D&D General Player-generated fiction in D&D

[Xetheral]

In terms of what I do that definitely leads to player-generated fiction, when starting new 5e campaigns at higher levels, I've experimeted with asking the players to collectively write their characters' first adventure together as a short story (or an outline of a short story, if they prefer). It gives me a few already-established places and NPCs (in addition to those generated by players in their backstories), gives the players more familiarity with the other PCs' capabilities, gives everyone something to make in-character references to, and provides a ready-made explanation for where some of their starting magic items come from. Then play begins with what amounts to the second adventure.

In terms of what may-or-may-not count as player-generated fiction, a lot of gameplay at my table consists of me creating new content to be able to respond to player questions. The example used upthread of "is there a ladder?" isn't likely to show up at my table unless there was some obvious reason to expect a ladder to be present. But I might well see: "On our way in did we see anything that looks like a gardening or maintenance shed?" Or, at higher level of generality: "Are any towns along the road heading to [destination] large enough that it would be reasonable to expect them to have a temple to [diety]?"

I'll answer such questions consistent with what has already been presented, but quite often that means creating new details on the fly, especially if the questions represent an unexpected widening in scope (e.g. "What would I know about what faction Z thinks about the conflict between factions X and Y?") or concern hypotheticals (e.g. "What do I know about faction Z that could be relevant to what they would think about a conflict between factions X and Y if we're successfully able to start one?"). Because I'm the one authoring the answers to the questions I wouldn't have ordinarily have considered that player-generated fiction, but some of the early posts in this thread suggested it might count, so I figured I'd mention it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

2nd thought,

Everything the player does is authoring the fiction. I attack the orc is authoring the fiction. Etc.

I disagree with this stance--or, at least, I disagree with using these terms for it. Because that turns "authoring" into being 100% identical with playing chess, and that's not a useful term anymore. It's watered down "authoring" until it's essentially a meaningless buzzword for "someone does something."

The question here really seems to be around particular ways in which the player can author the fiction.

I mean, again, the distinction I would make is that players can ACT in essentially any style of TTRPG play. They cannot AUTHOR in certain styles, but can in others. Authorship is very distinct from actions; indeed, authorship in some ways may be completely divorced from "actions" in the way you described above. That's the whole point of having a verb for this specific thing--actually inserting story elements, not just declaring personal actions in response to a fictional environment.

The other concept that came up here is focusing the fiction, and I find most living sandbox style games give the players a lot of freedom to establish their own goals and thus focus play toward those goals. That doesn’t mean every single thing that happens in such games are directly around player goals, but neither was there any kind of pretreatment that such ought to be the case.

I'm not really sure what the distinction being made here is. How does player-authorship--again, recognizing that I do not consider absolutely all actions taken by players as "authorship"--interfere with players' ability to "establish their own goals"? From where I'm sitting, most "sandbox" games actually offer very limited freedom to engage in authorship, because most "sandbox" gaming is done in the "Hexcrawl" style where there are very specific goals that need to be met in order to make progress.

For example, GP = XP means you need to make a lot of money; you just...don't earn XP from quests or personal achievements, and even defeating monsters is a very very thin quantity of XP, by design and intent. While the way in which one tackles the things in the hexes is allowed to stay completely open, there's...really no support for, and AFAICT very little appetite for, doing something like "settle down and start a business" or "earn my liege-lord's ribbon of favor" or "reveal what really happened to my ancestral home" or the like. Partly, this is because the "sandbox" style of play is strongly geared for a mix of high logistical planning and pure in-the-moment action, with anything like an ongoing "story" only resulting as an afterthought.

As a separate case consider the players and dm agreeing to run a particular module. Is this not an example of the players setting their goals for play as well?

I would agree that it is the players agreeing to a set of goals. I would not therefore say that it is the players choosing their own goals. Consenting to using what someone else has authored is not the same as authoring something yourself, otherwise there would never have been any need for, nor interest in, things like Dungeon World or other systems that others know better (like Prince Valiant, which IIRC Pemerton has spoken of repeatedly.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My personal preference both as a player and as a GM, is that this sort of meat-level fiction generation by players happens mostly before the campaign in the PC background creation phase, end when elaboration is needed, between the sessions. During the play, I prefer players to be mainly in immersed character stance and contribute mainly via the actions and choices of their characters. I can play in other ways, and it can even be refreshing from time to time, but I know what is my favourite.

At least to me having the authority to decide fiction outside the causal control of my character puts me from the actor stance to the author stance, and this to me is less immersive. It is fine if this is done outside the actual game sessions, as then we're not immersing into our characters in the first place.

And whilst I like players being able to resolve situations in different ways, I still feels this too works best when there is some sort of fixed reality they need to creatively exploit. Giving the players control of the external reality means that optimal gameplay becomes trying to invent BS that lets you use your best skills. That is something I am good at, but not something I particularly enjoy. And whilst things like letting player to use flashback diplomacy to learn magical secrets might seem fine at glance, it also means that you have now rendered all knowledge skills obsolete.

