Must We "Background"?

 A popular selling point of late is for the GM to try to sell their game playing to their player's preconceived notions about their Character. The GM promises to highlight the player-character (the PC) through a series of events forthcoming based off of what the Player has written down as a background. The rooms and crags where the PCs encounter this or that cool beast are secondary to what should be a Player's two sentence entry on the back of the Character Sheet, mostly indicating, in my opinion, the trope of what the Character might be. This to me is an awesome approach for the person that separates being a Game Master from being a person that wants to tell a story. Instead they are an impromptu script-provider for folks that want a little bit of attention and therefore will give some attention to the guy running the game session. Thinking about it fully, it really kinds of kills the glory of roleplaying to me.

Sure tabletopping is about spending time together, but we've all sat through that one GM that makes it up as she goes along. She's being clever taking her ques from the players around her. Still more often then not, the lack of a structure in her mind leads to problems with pacing or any visceral exploration required to ease things into a decent yarn by anyone at the table. Ironically "sandboxxers" might tend to agree that a story destroys their sense of what an RPG session is supposed to be like. So the "all-me" players and the guys that want to LARP being a miniature on a table both frame narrative as the enemy of them having a good time. Now try getting them at the same table. For the folks trying to have a roleplaying experience, though, going places where your mind hasn't gone to before and having things not drag along really makes for a good session or campaign.

I might be a little spoiled here. I run for about two dozen new players almost every year, either at conventions or mini-campaigns on-line. We don't have a lot of time besides getting a couple of sentences for the background. Even when time is not a constraint, my long term players are rather set in our exploration mode of roleplaying that we, I play in their games too, like to fill out our Characters as we go along.

That doesn't mean I don't indulge backgrounds. I have ran prequel campaigns for players that had PCs that they really liked. Want to talk about player satisfaction? Work out a detailed history with the Character at the table for even one session, if not three to six, in between big story frames of your ongoing campaign. That player will not just stay involved, they will show up early and buy the pizza for months.

That is my take.