Skip to main content

Background Stories and Knowledge and their Role in Campaigns

I have always been intrigued by the role that myth and legends and storytelling play in building a world.  Maybe it comes from my fascination with Tolkien's Silmarillion or the greek myths I studied as a child, or perhaps it comes from years of pouring over anecdotes of famous historical figures, scientists, and mathematicians.  For me, to know history is really to know the personalities involved and how their unique perspectives on things interacted to make big things happen.

In an RPG setting (Faerun, being my favorite currently), stories, legends, and background stories seem like an important element that gets overlooked too often.  Backgrounds woven together out of people and places and things help ground the maps of endless names and give the deities of character a form and flavor beyond things written on a character sheet.  The greatest asset of Faerun, which to a GM is also a curse, is the abundance of material that has already been written regarding the history, societies, peoples, places, and things.

With my current campaigns, an epic dungeon-delving tale of old on Friday nights and a pirate-themed adventure on Monday nights, I find that simply pointing characters at the existing material is a useless exercise.  There are many websites that capture all sorts of information, canonical and GM-created, but with my own additions (reverting the Time of Troubles and Spellplague) I find the need to focus and revamp the material that exists.  Enter the background stories.

Background stories are little anecdotes (one to several pages) written from various perspectives giving the players focused looks at relevant material that they 1) may want to use in backgrounds of their characters, or 2) explaining key aspects of the common knowledge that may come to play in their current worlds.  Background stories, if used properly, set the stage for characters feeling like they have changed the world.  You can't changes the world if you don't know what it was beforehand.

For example, in my Faerun, I used a time-traveling incident to roll back the Time of Troubles and the Spellplague.  There are several background stories that explain the new order of gods as a result of this.  Other background stories explain how Faerun reacted to these changes.  Other stories just explain interesting tidbits of information, like the Mithral cargo trains that run out of the dwarven cities of the North.

My latest challenge has been to fill in the missing geography of the western seas.  The Cimarine Isles, the Moonshae Isles, the Whalebones -- they all exist in Fearun, shown on maps, referenced in histories, but tying all the information together into making them a place one might want to go takes a lot more.  There must a common understanding of what, who is there.  There must also be a sense of what might be there, what isn't know, what could be.

Another piece I have been filling in lately are the legends concerning dragons.  Written as a multipart series, I am slowly boiling down the dragon lore into relevant summaries for the regions of interest, introducing potential new players in whatever events might eventually emerge.  Faerun serves as a source of two problems -- lengthy diatribes on dragons that far outweigh the word count any of my players would read, and one-line descriptions that give no details, ties, or background.  My challenge is to compress the long stories to short, relevant stories, and expand the one-liners into something colorful and interesting.

Now, background stories, above all, must be accessible to players.  Here are some key points to keep in mind if you write your own:

  • Keep them short, relevant, and add pictures (they help build the theater of the mind).
  • Keep them in a convenient format.  I prefer PDF, since most all platforms can access them, and since they don't allow easy editing.  (Never use word documents -- this an authorship format, not a format for exchange)
  • Include details sparingly, only where relevant and interesting.
  • Include multiple cultural perspectives -- for example, does the dragon have a nickname in one language that doesn't exist in others.  Cultural differences in how the world is viewed are important for giving your players that their character will react differently than the other characters.  Differences between characters is the whole point in having characters.
  • Include hooks for players.  I often send out an email to individual players after I send out a background story suggesting character specific hooks.  For example, here is a city where your character could be from?  Or this is the magic sword you could be searching for?
  • Be ahead of the game.  Don't send out background information just before it is needed.  Instead give your characters a few weeks to digest the information before they need it.  This also gives you time to evolve things, fix oversights, and even bring up the background in casual conversation.
  • Leave some things unknown, rumored, or open for future adventures.  (This is where you story can fit in.) 


Players:  feel free to add your comments on the advantages and disadvantages of getting background information!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5E Starting Gold and Equipment for Higher Levels

The DMG has a rough recommendation for starting gold and equipment for higher levels, but with my groups running one-shots, we wanted to nail it down to level by level. Here's my DMG-inspired table. Generally I allow equipment to be traded in during character creation for half book value, where applicable. I also, as a GM, offer to make custom magic items for players who can't choose. A list of magical items by rarity can be found here  with stats available in the DMG. I also generally allow players to buy healing potions (2d4+2) for 50gp and greater healing potions for 250gp (4d4+4). PHB items are available at book cost at creation. I do not allow other equipment to be purchased except in game. This is generally based off the "high magic" campaign. Level Starting Gold Starting Equipment / Magic Items 1 - 160gp  OR Standard starting equipment 2 210gp Standard starting equipment 3 285gp Standard starting equipment 4 365gp Standard sta

An Analysis of Tasha's Caldron of Everything: Spells

 I am going to be evaluating "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" for incorporation into my own games. I figured I would go ahead and record this analysis on my blog here so other folks can follow along and glean some useful information from the time I spent. I tried to find an in-depth analysis elsewhere, but at this time none so detailed as this seems to be available. You will not find any of the text in its entirety in this blog. I will be referencing the first printing of the book, so please refer to that as you read along. There are no released errata for the book at the time of writing, although there are errata from other books that affect some of this content. There are 21 spells in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. This includes Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, Lightning Lure, and Sword Burst cantrips that were originally published in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. There are 9 spells that allow you to summon creatures of various types. Three spells are notabl

GM Tip: Changing the Effective Font Size in Roll20

I've seen this complaint a few times in roll 20:  can't adjust the font in the chat window.  Unfortunately, they haven't added controls for this yet, at least not at the level of account I have.  For me the font is just too big, but I know for a lot of people it is too small. I am using chrome to do this, but I am sure it will work in other browsers. The method basically allows to increase/decrease the size of the font/controls by about a factor of 2 easily. To increase the effective font size, zoom in with the browser (ctrl-plus), and reduce the zoom on the map, until it is back to the size you want. To decrease the effective font size, zoom out with the browser (ctrl-minus), and increase the zoom on the map until its back to the size you want. The main limit of this is the limited range of the map zoom, which really limited me to fonts doubling to halving in size. Default size with chat font Decrease browser zoom and increase map zoom to reduce font e