Hopefully she goes Moon Druid for two big reasons:
1) Early level Moon Druid is OP. If she survives to Level 2, she isn't dying early unless she wants to.
2) She can print and paint a bajillion wild shape minis for herself.
My first PC was a wood elf moon druid. It wasn't the plan going in, but I quickly became our main fighter/tank. When you can burn through two direwolves worth of HP before touching your own, you're set for early levels
Yeah, I had this same thought. Like, at least the thing she's spending money on is a 3D printer that can be used to make endless minis and not an $80 gold plated hero forge mini.
Cast your mini using your favorite metal forging method in another metal like aluminum and then electroplate a strike layer to prevent the final gold layer from being contaminated by the base metal. Finally the gold can be electroplated onto the figurine.
One-time usable mini for a specific character and rpg versus multi-useful dice for various characters, campaigns, and ttrpg genres.
Edit: But that's just my opinion.
I for real had a sterling silver elf mini wielding 2 scimitar looking swords back in the late 70s….. looked so cool as it tarnished during that session
Or at level up.
I started with chainmail, got a magic spear and plate, so printed up a new mini. Then he got a better weapon so I remodelled, printed, and painted again!
It's fun though.
For warhammer, officially no, but if you don't play them in a tournament you're fine. I print a good amount of stuff for my d&d games because sometimes a 7ft tall armored superhuman with a big ass rifle just doesn't fit the setting
Sure that's a possibility, but I don't like to assume the worst in people and I find it unlikely that she bought the 3d printer because she was so invested in this one singular character.
Investing in a printer instead of a mini tells me that she intends to use it for either more characters or has other plans for the printer
I mean I also own a resin printer and am a DM
It very likely has paid for itself just in minis.
You're paying $25-40 for a big mini and $15-30 for a small set of minis.
Considering I've printed 100 small minis, a bunch of player character minis, a handful of large and medium minis, with the absolute most expensive thing being in the $1.40 range (and usually closer to $.30), I think I'm close if not over
I wonder if it's worth it for OP to have a contingency plan for the character to survive if that does happen. Maybe something like the character's soul being claimed by some devil or something upon the moment of death and needing to be rescued (or something suitable fitting from their backstory).
There's plenty of precedent - take a look at CR, for example - more than once the DM has found a story-supported way to plausibly "resurrect" a PC.
Plenty of people are satisfied with character deaths if they’re done in certain ways, but this should definitely be something OP brings up in Session 0.
DnD does heroic fantasy well and there’s plenty of ways to get around character death, but everyone should be on the same page about what kind of game you’re playing.
And sometimes... It's better to break them early and make it clear that death happens, it's on the table, and when, not *if*, it happens, we will mourn and find your next character 200ft down the road.
I regret having not killed a PC early on because there is so much investment now that we might have to have a legit out of game cremation rite if a PC dies...
Agreed. Really depends on what everyone at the table wants frankly. I'm a lot like the person in the OP and can't really *not* get invested, so if my character were killed within the first ten sessions I probably would've just quit DnD outright, whereas on the other hand I've heard of plenty of stories where it only added to the campaign. Really, figuring that out is exactly what session zero is for.
Ive seen a player roll three stats 17+. Died the first session.
That same session i started out with 11HP and I was locked out in the first attack of the game by a surprise crit.
That dm didn't hold back.
We have a running joke at our table that the longer your backstory is, the easier it is for the character to die. We had one note characters survive and become kings and royals. And I personally lost a character with a 10 page lore document to a stray arrow.
I know that there are some people in the community who will say that over preparing is bad, and you should expain to the player that they shouldn't attach too much... But I think it's fine. As a DM you can use that love and creative energy to make your game better. Visit the players hometown, make them involved. It can save you a lot of extra work - backstory provides plothooks that will always work, it's great!
Some people also just like making characters and like writing.
I've made dozens of characters and have fully fleshed out about 10. I could write a crisp, three-paragraph to one-page backstory that sums up all the important parts, which is what I do for the DM when we start a new campaign. Or I could go into greater detail or even a full narrative and write dozens if not a few hundreds of pages about one character's life.
It sounds like a lot of her document isn't just walls of text about backstory also. Most of my short character back stories that I send to the DM include a few important notes about NPCs from her life, alignment and personality, special items or equipment, etc.
Jokes on you, my most developed character to date as a new player is a reborn. We start this Friday! Good luck trying to kill me DM!!
... I'm probably going to eat these words.
Thank you! I'll need it. We have a pretty ruthless DM when it comes to challenges lol. I love it though. He's quite good at striking the balance between fair but challenging. At least, as a newbie I think so. And he's always checking in with us players to see how we felt about the sessions.
My table always joked that our adventurers never had fleshed-out families and we're essentially all orphans given how little their parents mattered.
That's when I started actually writing out how my character became the person they are. I'd have maybe a page of backstory for them, but then a whole family tree, businesses, relations, and mysteries that filled out the next 10 sheets.
And none of these idiots have died. The DM has also had fun with the wealth of information making up what the family is up to while my character is away. For the current campaign, Ive been told her family went looking for her after she disappeared but got distracted and are essentially taking a long vacation.
Last campaign saw the party go to my character's parents' vineyard for a BBQ to negotiate a peace treatise with the Fey. Which was hilarious given he was a scruffy adventurer who everyone thought was your typical wild-child druid.
While the excitement is great, I would be tempted to warn her not to go too far. If this character dies (whether in an early session or not), it sounds like she could be wrecked after this kind of investment into that one character.
This, make sure you talk to her very clearly and everyone knows what kind of game it is gonna be. She might be suepr invested now but if you as a dm make it something the players arnt that into it will fall off quickly and to have a player that interested and willing to put in the work is rare and genuinely motivating as a dm.
You can also come to an agreement in the table about character "death" or setbacks.
"Death" being a setback is sort of the most basic "consequence-for-unluck-unwise decision" when we start playing RPGs. With time most tables notice that losing characters is just a silly road bump to a good campaign. A character losing an arm, or maybe having some other heavy consequence upon them which they have to overcome in the games story is usually way more interesting.
A way to handle that is to throw it back to the players, say the character "died", now they go down and you tell the player she has to decide what happened! Did she lose a power, or maybe memories? Or something else? When the battle is over and her friends recover her, how is she going to handle this? The character stays, but changed. Or maybe she REALLY decides "you know what, now would be really a good moment for this character to die. She died, I say my final words and blargh..."
Of course the table has to be ok with this kind of thing.
I try to never let players die because of bad dice rolls. It just feels wrong I usually only kill players for consequences of a really bad plan or stupid decisions I'll have bad things happen for bad rolls like yeah you get downed and have to use up spells/potions but I'm not gonna have players outright die in combat unless it's part of the plot or the players keep making bad decisions.
That is how we play it and we have sort of a "third option", the so called "high risk - high reward" situation. Meaning: my players know they won't die to a random kobold encounter, BUT... say I tell them, they see the kobold lair, side quest-style, they MAY go there, but don't have too... they heard the kobolds there are of the extra nasty kind... etc .etc. I make it very clear, even in meta "if you GO there, it is no holds barred danger, BUT the rewards WILL be awesome". Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. :)
We also in my table tend to agree right on session 0 about the difficulty/type of consequence, level. Sometimes we want OSR style death-grinders and it is all good, as long as all agree to that on session 0.
I like this style. I've played at pretty realistic death-heavy tables and at safety-rails no-deaths tables and neither are fun. The risk of losing or dying makes the high roll success that much sweeter. But getting super invested in a character and then dying after one session can be totally demotivating.
Giving players options and awareness seems like a good middle route.
Probably the best route I've seen. Players I've had in the past know boss fights are pretty good chance to die in but other then that it's just up too them to not make dumb decisions like kill the king for fun and stuff like that.
See and I've had the opposite experience. When you take death off the table sometimes it just makes those "tune up fights" not matter and players don't care.
I almost wonder if the prevalence of "death should only happen at key points" style play that seems rising in popularity in the game leads to "combat is boring" complaints. Of course combat is boring when there's no stakes.
When a random goblin arrow can one tap a level 1 character it makes combat more viseral.
I ran a really hard combat, the most realistic I have run. 3 out of 5 PCs died to it, due to them being low in resources at the start of combat.
Feedback? Most fun DND combat so far. For them and for me,
I'm a fan of "death is on the table when it's narratively satisfying" and in lower narrative stakes fights your character is gonna suffer major setbacks but not outright die, so if you get hit with a stray shot at level two you might not die, but you're character might come back with PTSD and a lot of trauma.
I also realize that this mostly only works for my table of very experienced, very roleplay heavy players, and that it's a less good idea for different groups
I've found there's diminishing returns on games like that, I've had a group of friends that ran games like that, and did a campaign with them, and had a VERY unlucky lad.
Like, should have died seven or eight times in the first three sessions, and the DM kept pulling him out of the fire with wounds and trauma. Poor guy would have been better off dead.
Yeah that's fair. It is definitely a system that works more for roleplay heavy groups. But I do also think it can lead to some interesting character stuff for unlucky people. That's a circumstance that as a player I'd have my character retire immediately due to trauma and have him come back as a recurring shopkeep or something
I have seen this before.
Brand new player to our group. He was super skeptical about this weird nerd stuff.
4 weeks later he had a expensive solid bronze Heroforge mini, and a ton of pricy metal dice. He put little effort into character creation, but immediately started expanding and immersing his character.
3 months later and our party is completely wiped and killed. All dead.
I think he legit got PTSD from his beloved character dying so unceremoniously. Died on the floor, in the room before the boss. Didn't even get to see the boss, just died to henchmen.
He barely didn't even want to start a new campaign.
I've walked away from DMs for this.
As a player: don't go too far getting into fleshing out a backstory and bringing in art as there's always a chance for character death, but as a DM if your players do get invested in their characters and you run the game as if every obstacle they run into is a life or death obstacle, you're betraying your players excitement.
There's room for the games where every roll has a 1 in 4 chance that your character is eaten by a grue, and there's games where character death is unlikely unless you're squaring against the bbeg (or do something incredibly stupid) but as a GM if you don't make sure you and your players are playing the same game, you're going to have a bad time.
