Simultaneous Plotlines

The traditional background for characters in literary novels will almost always be something banal and mundane.  This is because the novel's story begins when things get interesting; it is presumed that before things got interesting, they weren't.  Thus Pip in Great Expectations does very little before helping an escaped convict, Edmond Dantes is just a good sailor in The Count of Monte Cristo before being found guilty of a crime he didn't commit, Ishmael has never done anything of note before climbing aboard the Pequod in Moby Dick and so on.

Allowing player characters to make backgrounds out of whole cloth tends to encourage the creation of interesting and complicated stories, which we don't want.  The characters should embark upon their first adventures in D&D as empty vessels, waiting to be filled with memories of their earned exploits and deeds; they should not be old hands at this adventuring notion yet, particularly in a fashion where they can simply invent their purported expertise.  The practice downplays the value added by the game and puts pressure on the DM to provide real game events equal to the delirious fantasies of the players' imagination.  This puts the DM's foot in a bucket, right off, compromising the game.

If the players have no background of note, they must focus not on themselves, but on trying to make sense of the world they have been thrust in.  This heightens their attention towards details they are given; as yet, they have no goals.  They must find them.  The DM is thus free to effect a series of opportunities, which the players may freely grab because they have nothing "going" at the time they start play.

These opportunities need not be part of a single story ~ in fact, I would argue they absolutely should not be.  The world is a complex and vast place, with millions of stories going on at any time; the campaign is not a play or a movie intended to amuse an audience in the space of two hours, but a rolling narrative that is expected to last for 20, 50 or 1000 hours.  We have all the time in the world to insert hooks that lead to multiple storylines, which can then converge, or not, as we design.  While being pursued by an absurd number of bandits, the players stumble across an ancient book that explains the disappearance of a nearby island.  While passing through a village towards the island's location, still eluding bandits, a member of the party stumbles across a thief breaking into a house.  One of the residents of the house, a beautiful girl, falls in love with a member of the party.  The next day, now in the process of getting out of town, avoiding the girl, and the thief's brother, who is angry now that the thief has been arrested, the party stumbles across two of the bandits.  They escape the town, thankfully extricating themselves, and stumble across a travelling troupe of actors.  There they stumble across the author of the book about the missing island.  He's a drunk, and to get information of out him, they must help him get sober.  In the process of doing that, the girl in love shows up.  The player gives in, makes love to her, then tries to send her back home.  She goes, unwillingly; but is then kidnapped by the brother of the thief, to force a confrontation with the party.  And so on.  There is no one "story" ~ but rather, a narrative in which one plot line naturally enfolds into another.

The involvement of the characters is therefore catch-as-catch-can.  To follow any one course, they find themselves dragged into multiple petty difficulties, any one of which may offer an unforseen opportunity or bit of knowledge as the DM is able to provide.  There's never any chance for a lull, because while some one thing might be wrapped up (a deal is made with the bandits) there is always something else that is still ongoing (the thief's brother gets away).

A new plot hook can be introduced at any time.  Events can be significant or not, just so long as they remain interesting.  They don't need to be world-shaking.

But we can talk about those, tomorrow.