I’ve recently been reading some books on how to improve my story writing, and one of the tips they invariably give is to not start your stories with a massive exposition dump. This is bad news for me because my writing is usually nothing but exposition dump, so I probably will never write the next bestseller to take the world by storm. That’s OK though, because it brought into focus one of the traditions of tabletop gaming that I’ve never really cared for. That is, of course, starting a campaign with every player going round and taking a massive character exposition dump right on your table.
I find this exercise more than a little boring and I always felt it was also a good deal odd, both because the expectations laid out rarely jive with gameplay, because you tend to end up with a group of really special snowflakes, and because it ends up with characters knowing a good deal more about each other than they probably should (think about your vague knowledge of your coworkers and compare to how much you would have known about your friend’s character if you hadn’t fallen asleep during his half hour monolog).
Of course some of my distaste for this probably harkens back to the era in which I joined the hobby. In the “start with 1 rolled hit die” era you could conceivably take more time telling everyone at the table your character’s backstory than your character might actually survive in the game, so backstory was usually “My character is a fighter. His name is Joe D. Fighter.” If Joe survived more than a session or two not only did he have some interesting backstory created by play, but then and only then might we start thinking about why Joe D. Fighter started adventuring instead of joining up with the army or the town militia. Most likely Joe has serious anger management issues and problems with authority.
But on the other hand I get that “Meh. Screw that noise.” just isn’t fair to those in the hobby who enjoy finely crafting characters and their backstories and then exploring their development. So instead, I propose what the writing books assure me is a better alternative to the exposition dump. They recommend that if you want to show a character’s traits, instead of simply telling the reader about them you slip some examples into the story in which you get to put them on display via the character’s actions. The same goes for backstory elements. Find a way to bring them to the forefront of the action and put them on display.
This seems like it would be a tricky thing in an RPG. It requires you as GM to know what characteristics the players would like their characters to have opportunities to display, and then for those that are unlikely to come up naturally it requires you craft and insert a few from time to time. Then it depends on your players recognizing and taking advantage of these opportunities to show off aspects of their character. This of course requires a little cooperation from both sides of the screen. The two biggest potential pitfalls are not knowing what your players want to highlight, and players not taking advantage of opportunities you present.
Not knowing what opportunities to highlight is easily solved by asking each player for a short list. Players missing cues could be miscommunication if you see something as a clear opportunity to show off a trait but it goes right over their head. In this case if a cue or two is missed, you can talk to the player about it. But of course there’s always the fairly common setup of a player describing their character one way then acting a completely different way in play. On the one hand that would seem to be a weakness of this system because a player that lacks follow through has problems showing the traits they wanted to make clear, but on the other hand it’s actually a strength since it forces players to put their money where their mouth is. You can’t just claim your character has a trait and then act completely opposite, which is where some of my distaste for the exposition dump comes from in the first place. If you don’t show it in play it doesn’t exist.
For the GM, this system isn’t that much extra work. You already have to plan elements to highlight other aspects of the game, this is just one more and it should overlap well with already existing work.
Yeah. Perhaps the way to deal with character backstories is to let people write them, but not read from them. When they get together they are probably strangers and, realistically, who unloads their life history to a stranger?
Better to have a campfire scene at some point after a bonding experience or two (e.g. smacking small groups of goblins and gnolls and taking their stuff) and have the players do an improv scene a-la Fiasco! in which they reveal some relevant or interesting piece of their backstory as part of a fireside bullshirt session or after-meal story telling.
Adventurers should want some passive entertainment after a hard day just like anyone else and the absence of modern anodynes means we are into storytelling here. Bard or no, people who have nothing to share about themselves are boring travel companions (Smart GMs will reinforce the idea with bennies, XP or whatever the game engine rewards players with). There’s only so much mileage in a taciturn tank who broods all the time, and were the game real life he (or she) would likely to find that one day they go to the agreed meeting place and no-one else shows up.
If you use the campfire idea, for high comedy, have a group of non-belligerent gnolls or goblins sit themselves unnoticed out of the light so they can hear too, and have them applaud at the end of a good story.
