Forked from "An Epiphany" thread: Is World Building "Necessary"?

[Hussar]

Originally Posted by Kask

2004? So? Are you saying that's when you started playing?

No Kask, that is not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that if my join date is five years ago, then perhaps, just maybe, I've been gaming for AT LEAST five years. The fact that I started gaming in 1980 is beside the point. I generally find that getting into pissing contests and trying to appeal to authority doesn't help in these discussions. Anyone who is feeling that their points are so inadequate that they require bolstering by telling all and sundry how long they've been gaming should possibly go back and rework their arguments.

Just a thought.

Originally Posted by Imaro

Ok, the 10 things I would want to have completed in two weeks...

NOTE: I am assuming that I have presented a brief summary of Gulmenghast (perhaps a page long) to my players and it is met with approval as a place they want to adventure in...

1. The racial write-ups how they relate to one another, attitudes towards
each other and differences from the generic PHB descriptions... (as an
example in Gulmenghast Shifters, Genasi, and Tieflings are the result of
long-forgotten alchemical and arcane gene-modification of humans with
the essences of beasts, elementals and devils that arose in response to
the invasion of these peoples lands by the Dragonborn Empire thus there
is an ancient enmity between these groups)
2. General descriptions of the 7 wards and The Severed Realms
3. Map of The Pinched Quarter with encounter charts
4. Fleshed out maps of The Quivering Catacombs, Badger Bayham's Brew
and Breakfast, Miss Skifin's General Tradehouse and Emporium, The
Shrouded Bath House, and The Gate Towers (Have no problem stealing
maps off the internet to cut down on work... )
5. General description of the two religious orders in Gulmenghast
6. List of Major NPC's w/stats (mostly re-skinned from MM, again to cut
down work)
7. Macro-level government of city in broad strokes
8. Macro-level political structure of The Pinched Quarter
9. The stats for the Lawbringer's stationed in The Gate Towers
10. 10 secrets; one for each Ward and 3 on a micro-level for The Pinched
Quarter

Now, I have a job, a child and am preparing to get married in September, so I don't have a ton of time... that said I enjoy working on my campaign and I generally devote an hour to an hour and a half before I go to sleep to working on my wiki. So total man hours is somewhere between 7 hours and 20 hours to complete the above... so less than an actual day out of 2 weeks.

Honestly Hussar, I find (and I am assuming here) what you call "adventure" design doesn't take that long unless I choose to do it from scratch without using all the maps, stats, monsters, traps, etc. that are widely available in the books and on the internet. The actual world I'm creating for these adventures to take place in, it's consistency, verisimilitude and logic are things I can't grab pre-made and tweak. I also find that the more fully fleshed out my world is the better informed I am as to the specific tweaks I should make to give it a Gulmenghast feel as opposed to a generic high-fantasy setting 6432577 feel. YMMV and all that of course.

A couple of points here. First one is, please stop with the strawman that if you don't do world building you are forced to have "generic high-fantasy setting 6432577" and I'll stop calling it setting wankery. Deal?

Second, let's not lose sight of the fact that your campaign setting is very small. You're limiting yourself to one city. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It sounds interesting, but, it does cut down on the work load.

But, in any case, let's split the difference on your time estimate and call it 15 hours. 15 hours of work to detail one small setting all before you sit down to do a single adventure. Granted, you've got a couple of locations here to play with, at least you have maps of them, but you have not statted a single encounter, nor created a single adventure. Say that's another 3-5 hours of work for a decent sized adventure.

See, right there, that's my problem with the idea of world building first. You've spent a fair bit of time, and yes, I do think spending 15 hours (give or take) on preparing to start writing adventures is a long time.

And, to boot, you have only the barest bones of setting here anyway. This is just the start. You have several hours of work ahead of you to add any really meaningful detail to most of these sections. Right now, beyond a very small handful of points, would you call this a fully fleshed out setting? I certainly wouldn't.

/disclaimer - the following is a joke, please take it as a joke

What happens when your players want to meet the thieves guild

/end joke.

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

I will have a description of the places that the PCs go, and they'll suspect I have descriptions of everywhere. When the truth is, I have descriptions of the 3 locations I expected them to go during the first session. I'll have battle areas that look planned out and monsters that work well together and compliment each other's strengths to make them more interesting to fight.

