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James D'Amato
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The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Prompts and Activities to Create the Most Interesting Story for Your Character (Ultimate Role Playing Game Series) Kindle Edition

by James D’Amato (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,286 ratings
See all formats and editions
Ramp up your role-playing game (RPG) and make your character your own with this fun, interactive workbook—an essential addition to any player’s gaming kit.

You’ve chosen your class, bought your weapons, and rolled for your stats, and you’re now the proud owner of your own RPG (role-playing game) avatar. But before you begin your adventure, there’s so much more you can do with your character to make him or her your own! Just how evil is she? What does his dating profile look like? Where did she get that scar? What does he want for his birthday? With fill-in-the blank narratives, prompts, and fun activities to help you customize your character at the start of the game, or build out your backstory as you play, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Book will help you fully imagine your character and bring them to life for the ultimate gaming experience!
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  1. Part of series
    Ultimate Role Playing Game
  2. Print length
    272 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publisher
    Adams Media
  6. Publication date
    October 2, 2018
  7. File size
    1026 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Your character creating journey itself seems like a game, there’s space available to write in the book which I feel helps add to pencil and paper feel to the famed tabletop RPGs! What I like about this book is even if you don’t want to play with others, you could entertain yourself by creating characters for fun OR to help you create characters for a book or short story. From what I’ve read so far, this book is pure fun. If someone like me who knows little to nothing about traditional RPG’s could enjoy this book, then other newcomers to the genre and returning heroes from past fellowships will find something in this for them." — Horror Fuel

"I took my time reading through this book, trying out exercises with new and existing characters, and handed it off to friends, both those who D&D players and short story writers. I was pretty quickly getting questions about how much it cost, ($14.00 USD MSRP, though it’s currently on sale for a lower price several places), when it comes out, (October 2nd) and if I’d be willing to let them borrow it, which I think speaks volumes. I’ve found myself reaching for the book when trying to come up with a clever little something to fit into a character’s backstory while writing a script, and have had other writers suggest they’d use it to do the same. It’s not only a useful tool for building and fleshing out characters, it’s also written in an incredibly entertaining way, making it fun way to get the creative juices flowing." — Gaming Trend

"James D’Amato has thought about the novice and the experienced player and has put together ‘The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide’ to essentially have you be an RPG superstar…. Taking fear into account can make your role-playing character come to life by giving them a sense of humanity and creating interesting gameplay. That’s something only D’Amato has realized and gamers will be the better for it…. James D’Amato has done something special with his new book ‘The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide.’ It’s akin to a graduate school course in role-playing games." — Reviewfix

"This is a great book for any player of RPGs and can be a valuable resource for those that act as a Game Master. Much of this book is addressed in the third person and it gives the feeling of a great attentive Game Master working out character creation you the reader as the player. We should all be so lucky to have such a GM and we should all be such thoughtful and creative players." — Game Industry

"I can give The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide the following praise - it's inspired me to want to kick off a new RPG Campaign for the first time in a year and a half. I want to DM a campaign and I want to play in a campaign. I want to pick through the guide for nuggets of inspiration, for added depth to my next game world. I can think of no better endorsement other than "this book will be used". Sadly, I can't say that for the vast majority of my gaming collection." — Tenkar's Tavern

"For me as a founder of Halo: The Lost Keys a text based RPG played via discord it really was fun and entertaining to do, and I look forward to writing some more in it." — Nation Fusion

"It truly is an RPG guide that hopes to make everyone a bit more excited for the RPG experience. Again, as mentioned above, it’s incredibly useful for those trying to get a kickstart into creating a story for their friends… I can dig this guide and its purpose… Anyway, there isn’t a lot to dislike about this book. It shoots straight, it works for what it is, and it feels open. I particularly enjoyed the fact that there are spaces for writers/game masters to fill in the blanks to answer questions, as well as make notes… it is a good book that does truly act as a guide. It will certainly help to kickstart ideas for characters, stories, and situations that pure RPGers can get behind." — Digital Chumps