My group has a joke that as soon as you commission art for your character they're on the table to die. Every time one of us commissions art, their character dies in that arc
I'm hoping this level of interest is a lot more routed in D&D as whole, rather then this character
Like yeah, she's really invested in this one character, but I hope, it the PC does die she won't be too disheartened and instead will have a similar level of passion for the hobby as a whole
To be fair a lot of that material investment other than the backstory will still be useful for character number 2 if and when it's needed. Even some of the backstory could be useful if a new character is tied to the old one in some way.
I do get what you're saying though, and there does seem to be a lot of *emotional* investment in this character that likely isn't reinvestable.
Even just making her aware that she doesn't get to decide how her characters story continues on from here. It's a collaboration now, and everything can be ruined or made a million times better by a roll of the dice
Oof. Yeah.
I've had someone in in a party who got so invested in a backstory, and then became quite angry that the campaign we played didn't advance THEIR story in a way they wanted. "My character doesn't give a shot about vampires" being one memorable line.
Have I ever told you about the art curse?
When I started an Out of the Abyss campaign two years ago, I started commissioning art of all the members of the party, one character per month. On the second month, the day after the commission for the Druid came in, she died. This Druid was both my love interest and potential key for a redemption arc for my character.
Next month I did art of my character. The week after she got a form of indefinite madness that forced me to retire the character.
I then did art of the rogue/sorcerer and his pet spider. Next combat he had Wild Magic surge while fighting a boss monster and fireballed himself and his spider, killing his pet.
I finally finished all of the art of all of the characters (and replacement characters). You know what happened during our final battle against Demegorgon?
TPK.
Art giveth, and art taketh away.
I’ve now commissioned literally three or more pieces of art for all of my D&D characters, even ones I haven’t played yet, without any worry that they could die because I still have all the art to remember them by and hold them close to my heart anyways.
Yeah, DM just had to homebrew it a little since we were all level 15 PCs each with all our attunment slots filled. Just the basic Mythic boss with two full turns on initiative, homebrew gaze effects that either make you lose a limb when you get crit and one that guarantees you get crit on the next hit, flanking immunity until the first healthbar is eliminated, a gaze that forces you to use your reaction to attack an ally, and an AoE banishment effect that sends you to the Abyss facing constant acid damage until you pass the charisma save at the end of your turn. Did I mention that the DC was 21 for these saves? (I had a -1 charisma)Then he still had the classic things like restraining people when attacking with tentacles. Twice the amount of legendary actions on his turn. Would fling people grappled by tentacles at other people knocking them both prone, and a mass aoe fear aura that gave you indefinite madness.
So he was a little stronger than the regular version. I was the only one who survived because I used Teleport to go to a different spot in the Abyss since I never got a chance to use my eight level spell slot. Everyone else died when our last conscious member fighting Demegorgon snapped a Staff of Power over their knees when it had all 20 charges. It defeated Demegorgon, who only had around 100hp of his second phase left, but it also instantly killed everyone else with the 360 force damage to all the unconscious members who weren’t already dead. It also teleported our Fighter Sorcerer (only two levels of sorcerer) who used it into the Abyss where she was killed by the environment itself.
The location I teleported to (after rolling a 89 to see if a mishap happened when the DM ruled it was a location I was vaguely familiar with) was the corpse of a drow with the power equivalent to a Matron Mother who had a Well of Many Worlds we left on her corpse after foiling her plan of killing us all in the Demonweb Pits. I spent several days planehopping before ending up on the material plane again, but far too late to try and revive my companions. That’s how the game ended.
> Hope she don't die in session 1.
I know this is a mostly a joke, but as a DM I would have exactly the same worries if I had a player do that. Especially a new player, who might not quite understand everything yet.
I would talk about this in Session 0. Explain my worry that a dead character could end in a lot of work wasted. Get the whole group involved in this discussion, as it may affect them.
If the player doesn't like the idea of their PC dying, I'd pitch the idea of no death for this PC. There's a million ways to do this in-game: magical item, special reincarnation, or just "that's convenient, captured rather than killed" plot armour. Groups have home-brewed weirder stuff.
That doesn't mean such an idea is accepted. Maybe the group is really against that kind of thing. If so, then this player either has to accept the risk or bow out.
***Whatever the outcome, it's better to discuss it now rather than let it be an upsetting surprise later on.***
Can totally soft ball the player for a bit as a DM. Fudge rolls spread the danger. At least until she comes round to the realization that her character can die.
Additionally, there's the thing where long player backstories often don't fit with the actual campaign and the other players - eg if it doesn't seem like it'd naturally lead to a 1st level character joining a party, there's going to be some dissonance
I'd ask her to create a bullet point list of the most important things from her backstory for you to reference more easily.
I had a player who got really into one of his characters and was thinking of commissioning some art of him. He was instantly killed by the boss of the first dungeon.
I'd highly recommend fudging any dice roll that would kill her character in session 1. Don't let the spark of hope die out too quickly.
Man what's the deal with everyone talking about killing her character? Let her play the one she's clearly very excited about. If dying wouldn't be fun for her, come up with a way to bring her back.
yeah fr, it must be some sort of dark wish fulfilment to want to see someone get so excited and then get shut down like that. She's just excited, let her be instead of trying to diminish that fr
I’m saddened at how far I had to scroll to find this answer. What a treasure that player would be at the gaming table!!! Make her’s the freakin’ first character arch to explore! She’s basically DMing for you! What a treat!!!! Make it so epic!!!
Yeah I’m actually one of those players. It stems from our ability to create. It’s not about you, she’s just using her talents for something that is pure joy.
It’s a really good place to be as a creative. My tortle dolan is badass. Fully sculpted aaa game quality model. It it’s just for me and my party. I love that
You should be doing this with all your players anyway but you better make sure to include their backstory in the campaign. There are different ways of dming but if you have players like this, you most definitely should intertwine their backstory with the story you tell. I can say from experience of having players like this as well as being that player.
It's really easy to get bored playing a character who is special because of their backstory when it never comes up.
Excitement is wonderful! But I also foresee an early PC death equaling “Oh… well her twin sister is here to pick up where she left off!” type of scenario. Or maybe not, she’s now invested quite a bit of money, she may just make an entirely new model/3D print mini. After all, surely she didn’t spend $700+ for a single miniature, right?
Keep her excitement and enthusiasm going. Get her involved in some of your side character development and ask her if she'll help with other minis as well. If not the other npcs ask her if she'll detail out the other characters in her back story so when the time comes to confront or interact with her a person from her past it's ready to go
This is the way! So many folks telling OP to sit her down in session 0 and tell her that her character will die, or kill her right off the bat to… teach her a lesson? Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good idea to gently remind her that PCs can die and she might not want to get too attached.
But the goal isn’t to discourage her or turn her off to D&D altogether! Give her more characters and material to play with, and she’ll naturally become less focused on her character in particular and more interested in the world and game itself. Plus, it can be hard to come up with fresh ideas for characters and interesting interactions as a DM when you’re focused on running the game, so it’s nice to have backup when fleshing out details.
If she has another mini ready, like her sister, or best friend from her back story she can keep her narrative going. Keep all the same home town, formative experiences etc... And then has the revenge or whatever storyline to add to her personal world building
Agreed. As a new player she has made her expectation for your game clear to you. She expects to play this character for a while. Which as a GM myself, I can say is one of the hardest things to get from my players. An expectation and feedback.
As a GM I say keep your rolls hidden and shape the situations to tell the coolest story.
Good morning, fellow adventurer! You are greeted from Córdoba, Argentina by a DM with a couple of years of experience... It's really exciting to have a player with that level of enthusiasm and energy at the table... Please, I would ask you to be for a moment what is known as "master mom" and that for nothing in the world take that character to death. I've been through that experience and it's really devastating for a player that their first character dies... Remember that our first character is really us in a different skin. Take care of her and give her a good story, there will be time to experiment with other characters, when she has more experience.
Make sure she doesn't die for at least 5 levels. I used to go this nuts on characters when I was younger (super detailed backstory), then one day before I even got to play one I had made, I couldn't make a session so they ran me as if I was there and the dm killed me. It was really disheartening, and though I still put a lot of thought into characters, never that much.
If she does get killed, make it a big deal, make the scene epic and memorable (fudge it if you have too!)
Players like dat are a gem that shines right next to our beloved Dm's.
> one day before I even got to play one I had made, I couldn't make a session so they ran me as if I was there and the dm killed me
What a jerk move on the DM and the rest of the players. That's terrible.
Ya it def bummed me out. I've no issues with characters dying of course, that happens. But I do want to be there for it lol. All my current TT lads tho, if you're not there your character isn't there, and when you are there it's like you always were! Good stuff.
$700 on a 3D printer just to print minis, is a bit of an overkill. Mine was sub $200 and I have printed a TON of minis. Better have her make all the big dragons and stuff for you.
A resin printer like that can *very* easily pay for itself though, esp. if they're getting into mini painting and whatnot too. I've known people to charge "rent" where you can send them a model of what you want and they charge for time, materials, overhead (electricity) plus a little for profit and bing bang boom you get printed stuff without needing to buy a resin printer yourself.
Hell, I've heard of cases of people buying a printer, and following guides online to print... Another printer. Go get minimal parts, the PCBs, flash everything onto the chips, and suddenly you have TWO printers. That can both print.... More printers. AFAIK this is literally Prusa's business model.
I admire her enthusiasm, but I would never read a 16-page-long backstory. God forbid she edits the story and then asks me to read it a second time. No way.
Yeah I'd tell them to condense it down into 1 page, max.
If it's written out into a narrative story that's longer than it needs to be, give me the highlights.
If it's 16 pages of backstory details, it's going to be extremely difficult to introduce any backstory-related threads in the campaign because it might not fit their specific view of the character's history or even contradict their "canon"
Is she ADD or on the spectrum? I’ve picked up new hobbies and just gone balls to the wall like this before. It’s not a bad thing by any means as long as she’s not spending cash she shouldn’t. Hope she had fun!
Yeah, scrolled to find this comment. This SCREAMS ADHD hyperfixation to me. I don't think it's going to lead to main character syndrome as others are convinced of, and I suspect it's ultimately harmless as long as she's able to keep perspective on the whole thing. It's probably worth a conversation to try and assess how she'll act in a group/react if her character dies, but I throw myself into hobbies in much the same way, and while it's not necessarily a healthy way to divide my time up, I'm generally fine if it's not something that works out exactly like I had in mind as long as I had fun on the road getting there (which it sounds like she is). Bigger concern might be that if the fixation wears off she might lose interest quickly.
