How Much Backstory Should You Give Your GM?

33 thoughts on “How Much Backstory Should You Give Your GM?”

1. What would you have done differently when creating these backstories?
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2. As a DM I try to push the following things to my players to figure out in their back story:
   1) Why is your character invested enough in the pitch to kill and potentially die?
   2) How did your character meet the party?
   3) Why is your character staying with the party?

   First one can be the hardest, especially when the pitch is bad. Happened to me once and lead to a short and sad campaign that deserved to be freed from its misery…
   Usually, when the motivation is not simply "I like money", the rest followos.
   "I like money" is veryproblematic as the party will usually quickly get enough of it so that a character could live comfortably for quite a while. Just give them a magic item they could sell and they might decide that this is all they need for the rest of their days and there is no reason to further endanger themselves.
   As the DM I can pitch "The dragon will destoy the town!", but it is the job of the players to figure out why they risk their lives in fighting the dragon instead of just looking for a new home elswhere.

   Potential plot hooks or specific characters that go beyond the points above are just icing for when we play a campaign that has room for character related content.

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3. Howdy Mike! This video emphasizes the need for a Session 0, before beginning a campaign. The Dungeon Master should outline the framework of their campaign setting BEFORE the players start creating their characters. The players have a better idea of the boundaries and basically meet the DM halfway.

   I am also a history buff, so my default backstory runs like this; I am the second son of a wealthy merchant family. I have a good childhood, was educated, but will not inherit the family business. So I have become an adventurer to earn my fortune.

   I have an infant goblin wild magic sorcerer named Blammo, who was banished from his village, for accidently set the nursery on fire. There is also a halfling, charlatan, rogue named Tyron Shoelaces. He is a counterfeiter and is forging letters of credit from Count de Monet, (who is hunting him down.)

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4. My favorite character was a tabaxi genie warlock who used to just be a cat until they knocked over the genie’s vessel.

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5. I can get really into my character's backstory. for my first VtM game I wrote like 2 pages and a half, but it wasn't a wall of text and I used proper punctuation. in some cases, a one sentence quote from my character would be the entire paragraph, so if I had compacted those instances and my prose, it would probably actually be like one page and a half, but I'm a sucker for style

   but if I were creating a character for Curse of Strahd, I'd write 2 paragraphs at most

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6. As a GM I actually prefer my players leaving names for NPCS and places open. I often already have a few ideas that I would like to weave into the PCs backstories, so that I can connect the characters to each other and the overarching plot. I also like to work pretty closely with my players, when they create their backstories, so that I can get a feel for their characters before we start playing. It's usually a really fun process of throwing ideas back and forth.

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7. I think the big thing for writing backstory is what pushes the character into adventure and you're actions up to that may be limited. Case in point, one of my characters has a backstory that is 10 pages in length, but, that backstory takes place in a few days (start was character is level 3 when game begins). The biggest things that happen before the call was that they're a bard in their family's tavern, ends up in a minor bar fight (breaking their lute over the head of a customer that got grabby), then getting a replacement lute (and encountering the customer following them after replacing the lute), and then having something that happens that makes them become a Sorcerer and find out that the customer was actually trying to warn the character. Then the character ends up leaving because they think they're in danger and staying would put their family in danger too.

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8. As a player that used to write a 10 page backstory, and as a dm that dreads the 10 page backstory, I ended up settling on only giving the dm relevant information that they can use in the game, and the inciting incident that pushed them into becoming an adventurer. I start my backstories with a bullet list of important information, hometown, important relationships, short descriptions of backstory characters, and their overall goal. Kind of like the character list at the beginning of play. Then I write out the inciting incident (that I try to keep to around a page) and send it off.

   I've had a lot more success with this method, and it's less of a time investment for everyone involved. That's not to say you can't still write that 10 page backstory, but we all know that those are more for the writer than the game master. That information is still relevant to you and how you rp the character, but not vital. You can still talk to the game master about backstory and character, and probably achieve the same result.

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9. Bit edge-lordy, but my main OC is a former petty rogue from Scornubel who was duped into raiding the crypt of the Wondermen (Lich coven).

   He wound up grabbing a gem being prepared as a phylactery/soul cage and had his soul trapped. When the mage killed him in anger, because of his trapped soul, he “woke up” a few decades later as a Reborn.

   Found his old thieves guild killed by the mage, (who had since completed his ritual and was now a lich), and swore to use the mage’s own dark powers against him.

