Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Now I've been thinking a lot about various settings and systems and I've noticed that a lot of them have a "Cool backstory" attached to them that will never be seen by anyone except the GM. Deadlands is particularly bad at this with its epic backstory of evil gods awakening and ancient pacts between indians and eternal spirits. But in game only three beings in the world have any idea whats going on and anyone who gets close to the truth will get their asses handed to them quicker than you can say "death wish". It can be even worse in published adventures - you can get page after page of information detailing the relationships between people and groups whose only job is to die at the hands of the PC's thirty seconds in. Transhuman space's Orbital Decay is guilty of this one: Providing detailed backstory and full stats for the co-piolts who both die five minutes into game off camera. All that extra detail is just wasted.

Does anyone ever find this stuff usefull in their games?

Oh and theres is a second type of Cool Backstory Syndrome (CBS[ii]). The one that is know to the players but requires them to read an entire telephone book of information to be able to understand what their charcaters should be doing.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

It depends.

Detailed background information can be very good for the GM, to know what's going on where and why. It doesn't need to be a mystery for the players to figure out, though that can be an element of it, too. It can help with all sorts of things, such as figuring out who might be interested in something, what might happen if the players do something unexpected, and what kind of consequences certain events might have.

Details of character relationships is at least as important, really. If the PCs aren't raving psychotic lunatics, they might talk to one of those NPCs, and then the detail could be very useful. Or even if they are raving psychotic lunatics, they might at least interrogate them. And those relations between individuals and groups are going to be very important once the PCs start doing bad things to one of them. Who's going to help who, after all? Even if the character is going to be offed almost immediately, it can still add some feeling. Players might sympathize a lot more with Master Sergent John Doe after chatting and hanging out for a while pre-mission (Especially if he's been a named and present person the whole time, even if completely unimportant and in the background), than they would for Redshirt Random McNoname.

So it really all depends on what effect it has. If it's adding depth and feeling to the game, or giving the GM something good to base the world and its events off of, it can be good. If not, well, then there's a problem...

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Sometimes the PCs aren't murderous psychotics, even when the whole game setup is encouraging them to go kill-crazy.

I ran my face-to-face group through Keep on the Shadowfel in D&D 4e - very mechanistic, game-mechanic oriented game. And yet they promptly forged documentation to get them through most of the first level of the hobgoblin fortress, leaving me running behind them crazily improvising.

They eventually fought almost everything on the first level in one drawn out battle while pinned down in the Fat Man's quarters, and things more-or-less reverted to "normal" after that, but if the module had provided me with ANY information about the goblins (even just their NAMES) I would have felt less out-on-a-limb.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

99% of the gamemaster part of the game Kult* and parts of the Traveller setting are guilty of it.

* There is seriously one part of it describing how beautiful murals on the wall of a palace are only to then add they're hidden by perpetual, impenetrable darkness.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

To me, "what's really going on" is much more important than a description of a room where three foes are playing cards.
The former is a constant source of plot hooks, consequences, and inspiration.
The latter has no bearing on much of anything. At most, it might influence tactics for a minute or two.

I love the flavor exemplified by Kult and Traveller. So much of describing a setting in an immersive way is getting the tone right.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Vampire: the Masquerade in the old World of Darkness was another prime example - volume after volume of interesting, detailed information about Kindred history, society, and power structures, which the PCs would be unable to learn about for years, if ever. (One of the changes I really liked in the reboot, Vampire: the Requiem, was where they decided that after the first four or five centuries, a Kindred would begin to lose the ability to distinguish between real memories and dreams in torpor. No detailed prehistory, linking to any given mythology - just vague hints. It's mentioned that scholars are pretty sure that certain bloodlines were active in the days of the Roman Empire, but that's "pretty sure", not "here are the names and positions of the undead who really controlled everything".)

I have to admit that I had a similar tendency when writing up the history of my D&D world, Aathe - but I tried to keep it under control. I have my reams of notes on the histories and personalities that shaped the world, to be sure; but there is also a four-page write-up of "the history that Everybody Knows" for the players to read. They may, over time, find clues pointing to where that history is inaccurate. It's up to them to decide whether they want to follow those clues up...

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Me personally, I always try to put in a perk and a quirk to make things interesting for me, and to give my GM something to play with.

