Background Fudging

[CrosshairCollie]

When a player gives you a very ... abrupt background/origin story for a character, how much willing to embellish it? Do you assume that he couldn't think of anything more, or that he doesn't want anything more?

 

In looking back over some old characters, I found a character who I made prior to acquiring CKC ... and I realize that his powers very closely mimic Holocaust's (though obviously much weaker). Now, that screams 'plot' in comicland ... either a wimpy clone of some sort (probably unknown to Holocaust), or even a "Luke, I am your father" situation.

 

The character's background is phenomenally sparse, perhaps four lines. Death of father as a child, entered military, left military, superheroed (to really shorten it). I have the odd feeling that the military background was a late addition, as he wanted a gun (despite his powers being superior in every concievable way to personal military hardware), but that's another issue.

 

So, we have a potential plot that adds a significant potential background element to the character; he may not be a human being (depending on how one defines clones), or his father may be one of the biggest threats to humanity around. Would you have a problem siccing this on him, or is it too 'invasive'?

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Background Fudging

 

Depends on the player, and how it's handled.

 

"Your whole past is a lie" is less likely to go over well. Something that adds to an established background without invalidating it is good, IMO. Your "his father is really Holocaust" most likely fits the latter category. If the character found out after all these years that he was really an alien-built robot instead of a human mutant...that wouldn't work as well.

[hooligan x]

Re: Background Fudging

 

I consider it my job to add hidden secrets to my PCs background. In my current group, I have Cobalt who started as an amnesiac cyborg. The player wanted his cybernetics powered by a mysterious crystal fragment and to be hunted by the corporation that built him. He recently found out the corps weren't the evil bastages he thought they were and that he was the lone survivor of a strike team that got unstuck in time and had been gone from the compound a mere three weeks although he had been with the PCs for over three years.

 

Another PC had a repressed childhood memory emerge to bite her. I had given Lillith write-ups of dreams of watching herself as a child drowning everytime she went to sleep. When the PCs were in hell, she met her father who had commited suicide when she was six after his inattention allowed Lillith's twin to drown.

 

My PCs like twists and soap opera pathos, so both stories played well. You have to know your players well enough to guess the reaction. Or you could just do it and hope you don't end up with a "Spider-clone" backlash. Eitherway, it's still true to the genre...