen is a natural “you help me kill the warlord who destroyed my village and I’ll help you recover the lost artifact” kind of bonding.



Ah, you're looking at something on a different scale than I am, then.  I'm looking at material that exists purely in the background of whatever group story is taking place, where you're looking at material that determines what the story will be, in whole or in part.

There's tons of ways to get parties together, even including ye olde "you all meet in a tavern"; and once in the field their experiences there will either bond them into a group or they won't.  I don't feel I need yet another layer of bonding; never mind that even were I to use such things it'd become largely moot after two adventures when 3/4 of the party lineup has turned over - maybe twice!


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## gepetto (Mar 8, 2020)

prabe said:


> Sounds as though since your campaigns are sequels to prior campaigns, more or less, you already have your backstories, and enough shared background that blank space for players to add stuff is tight. Given that, your decisions make a sort of sense.




Yes. In fact when I say campaign I mean the entire chain of events that involves those same players and the same group of adventurers roughly. I've noticed people seem to mean what we used to call adventures when they say campaign now. 

Like if its lord of the rings. ALL of the books, hobbit to Return of the king is what I mean by our campaign. Seems like a lot of other people would call each individual book its own campaign. Which might by the source of some of the disconnect here. 






prabe said:


> If I were a player and had ideas of my character's backstory and they were ignored, it would start to feel to me as though my character were just an interchangeable generic bundle of statistics, and it would be hard for me to stay engaged with whatever the campaign was doing. I don't ask my players for anything I wouldn't do myself as a player.




Thats sort of illustrative of the problem. Your backstory is not who you ARE, its who you WERE. A character shouldnt stay frozen in the past, and those things shouldnt matter for very long. Part of the point is that all those things that happened before you became an adventurer were small potatoes. Your world expands exponentially as an adventurer, everything gets bigger and more important the further on you go. What mattered on day 1 of your adventurer career is nothing by day 30. Much less a dozen levels and possibly years of game time further in. 

Real people dont stay frozen. At least your not supposed to. If your the same person at 21 as you were at 15 something is wrong. And if your still that person at 30 after you've left home, built a career, seen parts of the world and had some ups and downs all on your own then something is very definitely wrong. Who you started life out as really doesnt matter very much after a few years into independence and adulthood. And thats not even talking about a world full of magic, alternate planes of existence and a dozen intelligent species all living in close proximity. 

If backstory has some effects on the game for level 1, maybe level 2 characters, eh I can live with it I guess. I wont be doing it, because I have lots and lots of ideas for low level adventures and dont need any co-authors there. But it should be all done and much bigger and more important things should be happening after that.


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## prabe (Mar 8, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Yes. In fact when I say campaign I mean the entire chain of events that involves those same players and the same group of adventurers roughly. I've noticed people seem to mean what we used to call adventures when they say campaign now.
> 
> Like if its lord of the rings. ALL of the books, hobbit to Return of the king is what I mean by our campaign. Seems like a lot of other people would call each individual book its own campaign. Which might by the source of some of the disconnect here.




Just to be clear about my own campaigns, both of mine are running every other week. One just had Session 46; the other just had Session 13. I didn't start either with much more than an instigating event, involving all the PCs.



gepetto said:


> Thats sort of illustrative of the problem. Your backstory is not who you ARE, its who you WERE. A character shouldnt stay frozen in the past, and those things shouldnt matter for very long. Part of the point is that all those things that happened before you became an adventurer were small potatoes. Your world expands exponentially as an adventurer, everything gets bigger and more important the further on you go. What mattered on day 1 of your adventurer career is nothing by day 30. Much less a dozen levels and possibly years of game time further in.




Part of what I specifically ask for in backstories is why the characters are adventurers. Or at least, why you're at the instigating event. Call-backs to previous events happen from time to time; sometimes they're to things from backstories, sometimes they're to things from previous sessions.



gepetto said:


> Real people dont stay frozen. At least your not supposed to. If your the same person at 21 as you were at 15 something is wrong. And if your still that person at 30 after you've left home, built a career, seen parts of the world and had some ups and downs all on your own then something is very definitely wrong. Who you started life out as really doesnt matter very much after a few years into independence and adulthood.




I think of people more as onions. I am not the same person I was at nineteen, but I *contain* that person, and I would not be who I am now without having been that person.



gepetto said:


> If backstory has some effects on the game for level 1, maybe level 2 characters, eh I can live with it I guess. I wont be doing it, because I have lots and lots of ideas for low level adventures and dont need any co-authors there. But it should be all done and much bigger and more important things should be happening after that.




Heh. The longer-running campaign is still actively pursuing threads from at least one backstory, and they're level 11. They had a thread from another backstory that didn't get resolved until Session 31, and the resolution got them to level 8. Your campaign/s work for you and your players; my campaigns work for me and my players. Broader takeaway is there's no single right answer on this, as with many gaming-related things.


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## haakon1 (Mar 8, 2020)

For me, it depends on what the player's give me to work with.  Because I run very long campaigns and often start with folks who either haven't played in decades or never played, I've rarely seen players with elaborate backstories at the start (often I provide more than the player did).  Some players will flesh out the backstory as the campaign goes on, or start new stories with NPC's (romance, etc.) that can become a springboard for more stories.

What I definitely don't like to do is "use backstory" (original or "revealed" later) as a cudgel against the player.  I don't want it to be like "24" where Jack Bauer having a daughter means she's going to be kidnapped several times.  I like it more like "Hawaii Five-O", where the backstory of say, Junior Raines is built out over time, and only rarely is about action, but leads to character-driven stories.


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## pemerton (Mar 8, 2020)

I would say it's 30 years, maybe more, since I've run a game where the basic narrative drive didn't come from the motivations/aspirations/relationships etc the players have built into their PCs.

Some of this will be established as part of PC build. A lot of it emerges during play. 

(For a one-shot, _during play_ can take place within that single session. There's nothing special about one-shots as far as backgrounds are concerned.)


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Mar 8, 2020)

Enough for players to feel like their PC's did indeed come from THIS campaign world rather than drop in out of the sky from another parallel dimension, but I've come to believe strongly that character backgrounds are for PLAYER usage, not DM usage.  By the time my campaigns are beginning I've already built them sufficiently to run the entire campaign.  I don't need player input to then rearrange the campaign setting for me just so that they can have a special snowflake niche in the adventures that are about to happen.  The adventures are about to feature them exclusively anyway, I don't need (or want) to build _the world_ around them as such.

Backgrounds are for players to use to get a handle on their characters [where they came from, where they are when the game starts, where they as players plan on taking them PRIOR to finding that their plans may change as they begin interacting with the setting and ongoing game], not for ME as DM to use to make adventures revolve around them as individuals in particular.  Such occasions to use particular PC's and their personal backgrounds to develop SPECIAL adventures LATER as time and opportunity permits will undoubtedly arise, but I don't need that information to build the world and adventures around even before play begins.  In fact, if I am _not_ prepared as DM to run a campaign without ever having a word of background from any player about their individual PC then I haven't actually done my job as DM, have I?


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 8, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Ah, you're looking at something on a different scale than I am, then.  I'm looking at material that exists purely in the background of whatever group story is taking place, where you're looking at material that determines what the story will be, in whole or in part.
> 
> There's tons of ways to get parties together, even including ye olde "you all meet in a tavern"; and once in the field their experiences there will either bond them into a group or they won't.  I don't feel I need yet another layer of bonding; never mind that even were I to use such things it'd become largely moot after two adventures when 3/4 of the party lineup has turned over - maybe twice!




Yeah, I am talking about something more..._hefty _is probably a good word for it. The PC already has a Background as part of character creation (in 5E anyway) so that should help give them a sense of character history and outlook. 

But what I’m talking about is something more from that history. Some kind of goal or motivation for being an adventurer. It doesn’t have to define them in every way like Batman’s origin story, although it could. Alternatively, depending on the backstory of the character, I may lift elements of them for play. These need not be written before hand....they may come up as the player shapes the character in play. Perhaps a PC with the Soldier background decides that he spent time in a mercenary company. Okay cool....what company? What was the company like? Why did he leave?

Those questions suggest all manner of stories. 



Man in the Funny Hat said:


> In fact, if I am _not_ prepared as DM to run a campaign without ever having a word of background from any player about their individual PC then I haven't actually done my job as DM, have I?




I don’t think that’s true, no. It may be true, depending on how you like to run a game. But considering I do exactly what you’re describing as my default mode of DMing, I would have to say that it is not universal.


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## Maestrino (Mar 9, 2020)

This whole discussion seems to come down to whether you're the kind of DM that plots out an entire campaign and doesn't want any player backstories derailing "your" campaign, or whether you're the kind of DM that comes up with major plot hooks that can be dropped into pretty much any situation to steer your campagn while still letting your players feel like they're in a wide-open sandbox.

EXAMPLE:
Scenario 1: You have a plot set up to take place in Neverwinter. Come hell or high water, these events will take place in Neverwinter, no matter how you have to get the party there. It's a cool plot

Scenario 2: You have a plot hook that the PCs will find out one of their informants has been captured and thrown in prison. Could happen pretty much anywhere. Wait, one of the characters has some backstory in Neverwinter? Left their cousin for dead in Neverwinter and ran away to become an adventurer? The characters are going to be on their way to Luskan and pass right by Neverwinter anyway? The NPC is now in prison in Neverwinter. The PCs now want to stop to break her out on the way to Luskan. Now one PC reluctantly comes along, but is on edge the _whole time_ because they're worried someone will recognize them. What if that cousin _isn't_ dead? What if the cousin has a position of some power in Neverwinter now, and has been dreaming about revenge for _years_? This could turn into a dozen game sessions in Neverwinter.

In Scenario 2, is the rest of the party "bored" because this plot hook only ties in to one PCs backstory? Hell no, they're planning a prison break, which is what they would have been doing in Scenario 1 anyway, but now they have extra reason to be sneaky and avoid detection.


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## Man in the Funny Hat (Mar 9, 2020)

Also needs to be considered whether the player really wants to have their pc Shanghaied into something the DM cooks up for them personally, or if they’d just as soon remain anonymous orphan farm boy turned hero who’s simply along for the ride.  Not all players nor PCs are the same in that regard.
Again, I say the background is for players usage rather than the DM, so no reason a DM should _require_ it.


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## prabe (Mar 9, 2020)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Also needs to be considered whether the player really wants to have their pc Shanghaied into something the DM cooks up for them personally, or if they’d just as soon remain anonymous orphan farm boy turned hero who’s simply along for the ride.  Not all players nor PCs are the same in that regard.
> Again, I say the background is for players usage rather than the DM, so no reason a DM should _require_ it.




Even though I'm on the "I use them" side of the debate. I agree that backstories are at least as useful to players as to DMs, and that the DM should not insist on them. I figure anything the player writes in the backstory is fair game, but I'm not going to fridge their family or anything like that--I'm looking for things I can let the characters resolve more than anything else.


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## gepetto (Mar 10, 2020)

Maestrino said:


> This whole discussion seems to come down to whether you're the kind of DM that plots out an entire campaign and doesn't want any player backstories derailing "your" campaign, or whether you're the kind of DM that comes up with major plot hooks that can be dropped into pretty much any situation to steer your campagn while still letting your players feel like they're in a wide-open sandbox.
> 
> EXAMPLE:
> Scenario 1: You have a plot set up to take place in Neverwinter. Come hell or high water, these events will take place in Neverwinter, no matter how you have to get the party there. It's a cool plot
> ...




Yes a lot of times the rest of the party IS bored because this only ties into one persons story. And I'm bored. Because I dont want to run even one adventure about your stupid cousin much less a dozen. I want to run the adventure I planned, with bigger, more important, more interesting goals then dealing with some half remembered acquaintance from the past. 

Just like when I'm out with a friend from work now and we run into someone they knew from from highschool who all of a sudden wants to spend an hour talking about the old days. Nope, not interested. Lets move along, send a facebook message when you get home that we both know they're just going to ignore anyway. And lets get back to what we were planning to do before the peanut gallery showed up and interrupted.


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## pemerton (Mar 10, 2020)

Man in the Funny Hat said:


> Backgrounds are for players to use to get a handle on their characters [where they came from, where they are when the game starts, where they as players plan on taking them PRIOR to finding that their plans may change as they begin interacting with the setting and ongoing game], not for ME as DM to use to make adventures revolve around them as individuals in particular.  Such occasions to use particular PC's and their personal backgrounds to develop SPECIAL adventures LATER as time and opportunity permits will undoubtedly arise, but I don't need that information to build the world and adventures around even before play begins.  In fact, if I am _not_ prepared as DM to run a campaign without ever having a word of background from any player about their individual PC then I haven't actually done my job as DM, have I?



I would answer your (rhetorical) question the opposite way from you: if I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the players' individual PCs then I'm not doing my job as a GM.


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## pemerton (Mar 10, 2020)

Maestrino said:


> This whole discussion seems to come down to whether you're the kind of DM that plots out an entire campaign and doesn't want any player backstories derailing "your" campaign, or whether you're the kind of DM that comes up with major plot hooks that can be dropped into pretty much any situation to steer your campagn while still letting your players feel like they're in a wide-open sandbox.



No it doesn't. Read @hawkeyefan's posts. Or mine. We're not talking about either of the things you describe here.



gepetto said:


> Yes a lot of times the rest of the party IS bored because this only ties into one persons story. And I'm bored. Because I dont want to run even one adventure about your stupid cousin much less a dozen. I want to run the adventure I planned, with bigger, more important, more interesting goals then dealing with some half remembered acquaintance from the past.



I don't get this at all. DL is more interesting because Tanis's former lover is now his enemy and a dragon hierarch (or whatever they're called - it's been a few decades). LotR is driven by the fact that Gandalf has backstory with Saruman, Aragorn (via his descent from Isildur) with Sauron, Frodo (via his relationship to Bilbo) with Gollum, etc.

Evocative fiction tends to relate to the character, not just to cyphers chasing after McGuffins.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 10, 2020)

@gepetto - If the default assumption is that whatever story the player comes up with vis a vis their backstory is always going to be less cool and less interesting than whatever you as DM have planned then the issue is with you as the DM, and not so much the quality of the player backstory. I'm very much with @pemerton on this - evocative fiction is character driven, not plot driven. That doesn't mean you don't have a plot, but you also need strong characters and strong ways of connecting those characters to the narrative in multiple ways. You work character driven arcs into the larger plot arcs and make sure everyone gets their moment in the sun. This is much easier if there is some established fiction about how the characters know each other, who they might have in common, and what their core drives and motivations are.

All that said, if both you and your party enjoy running backstory free characters dropped into a plot based adventure, that's fine. If you guys are enjoying yourselves you aren't doing something wrong. However, that doesn't mean that using backstory/background in the way other posters are suggesting is _bad_, it's just not something that you think you want to do.


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## shawnhcorey (Mar 10, 2020)

Well, I'm confused. If you as GM want/allow the PCs to have backstories, then you should run as session zero where the players create their characters and integrate their backstories into the campaign. All aspects of caharacter integration should be a joint effort between the players and the GM.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 10, 2020)

shawnhcorey said:


> Well, I'm confused. If you as GM want/allow the PCs to have backstories, then you should run as session zero where the players create their characters and integrate their backstories into the campaign. All aspects of caharacter integration should be a joint effort between the players and the GM.




I don't think it has to be entirely front loaded at session zero, but I do think that most of this will require collaboration by the GM and player. I don't think there's any one way to handle this....it can probably take a variety of forms and could be all at once, or a bit at a time over the entire campaign. What works will vary from table to table, and also from character to character, depending on what the group wants to do.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 10, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Yes a lot of times the rest of the party IS bored because this only ties into one persons story. And I'm bored. Because I dont want to run even one adventure about your stupid cousin much less a dozen. I want to run the adventure I planned, with bigger, more important, more interesting goals then dealing with some half remembered acquaintance from the past.
> 
> Just like when I'm out with a friend from work now and we run into someone they knew from from highschool who all of a sudden wants to spend an hour talking about the old days. Nope, not interested. Lets move along, send a facebook message when you get home that we both know they're just going to ignore anyway. And lets get back to what we were planning to do before the peanut gallery showed up and interrupted.




Wow. You’ve managed to express both selfishness (What I want is most important to the game, regardless of how anyone else may feel) and insults (calling their friend part of a peanut gallery) in one post.

One of the biggest failings of a DM is when they assume their idea is always better than any players idea. It’s arrogant, often untrue, and leads to people feeling like they are being treated like kids with no input. A bad recipe for a social game where everyone is supposed to have fun.

Ive been DMing over 35 years, with thousands of games.  I can say with confidence (and I’m sure many will agree with me here) that some of the best sessions were when the players did something unexpected, or unusual, or creative that wasn’t preplanned by me. It makes the players feel involved, and like their decisions matter to the game world. No one is saying you have to cater to the players and change core game world NPCs or events just because a player wants to, but players should have the ability to play their PCs how they want. If they want to go break out a cousin from prison, then you as the DM should facilitate that and treat the world as a living world that reacts to that. There is a reason why railroading is universally regarded as a bad thing.


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## prabe (Mar 10, 2020)

shawnhcorey said:


> Well, I'm confused. If you as GM want/allow the PCs to have backstories, then you should run as session zero where the players create their characters and integrate their backstories into the campaign. All aspects of caharacter integration should be a joint effort between the players and the GM.




I've found that a lot of "Session Zero" can be handled online, and in many ways I prefer getting backstories away from the table. Some people aren't as good as generating backstories with an audience/on the spur of the moment, and I'd rather people be in their comfort zones for this. If players want to tie their characters together in the backstory, that's fine, but I don't insist on it.


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## gepetto (Mar 10, 2020)

pemerton said:


> No it doesn't. Read @hawkeyefan's posts. Or mine. We're not talking about either of the things you describe here.
> 
> I don't get this at all. DL is more interesting because Tanis's former lover is now his enemy and a dragon hierarch (or whatever they're called - it's been a few decades). LotR is driven by the fact that Gandalf has backstory with Saruman, Aragorn (via his descent from Isildur) with Sauron, Frodo (via his relationship to Bilbo) with Gollum, etc.
> 
> Evocative fiction tends to relate to the character, not just to cyphers chasing after McGuffins.




I couldnt disagree more. DL was actively damaged by that bit of unlikely and unbelievable cheese and would have been much better without it. 

And LoTR is driven by people not wanting a tyranical force of evil to win and enslave/murder all the good guys. The only backstory that matters in the slightest is Aragorns, and thats exactly the kind of "this guys a special snowflake and your all his sidekicks" adventure thats fine in a novel but a problem in a group activity. No one wants to be the sidekick to your fated hero.


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## gepetto (Mar 10, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> @gepetto - If the default assumption is that whatever story the player comes up with vis a vis their backstory is always going to be less cool and less interesting than whatever you as DM have planned then the issue is with you as the DM, and not so much the quality of the player backstory. I'm very much with @pemerton on this - evocative fiction is character driven, not plot driven. That doesn't mean you don't have a plot, but you also need strong characters and strong ways of connecting those characters to the narrative in multiple ways. You work character driven arcs into the larger plot arcs and make sure everyone gets their moment in the sun. This is much easier if there is some established fiction about how the characters know each other, who they might have in common, and what their core drives and motivations are.
> 
> All that said, if both you and your party enjoy running backstory free characters dropped into a plot based adventure, that's fine. If you guys are enjoying yourselves you aren't doing something wrong. However, that doesn't mean that using backstory/background in the way other posters are suggesting is _bad_, it's just not something that you think you want to do.




You dont get a strong character or anything interesting from a couple paragraphs about back when you were a turnip farmer. A strong character develops from choices that are made IN PLAY in response to the events of the world and the challenges you actually overcome, not things you just wrote down that you succeeded or failed at.

And no those backstories are never interesting. At best they are cheesefilled cliches and at worst they just stupid narcissistic puffery about why your super special. Blech.




Sacrosanct said:


> Wow. You’ve managed to express both selfishness (What I want is most important to the game, regardless of how anyone else may feel) and insults (calling their friend part of a peanut gallery) in one post.




I strive for efficiency. What I want is the most important. I'm putting in the most time and work so I'm the most important. If a player drops I can replace them in 2 hours, if I'm not there theres no game. 




Sacrosanct said:


> One of the biggest failings of a DM is when they assume their idea is always better than any players idea. It’s arrogant, often untrue, and leads to people feeling like they are being treated like kids with no input. A bad recipe for a social game where everyone is supposed to have fun.




My ideas are better. Thats why they come back to me over and over to run the games but all groan whenever someone else wants to take a turn and start pushing to change back after a few weeks. Its a meritocracy and I'm the proven winner with the track record to show it. 



Sacrosanct said:


> I can say with confidence (and I’m sure many will agree with me here) that some of the best sessions were when the players did something unexpected, or unusual, or creative that wasn’t preplanned by me. It makes the players feel involved, and like their decisions matter to the game world.




A back story is the definition of pre-planned. Theres nothing spontaneous about it and they are almost never creative or unusual. Nor is that a good way to "make their decisions matter" which is sort of a stupid thing that gets said in forums anyway. If they survived then obviously their decisions mattered. If they had made the wrong ones they would have failed. 



Sacrosanct said:


> No one is saying you have to cater to the players and change core game world NPCs or events just because a player wants to




Actually they are saying exactly that. Thats what incorporating a backstory is. 




Sacrosanct said:


> but players should have the ability to play their PCs how they want.




They are free to roleplay their character however they want. They cannot re-write the rest of the world according to their whims. 



Sacrosanct said:


> If they want to go break out a cousin from prison, then you as the DM should facilitate that and treat the world as a living world that reacts to that. There is a reason why railroading is universally regarded as a bad thing.




No I should not. If they can convince the rest of the party to indulge their little sidequest then I will go along with what the majority of the party wants to do. Because its everyones free time, not just the one characters. I definitely should not be putting my thumb on the scale with regards to the parties choice though one way or the other. 

And railroading is NOT universally regarded as a bad thing. Lots of players like a degree of railroading, even a fairly heavy degree and lots of GMs do to.


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## uzirath (Mar 10, 2020)

pemerton said:


> if I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the players' individual PCs then I'm not doing my job as a GM.




I agree. In my GURPS games, even in the less realistic "dungeon fantasy" mode, I always use the advantages and disadvantages of the PCs to inform my game prep. I'm starting a new campaign this weekend, for example. One of the characters has taken the disadvantage, "Vow (Never refuse a challenge to combat)," that fits in with her particular backstory. The fact that she has taken the disadvantage indicates that she will enjoy having this particular vow come up in play. I don't pre-script everything, by any means, but I'm certainly going to provide social opportunities where this might plausibly arise. (Not too hard in a faux-Viking setting!) This will not only be fun for her, but it gives me a hook that I can use to introduce interesting NPCs in the future.

Other PCs similarly have other disadvantages or patrons or allies that may come into play as the campaign evolves. I would be scratching my head to some degree without having that material to work with.


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## Nagol (Mar 10, 2020)

pemerton said:


> No it doesn't. Read @hawkeyefan's posts. Or mine. We're not talking about either of the things you describe here.
> 
> I don't get this at all. DL is more interesting because Tanis's former lover is now his enemy and a dragon hierarch (or whatever they're called - it's been a few decades). LotR is driven by the fact that Gandalf has backstory with Saruman, Aragorn (via his descent from Isildur) with Sauron, Frodo (via his relationship to Bilbo) with Gollum, etc.
> 
> Evocative fiction tends to relate to the character, not just to cyphers chasing after McGuffins.





Your job and my job obviously differ.  I would agree when running FATE or Champions that the situations depend on the PCs.  The system mechanics and character creation almost make it mandatory.

When I run D&D, the situations start entirely indifferent to the PCs.  How those situations change will depend on PC choices, stratagems, and levels of success.  I've run several groups through exactly the same starting situations and enjoyed watching how the tables diverged.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 10, 2020)

gepetto said:


> You dont get a strong character or anything interesting from a couple paragraphs about back when you were a turnip farmer. A strong character develops from choices that are made IN PLAY in response to the events of the world and the challenges you actually overcome, not things you just wrote down that you succeeded or failed at.
> 
> And no those backstories are never interesting. At best they are cheesefilled cliches and at worst they just stupid narcissistic puffery about why your super special. Blech.




I feel like you're assuming the worst possible version of the concept. Or course it could be bad. So could the GM's ideas. We shouldn't assume the worst when we discuss these things, or no one would ever get anywhere. 

When I'm talking about the idea of incorporating backstory, it's not about the PC's life as a turnip farmer prior to the start of play. Do you always have play begin with PCs having some sort of mundane place in the world that they leave behind due to the call of adventure? I mean, that's a strong trope in this kind of fiction, so I think there's absolutely a place for it....but does it apply to al the PCs? In every game? 

Isn't that...to use your phrase.....unbelievably cheesy? 

I kind of assume a variety of backgrounds and histories for the PCs. Perhaps one has been a caravan guard, perhaps another is a street urchin, and a third is an apprentice of some kind. These are all perfectly mundane starting points much like your turnip farmer....but there's also room to expand on each much more readily than the turnip farmer. Where has the caravan guard been? Who has he met? What happened on his last job? For the urchin, is he at all connected to the local thieves' guild? If not, how do they look at his petty crimes? Who has he stolen from? For the apprentice, what craft is he learning? Who is his master? Why is he heading out into the world; on some quest from his master, or must he now make his own name? 

There's no reason that these things need to be boring, or that the GM can't incorporate them into the story. These don't have to be stories about why "Only this urchin can save the world" kind of fated hero tropes that you seem to think they must be. It's just about creating a place in the world where the PC has been, and which will continue to shape things, even if the PC leaves it behind. 

As you say, there should be meaningful choices made in play. Having a backstory of some kind helps grant context to those decisions that may not exist otherwise.


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## gepetto (Mar 10, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like you're assuming the worst possible version of the concept. Or course it could be bad. So could the GM's ideas. We shouldn't assume the worst when we discuss these things, or no one would ever get anywhere.




Yes but if my ideas are bad no one has fun, the game falls apart and we all go home. If a players ideas are bad its usually not that hard to just ignore the bad stuff without any real problems.



hawkeyefan said:


> When I'm talking about the idea of incorporating backstory, it's not about the PC's life as a turnip farmer prior to the start of play. Do you always have play begin with PCs having some sort of mundane place in the world that they leave behind due to the call of adventure? I mean, that's a strong trope in this kind of fiction, so I think there's absolutely a place for it....but does it apply to al the PCs? In every game?




Thats pretty much what they all break down to yeah. Every supposedly awesome idea from a player really just breaks to down to either "forced to go out on the road" or "got bored and sought adventure". Theres really only so many origin stories.



hawkeyefan said:


> Isn't that...to use your phrase.....unbelievably cheesy?




The entire concept of wandering adventurer is cheesy and kind of ridiculous. At best your a rootless vagabond and a worst a roving murder band of psychos. Its something we have to overlook most of the time in this hobby.



hawkeyefan said:


> I kind of assume a variety of backgrounds and histories for the PCs. Perhaps one has been a caravan guard, perhaps another is a street urchin, and a third is an apprentice of some kind. These are all perfectly mundane starting points much like your turnip farmer....but there's also room to expand on each much more readily than the turnip farmer. Where has the caravan guard been? Who has he met? What happened on his last job? For the urchin, is he at all connected to the local thieves' guild? If not, how do they look at his petty crimes? Who has he stolen from? For the apprentice, what craft is he learning? Who is his master? Why is he heading out into the world; on some quest from his master, or must he now make his own name?




You could actually do all that with a turnip farmer too. Just to be a smart ass. His farm could be on the frontier and after harvest he takes the cart around to nearby farms and villages to sell, making connections and having petty adventures. Mundane is mundane and every job involves some opportunity to meet people from other walks of life and do other interesting things from time to time.



hawkeyefan said:


> There's no reason that these things need to be boring, or that the GM can't incorporate them into the story. These don't have to be stories about why "Only this urchin can save the world" kind of fated hero tropes that you seem to think they must be. It's just about creating a place in the world where the PC has been, and which will continue to shape things, even if the PC leaves it behind.




But they ARE boring. Thats why you dont play D&D "the caravan guarding" where you spend all day rolling spot checks for trouble and going months at a time without finding any and occasionally roll a fort check to endure hemoroids from the buckboard of your wagon and blisters on your feet. With thrilling social encounters like "trying to get seconds at supper" and "get the boss off your ass". 

