Crafting Compelling Characters: Courtland Goldengate on Backstory Creation in RPGs and the Tall Tavern Project

Welcome back to everyone to the Legends, loot and Lore podcast. Today's episode features our guest, cortland Goldengate, and we are going to talk about all things character backstory. So that's going to be today's episode really diving into what makes a great backstory and what things you should think about how to go through that whole process, because when Joe returns from Fall Soccer, we are going to create some of our first characters. So really, backstory is really where you're going to get to use your imagination. So that's what we're going to talk about today. But, cortland, please introduce yourself for all of our listeners and tell us a little bit about yourself. Awesome.

Thank you, Andrew. So yeah, as Andrew said, my name is Cortland and I don't know what there is to say. I love TTRPGs. I've been playing them pretty heavily for maybe five years now, but I'm one of those guys that had the books when I was younger and was very into reading them and reading all about the pantheons and the items and the monsters. But, then never really got around to playing or tried to play in junior high, maybe in high school, but not doing it right. Not that there's a wrong way to play these games, but it can be intimidating with hundreds of pages of rules and all the coordination and all of that. So I would say I've been into fantasy and role-playing games my entire life, but only really with fifth edition have I very much gotten into playing and acting as a game master. Outside of that, I enjoy this hobby so much that I actually recently left my boring old corporate enterprise job to start my own company. So I've been working in the space of software developer tools, data science, machine learning and software for these people, and that's all well and good. But what I really most wanted to do is get deep into the community of people that share the same sort of hobbies that I have, and so I'm now currently trying to blend my hobbies and my out-of-work interests with my actual work and as a result, I am building software called Tall Tavern. It's TallTaberncom and it's software to record, transcribe and then summarize your tabletop role-playing game sessions so that you can have history of your campaign. Thank you, yeah, it's one of those things where I take a lot of notes, but sometimes I just fall off doing that and it takes a lot of work to keep a record of that, and so it's just one of those things where I'm building something that I want and I hope that it's something that can bring other people joy as well, and we'll see. So the app is actually going. The beta test, the first round of beta testers, is starting tomorrow. Awesome, I'm really excited to get some real feedback on it.

So let's dive into this a little bit more, so give us some more detail about what the app actually does. Is this an iOS, Android-based app, or is this a computer-based, like web-based app? What's the actual process?

It's a web app and so it runs great on mobile, but it's not like an iPhone app or anything like that. So you can just run it off a browser or off a mobile device or tablet, whatever you want. And it's very simple and straightforward. You just create a campaign. You can have whatever number of campaigns you want, and then each time you sit down for a game session you just click Add Session and click a button and it starts recording and it will then take that audio recording and transcribe all the text to it, so you have a history of all the text. But then I think maybe the more interesting thing is that it then allows you to summarize that. So if you want to have a journal, basically as a player in a TTRPG campaign, you can have that without distracting yourself during the game and just focusing on the people there and focusing on the game rather than jotting down notes the whole time. And then, as a Game Master, you can take those summaries and then, without any effort really, you can do the post-session recap. So if you play weekly or bi-weekly or monthly, it's really easy to say, hey, as a reminder, here's what happened last session, because we just got that summary ready to go already.

That is super cool For me, I know, as both a player and a DM. Note-taking is not one of my strong suits, so I have to really work to get better at note-taking and I play now in three separate campaigns One. I've gotten much, much better in the newer ones as I go along taking detailed notes I really like in the one campaign that I play, the DM basically has everybody write a summary of that's night activities based on their perspective, so you get to see everybody's perspective of the same type of events from their character's perspective. So that one's really interesting as well. So I'm a huge proponent of anything that makes that process easier, to share that information out, because not everybody is a note-taker. It just helps for recollection as to all sorts of things what loot you got, who said what, just trying to keep track and, depending on sometimes it may be weeks in between your gameplay sessions. So it's a nice healthy reminder to oh yeah, that's what happened three weeks ago the last time we were able to play. So that's really cool. I can't wait to see it and try it out.

And we will definitely link in the show notes for everybody. And what was the URL? Again, talltavroncom.

TallTavroncom Excellent. So we will definitely have that in the show notes so everybody can go there and check it out. So tell me a little bit about your background. So you really got into playing when 5e came out. So do you remember the first character you created in 5e?

