Beating Back the Backstories

Some time ago, some friends-of-a-friend asked me about running D&D. They were reading the player’s handbook, and already talking about ancestry and class options. I asked several times if we could do a quick video call to talk about a potential game before they got too far along, but they weren’t in a hurry, and said they wanted to spend some more time with the book first. Unsurprisingly, communication trailed off and the putative game never coalesced.

One of the things they spent time thinking about – for this game that never came to be – was their backstories. I sometimes tell players that “backstory” is a banned word at my table. I am only kind of joking.

Players don’t appreciate that backstories are game-adjacent at best. They don’t support or advance at the table action. I’ve gone through several iterations of the Quantum Character Sheet because every hour of at-the-table action is worth a dozen hours of lonely fun spent crafting the perfect OC.

But players love backstories. Can we better incorporate them in the game itself? Other games I’ve played certainly do a better job. Let’s consider some approaches and hacks for D&D.

Not the DM’s Job

Modern D&D 5E play culture carries an unspoken assumption that the players create backstories and then feed them to the DM – potentially with secret or unresolved information. The onus is on the DM to incorporate disparate backstories into the game.

This can be helpful. And good DMs can use these backstories as fuel for session planning. But it can also create a lot of extra work; strain or distort the game’s tone; or create friction between different players’ very different ideas. Doubly so if the DM runs for a large group, or an open table. 

So instead, perhaps players with backstories have to find their own way to introduce them into action at the table. Your wizard actually dropped out of magic school? Think of a way to reveal it to the other PCs. Your character is the last survivor of a clan of fey-touched warriors? Find a way to make the other PCs recognize and remember that information. It’s your job, not the DM’s.

Level Up Rewards

This is simple. Every time you level up, you flash back to a scene from your backstory. The player has broad discretion to set the scene, as long as it doesn’t contradict anything that has happened in the present. Bonus points if the player can tie the nature of the flashback to recent in-game events, or the abilities they’re gaining with level advancement. 

This works if the characters view backstory as a reward for advancing. The drawback with this system is its more conspicuous if the characters who don’t care about backstories opt out.

Q&A Time

It is classic DM advice that you can learn a lot by asking the player questions about the character's history. “Has Thogdar ever shorn a sheep before?” The player knows – and knows that the DM knows – that this has never come up in a session. We also both know that it's not something the player thought about as part of any backstory planning. Without ever saying the b-word, we have invited them to create backstory, and in a way that could reveal something about their character that even they didn’t know.

Diegetic Objects

We take it for granted that many things in the game world can be turned into game objects. Spells and abilities can be encapsulated in magic items. A wizard reaching 5th level and learning fireball is, mechanically, not very different from acquiring a wand that allows the casting of the same spell.

So with that in mind, what if chunks of backstory are things within the game? This can be very literal – the characters have magical amnesia, and literally recover McGuffins that restore their memories. Or it can be a bit more figurative. The fey warrior who finds the lost family signet ring and establishes their lineage unlocks a slab of backstory. You want players to care about treasure? Bake their precious backstory into treasure, and they will care.

The Many Modes Implied by Goblin Mode

Goblin Mode was 2022’s word (phrase?) of the year. Sayeth the Dictionarians: 

‘Goblin mode’ – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’

It’s great to see goblins in the news. Grimy goblins robbing an Arby’s. Greasy gobbos licking pennies out of car ashtrays. Dumpster-diving greenfolk bursting forth from the alley to trod on the flowers and fart in the mailboxes. It’s goblin mode, baby. Goblin mode! 

Yes, you can play D&D, or an even more specialized game, and be an actual goblin living the goblin-mode life. That’s easy. But what if ALL of the cool, modern, sexy OC species were actually trashy, filthy, dungeon creatures at heart? Just shameless little weirdos from the mythic underworld, living nasty dungeon lives? What would that look like?

Tiefling Mode

They crawled out of the deepest levels of the dungeon to breathe hot sulfur on your cheek when you were almost done with a long rest, whispering “wanna party up?” Fiendish heritage does not make them evil so much as allergic to the concept of a rigid moral system. The surface world is a wonderfully fragile candy store. Don’t blame them if something’s on fire, it could have been anyone (it's them).

