Felltower, Players, and PC Bite-Sized Backstory

One of the conceits of Felltower is that players can add to the setting . . . within limits.

What are those limits?

Fun first

The first and most important guideline for adding backstory to the campaign is that it's all about the fun for the people playing - all of us, since it's Our Game. The game is really a pick-up game where the priorities are:

- us having fun together
- exploring a sometimes humorous but usually lethally unpleasant dungeon
- getting loot

. . . in that particular order. Yes, that mixes real-world and in-game priorities and that's okay with me. If something gets a lot of loot but isn't fun, we generally find a way to rule that it doesn't work. If exploring feels onerous in the real world, we handwave the exploration. And so on. The main thing is the fun.

And it's got to be fun for everyone.

So your backstory can't undermine other players or detract from the game itself. No guys who hate looting and exploration. No guys who are ferocious loners. No guys who have some power that makes everyone suffer so they can be great. No guys that come along with a backstory that explains away someone else's events or paints them in a new light.

Keep it Short and Punchy

The longer your bit of backstory, the less likely it'll stick. I'll say it outright - I won't even read it. I don't care. But I'll listen to a sentence or three that speaks volumes. The less sentences, the better. "Father Marco of the Order of Inquisitors" plus "True Faith with Turning" and a vow to use no edged weapons? Great stuff! I can work with that. I've got an order with a set of rules out of that and I don't need much else.

We have a joke related to another campaign run by my buddy Ryan. If I recall it correctly, someone (I know who, but let's say someone) showed up with a new PC and started to read his description of his guy. Another player said, part of the way through a long description of clothing and hairstyle and whatnot, "I stop looking." Our player Jon never fails to bring this up at exactly the right moment.

Don't make us stop looking.

Throwaway Details

Details, if provided, should be throwaway. As in, we should be able to ignore them later if they stop being helpful or funny.

Don't Force It

Don't try to put in backstory, or make backstory stick. If it's good, we'll repeat it forever. If it's not . . . let it die. Don't brainstorm good details for your guy. Let it happen organically, like the time Gerry said he brings his skeletons to church every day, or when Galen mentioned a dryad and "I don't want to talk about it," and so on. It'll stick if it sticks. And humor is hard . . . better to let it just become funny. Don't try to force that, either.

Cool is What You Do, Not Who You Are

Maybe aside from the first point, this is the most important. Don't use backstory to tell me you are cool. Your actions in play make you cool. We shouldn't have to remember you were raised from birth by ninjas after being orphaned by a demon attack on your village to prevent you from dual-wielding kukris in service to the death cult's elite guard of hand-selected black-clad holy warriors on behalf of god. We should just remember you have two blades and holy crap you killed four orcs in one second that time rolling three 3s and a 4. That's what we care about. The backstory is in the back. Remember we remember what we experienced with you, not what you decided explained why your paper man is awesome.

This whole damn post is far longer than all of the backstory of all of the PCs put together should be. All of this would have been better, in play, as "You are what you do, not what you are - so tell use your backstory in one punchy sentence and if we remember it, great, it's canon."