I do, I do. I don't remember this character's name and that's probably an indication that this character wasn't that interesting. It was just a stat block. It wasn't a character, it was a warlock that had a dexterity based weapon. There was no backstory, we didn't do a session zero and it was still fun to play. I think I had kind of a great old one back, so I was very excited about having my character be like drawing upon some of the stuff from the Cthulhu mythos and I had it in my mind, the idea that my character would grapple with growing mental health challenges and insanity setting in from his connection to the alien entity. I think it was interesting in my mind, but really more of a learning experience actually in what not to do. Okay, yeah. So it was a fun idea, I think in my mind and then in practice it was a kind of a chaotic character behaving irrationally at some times that got in the way of what the rest of the party wanted to do, as the character was like grappling with insanity. And I think the thing that I really didn't consider is that a good backstory isn't just about you. A good backstory is a backstory that enhances the enjoyability of everyone at the table the game master, the other players and yourself.

So that will lead me into my first question for you. So what really makes a compelling backstory that's engaging for both the player, the campaign, the rest of the party and even the DM. So what really makes that a compelling character?

as far as the backstory is concerned, Well, I mean, the first thing you got to get right is you need to min-max all your stats. You need to go online and do your crafty character out to level 20. Don't worry about any of that, and, in fact, creating a powerful character can be a lot of fun, but it's actually really limiting in a lot of ways if you want to create an interesting character, because everyone generally wants to create a powerful character, and so there are certain types of characters that are just more powerful than others, and those are the most common ones. And I find that what people really enjoy is creating a character that feels unique to them, where it's a character where the player gets to act as the author of that character, or that character can be used to explore an aspect of the player's identity, and both of those can be interesting, because you're drawing on real human characteristics to try and make your character relatable but also unique. So it's a balance between those two things, I think, where you want to make a character that's different and interesting because of the fact that they're different, but that has enough about them that can be connected to, so that the other people at the table feel like this is someone that they want to get to know someone that they might have things in common with and someone that's different enough that makes them want to spend the time to figure out what they have in common with that character. I think that it helps to think about the personality that your character has and then work backwards to think about their history that would have led them to have the kind of personality that they have, or do the reverse Think about their history and how that would impact their personality. Did you grow up in a very safe environment where the authority figures in your life were characters that brought safety and comfort and were reliable? As a result, do you generally trust authority? Or maybe it was the reverse? Maybe your first inclination is to be distrustful, to be skeptical? What would cause you to have those kind of characteristics? I think you can start in either direction, but it's important to connect the past to the present.

That's a really good point, I think. In my own character creation I think I've really tried to understand who that I always start with the present. Who are they? Who are they now? Then I go back where I'm, the type that I'll start with this is who I want to be. Now I'm like, okay, well, what made him that way or made her that way? What made them that way? That's typically the attack I've taken when drawing up a backstory for a character. It's interesting going all the way back to say, well, what happened to them? First, let's talk about their past, and what kind of character does that morph them into today? That's an interesting vantage point from character creation.

If you want to go that less common route that started with what happened in my past to then figure out who am I today, that can be good. If you don't know exactly who you want to be when you have a character I know a lot of the people that listen to your podcast are newer to the hobby that might be an interesting thing to try. If you're not really sure what kind of character you want to be, you could even do things like roll on a table to have life experiences that took place and then think about how would that life experience affect who I am today. You could use some tools to effectively get through writer's block or that feeling of staring at an empty page and not knowing where to start.

You're taking a look at it from a different angle is definitely a good way to cure the writer's block of trying to figure out who am I say. Well, where did I start from, I think of? The first thing that pops into my head is the backstory for Bruce Wayne, batman, and the tragedy that happened in his young life. You could go either way. That could become the beginning of your villain arc, or that could become how you become the hero. You could really take it both ways. It's really an interesting starting point to go from the past. And where does it lead From there? It could be anywhere. It's a fun adventure. Trying to figure all that out. Tell me this. Let me ask this question Can you think of an example of a character backstory of all the characters that you've played or someone that has been at your table that you've DMed? What's a memorable backstory that has left an impact or left a mark on your memory of all the tables you've been a part of?