I like a lot of detail in a character's backstory, it gives me things to think about and hooks to bait them with. It's only wasted if the GM chooses to.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I never find extra detail to be wasted. My own campaigns are full of backstory, sheets for characters who have only a moment or two on camera, and private jokes. The jokes amuse me; the rest often inspires me with plot twists and dialogue at unanticipated moments. By having a richer, more detailed world, I have more resources to answer the question, "And what happens now?" I look for the same in published game settings; if the setting doesn't engage and amuse me, I don't expect to get a good campaign out of it.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I remember hearing several years back that in a good novel, the author knows much more about the story and the setting than what actually makes it into the book. That extra is by no means wasted; it at least informs continuity and motivations.

This is even more important for an RPG setting, where you don't have a singular experience that is always shown in the same way. Not all games have rails, and even those that do sometimes wander astray.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I agree with the man with the Chainsaw.

Those extra details are there in case you need them. Some adventurers will go through and obliterate, some will go through and chat their way and you'll need to know that information or be forced to make it up as you go along. Packaged adventures are, by definintion, somewhat rail-ish. Players however, are notoriously not.

The problem with your second type has something to do with the presentation. Figuring out what the 'clever' bits are to a setting or adventure should be there for the discovery, and for simplicities sake, when discovered, should be understandable.

Knowing that one NPC double crossed another, is useful and accessible information.

Finding eraser marks on one page of a financial ledger in a library of written accounting records next to the word TOTAL isnt terribly revealing and the players may miss it.

Nymdok

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.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

But the transhuman space back story doesn't suffer from Cool Backstory Syndrome(i) because there's not much actual story. There's a list of dates and events but considering it covers 100 years of history its pretty sparse. Its also pretty vague (IMHO). Because there's little detail its easy to fill in the stuff that fits arround it and bend the setting to your will.

On the otherhand THS does suffer a bit from Cool Backstory Syndrome(ii). It can require a lot of reading to get a player up to speed.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That is utterly the opposite of my experience. I find that minute particulars inspire me to think of clever story elements that I would never had thought of had things been left vague.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hmmm... Intresting, I'll try your way sometime. But mostly I think its a case of different ships different captains. But I suppose that building big events from little deatails could be as fun as cutting big events down into their component bits.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I will admit, I so rarely get a game going that half the fun of RPGs for me is this back story and setting material. To me RPGs are like a weird mix of fiction and non-fiction and just make an enjoyable read. There are some games that are unplayable for any number of reasons (bad rules, setting hard to get into, etc.) but they're fun to read about.

Honestly, it's about the only thing that would make me buy a Rifts book, those things have amazing world building, just don't trip over the Munchkins running around. The others like that are Kult (too dark, it's like if Friedrich Nietzsche had taken the brown acid then sat through a fire and brimstone sermon), Deleria (wonderful poetically written color text, too bad the rules were equally poetically written) and Underground (bizarre setting, worst rules ever and was like a steroid-pumped muscle man's masturbatory fantasy.)

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Sometimes. As GM I need to understand what is fundamentally going on in the setting so that I can extrapolate and interpolate details. I need to understand the spine of the setting or scenario. And sometimes a backstory is the most efficient way to convey it.

Yeah. As a setting designer you can be in a bit of a trap. Your players, playtesters, and reviewers ask questions, argue with the answers, and tell you that the rebuttals to their arguments ought to have been in the original setting material. For example, action in my interstellar SF setting mostly takes place between 532 and 606 (but sometimes 630) years after the destruction of Earth in 2385. That is, it is set on other planets in the 30th Century. But I've had one playtester insist to me that the whole setting is completely implausible unless I list at least three terrorist attacks that occurred in the 21st Century and killed at least 10,000 people each. Another has told me that the setting is completely implausible unless I explain how the characteristics of the just-as-fast-as-light drive used in the Age of Emigration 2095–2385 led people to travel to stars up to 150 light-years distant when there was still space to settle on planets orbiting stars only 20 light-years distant. And both of them demand an explanation of what pirates were doing in the Age of Piracy that was so dreadful, and why the governments of the advanced colonies didn't stop it.

