Background Story

[saz]

i think that background stories are a nice thing to have for a RP game... BUT, not all of us are prolific writers with elaborate stories to tell about our characters. Furthermore i think that the reason to have a background story is to give some rhyme and reason to the characteristics we wish our character to have.... therfore i believe the most important thing is to be able to assign attributes and features to a character. It is these characteristic that will be defining factors in our character whether they are accompanied by an autobiography or not.
In short, should be an option and not a requirment

just my two cents worth.....

Saz

[leji]

it\'s important to know your background, but it\'s not compulsory to tell everyone nor to write it in a book.
I think it\'s part of rp to be able to anticipate your friends reactions according to what you know of their background.
But when I meet someone for the first time I dont expect to know everything about him, it would be stupid !

Now of course, having a complete background is cool but if you\'re not able to do it, a few lines that can explain your behaviour is enough :

 \"My parents were rich, so I\'m rich and I hate poor people, in fact I really dont understand them... if they dont have money, why dont they buy some ? HAHAHA (aristocratic laugh)\"

No, don\'t worry that\'s not my character, just wrote that to illustrate ... You see, these 3 lines can help people decide wether they want to have you as a friend or not ... simple, obvious and effective !

[Adeli]

Golbez, I really like your way of thinking.
Saz, you bring up a valid point, the autobiography is not necessary, the existence, not availability of a story is important IMHO, noone else need know it, but you must have some way to describe your character to yourself, and a mental autobiography should do just that.
Leji, I\'m very impressed by your attitudes towards RP, I know you are very new, and I think you are a welcome addition to PlaneShift. Your point is very good, anyone can write a few simple lines, mine would go along these lines:

\'Tyralus is a thief, his friends and family were killed by a powerful, as a result he hates mages and is terrified of magic...\'

Not sure if people would want to adventure with a Magiphobic Enki...

In case you are wondering Leji, I am Tyralus in the game.

Edit: To help you out Leji, you might want to fix your sig, \"list\" should say \"least\".

[Golbez]

Nobody is demanding a novel of a background for a character. I doubt anyone has the amount of free time  or the patience necessary to become a professional writer in order to partake in a gaming community!

However, every character must have a reason to be. Yes, MUST.

This is not Quake. This is not Wolfenstein 3D or any of its sequels and clones. RolePlaying is not about who has the higher stats, or who possesses the highest mathematical possibility of being successful in combat, spellcasting or crafting.

It is about character development. Yes, that is RolePlaying.

To give room for development, you need a background. A beginning for that imaginary avatar. An explanation of which one is or was the purpose of the existance of that conglomerate of pixels and bits that we call \"our character\".

It shall all unfold from then.

It can go from an intricate and detailed sucession of events, to a mere couple of short paragraphs. But you really REALLY REALLY need a background if you are in a RolePlaying game.

I would very much like to see an enviroment in which RolePlaying is enforced, instead of letting it fall under the \"optional\" category.

PlaneShift is an MMORPG. Enforcing the RPG part should be more than redundant, but in the internet community of nowadays it is downright impossible to leave a game in the hands of the players as the concept and purpose would inevitably be altered, shaped, re-shaped, adultered and deviated from its original course. Most if not all of the times for the worse.

I agree, it will never be alike to a table-top D&D game. The massive amount of players inherently brings this as a consequence. Nonetheless, it does not mean that the RolePlaying genre is doomed to die in the hands of lamers, hackers, crackers, and power-leveling.

I have asked on more than one occasion. \"What will be done to provide a comfortable RolePlaying environment for the players?\".

Obviously, this question is mainly addressed to the staff, as players have little more to do other than encourage their peers to behave as expected.

Nonetheless, (and even if it appears I am complaining, I am not) the staff never gave even the slightest hint of an answer.

There is time. We barely have a game as it is. But it is now as good of a time as ever to make sure that the online RolePlaying genre is not reduced to a bunch of drone-like players exclusive dedicating their precious time to indulge themselves with dull and repetitive hack and slash, mining, crafting and other individualistic activities.

After all, RolePlaying is all about socialising.

And there is no socialising whatsoever in solely trying to beat the ridiculously limited AI of the NPCs.

- Golbez

[leji]

Dont worry Golbez, I\'m sure PS players are nearly all eager to RP, and backgrounds can be written and developped after the creation of the avatar, you can even write a new paragraph each week.
This way you don\'t need to spend much time on it and you can add interesting things, for instance if you find a really good friend on PS after 3 weeks, you can always add that you know each other since you\'re 3 years old and that you have grown up together.. things like that really help RPing and are not a problem as soon as you dont modify really important things over and over...


PS : thanks for the \"at least\" Adeli I\'ll remember this one

[Stydracos]

I think a basic idea behind a character is important but an entire history isn\'t. A background story should be just that, in the background only occasionally peeping through and impacting on the now.

My character has a background story not written down mind you but in my head. To me that is enough, and I place little value on it for roleplaying. You see in real life I have experiences too, but they don\'t govern my actions on a day to day basis.

However I don\'t see why not having a background story is such a problem if the roleplay spirit is still there and realistic for the setting. If I play as I will in the planeshift world and the extent of my roleplay is fitting for that world then how is that wrong?

Perhaps I\'m more tolerant then some, but background should be in my opinion up to the player, so should roleplaying. While I wouldn\'t like to see rampart stupidity in play. My fear is non rp players playing as themselves be persecuted for the sake \"roleplaying\".

