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

[CleverNickName]

When I'm running a D&D adventure, I'll often choose a random player and solicit them for input every now and then. For example, I might say, "the chest contains 334 gp, 44 pp, three gems worth 100gp each, and a weapon that glows with a blue magical aura. Bob, what kind of gems are they? Doug, what kind of weapon is it?" Unless it's a very specific McGuffin they've been sent to find, I really don't care what shape their treasure takes. It's their treasure, after all.

Or I might be describing a room, and ask Bob, "there is a strange whisper coming from the archway to the south...a voice from your past. But that's impossible, they've been dead for years! Bob, who's voice did you hear? and what did they say?" And then Bob has an opportunity to introduce a little more of his character's backstory while I run them through a banshee encounter.

But I won't solicit their input for encounters or plot points. I won't ask them "you're attacked by a wandering group of monsters! Bob, what kind of monsters are they? and Doug, how many of them are attacking you?" I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just not something I would ask. That's a part of the game I enjoy, right up there with writing quests and drawing maps.

I think all DMs solicit input from their players in some way, to shape the fiction. And I think that every DM draws the line in a different place.

 

[Pedantic]

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!

"Cheating" implies malice that I don't think should be attributed to the example here. Instead, the player is simply trying to declare an illegal action, like trying to move a rook diagonally. It's cheating if you attempt to do so covertly, it's a misplay to do so because of mistaken knowledge of the rules.

 

[soviet]

"Cheating" implies malice that I don't think should be attributed to the example here. Instead, the player is simply trying to declare an illegal action, like trying to move a rook diagonally. It's cheating if you attempt to do so covertly, it's a misplay to do so because of mistaken knowledge of the rules.

No, it isn't cheating or a mistaken play. It's using the rules as designed and intended.

 

[mamba]

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!

my 'I use the ladder' was not an example of a skill challenge

 

[pemerton]

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.

Is that the only way to gain XP? (In Torchbearer, there are no XP in the most literal sense, but there is level advancement based on spending Fate and Persona, and these are acquired by reference to Belief and Goal, plus to a lesser extent Instinct and Creed, in the way I've described upthread.)

I ask, because that might influence how you handle the "disadvantage" XP: are they the mainstay, or more of a bonus?

In my earlier post I also mentioned simple obstacles. I want to say a little bit more about those. In Torchbearer and Burning Wheel, every obstacle will generate a check. (There's an exception that relates to pacing and thematic focus, but I'll ignore it for the moment - let's suppose all the obstacles are thematically on-point, like they seem to be in your example.)

Even if it's very easy, it still triggers a check - eg moving the materials from A to B to stop them being used by the villain might be an Ob 1 Labourer test. And the dice pool system (roll your pool of d6s, with every 4+ being a success) means that failure is always possible (if unlikely) even on the easiest task.

When a failure happens, the GM has to bring in a consequence - a change to the fictional situation, that speaks in some fashion to someone's Goals and/or Beliefs. This means that, even in rather instrumental action declarations, the thematic/character-development "weight" is still sitting there on the scales. This is a big part of how the quest to rid the temple and catacombs of undead also promises and produces thematic development. (Another part of the engine is that, parallel to level gain in Torchbearer, there is a system for skill improvement that requires both failure and successes; and Burning Wheel has something similar though not identical; which means that players don't always hate the risk of failing on their rolls.)

A simple example: a PC had been cursed by a gem, to obsessively crave and protect it ("my precious") - mechanically, this meant writing a Belief about keeping the gem safe from theft etc. The PC was out shopping with Golin (the Dwarf PC) and Golin's new friend Gerda, whom he had recruited from some bandits the PCs had encountered not long before.

The Resources test to purchase whatever it was they were after failed, and so the vendor wouldn't sell, and then (the GM-imposed consequence) when the gem-cursed PC got back to her rooms she found her gem had been stolen! At first she assumed it had been stolen by her enemy Megloss, but once that was cleared up (via social interaction with Megloss) then she realised it was Gerda. (Which also made sense from a meta-perspective, as she was the only named character other than the two PCs present in the shopping scene.)

So even the simple, most instrumental obstacle - can I persuade this person to sell me the <whatever it was> - produced this character-relevant situation, of Golin's friend Gerda having stolen, and herself become obsessed by, the other PC's cursed Elfstone..

