What is *worldbuilding* for?

AbdulAlhazred said:

lol! That's a lot of commentary to digest, but let me just respond that it DOES matter what are the interpretations of some of these questions, and Tuovinen's essay DOES have some relevance! I mean, look, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s interpretation of Story Now (of standard narrative model) becomes ridiculous when he flat out states that you can have NO agenda or signaling between players and GMs and somehow magically you have a narrative model game or magically you just achieve the same ends. I mean, regardless of how we explicate it (and I'm OK with your "this discussion of backstory is getting ridiculous") Max and Pemerton cannot both be correct!! I know from experience of play in this technique that some of the things Max asserts are simply not tenable. I know it. I don't need Eero Tuovinen to justify that, its simply outright demonstrable in my experience, because I've tried to do what Max claims 'just happens'. It never works!

Now, I'm not saying his game "doesn't work" or he's fooling on anyone. I just think that what he does and what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does, and what I do, and what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] does, etc. are not the same thing. I think if you understand the Tuovinen essay in the light of Pemerton's definition of backstory then you see how things make sense. It DOES cast a light on this distinction. Perhaps the guy wasn't being particularly precise when he wrote it and it isn't perfectly clear and doesn't touch on all the relevant points. Perhaps its even not perfectly consistent. I'd say he's not talking about a specific game, and thus the concepts are covering a lot of different possible game designs. That makes it easy to draw inconsistent conclusions from it, but a careful reading does provide insight!

Anyway, I've done more than skim it for statements that support my PoV, and I've got plenty of experience that seems to indicate certain truths about how RPGs work. I don't know what else to say. I don't care about superior or inferior but when I read monkeyshine I generally respond in a way that is intended to explicate where the shine is and where the monkey is.

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Yeah, man, step back and listen to yourself. It's critically important that you make sure Max understands how he's wrong about it works because otherwise he might believe he can have as good a result as you do.

Why do you care? Let's pretend Max does get just as awesome a game from his style, with all the stories and Pippen being in the honor guard and flowers on Mother's day! So what? How does that ever affect your game or how awesome your game is? You're all pretty, stop fighting over who's prettiest.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I think world building is also less problematical at a large 'world scale' where it blends into genre and more general milieu construction. A world map, or a general designation that 'orcs exist somewhere in the west' is not super problematic most of the time.

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Generally I agree, and think I've said as much in this thread (eg in the context of my use of GH). The difference between generic, trope-laden swords & sorcery city and Hardby]/i] is that the latter gives us a proper name to refer to the former. Large-scale maps, history etc play basically the same role.

System is also a relevant consideration here. If overland travel is handled in a classic D&D hexcrawl style, then "the orcs exist somewhere in the west" has the potential to be a bigger burden on play than a system in which travel is handled more abstractly or flexibly, and so the action can shift to the west (and the orcs) with a bit of deft narration and a handful of dice rolls.

AbdulAlhazred said:

The pre-authorship of individual encounters, assuming that the GM has got the scene framed properly (which is harder before the fact, but not impossible) is not as problematic as some other aspects of 'back story/world building'. An encounter is tactical. The PCs have arrived at the point where the ritual is to be disrupted, the GM can probably anticipate the most likely approaches. Even things he cannot anticipate are going to be limited in focus and present no more or less issue than with dynamically framed and generated encounters.

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I take your point, but I think this is also realted to system.

In 4e, disrputing the ritual is probably a skill challenge. A virtue of this is that the GM doesn't have to decide, in advance, how the ritual might be disrupted. Of course if there are some obvious possibilities (eg break the magic circle) then it would make sense to sketch out how those might work; but there is no reason not to follow the players' leads if thiey come up with alternative approaches the GM didn't anticipate. One strength of the skill challenge structure is to easily accomodate this.

In my Cortex+ game yesterday, the PCs ended up saving Yggdrasil from dying (its root suffering in the frozen soil of the fell winter). This was done by the troll earth-shaper, who first opened up a cleft in the ground to allow warm spring water to percolate up; and then extended the cleft to allow hot gases from an undergroudn geothermal pocket to rise up, both thawing the ground and kindling the fire the Norns had been trying to light in the lee of the tree.