Elf Mode

You think these magical forest dwellers are graceful and austerely beautiful? You, a FOOL, have been deceived. The nasty side of their fey cousins plays up strong, and their most visible form of artistic expression is using your insides to mark the edge of the forest where humans must not venture. You like the eerie flute music drifting out of the woods? What do you think those flutes are made from? It’s not wood…

Dragonborn Mode

As a bugbear is to a goblin, so the dragonborn is to the lowly kobold. Released from the lair-building instinct and long slumbers of their chrysomaniac cousins (the true dragons), the dragonborn are greed freed, instinctively lusting for treasure before they even have any idea of what they would DO with it. Is this not consummate old school dungeon life, pursuing treasure for its own sake?

Goliath Mode

Less Kratos from God of War, more Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy. Imagine what your putative husbando smells like after spending six months in the mountains wrestling yetis and drinking vodka made from hag’s egg potatoes.

Tabaxi Mode

Begin with the 2019 Cats movie. It only gets worse from there. Eating bugs. Licking netherzones. Chasing after Dancing Lights in the middle of combat. Have you MET a cat? They’re the real world’s goblins.

Dungeon23: Too Many Monsters, When Empty is Not Empty, and the Fast Lane to Danger

Monsters, Monsters, Monsters

Our Dungeon23 generator spat out monsters consecutively for the first three days. Hey, I just work here. Without some empty rooms to space out creatures, we had to get creative with explaining their proximity. Day one was the chained interrogator, day two the kleptoplasm (separated from the interrogator by a secret door), and day three was a tentacle snaking out from the crevasse, which leads down deeper into the dungeon.

Each monster is doing a different job. The interrogator establishes a faction, the fallen ancien regime of the reptilefolk. The kleptoplasm is a solitary, unintelligent/unaligned lair monster. The tentacle is nominally a monster, but is also something of a trap, and really an excuse to draw the characters deeper into the dungeon (it’s literally part of Something Bigger on a lower level). It foreshadows the deeper parts of the dungeon.

For statistics, I am using the following scheme: 

NAME (1-3 adjectives) AC X HD X Attack XdY (descriptor) ML SV x/y/z

AC, HD, Attack, and ML are bog-standard for rules-light games in the tradition of B/X D&D. With a little finagling, these could scale up to 5E-level complexity, although damage would need to be increased to keep up with 5E’s resilient characters.

The adjectives are inspired by Ultraviolet Grasslands’ method of presenting monsters, as I talked about previously. The three-part save numbers are inspired by Andrew Kolb’s Oz and Neverland, also addressed in that post. If a monster needs to make a save or ability check, the DM merely has to decide if the monster is good, average, or bad in the relevant area.

Environmental Storytelling

Day four was our first “empty” room. As detailed in Courtney Campbell’s Tricks, Empty Rooms, & Basic Trap Design, one of our sources of inspiration, an empty room is not really empty:

The first and most important thing to remember is that empty rooms aren’t. “Empty” refers to the fact that they lack an antagonist, threat, reward, or something ‘unusual’. The purpose of an empty room is to insure [sic] the players never know which one of these options they are going to face - all rooms devoid of antagonists should appear empty, so that the players never know when a trap, trick or treasure is hidden in front of them.

Empty rooms do a lot of the heavy lifting in establishing the history of the dungeon (what it once was) the current milieu or situation of the dungeon (what it now is) and opportunities for the players to leverage it to achieve their goals (what it may soon be).

Our room four is a dead-end, collapsed inward from a bomb-blast above. We’re still close to the surface, so we want a lot of our rooms to reinforce the revolution that happened up there recently (as implied by our ancien regime). Rooms five and six (also “empty”) include paint from revolutionary graffiti dripping down through cracks and the remains of an anarchist book stash, respectively. 

Entrances and Exits

We very intentionally decided that our day one room would not be an entrance to the dungeon. Days five and six provide us with our first entrance and our first point of access to a lower level.

