Cool Backstory Syndrome

[darksaba]

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.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

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...

[Bruno]

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.

[panton41]

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.

[moldymaltquaffer]

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.

[Irish Wolf]

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...

[ladyarcana55]

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.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by darksaba

All that extra detail is just wasted.

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

[RevBob]

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.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by RevBob

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.

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