That approach works very well at low levels. At mid-high level, it falls to pieces rapidly.

[Hussar]

Originally Posted by Bastarondo

I see your point. I don't fully agree with it, though. Rather, I think adventure creation should be addressed separately from campaign creation. It requires different levels of "zoom", different skill sets to some extent, and different levels of investment. Some people might run brilliant adventures but all-but-ignore campaigns; conversely, I had quite a lot of enjoyable gaming with a GM in college who was very negligent about plotted "adventures" but had a campaign that kept his players immensely busy with politics and social interaction alone. And as I've said before, I don't think the two disciplines are very often in conflict. They scratch different itches; world-building feeds the inspiration that is necessary for the perspiration.

That's certainly true. I do think that world building approaches do work. Heck, I know they work, I've seen them work, I've played in them and I've done them as well. If this conversation was happening about 5 years ago, I'd be 100% on your side of the fence on this.

What changed, for me anyway, was a dawning realization of a couple of things. One, very few players ever invest even a fraction of the interest in the setting that the DM does. They invest in the story, they invest in the campaign, but, as far as the setting goes, most of the players I've played with aren't terribly concerned with it beyond how it affects their character.

What I realized was that when I was designing campaigns, I'd have all these ideas for the setting - background, history, geography, etc. I'd do research into whatever elements I thought would help, I'd spend hours and hours trying to build my next world. And, inevitably, the stresses of trying to do that AND come up with next week's material for the session burned me out.

And I also found that this happened to many of the DM's I played with as well. So many of them would talk about how their games would fizzle after a few months or maybe a year, sometimes due to various factors, but, burnout seemed to be a pretty common one.

So, I started scaling WAYYYY back on how much world building I did, and focused much more attention on adventure creation - both linear and non-linear - and I found my campaigns worked a whole lot better.

Let me go off on a bit of a tangent here.

One of my absolute favoritest 3e book is Mystic Eye Games' Urban Blight. Fantastic book. Worth every penny. In it, it details 20 urban locations that you can drop into pretty much any setting with a bit of tweaking. They give a bit of history of each location, but primarily focus on each location as a place for adventures to occur. The bar has a slaving operation underneath, the wizard's mansion features a crazy wizard who captures people in clocks, that sort of thing.

Not that the locations are modules. They aren't. They are nowhere near that scripted. It's more like, "Here is this location, here are a few people at this location, here are half a dozen plot seeds for that location".

Now, compare that to most city setting books you buy for any given setting. You get five to ten pages of city history. A map with numbered locations. Each location has a paragraph or two of what the location is, maybe has the stats for the owner and that's about it. Tons of high altitude stuff - history, background, that sort of thing - but it's now pretty much entirely up to the individual DM to start creating adventures.

Not every setting book does this mind you. Ptolus for one does not. Freeport also includes adventure hooks for its locations. Ravens Bluff had their Points of Interest. Fantastic stuff and I wish more publishers went in that direction.

So, certainly you can go the direction of the standard setting book. Lots of background, history and whatnot. It works. It's certainly tried and true. I'm just trying to offer an alternative that I personally think works better.

[Imaro]

Originally Posted by Hussar

A couple of points here. First one is, please stop with the strawman that if you don't do world building you are forced to have "generic high-fantasy setting 6432577" and I'll stop calling it setting wankery. Deal?

Where did I state a strawman? I'm sorry but that's how I feel most pre-made adventures, and rightly so since they must sell to as wide a range of people as possible, feel like unless you take the time to personalize them for your game. I think your reading more into it than is there.

Originally Posted by Hussar

Second, let's not lose sight of the fact that your campaign setting is very small. You're limiting yourself to one city. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It sounds interesting, but, it does cut down on the work load.

So there's a standard size a world must be to qualify for your argument? Maybe that's just a bad assumption.

Originally Posted by Hussar

But, in any case, let's split the difference on your time estimate and call it 15 hours. 15 hours of work to detail one small setting all before you sit down to do a single adventure. Granted, you've got a couple of locations here to play with, at least you have maps of them, but you have not statted a single encounter, nor created a single adventure. Say that's another 3-5 hours of work for a decent sized adventure.

