Why Worldbuilding is Bad

First of all, thanks for providing some specific criticism.

Hussar said:

[*]It takes away time from the DM that would be better spent on developing adventures. We do not have unlimited time, and much of the world building stuff that goes on has little or nothing to do with the specific adventure that the players are doing.

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I don't think it is of concern to the players how the DM spends his time preparing his campaign. Nor do I think that you can make a reasonable case that the quality of the adventures suffers as a result of world building. I could come up with plenty of examples of ways in which the world building actually helps flesh out the finer details of an adventure, and improves storytelling, immersion and depth.

Hussar said:

[*]Worldbuilding replaces more practical elements in supplements. I mentioned earlier the old Dragon Magazine Ecology of articles. Replacing them with a more here is a page of information and three to four pages of plug and play adventure material is far more useful to a DM.

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I don't disagree here. But I think this is more of an inherent flaw with the way adventure modules are generally written. They overindulge in their own setting, while leaving out crucial information to run the adventure.

Hussar said:

[*]Worldbuilding and particularly game lore, becomes deeply entrenched and virtually impossible to change. The Great Wheel and attending arguments is a perfect example of this. New ideas become judged, not on their actual value, but on how well they toe the line with what came before.

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I don't see a problem with the DM writing out a clearly defined history for his world. I don't think the players need to have any input on this part of the campaign.

Hussar said:

[*]Much of world building is what I called before "Six page treatises on Elven Tea Ceremonies". As more and more world building gets piled on, less and less of anything of actual use at the table gets shoved in.

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This will differ per DM. When I do world building for my campaign, all of what I've written will show up at some point. So I feel this is an unfair stereotype of world building.

Hussar said:

[*]DM's sometimes mistake world building for adventure building. The "Tour Des Realms" example that I brought up earlier where the campaign was more about showing off the DM's beautifully wrought urn rather than an actual adventure. ((Note, this probably applies double to fantasy genre novel writers))

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This seems more of a flaw with specific DM's, rather than world building in general. To restate what I said earlier, when I write lore for my world, it always affects the adventures I build as well. The adventures are usually the reason I do world building in the first place. I want to have a reason why certain characters/cultures feel the way they do.

For example:

When I started my pirate campaign, I wrote that the two countries of St. Valenz and Kturgia were at war. I didn't write why they were at war, nor did I write who the leaders of these countries were. It didn't matter at that point.
But eventually the campaign reached a point where the players may have questions regarding who was running the country, and how the country decided who would be the next leader of a city. It was a direct consequence of the adventure the players were on. And so I came up with some names for the King of St. valenz and the Sultan of Kturgia. I also wrote that a bishop would be required to approve new local rulers, who would be an important npc that the players would have to deal with.

Over the course of the campaign I would gradually flesh out the finer details of the history of these two countries. I wrote a new expendable bad guy into the plot, for the players to fight. I came up with a vicious Kturgian pirate captain, called Karagoz. I came up with the idea that at some point Karagoz had been captured, but as part of a peace treaty between the two countries, he was set free. He immediately resumed his crimes, and the peace was short lived.

As the campaign progressed, the players eventually got into a big battle with Karagoz. I wanted to make the battle with him more interesting, so I came up with the idea of giving him a magic lamp with a genie. A genie was of the appropriate challenge, and made for a more interesting enemy, than more human pirates. Of course this meant that I had to think about how Karagoz came into the possession of the lamp. No doubt the players would ask the genie this question (and they did!), and I wanted to tie the backstory of the lamp to the history of the two countries.

So I came up with a plot where the magic lamp was actually a wedding gift, to seal a marriage between the prince and princess of the two countries. This would have guaranteed a permanent peace between the two countries, which was deliberately sabotaged by other villains in my campaign. The prince of Kturgia was slain by Karagoz, and the princess was corrupted by the big bad, while both countries pointed fingers at each other. The players still have not decided what to do with her. Will they return her to her father, and thus meet with the king of St Valenz? Do they even trust her?

