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

I believe the question is how much player input it takes for a quest to be considered authored by the players.

Is it enough to say ‘we want to rescue the princess from the dragon’ and the rest is up to the DM or do they have to declare where the dragon lives, what its lair looks like and what its stats are before it becomes player authored fiction.

I assume the answer lies somewhere between these two. Not sure everyone will agree to where exactly that is, but maybe we can narrow it down a little
Personally I would put the most weight on the most consequential elements of the narrative. So, the overall nature of the quest, why the princess matters to the PC, their relationship to each other, whatever. Not all of that, by any means, needs to be left exclusively to players, but certainly if most of it was defined by the GM, and/or it's rendered relatively inconsequential, then I wouldn't find it to be interesting player authored fiction. Like if the player is choosing to go get the princess simply because there's gold offered by the GM in the guise of the king, then 'authoring' taking up the offer is hardly notable.
 

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Certainly that's the point of this thread, as set out in the OP ("Who else's D&D has a high volume of player-generated fiction?").

To me it didn't seem as complicated as some seem to find it!
I think a reset is in order where we just do what your OP suggests and recount actual examples.

As @hawkeyefan points out, we are playing a really Narrativist Story Now 4e PbP which is here:


We, the players chose Nentir Vale, but I think it would be silly to say the players authored it. We picked out elements, and invented some, to establish what was central to our characters. Lief is focused on a primal cult, Sariel brought in an element related to arch Fey, and Starn tied in Nimozaran and the Septarchs' Tower. Vorn joined later with a bit of a batmanesque 'crime' fighter.

Subsequently more elements were included, @Manbearcat introduced the opening scene which bought Pelor into things, though possibly prompted by one of us. That lead to our choosing next moves based on backstory and the outcome of the first encounter. I believe the GM suggested several possibilities, though it was not an exhaustive list.

You can read the thread, and I will state that the fiction is heavily a mix of contributions by each participant. Mostly if you see a poster posting something, they authored it, though in some cases the GM might be posting stuff that originated with a player. Often we do discuss what to say next, since it's PbP.
 

pemerton

Legend
I think the player deciding to seal up the passage determines the focus of the action (they decided to take this action, and it has consquences) and also establishes what's possible in action declaration (the passage is something that can be sealed up, and we wish to to this thing).
I guess I don't see how it was in doubt or hadn't occurred to anyone that the passage could be sealed up, before the players declared their action.
 

I'm A Banana

Potassium-Rich
I guess I don't see how it was in doubt or hadn't occurred to anyone that the passage could be sealed up, before the players declared their action.
It was in doubt because it hadn't entered play. I could've said "no" to this action in various ways, so there was no guarantee of this being possible or likely or a good idea.

I don't quite understand why doubt factors into if it was player-authored, though.
 

pemerton

Legend
I'm responding to two strands of the discussion, because they seem to me to be connected:

Is it enough to say ‘we want to rescue the princess from the dragon’ and the rest is up to the DM or do they have to declare where the dragon lives, what its lair looks like and what its stats are before it becomes player authored fiction.
Personally I would put the most weight on the most consequential elements of the narrative. So, the overall nature of the quest, why the princess matters to the PC, their relationship to each other, whatever. Not all of that, by any means, needs to be left exclusively to players, but certainly if most of it was defined by the GM, and/or it's rendered relatively inconsequential, then I wouldn't find it to be interesting player authored fiction. Like if the player is choosing to go get the princess simply because there's gold offered by the GM in the guise of the king, then 'authoring' taking up the offer is hardly notable.
Consistent with what I've been posting over the past few pages, where I want to put the weight is what are we actually spending time talking about as we play the game? What is the focus of the action, in that sense?

If most of the discussion is about the tunnels and the traps and the sneaky kobolds in the dragon-hold that the GM has written up and is presenting to the players, then I don't see that it is the players who are generating that fiction. But if most or at least much of the discussion is about the princess, and her relationship to the PCs and/or other NPCs (including the dragon), and about the dragon and its relationship to the PCs and/or other NPCs, and those relationships and concerns are all things that the players have brought to the table, then we have the focus of the action being player-generated fiction.

So I am a tad perplexed by "upstaging." What does it mean for the setting to upstage the characters?
I'm not one of the participants in the conversation that @Manbearcat quoted, but I think I have a feel for what is meant by "upstaging". And I think what I have just posted above in response to the discussion of who is generating the fiction that is/constitutes/establishes the focus of the action illustrates it.