Nevermind the grim and depressing nature of "urchin, the starveling" where you can attempt to steal enough pocket change to survive every day and endure thrilling chases with the city guard rousting you out of your box under the bridge when you try to sleep, watching your friends and acquaintances slowly doing worse and worse things to survive. Maybe we could throw in a little child sex trafficking and spiraling drug addiction. Really bring that background into the game. I'm sure theres a whole cast of unseemly characters from the tragic background I could introduce. But thats not really the kind of game I want to play in. 



hawkeyefan said:


> As you say, there should be meaningful choices made in play. Having a backstory of some kind helps grant context to those decisions that may not exist otherwise.




But its for you the player. You decide that because you were a starving urchin you look at the world a certain way or because you were a town guard you have certain priorities and prejudices. Those are roleplaying guiderails for the player to choose to follow as closely as they want to. Not for me to strong arm into the game.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 10, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Yes but if my ideas are bad no one has fun, the game falls apart and we all go home. If a players ideas are bad its usually not that hard to just ignore the bad stuff without any real problems.




I'm sure you've had bad ideas.....or at least, ideas that would be on par with what your players may offer.....and everyone's managed. Every GM is going to have some off nights, or ideas that don't play the way they hoped.



gepetto said:


> Thats pretty much what they all break down to yeah. Every supposedly awesome idea from a player really just breaks to down to either "forced to go out on the road" or "got bored and sought adventure". Theres really only so many origin stories.




I think there's a ton of options. Sure, there may be some common elements, or some archetypes that appear more often, and that's fine....but there's always some way to make a character unique, whether it's in play or prior to play.



gepetto said:


> The entire concept of wandering adventurer is cheesy and kind of ridiculous. At best your a rootless vagabond and a worst a roving murder band of psychos. Its something we have to overlook most of the time in this hobby.




Orrrrrr.....you could try something different that maybe removes that problem?



gepetto said:


> You could actually do all that with a turnip farmer too. Just to be a smart ass. His farm could be on the frontier and after harvest he takes the cart around to nearby farms and villages to sell, making connections and having petty adventures. Mundane is mundane and every job involves some opportunity to meet people from other walks of life and do other interesting things from time to time.




Sure, I selected mundane options that might offer more than the average turnip farmer. But there are also far less mundane options that you could use. 

What if the caravan guard witnessed the slaughter of the crown prince by strange shadowy beings? What if the urchin is actually the baseborn child of the king? And what if the apprentice knows of the dark threat that is looming over the kingdom? 

Their backstories could connect them in meaningful ways that play into the idea that the GM has. And you may call it coincidence or cheesy, I suppose, but that's how people tend to meet.....because circumstances draw them together.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 10, 2020)

gepetto said:


> if I'm not there theres no game.




There was a lot I could have replied to, like the numerous factual errors you have.  But really I only need to reply to this one.

Hate to tell you this, but if you DM the way you describe you DM, I'm pretty sure they do game without you.  But they never tell you or invite you so you never know.


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## R_J_K75 (Mar 10, 2020)

The party background and their exploits are always more interesting than the background of an individual PC, worse yet is listening to the player telling it. Whenever I tried to incorporate a characters/PC backstory into a campaign it always seemed force and honestly none were really that good.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 10, 2020)

@gepetto - We're back to the tremendous difference between background and backstory. A couple of paragraphs of backstory might be interesting, but often isn't. Background is different. Background might include that backstory, but could/should include a bunch if other stuff that is _very_ useful. Who the character knows, both enemies and friends, what factions and groups are in play, important decisions the character has made, and perhaps most importantly, character drives and motivations. That last bit is lightly indexed by the existing 5e Inspiration rules, but it isn't that useful. Those things taken together are a wonderful planning tool, and some great games run on just that, with no plot planning to speak of from the GM.

On a separate note, I get how hard it is to let go of always thinking you're the smartest guy in the room. Most people who DM probably have that issue at some point, and I know I have. Most players have something to add to a campaign, and some players, invested players, are a virtual goldmine that shouldn't be ignored. YMMV with your group, but that doesn't make it not true generally.


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## pemerton (Mar 10, 2020)

shawnhcorey said:


> Well, I'm confused. If you as GM want/allow the PCs to have backstories, then you should run as session zero where the players create their characters and integrate their backstories into the campaign. All aspects of caharacter integration should be a joint effort between the players and the GM.



My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there. 

In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 10, 2020)

pemerton said:


> My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there.
> 
> In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.



This does work, and can work very well indeed if you have the right player buy in. What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D. That's not a criticism at all though. It's not the standard to the extent that some people don't even really seem to grok what it means. That's also not a criticism. I like the approach, but I find it's a tough sell for more traditional DMs and tables.


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## prabe (Mar 10, 2020)

pemerton said:


> My preference is to have the players establish their PCs and then just kick off from there.
> 
> In other words, less prep, more play! The campaign world will take care of itself.




I agree, though I'd be more inclined to say the campaign will take care of itself. The players have their characters; I have the world. Obviously, not everyone works that way.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 10, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> This does work, and can work very well indeed if you have the right player buy in. What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D. That's not a criticism at all though. It's not the standard to the extent that some people don't even really seem to grok what it means. That's also not a criticism. I like the approach, but I find it's a tough sell for more traditional DMs and tables.




This is very true. I think that what happens a lot of time is that these topics come up in the General RPG Forum, but references “DM” instead of “GM”, and so half the folks wind up discussing according to D&D and the other half are discussing RPGs generally. 

In this case, I think the approach is fairly well understood, except at its most extreme. But as is often the case in these discussions, when folks assume the worst and most degenerate form of play, we don’t get very far.

I mean, we could assume that GM driven play consists of the GM writing a novel in game form with the PCs as protagonists, and they progress exactly as pre-ordained. But I don’t think anyone who’s advocating for the GM as sole arbiter of the fiction is going to that extreme.

It’d help if others did the same.


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## pemerton (Mar 11, 2020)

gepetto said:


> LoTR is driven by people not wanting a tyranical force of evil to win and enslave/murder all the good guys. The only backstory that matters in the slightest is Aragorns



I think this is a very weak reading of LotR.

Start with Frodo and Sam (who are probably the two most inter-twined characters in the story):

* Frodo taught Sam his letters; Sam starts out on the adventure as Frodo's loyal sidekick; by the end of the adventure Sam has become an autonomous person able to pursue his own vision of personal and social good (everything from defeating Shelob, to carrying the ring, to replanting the party tree, to becoming Mayor of the Shire effectively for life);

* Frodo was "meant to have" the ring, because he inherited it from Bilbo, who was meant to find it; Frodo suffers as a result of his burden, literally as a ring-bearer, and in various other ways (Morgul blade, Shelob's sting, betrayal of and by Gollum, etc);

* Frodo is Bilbo's heir in other ways too: he wears the mithril coat, which establishes his affinity with dwarves; he can speak and read in Elvish, which establishes his affinity with elves (we first see this when he meets Gildor and friends in the Shire, but it is reiterated throughout Books 1, 2 and 3); he is master of Bag End, which provides a focal point both for the opening of the adventure (when Gandalf tells  him the story of the ring) and its conclusion (when the Shire is scoured).​
There's no doubt more that could be said, but those are some of the obvious ways in which Frodo and Sam's backstory matters to the story. And the story is obviously far more powerful and evocative as a work of romantic fantasy (or "fairy tale", to use JRRT's nomenclature) because it is _Gollum_ who proves to be the vehicle of Frodo's redemption, and _Sam_ (_not_ an elf-lord) who rescues Frodo from Shelob and Cirith Ungol, and _the Shire_ (not, say, Bree) that has to be saved from Saruman's final work of "mischief in a mean way", etc.

The same sort of account could obviously be given for Aragorn and Gandalf (the other two main characters). Pippin, Merry, Boromir, Faramir and Eowyn also have meaningful backstories the inform their place and actions in the story, but they are a little more secondary.

Gimli and Legolas are probably more secondary still - there most straightforward contributios are to be _the_ dwarf and _the_ elf - but even then their backstories are hardly irrelevant, as begins to come out in the Moria sequence, comes out more fully in Lothlorien, and then plays out in the encounter with Eomer, at Helm's Deep, and when they take the Paths of the Dead with Aragorn. You can't just plug a dragonborn and a half-orc into the story and have it remain much the same.



gepetto said:


> You dont get a strong character or anything interesting from a couple paragraphs about back when you were a turnip farmer.



In that case, why would someone choose that as their PC's backstory?

Luke Skywalker is the son of a great pilot and Jedi killed by the evil wizard henchman of the evil emperor.

Han Solo owns the fastest ship in the galaxy that he won in a dubious bet.

Ged is known to be a powerful wizard in waiting, if memory serves correctly given his true name by Ogion, the most powerful wizard on Gont. As a boy he conjures up a mist to defeat the invaders of his village, and he goes on to be the strongest pupil in his wizard shcool.

Stephen Strange was a great surgeon who lost the use of his hands and travelled to the "mysterious east" in search of a cure, where he learned wisdom and the magic of the Ancient One.

In my first Rolemaster campaign, Franklin of Five Oaks spent his youth hanging out with the trader (name now forgotten, but I think it's in the City of GH boxed set) and checking out the trinkets while being trained by a mystic who lived in a great hollow tree outside the village, living as a hermit lest his enemies track him down.

In the Burning Wheel game I GM, the wizard Jobe's brother was possessed by a balrog, and Jobe's ambition was to free him from possession. (In play, it ended up that the brother was killed by another PC, who had studied under the possessed brother and been mistreated, even tortured, by him, and was finally able to get her revenge.)

In my current Classic Traveller campaign, Vincenzo von Hallucida won his yacht by cheating at cards (service: noble; DEX: 12; skills: not much, but includes Gambling; mustering out: one roll, giving him an interstellar yacht) - and was hospitalised by the resulting beating that he took (near-miss survival check leading to forced mustering out). That was why the (renegade?) Marine Lt Li needed to approach him for he mission - because her original crew had lost their ship! How to make contact? Well, a former shipmate of hers was working in the hospital where Vincenzo was being treated (another PC, with service in the Imperial Navy and whose skills included Medic-1).

From the initial PC gen, starting world gen and random patron gen in that Traveller game we've got a whole campaign.


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## pemerton (Mar 11, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> What it isn't is the standard way a lot of people play D&D.



Sure. And there's a lot of variation too.

For instance, depending on details - of system, of table expectations, of mood, etc - it is possible to integrate a reasonable amount of _situation prep _(locations, antagonists, and the like) with a high degree of _player-driven events_. This is how I approach Cortex+ Heroic, Prince Valiant, and to some extent 4e D&D. It relies on the players - via their narration plus their action declarations - being able to evince their PCs and do their thing in a way that is at least somewhat independent of the minutiae of the current situation. (The "literary" analogue of this is the supehero comic - it's not a coincidence that Cortex+ Heroic had its origins as MHRP, and that Prince Valiant is also inspired by a continuing comic strip.)

In the approach I'm describing here, PC relationships will tend to be less prominent (because obviously they're _not_ indepedent of current situation) and (at least in my experience) play will generally be lighter, even a bit more frivolous, than one sees in a relationship-and-belief-heavy system like Burning Wheel.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 11, 2020)

Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.

Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.

And Gollum? His backstory is probably the most important of all, because it’s so key to the whole dang epic. Not only because he’s the one who had the ring in the first place, and not only because it allowed Frodo to show him mercy, but it’s literally the whole lesson about evil power corrupting an individual.

In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.


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## MGibster (Mar 11, 2020)

For a game like Vampire, absolutely!  In my last campaign, one of the PCs was a veteran of the Sabbat War of the 1990s.  I had planned as part of the campaign to have a Lasombra come to the city, ask the Prince for asylum, and make himself useful.  I made him part of the PCs background.  “You remember this guy from the 90s when he threw you out the window and you plummeted 4 stories onto the pavement.”


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## Lanefan (Mar 11, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I would answer your (rhetorical) question the opposite way from you: if I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the players' individual PCs then I'm not doing my job as a GM.



I completely disagree.

If I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the player's individual PCs then I'm doing exactly the job I should be doing as GM.

The setting is neutral, as am I when I present it.  It's up to the players/PCs to decide how to deal with it, and then do so.

Just because I prefer sunshine over rain doesn't mean the rain's gonna stop when I go for a walk because the world realizes "Oh, that's Lanefan out there, better turn the taps off".  The real world is neutral that way.  The game world should be also.


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## Lanefan (Mar 11, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.
> 
> Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.
> 
> ...



Completely agree.

However, all of those backstories are intertwined with a very VERY solidly and thoroughly built setting that has a deep rich detailed history that the author could then mine to help create these characters' stories.

Which is the part that's being left out by some here.  "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.


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## shawnhcorey (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Which is the part that's being left out by some here.  "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.




Ideally, the setting and the backstories should mesh together. The GM comes up with rough strokes of the campaign and during session zero, everyone adds in details.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I completely disagree.
> 
> If I'm presenting situations that would be identical regardless of the player's individual PCs then I'm doing exactly the job I should be doing as GM.
> 
> ...




Why? 

I understand this is your approach to gaming. And as your preference, it's certainly fine. But it is not essential as you describe here. 

The game world can be whatever we want. Why must it be neutral?




Lanefan said:


> Completely agree.
> 
> However, all of those backstories are intertwined with a very VERY solidly and thoroughly built setting that has a deep rich detailed history that the author could then mine to help create these characters' stories.
> 
> Which is the part that's being left out by some here.  "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.




I don't think there's really much chance of crafting a Middle Earth ahead of a game. I mean, it took Tolkien nearly his entire life to slowly craft and revise the setting and then ultimately create a story that used that setting in a satisfying way. He also was crafting a novel, not a game. 

What makes a game different from a novel? The fact that the protagonists are not controlled by the author, but instead by individual players. That's a pretty fundamental difference and requires a different approach to crafting the world. 

Another fundamental difference is that Tolkien was able to revise his setting and characters as often as he needed prior to publication. He was free to alter the history as needed in order to support the current events of his tale. He was not restricted by what he had previously written....he was able to revise it however it suited the actual story he wanted to tell.

Imagine if that was not the case. Imagine if his audience was privy to every idea or concept as it was first introduced to the fiction. He'd have to change his approach, don't you think? Maybe not commit so strongly knowing that he couldn't revise. 

Having said that, I think it's actually okay to proceed with a RPG in this manner. I just know that it's no better than any other approach, and is just as subject to paradox and conflicting details and other flaws. In some ways, even more so.


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## pemerton (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> *(1) *"Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it *(2) *gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.



Re *(1)*, Are you sure? My understanding is that JRRT's earliest work was the lay of Earendil and the Fall of Gondolin. From these episodes grew the whole corpus!

*(2) *Evidence? I've got actual play threads a-plenty on these boards. Where's the vacuum?


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Completely agree.
> 
> However, all of those backstories are intertwined with a very VERY solidly and thoroughly built setting that has a deep rich detailed history that the author could then mine to help create these characters' stories.
> 
> Which is the part that's being left out by some here.  "Build strong character backgrounds and let the setting take care of itself" doesn't give you Middle Earth, it gives you a bunch of characters operating in a vacuum.




I disagree, because unlike LoTR, an rpg campaign hasn't been necessarily written yet (or read yet).  What the players don't know, they don't know.  So with an rpg, we have the luxury of creating the setting as we go along.  I.e., a book is written before people read it.  An rpg is a living document, changing as players experience it, because their actions impact what's going on.  Well, except for gepetto apparently...

For example, I recall a campaign we played back in 1982 I think with Moldvay's expert set.  There was only a smattering of info on Karameikos, but one of the player's PCs had a background from there.  An illegitimate son of a noble.  As the game progressed, we fleshed out that area, and NPCs, and plot hooks, and story drama, etc.  By the end of the campaign (which culminated in him taking over and ruling the Isle of Dread as a lord in the name of the kingdom), it was a pretty rich setting with stories that rivaled the adventures in Middle Earth.   It was literally starting with a strong background and that molded the setting to take care of itself in large part.


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## uzirath (Mar 11, 2020)

I tend to be in a hybrid space myself. I consider the characters as protagonists and use them to develop the central stories of the campaign. This doesn't necessarily mean that the world revolves around them. That depends on the genre and the types of stories the group wants to engage in. I've run LOTR-style avert-the-apocalypse campaigns and others where the PCs are involved in smaller stories that are significant to them but have little impact on the broader world. 

I also enjoy tinkering with the fictional world—thinking up histories and religions, geography and architecture, magic and monsters—and am still quite fond of dungeon maps with hidden traps and things of that sort. I don't overdo it, though, and I no longer see the background work as _essential_ to a satisfying game. I like to have enough compelling NPCs and scenery to make the world feel like it exists beyond the PCs. I'm not comfortable with zero prep, but it is not the obsessive endeavor that it once was.

I also leave lots of room for player authorship. If a player has a backstory element that is important to their character, I'm happy to let them flesh it out. I'll do my best to integrate it with my preexisting material. This was a significant and not-entirely-comfortable step for me as a GM. I used to be very particular about _my_ world; now, I like to think of it as _our_ world. I am, perhaps, the lead author of an excellent creative team.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 11, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> While coincidences do happen in real life, that's rarely a satisfying explanation, and it's as important to avoid the appearance of meta-gaming as it is to avoid the actuality of meta-gaming.



I know what you mean.  When Darth Vader told Luke he was his father, I rolled my eyes since it completely shattered immersion.

I hear it got even worse in the third movie, which I didn’t watch for obvious reasons.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 11, 2020)

prabe said:


> It's not out of the question at all. It's not the way the APs are written, and it's not the way they've been run. Even though the one GM is frantically re-writing the one he's running us through so it makes some amount of sense, he's not particularly doing so to make the characters more involved. He's been trying to solve internal-logic problems more than anything else, as I understand it (and I still might have blown up the AP, by asking one question).



This is the complaint I have about the 5e adventures “Curse of Strahd”, “Out of the Abyss” and “ Tomb of Annihilation”.  Each of them takes steps to ensure your background is irrelevant by transporting you to a place where you are unlikely to have any ties to anyone.

On the other hand, I also own the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path and that AP makes it relatively easy to incorporate backstories while also integrating players without a relevant backstory.


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## prabe (Mar 11, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> This is the complaint I have about the 5e adventures “Curse of Strahd”, “Out of the Abyss” and “ Tomb of Annihilation”.  Each of them takes steps to ensure your background is irrelevant by transporting you to a place where you are unlikely to have any ties to anyone.
> 
> On the other hand, I also own the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path and that AP makes it relatively easy to incorporate backstories while also integrating players without a relevant backstory.




I think it's a problem with the idea of the adventure path. Published single adventures--the sort that used to be just one location and assorted stuff--can often be dropped into whatever setting the GM is running. Adventure paths don't work if there's no reason for the PCs to keep on the rails (or, if there's a reason for them to actively want to leave said rails).


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## gepetto (Mar 11, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> There was a lot I could have replied to, like the numerous factual errors you have.  But really I only need to reply to this one.
> 
> Hate to tell you this, but if you DM the way you describe you DM, I'm pretty sure they do game without you.  But they never tell you or invite you so you never know.




Nope. We've been at this for 25 years now. I know whats going on. thx for playing though.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 11, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> I know what you mean.  When Darth Vader told Luke he was his father, I rolled my eyes since it completely shattered immersion.



That's a movie. It's _just_ a story, unlike in an RPG, where we want to maintain the premise of speculative plausibility.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 11, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Nope. We've been at this for 25 years now. I know whats going on. thx for playing though.



something tells me you don't get a whole lot of new players either lol


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## Lanefan (Mar 11, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> something tells me you don't get a whole lot of new players either lol



In fairness s/he did claim in a post somewhere that replacing players hasn't ever been a problem.  Maybe that style of play is common in that region; there's certainly regional differences in general playstyles.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> In fairness s/he did claim in a post somewhere that replacing players hasn't ever been a problem.  Maybe that style of play is common in that region; there's certainly regional differences in general playstyles.



in my experience those "regions" usually involve a lack of other available groups, they can happen anywhere


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## prabe (Mar 11, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> In fairness s/he did claim in a post somewhere that replacing players hasn't ever been a problem.  Maybe that style of play is common in that region; there's certainly regional differences in general playstyles.




Or the group size might be somewhat larger than the table size. Not a big difference, I guess.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 11, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> This is the complaint I have about the 5e adventures “Curse of Strahd”, “Out of the Abyss” and “ Tomb of Annihilation”.  Each of them takes steps to ensure your background is irrelevant by transporting you to a place where you are unlikely to have any ties to anyone.
> 
> On the other hand, I also own the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path and that AP makes it relatively easy to incorporate backstories while also integrating players without a relevant backstory.




I've run both Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation as part of my ongoing 5e campaign. Our level up pacing is much slower than the standard game, so Curse of Strahd was for levels 6 to 8 I believe, and then Tomb was for 11 to 12. I connected both very strongly to the ongoing events of the campaign. Curse of Strahd was much trickier to do so, but we did some interesting things by connecting the Vistani and our Diviner PC, and a few other elements. 

But as they're presented, it can be done. CoS is the more difficult because it's meant to be a more short term situation, and it's a dangerous location in which the PCs are trapped and must escape. But if you know you're going to run it, I would either not bother with the mists and the demiplane angle, and instead just have Barovia and its surroundings be part of the campaign world. Then you can connect the PCs in any number of ways. Alternatively, they could be natives of Barovia. Beyond such tweaks, I'd maybe have a local town or maybe just a couple of NPCs vanish in the mists, and the PCs go in on a rescue mission. If you have  a cleric or paladin, maybe they receive a vision of a holy sword they can obtain but they'll need to defeat a powerful evil to keep it.

With Tomb, it was much easier for us because we already had ties to Chult, so I replaced the Death Curse afflicted merchant prince with a known NPC who the PCs liked and were willing to help. It also helped that we had two PCs who had been raised, and so they were afflicted with the Death Curse, too. That was pretty much all the impetus needed. However, as presented, I think making the PCs natives of Chult rather than visitors is probably the most immediate way to connect them to the events there. Perhaps they're refugees from Mezzro or another city? Perhaps they have ties to the lost city of Omu or one of the other locations? There are a number of ways you can craft backstories that fit the adventure.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 11, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's a movie. It's _just_ a story, unlike in an RPG, where we want to maintain the premise of speculative plausibility.



Well, the Star Wars franchise is a fiction created by a professional writer for money for an audience of millions.

My campaign is a shared fiction by amateurs with full time jobs and family responsibilities for an audience of exactly 5.

It _seems_ that you are holding the second to a higher standard of speculative plausibility than the first.  If so, I am extremely curious as to _why_?


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 11, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I've run both Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation as part of my ongoing 5e campaign. Our level up pacing is much slower than the standard game, so Curse of Strahd was for levels 6 to 8 I believe, and then Tomb was for 11 to 12. I connected both very strongly to the ongoing events of the campaign. Curse of Strahd was much trickier to do so, but we did some interesting things by connecting the Vistani and our Diviner PC, and a few other elements.



It’s definitely doable.  My plea, to anyone here who works on APs or AL adventures, is two-fold:

first, you don’t have to choose between a campaign geared to characters without backgrounds (even in APs and AL) and a campaign geared to characters who want their backgrounds to impact the campaign: it is possible to create campaigns that appeal to both types of characters.
second, there are groups out there who want to run published campaigns (slightly, moderately or massively tweaked), for which being able to tie the campaigns to the characters’ backgrounds is a big plus.


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## pemerton (Mar 11, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's a movie. It's _just_ a story, unlike in an RPG, where we want to maintain the premise of speculative plausibility.





FrozenNorth said:


> Well, the Star Wars franchise is a fiction created by a professional writer for money for an audience of millions.
> 
> My campaign is a shared fiction by amateurs with full time jobs and family responsibilities for an audience of exactly 5.
> 
> It _seems_ that you are holding the second to a higher standard of speculative plausibility than the first.  If so, I am extremely curious as to _why_?



I would also ask - why are RPGs obliged to be _boring_ in comparison to the genre works that inspire them?


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 11, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> It _seems_ that you are holding the second to a higher standard of speculative plausibility than the first.



That is definitely the case. 


FrozenNorth said:


> If so, I am extremely curious as to _why_?



A movie exists primarily for the purpose of telling a story. An RPG exists primarily to facilitate role-playing, with the literary merit of the generated narrative being irrelevant.

Things happen in a movie in order to facilitate a plot. Thing happen in an RPG because that's how the world works. If things happen in an RPG in order to facilitate a plot, then either you're playing in Discworld, or something has gone seriously wrong.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 11, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> It’s definitely doable.  My plea, to anyone here who works on APs or AL adventures, is two-fold:
> 
> first, you don’t have to choose between a campaign geared to characters without backgrounds (even in APs and AL) and a campaign geared to characters who want their backgrounds to impact the campaign: it is possible to create campaigns that appeal to both types of characters.
> second, there are groups out there who want to run published campaigns (slightly, moderately or massively tweaked), for which being able to tie the campaigns to the characters’ backgrounds is a big plus.




Yeah, I agree with both of these points for sure. I think maybe some adventure-specific Backgrounds that can be selected would help in both instances. They can be there to plug the PCs into the world a bit, or they can serve as inspiration for other ideas on how to incorporate characters into the adventure. And of course they can be easily ignored for anyone who doesn't want that kind of stuff in play.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 11, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I would also ask - why are RPGs obliged to be _boring_ in comparison to the genre works that inspire them?



I was gonna say, I find it weird to acknowledge that works that have plots that are very much tied to the characters' stories will inspire new people to play d&d, but then expect new players to totally accept the idea that their character's stories don't actually matter in d&d.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That is definitely the case.
> 
> A movie exists primarily for the purpose of telling a story. An RPG exists primarily to facilitate role-playing, with the literary merit of the generated narrative being irrelevant.
> 
> Things happen in a movie in order to facilitate a plot. Thing happen in an RPG because that's how the world works. If things happen in an RPG in order to facilitate a plot, then either you're playing in Discworld, or something has gone seriously wrong.



It's funny.  I can start from your first premise and conclude that incorporating the characters backstories, what you call "speculative implausibility", is more important in an RPG than in a movie or a novel.

IME, a player finds it a lot easier to get into a quest and will take it more personally, if as a DM, I have included something from his backstory so that his character cares about the outcome.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 12, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> It's funny.  I can start from your first premise and conclude that incorporating the characters backstories, what you call "speculative implausibility", is more important in an RPG than in a movie or a novel.



Only if your goal is to have players engage with plot elements, rather than treat the world seriously as an objective reality. Only if you're trying to act out a _story_, rather than role-play as a _person_.


FrozenNorth said:


> IME, a player finds it a lot easier to get into a quest and will take it more personally, if as a DM, I have included something from his backstory so that his character cares about the outcome.



Of course a player will take it personally if the DM tries to mess with them. The DM is supposed to remain objective and impartial. If the DM is making it personal, then they have failed.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 12, 2020)

To respond to the original poster, I incorporate a character's Background (I mostly play 5e) and backstory into the game all the time.

First, I incorporate it into the adventure in the manner that has already been discussed in the thread.  If a rogue character used to run with a gang led by a mysterious red-haired halfling, the halfling is going to appear in the game.  Your character is a noble?  That's going to be directly relevant, whether from family asking you to defend their interests or political intrigue.

Second, background and backstory are going to come up in the game in a lot of other ways as well.  I sometimes gate checks behind backgrounds and skills.  The enemy is flying a distinctive banner?  Characters who have the Noble background or training in History can try to identify it.  If you have both you get advantage.  

Sometimes it goes the other way: you don't have to roll if you have an appropriate background: You have the Sailor background?  I'm not going to make you roll to do regular work around a ship.

You're a rogue from Neverwinter?  Yeah, you don't have to roll to find the black market.  You know that Dagult Neverember is in charge, and you probably have a pretty good idea of the laws as they pertain to your activities.

Incorporating a character's backstory improves immersion, by giving the impression of a living world.  It also improves player engagement:  the choices players make tell you what they want to see in the campaign, and, unless it is unreasonable somehow (in which case it should be brought up with the player in advance), as a DM, you should try to accommodate what a player finds interesting.

Finally, there is also the fact that on the fiction layer, a character's backstory is not independent of the world, it is part of it.  If my background is "Sole survivor of a gnoll raid", it is going to be weird, immersion breaking and implausible that there don't seem to be any gnolls don't seem to appear in the world, or in any relevant numbers near where I grew up.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Only if your goal is to have players engage with plot elements, rather than treat the world seriously as an objective reality. Only if you're trying to act out a _story_, rather than role-play as a _person_.



One does not exclude the other.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Of course a player will take it personally if the DM tries to mess with them. The DM is supposed to remain objective and impartial. If the DM is making it personal, then they have failed.




Impartial how? 

I mean, I can understand the idea of impartiality as it applies to the rules and the dice. That part I can get.

But impartial in what is introduced to the fiction? I don’t know if that’s quite what you mean, but if so, I’m not even sure it’s possible. 