   He’s currently a Hexblade/Whisper Bard with Echo Knight levels after coming into the service of Kelemvor as a tainted, but devoted Doomguide. (The Echo is played as him temporarily summoning his soul from the gem).

   Story wise, it’s a more old school “what they want vs what they need”, he wants to find and kill the Lich, in the hopes of ending what he sees as the “curse” of immortality (he’s over 100 now), but he’s learning that there’s a need for someone like him, who is able to console, comfort, and strengthen those facing death or who are going through the same loss he did.

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10. The way I make backstories. First I usually start with a simple one, a one paragraph explanation of who they are and general motives, and then the second paragraph simply explains how they got to where they where when they enter the campaign to justify why they join the party. Basically it’s general story justifications to make the integration smoother. That’s just for simple backstories though. When do more detailed ones…well those I throw together a word document for. I still make a summery backstory of course but I also include physical and family details, details on important people and events in their lives, a general idea on food preferences and how willing they are to try new things, maybe even if they drink, smoke, or do drugs. I also include a small area of inspiration art and a I expand on this document as I go along in the campaign. This long form of backstory is actually less for the dm and far more for me. It’s to sorta keep straight things I may say in roleplay and might forget the implications of later. So I write it down and it tends to help be a good reference for me if it’s been a while since a session. I only really provide this style of backstory to my dm if the game is roleplay heavy and the dm asks for me to submit it. I’ve done this only a handful of times and mostly for exandria campaigns. This is probably because those campaigns are more built to be friendly for creating one and most who probably run them seem to encourage the longer backstories. It really comes down to what is asked for. I only had two non Exandria campaigns that asked for this style and one for for Radiant Citadel, and that more flowed into being so roleplay heavy of a party that dm just told us to submit it after a few sessions and he started incorporating it all (which was awesome because sometimes he would ask us to fill in or expand specific areas that had caught his interest and use that, it was awesome). The other time was a homebrew but honestly I don’t like to count that one. The dm was…honestly I don’t think he bothered to read any of it despite his request for the information. He didn’t even use it during a perfectly good time to do so and eventually I left due to lack of communication and so on. Honestly I was also tired of being the only want to instigate anything into happening at all because no one would talk and the dm provided bare minimum with little clarification if asked and often changed around how some spells worked or what information we found. Like, for instance, us submitting a report to the town guards and the the paperwork from that is lost. Honestly it became pretty obvious that the dm wanted us to let it go rather than let us bring in the guards in any way. Honestly roleplay on that was a pain. But that aside, that’s probably my only bad experience with a dm asking for a long form backstory and just basically tossing it in the fire despite having been the one to ask for it. The rest loved what I submitted and I got wonderful and engaging feedback that showed they cared and read over what I wrote. I am a bit of a writer so when I make these long form backstories I tend to leave in plenty of plot hooks for a dm to latch onto and use if it catches their interest. I’m in dnd for the creative collaboration (and the rest of the fun of dnd, but lots of fulfillment in creative collaboration, make no mistake) and so I respect a dm who engages in that. Anyway, apologies for the length, I just wanted to mention my way of doing these and went off in a tangent. Loved the video!

    Oh, one thing, I mentioned I add details like food preferences right? Well I know that seems silly to add to a long form backstory but…for me it tends to remind me of what my character acts like and what choices they might make. It’s more a roleplaying reference thing, like knowing a favorite color or animal, or that maybe the character fell out of a tree as a kid and broke their arm and now they prefer not to climb if they don’t have to. Maybe a chicken chased them around as a child and now they order chicken at all the inn’s in a petty revenge. Maybe my character likes to embroider flowers on their clothes and help sew dresses or nice clothes for their party. Maybe they like to white children’s toys and give them to various ones on their journey. This is why I add those little anecdotes. I should also mention I have a section for “goals” I want to hit in the backstory in terms of arcs, if possible. For instance, maybe they are scared of their family matriarch but finally confront them on all the pressures they put on the family and call them out despite their fear? I might make it a goal for that confrontation to happen. Maybe they saw their past lover die in a monster attack and blamed themselves for years, and so maybe their arc is to let go or forgive themselves? It could be a number of things. It could even be a petty man trying to smear their reputation because he lost to them in a public and fair spar and finally making that person eat their words. Little goals like this, and those would be subject to change as the campaign evolves. Anyway yeah I just wanted to add that on.

