Well, as I intended the term in the OP fiction created at the table is not worldbuilding. Worldbuilding, as I've used it, is establishing a setting, and setting material, in advance of play. ( [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] used the term in a broader sense not too far upthread. That's fine; I think I got he was saying clearly enough. But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was not using it in that broad sense, I don't think, of any way of establishing the setting.)Whether you do it in advance or at the table surely it doesn't make a difference about the importance of world building?
I don't see any reason to suppose it should sound the same it all.And this is what I just don't get: from the player side, what's the difference? The players/PCs are obtaining access to new information; why does it matter in the slightest on the player side what its metagame source might be?pemerton said:... tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes
Either way, the DM is going to narrate the hopefully-informative results of whatever the PCs have tried to divinate. Whether from notes or from top-of-mind that narration in theory should be and sound the same
Think of it this way - preparing a speech is very different from having a conversation. No one would suggest that engaging in conversation is just like writing a speech but in real time!
Likewise in RPGing. A GM who narrates content as part of a conversation with the players about the shared fiction their PCs find themselves inhabiting is doing something very different from a GM who tells the players something that the GM made up all by him-/herself some time earlier.
I have doubts about this contrast. A big part of playing a NPC or monster is giving voice to his/her/its personality, personal backstory, motivations, etc. To focus on playing the NPC or monster is to focus on establishing those things, and what they mean in the current situation. So I don't see how thinking about those things is any sort of distraction from playing that character.You've done the work ahead of time thus making it much easier to be consistent and clear with your narrations, and thus during the actual play you can focus on the here and now - action resolution, rules questions, playing NPCs and monsters, stuff like that.
Well, this is (more or less) what Dungeonworld means when it says "play to find out". Although the process for the GM is very different for the players, because they occupy different roles in the conversation that makes up the game with different sorts of authority over the shared fiction, over framing, etc.you see your role in your game as much more of an actual participant - a player - than I do. You want to share in the unexpected plot twists, and be surprised at how the story goes. You don't want any spoilers, as it were; and you want your own game world to organically unfold around you just as if you were a player.
But that is not an answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for". It's an account of how play proceeds with less, or no, worldbuilding. It's main relevance to this thread is that the answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for" is not otherwise RPGing can't take place.
OK, but what does it mean to "provide a game - with predesigned world, maps, history, cultures, possible storylines - for my players to play in"?I'm not there to play in my own game (other than via NPCs), I'm there to provide a game* for my players to play in
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In my own game I already know all the spoilers, as such is my place and my job, and I know how the story might go at least for the time being. I don't know how it *will* go - the PCs can certainly surprise me with what they do, and when that happens I have to react accordingly. But that reaction is as a neutral arbiter, not as a fellow player.
* - 'provide a game' includes pre-designing the world (maps, history, cultures), pre-designing and tweaking the rules (mostly homebrew these days) and then providing access to them, coming up with a possible storyline or three, and usually hosting.
The language you use, that I've quoted, is metaphor. (Contrast: if you provide a swimming pool for your friends to swim in, that is literal, not metaphorical.) To answer [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], the main agenda of this thread is to dispense with metaphor and try to get some descriptions of actual social practices, and their rationale.
For instance, "providing history and cultures for your players" presumably means telling them these sorts of characters are permitted; these other sorts aren't. It might mean, if a player declares an action "I search the room for a copy of the missing map", replying "You find nothing" without rolling the dice (or perhaps pretending to make a check but in fact stipulating the answer regardless of the roll), because you have written down, in advance, the contents of the room and they don't include a map.
What is that sort of stuff for?