As a DM I don ' t really want to read too much for each background , because chances are I won ' t remember much of it anyways . Personally I ' ve started asking players to create their backgrounds based on this minutebackground it is mostly based about information that will be useful to the DM , but still allows some fluff . Here ' s the template I ask players to fill Dropbox link 0 . Points 2 , 3 and 4 are the ones that the DM can use to create hooks . The 1 st and 5 th are there to get a sense of how the character is and what happened to him before adventuring . If a player doesn ' t fill it , I just won ' t create many , if any , hooks related to that character specifically and the player will be more of an audienceplayer for the rest of the party .