Players in my group usually do not make too much of a back story. We usually just generate the characters, come up with something vague and get going with the adventure.

I find this generally works better because backstories often wind up being these big blocks of text that never get used. We might instead throw in some details if needed, if the characters, for example, needs to know an NPC in town or they throw in some memory as flavour in their roleplaying.

The usual questions generally do not help to make the characters more interesting. Who the character actually is emerges through roleplaying, not through playing 20 questions before the characters has ever been on an adventure.

However, I recently ran into the concept of character background created through leading questions. Questions that sets up a premise about the character and then has the player come up with an answer. For example:

Why do you hate your father?

Why did you not get married to your betrothed?

Why did your family recieve a sizable gift from a nearby Lord?

I am thinking of writing a few questions that sets up the characters relationships to each other and some key NPCs. Like "Why do you feel so loyal to your Lord?", "What habit do you have that annoys the other party members?" "Why are you traveling with your childhood bully?"

The characters in our groups are pretty much blank slates as far as background goes, sp I want to throw them a bit of a curveball and see if they come up with anything interesting.

What do you guys think? Do you have some other clever ways of having players create their characters?

In the past I have asked Players to explain their connections to each other directly or indiretly (e.g., we both hate the same usurious money lender who ruined our families, we're both veterans of same unit, my dad ran the apothecary shop his wizard master sent him to get supplies from etc.).

The trick is to balance enough to give GM some realistic leads and tie-ins without requiring the "epic no one reads" (as you say). A GM pact to make is that "this is not to bleep you over". You may find spending time at home helps relive more stress, the moneylender becomes a villain in an adventure and you have more personal connectio to it, you get a bonus on the roll to identify where the apothecary supplies came from etc.

The background questions in Enemy Within are good examples of a mix of these sort of questions.

I've been using Organizations since our days in D&D. Family ties are fine and dandy, but it really only takes 1-2 of them to build a character off of..and to use for insanity later.

Anyways, regarding organization obligations, which FFG smartly stole from my house rules for their SW game (jk), you can have ongoing reasons for peoples' actions. Organizations and obligations can be anything from the family business, Aunt Bernice, secret fraternity, the Shriners, mercahnts guild of Nuln, The Order of Magic (even if you're not a wizard), criminal underworld ties, obligation to skaven, etc.

jh

Yeah, I've allways hated the "you all meet in a tavern..." type of parties. It allways ends up with the question "Why the hell are these people hanging together?"

Particularly in Warhammer, where everyone is defined by their race, career and social class. No way a Noble, a Ratcatcher, a dwarf and an elf would start traveling together for no reason.

But it can be good to expand on it a bit by giving the characters a few hooks to base NPCs on and to flesh out inter-party relations.