The Non-Euclidian Staircase

Character Hooks are pretty much a must, especially in PBEM games, which is where most of my RPG playing over the last decade or so has been (especially, as often mentioned, on CompuServe). The best GMs take pride in a deep background, giving lots of places to attach to, and lots of trouble that can result from doing so. And I was often somewhat too generous, sending characters with so many mistakes and entanglements in their background there was little need for the GM to add more plot... Which sometimes (rarely, thankfully) resulted in almost unplayably conflicted characters.

I have one character (Thonia, previously mentioned here) who was designed with so much in her background that we actually only ever played her there, detailing and backfilling what was originally imagined as background... In over four years with the character, we didn't get it all done, so we never got to the character as originally imagined. In fact, we eventually changed some dates so her background was present-day and she could meet some other PCs. We were having too much fun filling out the background to even want to jump forward to the "mature" character.

Nikolao in Passions of the Tides has several background hooks as well, a few of which have already dragged him around, some or still sitting quietly not making trouble. I don't expect that to last.

My current face-to-face characters are a bit less hook-y... Ezhno was designed with an intense dislike of his native folk and followed the group hook (an NPC we all had met in the past calling in a favor) as an excuse to get away from it. Running from your background isn't exactly a background hook, though. And Valentin is designed with his background planned to be a plot point at a specific point in the future (coming soon now, in fact), as it's his ticket to a rather distinctive prestige class.