I don’t think that a DM is “messing” with a player when they use elements of the fiction in which the PC is invested. Quite the opposite, really.

It sounds like the PCs in your game would never have goals that are more personal in nature. And if so, that’s fine, but if we’re talking about plausible worlds...well I think one where people pursue personal goals and interact with people with whom they already have relationships is more plausible than a world where that doesn’t happen.

If I’ve misunderstood, let me know.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 12, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> It sounds like the PCs in your game would never have goals that are more personal in nature. And if so, that’s fine, but if we’re talking about plausible worlds...well I think one where people pursue personal goals and interact with people with whom they already have relationships is more plausible than a world where that doesn’t happen.



There's a difference between having the PC's known brother as a recurring NPC, because the character has reason to be where their brother is; and having an unknown NPC turn out to actually be the PC's long-lost brother, as a plot twist, because it would be dramatic.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 12, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> One does not exclude the other.



Actually, it does. There can be only one _true _reason for why something happens. If the _true _reason for an in-game event is that it makes for a better story, then the reason _isn't_ due to purely in-world causal processes. The two are completely mutually exclusive.

As a player, you can't direct a character as though they were some character in a play, while also inhabiting their mindset and making their decisions as though they were a real person. It's a logical impossibility. _Either_ you're role-playing, _or_ you're story-telling. If you think you're doing both, then you're wrong.


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## pemerton (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Actually, it does. There can be only one _true _reason for why something happens. If the _true _reason for an in-game event is that it makes for a better story, then the reason _isn't_ due to purely in-world causal processes. The two are completely mutually exclusive.
> 
> As a player, you can't direct a character as though they were some character in a play, while also inhabiting their mindset and making their decisions as though they were a real person. It's a logical impossibility. _Either_ you're role-playing, _or_ you're story-telling. If you think you're doing both, then you're wrong.



These claims are false.

The reason things happen in the real world is real-world causal processes. That extends to events of authorship, incuding someone saying (eg) "There are Red Wizards in Thay - shall we go check 'em out?" It also extends to imagining things, which is a real world event.

The reason imaginary things "happen" in imagined worlds is whatever we imagine them to be. Because it makes for a better story, I might decide to imagine that Conan's jailer is the brother of someone he once killed, who recognises him and tries to kill him. (This, or something close to it, happens in The Scarlet Citadel.) But that doesn't mean that my real-world motivation is part of the fiction. The fiction is whatever I imagine it to be, and unless I'm choosing to be self-referential/fourther-wall-breaking, I don't need to imagine my motives as author as part of the fiction.

As far as the activity of roleplaying is concerned, there is a whole body of work, both commentary and RPGs (mostly originiated at the Forge, but not confined to there), that identifies and explains techniques whereby, at various stages of the overall process of play, various authors can have various responsibilities for establishing various bits of the fiction.

For instance:

* The player, at time A, decides that his/her PC has a brother. The player does this because s/he thinks it will be interesting.​​* The GM, at time B, decides that the next person that player's PC encounters will be said brother. The GM does this because s/he thinks it will be interesting.​​* The GM, at time C, says to the player "As you come round the corner fleeing the pursuing guards, you bump into someone. It's your brother!" The player then decides what his/her PC does in reponse to that situation by inhabiting the mindset of his/her PC and deciding as if the PC were a real person.​
What I've just described is not logicall impossible. In fact, it - or things like it - happen quite routinely in RPG sessions the world over.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Actually, it does. There can be only one _true _reason for why something happens. If the _true _reason for an in-game event is that it makes for a better story, then the reason _isn't_ due to purely in-world causal processes. The two are completely mutually exclusive.



That is incorrect.  In the real world, most events have multiple causes.  Suggesting that there is “one true cause” is both artificial and arbitrarily reductive.
Moreover, the example you give doesn’t track with the situation described: if I, as the DM, incorporate something from a player’s backstory into the campaign, then at no point is the player acting as a storyteller.  He is solely inhabiting his character as he reacts to the world, including events that he, as a character, has a personal stake in, as they involve elements from his backstory.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 12, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There's a difference between having the PC's known brother as a recurring NPC, because the character has reason to be where their brother is; and having an unknown NPC turn out to actually be the PC's long-lost brother, as a plot twist, because it would be dramatic.




So then there's no way to ever have the brother show up later in an unexpected way? Let's say there's a totally organic way for that to occur; do you not go through with it because it may be mistaken as a forced plot twist? Do you go through with it despite that?

What would you do in this situation? And how do you arrive at that decision considering only some kind of logical internal causality and not what's better for the sake of drama?


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 12, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> That is incorrect.  In the real world, most events have multiple causes.  Suggesting that there is “one true cause” is both artificial and arbitrarily reductive.
> Moreover, the example you give doesn’t track with the situation described: if I, as the DM, incorporate something from a player’s backstory into the campaign, then at no point is the player acting as a storyteller.  He is solely inhabiting his character as he reacts to the world, including events that he, as a character, has a personal stake in, as they involve elements from his backstory.




Agreed.  The players aren't the storytellers, they are the catalysts and inspiration for some great ideas and stories told by the DM.  Whether that be from an in game action from their PC, or by a background scenario.

And I'll repeat what I said earlier.  Unlike traditional stories, rpgs are written as they are played.  Played by the whole group, not just me in front of my PC writing a book.   That offers a lot more flexibility, and as a DM, I can move, change, adapt, and add things into the story based on the players' actions and any backstories they have.  They don't know what they don't know and you haven't revealed yet.  So maybe when prepping for the adventure the NPC X over there was statted out a Bob the fencer.  But when player Y tells me that their PC's background was escaping the thieves' guild, suddenly Bob works for that guild and is out to try to found out where the PC is for player Y to track them down and report on their actions.  The players have no idea I made that change.  And the player didn't dictate any part of the story to me.  I made that choice and implemented Bob how I wanted.  The player just gave me more ideas.  Needless to say, I strongly disagree with the notion tossed around in this thread that I as the DM am smarter and more creative than any of my players.  That's poppycock.


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## lowkey13 (Mar 12, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 12, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> I know!
> 
> We just have to be satisfied knowing that we are wittier and better looking.
> 
> It's a terrible cross to bear, but someone has to be El Guapo.




El Guapo is what I had stenciled on the sides of each of the engine cowlings on my UH-60 Black Hawk when I was in Korea....


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> That is incorrect.  In the real world, most events have multiple causes.  Suggesting that there is “one true cause” is both artificial and arbitrarily reductive.



In the real world, everything happens from _one_ true cause: internal causality present within our universe. There is no narrative force involved at any point, or any other outside force, because the real world isn't a narrative construct. The concept of there being anything _other_ than internal causality is laughable.


FrozenNorth said:


> Moreover, the example you give doesn’t track with the situation described: if I, as the DM, incorporate something from a player’s backstory into the campaign, then at no point is the player acting as a storyteller.



No, the player is acting as though their character was a narrative construct, because that's how the DM is treating them. The DM is subjecting them to contrived circumstances, and regardless of how well the player tries to cope with that, it will never be as a real (imaginary) person; a believable person, whether real or imagined, would not have to deal with contrived circumstances.


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## prabe (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> No, the player is acting as though their character was a narrative construct, because that's how the DM is treating them. The DM is subjecting them to contrived circumstances, and regardless of how well the player tries to cope with that, it will never be as a real (imaginary) person; a believable person, whether real or imagined, would not have to deal with contrived circumstances.




All fictional characters, including characters in TRPGs, are narrative constructs, and all stories in which they find themselves are to some extent contrived circumstances. Specifically, any TRPG adventure is a contrived circumstance, whether the GM asks for backstories, or uses them, or not.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> So then there's no way to ever have the brother show up later in an unexpected way? Let's say there's a totally organic way for that to occur; do you not go through with it because it may be mistaken as a forced plot twist? Do you go through with it despite that?



If there's literally no way to tell, and this one dramatic thing could very reasonably happen, then you could roll for it. If it was previously established that this character's brother is one of the twelve disciples of the Big Bad, and an unknown disciple would logically be messing things up in the next town over, then this one happens to be the brother on 1d12 roll of 1.

Alternatively, you could err on the side of avoiding the _appearance_ of meta-gaming. While that does mean unlikely events will never happen (rather than rarely happening), it will still give you the right answer in the vast majority of situations.


hawkeyefan said:


> What would you do in this situation? And how do you arrive at that decision considering only some kind of logical internal causality and not what's better for the sake of drama?



It's the easiest thing in the world. Just _don't meta-game_, the same way that you _don't meta-game_ when you're a player rather than the DM. You take all of your knowledge from outside of the game world, like which characters are being controlled by players rather than the DM, and you set that aside for the purpose of determining what happens.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

prabe said:


> All fictional characters, including characters in TRPGs, are narrative constructs, and all stories in which they find themselves are to some extent contrived circumstances. Specifically, any TRPG adventure is a contrived circumstance, whether the GM asks for backstories, or uses them, or not.



The premise of an RPG is that we _pretend_ these people are real. It's integral to the process, so we should strive to treat them, as much as we possibly can.


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> In the real world, everything happens from _one_ true cause: internal causality present within our universe. There is no narrative force involved at any point, or any other outside force, because the real world isn't a narrative construct. The concept of there being anything _other_ than internal causality is laughable.
> 
> No, the player is acting as though their character was a narrative construct, because that's how the DM is treating them. The DM is subjecting them to contrived circumstances, and regardless of how well the player tries to cope with that, it will never be as a real (imaginary) person; a believable person, whether real or imagined, would not have to deal with contrived circumstances.



I have to say, I don't know of any RPG that demands this level of simulationism and causal realism. There are several RPGs that I am tempted to say advocate the exact opposite, though I do not feel qualified to definitively comment on the matter as I have not played them.

What you are describing - utter and thorough avoidance of even the appearance of metagaming - as a necessity for "true" roleplaying is a restriction you are placing on yourself. If your players prefer this style, the simulation of the mundane over the replication of genre and stylistic convention, then more power to you. But introducing narrative elements, dare I say contrivances, to the table is by no means a mortal sin. In some systems and genres, and at some tables, it's more preferable than intentionally enforced mundaneity and lack of narrative drive.


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## prabe (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The premise of an RPG is that we _pretend_ these people are real. It's integral to the process, so we should strive to treat them, as much as we possibly can.




And there are writers who endeavor to treat their characters as much as though they're real as possible. Neither what they do nor what you do changes the fact the characters are fictional. If a given table prefer to do things the way you describe, that's fine, but it's not The One True Way or anything. Another table may prefer to know where the characters were before the campaign started, in the knowledge that some of those prior events may get brought up; that's not The One True Way, either. One presumes both tables are happy with the stories that emerge from play, and that's the key, really.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> A movie exists primarily for the purpose of telling a story. An RPG exists primarily to facilitate role-playing, with the literary merit of the generated narrative being irrelevant.



Further, a movie has to get its story told in a very limited amount of time, sequels notwithstanding.

With an RPG, unless you're getting well on in years you've got all the time in the world to tell or create whatever story or stories you want.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> So then there's no way to ever have the brother show up later in an unexpected way? Let's say there's a totally organic way for that to occur; do you not go through with it because it may be mistaken as a forced plot twist? Do you go through with it despite that?



If there's a "totally organic way for that to occur" then let it happen.

But if there isn't, don't force it.



> What would you do in this situation? And how do you arrive at that decision considering only some kind of logical internal causality and not what's better for the sake of drama?



Well, the logic - such as it is - would consist of me-as-DM knowing at least vaguely where this brother is most likely to be, on a large scale (e.g. _we've previously determined he's based in Praetos City these days but both he and the PC originally come from a village some 20 miles south where their family still resides; and he's a simple cobbler so not likely to travel much further than that_).  From this I now know that if the PCs are in Praetos, the village, or the road/waystations between there's at least a chance they'll meet the guy, and maybe they will; but if they're in Cyrax Town, 300 miles to the south across the mountains, there's no chance at all.

If, however, the brother was also an adventurer the PCs could potentially meet him anywhere - even in mid-adventure!


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> With an RPG, unless you're getting well on in years you've got all the time in the world to tell or create whatever story or stories you want.



Except that's not remotely true. It can be true and may be the case if we narrowly restrict our sense of RPGs to your games, but that is FAR from being a universal truth for RPGs. Sorry, but not all tables get "all the time in the world" regardless of the age of the participants. Some will only be one-shots. Some will only be 5-10 sessions. Some may get 20 sessions. There is no "all the time in the world" nonsense in the modern era. There are other games that some gamers want to try. There is a competition of attention. I think that most TTRPGs in the modern era lean into this reality instead of pretending that mega-decade campaigns that meet weekly in any way reflect the norm.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If there's literally no way to tell, and this one dramatic thing could very reasonably happen, then you could roll for it. If it was previously established that this character's brother is one of the twelve disciples of the Big Bad, and an unknown disciple would logically be messing things up in the next town over, then this one happens to be the brother on 1d12 roll of 1.




Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?



Saelorn said:


> Alternatively, you could err on the side of avoiding the _appearance_ of meta-gaming. While that does mean unlikely events will never happen (rather than rarely happening), it will still give you the right answer in the vast majority of situations.




In this instance, metagaming is just as much a factor in my choice, no? Ultimately, the decision to not have the brother show up is made because of concerns beyond the game. This is exactly your definition of metagaming.....so I don't see how one is preferrable.



Saelorn said:


> It's the easiest thing in the world. Just _don't meta-game_, the same way that you _don't meta-game_ when you're a player rather than the DM. You take all of your knowledge from outside of the game world, like which characters are being controlled by players rather than the DM, and you set that aside for the purpose of determining what happens.




It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.

Your logic has no way to replicate such circumstances because you're too concerned with avoiding metagaming. But you're absolutely metagaming. Your concern to avoid dramatic purpose is outside the game world. There is no feasible way to craft fiction of any kind without considering the content of the fiction.

Some times, dramatic things happen in real life. Your thinking allows no way for that to happen.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> If there's a "totally organic way for that to occur" then let it happen.
> 
> But if there isn't, don't force it.




Well, in a case where the drives and goals and state of mind of the brother are all created by the GM, I don't see how you can do anything  but force it, right? Perhaps the player has offered some bit of motivation or other detail for the brother as part of their backstory. "My brother got mixed up with the wrong crowd and left the farm..." or similar. In that case, it may help determine what's happened. 

But it's all fiction. It can't be real.



Lanefan said:


> Well, the logic - such as it is - would consist of me-as-DM knowing at least vaguely where this brother is most likely to be, on a large scale (e.g. _we've previously determined he's based in Praetos City these days but both he and the PC originally come from a village some 20 miles south where their family still resides; and he's a simple cobbler so not likely to travel much further than that_).  From this I now know that if the PCs are in Praetos, the village, or the road/waystations between there's at least a chance they'll meet the guy, and maybe they will; but if they're in Cyrax Town, 300 miles to the south across the mountains, there's no chance at all.
> 
> If, however, the brother was also an adventurer the PCs could potentially meet him anywhere - even in mid-adventure!




So in the first paragraph, you apply the kind of reasoning that I think we would all try and follow to some extent when determining this kind of stuff. Where has the brother been, what's he thinking, what resources does he have at his disposal to enable his travel, etc. I think this is generally the approach we would all take, 

Then in the second paragraph you essentially point out that all those details can be anything we want, so we can make anything we want happen, and we can justify it in any way.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yup.  I can kinda follow along with the player-side metagaming arguments (not agree, but follow), but I can't even grasp that argument for GMs.


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

I honestly wonder at times how Saelorn's exceptionally narrow perspective on roleplaying actually plays out in practice and how the hobby would look if his radical views were somehow the norm.


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## Ulfgeir (Mar 13, 2020)

Maybe an exaggeration, but it does seem that some people seem to think that the players are just along for the ride, and it is all the GM's show. Maybe those person should be authors instead...


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Determining things with a random roll of a die is just as unlike real life as choosing things for dramatic purposes, no? So why would it be preferable?



The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, just like real life. Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.


hawkeyefan said:


> It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.



While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are _exceedingly_ rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If _I_ try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and _you_ try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then _your_ conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while _my_ conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, *just like real life.* Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.



And that huge assumption is where your biggest mistake lies. 



> *While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are exceedingly rare,* and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If _I_ try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and _you_ try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then _your_ conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while _my_ conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.



Like adventurers? One might even say that these statistically-improbable things are fantastical or magical.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 13, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> I honestly wonder at times how Saelorn's exceptionally narrow perspective on roleplaying actually plays out in practice and how the hobby would look if his radical views were somehow the norm.



Pathfinder Adventure Card Game?


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> Pathfinder Adventure Card Game?



Probably not enough thespianism for Saelorn. Also, I'm sure that card games are somehow metagaming.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

prabe said:


> And there are writers who endeavor to treat their characters as much as though they're real as possible.



That seems doubtful, given their ulterior motive of writing a story. Making a character seem realistic can be a _goal_ of writing, but it isn't integral to the _process_ of writing, the way it's absolutely integral to the process of role-playing.


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## prabe (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That seems doubtful, given their ulterior motive of writing a story. Making a character seem realistic can be a _goal_ of writing, but it isn't integral to the _process_ of writing, the way it's absolutely integral to the process of role-playing.




For the writers I'm thinking of, having the characters behave realistically, for reasons inherent to the characters, is integral as integral to their process of writing as not-meta-gaming is to your process of TRPGs. Writers are surprised by their characters, sometimes, in roughly the same way DMs are by the PCs. It's an aesthetic decision/preference, nothing more or less.


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That seems doubtful, given their ulterior motive of writing a story. Making a character seem realistic can be a _goal_ of writing, but it isn't integral to the _process_ of writing, *the way it's absolutely integral to the process of role-playing.*



Except it absolutely isn't integral. You are just imposing your arbitrary preferences about role-playing.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 13, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Except it absolutely isn't integral. You are just imposing your arbitrary preferences about role-playing.



Is he meta-gaming?!?


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Is he meta-gaming?!?



Life is a meta-game.


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## prabe (Mar 13, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Is he meta-gaming?!?




If you decide not to do something because it's too meta-gamey, I'd be inclined to say yes. You're explicitly taking the game, and your aesthetic preferences for it, into account. I think the DMs who just aren't interested (for any of a number of reasons) are more consistent, here.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 13, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Life is a meta-game.



I've heard it's random dice mechanics aren't.


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> I've heard it's random dice mechanics aren't.



Indeed, which is why real life would be far more realistic if it was randomly determined by Saelorn's dice resolution mechanics.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Except that's not remotely true. It can be true and may be the case if we narrowly restrict our sense of RPGs to your games, but that is FAR from being a universal truth for RPGs. Sorry, but not all tables get "all the time in the world" regardless of the age of the participants. Some will only be one-shots. Some will only be 5-10 sessions. Some may get 20 sessions. There is no "all the time in the world" nonsense in the modern era.



Barring outside real-life circumstances getting in the way (an equal-opportunity hazard), that's purely by choice of the people involved.  Particularly the GM.

If a game's a one-shot that's because either the GM set it up that way or the collective group chose it'd be that way.

If a game only goes for 20 sessions it's because either the GM set it up that way or because the group in general made that choice.

But if the GM sets it up to be open ended and the players choose to keep coming back then yes, you've got all the time in the world.  Enjoy. 


> There are other games that some gamers want to try. There is a competition of attention. I think that most TTRPGs in the modern era lean into this reality instead of pretending that mega-decade campaigns that meet weekly in any way reflect the norm.



Again, barring external real-life circumstances it's a reality imposed only by one's own choices.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Well, in a case where the drives and goals and state of mind of the brother are all created by the GM, I don't see how you can do anything  but force it, right? Perhaps the player has offered some bit of motivation or other detail for the brother as part of their backstory. "My brother got mixed up with the wrong crowd and left the farm..." or similar. In that case, it may help determine what's happened.
> 
> But it's all fiction. It can't be real.



To us.  To the PCs it's real, and that's the reality I'd like to preserve.



> So in the first paragraph, you apply the kind of reasoning that I think we would all try and follow to some extent when determining this kind of stuff. Where has the brother been, what's he thinking, what resources does he have at his disposal to enable his travel, etc. I think this is generally the approach we would all take,
> 
> Then in the second paragraph you essentially point out that all those details can be anything we want, so we can make anything we want happen, and we can justify it in any way.



Not quite that simple.

Whether the brother is an adventurer or a cobbler or a nobleman is determined by random roll at the same time his very existence is determined (again by random roll of how many siblings you have and what they are), while doing up the PC's history.

Thus, all this information is pre-known.  The brother isn't just made to be an adventurer on the spur of the moment, which might be where you're getting confused.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> I honestly wonder at times ... how the hobby would look if his radical views were somehow the norm.



It'd look better from here.


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## Lanefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are _exceedingly_ rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results.



The answer, much of the time, is to use a more granular modelling system.  Though still not perfect, even d% is a vast improvement over d20.



> If _I_ try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and _you_ try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then _your_ conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while _my_ conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.



I never like to say that oddball-event-x is so unlikely as to be not worthy of consideration. Sure I might throw it out a huge percentage of the time, but it's still worth consdering provided one remembers to do so.

It's when oddball-event-x's become too common that the problems arise.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, just like real life. Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.




I don't think either of these points is necessarily true. Life isn't fair or unbiased. And imposing dramatic purpose on fiction is not unfair. 

A die roll is a method to determine a random factor in the game. Choosing based on what would be exciting or interesting is another method. Neither is more or less fair.....they simply are.



Saelorn said:


> While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are _exceedingly_ rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If _I_ try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and _you_ try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then _your_ conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while _my_ conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.




I don't know if I'd call coincidence exceedingly rare....they happen all the time. Certain types may be rare, or the odds of one may be far less than another....but statistically improbable things happen every day. 

But regardless.....even if I have my game filled with statistical improbabilities and unlikely events.....so what? 

In other words, as much as I struggle to understand your approach to GMing as described in this thread....at the end of the day, it's your preference and if it works for you, then great. But I don't get how you think that it's required. That's clearly not the case.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> To us.  To the PCs it's real, and that's the reality I'd like to preserve.




What does this mean, though? 

I mean....do you whisper to the PCs "this is sooooo farfetched" as if you're sitting next to them in a movie theater?

I'm joking, but it's to make a point. What is plausible is, usually, a pretty wide range of things. Some are less plausible than others, but still fairly plausible in and of themselves. 



Lanefan said:


> Not quite that simple.
> 
> Whether the brother is an adventurer or a cobbler or a nobleman is determined by random roll at the same time his very existence is determined (again by random roll of how many siblings you have and what they are), while doing up the PC's history.
> 
> Thus, all this information is pre-known.  The brother isn't just made to be an adventurer on the spur of the moment, which might be where you're getting confused.




So my PC who was a farmer might have a brother who is a nobleman? 

Do you do this for every family member at the time of character creation? Or only with ones that may be relevant to the PCs story? If the latter, why potentially eliminate or reduce that relevance?


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't think either of these points is necessarily true. Life isn't fair or unbiased. And imposing dramatic purpose on fiction is not unfair.



Life isn't fair, in the sense of justice or morality. It's _absolutely_ fair in that it's free from outside influence (e.g. a fair coin flip).

Imposing dramatic purpose on an impartial reality is to treat it like mere fiction. It violates the premise of an RPG, which is that this is a real (believable) place.


hawkeyefan said:


> But regardless.....even if I have my game filled with statistical improbabilities and unlikely events.....so what?



If I was a player at your table, I would not be having fun. Your approach says to me that you aren't taking this seriously, and that I would be wasting my time to do so.

But it is a matter of preference, yes. Some people enjoy role-playing, and others enjoy story-telling.


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Imposing dramatic purpose on an impartial reality is to treat it like mere fiction. It violates the premise of an RPG, which is that this is a real (believable) place.



Again, who says this is the premise of an RPG? Who claims this? I can't think of any tabletop RPG that demands this in the rules.


Saelorn said:


> But it is a matter of preference, yes. Some people enjoy role-playing, and others enjoy story-telling.



That is a bold distinction to make, and quite the narrow definition of "roleplaying".


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Life isn't fair, in the sense of justice or morality. It's _absolutely_ fair in that it's free from outside influence (e.g. a fair coin flip).
> 
> Imposing dramatic purpose on an impartial reality is to treat it like mere fiction. It violates the premise of an RPG, which is that this is a real (believable) place.
> 
> ...




Ah, okay, thanks for explaining! Here I thought I was role-playing all this time. Silly me!


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Ah, okay, thanks for explaining! Here I thought I was role-playing all this time. Silly me!



You'd be surprised, how many people have in-grained their meta-gaming to such a level that they don't even realize they're doing it. As always, better awareness of our own cognitive processes can help.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> You'd be surprised, how many people have in-grained their meta-gaming to such a level that they don't even realize they're doing it. As always, better awareness of our own cognitive processes can help.




Oh no, I'm quite aware how much I may metagame. I do it as a player at times, and by necessity, I do it as a GM even more. 

That doesn't mean I'm not roleplaying, though.


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The die roll is fair (in the statistical sense of the term) and unbiased, just like real life. Doing things for dramatic purpose is imposing your own bias on what you want to happen, which is inherently unfair.
> 
> While statistically-improbable things do happen in the real world, they are _exceedingly_ rare, and trying to incorporate them into our five-percent-granularity probability model would give disproportionate results. If _I_ try to extrapolate events based solely on likely scenarios, and _you_ try to extrapolate based on all theoretical possibilities; then _your_ conclusion will take a lot of time and effort to reach, while _my_ conclusion will be much more accurate in the vast majority of cases. From a statistical perspective, such events are not worth consideration.



wait hold up, how do you justify that all your adventurers are going to have an adventure you planned? how can you hold this up to a statistical model? do you roll to see if they know each other? or are even in the same place when the game begins? it seems exceedingly rare an entire party of adventurers just so happen to be together when an adventure is afoot.

why assume they're gonna go on this adventure? they might be in an entirely different part of the world when the evil bad guy starts putting his plans into motion. assuming that somehow all your players managed to be at the same place at the same time it should follow the game could be the party hanging around town doing the occasional oddjob only to find out the BBEG's army is on its way to destroy said town and there's nothing your lvl 1 party can do about it.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Oh no, I'm quite aware how much I may metagame. I do it as a player at times, and by necessity, I do it as a GM even more.
> 
> That doesn't mean I'm not roleplaying, though.



By definition, meta-gaming is the opposite of role-playing. If you're making a decision that utilizes out-of-game factors, then you are necessarily not making that decision from an in-world perspective. 

Meta-gaming is also _explicitly_ against the rules of many RPGs, such as D&D 5E. If you meta-game while using those systems, then the designers have told you that you are doing it wrong. You're free to change those rules at your own table, of course, if you prefer story-telling over role-playing.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 13, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> why assume they're gonna go on this adventure? they might be in an entirely different part of the world when the evil bad guy starts putting his plans into motion. assuming that somehow all your players managed to be at the same place at the same time it should follow the game could be the party hanging around town doing the occasional oddjob only to find out the BBEG's army is on its way to destroy said town and there's nothing your lvl 1 party can do about it.



Why are you even assuming there is a BBEG? Or an adventure?


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> By definition, meta-gaming is the opposite of role-playing. If you're making a decision that utilizes out-of-game factors, then you are necessarily not making that decision from an in-world perspective.
> 
> Meta-gaming is also _explicitly_ against the rules of many RPGs, such as D&D 5E. If you meta-game while using those systems, then the designers have told you that you are doing it wrong. You're free to change those rules at your own table, of course, if you prefer story-telling over role-playing.



AGAIN, I ask, where are you getting these definitions of roleplaying and metagaming???


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> wait hold up, how do you justify that all your adventurers are going to have an adventure you planned? how can you hold this up to a statistical model? do you roll to see if they know each other? or are even in the same place when the game begins? it seems exceedingly rare an entire party of adventurers just so happen to be together when an adventure is afoot.



That's just part of the premise. There's no uncertainty involved, because it already happened. If a coin flip comes up heads fifty times in a row, then the likelihood that it has just done so is 100 percent.

Our model is only concerned with what happens _after_ that point.


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## Aldarc (Mar 13, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Barring outside real-life circumstances getting in the way (an equal-opportunity hazard), that's purely by choice of the people involved.  Particularly the GM.
> 
> But if the GM sets it up to be open ended and the players choose to keep coming back then yes, you've got all the time in the world.  Enjoy.
> Again, barring external real-life circumstances it's a reality imposed only by one's own choices.



So apart from all the exceptions that disprove your thesis that you are trying to impose on gaming, it's true? Gotcha. Try not to let reality hit you on your way out.



Lanefan said:


> It'd look better from here.



Why am I not surprised that you would want to join his "Everyone is doing badwrong-RP-fun" Club?


