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Could you do me a favor? Take a moment and think about a person you probably know very well: your Gamemaster. Consider the hours and the effort he's put into learning the system, world-building, mapping, plot, character development, and just plain running the game itself. Now ask yourself, what could I do to thank my wonderful GM for all the work she's done to ensure that I have a fun evening once a week? Sure, you could take him out for a few drinks, send her a thank-you card, or just offer to pay for pizza the next time around, but I think there's a better way - or at least one that's more in keeping with what you received from him in the first place. Best of all, the alternative doesn't cost you a dime. That gift, of course, is an interesting, well-crafted background for the next character you decide to run.

I think most of my fellow experienced GMs would agree that when planning a new campaign, nothing is more refreshing than receiving an inventive background just dripping with plot hooks, just as nothing ruins your day quicker than getting a bad one. As I've said in earlier articles, backgrounds are probably the best motivational tool in a GM's repertoire because the good ones are practically guaranteed to contain plot hooks the PCs can be assured of following. Yet, this approach can become extremely frustrating because character backgrounds are one of the few aspects of your game you have no control over. You can give your players all the ideas and suggestions you want in the hopes they'll come up with the sort of thing you wanted to see, but the simple fact is you're never going to know until you actually have the characters in your hands. By that time, it's sometimes too late.

Fortunately, there is hope. Writing a good and useful background - or ensuring you get them from your players - is simple if you know what you're doing. This article aims to provide GMs and players with a few tools to help. First, I'll give GMs a few pointers on how to encourage good background writing from their players. Then, I'll offer a few suggestions for players on how to hold up their end of the bargain.

GMs: the key to getting good backgrounds from your players is communication. When you first announce the game you are running and put out your call for players, you should also announce your expectations for character development. Does your plot dictate, for whatever reason, every character have a well-developed childhood and a concrete rationale behind how he acquired each and every one of his skills? You'd better tell them now, because otherwise they won't think it's as important as you do. Also, try to give them an idea of the length of background you're looking for, so you don't receive paragraph-long ones when you're looking for a length of several pages, and vice versa. Or maybe you don't think they need backgrounds for this game and don't want to waste time wading through them. Whatever option you choose, make sure to be clear about what you're looking for. Putting it in writing and giving it to your players couldn't hurt, because it gives them a set of concrete guidelines to look back at.

Don't be afraid to put your foot down about this. In fact, the best way to encourage good background writing from your players is to be strict about them. Make it clear that if your players can't deliver a background to you by the first session of the game, they won't be playing until they do. Don't be afraid to reject (or ask for the revision of) backgrounds that don't live up to your expectations, either. The flip side of this strictness, however, is a willingness to work with your players to be sure they live up to your expectations. Take the time to sit down with them, discuss any problems you might see with their background or suggestions for how they could improve it. This also has the added benefit of allowing you to slip in little plot hooks and other tidbits that might make your job easier later on in the game.

At that point, however, the GM's job in the background-writing arena ends and the player's job begins. So what's a simple gamer to do when confronted with this amount of responsibility? In my view, good backgrounds aren't that hard to write. In fact, they can come about simply by paying a little attention to the following five extremely non-scientific categories of the characteristics of a good background:

Effort
I'd hope I made this clear earlier in the article, but don't blow off writing a background when the GM asks for it. Even if you don't feel like your character is interesting enough to warrant a full background or you aren't a good writer, I can guarantee your GM will appreciate it if you just make the effort to fulfill the expectations. (Besides, as a writer I can tell you the best way to produce good work is simply to sit down and do it, without worrying about whether it's good or what others might be thinking.) A good rule of thumb is to approach writing a background with the same amount of effort you would normally put into a session of the game. If it's a straightforward "beer-and-pretzels" type game you can probably get away with dashing off a few paragraphs and handing them in, if you have to write a background at all. If, on the other hand, the game requires a high degree of mental engagement from all of its players, all the time, you should seriously think about sitting down for a few hours to give the writing process your full attention.

Consistency
It's not necessary for every character or every background to be amazingly original. Perfectly good, even great, stories can be told using stock characters or ideas that have been "done to death" - after all, cliches got to be overused because they work. What is necessary is your background be consistent with the way you play the character, with the plot the GM has created, and with the larger framework of the game itself. The purpose of the character background is not only to let the GM know where your character has been and what she's done - it's also to give you and the GM an idea of what the character is like and how she'll fit into a normal gaming session. Because of this, it's important to give the GM (and yourself) an internally consistent worldview and a sense of the character's personality through what you write. There are a number of ways to do this, but the easiest one is to try writing your backgrounds in first person as opposed to third person ("I was born in the north" rather than "Torsh the orc was born in the north"). Include peculiar word choices and metaphors, speech patterns, and anything else that makes your character distinct. When you force yourself to write in a character's voice, the same way you would try to roleplay in that voice during a session, it can unlock all sorts of secrets about that character you didn't even know where there.

Detail
Some GMs hate getting really long backgrounds from their players. I, for one, love them. The more a player gives me to play around with, even tiny details that don't seem to have any bearing on anything, the easier it becomes for me to work them into the story and create a plot. If your GM is of a similar persuasion as me, go nuts. Think up things like names and personalities of important figures in your character's past and anecdotes from your character's childhood and young adulthood and write them into the background. Just keep on doing this until you get bored and you don't think you have anything to say anymore, then edit it down so it fits together (thus fulfilling the "consistency" requirement). Even if they don't like long backgrounds, you can still slip in one or two paragraphs of solid detail like this, and your GM will probably thank you for it.

Cooperation
Another hidden purpose of backgrounds is to give the characters a reason to be together. This means you should talk to your fellow players as all of you are in the process of writing backgrounds, and work together to create reasons to cooperate. Mainly this extends to making sure your character doesn't conflict with others to the point of interfering with the game - if there are a bunch of elves in the party, you'd better be sure you don't decide to have your character hate elves. But if you really go crazy, you could work with one or more of your fellow players to write a shared background. Make your characters siblings, best friends, lovers, a mentor and a student, whatever - just give them a reason to work together and know each other already. It's a little extra work, but it results in a group of PCs with built-in reasons to cooperate. GMs love that.

Loopholes
This is the number one thing that makes me smile with glee: when I receive a background and declare it as "excellent." The best kinds of backgrounds are the ones that are detailed, yet vague (if that makes any sense at all). They're the ones that give you a good sense of the character, yet leave enough wiggle room the GM can fill in any gaps that might present themselves. Don't write a background that's airtight, so everything in your character's life has some sort of concrete explanation. Instead, leave some things open for the GM to fill in. If mysterious men in dark robes destroyed your character's village, it's okay and even good to say you don't know who those people were - the GM can think about it and tell you that later on when he presents you with a plot hook based on the unresolved experience. (Alternatively, if you have some ideas, you might "break Rule Zero" and inform the GM of those ideas.) This requires putting a lot of trust in your GM, but trust me - it'll pay off in the end when you find your character (and your background) at the epicenter of an amazing, epic plot line that grew out of the loose ends you didn't tie up beforehand.

If all goes well, after you take these elements into consideration you should be well on your way to writing a background that will make your GM weep in gratitude. If you've got any other ideas for how to accomplish this task, go ahead and enter them in that little comments window at the bottom of this page. Happy gaming!