I think one of my primary criticisms with threads about worldbuilding - and this is not aimed at anyone in particular - is that they almost always invariably devolve into people wanting to talk about their homebrew worldbuilding. Though having examples are nice, it again gets to my contention that worldbuilding often comes across as self-indulgant oversharing, even when people are asking for advice about worldbuilding. People often get less actual tips, advice, or answers, but, instead, ten page long backstories provided by other posters who want their campaign bibles to be lauded and appreciated.

Aldarc said:

worldbuilding often comes across as self-indulgant oversharing

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Yes, I think you're on to something there. Talking about one's PC falls into the same category. That's an advantage to talking about game rules, artwork and other published texts we've all read - we all have equal access. Whereas played rpgs are private.

Also, it's weird that we don't have established terms to distinguish between 'roleplaying game' in the sense of a published game text and 'roleplaying game' in the sense of actual play.

Aldarc said:

I think one of my primary criticisms with threads about worldbuilding...(snip)... is that they almost always invariably devolve into people wanting to talk about their homebrew worldbuilding.

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Can we all just agree

Worldbuilding is not bad, however threads about worldbuilding are.

Aldarc said:

I think one of my primary criticisms with threads about worldbuilding - and this is not aimed at anyone in particular - is that they almost always invariably devolve into people wanting to talk about their homebrew worldbuilding. Though having examples are nice, it again gets to my contention that worldbuilding often comes across as self-indulgant oversharing, even when people are asking for advice about worldbuilding. People often get less actual tips, advice, or answers, but, instead, ten page long backstories provided by other posters who want their campaign bibles to be lauded and appreciated.

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Heh, that's not a bad point. I think people are bad at relaying what they find useful in worldbuilding, so they go to examples.

In general, worldbuilding is of such varied quality and usefulness as to be almost idiosyncratic. What works for one person doesn't work for another. Again, hence why examples seem to be rule rather than less concrete advice.

The best advice for worldbuilding I've found yet is adapted from Apocalypse World: hold on lightly. That simple advice has done more for my thinking on the matter than anything else I've seen. It doesn't say don't worldbuild, or don't plan, it just simply says that if you're more interested in staying true to what you've already written, you're going to miss big opportunities for awesome stuff in game. So, hold onto your plans and your worldbuilding lightly and always be on the look out for the play presenting something better.

That said, I find a good bit of use in some worldbuilding. Just like I give NPCs motivations and desires so that I can present them more authentically, I like to do the same with the world -- give it a purpose and a movement so that it becomes a living part of the game. I do that better with some forethinking, just because that's how I work best. I can ad lib in a framework so much better than without, and I find I do better ad libbing something new if I'm doing it via throwing out something I've already considered because there's almost always something similar to work off of and I have some kernel to still build by thoughts on instead of casting about for inspiration. Still, my worldbuilding is usually big sweeping moments instead of details (my last "big plot" game had a bad guy that had some fully realized motivations, but nothing scripted outside of some loose ideas on how that would play out). Details, I find, are neat if they serve a purpose. I rarely do details except to set a theme for description, like describing the way doors are carved with dragon motifs in a dragon cultist complex. That's just adding dragons so that the players really get that dragons are something these people care a lot about.

Ha! I used examples! I am ironic!

Doug McCrae said:

Yes, I think you're on to something there. Talking about one's PC falls into the same category. That's an advantage to talking about game rules, artwork and other published texts we've all read - we all have equal access. Whereas played rpgs are private.

Also, it's weird that we don't have established terms to distinguish between 'roleplaying game' in the sense of a published game text and 'roleplaying game' in the sense of actual play.

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Is it? We don't have established terms to distinguish between Monopoly the boardgame and playing Monopoly the boardgame, or football the rules vs a game of football, or Jeopardy the gameshow vs playing on Jeopardy the gameshow. I'm not sure there's a strong indication we need a term defined to mean 'playing a X' rather than just saying 'playing a X' to differentiate.

pemerton said:

Well, if the game is run just like a "worldbuilt" one but with the GM building the world on the fly, that will be true.
But if the game is run "no myth" or simllarly, then that won't be true.