Well, yes, it obviously means inventing stuff, to a degree. Still, if you look at the things I, playing Starn in our 4e PBP here, have invented I think you'd agree it's consistent with the 4e PoL Nentir Vale milieu we collectively agreed on. In greater detail the bits had to mesh with the scene framing of the GM, etc. Also you may be discounting the impact of the SC framework. ALL our activities fall within that or the combat system. There's a hard stricture on skill use. We can invoke a primary skill use for a success only once. Any later use must forgo the proficiency bonus of +5, generally removing the incentive to try to keep pushing the fiction to only specific places.

But, of course a Story about Starn, magical prodigy, will involve MANY instances of him spouting Arcane lore and leveraging his keen intellect to make magic solve his problems. Why wouldn't that be appropriate? I mean, if that was not the game I was into playing, I wouldn't draw up a 20 INT Wizard! If it was not going to work for the rest of the table they'd have said so back when we started.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you only want positive feedback on alternative approaches you should have made it a (+) thread.



I see nothing other than some miscellaneous text to think it's designed for player-generated fiction. It states the obvious, that the DM can choose to share world building if the group chooses to do so. There's no built-in limitations, no trade-offs, no resource that controls what the player fiction can be. How much the player adds to the fiction is still always limited to what the DM allows.

There's a difference between accepting alternative approaches (which if I scoured the 5E DMG is probably there as well) and stating it as the assumed way to play.

Yeah, I agree that 4e hedges to a degree, it can be interpreted as being similar to 5e in many ways if you really want. OTOH it's got EVERY tool for the type of play we use it for. It's not plausible that this is coincidence. And the results bear this out, played trad you almost invariably get a kind of skirmish game with an SC system that most players and GMs find frustrating or at least not matching the style really well.


When played as a character focused low myth kind of game, it's really pretty amazingly adept. All the nuance of PoL and keywords and it's character build style, on top of the SC/Quest/Encounter focus really produces.

 

[Pedantic]

In terms of what I do that definitely leads to player-generated fiction, when starting new 5e campaigns at higher levels, I've experimeted with asking the players to collectively write their characters' first adventure together as a short story (or an outline of a short story, if they prefer). It gives me a few already-established places and NPCs (in addition to those generated by players in their backstories), gives the players more familiarity with the other PCs' capabilities, gives everyone something to make in-character references to, and provides a ready-made explanation for where some of their starting magic items come from. Then play begins with what amounts to the second adventure.

In terms of what may-or-may-not count as player-generated fiction, a lot of gameplay at my table consists of me creating new content to be able to respond to player questions. The example used upthread of "is there a ladder?" isn't likely to show up at my table unless there was some obvious reason to expect a ladder to be present. But I might well see: "On our way in did we see anything that looks like a gardening or maintenance shed?" Or, at higher level of generality: "Are any towns along the road heading to [destination] large enough that it would be reasonable to expect them to have a temple to [diety]?"

I'll answer such questions consistent with what has already been presented, but quite often that means creating new details on the fly, especially if the questions represent an unexpected widening in scope (e.g. "What would I know about what faction Z thinks about the conflict between factions X and Y?") or concern hypotheticals (e.g. "What do I know about faction Z that could be relevant to what they would think about a conflict between factions X and Y if we're successfully able to start one?"). Because I'm the one authoring the answers to the questions I wouldn't have ordinarily have considered that player-generated fiction, but some of the early posts in this thread suggested it might count, so I figured I'd mention it.

This is an interesting grey area. While acknowledging the player's input has an effect on the outcome, I don't generally think of players seeking more information or asking clarifying questions as establishing new information.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Our home games accept player contributions to the extent that players can simply add details that they think make sense in the story. But this could become an issue if they contradict what I have already set up in ways that will negate chunks of world building or trivialize the game. So, for example, one of my players could simply respond to the wall problem by stating, "I notice a nearby worksite where a new temple is being constructed, and see that there is an unattended ladder." Usually, players will therefore frame such moments as a question.

This happened in our last game. As part of an ongoing subplot, one of the players was looking for news of where his missing mentor might be found, and he had an idea about it that he wanted to introduce to the story. Unfortunately, that idea would have contradicted another plot thread and obviated a huge chunk of material that I had prepared that morning on the understanding that the players wanted to do a certain thing, and that the player was leaving the mentor subplot largely to me. So I politely declined and he politely accepted, trusting there was good reason.

My point is that I have found that running an aggressively player-generated content campaign requires a group that is very copacetic and trusts each other - I trust that my players aren't trying to undermine me or each other, and they trust that if I don't run with an idea, I have good reason for it. I don't run my beginner games at school nearly as loosely.

Sure, or else an approach to prep/myth that avoids lots of 'story before', which is the approach taken in most PbtA type games, or some approaches to 4e.

 

[Clint_L]

I get your point, but personally, I wish D&D had a little more in regard to stakes for the characters, from a mechanical standpoint. Just something, anything, that had some teeth and meant something and wasn’t hit points.

