Taking 20 Podcast - Dp 274 - Character Backstories

Episode Date: April 19, 2026

Want to make your characters better?  Consider adding flaws to your character.  What kinds of flaws are there and how do you add them  in a way that’s not disruptive to the game?  Give this episode a listen and find out.   #rpg #ttrpg #dnd #pathfinder #gmtips #playertips #tabletop #backstory Resources: Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast www.taking20podcast.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/taking20podcast  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/taking20podcast  Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/taking20podcast.bsky.social    WOTC TRPG Publishing Lead - https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4385555228/ 

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. So if you're not experienced making up a backstory, here's my default, middle-of-the-road suggestion for how you could write a very simple backstory for your character. Thank you for listening to The Taking 20 Podcast, episode 274, talking about character backstories. I want to thank this week's sponsor, toilets. I think my toilet was a little embarrassed that I was using it the other day

because while using it, I felt it flush. Do you have any topics you'd like me to hear me discuss or questions you'd like me to answer or maybe issues with your group I can help with? If so, please send me the ideas on the socials. The links, by the way, are in the description, or email me, feedback at taking20 podcast. Or you can message me on my coffee, K-O-Fi.com slash taking 20 podcast. Let's start this episode off with some interesting Wizards of the Coast news. It looks like they're going a different direction since Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins left.

They've listed a position opening for a TRPG publishing lead that will coordinate second and third-party content for D&D. In looking at the job description on LinkedIn, it reads, honestly, like project management, making sure that the contractors and subcontractors provide the material expected at the quality expected and stay under budget while doing so. I have a guess as to what this means for D&D going forward. A lot of their materials, I think, are probably going to be written by external IP collaborators, meaning either there won't be a lot of official books going forward or what I think's probably going to happen. The official D&D books will no longer be written by Wizards of the Coast employees, but by contractors and subcontractors.

I am honestly kind of ambivalent about the news, but that doesn't make for good hot takes that get clicks for podcast episodes. So I'll just say that third-party content for D&D already exists. If you had over to D&D beyond, the quality is all over. the place. I think this person is going to have their hands full because as someone who's managed large projects with a lot of external entities, it can be like hurting cats on meth. Listen, I have no ill will towards Wizards of the Coast. As a matter of fact, I put a link to the job listing down in the description. Go check it out if you're interested. I've been very vocal about some of

Wizards of the Coast's poor decisions in the past, like their use of Pinkerton agents like it's the fucking 1880s or their attempts to turn D&D into a live service offering. But, but I also praise them, like for the 2024 edition of the game and their recent regular surveys getting feedback from the community at large. To whomever accepts that position, I wish them luck and I hope they listen to the gaming community and maybe make D&D the draw it once was. It's still the gorilla in the room,

but where it used to be 800 pounds, now there's a lot of other options out there and they are growing by leaps and bounds. Thank you for listening. Now on to the character backstories. To be very direct, which probably makes for a bad podcast episode, the decision of whether or not to create a backstory for your character depends largely on the game you're playing.

If you're participating in a role-play-heavy campaign that prioritizes narrative depth and character development, then yeah, you should come up with something for a backstory, even if it's a short one. Giving your character a defined past of some sort provides justification for the role-play choices that you make, the skills that you choose, and the general motivation of your character. Why does your investigator hoard gold like that? Oh, oh, they grew up dirt poor

and they're always worried they're going to have a great idea and no way to fund it? Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Why is your sorcerer so withdrawn from everybody? Well, they were abused or teased because they were a teafling? Okay, it's only tangentially related, but with a huge apology to Marcus Garvey, one of my favorite quotes is, people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots. Garvey was talking about an entire continent of people, but the same idea could hold for your character's backstory. Giving your character a history will ground them in the present and give them a strong sense of who they are based on what they experienced before. Furthermore, a backstory gives game masters and your fellow players a lot of ways

to connect to your character, role play with your character, interact with your character. Maybe you both were in the Bellflower Network or were spies for Neverwinter or hunted mammoths together in the great wintry north. Rather than just being a fighter and a barbarian, now your characters have a reason to know each other. It gives you that root to show depth of your character and why you're adventuring together. Case in point, I've mentioned my cleric in recent episodes. She fought for a long time at the world wound, rift in the plains where the demons poured through and the peoples of Galerian fought to keep them contained. She saw the distra. She saw the distra. and in a lot of ways, senseless death of wannabe a hero after wannabe hero,

dying of wounds that she couldn't fully heal. She even bears the scars of those years. Emotionally, she's largely disconnected from most people, having lost so many people she was close to. And people that she heals are more slabs of meat than anything else, which honestly is ironic, given how hard she fights to make sure that innocents don't suffer. That backstory gives context when she says to, the sorcerer. You don't get to die today, pretty boy. Get over here. After he takes a critical hit to the chest from some sort of weird infected dinosaur. Yeah, that happened, by the way.