I did state I would detail (by reskinning) the major monsters and NPC's of these environments. Second, are you telling me it takes you 3-5 hours to create an adventure in 4e... are you serious? To me one of the easiest parts of 4e is making a combat encounter on the fly by reskinning monsters and adding up XP... especially if you have tables detailing what is found in a particular area. Since the maps are fleshed out anything outside of combat (hazards, traps, terrain) should be covered. I don't need a scripted adventure because the PC's will interact with things and create an adventure from the pieces that have been laid out before them.

Originally Posted by Hussar

See, right there, that's my problem with the idea of world building first. You've spent a fair bit of time, and yes, I do think spending 15 hours (give or take) on preparing to start writing adventures is a long time.

Uhm... but I have less work to do as the game progresses and more freedom for my players than if I had started wth only one option for their "adventure"... that's my problem with "scripted" adventures. I have numerous places, people, and things for them to interact with in a logical and consistent manner, more than enough to run quite a few game nights and by the time it reaches a point where they're exhausted... I'll have even more. Starting out my PC's can explore the mutant-ridden depths of the Quivering Catacombs, become enemies or seek employment with the Lawbringers, come into conflict with or work for The Faceless Man's lieutenants who run crime in The Pinched Quarter through The Shrouded Bath House, haggle and buy goods, get robbed, or hire on as bodyguards amongst the numerous merchant's tents and stalls set up in the Tradehouse or seek out room & board, rumors, employment, and information at the Brew and Breakfast. They're mapped, I have the Mjr NPC's and monsters stated and a random encounter table for The Pinched Quarter.

Originally Posted by Hussar

And, to boot, you have only the barest bones of setting here anyway. This is just the start. You have several hours of work ahead of you to add any really meaningful detail to most of these sections. Right now, beyond a very small handful of points, would you call this a fully fleshed out setting? I certainly wouldn't.

I knew this was coming, you propose a situation where I have the minimum material I would need... then go look, you only have the minimum material needed... Yeah, ok whatever.

The funny thing is that I have set up more choices and varied opportunities for my PC's than are offered by your single adventure. And since you claim it takes you 5 to 6 hours to create an adventure... that means with the same time spent on adventures, that I spent worldbuilding, you could have 2 to 3 scripted adventures ready, I've cited above only a handful of the things the PC's can explore and interact with in a single part of my world and it certainly presents the material necessary for more than 3 adventures without dictating what my PC's will do.

Originally Posted by Hussar

/disclaimer - the following is a joke, please take it as a joke

What happens when your players want to meet the thieves guild

/end joke.

The Faceless Man's lieutenants run organized crime (drugs, prostitution, extortion, larceny, etc.) in The Pinched Quarter out of The Shrouded Bath House. Or did you expect him to have a building with the words "Thieve's Guild is Right Here" carved into it ??

[Ourph]

Originally Posted by Kask

That approach works very well at low levels. At mid-high level, it falls to pieces rapidly.

That's not been my experience at all. As long as the players are on board with the "If you want to do something outside the current campaign context, give the DM some advance notice"-guideline, everything works just fine.

[rounser]

I have numerous places, people, and things for them to interact with in a logical and consistent manner

This is usually termed adventure design, if you can actually interact with it. Will you please define terms and answer those questions, because discussing worldbuilding with you is a waste of time unless we know what you want it to mean.

[Imaro]

Originally Posted by rounser

This is usually termed adventure design, if you can actually interact with it. Will you please define terms and answer those questions, because discussing worldbuilding with you is a waste of time unless we know what you want it to mean.

How about you're the only one who keeps harping on this "exact definition" thing... yet have given none yourself. How about you state what you believe and answer the questions yourself... because otherwise discussing worldbuilding with you is a waste of time unless we know what you want it to mean.

As far as your statement above, let me put it this way. IMO a building in and of itself is not an adventure. A building with a fully fleshed out inside is not an adventure. a building with a fully fleshed out inside and npc's that are fully fleshed out is not an adventure. A building with a fuly fleshed out interior, npc's and notes on their activities isn't an adventure. All it is is a component of the world (ala worldbuilding) unless the PC's choose to interact with it in some meaningful way.

You see it's not an adventure and thus not part of "adventure design" because there's no given plot or certainty for it ever being interacted with in any way by the PC's.

