Why Worldbuilding is Bad

Riley37 · Apr 16, 2018

Shasarak said:
That is a good point: Could you even understand what the other people were saying even if you could speak "English"? I have heard some modern day people from England whose accents were such that I could barely understand what they were saying. How much worse would that be in King Arthurs time?

You have found the one flaw in the realism of that novel!

On day 1, the Yankee would have only a few useful words in common with the locals; on day 10, the Yankee could hold a simple conversation; day 100, the Yankee would still have an "accent", but communication would bottleneck more often on lack of shared fundamental assumptions, than on lack of shared vocabulary. YMMV, some people learn languages and dialects faster than others.

pemerton · Apr 16, 2018

Riley37 said:
Insofar as we participate in this thread with the Cuthbertian goal of more fun at our respective tables, then actual play examples are the richest source of useful material.

Well, here's one example of an opening session.

Riley37 said:
What are *you* doing here?

(1) I enjoy talking about RPGing.

(2) I think there are some RPGers who might enjoy trying stuff that they haven't yet tried.

(3) The flip-side of (1) and (2) - I sometimes find it frustrating when posters make mistaken claims about how RPGing must be.

******************

I know there are posters on these boards who feel they've learned useful things from posts I've made. And I know that I have learned useful things from other posters on these boards. (The "things" I'm talking about here mostly are various sorts of GM techniques.)

Imaro · Apr 16, 2018

pemerton said:
Well, here's one example of an opening session.

(1) I enjoy talking about RPGing.

(2) I think there are some RPGers who might enjoy trying stuff that they haven't yet tried.

(3) The flip-side of (1) and (2) - I sometimes find it frustrating when posters make mistaken claims about how RPGing must be.

******************

I know there are posters on these boards who feel they've learned useful things from posts I've made. And I know that I have learned useful things from other posters on these boards. (The "things" I'm talking about here mostly are various sorts of GM techniques.)

Hey @pemerton maybe this could be a separate thread... a wiki where various GM's can share GM'ing techniques. I often find myself arguing against some of how you run your game but it doesn't mean I don't consider or have never tried some of them in my own game. I just think it might be better (if that's the point of your discussion is versus proving what style is the "correct" way to run a game) a wiki thread might server better (with a less controversial title.). I'd definitely read it though I'm not sure how much I can really contribute to it.

Aldarc · Apr 16, 2018

Shasarak said:
That is a good point: Could you even understand what the other people were saying even if you could speak "English"? I have heard some modern day people from England whose accents were such that I could barely understand what they were saying. How much worse would that be in King Arthurs time?

Supposedly you can learn a language with conversant profiency with three months of full language immersion. But this would also mean that you would potentially be considered an idiot for at least your first three months of time travel. And this does not take into account the possibilities for multiple language proficiencies required for conversing back to any given hypothetical "King Arthurs time": e.g., Brittonic Celtic, Anglo-Saxon dialects, Latin, Frankish, Greek, etc.

From personal experience (year 2.5 in Austria), however, that task is far more difficult when you are a native English speaker and everyone around you can speak your language well and most media uses your language as its lingua franca. So immersing yourself for three months is basically nigh impossible. :erm:

AbdulAlhazred · Apr 17, 2018

Shasarak said:
That is a good point: Could you even understand what the other people were saying even if you could speak "English"? I have heard some modern day people from England whose accents were such that I could barely understand what they were saying. How much worse would that be in King Arthurs time?

I've met AMERICANS whom I couldn't understand (and I am one). My father once bought a parcel of land far up in the Adirondack National Forest in upstate New York, up beyond Old Forge (or family was part of the original colonists of that area back in the early 18th Century). There was a road that ran about half a mile out front of his land, so he went up there (this was the 1950s) to hunt. He ran into a shack out on the road, in which lived a guy and his family. They had no shoes, no electricity or running water, never had, and probably still don't to this day. The place was theirs since the day white men first set foot on that land, they were the original settlers. You could not understand one word. The youngest (of like 12) kids, who actually went to school, translated. The guy was a really awesome hunting guide, but his English was straight out of 300 years ago, and totally incomprehensible.

Riley37 · Apr 17, 2018

pemerton said:
Well, here's one example of an opening session.

Wow, all that in one session? Awesome!

pemerton said:
(3) The flip-side of (1) and (2) - I sometimes find it frustrating when posters make mistaken claims about how RPGing must be.

https://xkcd.com/386/

pemerton · Apr 17, 2018

Riley37 said:
https://xkcd.com/386/

Sure, there's that. There's also establishing some sort of shared understanding, culture etc in what continues to be a fairly specialised hobby. Venting frustration, connecting with like-minded hobbyists, and providing ideas/illustrations for yet further hobbyists, aren't mutually exclusive possibilities!

Here's a recent post on the 4e sub-forum:

AbdulAlhazred said:
I was greatly influenced by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s play examples of things like players consuming magic items to power permanent (or at least highly potent) rituals or even to simply create non-standard but narratively appropriate effects.

I'm not going to say that my influencing of AbdulAlhzared's thinking about how a 4e-type game might allow improvised action declarations centred around magic items, in and of itself, justifies nearly 18,000 posts. Nevertheless, those long and sometimes challenging discussions about how 4e works are one way in which some members of the hobby (of whom I'm one) were able to get a better handle on what we were and are doing, and what we want to do.

pemerton · Apr 17, 2018

Imaro said:
this could be a separate thread... a wiki where various GM's can share GM'ing techniques.

<snip>

I just think it might be better (if that's the point of your discussion is versus proving what style is the "correct" way to run a game) a wiki thread might server better (with a less controversial title.).

I don't know much about wiki threads.

My own experience is that explaining techniques to someone who's not encountered them before can sometime be hard, as the audience may be making assumptions that they don't even realise they are making. This came up in the other current worldbuilding thread, where one poster read something about the GM narrating an NPC claiming to be a PC's parent, and just assumed that this meant the GM has decided, as a matter of worldbuidling/backstory, that the NPC is the PC's parent.

So - again talking about my own experience - sometimes a lot of groundclearing can be needed to really articulate an idea.

I don't know if that is consistent with how a wiki thread would work, or not, because as I said I'm not really au fait with such a thing.

Riley37 · Apr 17, 2018

pemerton said:
My own experience is that explaining techniques to someone who's not encountered them before can sometime be hard, as the audience may be making assumptions that they don't even realise they are making.

Unknown knowns, so to speak?

I question whether wiki is the best tool for the job, or a +3 Golden Hammer, but if someone invest the time to create one, I would give it a try.

Also, pemerton - in regards to your answers to my question - as you may have noticed, I'm here too, voluntarily.

MichaelSomething · Apr 18, 2018

Riley37 said:
In a game of GURPS: MLP, would the DM narrate these things, or would they appear in the PHB (Pony Horse Book) which all players have as shared reference material, or would they actually emerge in the course of events played out at the table, over pizza? Which of those come from the GM, and which of those do players establish, adding to their table's particular implementation of the canonical Equestrian setting, uniquely and unknown to all other tables playing GURPS: MLP? Do the players learn the legend of the Mare in the Moon because the GM had an NPC narrate it, or because one of the players composed that legend, and had their PC tell that story to the other PCs?

If, after a dozen sessions, y'all want a change of pace, and shift to the "Fallout: Equestria" setting, what is the balance between GM and players, establishing what happens in the Vault in the long years before somepony emerges into the drastically-changed surface world?

An RPG is different from a TV show. At the very least, I would use Tales of Equestria instead of GURPS

Why Worldbuilding is Bad

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