What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Lanefan]

Your style doesn't allow for greater player control over the story. It simply allows for a different kind of player control over the story and has a different focus on the game.

It seems a difference between your style and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that where you'd have the players (in character) take the time to figure out how in the game-world to find the information that would lead them to the bazaar, he'd assume the PCs would obtain the correct info and thus jump straight to the bazaar scene.

Your way allows the players / PCs to make mistakes, find and follow false leads, or otherwise run into distractions that make the whole thing take longer to play out at the table. His doesn't.

Pacing.

As far as the side quest is concerned, I don't get what you are saying. First, I don't know what you mean by "side quest" - it's not a notion that has any purchase in player-driven RPGing, because it rests on a contrast with the "real" or "main" quest that only operates in GM-driven games.

Er...if the PC's main quest is to free his brother from demonic possession, and during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes and decides to put his main quest on hold and stop to help the villagers for a while by rounding up a party and taking the battle to the trogs...sounds like a player-driven side quest to me.

Not every PC needs to always be so focused on its own goals and angst that it ignores the world around it.

And before you say you'd never frame the village scene as it's not important to the PCs' goals, I say why not? Make them make a choice. Give them a chance to side-quest themselves, or distract themselves. Who knows, maybe what starts as a side quest will become a main quest, with the PC's original goals forgotten or abandoned.

Lan-"every time a player has a choice of what her PC does next, that player's agency is increased"-efan

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Er...if the PC's main quest is to free his brother from demonic possession, and during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes and decides to put his main quest on hold and stop to help the villagers for a while by rounding up a party and taking the battle to the trogs...sounds like a player-driven side quest to me.

Not every PC needs to always be so focused on its own goals and angst that it ignores the world around it.

And before you say you'd never frame the village scene as it's not important to the PCs' goals, I say why not? Make them make a choice. Give them a chance to side-quest themselves, or distract themselves. Who knows, maybe what starts as a side quest will become a main quest, with the PC's original goals forgotten or abandoned.

Further, if the player has a belief for his character such as, "My own personal ambitions are more important the the plight of the downtrodden." Then the DM must introduce such scenes in order to bring that player belief into conflict.

 

[Lanefan]

This just reiterates my point that the issue is not player freedom to make action declarations that are then resolved via the mechanics; but rather that balancing moves is a bigger deal in D&D than in most other RPGs. The concern you raise here isn't about the player's "authorship" role, but about the fact that the move is too powerful relative to other available moves.

(Though personally I'm not sure this is true in a game with fiat secret doors via Passwall.)

Not everyone has Passwall as a field-castable spell, particularly at low level; but most parties have someone capable of a competent secret door search.

In AD&D there are pursuit rules. In BW there are pursuit rules, and they are only activiated if first you satisfy the disengagement requirements.

In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door might support an action to impose a "I Escaped" complication on the enemy, but that is no easier or harder than imposing a "You're dead!" result on them - so finding the secret door changes the fiction, and thus may change what abilities the oppponents can bring to bear, but doesn't change the mechanical difficulty in any in-principle sense.

It'd be situationally dependent, of course.

And AD&D's pursuit rules aren't much use.

Everything you describe here is just GM authorship of fiction.

You are saying that by framing the PCs as being at the reliquary I am denying the players the chance to rescue the slave. But by framing the players into a scene with a doorway and beyond that a beating of a slave, you are denying the players the chance to meet the Modron that some other GM might have decided to mention in his/her possible framing. Or whatever.

Either way, the players are being denied the opportunity to make a choice. There might be nothing but empty passages...but unless you narrate them the players don't know they exist and thus don't get to choose whether to explore them or not.

Every moment of framing means that some other framing wasn't established. Every moment of play spent doing X means that we have less time to do Y.

Why is it so important that we do Y right now rather than next session or the session after that? You're not running to a time limit.

By spending time framing situations about slaves and intersecting passages you don't increase the scope for agency. You just spend more time on the stuff that you think is interesting and less time (or delay the arrival at) the stuff the players have flagged as interesting to them.

If the players (in and-or out of character) are dead set on getting to the reliquary they'll choose to bypass whatever distractions may appear...and that's fine. They had the choice, and they made it: all is good. But for them to have made this choice they have to know it exists.

But maybe the players (in and-or out of character) will find one or more of the distractions more immediately interesting than the reliquary*, and divert course to follow up on that while leaving the reliquary for later. Neither you nor they will ever know if they're not given the chance; and you-as-DM can't just assume they'll choose to ignore everything else they might stumble across en route to where the were originally going.

