What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nah, it isn't a distraction it is rather central to that feeling I was referring to, for a lot of players. For a lot of players if the world feels too amorphous that feeling is gone, the more it seems like the world is fully formed in a person's mind/notes, etc. the less likely it is to be disrupted.



Yep, that's an action declaration. If it seems like action declarations are impacting the world in any sense other than what a PC attempting those actions would, then it can get in the way of that feeling, if it doesn't then it won't.



Ideally (for that feeling), it does, yeah. That feeling relies on some sort of consistency and understanding of the other world. Just as the written rules of the game can work to provide that sort of framework, so too can the GM or the table, they can even override or add to the system rules to facilitate it.

Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?

Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?

I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play).

That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.

 

[Maxperson]

Gah. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you drug me back into this. I shan't forgive you.

You may call me Threadfather. ::queues up the violin music::

 

[happyhermit]

Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?

It looks like you are quoting me with 'logically more consistent' but I don't actually see where I said that in the post you quoted

Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?

Uhm, I didn't say it can't and I never said there aren't. You don't seem to be addressing what I actually wrote.

I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play).

Then I would argue your entire premise seems based on some biased assumptions.

That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.

That's like saying "When the driver is fully engaged with driving ie; on the racetrack or trying to avoid a collision, then the need for viewing the scenery disappears rapidly." Can certain games or playstyles encourage or discourage some aspects of the experience? Of course they can, but that is anything but inherently positive or negative. My experience is that for many players, regardless of how engaged in a plot they are, they still want that feeling.

 

[pemerton]

For a lot of players if the world feels too amorphous that feeling is gone, the more it seems like the world is fully formed in a person's mind/notes, etc. the less likely it is to be disrupted.

<snip>

If it seems like action declarations are impacting the world in any sense other than what a PC attempting those actions would, then it can get in the way of that feeling, if it doesn't then it won't.

<snip>

That feeling relies on some sort of consistency and understanding of the other world.

There is nothing "amorphous" or "inconsistent" about a setting established in the course of play, including action resolution. And a world of that sort need not be particularly hard to understand.

The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.

 

[pemerton]

Eero neither endorses nor rejects secret backstory. But some of the games he refers to, as illustrating his preferred approach, do. For instance, there is the following from DitV, under the heading "Actively Reveal the Town in Play" (pp 137-38 ):

The town you’ve made has secrets. It has, quite likely, terrible secrets — blood and sex and murder and damnation.

But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things - that you can’t wait to share. . . .​

I understand that's what he was using them for, which is why I'm using them to point out that they also apply quite well for the exact opposite.

I'm not really sure how deciding that there is no secret door in place X, and then not telling the players that until they (i) declare moves that get their PC to place X, and (ii) decide to search for a secret door there, counts as having cool things that ou can't wait to share!

I'm happy to allow that, for some people, the absence of a secret door is a cool thing. But how is this an instance of being unable to wait to share it?

sometimes my cool stuff lays dormant for years

So it seems like you can wait to share it.

I'm really puzzled how you think what Vincent Baker says is apropos to your approach to GMing. It seems that he is putting forward something quite different from what you enjoy.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I'm not really sure how deciding that there is no secret door in place X, and then not telling the players that until they (i) declare moves that get their PC to place X, and (ii) decide to search for a secret door there, counts as having cool things that ou can't wait to share!

I'm happy to allow that, for some people, the absence of a secret door is a cool thing. But how is this an instance of being unable to wait to share it?

So it seems like you can wait to share it.

I'm really puzzled how you think what Vincent Baker says is apropos to your approach to GMing. It seems that he is putting forward something quite different from what you enjoy.

Perhaps because “cool” depends on context? Just because I think of something that I think might be cool doesn’t make it so until the context makes it so. At which point I share it.

Nor am I saying that every tiny event or aspect is cool. It’s the collection of events, created and/or compiled at the table that is important.

Part of what’s cool is exploration, discovering things, reacting to challenges (or really, what the reaction to the challenge is). Part of what we find cool is a believable, immersive world. Worldbuilding helps do that.

I’m more interested in the experience at the table. And as a DM I take the responsibility of fostering that experience seriously. My players are also interested in the experience. I have a couple that enjoy the theory of RPG games, as well as designing mechanics and we discuss and work on these things quite a bit. The rest don’t care about the mechanics, the techniques, etc. it’s all about the experience to them.

So I’ll use any approach and technique that will help me best do that. Part of that is communicating with the players to understand better what they like. What their expectations are, and working to meet those expectations.

Drawing a map of a keep that includes secret doors, and identifies where they are and aren’t is simply a tool. They might never search for a secret door, in which case it’s irrelevant. Or they do, and they find there isn’t one. That’s a point in the overall evening that together shares something cool (hopefully). Last week, I had perhaps 15% input into the night’s session. The majority of the time I was a spectator, and an occasional reference when they had a question. Every once in a while I’d jump in with a clarification or correction regarding something about the world. Otherwise, it was almost entirely the PCs discussing things, sharing information, debating their options, and making plans.

A good part of what I provided was prior to the session, to help a player integrate a new character into the world. As this character is from a part of the world that we had not previously discussed, I provided a combination of general things that were fixed, and possibilities based on those and what I knew of their character and relationships to the existing campaign. This was one way that I shared material that had been secret. Some of it was published, some I prepared, and much that we made up in the spot. And much of that morphed when it actually entered the game at the session.

