Pro-Tip Thursday the Weekend Edition!
Greetings Survivors!!! Welcome to a rainy day weekend edition of Pro-Tip Thursday!!
Our topic today is about you and your character! The game we play is a full immersion role playing game. When the game starts we drape our concept of who our character is to interact with our fellow players. Yes, we have a rules-based game where we have to understand how the mechanics work, but the Characters we play are created in our minds.
Creating the character in our minds can sometimes be a difficult task. When we are new we are working hard on remembering the rules and figuring out how to interact with other characters. One of the best tools to do this is to create your character's back story.
A simple definition of a back story is:
back·sto·ry
/ˈbakˌstôrē/
noun
noun: back-story
a history or background, especially one created for a fictional character in a motion picture or television program.
"a brief prologue detailing our hero's backstory"
A classic example of a back story is the Amazing Spider Man. Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider. He enjoys new powers using them for selfish reasons. Until his actions lead to the death of his uncle. This causes Peter to learn the lesson that with great power comes great responsibility. This shapes the growth path for his character from that moment on.
It is the same for our characters. Each character has to have a starting point. A place to grow from while interacting with the game space and other characters. As a personal example, I wrote the backstory of Mi’tok to explain why he was, why he took part in the civil war in the tribe and why he is all about gathering resources. As a character Mi’Tok grew and changed over the course of the years of playing him and telling his story, but it all comes from the story I created in my mind to explain his core. For an example, Here is the backstory I wrote for Mi’Tok.
Once you have a solid understanding of your story we invite you to share it with our writers! Giving our writers access to your character's past helps us drop flavor into our plots that affect your character specifically. Also it helps them write PFA’s or Personal Plot Requests. There is often some debate about sharing information with the writers because some believe that hiding from plot is better than getting deeper involved in the story. That is always your choice, but I believe those who get deeper involved with the story enjoy the weekend better.
You can submit your characters back story Here!
https://www.dystopiarisingar.com/background
This page gives some good guidelines for submitting backstories and a link to inappropriate concepts that we do not allow.
Having a solid back story helps you see how your character is growing and evolving as you play. It gives you the foundation to how your character thinks and how they would react to things in game. It also helps you think about how the events of the game helps you to engage with other characters both during game and between games.
So during this rainy day, It's a good time to sit back and think about where you character actions and motivations come from!
Till next time Friends!!
See you in the waste!!