* - for these purposes I'm arbitrarily authoring that the guiding angels are exceptionally patient and tolerant and won't mind if the PCs take some detours en route to the reliquary.

This takes us back to the point that fiction is imaginary.

From the point of view of "interacting" with fiction, there's no difference between authoring that an (already mentioned) orc is dead, and authoring that an (already mentioned) wall contains a secret door.

Where I posit that there is a difference, unless you're referring to someone simply stating the orc is now dead while bypassing the combat mechanics usually required to get it there.

A better comparison might be authoring that an orc appears in a (previously mentioned) room vs. authoring that a (previously mentioned) wall contains a secret door. For me, the option to do either of these would be only open to the DM: she'd have pre-determined the secret door bit, and would have a rationale for the sudden appearance of an orc; and note that said rationale could be a PC having just cast a summoning spell.

You have to introduce other constraints - eg the player's authorship is constrained to things that, in the fiction, might be causal results of his/her PC's actions. I know that plenty of people like such constraints

Count me as one such.

but RPGs that don't adhere to them aren't in any sense abandoning the idea of "interacting with the fiction", and aren't in any sense more "unrealistic" or "Schroedingerish".

They're not abandoning the idea of interacting with the fiction but the fiction being interacted with is - or certainly seems to be - a lot more fluid, which makes those interactions more difficult both to initiate and to pin down.

Lanefan

 

[BryonD]

In real life, "interacting with a canvas" means painting on it. But upthread you said that the players in your game don't get to author setting elements. So I'm having trouble following the metaphor.

Sorry for the long delay.

But yeah, round and round we go. And this quote does a decent job of summing it up. You can't follow the concept of players interacting with setting elements via their PCs within an RPG unless they have the ability to author them. That is just stunning. As I've said numerous times before, I totally get the value and fun potential of your player agency approach. It provides less fun *to me* and to 99% of those I've discussed it with. But it would be absurd to claim that the sum total of all of our opinions count one sliver of impact on what you enjoy.

So differences of opinion are all well and good. But when you openly say that you are unable to wrap your brain around something so fundamental to such an immense portion of the gaming community and history, then clearly there is nothing that can be offered.

That I've been offline for about a year and you are still here going through the exact same circles with new people reinforces that point.

So be it.

Until I fail my next WILL save.... Enjoy your games

 

[Maxperson]

Now, I'm not in pemerton's game, so I have no idea how this may have played out at his table, but I see nothing in his description of the episode that guarantees that a single successful action resolution mechanic would have led to the fulfillment of the PC's Belief that I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother. Might the angel feather have been magically beneficial and not cursed with a single roll? Maybe. Would it be useful against his brother? Maybe, but not necessarily.

You've come late to the conversation, so you've missed a lot. He has said many times that success on rolls gets the player what the player has said he wants to happen. A failed roll results in a consequence of some sort. That's why a few posts after the one you quoted, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said that the feather turned out not to be the item being sought due to a failed arcana roll.

The point of the example, though, and he's subsequently addressed this upthread, is that his framing goes directly to the PC Belief (regardless of how much work may be required to get there), whereas the situation you propose interposes several GM-designed intervening obstacles to even addressing the Belief.

This is not accurate. The situation I propose does address belief. Every step of the way the PC is heading towards his goal and accomplishing that belief. The only difference is the style of play. i.e. how one gets to the goal, and how the players drive the story.

 

[Maxperson]

It seems a difference between your style and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that where you'd have the players (in character) take the time to figure out how in the game-world to find the information that would lead them to the bazaar, he'd assume the PCs would obtain the correct info and thus jump straight to the bazaar scene.

See, as the DM I would never force my view on the players by assuming how the PCs will accomplish their goals. I have no idea if they will find their way to the bazaar, end up seeking out a sage or wizard, making a pact with a demon themselves, and so on. By assuming the bazaar as the end result, I would be depriving them of a lot of possible ways to proceed. I would also be taking the story out of their hands and driving it myself, which is something I don't want to do.

Your way allows the players / PCs to make mistakes, find and follow false leads, or otherwise run into distractions that make the whole thing take longer to play out at the table. His doesn't.

Pacing.

It's significantly more than just pacing. Yes the pacing is different, but along the way is tons of roleplay that wouldn't/couldn't happen if I skipped ahead, as well as opportunities to make allies and enemies, acquire information and things, get into fights, and more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But what if the player wants to slow it down and make everything more granular; for example making each left-right choice at each intersection even if there's nothing there, rather than jumping straight to the 'action' without real opportunity to do anything else. This is what I mean when I refer to pacing; where more (or less) granular exploration and interaction with the game world means less (or more) overall story gets told or produced in a session.

