Types of Stories

Generally, there are two types of stories, regardless of medium or genre.  There are stories in a world, and then there are stories of a world.

Stories in a world are exactly that: they are stories contained within a larger setting and the events of the story do not impact the setting.  Most television series are stories set within the world - while character relationships may change over time, the setting might shift for a season, and the character roster may change, the overall setting of the story remains constant.  Some examples include every sitcom ever, every police procedural I can think of, Eureka, Piers Anthony's Xanth books, Shakespeare's plays, The Hobbit, The Walking Dead, etc.

Stories of a world are almost completely different.  The events of the story deal directly with the setting - either the world changes because of the story and/or we understand the world very differently as a result of the story.  I think this happens more frequently in works of science fiction and fantasy because it is in those two genres that authors have the ability to craft their own worlds in a much larger sense than in a non-speculative genre.  Some examples include Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy (at least the first one), Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles, Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books (from Arrows of the Queen through the Mage Storms trilogy including Vanyel's trilogy), Lost, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Lord of the Rings, Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule and subsequent books, and Karen Russell's Swamplandia!.

Now that you have a better idea what I mean when I talk about each of these types of stories, I want to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each kind of story - neither is 'better' in any sense.

Because stories in a world don't interfere with the setting, they are, in a sense, repeatable.  If the characters and immediate situation surrounding them is compelling, the story never needs to end (until the audience loses interest).  The flipside is that the scale of the stories is necessarily smaller - because the events of the story can't ripple out into the outside world, they have to be restrained.  But wait, you say.  Why, then, is The Hobbit on the list?  It's simple.  Has the world really changed now that Smaug is dead?  Yes, Laketown will have an improved economy and there is now another metal-producing dwarven holt.  But, given the broad expanse that is Middle Earth, that is a penny in the bucket.  But wait, what about the One Ring?  What about it?  Within the story of The Hobbit, it's just a trinket that can turn people invisible.  While the events of The Hobbit do bring about much of the world-altering events of the later series, we see none of that in The Hobbit.  The ultimate risk of a story within a world is that it feels petty, artificially restrained.

Stories of the world are the exact opposite - because their subject matter is by definition epic, the stories are be huge and expansive.  However, most worlds have a finite number of secrets to divulge, and once those secrets are exposed, there is little left to write about.  Terry Goodkind wrote himself into exactly this predicament - he created the entire world around the central protagonists, but because of this he was unable to (successfully) write about other characters within the world - to do so would require writing an entirely different story (one within the world) than he was able to write.  Brandon Sanderson's stories are mostly those of a world, and so when he finishes exploring a world's secrets, he leaves it behind and begins the process over on a new world.  The problem of these stories is that they are ultimately wasteful - because the secrets have been excavated, the world's authors will leave behind the compelling characters and institutions that would have provided many stories within the world.

I'll talk about how we can apply this very directly to roleplaying games shortly, but first I wanted to collapse this binary.  It should be very clear from the opinions above that these two types of stories are highly complementary.  Indeed - many stories within the world find their drama in threatening events that would change the setting of the show, while the secrets and world alteration that occur in stories about a world happen in small dollops between larger events that do not shake the foundations of the world.  Of all my examples, Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books probably do the best job of this; I include 4 trilogies and of each trilogy, discounting the last, secrets are uncovered and the world shifts in the third book each time - little tidbits are scattered throughout, but the major changes are saved until the end.  The first two books can be viewed as stories within the world that grow into a story about the world.

If Tolkien has been the dominant creative force behind D&D as it began, then looking at the stories being told (via the modules released and the setting details), The Hobbit was far more influential than The Lord of the Rings ever was.  LotR is epic fantasy that changes the face of Middle Earth.  Greyhawk is an unchanging backdrop for site-specific adventures that enrich the party.  However, in many more recently published modules and scenarios I see much more a push for these stories about a world - Paizo's Rise of the Runelords being an excellent example as the party is guided into discovering a number of clues about the history of Paizo's world and in stopping the Runelord's ascension.  Of course, the actual setting doesn't really change over the course of this module, but the scope is far more epic, far more in line with what one might expect from a story about a world.

As a DM, you have a choice to make.  You have the ability to decide what kind of stories your players can tell.  Are the foundations of your world up for negotiation, for realignment?  Or are they fixed in stone?  If you run someone else's module in someone else's setting, that choice is largely made for you.  The intricacies of Society play, of presenting a unified D&D experience means that the world has to stay constant.  When it's your world, you can open that up to your players.  I think that is one of the true powers of well-built sandbox - the world can have secrets for clever players to unlock, kingdoms to topple, and an infinite supply of the smaller-scale adventures.