What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.

What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?

There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG.

The DCs are entirely irrelevant to his point. There is no limit on the attempt of those actions. My PC can flap his arms in an attempt to fly to the moon and there is no system limitation that stops me from trying. The same with the volcano and killing 10 orcs in one round, though I'm not sure why you'd have asked for a DC for that one. Have you not played D&D before?

And who are you to declare what is meaningful and what isn't? If my PC is crazy, then there is meaning in the attempt to fly to the moon by flapping my arms. If my PC is not crazy, but I'm trying to freak out a tribe of primitives who are superstitious and don't mess with crazy people, the attempt has meaning. If my jump into the volcano is part of a heroic sacrifice, it has meaning, even if my PC is desperately hoping for a miracle and hopes beyond reason to survive. If my PC wants to be the best swordsman in the world and his goal is to kill 10 orcs in one round, his attempts have meaning, even if he doesn't succeed when 1st level.

But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - provided you actually play the game (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC will go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.

Yes it is a reward. Those levels are a reward for playing the game. A guaranteed reward for doing something is still a reward. When I tell my son that if he eats all of his dinner he can have desert as a reward, it's guaranteed that if he actually eats his dinner(engages with the food via his mouth and stomach) then he will get desert.

 

[Aenghus]

When I'm starting out a new campaign I generally have a "Session 0" to hammer out a mutual understanding of what the game will and won't be about in general terms, and how the game is going to be run. This especially applies to new rulesets or editions which require some work to get to grips with. Agreement to play a particular game module, or to abide by preset character goals emerging from character generation or acceptance of a certain amount of railroading etc etc

It's a chance for participants to ask questions or express their doubts.At the end everyone resolves to give the game a fair try and accept the agreements for the campaign, or bows out.

After that I expect players to abide by their agreements. If after the first sessions a player really isn't enjoying the resulting game, they can drop out. What they can't do is misbehave and disrupt the game. I haven't had to go beyond warnings in my own games, though I would eject a player who persisted in dragging down a game for whatever reason (dislike, contrariness, boredom etc).

Now in the case of a "Story Now" game, I'm working from the assumption that the players have all agreed to play the game sincerely and are thus committed to playing out their driving goals, and moving from scene to scene in the process of this in a way that fits the pre-agreed and evolving fiction of the game.

For me system matters. Playing a game as if it was a different game goes wrong more often than not. Consciously or not, it's a form of sabotage, violating the group social contract and campaign agreement.

For a "Story Now" game, such behavior would include trying to modify or ignore driving goals in ways that break the rules or agreements, or trying to avoid scenes that logically flow from the direction of play, or ignoring the conflict resolution rules to try and resolve in-game problems in different ways. For me this is all classic "bad player" behavior, selfish play that violates the social contract, and grounds for a private talking to or even expulsion from that game.

But there are many ways to run games even under the same system. There are people I would play with only under very limited circumstances, and others I could play anything with and probably have fun (and a few who I will never play with again).

 

[nugstradamus]

I think a good example of world-building would be, like, if there is a war going on 50 miles from where your party actually is. They physically have nothing to do with it (yet, anyway), but the effects of the war are important to the campaign. Trade embargos, uptick in crime, etc. What side of the war does the town you're in support? Is their side winning the war? Maybe people are happier, dancing and drinking at a tavern. Are they losing? Maybe they're sad, downtrodden, more hot headed and on edge.

That war is going on in the background, far enough away from the party that they won't be hearing about specifics as they happen, but you still have to build those stories in such a way that all NPC's actions can be justified.

 

[Lanefan]

You say this as if differences in mechanics and techniques don't matter! That is, as if all that matters in a RPG is what fiction results.

From the point of view of my PC - through whose eyes I-as-player am viewing the game world - that's exactly right.

But that obviously isn't the case. RPGing is about playing a game. Who makes the moves, and how they are resolved, is fundamental to the whole activity.

From the player-at-the-table side, yes. But from the PC-in-the-fiction side, not in the slightest.

Upthread, you suggested that your approach to RPGing can yield "story now". But here we see one reason why not.

Four hours (or whatever) of nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do is not a story.

In and of itself, no it isn't; though in hindsight it'll without doubt be a part of a bigger story. Kind of like a ten-game losing streak at some point during a season in which you still win the cup at the end.

Failure is not the same things as nothing interesting resulting from what is attempted.

Depends. If it's a binary succeed-fail situation (e.g. either you find a secret door or you don't) then failure directly equals nothing-interesting. If it's a sliding-scale situation where both success and failure can come in degrees then it's sometimes possible to generate interest from failure.

