Backstories are good and neccessary. But the most interesting thing about rping is in my opinion the development of the character through the events of the game.

My current char "Goodman" was a good-natured man, charming, suave. He mostly cared for himself though, never minding the future, never really having a drive beyond living his life in a world he claimed to understand. "Everything will work out well in the end" or so he thought "It goes the way it will". Commerce was the base for peace and it's what he was really good at. Not that he ever amassed riches or what, but his way with people often gave him opportunies.

Surviving the shot in the head left him with a hollow feeling. Shouldn't he be more happy for his luck? He quickly discarded the possibility of ever finding the one responsible for his near-death. He witnessed the struggle in the Mojave, the faultiness of humanity, but it wasn't anything new. People just did what they always do and the poor souls who suffered from the situation wouldn't change anything anyway.

His trails to Zion forever changed him. The scripture he got from Daniel, the way of the New Canaanites invoked a faith, an ideal, a drive that he never had before. Pragmaticism made way for irrepressible faith in the God of the New Canaanites, a faith that went beyond simple positivity and general kindness. Interestingly, the self-immolation of the Followers of the Apocalypse never moved him in the way Joshua Graham and Daniel did.

What ingame events changed your characters, profoundly or just peripherally?