Improve your GMing: Background creation with around the table questions

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Details: Instead of everybody doing background stories on their own, let others influence some part of it and create a connection between characters as a side effect. One way to achieve this is to frame some questions everybody has to answer about the character of his left or right neighbor and share that information with that player.

Some examples:
Your character knows a secret of the neighbors character. What is it?
Or the variation: The neighbors character knows a secret of your character. What is it?
What does your character not like about the neighbors character?
How did your character met the neighbor's character?

And since there has to be an explanation how that character knows these things a connection between characters is created.

The technique is not restricted to character creation. It could also be applied after some time thereafter. For example by saying that the group has spend some time together and the members have learned more about each others during encounters.

Usage in the session: When we played a one-shot we used this to create the some background for the characters.

Impact on our session: It was fun to see how different the players did answered the questions and most answers were original and made a good base to start the game with. Also did the players get into the mood for more than only some combat encounters and we had some descent roleplaying.

Advice: Whenever I am in a game with new characters I would like to have at least one around the table question. Why?
For a one-shot this helps to create a bit of background story since most players probably would bother to make up a background for such a game.
And for a ongoing game it helps to create connections between characters. And the players do learn about each others background stories. Especially questions about secrets could be the cause for some interesting developments in game. I had enough campaigns in the past where background stories did contain some hidden facts about a character but they never came up in the game. But since one in the group knows about it, if using this technique, it is more likely to come up and have some impact on the game.
This should not replace the creation of background stories by each player but it is a nice way to contribute to the stories.
The questions/answers should be framed in such a way that the answers do not have to much impact on one characters background story. If a player has a clear vision of his character and such an answer would force the player to go into a direction she or he does not want to the player should be allowed to either ignore it or to ask for another answer.
And I would also advice against to many questions. One or two (one for each neighbor) is enough.

Improve your GMing: The Mountain Witch Trick

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Details: I have heard about this the first time in a podcast (if I remember which I will add the name and URL) and a quick google will tell you that it is a technique described in the game 'The Mountain Witch'.
Instead of the GM telling the players a background story or describing a scene a player does it. This is done by the GM by telling either what a specific character perceives or how he reacts to a certain scene and asks the player why.

Usage in the session: The party was confronted by a group of mercenaries lead by a dragonborn. I told a player, who also plays a dragonborn, that he knows the leader and remembers him as shady, untrustworthy individual. And then I asked why his character did know him and where from.

Impact on our session:The result was way better than expected. The player did not only instantly tell a good story but also did the other players learn more about the background of that players character as well. He did such a good job that the others did not even noticed that he made it up on the fly.
The now established personal relationship motivated the player to some roleplaying which lead to more fun for everybody. In the combat that eventually followed the player insisted that he would battle the leader alone and an exchange of insults did take place which added flavour to the session we seldom had.
Thanks to the usage of Mountain Witch I had the best session as a GM for months and I think my players had a good time as well.

Advice: Even if the Mountain Witch is a great way create to instantly involve characters or to add elements to a scene you as a GM would not have thought of I would not use it too often. Why? Taken to the extreme it might get silly. Think of a dungeon delve where every group of enemies the party meets has at least one member which is personally connected to one of the characters. Which is more than implausible.
But if you use it maybe once per session and in a creative way this trick will definitely improve your game.