It’s this week’s Game WISH.
How do you like to build character backgrounds? Do you think they are important or not? Do you prefer to write an elaborate background, or fill in later? Do you find character quizzes like the one in the ADRPG or related exercises like the round of questions in Everway character development to be useful?
I find characterization and character interaction to be among the most interesting part of RPGs (else why not just play video games), and character quizzes and backgrounds are an important part of that.
So I tend to have an elaborate history worked up for each character. Actually writing it down takes a while, and it would probably be wise of me to actually check with the GM to determine whether the background fits in with where the character is going. (On the other hand, I always try to make sure that my character bios provide the GM with plenty of hooks to play with.)
On my current supers RPG I actually went wildly overboard in pestering my players to do a long, elaborate character quiz. The problem with it is that until you actually play a character, you don’t have his or her voice, which makes an early character quiz sometimes like the first draft of a TV series “Bible” — recognizable but parallel universe versions of the characters involved, waiting to be fleshed out by actual production/play.