This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2012, San Sebastián, Spain, November 2012. The 14 revised full papers presented together with 6 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on theory and aesthetics, authoring tools and applications, evaluation and user experience reports, virtual characters and agents, new storytelling modes, and workshops.