Can anyone help me out? It was basically a round-robin wherein each player would answer a few questions (such as “Who is your arch-nemesis?”), and then the GM took their answers and used them to craft questions for the NEXT player in the circle, who got to provide the answers (such as “Player 2, where does player 1′s arch-nemesis reside now?”).

Search isn’t turning anything up; perhaps it was in someone’s comments?

Thanks!

This might do it. If I get them to stop playing the same characters I can at least get them to flesh them out a bit.

I know that I’ve been light on “highlight the campaign world” type questions in the past– and I can see that I’ve been overlooking a great expectation setting tool. I’ve usually been longer on hooks and personality questions, but that’s only half of the tool. Thanks!

The ones I like the most are questions that give me story hooks. There is always a question about family and closest friends (in SR I’ll even give the player free contacts for fleshing out some friend they have).

I also like to ask about the characters’ child hoods, what was the biggest events in their lives, marriage/dating status, big dream or goal they are working towards.

I’ve also asked questions like if you got a million nuyen what would you do? Or, moral compass kinds of questions with a “what if?” question.

Again, great article!

I’ve used the list of questions in past campaigns — mainly Shadowrun. I think they usually number between 20 and 30 questions total. In the past I have had the players fill out a form and email it to me. As incentive for them to fill out all the questions I give the player something of value like build points in SR.

However, after reading this article I am quite taken by the idea of doing this live with the group. I can really see a gathering of my group at our old time favorite diner having a meal and lots of coffee while we go through some background questions. It would be a lot of note taking for me, but I think the environment would work (in SR the players usually have a favorite diner they haunt for planning and post run short stacks of pancakes). Also, I would imagine the cross fertilization of ideas amongst the group would be very interesting. One of the players might chime in that they think they were with the player talking on some occasion, or the idea of one will spark another idea in a fellow player.

Aside from that I’ll add my one experience playing Amber. It was a play-by-email game. In it, we had a questionnaire that was lengthy, but also had to write stories about our character for each round of attribute bidding as well as for any items of power or personal shadows we had.

I’m a big fan of the question list to get some background for the players and give them a pre-taste of the campaign. Plus it’s a good way to get an idea of what your players are looking for in the campaign.

In closing, I love the idea of the live question session with the group. I can’t wait to give that a try for some game I run.