I mean honestly what can't you interact with in a campaign world (unless your DM specifically forbids it)? According to your definition, no matter how remote the chance... every NPC I might possibly talk to, pantheon or deity I might possibly offend, monster whose path I just might cross, shopkeeper I may haggle with, land I could ever visit, etc. is not part of worldbuilding but adventure design... so please explain to me what your version of worldbuilding actually allows for.

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Ourph

As long as the players are on board with the "If you want to do something outside the current campaign context, give the DM some advance notice"-guideline, everything works just fine.

Like I said, it falls to pieces rapidly. Playing in little predefined boxes (you can't use high level spells unless you give advanced notice to DM) isn't a good campaign style.

[Remathilis]

Originally Posted by Kask

Like I said, it falls to pieces rapidly. Playing in little predefined boxes (you can't use high level spells unless you give advanced notice to DM) isn't a good campaign style.

You can't use high-level spells unless you've given the DM advanced notice.

A wizard must research his spells before hand. Which means he must find a tutor or a scroll to copy from. Ergo, he needs to tell the DM he's looking for said magic. He doesn't magically gain a scroll because he gained a level...

Sorcerers too, must seek to research any spell not in the PHB.

As for clerics and other divines, they must ask at the time of spell-selection if their god will grant it to them ("No, the god of ice will NOT grant you flamestrike!").

But more to your point, I don't see where it is unreasonable to ask players "what do you want to do next session" so I can prepare. If things change duing the game, I'll wing it. Otherwise, they typically stick to plan because they know the game is better with a little prep than if I'm pulling stuff out my kiester...

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Remathilis

You can't use high-level spells unless you've given the DM advanced notice.

Umm, wrong. A player can't obtain them without DM permission. Casting them (teleport, scry, etc.) if you have them, is a different matter and is only a problem if the DM hasn't properly prepared the campaign world ahead of time. Which of course leads us back to, world building. Funny how that works...

[Remathilis]

Originally Posted by Kask

Umm, wrong. A player can't obtain them without DM permission. Casting them (teleport, scry, etc.) if you have them, is a different matter and is only a problem if the DM hasn't properly prepared the campaign world ahead of time. Which of course leads us back to, world building. Funny how that works...

Nitpick: You can't use them until you've obtained them.

I fail to see the problem, either the DM already knows what's there (We're going to the Golden City of Isis), figures it out between sessions (Ok, next week we want to go to Isis. Cool, I'll whip something up.) or does it on the fly (We teleport to the largest city on the content. Ok, uh, you end up in the city of Isis. *scribble scribble*)

In one, you did all the work months and years before, one you did it the week before, and one your doing it right then. The PCs still ended up in Isis, didn't they?

[Kask]

Originally Posted by Remathilis

In one, you did all the work months and years before, one you did it the week before, and one your doing it right then. The PCs still ended up in Isis, didn't they?

It's up to the players whether they want to sit around during game time while a DM creates a city that should already be prepared... Some people don't mind. It's a matter of taste.

[Barastrondo]

Originally Posted by Hussar

(slight snip)

What I realized was that when I was designing campaigns, I'd have all these ideas for the setting - background, history, geography, etc. I'd do research into whatever elements I thought would help, I'd spend hours and hours trying to build my next world. And, inevitably, the stresses of trying to do that AND come up with next week's material for the session burned me out.

Interesting. See, for me, the world-building is what keeps my batteries charged. It probably has something to do with the fact that unless I'm targeting a specific area, I tend to just jot down ideas as they come to me, spend half an hour here on some details for one setting, muse on a neat addition to another setting in the shower. (I do have a long-running D&D world that's hosted games since my college years, but I also run other games and genres.)

Secondly, I just haven't had the same experience you have with players being interested in the setting. Certainly it helps that my wife is very much into it; she's often said she could throw a dart at a map of my world and come up with an idea for a character from wherever it landed. But it's the same for some of my other players, in different ways. One loves the pantheon she's gamed with for years on years. Another asked me out of the blue about the various war heroes-turned-nobles for a given nation: who are they, what are they famous for? For me, world-building isn't something wasted on the players (though I'll admit I have a few who are less overall intrigued by it), it's often something they demand and inspire.

I totally get your approach. And I hope you don't take it the wrong way if I say I'm glad that I haven't had the same experiences, because right now my way of getting into D&D is pretty much my favorite, and I'm really happy it works.