That means that access to level two is quite close to an initial entry point to the dungeon. This serves two purposes. First, it allows the characters to get in over their heads. Yes, day six’s room includes a ladder downward, allowing PCs to very quickly "skip" the first level and get deeper into the dungeon; but that ladder goes down into the same chasm from which the tentacle in room three emerged, so it is certainly not the safest way to get to level two! Second, it provides a fast way for the party to move deeper into the dungeon on repeat visits, after level one itself is no longer of much interest for exploration (and, presumably, after the source of the tentacles is dealt with in some way).

The First Three Pages

Comparing the below image to the one in my previous Dungeon23 post, we can see how the first page has been retroactively filled in with more detail as the subsequent days were completed. As of time of writing, I am (almost) caught up to the present day; but I will hold off on photos of the next few pages, until this kind of retroactive embellishment is complete. 

Stranger Than Fiction: Historical Instability and Dynamic Society

Think of your typical fantasy kingdom in the common fantasy vernacular. There is a king or queen who dwells in a palace or castle in the capital city. They have soldiers who act both as military and police force. If there is intrigue and conflict, it typically comes from monstrous infiltration; perhaps a shapeshifter stirring up trouble within the royal court. 

There’s nothing wrong with this approach. Like many motifs in the vanilla fantasy vernacular, this allows viewers (or players) to quickly engage with a familiar setting, with minimal load time.

But it’s still a great point of departure for adding complexity and drama to a game. And real world history provides plenty of fuel to do so. I was inspired, for example, by overlapping stories that emerged while listening to history podcasts covering the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the history of the Catholic popes. 

The Mediterranean world – and Italy in particular – in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Western Roman Empire provides a situation ripe for dynamic gameplay. Imagine PCs beginning their adventures in a kingdom with factions modeled on some or all of the following:

The Ostrogothic Kingdom

They speak a different language and practice a different form of Christianity than the Romans they rule over. Militarily triumphant, they lack the legitimacy needed to establish stable diplomatic relations and trade connections with other powers, and need to act as nominal “vassals” of the Eastern Roman Empire. A recently ascendant foreign ruler is a great prompt for game action.

The Pope and the Church

The pope is not just a spiritual leader, but also has growing secular power. The pope must both compete and cooperate with the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Eastern Roman Empire to maintain independence, while also making concessions to protect the citizens of Rome and negotiate thorny theological problems for the still-young religion. A young religion is another way to reinforce a dynamic scenario.

The Senate

Far from the republican body it was at its height, the Senate would still represent the interests of a powerful landed aristocracy. The Ostrogoths rely on them for the civil and administrative tools of the former Western Empire. They would have the strongest attachment to Rome’s imperial past.

The Eastern Emperor

The emperor has unparalleled legitimacy, vast funds, a defensible capital, and relatives for marriage alliances. But they lack the manpower to take and defend the former imperial lands of the Western Empire. Their use of mercenaries to and proxy interests adds dynamism to the situation. 

The Exarch

A local extension of the Emperor’s rule, they are expected to do the impossible: take back an Italian peninsula swarming with barbarians. They can take cities, but not hold them; make deals, but not enforce them, if the emperor overruled them. There are many ways they could become enemies or patrons of adventuring PCs.

Anti-Popes and Schismatics

Many Christians oppose the pope's authority, or differ on religious teachings. Other cities vie for doctrinal preeminence. And the formal succession of the pope itself is by no means a settled matter. These religious disputes intermingle with political disputes, fueling even greater conflicts.

The Lombards

The Ostrogothic Kingdom is young, and other barbarians from the north are eyeing the depopulated peninsula, planning to sweep in and take the kingdom from its new rulers.

Consider the implications of these overlapping, contrasting power structures. No one living at this time could be sure if some form of empire would return, or if gothic rule would persist. Those in power would speak a variety of languages, from Germanic tongues, to vulgar Latin, to proper Latin, to Greek. Christianity was still a young religion, with core principles in flux. Merchants, mercenaries, and missionaries could introduce people and cultures from all over the early medieval world.