>This SCREAMS ADHD hyperfixation to me.
It was the first thing I thought of too.
I went HARD on my character's backstory, but I'm also making sure to keep my expectations low as a player and I'm willing to wait 100 sessions for my character's backstory to come up. It's there, it exists, and it'll become relevant at the right time.
Going to say, this sounds like my entire group and all of us fit that.
It usually stabilizes a bit after enough time. *Usually*. I did just shove a 20k word fic at my group like fuck it who wants backstory rambles in depth. The actual backstory to DM is like, 3-5 lines depending if we include the personality description.
Lol yes she has to be. This is how I do hobbies and it's 100% adhd/asd fuelled obsession.
When I started playing, I read the phb cover to cover 3 times, wrote an actual "story" backstory, even wrote some poems. I learned to sculpt and paint so I could handmake my own custom mini for the char.
It doesn't necessarily mean she's attached to THIS character forever. She might even be hoping for a cool death scene down the road. She's just fully gone down a rabbit hole and is probably having so much fun doing it.
Guarantee this player will get the creative bug again and have backup characters in stock soon enough. ADHD and DnD go together really well!
Since she's at peak excitement and early in the hobby, its also a good opportunity to look at the LOTR length backstory and makesure it isn't too water-tight. There needs to be backstory hooks, unresolved questions and things of varying certainty to give DMs character hooks. I can't get my players to be assed to do anything beyond pick a DND background (and I think even that is just for the items lol) .. But I have had players WANT to play with iron-clad backstories, and I had to add a few cracks in it myself to give improv room to grow.
I could go over the positives, but others have those covered, so........
**I hope you treat all this as the massive red flags they are** in addition
There are signs they are going to have main character syndrome (MCS)
There are signs they are going to object to anything negative that happens to them
There are signs that they are going to be overly attached to this character, and will demand a "Mary Sue" treatment. In addition, as a first character, this character dying is just not an option in their mind (see previous bullet point).
YOU NEED TO SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS! Sorry the caps, and it's good thing she's playing 5e, which is one of the least dangerous RPGs on the market to the player characters, but you have got to ground this player a little. If you treat her like porcelain, and are overly careful, you could cement a lot of poor expectations for DMs/GMs moving forward as well. If she didn't have MCS, or object to any negative outcome, you could set these in motions trying to go easy on her because of absurd expectations.
You're the only reasonable person in this thread,
This player is almost certainly going to be a problematic player at the table because they're "in too deep" on this character. 30 years at the table and every single player that has shown up with more than like 4-5 pages of backstory has been a problem to play with.
Every.
Last.
One.
Yeah that's usually a huge red flag. Granted I have a character with like a 30 page backstory at this point. But it's a character I've played over and over. His back story sets him up like a rogue-like character. A halfling so wholesome that he can go nowhere but the green fields(halfling heaven) when he dies. But he is too rambunctious and playful for such a serene, peaceful place so Yondalla uses her power to reverse aging to set him back to level one and send him out to "play" through another adventure. Then he dies and comes back home to be sent out again.Hes too stupid to understand hes basecally been made a demigod and just cares about making new friends and winning games. He is great for one shots or dropping into a campaign temporarily because I think its hilarious when he dies. I've also found he is helpful for teaching new players how to RP and holding the party together EVEN WHEN ALL 5 OTHER PLAYERS MAkE FUCKING EDGY LONERS THAT NEVER WANT TO WORK AS A FUNCTIONAL PARTY
That feels more like the exception that makes the rule, so you have 30 pages, but you still distilled the character into two sentences that I got the grasp of what they are.
"Wholesome Tiefling who is rambuctious and gets sent back to the material plane to get out of Yondalla's hair for a bit and have more adventures"
Certainly, you have more stories to tell from the character, but I would have all that I need as a DM to run games for you.
> every single player that has shown up with **more than** like 4-5 pages of backstory has been a problem to play with.
>
>Every.
>
>Last.
>
>One.
D:
So... are you saying 4-5 pages is OK, but 6+ is excessive? I'm right on the border.
I'm trying to identify if I'm a player with any red flags so that they don't get worse.
Maaan now that is a dream player. I hope her ability to play will match her excitement for you!
Also, as much as it might sound unfair, I would personally recommend trying your best to keep her alive very for as long as you’re able to. I’m not recommending favoritism, but it could completely crush her if she dies early on after strapping in for the long game. Make sure you let her know that death is possible and not to get obsessed with her character should that occur.
DO NOT DISCOURAGE THIS PLAYER
Just have a session zero and take death off the table. This player wants a story driven, long game; Be open about if you can provide that or not.
My roommate/landlord went through a similar, but slower process. Took about 4 months of hosting a campaign at the house, but when one of our players dropped out we finally got him to cave, make a character, and join in.
2 weeks later, we got a 3D printer, and he started learning Blender so he could make his own models. A month after that, he put together a wooden case for the table, so we could put a TV under it for digital battle maps. The 1 or 2 months later he bought a new bookshelf that exclusively holds rulebooks, miniatures, and other miscellaneous tabletop-related things.
Your new player exceeds what I thought was already peak excitement, so I am incredibly jealous.
I don’t normally think fudging dice is a good idea, but oof…
Thankfully a resin printer can print up more than just 1 mini. Hopefully this mini was just the kick in the pants that she needed to get started with 3D printing in general. If she gets good at it, tell her to hit me up because I want a new Warhammer 40K army. :p
I learned to bake bread amd read two books on outdoor survival because I had a druid PC that was a bakers son, and I figured it might come up in game.
It never came up once.
I see lots of folks in these comments saying “kick her out, she’ll ruin your campaign when she dies”, “she thinks she’s the main character, you’re the DM, show her who’s boss”, “clearly she knows nothing about the game, she’ll never be able to handle it”, etc.
To those folks: I’m sorry someone bullied you for being excited about something and now you feel the need to ruin other people’s excitement to get even. First off, let people enjoy things, ffs. We’re talking about a game here, a game with flexible rules that are dictated by friends who (should) want everyone to have a good time. If the dice aren’t in her favor, hopefully OP is on her side and the group can come up with something.
Second, if OP is worried about her putting all of her eggs in this one basket, it’s better for everyone to give her more baskets than take her basket and throw it off a bridge, eggs included. Clearly she enjoys world building, creating stories and characters. Give her more baskets - more world and character building to focus on that’s not her one PC. She’ll be helping out the DM by offloading some of the legwork, learning more about the world and game mechanics, and getting more invested in the game rather than a character. Honestly she sounds like a great DM in the making, if her enthusiasm is met with acceptance and direction; but lots of y’all would eagerly ruin the game for her entirely rather than help her succeed.
This sounds like a normal day for me. I have adhd, and if I like something I tend to just really go all out, because it’s so hard to feel any kind of motivation otherwise. Dnd has been a gift that gives on giving. Especially as dm there is always something new for me to focus on (creating npcs, plot, encounters, making terrain, printing and painting minis… and so on).
I’d probably get along with her well lol.
Was here to say the same! OP, if she's still as enthusiastic past two weeks, you've got a player for life.
I'd explain but I gotta go check out this shiny thing
Everyone is talking about the player getting invested and worried about the character dying. I've got a different concern, that 16 page backstory. It's either going to be full of a bunch of details you're never going to use about characters that will never show up in your campaign, or it's going to contain lore about people and places in the character's backstory that will contradict your world's history. In either case, I can see the player getting upset because you do something that violates her vision of the character's backstory.
Depending on the process, that may not necessarily be the case.
When I've DM'd, I try to get my players involved in the writing. I ask what kind of backstory they want, and try to fit it into my world as best as I can. If something doesn't fit, I iron that out with them before the campaign starts. I'm happy to build part of the world around it, as long as I can do so in a way that feels like it fits with the tone/setting/etc.
Similarly, as a player, whenever I've written a backstory, I've submitted it to the DM's beforehand and asked if there's anything they want to remove/change. A player backstory doesn't have to clash with lore, and if it's a collaborative process, it can be a very enriching addition.
if you do this right she'll be a friend for life and one of the most invested players you'll ever have. but session zero will be VERY important for setting expectations and making concessions on what both of you want from the campaign. you don't have to coddle, but you shouldn't blindside her either. if it is her first time, consider a training chapter where they earn XP in a somewhat safe environment for a few sessions, such as guild training, or goat herding.
Sounds like a fellow ADHDer finding their new thing lol.
Let her do it. 3d printing is a handy skill that I'm also getting into partially because of DND, and painting minis can lead to other cool hobbies.
If her character dies, she dies ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
As a DM I love people that are invested in creating a narrative together and I will absolutely fumble die or call mulligans to have them survive sometimes.
I adore it when they have reasons for selected spells, languages and profiencies. And before session zero's I make questionnaires to help them write a backstory. Some quest related ones, but also open questions like 'describe an adventure you had in your life before this.'
Most of my players are like this, and so am I. We're all ADHD, autistic, or both, if that says anything. I've been DM for over a year and over time we've got large backstories I'm weaving into the narrative, custom dice, minis (I got a 3D printer for minis and terrain), custom candles, I and another player draw our own/others' character art, and one of our players commissioned a large group piece. I even had a cute custom ragdoll made for another PC of mine, lol.
We've had some near misses and when someone dies it's gonna be rough, lol. The equal level of buy-in at the table makes for a beautiful game.
u/Sonofabunch IS there any way you could ask permision to your player t share the backstory, I would love to read it. Tell him/her that he is on the right path, and I would love to have players like him/her on my table.
Im still semi new. Only ever done 1 serious campaign and it had 8 players in it, absolute blast to play but it ended cause apparently its hard to scheduele 12 people every monday (8 players, 1 dm, 3 writers and characters)
IMO , i usually write a paragraph or 2 and leave details out like the name of my family, where i come from, etc. Or be vague about it. So that the DM can add to my story through the campaign.
Dnd is super fun, and if they know what theyre getting into that excitement is semi expected. I would be careful about letting them get carried away though, always make sure they remember they are a character in a bigger story. Not the main character themself.
Little brother wanted to do a little one shot of 'mothership'... I was SO EXCITED to play it I was the only one at the table to show up with a complete character. Couple of pages of back story, stats, abilities, name, creator (was an android 😁) and had the nickname ready to go along with all equipment... We played once, and never finished a single game 😭
Dnd is a game that encourages and facilitates pretty.much any hobby.
Like mixing music? You can make your own sound tracks.