I think that it's good to have some amount of backstory, but not have so much that it takes center stage. It's called a backstory for a reason the coolest parts of your character and their story should take place and should emerge through gameplay. But it is important because it gives you a way to react and to build your character and their story, because it gives you an idea of how you would react to the situations that the Game Master is going to throw at you. Let me answer your question. To answer your question, a character that comes to mind for me, I feel like I'd make a good politician.

That was a great political answer.

That was an interesting question, a deep, thoughtful answer that has nothing to do with the question itself. Not at all. That was a brilliant question asked by a beautiful person. Let me talk about something else that I want to talk about. There is a character that comes to mind for me. This is a character whose name I do remember. That's immediately a good sign versus a good character that I created. This character's name was Aidan Broadmore, who was an arrogant, selfish, condescending, vain, noble, not a good guy, not someone that you'd want to hang out with, but who had a little bit of a comedic air as well. I thought it would be entertaining for the table to have an unlikeable, arrogant but kind of comic relief character. When creating this character's personality, I was actually inspired by what's his name? The military officer in Futurama, I can't remember his name, the blonde guy and his got his alien.

Absolutely, I know who you're. Now I'm going to have to look it up because Zapp Branigan.

There it is, zapp Branigan.

Yes, Zapp Branigan. Yes, exactly, I know he's so cocky and just full of himself and yep.

Yeah, so just the idea of comedically repeating what other people at the table said, but more loudly and with more gusto it was a fun little quirk to add in there and the thought I had about kind of his backstory in terms of like what would cause that arrogance and obviously a life of privilege like growing up with rich parents being spoiled, having it just be expected that you'd be leading in whatever situation you're in and have it not even cross your mind that you wouldn't. This thought that there's a certain amount of predetermined leadership capacity that people had and you happen to be born with it and other people happen to not be, and just kind of like sheltered, like not being in a situation that, not really having ever faced any challenges and being pretty weak as a result, not having kind of adversity, to like build kind of his own character. And I thought that would be kind of a good way to tackle a backstory, because during an adventure you encounter a whole lot of adversity. And so that was a sort of backstory that like pre-programmed room for growth. And yeah, I think that's part of what makes kind of a character interesting or memorable is that they're not static, that they change over time. And so, like I remember, at the start of the campaign, a giant kind of like spider creature was attacking the party and like and not even a giant spider, like some sort of demonic librarian spider creature in this old decrepit library and you know there was an NPC along with us and I just remember it like the creature was coming in to like stab at Aiden Broadmore my character, one of its sharp kind of forelegs and my character like grabbed an NPC and, like you know, block the attack with the NPC to like save his own skin.

And so that makes sense.

Decidedly unheroic, but then like also something to reflect on, something to be ashamed of. As the story went on and I observed like the much more heroic kind of characteristics of this other group of people and then started to like change my mind over time and then like see them do things for me that I wouldn't do for anyone, like rescue me, save my life, and then just starting to over time become less and less selfish, more and more open and kind and like really bond with you know his newfound family of this, you know the other people in the adventuring party?

That's fantastic. That is because, again, you could play it either way. You could play that the character does grow and changes and learns, or you could just play that this is the way the character is and the party kind of has to like. What does the party do with that? So interesting I'm playing, I'm looking forward to. I started playing a tiefling warlock. I've been in one of the campaigns and similar thing. So my patron is an undead Egyptian God and unbeknownst to me. The patron is trying to get me to raise an undead army to take over the world and destroy the world for them. But I'm a little naive and unaware of what their goal actually is. I was more interested in getting the power from the patron, not so much interested in the details of the contract. So I'm going to. I still haven't decided which way it's going to play out. Is he going to turn and say, no, this is not something that I'm okay with. I'm not going to help you raise an undead army. Or is he going to say, well, I want to keep my power? This is kind of what I have to do to keep my power. So I'm curious to see how the campaign plays out and what choices my character makes. But I've kind of put him in this precarious kind of big life decision of choosing good or evil and he's kind of chaotic, neutral at the moment, so it could go either way. So I've never played that before where the outcome is undetermined.

Awesome. Well, as someone who likes to think of himself as chaotic, good in real life, I hope you choose the light, my friend, and the cool thing I like about your story and that setup is that there's a real cost behind doing something good. You have to give up. You know potentially the source of your power, the source of your kind of uniqueness and your usefulness to the party and your ability to potentially do other kind of good with that power in order to really kind of break with your patron there. So I always think that you know a value is only a value if you do it when it's hard, and so if you make that kind of decision with your character, that's a really kind of strong indication of the character of your character.

