How much background does a RPG character need?

Escape from New York

One of the more interesting quirks of director John Carpenter’s body of work is how little background most of his protagonists are given. Barring horror classic Halloween, there’s few flashbacks or monologues detailing personal histories for the characters, who are defined largely by their role in the story. They Live’s George Nada is the most obvious example - even down to his name - as he quite literally wanders into the events of the film.

That’s not to say Carpenter’s subjects are total enigmas. The presence of Kurt Russell’s beloved Snake Plissken in Escape from New York feels anything but accidental. In light of his heroics during World War 3, he’s brought in to save the President of a dystopian United States from the open air prison that was once New York City. 

Even with frequent allusions to prior escapades, such as a failed attempt to rob the Federal Reserve, Snake’s personal history and deeper motives are left unspoken.

Cryptic as he might be, audiences never assumed Snake simply leapt into being with one eye and a permanent cowl. Neuromancer scribe William Gibson once explained how, "I was intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best SF where a casual reference can imply a lot".

What, pray tell, does any of this have to do with roleplaying games? Well anyone who’s made a character, run a campaign, or dreamed longingly of doing either knows that an RPG character is more than just a bunch of numbers. 

A background is what gives the character a place in the world, a reason for their motivations,

personality, and why they ended up as a thief or space marine.

Previously I was frustrated by how some of my players would hesitate to give their characters much of a history. I wanted some insight into what made their characters tick, into what shaped them. 

Many game masters, particularly online, lament the opposite, with players crafting elaborately multi-page back stories or novella-length monstrosities. 

Even on my end I started to notice my efforts were backfiring. Lovingly crafted back stories were rendered irrelevant or even contradictory by how a character actually came to life on the table. 

No creative endeavor seems to unfold exactly as planned, for better or worse.

With more lethal systems, players’ tales of grand heroics were met with humiliating fumbles, defeats, and even deaths when it came time to roll the dice.

With Carpenters’ films, the protagonists’ actions speak for them and the actual events given room to unfold, just one of his many borrowings from the Western canon. I realized this might be an ideal approach for RPGs, where so much of the appeal is how the players interact with each other and guide the narrative.

That’s not to say characters should be total ciphers. Many of my tables’ most satisfying moments involved bringing an element of a character’s back into the game.

Snake Plissken’s lasting appeal is in no small part because he carries a sense of history. Escape from New York is far from his first adventure but we’re left to guess at prior ones for ourselves, guided by a few tantalizing hints.

Of course, plenty of systems work background directly into character creation. Vaesen instructs players to choose how they became aware of the titular supernatural creatures and the Dark Secret that will haunt them in play.

Vampire the Masquerade turns a character's background into a resource like skills and supernatural powers, allowing players to allocate points to their Kindred’s standing, wealth, and allies before the game even begins.

Some games go further with life path creation systems, one of the stronger aspects of Star Trek Adventures, in which your Starfleet officer’s past exploits becomes a set of defined mechanics with tangible benefits and drawbacks depending on your choices.

The level of detail from Life path style approaches can be rewarding, suiting certain rigid settings like Dune’s feudal power plays, where everything has a defined place and a part to play. Not every story can have the PCs wander into it. Other set ups benefit from less detailed casts, one-shots being the obvious example.

But the more games I run, the more I gravitate towards something akin to Carpenter’s approach, where players provide enough to care about their characters and inform how to play them but their most important moments aren’t bound to the past.

After all, who doesn’t want to see their characters’ Gullfire runs and Federal Reserve heists unfold at the table?