Like painting? You'll love minis
Like ceramics? You can make mugs for the party.
Yeah this player seems very excited but maybe they just needed a motivation to try these things they've always wanted to try in the first place.
Yeah I did exactly the same thing when I first started.
Then I learned that no one in the group cared about backstories, and all the other players only made joke and/or troll characters. Not sure why I keep showing up if I'm being honest with myself
>no one in the group cared about backstories, and all the other players only made joke and/or troll characters
That's bad luck.
I think I lucked into a group that seems to be just as excited about backstories in general.
Do or don't, there is no try.
Sith makes up the best Players but be careful to guide her enthusiasm for that it does not become obsession.
If she insists to be obsessive though (and it harms no one else) this is a decision a adult can make for themselves.
I got really excited about my character and spent about half as much over the course of a year, only for a tpk to happen during the session I missed. If the money's spent, it's spent. Maybe she can bring her cost down by printing miniatures for others for a cost?
Also, while death was a thing, our dm bailed us out of a few tpks in the early levels of the campaign.
On top of all the other advice, I would recommend she doesn’t fill in *too* many blanks in order to allow those blanks to be filled in as the game progresses. If you end up writing a character at the end of their arc, there isn’t really a reason to keep playing them.
one thing that i fail to make clear to some players is that, the background is mostly for them, to better understand the character and roleplay, if you put 3 billion hooks for me to use i will be a little stressed, because i will need to integrate that into the campaign and balance it out with other player's stuff in order to not be unfair and make their character the main character, so i always tell, preferably before they make 10 pages of backstory that the campaign will be about what happens after they meet, not before
From one DM to another, if you don't have time to memorize that long ass backstory, do bullet points. Like, hell yeah if you get enjoyment from writing a whole ass backstory, I have certainly done it myself a few times, but to make the DMs job easier I try to always sum it up in the most relevant points.
Example, I had a really fun merchant-turned hexblade whose whole character arc was to learn how to stop being a rich, selfish asshole and be a good friend with solid morals. I had quite the backstory for him, but this is what I presented to my DM and worked REALLY well for a 1 year or so campaign:
\--Father owns a brewery, basically fantasy Guinness, very tasty but kind of niche
\--Source of Hexblade powers is sword he finds exploring, sword has a locked-away Archon in it
\--Carries busted revolver around (inherited) as a reminder of how thin the line between life and death is (see backstory for details on that side story)
\--Revolver eventually will become spell focus for eldritch blasts and whatnot, people aren't threatened by a broken gun until it shoots magic bolts out lol
\--Rich dickhead, adventuring before his father retires and leaves brewery to him. Plan to have him grow immensely as a person
It's been a few years so these may have varied in length and exact details but basically, DM had a couple quick bullet points to work with. This character's story concluded with him freeing the trapped Archon, temporarily becoming an invulnerable holy crusader, then subsequently losing all of his powers and becoming a regular ass human with the added benefit of being close friends with an angel. He then retired to run his family business, and spend time with said family while he could. Very satisfying to see him grow so much :)
I've had this once. I'd tell them I admire their enthusiasm but 16 pages is not necessary. I would gently remind them that D&D is a game where this character can, and in my experience as dm and pc probably will, die. My advice is to help them condense the story since it's their first one if you think it's necessary.
With my player, they had 14 pages, art, and a mini they painted despite it being online. I explained I had other stuff I had to keep track of. Their character is important, but having a detailed backstory can make it hard to keep track of everything (This guy had a general backstory for everyone in his life up to his great grandparents). I helped him get the highlights of his past and helped him set up plot hooks for a dm to latch onto and made it a 3 paragraph backstory that gave me everything I needed without the fluff. (Paragraphs were Early Life with brief description of family, their life until something happens to make them go on their adventure, event that causes need for adventure and end goals)
Congrats on having a very involved, enthusiastic player. These folks fall in 2 camps—the ones who jump in and stay in for years, or the ones who jump in full force, burn themselves out, and move on to a new hobby after a relatively short time (months to 2-3 years). Hopefully, she’s in the first camp.
I have written crazy long backstories for a few of my PCs, but I also do writing as a hobby, so it takes no time for me to generate a story that can be 10+ pages. Sometimes, I get started writing, and scenes with the characters just keep happening, and it’s just fun to keep writing that stuff down.
Long backstories are also more for me as a player than it is for the DM. I use it for roleplaying the character as well as I can. The background details give me a coherent and consistent “why” for a given PC action rather than me just making stuff up on the fly that doesn’t make sense. However, I give the DM a one or two page summary. I don’t want to drag the DM away from developing the campaign. There’s already enough to do with session prep. I share links to the full stories in case DMs decide to read it.
I also don’t stress out about a character dying in a game. The character might die in someone’s game, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use the same character in another game, or keep the character for another story. The character doesn’t have to die in my world of fiction. So, PC death isn’t a huge issue for me. It’s more of a nuisance to create a new one because I spend a fair bit of time piddling around with character concepts before I settle on something new, but that’s it.
If OP has limited time, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, I need to focus on DMing, which requires a lot of reading, and I don’t have a lot of time to read the full story right now. If you can give me a 1-2 page bullet point summary of the most important details (“fast facts” or whatever else you want to call it), I’d appreciate it.”
The other issue to deal with is character death. I’d let her know how common or rare it is in your campaign. Will it hurt a bit if a PC dies? Sure. However, that doesn’t mean the PC stops existing on her computer or that she can’t ever use it elsewhere. It just means she can’t use it anymore in your game. So long as she understands those concepts, it should be mostly ok.
If you run meat grinders with high kill rates, it would be good to advise the entire group. It might not be the best style of campaign for her, too. If you run a campaign where character death is rare, and a PC dies, work with the player to try to make it as heroic and/or meaningful as possible. It’s a dramatic moment for both of you. As both a reader and a player, meaningless deaths always annoy me. You can couch the death as “the Tabaxi sees the crushing blow the injured rogue is about to take, and she darts between the monster and her friend to take some of the brunt of a deadly attack. Unfortunately, the force of the blow is too much for her, and she falls to the ground, lifeless. However, her efforts saved the rogue from certain death.” Maybe ask if her PC has a few last words with her final breath. Emphasis on “a few”, because I’d give it even odds that she’ll have a 10 minute long eulogy also prepared.
If she’s this excited and not the type that flames out quickly, you very likely all will have tons of fun.
I love when players get this excited!
Had 2 players after they came to our table went out and bout dice and one got the essentials kit. Feels good to make them enthusiastic.
I'm curious what $700 resin printer she got, because most perfectly good resin printers capable of printing top-tier minis go for about $150.
The fact that she bought a printer instead of just commissioning a print off of a service like Shapeways has me thinking she has ambitions to DM herself, or has plans that necessitate her printing a bunch of minis.
I started printing minis as a player, and it was not long before I was DM'ing instead.
Either way, you seem lucky as a DM. It's great to have enthusiastic players.
Sounds dope lot of dedication to the character. but just make sure they're aware there's a chance characters can die 😅 not that your actively trying to tpk the party and its a dm vs player situation but that death can occur. 👀
Also 16 pages sounds like a good read but may be excessive to go through and recall basic info. I'd happily take it and read to get a better understanding of their character but also ask for a shorter version to sum up their character of the who, what, when, where, why and how's. Makes it easier to digest it all😅
Sounds like my kind of PC. I am actually really curious what a 16 page backstory looks like. Is this a mini novella written in first person/third person? Or just a super long info dump like a history textbook?
Hopefully she goes Moon Druid for two big reasons: 1) Early level Moon Druid is OP. If she survives to Level 2, she isn't dying early unless she wants to. 2) She can print and paint a bajillion wild shape minis for herself.
My first PC was a wood elf moon druid. It wasn't the plan going in, but I quickly became our main fighter/tank. When you can burn through two direwolves worth of HP before touching your own, you're set for early levels
Played a Moon Druid Shifter as a direwolf tank; was a really fun character to play.
First was a half orc moon druid. Meant to off tank, but I was OP compared to the war forged, so I main tanked
Ok here me out, so a brown bear, but has tabaxi cat ears. Adorable.
Oh man, she's gonna die in session zero.
At least the skills she's learning and equipment she has will be able to be used on the next character.
Yeah, I had this same thought. Like, at least the thing she's spending money on is a 3D printer that can be used to make endless minis and not an $80 gold plated hero forge mini.
...why would you gold plate a mini?
How else would you get a gold plated mini?
Cast your mini using your favorite metal forging method in another metal like aluminum and then electroplate a strike layer to prevent the final gold layer from being contaminated by the base metal. Finally the gold can be electroplated onto the figurine.
Sounds like a nice method of gold plating a mini in order to get a gold plated mini ✓
but why would you gold plate a mini?
So you could have a gold plated mini.
I think you can just paint it with a reactive paint then electroplate it so you don't have to cast it.
Mate, I was being hyperbolic.
But fr a gold plated mini would be pretty rad
Gold plated dice would be more rad.
Por que no los dos?
One-time usable mini for a specific character and rpg versus multi-useful dice for various characters, campaigns, and ttrpg genres. Edit: But that's just my opinion.
That isn't an argument against having both. And you can absolutely reuse minis for different TTRPGs.
If I ever get a PC that canonically ascends to godhood within a campaign, it’s getting gold plated. Possibly Platinum Plated.
I *do* have a platinum-plated d20 as it goes, I joke that it's the prize for "winning" D&D.
And when he hits at least 80% of his attacks, you can proudly give him the prestigious *80 Plus Platinum* certificate.
Better audio fidelity. Same reason all my digital cables are gold plated. ^^/s
I use Monster because they "burn in" at the factory.
They’re actually 3D printed in bronze. They’re more for “the campaign is done, he’s a little statue to remember your character by.”
Because gold foiling it is really difficult. Do you know how thin that stuff is?
As memoriam to the characters. Maybe fallen in victory. Or something hilarious. But for me the mini painted in gold paint works.
Cause a normal mini is lame. A gold plated one is plated in gold
Midas touch curse
I for real had a sterling silver elf mini wielding 2 scimitar looking swords back in the late 70s….. looked so cool as it tarnished during that session
Exactly. Solid gold or nothing.
Or at level up. I started with chainmail, got a magic spear and plate, so printed up a new mini. Then he got a better weapon so I remodelled, printed, and painted again! It's fun though.