Let me go off on a bit of a tangent here.

One of my absolute favoritest 3e book is Mystic Eye Games' Urban Blight. Fantastic book. Worth every penny. In it, it details 20 urban locations that you can drop into pretty much any setting with a bit of tweaking. They give a bit of history of each location, but primarily focus on each location as a place for adventures to occur. The bar has a slaving operation underneath, the wizard's mansion features a crazy wizard who captures people in clocks, that sort of thing.

Not that the locations are modules. They aren't. They are nowhere near that scripted. It's more like, "Here is this location, here are a few people at this location, here are half a dozen plot seeds for that location".

I find books like that really neat, but they tend to serve as inspiration for me more than anything else, a lot like published adventures do. I have a tough time dropping anything whole-cloth into my game, as usually there's at least a few assumptions about setting or play style that are interesting, but not 100% compatible. (I'm a rabid reskinner, for instance, and have gone along a parallel development track from most DMs as far as personal tastes go; leucrottas are a campaign must-have for me, for instance, whereas I would rather have Warhammer-inspired dark elves than drow in a game, and never got into mind flayers or beholders at all.) So because I have my eccentricities of setting (and players who go along with 'em), the real raw attention to immediate detail isn't helpful above and beyond the usual.

So, certainly you can go the direction of the standard setting book. Lots of background, history and whatnot. It works. It's certainly tried and true. I'm just trying to offer an alternative that I personally think works better.

Yep, I see the strengths. To some extent, i think 4e is messing around with that sort of thing; their Delve approach would work quite well in a setting book if they zoomed down to more of a city scale. But to have stuff that you can just plug and play does require everyone to be on a fairly large set of shared assumptions before a ready-to-go "module" is actually ready to go without alteration. Otherwise, they're work to use too, just like the setting elements that come with story hooks but not actual adventure outlines and stat blocks.

Of course, that's also why I like reskinning conversations so much (like the folks at RPGnet who turn shamans into sha'ir or bards into necromancers), because they feed me with ideas to use more of a drag-and-drop accessory. It's still work, but work is always easier with the right inspiration.

Just depends on wiring, I figure.

[Kamikaze Midget]

Players geek out on the cool stuff their characters can do all the time.

"Oh Wow, now I can cast Fireball!"

"Neat! I'm level 15!"

"Oh boy! New magic swords!"

....The world is just the DM's character.

If my character can have a backstory about how he was orphaned by adventurers at the age of 12, then my DM can have a backstory about a goblin war. If it helps him make goblins for me to fight and goblin kings for me to negotiate with and maybe goblin orphans for my to sympathize with, that's his thing, and it's fine.

I don't think a character having a personality is "character wankery," and I don't think that a setting having some not-entirely-relevant details is "setting wankery."

I don't care to hear about the obscure irrelevant insanity of your world's flumph breeding habits any more than you care to hear about how my character lost his virginity, though, so let's both agree not to bore each other.

[Barastrondo]

Originally Posted by Kamikaze Midget

I don't care to hear about the obscure irrelevant insanity of your world's flumph breeding habits any more than you care to hear about how my character lost his virginity, though, so let's both agree not to bore each other.

And let's just hope the two are wholly unrelated.

[Lanefan]

Originally Posted by PrecociousApprentice

Setting creation is inherently directed at the PCs and the actions they take. World building can be PC diercted, but doesn't have to be. That is the difference.

Disagree. When you're designing the world/setting, you don't (or shouldn't) *have* PCs yet. This is all done before the first PC gets rolled up. Thus, by default, it's the same thing.

See, this is where the heart of the disagreement is. You do not need a world to create a character background. You do if you want to only choose from things that the DM provides for you. If players are allowed to come up with options, then no pre-established world created by the DM is necessary. Character backgound creates the setting, which becomes part of the world. Players and DM can create this together, usually toward the beginning of a campaign, but definitely not limited to the start of a campaign. The campaign is built around this, and this is why it is setting and not worldbuilding. Because it is PC and story driven.

I see the world as specifically something in the DM's purview, whether as a pre-gen setting or a homebrew invention. Which means, I'm not about to expect to be able to mess with it very much, if at all...if only because I'll be generating even more work for the DM if I do.

