How Much input do your Players Have

[Gwaihir]

My group is in the disapointing situation of only being able to once per month. To encourage "buy in" i have encouraged the players to help build the world, for which I give XP. So I give XP for background & Journaling, But I aslo gave XP to a player who designed one of the Major towns in the setting and such. I have another player who is working out who Mordenkainen, Bigby, Tenser etc are in my homebrew.

Does anyone else do this? Any success stories of things you let/asked players to contribute?

 

[Sammael]

I am supposed to play in a d20 Future campaign at some point in the future (heh), and the GM asked me and the other players to design the campaign together. By "design," I mean define the style of play, basic campaign elements, background, tech level, pseudoscience, etc. It was a lot of fun.

The players in my own campaign do not have the time or inclination for world-building. I have shaped my campaign around their characters, and I often take their in- and out-of-character conversations into consideration when planning sessions, but that's about it.

 

[Crothian]

I have but never had anyone really take me up on it. Cureently though we hjave a small message board that we use in between sessions, we game every other week. IT has served to really help keep people on the same page and take care of little things in between games.

 

[John Morrow]

Does anyone else do this? Any success stories of things you let/asked players to contribute?

I'm giving out experience points for session summaries (two out of four players do it regularly) and have offered experience points for art and music, but so far the people who do art and music have declined to contribute that. I also offered XP to get people to play "out of type" characters and that was successful with 100% buy in. I've also gave a player some XP for doing PCGen character sheets for some of the other players, saving me the trouble. I haven't tried XP for world creation stuff yet but that sounds interesting.

 

[aco175]

I would like to have more player input in the world. it boils down to both them and myself having fun, so I try and give them what they want. I ask them the list a few things about how they want their character to end up down the road and list a few magic items or spells that they would like to have. Most of them do well with dealing with their characters, but have no motivation or are afraid to develop any groups, towns, dungeons, etc... One of the players does enjoy making characters and does make several npc's for the party to fight, but he does tend to overdo the magic of them.

 

[HellHound]

Depends on the campaign - but typically my players have a lot of input.

They often decide the tone of the game, as well as the level of opposition, the style of campaign, and the kind of challenges they will face.

I've added new towns based on character backgrounds, turned bit-NPCs into repeatingmajor characters because a player liked him, and so on.

 

[megamania]

They have input but the work remains my own. I ask about stories and character-types they want to meet or visit and do whatever I can to do it in unexpected ways.

 

[dvvega]

My players have input, however I do have final say of what makes it in.

For example: if you wanted to be from a small village in one of the northern kingdoms that I didn't have a "marker" for, you can go ahead and outline the village, its residents, perhaps produce, however I will go over it, see if it fits into the schema of that northern kingdom, and so forth.

I have been bitten once or twice in the past when allowing complete player input and discovering the industrious players "munchkin-ing" their own home towns or lands so they can get some benefit (like a bonus Regional Feat because that area is "well known" for producing "geniuses"). It was quickly quelled, but it makes me err on the side of careful nowadays.

D

 

[Wombat]

I give my players XP for mini-fiction, interesting shops, legends, NPCs and many other bits and pieces that go towards making the world feel more "real".

Out of my six players, four do this on a regular basis, one on an irregular basis, and one only once.

Still, it gives all of them a "stake" in the game world, which is something both they and I love.

 

[Methos]

I always try to involve the players

I’m in the process of designing a completely new campaign world from the ground up. While I have completed the basic history of the world for the PC’s, the character creation and development guidelines (including feats and prestige classes allowed), the basic kingdoms, PC starting area, significant NPC’s, etc., I have also tried to encourage the player’s to come up with some background information and character concepts for their players.

In addition to the couple of metaplots that I have in mind, I’m hoping that by encouraging them to do this, it will help me to design additional details and adventures of interest to them. Of the 5 players, I was pretty confident that 2 of them would come up with something. This was an accurate assumption.

I’m a big believer in trying to get the player’s to have some involvement in the campaign design at some level. I find it really helps me as the DM.

I generally don’t reward PC’s with additional Exp. Points, or items since I think it is unfair to other players who just aren’t as interested in this aspect of the campaign. It probably helps that the 2 players that provided character concepts and some basic background are DM’s themselves.