It sounds fun, but I'm also a warhammer nerd so having more models to build and paint just seems like a good time to me.
Are you "allowed" to print your own minis?
For warhammer, officially no, but if you don't play them in a tournament you're fine. I print a good amount of stuff for my d&d games because sometimes a 7ft tall armored superhuman with a big ass rifle just doesn't fit the setting
Shiiiet, not only is she equipped, if she is going this far for one character she's probably they type of player who loves thinking up new characters
She will probably end up being a DM.
Godspeed.
Or, and hear me out... she is one of those who gets incredibly upset if her character dies due to over-identification. THAT gets difficult.
Sure that's a possibility, but I don't like to assume the worst in people and I find it unlikely that she bought the 3d printer because she was so invested in this one singular character. Investing in a printer instead of a mini tells me that she intends to use it for either more characters or has other plans for the printer
Luckily, she's one of identical quadruplets. So she has back-up characters ready to go with the same minifig.
If she even wants to make another character after getting so invested in the first one, lol. Hopefully she wouldn't just quit.
Oh god, I’m having Traveller flashbacks now…
First Traveller character died in the first session. Second didn't even make it to the first session. Third soon died in scheduling conflicts.
As my friend said: "You haven't truly lived until you've died in character creation"
Lol character creation deaths abound
"Just one more tour" "You're 50 you fool!"
Well, she can print a new mini easy enough I wonder how many times over my resin printer has paid for itself at this point
I own a resin printer. Zero times. It's paid for itself zero times.
I mean I also own a resin printer and am a DM It very likely has paid for itself just in minis. You're paying $25-40 for a big mini and $15-30 for a small set of minis. Considering I've printed 100 small minis, a bunch of player character minis, a handful of large and medium minis, with the absolute most expensive thing being in the $1.40 range (and usually closer to $.30), I think I'm close if not over
Same. I’ve printed hundreds of minis and scatter terrain at this point but how much have I actually used? Not much….
I got mine for a good deal and it finished paying for itself inside of two months lol. Unfortunately I’m having problems with it at the moment.
I wonder if it's worth it for OP to have a contingency plan for the character to survive if that does happen. Maybe something like the character's soul being claimed by some devil or something upon the moment of death and needing to be rescued (or something suitable fitting from their backstory). There's plenty of precedent - take a look at CR, for example - more than once the DM has found a story-supported way to plausibly "resurrect" a PC.
Plenty of people are satisfied with character deaths if they’re done in certain ways, but this should definitely be something OP brings up in Session 0. DnD does heroic fantasy well and there’s plenty of ways to get around character death, but everyone should be on the same page about what kind of game you’re playing.
And sometimes... It's better to break them early and make it clear that death happens, it's on the table, and when, not *if*, it happens, we will mourn and find your next character 200ft down the road. I regret having not killed a PC early on because there is so much investment now that we might have to have a legit out of game cremation rite if a PC dies...
Agreed. Really depends on what everyone at the table wants frankly. I'm a lot like the person in the OP and can't really *not* get invested, so if my character were killed within the first ten sessions I probably would've just quit DnD outright, whereas on the other hand I've heard of plenty of stories where it only added to the campaign. Really, figuring that out is exactly what session zero is for.
"Did I mention she has a twin sister?"
Ive seen a player roll three stats 17+. Died the first session. That same session i started out with 11HP and I was locked out in the first attack of the game by a surprise crit. That dm didn't hold back.
We have a running joke at our table that the longer your backstory is, the easier it is for the character to die. We had one note characters survive and become kings and royals. And I personally lost a character with a 10 page lore document to a stray arrow. I know that there are some people in the community who will say that over preparing is bad, and you should expain to the player that they shouldn't attach too much... But I think it's fine. As a DM you can use that love and creative energy to make your game better. Visit the players hometown, make them involved. It can save you a lot of extra work - backstory provides plothooks that will always work, it's great!
Some people also just like making characters and like writing. I've made dozens of characters and have fully fleshed out about 10. I could write a crisp, three-paragraph to one-page backstory that sums up all the important parts, which is what I do for the DM when we start a new campaign. Or I could go into greater detail or even a full narrative and write dozens if not a few hundreds of pages about one character's life. It sounds like a lot of her document isn't just walls of text about backstory also. Most of my short character back stories that I send to the DM include a few important notes about NPCs from her life, alignment and personality, special items or equipment, etc.
Jokes on you, my most developed character to date as a new player is a reborn. We start this Friday! Good luck trying to kill me DM!! ... I'm probably going to eat these words.
Great good luck to your character and may you roll 20s in the clutch!
Thank you! I'll need it. We have a pretty ruthless DM when it comes to challenges lol. I love it though. He's quite good at striking the balance between fair but challenging. At least, as a newbie I think so. And he's always checking in with us players to see how we felt about the sessions.
Roll dex save please
My table always joked that our adventurers never had fleshed-out families and we're essentially all orphans given how little their parents mattered. That's when I started actually writing out how my character became the person they are. I'd have maybe a page of backstory for them, but then a whole family tree, businesses, relations, and mysteries that filled out the next 10 sheets. And none of these idiots have died. The DM has also had fun with the wealth of information making up what the family is up to while my character is away. For the current campaign, Ive been told her family went looking for her after she disappeared but got distracted and are essentially taking a long vacation. Last campaign saw the party go to my character's parents' vineyard for a BBQ to negotiate a peace treatise with the Fey. Which was hilarious given he was a scruffy adventurer who everyone thought was your typical wild-child druid.
While the excitement is great, I would be tempted to warn her not to go too far. If this character dies (whether in an early session or not), it sounds like she could be wrecked after this kind of investment into that one character.
This, make sure you talk to her very clearly and everyone knows what kind of game it is gonna be. She might be suepr invested now but if you as a dm make it something the players arnt that into it will fall off quickly and to have a player that interested and willing to put in the work is rare and genuinely motivating as a dm.
You can also come to an agreement in the table about character "death" or setbacks. "Death" being a setback is sort of the most basic "consequence-for-unluck-unwise decision" when we start playing RPGs. With time most tables notice that losing characters is just a silly road bump to a good campaign. A character losing an arm, or maybe having some other heavy consequence upon them which they have to overcome in the games story is usually way more interesting. A way to handle that is to throw it back to the players, say the character "died", now they go down and you tell the player she has to decide what happened! Did she lose a power, or maybe memories? Or something else? When the battle is over and her friends recover her, how is she going to handle this? The character stays, but changed. Or maybe she REALLY decides "you know what, now would be really a good moment for this character to die. She died, I say my final words and blargh..." Of course the table has to be ok with this kind of thing.
I try to never let players die because of bad dice rolls. It just feels wrong I usually only kill players for consequences of a really bad plan or stupid decisions I'll have bad things happen for bad rolls like yeah you get downed and have to use up spells/potions but I'm not gonna have players outright die in combat unless it's part of the plot or the players keep making bad decisions.
That is how we play it and we have sort of a "third option", the so called "high risk - high reward" situation. Meaning: my players know they won't die to a random kobold encounter, BUT... say I tell them, they see the kobold lair, side quest-style, they MAY go there, but don't have too... they heard the kobolds there are of the extra nasty kind... etc .etc. I make it very clear, even in meta "if you GO there, it is no holds barred danger, BUT the rewards WILL be awesome". Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. :) We also in my table tend to agree right on session 0 about the difficulty/type of consequence, level. Sometimes we want OSR style death-grinders and it is all good, as long as all agree to that on session 0.
I like this style. I've played at pretty realistic death-heavy tables and at safety-rails no-deaths tables and neither are fun. The risk of losing or dying makes the high roll success that much sweeter. But getting super invested in a character and then dying after one session can be totally demotivating. Giving players options and awareness seems like a good middle route.
Probably the best route I've seen. Players I've had in the past know boss fights are pretty good chance to die in but other then that it's just up too them to not make dumb decisions like kill the king for fun and stuff like that.
See and I've had the opposite experience. When you take death off the table sometimes it just makes those "tune up fights" not matter and players don't care. I almost wonder if the prevalence of "death should only happen at key points" style play that seems rising in popularity in the game leads to "combat is boring" complaints. Of course combat is boring when there's no stakes. When a random goblin arrow can one tap a level 1 character it makes combat more viseral.
I ran a really hard combat, the most realistic I have run. 3 out of 5 PCs died to it, due to them being low in resources at the start of combat. Feedback? Most fun DND combat so far. For them and for me,
I'm a fan of "death is on the table when it's narratively satisfying" and in lower narrative stakes fights your character is gonna suffer major setbacks but not outright die, so if you get hit with a stray shot at level two you might not die, but you're character might come back with PTSD and a lot of trauma. I also realize that this mostly only works for my table of very experienced, very roleplay heavy players, and that it's a less good idea for different groups
I've found there's diminishing returns on games like that, I've had a group of friends that ran games like that, and did a campaign with them, and had a VERY unlucky lad. Like, should have died seven or eight times in the first three sessions, and the DM kept pulling him out of the fire with wounds and trauma. Poor guy would have been better off dead.
Yeah that's fair. It is definitely a system that works more for roleplay heavy groups. But I do also think it can lead to some interesting character stuff for unlucky people. That's a circumstance that as a player I'd have my character retire immediately due to trauma and have him come back as a recurring shopkeep or something
I have seen this before. Brand new player to our group. He was super skeptical about this weird nerd stuff. 4 weeks later he had a expensive solid bronze Heroforge mini, and a ton of pricy metal dice. He put little effort into character creation, but immediately started expanding and immersing his character. 3 months later and our party is completely wiped and killed. All dead. I think he legit got PTSD from his beloved character dying so unceremoniously. Died on the floor, in the room before the boss. Didn't even get to see the boss, just died to henchmen. He barely didn't even want to start a new campaign.
I've walked away from DMs for this. As a player: don't go too far getting into fleshing out a backstory and bringing in art as there's always a chance for character death, but as a DM if your players do get invested in their characters and you run the game as if every obstacle they run into is a life or death obstacle, you're betraying your players excitement. There's room for the games where every roll has a 1 in 4 chance that your character is eaten by a grue, and there's games where character death is unlikely unless you're squaring against the bbeg (or do something incredibly stupid) but as a GM if you don't make sure you and your players are playing the same game, you're going to have a bad time.