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No, it's always true (or I suppose one could qualify this with in 99.9% of all rpgs or some such, but no exceptions come to mind) that the GM will spend a certain amount of time describing the world to the PCs. If a game exists where the GM never describes the existence of an NPC, what they look like, etc. and never sets a scene, etc. then I haven't seen it. Now you can choose to say "That isn't describing the world", but that wouldn't be accurate. A GM running a "no myth" game, who then describes something in the game world, is describing the game world, no matter how one spins it.

pemerton said:

I was referring to a particular sort of impossibility, namely, impossibility that results from the GM making a decision, secret from the players, that there is no secret door to be found; or the GM making a decision, independently of the players, that in this land there is an impassable mountain range to the east.

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Sure, and I was pointing out that there are many ways a specific action will be made difficult to impossible in a ttrpg, not just "worldbuilding". I will also point out that "worldbuilding" doesn't need to make anything difficult to impossible, so the whole point is even less salient.

pemerton said:

The effect of these sorts of decisions is that the GM is (to some extent, the degree of which depends on the details of the case) shaping the outcomes of play in advance.

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Sure they can, just like the rules do. Or the table can, etc.

pemerton said:

And whether or not we people are numerous or not, as I said, this is a particular outcome of worldbuiding which has a definite inpact on the RPG experience, and it's an impact that I personally regard as bad.

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The "definite impact" being only that a GM can choose to make certain actions difficult or impossible, on top of things made difficult or impossible by the rules, table consensus, veto powers, etc. Or they can not. Doesn't seem especially definite.

pemerton said:

If the GM writes the dramas prior to play and/or independently of the players, the players have to follow the GM's hooks or else be spectators.

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What? No! To start with "worldbuilding" =/= "GM writes the dramas", they might "write" some drama or conflict in the world but by what leap of logic does that mean they write all of it, or that the players must follow their hooks or be spectators? This is not only illogical, and wrong on it's face but it seems to show a very biased and uncharitable attitude to make that jump.

pemerton said:

If the players establish the dramas and hook the GM, then the dynamic of play is quite different.

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And, it shouldn't need to be pointed out, but obviously the players can establish drama with or without "worldbuilding" (technically some degree of worldbuilding is necessary unless it's a group of PCs arguing in a vacuum). They do it ALL THE TIME, but they do it within the world.

pemerton said:

This, again, is a real impact that worldbuilding can have, and personally I don't like it.

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And here you shift to "can", which I appreciate. I get that you don't like it, but that shouldn't be an excuse to make unfounded leaps in logic that are clearly contradicted by evidence, or to characterize it as causing unique issues that in reality it need not cause and that many other things can cause as well. Hussar just made a bunch of criticisms without doing that sort of thing.

Ovinomancer said:

Is it? We don't have established terms to distinguish between Monopoly the boardgame and playing Monopoly the boardgame, or football the rules vs a game of football, or Jeopardy the gameshow vs playing on Jeopardy the gameshow. I'm not sure there's a strong indication we need a term defined to mean 'playing a X' rather than just saying 'playing a X' to differentiate.

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Well maybe it isn't weird then! But I think it causes confusion. Someone will say "D&D is X" (talking about the game text) and someone else will say "Well our game is nothing like that".

Ovinomancer said:

The best advice for worldbuilding I've found yet is adapted from Apocalypse World: hold on lightly. That simple advice has done more for my thinking on the matter than anything else I've seen. It doesn't say don't worldbuild, or don't plan, it just simply says that if you're more interested in staying true to what you've already written, you're going to miss big opportunities for awesome stuff in game. So, hold onto your plans and your worldbuilding lightly and always be on the look out for the play presenting something better.

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With advice like that, I may have to look more closely at giving the PbtA engine a whirl. (I have picked up the Blades in the Dark off-shoot, but I have not yet had an opportunity to play it or read through it properly.) It's incredible how much we can learn from other games.

Along similar lines, I have also appreciated Fate's Session 0 approach that actually gives players the opportunity to contribute to the worldbuilding. I found that players become more invested in the world when they are given an opportunity to invest their own ideas into the campaign.

That said, I find a good bit of use in some worldbuilding.