"The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is the perfect way to create a unique character for yourself, and no two characters made using this book will be the same… Even if you don’t intend to use your character for anything, going through this book will give you an appreciation for the skill of creating characters. Whether for video games, literature, D&D or even comic books… The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a gem for all dungeon masters, and for anyone who may find themselves with the need to create characters with depth. I could even picture indie developers who may not have their own creative resources, utilizing this book to flesh out characters in their RPGs. At $10.39 for the paperback currently, this book is completely worth the price." — Koalition

"In what seemed like it would be a novelty item to your RPG adventure, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide comes off far more as a requirement for crafting your character… I absolutely enjoyed this. I tried to be a bit critical and think what this book lacked. There’s really not much… The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is still a really essential guide for crafting your player character to their fullest. For me, this gave me the opportunity to delve a bit deeper into my own character in some rather interesting ways that I never thought about. Highly recommended." — Outright Geekery

"James D'Amato's The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide contains a wealth of exercises that can be used to enrich RPG characters and their interactions with others through the use of improvisational storytelling techniques, something James has a great deal of experience with, having trained at Second City and iO in Chicago in improvisational comedy." — Game Vortex

"Whether you are a DM/GM that wants to encourage their players to have deeper characters and create more engaging Non-Player Characters (NPCs), or a player looking to bolster their roleplaying by establishing more about a character’s origin, or even an author in need of a tool to assist in building believable characters, relationships, and establishing world building, The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a perfect supplement to any game’s character creation process. Ever activity is well thought out and cover a broad range of impact to the character and the world they live in. Some are silly and fun, while others dig deep into a character’s major events. For RPG veterans and new players alike grabbing The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide is a sure way to expand your overall RPG experiences!" — Marooners Rock

"This guide is a great addition to any adventurers’ library."

— Gaming Buddha

About the Author

James D’Amato is the author of The Ultimate RPG Series, cofounder of the One Shot Podcast Network, and host of the One Shot and Campaign: Skyjacks podcasts. He trained at Second City and iO in Chicago in the art of improvisational comedy: he now uses that education to introduce new people to role-playing, and incorporates improvisational storytelling techniques to create compelling and entertaining stories for RPG campaigns and one-shot adventures.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07CL4VY2K
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Adams Media (October 2, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 2, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1026 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,286 ratings

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James D'Amato

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
2,286 global ratings
This is what you need!
5 Stars
This is what you need!
I have been listening to the author's podcast for quite some time now. I was always amazed at how rounded his RPG characters seemed, even when they are just playing one session.This book is good for beginners who have no idea how to create a backstory, and it is also good for people who are skilled at writing backstories. This book provides so many prompts of things that you may not ever have thought of on your own. Lots of really intriguing choices, and in the end, it will help you flesh out a character to the fullest of your capabilities!This has become my go-to book to gift to my RPG player friends. It's just plain fun!
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Top reviews from the United States

Frank D
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration for Character Generation.
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book is a really useful tool for helping generate backstory ideas during character creation. Either for a Player Character or a Non Player Character this book provides a good stepping stone in the process.

It’s simple and open format is not intended as a specific regimen to be followed for Character Generation nor is it just an endless list of random tables. Instead it is a system neutral collection of brief themed exercises with questions and some random tables. These exercises are written in a way as if a GM were providing a scenario for you or asking you the questions and even have some die rolls for certain resolutions and possibilities.

It is meant to inspire you to flesh out what this Character has been through and what may have helped shape their personality and their motivations. The books exercises are also broken up into tiers to have a general gauge over potential starting points in a Characters career.

I really enjoy what this book has to offer and I find it very useful to get my own thoughts kickstarted. I would highly recommend this book to any player of any tabletop game or any GM to have at the table for their players to thumb through. A GM might even want to select certain exercises that might fit the theme of the campaigns starting point and use them as handouts at session zero.

This book is jam packed with a variety of material to inspire you, a worthy purchase indeed. Thank you James D’ Amato.
15 people found this helpful
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Ryan B
5.0 out of 5 stars If anything can flesh out my a'murderin and a'stealin bad boy Dirge Stranglethorn...
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2019
Verified Purchase
I love this book. It turned my gunslinging madman, Dirge Strangethorn, the worst of the worst in the weird west, into a somewhat sympathetic character! Take that, Cresendo Restriction-Bush!