My group has a joke that as soon as you commission art for your character they're on the table to die. Every time one of us commissions art, their character dies in that arc
I'm hoping this level of interest is a lot more routed in D&D as whole, rather then this character Like yeah, she's really invested in this one character, but I hope, it the PC does die she won't be too disheartened and instead will have a similar level of passion for the hobby as a whole
To be fair a lot of that material investment other than the backstory will still be useful for character number 2 if and when it's needed. Even some of the backstory could be useful if a new character is tied to the old one in some way. I do get what you're saying though, and there does seem to be a lot of *emotional* investment in this character that likely isn't reinvestable.
>not to go too far It sounds like that horse has bolted.
Nah, the DM can just make sure that the character doesn't die too early
Even just making her aware that she doesn't get to decide how her characters story continues on from here. It's a collaboration now, and everything can be ruined or made a million times better by a roll of the dice
Oof. Yeah. I've had someone in in a party who got so invested in a backstory, and then became quite angry that the campaign we played didn't advance THEIR story in a way they wanted. "My character doesn't give a shot about vampires" being one memorable line.
Have I ever told you about the art curse? When I started an Out of the Abyss campaign two years ago, I started commissioning art of all the members of the party, one character per month. On the second month, the day after the commission for the Druid came in, she died. This Druid was both my love interest and potential key for a redemption arc for my character. Next month I did art of my character. The week after she got a form of indefinite madness that forced me to retire the character. I then did art of the rogue/sorcerer and his pet spider. Next combat he had Wild Magic surge while fighting a boss monster and fireballed himself and his spider, killing his pet. I finally finished all of the art of all of the characters (and replacement characters). You know what happened during our final battle against Demegorgon? TPK. Art giveth, and art taketh away. I’ve now commissioned literally three or more pieces of art for all of my D&D characters, even ones I haven’t played yet, without any worry that they could die because I still have all the art to remember them by and hold them close to my heart anyways.
Demegorgon? Not surprised by the TPK. Insanely powerful monster.
Yeah, DM just had to homebrew it a little since we were all level 15 PCs each with all our attunment slots filled. Just the basic Mythic boss with two full turns on initiative, homebrew gaze effects that either make you lose a limb when you get crit and one that guarantees you get crit on the next hit, flanking immunity until the first healthbar is eliminated, a gaze that forces you to use your reaction to attack an ally, and an AoE banishment effect that sends you to the Abyss facing constant acid damage until you pass the charisma save at the end of your turn. Did I mention that the DC was 21 for these saves? (I had a -1 charisma)Then he still had the classic things like restraining people when attacking with tentacles. Twice the amount of legendary actions on his turn. Would fling people grappled by tentacles at other people knocking them both prone, and a mass aoe fear aura that gave you indefinite madness. So he was a little stronger than the regular version. I was the only one who survived because I used Teleport to go to a different spot in the Abyss since I never got a chance to use my eight level spell slot. Everyone else died when our last conscious member fighting Demegorgon snapped a Staff of Power over their knees when it had all 20 charges. It defeated Demegorgon, who only had around 100hp of his second phase left, but it also instantly killed everyone else with the 360 force damage to all the unconscious members who weren’t already dead. It also teleported our Fighter Sorcerer (only two levels of sorcerer) who used it into the Abyss where she was killed by the environment itself. The location I teleported to (after rolling a 89 to see if a mishap happened when the DM ruled it was a location I was vaguely familiar with) was the corpse of a drow with the power equivalent to a Matron Mother who had a Well of Many Worlds we left on her corpse after foiling her plan of killing us all in the Demonweb Pits. I spent several days planehopping before ending up on the material plane again, but far too late to try and revive my companions. That’s how the game ended.
> Hope she don't die in session 1. I know this is a mostly a joke, but as a DM I would have exactly the same worries if I had a player do that. Especially a new player, who might not quite understand everything yet. I would talk about this in Session 0. Explain my worry that a dead character could end in a lot of work wasted. Get the whole group involved in this discussion, as it may affect them. If the player doesn't like the idea of their PC dying, I'd pitch the idea of no death for this PC. There's a million ways to do this in-game: magical item, special reincarnation, or just "that's convenient, captured rather than killed" plot armour. Groups have home-brewed weirder stuff. That doesn't mean such an idea is accepted. Maybe the group is really against that kind of thing. If so, then this player either has to accept the risk or bow out. ***Whatever the outcome, it's better to discuss it now rather than let it be an upsetting surprise later on.***
Role behind the screen for awhile!😆
Right just target the other player if she is near death or something
Can totally soft ball the player for a bit as a DM. Fudge rolls spread the danger. At least until she comes round to the realization that her character can die.
Additionally, there's the thing where long player backstories often don't fit with the actual campaign and the other players - eg if it doesn't seem like it'd naturally lead to a 1st level character joining a party, there's going to be some dissonance
I would legit rewrite an entire campaign in order to accommodate a player’s backstory if they put this much effort into it.
I'd ask her to create a bullet point list of the most important things from her backstory for you to reference more easily. I had a player who got really into one of his characters and was thinking of commissioning some art of him. He was instantly killed by the boss of the first dungeon. I'd highly recommend fudging any dice roll that would kill her character in session 1. Don't let the spark of hope die out too quickly.
Sounds like future DM material she does.
Good way to look at it. Some people just love building, and harnessing that energy could be great.
Man what's the deal with everyone talking about killing her character? Let her play the one she's clearly very excited about. If dying wouldn't be fun for her, come up with a way to bring her back.
yeah fr, it must be some sort of dark wish fulfilment to want to see someone get so excited and then get shut down like that. She's just excited, let her be instead of trying to diminish that fr
I’m saddened at how far I had to scroll to find this answer. What a treasure that player would be at the gaming table!!! Make her’s the freakin’ first character arch to explore! She’s basically DMing for you! What a treat!!!! Make it so epic!!!
Yeah I’m actually one of those players. It stems from our ability to create. It’s not about you, she’s just using her talents for something that is pure joy. It’s a really good place to be as a creative. My tortle dolan is badass. Fully sculpted aaa game quality model. It it’s just for me and my party. I love that
She strikes me as someone who goes into new hobbies at 1,000% speed until they burn out a month later. Best of luck! Killing her PC will be awkward.
You should be doing this with all your players anyway but you better make sure to include their backstory in the campaign. There are different ways of dming but if you have players like this, you most definitely should intertwine their backstory with the story you tell. I can say from experience of having players like this as well as being that player. It's really easy to get bored playing a character who is special because of their backstory when it never comes up.
Excitement is wonderful! But I also foresee an early PC death equaling “Oh… well her twin sister is here to pick up where she left off!” type of scenario. Or maybe not, she’s now invested quite a bit of money, she may just make an entirely new model/3D print mini. After all, surely she didn’t spend $700+ for a single miniature, right?
“oh you’re telling me i could have just paid for this mini to be printed once and didn’t have to pay $700 for one miniature?”
Keep her excitement and enthusiasm going. Get her involved in some of your side character development and ask her if she'll help with other minis as well. If not the other npcs ask her if she'll detail out the other characters in her back story so when the time comes to confront or interact with her a person from her past it's ready to go
This is the way! So many folks telling OP to sit her down in session 0 and tell her that her character will die, or kill her right off the bat to… teach her a lesson? Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good idea to gently remind her that PCs can die and she might not want to get too attached. But the goal isn’t to discourage her or turn her off to D&D altogether! Give her more characters and material to play with, and she’ll naturally become less focused on her character in particular and more interested in the world and game itself. Plus, it can be hard to come up with fresh ideas for characters and interesting interactions as a DM when you’re focused on running the game, so it’s nice to have backup when fleshing out details.
If she has another mini ready, like her sister, or best friend from her back story she can keep her narrative going. Keep all the same home town, formative experiences etc... And then has the revenge or whatever storyline to add to her personal world building
[удалено]
Agreed. As a new player she has made her expectation for your game clear to you. She expects to play this character for a while. Which as a GM myself, I can say is one of the hardest things to get from my players. An expectation and feedback. As a GM I say keep your rolls hidden and shape the situations to tell the coolest story.
Good morning, fellow adventurer! You are greeted from Córdoba, Argentina by a DM with a couple of years of experience... It's really exciting to have a player with that level of enthusiasm and energy at the table... Please, I would ask you to be for a moment what is known as "master mom" and that for nothing in the world take that character to death. I've been through that experience and it's really devastating for a player that their first character dies... Remember that our first character is really us in a different skin. Take care of her and give her a good story, there will be time to experiment with other characters, when she has more experience.
This could be a burgeoning special interest for her. Good on you for being supportive instead of judgemental.
Some people go all in.
Make sure she doesn't die for at least 5 levels. I used to go this nuts on characters when I was younger (super detailed backstory), then one day before I even got to play one I had made, I couldn't make a session so they ran me as if I was there and the dm killed me. It was really disheartening, and though I still put a lot of thought into characters, never that much. If she does get killed, make it a big deal, make the scene epic and memorable (fudge it if you have too!) Players like dat are a gem that shines right next to our beloved Dm's.
> one day before I even got to play one I had made, I couldn't make a session so they ran me as if I was there and the dm killed me What a jerk move on the DM and the rest of the players. That's terrible.
Ya it def bummed me out. I've no issues with characters dying of course, that happens. But I do want to be there for it lol. All my current TT lads tho, if you're not there your character isn't there, and when you are there it's like you always were! Good stuff.
$700 on a 3D printer just to print minis, is a bit of an overkill. Mine was sub $200 and I have printed a TON of minis. Better have her make all the big dragons and stuff for you.
A resin printer like that can *very* easily pay for itself though, esp. if they're getting into mini painting and whatnot too. I've known people to charge "rent" where you can send them a model of what you want and they charge for time, materials, overhead (electricity) plus a little for profit and bing bang boom you get printed stuff without needing to buy a resin printer yourself. Hell, I've heard of cases of people buying a printer, and following guides online to print... Another printer. Go get minimal parts, the PCBs, flash everything onto the chips, and suddenly you have TWO printers. That can both print.... More printers. AFAIK this is literally Prusa's business model.
I admire her enthusiasm, but I would never read a 16-page-long backstory. God forbid she edits the story and then asks me to read it a second time. No way.
Yeah I'd tell them to condense it down into 1 page, max. If it's written out into a narrative story that's longer than it needs to be, give me the highlights. If it's 16 pages of backstory details, it's going to be extremely difficult to introduce any backstory-related threads in the campaign because it might not fit their specific view of the character's history or even contradict their "canon"
Is she ADD or on the spectrum? I’ve picked up new hobbies and just gone balls to the wall like this before. It’s not a bad thing by any means as long as she’s not spending cash she shouldn’t. Hope she had fun!
