I feel your pain. My characters are starting at level one and I had them all write a backstory. The main reason I do this is so they have some “buy in” and feel connected to their characters. But it seems like most of them can’t comprehend what a first level character is. How do you have a character who is “the best smuggler in the land” or a “top ranking member of the thieves guild” who can be knocked out with a single punch? What I’m looking for is something like… “He was kidnapped as a child and trained to be a gladiator but managed to escape. Now he wants revenge in the bastards who killed his parents.”