The character of the character, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. I'm rooting for your character. Challenge the patron, take him down.

Yeah, I want to say it's. I've been working with the DM on trying to figure out how that all fits into the campaign, but we'll see how it plays out. I want to see. I mean I think ultimately he's going to choose right over wrong and sacrifices power, but does that mean loss of life? Does that mean you know what does that mean? So I'm very curious to see how it all plays out. He's got something, the DM's got something in mind. So that brings me to my next question. So how much collaboration should there be with the Dungeon Master when developing a character's backstory? Like how much? Because I mean you kind of want to create a character that's going to kind of fit the campaign but still be something of your own. So to what extent should a DM be involved in helping you craft your character or help guide you kind of to finding something that's going to be a good fit for the party, for the campaign, et cetera?

Well, as a you know Game Master or the Dungeon Master myself, I think that the DM should proactively solicit input from the players at the table and involve them in building the world, because it's easy for a Dungeon Master to get lost in the world that they're creating and think of it as their world, their story, and that leads to, I think, the single biggest killer of fun in a role-playing game, which is this feeling like you're on rails. Yes, you don't have real choice or agency. It's like, okay, the DM has got an idea of where this is going. I actually don't have any choice. It's like the train is heading that way. You know get on it or don't. And then you know think about how the player feels about their cool backstory that they spend all this time creating. That's right. Why does your backstory matter if you don't have any choice or agency in the present? You know. So I think there are ways to avoid that, and I would say I borrowed this idea from someone that is a better Dungeon Master than me, and there are plenty of those out there, and I think people should generally just steal good ideas whenever they see them. No one can hoard good ideas in our community, in this space and hobby and the idea is to ask of the players at the table to create parts of the world, give them a little homework, create an NPC that exists in this world. Where does that NPC live? How did you know that NPC? Give them an item or have them create an item that comes from the world but has no utility. So I remember a character of mine in a game that I was playing from this DM that I learned this kind of thing from had a miniature boat and a bottle like a little kind of like handcrafted miniature boat and a bottle. So no use, no value. It's not going to help in combat, it's not going to help in social interaction. There's literally like zero mechanical use for this thing, except to force me to consider like, where did I get this? And in this particular game I'm playing in the Dragon Lance setting, which some people may remember from Tracy Hicks and Margaret Weiss' books I think I'm getting their names correct but a lot of people read those books back in the day the dragons of blank season and so it acted as a start like a thought starter. It's like, well, okay, I got this tiny little boat crafted by tiny little kinder hands, which is like that setting's version of the halfling Okay, well then I was in Kendermore, okay, well, if I was in Kendermore, might I have met this other player's character at the table who's a Kendr? And so it acted as a seed from which more story could grow. So I think, yeah, dms should give their players that opportunity to like create something from the world. Don't just hand them the world like involve them actively in trading it and then from there, like encourage them to like think about those sorts of things. I also think that, like a pro tip for DMs is to have, like players characters, know some of the other players characters, because why would a group of you know people risk their lives to pursue some call to adventure and like stay with each other versus any other loyalty that they might have to their family or their kingdom or whatever else, to their own sense of safety and security? And one way to do that is like, if you have a group of four players at a table you have have like one character, no, the second character and the third character, but not the fourth character. Okay then you can have, like the second character no, the first character and the fourth character, but not the third character. So everyone knows someone else and everyone doesn't know someone else. And so there's some people that you're meeting for the first time, other people where you have some background in history with, and then it not only like avoids the pitfall for a player and their characters backstory, to just be all about them and only be interesting to them and not the rest of the table. It also opens up the opportunity to like introduce people. No, oh, you know, like character character two, I know you and I know character three, but I don't know character four. You know character two. Can you introduce me to character four? How did you? You know, it just opens up opportunities for a dialogue. So I, you know, I put a high degree of responsibility on the DM for that and to do things that will involve you know characters and their backstory and its creation. But there's more players out there than there are DMs and it certainly doesn't hurt to ask and to be proactive right. Or maybe you have a newer, a newer DM or a DM that hasn't tried that particular trick. I mean, you know in, why not ask like, hey, you know, can I create an NPC in the world? I don't think any DM would say like, no, get out of here, this is mine, definitely not. You know. You know players that offer to do some of the work, to lift some a load from a DM right. I think the response that you're going to get 100% of the time is like yes, absolutely, like you know. Come on, let's. Let's do this together.

