The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create the Most Interesting Story for Your Character (Ultimate Role Playing Game Series)

Gave me a lot of ideas and thought exercises for a good character background. Even after 30+ years of role playing this book was helpful and appreciated.

I love this book. It turned my gunslinging madman, Dirge Strangethorn, the worst of the worst in the weird west, into a somewhat sympathetic character! Take that, Cresendo Restriction-Bush!Seriously, though, this book has exercises for all sorts of characters. From new characters to seasoned veterans, to the untamable anti-heroes! It's good to note that these are very good exercises that will help guide your creative mind in order to flesh out your amazing characters. Though there are some random tables, it doesn't just spell out the answers for you. What fun is it if you don't put at least a little thought into the process?So, bond with your favorite characters created. Cast aside your doubts and embrace this amazing design doc. It's not like you have one shot only to a system mastery, or is it backstory mastery. Your character is more than a shield and some broadswords. Before you get to your session zero, you won't need a modifier for the critical success that will be your character! You can be guaranteed it'll be an adventure! You could even say it's neoscum good!

True to its word, The Ultimate RCBG guides players through the process of creating a detailed backstory for their role-playing game characters with the lightheartedness and whimsy of most Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Readers will enjoy the comedic tone of many of the exercises, from the adventuring party formation app called “Ventur” (“Whom does your character swipe right?”) to the “Damn Merlinials” prompt that explores how older generations of adventurers might look down on those newer to the lifestyle.The book leaps from topic to topic—“What is your character’s catchphrase?” segues into “What would you do to save a cat?” before proceeding to “What unique holiday do you celebrate?”, for example—which means readers don’t have to worry about getting “stuck” on one portion of their character’s life. You can easily skip ahead to a prompt that interests you, or open up the book to a random page for an unexpected adventure. If you want to work through the book in order, the activities are organized based on character level, which makes sense when you consider that the experiences of a fifteenth-level hero will differ compared to a first-level novice fresh from the farm. There’s also some great guidance in the introduction for the types of feats your character will be capable of accomplishing by level.A reader needs only the loosest of character concepts in mind to complete the activities—and honestly, you could go in with a blank slate and have fun seeing what sort of character you generate through the prompts alone. I think this is especially helpful for readers who may be intimidated at the prospect of crafting an epic backstory worthy of a George R. R. Martin novel (and having to generate a treatise numbering in the dozens of pages, like that one player always does). Even after completing only a handful of activities, you’ll produce an emergent narrative for your character’s past in much the same way that a series of rolls and card draws creates a story over the course of a board game. Contemplating how the different episodes in a character’s life might be linked makes for an organic and unique backstory, although it might not have quite the elegance and resonance of a character whose histories have been tightly plotted.Where many character backstory generators focus on the who, what, where, and when, the activities are structured to let readers focus on the how and why, which is much more useful when figuring out how to actually role play as your character. (Consider how two characters with a similarly tragic childhood might respond to those formative events very differently.) I was pleasantly surprised by how the activities also engage the rest of the adventuring party, inviting the reader to think about how their character relates to or potentially clashes with their fellow travelers. This is an aspect absent in similar types of character-writing advice books for novelists, and it’s something Amato’s book does especially well.Who Should Get This Book?This book is especially geared toward players who want to continue enjoying the tabletop gaming hobby on their own time, players who are new to role-playing and Dungeons & Dragons specifically, and players who don’t normally consider themselves creative. The latter type of reader will appreciate jumpstarting their inspiration with fill-in-the-blank prompts, short-answer questions, multiple-choice options, and tables to roll on to generate random results. If you do consider yourself especially creative and enjoy writing, your answers to the activities can serve as the foundation for a slew of short stories or scenes. The sheer variety of activities, as well as the range of prompts, makes the workbook fun and exciting to work through, since you’re genuinely curious to know what the next questions will be.Who May Want to Pass?This book won’t appeal as strongly to gamers who are turned off by fantasy tropes or settings, role-players who want a very serious or dark tone for their characters, and people who want to create novel-worthy characters efficiently (you can totally use these prompts to create a protagonist for your next writing project, but you won’t get there as efficiently or cover all the bases needed by a novel). That said, there’s still plenty of gaming goodness here for players of games other than D&D.Between the PagesThe very first thing I noticed upon opening the book was the interior design, which is elegant and well-balanced on the page. The sans-serif font is easy to read and not too small. The dual ink tones (black and orange) makes the product look good without the cost of a full-color production. The spot gloss on the cover and spine also provides a touch of class.Unfortunately, a lot of the beauty and visual interest is lost in the Kindle version, and I was disappointed by the low resolution of the bullet icons (likely done to keep the file size low, but storage space usually isn’t a concern for me on my Kindle or tablet). On the plus side, the tables are sized properly and don’t break awkwardly in the Kindle reader like I’ve seen in many other professionally produced e-books. Nevertheless, this book is definitely worth getting in print, or in a PDF option if one becomes available.Finally, I think any true workbook would benefit from a lay-flat binding, and some readers may find it awkward or impossible to write in their copies without breaking the spine. However, coil binding would have greatly increased the cost, and customers who really want this experience can take their books to their local office supply store or print shop to rebind it for ten dollars or so.Final ThoughtsAll in all, this book helps fill a gap in a burgeoning hobby where most of the how-to books are directed at game masters. Most importantly, this book provides a vehicle for many more hours of fun when you don’t feel like you have enough role-playing in your life.A complimentary copy of the softcover was provided to the author for review purposes.

