Letting the Player's Do the Work via Backstory

[JamesIntrocaso]

Hey all, I let my players do some of the worldbuilding work in my campaign setting when they create their backstories. Some think I give them too much freedom. What do you say? Here's the post I did about it. http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/09/3...s-do-the-work/

[the_david]

It seems similar to what I want to do for my players, except I would just let the players come up with backgrounds first, and then I would connect the dots and base the campaign setting on their backgrounds.

[EisenKreutzer]

I live for stuff like this. I always allow my players huge freedom with the campaign world, letting them decide if something exists or not in the setting and always listening to their desires and thoughts. I love when a setting takes shape not just because I've written lots of notes about it, but because all of us at the table are being creative and sharing the narrative power.

If a player comes up with a knightly order, a country, a language, an artifact or even a religion, I incorporate it into the setting.
That way, when we've played for long enough the setting is ours. We've all had a hand in creating it, and that means we're all invested in it. We all care about the setting and the campaign, and nothing is more effective at making campaigns memorable and exciting than that.

[sktarq]

big problem with this style is that as more pieces come into being these pieces don't work well together. a very long term powerful nation. That for whatever reason never expands into the abandoned or tribal areas near them. Nor do the inhabitants of that tribal region pick up on their neighbors tech or styles. . . . A necromantic expansionists who don't pull any response to the social structures around them because those areas were created first. . . and histories get exceptionally bad. Fallen empires whose existence is never noted by the next kingdom over when understanding their relationship would be very important to how they both developed etc. So guiding themes can help and as DM lots of revisionist editing of how the hell things got to be this way will be needed.

[EisenKreutzer]

big problem with this style is that as more pieces come into being these pieces don't work well together. a very long term powerful nation. That for whatever reason never expands into the abandoned or tribal areas near them. Nor do the inhabitants of that tribal region pick up on their neighbors tech or styles. . . . A necromantic expansionists who don't pull any response to the social structures around them because those areas were created first. . . and histories get exceptionally bad. Fallen empires whose existence is never noted by the next kingdom over when understanding their relationship would be very important to how they both developed etc. So guiding themes can help and as DM lots of revisionist editing of how the hell things got to be this way will be needed.

Thats a very pessimistic view of players abilities as worldbuilders. Theres nothing magical about being a GM that grants powers of creativity. We're all just people around a table, pretending to be fantasy heroes.

There is nothing stopping a group of players from contributing setting elements that make perfect sense within the context of the setting.

[VoxRationis]

I'm with sktarq on this one. My players tend to coordinate when building a party only so far as to make sure the "bases" are covered. If I let their backstories define the setting, it would be ridiculous. It's also harder to create a detailed, in-depth world when this sort of thing happens; you need to create a lot of the world after you've consulted with all of your players, which probably means, given a lot of players' propensities to not make characters until the first session has started, that your world will look like a grey, featureless void for a while.

[Everyl]

IMO, it depends what your goal is as a setting-builder.

Is your goal to create a vast, richly-detailed fantasy world to set world-spanning (collaborative) stories in? If yes, then letting your players define major elements of the world probably won't produce the results you're hoping for.

If, on the other hand, your goal is to have fun with a bunch of your friends sitting around a table with dice every Friday night for the foreseeable future, then letting your players define setting elements can work out quite well.

I was once a player in a game with a new DM. He started us out on an island nation, isolated from contact with the rest of the world, and built the island's culture in part around the backstories we made for our characters. The game was fun and memorable, and in a totally different way than games I've played which had GM-mastercrafted settings.

If a novice DM with little creative writing experience can make a game that enjoyable using player-aided setting building, I wouldn't dismiss the technique out of hand.

[jqavins]

Thinking about things like this I try to follow two and only two guiding principles: YMMV, and if it's working keep doing it. After that, of course, I like to start throwing my two cents in anyway

The only thing I would suggest you consider changing is this:

Usually, my players still clear anything major with me before they cement it into their backstories. I’m very cool with this, but it’s a courtesy, not a requirement.

IMHO, it should be a requirement. Even if you rarely disallow anything, there's always the possibility that one day you'll be presented with something that really messes up something else that they don't know about yet. A DM should, IMO, maintain the ability to play his cards close to his chest.