Backstory development through play - does this exist?

[TygerTyger]

I recently got the idea in my head of a system in which characters are created with little to no established backstory but are allowed to detail it in play in ways that will help achieve their current goals. So when the Bride was buried alive in Kill Bill 2, her player chose that moment to describe her training with Pai Mei, including learning to punch holes through boards. When the flashback ends, it confers an immediate benefit in the PC's present situation (e.g., the ability to punch through boards), rewarding the players for "revealing" character backstory at dramatically appropriate moments.

Does this exist in some form in a published RPG?

[hls]

I'm not aware of an RPG which explicitly mechanically represents this idea, but it's how the vast majority of my characters tend to get developed.

[Jackalope]

Damn. I thought this was going to be something else entirely.

I have a player who never comes up with a backstory for his characters. He claims he'll develop it during play, but he never does. Drives me crazy.

[Narcisista]

Originally Posted by TygerTyger

I recently got the idea in my head of a system in which characters are created with little to no established backstory but are allowed to detail it in play in ways that will help achieve their current goals. So when the Bride was buried alive in Kill Bill 2, her player chose that moment to describe her training with Pai Mei, including learning to punch holes through boards. When the flashback ends, it confers an immediate benefit in the PC's present situation (e.g., the ability to punch through boards), rewarding the players for "revealing" character backstory at dramatically appropriate moments.

Does this exist in some form in a published RPG?

Fireborn, more or less.

Caliphate Nights, definitely, altough it is not necessarily by revealing the character's background.

[Jackalope]

One of the character creation methods in Spirit of the Century works like this, more or less, without actually requiring a flashback. A character has 10 Aspects, and there's an option to just start playing after picking two aspects. The character can then define other aspects as play goes along.

[LordDraqo]

Actually, this is one suggestion for a way to work with FATE, and SotC. There was an article entitled FUDGE on the Fly, that worked well, IMO.

[TygerTyger]

Aha. I'll have to check some of those out. Thanks.

[Mechante_Anemone]

HeroQuest offers this as one of the character creation methods. In addition, there is a little indie game by Alexander Cherry, called Snowball (free download) which is "an attempt to emulate backwards-storytelling, starting with the last scene, and moving backwards towards the beginning of the story in discrete intervals (like the movie Memento)." The system is based on The Pool.

[Tiran]

Well that would definitely fit in a system shounen fighting anime

[Cirv]

Thanks just for asking the question. Never done it before but my current Dragonlance campaign is about to get a whole lot more interesting!