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> By definition, meta-gaming is the opposite of role-playing. If you're making a decision that utilizes out-of-game factors, then you are necessarily not making that decision from an in-world perspective.




That's not true. Role-playing doesn't require you to abandon all knowledge you possess beyond the role you are playing. And playing a role doesn't mean you can't make decisions based on things outside the role, it just means that there also needs to be a fictional reason for the decision. 

So I can have my PC go on an adventure because that's the game and if I stay on the farm.....a perfectly reasonable and probably desirable choice for the character....then nothing fun happens. 

There's no reason that metagaming and roleplaying need to be at odds.



Saelorn said:


> Meta-gaming is also _explicitly_ against the rules of many RPGs, such as D&D 5E. If you meta-game while using those systems, then the designers have told you that you are doing it wrong. You're free to change those rules at your own table, of course, if you prefer story-telling over role-playing.




Not really, no. I think that there's a bit in 5E about discouraging metagame thinking. But there's nothing that says it's "explicitly against the rules".  Exactly what they are advising is open to interpretation. And there are plenty of roleplaying games where it's absolutely not against the rules, and may in fact be encouraged. 

I'm sure that you'll say that "those games are storytelling games not roleplaying games" or some such, and that's where I will say that your opinion is poo.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Role-playing doesn't require you to abandon all knowledge you possess beyond the role you are playing.



That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.


hawkeyefan said:


> And playing a role doesn't mean you can't make decisions based on things outside the role, it just means that there also needs to be a fictional reason for the decision.



If the real reason for making a decision is based on a factor that exists external to the game world, then that's meta-gaming rather than role-playing, and no amount of post-hoc rationalization will change that. If you were actually role-playing for that decision, then you would reach that conclusion _without_ compromising the integrity of the process.

Sometimes, there are situations where meta-gaming is the lesser of two evils, but it's never _good_. It's _always_ to the detriment of the role-playing process.


hawkeyefan said:


> I'm sure that you'll say that "those games are storytelling games not roleplaying games" or some such, and that's where I will say that your opinion is poo.



You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true. 

If you disagree, then make some sort of logical argument to support your claim, rather than Appealing to Authority.


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.
> 
> If the real reason for making a decision is based on a factor that exists external to the game world, then that's meta-gaming rather than role-playing, and no amount of post-hoc rationalization will change that. If you were actually role-playing for that decision, then you would reach that conclusion _without_ compromising the integrity of the process.
> 
> ...



*WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE DEFINITIONS?????*


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## Panda-s1 (Mar 13, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's just part of the premise. There's no uncertainty involved, because it already happened. If a coin flip comes up heads fifty times in a row, then the likelihood that it has just done so is 100 percent.
> 
> Our model is only concerned with what happens _after_ that point.



does this mean your adventures _always_ begin with the adventurers already in the dungeon or wherever the bad guys are hiding?


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 13, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> does this mean your adventures _always_ begin with the adventurers already in the dungeon or wherever the bad guys are hiding?



They always start with the improbable event having already happened. That doesn't usually mean the party is already in the dungeon, but it does usually mean that the relevant parties are all in the right geographical area for things to (probably) resolve in an interesting fashion.


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## chaochou (Mar 14, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.




No. That's literally your definition of roleplaying. It's an utterly crap one, but it does it for you. The fact that you're sufficiently bigoted and one-eyed to insist that everyone adopt your definition simply makes you very, very strange.



Saelorn said:


> If the real reason for making a decision is based on a factor that exists external to the game world, then that's meta-gaming rather than role-playing.




This is, quite literally, total gibberish. Everything exists 'external to the gameworld' and nothing exists within the gameworld. We are not observing or discovering a world. We are inventing it, the people sat playing.

The fact that your playstyle depends so totally on pretending that you don't actually exist, again makes you very, very strange, but it doesn't define roleplaying beyond a very sad and tragic subset of exactly one.



Saelorn said:


> It's _always_ to the detriment of the role-playing process.




No, it is _never _to the detriment of the role-playing process.


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## gepetto (Mar 14, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> Yeah, Frodo’s backstory is pretty important lol. Without it, he’s just another hobbit who wouldn’t have been on the adventure in the first place.




He could have been just another hobbit and it wouldnt have mattered much. Gollum was following the ring, not frodo. Frodo could have just dropped it and gone home and never would have seen gollum again. Gandalf didnt say to Elrond "i needed THIS hobbit. He said hobbits (plural) are tougher then they seem and can resist evil" He would have snatched up any convenient hobbit. He needed someone to carry it who wouldnt be able to use it to become a super villain. Thats why none of the more powerful, better equipped people could be trusted to carry it.

Frodo doesnt bring anything to the table from his background. Bilbo had dwarf friends. So what? Theres 1 dwarf in the main story and I dont think they ever have a conversation in the whole thing. He's an elf friend? Big deal. Again theres 1 elf in the party and they never even talk to each other. Their welcomed into Lothlorien because they have the ring and Elrond put in a good word. But ANYONE who was carrying the ring to destroy it would have gotten their help. They didnt know him. The sword he barely uses and could really have been any old sword. He could have just bought an elf sword in rivendell, or asked for one. The armor does save him, but if he had been killed Aragorn would have picked up the ring, taken it to mordor himself, not gotten lost in the mountains of shadow and quite possibly destroyed the thing BEFORE the army of evil killed all those people in Minis Tirith and the surrounding areas.

All his background gets him is 2 bumbling henchmen who he would have been better off replacing with a couple of good dogs. Even Sam was only there because Gandalf dragged him along. Frodo didnt go looking for his gardener to drag him out to mordor.

And they certainly dont go haring off any sidequests because of anything that happened in the shire before the adventure.



Sacrosanct said:


> Boromirs background is also important, because it comes into play in a pretty significant way down the road.




Well first, Boromir is clearly an NPC. He has about 3 lines and everyone just ignores everything he has to say until he gets redshirted as a plot device. So that doesnt even count. And second his "backstory" certainly doesnt come up for HIM at all for more then 30 seconds after he gets introduced.



Sacrosanct said:


> And Gollum? His backstory is probably the most important of all, because it’s so key to the whole dang epic. Not only because he’s the one who had the ring in the first place, and not only because it allowed Frodo to show him mercy, but it’s literally the whole lesson about evil power corrupting an individual.




Gollum is not a PC either. He's an NPC plot device.



Sacrosanct said:


> In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.




Yes NPCs do often have stories. They kind of have to in order to explain their presence in the PC's story. That has no bearing on the topic at hand.


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## gepetto (Mar 14, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> something tells me you don't get a whole lot of new players either lol




When no one ever drops you dont need to.


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## gepetto (Mar 14, 2020)

Panda-s1 said:


> in my experience those "regions" usually involve a lack of other available groups, they can happen anywhere



Nope, we play in las vegas. Theres about a million and a half people here. Lots of choices.


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## Aldarc (Mar 14, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.



This is ridiculous. Playing a role does not require abandoning your own perspective, as it inherently entails playing that role from the point of your perspective. You may be attempting to guess what the perspective of that fictional character may be, but you are doing so from your own perspective and play goals. 

The role does not exactly have some sort of objective reality in itself. If you asked multiple people who shared your own dogmatically-bound perspective on roleplaying to roleplay a given character to the backstory you all agreed upon, then the character would likely still be played differently because the players' perspective on how the role should be played will differ. 

In fact, I would argue that the definition of "role-playing" as a term literally entails meta-gaming as part and parcel of the process. A "role" is a meta-textual construction that only has meaning outside of the fiction for the participants, while "playing" entails an inherent awareness of the recreational purpose that drives the participation in the process. Likewise, "role-playing" as a process involves the player playing an imagined role that exists in distinction from the player themselves and that one cannot actually assume the role of a fictional role without bringing one's own cognition and perspective to bear. The player will be aware - assuming here that they are not sociopaths - that the game is being played with a recreational purpose, a tacit social contract (of some sort or another, likely including at the least not being a wang-rod to other participants at the table), and an attempt to making sure the actions of the character in the fiction do not disrupt play in a manner for other players in a manner that would disrupt their own desires for recreational enjoyment. 

But let us also consider something else here for a second. Let's take the sense of "metagaming" from the wikipedia article on the same name: 


> *Metagame*, or *game about the game*, is any approach to a game that transcends or operates outside of the prescribed rules of the game, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game.



If we apply this to what Saelorn is advocating, then it becomes fairly clear that Saelorn's "definition" isn't so much what roleplaying is about, but, rather, the metagame that he seeks to impose on the roleplaying process. In effect, Saelorn is just wanting people to play by his metagame rather than the range of other metagames that others may use for approaching roleplaying. 



> Sometimes, there are situations where meta-gaming is the lesser of two evils, but it's never _good_. It's _always_ to the detriment of the role-playing process.





> You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true.





> If you disagree, then make some sort of logical argument to support your claim, rather than Appealing to Authority.



You're appealing to non-existent definitions that have not been agreed upon and that you have not sourced and treating these definitions as an authority. You're appealing to truth statements that have not been verified. You're making highly-charged, unsubstantiated ethical claims about these things. I don't think that you realize how hypocritical and hollow that your argument sounds when you use the sort of language that you are choosing to use here, Saelorn. 



PsyzhranV2 said:


> *WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THESE DEFINITIONS?????*



His preferred metagame.


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## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> What does this mean, though?
> 
> I mean....do you whisper to the PCs "this is sooooo farfetched" as if you're sitting next to them in a movie theater?
> 
> I'm joking, but it's to make a point. What is plausible is, usually, a pretty wide range of things. Some are less plausible than others, but still fairly plausible in and of themselves.



True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.

The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.



> So my PC who was a farmer might have a brother who is a nobleman?



Yeah, bad example; sorry.  But your PC who's a farmer (and 1st level Fighter) might well have a sister who's already a 7th level adventuring Thief.



> Do you do this for every family member at the time of character creation? Or only with ones that may be relevant to the PCs story? If the latter, why potentially eliminate or reduce that relevance?



 The only thing that's always rolled at char-gen is secondary skill, as it can materially affect a character's abilities (e.g. non-mage characters are by no means guaranteed to be literate, but if your secondary skill comes up as Author then you're guaranteed literacy no matter what).  If you're going to be related to a noble, or be one yourself, this is where it'll happen.

Other than that we don't usually bother with character history-family stuff until it's clear the character's going to be more than a one-hit wonder, with very rare exceptions if-when something in the plot tells us we need to know it now.

Once the character's established, at some point the player and I* sit down for an evening with some dice and beer and determine where the PC's from, what else it might have done in life, where it might have been, what is has (left) for a family, and so forth. For family we usually just worry about parents, siblings, and - very rarely - children of the PC; along with ex or current spouses if relevant.

* - if the player wants to.  Not all do.


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## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

PsyzhranV2 said:


> Again, who says this is the premise of an RPG? Who claims this? I can't think of any tabletop RPG that demands this in the rules.



One could argue the demand is implicitly - and somewhat universally - made by the use of the words "role-playing" in the name of the game-type.

To play a role means, to whatever extent works for the person so doing, inhabiting the character you're trying to portray and then looking out through its eyes.  It's this way in theatre, and in films, and pretty much any other situation where you're trying to act as someone who isn't you - which is the very definition of what playing a role means.

If you've ever done any drama classes or halfway-serious acting you'll know this already.  If you haven't, I can see how it'd perhaps be a slightly foreign concept when looked at from a distance.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 14, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I couldnt disagree more. DL was actively damaged by that bit of unlikely and unbelievable cheese and would have been much better without it.
> 
> And LoTR is driven by people not wanting a tyranical force of evil to win and enslave/murder all the good guys. The only backstory that matters in the slightest is Aragorns, and thats exactly the kind of "this guys a special snowflake and your all his sidekicks" adventure thats fine in a novel but a problem in a group activity. No one wants to be the sidekick to your fated hero.



You’re objectively wrong about lord of the rings. Laughably so.


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## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> That's not true. Role-playing doesn't require you to abandon all knowledge you possess beyond the role you are playing.



Agreed, though it may at times require you to set aside some of that knowledge.



> And playing a role doesn't mean you can't make decisions based on things outside the role, it just means that there also needs to be a fictional reason for the decision.



True, but I'd flip it around: there has to first be a fictional reason for the decision, then after that if it happens to fit in with the outside world it's benefits all round.



> So I can have my PC go on an adventure because that's the game and if I stay on the farm.....a perfectly reasonable and probably desirable choice for the character....then nothing fun happens.



Which means the challenge is on you-as-player* to come up with a plausible in-fiction reason why Jane Farmgirl decides to get off the farm, take up the sword, and go travelling with (eventually) a bunch of other potentially-dangerouns people.  For me, sheer boredom is the go-to here if the character has any kind of decent Intelligence.

* - usually.  Sometimes the DM can find a way to bring adventuring to you.



> There's no reason that metagaming and roleplaying need to be at odds.



I somewhat disagree.  I think they're always at odds, in that metagaming or metaknowledge dilute the (for lack of a better term) "purity" of one's role-play.

The question is merely one of how much dilution one is willing to accept, in the knowledge that nothing's perfect.


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## Aldarc (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.
> 
> The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.



(1) You are stating an aesthetic preference about books and movies rather than any actual flaw. 

(2) History is rife with examples of the implausible happening nearly all the time. Life and history are a bit more implausible than you give credit. Implausibility is perfectly suited within the realm of plausibility. 

(3) It's probably healthier to admit that the desire for having "the implausible happening once in a while" seeks to impose a preferred aesthetic of plot pacing on the fiction rather than serving as any actual metric of realism.


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## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

chaochou said:


> This is, quite literally, total gibberish. Everything exists 'external to the gameworld' and nothing exists within the gameworld. We are not observing or discovering a world. We are inventing it, the people sat playing.



True, and in that process of invention we're creating a fictional reality quite different from our own, in which our PCs live and do whatever they do when we play them.

Which means there's now two "realities" - one for us, one for our PCs.  Complete immersion, which seems to be Saelorn's goal here, requires the player to in effect largely ignore one reality (ours) and as far as possible inhabit the other one (that of the PCs).  It's a laudable goal, if often unattainable.

There's strong parallels with "method acting", where a performer fully inhabits their fictional character even when off-stage or off-set such that they don't have to do anything to get in character to perform, because they're already there.  It's not how all actors do it, but it really works for some.

Here, the idea is that the game-player fully inhabits the fictional character while at the table (but hopefully not all week!) and think, as far as possible, like it thinks.



> The fact that your playstyle depends so totally on pretending that you don't actually exist,



Seeing as the whole hobby revolves around pretending anyway, to pretend one doesn't exist for a while doesn't seem all that big a jump.


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## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Well first, Boromir is clearly an NPC. He has about 3 lines and everyone just ignores everything he has to say until he gets redshirted as a plot device. So that doesnt even count.



Borimir's 100% a PC, just with different goals and motives than the rest.  He can't bend the party to his goals, so he initiates some PvP; that goes wrong as well so in the end he dies heroically but not before splitting the party into three groups.



> And second his "backstory" certainly doesnt come up for HIM at all for more then 30 seconds after he gets introduced.



Oddly enough, we find out far more about his backstory after he's dead than we do while he's alive.  It's still important.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> (1) You are stating an aesthetic preference about books and movies rather than any actual flaw.
> 
> (2) History is rife with examples of the implausible happening nearly all the time. Life and history are a bit more implausible than you give credit. Implausibility is perfectly suited within the realm of plausibility.



It may seem that way, because we hear about and-or remember the implausible occurrences when they happen but don't hear about or remember the many-factors-higher more frequent occasions when they don't happen.

Just as an example: the city I live in is, by all standards, not very big.  There's someone I knew who I lost touch with many years ago, but who I know has been living in town the entire time, yet the implausible has only happened once where by sheer chance we bumped into each other.  That was a memorable event - far more memorable than the nearly-infinite number of times it didn't happen.

Drama likes implausibile occurrences.  It thrives on them.

In reality, however, their relatively extreme rarity is what makes them implausible.


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## Aldarc (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> It may seem that way, because we hear about and-or remember the implausible occurrences when they happen but don't hear about or remember the many-factors-higher more frequent occasions when they don't happen.
> 
> Drama likes implausibile occurrences.  It thrives on them.
> 
> In reality, however, its their relatively extreme rarity which is what makes them implausible.



Here I would say instead that "Roleplaying likes implausible occurrences. It thrives on them," largely because tabletop roleplaying is an intentional exercise of recreational dramatic play rather than an exercise of reconstructing reality to its "proper" dimensions of plausibility.


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## chaochou (Mar 14, 2020)

Plausibility is an aesthetic preference linked to playstyle.

In a game which involves learning what the GM has planned and thwarting it, predictability is necessary so as not to cheat the players of the 'cleverness' of antipating the script. This leads to a narrow tolerance for 'plausible'.

In a game which involves finding out what happens as a result of character-driven conflicts, predictability is the very thing you don't want. This leads to a very wide tolerance for 'plausible'.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> True, but I'd flip it around: there has to first be a fictional reason for the decision, then after that if it happens to fit in with the outside world it's benefits all round.





> Which means the challenge is on you-as-player* to come up with a plausible in-fiction reason why Jane Farmgirl decides to get off the farm, take up the sword, and go travelling with (eventually) a bunch of other potentially-dangerouns people.  For me, sheer boredom is the go-to here if the character has any kind of decent Intelligence.





> I somewhat disagree.  I think they're always at odds, in that metagaming or metaknowledge dilute the (for lack of a better term) "purity" of one's role-play.




I want to highlight these 3 quotes because they are precisely why the DM should make ample use of character background in the adventure.

Yes, it is possible for a PC to come up with a fictional reason to go on any adventure or sidequest.  But it is a lot easier (and less “metagamey”) if it already ties into that character or their friends.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.
> 
> The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.



You won’t get any disagreement from me that many modern books and films lazily employ coincidence rather than good writing (though my initial example _was_ Star Wars, so modern is relative).

However, certain points remain:

1) there is no reason to assume “DM uses character backstory” means “DM uses character backstory in an excessively implausible manner”.  “You run into the gnoll who killed your parents as the chief of a gnoll tribe somewhere else in the same kingdom” is different from “you are actually the son of the BBEG’s lieutenant and this was never alluded to anywhere else previously”;

2) while bad writers (and bad DMs) tend to rely excessively on implausible coincidences, it is possible to use implausible coincidences to very good effect.  To put it differently, if you remove bad coincidences from the repertoire of a bad writer, what remains is still a bad writer.  Removing coincidences from the repertoire of a DM is removing a tool that can be the proper tool for the job, if used sparingly;

3) to get back to a point I raised earlier, I do this for fun in my spare time, yes, I take pride in my work and try to do the best job I can, but it is a little ridiculous to compare me to a professional screenwriter;

4) the DM who completely ignores your backstory is worse from both an immersion perspective and a “plausibility” perspective.  In a 4e game, I rolled up a Rogue with a Soldier background.  He was a farmboy who had been conscripted at the end of the war and trained with other locals who knew the area as a scout and a skirmisher.  I provided a short background to this effect to the DM.  The DM began the adventure with my character trying to break into an archeological dig as part of a Thieves’ guild initiation, and the climax depended on my character reading a note in thieves’ cant, despite my character neither being a thief nor literate.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Oddly enough, we find out far more about his backstory after he's dead than we do while he's alive.  It's still important.



Not really odd. The DM had a great arc for him planned once they reached Gondor and didn’t want that work to go to waste.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 14, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Life isn't fair, in the sense of justice or morality. It's _absolutely_ fair in that it's free from outside influence (e.g. a fair coin flip).




I wanted to go back to this for a moment. 

How exactly is life free from outside influence? 

We’re all impacted by outside influences all the time. We don’t have to look very far to find one going on right now. But even in the absence of a major event, there are any number of minor outside influences that impact each of us daily. 



Saelorn said:


> That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.




That may be _a definition, _but that does not make it _the definition._ This is where I think you’re being unreasonable. 



Saelorn said:


> If the real reason for making a decision is based on a factor that exists external to the game world, then that's meta-gaming rather than role-playing, and no amount of post-hoc rationalization will change that. If you were actually role-playing for that decision, then you would reach that conclusion _without_ compromising the integrity of the process.




This is simply not true. It would require there being one valid interpretation of a character and all others being invalid. 

If I as a player declare an action for my PC and I don’t vocalize my reason for doing so, then how would you as GM ever know if I was taking that action because I wanted to do it as a player, or because I thought that is what my PC would do, or both?

And if someone else was playing that character, faced with the same decision....could they not conceivably come up with a different course based on what they thought a character would do? 

So two players could come up with alternate actions based on what they thought the character would do. Therefore, there is no one preferred choice.



Saelorn said:


> Sometimes, there are situations where meta-gaming is the lesser of two evils, but it's never _good_. It's _always_ to the detriment of the role-playing process.
> 
> You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true.




You are right.....it is not my distaste for it that makes it untrue. It’s the fact that it’s not true.



Saelorn said:


> If you disagree, then make some sort of logical argument to support your claim, rather than Appealing to Authority.




I appealed to poo, sir, not to authority.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> True, and the implausible happening once in a while is fine.
> 
> The problem is when it happens all the time; a flaw many books and movies suffer from.




But what’s the problem. Why is having some implausible things happen bad when we’re talking about fiction? 

I get that an excess could possibly push believability past where we’d like it, but I don’t think having some coincidences happen is in any way bad. Even in a zealous adherence to simulationism....a lack of coincidence would be a glaring breach of simulating the real world, no? 

And this is also important...we’re not talking about the real world. We’re talking (in general) about worlds where the fantastic is true. Why would we expect such a world to behave as ours does? 



Lanefan said:


> Yeah, bad example; sorry.  But your PC who's a farmer (and 1st level Fighter) might well have a sister who's already a 7th level adventuring Thief.
> 
> The only thing that's always rolled at char-gen is secondary skill, as it can materially affect a character's abilities (e.g. non-mage characters are by no means guaranteed to be literate, but if your secondary skill comes up as Author then you're guaranteed literacy no matter what).  If you're going to be related to a noble, or be one yourself, this is where it'll happen.
> 
> ...




This is largely what we do. It can happen anytime though, and likely is an ongoing aeries of discussions. However much the player wants to delve into all these elements, we do....and I offer ideas, and maybe other players offer ideas, and so on. And nothing is certain until it’s introduced in the fiction. 



Lanefan said:


> Agreed, though it may at times require you to set aside some of that knowledge.
> 
> True, but I'd flip it around: there has to first be a fictional reason for the decision, then after that if it happens to fit in with the outside world it's benefits all round.
> 
> Which means the challenge is on you-as-player* to come up with a plausible in-fiction reason why Jane Farmgirl decides to get off the farm, take up the sword, and go travelling with (eventually) a bunch of other potentially-dangerouns people.  For me, sheer boredom is the go-to here if the character has any kind of decent Intelligence.




Sure, that all seems pretty reasonable. But I do have a few questions on this. I believe that you’re of the opinion that the PC is 100% the “property” of the player, right? Meaning that any and all decisions, barring those few instances of magic or similar compulsory effects, are up to the player and only the player, right?

If so, how can any decision I make for my PC as the player be deemed as metagaming? Who can tell me I should have made some other decision for my PC?

Because here’s the thing....there is no “best option” because in the real world, there isn’t always a best option for a person faced with any decision. And even when there is a generally agreed upon choice that would be in the person’s best interests....they don’t always do what’s best for themselves. People are dumb or foolish or proud or reckless or mistaken. People are inconsistent. 

So let’s say I’m playing a RPG and I make a decision for my PC.... I have the PC rush into danger. Previously, I’ve played the PC as a cautious person, very calculating and careful. 

You as GM assume that I as a player am looking for some action. And maybe that’s true, maybe not...I don’t explain.

Do you as GM question my decision for my PC? Do you ask me to explain my PC’s thought process? Because if so, I can explain it in any number of ways that would make sense in the fiction. 

So how does this ever even come up in play? 



Lanefan said:


> I somewhat disagree.  I think they're always at odds, in that metagaming or metaknowledge dilute the (for lack of a better term) "purity" of one's role-play.
> 
> The question is merely one of how much dilution one is willing to accept, in the knowledge that nothing's perfect.




I think my questions above address this, pretty much. 



Lanefan said:


> Just as an example: the city I live in is, by all standards, not very big.  There's someone I knew who I lost touch with many years ago, but who I know has been living in town the entire time, yet the implausible has only happened once where by sheer chance we bumped into each other.  That was a memorable event - far more memorable than the nearly-infinite number of times it didn't happen.




So you consider it implausible to bump into someone you know in the small city where you both have lived for many years? 

Perhaps this very broad interpretation of implausibility that’s making you think there’s too much?


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Here I would say instead that "Roleplaying likes implausible occurrences. It thrives on them," largely because tabletop roleplaying is an intentional exercise of recreational dramatic play rather than an exercise of reconstructing reality to its "proper" dimensions of plausibility.



Perhaps.

For each person involved, however, there's a different point at which the increasing implausibility breaks immersion beyond recovery.  The trick for the GM is to keep the level of implausibility just below that point.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> I want to highlight these 3 quotes because they are precisely why the DM should make ample use of character background in the adventure.



Why the DM, though?

The player should make use of the character background in order to justify why said character is doing what it's doing (in a typical PRG, this probably means adventuring).  But the player, not necessarily the DM.



> Yes, it is possible for a PC to come up with a fictional reason to go on any adventure or sidequest.  But it is a lot easier (and less “metagamey”) if it already ties into that character or their friends.



The reason will tie in to the extent that the player allows it to (or makes it) tie in.

The adventure itself, on the other hand, doesn't actually need to tie in to anything except itself; though it obviously can tie into other things either now or in hindsight.


----------



## Aldarc (Mar 14, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Perhaps.
> 
> For each person involved, however, there's a different point at which the increasing implausibility breaks immersion beyond recovery.  The trick for the GM is to keep the level of implausibility just below that point.



That's a fair enough answer.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 14, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> But what’s the problem. Why is having some implausible things happen bad when we’re talking about fiction?
> 
> I get that an excess could possibly push believability past where we’d like it, but I don’t think having some coincidences happen is in any way bad. Even in a zealous adherence to simulationism....a lack of coincidence would be a glaring breach of simulating the real world, no?



I think we're closer to agreement here than it might appear at first glance.

I'm not saying there should never be implausible occurrences.  I'm more saying that it's an easy trap to fall into to have them occur far too often.



> And this is also important...we’re not talking about the real world. We’re talking (in general) about worlds where the fantastic is true. Why would we expect such a world to behave as ours does?



True, meddling deities and all that. 



> This is largely what we do. It can happen anytime though, and likely is an ongoing aeries of discussions. However much the player wants to delve into all these elements, we do....and I offer ideas, and maybe other players offer ideas, and so on. And nothing is certain until it’s introduced in the fiction.



As in, introduced during play?  Because the way I see it, rolling up those backgrounds introduces the elements thus created into the fiction right then, i.e. it locks them in.



> Sure, that all seems pretty reasonable. But I do have a few questions on this. I believe that you’re of the opinion that the PC is 100% the “property” of the player, right? Meaning that any and all decisions, barring those few instances of magic or similar compulsory effects, are up to the player and only the player, right?



Pretty much, yes.



> If so, how can any decision I make for my PC as the player be deemed as metagaming?



Very early on in a character's career, it often can't.  But once a character has established patterns in how and what it does, it's usually pretty easy to tell when something's fishy.  Back in 1e days this came under playing out of alignment, and had some rather nasty consequences.



> Who can tell me I should have made some other decision for my PC?
> 
> Because here’s the thing....there is no “best option” because in the real world, there isn’t always a best option for a person faced with any decision. And even when there is a generally agreed upon choice that would be in the person’s best interests....they don’t always do what’s best for themselves. People are dumb or foolish or proud or reckless or mistaken. People are inconsistent.



Agreed, and having that inconsistency show up during play is great.



> So let’s say I’m playing a RPG and I make a decision for my PC.... I have the PC rush into danger. Previously, I’ve played the PC as a cautious person, very calculating and careful.
> 
> You as GM assume that I as a player am looking for some action. And maybe that’s true, maybe not...I don’t explain.



Most of the time, because I know my players, I can tell when someone's having their character do something with out-of-game motivations as opposed to just because the character (or player) is having an off day or is in a different frame of mind than usual.



> Do you as GM question my decision for my PC? Do you ask me to explain my PC’s thought process? Because if so, I can explain it in any number of ways that would make sense in the fiction.



Rarely does it ever get to the point of direct questioning.  More often it's a raised eyebrow and, depending on the decision, a mental note of any possible alignment ramifications down the road.

