My group just finished a 6-year, 16-level DD5E campaign consisting of Adventurers League content strung together. It was a lot of fun of course, or we wouldn’t have kept at it for 6 years, right?
Character backstory was 100% irrelevant throughout the campaign. I think few if any of my fellow players imagined their characters as having eventful backstories. We had only one adventure shaped by party dynamics, where we quested for a scroll to Resurrect our cleric after a bit of bad luck with death saves. Apparently the only friends our characters ever had were each other, and the small handful of recurring quest-giver patron NPCs in the AL modules.
As players in our late career years with other outside hobbies and interests, sure, we can’t all commit to every campaign session or sink unlimited time into story collab. But I feel like it could have been so much more immersive and special with just the slightest bit of story tailoring to the PCs, not just steering us to dungeon after dungeon to solve a few puzzles between set-piece battles. I feel like it must be possible to run a campaign where backstory and character evolution still matter within a necessarily flexible attendance policy.
By contrast, another friend ran 8 or 10 sessions of the “Tomb of Annihilation” book, with a lot of thought toward weaving characters into the setting using backstory and personality details solicited from each player. Such a different experience, and I was a little heartbroken when the campaign fizzled due to scheduling impasses.
How would you describe the importance of backstory and player-driven story direction in your group? What are your top tips/tricks to make D&D characters feel less like interchangeable plug-and-play potatoes rolling through a disjointed series of episodes?
As DM it’s exponentially more work to incorporate player backstories into campaigns. I try to do it because I think it’s more fun, even if the current adventure has no tie-ins the characters can sometimes receive updates from back home via messages or letters, telling them about their siblings taking an exam or finding work, or the leaves at home changing colours and Nanas leg is on the mend, or possible hooks for future adventures like most crops to the west unexpectedly failing or tensions building near the border. Or maybe a market in this unknown land will hold a PCs favorite type of sport/show, and going there they’ll find a clue or hook or boon or ally for the current adventure which they would’ve missed if that character didn’t insist on going (nothing story-critical of course, just an extra bit of help)… but this only works if you have players who it works for, and I’ve also had players who doesn’t really care for personalized story arcs - and have played in games where the story was intriguing enough that I could take or leave any personal tie-ins for my character.
So it depends in the DM, the players, and the story.
You can always talk to your DM about this. Ask if they are willing to work more of your backstory into the campaign and suggest ways to do so (dont make them do all the work). Check in with the rest of the group if they also want to weave into the story or are fine adventuring for the sake of adventuring, so you dont all of a sudden get “perks” because you were the only one to ask.
But remember that DMing is a LOT of extra work as it is, and if they dont have the time or energy or enjoyment to work characters into the story, it wont happen (or it will but they’ll burn out, and the campaign will fizzle out).
As a counterpoint I would like to add that it also depends on your general style of play and the system your are playing.
I’m GMing a Burning Wheel group which is 100% player driven. We created the world and general story arc together and in Burning Wheel each Character has beliefs that are serving as story guidelines for me. I usually spend one hour on preparation to outline some challenges to their beliefs or a few kickers to stir the story up a bit. The rest happens at the table.
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Sounds fun!