This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2012, San Sebastian, 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; workshops.