Bob and Mary's characters have always been good buddies in the game.  Then one session they suddenly haul off and try to kill each other; maybe one succeeds.  My reaction as DM is going to be a bit different if I happen to know Bob and Mary had a big fight during the week than it would be if I knew they were still good friends in real life and merely wanted to do something silly in the game just for kicks.

It's still out of character either way, but I'm going to be much more torqued off in the first instance than the second.



> So you consider it implausible to bump into someone you know in the small city where you both have lived for many years?
> 
> Perhaps this very broad interpretation of implausibility that’s making you think there’s too much?



I'm using "implausible" as a synonym for "unlikely to the point of near-but-not-zero chance".


----------



## Son of the Serpent (Mar 14, 2020)

*DM question: how much do you incorporate PC backgrounds into the campaign?*

Encorporated completely.  Which means it has ti be plausible for their level and if there is something in their backstory that would be impossible due to dm knowledge about the world that the players dont have i let them know they need to change something.  I usually dont subject the world to the pc backstory.  On rare occasion i have.  Very rare.  But i have much more time to encorporate these things than most dms do because we play with a very slow leveling style.  1000 times more xp required per level.  And we play campaigns for years.  If i were dming a campaign that was only supposed to last a couple months the backstories might possibly go out the window accompanied by apologies.


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## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

I am still catching up on this thread. But the notion that _treating characters as if they are real_ precludes the use of narrative device is just wrong.

Here are some great books by great writers: _Howard's End_ (EM Forster); _The Quiet American_ (Graham Greene); _The Remains of the Day _(Kazuo Ishiguro). I woiuld be amazed and impressed if anyone posting in this thread, GM or player, had ever produced a fiction of the same quality as any of these works.

These works are driven by characters and situations that have been carfeully crafted. _Howard's End _in particular involves multiple coincidences. None of this an obstacle to the characters being written as real. None of this stops these being powerful works.



Lanefan said:


> Further, a movie has to get its story told in a very limited amount of time, sequels notwithstanding.
> 
> With an RPG, unless you're getting well on in years you've got all the time in the world to tell or create whatever story or stories you want.



As some hack once said,_ brevity is the soul of wit_. Maybe in my RPGing I would like to have multiple compelling fictinal sequences rather than one drawn-out one?


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## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Well, the logic - such as it is - would consist of me-as-DM knowing at least vaguely where this brother is most likely to be, on a large scale (e.g. _we've previously determined he's based in Praetos City these days but both he and the PC originally come from a village some 20 miles south where their family still resides; and he's a simple cobbler so not likely to travel much further than that_).  From this I now know that if the PCs are in Praetos, the village, or the road/waystations between there's at least a chance they'll meet the guy, and maybe they will; but if they're in Cyrax Town, 300 miles to the south across the mountains, there's no chance at all.





hawkeyefan said:


> It's not the easiest thing in the world because there's literally no way to replicate reality in the way you insist must be done. The reason is that sometimes in real life, crazy coincidences happen. They just do. Childhood friends who grew up together in rural Kansas but then went their separate ways in college somehow find themselves in Kyoto, Japan 50 years later, and resume their friendship.
> 
> Your logic has no way to replicate such circumstances
> 
> ...



So much what @hawkeyefan has posted!

London is a city of, what, 8 million people? I've spent a total of around 5 weeks there in my life. And one time during those five weeks I was walking down a street somewhere near Bloomsbury and bumped into my best friend's sister, whom I hadn't seen for probably 10 years. I knew she had moved from Melbourne to London, bu tnot much more.

In itself, that's not a story. But now make it my ex-girlfriend instead. And have me stuck in London without the money for a flight home. And now we have the possible beginnings of a story . . .


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## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Barring outside real-life circumstances getting in the way (an equal-opportunity hazard), that's purely by choice of the people involved.



And so is the choice to have a shared fiction that's interesting rather than boring. So what exactly is your point?



Lanefan said:


> Whether the brother is an adventurer or a cobbler or a nobleman is determined by random roll at the same time his very existence is determined (again by random roll of how many siblings you have and what they are), while doing up the PC's history.



Says who? The only version of D&D that has random sibling generation is Oriental Adventures (or is there also an optional chart in Unearthed Arcana?), and it doesn't also have random occupation generation. I know that Gygax's Dangerous Journeys RPG had random family generation.

In most RPGs, the players or GM are free to decide these things.

When one of the players in my BW game decided that he had a brother who'd been possessed by a balrog, this wasn't generated on the _random sibling _table or the _random sibling fate _table. He decided this because he thought it would make for interesting play. Which it did.



hawkeyefan said:


> Role-playing doesn't require you to abandon all knowledge you possess beyond the role you are playing. And playing a role doesn't mean you can't make decisions based on things outside the role, it just means that there also needs to be a fictional reason for the decision.



Further to this, I want to reiterate a point I made upthread. RPGing happens over time, with various tasks distributed across different participants at those different times.

At time 1, I - a player - can deicde that my brother is possessed by a balrog because that sounds like it could be a fun premise for a game.

At time 2, when I'm _playing_ my character, I can make decisions about what to do about my brother without any need to metagame at all.[/quote][/QUOTE]


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## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> True, and in that process of invention we're creating a fictional reality quite different from our own, in which our PCs live and do whatever they do when we play them.
> 
> Which means there's now two "realities" - one for us, one for our PCs.



No. There is one reality: the real world. And it doesn't need scare quotes to describe it.

The "reality" or "world" of the PCs _does _need scare quotes, because it is obviously not a reality at al. It is a fiction. It is authored. What you and @Saelorn are advocating are various sorts of constraints on authorship, such as that things in the fiction be authored by way of random rolls (onewhat tables? ones you wrote up? is that metagaming?) rather than deliberate choice.

No RPG text has ever advocated that. Gygax always advocated _deliberate authorship_ of the dungeon, with random generation used simply to fill in peripheral details. No one thinks that the Tomb of Horrors would be a better module if Gygax had rolled it all up rather than made the choices that he did in authoring it.

Stated at the level of generality appropriate to this current thread discussion, making choices about what brothers are like, or where they are in the gameworld, is no different from making choices about whether there are gobins or orcs on the first level of the dungeon.



Lanefan said:


> the implausible happening once in a while is fine.
> 
> The problem is when it happens all the time;





Lanefan said:


> I'm not saying there should never be implausible occurrences.  I'm more saying that it's an easy trap to fall into to have them occur far too often.



And so are you setting yourself up as the arbiter for everyone else's game? (As @Saelorn clearly is.)

If not, what point are you trying to make? Who in this thread is expressing the concern that their game is suffering due to an excess of implausibility? As far as I've seen it is only a criticism being levied by some against the games of others whom they've never met and with whom they've never played.

In my 4e game after the PCs defeated a ropet and some beholders, when they explored they found the remains of a former member of The Order of the Bat, who had gone missing centuries before  - the decision that such a thing was found was made by me as GM, and all the backstory made up on the spot, in interplay between me and the player whose PC was a member of The Order of the Bat. That PC was able to take some valuable things from the remains of his predecessor (ie magic items that the payer had on his "wishlist").

Implausible? Coincidence? Good luck? Fate? What does it matter? It's no more absurd than Gandalf and Thorin finding ancient swords of Gondolin in a trollhoard in the Ettenmoors.


----------



## Fenris-77 (Mar 15, 2020)

The extended background tables in Xanthars has random family and sibling generation, does it not?


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 15, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> The extended background tables in Xanthars has random family and sibling generation, does it not?



It does. There are also a few online random generators based on the Xanathar's table, such as this one: This is my Life


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## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The premise of an RPG is that we _pretend_ these people are real. It's integral to the process, so we should strive to treat them, as much as we possibly can.



This contention is confused, and also confusing.

When we strive to treat the PCs as real people, are you saying that we should be polite to them and hold parties on their birthdays? Or are you stating a constraint on authorship? If the latter, a process constraint or an outcome constraint? If a process constraint, how do you tell it's being adhered to? And what do you do if it's not?

A player can know that a decision was taken non-randomly by the GM (eg see the story not far upthread about discovering the remains of a member of the Order of the Bat) but respond to it using the _process_ of choosing or intuiting or <insert apposite verb here> how his/her PC would act. In the episode just described, the PC honoured his predecessor with a small ceremony followed by making sure that the treasures of the Order of the Bat would not be wasted!


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## haakon1 (Mar 15, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> In fact, pretty much every main character has a backstory that comes into play and is important to the overall story in some way.




About LOTR, how the backstory is revealed is important.  When we first met Gandalf & Gollum in The Hobbit, we didn’t get to read their backstories.  It was revealed in play, the same way it works in most TV series, at least form the audience POV.  My point is, don’t say the PC’s have to make up the whole story before the gaming starts.  Their specific home village and family and even why they left, the player can decide to reveal later, as they figure it out in the context of the plot.

Character DEVELOPMENT has a lot of room if the backstory has a lot of room.  My favorite TV show right now is “Endeavour”, and while they main character (Inspector Morse) was a very well known major star of British TV for decades, the whole series is about filing in how young Endeavour Morse became the old character.  Each of the major characters also has backstory - and indeed who they actually are - developed over the seasons.  We knew early on DI Thursday was from London and a WW2 vet.  We didn’t know until it became relevant that he left London in a cloud after his “bagman” was murdered and framed for corruption by London mobsters - that’s SLOWLY revealed and deepens the story for everyone.  If Fred Thursday was a PC, I’d be just as happy if he came up with that 12 sessions into the game than if he came up with in character creation - actually much more likely to fit the plot and campaign world and character as they have been developing it in the “revealed” way.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 15, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> How exactly is life free from outside influence?



Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior. 

Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality _outside_ of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world. If the _player_ reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably _doesn't _exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their _character_.


hawkeyefan said:


> That may be _a definition, _but that does not make it _the definition._ This is where I think you’re being unreasonable.



It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term _outside _of the hobby. If you want to establish it as some sort of special jargon, aside from that, then you should do that from the outset. But there's also no reason why anyone should buy into your special definition, given your obvious ulterior motive.


hawkeyefan said:


> If I as a player declare an action for my PC and I don’t vocalize my reason for doing so, then how would you as GM ever know if I was taking that action because I wanted to do it as a player, or because I thought that is what my PC would do, or both?



This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.

That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.


----------



## prabe (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.




If this is a big deal, it's a big deal if/when/because people at the table don't have the same ideas what the rules are. If everyone agrees and is having fun, no one is doing anything wrong--not you at your table, where people strive not to metagame at all, not at my table, where backstories arise from time to time and people talk about game rules when they are arguably in character (both of which seem to fall in your definition/s of metagaming; I apologize if I misunderstand them), not the people at some other table where there's a full railroad in effect.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I think we're closer to agreement here than it might appear at first glance.
> 
> I'm not saying there should never be implausible occurrences.  I'm more saying that it's an easy trap to fall into to have them occur far too often.




I don't know if I agree at all, but I think that ultimately this is just a matter of preference. So in that sense, I don't really think we're disagreeing so much as our preferences differ a bit.



Lanefan said:


> True, meddling deities and all that.




Right, and any other number of phenomena that may apply.



Lanefan said:


> As in, introduced during play?  Because the way I see it, rolling up those backgrounds introduces the elements thus created into the fiction right then, i.e. it locks them in.




Why lock anything in until it needs to be, though? I mean, if a player says to me "My PC wants to find their brother who left the farm years ago" I'm going to incorporate that into the game. How will I do so? Why commit then and there at session zero when I can see how the game goes, and see if there's a way to incorporate this into the ongoing events in an interesting way"



Lanefan said:


> Pretty much, yes.
> 
> Very early on in a character's career, it often can't.  But once a character has established patterns in how and what it does, it's usually pretty easy to tell when something's fishy.  Back in 1e days this came under playing out of alignment, and had some rather nasty consequences.
> 
> Agreed, and having that inconsistency show up during play is great.




Okay, but then that inconsistency makes us unable to gauge if someone else is making a decision outside of character, doesn't it?



Lanefan said:


> Most of the time, because I know my players, I can tell when someone's having their character do something with out-of-game motivations as opposed to just because the character (or player) is having an off day or is in a different frame of mind than usual.
> 
> Rarely does it ever get to the point of direct questioning.  More often it's a raised eyebrow and, depending on the decision, a mental note of any possible alignment ramifications down the road.




Ramifications of what kind? I mean, I get the idea of alignment and all, but I don't tend to think that people only ever behave in one of nine possible ways. So how do you decide when ramifications are needed, and what they would be?

And if someone's Chaotic Neutral, how do you ever determine if what they've done is against alignment? If they become too consistent?



Lanefan said:


> Bob and Mary's characters have always been good buddies in the game.  Then one session they suddenly haul off and try to kill each other; maybe one succeeds.  My reaction as DM is going to be a bit different if I happen to know Bob and Mary had a big fight during the week than it would be if I knew they were still good friends in real life and merely wanted to do something silly in the game just for kicks.
> 
> It's still out of character either way, but I'm going to be much more torqued off in the first instance than the second.




I don't think I'm quite following.....Bob and Mary had a fight in real life, and so they have their PCs fight in the game?

You'd be more mad about that than if they just decided their PCs now wanted to kill each other? I mean....what's the difference? The same thing is happening.



Lanefan said:


> I'm using "implausible" as a synonym for "unlikely to the point of near-but-not-zero chance".




Two people who live in the same town bumping into each other in that town is simply not implausible. Bumping into the Pope in that town is probably a better example.

When you bumped into the person you may have thought, "wow I haven't seen them in so long", but I doubt you'd think "how could this possibly happen?" Um, you live in the same town is how it happened.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior.
> 
> Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality _outside_ of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world. If the _player_ reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably _doesn't _exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their _character_.




Everything in the fictional world is made up. Including the reasons for any decision made by any character. They're fictitious.

How can you judge what is a valid decision versus an invalid decision when people can be quite mercurial?

In other words, if I'm in your game, and I have my character take an action that you find to be questionable by your standards, how do you know I'm not doing so in character? Do you only know when someone says that's the reason?

What if you asked a player why their character did something, and they replied with "I'm not sure....it just felt like what they'd do"?





Saelorn said:


> It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term _outside _of the hobby. If you want to establish it as some sort of special jargon, aside from that, then you should do that from the outset. But there's also no reason why anyone should buy into your special definition, given your obvious ulterior motive.




I don't think that what you've offered as a definition is jargon. I think it is only a definition because it is incomplete in that role playing is a conscious act. You do not abandon your own perspective.....everything is shaped by your perspective.

This is why you can have two real people who may have completely different perspectives on a fictional person. They're deciding something for the fictional person, and they're doing so by relating to the person and imagining how they'd feel and what they'd do in those circumstances.

And speaking of outside the hobby.....what about sketch comedians? They role play, right? Would you say that they're more concerned with portraying their character, or with getting laughs?



Saelorn said:


> This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.
> 
> That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.




You don't need to trust me in any way because we're never going to wind up in a game together. I mean.....I suppose it could happen under some odd circumstances, maybe at a con, or in an online game, or maybe if one of us wound up moving to a new location and found a new gaming group.

But who'd believe that?


----------



## Son of the Serpent (Mar 15, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Everything in the fictional world is made up. Including the reasons for any decision made by any character. They're fictitious.
> 
> How can you judge what is a valid decision versus an invalid decision when people can be quite mercurial?
> 
> ...



Logic still operates in d&d.
Your character is a person.
People are subject to psychology.
You can therefore have a general sense of when a character is being played very unrealistically and non-self-consistantly.
So yeah.  Pretty easy to tell that not all actions are reasonable.


----------



## doctorbadwolf (Mar 15, 2020)

gepetto said:


> He could have been just another hobbit and it wouldnt have mattered much. Gollum was following the ring, not frodo. Frodo could have just dropped it and gone home and never would have seen gollum again. Gandalf didnt say to Elrond "i needed THIS hobbit. He said hobbits (plural) are tougher then they seem and can resist evil" He would have snatched up any convenient hobbit. He needed someone to carry it who wouldnt be able to use it to become a super villain. Thats why none of the more powerful, better equipped people could be trusted to carry it.
> 
> Frodo doesnt bring anything to the table from his background. Bilbo had dwarf friends. So what? Theres 1 dwarf in the main story and I dont think they ever have a conversation in the whole thing. He's an elf friend? Big deal. Again theres 1 elf in the party and they never even talk to each other. Their welcomed into Lothlorien because they have the ring and Elrond put in a good word. But ANYONE who was carrying the ring to destroy it would have gotten their help. They didnt know him. The sword he barely uses and could really have been any old sword. He could have just bought an elf sword in rivendell, or asked for one. The armor does save him, but if he had been killed Aragorn would have picked up the ring, taken it to mordor himself, not gotten lost in the mountains of shadow and quite possibly destroyed the thing BEFORE the army of evil killed all those people in Minis Tirith and the surrounding areas.
> 
> ...



You...don’t understand storytelling in general, or The Lord of The Rings in specific.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior.
> 
> Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality _outside_ of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world. If the _player_ reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably _doesn't _exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their _character_.
> 
> ...



Meta-gaming is okay. The idea that it is “cheating” is absolutely preposterous.

Have fun however you want, but your obsessive adherence to some sort of “pure roleplaying” to the point of disparaging people who don’t play like you do is insulting BS of the most obnoxious order.


----------



## doctorbadwolf (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> That is literally a definition of role-playing: You abandon your own perspective, and instead think like the character.



That is quite literally not the definition of roleplaying. I searched, and couldn’t find any definition of roleplaying that looks like what you claim. 

You're free to not like the truth, or to find it distasteful, but that doesn't make it any less true.


----------



## doctorbadwolf (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> One could argue the demand is implicitly - and somewhat universally - made by the use of the words "role-playing" in the name of the game-type.
> 
> To play a role means, to whatever extent works for the person so doing, inhabiting the character you're trying to portray and then looking out through its eyes.  It's this way in theatre, and in films, and pretty much any other situation where you're trying to act as someone who isn't you - which is the very definition of what playing a role means.
> 
> If you've ever done any drama classes or halfway-serious acting you'll know this already.  If you haven't, I can see how it'd perhaps be a slightly foreign concept when looked at from a distance.



I’ve acted a good bit, and literally only method actors (and not all method actors) try to pretend they, the real person, don’t exist. Roleplaying, like acting, doesn’t require abandoning ones own perspective at all, and many experts on both argue that the activity is enhanced by what some call metagaming, or consciously bringing your own perspective and knowledge to the role.


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## Aldarc (Mar 15, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Which means there's now two "realities" - one for us, one for our PCs.  Complete immersion, which seems to be Saelorn's goal here, requires the player to in effect largely ignore one reality (ours) and as far as possible inhabit the other one (that of the PCs).  It's a laudable goal, if often unattainable.



Going back to this point: IMHO, the desire for "complete immersion" immediately stops being laudable when it's being used for gatekeeping purposes, telling other tables that they are having badwrongfun, or adhering to supercilious notions of "bad RP." 



Saelorn said:


> Everything in the entire universe is internal to this universe. In the real world, there is no such thing as an outside factor. If you read something in the news, then that news is a real thing that exists in this world, so of course it can influence you. Even if the news in the article is fake, it's still a real article, capable of being read and influencing your behavior.
> 
> Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality _outside_ of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world. If the _player_ reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably _doesn't _exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their _character_.



The idea that the only way for players to roleplay their characters is to pretend that the outside world does not exist is psychotic. The game world is fictitious. It has an outside world that no degree of "complete immersion" or "roleplay purity test" will erase. If one even hopes to roleplay with "verisimilitude," the player will and must draw on outside knowledge of what it means to be real. The GM is drawing upon outside materials, sources, inspiration, and other things when generating the world and its inhabitants. The outside world will most definitely influence what goes inside, because that is the only way for the inside world to exist. Its fictions and content exists only through input from the outside! If the contents of a newspaper article has personally adversely affected the mood, behavior, or attitude of my player (or even myself) - and I will not speculate why that may be the case - then it would be absolutely bonkers to say that it has no influence on how the player may roleplay their character. It isn't just illogical to think that it won't have no effect on the behavior of their character, it's pure lunacy to argue otherwise! 



> It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because *it's also the primary definition of the term outside of the hobby.* If you want to establish it as some sort of special jargon, aside from that, then you should do that from the outset. But there's also no reason why anyone should buy into your special definition, given your obvious ulterior motive.



Source? Wikipedia, which is a fairly decent source for common denominator understanding, does not evidence your stringently narrow understanding of the term, its definition, or usage. So it appears that you have not only created a false definition of the term, but also imprinted it on a false past too. Impressive. 



> This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.
> 
> That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.



See? For me, if a fraction of the fanbase are giant douche-nozzles who go around thinking that it's okay to police others about metagaming and the need to police others about OneTrueWayism roleplaying or telling them that they are doing badwrongfun at their tables, then I not only can't trust them, but I will fight them tooth and claw because they are far more toxic to our hobby than metagaming.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Contrast with the game world, where we have this whole reality _outside_ of the game world, which shouldn't be able to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world. If the _player_ reads a news article in the real world, then that news article probably _doesn't _exist within the game world, so it couldn't logically influence the behavior of their _character_.



Fictions are _imagined_. Whatever it is that (in the ficiton) "infuences" a PC is something that is imagined. Reading the newspaper might influence how a player authors his/her PC; but no one (except in a 4th-wall breaking game - eg Over the Edge can be played like that) is going to imagine that _one of the fictional causes of the PC's behaviour is a newspaper in the real world_.

The same thing is true if the player decides to make an action declaration for his/her PC because inspired by something in the newspaper.



hawkeyefan said:


> Everything in the fictional world is made up. Including the reasons for any decision made by any character. They're fictitious.
> 
> How can you judge what is a valid decision versus an invalid decision when people can be quite mercurial?





Son of the Serpent said:


> Logic still operates in d&d.
> Your character is a person.
> People are subject to psychology.
> You can therefore have a general sense of when a character is being played very unrealistically and non-self-consistantly.
> So yeah.  Pretty easy to tell that not all actions are reasonable.



What @hawkeyefan says here is absolutely correct.

In the real world, all the time, people do things that others - even others who know them very well - don't expect and don't see coming. Relatioships end; old friendships bust up, or surprising new ones are made; people change which political party they vote for; sadly, sometimes people do things that hurt themselves or others.

The amount of information generated about the typical PC in the typical RPG session is so far from being sufficient to establish any sort of personality it's ridiculous to think that it provides any practical constraint on "reasonable" action declaration.


----------



## chaochou (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> ...to influence the reality _inside_ of the game world.



There is no reality _inside _the gameworld. It's total nonsense.



Saelorn said:


> It's a definition which has stood the test of time for decades, because it's also the primary definition of the term _outside _of the hobby.



This claim is totally false. It's an appeal to an authority that has never existed. More laughable nonsense.



Saelorn said:


> That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.




The entirety of the player base is metagaming, by virtue of playing a game in this world (the only one available). It's you who are in denial about it.

The fact that no players are welcome at your table is... well I'd call that a stroke of good fortune, for them.


----------



## pemerton (Mar 15, 2020)

Against my better judgement (ie implausibly!) I'm currently watching Wrath of the Titans on TV.

About 5-10 minutes ago, _just as the heroes were about to enter the secret way to Tarterus_, with the help of Hephaestus, _one of them prayed to Ares_ despite Perseus having earlier directed everyone not to do so. The result was that Ares showed up, killing half the team and requiring Hephaestus to valiantly sacrfice himself so that the heroes could go throw the secret entrance and thereby both escape Ares and continue on their quest.

Now this is definitely a B-grade film but its not partiuclarly bad by the standards of fantasy RPGing. And the particular contrivance I've just described is nothing out of the ordinary for an adventure story.

The way I would establish such a situation in a RPG is if one of the players' Command (or similar leadership-type) checks failed, the failure being narrated as the NPC praying to Ares. The idea that a GM who establishes such a situation is doing something wrong in having the consequence of the failure manifest in such a way as to maximise the drama and pressure is just aburd.

@Saelorn has referred upthread to the distinction between establishing the "implausibilities" before play starts, and doing it during the course of play. There are some playstyles - most notably Gygaxian skilled play - where the contrast between _establishing material in prep _and _establishing material during play_ is important. But that has nothing to do with plausibility or "metagaming". It's about fairness in refereeing, and allowing the players to "beat the dungeon". In such play, it would be tantamount for cheating for the GM to alter the dungeon as part of the process of refereeing the players' attempts to beat it.

It is a category error to suppose that this principle of fair play has anyting to do with ensuring the integrity of the shared fiction. And it is sheer fetishisation of a rather narrowly applicable technique to generalise it across RPGing as such.


----------



## Son of the Serpent (Mar 15, 2020)

pemerton said:


> Fictions are _imagined_. Whatever it is that (in the ficiton) "infuences" a PC is something that is imagined. Reading the newspaper might influence how a player authors his/her PC; but no one (except in a 4th-wall breaking game - eg Over the Edge can be played like that) is going to imagine that _one of the fictional causes of the PC's behaviour is a newspaper in the real world_.
> 
> The same thing is true if the player decides to make an action declaration for his/her PC because inspired by something in the newspaper.
> 
> ...



Fiction still has logic within it.  The more information there is about a character the more easily patterns of behavior become predictable.

This is basic.  If you dont agree then at this point i dont think it can be explained to you.


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## Son of the Serpent (Mar 15, 2020)

chaochou said:


> There is no reality _inside _the gameworld. It's total nonsense.
> 
> 
> This claim is totally false. It's an appeal to an authority that has never existed. More laughable nonsense.
> ...



well arent you just an arrogant ray of sunshine.

Was that really necessary?

Also there are clearly things that the members of the hobby have long commonly thought of as meta gaming and things they have not.  How do you think the term began to be used in such a way in the first place and in those contexts?  Because there was a problem that a very large number of people identified and have avoided for a long time.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 15, 2020)

PsyzhranV2 said:


> Again, who says this is the premise of an RPG? Who claims this? I can't think of any tabletop RPG that demands this in the rules.
> 
> That is a bold distinction to make, and quite the narrow definition of "roleplaying".



Not just narrow, but wholly false and unsupported. 


gepetto said:


> When no one ever drops you dont need to.



No one believes you, bud.


----------



## TwoSix (Mar 15, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> This is a trust-based hobby. I need to trust that you aren't cheating. If I can't trust you, then you aren't welcome at my table.
> 
> That's why this is such a big deal. If there's a fraction of the player-base which thinks meta-gaming is okay, then you can't trust them, because they don't understand that they're doing something wrong.



Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 crisis, most elective surgeries have been put on hold; we're going to need to delay the extrication of that deeply rooted stick.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 15, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 crisis, most elective surgeries have been put on hold; we're going to need to delay the extrication of that deeply rooted stick.



Masks and gloves sound like a necessity there and are in short supply. 

We also need to take into account that a predilection for metagaming is an airborne vector that can live quite happily on most surfaces for up to 72hrs. The mortality rate there is high enough that I'd worry anyway. I mean, we aren't talking about illusionism, which kills something like 80% of gamers exposed to it, but metagaming is still no joke.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 15, 2020)

Son of the Serpent said:


> Logic still operates in d&d.
> Your character is a person.
> People are subject to psychology.
> You can therefore have a general sense of when a character is being played very unrealistically and non-self-consistantly.
> So yeah.  Pretty easy to tell that not all actions are reasonable.




Sure, I agree. 

However, people can be unreasonable. So how do you decide as a GM that a player just metagamed and made a decision or if the character is simply behaving in an unreasonable way?

This is what I’m curious to hear....how it comes up at the table. 

Because for me, it sounds like people don’t want to incorporate player authored back story because they want to control the narrative of the game. And then one step further, they want to control how the characters behave.

I see one common element there, but I don’t want to assume the worst. But so far, no one has given much of an explanation how they handle supposed metagaming at the table.


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## Umbran (Mar 15, 2020)

chaochou said:


> ...It's total nonsense.
> 
> ... More laughable nonsense.
> 
> The fact that no players are welcome at your table is... well I'd call that a stroke of good fortune, for them.




*Mod note:*

I understand that these are stressful times... but this isn't acceptable.  



Son of the Serpent said:


> well arent you just an arrogant ray of sunshine.
> 
> Was that really necessary?




Ironic.  Too ironic.

@chaochou and @Son of the Serpent  Both of you are done in this thread.  Please take some time to consider how you can engage without people without being disrespectful.


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## MGibster (Mar 16, 2020)

When running games, I've been known to just make stuff up about a player character's background to get the ball rolling.  In star one Star Wars session, I had one of the PC's contacted by their sister to get the group involved in the adventure.  And since we never discussed PC background's I just made up a sister on the spot and went with it.  I've also been known to introduce NPCs, tell the player their character knows him, and have the player tell me how he feels about the NPC.