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11. These are awesome. Honestly though, I'll say this: as a DM I have never yet received a backstory that is too long – too short and a sparse is much more common. I don't mind reading a long backstory at all, as long as the player didn't try to give themselves unreasonable power for the level at which we're playing (and I haven't seen this actually occur in real life yet, though I'm sure it happens – most of my players are much more interested in making their characters go through the wringer in their backstories instead 😂). Long backstories often have a lot of stuff for me to choose from when I'm building arcs… and also usually help the player get into their character's head faster.

    Maybe I'm still overcompensating for my own first backstory experience, which was pretty disheartening. I wrote four paragraphs. I gave info on the character's family, why she left home, how she joined a criminal organization in a big city to explain the criminal background, and the sorts of low stakes crimes and cons she helped with until she got someone innocent jailed for HER crime and decided to move on. No special powers, no insane importance, none of that. My DM informed me it was unreasonable to write "so much" (four paragraphs???) and that as a level one character there was no need for "all this." I felt terrible (and incidentally that whole game was a disaster but that's for another day – I'm just glad my first experience didn't become my last). Anyway, next time I made a character, I wrote two sentences, hoping I got it "right" this time, and for nearly a year the poor DM was operating blind thinking I just didn't care when actually I had a whole complex background in my head. Eventually we talked and I gave them all the info they needed but geeeeeez. That first guy really made me feel small.

    Anyway, all this to say, go out there and write a dang novel if you want to. Just edit, and give the DM a cliffs notes version that they can reasonably read in a quick glance. If they decide they want more, they can ask.

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12. “Don’t do a cannibalism.” Life advice I never knew I needed: Thank you Mike.

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13. I FEEL LIKE IM BEING WATCHED I LITERALLY JUST GOT DONE WITH MY FIRST DND SESSION

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14. i mean old man henderson had like 500 pages of backstory to justify being able to do anything so any is fine tbh

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15. I asked my players for "approximately a page of backstory" with the understanding that more or less was acceptable depending on how much they want to give me to play with. Much more can give me too much to latch onto and less gives me too little. I think one player used ChatGPT to write his and ended up with 4 pages, but it was all very solid stuff that doesn't relate too much to where they're going, only where they've been, which isn't far.

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16. My first campaign was set in ravnica. My first character’s entire backstory was he,a human, was orphaned and grew up with goblins. He had a friend who joined a gang and eventually was killed in gang violence. My character proceeded to get revenge on the killer and the detective working the case was actually a member of the dimir and took a liking to my handy work. He then recruited me to the dimir guild as an assassin. During the campaign, my rogue was undercover as someone from the orzhov syndicate. Sadly, the campaign just fizzled out due to lack of consistent scheduling and other life stuff

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17. All these characters are super cool, but HOLY SHIT do I want to be in a campaign with Sterling. What a great backstory.

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18. I really need to write up my character’s backstory. But I keep running into the same issue. “It this going to make sense”..😅 granted I myself like it, but I need it to make some logical sense though.

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19. I gave my "last GM" like 2 paragraphs of backstory on my character, but since we were playing a level 1 one-shot starting with character creation for our coworkers, even that was overkill. 😅

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20. Awesome work my dude! If I could add a suggestion for your next video, I would like to see how a GM can help a player who wrote a poor/bad backstory. Maybe a blurb or even a whole video concept on it's own? I.E. what makes a backstory unusable?

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21. "Don't do a cannibalism." 😂

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22. I got me a recovering cannibal in a current campaign. A bugbear w a kiwi accent. A big ole sweetheart and orgy enthusiast. He’s learning to play guitar and writing a travel guide. He’s a defender of the small, who occasionally relapses after a battle. I accidentally ate another one. My bad. The struggle is real

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23. These series of videos are so formative. I'm loving them a lot. Can't wait for monday video since I'm the DM and I can learn a lot from that.

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24. in one game I tackled the common "you were the king's greatest knight but now you're a level 1 fighter??" problem by using my character's weakness in the backstory. he was basically enslaved and forced to work for a high-level evil Paladin via the Geas spell. adventurers may shrug off the damage caused by disobeying Geas by the time they're fighting people who know the spell, but not my level 0 villager noob who wasn't an adventurer yet. I liked using the fact that his Hit Points would be so low at the time of his backstory that he'd be instantly killed by that spell no matter what

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25. One of my biggest hang ups as a 'forever dm' is when a player gives me like a massive google doc of backstory but its not just backstory, it's the travelling band of merchants they grew up with and their entire history and each of the people in the village and how they all interact with each other. which on the one hand is super cool, I love that a person is this excited about their stuff…but i get big DM anxiety personally whenever someone else puts too much character into a npc that I have to play at some point. It's also the reason I really dont like controlling PC's as the DM if a player misses a session and prefer to just explain them away or just kind of remove them.