Let's say I'm an Elf. I decide (as player) I was born near the small village of Teria, near the border between the Elven and Dwarven lands to the north of where the campaign begins. Right there I've forced the DM to somehow fit in that there's an Elven land somewhere north of the campaign start point, sharing a border with a Dwarven land, and there's a specific village that might become important someday if my PC ever wants to go home. This might not mesh at all with what the DM had in mind (his view has Elves only living across the sea). Who wins?

The crux of the dispute is basically that some people feel that a world should be created, and then characters can be created to inhabit it using choices provided by the DM/worldbuilder, and whatever these characters do becomes a story. This is fine if you are OK with the idea that only the DM can have a say in the initial options, and you want story and themes to emerge from the play within this established world.

That's in part what a DM is for.

It inherently places the world in the center of the activity, and not the characters, and shifts a huge amount of the creative power and responsibility to the DM.

Not necessarily a Bad Thing, provided the DM has a clue...hence explaining why the guide to worldbuilding is presented prominently in all versions of the DMG.

Others feel that the story and the characters should be placed at the center of the activity, and the world created around them. Goals are set first, and themes are created around these goals. Characters are created that capture the themes and are capable of fulfilling these goals. These characters are created with backgrounds. These backgrounds are used to help create the setting. The DM then creates a plot outline that will allow the players to accomplish the goal of play. The DM also fills in the setting enough to make the characters, plot, theme, and goals all fit together in a pleasing and consistent way. All setting creation is directed at fulfilling the goals of play by reinforcing theme, allowing characters to deepen, or forwarding the plot. Nothing else is necessary. Anything not directed at fulfilling the goals of play, reinforcing theme, deepening characterization, or forwarding the plot will actually lower the quality of play because it takes time away from the goals of play.

Provided you know exactly what the PCs are going to do, and want a game where the PCs are such special flowers that the world revolves around them, then fine. Me, I want some non-PC-related theme and history built in to my world before the puck drops, so I'm not winging it all 4 sessions in when the PCs suddenly decide to interact with it.

Deep characterization will come from the players if they want it to, regardless. And the plot is probably going to be driven by either the world's history or its current events, both of which the DM needs to know going in.

Lanefan

[PrecociousApprentice]

Originally Posted by Lanefan

Disagree. When you're designing the world/setting, you don't (or shouldn't) *have* PCs yet. This is all done before the first PC gets rolled up. Thus, by default, it's the same thing.
I see the world as specifically something in the DM's purview, whether as a pre-gen setting or a homebrew invention. Which means, I'm not about to expect to be able to mess with it very much, if at all...if only because I'll be generating even more work for the DM if I do.

This is exactly what I am talking about. You don't see the difference because you are a world builder, you don't create settings. Setting creation is PC directed. If you aren't directing your campaign creation at the actual PCs, you are world building, not creating setting. That is the difference. You can disagree, but that is really the difference. Until you can see that difference in play style, you will never understand what the OP is talking about.
__________________________________________________ _____
Definitions
Setting Creation- Creation of a campaign that is directed at the PCs. The purpose of all elements in setting creation is to address the predetermined goals of play, reinforce appropriate themes, allow for deep characterization, and forward the plot(s), all relative to the main characters of the game (usually the PCs).

Good setting creation allows the characters to shine during the creation of stories that revolve around them, and is often appropriate for players who enjoy approaching games as an author would.

Worldbuilding- Creation of fictitious worlds, with the goal being the creation of a world that is believable enough that it takes on a life beyond the PCs. The purpose of all elements of worldbuilding is to add as much detail as possible to create the illusion that the world has a life of it's own, and usually presuposes that the PCs are not the center of the creation.

Good worldbuilding allows DMs to feel comfortable knowing that they can handle any action that the PCs want to pursue, and is often appropriate for players who desire immersive play.
__________________________________________________ _____

Any playstyle can be achieved with either method, but setting creation is better for creating stories and worldbuilding is better for the experience of exploring fantasyscapes. To tell me that the process of setting creation is the same as worldbuilding, just that worldbuilders are doing it right and are better prepared is to show me that you completely misunderstand what setting creation is. It is not half-@$$ed world building. The two methods have entirely different goals, strengths, and usually very different outcomes and play experiences.