[Adeli]

As much as I deeply enjoy roleplaying, I agree with Stydracos, but I also know how terrible the alternative is. No roleplayers at all ruin a game... those \'drone-like- resource gatherers... kill-stealing, hack\'n slash obsessed players truly ruin the game play. Ever played Runescape? Nexus? perfect examples... everyone cares for one thing, levelling. In PS this would obviously be skill-building.

Leji I really like your idea of adding to the background story to relate to your progress in game. I however would save this for when something important happened or something truly momentous occurred, to prevent a boring history. That\'s okay about \"least\" you said you wanted to improve your English, I\'m happy to help.

Golbez, you\'re the type of person I\'d like to play tabletop D&D with. My old group, one of them was deadly serious, the rest of us just wanted to have fun.. and our DM was cruel, good but cruel. You seem to truly like RP and I agree with that. You\'re not american are you? I thought you were, but you didn\'t use a \'z\' in socialising...

Edit: I was lazy and typed the real name of \'Spoonscape\' instead of \'the-game-that-shall-not-be-named\' and saw an automatic filter, that\'s cool... I\'d always typed the whole thing, silly me

[leji]

Wow ! amazing how important the background is important to everyone *Leji stares at the poll* !
I guess we will really have a good time reading all those stories coming strait out of your tortured brains

[John_Thazer]

It is very important...my character\'s background was already formed many years ago from short stories i wrote...and did background on my clan...

Being a person ina world is more important for me rather than...skill leveling...I don\'t like playing...faceless characters...

[Dajmin]

I think lore is vital, especially to the RPG genre.

RPGs have become to reliant on things that people already know: elves, dwarves, gnomes, blah blah blah.
These are okay, but where are they from?  Are they good or evil?  Why?
You have to have quests in these games, but why are you killing NPC_001 to give his head to NPC_002?  You have to have a reason for these things.

A backup storyline isn\'t enforcing any rules - look at old-style D&D.  Your DM set up the scenario and the story played itself from there.  Without that scenario you don\'t know what you\'re doing there in the first place.

So yes, I think it\'s very impotant myself.  But then I love reading lore and discovering exactly why I should be doing things, rather than just mindlessly following orders

[druke]

wow you allg ot long posts...

well i\'m neutral b/c its not what about my character has done or been through, its more what his is/will be doing.

[Karyuu]

Yet when you think about it, what s/he is going to be doing is often influenced by what s/he has already done. Why does the character reach for the goals s/he reaches for? For the hell of it? That\'s not very interesting. Are any goals present at all? No? Then what is your purpose here? There are some things that at least the player behind the character must think about.

[Kiva]

One thing that I find is a problem with people who demand background stories for online games is this - You may have gone to the best school, or you may be a deadly assassin, but when you start, you\'re still the same stupid n00b that everyone else is too, and you still have to learn how to walk, jump, fight and so on. Whatever you pretend your character is, was and will be, it is always limited to the features of the game. Background stories are not necessary to play an online RPG, as you basically start out at the beginning of your life, and you advance from there. In maybe two or three years, you\'ll be able to write a good story about yourself, going from when you started out in Hydlaa, exploring the world as it developed, finding the new monsters and getting killed over and over again. Another thing is a biography. It tells simple things like where you were born, what your parents do, how your family is like and such. A background story doesn\'t. It descibes your life until the day it is now, and since we all start around the age of like 20 something (or at least we look that way), your background story must only contain things like childhood memories, and so on. When playing an online RPG, you play your story. You don\'t write it.

[Elkindel]

You start out at the beginning of your life... as an adult? You still have all the events that happened prior to the age you are at character creation. Was your family abusive? Were you raised by a race completely different to your own? Were you always taught to be peaceful and help people or were you trained by a swordsmen as a youngster? These things that happened to your character in childhood would all effect who they are now, and thus how you roleplay their personality.

You don\'t start out at the beggining of your life, just the beggining of your skills, and even then you get to distribute the bonus points you get at creation to lay down the template for what you will make your character, skill wise.

I have a pretty detailed background story myself, though not all of it is written... Thanks Grono, you\'ve inspired me to write down more info about my character past and his tribe ^^ I\'ve needed to do that for awhile but haven\'t gotten around to it.

[Kiva]

Well, as a child you\'re basically capable of doing nothing. Your life really starts when you set out on the epic quest of saving the world or whatever it might be. You leave the place where you grew up (or you start a shop, or whatever). What I mean is simply that your character\'s life only really starts when you enter the picture.

Where you come from and what happened to you during your childhood, etc... Those things are just a part of the biography, and not a part of your story. Your story starts whenever you get fed up and leave, or you decide to go save the world, or whatever might be the reason for you to play your character. The ultimate goal is where your story starts. When you have completed your story, you can ask yourself, \"Did I do all that I dreamt of?\" That is really the purpose of a background story. It\'s for old people to let new ones get glimpse of the outside world, and inspire them to leave and get their own experiences. An 18 year old person doesn\'t have a story. They only just got away from where they are, and their story has just begun.

As for the biography. It doesn\'t have to be some huge novel on everything, unless you plan to have those people  around you when playing. Saying how great your mom and dad is, or how many great friends you have wont help you if you actually don\'t have them. Altough it is an RPG, you have to be realistic to some extent, and not come up with some story that makes you seem like Superman, when in fact you just want to play a baker. You won\'t get good, cool or at all better from making a wonderfully perfect story about your childhood. It is what you do ingame and offgame that makes you special and earns you friends/enemies, and they are the things that creates gameplay. You have to keep one thing in mind. You create the story as you play. You\'re not making a game where the story has to be preconfigured, as in Final Fantasy games, you are an active participant and you must remember that there are thousands of other people out there who want to contribute to the story as well. You\'re not alone in the world.