Rewarding an RPG Character’s Backstory

Hello and welcome to another article here at Nerdarchy.com. My name is Nerdarchist Dave and I’ll be laying down some Game Master tips for you today. Have you ever struggled with getting your players involved in your game? Maybe they ignore every one of your plot hooks. Perhaps they aren’t willing to interact with your finely crafted NPC’s. Or they don’t care about the living, breathing city you’ve lovingly sculpted from your imagination. Have you asked yourself why this is? Or do you blame the players, because let’s face it you’ve done everything you could to give them an awesome experience. I see a lot of Game Masters in tabletop roleplaying games who struggle with letting go of the reigns a little bit. After all it’s their game right?

Game Master tips

Rewarding players for good backstory in RPGs

One of the most important things to remember for us Game Masters is RPGs are a shared experience. If you keep this in mind you’ll have all the tools in your tool box to get the reactions you want from your players.

Two Game Master tips in one

• First thing first, when starting your campaign if there is going to be a specific theme or story arc, let your players in on it. The reason for this simple. You want your players to be invested in your campaign world or story arc, right? Give them a reason to be. Let them build their character around what’s going to be happening in the game. Be open minded to their ideas — maybe they’ll think of something you didn’t. This will cement the shared experience.
• Second, you could let your players create their characters and then build the campaign around them. Have them each come up with some backstory for their character and then begin incorporating it into your campaign world. If it doesn’t exist and it’s feasible add it in. Make sure you let them know they are the reason for it.

Game Masters, if you do these things, rarely will your players turn down your hooks. Not only that, they’ll never even view them as your hooks.

Some benefits to incorporating character back story into your game:

• Your hooks are now just continuations of the stories the players created.
• As an extra benefit your players will be writing part of your material for you.
• They’ll be dying to interact with the NPC’s they helped to create.

Feel free to share your backstories in the comments below.