If everyone at the table knows that the game is not silly, then everyone equally knows that (in the absence of some context, such as searching the home of a fairy) there is no point looking for wands in trees, as there won't be any there.

Sure - but that still doesn't (and IMO can't) stop me from going through the motions of trying.

This repeated concern, from you and now [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.

No, my repeated concern - usually expressed in silly terms but with a very serious underlying point - is that players with the power to contribute to the fiction will always ALWAYS sooner or later attempt to bend that contribution to their own unfair or unbalanced advantage, be it over other players/PCs or over the game itself; and the DM in these types of games has no means to stop it. Human beings are by nature competitive - that's why part of the DM's role is and always has been that of referee.

I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.

That it's the DM's job to say no to things the players try that are impossible, not the player's job to limit themselves to only attempting the possible.

What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?

Perhaps infinity, but who cares? They can still try if they want.

But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward

Sure it is. It just arrives more frequently and (in most cases) more predictably than in AD&D, and unlike AD&D with its level-loss mechanics it can't be taken away later.

(despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - provided you actually play the game (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC will go up levels.

Unless the DM houserules otherwise...

The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.

This can be true of any RPG, and speaks more to the players' focus of play. Some play for the power-ups. Some play for the story. Many play for a bit of both.

Lan-"time is short or there'd be more to this"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

Four hours (or whatever) of nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do is not a story.

It could be a story. It could be a haunting coming-of-age story about a group of friends playing 1e D&D (it might even sell in the wake of Stranger Things). Or a gripping, real-life drama of a group of rivals playing 3.5 D&D as adults. Or a thoughtful comedy with a conscience about millennials playing 5e D&D.
It would at least be a realistic story.

... concern that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.

I think the issue is that the system implies qualities of the world, so if the system seems silly, the world will seem silly.

What's the DC for your D&D character to ...?

"Ask, your DM."

The main one that trips people up in classic D&D is stuff like letting fighters move silently with a DEX check, or climb with a STR check, while forcing thief PCs to use the generally weaker percentage chances - even Luke Crane fell into this rookie trap GMing Moldvay Basic, as he reports in one of his blogs.

I was used to the opposite: "...well the Thief only has a 25% chance, so clearly your chance should be worse..."

It's a bit like "hit dice" in AD&D: you don't need to earn your hit dice independent of gaining levels - rolling for additional hit points is part-and-parcel of gaining a level.
But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - provided you actually play the game (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC will go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.

It's a reward for showing up, then. (Honestly, ever since 3.0, that's how leveling has felt, to me. Everyone's on the same exp table, everyone gets a share of the exp for the session. I've never actually had 'freeloader' players who contribute nothing and walk away with XP, but technically it could happen....)

Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character.

Don't forget that the point of the power-ups are so you can take on bigger challenges to unlock better power ups.

It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend

Oh! Like Pendragon, sure.

, or the Iliad,

HeroQuest!

or the Silmarillion.

GURPS (OK, maybe that was just my GM who made GURPS feel like endless exposition and no story.)

, in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to do stuff with their gear

In 4e (which, I think was what this particular tangent was about), special equipment is more like a character-customization option, just like feats, powers &c, at least in so much as the DM honors the wish list.

Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.

Don't see it. Most 4e magic items struck me more as price-of-admission (oh, you're going to be Epic, now, better up your gear to +5, or you won't get invited to parties), and could fade into the background unless they did something cool for the character concept.

 

[Nytmare]

OTOH, I can imagine where both a DM-centered game and a Story Now game would do this. Suppose the whole shtick of this vampire family is to fit in with the rest of the world and not be noticed? Maybe that's how they operate, and the whole point is "what do you do when you get dropped into castle Dracula without any prep!?" Its at least a feasible and plausible concept, so I can't categorically condemn it.

That kinda reminds me of a Vampire: The Masquerade game I played in in college where the set up was essentially that the PCs were the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys. We spent 2 or 3 game nights discovering that there was a secret throng of vampires hidden in the city. All the signs were there if you knew to look for them. So we stormed the "castle" and discovered to our horror that we had just accidentally happened upon and murdered a bunch of innocent, late 80s, proto-goth, vampire-wanna-bes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think that all this speaks directly to the OP.

