Time Enough for Genesis?
How much character development, particularly of the pre-first-level backstory variety, is typical for your gaming group?
My gang is a bit of a mixed bag – some are willing and capable of creating personal histories that would fill a small book, before they ever set out on their first adventure. There’s some good reasons for this – having seen it in action, my observation is that this is usually a result of forward-looking character design, and a desire to have some sensible motivation or reason why this character is going to make certain path/class/level choices as they come along. Fair enough.
Others may as well be playing chronic amnesiacs. Reasons here differ. A bad reason is just not caring about anything other than the day’s action. A better reason is a holding back out of a desire to see where the campaign leads and what the DM has in mind regarding player destinies.
Personally I like to take my characters just to the edge of a “formative” state at first level and then let it play out from there. More personality than history, see? I’ve been both successful and not-so-much at this, perhaps I could say diligent and lazy, because that’s what it usually boils down to for me. Or I can get cranky and blame the DM or campaign; hey, we’re only human. But let’s examine this: so maybe I’m not the sort of person who creates a character whose family is in a complex and prolonged blood feud with a rival house; but maybe I am the sort who’d be happy to accept such a turn of events were the DM to introduce it; but have I done enough to signal to my DM a willingness to explore such possibilities? Many DMs might assume that a player want to write his personal story as individually as possible, thus mistaking a story-passive player as uninterested when really he’s just looking to do it collaboratively. Communication is key.
In 4E, character levels 1–10 make up the first tier of play, heroic, after which that characters rise to paragon (11–20), then epic (21–30). If you liken character development to that of your favorite comic book heroes, perhaps the arrival of paragon level (11) can be seen as the end of your “genesis” story. Some might feel that’s too late/long. Heck, some might feel level 2 or even level 1 is the end of your “genesis”. “Genesis” has to be different than backstory, because by definition you wouldn’t play out a backstory. But I take it to mean that by the end of your genesis story you’ve clearly found and established your heroic identity. You are far from triumphing over (or even identifying) your greatest foe, but you’ve probably waged a great struggle against some powerful foe, and emerged victorious, to get this far.
Perhaps you can break it down and call levels 1–5 the “finding yourself” levels, and 6–10 the “proving yourself” levels. Of course, this works best if there’s some unifying story to tie all those adventures together. By this approach, by around level 6 the party should become aware of a specific opponent to defeat, or other such goal to accomplish, and the effort should take them all the way through to paragon. They haven’t saved the world, but they’ve made a dent in it.
So instead of having your characters start at level 1 trying to look backwards to create a backstory to put the fire in their bellies, perhaps instead you should have a group conversation about the sort of things they’d like to be part of their “genesis experience”. I don’t think it’s so wrong for a player to say, “I was thinking I would need to see my home village burned to the ground in order to become the sort of stone-faced killah I’d like to eventually play.” A lot is left in the hands of the DM, as well it should be, but you’re never going to get these things into play if you don’t try. And the bottom line is, if somebody’s home village is going to get burned down, isn’t it better to do it when your characters are at 5th level, not before they even start playing?