Yeah, that's, that's. That's a great point. Yeah, I think this topic has come up with with other others that I've interviewed on the podcast about, yeah, railroading, kind of railroading the players in one way, or giving them a sandbox to play in, and I think having that that level of autonomy and just and just being able to kind of choose where, where you get to go, really, really, I think enhances the game Even, even as if we're going back to talking about backstory. You know, why is there? What's the purpose of a backstory If you're just going to railroad them down the particular path you know there's no, there's no, there's very little point to it at that point, I think. So, so, by giving them the freedom to choose where to go, you know. So, based on on their history, where do you feel your character would, would go? So that's a really good, a really good point to make.

So maybe add one thing to that, which is that you can go too far in the other direction. You know, you can have a world that's so open that the players just don't know what to do, don't feel like they have a purpose, and so it is a tricky balance to, you know, allow freedom and maybe there, maybe there is a path, maybe there is a railroad and there is a kind of a central antagonist at the end of the campaign, or you know that needs to be stopped, whatever it is, but then you at least have to allow for detours.

Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's good to have a thread that the story follows. I always liken it to a choose your own adventure book. You know there's a story, there's a plot, but there's still room for you to make it your own. Yeah yeah, for sure I agree. So I don't know about you, but I've seen this with some people. I struggled with it the first time. Again, people new to D&D, sometimes it's not, there's so much to remember. So there's all the rules, remembering the dice which dice do I roll for this? Which dice do I roll for that? How much do I use for my weapon? Oh wait, there's advantage and those disadvantage. You know inspiration, yada, yada, yada. But it can sometimes, on the face of it, be a little intimidating and overwhelming. So, as far as creating the backstory is concerned, what's some advice you'd give to someone to maybe jump over that hurdle when they're creating their first character? What's a good starting off point? Maybe to again. So we talked about either starting back from kind of a trigger point in their history or how are they right now. But what might you say to someone who's trying to kind of come up with that backstory for the first time for a new character?

I would say especially for D&D, which is fairly combat heavy, like there's not a lot of D&D games out there where combat is a minimal or absent part of the game. And with that in mind, I think a good place to start is to ask yourself a couple of questions, the first one being why would I risk my life? What would I risk my life for? And communicate that to the DM? This is something that motivates my character and that is important enough to my character that they would risk it all, risk losing their own life to advance, whatever that thing is. And there's a whole host of motivations for that, good ones bad ones somewhere in between, and so answering that question can be a good first step. A second one, and at least as important, is asking yourself the question what would lead me to be loyal to other people? What would lead me to be loyal to the other people around the? table what sort of person and personality? Would my character need to have to go to the mat for the other characters at the table? And if you answer those two questions and communicate that to the DM, you should have a character that will heed the call to adventure that they will inevitably get and that will feel natural and true when you make decisions to support the other player characters at the table. And that's not just about you and your own thing, but it's being a part of a found family, which is really, I think, what these tabletop role-playing games are all about Like. Why are you spending all your time with these other weirdos around? The table, oh for sure. It's because you care about them and care about them enough that you choose them, over whatever background or circumstances that you came from. So, yeah, I think to me, keep it simple. Just ask those two questions what would cause me to risk my life for something, for a cause? Who would I need to be to risk my life for something, and who would I need to be to have unwavering loyalty to other people? What would need to be true about me and about them for that? And then just talk. That's what a Session Zero is all about is crafting your character and your backstory as a collaborative effort, not as an individual author coming up with a cool individual story.

So let's talk a little bit about it, because we haven't really yet touched on this topic. We've mentioned it several times. But let's talk about Session Zero and what that means for what kind of what happens at the like. Let's talk about your tables, for example, that you DM. So what are? How do you weave in, how do you welcome in new players into a Session Zero to talk about backstory and their character development? And how do you kind of blend, help blend that party together so that when they're ready for the first session together they're a cohesive unit? So how do you tie in all those backstories into an adventuring party for a campaign?