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My own sense of this thread is that a lot of contention could have been averted by shifting the question from "Why worldbuilding is bad" to "How worldbuilding is bad." The latter question, IMHO, puts GMs who worldbuild less on the defensive, but instead shifts the focus of the symptomatic problems that can manifest in homebrew worldbuilding.

Ha! I used examples! I am ironic!

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That's fine as long as you are not reprinting your Campaign Setting Bible.

Aldarc said:

...
Along similar lines, I have also appreciated Fate's Session 0 approach that actually gives players the opportunity to contribute to the worldbuilding. ...

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With the right people, group worldbuilding and character creation can be just as fun as playing the game.

Aldarc said:

I think one of my primary criticisms with threads about worldbuilding - and this is not aimed at anyone in particular - is that they almost always invariably devolve into people wanting to talk about their homebrew worldbuilding. Though having examples are nice, it again gets to my contention that worldbuilding often comes across as self-indulgant oversharing, even when people are asking for advice about worldbuilding. People often get less actual tips, advice, or answers, but, instead, ten page long backstories provided by other posters who want their campaign bibles to be lauded and appreciated.

Click to expand...

Aldarc said:

With advice like that, I may have to look more closely at giving the PbtA engine a whirl. (I have picked up the Blades in the Dark off-shoot, but I have not yet had an opportunity to play it or read through it properly.) It's incredible how much we can learn from other games.

Along similar lines, I have also appreciated Fate's Session 0 approach that actually gives players the opportunity to contribute to the worldbuilding. I found that players become more invested in the world when they are given an opportunity to invest their own ideas into the campaign.

My own sense of this thread is that a lot of contention could have been averted by shifting the question from "Why worldbuilding is bad" to "How worldbuilding is bad." The latter question, IMHO, puts GMs who worldbuild less on the defensive, but instead shifts the focus of the symptomatic problems that can manifest in homebrew worldbuilding.

That's fine as long as you are not reprinting your Campaign Setting Bible.

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Having played Fate, the move to Blades (which I recently started playing myself, btw, and love to pieces) shouldn't be as jarring. The real key, I've found, is as DM both rooting for the PC and yet still beating the hell out of them. It's a strange integrity to do both.

There's a few ways I've seen about running scores. Some prefer to have a general map laid out and established and go through it for the score, others wing it and create the scenes as needed in TotM only. The trick is to find a pacing that works for you and your group and meets their expectations. I was moving players from D&D 5e to Blades, so I broke entirely for TotM to separation because the play is pretty different, but YMMV. I can easily see the use of a map as a pacing mechanic -- you have to get through these rooms to here to succeed -- but it's not necessary. I use the clocks to pace the score, using more or more complex clocks depending on the details. The clocks mechanism of Blades is something I just fell in love with, and I occasionally find myself thinking of even other games in terms of clocks now. They're just so flexible, especially if you adopt the idea that play can go against any clock at any time. Example time!

So, in a theft by stealth score against a tough target, the engagement roll established a risky entry, so I placed the play outside the target building but close and in an undiscovered condition. The issue was that there were more guards than anticipated, so the initial plan to access the kitchen window (the detail of the stealth approach) was in jeopardy. I set down two clocks for this scene -- access the window and gain entry, a four clock, and Alarm is raised! an six clock (the numbers are the number of segments in the clock, fill the clock and it's 'thing' happens). The Alarm clock is filled by failures, the window clock by successes. A player declared a dash across the street to the shadows under the window. No effort had been expended to determine the guard patrols, so I declared the action to be risky with normal results. A failure occurs, and the Alarm clock got 2 ticks as the PC made the dash but was exposed as a guard came around the corner. A moment away from it going pear shaped! But, in allowing actions against any clocks, the next player declared an action to try step out and knock out the guard before an alarm was raised. That seemed a desperate action, with limited results because the guards were a tier higher than the PCs. This time a critical success was rolled, so the player got full success and then pushed for increased effect so guard was knocked out and dragged into an alley, removing all the ticks on the Alarm clock. The players are still no closer to gaining access to the kitchen window (they've not advanced that clock) and now have a possible liability (an unconscious guard in the alley across the street), but they've reset the challenge of the scene back to start.

Ciocks are just awesome.