What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Emerikol]

There is no general connection between these goals for setting, and having the setting authored by the GM in advance so that a signficant goal of play is the players learning what that is. If players enjoy play oriented around such learning, well, obviously that's their preference and their prerogative. I'm just denying that there is any special connection betwen that particular technique, and a rich and verisimilitudinous setting.

I think there is for many people even if you don't agree for yourself. Poor world design is the biggest reason I reject a DM. The real difference is - are the players authoring the setting itself or are they just authoring the moves of their character. It's in character viewpoint play vs story creation play perhaps. I have no interest in authoring a story as a goal. I want to play a character and only operate through that characters eyes. I want my DM to relay to me what my senses detect and then I act on that knowledge. The DM is the describer of the world for the players so they can act within it.

I do think it's classical Gygaxian play. I think it's a great way to play. You obviously don't. That is okay. Different strokes for different folks. But verisimilitude and those things we disagree on are subjective. For me it is about verisimilitude and your style wouldn't provide that to me.

 

[Maxperson]

The GM said "Your're heading off, right?" and - after the players replied "yes" - described them travelling through the Underdark. That was when the players knew they were approaching the giants, and that was the players' chance to say they wanted to be sneaky, if they wanted to be. In my exmample the players didn't say any such thing. From which we can infer that the didn't care to be sneaky.

Here is your quote.

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!

Up until the bolded part ends, there was nothing to indicate that they were near the giants territory yet, or that they should talk to you about stealth. They had all of a split second to tell you they wanted to be stealthy, after you got to "you can see fire giant sentries...", it was too late.

(And how do you know they had no knowledge of the giants' territory? Where did I say that? Where did @AbdulAlhazred say that? Maybe the dwarves told them all about it - again, you're just making stuff up.)

I can only go by the information you give.

There's no need to guess what the GM will do! The GM asked "Are you going to the giants", and they said "yes", so that's what is happening. A clever 3 year old could manage that guess!

There are many ways to go to the giants. Let's see if your 3 your old can guess them all.

And as I already asked - what makes you think they knew they were getting close to the giants' territory before they saw the cave? Why would there be signs of patrols? Everything you say here is framed in terms of a GM-driven railroad: the GM is railroading the players into a confrontation with the giants, but "telegraphs" by narrating signs of patrols, and other contrived evidence of "giant territory", so that the players can make "skilled play" choices that will optimise their chances in the forthcoming, GM-arranged confrontation with the giants.

You REALLLLLY need to learn what a railroad is.

 

[pemerton]

In a medieval or modern-day setting this seems - to say the very least - unrealistic.

Does your modern-day setting have a mechanic to track credit ratings? Vaccinations? Familiarity with a wide range of cuisines (whether as consumer or as cook)?

Does your fantasy setting have a mechanic to track holes in shoes and clothing? Blunting of blades? Shoeing of horses?

In my BW game there is a Resources mechanic. That game is about (among other things) gritty survival.

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, there is no wealth mechanic. That is a game about vikings trying to find out why there are strange portents from the spirits of the wood and in the Northern Lights. Wealth is largely irrelevant. When one of the PCs robbed the drow of their gold, he earned a persistent d8 Back of Gold asset. There is no need for a special mechanic to track that.

Meeting a friendly border guard or pleasant fellow travellers is interesting, no doubt there; and if people want to RP that I'm all in. But, the chances of such RP generating any mechanical changes to the PCs are extremely low. Ditto for all the RP the characters would also likely do with each other during this time; the romances*, the minor arguments, etc.

Combat and risk and danger, on the other hand, have a quite decent chance of generating mechanical changes - lost gear or wealth, major injuries, death, getting separated, etc. - and that's what I-as-DM need to know about: how has the party that left Washington changed or been changed by the time it gets to Tokyo. (and there's always the very tiny chance of a TPK meaning they never reach Tokyo at all)

Let's just start with one assumption: that social interaction won't change the party.

That is already so far removed from my RPGing experience that it's hard to know what to do with the rest of what you say.

In the real world, people travel from A to B and survive; even flourish! In fantasy fiction, people travel from A to B without dying or being maimed along the way. (Conan does a fair bit of it, for instance; so do the protagonists in LotR.)

If you want to play a RPG in which more time is spent worrying about random encounters with jermlaine than finding out whether or not the PCs can keep their promise to the dwarves to help them with the giants, well, no one's stopping you. But that sort of focus is not inherent in the idea of RPGing.

Why not give them both opportunities - the journey, and the events after they arrive?

The answer to this is simple: if everyone wants to play an encounter with giants, why would we bother spending time on a trip through the Underdark? (Or from DC to Tokyo. Or whatver.) If you like that stuff, then good for you - knock yourself out! But if the players want to go to where the giants are, then a quick narration is fine.