It's a fun campaign being run by my friend and author Tom Robinson, who, by the way, is updating one of his older custom modules he wrote for Pathfinder 1E and bringing it up to remastered Pathfinder 2E. When it comes out, by the way, you're going to hear it from me because I played it back in the day and had an absolute blast doing it. Keep an eye out. for the adventure of the Forbidden Sands, which will be out at some point on Pathfinder Infinite and probably other places as well. I will definitely announce when that happens. Back to the topic at hand, though. There are times when a backstory is extremely helpful. A backstory can be incredibly helpful, for example, to explain why your character is what they are, providing the

background context for their class, skills, current situation the character is in. For example, If your investigator hoards gold or sorcerer is withdrawn and antisocial, the backstory gives the reason why. It's the root that gives depth to your character. Secondly, if your character has a strong belief in something, whatever, a cause, a religion, anything that's core to the character, backstory helps reveal why your character believes what they believe. What actions or events in their past made them a family woman, a religious person, a champion for social justice? Without a backstory, then, yeah, okay, fine, that's who they are. But with a backstory, it can be a dramatic reveal of what happened behind the curtain to make them act like this now.

Your character's motivations, moral code, and deeply held convictions, like my cleric's unwavering commitment to protecting innocence, after her time in the whirlwind, by the way, witnessing young people by the thousand dying at the end of a demonic sword or rent in two by abyssal claws, these motivations are born from their past experiences, and these background events can be dramatic reveal moments in your role-play-heavy games. Finally, and most simply, you need a backstory if the GM requires you to have one. Many campaigns, especially those focused on heavy narrative,

make backstory a mandatory part of character creation to ground the character in the world, ensure they have connections that the GM and other players can use for plot hooks. That backstory should be discussed with your DM and around the table at session zero so you can look for ways to connect characters to each other and to the world at large. On the other hand, if you are simply with friends, slinging dice, eating pizza, and there's not a lot of in-character talking, acting, etc., it's more of a tactical game. Backstory is only necessary if it's fun for you. And these casual action-focused games, a complicated history would probably go

unused and the focus really of the game remains on the here and now. All that time coming up with the wise and aware force of your character would help you get into your character's headspace, but you have to expect that it won't come up during the course of the game. So yeah, come up with a backstory if you're in a roleplay heavy game, you want to create one to ground your character and its beliefs or if your DM requires it. So, my beloved GM's out there to flip that advice around on the other side of the screen. Should you absolutely require your player, to create a backstory for their characters.

I'd say if it's a role play heavy game, yeah, sure, absolutely require it. Or if you're willing to spend a little bit of time to weave that character's backstory into the history and narrative of your world, then yes, encourage your players to do it, even if they choose not to, those that do can be more integrated to the game world.

For example, if you ask your characters to come up with a brief backstory and they come up with the fact that their bard used to be a cortisone for a minor noble, You should look for a way to weave that into your game world. Who's the noble? Where are they from? Why aren't they still a cortisone for that minor lord?

Did they betray their former boss? Were they disgusted with the constant rumors that they were just forming for kingdom elites because they were having sex to keep their position? Oh, they're not really talented. They just earn their position on their back, that kind of thing. They're sick of that intimation. They strike out to prove their talent away from these baseless, or accurate, accusations being made.

DMs can also use the backstories to really twist the knife against a character, which sounds awful, by the way, but it gives you something dramatic and tragic to happen to the people from that character's background. For example, having the big bad attack the character's dad, if the character's dad is listed as an important part of their life, it takes it to a different level than if it just attacks random blacksmith number 27 in your game world. If a key part of your planned adventure is a character arc for one or more characters, then yes, having your characters come up with a backstory can show where their arc started

and will make their eventual growth or redemption even more powerful and have more of an impact. Without a backstory, you're seeing their journey from middle to end. But backstory can show those initial events and you'll see the full growth arc of that character. Okay, Jeremy, you've convinced me. I want to come up with a backstory for my character. How do I do it? Well, I'm glad you asked, person in my head. Honestly, start simple, short, succinct, uncomplicated.

While I love it when a player is so into their character to make a seven-page backstory, I love you. I'm not reading all that shit. I have the rest of the world to design and run and keep straight in my head. So if you want to write a novel for your backstory for your benefit, feel free to do so. But writing a long backstory and expecting your GM or worse, your players to read it is frankly unreasonable.

They have their own character to design, and yours is not as important to them as your character is to you. So if you're not experienced making up a backstory, here's my default, middle-of-the-road suggestion for how you could write a very simple backstory for your character. First off, maximum length, one paragraph.

Not a thesis, not a pamphlet, not even a page, one paragraph. And as a matter of fact, that paragraph needs to be about three sentences long. sentence one, where'd your character come from? My character hails from an isolationist, nomadic tribe of warriors and sages who continually travel the great desert looking for water. Or, my character grew up the child of a farmer in an unremarkable village to the west.