This is a version of "stop the ritual". I was able to write up the encounter without even knowing which of the PCs would be present (this is only the second time in a year or more that the troll player has played in this particular campaign), and without knowing what they would do to save Yggdrasil, or even whether they would do it (the Loki devotee hemmed and hawed a bit before coming in on the Norns' side; the berserker was trying to kill the Norns up until the end, ostensibly because he thought they were witches killing the tree and had been worked into a rage; also because the player was wanting to earn XP for exercising wanton violence and being rebuked by his fellows for doing so - which he did!).

Cortex+ Heroic takes for granted that the players will declare actions that engage the fiction in a pretty free-flowing manner, and will establish relevant backstory elements (like underground springs and geothermal pockets) as they become salient to those action declarations.I don't really know how [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] would handle this sort of thing, but in so far as he interposes a step between declaration and resolution, where the GM decides if the idea is feasible, or if the outcome is in doubt, and - presumably - decides whether or not there are underground phenomena present, well that's where I think considerations of railroading become relevenat.

The reason I referreed to Eero Tuovinen's essay, a long way upthread, is because it gives a very clear statement of the "standard narrativistic model", which is one method of "story now" RPGing. PbtA is another way, which emphasises scene-framing less and extrapolation from the fiction more. (PbtA is, in that way at least, closer to OSR.)

In my experience there are some posters on ENworld who think the question "If there's no worldbuilding, how would the game even be set in motion?" is a purely rhetorical quetion, and a sufficient explanation of what worldbuilding is for. Hence the utility of a succinct description of an approach to play - the standard narrativistic model - which uses other methods to set the game in motion.

Examples of searching for a map, or a secret door, were introduced into the discussion by me - not Eero Tuovinen - to illustrate the contrast between resolution with or without GM secet backstory. The only connection they have to Eero's essay is indirect, in the following way: (i) the absence of secret-backtory is more typical in standard narrativistic RPGing, because (ii) the use of secret backstory makes it harder to "go where the action is" if the action involves discovery (as opposed to, say, killing) and makes it more likely that the game will involve a significant degree of the players declaring actions that trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-unrevealed backstory so that the players then know what the necessary fictional positioning is for their PCs to make the desired discoveries.

I guess a third connection between the topic of the previous paragraph, and Eero's essay, is that his essay is moslty a criticism of conch-passing (or, as he calls it, narration sharing), and resolving an action declaration in a RPG is obviously not conch-passing.

Subsequently, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] asserted that resolving action declaration is, in fact, a form of conch-passing, and hence is the sort of thing that Eero is cautioning against. I think this is obviously not what Eero had in mind, for the reasons that both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have given: whatever we think about action resolution, it is clearly not preparing something in advance of playing the game, nor a proxy for it.

pemerton said:

The reason I referreed to Eero Tuovinen's essay, a long way upthread, is because it gives a very clear statement of the "standard narrativistic model", which is one method of "story now" RPGing. PbtA is another way, which emphasises scene-framing less and extrapolation from the fiction more. (PbtA is, in that way at least, closer to OSR.)

In my experience there are some posters on ENworld who think the question "If there's no worldbuilding, how would the game even be set in motion?" is a purely rhetorical quetion, and a sufficient explanation of what worldbuilding is for. Hence the utility of a succinct description of an approach to play - the standard narrativistic model - which uses other methods to set the game in motion.

Examples of searching for a map, or a secret door, were introduced into the discussion by me - not Eero Tuovinen - to illustrate the contrast between resolution with or without GM secet backstory. The only connection they have to Eero's essay is indirect, in the following way: (i) the absence of secret-backtory is more typical in standard narrativistic RPGing, because (ii) the use of secret backstory makes it harder to "go where the action is" if the action involves discovery (as opposed to, say, killing) and makes it more likely that the game will involve a significant degree of the players declaring actions that trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-unrevealed backstory so that the players then know what the necessary fictional positioning is for their PCs to make the desired discoveries.

I guess a third connection between the topic of the previous paragraph, and Eero's essay, is that his essay is moslty a criticism of conch-passing (or, as he calls it, narration sharing), and resolving an action declaration in a RPG is obviously not conch-passing.

Subsequently, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] asserted that resolving action declaration is, in fact, a form of conch-passing, and hence is the sort of thing that Eero is cautioning against. I think this is obviously not what Eero had in mind, for the reasons that both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have given: whatever we think about action resolution, it is clearly not preparing something in advance of playing the game, nor a proxy for it.

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I think that the only thing that is clear is that Eero's post isn't as clear as you think it is.

We all seem to be pretty sure that what he writes in that post is directly relevant to our perspective.

