What's the longest/most detailed back story you've written for a character? My previous was a 5 page back story for a WoW RPG campaign with a Troll Warrior, but now I'm on page 10+ diary for a character I've had ideas about for a while in 5e. [Spoiler]I probably won't even get to play her ever though.[/spoiler]
I've literally never written a backstory longer than a few paragraphs. When you're playing a tabletop game, the point of the game is to have the story happen DURING the game, not before it. Nobody wants to read through a bunch of stuff that happened before the game and didn't even involve their character or the rest of the party.
>>43819820
You'd be surprised, a good few of my previous GMs required a back story of at least 3 pages. I'm more of a dungeon crawl person, so that was tedious, glad some other GMs only wanted a sentence, if that.
>>43819820
Mhm, the most I've written would have to be a page or two. That was only because I was sharing a backstory with another member of the party.
>>43819851
I keep a loose idea of backstory stuff in my head in case there's ever a time I wana share a story from my character's childhood around the campfire or something... but yeah, I don't actually hand that stuff in with the character sheet or anything. If it comes up during the game, it comes up. If not, it doesn't.
>>43819869
Normally, backstory isn't brought up in my games either. However, sometimes the DM will include snippets of story in-game or bring a character from your history in your face. It varies, you know.
>>43819799
I don't write anything because the GM for my group lives with me and we've often discussed my characters for days already while we're waiting for the other players to figure out a day when they can all show up.
>>43819799
Does it count if it wasn't originally meant to be a backstory? Because my GM once encouraged (read: hardcore bribed) me to turn a character from an at-the-time 30-page book I was writing into a character for a campaign he was running for some other players. I only agreed after he let me make a few changes, and promise not to make the campaign suddenly focus only on me. Mainly, I think he just wanted a player with an established idea for their character's personality and motivations, as opposed to the chucklefucks he currently had.
>>43819799
I downloaded a journal mod for Skyrim and wrote at least one entry per in-game, with pages worth of entries covering their journey to Skyrim before they got caught at the border. They were a battlemage and a veteran of the war with the Thalmor who was left for dead after taking a fireball to the face.
It was a lot more fun and engaging than I thought it would be.
Not exactly the question you asked, though, as that was more concurrent to play.
As far as pen-and-paper stuff goes, I rarely write out more than half a page. Typically much of the backstory is hashed out conversationally within the group before the campaign starts, so concrete prose isn't really necessary, and if it's used it won't need to establish *all* the details.
>>43824275
that actually sounds like a really cool idea. Creating a journal in morrowind or skyrim and writing down what you did each in-game day.
>>43825234
While I forget the exact names of the mods, I also recommend the expanded character creator in the picture. It let me do things like add a crook in the nose and have the burnt-to-fuck eye be a bit smaller and misshapen.
You can also use it to scale the character up or down a bit, if you want an especially big or small character. It's adds a whole new dimension to making a character in Skyrim.
I also have a few mods that let you start in a random town, at a random dungeon, and/or with item presets based on the classic TES classes. Makes starting as a new character less of a grind.
I'm away from my desktop, or I'd just list the mods. I'll share them when I get home, if you're interested.
>>43825476
Alternate Start/Live Another Life
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/9557/?
Racemenu (what you used) or Enhanced Character Edit
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/29624/?
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12951/?
Take Notes
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/48375/?
Like a couple pages for an anime forum RPG. They require a pretty detailed character sheet though so it's easy to end up hammering out several pages worth.
>>43827711
thanks! I will try them out some time.
>>43819799
Short, probably a page at most. Usually my characters don't have backstories complex enough to fill multiple pages, so I just go over the general important parts. If it's necessary or there's interest, I'll expand on the backstory during the game.
>>43819799
About 23 pages.
Admittedly it was only four pages when the character was introduced and most of it was written after she got NPC'd.
A few years back my former DM told everyone to roll up 3rd level characters. He said it would be a combat light campaign, so I rolled a fighter with a 16 in Wisdom.
The fighter had a vengeful dead thing going on, and had sworn vengeance on the town nobility for taking half of the town guard and fleeing when an orc raid happened. He was brought back by accident, when a young necromancer started playing with magic and combined animated dead and raise dead trying to make a #2 for his skellington army. The fighter put on his rusty gear and went searching for the noble family. He had as many ranks of disguise as I could manage, and the plan was to roll disguise checks on a daily basis. DM okay'd it, and the party was none the wiser while we played. I wrote up 6 pages of backstory, most of it focusing on what he had been doing since he was raised, and why he's a walking bundle of metal and cloth. He was my finest work at the time, and I was somewhat proud of him.
And then 6-8 rocs swooped over the cliff and killed all but one person in the party, who only survived because the DM had the rocs fly away after nobody could land a hit before being mauled to negatives.
To this day, he still doesn't know why I don't play in his games anymore.
A full fledged 20+chapter book over 70 pages of content for a single character
>>43819799
I usually do really general stuff for early life, more specific stuff for adult life, then detailed stuff for about a month before the session.
So like "Father was a dockworker, helped at the docks. Later, he joined the navy and was bog-standard in all respects except for his unusually good skill of swinging from the ropes. He just received his honorable discharge and decided to not re-enlist, and instead find work as a longshoreman. A few weeks of this have got him craving the life of adventure and the high-seas again so he goes down to the bar to see if there's any privateers who need an extra hand."
>>4383073
meant 170
