Background Story

[acraig]

How important is a background story to your character and the game world?

[Watcher]

Important because it decrees what I will do in the future without my charictures rough past he decided to live in the forests after one last adventure (to journy the planeshift world) Also it defines my goal. To taim the toughest flying creature and to live in a forest untouched by any humans.

[steuben]

i\'d rank it as a nice to have but not manditory.

most people, myself included, aren\'t creative enough to carve a decent back story.

[jorrit]

To me this game is a story. We are all the heros in it. Playing this game is equivalent to writing part of the story. So I voted \'Very important\' :-)

[lynx_lupo]

Sure thing jorrit, but don\'t have so much fate in boring masses. It should be partially enforced.

[Karyuu]

Very important. Without putting much thought into who you are becoming in the world of Yliakum, you are... nobody. Just another random face with no interesting quirks or habits or curious features that will grab the attention of others. If you want to roleplay as yourself, that\'s perfectly fine (as my character, Karyuu, nearly IS me) but it still is important to think through to the beginning of your character, his or her early history, what made him or her the way the individual is now, etc. Once you do at, at least for yourself, it\'s much more fun to \'sink\' into the character. In the world of roleplay, you have the amazing ability to control every aspect of your persona - every movement, facial expression, and so on. You have incredible control, and you can use it in any way you like. However, without a sort of \'focus,\' that power is too broad to be used effectively. You have to set some sort of realistic and individual limits on your character. For example, create some intriguing likes/dislikes that will affect how the character feels towards others and make for good scenarios. Set goals for your characters, be they large or personal, materialistic or internal and emotional. Make them act a certain way because of who they are - not jump all over the place because they have no attributes that define them.

It makes things a heck of a lot more interesting :)

[Aware]

How would the background story affect your character...
Lets say that your backgorund story said somthing like this.


Life was tough as a Karn at a early age, was slaved labored in the town where i was born. The miners had no idea I was to become more powerfull then 5 of them combined.

So at age 10 I made my first stand with my best friend _____, we made it out we were all alone trying to make it back to the main city.

Upon arriving the people here were really mean, racist to karns they did not like us for some reason, This saddened me so I moved on trying to be the best karn to make a stand to let everyone know karns are powerfull.

My first attempted failed, I was 12 everyone laughed they caught me and sent me back to slave labor for the miners.

5 long years had past I became very strong after all that hard work I was planing it, finally the day where again I would make my stand I succeeded.

Now I have made someone of myself no one wants to mess with me, I free the other karns from mining camps.
Now we live in a town called karroikw (weird name i know).

We will one day make our stand against the racist towns people.


Something like that...

[Aware]

The reason why I made that post is that the community in the game itself is really mean to karns, its like they were put in the game to laugh at?

One guy named camp is really mean.   /sigh

[Seytra]

I voted \"Important\". If the game is good enough to warrant making the effort of creating a background story, it\'s something I\'d like to be able to do in-game (I could write it in a text editor an day, but I\'d rather have some editor in PS to store it with my char). I wouldn\'t go so far as to say it\'s \"very important\" because I can also do without, and I\'d most likely not spend much time reading more than the occasional background story in the library or consider my own one good enough to be put into the library, for that matter. The story will affect my char, of course, but it should be editable to allow for adding stuff as it comes to my mind.

@ Aware: Huh? Krans are just like dwarves in that they have some properties that can easily be made fun of, but I would like to know where in the setting it sais something about mining camps, child labor and racism? I don\'t think they were put into the game as some running gag, because they do have qualities that make them very good for certain tasks (mostly the more strength-intensive ones and in hostile environments) so they will be a good choice for ppl. who wish to excel at these jobs. I don\'t see any need for a \"save the Krans\" movement.

Originally posted by Aware
One guy named camp is really mean.   /sigh

Was his name \"Mining Camp\"?

[Icefalcon]

Very imortant, a background story will affect everything you do while RPing in some small way. It is an essental part of an RP world. If I were some hack-n-slasher, it wouldn\'t mean a thing, but to me it is very important.

@Aware - There is an Edit button...

[Waylander]

Very Important, what is a role playing game if you don\'t have a role of some sort, and the backstory defines what kind of role you are ging to have.  It shows that you weren\'t just thrown into the world, also very fun when you add hints about what you are doing in there

Also good for showing why you shows certain characteristics of your character

[Yarulion]

Everyone doesn\'t have to have a backstory.

It\'s just as possible to say you don\'t remember or you don\'t want to talk about where you came from without elaborating on it. Also, you don\'t have to have preset parameters defining who you are. Spontaneous creativity is what has made for some of the best games I have ever played.

I mean, honestly, can you think of a reason for why you do every little thing in your real life? If you are tapping a pencil on your desk and someone goes \"Why don\'t you quit?\" is your more likely answer \"I don\'t know, just a habit\" or \"Well, you see, ever since I was a small child in the village of...\"

Backstories are a nice cinematic touch, but they bear little overall relevance to the game and how role-playing is done. Some of the most creative and inspired characters I\'ve ever adventured with had no backstory whatsoever - none.

[Watcher]

Thats actualy a good idea, some games have profiles so it would make sence to be able to edit your profile to have a history.

[dfryer]

I think the idea of story in general is very important (i.e. that cities and organisations have histories, and that characters have particular goals or intentions that they work to achieve).  The only downside is that I have a fairly low opinion of the average story-writing capacity of the gamer

[Syzerian]

EDIT: Ack! I read the question wrong
Very Important because it defines your characters personality and abilities more clearly