The very problem he points out as the basis of his post is:

"The problem When we bring the above terminology together, I can finally express my issue: I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks ass. Examples:

My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character.
Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?
In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."

And it's clear (to me anyway), that in the rest of the post he's not arguing about secret backstory. He is arguing against sharing the narrative in a way that allows the players to add to the backstory during the course of play. That you can't have an "I am your father" moment if the players themselves are contributing to the backstory. The parts I bolded only speak to the GM having the authority to write the backstory. It says absolutely nothing about when that backstory is written.

His conclusion also speaks specifically to this:

"Conclusion
I hope I’ve outlined my argument in sufficient detail. What I’m getting to here is that I don’t find it convincing how lightly many GMs seem to give away their backstory authority even when playing games that absolutely rely on the GM’s ability to drive home hard choices by using these same powers. There are other types of game that have similar problems (D&D for instance has nothing to do with the standard narrativist model, but it still sucks for slightly different reasons if you make playing the setting a matter of group consensus), but that issue with narrativist games seems exceptionally clear to me on account of how very clearly these games are written and how well-known the theory of their function is – the only reason to introduce extra dashes of shared narration in these games is well-intentioned foolishness, it seems to me."

There is absolutely nothing about the "Pitfalls of secret backstory" or "pitfalls of worldbuilding" or "pitfalls of pre-authoring materials."

I'm not sure how you'd come to the conclusion that I think action resolution is conch-passing, because that's definitely not what I think at all. It is a form of contribution to the story, yes, but very, very different from conch-passing. To me, conch-passing is what I see in the YouTube demo of Dungeon World. "OK, Bob, you're playing the dwarven cleric, tell us about the dwarves of this world. And tell us about the gods and religion in this world." That is, essentially handing over full control of the setting, backstory, and the fiction as a whole in a round-robin sort of way. I see most RPG's action resolution as a structured process, where the GM and players have more defined roles in the context of how they contribute to the fiction, but it's not a fixed process. That is, at times the players have more control, and other times the GM has more control. However, this control is centered around the roles they agree each of them will have, and it's a mutual decision during the course of play that allows this to be flexible. Can the GM in such a game ask a player to define the way religion works in the world? Of course, if that's how they'd like to play the game, that's fine.

Going back to Eero's post, the only thing he's advising against is to allow the players to have full control over the backstory. That is, there will be secret backstory (whether written or otherwise) that they players are not empowered to write. That portions of the backstory are reserved for the GM to write. If the GM decided at the beginning of the entire campaign that one PCs father is, in fact, the leader of the empire they fight, then he can choose when that is best revealed in the course of the game. It could be years later that it comes to light. On the other hand, if in the course of play, the PC and the evil leader of the empire are locked in a fight to the death, and it suddenly occurs to him that this evil man is the PCs father, and declares it to be, the result remains the same. The player now has to determine how his character will react. The fact that the backstory was secret is part of what gives it impact. Whether it's pre-written or not is immaterial.

I get that to you, it's not immaterial. That it makes a difference somehow. I don't doubt that it makes a difference to you. But I also don't doubt that it doesn't to me.

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The other thing that recently occurred to me is that we have a fundamentally different belief/feeling about pre-authored material/worldbuilding. You see such activities as limiting your options or agency. I see that very same activity as enabling them, as making it easier to participate in a meaningful way.

I see it as a framework, where the limitations it imposes provides the opportunity for a different type of creativity. If you want to call it agency, whatever. When you sit down at a gaming table and are told that the game is taking place in Europe, 1943, and you can be a French, UK, or US soldier, it doesn't inhibit your agency. It shapes it. It provides context. Such context is helpful in determining what might matter to the character. For example, if the setting indicates you are Roman slaves in 500 BC, your goals and motivations will be different than a setting that pits you in a race against your rival to be the first to climb the world's tallest mountain.

Likewise, a GM determining ahead of time that a secret door does or does not exist has no bearing on your agency. You are still free to search for a secret door. It does have a bearing on the potential success of that action. To try to narrow agency down to one aspect of RPGs, that it is relevant only to "the narrative" or "the fiction" is not considering the game as a whole. In addition, it's making a lot of assumptions about what constitutes a narrative.