I've tried to resist this bloat as much as I can. But I'm still left with a history 11 thousand words long though I would much prefer something much shorter, perhaps just a timeline.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hum. That's what we did for GT:Sword Worlds. On the principle of beginning with the beginning, we put the history chapter first and ended with the adventures. I haven't heard of any complaints on that score from anyone who has read it.


Hans

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

What I try to do is write one-page fact sheets where the information is boiled down to about 700 words. I then write more detailed fact sheets of the interesting bits. Of course, my time being a limited resource, I sometimes have to tell the player that the big overview is all he gets.


Hans

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Ow!

My usual fantasy setting doesn't have a history at all. But my SF setting is history first, and I can't think of another way to do it other than technology first. There's no way I could put the history after describing the colonies and the Empire because they hardly make sense without their history. Colonies are what they are and where they are because of the history of emigration. The Empire is what it is because of the destruction of Earth, the destruction of Mayflower, the destruction of New Aachen, and the Formation Wars. The whole setting is what it is because of the way it got to be, and it would be much harder to describe it the other way around.

I guess that's one sale I'm not making.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I don't think that's a necessary position. Consider running a campaign set in the United States, now. You could run it without writing 50K words on American history. In fact, most Americans don't know a lot of their own history. Certainly they don't look at current institutions and think, "This dates to year X when historic event A happened." Current institutions are just the way things are. They may know a few spectacular "things used to be different" data like slavery or the Old West; but those are stage sets for historical dramas that don't relate to the present.

Have you ever seen the Web sites that list "what has always been true" for 18-year-olds now entering college? Things like the South always having been Republican, or people always having carried cell phones, or rap always have been a major strand of popular music? You could do a page or two like that for your setting. Imagine a campaign set in 2050 where same-sex couples have always been able to marry, or the Yukon has always had a thriving agricultural sector.

And if people want to know or debate the historical origins, the answer is, "Does your character have History skill? Okay, your default is IQ-6. Do you make the roll?" or maybe "Why is your character curious about that?" It isn't as if, when you or I got onto an elevator, we say, "You know, this technology was invented by Elisha Otis" [or "Archimedes"]. Many people would be more like the Heinlein character who, confronted with an early spacecraft named the Kilroy Was Here, explained that Kilroy was an admiral in the Second Global War. . . .

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Maybe not. I'm going to have to think about describing FLAT BLACK in terms that the core planets just are populous, advanced, and more-or-less cosmopolitan, and the colonies in the Sectors just are sparse, underdeveloped, and weird; that the Empire just is a bunch of creepy fanatics with the whip hand in space; and so forth. To me it seems simplest to describe how it developed, because then all the consequences make sense, and therefore are easy to remember. But I could easily be wrong.

Quite, but I was thinking in terms of describing to players (especially other GMs than myself) what the setting is like rather than providing material for characterisation.

Perhaps it is better done with a quarter-page each on Fifty Famous Colonies than with 12–13 pages of history. I'll have to think about it.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Whatever happened to Orinoco?

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That makes sense to you, and a fair amount to me, because we both have analytical minds; we are in the habit of looking for the forces that create the societies we inhabit, and we will ask such questions about fictional societies. Or perhaps I should say that we have didactic minds. Early science fiction was written in that style. But the twentieth century saw the invention of indirect exposition by Rudyard Kipling and its adoption by John Campbell as the obligatory literary style for Astounding Science Fiction; sf readers have become accustomed to reading about a society and picking up the hints as to how it came to be.

Of course, for a game book, didacticism is in order. But what players need to have explained is the visible surface of the society, not the how-it-came-to-be.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

A nasty outbreak of simulationism. We did what we had to do.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Or one book if that's publishing reality, but divided into sections so that you can keep the spoiler stuff out of the players' section. If the campaign involves, say, the surprise appearance of hitherto-unknown dark elves, don't put rules for the dark elf race template in the player section, or have the captain of the guard in town described as "truly comes into his own during the fight against the dark elves".

Also, the players need flavor as well as the GM, not just crunch.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That's an intriguing idea. "Mankind has always lived on hundreds and hundreds of different planets. There has never been any warfare in space. Weapons of mass destruction have always been effectively banned. There has never been an inhabited planet called 'Earth', nor 'Mayflower', nor 'New Aachen'. The Empire has always been a bunch of hard-nosed, steely-eyed party-poopers."

