Every so often I get an idea of how to stimulate more role-playing in my games. Usually the implementation of these ideas reaches it's conclusion with my players offering threats to my general health and fertility should I ever try to use that particular idea again. (For instance, one of my favorites was when the players were about to meet the dwarven king, I had them all pass their character sheets around the table to the left and made them role-play whatever character they got. It was a ton of fun... for me at least.) This time, however, my idea actually went over really well.
I find that game mastering is a lot more fun when players actually have decent background stories for their characters. The players have more material to go off of when role-playing and I can tie elements from their background stories into the general plot of the game. However, if I just ask the players to write background stories, usually half the group never gets around to it. Furthermore, the quality of background stories varies greatly. One of my previous attempts to improve this was providing prompts for the players to fill out. What is your characters job, what is his or her family like, etc. Overall, I would consider that idea to be a success, though it required quite a bit of nagging on my part and I still had to write a background story more or less in it's entirety for one heavily writer's blocked player.
The particular game for which I came up with the idea this post is actually about was only intended to last 2-3 sessions, so I didn't want to be that demanding of the players. What I decided to do instead was to provide the players with prompts to answer during the first session, and have them improvise answers in front of the group. Since I wanted there to be some reason why this motley group was adventuring together, I decided to force interactions between players responses to the prompts. For instance, I asked one player what was the worst thing that had happened to him during his training at the Royal Magic Academy. His answer was that he had once accidentally summoned an enormous hydra that nearly killed him. The next player in line was playing a somewhat out of control alchemist, so I asked him how he was actually to blame for the accidental hydra summoning. Apparently, as a joke, he switched out some of the ingredients ahead of time and got a bit more than he bargained for. Then I went back to the first player and asked him how this had led to them becoming friends.