You also seem to consistently insist that pre-authoring means that the GM cannot bring that material to bear in a way that speaks to the "needs of the fiction." While I'm sure that there are GMs that author material and believe it to be immutable, I've made it clear that I don't consider that the case at all. That whatever might have been "pre-authored" is in fact not actually authored until it comes into play, and can be changed at any point before that. Does that mean I never use what I (or somebody else) might have written as is? Of course not. A lot of times I do, because there's no compelling reason for it not to be that way. If I have a map of a keep, and there's no secret door in the wall, and I can't see any compelling reason for one to be there. Then it isn't there. My approach is more about whether it makes sense for it to exist, rather than whether it's compelling for the PCs at that point in time, but that's also because I don't consider any single event or series of events to be that important in the big picture. The PCs are compelled to enter the keep and kidnap the king. The fact that there is or isn't a secret door doesn't change that, nor does it matter when that decision is made. They will succeed at some things, and fail at others. If the failure to find a secret door here is enough to stop the quest, then it wasn't very important to begin with.

Part of what a lot of people seem to enjoy in RPGs is overcoming obstacles, and succeeding in the adventure, not a single use of a skill. This time it's the wizard that figures out how to get them in, next time it's the rogue. Not everybody wants every moment to be connected directly to one's motivations. Sometimes it's just part of getting there. To me, eliminating those parts (the parts between the action) are more about what makes the story interesting. They can have a material impact on what happens when you get to the action. But more importantly, it helps shape the narrative. The action is somehow more exciting when there are periods of non-action. Although more decisions, character development, and narrative somehow seems to occur in the in-between scenes in our campaigns.

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As I've been running the last few sessions, I've been considering the different approaches to play. I don't think the way I run my game is really that different than a lot of games. It's the same basic approach as I learned from Holmes Basic, B2, and the AD&D PHB and DMG. Certainly more refined, and my skills have improved (I hope), but the process is how I think the game is generally designed. And I find that there are times that I exert more control than I might think I do, and other times where the players have a greater control and contribution to the setting, backstory, and other elements outside of their character's actions. I think this is really a natural thing in RPGs, although some games are designed in an effort to steer more towards one sort of playstyle or another.

As I've considered the many other RPGs I've tried, and really even other games, like the more complex board games, video games, whatever, I think the main reason I keep coming back to D&D is because it doesn't favor one specific style to an extreme amount. That the game flows (at least for us) naturally to whatever playstyle is appropriate. Over the years, different editions drifted to favor one playstyle over another. And we'd ignore those parts that seemed to drift too far in one direction or the other.

Perhaps I'm not that objective. Maybe my style or D&D favors a particular playstyle more than I think. I definitely think individual games can heavily favor one style over another. So maybe we do favor a particular style. The thing is, when I read or play other games, or essays about how D&D or another RPG works, I find that a lot of what is said applies directly to our game. I guess I've had very few power gamers, min/maxers, etc., although on the other hand, most of the ones that I have had seem to blend in fine with our campaign, while still being able to enjoy their "game within a game" of mechanical optimization.

Ilbranteloth said:

in the rest of the post he's not arguing about secret backstory.

<snip>

There is absolutely nothing about the "Pitfalls of secret backstory"

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No one has said that he is. To repost part of my post to which you replied, with some additional bolding:


A point that I - pemerton, not Eero Tuovinen - made is that if you are playing along the lines of the standard narrativistic model (which Eero outlines, nicely, but did not himself invent) then you have reason not to rely too much on secret backstory. I've just quoted my explanation of those reasons, and so won't repeat them again.

Ilbranteloth said:

He is arguing against sharing the narrative in a way that allows the players to add to the backstory during the course of play. That you can't have an "I am your father" moment if the players themselves are contributing to the backstory.

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The first sentence is largely correct (although, given that he refers to games like DitV as illustrating his point, and DitV does allow the player to add to certain parts of backstory during play, it does need to be qualified in some fashion).

The second sentence is not correct. He says you can't have an "I am your father moment" if the GM asks the player if that would be cool. That is, as he says, "The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character, not ask the player whether he’s OK with it," ie, to present the NPC as making the claim. This is GM authority over framing.

Ilbranteloth said:

it suddenly occurs to him that this evil man is the PCs father, and declares it to be

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Eero doesn't talk about this at all. Eero says nothing about how the truth of the claim about parenthood might be resolved.

Nor does his discussion of the "I am your father" example have any direct bearing on the examples of finding a map, or a secret door: neither of these is the GM asking the player if it would be cool to find the map or find the secret door; both are the player declaring the search as an action. That is, the GM has already thrown out the challenge - "can you find the map", "can you escape your pursuers" - and the player is now declaring an action whereby his/her PC hopes to respond to the challenge.