Faced with a life of growing wheat for the next 70 years, he stole a little money and set off to adventure. In one sentence, be able to say where you're from? Or is your character from a coastal city destroyed by the water elementals in retribution for our leader's depraved actions of the past. So the first sentence, tell me where you're from. Second sentence, your character wants something. What is it?

It doesn't have to be overly complicated. It could be as simple as they want excitement or money or better life prospects than they would have had otherwise. They're the fifth child of some minor noble somewhere, and when faced the prospect of becoming a monk or none, they said no. But I would encourage you to be creative about what your character is. once. Sure, money, power, wealth, fame. Those are just fine as far as motivations go, but there are other options. They want redemption for some past failure or with the church. They're fulfilling

an oath that they gave to someone important, especially if it was a dying oath. They are trying to prove their research right. They want to prove their doubters wrong. In the Dragonlance series, early on in Dragons of Autumn Twilight, you meet Gold Moon and Riverwind, two plains people of the Kayshoe tribe. They are in separate casts, but love each other. To win the right to marry her, Gold Moon's father, Aero Thorne, sends him on a quest to find proof that the gods exist.

Against an ocean of odds, he does. I'm not going to spoil how, and even after all of that, he returns with proof, Aero Thorne still refuses to give his blessing to their marriage. Gold Moon loved Riverwind, so they left the tribe together, and they meet the other protagonists in the end of the last home in Solace and voila, we're off on an adventure.

River Wins' reason for the first quest was that he wanted to marry Gold Moon. That's what he wanted. And the reason that they left together was because they wanted to marry and protect each other. Little did they know, by the way, though, what they would find in the lost places of the world would shape the rest of the world for all of time, effectively. Sorry, I have some Dragonlance knowledge stuck up in this archaic brain of my, and sometimes it just kind of leaks out. The knowledge, by the way, not the brain.

Brain is leaking out. Please see a competent medical professional. Anyway, your character wants to find the Lost City of Atlantis or destroy the heretical scroll of Dabagoth or find out the fate of colony Epsilon 13. Come up with a one-sentence motivation for your character for that second sentence of your backstory. Lastly, there's a conflict of some sort

that's either preventing your character from getting what they want, or some duty that they are called to fulfill. What's that conflict? What's that duty? Are they duty bound by their liege lord to take up this quest? Was their family heirlooms stolen by the cult of the whispering reed? Are they thwarting a rival? Were they excommunicated from their faith and the church is looking to make an example of them? Come up with these three sentences for your backstory.

Where did they come from? What do they want? And what's the conflict of their story? For example, the cleric I'm running in the Pathfinder 2E Adventure Spore War is a veteran of fighting at the world wound. Her backstory, she's from a faraway village and migrated as a part of a holy pilgrimage. She fought demons at the world wound and wants to prevent the unnecessary suffering of others. The internal conflict is that she is tired of fighting, tired of constant death, tired of what feels like trying to sweep back the ocean tide of evil. She is older and has proven her medal a hundred times over.

But she is better suited to fighting these monsters than so many others around her. So she soldiers on, nursing a growing list of wounds, both physical and emotional, knowing she will probably die at the hands of an infernal fiend, but better her than someone who can't defend themselves. Boom! There we go. She's emotionally detached. She'll help you out, but don't expect a good bedside man. manner, she doesn't fear death because she knows it'll find her eventually. She doesn't expect to grow rich, have a family, become someone's nana, nope, she fights because she must. Because she's

better equipped to do so than just about anyone else, and because the threat to her adopted homeland is real, immense, and requires everyone to do what they can. Three sentences, easy to remember, easy to role play. You don't get to die today, pretty boy. We've got more demons to kill, or I've seen enough people die. Her backstory tells you she is the living embodiment of, quote, just because I heal you doesn't necessarily mean I like you. Whether backstories are necessary and the benefits you get and having one for your character, like tying it to the world and giving your character some depth at the table,

depends on the circumstances of your game. Use the three-sentence method for writing out your first backstory. Where are you from? What do you want? And what's the conflict your character has? Take some time and think about your next character's backstory. even if it won't come up at the table. If nothing else, it will give you practice doing it and writing like anything else is a muscle that needs exercise.

Give your character some depth and roots, and if you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your friends would have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening. I'd like to get your feedback either via social media or email, Feedback at Taking20 Podcast.com. I also get comments sometimes on the Spotify version of my feed, so feel free to leave comments there as well.

Please send me a message. Let me know your thoughts on the episode. Tune in next episode where... You know what I just thought of? I haven't had a monster series in a long time. I mean, it's probably been half a year. So next time, let's talk about some golems. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Toilets. Toilets are a lot like celebrities.

Every now and then, they really make a splash. This has been episode 274, all about character backstories. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is Copyright 2026 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.