Yeah, I feel like I've done this with varying degrees of success in games that I've run, and even in some recent ones I have not given. You know, just to be honest, haven't given Session Zero its proper time and attention and then, like, really quickly realized what a big mistake that was. But I'm just going to talk about the times when I did stuff good and well rather than my mistakes. So I remember kind of a group that I started with where I was the DM and we've been playing since the start of the pandemic. This was an online game and it's you know, it's still going you know where, I think close to three years on, something like that. It started out with a pretty involved Session Zero. It was, you know, a lot of us getting together. We met online. We didn't know each other beforehand and we're all kind of just, you know, stuck at home, you know, sheltering in a place, and part of it was just getting to know these people, like asking them like why they're interested in playing D&D to begin with. So you know, there was a guy who had never played before but had, like, was a critter and would watch and listen to a lot of critical role and just really drawn to it. You know, due to that, there was, you know, another person that had played for decades and knew everything about the game and was a DM and his motivation for playing was different. He was like I just want to play Lost Minds of Fandelver. I want something simple. I feel like every campaign I play is made for people that have done it all and seen it all. Like I just want like a very straightforward experience. I was like, okay, that's interesting. And there was a couple you know, a husband and wife, and she had kind of like grown up playing D&D second edition with her family, and she brought her husband into the hobby. I thought that was super cool, because I hear the reverse of that all the time.

Right, right, that's awesome.

So that was, you know. It made me realize I had this preexisting you know. Note that. I hadn't really even thought about. But I was like oh yeah, that's cool and you know they wanted characters that knew each other and like came from a similar place and background. So that was important to them. And so, yeah, I mean I started out with, like why do you want to play D&D? Like you're the person, and then from there went into those two questions that I asked, like what would cause you to risk your life or something and what would cause you to be loyal to a group of other people you know, basically a group of strangers, or you can know them in your past and that sort of thing. So I teed it up like that for them and got a sense of the character arcs that I believe would have been fulfilling for the players and overwhelmingly it was about self discovery. It was like the motivating factor for people Like wanting to you know. So one of the guys that was currently doing a lot of improv, she wanted, like she was drawing actually inspiration from Ariel the little mermaid as someone that just wanted to like get out from a sheltered kind of experience and like see what else is out there in the world and having that be like such a huge draw that you know you would actually, you know, risk your life to do that, to like experience, you know, a whole new world. And I thought that was interesting because I would have never made a character like that, with a motivation like that. But then I was thinking about it like, oh yeah, ariel the little mermaid, she like goes to a pretty sketchy sea, which just like you know, see, you know part of the world that was previously inaccessible to her. So that was, I think, laid out and, as a result, you know, we're all you know, we're still playing this campaign. We've got, you know, this group of people that are three years on still adventuring and actually like not even that far along after three years, I think like the party's level eight. All right, that's.

After three years that's got to be quite an adventure to not know, I would love to thought like level eight is what just your just your second ability score increase. So interesting yeah.

And you know to think that we started off on the intro campaign, lost months of hand over the original one, not the new one. Right.

And that's how I started. I started on lost minds and I still love it.

It's supposed to be a five session adventure, which is like Is it really? People get through that and no one gets through it in five sessions. But, like, like in the book, it actually says like oh yeah, you know you should be able to accomplish each of the five chapters of one session, each Like with you, like playing with the, you know anyway. Right. So we played it particularly slowly and you know they want to beat path and completely off the rails and we're doing their own thing and really identifying, or you know, finding themselves and who they were through that play. And it was, yeah, as a, as a DM, that that's. I mean, I've DMed a number of games in my usual group, with the people that I play with in person. They're such power gamers, every single one of them. Yeah, to be honest, as, as I'm, I have to like, fight the urge, like you know, like, like I've got, like you know I must, you know, have eight intelligence and 20 strength and I have to, like you know, tone it back and and not, you know, make such cookie cutter characters. But you know this group of people. Most of them were so new to D Well, half of them were so new to D and D that you had characters like a fighter that somehow managed to have, like 13 AC as, like you know, a level four or five character. Like how do you create a fighter that's so easy to hit? Oh, my goodness. But yeah, this this guy did and and what you know it was this super fun character and like just looking at the stats and things of all of them is like horribly unoptimized and yet this group it's been the most like, enjoyable and fulfilling D&D game I've ever played. Because the stats, that's not where their attention was. Right. You know their attention were what was in like their backstories and their story arcs and how it would change over time and the role playing moment. So I knew this group was special when they were just traveling along the road and you know, from point A to point B and you know I just put up a screen of like a campfire you know crackling sound of a kind of a campfire going as they made camp for the night and they were all just sitting around the campfire just talking to each other and character and I was doing nothing. I was just sitting there like listening to them, like recount the day and like what they were hoping to do. When you know, when they reached never winter and and you know, talking about this funny merchant that they had like ran into the day earlier on the road and like and they're just, you know, like building off each other and like the more comfortable one player got with, you know role playing, the more comfortable everyone got Right. And I think, like this, this virtuous cycle is really cool and, as a DM, just a very rewarding experience.

