File Under Others Saying It Better Than I Ever Could...

Courtesy of James at Grognardia:

"...I have several possibilities in my mind -- that's the job of a good referee, after all -- but I don't favor one over the others and, even if I did, the X factors of player choice and the randomness of dice militate against my being able to ensure that any one possibility happens "as it should."

All of this is a long-winded way of agreeing with Rich Marshall's comment that "The advocates of pre-scripted storylines believe that without predetermined ends, overarching stories are impossible. They believe that if you allow the players' actions to create the story, chaos will ensue instead and no story will be possible." I am not in the slightest opposed to the idea that even old school RPGs include "story." Rather, I believe old school gaming generates stories -- many stories -- through play rather than through explicit referee planning beforehand. I can pretty much guarantee that, if I had a different group of players, the campaign would currently be quite different, if only because their dice rolls would have led to different outcomes and thus different decisions in response to them. That imaginary alternate campaign would likely have different stories and, to my mind, that's as it should be...."

Emergent Character Backstory...

Although I caution my players from investing too much effort into the back story of a 1st level character who could easily get incinerated by the radioactive eye-beams of a mutant cyborg random encounter, I do enjoy it when a back story emerges. Which coincidentally enough, usually happens sometime after the character achieves 2nd level.

One of the players in my Planet Algol campaign has a character, Nigel Nightbreaker, a British Fighting-man who, due to my ability score requirements for weapons house rules, uses a halberd in melee. He is also upset that he can't find ale or beer anywhere.

However, while talking after a session, we decided that on account of him being a polearm wielding Englishman that he was most likely a Beefeater who had been guarding British archaeological treasures in the Tower of London. One eve while investigating a strange glow emanating from a bizarre artifact he was transported to Planet Algol 210? A.D.