Seriously, though, this book has exercises for all sorts of characters. From new characters to seasoned veterans, to the untamable anti-heroes! It's good to note that these are very good exercises that will help guide your creative mind in order to flesh out your amazing characters. Though there are some random tables, it doesn't just spell out the answers for you. What fun is it if you don't put at least a little thought into the process?

So, bond with your favorite characters created. Cast aside your doubts and embrace this amazing design doc. It's not like you have one shot only to a system mastery, or is it backstory mastery. Your character is more than a shield and some broadswords. Before you get to your session zero, you won't need a modifier for the critical success that will be your character! You can be guaranteed it'll be an adventure! You could even say it's neoscum good!
5 people found this helpful
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Katrina Ostrander
4.0 out of 5 stars It's About the Journey, Not the Destination
Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2018
Verified Purchase
True to its word, The Ultimate RCBG guides players through the process of creating a detailed backstory for their role-playing game characters with the lightheartedness and whimsy of most Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Readers will enjoy the comedic tone of many of the exercises, from the adventuring party formation app called “Ventur” (“Whom does your character swipe right?”) to the “Damn Merlinials” prompt that explores how older generations of adventurers might look down on those newer to the lifestyle.

The book leaps from topic to topic—“What is your character’s catchphrase?” segues into “What would you do to save a cat?” before proceeding to “What unique holiday do you celebrate?”, for example—which means readers don’t have to worry about getting “stuck” on one portion of their character’s life. You can easily skip ahead to a prompt that interests you, or open up the book to a random page for an unexpected adventure. If you want to work through the book in order, the activities are organized based on character level, which makes sense when you consider that the experiences of a fifteenth-level hero will differ compared to a first-level novice fresh from the farm. There’s also some great guidance in the introduction for the types of feats your character will be capable of accomplishing by level.

A reader needs only the loosest of character concepts in mind to complete the activities—and honestly, you could go in with a blank slate and have fun seeing what sort of character you generate through the prompts alone. I think this is especially helpful for readers who may be intimidated at the prospect of crafting an epic backstory worthy of a George R. R. Martin novel (and having to generate a treatise numbering in the dozens of pages, like that one player always does). Even after completing only a handful of activities, you’ll produce an emergent narrative for your character’s past in much the same way that a series of rolls and card draws creates a story over the course of a board game. Contemplating how the different episodes in a character’s life might be linked makes for an organic and unique backstory, although it might not have quite the elegance and resonance of a character whose histories have been tightly plotted.

Where many character backstory generators focus on the who, what, where, and when, the activities are structured to let readers focus on the how and why, which is much more useful when figuring out how to actually role play as your character. (Consider how two characters with a similarly tragic childhood might respond to those formative events very differently.) I was pleasantly surprised by how the activities also engage the rest of the adventuring party, inviting the reader to think about how their character relates to or potentially clashes with their fellow travelers. This is an aspect absent in similar types of character-writing advice books for novelists, and it’s something Amato’s book does especially well.

Who Should Get This Book?

This book is especially geared toward players who want to continue enjoying the tabletop gaming hobby on their own time, players who are new to role-playing and Dungeons & Dragons specifically, and players who don’t normally consider themselves creative. The latter type of reader will appreciate jumpstarting their inspiration with fill-in-the-blank prompts, short-answer questions, multiple-choice options, and tables to roll on to generate random results. If you do consider yourself especially creative and enjoy writing, your answers to the activities can serve as the foundation for a slew of short stories or scenes. The sheer variety of activities, as well as the range of prompts, makes the workbook fun and exciting to work through, since you’re genuinely curious to know what the next questions will be.

Who May Want to Pass?

This book won’t appeal as strongly to gamers who are turned off by fantasy tropes or settings, role-players who want a very serious or dark tone for their characters, and people who want to create novel-worthy characters efficiently (you can totally use these prompts to create a protagonist for your next writing project, but you won’t get there as efficiently or cover all the bases needed by a novel). That said, there’s still plenty of gaming goodness here for players of games other than D&D.

