Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

In a well-written adventure, there is no wasted back story. Assuming the PCs have any chance at all of discovering the information, it's useful. And even if they can't find out that information for themselves, it might paint how NPCs react to them. So again: useful.

Where I find game designers failing in back story inclusion is in published campaign settings. Some campaign settings are about how cool the world used to be and don't spend nearly enough time talking about how cool it is, now, when the PCs are wandering around in it. If a published campaign setting places its history chapter in the first half of the book I put it down and don't look at it again.*

* And now that I've said that I'm trying desperately to remember if the setting book I put together does this. ;D

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Published settings often fall into the trap of mixing the public information with the adventure/plot-specific stuff in the same book. More that once, I've run into the GM that's amazed and exciting about some really cool world / area / adventure series and wants to run a game. But when we start, I get told "don't read the books, not even the player's book, because it gives away too much". This is a serious flaw in editing the setting book or books.

At that point, I can't even make an interesting character, because I know literally nothing about the world other than generic (fantasy (say) assumptions. I guess I'll play a guy with a sword that has complete amnesia about his homeland, because all I the player know is the phrase "Forgotten Realms" or "Glorantha". The character isn't really even playable. "So, where are you from? How'd you get here anyway?" You can make some of this stuff up, but with predefined settings it runs the risk of conflicting with the existing defintions, unless the GM is willing to take the player's invention as gospel and cause it to be so -- which in turn runs the risk of altering the really cool setting that was the point to start with.

The backstory stuff is great, but it has to be accessible to players, not just the GM, or the players don't get to be excited by the fabulous background. Players need hooks to tie the characters into the world, just as the GM needs hooks to tie the characters into the adventure.

The third tense is "how cool the world is going to be". If the cool factor is actually the plot rather than the setting,then there's still the issue of creating initial interest. The GM might be excited because he knows what's going to happen, but that doesn't mean it's exciting to the players until they get there.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I like giving players backstory that turns out to be wrong.
Particularly in Fantasy games - think of how much utter tripe people believed in the Middle Ages.
Although on one occasion I did have a PCs mentor lampshade some of the sillier ideas (including one drawn from real life where a bestiary confidently asserted that the blood of a male goat was hot enough to melt iron).

Of course you have to be careful not to deceive your players about game mechanics, but they don't lose much if it's a false belief that their character could reasonably reach adulthood and still hold.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

It all depends on whether you prefer flavor text first or crunch first. I find that setting books with flavor first are better than those with crunch first, as I don't have to go searching for much of the flavor when I need it. However, system books that are tied to their setting should probably have the crunch bits first - at the very least the chargen bits.

(And then books that intersperse the crunch in the different flavor chapters are often the worst of the lot... A group of NPCs that appear on page 100 using equipment that's on pages 57 and 133? That doesn't help in the middle of play.)

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I really really hate that. Bu then 99% of fascination for the setting for me was the ancients and the detailed history

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Mm. Fair enough. In that case, I wouldn't touch the book again if the history section came in the first half of the background/flavor material.

As Anaraxes was implying, in a perfect world every campaign setting would have two books: A book strictly for the GM (a flavor-heavy tome of the world's information, with some mechanics stuff thrown in the back) and a book mainly for the players (a mechanics-heavy book with the character generation stuff up front with plenty of page references to the flavor in the back). Alas, the world is imperfect.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

My old friend, Zigokubasi (Ziggy K) and I love Heavy Gear. We’d read the books and when we sat down to play his character was the most interesting and well developed. He had in-character discussions that fit the world and was able to bluff his way past a guard by guessing what, in the world, would impress and/or frighten him. Everyone else just went off of what we both told them.

There are a lot of games out there that have beautiful, rich, detailed histories. Most gamers see having to read history as “homework,” I see it as a reward.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I've had players who felt that reading anything was homework. One of them would buy a new game, and immediately (usually on the way home from the store) drop it off with me so I could learn the rules for him. I gave up on him after a while.

He could read, well and quickly, but he was lazy. He even had his wife read him the subtitles in movies, much to the annoyance of others in the audience.

On the other hand, I love well written game backgrounds. Mashups of historical settings... they can be entertaining, but also drive me buggy at times (as experienced by my recent sojourn into the world of Rokugan. There's an interesting, yet messed up setting.)

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Seems to work just fine for Transhuman Space. Then again, it's probably a lot easier to describe 'what happened to the world' about a future-history scenario than 'what the world is', and it's probably a lot more useful. It also doesn't suffer much from 'Cool Backstory Syndrome', at least in my opinion.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Now I much prefere details to be left vague. I think it makes things flow better, details are corners, stories often get snagged on them.