That's fantastic. I think you said something I'm trying to remember. I was just listening to what you were saying so I lost my train of thought. You know, I think it's really interesting how, how the back story is really. I think it drives a lot of the role play, like you said, really really well, because that's I mean we talked about. We've talked about a bunch of the races, classes, et cetera, you know, and all that's kind of pre-built, like you can play opposite a class or race or things like that, but a lot of that's already kind of set in stone, so to speak. But really the back story is where you get to to put the meat on the bones that D&D has created, and I think you know it's. I liked what you were saying about the players not optimizing the stats, because you can really create some interesting, very interesting interactions for your character by not necessarily optimizing them. You know, you can imagine a fighter with 13 AC. He goes into the fight, he's getting hit every time, but you know he may be, it may be just because he's slow, but you know, but he's still gonna go in there and fight and then stand beside his party. So there's some really interesting ways you can definitely play that, so I love that. Yeah thank you, it's. I never think about that because it's after you've played a while. You know, I think you're just like you said. I think you fall into that trap of trying to optimize your character and really make them strong and everything like that, but you forget about kind of the early days and how you really didn't understand a lot of those concepts and you just had you almost had more fun with it then than you do now.

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know you can over complicate things, for sure, and it can actually take away from the experience, right, but you know, it's obviously there's no one right way to play D&D. But one thing that I think is generally true is when players spend time and care on their backstory, it shows DMs appreciate it and it makes the DM wanna do the same. You know, it makes them wanna reciprocate. And so, okay, you created a character with this awesome backstory and, oh right, yeah, you're a fighter with 13 armor class but, like, let me play into this and some of the stuff that you've written and let me design a game session that's just all for your character and will like create something in game that will actually make you like stay conscious during the combat encounters. Yeah, right, because the DM wants everyone to have fun and it's no fun to like just be a punching bag, you know, in a combat encounter. And so what that means is that the DM is going to balance the strengths of the characters out. You know, I think people forget that a DM can, you know, create an item that you find that increases your armor class? Sure, they can, you know, create an experience that happens to your character that changes their abilities, so you can make an unoptimized character and that character could become the most powerful character at the table just through story and customization that the DM does. So it can feel, I think, as a player, a little risky to do that. Like it feels like a little bit of a leap of faith, like how do I know, if I create this like horribly unoptimized character that is unoptimized for a reason, because of this interesting backstory, how do I know that the DM is going to like compensate for that to make sure I'm having fun, because it's then fundamentally out of your control. But that's part of the game, that's part of the experience. It's not a one player game you know, for sure, for sure.

So I know we're running out of time here, so let me ask you this question to kind of wrap up here. So are there any resources or tools that you would recommend for both DMs and players who are looking to trying to? Maybe they've already created some backstories for characters and maybe they're looking to enhance their abilities, you know, are there any tools or resources out there that you use or have used that might be of value to to others trying to write up a backstory for their character?

