Hi just a small question about back stories


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


so im new to this sight and i have been looking st s few peoples characters and i need to ask how to you all feel about it when someone takes the background you have made for a old character and uses it as there own...please don't hate me i just felt i had to ask this...


if you are looking at it as inspiration and tweaking things to make it a little bit more fit your character... then that seems perfectly fine to me.

if you are literally copy/pasting, and not changing a thing... that still doesn't bother me too much... but it seems a little odd. And i would likely be weirded out if the person who did it ended up playing in a game with me...

Safest bet would be to read the backstory you liked a second time, and then rewrite it from memory. It will go pretty quickly, and the act of typing it out can often open up your own imagination so that you can customize it a bit, and let your own voice show in the writing.


It's all fair game. None of the background stuff that gets posted here is, like, proprietary information, so if you think it's a fun backstory then go for it. If you're using a character backstory from another player at the same table that might get a little weird, since that was sort of their creation, but at the same time a lot of backstories are, to be fair, a little cliched or tropey, so just changing a few facts can be enough to make the character more unique.

Have you checked out the Ultimate Campaign background tables? Even if you don't roll (and I actually don't encourage that unless you're really stuck) there can still be some great inspiration from those that can make your character feel a little different. It seems odd, but making character backstories is kind of a muscle that you have to exercise. If you want to get really good at it, roll up X number of characters and then make up backstories for them that avoid the most cliche archetypes: brilliant but crazy wizard, lucky smartass rogue, quiet and brooding barbarian, "I AM THE LAW!" paladin, etc. People are also really adverse to having adventurers with families. Add in a family and the background almost creates itself.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Zonox wrote:
so im new to this sight and i have been looking st s few peoples characters and i need to ask how to you all feel about it when someone takes the background you have made for a old character and uses it as there own...please don't hate me i just felt i had to ask this...

Never had that problem. Closest I ever had to it was someone making a character who was related to mine without asking first. Only reason I was annoyed because he was creating it to be dumb joke foil for one I played seriously and I wasn't looking for that kind of roleplay, although I would have accommodated him if he had asked first.


I think there are ways to send private messages on these boards? I may be wrong, but at least try to contact the original creator first.


You'll probably never interact with any of the players, and the backstory just sets up the character, so even if you take the backstory, your roleplaying is going to give you a completely different character. If any locations/people are named in the ackstory, your views on them will also differe from the original creator's as well.

Besudes, a lot of backstories are just the sme sort of broad strokes peppered with little ideas anyway.
Orphans, super special kids, feral children, anthropomorphic animals, last of their kind, evil race doing good things, stuff like that.
Creating a carbon copy/reskin happens often enough that there's almost no need to blatantly lift a backstory word for word.


ok thank you all for your input I appreciate it

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