I don't think D&D's approach to resolving actions, and especially to determining the consequences of failure, always makes it so easy to keep the focus on these things that the players are bringing to the front and centre of the fiction, because they tend to encourage consequences to be narrated in terms of the immediate physical environment rather than the "thematic" environment that is surrounding the characters.

4e skill challenges are an exception here (or can be). I saw in your post that you're using social skill challenges: if you're wanting to increase the character discovery/development aspect in play; and if you're currently not using failures in skill challenges, and the reframings that they produce, to do that; then I'd suggest maybe giving it a try.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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

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.

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.

Your examples could easily be player generated quests. The player could go further and describe the quest in terms of some additional fiction, like a goal of recovering the goblins' sacred treasure from the giants, allowing them to restore their honor. What should not be the case is that a quest simply represents something the character is going to do anyway. It should be an additional or tangential goal.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

my 'I use the ladder' was not an example of a skill challenge

And I would thus respond that very little is at stake then. 4e is a system where all 'weighty' play is encounter based, not happening in free play. While 4e certainly, as written, doesn't mandate that you can't do something important in free play, it also lacks any mechanism to allocate XP or treasure for it. I personally don't call for checks unless they're associated with an encounter. There are a few edge cases in 4e like monster knowledge or stealth etc. to get surprise, but those are almost invariably tied closely to a combat or something.

 

[Pedantic]

No, it isn't cheating or a mistaken play. It's using the rules as designed and intended.

We're like 6 quotes deep here, but I'm referring to @mamba's example, not the proposed skill challenge.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So I had an example of this come up in a game I ran last night. It’s notD&D, but it’s a game that is played very similarly. I’m running a campaign of Mothership for my Monday night game.

Last night, two of the PCs found themselves in a small casino on the Station Prospero’s Dream. They were there to collect protection money from the proprieters on behalf of a criminal gang that the PCs have befriended. The casino has a strict “no androids” policy. Unfortunately, one of the PCs is secretly an android.

The casino staff, made up entirely of androids, detect this, and direct him to leave. He makes a bit of a scene and a scuffle breaks out. Ultimately, the other PC is able to jump in and break it up, and the PCs collect the protection money, minus some cost for damages.

Until this scene, androids hadn’t really come up in play. The player of the android PC had said he wanted to keep it a secret, but he never really said why. So I took this opportunity to ask him. “What’s the general view of androids by the public? Why did you decide to keep your status as an android a secret?”

He thought about it a bit and decided that although opinion runs the gamut among people, mostly androids are second class citizens, considered disposable and not truly sentient by most. More specifically, he was unaware he was an android until a couple years before the game started.

So… the player determined the general outlook of society toward androids which will influence how I run the setting going forward. He also gave me some fodder in the form of his mysterious origin as an android. Why was he designed to not know what he was? Who designed him this way? Why? Some potentially interesting things to explore in play.

I very often do similar things in D&D… I pose questions to the players that allow them input on the setting and other elements of play. I find it helps spark my own creativity and also gets the players more invested in the setting.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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 they 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.


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.



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.

I think there are three different things that are being discussed here, one is 'action description' in which players, and possibly in some games the GM, describe what the PCs do, as well as possibly their plans and goals and such as depicted strictly within the shared imagined space. This would include things like describing casting a spell and its effects (subject potentially to some resolution mechanics) or simply things like which direction a character takes, or what they say. I do not think this is what the OP was generally describing. ALL games have this, and while some details might differ, it is fundamentally similar in all types of play.

Then we have fiction that is less directly engaged with the character and her actions. This would include things like backstory, which is ABOUT a character, but not necessarily representing things the character did. This might also be held to include 'meta fiction' like describing the character's goals and such, stuff that is about things in the shared imagined space, but which is not action oriented or necessarily governed by imagined causality.

Finally we have things that are entirely independent of the character, or largely so. Backstory might fall into this category as well, but any sort of general setting lore or fiction would be things that primarily fall into this category.

I think the OP is most focused on this third category, though I think it bears on the second category as well. These are the independent fictional contributions of the players. Contributions which simply depict character actions are fundamentally much more constrained and dependent, they're really secondary in some sense because they can only happen and be relevant in the context of other preexisting fiction. Regardless of who authored that context, actions depicted within it are not really independent, while something like imagining the history of your clan is much more so, and inventing a new location is primary fiction.