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.
