Topic: What Reward Have You Given for a Good Background

[arakish]

To start off...

This is a synopsis.  A memory that popped into my frond.

I had a character who wrote in his background where his father had a catastrophic injury.  He lost the lower half of his right leg due to a bandit attack and later necrotic sepsis.  Being the oldest child at 10, he had to support the family.  He did so for several years with bow and arrow, since, for his age, it was simpler and less physically intensive.  Mom and other kids can tend a small farm field.

Player wrote that background not knowing I was going to give his character a reward.  For that kind of background, I actually gave him 5 ranks free on top of the 4 he already developed.  Gave him a nice jump as an archer.  Although 1st level, he had 9 ranks with the bow.

I figured at least 5-7 years of using a bow that way, should deserve a reward.  I sometimes did this as GM when doing PC development as RAW.  Of course, the players not getting a reward for a good background felt a little miffed, but they also got over it quickly.

rmfr

[jdale]

I expect a character history from every player. It's just part of making a character. The reward is story share when your character history becomes relevant to the story.

What the character writes as their history is what they believe. Sometimes it's even true!

[Thot]

I tend to just use what they give me - which means a player who writes ten pages of background will of course have more of his backstory woven into the campaign than one who only delivers a sentence.

I don't find it necessary to reward players in other ways. My games are an activity for fun, and a player who doesn't find it fun to write a backstory shouldn't feel compelled to do so. The result wouldn't be all that interesting anyways.

[Peter R]

These days I don't demand anything additional from my players, some of them have extremely busy  and stressful lives and finding the time to game is enough, writing a 10 page background is never hoping to happen.

Years ago I scrapped the 10,000 starting experience and instead calculated it by what the character had done prior to starting the game. Characters with fuller backgrounds sometimes started with more than the default 10k and others less.

Last weekend one player had to create a new character to join the group and we worked out his entire background while on a 5k run around Glastonbury Tor. When we got back he wrote it all out but it was no more than three paragraphs. He did know his character though which was the whole point.

[Hurin]

Like Thot, I work the more detailed backgrounds into the campaign story. The more of your story you make, the more your story becomes the party story. So in the example above, the archer might find out that his dad's injury was the result of a botched assassination, and there might be an opportunity for vengeance (Inigo Montoya style).

Another thing I will introduce is what DnD calls 'inspiration'. You get an inspiration point for good roleplaying, including making a background. You can use this point to reroll an attack roll or save. You can only ever have one, so you can't store them up and have to use them carefully.

[bpowell]

While I do "require" a background write up most fold handle it in a  few paragraphs.  Most time this is less than a page of typed text.  Some go overboard and I have been know to hand a GM a background of several pages with relative (living and dead), allies, foes, likes, dislike and the like.  While I am sure most go under the bird cage so to speak.  It does give a starting point and allows integration into the group easier.

While I have had players give me a background like "I am Krak.  I hit things!"  Krak finds himself with only access to the most basic things.  His (or her) gear is of low quality and they have no contacts in the starting village.  I might even prevent them from having an heirloom type item.

Now if the person gives me something to work with (3-4 simple paragraphs), they start with normal gear of medium quality.  And normally I give them some sort of a contact in the starting town.  "You have heard that the evening bartender, Fat Maurice, often knows of jobs that need....discretion."

The person that goes overboard does not receive anything more to start.  But they might have friends and family woven into the story.  "Your sister, Kela, has been kidnapped.  No one knows anything.  But you know a person that has his fingers on the dark pulse of the underworld.  A bartender at the Hanged Man, named Fat Maurice."

In the later two characters I might drop hints of rumors of items of magic and power.  These could be used as the start of quests.

-BP

[Spectre771]

It's nice being able to look at this from both sides of the GM screen.

As a player, I make a background for my PC that matches desires of the GM.  Some GM's love the extra detail and others don't even care beyond the info for how/why my PC is with this group.  Some only need the background as a springboard to get the game rolling.

As a GM, I like a little bit of info.  I had one background story that was 3 pages long and it had zero impact on the campaign at hand as it was filled with his family's history and family tree and the history down the line through the generations.

However, if I see something interesting in the background story, I'll try to find a way to work it into the session or campaign.  It makes the player feel as if there is something personal for the PC invested in the grand campaign and the player starts to really get creative.

I've taken a tidbit about a dagger that was inherited down the line for one of the players.  It was a background option at character creation (+10 magical item) and the player worked that into his background story, so I worked it into the campaign as a bit of a side quest; the mage who previously owned that dagger wanted it back and had been hunting the family for generations, and killing off the family members in an attempt to reclaim what was once his.  Every once in a while, the party would do a Sense Ambush/Assassin roll and have no idea why.  Sometimes they would catch a glimpse of "that same guy from two days ago is at the edge of the crowd and he seems to be watching you."  (Depending on how poorly the NPC rolled Surveillance and how well the group rolled General Perception.)  The paranoia set in and the conspiracy theories started flying around the group.  It added a little more suspense and intrigue to the party and had them running around in circles a few times.

As a GM, I appreciate a little bit of effort on the part of the player to see their level of interest.  If they treat their characters as 'disposable' then chances are I'll start to do so as well, maybe unconsciously maybe deliberately.  If I see they put some effort and enjoyment into the character, then I start to get invested in their character as well and it allows me to have more creative material to work with.  Perhaps that is the reward I give the player for investing some time and effort.