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## Tallifer (Mar 16, 2020)

Usually I do not use the characters' background stories very much except as a hook to get them going somewhere. Any of my players who want to fully realize their amazo backstory will have to write it up as a uncanonical novel.


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## Sadras (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> However, people can be unreasonable. So how do you decide as a GM that a player just metagamed and made a decision or if the character is simply behaving in an unreasonable way?




So IF I were playing along those lines as strictly as @Saelorn seems to do: If the GM wasn't happy with the player's reasoning for the character's actions it could go to a table vote. Personally if I were a player (and actually a GM) at that table I would prefer it going to the table rather than have the entire decision rest in the GM's hands.



> Because for me, it sounds like people don’t want to incorporate player authored back story because they want to control the narrative of the game.




In a way yes, but also to try maintain a sense of internal consistency.



> And then one step further, they want to control how the characters behave.




Look if it ever went that dark - the GM would generally have serious trouble at the table. Checks and balances.

I do not run my table as metagame free as Saelorn, obviously, given some of the gaming techniques I have incorporated, but I will say this: Our table is very much open. Anyone is free to question any character's actions at our table since those actions may affect the story's internal consistency. I often find it is players that check players at our table and opinions may be shared and may lead to rethinking/modifying the character action taken. In another light (positive) this could be viewed as shared narrative (between two players). Other times the questioning of a character's actions serves to get clarrification but more so insight into the character.


----------



## prabe (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> However, people can be unreasonable. So how do you decide as a GM that a player just metagamed and made a decision or if the character is simply behaving in an unreasonable way?




It hasn't come up at either of the tables I'm DMing, at least not seriously. There are some jokes about bad things happening wherever the PCs are--the parties ended up in the same city, three months apart, and while the first party found the city welcoming to adventurers, the second didn't. Since there are players playing in both campaigns, there was some pondering if they could somehow not be the ones the city had gotten mad at. No one really metagamed in practice, though.



hawkeyefan said:


> Because for me, it sounds like people don’t want to incorporate player authored back story because they want to control the narrative of the game. And then one step further, they want to control how the characters behave.




I think the absolute refusal to consider using a player-written backstory might reflect that, or it might reflect an insistence on a play-style that at least doesn't reward backstories at all.

I welcome backstories, and they can come up at roughly any point in a campaign, but I'm at the point where I'm going to start asking for shorter backstories because I don't want to spend an hour trying to pull the hooks out, and because the PCs are supposed to be closer to the beginnings of their stories than the middles, let alone the ends. I'm also trying to keep my homebrew world consistent, so the more stuff there is in a character's backstory, the more likely it is to conflict with what I have or require some thinking to fit in. I'm not trying to control the narrative of the campaign: As @Sadras said, I'm trying to keep the setting at least somewhat consistent/coherent.

EDIT: I don't believe I have ever tried to control how the characters have behaved as a GM. I have had villains and NPCs do so, however, with roughly little success.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> In other words, if I'm in your game, and I have my character take an action that you find to be questionable by your standards, how do you know I'm not doing so in character? Do you only know when someone says that's the reason?



If I trust you, then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. If I find out you've been cheating, then you get one reminder, before being removed from the game.


hawkeyefan said:


> What if you asked a player why their character did something, and they replied with "I'm not sure....it just felt like what they'd do"?



That certainly sounds, to me, like the they're making the decision from the character's perspective. While it's possible that they're subconsciously meta-gaming, as long as they're acting in good faith, that's the most anyone can ask of a player.


hawkeyefan said:


> And speaking of outside the hobby.....what about sketch comedians? They role play, right? Would you say that they're more concerned with portraying their character, or with getting laughs?



I would not say that they are role-playing, no. They may be doing something similar to role-playing, in a sense, but they have an obvious ulterior motive which compromises the integrity of the process.


----------



## gepetto (Mar 16, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Borimir's 100% a PC, just with different goals and motives than the rest.  He can't bend the party to his goals, so he initiates some PvP; that goes wrong as well so in the end he dies heroically but not before splitting the party into three groups.
> 
> Oddly enough, we find out far more about his backstory after he's dead than we do while he's alive.  It's still important.




He's definitely an NPC. Or at best an occasional player whose character the GM runs most sessions. But really the background after death thing is how we know he's an NPC. If he was a PC then when he died the player would get a new one and that would be the focus.


----------



## gepetto (Mar 16, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> You won’t get any disagreement from me that many modern books and films lazily employ coincidence rather than good writing (though my initial example _was_ Star Wars, so modern is relative).
> 
> However, certain points remain:
> 
> ...




Yeah but thats like the first adventure, or pretty close. When maybe backgrounds popping up can be believable. If its still happening past level 3 or 4 it becomes progressively more unlikely and undesirable.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Sadras said:


> So IF I were playing along those lines as strictly as @Saelorn seems to do: If the GM wasn't happy with the player's reasoning for the character's actions it could go to a table vote. Personally if I were a player (and actually a GM) at that table I would prefer it going to the table rather than have the entire decision rest in the GM's hands.




That'd probably be a better way to handle it than based solely on the GM, I think. Still seems odd that other people would know better than the player what his or her character would do.



Sadras said:


> In a way yes, but also to try maintain a sense of internal consistency.




I don't think having more than one source of input into the fiction really threatens the internal consistency all that much. It could, of course...but it can also be pretty shoddy with only one source, too.



Sadras said:


> Look if it ever went that dark - the GM would generally have serious trouble at the table. Checks and balances.
> 
> I do not run my table as metagame free as Saelorn, obviously, given some of the gaming techniques I have incorporated, but I will say this: Our table is very much open. Anyone is free to question any character's actions at our table since those actions may affect the story's internal consistency. I often find it is players that check players at our table and opinions may be shared and may lead to rethinking/modifying the character action taken. In another light (positive) this could be viewed as shared narrative (between two players). Other times the questioning of a character's actions serves to get clarrification but more so insight into the character.




Yeah, I don't think that this is problematic as an approach, overall.

I just don't quite get how anyone can overrule another player's choice for their character. Seems very odd. Also, where is the line drawn? If I'm playing a cleric of a life deity and I've established that my character's primary concern is the health of his companions.....and as an action I declare to attack an enemy instead of casting a cure spell on comrade.....is this grounds for that character's player or anyone else to question if I'm playing in character?


----------



## prabe (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I just don't quite get how anyone can overrule another player's choice for their character. Seems very odd. Also, where is the line drawn? If I'm playing a cleric of a life deity and I've established that my character's primary concern is the health of his companions.....and as an action I declare to attack an enemy instead of casting a cure spell on comrade.....is this grounds for that character's player or anyone else to question if I'm playing in character?




The only way I have done this (and it happened as recently as this past Saturday) was when a player made a decision that didn't seem to reflect the situation/rules. Mind-control effects are obvious; this was a minion that had been given a specific order, and ended up behaving in a way that was ... tactically suboptimal (with the player completely buying in, once I pointed the situation out).

Obviously that's not the same thing as a real in-character decision, which I tend to be leave in the hands of the players. I have, however, seen at least one instance where a player was pondering which class to advance and was talked into changing his mind by the other players (because of what had just happened in-game); that's still probably not what you're talking about.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

prabe said:


> It hasn't come up at either of the tables I'm DMing, at least not seriously. There are some jokes about bad things happening wherever the PCs are--the parties ended up in the same city, three months apart, and while the first party found the city welcoming to adventurers, the second didn't. Since there are players playing in both campaigns, there was some pondering if they could somehow not be the ones the city had gotten mad at. No one really metagamed in practice, though.




I am really struggling to understand how it even can come up, unless a player outright says "I only did that because I knew the session was almost over, and I wanted something cool to happen" or something similar. Without such an admission, all I'm seeing is an ultra-controlling GM telling people how to run their characters.



prabe said:


> I think the absolute refusal to consider using a player-written backstory might reflect that, or it might reflect an insistence on a play-style that at least doesn't reward backstories at all.




Right. I'm trying not to assume the worst. I understand that for some folks, they don't want preconceived ideas about who a character may be, or what they've done to this point. It's not my preferred method of play, and I may disagree about the pros and cons of it.....but I can intellectually understand it.



prabe said:


> I welcome backstories, and they can come up at roughly any point in a campaign, but I'm at the point where I'm going to start asking for shorter backstories because I don't want to spend an hour trying to pull the hooks out, and because the PCs are supposed to be closer to the beginnings of their stories than the middles, let alone the ends. I'm also trying to keep my homebrew world consistent, so the more stuff there is in a character's backstory, the more likely it is to conflict with what I have or require some thinking to fit in. I'm not trying to control the narrative of the campaign: As @Sadras said, I'm trying to keep the setting at least somewhat consistent/coherent.




Yeah, I don't need a novella. Generally, a conversation about the character will do. If anything is written down, a paragraph, or better yet a list, will be plenty.



prabe said:


> EDIT: I don't believe I have ever tried to control how the characters have behaved as a GM. I have had villains and NPCs do so, however, with roughly little success.




I've never seen anyone play this way. Even if I did have a player say to me "I only had my character do that so we could get to the fight" I wouldn't call them cheater and ban them from my game. I'd probably just chuckle.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

prabe said:


> The only way I have done this (and it happened as recently as this past Saturday) was when a player made a decision that didn't seem to reflect the situation/rules. Mind-control effects are obvious; this was a minion that had been given a specific order, and ended up behaving in a way that was ... tactically suboptimal (with the player completely buying in, once I pointed the situation out).
> 
> Obviously that's not the same thing as a real in-character decision, which I tend to be leave in the hands of the players. I have, however, seen at least one instance where a player was pondering which class to advance and was talked into changing his mind by the other players (because of what had just happened in-game); that's still probably not what you're talking about.




Yeah, I'm not saying that there aren't times where I say something like "You have no way of knowing that" when a player is having their character act on knowledge they don't have. This sometimes comes up when there's a split party....some folks are in one room, and some in another, and one of the groups gets into some trouble. 

I might step in and say something....but at the same time, there's no way to say that the character might not be cautious in such a way, is there? What if I placed both groups of players in separate rooms, and then went back and forth between the two, and one of the players said "I'd like to go check on the other group"; should I deny his action? Or allow it?

The way I see it, is that one method limits the options that should be conceivably available to the characters, and one allows for all options that should be conceivably available to the characters.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Why lock anything in until it needs to be, though?



Because then the player can build off it, as can I-as-DM should I want to and-or have to.



> I mean, if a player says to me "My PC wants to find their brother who left the farm years ago" I'm going to incorporate that into the game. How will I do so? Why commit then and there at session zero when I can see how the game goes, and see if there's a way to incorporate this into the ongoing events in an interesting way"



Depends.  If we've already determined that the PC doesn't have a brother then it doesn't have a brother, and one would hope the player is already well aware of this (having been involved in the determination process) and thus won't try to invent a brother where none exists.

If we haven't yet determined the makeup of the PC's family then I'll keep this in mind, and maybe bring it in later depending on some other factors e.g. is the player doing this just to try and hog airtime, is the player actively trying to incorporare other PCs into this side-story, and so forth.



> Ramifications of what kind? I mean, I get the idea of alignment and all, but I don't tend to think that people only ever behave in one of nine possible ways. So how do you decide when ramifications are needed, and what they would be?



I look for patterns.

Ramifications for most characters include how an aligned item treats you; what results someone gets from casting Know Alignment or Detect Good/Evil on you; how you're treated by some NPCs if-when word spreads, and so forth.

If you're a Cleric, Paladin, or other class with alignment restrictions the ramifications can be much more significant, up to and including loss of class or - in very rare instances (i.e. once in my DMing career) - a divine bolt of lightning dropping from the sky...



> And if someone's Chaotic Neutral, how do you ever determine if what they've done is against alignment? If they become too consistent?



As CG and CN are the two most common alignments played here, I've had lots of practice with this one.   They might become too consistent or predictable, or insist on following/enforcing/inventing rules and regulations, or (for a CN) consistently act evilly or goodly, and so forth.



> I don't think I'm quite following.....Bob and Mary had a fight in real life, and so they have their PCs fight in the game?



In this example, yes.



> You'd be more mad about that than if they just decided their PCs now wanted to kill each other? I mean....what's the difference? The same thing is happening.



The difference is the meta-thinking and motivation behind it.

If their fight in-game mirrors their fight in real life (and-or is caused by it), that's just the reverse of having an in-character argument move out of character; which is something I smack down on rather hard.

But if their in-character fight is simply something happening in character and nothing to do with real life, I'm cool with it as long as it stays in character.



> Two people who live in the same town bumping into each other in that town is simply not implausible. Bumping into the Pope in that town is probably a better example.



Well, maybe not, as the Pope's movements outside the Vatican are usually quite well publicized.

But e.g. bumping into Tom Hanks or Taylor Swift were either here on an unannounced vacation, perhaps that's closer to what you mean.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Everything in the fictional world is made up. Including the reasons for any decision made by any character. They're fictitious.
> 
> How can you judge what is a valid decision versus an invalid decision when people can be quite mercurial?
> 
> ...



IME it's one of those things where "you know it when you see it" applies.



> And speaking of outside the hobby.....what about sketch comedians? They role play, right? Would you say that they're more concerned with portraying their character, or with getting laughs?



Both, I'd say.

They're concerned with portraying their character in such a way as to get those laughs.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If I trust you, then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. If I find out you've been cheating, then you get one reminder, before being removed from the game.




Let's just use the term "metagaming" in order to remain clear. Cheating can mean any number of things. I'm aware of your stance, and you're aware of mine.....so let's respect each other and not assume the worst, eh? 



Saelorn said:


> That certainly sounds, to me, like the they're making the decision from the character's perspective. While it's possible that they're subconsciously meta-gaming, as long as they're acting in good faith, that's the most anyone can ask of a player.




So then how would you ever arrive at a decision that a player has metagamed barring their admission that they've done so?



Saelorn said:


> I would not say that they are role-playing, no. They may be doing something similar to role-playing, in a sense, but they have an obvious ulterior motive which compromises the integrity of the process.




So then role-playing doesn't exist outside the hobby? At least as you define it? 

And they don't have an ulterior motive.....there's nothing hidden about their goal to get the audience to laugh. They simply have a goal other than portraying their role.....they have more than one goal, and can be doing both! 

Just like players in a RPG.


----------



## Aldarc (Mar 16, 2020)

gepetto said:


> He's definitely an NPC. Or at best an occasional player whose character the GM runs most sessions. But really the background after death thing is how we know he's an NPC. If he was a PC then when he died the player would get a new one and that would be the focus.



Or the player needed to drop out of the group, so either the player decided to go for the One Ring himself or the player and GM collaborated on a cool twist for the character. But nothing precludes Boromir from being a PC rather than a NPC. 



Lanefan said:


> Both, I'd say.
> 
> They're concerned with portraying their character in such a way as to get those laughs.



This is one fairly clear piece of counter-evidence, IMHO, why Saelorn's definition, usage, and sense of roleplay falls flat, at least if they want to assert that their term is how it is commonly used inside and outside of the hobby. Saelorn is basically setting up legitimate forms of roleplay that fall outside of his narrow sense of roleplay essentially as a "No True Scotsman."


----------



## FrozenNorth (Mar 16, 2020)

gepetto said:


> Yeah but thats like the first adventure, or pretty close. When maybe backgrounds popping up can be believable. If its still happening past level 3 or 4 it becomes progressively more unlikely and undesirable.



What part of it becomes unlikely as you go up in levels?  In 5e, a gnoll flind is CR 8, so you could definitely have a gnoll flind and his bodyguards as the boss fight for a 10th level party.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Going back to this point: IMHO, the desire for "complete immersion" immediately stops being laudable when it's being used for gatekeeping purposes, telling other tables that they are having badwrongfun, or adhering to supercilious notions of "bad RP."



Why is it of late that seemingly every time someone wants to dispute a point, the argument of "gatekeeping" shows up?

I mean, I have no problem at all telling someone else (or a lot of someone elses) that I think they're doing it wrong, nor do I have any problem if-when they say the same right back to me.  We can then argue, or agree to disagree, or go for pistols at dawn, or whatever.

But to suggest I'm not allowed to say this in the first place?  Sorry, not buying it. 



> See? For me, if a fraction of the fanbase are giant douche-nozzles who go around thinking that it's okay to police others about metagaming and the need to police others about OneTrueWayism roleplaying or telling them that they are doing badwrongfun at their tables, then I not only can't trust them, but I will fight them tooth and claw because they are far more toxic to our hobby than metagaming.



I'm not sure I'd go anywhere near as far as saying either opinion is 'toxic'.

That said, it's a breeding ground for at-the-table arguments and IMO the easiest way to avoid these is just to rule 'no metagaming where possible' and stick to it.


----------



## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I just don't quite get how anyone can overrule another player's choice for their character. Seems very odd. Also, where is the line drawn? If I'm playing a cleric of a life deity and I've established that my character's primary concern is the health of his companions.....and as an action I declare to attack an enemy instead of casting a cure spell on comrade.....is this grounds for that character's player or anyone else to question if I'm playing in character?



I think it's more if you decided to attack the fallen comrade rather than cure him, that eyebrows would shoot skyward.

Or if after the battle was done you intentionally dragged your heels such that the comrade bled out and died.


----------



## Aldarc (Mar 16, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Why is it of late that seemingly every time someone wants to dispute a point, the argument of "gatekeeping" shows up?



Because of toxic gatekeepers in the hobby that people are growing tired of having to deal with. 



> But to suggest I'm not allowed to say this in the first place?  Sorry, not buying it.



You're not buying what I'm not even attempting to sell? That's laudable. You should probably come up with a better counter-argument than a strawman.



> I'm not sure I'd go anywhere near as far as saying either opinion is 'toxic'.



None of this "both sides" nonsense. One opinion entails upholding and including various forms of roleplay that tables enjoy as valid and one is about excluding various forms of roleplay that tables enjoy and declaring them invalid. I'm sorry, but not all opinions are equally valid when it comes to this, and one is definitely far more toxic to the hobby than the other. So I definitely would say that one opinion is toxic. 



> That said, it's a breeding ground for at-the-table arguments and IMO the easiest way to avoid these is just to rule 'no metagaming where possible' and stick to it.



IMHO, the easiest way to avoid these things is to not to rule against metagaming, which is unenforceable, but simply to ask players politely what their character would do. That may even require that the player talk their decision or thinking process through with other players on a meta-textual level.


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## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, I'm not saying that there aren't times where I say something like "You have no way of knowing that" when a player is having their character act on knowledge they don't have. This sometimes comes up when there's a split party....some folks are in one room, and some in another, and one of the groups gets into some trouble.
> 
> I might step in and say something....but at the same time, there's no way to say that the character might not be cautious in such a way, is there? What if I placed both groups of players in separate rooms, and then went back and forth between the two, and one of the players said "I'd like to go check on the other group"; should I deny his action? Or allow it?



Allow it, of course, and then you can briefly put the two groups of players together as an opportunity for info exchange has arisen.

But otherwise yes, this is one instance where I don't hesitate to step in and smack things down.  Ditto with players making suggestions for what other players' PCs should do when the suggesting player has no PC in the neighbourhood and thus no way of knowing the situation; this is something I've had to get rather nasty about in days of old.


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## Lanefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Because of toxic gatekeepers in the hobby that people are growing tired of having to deal with.



In many ways I'm a big-tent kind of person and don't like gates.

That said, I also reserve the right to both hold opinions on what goes on inside said tent and to express such opinions (in a civilized manner).



> None of this "both sides" nonsense. One opinion entails upholding and including various forms of roleplay that tables enjoy as valid and one is about excluding various forms of roleplay that tables enjoy and declaring them invalid. I'm sorry, but not all opinions are equally valid when it comes to this, and one is definitely far more toxic to the hobby than the other. So I definitely would say that one opinion is toxic.



I'll just self-moderate here and save the mods some headaches.



> IMHO, the easiest way to avoid these things is to not to rule against metagaming, which is unenforceable, but simply to ask players politely what their character would do. That may even require that the player talk their decision or thinking process through with other players on a meta-textual level.



And if that meta-textual talk-through (which ain't a bad idea, for all that!) reveals the player's thinking involves outside-the-game stuff, then what?

"Bob made a move on my girlfriend this week so I'm gonna run his character into the ground, so now I've defeated my Orc I'm going after Falstaffe... "


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> So then how would you ever arrive at a decision that a player has metagamed barring their admission that they've done so?



Bayesian probability analysis. Estimate the likelihood that someone would have made a given decision on the basis of honest character interpretation, compared to the likelihood that they would make that decision on the basis of some other motive. If an observation is too improbable, then we can feel a degree of confidence in how it came about.

The likelihood of an adventurer walking into a dungeon and immediately proceeding to the treasure, without hesitation and without triggering any of the traps along the way, is too small to really consider. Call it one-in-a-thousand, if we're being generous.

The likelihood of a player having their character act in such a manner, if they've read the source material, is much greater. Call it one-in-ten.

Given the relative likelihood of the observed outcome, given those possible motivations, we should believe that it's one hundred times more likely that the player is cheating than that they are not.

And likewise, with a DM manipulating the background to contrive drama for the players. If there are a dozen evil cultists, then there would be a one-in-twelve chance that the character's brother is the one sent on the mission to where the PCs happen to show up, if the DM was acting impartially. If the DM was acting on a bias to create drama, then the likelihood of that outcome is much closer to eleven-in-twelve. Thus, given the observation that the brother does show up, we should believe that it's eleven times more likely that the DM is acting with bias than that they are not.


hawkeyefan said:


> So then role-playing doesn't exist outside the hobby? At least as you define it?



It also exists in the therapist's office, the war room, and any number of other scenarios where our true goal is to understand what someone else is thinking. Sometimes, it even exists in this very forum.


hawkeyefan said:


> Just like players in a RPG.



Just like so-called "players" who prioritize story-telling over role-playing.


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## prabe (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Just like so-called "players" who prioritize story-telling over role-playing.




Wow. You're really not clear on the difference between "preference" and "The One True Way," are you?


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## TwoSix (Mar 16, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> And if that meta-textual talk-through (which ain't a bad idea, for all that!) reveals the player's thinking involves outside-the-game stuff, then what?
> 
> "Bob made a move on my girlfriend this week so I'm gonna run his character into the ground, so now I've defeated my Orc I'm going after Falstaffe... "



There's a pretty big difference between "I'm bringing personal issues into the game" metagaming and "I'm prioritizing moving the plot over character immersion" metagaming.  The first is bad, and the second is good.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

prabe said:


> Wow. You're really not clear on the difference between "preference" and "The One True Way," are you?



There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing. I'm not going around and forcing everyone else to role-play, unless they want to play at my table, in which case they've already agreed.

I'm also not going to let people get away with using weasel words to imply that out-of-character decision making (for whatever motive) is actually role-playing. Words have meaning, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing. I'm not going around and forcing everyone else to role-play, unless they want to play at my table, in which case they've already agreed.
> 
> I'm also not going to let people get away with using weasel words to imply that out-of-character decision making (for whatever motive) is actually role-playing. Words have meaning, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.



Cite the gollywoggin’ source of your overly strict and narrow definition of roleplaying, if you please? Fourth time asking and I'm losing patience.


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## prabe (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing. I'm not going around and forcing everyone else to role-play, unless they want to play at my table, in which case they've already agreed.




There are indeed many ways to play a TRPG. Many people would call many of those ways "role-playing." You don't get to make the decision as to whether another table is doing that correctly.



Saelorn said:


> I'm also not going to let people get away with using weasel words to imply that out-of-character decision making (for whatever motive) is actually role-playing.




So, the player who uses his knowledge of a published adventure to waltz through it at no risk to his character is very probably doing it wrong. I don't think you'd get much argument about that, if only because it kinda nukes the fun for everyone else at the table. I'm not sure how adding information about who your character is, and how your character got to the beginning of the campaign, and what ties your character has to the setting, can be bad; nor do I understand how a DM wanting that information is a bad thing. Creating the character seems as though it would necessarily be an out-of-character process, so I don't see how any part of that would be a problem for you.



Saelorn said:


> Words have meaning, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.




Words have meanings, yes; sometimes a word has more than one. I'll second @PsyzhranV2 on this: Where is your definition of "role-playing" coming from? It sounds less like an actual definition and more like a personal/aesthetic thing.


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## gepetto (Mar 16, 2020)

FrozenNorth said:


> What part of it becomes unlikely as you go up in levels?  In 5e, a gnoll flind is CR 8, so you could definitely have a gnoll flind and his bodyguards as the boss fight for a 10th level party.




The part where you should have moved the hell on. Because your 0 level nobody being involved with people who are powerful and important enough to be involved in high mid or high level adventures is ridiculous. And if as a GM you havent been able to build up enough shared history by then to have everyone bought in without having to drag up some backstory from way back when then you suck.

You should have done far more important things by then as part of your collective history as a group, things which are better to have as reasons for the adventure because they are from the SHARED HISTORY that was actually played rather then one characters silly origin story.

And I think 5e sucks, so referring to it as a mechanical source for a roleplaying issue is not going to get you anywhere.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

prabe said:


> There are indeed many ways to play a TRPG. Many people would call many of those ways "role-playing." You don't get to make the decision as to whether another table is doing that correctly.



If we're going to ignore history and common sense, then nobody can ever claim to be role-playing. Labels are only meaningful if they facilitate communication, and you insist on rejecting that. Whatever. The key idea is still in the underlying process, which the label is supposed to represent.

The point of an RPG is to engage with the world as our character does, as though it was a real place, and not just a story. That's the unique thing, which distinguishes an RPG from any other type of game.

Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.
[/QUOTE]


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing. I'm not going around and forcing everyone else to role-play, unless they want to play at my table, in which case they've already agreed.
> 
> I'm also not going to let people get away with using weasel words to imply that out-of-character decision making (for whatever motive) is actually role-playing. Words have meaning, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.



You’ve yet to actually defend your definition of roleplaying. It’s a false definition.

You are doing the same thing as if method actors started claiming that only are actor, and other “actors” are doing something other than acting.

You are practicing full immersion roleplaying, which is a type of roleplaying. Most other players practice other types of roleplaying.


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## Sadras (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> That'd probably be a better way to handle it than based solely on the GM, I think. Still seems odd that other people would know better than the player what his or her character would do.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> I just don't quite get how anyone can overrule another player's choice for their character. Seems very odd.




I think Saelorn said it best - you generally give the benefit of the doubt to the player. That is not to say, a quick discussion cannot take place just to help assist the internal consistency for one or more of the players. Everyone at the table is relatively mature - even newbies quickly learn from the experienced in this regard.
It would never be brought up in a malicious way. If I have to think of my games over the years - I have never changed a player's decsion, never once. I may have questioned, prodded and poked but never have I actually enforced the rule.

Having said that I HAVE reversed the use of a plot point (5e DMG) by a player. I was trying out the system where players have the ability to inject fiction via the use of plot points. The player was testing out the limits of these plot points and used it to have fingers fall out of the villain's pockets so that it could guarantee the villain was guilty for a crime they suspected and to immedialy convert the social encounter into one of  combat. With the use of that plot point in such a blunt shoddy manner all the players groaned at the table - they were not happy with the use of that plot point. I exercised my GM authority in that 1 and only scenario ever and overruled the player's injection of fiction and have never again incorporated plot points. I didn't like having to negate the use of a plot point to ensure the table enjoyed the game so I instead removed this gaming feature all together so I would not have to exercise such GM authority again. I don't like using that kind of GM authority and I also could not provide a reason I was sufficiently happy with to the player at that point for denying him the use of his plot point. 



> Also, where is the line drawn? If I'm playing a cleric of a life deity and I've established that my character's primary concern is the health of his companions.....and as an action I declare to attack an enemy instead of casting a cure spell on comrade.....is this grounds for that character's player or anyone else to question if I'm playing in character?




No. I imagine our discussion here is very much painting things in black and white - it isn't really so. The only thing that has ever happened at my table has been player vs player discussion and having seen the player of the pc changing their course of action because they agreed with the other player's input. No hard feelings either side. It has happened a handful of times at my table in the last decade.


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## prabe (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The point of an RPG is to engage with the world as our character does, as though it was a real place, and not just a story. That's the unique thing, which distinguishes an RPG from any other type of game.




That's certainly a point. For many it's the main point. It's not the only point. TRPGs can be seen as story-generators. I'd say the emergent stories are the real strength of TRPGs, the real point of play, the real unique thing about them.



Saelorn said:


> Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.




You seem to be conflating meta-gaming with operating on story logic. They're not the same thing and neither necessarily needs to be game-breaking. I'd argue that some rules-thinking (arguably meta-game thinking) is going to be inevitable; those rules are pretty much how the world works, and it's possible to consider the players' thinking to be a reflection or abstraction of the characters' thinking.