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I think that Flat Black seems to attract people with those sorts of minds, and I suspect that a lot of backstory now exists because players asked Brett uncomfortable questions. I must apologize I'm afraid for my part in it.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Don't blame yourself. Nitpicky players have been busting my nuts over trivia in FLAT BLACK since 1990, at which time you were probably in grade school. Tony P and David Boff have each caused more than ten times as much grief as you. And then there's Phred, and Marq. Not to mention Icelander.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Cross-referencing back to a discussion a couple of weeks ago, this is a large part of why I like game systems with lots of fiddly little details on the character sheet as opposed to broad descriptive terms: the minute particulars inspire me to think of clever story elements that I would never had thought of had things been left vague.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I guess the other option is to very deliberately grind off the backstory:
"No-one remembers what the war was about, or when it started, only that it was terrible. The last recruiting parties came around in your grandfather's day, and it was in your father's time that we last had contact with the city up river. First the war, then the plague and the famines ... we barely survived. It may be that we are the only ones..."
(They're not, or it wouldn't be much of a game world, but it's a good way to keep the PCs ignorant and dependant on a small home base. Also, to give them projects where their adventures have a visible effect on their home community)

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I am absolutely willing to admit that the no-history-early concept is a personal pet peeve that most people don't share or even think about.

And note that I never once said that history shouldn't be included in a setting or that it isn't important. History is absolutely important for those who want to understand the current world around them. I was a history major in college, for example, and I enjoy reading Wikipedia about the origins of various institutions in the real world, but none of that knowledge helps me in my day-to-day life at all. Now, a professional historian obviously needs to know that sort of thing and it does affect his daily life, but there aren't very many professional historians in the world. For most people, it doesn't matter how such-a-such institution was formed, only that it does exist today in this way.

Bill already discusses a way to do this and says it better than I could, so I won't belabor my point here. :)

And please note that I don't claim that my way is the right way to present information. There is no "right" way, there are only different ways. It's not something that people always think about, so even if you don't change the way you're doing things (and you shouldn't change just because of my opinion!) you are now at least aware that other ways of presenting information exist. :)

Yeah, this is largely my point (well, everything you said in that post, which I didn't want to use up screen space to quote all of): if your characters don't need the information to operate within the society in which they live, the information doesn't need to be in a prominent place.

If you're writing for others, it is always best to break up information into bite-sized chunks when you can. Certainly, the GURPS community here on the forums seems to have a higher-than-average attention span, but if you want to appeal to as many people as possible (and if you want to sell something, you do) you should make it as easy to read (and as easy to look up later) as possible.

Yup. All the how-it-came-to-be probably needs to be in the book, but I (obviously) feel it should come after the here-it-is-today.

But that's not ideal. That's as close as we can get today with the reality of the dying TRPG industry. The ideal is two books. The present-day best-case-scenario is to divide one book into a player section and a GM section. But note that most players will read the GM section anyway, because humans are curious creatures. ;)

I didn't say they didn't. I said they don't need as much. A player doesn't need a 10-page chapter on the setting's history, but the GM probably does. If a player needs to read the history section because his character is a historian, it's not hard for the GM to hand him the GM book and let him read just that chapter. Ostensibly, in that situation the history chapter would be written in such a way as to not include spoilers.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Enforcement isn't my goal. These players would buy both books even if you physically split it.

With the usual intermixed text, it's impossible to avoid the spoilers even if you try. So, sure, you can read everything and then pretend you don't know all the surprises already, but that's just plain less fun. Or you can not read anything at all and be utterly clueless about the world and your character, which is even less fun.

Game authors should be aware that they're writing for a game, not writing a milieu novel, and help make it fun for everyone, not just the GMs.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I would add that it isn't just game authors, us GMs tend to do this type of thing too, we write backstory as if we were writing for other GMs, but the truth is most players get information overload if we give them a brief which is intended for a GM...