OK, that's fairly explicit. I guess my basic answer is there are an INFINITE number of these 'what if the player wants' questions, I could ask "what if the player wants to only play the exciting parts" and that's just as much a what-if. So, we can really only say "in my experience, this is what players typically want, and this is what can serve most of them well a majority of the time." Hopefully that can also be relatively adaptable so that you can adjust how things work, at least to some extent.

IME players get bored. I mean, yes, a player who is new or in a certain mood will probably relish crawling around in a dungeon pixel bitching every cobblestone trying to find traps and secret doors and whatnot endlessly, and scrounging for every copper piece and whatnot. This WILL almost certainly get old after a few sessions, at most. MOST players will begin to desire to move into a more narrative, cinematic, heroic sort of play. Maybe they will also want to do some 'boring stuff' as well, like they might become fascinated with shopkeeping or farming or something, but they don't really end up wanting to spend vast periods of their table time on it every game. Its enough to make a few critical decisions and feel like they're having the experience. Usually this kind of thing will segue into "the thieves guild is trying to take 90% of your profit!" or something rather quickly and that will be more interesting than trying to negotiate a cheaper source of quality high hard boots (15gp).

I feel like it is always possible to do some 'development' if the player wants, but its almost always a pretty good idea to get on to pushing things pretty soon. I find that 4e's SC system is really awesome here. I can make up an SC for "successfully convince the thieves guild to stop threatening you" and that will include plenty of shopkeeping action and a real interesting plot that 'goes to the action' at the same time. Its probably not going to dwell on book keeping, negotiating contracts, and meetings of the cobbler's guild, but those things might factor in as scenes within the SC.

I'm not sure what your take is on this, but from things pemerton has posted he seems quite concerned with maintaining a 'fast' pace, where lost of story gets told or produced each session (and thus the campaign as a whole is completed sooner); where I by contrast don't care about speed - it can all take as long as it wants to as long as people are having fun. There'll always be another session, and another after that...

I find that I want to see what happens in the game. So I like it if there's a fairly robust plot progression. I feel like there's always more characters and more situations and more games to be had and there's no need to linger and draw out one specific situation when there is an infinite amount of gaming I could be doing.

This is quoted as posted - I think you were going to say more but it got lost somewhere?

Oh, maybe I got distracted, lol. I think I was going to say "cool to place obstacles in the way of making it thrive or growing his holdings into a Kingdom or whatever." I would also say it would be cool to threaten THE WHOLE WORLD, that would of course necessarily threaten his castle, but there's a progression there to more global concerns, so it doesn't really feel so much like endlessly repeating the same thing. I mean, its sort of like Superman, after the 100th time some villain kidnaps Louis Lane it GETS OLD, so you have to move on. Players should always feel like they've accomplished something and their achievements will stand. Never refight the same battle!

Sometimes it feels more like comparing apples to motorboats.

I'd say it's more pace of events in the narrative. Pace of play at the table is another issue entirely.

Fine, but it'll seem like a constant barrage of attacks anyway if there's no chance for "downtime activities" between them. And this is what I'm getting at - if no attention is ever paid to downtime* then it might as well not exist.

* - on both the small (exploring empty passages, or PC-to-PC interactions while camped out) and large (what the PCs do during their three-week stopover in town between adventures) scale.

Right, and I agree that it is the pace experienced by the players that is really actually experienced and thus forms the basis of their enjoyment (or lack thereof) in play. I don't think its necessarily true that the pace should be unrelenting at the table either, there needs to be some degree of pacing, but I don't think every sticky situation that the PCs are in need be immediately hair-raising either. Maybe they are spending the next hour of table time negotiating and planning. These can still be DRAMATIC activities, and even punctuated with action scenes, but they don't need to be Indiana Jones crazy rollercoaster every minute either.

Here I agree, and would go a step further and say you don't always need to be flinging anything at them at all. Give them a chance to determine their own next course of action - that's a part of player agency too.

I call those scenes basically 'Interludes'. They often take place outside of table time too. Nothing is really at stake, but the parameters of the next challenge may be set. I don't think that games have to be merely reactive on the part of the players to be 'go to the action' either. "Some guy walks in with a map" and now things are rolling and the party is in the driver's seat, for now...

The poor-ness of the 4e and 5e resting rules aside, input into the in-game logistics is very important as a player; and is a part of the 'pacing' agency.

