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MU Peeves Thread
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@Warma-Sheen I feel like there’s a sweet spot for background lengths. The few times I’ve actually written a multipage bg for a character, it feels like the staff totally ignored it. Most of the time I’ll do a bullet point list of major things, and maybe a paragraph if anything needed special justification or clarification. And in most of those cases, I actually got notes back from staff on some aspect of my bg and how they’d like to pull it into the game.
The few times I’ve been staff somewhere and in a position that required me to do approvals and review of characters, I will totally admit that I sort of skimmed any background longer than what would fit in 2 notes on a character bit.
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
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@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
I’ve staffed on games where we have a background MAXIMUM and people have still tried to go over and at least once the person was like “I know that it’s over the limit but it’s important” and we just went NOPE EDIT IT DOWN.
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@Roz I’ve been in the same situation. When I was staff for a game, we specifically asked for brief bullet points in character backgrounds - but players still sent us these multi-page narratives. And of course, they’d get frustrated when we rejected their applications and asked them to simplify things.
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
I’ve staffed on games where we have a background MAXIMUM and people have still tried to go over and at least once the person was like “I know that it’s over the limit but it’s important” and we just went NOPE EDIT IT DOWN.
I made the background field a single line. Once you press enter, that’s it. Your background is over.
And I’ve still seen backgrounds that fill my entire screen. An entire brick of text. Even then, I do read them and enjoy the stories people come up with.
Side-tangent: I do sometimes get people who submit troll backgrounds, like someone’s dark secret is that they killed the dinosaurs, or that they accidentally crashed a car into a furry convention and swapped lives with one of the costumers. Those are less fun to read
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My problem with backgrounds is that I constantly do the thing where I put all the interesting bits of a character’s life in the background, and leave very little room for interesting stuff to happen on the game. But nobody wants my 125,000 word fan fic of a fallen Ottoman prince-turned-vampire.
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if your character has to come with a disclaimer –
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@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
My problem with backgrounds is that I constantly do the thing where I put all the interesting bits of a character’s life in the background, and leave very little room for interesting stuff to happen on the game.
I don’t think that’s only your problem. Its a problem built into the system that you have to self correct for. You’re told to make a background and usually told that you have to justify your stats. So you come up with whatever ridiculousness you need to to justify the stats, then after approval, you’re not actually allowed to do half the interesting stuff that was approved in your background for various reasons, many of which are completely valid. So you end up in this weird twilight zone of having this very cool character who will not likely accomplish anything near as interesting as what you had in your head. As a result there’s more than a few people who have made characters they really liked, but then have done little to nothing with them before fading out completely.
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@Warma-Sheen said in MU Peeves Thread:
So you end up in this weird twilight zone of having this very cool character who will not likely accomplish anything near as interesting as what you had in your head. As a result there’s more than a few people who have made characters they really liked, but then have done little to nothing with them before fading out completely.
This is why I try to write characters who are boring as fuck in their backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoy “random nobody gets drug into a world of whatever and has to adapt” stories.
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The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.
So go as vague as you like, justify the skills loosely, and fill in gaps before approval if staff asks for them.
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@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
This is why I try to write characters who are boring as fuck in their backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoy “random nobody gets drug into a world of whatever and has to adapt” stories.
This was why I liked playing bog standard humans in WoD MU*s. Just someone completely absent from the machinations of mages, the centuries old plots of vampires, the chicaneries of changelings, the violence of werewolves, the… bandages?.. of mummies, etc.
It was really neat to toss them into the world with these kind of characters and see what happened to them. Interestingly enough, most of the time these standard human characters ended up being quite popular with the supernatural crowd. It amused me to think that there was only, like, ten normal humans in the entirety of the WoD and I was playing one which all the other supernatural entities were trying to court.
@Hobbie said in MU Peeves Thread:
The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.
Or go the Old Man Henderson route and just make an insane background that has everything and the kitchen sink to justify any possible weirdness.
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@STD said in MU Peeves Thread:
go the Old Man Henderson route
For those unfamiliar, here is an excellent audio rendition: The Tale Of Old Man Henderson
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@Warma-Sheen I’m so sick of having to justify my stats. I shouldn’t have to write that my character was a career chef just to beg enough points to make toast. I’ve been told multiple times my character needs more experience for their build but I look at what I’m asking for and my character is in the range of “fucking useless”.
