What if each of your live play sessions started with a scene that dramatically featured the backstory of one of the player’s characters in your campaign? What if it set the tone with evocative role play and drama and shed light on interesting parts of the characters around the tables origins and motivations?
Flashbacks can be a truly awesome tool for elevating your D&D experience. We’re challenging you to try incorporating this into your upcoming games. In this week’s article we will walk give you an easy to follow, step by step guide for bringing in your players’ characters stories into the foreground with back story flashbacks.
Why Use a Flashback in Your Game
Key benefits:
- Amazing spotlight management. Target a player that has not really had a chance to shine and approach them about featuring their character in the next session.
- Huge improvements to player engagement and involvement in the current story.
- Get all the players interested in the details of other players stories.
Examples of Back Stories for Your D&D Character Flashbacks
Better seen than discussed abstractly; here are some great examples of flashbacks to light up a character’s backstory both in and out of a D&D context for your inspiration.
Nimeria
In the campaign “The Winds of Sur Salin” by the Be a Better Game Master channel, we have a great example of DM Barker illustrating the back story of Nimeria – the Tiefling in the party’s emotional story of her last interaction with her parents. We are brought in to the first person as villagers burn their home down in their fear and suspicion of the demon-blooded Tiefling family. Note how Barker has prepared a compelling scene with notes on descriptions rich with the five senses brought into the scene.
Dominic
My good friend and I created this fiery rite of passage scene for his druid. We walk through the dramatic rite of passage ceremony of Dominic becoming a recognized member of the
GA-DD00-T
(Pronounced Ga-DOH) This scene tells us an origin story of GA-DD00-T – the Warforged garden automaton turned sentient when struck by a meteorite. It is filled with the details of his surprising gained sense of consciousness and the interactions with the soldiers that found him.
Arrow
This video is of flashbacks from the TV show Arrow. My favorite is the very first scene that really shows the ingenuity, skill, endurance
4-Step Process for Introducing Great Character Flashbacks
Now that you’ve seen the examples here are some steps to take to get back story flashbacks implemented in your game.
Step 0 – Get the players creating a cool back story that you can dive into
The prerequisite to having a good flashback is that we need characters that have a compelling back story that we can expand on. In your campaign creation process, set yourself up for success by helping the players. Give them with prompts that help them think up compelling parts of their back story. Make sure to hit some of the fundamental questions. Why is your character adventuring? What happened in their past that made them who they are? What open loops are there from their past, story wise? (((for more on this check out our related article)))
Step 1 – Choose a Character to Feature
You will probably want to limit your character flashbacks to one per session. You’ll need to plan on who you want to feature next in your upcoming session. Here are some questions to spark your thinking:
- Which player has not been very engaged? Who do I want to help shed some spotlight onto?
- Which player has something coming up in the story related to their background?
- Which player will help do the best job at setting the tone for how these back stories play out? This one is especially good to ask yourself if this level of storytelling is new to your group.
Step 2 – Plan a dramatic encounter that showcases the character’s past
Recommendations
- Keep it short… the entire encounter should play out in 5-15 minutes.
- Pick a pivotal, defining moment from the characters past, or pick a story that really showcases a part of the characters story that the rest of the party may not know about
- Make it immersive. If there was ever a time not to skimp on prepping your dramatical flair and immersive detail, this is it! Think about including background music, maybe change the lighting? Will you be RP’ing a character that has a voice that you’ll be bringing in? Check out the linked videos for inspiration here.
- Make sure that the player can act out the story. Have the framework laid out ahead of time but the player should really be able to help co-author this scene with you.
- Think about 1-3 actual skill or combat checks that the character(s) in the flashback might have to accomplish in the scene.
- Consider giving the other players at the table a role to play in the adventure. Maybe they can be a part of the fun? They might love playing the protagonist OR the antagonist’s side.
Step 3 – Act it out in Session
It’s Showtime! You can introduce the flashback encounters right before the previous session recap or after. If your flashback is going to include other characters around the table, introduce them to their roles, and jump in! You and the spotlighted player should put on a compelling scene. Try flashing back after a particularly emotional or impressionable part of the scene….
Step 4 – Reap the Benefits
As you bring your players through this process… maybe one per session… notice that you’ve created some very fertile soil for roleplay hooks both for players themselves and for player – to – player roleplay. These open loops from the past become great nuggets for bringing into the story. It will raise the level of excitement if suddenly, the party meets an NPC or villain from a character’s past.
If you’re feeling a bit unsure, I’d encourage you to just try it out! You might find that this process really takes your game to new levels. I hope that this technique can help you really Elevate. You. Game.
Premade Modules
Does this work with premade modules too?
Interweaving character stories lends itself best to a custom, homebrew game because the story milestones are so flexible. This can still happen in a premade campaign though. I’d argue that it takes a little more creativity on the side of the DM to make the story relevant to the current campaign… but even if it does not come into play in the actual story it is still awesome in that it tells us an emotional, compelling part of the character’s past.