    There's something about playing someone else's character that gives me a lot of anxiety. Living up to their expectations. I want them to see and have their backstory interwoven dramatically with the story but everytime I think about trying to remember everything they wrote for each character and trying to get personalities, genders, and anything else right I kind of freeze up.

    I find when i make NPCs it's easier for me because the act of making them like, unlocks a weird memory block in my head that makes them easier to slip into. Which is why i prefer helping my player's make their backstories feel more connected to the world and having a bit more influence.

    For what its worse I never get mad or say 'no dont do that' (though a 'okay…but lets make this slightly more realistic' is a bit more common) but it does make me a bit uncomfortable, and I have noticed I like, subconsciously interweve those stories less into the campaigns directly because of that anxiety of playing someone else's babies.

    idk. no reason to make this long message other than it just felt like the thing to do.

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26. You're honestly one of my favourite youtubers! Wonderfully listenable, simple presentation and videos that always have their niche for me. Hope you're having a good day!

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27. Please have a video on how backstories influence RP!

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28. From a DM perspective, don't create names and motivations for anyone outside your immediate family and friends. Describe the actions of NPCs, and I can find existing NPCs in my campaign who might have done what is described. If your backstory has enough gaps in it, and the connections from it to the world around you are vague enough, then it fits easily into an existing campaign setup. Focus on the formative moments, keep everything scaled at "Level 0" adventures.

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29. Your ‘type’ seems to be fallen or displaced nobles. ‘Highborn brought low’, in the sense of being someone who could have been wealthy and powerful, but was humbled by circumstance. It’s a good trope for playing a character who develops personal dignity rather than relying on an accident of birth.

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30. One minor quibble: it is possible to have a level 1 or 2 character with level 10 accomplishments in their backstory, you just need a good in universe explanation for why they've lost their old abilities. Maybe your character is an older person who was a skilled adventurer in their youth, but has spent the last several decades as a civilian and has gotten rusty (this works especially well for longer lived races like elves and gnomes). Or maybe they suffered some debilitating illness/injury/curse with lasting effects that has forced them to relearn their old abilities (e.g. a swordsman who suffered a permanent injury to their sword hand, and has had to relearn how to fight with their off hand). You can then RP leveling up as your character slowly regaining old abilities they lost through practice.

    In my CotN game I'm playing a consecuted Bladesinger who was a level 10 drow wizard in her first life, then died and got reborn as a human. The way I wrote it, her memories of her previous life only started returning a few years before the campaign, and her magical skills and knowledge have been especially slow to come back. Hence why she starts the campaign at only level 3, despite having a backstory where she spent years fighting demons. The two free spells she gets to learn with each level up, I RP as her slowly copying/reconstructing from memory spells that she used to have in her old spellbook (which was lost when she died).

    With a character like that, tho, there was still a risk of overloading my DM with pages and pages of backstory from all the lives she'd lived over the centuries, so I did us the favor of giving my character only one previous life. That way, we wouldn't need to remember any lives besides her first one and her current one (which were the only two interesting ones anyways). I also had her first life end at the young-for-an-elf age of 200 or so, so I wouldn't have to write 700+ years worth of backstory.

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31. I generally write a page to a few pages depending on what level our group is starting at and what the character necessitates. Starting at level 10 for our current campaign of more than a year of playtime now, I wrote maybe 3-4 pages since our characters were actually strong enough to have some crazy experiences.

    Our other current campaign which also started at level 10, I'm playing a husky paladin who was experimented on by an evil scientist (hence why she can talk and reason). I think I wrote two pages for that maybe, but it was really just focused on her very early life being taken and experimented on leading to her awakening. It didn't make sense to go into more than that since she hasn't had a ton of other experiences outside of captivity.

    Lower level campaigns, I had a druid raised by a hidden village of birds who literally thought she was a bird (albeit featherless most of the time) for a long time. Basically just wrote about how her bird mother found her and her childhood for a few paragraphs max.

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32. 9:40 that is such a sad backstory. well done

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33. Two things: as a gm I work very closely with my players on their backstories. I want them to play the character they want to play but also need to make sure it fits in with the setting and tone of the campaign and also to gently guide them into a direction where the character's motivations and goals are solid from the beginning.

    Two: love the idea of a character that's just in debt. Not from gambling or some tragic backstory of the family business being taken from them. Just a guy in what it essentially horrible credit card debt that he spent on drinking and restaurants. Like even his starting equipment is financed all to hell.

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