Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
Worldbuidling - Huh!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Good god, ya'll!!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Good god, ya'll!!
You say "And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze", but it's not. "Worldbuilding" refers to the act of creating an imaginary world. Like "roleplaying" it's a term that predates "RPGs" and "D&D". We know the first source, the December 1820 issue of the Edinburgh Review. Making fantasy worlds has long been a part of fantasy fiction, which long predates the hobby.On classic D&D, the dungeon was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.
But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.
But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
That's not a failure, in my view. It's a success (they were trying to find the map, they found the map, therefore success) with a DM-forced complication.
Failure narration in this example always has to somewhere include "you don't find the map". It's black and white: you either find the map (success), or you don't (failure).
But @pemerton doesn't seem to like the idea that the DM has superior or overriding authorship over the players. I haven't posted much in the last year or two, but this is the same underlying agenda he's been pushing for years. Nothing wrong with that, but he (you) does seem to be advocating for it as the Right Way to Play D&D. But to me this comes down to campaign group preference, and a diversity of possible ways of playing.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "handling worldbuilding collaboratively with the players".
I don't know of any game in which the player is simply authorised to tell the GM how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate,
but part of the context for this is a lack of context for the suggestion ie I'm not able to think of a context in which action declaration by a player for his/her PCs would entail determining how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate (eg if, in the game, there is a trivia contest on, it seems unlikely that the actual answer to the question would matter, and so it seems unlikely that anything would be at stake in the player rather than the GM deciding on what that number is.)
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The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms).
Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?
These are extremely different things.
A model railroad is a physical artefact. I can "explore" it by looking at it, noticing the intricacies of the track network, seeing if there are configurations of signals and vehicle movements that will engender collisions, etc.
But a fantasy or sci-fi story is not a physical artefact (the book itself is, obviously, but the story is not the book - it's the abstract object "encoded" by the words which are physically expressed by the type in the book). And I can't "explore" it other than by reading it, or having it read to me.
In RPGing, the players don't (generally) just sit down and read a book (be it a novel, or a fictional encyclopedia) written by the GM. There is a back-and-forth of conversation, and at certain points the GM tells the players stuff about the setting. In many games, some of that stuff is read by the GM from notes (or recited from memory; that difference isn't important at present, I don't think).
Also, in many circumstances, when the players canvass or declare actions for their PCs, the GM will adjudicate by reference to those same notes - eg "We go to the shop to ask that guy we met there yesterday" "Sorry, when you get there you see the shop has been burned down" - the GM doesn't decided the shop has been burned down as an outcome of the action resolution (eg the player failed a "Talk to contact in shop" test) but rather has notes that say that, on such-and-such a day, or triggered by such-and-such an event, the shop will burn down.
That is an example of the GM using the fiction that s/he has prepared in advance to determine the outcome of a player action declaration.
In classic D&D, where the fiction in question is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, replies (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.
Familiar with the concept? Yes. Enamoured with the concept? Not really.I do not understand why you choose to live in such an absolutist world. Are you not familiar with the concept of "fail forward," a component of many, many games and even embraced by 4E D&D?
And from your next post:Other options exist for other other players in other games (or, potentially, even with the game systems you prefer). Yet you persist in demanding only the "Lanefan method" is even viable! How can someone have an honest debate with you if you refuse to acknowledge other ways of doing something exist, even if they're not for you?
Er...your bias is showing.I'm sure @pemerton doesn't need me (or anyone) to defend him, but I think you may be misreading the tone of his posts. While he certainly advocates for a certain style of play on the regular, I've never seen him declare another form of gaming as wrong (that seems to be @Lanefan 's approach). Yes, he's articulated many times what his preferences are, but that's very different from mandating how others should play in order for it to be the "Right Way to Play D&D."
Some puzzles are like this, to be sure. The one I hit most often is the unmappable maze of twisty little passages where there's no functional way to give the players anything to work with on the table (have you ever tried mapping a plate of spaghetti?).As the idea of roleplaying, separation of player and character and metagaming evolved in RPGs, I gained a second reason to dislike player-facing puzzles. Translating them to pc-facing challenges can often lose the puzzle aspect others can enjoy, and turn the challenge into a mere dice-rolling exercise.
The searching can get tedious sometimes, no doubt there; but put yourself in your character's shoes for a moment: while in a hostile area e.g. a dungeon or enemy territory it's not paranoia, it's reality - the world really is out to get you.I found searching constantly for traps and secret doors, a necessity in many old school games, a soul-destroying exercise in paranoia, and have a lot less of this in the games I run.
More or less what I also do, in the end. The only difference (and it may not even be a difference, but you don't mention it) is that I also have a reasonably good idea of what would happen going forward if the PCs weren't around to change it.While I have voluminous knowledge of the setting I use, I don't go into heavy details on the plans of the PCs antagonists, keeping a hazy overplan of the campaign, but keeping it flexible enough that I can move elements around in reaction to the players actions and events in the gameworld.