Also, the world of a TRPG is removed enough from reality that for some people the only way to engage with it is with something like story-logic. It's not always easy to maintain willing suspension of disbelief in the face of what, e.g., D&D can throw at characters. Story logic sometimes helps with that.


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## Aldarc (Mar 16, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> And if that meta-textual talk-through (which ain't a bad idea, for all that!) reveals the player's thinking involves outside-the-game stuff, then what?
> 
> "Bob made a move on my girlfriend this week so I'm gonna run his character into the ground, so now I've defeated my Orc I'm going after Falstaffe... "



I hope that any well-adjusted adult here, which may already be asking too much from people, could recognize here that the problem is not metagaming, but personal issues between Bob and the Speaker. Bob and the Speaker should handle this between themselves like adults. But in no way is the actual problem here metagaming. It's the personal lives of the players. So we should probably stop pretending like metagaming is the disease rather than a mere symptom. IME, metagaming is almost always the symptom of an underlying problem at the table rather than the actual problem itself.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> IME it's one of those things where "you know it when you see it" applies.




I suppose it would have to be since there's no way to prove it.



Lanefan said:


> Both, I'd say.
> 
> They're concerned with portraying their character in such a way as to get those laughs.




Sounds about right.



Lanefan said:


> I think it's more if you decided to attack the fallen comrade rather than cure him, that eyebrows would shoot skyward.
> 
> Or if after the battle was done you intentionally dragged your heels such that the comrade bled out and died.




But even then.....isn't it that I'm actually establishing that there's something not quite certain about my character's devotion to life?

I don't mind when the players or GM says "Wow, really? That seems unlike your cleric"; we can discuss it and maybe I'd even revise my choice. But ultimately, I'm the one that decides.

I'm surprised to hear you advocating for this.



Lanefan said:


> Allow it, of course, and then you can briefly put the two groups of players together as an opportunity for info exchange has arisen.
> 
> But otherwise yes, this is one instance where I don't hesitate to step in and smack things down.  Ditto with players making suggestions for what other players' PCs should do when the suggesting player has no PC in the neighbourhood and thus no way of knowing the situation; this is something I've had to get rather nasty about in days of old.




But like I said.....the approach of letting them metagame actually "aligns with reality" better since it allows for all conceivable options. Where as the decision to restrict the character's actions is the one being made by outside of game factors.

Do you see what I mean here?


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

prabe said:


> You seem to be conflating meta-gaming with operating on story logic. They're not the same thing and neither necessarily needs to be game-breaking.



Story logic is the form of meta-gaming that's relevant to this thread. If the DM makes things happen in order to facilitate a story, then that's a form of not-acting-purely-on-internal-causality (aka meta-gaming). It's the same category of behavior as other forms of meta-gaming, such as dungeon speed-running. If you're in the game because you want to pretend to be a real person in a believable world, then those things are both bad for the exact same reason.


prabe said:


> I'd argue that some rules-thinking (arguably meta-game thinking) is going to be inevitable; those rules are pretty much how the world works, and it's possible to consider the players' thinking to be a reflection or abstraction of the characters' thinking.



To the extent that the rules of the game reflect the reality of the game world, a player thinking about those rules will reflect how their character thinks about that reality. This is one of the reasons why it's possible to stay in character, when making decisions. Both the player and the character are on the same page, that a fall from 200' is survivable to a sufficiently-skilled warrior.


prabe said:


> Also, the world of a TRPG is removed enough from reality that for some people the only way to engage with it is with something like story-logic. It's not always easy to maintain willing suspension of disbelief in the face of what, e.g., D&D can throw at characters. Story logic sometimes helps with that.



As with many things, it gets easier with practice. While the concept of story logic _might_ work as a crutch for very young players, or people very new to the hobby, most people should be capable of accepting the concept of alternative reality after they've had a bit of experience.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Bayesian probability analysis. Estimate the likelihood that someone would have made a given decision on the basis of honest character interpretation, compared to the likelihood that they would make that decision on the basis of some other motive. If an observation is too improbable, then we can feel a degree of confidence in how it came about.
> 
> The likelihood of an adventurer walking into a dungeon and immediately proceeding to the treasure, without hesitation and without triggering any of the traps along the way, is too small to really consider. Call it one-in-a-thousand, if we're being generous.
> 
> ...




This one I'll give you, because that player has a challenge before them, and they've acquired an unfair advantage to defeat that challenge. In this case, sure, I'd agree that this is a form of cheating, and I wouldn't advocate for it.

But this kind of example wasn't really what we were discussing.



Saelorn said:


> And likewise, with a DM manipulating the background to contrive drama for the players. If there are a dozen evil cultists, then there would be a one-in-twelve chance that the character's brother is the one sent on the mission to where the PCs happen to show up, if the DM was acting impartially. If the DM was acting on a bias to create drama, then the likelihood of that outcome is much closer to eleven-in-twelve. Thus, given the observation that the brother does show up, we should believe that it's eleven times more likely that the DM is acting with bias than that they are not.




Okay.....how does a DM not contrive drama for the players? Do your characters all remain on the farm and you play out their weekly trips to market? 

You act as if coincidence is bad......but it'd all be coincidence, wouldn't it? Oh, you guys showed up in a new town.....there just so happens to be a bandit problem here! Oh, you went on to the next town.....my, my there are some ruins nearby where strange things are happening....imagine that!

You're making up stuff for the players to engage with. It's all made up.....it is not a real world.



Saelorn said:


> It also exists in the therapist's office, the war room, and any number of other scenarios where our true goal is to understand what someone else is thinking. Sometimes, it even exists in this very forum.




Right! Here you yourself explain that role-playing is a tool. It is the means used and the goal is to understand someone else. Understanding is the goal of therapy, not inhabiting a role.

The point of playing a game.....any game....is entertainment. For a RPG, adopting a role is one of the ways that you achieve that goal.



Saelorn said:


> Just like so-called "players" who prioritize story-telling over role-playing.




And here's where your bias shows. Even if you don't agree that they are role-playing, they are still players in a game....your insistence to refer to them as "players" is a bit much, no? 



Saelorn said:


> There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing. I'm not going around and forcing everyone else to role-play, unless they want to play at my table, in which case they've already agreed.
> 
> I'm also not going to let people get away with using weasel words to imply that out-of-character decision making (for whatever motive) is actually role-playing. Words have meaning, and to claim otherwise is disingenuous.




Words can also have multiple meanings. You've shared what you think role-playing is. You've brought up out of hobby uses, and none of those have actually fit your description, so I don't know why you introduced them to the topic.

Obviously, people have disagreed with your insistence that your definition is correct. People has asked you to cite where you get this definition. You have not done so.

So at this point, I think that it is on you to explain why we should all accept your rather specific definition of role-playing. 

And that's one more little veiled insult....."weasel". This is a third time I'm going to ask you to please be respectful.



Saelorn said:


> If we're going to ignore history and common sense, then nobody can ever claim to be role-playing. Labels are only meaningful if they facilitate communication, and you insist on rejecting that. Whatever. The key idea is still in the underlying process, which the label is supposed to represent.
> 
> The point of an RPG is to engage with the world as our character does, as though it was a real place, and not just a story. That's the unique thing, which distinguishes an RPG from any other type of game.




That may be _a point _to roleplaying, but that doesn't make it _the point. _Perhaps I role-play to spend some time with my friends and have fun. That's the point of it all, to me.




Saelorn said:


> Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.




Hey, I'm glad that your immersive approach to roleplaying works for you. Keep on doing it. Just stop telling others who don't adhere to that approach that they're cheaters, or weasels, or that they don't know what "true roleplaying is" and so on. Because all of that is really pure nonsense.


----------



## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 16, 2020)

gepetto said:


> The part where you should have moved the hell on. Because your 0 level nobody being involved with people who are powerful and important enough to be involved in high mid or high level adventures is ridiculous. And if as a GM you havent been able to build up enough shared history by then to have everyone bought in without having to drag up some backstory from way back when then you suck.
> 
> You should have done far more important things by then as part of your collective history as a group, things which are better to have as reasons for the adventure because they are from the SHARED HISTORY that was actually played rather then one characters silly origin story.
> 
> And I think 5e sucks, so referring to it as a mechanical source for a roleplaying issue is not going to get you anywhere.



So once you achieve "great things", your friends and family are dead to you? That just because you can punch things really hard or cast rare and powerful spells, that mundane concerns of life, baggage from your past, and really just being a normal, functional person are beyond you?

Well, then I hope you find some sort of greatness in your life, so your family and "friends" no longer have to deal with you.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 16, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Hey, I'm glad that your immersive approach to roleplaying works for you. Keep on doing it. Just stop telling others who don't adhere to that approach that they're cheaters, or weasels, or that they don't know what "true roleplaying is" and so on. Because all of that is really pure nonsense.



If one of those cheating weasels shows up at my table, then they will absolutely be shown the door, because agreeing to role-play (per the understood definition) is a pre-requisite for playing in my campaign. I'm not going to waste time on someone who only shows up in order to ruin the game for everyone else.

And if the DM is the one wasting everyone else's time, by pretending to run a fair game (per the agreed-upon rules) while secretly contriving coincidences behind the scenes, then they'll quickly find themself without any players. 

Meta-gamers are a plague on this hobby, who do nothing but contribute to rampant mis-trust. They have no place within the role-playing community.


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## PsyzhranV2 (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If one of those cheating weasels shows up at my table, then they will absolutely be shown the door, because agreeing to role-play (per the understood definition) is a pre-requisite for playing in my campaign. I'm not going to waste time on someone who only shows up in order to ruin the game for everyone else.
> 
> And if the DM is the one wasting everyone else's time, by pretending to run a fair game (per the agreed-upon rules) while secretly contriving coincidences behind the scenes, then they'll quickly find themself without any players.
> 
> Meta-gamers are a plague on this hobby, who do nothing but contribute to rampant mis-trust. They have no place within the role-playing community.



You're really not helping your case by giving off the impression  that you have paranoid delusions.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 16, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If one of those cheating weasels shows up at my table, then they will absolutely be shown the door, because agreeing to role-play (per the understood definition) is a pre-requisite for playing in my campaign. I'm not going to waste time on someone who only shows up in order to ruin the game for everyone else.
> 
> And if the DM is the one wasting everyone else's time, by pretending to run a fair game (per the agreed-upon rules) while secretly contriving coincidences behind the scenes, then they'll quickly find themself without any players.
> 
> Meta-gamers are a plague on this hobby, who do nothing but contribute to rampant mis-trust. They have no place within the role-playing community.




Ha okay.  I’ve made several points in my posts, and you’ve chosen to ignore them, as well as my requests for reasonable and respectful discussion. Instead you double down on the loaded terms and your one true wayism. 

Your posts really give off a delusional vibe. I don’t say this as a joke or a parting shot....you seem irrational and you may want to give that some thought. 

Good luck to you.


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## MGibster (Mar 16, 2020)

We’re all getting a little worked up over some games where we pretend to be space cowboys or gnomes.  Let’s all chill out and acknowledge that my way is the one true way.  Cyborg Commando is the only true RPG.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

Y'all need to stop tapping the aquarium.  The difference between the common definition of a TTRPG, or even a very academic definition of a TTRPG, and the other definition in play here is one best measured in light years.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 17, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Ha okay.  I’ve made several points in my posts, and you’ve chosen to ignore them, as well as my requests for reasonable and respectful discussion. Instead you double down on the loaded terms and your one true wayism.
> 
> Your posts really give off a delusional vibe. I don’t say this as a joke or a parting shot....you seem irrational and you may want to give that some thought.



No offense, but are you sure that you aren't describing yourself? I was the one actually resorting to logic as a means of decision-making. You're the one pushing an unreasonable agenda to alienate role-players.


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## Umbran (Mar 17, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There are lots of ways to play an RPG, but only one of those ways is actually role-playing.




*Mod Note:*

You should be aware - the owner of this site does not buy into "One True Wayism" - and while you put a disclaimer here, that's what you are doing.  If you do not have room in your head and heart for what others do, you will be asked to leave the discussion.  Gatekeeping like this is not acceptable.


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## Umbran (Mar 17, 2020)

PsyzhranV2 said:


> You're really not helping your case by giving off the impression  that you have paranoid delusions.




*Mod note:*

You are done in this thread.  You are taking a week off from the site, as well.

*Anyone else want to step over the line?  This is not a time to treat each other poorly, people.*


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## Legatus Legionis (Mar 17, 2020)

.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> But otherwise yes, this is one instance where I don't hesitate to step in and smack things down.  Ditto with players making suggestions for what other players' PCs should do when the suggesting player has no PC in the neighbourhood and thus no way of knowing the situation; this is something I've had to get rather nasty about in days of old.



Why would you want to get “nasty” with a friend over OOC conversation in a game?


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

When people step outside the boundaries of the table conventions for personal gain (even if they didn't mean to) you need to step on it. It's not about friends, it's about nipping that shizz in the bud before it gets out of hand. The table conventions are sacred and the game (any TTRPG) doesn't work without them.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> There's a pretty big difference between "I'm bringing personal issues into the game" metagaming and "I'm prioritizing moving the plot over character immersion" metagaming.  The first is bad, and the second is good.



I agree there's a difference between these but I disagree when you say one type is good.

If the plot comes to a standstill for a session because players spend that session in in-character conversation or discussion about something in the game-world (in the game I play in, these days the topic would probably be the place and uses of Necromancers and undead) then so what?


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

The so what is entirely about table enjoyment. If your players are having fun then fine, very cool. If it's one drama queen leading the charge then less so.


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## Tallifer (Mar 17, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> There's a pretty big difference between "I'm bringing personal issues into the game" metagaming and "I'm prioritizing moving the plot over character immersion" metagaming.  The first is bad, and the second is good.



Indeed. It irritates me when a player keeps pretending not to know something because another player did explicitly parrot a word-for-word repetition of the information which was already shared openly at the table. It drives me up the wall when a player will insist on acting in the most foolish way possible because "no one told me" even when the dungeon master says "yes, X told Y all about it when he got back... do you still want to do that?"


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> The point of an RPG is to engage with the world as our character does, as though it was a real place, and not just a story. That's the unique thing, which distinguishes an RPG from any other type of game.



I largely agree with this.



> Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.



But I don't as largely agree with this, because it's quite possible - very possible - to operate on story logic and still be fully in-character. 

It simply means the character has connected the dots and figured out what's going on*, and is acting on that basis.  Not always that hard to do provided that a) the character is halfway intelligent and b) the DM provides enough in-fiction clues (or "dots") to allow a pattern to emerge that the character can work out and then follow.

* - or thinks it has; only time will tell if it's right or not.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> You are practicing full immersion roleplaying, which is a type of roleplaying. Most other players practice other types of roleplaying.



Now here I'll ask: how many have even tried full-immersion RP?

For me, full-immersion is kind of like a holy grail - it's out there somewhere, and now and then I almost see it in the distance, but I've yet to be able to achieve it other than for a few fleeting moments at a time now and then.

That said, I've never really done any LARP, where from what I gather full immersion is somewhat easier.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

Full Immersion is a myth, there's no such thing. There are certainly levels of immersion, some of them quite deep, but we never get to escape the fact that the character is an avatar of the player.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> I hope that any well-adjusted adult here, which may already be asking too much from people, could recognize here that the problem is not metagaming, but personal issues between Bob and the Speaker. Bob and the Speaker should handle this between themselves like adults. But in no way is the actual problem here metagaming. It's the personal lives of the players. So we should probably stop pretending like metagaming is the disease rather than a mere symptom. IME, metagaming is almost always the symptom of an underlying problem at the table rather than the actual problem itself.



Yes, and when you can't cure the root problem all you're left with is to suppress the symptoms as best you can.

It's not my place to sort out any out-of-game problems between Bob and the Speaker.  If they're both friends of mine outside the game, I could try; but even then in the end it's their headache to deal with as they see fit.

It is, however, my place to sort out what happens at the table I'm running; which means whatever's going on between them out-of-game is, as far as I can manage it, not going to be allowed to influence what happens in the fiction of my game.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

Metagaming happens when you play games. It can't be avoided, only minimized and controlled to affect the table as little of possible. Unless someone wants to claim we aren't playing a game, which is whole other thing.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> But even then.....isn't it that I'm actually establishing that there's something not quite certain about my character's devotion to life?
> 
> I don't mind when the players or GM says "Wow, really? That seems unlike your cleric"; we can discuss it and maybe I'd even revise my choice. But ultimately, I'm the one that decides.
> 
> I'm surprised to hear you advocating for this.



I'm all for player agency over their character, provided such agency is exercised in good faith.  Bringing out-of-game issues into the game isn't good faith any more.



> But like I said.....the approach of letting them metagame actually "aligns with reality" better since it allows for all conceivable options. Where as the decision to restrict the character's actions is the one being made by outside of game factors.
> 
> Do you see what I mean here?



Uh...no, I don't, really.

If your character and Bill's character have gone ahead to scout with no means of communicating back to my character and Mary's character, then ideally Mary and I as players should have a_bsolutely no knowledge_ of what's become of you until and unless you return or find some way of communicating with us. The only things we should know are a) how long you've been gone (vs. how long you expected you'd be gone) and b) whether there's been any sign of trouble we'd be able to notice e.g. a distant scream or the lights and-or sounds of unexpected spells going off.

Because if we-as-players do have knowledge that, say, you got captured and Bill's PC got killed then no matter how hard Mary and I try to deny or avoid it, that knowledge is inevitably going to seep into our thought processes as we determine what our PCs do next: how long we wait, whether we come looking for you or give you up as a lost cause, and so on.

Mine and Mary's actions should be restricted by the knowledge our PCs have, which ideally is the same as our knowledge as players so that we don't have to self-restrict.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> Why would you want to get “nasty” with a friend over OOC conversation in a game?



Because what they're doing is spoiling the play of others.

I'm not talking about OOC conversation as in "Did you see the Canucks game last night?"; that's bad enough but I'm used to it, and I'll usually just tell them to pipe down so I can hear those who are still playing the game.

I'm talking about where we're both players in a game, your character is off on a solo scouting mission where my PC has no idea what you're doing, yet every time you've a decision to make I'm butting in and suggesting (or worse, outright telling you) what to do and in so doing interrupting both your immersion and your thought process.

'Cause if I'm the DM and a player does this, yeah, things can get nasty in a hurry.  I've seen it far too often and for far too long and my tolerance long since wore out.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> The so what is entirely about table enjoyment. If your players are having fun then fine, very cool. If it's one drama queen leading the charge then less so.



Guess it's a good thing then that most of us are, if not drama queens, at least somewhere in the ranks of drama nobility.


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## Sadras (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I'm not talking about OOC conversation as in "Did you see the Canucks game last night?"; that's bad enough but I'm used to it, and I'll usually just tell them to pipe down so I can hear those who are still playing the game.




Hilarious 



> I'm talking about where we're both players in a game, your character is off on a solo scouting mission where my PC has no idea what you're doing, yet every time you've a decision to make I'm butting in and suggesting (or worse, outright telling you) what to do and in so doing interrupting both your immersion and your thought process.




Just a quick comment on this.
I have been a little more lenient on this of late but more so _IF_ the PC who is supposed to be deciding has a high INT or WIS, depending on the situation. One way to cater for the high character ability scores but average RL scores of the players is to allow for more ideas to come through i.e. allowing the other players to voice suggestions.

It's a good thing my players don't read Enworld.


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## Aldarc (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Yes, and when you can't cure the root problem all you're left with is to suppress the symptoms as best you can.



Before claiming that metagaming is the problem, how about starting with a more basic rule for the table: _Don't use this game as a battleground to be jack-donkeys to each other? _



> It's not my place to sort out any out-of-game problems between Bob and the Speaker.  If they're both friends of mine outside the game, I could try; but even then in the end it's their headache to deal with as they see fit.
> 
> It is, however, my place to sort out what happens at the table I'm running; which means whatever's going on between them out-of-game is, as far as I can manage it, not going to be allowed to influence what happens in the fiction of my game.



You don't have to try. Just tell them that they can't play until they sort it out themselves. They can take it outside but they can't bring it in here. But ruling that this is a "metagaming problem" is absolutely ridiculous. It completely misses the forests for the trees. It completely pretends that the people aren't the problem and that they aren't people. It comes across as a self-centered approach that only views the personal problems between the two individuals in terms of how it inconveniences the "fiction" of your game. I don't think that's the appropriate approach for the situation. If you can explain to me how this is actually more of a metagaming problem and not an interpersonal conflict between the two players then I'm all ears. But right now your example seems incredibly ill-picked. You are welcome to replace it with something that maybe would have served your purposes for this reply better, because metagaming is not the problem here.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 17, 2020)

"Metagaming," as generally defined as using out of PC knowledge to direct PC actions (scare quotes because this is a specific definition inside the broader actual definition of metagaming), really can only exist in a situation that has a fixed fictional framing where parts of that framing are meant to be hidden from the players and discovered in play.  The focus on the players here rather than the PCs is important, here.  The reason for this is because if the players actually do not know these facts, then they cannot engage in "metagaming" because their reference frame is the same as their PCs. The issue occurs when the hidden structure breaks down and you have players than know the supposed hidden facts but these facts haven't been revealed to the PCs in the fiction, yet.  Every argument I've seen on this relies on this set of hidden facts. The canonical example is the troll vs new players and then the troll vs experienced players.  Against new players, the player knowledge aligns with the supposed PC knowledge in that neither have information on trolls, so the encounter is difficult and challenging.  Against experienced players, the troll is trivialize if they use their knowledge to attack the troll's weaknesses, but this raises complaints of metagaming because it's not established that their PCs know this.  Much argument has ensued.

So, "metagaming" exists when the player/PC hidden fact knowledge diverges, for any reason.  Here's the controversial statement:  this is mostly going to be the GM's fault, except in cases of outright cheating where a player has knowledge but conceals it from the other players for personal gain.  So, outside of bad faith play (lying by omission), "metagaming" is usually a GM caused issue.  It's caused by the GM establishing a fact pattern that is known by the players but expected to be not known by the PCs.  You don't have to do this.  You could, with a bit of effort, establish fact patterns that are unknown to both players and PCs or, alternatively, you can establish fact patterns that aren't dependent on player's knowing them.  To turn back to the troll, you could reskin the troll or change it's abilities to be a surprise to both players and PCs as an example of the first, or you could just not expect the troll to be a serious single challenge to experienced players and establish that PCs do know about trolls in the latter.  If you're canny, you can do the last by putting the troll in a place where fire is dangerous or difficult to use, such as a explosive gas filled chamber or underwater.  This establishes a fact pattern where the players knowing about trolls is irrelevant to the anticipated challenge of the situation.

And, if you really want to drive this home, play a game where metagaming cannot exist because there's not a hidden established fact pattern.  PbtA games are good for this, in that the only established fact pattern that matters is the one established in play.  It's hard to metagame if there are no hidden facts for which the player/PC diverge in knowledge.

This leaves the split party table talk example.  This is a situation where the divergence in knowledge is created at the table, in play.  Here's a place where you can get out of your own way pretty easily.  The example is given where two PCs have moved ahead and are captured/killed outside of the rest of the party's knowledge.  The "metagaming" occurs if the rest of the players act on this as if they know what happened.   What's the actual issue, here, though?  Is it that the party will mount an operation with foreknowledge of the foe and thus trivialize the encounter?  This is the same as above -- change something and it's not an actual problem.  The monsters know about the party as much as the party knows about the monsters, so, while their prepping, the monster fast reaction force descends on them before their ready.  Or they move, or they leave a trap.  There are hordes (heh) of ways to frustrate this kind of play by just not rigidly sticking to your fiction.  I get the desire to have a fixed fictional world the players engage fairly, but it's impossible to do so in the given situation because the knowledge divergence has occurred, so you can either demand that players act against their play goals and risk PCs in ways they don't want to or you can change with the situation a bit.  It doesn't have to be much.  You can also arrange to have the PCs find out what happened in myriad ways.  This kind of problem occurs because GMs have decided to codify into fixed forms areas that the game has left open and have painted themselves into corners.  The game rules do not define an exact reality, they provide a general outcome and leave open large areas for interpretation and improv.  

Metagaming is caused by an insistence on a fixed, immutable fact pattern that is intended to be hidden from the PCs but is not hidden from the players.  You can correct for this by changing the fixed and immutable part, the hidden from PCs part, or the not hidden from players part.  Or you can complain that people tend to actually act on what they know instead of pretending otherwise and be upset when it happens at your table because you've set up the conditions for it -- and blame the players for it.  I don't let my players metagame, not because I insist that they ignore things they know, but because I, as GM, don't set up the conditions for it to exist.  If I do, I blame myself, not the players.


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## TwoSix (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I agree there's a difference between these but I disagree when you say one type is good.
> 
> If the plot comes to a standstill for a session because players spend that session in in-character conversation or discussion about something in the game-world (in the game I play in, these days the topic would probably be the place and uses of Necromancers and undead) then so what?



Because making stuff happen is FUN.  Talking is fun, getting into fights is fun, exploring new places is fun.  If "being my character" gets in the way of that, then it takes a back seat to "push to make something fun happen", and simply justify it with something in character.

My character is simply a tool to drive events into motion.  I certainly try to push events into motion that are in alignment with my character's goals and drives, but the most important thing, for me, is to choose action over stasis.

For my playing style, the reason to play a paladin is to have him fall.  If you finish playing a character and his alignment hasn't changed, you probably haven't pushed him hard enough.


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## pemerton (Mar 17, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> You are practicing full immersion roleplaying, which is a type of roleplaying. Most other players practice other types of roleplaying.



I don't thikn it's "ful immersion" at all. Look at this:



Saelorn said:


> Bayesian probability analysis. Estimate the likelihood that someone would have made a given decision on the basis of honest character interpretation, compared to the likelihood that they would make that decision on the basis of some other motive. If an observation is too improbable, then we can feel a degree of confidence in how it came about.
> 
> The likelihood of an adventurer walking into a dungeon and immediately proceeding to the treasure, without hesitation and without triggering any of the traps along the way, is too small to really consider. Call it one-in-a-thousand, if we're being generous.
> 
> ...



​I can't see anything remotely immersive about responding to _your brother turns up in cultist robes_ not by worrying (in character) about how and why one's brother joined the cult, but rather (as a participant in a game) calculating the odds that the GM made a framing decision one way rather than another.



Saelorn said:


> Meta-gaming is bad because it means you aren't doing that anymore. You aren't engaging in the world as your character would, if they were a real person, living in a real world. Once you start operating on story logic, then all you're left with is a story. It no long reflects that unique thing, which is only possible in an RPG.



A player can engage the in-fiction situation as his/her character would _regardless _of how the earlier decision was made that the PC has a brother, or that the brother is a member of a cult.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 17, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> "Metagaming," as generally defined as using out of PC knowledge to direct PC actions (scare quotes because this is a specific definition inside the broader actual definition of metagaming), really can only exist in a situation that has a fixed fictional framing where parts of that framing are meant to be hidden from the players and discovered in play.  The focus on the players here rather than the PCs is important, here.  The reason for this is because if the players actually do not know these facts, then they cannot engage in "metagaming" because their reference frame is the same as their PCs. The issue occurs when the hidden structure breaks down and you have players than know the supposed hidden facts but these facts haven't been revealed to the PCs in the fiction, yet.  Every argument I've seen on this relies on this set of hidden facts. The canonical example is the troll vs new players and then the troll vs experienced players.  Against new players, the player knowledge aligns with the supposed PC knowledge in that neither have information on trolls, so the encounter is difficult and challenging.  Against experienced players, the troll is trivialize if they use their knowledge to attack the troll's weaknesses, but this raises complaints of metagaming because it's not established that their PCs know this.  Much argument has ensued.



Very good post and your definition of metagaming is similar to the one I use.

I would add an additional point: because adventures take place in a constructed world metagaming is necessary to play the game.

Specifically, there are innummerable, anodine elements in a game that to interact with we need to extrapolate from the real world and to “fill out” details of the constructed world.  (This is at least somewhat system-specific).  What happens when my character grabs a handful of dirt and throw it in an enemy’s eyes?  Can My character use a pail of water to extinguish a fire?  Does my character have a reasonable chance of successfully climbing that tree?


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Guess it's a good thing then that most of us are, if not drama queens, at least somewhere in the ranks of drama nobility.



We need to have a fantasy draft for our drama titles. Could be awesome. I'd like to be a Viscount, or perhaps a Marquis.


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 17, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I can't see anything remotely immersive about responding to _your brother turns up in cultist robes_ not by worrying (in character) about how and why one's brother joined the cult, but rather (as a participant in a game) calculating the odds that the GM made a framing decision one way rather than another.



