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How much character history do you, as a GM want from your players? Do your players know their characters needs/wants? Or are they out their butt kicking for goodness?

My campaigns are always story-driven, so the more story a player adds to their character the better. If the player has an idea what their character's history is, I am more than willing to draw up NPCs to fill in gaps and add family members and friends.

Ranger wrote:How much character history do you, as a GM want from your players? Do your players know their characters needs/wants? Or are they out their butt kicking for goodness?

I want characters to have a detailed enough background so, if the player is absent and I know his style, I will know how or what his character do and/or want to do.

All I want is a character sheet, a real name, and a job.
CES

Stone Gargoyle wrote:My campaigns are always story-driven, so the more story a player adds to their character the better. If the player has an idea what their character's history is, I am more than willing to draw up NPCs to fill in gaps and add family members and friends.

Ditto - the more the better. This may be "whatever", but if a player doesn't take the time to think up of a back story, that's just an invitation for me to create one for them and add evil baddies in their past that killed their parents, did bad stuff to sisters and kicked the dog for good measure on the way out of the house.

Players should at least put in the effort to create their own parents and siblings...I know Rifts and PFRPG put in random charts to roll up basic backgrounds (land of origin, birth order, etc) so creating a backstory shouldn't take much time at all.

Depending on the experiance of the players and the campain.

I've seen it done in some other RPs, but I've noticed the best way to get the players invested is to reward them for writing and investing into the character. From drawing pics of their character, to writing an indepth story and history, these are things that should not be mandatory but should be somehow rewarded if the player goes the extra mile to do so.

Dobergirl wrote:I've seen it done in some other RPs, but I've noticed the best way to get the players invested is to reward them for writing and investing into the character. From drawing pics of their character, to writing an indepth story and history, these are things that should not be mandatory but should be somehow rewarded if the player goes the extra mile to do so.

I have also used a character's history as ideas for when I run out of ideas.

MT-NME wrote:

Dobergirl wrote:I've seen it done in some other RPs, but I've noticed the best way to get the players invested is to reward them for writing and investing into the character. From drawing pics of their character, to writing an indepth story and history, these are things that should not be mandatory but should be somehow rewarded if the player goes the extra mile to do so.

I would give extra xp for this, say 500-1000 for a story or pic.

Or themesong, or models or anything really, anything that has been done that's done of the character for instance, like me spending literally hundreds of dollars to get a real comic of my heroine to me drawing quick costume design ideas and drafts and actually making costume that's both unique and "works." The more stuff and more "work" to the character, the more it's clear that the player is invested into them and wants to play them. The GM should somehow recognize the extra effort and give these rewards to the player to make them to do "quality over quantity" when creating characters. Even if nothing else, it's positive interaction between the player and their character and the GM and I always tend to give something for the people for their trouble.