Well, they seem better to me than the AD&D ones! lol. I mean, "every time you're injured you have to wait weeks to do anything again" wasn't really very thrilling, and the "well, just find a cleric to magic you back to health 100x faster!" didn't really cut it either. The fact that half the party used a totally different resource scheme than the other half wasn't winning me over either. This is a BIG reason as well that I like 4e over 13a or 5e, because it DOES have a consistent set of resources that all classes basically share (ignoring some ill-considered exceptions).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My retort, and it really isn't a retort, but rather just a statement of preference, is that it seems too easy. For me, something that important to my PC should take some work to locate. That work adds extra meaning to my success when I finally find the item I need to free my brother from his possession. Is there a reason why instead of starting the scene where the feather was located, you didn't start the scene at a place where a guy knows a guy who knows a place where such things can be found?

Does it matter? I mean, sure, you could start somewhere further back up the chain, but its not like its planned out! If you're creating a DM-driven story arc then there could 3 stages to the goal, or there could be 13, and then its a real question "how big is this story arc and should I keep it going for 1, 2, 5, 7, or 100 sessions?" In Story Now it isn't important to think about that except tactically, as in don't actually put the prize in the character's hands in THIS scene. Now, clearly pacing and genre conventions and whatnot will probably signal at what point you're belaboring the premise and need to move on to the conclusion. A good GM will manage that, but I don't think where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is with the angel feather is really problematic. The feather itself is merely a prop. Possession of it MIGHT have signaled a chance to advance the character towards his goal. In fact it appears it was of little real value, except in engaging the desired story element and spurring the PLAYERS to take further actions.

In DM-driven play you need sufficient obstacles laid out in the path of success to establish a pace, but in story now play that just isn't the case. I would posit that even in most DM-driven games the DM is likely interpolating new obstacles into the path of the party as needed in order to draw things out to the proper degree. Its just a less nimble way of doing it.

 

[Lanefan]

OK, that's fairly explicit. I guess my basic answer is there are an INFINITE number of these 'what if the player wants' questions, I could ask "what if the player wants to only play the exciting parts" and that's just as much a what-if. So, we can really only say "in my experience, this is what players typically want, and this is what can serve most of them well a majority of the time." Hopefully that can also be relatively adaptable so that you can adjust how things work, at least to some extent.

True. I'm mostly trying to point out the agency that players in 'go where the action is' games are missing out on. As long as they know they're missing out on it and are cool with that, then fill yer boots.

IME players get bored. I mean, yes, a player who is new or in a certain mood will probably relish crawling around in a dungeon pixel bitching every cobblestone trying to find traps and secret doors and whatnot endlessly, and scrounging for every copper piece and whatnot. This WILL almost certainly get old after a few sessions, at most.

Actually, IME it never does; at least not permanently.

I'm starting to look forward to the next time I can play in a start-out-fresh-at-1st-level party again, where every copper piece you find is a big deal and you're not expected to save the known world every other adventure.

MOST players will begin to desire to move into a more narrative, cinematic, heroic sort of play.

I find most want to start seeing some sort of overarching story develop out of what they do, but at the same time don't become all that concerned about cinematic or heroic play as such. (that said, we don't really do 'heroic' play here; it's more like 'murderhoboes with occasional flickers of conscience')

Maybe they will also want to do some 'boring stuff' as well, like they might become fascinated with shopkeeping or farming or something, but they don't really end up wanting to spend vast periods of their table time on it every game. Its enough to make a few critical decisions and feel like they're having the experience. Usually this kind of thing will segue into "the thieves guild is trying to take 90% of your profit!" or something rather quickly and that will be more interesting than trying to negotiate a cheaper source of quality high hard boots (15gp).

This isn't what I mean. I'm more getting at the granularity of interactions while adventuring...that every intersecting passage gets described and the party given a choice which way to go, for example, rather than jumping them straight to the 'action' scene in the throne room.

I feel like it is always possible to do some 'development' if the player wants, but its almost always a pretty good idea to get on to pushing things pretty soon. I find that 4e's SC system is really awesome here. I can make up an SC for "successfully convince the thieves guild to stop threatening you" and that will include plenty of shopkeeping action and a real interesting plot that 'goes to the action' at the same time. Its probably not going to dwell on book keeping, negotiating contracts, and meetings of the cobbler's guild, but those things might factor in as scenes within the SC.

