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Heroic Knight
 
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Saturday, October 04, 2008 5:20 PM
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| In a rush!!! I was wondering about character backgrounds and thinking about how they affect your game before you've actually stepped into time in? I've always played characters who have most of their opinions and ideas about the game-world pretty much set and this means you are playing based on something you kinda invented rather than uptime experiances. Has anyone played a character who was just a normal typical example of a person of that race, Faction, if so, how was it, did it lead to a better game or are you better off with a solid or heavy background?
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"Stick around!"
-Governor of California throwing a hunting knife into a man's chest
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Wag
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| When I was asked to play Emperor Joshrum, I was told it was a bit of monstering for the afternoon, 2 hours later and Darren was still trying to tell me my background (including imperial dynasties dating back to the elder wars), needless to say it all fell out of my head and I ran on the basic briefing- every event would start with me reeling from the background dep't with another essay on imperial history bleeding out through my ears, then reading up on it between events, so it was kind of both-so much info I couldn't hold it all, resulting in me behaving as if I hadn't got a background at all.By the start of the next LT "season" I'd got a handle on it and Joshrum stared to come to life, but that first year was kind of a blur.
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Heroic Knight
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Last Login: Monday, December 15, 2008 11:09 PM
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| I prefer to start with a sketchy background and a rough idea of the character's personality when I first play them. That way I can react as the character and find out what the character really feels about some things in play. Justifying this rarely involves any need to re-write or add to their background, and the reactions to things discovered 'in play' frequently feel more natural than the ones you've programmed in to your character to start with. Sometimes you discover that your character is a softy at heart, despite his violent attitude. Sometimes you discover that your character is racist and terrified of undead.
Dave 2 / Man in Blue
LT - Artfiel Macenion Duvall, Knight of Celestial
EOS - Weeping Boar, War Sayer of the Mystwalker Tribe Maelstrom - Tal Rufen, Quicksilver Trading Riftworld - Cpl Caplin San Angelo, 48th Assault Recon
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Wag
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| I prefer to go into it with a sketch, often just a vague concept and some 'stuff that happened' and then allow play to decide opinions on things - though making sure I take into account the 'stuff that happened'. Too much detail and you can end up swamped in trivia. Too little and you end up 'playing yourself in costume' so you have to have a happy medium between the two. I've been to a lot of games where the majority of several characters' background was worked out within 5 minutes of going time in - the moment someone said something like 'So, tell me about your family'. A complete aside (but related), by all the traditions of drama, one character at the last Waypoint should, by rights, have died. The reason? Well, in a moment of 'quiet time' he started talking about his wife and children 'back home' an even produced photographs (cunningly phys repped by photographs he'd taken from magazines and other places). That shows a level of dedication to background detail and personality I have rarely seen. However, by the sacred laws of war films, he should have bought a bullet at Gallipoli 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Heroic Knight
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To me the simplest solution would be to play a "I grew up in a tiny village, but got "X" happened and I decided to become a soldier/merchant traveller" type thing.
By having your background set mostly in a small village you are unlikely to have traveled far or seen very much, in the absence of TV media and regular newspapers your unlikely to know very much about anything not directly related to your village nor would you be likely to have much reason or interest in getting to know anything outside of your immediate area...
The advantages being that a) you don't need to know very much about the world background, and b) you have the perfect IC reasoning to ask other players/charactors about everything you don't know, and c) you background needs only be a simple "I grew up in small village.. I used to look after the sheep
All you really need then is a good reason why you left the village and turned up wherever the event is set...
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I'm a variable power wit.... sometimes full-on, sometimes only half....
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Champion
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balor (6/29/2006)
However, by the sacred laws of war films, he should have bought a bullet at Gallipoli Ahh yes, the "This here's a picture of mah girl. We're gettin' married soon as I'm back home." school of narrative causality. The amount of background I write for characters has reduced substantially since I started LRP... my first character had two pages of A4 written about him and was a right pain in the arse to play (although I did get to shout a lot and accuse people of heresy), whereas my current main character had a couple of lines about his family, a couple about his life since leaving home, and a couple of RPing notes and is probably a much more developed and rounded person than t'other guy.
Ascendancy LRP: Redvers Fenn-Cooper Crimson Requiem: Crew Real Life: Doug McKerracher Quis custodiet ipsos custard?
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Heroic Knight
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| Imagine this. I'm crewing st Sinergy and we decide to hold a pit fight. I strap my costume etc on and have a brief chat of 30 seconds with one of the refs. It was a brief, atmospheric encounter, all I got was all I needed at that time, my stats and my name, Lucenza. Well not only did she win the fight, she got PC attention (from two players!) and she is now a player led NPC in her own right, with plot and stuff. So after another couple of chats with the relevant ref I have written a full background for her as though she was a PC. So it can happen. You need to keep your options open, try not to flange stuff as you go along and ensure that the background you come up with is nice and basic when you start playing, which you can fill in the colour later. Just don't add stuff like 'it was discovered I was the lost son of Lord Ponceby so will be entitled to all his stuff'. Thatc could be taken as cheating. If you do need to backfill background, speak to the refs about your ideas , get it in as quickly as possible and try to avoid retrospective advantages.
www.absintheskiss.com - Alternative, Goth and LRP Design. Fuller figure specialist.
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Heroic Knight
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| I usually play that sort of char. There's so many people playing chars who start off wanting power, vengance on X etc, I really enjoy playing a well balanced Joe Public char, they tend to be rare (well, depends on the system). I usually start an event with a name, race, skills and favorite hobby, and that's it. After I've played an event or two I can write the background and detail attitudes/ambitions etc, if necessary. I much prefer for my char to develop ambition/friends/enemies at events, rather than write them in to my background in advance. I also find it easier to adlib, than try to remember a briefing/background document. Feral (6/29/2006)
To me the simplest solution would be to play a "I grew up in a tiny village, but got "X" happened and I decided to become a soldier/merchant traveller" type thing. Basically thats what I tend to play, only without X happening. Usually turn up to events out of IC curiosity or looking for more interesting work than staying home looking after pigs etc.
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