Letting the players invent

It's hard to believe, but it has been more than a year since my last post here. Quite a number of changes took place in my life, which I might get to write about them eventually. But not for that I wanted to come back to the blog. I wanted to write about RPGs again, 'cause it's a kind of passion that I still have. In the past year I've moved to "RPG Stack Exchange", where I was amazed by the sheer amount of knowledge going on in there.

I guess that some of the new posts in here will be renditions of some of the answers I wrote for questions that were asked there. But others, like the one that I'm writing now will be completely new., completely original. A word of caution, though: I don't know yet in what schedule I'll be updating here, in the blog. It might be every few days, or once a week, or who knows. But I'm back and hopefully for good.

With that said, it's time to start. Well… I'm reading right now a book, written by our beloved Gary Gygax , called "Master of the Game". It's part of the reason that I came back, but anyway, Gygax talks there quite a lot about the creative role of the GM. He all but says that the players are there for the ride, w=and it is the sole responsibility of the GM to create content and invent things about the imaginary world.

And here I must wholly disagree. Part of the magic in the RPG world is that the story is created together, by the entire group. It is true that by deciding to knock on the dungeon door (for example) the player changes the fiction of the story, thus creating something of her own accord, but is it the only way that a player can use to invent something?

In rule-systems like Fate there are tools, mechanical tools, which the players use to invent things. But I must say that I don't think that it went far enough. The players need more than a limited amount of facts to invent about the imaginary world. If you ask me, a limited amount of facts to invent is far too limited for most groups.

I, for once, use a different system. Whenever I'm stuck without an idea, I ask my players for one. "So, you found the truth about the murder- what is it?" When I'm stuck, whatever my players will bring will be far better than what my stuck mind can bring to the story.

But even this is not far enough. It is a known fact that a great way to bring the players to care about something is to let them invent it. So nowadays I let my players invent and/or describe my NPCs, invent barrels and cats and other parts of the scenery, and much-much more.

For me, it has always been the shared creation of the story and of the world. This was my thing, the reason that I came back to the infamous seat of the GM. It is not groundbreaking. Hell, it's a technique that even I use for at least six or seven years. But nevertheless, it is one of those things that I wanna see more- GMs who let their players create and invent the world as equals to them [the GMs].

And somehow, just somehow, when I GM to new players, I see the players try to invent more. Has the social contract changed us so?

What do you think? Do you let your players invent and/or describe things in the imaginary world? And if so, to what extent?