If the bulk of the discussion at the table is about things that the GM has brought to the table - their princess, their dragon, their tunnels, their traps, their kobolds, perhaps what will happen to the kingdom if the princess is not rescued - then the setting is "upstaging" the characters. What play is actually about is the setting that the GM has presented to the players; and the PCs are vehicles through which the players engage with that setting (via declaring actions that might impact it).

Conversely, when the bulk of the discussion at the table is about stuff that the players have brought to the table as part of their play of their PCs (broadly construed) - their characters, their characters' concerns and aspirations and relationships, their characters families and holdings and pasts and futures - then the setting is not upstaging the PCs.

To use my 4e game, already discussed upthread, just as an example: if I as GM had used my authority at some appropriate point of play to have the imp familiar implanted with the Eye of Vecna, and had thereby made Vecna salient in play, and thereby led the player of the invoker/wizard to have to reflect on and make decisions about how to deal with Vecna, that would be my setting "upstaging" that PC.

But as it actually unfolded, it was the player who made Vecna salient in the play of his PC, and that led me to present the Eye of Vecna as an "opportunity" (to use the Apocalypse World language). The player then made the call about implantation, further stepping up the stakes and sharpening the focus. And so when I then, at the moment of crisis, prompted the player to make a hard decision about the character's relationship to Vecna I was not "upstaging" the PC with my setting.
 

pemerton

Legend
It was in doubt because it hadn't entered play. I could've said "no" to this action in various ways, so there was no guarantee of this being possible or likely or a good idea.

I don't quite understand why doubt factors into if it was player-authored, though.
Well, presumably most declared actions are player-authored. That's close to the bare minimum for a RPG experience.

But in the OP, when I referred to what is possible in action declaration, I was thinking about more than just the players choosing their PCs' actions. I was thinking about the players establishing what is possible where that hadn't previously been flagged or assumed. In a FRPG this is probably particularly going to involve magic/the supernatural; in a sci-fi-ish RPG is will probably particularly involve scientific mumbo-jumbo.

In your scenario, I guess something like finding and diverting an underground stream to flood the tunnel would be more like the sort of thing that I had in mind.
 

That's an interesting line of discussion. I'm also curious to see how @Crimson Longinus will respond.

I do have a clarifying question, however: when your refer to the GM upstaging the PCs, are you referring to the PCs being diegetically upstaged IC by events and/or NPCs? Or are you referring to the GM not upstaging the players at the table, OOC? Your use of "PCs" instead of "players" and your emphasis on how the game world is perceived led to me to originally read your question in the former sense, but the latter sense could be argued to more directly pertain to the question of fiction authorship, so I figured I'd double-check.

@pemerton answered your question how I would here.

Briefly (in my words):

* who is authoring the core questions (around ethos and relationship in particular) that give rise to the trajectory and shape of play? Is it the GM or the players?

...and...

* where are those questions embedded? Within an individual PC such that it proactively animates said PC, imbuing the course of play with forward momentum and meaning or is said PC reactively onboarding something external to them (via the player taking on a social contract or a play meta or a GM/AP prescription) like (i) a setting's trope/conceit/metaplot or (ii) an NPC's dramatic need or (iii) an auxiliary sidequest disconnected from anything prior (which, if this was a well-edited movie, it would be deemed "run-time filler" and "left on the cutting room floor").




"Poster 1" in the post you're responding to had this to say to answer your question:

"...the kind of diagetic upstaging he <you, Xetheral> mentions generally serves to keep authorship firmly in the GM's hands."
 

@pemerton answered your question how I would here.

Briefly (in my words):

* who is authoring the core questions (around ethos and relationship in particular) that give rise to the trajectory and shape of play? Is it the GM or the players?

...and...

* where are those questions embedded? Within an individual PC such that it proactively animates said PC, imbuing the course of play with forward momentum and meaning or is said PC reactively onboarding something external to them (via the player taking on a social contract or a play meta or a GM/AP prescription) like (i) a setting's trope/conceit/metaplot or (ii) an NPC's dramatic need or (iii) an auxiliary sidequest disconnected from anything prior (which, if this was a well-edited movie, it would be deemed "run-time filler" and "left on the cutting room floor").




"Poster 1" in the post you're responding to had this to say to answer your question:

"...the kind of diagetic upstaging he <you, Xetheral> mentions generally serves to keep authorship firmly in the GM's hands."
Right, this is why I cast doubt on notions like the players choosing to play B2 constituting a player generated fiction.
 

Stormonu

NeoGrognard
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."
 

FrogReaver

As long as i get to be the frog
Right, this is why I cast doubt on notions like the players choosing to play B2 constituting a player generated fiction.
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.
 

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