Like in 5e you’re meant to pick a Flaw as one of the BIFTs. But the player can ignore that flaw forever and face no consequence. I just don’t like that. I wish there was something there mechanically… it doesn’t even have to be too significant. But I wish there was something.

Yeah, I mean it's debatable. I think Dungeon World has that niche covered pretty well, and I think D&D's strength has always (4e somewhat excepted) been that it's like a big box of lego where the players have to finish building the game to their own satisfaction.

For instance, Oofta seemed to get annoyed with me for comparing a certain style of playing D&D to being like a board game, but I meant that as a feature, not a flaw. I think it's kind of awesome that you and I can build more story elements into D&D, but others can make a hack'n'slash game out of it, and it still works pretty well. However, if I want a game where deeper story elements are essential, then D&D is not my first choice.

 

[bloodtide]

One possible conclusion is that an approach that empowers players leads to engaged proactive players, and that your approach leads to players that don’t care very much about the game.

Or maybe my players just play the game as players, instead of DMing the DM around.

It's bad enough for a player to just make random stuff in a game, but it's ten times worse for that player to demand the DM alter the game reality for their character. And just because so many DMs willing do it with a quick "yes, player, whatever you say", does not make it right.

There's an obvious parallel between @Crimson Longinus's comment and @bloodtide's comment, upthread, about the players just staying home and writing their novels.

Both comments take it as a premise that the GM's "BS" or "novel" - that is, the GM's fiction - is in some sense genuine or robust or worthy of sharing, whereas the players' contributions are not.

Well, there are a whole group of players that will whine and complain if a DM makes any fiction, often with the classic line "go write a novel DM!". And, well, it works both ways. If a player wants to sit there and "make fiction", the DM can tell them to "go home and write your novel".

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

sure, but what is the likelihood of that? If you are that confused about your chances or what is going on, then you really are confused about it, this is not because the DM is constantly intentionally messing with you

I doubt many GMs are messing with me or anyone else. I think a lot of play, however consists of the player asking the GM what her character knows, for basically every fact, which I find anti-immersive. It's also weird in that I can't rely on any sense of generally understanding the context and situation, even in my home town. I think this is at the root of a lot of the 'rootless character' thing that exists in trad play so much.

 

[pemerton]

I am more interested in the story however, I do not need to learn some deeper truth about the character I made up. Arguably there is no deeper truth, there is just me playing the character the way I always envisioned them to be

There is no deeper truth, in the sense that it is all fiction and hence - in at least one sense of the word - artifice.

But sometimes the player is invited to decide who their character "really" is, or what they are really committed to. Here's an example from 4e D&D play, that I first posted around a decade ago:

Here is an episode of play from my 4e session yesterday:

The PCs broke the hold that the Underdark god Torog has over the souls of those who die in the Underdark. They did this by destroying the metaphysical machinery of Torog's "Soul Abattoir".

At the climax of the action - which at this point was being resolved as a skill challenge, which is a fairly tightly defined mechanical subsystem for determining the outcome of certain events in a 4e game - the machinery had been destroyed, the cavern was collapsing, and the PCs were escaping as one of their number tried to hold the onrushing tide of soul energy at bay long enough for that escape to take place.

I invited the player of that PC to make an Insight check. He did, and succeeded. The PC therefore noticed that his imp familiar - which has the Eye of Vecna implanted in it - was channelling power from Vecna to try to direct the newly freed flow of souls to Vecna rather than the Raven Queen (who is the more orthodox god of the dead).

I asked the player whether his PC - who at this point still had the erupting soul energy under his mystical control - whether he was going to let the souls flow to Vecna, or rather direct them to the Raven Queen. The player though for probably about 20 seconds, and then replied "The Raven Queen". (If he had chosen otherwise he would have felt the wrath of at least two other party members, perhaps all of them!) That was fine, and he then made the Athletics check to try and run out of the collapsing cavern behind his friends, being shielded from falling rocks by the burly dwarf fighter. (Whose player had made a successful check at a high enough DC that he could confer an "aid another" bonus.) But I also told the player who had chosen the Raven Queen over Vecna, something to the effect of Vecna being angry, and hence his imp being - at least for the moment - non-functional, as Vecna lashes out through his Eye. (There may also have been some damage there - I can't remember now.)​

Here is a case of a player, playing his PC, having to choose whether to allow the flow of souls to go to the Raven Queen, or instead to Vecna as part of Vecna's desire to power himself up relative to the other gods (especially the Raven Queen). The player made that choice by reflecting on the content and implications of the various options with the fiction - including evaluative implications - and then choosing by reference to those matters.

The choice reflects the player's conception of his PC, including his conception of his PC's relationship to various gods and to the other PCs. It also reflects the player's conception of the broader fictional situation, including what is at stake in the fiction for the other players.

That's just one illustration of the relationship between player-generated fiction in relation to the focus of play, and "discovery" of character.