I know people who could do it, but would be completely put off by having to do it. Beth, in particular, would never have given TL a try if she'd had to come up with that much history, and she's a writer (to the extent that she's just completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing). Similarly, I don't know how my characters will react to a situation until I play them in anger, and their personality makes itself known to me.
I've never written a back plot for a character in my life. Does that make my characters inert? Does it make them uninteresting? I hope not. I've never felt that it has, and I've never had anyone tell me such. I *have* sketched a brief outline (siblings, parents, interests, basic outlook/motivations)... and even those have occasionally changed once I've played the character, and they've actually woken up and told me what their personality is. The *most* I've ever written was what I submitted to Shaun for this year's campaign, and I think that may just about have hit four lines of an e-mail.
Thing is, roleplaying is essentially improvisation, not acting. You know (roughly) what your scenario is, you know (roughly) what your character's motivations are, and you put yourself in the character's shoes and see what happens. Someone asks you about your background? Make it up! If you want to be fairly sure that it's not going to conflict with anything, make it low-key. If you don't care, or your character thinks nothing of lying, make it as big as you like - but be prepared to be called on it.
Ultimately, a character (or a person, for that matter) is defined by what happens to them, and more recent events tend to have a greater influence than older ones. Backplot should at most help you define your initial motivations and prejudices, and should then take a back seat to the wild and wacky life of being a member of the Barony Patrol Corps. What makes a character interesting is not how amazingly well their history is defined; it's what they do in the heat of the moment, here and now.
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branchandroot
Re: comments
Date: 2006-02-08 06:41 pm (UTC)I've never written a back plot for a character in my life. Does that make my characters inert? Does it make them uninteresting? I hope not. I've never felt that it has, and I've never had anyone tell me such. I *have* sketched a brief outline (siblings, parents, interests, basic outlook/motivations)... and even those have occasionally changed once I've played the character, and they've actually woken up and told me what their personality is. The *most* I've ever written was what I submitted to Shaun for this year's campaign, and I think that may just about have hit four lines of an e-mail.
Thing is, roleplaying is essentially improvisation, not acting. You know (roughly) what your scenario is, you know (roughly) what your character's motivations are, and you put yourself in the character's shoes and see what happens. Someone asks you about your background? Make it up! If you want to be fairly sure that it's not going to conflict with anything, make it low-key. If you don't care, or your character thinks nothing of lying, make it as big as you like - but be prepared to be called on it.
Ultimately, a character (or a person, for that matter) is defined by what happens to them, and more recent events tend to have a greater influence than older ones. Backplot should at most help you define your initial motivations and prejudices, and should then take a back seat to the wild and wacky life of being a member of the Barony Patrol Corps. What makes a character interesting is not how amazingly well their history is defined; it's what they do in the heat of the moment, here and now.