Between the Pages

The very first thing I noticed upon opening the book was the interior design, which is elegant and well-balanced on the page. The sans-serif font is easy to read and not too small. The dual ink tones (black and orange) makes the product look good without the cost of a full-color production. The spot gloss on the cover and spine also provides a touch of class.

Unfortunately, a lot of the beauty and visual interest is lost in the Kindle version, and I was disappointed by the low resolution of the bullet icons (likely done to keep the file size low, but storage space usually isn’t a concern for me on my Kindle or tablet). On the plus side, the tables are sized properly and don’t break awkwardly in the Kindle reader like I’ve seen in many other professionally produced e-books. Nevertheless, this book is definitely worth getting in print, or in a PDF option if one becomes available.

Finally, I think any true workbook would benefit from a lay-flat binding, and some readers may find it awkward or impossible to write in their copies without breaking the spine. However, coil binding would have greatly increased the cost, and customers who really want this experience can take their books to their local office supply store or print shop to rebind it for ten dollars or so.

Final Thoughts

All in all, this book helps fill a gap in a burgeoning hobby where most of the how-to books are directed at game masters. Most importantly, this book provides a vehicle for many more hours of fun when you don’t feel like you have enough role-playing in your life.

A complimentary copy of the softcover was provided to the author for review purposes.
74 people found this helpful
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Ryan M.
5.0 out of 5 stars The best way to spend your time in between sessions
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2018
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I've been playing dungeons & dragons for 10 years. My favorite part was always setting up my chracters and non-player characters. As a DM, I coyly refer to the story surrounding a character as their "frontstory" because it's really more important than anything else on the character sheet! Unfortunately, D&D itself leaves little formal mechanisms for players to flesh out their characters' stories. That's where this book comes in.

D'Amato's fun activities throughout the book help you put yourself in the shoes of your character. It's perfect for when you come home from a session, full of energy, and wanting to spend time on the campaign before you see the rest of your group again. As a bonus, if you answer these questions truthfully about yourself, you'll emerge remarkably self-aware! The book can be used over and over again for different characters. It also doubles as a helpful fiction-writing tool for authors who want to understand their characters better.

I don't know for sure that this book would be fun for people who despise worksheets - but that's okay. For those of us that like to geek out on our character sheets, it's a gem. :) My only criticism of the book is that the current e-book version is not very nice to look at.
13 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Scott Gilroyed
5.0 out of 5 stars Cool Book
Reviewed in Canada on December 27, 2022
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Great idea well executed. Made a nice gift.
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Marina M. Mattano
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent present for rpg fans
Reviewed in Germany on January 2, 2021
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I got this for my boyfriend and he enjoyed it a lot, mow he knows all the tricks and tips to make his own rpg.
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juan muniz
5.0 out of 5 stars Gran herramienta para creación de personajes
Reviewed in Mexico on February 17, 2019
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Gran herramienta de ayuda para la creación de trasfondo de personajes no solo en juegos de rol
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Vincent BETTENFELD
5.0 out of 5 stars Utile pour les campagnes med-fan
Reviewed in France on August 17, 2019
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Ce livre commence par des questions très sérieuses pour aider au développement des personnages de bas niveaux, et devient de plus en plus amusant au fur et à mesure qu'ils gagnent en puissance. Ce livre sera utile pour les joueurs qui veulent développer leurs historiques comme pour les MJs qui veulent créer des aventures "fillers". Il est fait pour D&D, mais s'insère sans effort dans des jeux narrativistes comme Dongeon World. Il demande par contre un GROS effort d'adaptation pour sortir du med-fan.
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P. Bennett
5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2019
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I honestly think this book (and its inevitable multiple genre-specific sequels) will be the required reading for all RPGs along with the players guides.
For GMs, this gives you an excelent session zero and multiple ways of structuring in-game social RP moments. No longer will you ask for watches and rolling checks for the sake of it. Instead you can open up the fireside conversation section and have a character moment without putting anyone on the spot to hold up the drama.
There are things that help players build the world and have character building sessions together outside of the regular game you might not have time for on game night.
A less noted thing this gives you as a player is, as you randomly roll through some of the sections, you see things you don't like for your character. I find this gives you just as much insight and clarity on things you haven't thought about yet or are unsure of
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