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Ah, yes, I definitely agree with this. I think the desire to do this exact thing is why some game companies resort to producing Players Guides. The problem with the approach they take, I think, is that the players guides are almost never the first or second books they put out for their settings, like they should be. Too often, they seem like after thoughts. :\

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

My experience matches yours. many of our most memorable sessions have come from such ideas

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Details are inspiration for great and different stories. Great for the flow of creative juices! The more depth the more strange interactions to create fantastic tales exist!

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Not Eurasia?

oops...
As a player I almost always appreciate the little things that add authenticity to the setting... but as a GM, actually writing all that stuff down bores me to tears. I would much rather make broad outlines and wing the details as necessary. Consistency becomes the fly in the ointment :/

... or inconsistency, depending on which way you are looking.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

thats me in a nutshell.
thats my strongsuit,when i start running a game my brain just kicks into overdrive and i surprise my self a lot of times.
just seems to make stuff just pop up when ''in'' game.
a lot of times i draw a blank when sitting by myself and thinking up detailed misc stuff is a serious hassle,that stops when i say game start and players are present and then the ideas don't stop.
i guess i'm one of those g.m's who like interaction and it's easier to mesh the background into the players you have when they are present.
plus you can tweek it to match the game ''in progress''.
i love winging it.
i just have a broad outline and let the details take care of themselves,then thats when the real work starts,when the players are doing something in game and the session ends and you have to work your keister off to prepare for the next session.
but then i have drive because i have a reason to do it.
it's alway nebulous and vague untill the players get involved.
i save my copious notes from the game and add the important facts to my world.
more towns and cities and villidges have ''popped'' up when i needed one to be somewhere when i did'nt have that section of my world detailed out,then it's there permanately.
wallah,world building on the fly!

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That happens with me, too, but I find that prep effort leaves me with more springboards. "Chance favors the prepared mind," as Pasteur said.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

yeah i do a lot of broad prep and some detailed if i know it will affect whats going on around the characters,such as something obvious thats to hard to miss,or i want it to be noticed for some reason.
i don't wing the setting as a whole as i need a solid setting to base my winging.
when i wing it,it's usually something i have to improvise on because the players went a direction i had not forseen or overlooked in the details of the background.
seems like everytime you thought you had just about everything covered,the players always make you wing something,and sometimes that will lead to scenerios better than what you had in mind originally.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Oh, absolutely. I do quite minimal plotting; no scenario survives contact with the players anyway. What I want is a lot of information about the setting and the backstory, so that if the PCs go somewhere I hadn't planned on I either have something ready to pull out, or have a starting point for improv. I find that I get better material if I do so advance planning.

Bill Stoddard

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I've actually been trying to avoid both Cool Backstory Syndrome and Player Information Overload while working on my new DF campaign.

For various personal reasons, I can't run it until this summer, but I got the idea last fall. I basically get a daily or weekly allotment of creativity - if I'm not using it handling player interactions and coming up with NPC dialog and tactics, it vents itself in other ways. This tends to result in the huge overwrought backstory and tons of houserules multiplying needlessly when the game isn't even in play yet sort of problem.

I'm sure most people here have encountered That GM, who is working on the magnum opus of his gaming career and filling up either 3-ring-binder after 3-ring-binder or CD after CD with resources and notes and maps and character portraits and light fiction and timelines and and and and... (and almost always a customized or original game system that is constantly in alpha).

That GM is a problem, because anyone trying to join his game is either expected to borrow his notes and research everything before starting play, or never gets to see the precious notes and comes in to play completely confused.

None of That GMs notes ever seem to be well organized either. :/

Being That GM before play even starts means that you don't even have a crew of gamers who are already familiar with your material.

Some publishers seem to hire That GM to write up settings (key warning sign - weird organization in the core book and a tendancy to shoot off into side discussions of the background of institution X or country Y or species Z.) I turn into That GM if I'm not actively running something - that creativity needs to go somewhere...

So I've been making an effort to keep my damn mouth shut about the history I'm working on, except for the bits that players of religious or scholarly characters will want to know about. I can expose more in soundbite sized nuggets as PCs need to make Religion or History or Hidden Lore checks to help solve a puzzle or figure out an NPCs motivations or whatever.

I've also deliberately started with Greek Myth smashed up with the D&D Points of Light idea so that I can give a one-sentence description to rapidly orient my players to the setting concept, and so I can assume some minimum level of familiarity with the mythology (at least around here, Greek mythology gets covered in highschool for about a month so when I say Ares, I'm pretty sure people will recognize the name).

