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Topic	A Geektivus For The Rest Of Us
ParanoidObsessive 03/01/18 6:51:27 PM #263:	shadowsword87 posted... Backgrounds give you skills, some basic starting equipment, and a minor one-off ability to use once a session (also personality traits if you're boring). Yeah, but for me, Backgrounds merely quantify the backstory I already had in mind for a character long before I ever started looking at race or class options. My standard method is more like coming up with the rough concept ("I feel like playing an orphan who grew up on the streets and eventually became a mercenary for hire"), then spinning that out into a more defined framework ("He's a half-elf, but he's more brawler than thief, so I'll go Fighter instead of Rogue"), then backfit the Background ("He's a street orphan, so Urchin fits best"). At most, I might start in the middle, and say "Hey, I'm going to play a healer" and then build that Cleric from the ground up in my head before starting to stat them out. Going the other way and coming up with a Background after everything else and THEN trying to work it backwards into a story is pretty much anathema to me in every conceivable way. Keep in mind, you're talking to the person who took about a week and a half to make a D&D character because all of the backstory had to be worked out in advance. I'm the sort of person who could write 37 pages of backstory for a character before I even put a single dot into stats. Hell, in Nudo's game I was constructing entire continents and cultures from the ground up to justify my characters before I ever thought about whether they were going to be Sorcerers or Warlocks or Wizards or whatever. shadowsword87 posted... If you want to actually do anything with your character to actually have useful stuff, just take it. It's fine, you can join everyone else by ignoring everything else from backgrounds anyway. If I ever tried to ignore backstory for one of my characters, I think I would suffer an aneurysm. Blood would just be gushing all over the gaming table and all your books. Retconning something to fit events in play to make for a better story is fine. Adjusting something after the fact because the DM wants to tinker with something is fine. But blatantly ignoring the narrative implications of something runs counter to pretty much every single reason I RP in the first place. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family <cite>ParanoidObsessive posted [p:897011401] in A Geektivu... [t:76102111]...</cite> <quote><cite>shadowsword87 posted...</cite> <quote>Backgrounds give you skills, some basic starting equipment, and a minor one-off ability to use once a session (also personality traits if you're boring).</quote> Yeah, but for me, Backgrounds merely quantify the backstory I already had in mind for a character long before I ever started looking at race or class options. My standard method is more like coming up with the rough concept ("I feel like playing an orphan who grew up on the streets and eventually became a mercenary for hire"), then spinning that out into a more defined framework ("He's a half-elf, but he's more brawler than thief, so I'll go Fighter instead of Rogue"), then backfit the Background ("He's a street orphan, so Urchin fits best"). At most, I might start in the middle, and say "Hey, I'm going to play a healer" and then build that Cleric from the ground up in my head before starting to stat them out. Going the other way and coming up with a Background after everything else and THEN trying to work it backwards into a story is pretty much anathema to me in every conceivable way. Keep in mind, you're talking to the person who took about a week and a half to make a D&D character because all of the backstory had to be worked out in advance. I'm the sort of person who could write 37 pages of backstory for a character before I even put a single dot into stats. Hell, in Nudo's game I was constructing entire continents and cultures from the ground up to justify my characters before I ever thought about whether they were going to be Sorcerers or Warlocks or Wizards or whatever. <cite>shadowsword87 posted...</cite> <quote>If you want to actually do anything with your character to actually have useful stuff, just take it. It's fine, you can join everyone else by ignoring everything else from backgrounds anyway.</quote> If I ever tried to ignore backstory for one of my characters, I think I would suffer an aneurysm. Blood would just be gushing all over the gaming table and all your books. Retconning something to fit events in play to make for a better story is fine. Adjusting something after the fact because the DM wants to tinker with something is fine. But blatantly ignoring the narrative implications of something runs counter to pretty much every single reason I RP in the first place. --- "Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76 "POwned again." --- blight family</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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