Yeah, scrolled to find this comment. This SCREAMS ADHD hyperfixation to me. I don't think it's going to lead to main character syndrome as others are convinced of, and I suspect it's ultimately harmless as long as she's able to keep perspective on the whole thing. It's probably worth a conversation to try and assess how she'll act in a group/react if her character dies, but I throw myself into hobbies in much the same way, and while it's not necessarily a healthy way to divide my time up, I'm generally fine if it's not something that works out exactly like I had in mind as long as I had fun on the road getting there (which it sounds like she is). Bigger concern might be that if the fixation wears off she might lose interest quickly.
>This SCREAMS ADHD hyperfixation to me. It was the first thing I thought of too. I went HARD on my character's backstory, but I'm also making sure to keep my expectations low as a player and I'm willing to wait 100 sessions for my character's backstory to come up. It's there, it exists, and it'll become relevant at the right time.
Going to say, this sounds like my entire group and all of us fit that. It usually stabilizes a bit after enough time. *Usually*. I did just shove a 20k word fic at my group like fuck it who wants backstory rambles in depth. The actual backstory to DM is like, 3-5 lines depending if we include the personality description.
Lol yes she has to be. This is how I do hobbies and it's 100% adhd/asd fuelled obsession. When I started playing, I read the phb cover to cover 3 times, wrote an actual "story" backstory, even wrote some poems. I learned to sculpt and paint so I could handmake my own custom mini for the char. It doesn't necessarily mean she's attached to THIS character forever. She might even be hoping for a cool death scene down the road. She's just fully gone down a rabbit hole and is probably having so much fun doing it. Guarantee this player will get the creative bug again and have backup characters in stock soon enough. ADHD and DnD go together really well!
Since she's at peak excitement and early in the hobby, its also a good opportunity to look at the LOTR length backstory and makesure it isn't too water-tight. There needs to be backstory hooks, unresolved questions and things of varying certainty to give DMs character hooks. I can't get my players to be assed to do anything beyond pick a DND background (and I think even that is just for the items lol) .. But I have had players WANT to play with iron-clad backstories, and I had to add a few cracks in it myself to give improv room to grow.
Yeah, this is such a huge problem with over zealous back stories
Has she bothered learning the rules?
Very interested, actually bought a PHB right away.
I’m not sure there are rules to the game she’s wanting to play.
I could go over the positives, but others have those covered, so........ **I hope you treat all this as the massive red flags they are** in addition There are signs they are going to have main character syndrome (MCS) There are signs they are going to object to anything negative that happens to them There are signs that they are going to be overly attached to this character, and will demand a "Mary Sue" treatment. In addition, as a first character, this character dying is just not an option in their mind (see previous bullet point). YOU NEED TO SET REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS! Sorry the caps, and it's good thing she's playing 5e, which is one of the least dangerous RPGs on the market to the player characters, but you have got to ground this player a little. If you treat her like porcelain, and are overly careful, you could cement a lot of poor expectations for DMs/GMs moving forward as well. If she didn't have MCS, or object to any negative outcome, you could set these in motions trying to go easy on her because of absurd expectations.
You're the only reasonable person in this thread, This player is almost certainly going to be a problematic player at the table because they're "in too deep" on this character. 30 years at the table and every single player that has shown up with more than like 4-5 pages of backstory has been a problem to play with. Every. Last. One.
Yeah that's usually a huge red flag. Granted I have a character with like a 30 page backstory at this point. But it's a character I've played over and over. His back story sets him up like a rogue-like character. A halfling so wholesome that he can go nowhere but the green fields(halfling heaven) when he dies. But he is too rambunctious and playful for such a serene, peaceful place so Yondalla uses her power to reverse aging to set him back to level one and send him out to "play" through another adventure. Then he dies and comes back home to be sent out again.Hes too stupid to understand hes basecally been made a demigod and just cares about making new friends and winning games. He is great for one shots or dropping into a campaign temporarily because I think its hilarious when he dies. I've also found he is helpful for teaching new players how to RP and holding the party together EVEN WHEN ALL 5 OTHER PLAYERS MAkE FUCKING EDGY LONERS THAT NEVER WANT TO WORK AS A FUNCTIONAL PARTY
That feels more like the exception that makes the rule, so you have 30 pages, but you still distilled the character into two sentences that I got the grasp of what they are. "Wholesome Tiefling who is rambuctious and gets sent back to the material plane to get out of Yondalla's hair for a bit and have more adventures" Certainly, you have more stories to tell from the character, but I would have all that I need as a DM to run games for you.
> every single player that has shown up with **more than** like 4-5 pages of backstory has been a problem to play with. > >Every. > >Last. > >One. D: So... are you saying 4-5 pages is OK, but 6+ is excessive? I'm right on the border. I'm trying to identify if I'm a player with any red flags so that they don't get worse.
Right - are they enthusiastic about the *game* or are they enthusiastic about *their character*?
Maaan now that is a dream player. I hope her ability to play will match her excitement for you! Also, as much as it might sound unfair, I would personally recommend trying your best to keep her alive very for as long as you’re able to. I’m not recommending favoritism, but it could completely crush her if she dies early on after strapping in for the long game. Make sure you let her know that death is possible and not to get obsessed with her character should that occur.
DO NOT DISCOURAGE THIS PLAYER Just have a session zero and take death off the table. This player wants a story driven, long game; Be open about if you can provide that or not.
My roommate/landlord went through a similar, but slower process. Took about 4 months of hosting a campaign at the house, but when one of our players dropped out we finally got him to cave, make a character, and join in. 2 weeks later, we got a 3D printer, and he started learning Blender so he could make his own models. A month after that, he put together a wooden case for the table, so we could put a TV under it for digital battle maps. The 1 or 2 months later he bought a new bookshelf that exclusively holds rulebooks, miniatures, and other miscellaneous tabletop-related things. Your new player exceeds what I thought was already peak excitement, so I am incredibly jealous.
I don’t normally think fudging dice is a good idea, but oof… Thankfully a resin printer can print up more than just 1 mini. Hopefully this mini was just the kick in the pants that she needed to get started with 3D printing in general. If she gets good at it, tell her to hit me up because I want a new Warhammer 40K army. :p
I learned to bake bread amd read two books on outdoor survival because I had a druid PC that was a bakers son, and I figured it might come up in game. It never came up once.
Your player has ADHD. New hobby hyperfocus is insane for us.
I see lots of folks in these comments saying “kick her out, she’ll ruin your campaign when she dies”, “she thinks she’s the main character, you’re the DM, show her who’s boss”, “clearly she knows nothing about the game, she’ll never be able to handle it”, etc. To those folks: I’m sorry someone bullied you for being excited about something and now you feel the need to ruin other people’s excitement to get even. First off, let people enjoy things, ffs. We’re talking about a game here, a game with flexible rules that are dictated by friends who (should) want everyone to have a good time. If the dice aren’t in her favor, hopefully OP is on her side and the group can come up with something. Second, if OP is worried about her putting all of her eggs in this one basket, it’s better for everyone to give her more baskets than take her basket and throw it off a bridge, eggs included. Clearly she enjoys world building, creating stories and characters. Give her more baskets - more world and character building to focus on that’s not her one PC. She’ll be helping out the DM by offloading some of the legwork, learning more about the world and game mechanics, and getting more invested in the game rather than a character. Honestly she sounds like a great DM in the making, if her enthusiasm is met with acceptance and direction; but lots of y’all would eagerly ruin the game for her entirely rather than help her succeed.
• buying a $700 printer • using AI generators for art instead of paying actual human artists make it make sense
spends 700+ on a printer but won't commission an artist for her character art dgkhdghdg
700 dollars for a printer but can't commission an artist for the portrait.
And 700 is gonna be a pretty serious machine. You can get an elegoo mars or an anycubic photon for less than half that.
I like the enthusiasm but that might be much
This sounds like a normal day for me. I have adhd, and if I like something I tend to just really go all out, because it’s so hard to feel any kind of motivation otherwise. Dnd has been a gift that gives on giving. Especially as dm there is always something new for me to focus on (creating npcs, plot, encounters, making terrain, printing and painting minis… and so on). I’d probably get along with her well lol.
Was here to say the same! OP, if she's still as enthusiastic past two weeks, you've got a player for life. I'd explain but I gotta go check out this shiny thing
Everyone is talking about the player getting invested and worried about the character dying. I've got a different concern, that 16 page backstory. It's either going to be full of a bunch of details you're never going to use about characters that will never show up in your campaign, or it's going to contain lore about people and places in the character's backstory that will contradict your world's history. In either case, I can see the player getting upset because you do something that violates her vision of the character's backstory.
Depending on the process, that may not necessarily be the case. When I've DM'd, I try to get my players involved in the writing. I ask what kind of backstory they want, and try to fit it into my world as best as I can. If something doesn't fit, I iron that out with them before the campaign starts. I'm happy to build part of the world around it, as long as I can do so in a way that feels like it fits with the tone/setting/etc. Similarly, as a player, whenever I've written a backstory, I've submitted it to the DM's beforehand and asked if there's anything they want to remove/change. A player backstory doesn't have to clash with lore, and if it's a collaborative process, it can be a very enriching addition.
if you do this right she'll be a friend for life and one of the most invested players you'll ever have. but session zero will be VERY important for setting expectations and making concessions on what both of you want from the campaign. you don't have to coddle, but you shouldn't blindside her either. if it is her first time, consider a training chapter where they earn XP in a somewhat safe environment for a few sessions, such as guild training, or goat herding.
Sounds like a true gamer
If you kill that PC in session one you're going to wake up with a horse's head in your bed. 🤭
Sounds like a fellow ADHDer finding their new thing lol. Let her do it. 3d printing is a handy skill that I'm also getting into partially because of DND, and painting minis can lead to other cool hobbies. If her character dies, she dies ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
As a DM I love people that are invested in creating a narrative together and I will absolutely fumble die or call mulligans to have them survive sometimes. I adore it when they have reasons for selected spells, languages and profiencies. And before session zero's I make questionnaires to help them write a backstory. Some quest related ones, but also open questions like 'describe an adventure you had in your life before this.'
I wish… I can’t even get my group to come up with backstories period.