This book is a really useful tool for helping generate backstory ideas during character creation. Either for a Player Character or a Non Player Character this book provides a good stepping stone in the process. It’s simple and open format is not intended as a specific regimen to be followed for Character Generation nor is it just an endless list of random tables. Instead it is a system neutral collection of brief themed exercises with questions and some random tables. These exercises are written in a way as if a GM were providing a scenario for you or asking you the questions and even have some die rolls for certain resolutions and possibilities. It is meant to inspire you to flesh out what this Character has been through and what may have helped shape their personality and their motivations. The books exercises are also broken up into tiers to have a general gauge over potential starting points in a Characters career. I really enjoy what this book has to offer and I find it very useful to get my own thoughts kickstarted. I would highly recommend this book to any player of any tabletop game or any GM to have at the table for their players to thumb through. A GM might even want to select certain exercises that might fit the theme of the campaigns starting point and use them as handouts at session zero. This book is jam packed with a variety of material to inspire you, a worthy purchase indeed. Thank you James D’ Amato.

Just a really fun book that can be useful for both your RPG characters and also just like writing exercises to better know and flesh out characters! D'Amato does an amazing job of asking these really, really insightful questions that strike at the heart of knowing more, and strikes the perfect balance of serious and also silly. Probably my favorite exercises in the book include building a familiar/mount/apprentice, where you are forced through the exercise mechanics to build a balanced (and therefore more likely to be fleshed out) character for yours to interact with. Some of the charts I found a little confusing, but otherwise I think this is a really handy book for any writer or roleplayer to keep around!

I use this book CONSTANTLY when making new characters or even for filling in gaps after giving a character a break and coming back with a level change. It's not just for TTRPG characters though; the exercises in this book are also great for creating a character in writing. Highly recommend this for anyone who plays TTRPGs or writes, whether you struggle with character creation/development or not. This book is a serious game changer.

Great idea well executed. Made a nice gift.

I got this for my boyfriend and he enjoyed it a lot, mow he knows all the tricks and tips to make his own rpg.

Gran herramienta de ayuda para la creación de trasfondo de personajes no solo en juegos de rol

Ce livre commence par des questions très sérieuses pour aider au développement des personnages de bas niveaux, et devient de plus en plus amusant au fur et à mesure qu'ils gagnent en puissance. Ce livre sera utile pour les joueurs qui veulent développer leurs historiques comme pour les MJs qui veulent créer des aventures "fillers". Il est fait pour D&D, mais s'insère sans effort dans des jeux narrativistes comme Dongeon World. Il demande par contre un GROS effort d'adaptation pour sortir du med-fan.

I honestly think this book (and its inevitable multiple genre-specific sequels) will be the required reading for all RPGs along with the players guides.For GMs, this gives you an excelent session zero and multiple ways of structuring in-game social RP moments. No longer will you ask for watches and rolling checks for the sake of it. Instead you can open up the fireside conversation section and have a character moment without putting anyone on the spot to hold up the drama.There are things that help players build the world and have character building sessions together outside of the regular game you might not have time for on game night.A less noted thing this gives you as a player is, as you randomly roll through some of the sections, you see things you don't like for your character. I find this gives you just as much insight and clarity on things you haven't thought about yet or are unsure of