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

[Crimson Longinus]

OK? I'm not sure what you're inviting me to do with this information.

Perhaps elaborate on your definition of "player-generated fiction"?

I don't know that I'm quite following all the temporal adjectives and adverbs here.

I mean the difference between introducing NPC Jake at session 15, where the characters meet him for the first time and befriend him, and introducing NPC Jake at session 15, but framing him as an old friend of the characters.

I don't recall much about Ioun now. I do recall that, when the players found the Sword of Kas, some time early in Paragon Tier, the player of the invoker/wizard didn't want to handle it, because he was pretty sure it would be hostile to him (given its hostility to Vecna-ites). I think that's about the point that I (as GM) realised that the character had a serious (if complicated) connection to Vecna - because of Vecna's role as the god of secrets.

Yeah, I am a bit confused about what counts as "player-generated fiction" for you. I initially didn't think my game has much of it, but given these examples it seems that it might.

 

[pemerton]

Perhaps elaborate on your definition of "player-generated fiction"?

It's in the OP: "the players making decisions about the shared fiction: backstory, the focus of the action, what is possible here-and-now in terms of action declaration."

The OP illustrates these using the 4e rulebooks to provide examples:

*Player-designed quests, as an example of play-generated fiction pertaining to the focus of the action;

*Page 42 of the DMG, and its skill challenge section, as examples of player-generated fiction pertaining to what is possible in terms of action declaration;

*Passages from the DMG2 on collaborative world-building, as examples of player-generated backstory.​

But as the OP notes, player-generated fiction may be a feature of play using other versions of D&D (eg AD&D) or systems that are broadly similar in their processes of play (eg Rolemaster).

EDIT, to elaborate by way of contrast:

Player-designed quests contrast with the GM deciding what the focus of play is (eg by "laying breadcrumbs" or providing hooks).

Players generating fiction that pertains to what is possible in terms of action declaration contrasts with the GM deciding what is possible in terms of action declaration, or with this being tightly circumscribed by the rules. (The OP notes that in AD&D and RM it is the GM and the rules that determine what is possible in terms of action declaration - AD&D because it has no general resolution system but just a collection of subsystems; RM because of its hyper-simulationist resolution framework.)

Collaborative worldbuilding and other player contribution to backstory contrast with the GM being the sole author of the gameworld and the backstory.

 

[pemerton]

Interesting, can you give me an example of each (Goal and Belief) please?

Golin is a Dwarven Outcast. His Belief is that Elves are fickle and unstable! In our most recent session, his Goal was To find something useful on the way to Nulb.

More examples, and fuller discussion of how Goals and Beliefs factor into play, can be found in my AP thread: Torchbearer 2e - actual play of this AWESOME system! (+)

I'd like to assess how easy these goals can be

<snip>

Let me give you an example of my concern with the advanced TB2e mechanic you mentioned:

Player declares goal is To rid this ruined temple of Myrkul and the catacombs underneath it of Evil and then proceeds to motivate the rest of the party to go slaughter some undead, when in all likelihood, knowing that player and possibly the group, they would have done that anyway with the same risks/costs. So it is an empty reward. No character discovery/development.

To me, it seems that the issue you raise sit more on the GM side than the player side.

Pages 218-9 of the Torchbearer 2e Scholar's Guide gives the following advice/direction to the GM:

In Torchbearer, we give you four tools you can use to make your expeditions more than just loot hunts and massacres. Beliefs, creeds, goals and instincts all contain the potential to hook in players and push play to another, more intense level.

If, during an adventure, you find an opportunity to present a player with the choice of either playing a belief or acquiring loot, then you’ve offered what we call a meaningful decision. At this juncture, the player must decide what is most important: satisfying that belief or scoring some loot.

Torchbearer thrives on choices like that. The game presents many opportunities for the players to earn benefits and improve their characters - through the rewards mechanism, advancements and acquiring loot. If you pit acquiring a reward against acquiring loot, your players will squirm and struggle with that decision. And the ultimate outcome will be more meaningful for the tension.

The game becomes even more interesting once you present decisions that set a belief and a goal against one another. If a player has a belief to soak up loot and a goal to teach their young companion, what will they do if their young charge is captured - but they’ve also stumbled on a statue with glittering gems for eyes? Will the player waste time prying out those gems or will they hurry to the rescue?

If a character has a belief about making it rich but a goal about serving the common good, the game master can create tension by offering conflicts that fork both priorities.

Don't Force Decisions
The key to playing Torchbearer is to insert those situations into your adventures and leave them there for the player to decide. Don’t force them. You can prompt a player to make a choice, but let them make the decision. Neither outcome is correct or better. It’s the decision that matters.​

This advice is derived from similar ideas found in Burning Wheel.

In your example of the Goal To rid the temple and catacombs of evil, the GM should be presenting situations that put pressure on this goal: simple pressures, like obstacles in the way of the goal; and more thematic ones, of tensions between achieving the goal and pursuing a Belief.