The bottom line is that it’s not about every little think I think of. If that were the case I’d just write a book. For me it’s about working the cool ideas I have into the flow of the game with the cool ideas they have. We have different frameworks (world vs. character/family for example) but those are soft, moveable lines. Notes, maps, identifying things like where secret doors are help me do that better. It gives me time to think things through, and then during the session if I decide to add (or remove) a secret door, that’s fine.

The purpose is the same - to share cool things. We just go about it differently.

Baseball, basketball, and football all provide entertainment, fantasy games, and an exciting “product” to their fans. The details of how they do it are all different. That you (or he) might have a different process for sharing cool things doesn’t alter the fact that it’s what we are both trying to do. His goal and mine are the same, we just use a different approach to achieve it.

 

[happyhermit]

There is nothing "amorphous" or "inconsistent" about a setting established in the course of play, including action resolution. And a world of that sort need not be particularly hard to understand.

Hopefully by accident, you took that line out of it's context and missed the entire point. It was referring to external modification.

The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.

Are you sure you aren't trying to get this wrong because you don't like it? Either way you are totally off base. It's not about telling a story, it's about a world. Describing a forest at a particular moment in time isn't telling a story, right? You aren't using some definition of the word I haven't heard of? If the PCs decide to cut down a bunch of trees and build a cabin, that could be a story, right?

Could the GM "tell a story" sure, maybe through an NPC recollecting something they saw or an old parchment recalling some great battle or betrayal, is this not possible in a "no myth" game? Either way it is by no means central to the feeling I was describing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?

That's the thing about feelings, they can be pretty subjective & contextual. If you've gamed a lot using one technique, defended it against undue criticisms a lot, and become invested in it and proprietary about it, you can turn around and be just as unduly critical of any alternative. And, part of that will be the unique, irreproducible, 'feel' you get from it. (What? Try something else? Blasphemy!)

Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?

As long as something, once added, isn't just forgotten or contradicted, sure - and as long as the addition isn't too suspect nor redolent of implausible retro-active continuity, of course.

when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.

IDK about /more/ interesting... it depends on the players. Some can be sucked into the engagement of participating in that way, others like to feel like they're exploring and uncovering something that's "already there" in some (albeit, ultimately illusory) sense.

The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.

That sort of 'setting tourism' would be the arguably-dysfunctional extreme of a focus on world-building. But you can delve pretty deeply into building a world and running a game within it, without taking it that far.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?

Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?

I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play).

That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.

You're backsliding into claims of superiority rather than advocacy. Just a note, if you care, that saying things like 'proves to be more interesting to most players, ' even if caveated by an IME, is a claim of style superiority, and one not backed by anything other than your opinion. So, too, is calling the other viewpoint 'two dimensional thinking' and implying that you're engaged in three dimensional, and therefore better, thinking.

To the larger point, narrativist style games require a large conceptual hurdle to be overcome, at which point it clicks and you understand that most of the traditionalist arguments against really don't apply. The problem, at that point, is being able to vault back over the hurdle and see that many of the narrativist criticism of traditional player also don't really apply. It's apples and oranges, chess and checkers. The concepts and points of play are arranged differently and given different weights, so trying to judge the other style using your style weighting is going to end up being incorrect, and it's not a matter of 2-D vs 3-D thinking -- one isn't a dimension superior. Rather, it's more like X-axis vs Y-axis thinking, different, one has trouble understanding the other, but one isn't superior to the other. Actually, I like this, as most arguments in this thread really seem to boil down to 'but you only have 1 value! No, I don't, you do!' which is appropriate because a horizontal line has only 1 value on the Y axis, and vice versa.

Regardless of my own opinions of my cleverness, it occurs that the argument about no-myth vs myth games is that there are things missing in the analysis. Most myth in games is there to set up theme and conflicts, yes? Well, as [MENTION=43157]caliburn[/MENTION] notes, this role is taken over by the player backstory and goals in no-myth play, meaning that the role of establishing themes and conflict exists in both systems, it's just a matter of who has authority in which parts. Traditional play has the GM authority in establishing this and narrativist allows player authority. After that, the DM still has authority to set scenes and the players still have action authority in both. But, the role of myth in the game is the same between the two, it's just who gets to introduce it. That can have huge difference in play, sure, but it's a bit premature to claim that no-myth play really is no-myth; it uses a different arrangement of authority to generate the myth that the game operates by. All games are, then, at best, low myth, because players establish myth for the game before play starts through their backstories and goals/traits/flaws.

Hopefully, discussing the relative benefits as each sees them of these two models without yelling back and forth over which has myth and which doesn't might prove more fruitful.

 

[Maxperson]

Hopefully by accident, you took that line out of it's context and missed the entire point. It was referring to external modification.

Are you sure you aren't trying to get this wrong because you don't like it? Either way you are totally off base. It's not about telling a story, it's about a world. Describing a forest at a particular moment in time isn't telling a story, right? You aren't using some definition of the word I haven't heard of? If the PCs decide to cut down a bunch of trees and build a cabin, that could be a story, right?

Could the GM "tell a story" sure, maybe through an NPC recollecting something they saw or an old parchment recalling some great battle or betrayal, is this not possible in a "no myth" game? Either way it is by no means central to the feeling I was describing.

At this point I'm convinced that it's not an accident. He seems to have a strong need to misportray our playstyle. Has he told you that how you run your game is like a choose your own adventure book yet?