Ilbranteloth said:

I'm not sure how you'd come to the conclusion that I think action resolution is conch-passing, because that's definitely not what I think at all.

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Because that's the only basis on which one could think that Eero Tuovinen's objection to conch-passing shared narration could also be an objection to resolving a search for a map or a secret door by way of straightforward action declaraton without regard to shared storytelling.

Ilbranteloth said:

Going back to Eero's post, the only thing he's advising against is to allow the players to have full control over the backstory. That is, there will be secret backstory (whether written or otherwise) that they players are not empowered to write.

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No. Eero neither endorses nor rejects secret backstory. But some of the games he refers to, as illustrating his preferred approach, do. For instance, there is the following from DitV, under the heading "Actively Reveal the Town in Play" (pp 137-38 ):


You, [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], are assuming that GM authority over backstory equals secret backstory. But it doesn't. Because, as Vincent Baker shows us in the passage I just quoted, the GM can author the backstory but reveal it to the players. This is how the "standard narrativistic model" works - the GM frames the PCs into situations. The elements of framing are backstory, but - just as DitV illustrates - they're not secret.

It's an important part of PbtA also - the GM establishes the fiction by performing narrations in response to player moves (both failed moves - 6 or down - and half-way successful moves - 7 to 9 - and in some cases even fully successful moves where the player's result is 10+).

Ilbranteloth said:

When you sit down at a gaming table and are told that the game is taking place in Europe, 1943, and you can be a French, UK, or US soldier, it doesn't inhibit your agency. It shapes it.

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That is not secret backstory. It is revealed backstory. It is genre, feeding into framing.

Ilbranteloth said:

If the GM decided at the beginning of the entire campaign that one PCs father is, in fact, the leader of the empire they fight, then he can choose when that is best revealed in the course of the game.

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This may well be true, if you like that sort of RPGing. But it is completely orthogonal to Eero's discussion of why narration-sharing sucks in standard narrativistic model games. Because what you're describing here is not "standard narrativistic model" RPGing!

And just as you have assumed that GM control over backstory = secret backstory, so now you are assuming that the NPC "throwing out the claim of fatherhood" = the NPC is the father, and the GM already knows this. The first assumption reveals a blind spot for framing, the second a blinspot for "playing to find out", and seeing what fiction is established as players delcare actions in response to the challenges framed by the GM.

Those blindspots obviously don't matter if your goal is to run a game of the sort that you and your players enjoy. I'm not pointing them out to be critical of you as a GM. What I'm saying is that, because of those blindspots, you are failing to understand (i) how "standard narrativistic model" RPGing actually works (which is what Eero Tuovinen talks about), and (ii) why "secret backstory" doesn't sit easily with that sort of RPGing (which is what I have been talking about for a good part of this thread).

Ilbranteloth said:

a GM determining ahead of time that a secret door does or does not exist has no bearing on your agency. You are still free to search for a secret door. It does have a bearing on the potential success of that action.

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It bears on agency in the following way: if I, playing my PC, would like to discover a secret door here and now, the GM has already decided whether or not that is possible. Hence my agency, as a player, over the fiction concerning my character, is constrained by and mediated through the GM's unrevealed decision.

You may be indifferent to that particular burden on this particular way of a player manifesting agency, but it's there.

Ilbranteloth said:

Part of what a lot of people seem to enjoy in RPGs is overcoming obstacles, and succeeding in the adventure, not a single use of a skill.

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Well, to requote something from Ron Edwards, "[t]here cannot be any 'the story' during Narrativist play". That is, there is no "the adventure". To quote again from Eero,


In "story now" RPGing, especially pursuant to the standard narrativitic model, the action is not oriented around "the adventure" or "the story", but is driven by the dramatic needs of the PCs: framing > action declarations > consequences > new framing > further action declarations > further consequences, until the issues have been resolved ie the final consequences don't compel new choices because the PCs (and hence players) are content with how things have ended up.

