i know this sounds all grumpy but i legit mean it when i say it is hilarious when someone writes it in to their backstory that they were the Smartest Mage on the Planet that has researched magic for A Thousand Centuries and then the game starts and they’re like “yeah i know fireball whats up” 

the more detailed your character’s backstory is and the more you boast about the character’s competence and abilities, the funnier it becomes when you roll a 1 and your character just drops their sword and shits themselves. president of the dwarves for six centuries and you just shit yourself in a bar you were trying to find work in.  

Like I know that this is a Goof Post™ and that you’re generally not supposed to try to offer any explanations for stuff like this for fear of Ruining The Joke™ but I feel like people do this because they fundamentally misunderstand what their character’s backstory is actually for.

The most interesting and compelling part of a character’s life is supposed to be the story you’re going to tell; you’re defeating the object by shoving all of the cool shit into their backstory. The actual purpose of the backstory is to inform your character’s behaviour and choices and the way they react to things so you can play/write them consistently! A solid backstory is a great way to make your character a whole person with a personality that makes sense.

tl;dr - A “cool” backstory doesn’t necessarily make for a cool character. It’s less about who they’ve been and what they’ve already done than it is about who they might become over the course of the story you’re going to tell with them.

hey! this! this is really really good advice for players!

Though also if you’re playing a long lived species, it is entertaining as hell to explain why they haven’t done anything in their life worthwhile. It’s also funny to explain how they did all these incredible things and still can barely hold a sword.

My paladin was a folk hero. Fought off bandits and saved a town. One of the first campaign battles, she rolled a one and yeeted her sword across the room.

Cue her going very red and stammering about how she was usually more proficient than this but you know. She had hurt her arm. And slept weird last night. You know. Perfectly reasonable explanations for not knowing how to swing a sword.

So I guess my advice for new players is to make whatever backstory you want. If you were epic beforehand and want to grow as a character still? Lean into it. Explain why they’re at level one. Did they land in a coma for a year, and their muscles atrophied? Did a wizard cast a spell on them? Did they just fall off their horse and hit their head really hard?

Anything is possible. And there are ways to do it serious and gritty if you want- say they took a serious blow protecting a loved one or even just an ally, but corrupt energy in the wound prevented magical healing and it didn’t heal right. They have to relearn everything left handed because they lost their right. The whack on the head was by an enemy attacking their group and they only survived because they passed out and the enemy thought they were dead. They have constant splitting migraines that make it hard to focus. There are so many ways to explain why they’re back down to level one.

And any answer is fun. Even if that answer is just “things are easier where I’m from.”

Play with it. Make a character you want to play. No matter who that is.

(My paladin, for reference, got arrested for stealing food when she was starving and lost her skills while she was in solitary confinement for 60 years.)