Many people actually create characters first, then the world is created around them. It only creates more work if the DM insists on worldbuilding first, then players are allowed to create characters that inject setting elements into his world. If you quit worldbuilding, then there is no wasted work. That is basically what the OP is trying to get at (If I read him right.) If you use a PC directed method to create the setting, then you don't create any extra work, and the players get to actually play what they want. The DM can even create setting without help from the players. He just by definition has to have input from the players about their goals for play, and the characters that they want to play, because setting creation is ALWAYS directed at the PCs and their story. That is how it is defined.

There are particular strengths of setting building that haven't even been addressed in this thread so far. Have you ever seen how many comments there are on messageboards about things that DMs won't allow because it doesn't fit his campaign? I have seen a ton. It is actually kind of sad. Players want to play things, but are not able to. This is very much a product of strict worldbuilding. It is not at all a problem of setting creation. Setting creation asks "Who are the PCs and what story do they have to tell?" Then a setting is created to facilitate this. Very different than pure world building.

Originally Posted by Lanefan

Let's say I'm an Elf. I decide (as player) I was born near the small village of Teria, near the border between the Elven and Dwarven lands to the north of where the campaign begins. Right there I've forced the DM to somehow fit in that there's an Elven land somewhere north of the campaign start point, sharing a border with a Dwarven land, and there's a specific village that might become important someday if my PC ever wants to go home. This might not mesh at all with what the DM had in mind (his view has Elves only living across the sea). Who wins?

There is no "win". You should be mature enough that you communicate and come to an agreement. Otherwise it is just one person railroading another. That is how worldbuilders railroad. "Not in my campaign." "Those only exist over here, and they are not like you said. Here let me tell you how it is in my world..." It becomes the DMs game. I like it to be everyone's game.

Originally Posted by Lanefan

That's in part what a DM is for. Not necessarily a Bad Thing, provided the DM has a clue...hence explaining why the guide to worldbuilding is presented prominently in all versions of the DMG.

That can be what a DM is for. DMs can also be in the role of adjudicator, facilitator, and as the guy that focuses on the elements of play that are not the PCs, but still address the goals and themes of the campaign. They are directed at the PCs, but are not traditionally the purview of players. The DM also helps to facilitate the plot. Yes, this is in part what a DM CAN be for, but the DM can be for other things, and this certainly is not all that they are for. They can also do very little of of what you say a DM is for, and still be a fantastic DM.

Originally Posted by Lanefan

Provided you know exactly what the PCs are going to do, and want a game where the PCs are such special flowers that the world revolves around them, then fine. Me, I want some non-PC-related theme and history built in to my world before the puck drops, so I'm not winging it all 4 sessions in when the PCs suddenly decide to interact with it.

I hate to tell you, but the PCs are always special flowers. No other characters have non-DM players running them. That is what makes them special. There is no reason to make the stories of any NPC fun and exciting. When you make games where the stories of the PCs are not fun and exciting, the game sucks. There is an inherent difference between a PC and an NPC. To pretend otherwise is to fool yourself.

Originally Posted by Lanefan

Deep characterization will come from the players if they want it to, regardless. And the plot is probably going to be driven by either the world's history or its current events, both of which the DM needs to know going in.

Lanefan

The DM doesn't actually have to know much of anything going in. Fantastic stories can be told without any world history, and plot can have nothing to do with this history. The only history, current events, or for that matter any other world element, that is needed are the ones that relate to the stories of the PCs. Unless it has a meaningful impact on the stories of the PCs, who gives a crap? It is all just made up. I can make that stuff up on the fly.

See, this is the issue. The world doesn't exist. We just pretend that it does. You can make yourself feel better about pretending it does by defining large amounts of it before play, but it still doesn't exist, and definition stifles possibilities later. What if you regret your choice later? If it is an element that the PCs have not interacted with you can always change it, but are you ahead of the guy who didn't define it until the moment it was needed? No, you are not. That is how setting creation saves time over worldbuilding. Work that doesn't get used is much rarer with setting creation than worldbuilding.

[Andor]

Originally Posted by Kamikaze Midget

Players geek out on the cool stuff their characters can do all the time.

"Oh Wow, now I can cast Fireball!"

"Neat! I'm level 15!"

"Oh boy! New magic swords!"

....The world is just the DM's character.