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

The same can apply in settings that have simply been going on for a long (real) time, though. Consider the information burden of late-period Glorantha, or for that matter late-period (pre-Civil-War) Traveller - both of them started off as fairly easy to get into, but twenty years later there had just been so much material added that to anyone who hadn't been along for the ride it was very intimidating.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Some publishers are run by That GM. XD

Forgotten Realms sort of averts this trope by resetting itself every 10 or so years, whenever a new edition of D&D comes out.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Empire of the Petal Throne started out that way, as far as I (and, presumably, others interested) was concerned. I guess a lot of that is due to information build-up over the years before TSR first published it.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Bruno, I too am that GM.

The Space Opera game I ran a year ago was part of a setting I've been tinkering about with since the first GURPS Space came out. I have notes for that setting on digital media I can't access anymore (what does one do with 3.5" floppies formatted for a Mac Plus?)

When I started the game, I admit that I handed out a 12 page summary of local astrography, the political system in broad strokes, a short history of the region and a description of the Imperial Fleet and Imperial Survey Service. Some players read it, some players skimmed it, some players disregarded it.

The central key seems to be to try to focus on the essentials. What do the players need to know to participate in *this* adventure, at *this* time, and in *this* specific area of the world? They can pick up other details in play as needed. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark didn't need to info-dump the history of Egypt, or explain the nuances of Anglo-Egyptian relations of the interwar years, or the geography of the Western Desert. Works fine with "Here's the Ark. Nazis bad. Lots of sand. Dun-de-dun-dah, dun-de-dah..."

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That's the important part of the backstory. A rousing theme tells you when the good guy walks in. Also, the essentials are pretty well known to the audience. If we replace the Nazis with the Terran Republic, the Gestapo with the Patrol and Indiana Jones with Cygnus Wang, a little more explanation might be in order.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

That is certainly true, but you can bypass some of that even by just saying something like, "The Terran Republic are like Nazis, the Patrol is like the Gestapo, and this guy Cygnus Wang is like Indiana Jones. Got it? It's not exactly like that, but close enough for this encounter. Now roll for initiative."

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hello. My name is Brett, and I am That GM.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hi, Brett!

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Yeah, Hi Brett. And remember to take one day at a time. Have you got a sponsor?



Hans

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I'm not that GM. I'm pretty good about boiling down the essential information to create a character that fits the setting into about 5 pages.

That said, it would be nice if more players would actually *bite* on some of the provided plot hooks during character design.
Or at least realize that most of what they're going to learn over the course of the campaign is going to be built on this foundation. Knowing it might be helpful.
Especially fun are the players who read the synopsis, and suggest a totally-inappropriate character. Sorry, but you can take your katana-weilding catboi and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

As a player, the only time too much backstory bothers me is when it details something cool which is totally off-limits to me as a player. D&D 4E is guilty of this sometimes. In particular, for whatever reason, I've found the evil god Torog to be interesting to me. There are plenty of articles which detail body grafts and modifications which devout followers of Torog inflict upon themselves. The catch? These are only considered appropriate for NPCs or for as a negative fate to befall a PC. If I want to voluntarily gain some of these grafts - say because I'd like to be a cleric or paladin of Torog, there's no way for me to do so unless the GM comes up with some sort of adhoc rule to allow me to do so.


As a GM, I suppose I'm somewhat guilty of writing a lot of backstory. Earlier in this thread it was mentioned that the problem with 'too much backstory' was that it would take years for the player to learn some of the information. I only see this as a problem in games where the timeline never really moves forward any significant amount. Sometimes, as a GM, I tell my players 'there's really not much going on for the next X-amount of months of in-game time' and ask 'what is your character doing during this time?' I often find myself surprised at the things they choose to do.

In one of the GURPS campaigns I ran, one of the somewhat evil PCs used the time away from the rest of the party to attempt to destroy the reputation of a politician after hearing a rumor about said politician's personal life. As a GM, it was hard for me to keep a straight face at times when the rest of the party (who were more good-inclined) took up the mission to find out who was harassing the politician and his family. They ended up chasing somebody who was in their party the whole time.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Yeah, I'm one of those GMs. Though I prefer a certain type of report cover as they fit on bookshelves better than 3 ring binders.