Classic D&D dungeoncrawling isn't meant to "make sense". We don't ask what the monsters eat (or, if we do, the answer - as per Old Geezer on rpg.net - is that they eat at McMonster's (? or something like that) on the bottom level). The constraints of the "puzzle"/maze are tightly confined, by a mixture of stipulation and convention.

B2 is good for that sort of game.

But as soon as we are thinking about a "living, breathing world" with a story that is meant to involve story and character in some meaningful fashion, the Caves of Chaos have nothing to offer. At best, one or two fragments might be pulled out of it and turned into something else.

Right, an Arnesonian Dungeon is a perfectly good game construct. It is PURELY gamist however, just about as realistic as the board in Monopoly, maybe less. The RPG format affords it an open-ended character, but only within the very narrow scope of "things you can do while looting a dungeon."

I really think the format has survived so well, even with additions of some less highly structured material and some rationalization (ala Phandelver) is simply because it is so easy to produce and simple to understand. There is, pretty much by definition, no market for No Myth adventures (hmmm, have I named a game company here, or what?). In any case, things like B2 are easy to conceive, simple to package, and relatively simple to run.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character. It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend, or the Iliad, or the Silmarillion, in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to do stuff with their gear.

Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.

This reminds me of the great virtue of 4e in this regard. Its scaling is so transparent, that in effect there's nothing really from a gamist standpoint which matters about 'power ups'. Magic items and whatnot are just (as oft observed) elements of scaling for the sake of scaling (at least to a point, the nature of the fiction is cumulatively impacted, but its not in a classic D&D sense, where a fighter is COMPLETELY distinguished by the fact that he is a wielder of a +2 greatsword and carries a +1 shield and +1 plate armor).

The point being, the story aspect of these things becomes the only meaningful dimension on which they exist. Treasure falls in the same way, it just does not matter, except as the player wants it to matter. The game is free to be about anything, and these elements are free to become purely narrative support.

I like the way you tend to weave them into the story by taking their mechanics as inspiration (I guess often this is something your players do). It expands on page 42 in a way that synergizes with a lot of D&D loot tropes. Fun stuff!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

First, I'm not talking about game rules. I house rule the heck out of my games. Breaking a game rule isn't that big of a deal. I'm talking about shutting down players when they want to do things with their PCs. That's just bad, even if the person is amazing at the rest of the game, it still makes him a bad DM. An analogy would be if a man was generous to a fault. Donated time and money to charities. Did all kinds of amazing things that make him a great person, but had a thing where he molested children in his basement. That person would be a bad person, despite all of the other amazing things that he does. You could argue, and rightly so that he does great good for the world, but he's still a bad guy.

Well, first I apologize if my post was unclear. I mean that this person, this amazing GM, broke all of YOUR rules of GMing. Whenever you say to me "this would only happen with a terrible GM" I think of my friend. He did ALL of those things (maybe some of them he only did a little bit and in ways that you might admit weren't exactly all bad, but he did them).

To call the man a 'bad GM' is literally laughable. I mean I'm actually chuckling to even think of it. And yup, sometimes you'd want to do something in that game, and you'd NEVER get to do it. You'd watch him pull the strings and make it all go a certain way, AND YOU'D JUST SAY WOW, HOLY CRUD THIS IS AMAZING! We'd all get frustrated as heck too. I don't even think he is the best POSSIBLE GM, just pretty close to the best that actually exists. Some things he did you could have said "Mike, if you don't do THAT then it will be better." but it was pointless. He was like a force of nature, his technique just was, it didn't suffer analysis, it wasn't planned or affected in any way. He couldn't use his understaning of GMing to change and do it like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], he's just what he is, and still awesome.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess I just didn't realize how passive your players are, and it floors me that not one of them would even try to talk to her. I would, as would all of my players. You still interrupted the spell that doesn't get interrupted, though, which prevented final resolution until AFTER you were done narrating what you did. There's no way around that. What the players tried to do was not final until after your narration.

The absurdity of this is becoming downright silly. First freedom of choice is 'railroading', and then active equal partners in forming the game are 'passive', and I'm forgetting a few other absurd things too I'm sure. Oh, the whole treating the game world as if it constitutes a form of reality, and thinking that how the game narrative is formed and by whom doesn't matter.

I feel like you're painting yourself further and further into some completely absurd corner in any attempt to create some kind of definition of things to serve some point which everyone forgot or lost interest in 500 posts ago.

There was a point at which I felt like there were clarifications that were happening in terms of how I describe the structure and activity in games, and what some of it means. Also what different ways you could come at the same things. That was interesting, but this is just over the Moon, its absurd.