The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Expanded Genres Edition: Prompts and Activities to Create Compelling Characters for Horror, Sci-Fi, X-Punk, and More (Ultimate Role Playing Game Series)

Wonderful addition to D'Amato's other three books, this guide adds even more utility and flavor options.

I’m a forever GM, but my players are not great at roleplay, or character creation, or… literally any part of playing ttrpgs, -but at the beginning of each session I’ve been having them each answer one question from this book or do one of the exercises, and it has really been helping them see the characters more as moldeable archetypes instead of a cardboard cutout with a sword, which is a good starting place for them. I’ve also used this book to create a gun for hire who was raised by snakes in the sewer, so I’m very happy with that. I highly recommend not just this book, but all of James D’Amato’s work. I have all of his books, and they all serve me very well.

The book is a good guided tour of character development with many questions to answer about your characters or NPCs. I was hoping for more of a rogue's gallery or suggested answers. As said in the headline, it's a good book to get you to think more about your character.

This book helps to bring about some very interesting views and Ideas to add some spice to character creation and bringing your RPG characters to life!

My Starfinder game recently wrapped up our first campaign and we started a new one. Most of my fellow players enjoy the math elements of the game, but I figured I'd get this to help inspire us all into more layered characters and help our GM build more plot hooks relevant to our characters. I also got the first RPG Character Backstory Guide to go with it, since it looked very fun for developing ideas for my own OCs. Looking forward to daydreaming up tons of new ideas from both of these books!

James as always is a master in the RPG space. This book is chock full of content that will be helpful no matter the genre of game you choose to play and is just as useful for writing or acting, as these skills go hand in hand with pen and paper roleplaying games. Everyone looking to improve their skills in this regard should look to James' ultimate rpg series.

James D’Amato is at it again! The voice of the OneShot Network is helping his listeners and fans by giving them even more prompts, games, and questions to completely help TTRPG players, new and old, create an amazing backstory for their characters. 5 out of 5 stars! Pick up a copy along with his other titles and bring your Characters, and your World Building prowess to a new level!

This was a gift to a friend new to role playing games. They found the book to be easy to read, but some of the information/questions in the book did not pertain to their situation.

This book is a mixed bag of TTRPG character backstory exercises, primarily organised by genre. There is no shortage of content on offer here, and the 300+ pages are very generous with their variation and choice. With all this quantity however, comes a notable lack of focus, practicality, and at times, quality. Some of the exercises are useful enough, like the d20 'question tables' that start each of the six genre sections. The rest, is riddled with exercises like rolling for details of your horse, or describing items of clothes you're wearing. Overall there's a lot of content here, though how much of it you might find useful will depend heavily on personal preference.