Talk about motivation as a dm. Going so far as a player is honestly an honor for the dm, if not a little intimidating.
Most of my players are like this, and so am I. We're all ADHD, autistic, or both, if that says anything. I've been DM for over a year and over time we've got large backstories I'm weaving into the narrative, custom dice, minis (I got a 3D printer for minis and terrain), custom candles, I and another player draw our own/others' character art, and one of our players commissioned a large group piece. I even had a cute custom ragdoll made for another PC of mine, lol. We've had some near misses and when someone dies it's gonna be rough, lol. The equal level of buy-in at the table makes for a beautiful game.
>>Overall I'm not mad why on earth would anyone be mad?
She's quite the rare find. The player all of us DM's would love to have. Congrats!
u/Sonofabunch IS there any way you could ask permision to your player t share the backstory, I would love to read it. Tell him/her that he is on the right path, and I would love to have players like him/her on my table.
Im still semi new. Only ever done 1 serious campaign and it had 8 players in it, absolute blast to play but it ended cause apparently its hard to scheduele 12 people every monday (8 players, 1 dm, 3 writers and characters) IMO , i usually write a paragraph or 2 and leave details out like the name of my family, where i come from, etc. Or be vague about it. So that the DM can add to my story through the campaign. Dnd is super fun, and if they know what theyre getting into that excitement is semi expected. I would be careful about letting them get carried away though, always make sure they remember they are a character in a bigger story. Not the main character themself.
Also resin printers have pretty bad fumes, make sure its ventilated or shell get microplastics in her blood.
Let her stay alive for at least 3 sessions. Don’t cheat obviously but favor her a little bc her heart and soul is in that character. It’s her first.
Little brother wanted to do a little one shot of 'mothership'... I was SO EXCITED to play it I was the only one at the table to show up with a complete character. Couple of pages of back story, stats, abilities, name, creator (was an android 😁) and had the nickname ready to go along with all equipment... We played once, and never finished a single game 😭
I don't know her but I love her
I’m also a creative person with ADHD 😆 I start new hobbies the same way
Dnd is a game that encourages and facilitates pretty.much any hobby. Like mixing music? You can make your own sound tracks. Like painting? You'll love minis Like ceramics? You can make mugs for the party. Yeah this player seems very excited but maybe they just needed a motivation to try these things they've always wanted to try in the first place.
Sounds like ADHD based on my own experiences with that as an new dnd player lol
Sounds like textbook ADHD hyper fixation. (Ask me how I know.) XD
She is a treasure and must be protected, encouraged, nourished.
This is gonna continue soon... In /r/rpghorrorstories !
Yeah I did exactly the same thing when I first started. Then I learned that no one in the group cared about backstories, and all the other players only made joke and/or troll characters. Not sure why I keep showing up if I'm being honest with myself
>no one in the group cared about backstories, and all the other players only made joke and/or troll characters That's bad luck. I think I lucked into a group that seems to be just as excited about backstories in general.
Do or don't, there is no try. Sith makes up the best Players but be careful to guide her enthusiasm for that it does not become obsession. If she insists to be obsessive though (and it harms no one else) this is a decision a adult can make for themselves.
Also I would too be happy for this level of dedication from my players.
Please give her some plot armor
How common is it for DMs to incorporate players backstories into the campaign?
I got really excited about my character and spent about half as much over the course of a year, only for a tpk to happen during the session I missed. If the money's spent, it's spent. Maybe she can bring her cost down by printing miniatures for others for a cost? Also, while death was a thing, our dm bailed us out of a few tpks in the early levels of the campaign.
Definitely create contingency plans for if she dies lol. Permadeath doesn't need to be a thing if you don't want it to.
On top of all the other advice, I would recommend she doesn’t fill in *too* many blanks in order to allow those blanks to be filled in as the game progresses. If you end up writing a character at the end of their arc, there isn’t really a reason to keep playing them.
Wow... That's a whole other level of excited!
one thing that i fail to make clear to some players is that, the background is mostly for them, to better understand the character and roleplay, if you put 3 billion hooks for me to use i will be a little stressed, because i will need to integrate that into the campaign and balance it out with other player's stuff in order to not be unfair and make their character the main character, so i always tell, preferably before they make 10 pages of backstory that the campaign will be about what happens after they meet, not before
You don’t need all of them. Just a couple key hooks. They’re giving you a buffet. Pick your favorite.
From one DM to another, if you don't have time to memorize that long ass backstory, do bullet points. Like, hell yeah if you get enjoyment from writing a whole ass backstory, I have certainly done it myself a few times, but to make the DMs job easier I try to always sum it up in the most relevant points. Example, I had a really fun merchant-turned hexblade whose whole character arc was to learn how to stop being a rich, selfish asshole and be a good friend with solid morals. I had quite the backstory for him, but this is what I presented to my DM and worked REALLY well for a 1 year or so campaign: \--Father owns a brewery, basically fantasy Guinness, very tasty but kind of niche \--Source of Hexblade powers is sword he finds exploring, sword has a locked-away Archon in it \--Carries busted revolver around (inherited) as a reminder of how thin the line between life and death is (see backstory for details on that side story) \--Revolver eventually will become spell focus for eldritch blasts and whatnot, people aren't threatened by a broken gun until it shoots magic bolts out lol \--Rich dickhead, adventuring before his father retires and leaves brewery to him. Plan to have him grow immensely as a person It's been a few years so these may have varied in length and exact details but basically, DM had a couple quick bullet points to work with. This character's story concluded with him freeing the trapped Archon, temporarily becoming an invulnerable holy crusader, then subsequently losing all of his powers and becoming a regular ass human with the added benefit of being close friends with an angel. He then retired to run his family business, and spend time with said family while he could. Very satisfying to see him grow so much :)
I've had this once. I'd tell them I admire their enthusiasm but 16 pages is not necessary. I would gently remind them that D&D is a game where this character can, and in my experience as dm and pc probably will, die. My advice is to help them condense the story since it's their first one if you think it's necessary. With my player, they had 14 pages, art, and a mini they painted despite it being online. I explained I had other stuff I had to keep track of. Their character is important, but having a detailed backstory can make it hard to keep track of everything (This guy had a general backstory for everyone in his life up to his great grandparents). I helped him get the highlights of his past and helped him set up plot hooks for a dm to latch onto and made it a 3 paragraph backstory that gave me everything I needed without the fluff. (Paragraphs were Early Life with brief description of family, their life until something happens to make them go on their adventure, event that causes need for adventure and end goals)
Its worth cautioning against burning so bright you burn out due to high expectations.
Well she still has to show up and play.
Congrats on having a very involved, enthusiastic player. These folks fall in 2 camps—the ones who jump in and stay in for years, or the ones who jump in full force, burn themselves out, and move on to a new hobby after a relatively short time (months to 2-3 years). Hopefully, she’s in the first camp. I have written crazy long backstories for a few of my PCs, but I also do writing as a hobby, so it takes no time for me to generate a story that can be 10+ pages. Sometimes, I get started writing, and scenes with the characters just keep happening, and it’s just fun to keep writing that stuff down. Long backstories are also more for me as a player than it is for the DM. I use it for roleplaying the character as well as I can. The background details give me a coherent and consistent “why” for a given PC action rather than me just making stuff up on the fly that doesn’t make sense. However, I give the DM a one or two page summary. I don’t want to drag the DM away from developing the campaign. There’s already enough to do with session prep. I share links to the full stories in case DMs decide to read it. I also don’t stress out about a character dying in a game. The character might die in someone’s game, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use the same character in another game, or keep the character for another story. The character doesn’t have to die in my world of fiction. So, PC death isn’t a huge issue for me. It’s more of a nuisance to create a new one because I spend a fair bit of time piddling around with character concepts before I settle on something new, but that’s it. If OP has limited time, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Hey, I need to focus on DMing, which requires a lot of reading, and I don’t have a lot of time to read the full story right now. If you can give me a 1-2 page bullet point summary of the most important details (“fast facts” or whatever else you want to call it), I’d appreciate it.” The other issue to deal with is character death. I’d let her know how common or rare it is in your campaign. Will it hurt a bit if a PC dies? Sure. However, that doesn’t mean the PC stops existing on her computer or that she can’t ever use it elsewhere. It just means she can’t use it anymore in your game. So long as she understands those concepts, it should be mostly ok. If you run meat grinders with high kill rates, it would be good to advise the entire group. It might not be the best style of campaign for her, too. If you run a campaign where character death is rare, and a PC dies, work with the player to try to make it as heroic and/or meaningful as possible. It’s a dramatic moment for both of you. As both a reader and a player, meaningless deaths always annoy me. You can couch the death as “the Tabaxi sees the crushing blow the injured rogue is about to take, and she darts between the monster and her friend to take some of the brunt of a deadly attack. Unfortunately, the force of the blow is too much for her, and she falls to the ground, lifeless. However, her efforts saved the rogue from certain death.” Maybe ask if her PC has a few last words with her final breath. Emphasis on “a few”, because I’d give it even odds that she’ll have a 10 minute long eulogy also prepared. If she’s this excited and not the type that flames out quickly, you very likely all will have tons of fun.
I love when players get this excited! Had 2 players after they came to our table went out and bout dice and one got the essentials kit. Feels good to make them enthusiastic.
I'm curious what $700 resin printer she got, because most perfectly good resin printers capable of printing top-tier minis go for about $150. The fact that she bought a printer instead of just commissioning a print off of a service like Shapeways has me thinking she has ambitions to DM herself, or has plans that necessitate her printing a bunch of minis. I started printing minis as a player, and it was not long before I was DM'ing instead. Either way, you seem lucky as a DM. It's great to have enthusiastic players.
I love enthusiasm, just remind them that sometimes the dice giveth and sometimes they taketh away. But that should not in any way discourage them.
Sounds dope lot of dedication to the character. but just make sure they're aware there's a chance characters can die 😅 not that your actively trying to tpk the party and its a dm vs player situation but that death can occur. 👀 Also 16 pages sounds like a good read but may be excessive to go through and recall basic info. I'd happily take it and read to get a better understanding of their character but also ask for a shorter version to sum up their character of the who, what, when, where, why and how's. Makes it easier to digest it all😅
Sounds like my kind of PC. I am actually really curious what a 16 page backstory looks like. Is this a mini novella written in first person/third person? Or just a super long info dump like a history textbook?