'Dead' or 'diseased' or 'separated from the group and lost' or 'down some significant gear including magic items' are more what I'd be checking for after a long Underdark journey

<snip>

'Down a healing surge' conveys nothing more to me than I didn't get a good night's sleep. It completely trivializes the risks and dangers of such a journey.

And you know this because . . .? What level are these PCs? How powerful are their healers? What other magic are they using? How heroic are the martial characters? And how long is it since they took an extended rest?

Aragorn didn't become dead, diseased or lost travelling through Moria. Nor did Pippin.

The original Underdark module, D1-D3, doesn't imply that the PCs will become dead, diseased or lost travelling from the fire giant dungeon to the Vault of the Drow.

There's so much assumption and projection in these comments, that they're very hard to take seriously as analysis of gaming techniques.

But do you ever tell them these wild tales?

irrelevant stuff is only irrelevant until it becomes relevant, and without it the scope of the 'world' is limited to only that which the PCs are directly interacting with.

Like I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just nonsense. I posted, upthread, an actual play account of the session in my main 4e game where the PCs were in the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. At one point, one of them had a vision of the tarrasque breaking out of the earth onto the surface of the world.

In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.

Just a handful of posts upthread, I posted an account of how the PCs in my BW game, while living in a tower in the Abor-Alz, heard tales of happenings in Hardby and in Urnst.

The PCs are not directly interacting with the tarrasque, or the Sorcerer-King and his assassins, or Hardby, or Urnst, and yet these things figure as part of the shared fiction!

And once you do, those rumours could instantly become adventure hooks!

In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure, the scope of the world is say, 7. You narrate 7, conveying the scope. We tell them 2+2+2+1 = 7, conveying depth about that scope, which gives it a different feel.



I've played 1e, 2e, 3e and 5e and never played a wargame when I did so. Not once.



Sure, but you do it without the same depth of scope that our style has. Fast forwarding from one major even to another has the effect of diminishing depth of the world in order to enhance depth of character. I'm not yet convinced that the trade-off is worth it. Our style can get some very good depth of character without sacrificing depth of world.

Horse potatoes.

I just completely disagree with you, there's no 'increased depth' to be had from playing in a pre-generated environment. I mean, there's no objective standard, IMNSHO, by which to measure such 'depth' anyway, so arguing about it is pointless. Even if we just talked about the # of hours of time put into thinking about setting, I've got 6 game participants doing that during play, which is going to make up for, I'm guessing, whatever hours you might possibly spend outside of play doing it yourself. On top of that I can always engage the players outside of table time too!

I might buy some kind of statement like "different playing styles may generate more or less exploration of different aspects of the world." Even then, I'm not strongly convinced that's an overwhelmingly true statement. It may be weakly true. Perhaps GMs who draw up world maps have a little more established geography, but does any more of it actually matter in play than in some Zero Myth game where its made up on the fly? Do NPCs and locations that the PCs never see make any difference or add some mysterious quality of depth? I don't think so. Maybe its true that some people create richer detailed worlds by pre-generation, and others do it with collaboration. Maybe that's true.

 

[pemerton]

The real difference is - are the players authoring the setting itself or are they just authoring the moves of their character. It's in character viewpoint play vs story creation play perhaps. I have no interest in authoring a story as a goal. I want to play a character and only operate through that characters eyes.

I feel that I have been around this topic before (at least a dozen times already upthread, I would guess).

In this thread I am talking about declaring actions "through the character's eyes". When I say As we travel along the river, I look out for any signs of fellow members of my order, that is an action declaration through my character's eyes. It is not an attempt to "author a story".

One way to answer my question is for the GM to just tell me. (Based on his/her notes, or his/her best guess, or his/her random rol, or whatever.) Another way is for me to make a Circles check, with the result of the check being binding on the GM as well as the player.

The second approach doesn't require me to step outside my character viewpoint anymore than rolling an attack die does.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]:

If the players declare, "We go to the giants' cave", and then the appropriate checks are resolved, and then the GM narrations "OK, you're at the giants' cave" that is not a railroad. The players weren't prevented from sneaking - they chose not to declare any stealth.

There are many ways to go to the giants. Let's see if your 3 your old can guess them all.

How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.

Furthermore, it shows yet more assumption that the game is a GM-driven one based on pre-authorship of stuff which the players are then expected to have told to them.

The dwaves, the giants and their caves - none of them are real. They have no real geography. It's all just story.

So if the only bit of the story that gets authored - because that's the only bit of the story anyone cares about it - we leave the dwarves, and arrive at the giants' cave - well, that's what it is.

If the players wanted a different story, they had the capacity to declare some different action. But they didn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The GM said "Your're heading off, right?" and - after the players replied "yes" - described them travelling through the Underdark. That was when the players knew they were approaching the giants, and that was the players' chance to say they wanted to be sneaky, if they wanted to be. In my exmample the players didn't say any such thing. From which we can infer that the didn't care to be sneaky.