This is what will then lead to character discovery/development.

 

[AnotherGuy]

In your example of the Goal To rid the temple and catacombs of evil, the GM should be presenting situations that put pressure on this goal: simple pressures, like obstacles in the way of the goal; and more thematic ones, of tensions between achieving the goal and pursuing a Belief.

This is what will then lead to character discovery/development.

In my above scenario, PCs were tasked to deal with the culprit who was removing arcane materials from a permanent teleportation circle in the making. It was discovered that this led back to the ruins of a nearby temple and more specifically to the catacombs. There they found a portal to the Negative Plane that had been rudimentary and temporarily shut (imagine poor stitching) using the materials stolen from the teleportation circle.

They managed to close the portal permanently, but decided to press on in the catacombs until they came across a ghostly knight who warned them not to go any further and that he was protecting further life from falling prey to great evil, just like he had once fallen. They realised that that whoever had been stealing the arcane material was undead and had only been doing so to close a portal to the Negative Plane (essentially a good thing). Nevertheless, according to the ghost they were a great evil.

They failed their social skill challenge, and the ghost did not relent in his conviction thus forcing a combat encounter. They defeated the ghost and will next in the session prepare to defeat this great evil which supposedly lurks beyond the sealed doors the ghost had been guarding.

What I did, was offered an XP (reward) in exchange for a disadvantage on a PC's action (to place goal in jeopardy), with defined stakes, if I could tie that action back to the character's TBIF (when it relates to a flaw or challenges their belief). The PC has the right to ignore the offer and thus not suffer any penalty, but then neither do they gain the XP.

 

[FrogReaver]

Player-designed quests contrast with the GM deciding what the focus of play is (eg by "laying breadcrumbs" or providing hooks).

Perhaps part of this stems from not knowing the limitations around what you consider a player-designed quest. Like is goal: I want to find X item a player authored quest? Is I want to avenge my fathers murder a player authored quest? If not, can you add enough detail to make these quests be player authored?

Also, can a player authored quest develop in game. Dm introduces goblins and their fire giant overlords as a faction players can interact with. Player decides his goal is to free the goblins from the fire giants grip. Is this a player authored quest? If not could anything be changed about it to make it so?

If that kind of stuff counts then it happens all the time in most d&d games I think.

Players generating fiction that pertains to what is possible in terms of action declaration contrasts with the GM deciding what is possible in terms of action declaration,

I don’t think I follow the meaning here at all

Collaborative worldbuilding

To me this comes back to the initial social agreement. Players and DMs must agree about what they are playing, who has what roles and responsibilities, etc.

If the DM pitches a world he’s created for the next campaign and the players agree to as is then to me that’s still collaboration. Accepting someone else’s cool idea is still collaboration IMO.

But what if a player suggests NPCs and impactful local events that impact his character backstory. Collaboration is talking that through with the group and the group deciding whether that’s a good idea or not. Whether the player idea is (by the group) ultimately incorporated as is, rejected entirely or modified and then accepted by the group that’s still collaboration.

Same if the group decides to use a module.

and other player contribution to backstory contrast with the GM being the sole author of the gameworld and the backstory.

let’s say the dm does solely author the game world before play begins. He collaborates with the players and they all agree to play in this game world. Even if that’s the case. The moment play begins the players have input, they can change nearly everything by their character actions and since whatever happens in play shapes the world just as much if not more so than the initial state the dm started it in, then aren’t the players worldbulding through their play?

In short this means the DM is not the sole author of the world, he might be sole author until play begins, but even that required player collaboration and buy in.

I think we might be putting the cart before the horse. Its the initial group collaboration on what specifically to run that determines the amount of player input that gets put forth and potentially accepted in backstory/worldbuilding. Everything else is downstream from there. To me, this says the key is understanding why such collaborative agreements with limited player input into worldbuilding/backstory form in the first place.

 

[I'm A Banana]

let’s say the dm does solely author the game world before play begins. He collaborates with the players and they all agree to play in this game world. Even if that’s the case. The moment play begins the players have input, they can change nearly everything by their character actions and since whatever happens in play shapes the world just as much if not more so than the initial state the dm started it in, then aren’t the players worldbulding through their play?

My current gothic fantasy snow white game has a world authored by me (the PCs are strangers to the world, so I want them to go in blind). There is an abundance of NPC's trapped in the world with the PC's. One of those NPCs is a blood warlock who hunts others. The world was such that this blood warlock was slowly draining the life-force of a knight in the town via a secret passage.

The party enters the scene. They discover the secret passage, and figure out what the blood warlock is doing. They then seal up the secret passage.

They decided to do this. I had no inkling they'd do this, no plans for what would happen if they did this. This was improvised, unscripted.

As a reaction to this, I had the blood warlock decide to hunt another NPC, and rolled some dice, determining that the blood warlock killed this NPC.