I've looked at 4e a bit, in terms of converting some of its adventures for my own game, and found that wherever a module suggests a skill challenge it's really saying 'here's a nice quick mechanical shortcut around all this exploration or negotiation they'll otherwise have to do'. I don't want those shortcuts; I want to play out the exploration or negotiation or whatever in a much more granular fashion.

I find that I want to see what happens in the game. So I like it if there's a fairly robust plot progression. I feel like there's always more characters and more situations and more games to be had and there's no need to linger and draw out one specific situation when there is an infinite amount of gaming I could be doing.

Where I know I'm going to see what happens in the game sooner or later anyway, and I'm not (usually) so eager to get to the next character/game/situation that I'm willing to shortchange this one.

As I even say in my houserules introduction (paraphrased here): it doesn't matter if little or no actual adventuring gets done during a session as long as everyone has fun. What I mean by this is that if the PCs want to spend the session arguing with each other or chasing red herrings or telling war stories or whatever it's fine with me, as long as what they're doing is game-related. If the players drift off into a long discussion about politics or hockey or food , that's different; and I'll steer them back to the game at hand.

Oh, maybe I got distracted, lol. I think I was going to say "cool to place obstacles in the way of making it thrive or growing his holdings into a Kingdom or whatever." I would also say it would be cool to threaten THE WHOLE WORLD, that would of course necessarily threaten his castle, but there's a progression there to more global concerns, so it doesn't really feel so much like endlessly repeating the same thing. I mean, its sort of like Superman, after the 100th time some villain kidnaps Louis Lane it GETS OLD, so you have to move on. Players should always feel like they've accomplished something and their achievements will stand. Never refight the same battle!

I'm not sure I completely agree here: I've had some great situations arise out of the use of recurring villains. In my current game there's one villain they've beaten (I think) 5 times now - each a clone of the original except the most recent one met, which was the original - and they've reason to believe there's at least one more of her out there somewhere. The trick is to have her show up in different and unexpected situations - so far she's been met as the boss of two different (and widely separated) dungeons, a leader of an enemy army, a quasi-wandering monster, and the sidekick of another dungeon boss.

Right, and I agree that it is the pace experienced by the players that is really actually experienced and thus forms the basis of their enjoyment (or lack thereof) in play. I don't think its necessarily true that the pace should be unrelenting at the table either, there needs to be some degree of pacing, but I don't think every sticky situation that the PCs are in need be immediately hair-raising either. Maybe they are spending the next hour of table time negotiating and planning. These can still be DRAMATIC activities, and even punctuated with action scenes, but they don't need to be Indiana Jones crazy rollercoaster every minute either.

I agree, but is the hour of table time spent in planning even possible if they're being framed into the next scene right away?

I call those scenes basically 'Interludes'. They often take place outside of table time too. Nothing is really at stake, but the parameters of the next challenge may be set. I don't think that games have to be merely reactive on the part of the players to be 'go to the action' either. "Some guy walks in with a map" and now things are rolling and the party is in the driver's seat, for now...

I'm thinking even less structured than that; a situation where the players / PCs can stop, divide their treasure, re-equip themselves, purchase or commission magic items if allowed by system, assess their successes-failures-goals-desires-assets, and generally take a deep breath. And from there they get the chance to ask the DM what's going on in the world (the DM takes on the role of newscaster for a moment); and then process this information through the filter of their own goals etc. and decide - without any DM framing - what they're going do next.

And at this point the players are in effect telling the DM what to frame next, via exercising the agency provided by choice.

Well, they seem better to me than the AD&D ones! lol. I mean, "every time you're injured you have to wait weeks to do anything again" wasn't really very thrilling, and the "well, just find a cleric to magic you back to health 100x faster!" didn't really cut it either.

I far prefer this over the 4e-5e model where you can be near death several times during a day yet be right as rain the next morning.

That said, the 1e model as written is too slow even for me; and we long ago fixed it to something we like that's between those two extremes.

The fact that half the party used a totally different resource scheme than the other half wasn't winning me over either. This is a BIG reason as well that I like 4e over 13a or 5e, because it DOES have a consistent set of resources that all classes basically share (ignoring some ill-considered exceptions).

Where I don't at all mind different classes using different resource schemes - not everyone has to be the same. 4e went way too far in this idea of streamlining the classes and making them all more similar to each other.

Lan-"an overnight rest gets you back 1/10 of your full hit points, rounding any and all fractions up"-efan

 

[Maxperson]

Lan-"an overnight rest gets you back 1/10 of your full hit points, rounding any and all fractions up"-efan

We did 1 per level + your con modifier per night of rest.