Finally, Matthew, if you want to see an hysterically funny sketch in which exposition happens ludicrously during a single-combat fight scene (parodying actual low-budget UK TV shows of the time) you need to grab a copy of 1960s show At Last the 1948 Show, and look for the “Mystery Theater” sketch with Marty Feldman and John Cleese. There’s also the original version of the Monty Python “Dueling Lancashiremen” sketch (Luxury! We dreamed of living in’t paper bag!) to look forward to.
For a lot of the games we’ve played, the characters tend to have a half-to-on page backstory with the basics that most players might need to help define their character: name, age, where/when they were born, basic BASIC childhood or educational/vocational history, and maybe how the characters know each other.. The essentials to “how I got here…” This is more to help the players know their character better at the start, but I let them change anything that hasn’t been revealed to fit their portrayal or the events in the game.
As in real life, they don’t tend to throw a lot of “i am Gloop, son of Gorp, the excellent ruler of blah blah blah…” It’s more like, “I’m Steve. just got transferred from 1st Cav. S’up?” or “Who are you and where did all these Nazis come from!?!”
Personally, I enjoy coming to the table with only a vague idea of my character, and then developing a backstory on the fly.
Sometimes I get inspired by something that occurs in game. Other times it’s just an idea that floats into my brain between sessions.
I’ve found that that “slow reveal” style lets me put some serious thought into my character without ever overwhelming the rest of the table with a bunch of ideas right off that may not end up reflecting how I play. Better to let how I play inform my backstory than vice-versa.
This goes along with my preferred style as both player and GM. I like to inspire others and also be inspired by others. As a GM, I totally let player chatter inform my game. I also like it when I throw an idea out there and watch another player (or the GM) take it further.
Yeah, the exposition dump can be annoying and badly done, but it’s important to provide the players with some context of who their fellow PCs are when the game starts. It’s one of my pet peeves when GMs completely forget to do something, anything to introduce the PCs, and at some point, someone has to stop the game and ask who the hell the other PCs are that they’ve supposedly been traveling with for months.
With one-shots and con games, the GM will generally know who the PCs are but forget that the other players may not. Without doing something, you end up with misconceptions about the other PCs that can derail the game. Whether it’s gender, age, fantasy race, or what, there are details that should be known.
That said, I do think it is a good idea to try and avoid the overwhelming info dump type of exposition. There can be other fun ways to work introductions into the game, or short cuts, like name tents with pertinent details, or even a little note in the background that gives the names and some info on the other PCs.
Exposition can be tricky, and it can be frustrating to invest a lot of time into a background that is invalidated after the dice go cold in session 1.
Character Histories and Background and Character Ties Cubed (3x3x3) have great take on character backgrounds done right in comments.
I will throw out a few ideas here.
First, I LOVE the Fate character creation session. You not only have a solid session during which you are doing nothing BUT building up background, but you are doing so collaboratively. So, no one gets bored, and all the characters get links, relationships, and whatnot worked out before play actually begins. (Because seriously, what are the odds you are all going to meet in a tavern and spontaneously decide to trust each other with your lives and treasure?)
I had one group of players pull something really odd on me. They said, “Hey, we’ve got downtime, right? We go off into the woods and practice intensively with each other. Every trick, every spell, everything. We also spend each night telling our stories.” They then just swapped the character sheets around so that they all knew everything pertinent about each other. (There were one or two “dark secrets” kept back, naturally.) It was remarkably efficient.
The trickiest thing about exposition is that there is not a damn thing the GM can do about it. It entirely rests on player skill to do it right. A good GM can guide the action by rewarding good exposition and shutting down the terrible. But that requires both a subtle hand and players who actually give a damn. Your average group is going to have one person who’s really into it (and who probably doesn’t need the encouragement), one or two who just want to cut the blather and kill things, and a couple others who mean well but have absolutely zero skill at storytelling. Getting all these people on the same page in the same direction is hit or miss at best.