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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yea. I think player generated fiction is different than players choosing the focus of whatever fiction gets generated by whoever is doing the fiction generation.

I think I agree with that, though it may be that we'd differ as to specific examples.

So, with @Stormonu 's example I would wonder why players are suddenly suggesting a specific module unless they're sure the GM has it. Like I would guess it's really more of a joint decision process, but I guess anything is possible.

The second example is a bit contrived, but if the GM based his scene framing on A1-4 who would blame him? I think the players certainly asked for it, and I will assume the resulting fiction is answering to the fictional trajectory they're establishing vs simply recapitulating the module as written.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yea. I think player generated fiction is different than players choosing the focus of whatever fiction gets generated by whoever is doing the fiction generation.

I think it can be both. It's more of a question of depth of narrative control as opposed to its presence.

The players saying 'I want to fight ninjas' and I want to come from and be beset by this particular ninja clan as part fo the game' are on the same spectrum.

 

[pemerton]

So is this more of a situation of:

Players: "We want to go on an adventure against the Slavelords"
DM: "Okay, let me pull out the A1-A4 modules. You'll be going against the Slave Lords of Suderham. I've got all the information here."

vs.

Players: "We want to go on an adventure against the Slavelords"
DM: "Okay, tell me more about these slave lords"
Player 1: "They abducted my aunt, using a force of hobgoblins."
Player 2: "There's rumors they operate out of a port city called Slaver's Bay"
Player 3: "I have a trinket I started play with. It's a key to an old forgotten gate on the wall of Slaver's Bay"
DM: "Cool, that'll give you a way to get into the city undetected. But how about getting there?"
Player 4: "We're going to disguise ourselves as merchants, heading to the city to trade."

Possibly, but not necessarily. See (eg) my post 335.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think it can be both. It's more of a question of depth of narrative control as opposed to its presence.

The players saying 'I want to fight ninjas' and I want to come from and be beset by this particular ninja clan as part fo the game' are on the same spectrum.

Right, I'm not saying player generated fiction cannot be used to choose the focus, i'm just saying 1) it need not do so and 2) the focus can be chosen by players without player generated fiction. For 1 an example: the players generating fiction about the color of their PC's shirt is truly player generated fiction, but it likely doesn't focus anything. For 2 an example: players wanting to play through a particular module. This focuses play but the players didn't generate any fiction.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So this isn’t from a D&D game, but I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be.

Last night my players and I played a session of Stonetop. This was the first session following the resolution of a few major events, and also marked moving from winter to spring, which comes with some mechanical implications for the characters’ steading. The characters were away from the village of Stonetop for some time at this point.

Some time had passed in the game world for the characters. And the way things were left after last session was a bit uncertain. So I thought doing some character vignettes would be the best way to handle this session. I started off with a beloved NPC, the nephew of one PC and a kind of apprentice to another. I showed how he had grown in the months since we’d seen him, and kind of touched on some other things in town through him.

Then I went around the table. I asked each player what their character had been up to. When (and if) they came back to Stonetop, what they’d been doing since the end of last session. So a lot of this was done in flashback. We made rolls when needed. For instance, the Blessed (a druid kind of nature priest) said he wanted to bring some wild horses he’d previously encountered to the town. We made a roll to Persuade the horses… and he got a success with complication.

So I said the horses will agree to come to Stonetop, but it’s largely because they are afraid of something. I asked the player… what are they afraid of? He answered that there was a large creature in the nearby forest that was watching them and had killed and eaten one of them. He said the horses described it as a snake-like creature. This sounded like a Swyn, a powerful abomination that the PCs had encountered early in the campaign, They faced it in combat, but had to flee when it nearly killed one of them. They locked it away behind a portal by removing the keystone from the portal.

So now it seems that it’s made its way to Stonetop without the portal.

We then continued around the table for each player, establishing what their character had been up to and generating more interesting things for future sessions.

Just lots of player input that helped generate the content of future play. I had input… plenty of it. But most of it came from the players.

 

[RhaezDaevan]

This may be off-topic, but how would it be resolved if two (or more) players generate fiction that contradict each other? Does the DM decide then, or does the whole group have to come to a consensus?

Example:

Player 1 - I'm the last of the elves and am on a quest to find a way to travel back in time to prevent the extinction of my people.

Player 2 - I was raised by elves, but am human, and I'm on a quest to find a lost relic to finally be accepted as one of them.

 

[darkbard]

This may be off-topic, but how would it be resolved if two (or more) players generate fiction that contradict each other? Does the DM decide then, or does the whole group have to come to a consensus?

Example:

Player 1 - I'm the last of the elves and am on a quest to find a way to travel back in time to prevent the extinction of my people.

Player 2 - I was raised by elves, but am human, and I'm on a quest to find a lost relic to finally be accepted as one of them.

Take this as my opinion rather than the definitive answer, but (1) generally speaking, games with a more narrative focus (substitute your adjectival of choice) tend to have a collaborative "Session 0" (see, eg Dungeon World) in which these kind of backstories might be worked our through discussion between players; (2) if I were GMing these players, I would stress that each is that character's experience and view of the world, not definitive truth (perhaps they come from different regions and the Elven people were sundered long ago) and is to be put to the test through play and the fortune mechanics of action declarations in game.