Edit: Lately however (last 3-5 years) I've tried to keep an up to date synopsis version of "even the farmer in the middle of nowhere knows this much" version of the setting for new players. I try to keep it at a maximum of 10 pages.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Though farmers in the middle of nowhere are notorious for not knowing much...

There's some big city, called Duplays, a few days march away, once or twice a year some peddler comes by who says he's been there, but no one in the town of Hiberm has ever been further than the town of Loberm which is more than half a day's walk away.

The city used to send some tax collectors by every other year or so, rumored to be blood thirsty bullies, it's been nice that they haven't come by in ages, though the last time they came by they also conscripted half a dozen of the town's unmarried young men, none of which ever came back.

Etc.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

No. I have a mob of co-dependent players.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Enabling rocks!

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hello My name is Ed - and I might be that GM.


- Ed _________

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

But have you given your life to Kromm?

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Does that help?

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

In 1746 the British government sent troops to St Kilda (in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland) to see whether Prince Charles Edward Stuart had fled there after surviving the Battle of Culloden. It turned out that the locals hadn't heard of the Battle of Culloden. Or of the uprising of The '45. Or of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. In fact, they hadn't even heard of King George II, who had been their king for nineteen years.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Do twelve-step programs help? The AA staunchly refuse to release any statistics...

But I get the feeling Kromm spends more time on crunch than fluff when starting a new campaign. I, personally, am firmly in the "that GM" camp.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I've always found that the more fluff a gaming system gives you the easier it is to ad lib and go off at interesting tangents. That said the kind of fluff i'm on about isn't dry history and a long list of useless dates but instead the organisations, personalities and traditions of the current campaign setting.

I really liked the way White Wolf would do the stereotyped profiles of their 'classes' and then a list of how they regarded the other stereotypes. Werewolf, Vampire and Changeling all had this approach. A quick hook for the players and there was plenty more information for the Storyteller to play too or against expectations.

In my own games I really try and get a straw poll of the kind of game the players want. I always thought we'd get more mature as we aged but games seem more and more likely to be a session to let of steam and little more than a gun-bunny combat-wombat rampage through the scenery and really the fluff tends to be focused on the equipment and character design, world concept tends to fall back into the vague and generic. And when i say fluff for equipment it tends to be along the lines of "My zombie hunter only uses sig sauer automatics cause that's what Agent Scully uses".

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Today I cut the cool backstory in the current draft of my setting from 11,300 words to 1,530 words.

It's still going in the front half of the book, directly after "Introduction" (554 words) and "Astrography" (347 words). "Where" and "when" will tell you "who" and "why".

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I really hope you didn't just up and delete all those words and not save them elsewhere for later use... O_o

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Some of your examples just sound like filler. I also just read the story of Kult on wikipedia for the first time, and that just sounds like the description of Neo-Platonism.

I'd take the philosophy that RPGing is all about unleashing the imagination of all the participants, including the GM, so if any material (e.g. game mechanisms, NPC descriptions, world setting material, etc...) helps in that regard, then it's not a waste of space.

E.g. mechanistic rules that say at level 10, my character gets to design a castle of up to 250 square feet, and then has a nuts and bolts chart for the cost of that castle, vs. a setting that describes all the counties and inns and innkeepers.
Both are useful if that turns on the participants.

In the case of material that inspires no one, not even the GM, then it's just filler. It's kind of subjective though, dependent on who the participants are.
Backstory/Setting info to be discovered may spark players of an inquiring nature, but probably won't turn on hack n slashers.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Gnosticism, not Neo-Platonoism, but yeah basically.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

Hello. My name is Crispy and I am That GM.

I've been developing, mapping, writing, rewriting, plotting, running, house ruling, modifying, and sucking the last burning light of fun out of MY setting for about 12 years now.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

I don't do it because I think it'll become useful. I do it because I think it's fun.

Re: Cool Backstory Syndrome
 

True. But some of them, my wife for instance, will skim that information, and come away with a 5 page character background. I'd guess my players form a bell curve. Some read some of the information I give them. One or two won't read any. And one or two read it, and actually act upon it.