Besides, Bayes likely doesn’t exist in the game world (unless you are playing urban fantasy) and in a high fantasy setting, his theorem hasn’t been discovered.


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## pemerton (Mar 17, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Story logic is the form of meta-gaming that's relevant to this thread. If the DM makes things happen in order to facilitate a story, then that's a form of not-acting-purely-on-internal-causality (aka meta-gaming). It's the same category of behavior as other forms of meta-gaming, such as dungeon speed-running.* If you're in the game because you want to pretend to be a real person in a believable world, then those things are both bad for the exact same reason.*



I have bolded the false statement in this post. In my view, based on my experience, it is obviously false.

When I play (which is much less often than when I GM, but it does happen from time to time) I play my character as a real person in a believable world. As one component of that, I engage the fictional world _on its own terms, as it is narrated to me by the GM_. I don't worry about the _real world _issue of how the GM decided to narrate A rather than B.

I've also underlined a clause in the post. That clause is incoherent. A person in the real world (eg me the player) _cannot _act purely on something that is purely imaginary, ie "internal causality". I act for reasons that exist in the real world, such as (to quote) _pretending to be a real person in a believable world_. That act of pretence is largely independent of how other participants make their decisions. Of course if other participants take decisions that puncture the believability of the world, that might be an issue. But it's not remotely unbelievable - though of course it might be incredibly _shocking _- that my brother has joined the cult, or that Darth Vader is my father.


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## Umbran (Mar 17, 2020)

Anyone here seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, _Last Action Hero_?

The Hero and Villain of that film operate on different logic than you or I do (or would, in their general situation), because they come from a world where the rules are different.  Events unfold differently.  It is _in character_ for a person to act in accordance of the rules of their world... but for RPG characters, that world is different from ours.  Theirs is the game world.

So, the player has to emulate someone with a different experience from their own.  To do that, they do have to have the rules of the fictional world in mind, and abide by them.


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## pemerton (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Now here I'll ask: how many have even tried full-immersion RP?
> 
> For me, full-immersion is kind of like a holy grail





Fenris-77 said:


> Full Immersion is a myth, there's no such thing. There are certainly levels of immersion, some of them quite deep, but we never get to escape the fact that the character is an avatar of the player.



If _full immersion _means not knowing who one really is, or actually believing that one is the PC, then it seems like it may not be compatible with lucid sanity.

If full immersion means experiencing the ingame situation _as_, or _from the perspective of_, the PC, then I have done that. Mostly playing CoC, with GMs who are very skillful at evoking the situation in not only "objective" terms but in emotional terms also.



Lanefan said:


> Because what they're doing is spoiling the play of others.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm talking about where we're both players in a game, your character is off on a solo scouting mission where my PC has no idea what you're doing, yet every time you've a decision to make I'm butting in and suggesting (or worse, outright telling you) what to do and in so doing interrupting both your immersion and your thought process.



This assume a very particular approach to the RPGing experience. It seems at least related to @Saelorn's example, upthread, of cheating in the play of a module by reading it in advance.

As soon as we change some of the parameters of what play is for, and about, and how it's to be done, then all these other things change too. Eg for the full immersion experience I described above it's absolutely crucial that players, and even moreso the GM, engage with you by commenting on your choice, helping you see the full emotional significance of the situation and your response to it, etc.


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## Aldarc (Mar 17, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> So, "metagaming" exists when the player/PC hidden fact knowledge diverges, for any reason.  Here's the controversial statement:  *this is mostly going to be the GM's fault,* except in cases of outright cheating where a player has knowledge but conceals it from the other players for personal gain.  So, outside of bad faith play (lying by omission), "metagaming" is usually a GM caused issue.  It's caused by the GM establishing a fact pattern that is known by the players but expected to be not known by the PCs.  You don't have to do this.  You could, with a bit of effort, establish fact patterns that are unknown to both players and PCs or, alternatively, you can establish fact patterns that aren't dependent on player's knowing them.  To turn back to the troll, you could reskin the troll or change it's abilities to be a surprise to both players and PCs as an example of the first, or you could just not expect the troll to be a serious single challenge to experienced players and establish that PCs do know about trolls in the latter.  If you're canny, you can do the last by putting the troll in a place where fire is dangerous or difficult to use, such as a explosive gas filled chamber or underwater.  This establishes a fact pattern where the players knowing about trolls is irrelevant to the anticipated challenge of the situation.



I know that I have posted it before, but Angry GM comes to a similar conclusion about metagaming: "Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault."  Of course, it's something that most GMs don't won't to hear. Or in the words of the Angry GM:


> In the end, as a GM, if you start losing your s$&% about metagaming, you need to adjust your attitude. Most metagaming isn’t problematic. It’s only problematic because you have some f$&%ed up idea about how the game is supposed to work. And the problematic metagaming, the metagaming that really DOES somehow break something is a sign of another problem. And you need to fix THAT problem. And THAT problem is usually you.



The more I have discussed metagaming, the less that I have actually seen it as a problem that actually exists. Most players are there to have fun, so that's what I try to focus on as a GM or player rather than a fake metagame boogeyman. 



Fenris-77 said:


> We need to have a fantasy draft for our drama titles. Could be awesome. I'd like to be a Viscount, or perhaps a Marquis.



I hereby inform you of my election to the position of "Drama Doge."


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## pemerton (Mar 17, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> To turn back to the troll, you could reskin the troll or change it's abilities to be a surprise to both players and PCs as an example of the first, or you could just not expect the troll to be a serious single challenge to experienced players and establish that PCs do know about trolls in the latter. If you're canny, you can do the last by putting the troll in a place where fire is dangerous or difficult to use, such as a explosive gas filled chamber or underwater. This establishes a fact pattern where the players knowing about trolls is irrelevant to the anticipated challenge of the situation.



A tangential remark:

What you descibe here is an important aspect of (well-designed) 4e D&D combat encounters. That is, it should be both interesting to discover what a NPC/creature can do in combat, _and_ if the players learn this other than the hard way (typically by way of a monster knowledge check) it should still be interesting to work out how you're going to handle it given the constraints (of resources, terrain, other elements of the situation) that you have to act under.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 17, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> I know that I have posted it before, but Angry GM comes to a similar conclusion about metagaming: "Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault."  Of course, it's something that most GMs don't won't to hear. Or in the words of the Angry GM:
> 
> 
> I hereby inform you of my election to the position of "Drama Doge."



Heh.  I don't read Angry, but I might should, given how often I'm told Angry has said something similar to me. 

I'd like to be a Drama Despot, but I promise an enlighted rule.  Trust me.


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## Aldarc (Mar 17, 2020)

I definitely don't agree with everything he says, such as when talking about Fate, but I at least respect that he puts a modicum of effort into explaining his positions about things. 

I also found this other OSR-community opinion piece: "If You're Not Metagaming, You're Not Trying Hard Enough."


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 17, 2020)

Just keeping track, we have a Drama Despot and a Drama Doge. I'd like to encourage some additional verbiage, as it'll get crowded if we just have single titles. For example, Fenris-77, Marquis of Drama, Knight of Optimization, and Protector of Salty Snacks.


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## generic (Mar 17, 2020)

I try to incorporate the backstories of my player's Player Characters in each campaign or adventure as best I can, generally, through little details, and being lenient enough to allow leeway which makes sense in-world.  For example, if the player says that their Fighter inherited a small farm with arable land from their parents, I will give them the deeds to the farm as an in-game item, and allow them to do what they wish with their land.  Tie-in often takes the form of land, family ties, or, sometimes, small villages or outposts which only exists due to the player's backstory.  Although I will sometimes incorporate the background/backstory into the main plot of the campaign, or into the subplots, it's often unnecessary, and just clutters everything in the adventure.  On the other hand, if a PC expresses interest in, say, slaying the Orc Lord who slew his family with one mighty swing of the Sword Geoyr, I will certainly tailor a sidequest to their aims.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I'm all for player agency over their character, provided such agency is exercised in good faith.  Bringing out-of-game issues into the game isn't good faith any more.
> 
> Uh...no, I don't, really.
> 
> ...




Okay, let me try to elaborate. 

Forget that we're playing a game for a minute. Imagine a group of 8 people has split up into two groups of 4 in order to search an abandoned building. Each group moves about the building, room to room, examining what's there. 

One of the people in the first group gets a little concerned and decides to check in on the second group. Maybe he has a hunch, or maybe he sees something in one of the rooms that indicates there may be a need for caution.....whatever the case, I think you will agree that this is a possibility in the real world. He may, without any direct knowledge of what is happening to them, decide to go and check on the other group. This seems like a very reasonable and plausible action, no?

Okay, now let's take that situation and drop it into a game unconcerned about metagaming, and one that is concerned about metagaming. 

In the unconcerned game, the above is still possible. The character from the first group is free to go check in on the second group. There is no restriction on his actions from reasons outside of the game.

In the game concerned with metagaming, there very likely may be such restrictions. Of course, it depends on what is happening at the table. If group 2 actually is in some kind of danger, and anyone from group 1 says "I'd like to go check on them" the DM blocks the action because of the outside knowledge. Oddly enough, if there is no danger, the DM would likely allow it. This is not at all consistent, and is entirely dependent upon elements beyond the game world.

One game allows for any and all actions, the other restricts actions based on a concern about metagaming. A perfectly reasonable and plausible action on the part of one character is blocked. 

If plausibility is one of the guiding principles of play, then I think the one that limits plausible actions is probably not preferred. Or would normally not be considered preferable, except that metagaming's been set up as a boogeyman for many gamers.


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## Ovinomancer (Mar 17, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Just keeping track, we have a Drama Despot and a Drama Doge. I'd like to encourage some additional verbiage, as it'll get crowded if we just have single titles. For example, Fenris-77, Marquis of Drama, Knight of Optimization, and Protector of Salty Snacks.



Well, then, allow me to amend:

Ovinomancer, the Diabolical Despot of Drama, Slayer of Sacred Cows, Terror of Trap Choices, and Despoiler of Salty Snacks.


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## The Crimson Binome (Mar 17, 2020)

Umbran said:


> *Mod Note:*
> 
> You should be aware - the owner of this site does not buy into "One True Wayism" - and while you put a disclaimer here, that's what you are doing.  If you do not have room in your head and heart for what others do, you will be asked to leave the discussion.  Gatekeeping like this is not acceptable.



I apologize if it was not clear. At _my_ table, anyone who tries to meta-game is necessarily a cheating weasel, because agreeing to not meta-game is a pre-requisite to playing at my table. Doing so would be a direct violation of explicit social contract. I have zero tolerance for meta-gaming _at my table_.

At anyone else's table, I have no control over what sort of game they're playing; but there's zero chance that I'll ever play in any RPG that allows for meta-gaming.


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## Aldarc (Mar 17, 2020)

You're still implicitly accusing other tables of metagaming if they are not roleplaying by your One True Way.


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## Michael Silverbane (Mar 17, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> Just keeping track, we have a Drama Despot and a Drama Doge. I'd like to encourage some additional verbiage, as it'll get crowded if we just have single titles. For example, Fenris-77, Marquis of Drama, Knight of Optimization, and Protector of Salty Snacks.






Ovinomancer said:


> Well, then, allow me to amend:
> 
> Ovinomancer, the Diabolical Despot of Drama, Slayer of Sacred Cows, Terror of Trap Choices, and Despoiler of Salty Snacks.




Why are the snacks so salty? Is someone accusing them of metagaming?


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## Umbran (Mar 17, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I apologize if it was not clear. At _my_ table, anyone who tries to meta-game is necessarily a cheating weasel,




*Mod Note:*
We don't need your clarification.  

We need to you to stop using emotionally loaded terms like "cheating weasel" about other types of play.  There is no way that comes across as if you actually feel it is perfectly acceptable for other folks to play that way - it comes across as judgemental, no matter how many disclaimers you put around it.  So, please stop using that kind of language.

And, we need to you to follow the rules, and not argue or try to justify yourself in-thread in the face of moderator statements.  If you feel you must justify yourself, please take it to the private message system in the future.


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## TwoSix (Mar 17, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> I hereby inform you of my election to the position of "Drama Doge."



Much drama.
Many metagame.
Wow.


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## Arilyn (Mar 17, 2020)

I appreciate chatacter backstories because they give me hooks, and give me an idea of what kind of stories the players are hoping for. I don't insist on backstories. Totally up to the players. Sometimes players come to the table with zero backstory and have incredibly rich characters, while others have detailed backgrounds and very flat characters. I know I have had times where a character I've thrown together with little thought ends up being very memorable, whereas one with lots of background just fizzles. Just never know, which is part of the fun of the game. 

As for metagaming? I think there is way too much hand wringing over it. I just assume my players know fire works on trolls, and if somebody remembers some more obscure weakness, no biggie. They have probably remembered wrong anyway.  And I change up monsters, so no guarantees. 

Players get to know their GM, so metagaming is pretty unavoidable. If a particular GM expects players to talk first, they are going to learn not to attack everything in sight, whereas, attacking first, might be the best tactic under a different GM. Players are going to start unconsciously picking up on patterns, and not even be aware that their behaviour in Bob's game differs from Anne's. 

I also find that certain "metagame" systems, such as Fate points, story cards, the escalation die, etc. actually enhance the engagement of the players at the table. To me, maximizing engagement as much as possible, is what is going to make the game world seem more real, and ensure players return to the table. 

Really, the only metagaming sin I can think of, is a player reading a published adventure ahead of time, and acting on that knowledge. Or deciding to gather the ingredients for making gunpowder when it hasn't been invented yet, and said character is no alchemical genius. 

We are sitting at a table, eating snacks, maybe drinking beer, dealing with phone calls, bathroom breaks, and getting distracted by such gravely important questions, like which is the best Marvel movie. Not going to worry too much over whether John's character insists that the hooded man in the corner of the tavern must be important somehow.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> Before claiming that metagaming is the problem, how about starting with a more basic rule for the table: _Don't use this game as a battleground to be jack-donkeys to each other? _
> 
> You don't have to try. Just tell them that they can't play until they sort it out themselves. They can take it outside but they can't bring it in here.



Exactly.  Leave it at the door.

But that don't always happen...and thus the DM has to step in.



> But ruling that this is a "metagaming problem" is absolutely ridiculous. It completely misses the forests for the trees. It completely pretends that the people aren't the problem and that they aren't people. It comes across as a self-centered approach that only views the personal problems between the two individuals in terms of how it inconveniences the "fiction" of your game.



Or the play-at-the-table of my game, yes.

You're here to play the game, in good faith.  Leave the rest of it outside.



> I don't think that's the appropriate approach for the situation. If you can explain to me how this is actually more of a metagaming problem and not an interpersonal conflict between the two players then I'm all ears.



It's both, as one (the interpersonal conflict) leads directly to the other (meta-game character decisions).  And I know - I've both seen it and done it during my playing career.

And as I said earlier, as DM of the game it's not my place to sort out the interpersonal conflict but it is my place to - where I can - not allow it to unduly affect my game.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> "Metagaming," as generally defined as using out of PC knowledge to direct PC actions (scare quotes because this is a specific definition inside the broader actual definition of metagaming), really can only exist in a situation that has a fixed fictional framing where parts of that framing are meant to be hidden from the players and discovered in play.  The focus on the players here rather than the PCs is important, here.  The reason for this is because if the players actually do not know these facts, then they cannot engage in "metagaming" because their reference frame is the same as their PCs.



Exactly.  Player knowledge = character knowledge.



> So, "metagaming" exists when the player/PC hidden fact knowledge diverges, for any reason.  Here's the controversial statement:  this is mostly going to be the GM's fault, except in cases of outright cheating where a player has knowledge but conceals it from the other players for personal gain.  So, outside of bad faith play (lying by omission), "metagaming" is usually a GM caused issue.  It's caused by the GM establishing a fact pattern that is known by the players but expected to be not known by the PCs.  You don't have to do this.  You could, with a bit of effort, establish fact patterns that are unknown to both players and PCs or, alternatively, you can establish fact patterns that aren't dependent on player's knowing them.  To turn back to the troll, you could reskin the troll or change it's abilities to be a surprise to both players and PCs as an example of the first, or you could just not expect the troll to be a serious single challenge to experienced players and establish that PCs do know about trolls in the latter.  If you're canny, you can do the last by putting the troll in a place where fire is dangerous or difficult to use, such as a explosive gas filled chamber or underwater.  This establishes a fact pattern where the players knowing about trolls is irrelevant to the anticipated challenge of the situation.



These options work for this example, but see below...



> And, if you really want to drive this home, play a game where metagaming cannot exist because there's not a hidden established fact pattern.  PbtA games are good for this, in that the only established fact pattern that matters is the one established in play.  It's hard to metagame if there are no hidden facts for which the player/PC diverge in knowledge.



It's also difficult to pre-establish or foreshadow anything when you're playing in, at the extreme, Schroedinger's Setting.  Pros and cons.



> This leaves the split party table talk example.  This is a situation where the divergence in knowledge is created at the table, in play.  Here's a place where you can get out of your own way pretty easily.



Yep.  Do the scouting by note, or physically separate the players.  Happens all the time and is, in most situations, easy to do.



> The example is given where two PCs have moved ahead and are captured/killed outside of the rest of the party's knowledge.  The "metagaming" occurs if the rest of the players act on this as if they know what happened.   What's the actual issue, here, though?  Is it that the party will mount an operation with foreknowledge of the foe and thus trivialize the encounter?



The issue is that no matter what the surviving players do with their PCs, there's no way of ever knowing whether they'd have done the same thing absent the knowledge of what happened to their companions; which means the whole process becomes tainted.



> This is the same as above -- change something and it's not an actual problem.  The monsters know about the party as much as the party knows about the monsters, so, while their prepping, the monster fast reaction force descends on them before their ready.  Or they move, or they leave a trap.  There are hordes (heh) of ways to frustrate this kind of play by just not rigidly sticking to your fiction.



It has nothing to do with sticking to the fiction.  Sure the foes can (and likely will) react in some way, but unless that reaction directly affects the remaining PCs in some way (including what they can observe) it doesn't change anything.



> I get the desire to have a fixed fictional world the players engage fairly, but it's impossible to do so in the given situation because the knowledge divergence has occurred, so you can either demand that players act against their play goals and risk PCs in ways they don't want to or you can change with the situation a bit.



Or better yet, I can make sure the knowledge divergence doesn't occur in the first place, by using notes or separating players or whatever other means come to hand.

Doesn't solve the troll example above; and here sometimes I will shake it up...in one memorable instance, much to my players' dismay: I used the explosive-gas atmosphere idea with some trolls and despite several hints and clues (to the point where even a couple of the players said in-character we'd better not use fire here) sure enough someone forgot, and cast _Flaming Sphere_ to burn the bodies after the battle was done.

Oops.

One death and about 150000 g.p. worth of magic items later.......


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

TwoSix said:


> Because making stuff happen is FUN.  Talking is fun, getting into fights is fun, exploring new places is fun.  If "being my character" gets in the way of that, then it takes a back seat to "push to make something fun happen", and simply justify it with something in character.



And here I thought I was gonzo. 



> My character is simply a tool to drive events into motion.  I certainly try to push events into motion that are in alignment with my character's goals and drives, but the most important thing, for me, is to choose action over stasis.



Thing is, character development - which is what comes of these long in-character conversations - isn't stasis, though it's usually less dramatic than normal adventuring would be.


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## Lanefan (Mar 17, 2020)

Fenris-77 said:


> We need to have a fantasy draft for our drama titles. Could be awesome. I'd like to be a Viscount, or perhaps a Marquis.



Lanefan: Court Jester of Drama, Actor of the Stages Left, and Warden of the Proscenium Arches.


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 17, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I apologize if it was not clear. At _my_ table, anyone who tries to meta-game is necessarily a cheating weasel, because agreeing to not meta-game is a pre-requisite to playing at my table. Doing so would be a direct violation of explicit social contract. I have zero tolerance for meta-gaming _at my table_.
> 
> At anyone else's table, I have no control over what sort of game they're playing; but there's zero chance that I'll ever play in any RPG that allows for meta-gaming.



You can’t weasel out of the insulting tone you’ve taken toward other gamers that easily.

Referring to people who differently from you as “Players”, as if they aren’t real rpg players, for a start. No one is buying the notion that this only refers to your table.


Lanefan said:


> Now here I'll ask: how many have even tried full-immersion RP?
> 
> For me, full-immersion is kind of like a holy grail - it's out there somewhere, and now and then I almost see it in the distance, but I've yet to be able to achieve it other than for a few fleeting moments at a time now and then.
> 
> That said, I've never really done any LARP, where from what I gather full immersion is somewhat easier.



Yep. And it doesn’t actually require treating meta gaming as a boogeyman that destroys all hope of immersion.
When I play Dresden, I feel his rage when his enemy’s cultists speak of demons* as Knowing Ones who will usher in a new utopia from the ashes of a broken world. I am not brought to tears by a desire to perform, but from inhabiting his emotional state.
And I also remain cognizant of things like spotlight time, what time of night it is, etc.
*demons being a term which here means, any fiendish creature from beyond the middle world. This campaign has no demon/devil/yugoloth dynamic. Devil and demon and fiend are interchangeable, yugoloth is an unknown term, and their all the same sort of creature. 


Lanefan said:


> Because what they're doing is spoiling the play of others.
> 
> I'm not talking about OOC conversation as in "Did you see the Canucks game last night?"; that's bad enough but I'm used to it, and I'll usually just tell them to pipe down so I can hear those who are still playing the game.
> 
> ...



That sounds like a very unfriendly table. If someone at my table because rude, or abrasive, or whatever, with another person at the table for anything other than treating someone else poorly, they’d be told to leave the table, and come back when they can act like an adult, apologize, and express their concerns in a civilized manner.


Aldarc said:


> You're still implicitly accusing other tables of metagaming if they are not roleplaying by your One True Way.



And more importantly, of not “really” roleplaying at all.
And of course “XYZ doesn’t have any place in the community/hobby” is _explicitly_ not limited to a given table/group.


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## Lanefan (Mar 18, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> That sounds like a very unfriendly table. If someone at my table because rude, or abrasive, or whatever, with another person at the table for anything other than treating someone else poorly, they’d be told to leave the table, and come back when they can act like an adult, apologize, and express their concerns in a civilized manner.



As DM I claim and retain the right to be rude and abrasive whenever I feel like it.  Sometimes it'll even be in character! 

But no, it's not so much unfriendly as it is that some don't have quite the social skills of others.


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## TwoSix (Mar 18, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> Thing is, character development - which is what comes of these long in-character conversations - isn't stasis, though it's usually less dramatic than normal adventuring would be.



A long, in-character conversation that develops and deepens your character IS action, at least how I define it.


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## Fenris-77 (Mar 18, 2020)

I think character development comes through choices as much as anything else. I think character development happens in spades during peak stress times in a campaign. Important choices with real consequences are key to building a character. It also happens within long in-character conversations of course.


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## uzirath (Mar 18, 2020)

I just launched a new campaign this past weekend with three of my players (three more will be joining in the coming weeks). Each player approached their backstories differently. 

One wrote a great character story (she's a published writer, so I don't complain when she writes longer backstories), leaving some blanks for me to fill in with setting-appropriate details. We had a good time batting drafts back and forth before the game. 

The next player sent me a basic idea, "I want to be the rich third son of a nobleman, perhaps from this town on the map that you shared with us." (We're using Douglas Cole's excellent Citadel at Nordvorn as the setting.) I sent him some further information on the town, suggested some names for other members of the family, and ran with it. 

The third focused entirely on the mechanics of his character, knowing only that he was a "Viking sea druid." During the course of the game, however, he invented many background elements, writing everything in his campaign journal for future reference. These inventions invariably added the the fun at the table, and gave me many ingredients to use in future adventures. For example, when he fought a minor winterfae villain, he discovered that his enchanted bone harpoon wasn't very effective because it isn't made of iron. When one of the other PCs suggested switching to his knife, he decided that his harpoon is a religious artifact that he has vowed to use as his only weapon. This was an awesome moment of roleplaying at the table, despite the fact that it was written into his character on the spot.

Over the course of the weekend, we played for more than15 hours. I went into it with zero notes. My only preparation (to my consternation, initially) was bouncing around some of the backstory ideas, perusing their character sheets, and skimming the setting book. I let the players take the lead, allowing for flashbacks and spatial/temporal jumps as we explored the world and got to know the characters. Within an hour of the start, they had zeroed in on a thread that interested them and we were off and running. I had to insert a few breaks to plan some encounters, but everything was remarkably spontaneous. 

It was an exhilarating game with far more drama than any of us were expecting. Backstory, even for the player who didn't initially write any, was essential to provide the sense that the characters were real people exploring a real world.


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## gepetto (Mar 18, 2020)

PsyzhranV2 said:


> So once you achieve "great things", your friends and family are dead to you? That just because you can punch things really hard or cast rare and powerful spells, that mundane concerns of life, baggage from your past, and really just being a normal, functional person are beyond you?
> 
> Well, then I hope you find some sort of greatness in your life, so your family and "friends" no longer have to deal with you.




You mean all those people your character ran out on years ago in search of bigger, better things and spent exactly 0 thoughts on until the villain of the week tracks down great aunty so and so and ties her to a railroad track while stroking his villain goetee? Causing you to suddenly remember their existence and rush off to save them just in the nick of time?

Shall we complete the ludicrously trite cliche by giving you a phonebooth to run into and change into your hero clothes first?

Or maybe they also kidnapped your brothers, neighbors, crippled puppy and you can only save 1 ? Zoinks, the heroes choice......

Pass.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:


> You mean all those people your character ran out on years ago in search of bigger, better things and spent exactly 0 thoughts on until the villain of the week tracks down great aunty so and so and ties her to a railroad track while stroking his villain goetee? Causing you to suddenly remember their existence and rush off to save them just in the nick of time?
> 
> Shall we complete the ludicrously trite cliche by giving you a phonebooth to run into and change into your hero clothes first?
> 
> ...




Perhaps your distaste for the idea is due to the limited way you seem able to imagine it being employed?

Look at the post directly above yours for a pretty strong counter example of how this method can be used to great effect, with three different players going about it three different ways.


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## gepetto (Mar 18, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Perhaps your distaste for the idea is due to the limited way you seem able to imagine it being employed?
> 
> Look at the post directly above yours for a pretty strong counter example of how this method can be used to great effect, with three different players going about it three different ways.



I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.


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## hawkeyefan (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.




There were no previous sessions.


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## Lanefan (Mar 18, 2020)

uzirath said:


> Over the course of the weekend, we played for more than15 hours.



I'll just crawl over into the corner and be jealous now... 

I really like the harpoon bit - cool stuff!


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## FrozenNorth (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.



Uzirath provided examples.  You provided a bare assertion and denigrated other people’s examples by mischaracterizing them.  I know who I find more convincing.


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## pemerton (Mar 18, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> It's also difficult to pre-establish or foreshadow anything when you're playing in, at the extreme, Schroedinger's Setting.



I don't know what you mean by "pre-establish" here. But it's very easy to foreshadow things without a pre-authored setting. This is more-or-less what _soft moves _in Apocalypse World involve.


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## uzirath (Mar 18, 2020)

Lanefan said:


> I'll just crawl over into the corner and be jealous now...
> 
> I really like the harpoon bit - cool stuff!




Thanks. We were up at my tiny rustic cabin in northern Minnesota surrounded by deep snow. It was an idyllic escape from the real world. We were pretty sure that this would be our last face-to-face game for a while. All of this helped fuel the immersion, I’m sure. We were in it.


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## Sadras (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:
			
		

> I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.




Just something to consider - once a background element is allowed to breath into a session of actual shared play any spring off step from that can be defined as an _a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous session of actual shared play._


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## doctorbadwolf (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.



Then you don’t understand story as well as you think you do.


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## Sacrosanct (Mar 18, 2020)

gepetto said:


> I didn't find any of those examples to be the equal, much less superior to a situation created solely and entirely by events that happened during previous sessions of actual shared play.




You keep saying "shared play", but your earlier comments about how players can't possible have ideas better than yours, and they have to do whatever you tell them, I have to wonder if you know what shared play actually means.  That's not shared play.  That's just a DM dictating what happens however they want the adventure story to progress.


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## prabe (Mar 18, 2020)

Sacrosanct said:


> You keep saying "shared play", but your earlier comments about how players can't possible have ideas better than yours, and they have to do whatever you tell them, I have to wonder if you know what shared play actually means.  That's not shared play.  That's just a DM dictating what happens however they want the adventure story to progress.




I suppose it's possible it's one instigated event after another, followed by characters reacting, with little tie-back to character origins. There might be multiple threads going at once, but that doesn't seem likely to me.

Wouldn't be my first choice, but if everyone is enjoying it I wouldn't call it wrong, either.


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