As far as your contrast of "overcoming obstacles" with "a single use of a skill", I don't understand the contrast. In RPGing, the main way that obstacles are overcome by players is by declaring actions for their PCs. Whether this involves a "skill" depends on the system (it often does in 4e and BW; it never does in HeroWars/Quest or DitV; it sometimes does in Cortex+ Heroic). Whether it involves a single check depends on the system (in 4e or HW/Q it might, depending on whether the GM uses simple or extended resolution; in BW it nearly always will if a search is involved, because BW has extended resolution for fighting, talking and running but not searching; in DitV it never will because all resolution in DitV is "extended").

Ilbranteloth said:

To try to narrow agency down to one aspect of RPGs, that it is relevant only to "the narrative" or "the fiction" is not considering the game as a whole.

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Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "the game as a whole", and how you are contrasting it with "the fiction". But of course RPGing doesn't consist just in "the fiction" - [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I made just this point to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] not far upthread. Central to RPGing is the method whereby the participants in the game generate the fiction.

pemerton said:

But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things - that you can’t wait to share. . . .

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Aaaaaand there we go. You've answered your own question and the thread can be closed!

The purpose of world building is so the GM can have more cool things they can't wait to share.

That covers absolutely everything I wanted to say. Because I'm not writing stuff for the players to determine what's in my notes. I'm writing stuff to help me figure out what cool things are going on, and determining when and where I can share them. But it's not all about me. So sometimes my cool stuff lays dormant for years, and gets shared with a different group. Or maybe it's just not cool. Either way, it's just as often as not that we go with the player's cool stuff in one way or another.

The mechanics (both game mechanics and DM reveal mechanics) may vary, but you've hit the nail on the head. Thanks!

Ilbranteloth said:

Aaaaaand there we go. You've answered your own question and the thread can be closed!

The purpose of world building is so the GM can have more cool things they can't wait to share.

That covers absolutely everything I wanted to say. Because I'm not writing stuff for the players to determine what's in my notes. I'm writing stuff to help me figure out what cool things are going on, and determining when and where I can share them.

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The words you quote aren't mine, they're Vincent Baker's.

And of course he's putting them forward in explaining why he thinks the game is better if the GM avoids using "secret backstory".

pemerton said:

It's an important part of PbtA also - the GM establishes the fiction by performing narrations in response to player moves (both failed moves - 6 or down - and half-way successful moves - 7 to 9 - and in some cases even fully successful moves where the player's result is 10+).

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PbtA (at least DW, which is the only one I've really played/run) is interesting in that it has COMPELLED backstory. The players have 2 moves, (sometimes others, but everyone has at least these 2) Spout Lore and Discern Realities, which literally COMPEL the GM to construct backstory on the spot. There is also, importantly NO move which allows a player to spontaneously generate backstory (although there are some moves which create 'invitations' to do so, Spout Lore for instance allows the GM to demand backstory explaining how the PC knows the facts the GM just produced!).

Players can make moves which introduce new facts into the fiction however. Its a bit of an open question with DW if you could for instance state "I swing down to the ground on a rope." (inventing the rope in the process) but most detailed discussions I've had with PbtA GMs indicate that there are reasons to assume this is the case, at least in some situations (Defy Danger is the usual example).

AbdulAlhazred said:

Players can make moves which introduce new facts into the fiction however. Its a bit of an open question with DW if you could for instance state "I swing down to the ground on a rope." (inventing the rope in the process) but most detailed discussions I've had with PbtA GMs indicate that there are reasons to assume this is the case, at least in some situations (Defy Danger is the usual example).

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I haven't played enough DW to know how important equipment lists are in that game, but my default assumption would be "not super-important".

In Cortex+ Heroic, for equipment to be worth noting on the sheet it has to be either:


So if a player wants his/her PC to get a bonus/augment from using a rope to escape a situation, that would have to be established either as an Asset (which relies on the currently existing fiction) or a Resource (which can include "while back at base camp, I made sure to pack some rope). The details of the generation method would determine the rating of the rope.

But if a player just wants his/her PC to climb to the top of a cliff (say, to establish an Overview of the Terrain asset), and is using Outdoor Expertise to help with that, and in the course of narration includes a rope as part of it, that is fine and just part of the colour.

There is a very marked contrast here with Burning Wheel, which is super-obsessed with the equipment list (at least as much as AD&D I would say; maybe more, because losing or breaking equipment is a legitimate narration of a failure, which happens quite a bit, so there isn't necessarily the AD&D phenomenon of "growing out" of the need to maintain an accurate list once your reach 4th level or so).

4e is a bit confused in this respect because it should be more like Cortex+ Heroic, but it presents itself as more like Burning Wheel.