(And how do you know they had no knowledge of the giants' territory? Where did I say that? Where did @AbdulAlhazred say that? Maybe the dwarves told them all about it - again, you're just making stuff up.)

There's no need to guess what the GM will do! The GM asked "Are you going to the giants", and they said "yes", so that's what is happening. A clever 3 year old could manage that guess!

And that's their informed decision - knowing that they have promised the dwaves to help with the giants, they go off to keep their promise?

And as I already asked - what makes you think they knew they were getting close to the giants' territory before they saw the cave? Why would there be signs of patrols? Everything you say here is framed in terms of a GM-driven railroad: the GM is railroading the players into a confrontation with the giants, but "telegraphs" by narrating signs of patrols, and other contrived evidence of "giant territory", so that the players can make "skilled play" choices that will optimise their chances in the forthcoming, GM-arranged confrontation with the giants.

But that is not the example the @AbdulAlhazred gave and I offered some elaboration of. That was an example of player-driven play. If the players want to fight giants, they don't need "warning" or "telegraphing" that they're facing giants. That's inherent in them expressing their desire. And - as I've already said many times - if they want to approach stealthily then that's up to them. Maybe they don't want to be!

I just want to add, the WHOLE EXAMPLE was something I made up out of my head as I was typing it, and I have a typing speed fast enough to jam an IBM Selectric (like 200WPM). I've been known to write BOOK LENGTH material in a day, end-to-end. So, TOPS 5 seconds went into that example, I mean, really, max 5 seconds.

It wasn't meant to be a recording of the entire dialog of a sequence of play. It was just an illustration of the concept of what might happen, described at a fairly high level with just enough detail to convey the general concept I was getting at. I don't think you should judge my (and probably not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s) entire technique based on this example.

Chances are, in actual play, the players would fiddle and digress and wrangle with the dwarves a bit, and ask questions, probably discuss some sort of plan, etc. If they really couldn't get ANY information on their objective then they'd probably start to outright consider what sort of additional measures they should take. Maybe they would send out word for anyone with intel, or ask the dwarves to scout ahead, or approach in a stealthy manner.

Now, mostly my players are guys and gals that cut their teeth on B1 hot off the presses and remember when the 1e MM hit the shelf and amazed us all with its hardcover goodness. So they're perhaps not representative of the degree of experience and adventurer-grade expertise of every group. They might also choose to RP being foolish or whatever, but my guess is they, and probably most other players, will ask questions and be proactive. I MOST SURELY will not get in the way of that! Certainly not in a D&D game. Maybe in Paranoia you sic the computer on them for being clever, but that's a bit different story...

 

[Maxperson]

Like I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just nonsense. I posted, upthread, an actual play account of the session in my main 4e game where the PCs were in the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. At one point, one of them had a vision of the tarrasque breaking out of the earth onto the surface of the world.

In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.

Just a handful of posts upthread, I posted an account of how the PCs in my BW game, while living in a tower in the Abor-Alz, heard tales of happenings in Hardby and in Urnst.

The PCs are not directly interacting with the tarrasque, or the Sorcerer-King and his assassins, or Hardby, or Urnst, and yet these things figure as part of the shared fiction!

In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.

Yes, and I found it really interesting how you said, "Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need although s/he is not (yet) interested in it." You've been chiding me for putting in things I think the player will find interesting, even though he's not interested in it yet, and there you go doing it yourself. This is like the third or fourth time you've asked me why I do something, implying your way is different, and then posted examples of you doing it, too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]:

If the players declare, "We go to the giants' cave", and then the appropriate checks are resolved, and then the GM narrations "OK, you're at the giants' cave" that is not a railroad. The players weren't prevented from sneaking - they chose not to declare any stealth.

How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.

Furthermore, it shows yet more assumption that the game is a GM-driven one based on pre-authorship of stuff which the players are then expected to have told to them.

The dwaves, the giants and their caves - none of them are real. They have no real geography. It's all just story.

So if the only bit of the story that gets authored - because that's the only bit of the story anyone cares about it - we leave the dwarves, and arrive at the giants' cave - well, that's what it is.

If the players wanted a different story, they had the capacity to declare some different action. But they didn't.

I'll go further, there ARE many ways to the giant's cave, as many as the players choose to invoke! If the action declaration was "Lets find a way to sneak into the Giant's Cave by the back door" then, you guessed it... (actually maybe there isn't a back door, maybe they fail their dungeoneering check on that one and end up in the Cave of the Flumphs.

 

[Maxperson]

How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.

Making up facts, sure. Right off the bat I can think of, 1) going to the giants at a normal pace, 2) going to the giants at a fast pace, 3) going to the giants at a stealthy pace, 4) going to the giants at a normal rate until we get close, then being stealth, 5) going to the giants at a fast, pace, then being stealthy, and so on. There are many ways to go to the giants.