Many games adopt such trappings for setting. The key when doing so is to find the conflict inherent in these stories, and remember that while they read as ancient, settled, historical fact to modern eyes, they were as chaotic and unpredictable in their time as at any other point in history.

Dungeon23: Well Begun is 1/365 Done

Previously: Planning (and not Planning) for Dungeon23 

The First Prompt 

The first prompt from Sean McCoy’s list is “Ancient.” Clearly there are straightforward ways to use that prompt. Implicit in many megadungeons is the idea of deep history and generations of occupants repurposing the site for different uses. For example, in Thracia, there are three major layers; the modern and recent activity of the humans and beastfolk, especially on the upper levels; an old history of a decadent Greek-inspired culture, especially in the crypts of the middle levels; and an ancient reptile/dinosaur-folk civilization buried in the deepest and most hidden levels.

But… I am not doing deep history. At least, not yet. In keeping with my principles, I’m going for a less literal interpretation. Where else could this prompt take us, if we get sufficiently fuzzy with it? Ancient makes me think of “Ancien,” as in “ancien regime,” because I’ve recently been listening to the final episodes of the venerable Revolutions podcast.

So why would the ancien regime be in a dungeon? Perhaps they’re a displaced aristocracy who fled to the dungeon to escape the new regime. They’re probably still trying to maintain the customs, rituals, and structures of power they were accustomed to before their downfall. They’re in that beautiful gray area where humans are struggling to preserve or win power in a system or social milieu that the audience can see is already beyond recovery (the TV station scenes early in Dawn of the Dead are perhaps the example par excellence, but there are others). 

The Generator Speaks

We won’t write a full post with this much detail for every single room. But for our first day, it can help define what we’re doing. 

Cryptic Keyway #Dungeon23 Generator

Room Contents: Monster and Treasure

Dimensions: medium -- hallway, lair, lounge, vault, crypt

Empty: rusted, undead, broken

Monster: angry outsider

Treasure: hidden art

Special: rotted brickwork

Trick/Trap: choking symbol

Additional Prompts

Objects: foul tapestry, invisible portcullis, blessed fountain

Answer: yes, and

NPC: dark spy

A “monster and treasure” result suggests to me that this is not an entrance to the dungeon. We’ll stay entrance-agnostic for now, and intuit how one accesses the dungeon as we go. 

What is this space? In keeping with our fuzzy principles, we can borrow prompts from results we didn’t hit. “Rusted” and “broken” both suggest something metallic and tangible in this space. I am thinking of chains and locks.

How do we draw the room itself? This post from Perplexing Ruins provides a good method for narrowing it down. A roll of 6-6 creates a medium chamber offset from a north-south hallway, with a secret door to the east.

So is our “monster” (or NPC, or other dungeon denizen) a member of the ancien regime? Our divination prompt says “yes, and,” so let’s say that they are, and they’re a quintessential example, a true believer.

The optional NPC prompt suggests “dark spy.” We can use this to further define our denizen as someone who was involved in the shadier side of statecraft on behalf of the fallen regime. Perhaps this was their underground black site, where they interrogated enemies of the state.

The treasure is hidden art. We have “foul tapestry” as one of our objects. Was the regime involved in something unsavory? Is it merely an aesthetic offense to the revolution that overthrew them? Or something darker? We’ll move “angry outsider” from the monster prompt to here.

The Interrogator (conniving, inquisitive). AC 14 HD 2 ATT 1d6 (bite) ML 6 SV +2/0/-2. This gatorfolk spymaster is draped in chains that serve as makeshift armor; the thickest chain is locked to his waist and pinned to the floor. The lock and the spike are coated in a contact poison deadly to cold-blooded creatures, but harmless to mammals.

A chest underneath the spike is wrapped in chains and locked with a dozen identical padlocks; the key is inside the interrogator’s stomach (he can regurgitate it at will). The chest contains a jar of paste that makes doors transparent and windows opaque; a vial of blessed water that can be drunk to destroy a spirit or demon that has been ingested into the body; and a forbidden occult tapestry depicting The Inevitable Coming of Betagior, an allegedly mythical entropy-eater from the Plane of Broken Mirrors.

The Results