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is probably going to be a polarizing answer, depending on kind of what your stance is on, like chat GPT specifically, generative AI generally but if you are comfortable using a tool like that, if you believe that, like anything, there are bad people that use tools to do bad stuff and there are good people that use that same tool to, like, do good stuff or harmless stuff, then you could consider using a service like chat GPT as a thought partner you know a brainstorming buddy, just you know. Yeah, here's what I'm thinking for my character. Give me 10 ideas that you know would help me flesh this out, or you know that sort of thing. I think it's what you don't want to do is just have something, or someone else create something entirely for you. But I do think that tools like chat, gpt or any other large language model can help get you unstuck and then, if you know, if you don't want to use the tool. The other thing is to like riff with a friend. You know someone else at the table like do the same thing, but you know, brainstorm with a human instead of you know, an AI chat bot. So I, you know, I would recommend, you know, using that if you're comfortable doing so, like if you don't have, probably. You know, there's a lot of people that have very well thought out reasons for being kind of philosophically opposed to the stuff, and that's awesome. Yeah, I have a ton of respect for people that have different points of views than I have, and especially people who take a principled stance on a point of view. But if that's not you and you know you've thought it through and you do believe that these tools are, like, worth using, or there's not a kind of an issue in how you would intend to use them, and I think they're a great resource, you know, absolutely a great resource. There are a bunch of services out there that offer like tables that you can use. Roll a dice, get an idea. Mm-hmm yep, those are created by humans. Probably too many to list. Don John, I think, is a common resource that people use. Yeah, I met this guy, you know, we met on threads. There's somebody else I met on threads, I think it's handle is Dungeon Glitch and he's got a site that's got some tables. I wanna say All right, cool. But yeah, to be honest, like I use chat, gpt, but I know there's a lot of great tools out there that, like you know, offer that same sort of thing, but without the AI.

I would even say, you know, for book lovers, comic book readers, you know, take a look at there. You know a lot of these backstories are very common archetypes of you. Look at the, you look at Batman, you look at Lion King, the parents who die in the background and they run off and kind of find themselves and come back to be the you know the hero and save the day. You know these are a lot of the very common stories that you can take those same backgrounds and use that same kind of concept for your own character. Like I, one of my characters was a Tabaxi monk who I based off of kind of the backstory of Daredevil and he was a blind monk, so he had the martial arts abilities he couldn't see. So he had that same kind of story as Daredevil did, but it became my own character. You know, after that that was just a jumping off point to get started. So there's all sorts of great, great backgrounds in literature and things that you can use in history. I'm another user of chat GPT just for generating ideas at volume. You know it can be really helpful to see something that might spark your interest and you use that as a jumping off point. So there's a lot of tools. You have the tables that you mentioned. You know you roll and you can come up with all sorts of random ideas for your character. So there are lots of tools and lots of ways to be inspired for those backstories. So I think that's a great thing to remember, don't? There's nothing that's gonna limit you, don't? You don't have to be, it doesn't have to be 100% original. You know that's it's hard to it's hard to be 100% original these days. So think about what you love, especially if this is your first character. Think about a story that you love and maybe pick up from someone's backstory there and make it your own. So there are tons, of tons of options out there for, I think, for for getting inspiration for writing your character's backstory. Yeah so, coralyn, thank you. Thank you so much for for being on the podcast today. Are there?

do you have any any parting words or anything else you would like to share with our audience before we, before we wrap up, Well, I mean, first and foremost, I wanna thank you for having me on your show and just let you know this was a blast for me, like what a fun way to spend an hour just talking about this hobby that you know both you and I enjoy. You know parting thoughts not, you know not really If. If I'm I'm on the internet at Tull Tavern, mainly active on on threads, and I love meeting new people and talking to folks and all of us out here in the TTRPG creator space we're real humans, like. We're not like companies, and you know we talk to people and like talking to people and I know a lot of us are introverts but I know personally that what are you talking about? Yeah, I mean I'm I'm a pretty shy person myself, but what I've found since kind of getting a little bit deeper into the scene here is that people are awesome and and cool and nice and generally like connecting. It's not like, it's not an imposition, you know, to just like reach out and say hi and ask questions like a conversation. So I don't know, I guess I feel like I'm giving advice to myself not, not to anyone else. But yeah, that's all right. It's been really cool meeting a lot of new people in the TTRPG space and it's just you know what a beautiful, diverse, vibrant, interesting, smart, kind group of people, and so that's probably the biggest benefit of getting into like a TTRPG, like Dope and. Dragons is you get to meet awesome people. Yep, you know, I'll leave it at that.

Excellent, great, great, great note to end on Cortland. Thank you again so much. I appreciate you being here today and for sharing your expertise. And tall, it was a talltaverncom, correct.

Talltaverncom. Yeah, you got it and it was a blast, thank you.

Awesome, thank you.