Building Character: Drawing Stories From Players

To quote Babylon 5: Who are you? What do you want?

You can't expect every player to who sits down at a game table to give you detailed plot hooks for their character right away. In fact, I have found that lengthy backstories and pre-made character backgrounds are often inflexible and tedious. Establishing details as the campaign progresses is a much better way to make everything mesh together and build a story that is collaborative and organic. Players have a better opportunity to tie their storylines together with each other and the game world in which they exist if they are allowed time to familiarize themselves with both.

However, you will have to remember to provide opportunities for the players to open up about their character and history. One way to do this is to add occasional narrative prompts for the players to share certain details. These prompts are open ended questions, inquiries that direct the player to answer in a way that will provide a new insight into their character and the story as a whole.

For instance, I once ran a game in which the party was falsely accused of a crime and about to go to trial. Before the case began, the NPC defense attorney asks each PC to name one previous infraction that might be used against them in a court of law. This question requires each player to think about a way in which their character might have broken the law or at least incited a grievance against themselves.

Another classic one is having characters face a magic spell that brings their greatest fear to life. What is that fear? Only the player can answer that question, so the question is posed to them. Another might be to ask about what they did during a great war or major historical event that previously affected everyone in your chosen campaign setting.

The two main ways to present this question are in-story or as an aside. In-story questions may be asked directly by NPCs or when certain situations present themselves. If a character is asked by their mentor who their most hated enemy is, or stares into a magic mirror and sees their nemesis' face, that's a clear prompt for them to name and describe this individual. Remember to put opportunities like this in your game if your players are fans of character development. It is a natural way to present opportunities for creative choices.

Asides are questions that might come up at any point that you should use during character creation and throughout the campaign to encourage players to build upon their characters and add details to the story. Once again, use open-ended questions. Don't direct players to a specific answer right away, give them an opportunity to make the story their own. What was it that you left behind when you became an adventurer? Being a thief, what was the first thing you stole? 

Some of these questions might be player-specific, but many of them could be asked of the entire group. The answers will provide you with more 'ammunition' for your campaign in the form of plot hooks and relevant details about the player characters. Just remember that you are in charge of directing these prompts, and unless you do this every now and then, your players won't have many opportunities to open up and add these details to the story.

I encourage you to think up your own ways to make these questions relevant to your campaign. Listen to your players and question them in response to them questioning you. Give them time to think about the questions before they answer, don't rush them. Do this and you will have a lot more material to work with, and more attentiveness and engagement on their part.

Happy ventures!