I'm gonna disagree with you here. Some players geek out about what their characters can do all the time. Other geek out about what their characters have accomplished or aspire to achieve.

For every guy telling you about his bohemian ear-spoon of flensing, someone else has a story about when they saved the merchant's daughter from orcs, and how they helped her get set up in another town.

You might like hearing about a sword +1, +2 vs papparazzi. I'd rather hear about how it was forged by a sorcerer who was hounded from his city by a newspaperman with a vendetta.

If you were going to get cornered at a cocktail party by a guy in a gamer shirt, who would you pick? The guy who wants to tell you about his flaming spork? Or the guy who tells you about a tribe of troglodytes that worshiped a flaming spork as their sole source of light and heat?

And guess which sort of campaign spawns which sort of players?

Incidently, the world is not the GM's character. The world is the characters playground. Do you want fog and sand? Or the jungle gym and hauinted house?

[billd91]

Originally Posted by PrecociousApprentice

This is exactly what I am talking about. You don't see the difference because you are a world builder, you don't create settings. Setting creation is PC directed. If you aren't directing your campaign creation at the actual PCs, you are world building, not creating setting. That is the difference. You can disagree, but that is really the difference. Until you can see that difference in play style, you will never understand what the OP is talking about.
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Definitions
Setting Creation- Creation of a campaign that is directed at the PCs. The purpose of all elements in setting creation is to address the predetermined goals of play, reinforce appropriate themes, allow for deep characterization, and forward the plot(s), all relative to the main characters of the game (usually the PCs).

Good setting creation allows the characters to shine during the creation of stories that revolve around them, and is often appropriate for players who enjoy approaching games as an author would.

Worldbuilding- Creation of fictitious worlds, with the goal being the creation of a world that is believable enough that it takes on a life beyond the PCs. The purpose of all elements of worldbuilding is to add as much detail as possible to create the illusion that the world has a life of it's own, and usually presuposes that the PCs are not the center of the creation.

Good worldbuilding allows DMs to feel comfortable knowing that they can handle any action that the PCs want to pursue, and is often appropriate for players who desire immersive play.
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I'll give you kudos for coming closest to clearly putting into words the difference between the approaches but these two activities are really just points on the same spectrum, or perhaps involve circles of different radii of focus. And this is why some of us have been flat out stating that the two activities really aren't very different.

I would even submit that your definitions aren't mutually exclusive and that plenty of decisions a DM might make will fit into both or may shift from one classification to the other based on what the PCs actually do when interacting with the world.

[PrecociousApprentice]

Originally Posted by billd91

I'll give you kudos for coming closest to clearly putting into words the difference between the approaches but these two activities are really just points on the same spectrum, or perhaps involve circles of different radii of focus. And this is why some of us have been flat out stating that the two activities really aren't very different.

I would even submit that your definitions aren't mutually exclusive and that plenty of decisions a DM might make will fit into both or may shift from one classification to the other based on what the PCs actually do when interacting with the world.

You are completely right that these activities are on a continuum. The issue is that many people don't realize how different these activities can be. Look at Lanefan's comment that when creating a campaign "you don't (or shouldn't) *have* PCs yet." It shows that he only understands the part of the continuum that is furthest toward the worldbuilding side. The other issue is that for what I remember, every edition of the DMG has focussed almost solely on worldbuilding with maybe one line about "communicate with your players." This does not help to teach players to create anything but worlds that are the sole purview of the DM.

Red and blue are on a continuum, but I would bet that only the most argumentative would argue that they are no different, so we might as well always choose red. This is basicaly the argument that has been presented when this thread and all of the campaign creation advice of the various DMGs and the online resources are taken together. The OP presents an argument for why he thinks that this has been a disservice to both beginning gamers and those who have been doing it since the stone ages.

Worldbuilding is not the only way, and there are weaknesses inherent in it that need to be considered before you can really say that it is the way for you. It is one tool in the toolbox, and to ignore the others will create inferior craftsmen.

EDIT: As a side note, you say I come closest, but it implies that I have really missed the mark, even if I am closest. Could you refine my definitions to make it hit the mark instead of only come close? What is missing? What is needed? Not trying to be confrontational here, I actually want to create a definition that will help people understand the differences in approaching the game. This is not the first thread to argue these concepts. Having a good definition would streamline communication.