In that example, we have both the DM authoring content (setting up the world the PC's enter into), the PC's improvising actions (saving the knight by sealing up the passage), and the dice creating variability (determining the outcome of the offscreen NPC fight).

I'd wager that a lot of DM's games run pretty similarly...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's in the OP: "the players making decisions about the shared fiction: backstory, the focus of the action, what is possible here-and-now in terms of action declaration."

The OP illustrates these using the 4e rulebooks to provide examples:

*Player-designed quests, as an example of play-generated fiction pertaining to the focus of the action;​

​

*Page 42 of the DMG, and its skill challenge section, as examples of player-generated fiction pertaining to what is possible in terms of action declaration;​

​

*Passages from the DMG2 on collaborative world-building, as examples of player-generated backstory.​

But as the OP notes, player-generated fiction may be a feature of play using other versions of D&D (eg AD&D) or systems that are broadly similar in their processes of play (eg Rolemaster).

EDIT, to elaborate by way of contrast:

Player-designed quests contrast with the GM deciding what the focus of play is (eg by "laying breadcrumbs" or providing hooks).

But what does this mean in practice? What elements of the quest need the player to author? Goal? Opposition? Exacts setting details pertaining the quest? Because if "authoring" the goal is sufficient, it is happening in all sort of RPGs all the time.

Also, what is difference between "breadcrumb" or "plot hook" and the setting just having interesting details that may or may not catch the attention of the players? Like in my 5e game the players have spend several sessions exploring ancient giant ruins and acquiring giant artefacts, as after a "random"* encounter with a giant carrying magical stone cube with memories sealed in it, one character decided that that they want to learn everything they can about the ancient (and bygone) giant civilisation.

* Not really random, but just something that was not at the moment intended to be impactful, just a "filler fight" along the journey.

I try to include little details that might catch the players imagination, but they're often not "plot hooks" in a sense that I have expectation that the players take some specific action, or any, regarding them. Just something that makes the world feel deep, and if players show interest to something, then I'll elaborate on that.

Players generating fiction that pertains to what is possible in terms of action declaration contrasts with the GM deciding what is possible in terms of action declaration, or with this being tightly circumscribed by the rules. (The OP notes that in AD&D and RM it is the GM and the rules that determine what is possible in terms of action declaration - AD&D because it has no general resolution system but just a collection of subsystems; RM because of its hyper-simulationist resolution framework.)

But I think skill system in any edition of D&D is pretty freeform, and doesn't have just limited set of outcomes. Players can try weird things, and with good rolls they might work. For example in my last game a warlock decided to "reverse polarity" of enemy arcane ward that would trigger a trap, and with an excellent arcana skill roll they managed to change the ward from "lizardfolk may pass, everyone else triggers a trap" to "lizardfolk trigger a trap, everyone else may pass." It is not something I had considered, the player invented it on the spot, and as it sounded reasonable, albeit difficult, they could do it.

Collaborative worldbuilding and other player contribution to backstory contrast with the GM being the sole author of the gameworld and the backstory.

You present gameworld and backstory here as separate things, and I agree, they are. As a GM I prefer to have authority over the world, i.e. metaphysics, creatures, societies etc, but in the background creation phase the players certainly are free to invent stuff within those parameters; NPCs, relationships, events etc. And sometimes it is also necessary to elaborate on the PC background later on, when things that were originally not detailed become relevant.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

DW springs to mind as presenting similar ideas and processes, with some interesting differences. Session 0 stuff definitely could take the form of asserting some previous adventure or other similar things. The game is generally designed to start in media res from there, so again assuming some previous action/association, and bonds generally will reflect that.

Interestingly, while players are certainly likely to ask questions this process is mechanical! Spout Lore and Discern Realities structure the process and virtually guarantee it produces relevant actionable outputs. Otherwise the questions are asked by the GM and the players supply answers, though the GM is not obligated to use this mechanism exclusively, they can inject appropriate fiction as well.

There are potentially a number of good approaches.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I think clever players can kind of manage the GM and even introduce stuff via the back door this way. It's not introducing stuff directly and I am quite sure there are many people here who would actually see it as a form of 'problem play'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

agreed, the establishment of fiction happened in the first part of the post, where the players introduced places, NPCs and (quest) goals. I am fine with this upfront creation of fiction, doing so in the middle of the session feels much more like cheating to me however.

If my char has to climb over the wall and I declare 'I just use the ladder I see leaning against the wall some 10 feet from me' then I consider that very close to cheating. Same with an earlier example in this thread where someone said they spotted a friend of theirs in the inn and since that friend had some clout, the guards let their character be, that is rather borderline to me. If it happens once, ok, if something like this happens often however...

All you can achieve in 4e terms would be to replace one skill with a different one, or perhaps one obstacle with a different one, this is good play, not cheating. To finish the SC you will have to pass N checks before 3 failures, that is a mechanical requirement of the system. This points up the real value of this kind of subsystem!