Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[eayres33]

There are fairly well-established ways of handling this sort of RPGing without worldbuilding.

Can you share your insight, on these well-established ways. I don't expect you to actually detail but perhaps a link. I know its alot to ask because we all should know, but it may help your point.

 

[eayres33]

Well, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is on record as not enjoying LotR for much the same reasons he doesn't care to read the dragon turtle's backstory. But also, I think implicit in [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s comment is the suggestion that setting background in RPG books is not inspirational literature on a par with JRRT or REH or whichver fantasy author one prefers.

Certainly, for my part, if I want to read a story I will do that. If I want a set of RPG rules, I will acquire those. I want my RPG rules to be inspirational, but inspirational of play. I want rules that, when I read them, inspire me to imagine moments of play that might occur at my table. (Eg because of the sorts of situations they will allow me to frame, because of how they handle resolution, etc.) I don't want to pick up a RPG rulebook and find myself reading a second-rate short story. (I would put the Essentials books for 4e in this category, and also quite a bit of The Plane Below and The Plane Above.)

That's nice, and while I in general agree, I would like my main rule books to be setting neutral, I know most don't, and I know this because almost every single popular TTRPG writes a setting into their core rule book. Now I may not want that to be true, much like I would like to have enough money to not have to punch into work, or worry about bills, but these are all things I recognize as part of the real world, so I deal with them.

 

[eayres33]

Its not free! This is a commercial product, so if I paid for it, then I paid for all that excess verbiage that I won't use, INSTEAD of getting something valuable, like 500 words here and 2k words there about additional encounter locations and other elements of that sort which I COULD probably use.

Of course it's not free, unless you stole it, but you didn't have to buy it. There are many reviews of an official product before it is released, and if you wait a week or two there are plenty of player's/DM's that have given an Amazon review, so if you pay for something you don't want that's on you.

 

[pemerton]

deleted double post

 

[pemerton]

From other threads you seem to point out the difference between a player presenting a situation in a passive voice, asking. Versus saying what they are doing and thus making the GM rule.

You either are mistaking me for someone else, or have misunderstood something I've posted. I've never posted on the issue that you describe, and don't care what sorts of words, person, tense, mood, voice, etc players use to declare actions.

Maxperson did not present a when did stop beating your wife situation, he was calling out Hussar for not phrasing his objections in a clear way.

Maxperson congratulated Hussar for finally conceding that worldbuilding need not involve planets; when Hussar had never suggested that it must, indeed had said nothing at all about planets. Hussar's "concession" was purely something imputed by Maxperson.

Can you share your insight, on these well-established ways. I don't expect you to actually detail but perhaps a link. I know its alot to ask because we all should know, but it may help your point.

I thought that this thread, and the other active worldbuilding thread, had canvassed them in some detail.

Here's a link to a discussion of what the blogger calls "no myth"; and here's a link to Christopher Kubasik's "interactive toolkit" articles from the mid-90s.

 

[darkbard]

First this:

Wow, could you be more offensive or condescending in one forum post?

Then these:

if you want to take a crap over the authors who spent their time for very little money to write that setting you can, but I’m not rubber stamping that BS.

Can you share your insight, on these well-established ways. I don't expect you to actually detail but perhaps a link. I know its alot to ask because we all should know, but it may help your point.

Do you not see the offense and condescension in your own posts?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Its not free! This is a commercial product, so if I paid for it, then I paid for all that excess verbiage that I won't use, INSTEAD of getting something valuable, like 500 words here and 2k words there about additional encounter locations and other elements of that sort which I COULD probably use.

Sure, that’s a valid point. But at the same time, I would think that people buying Dragon Magazine wouldn’t be all that surprised to find a variety of content within. I have my fair share of issues of it and Dungeon, but never really purchased either one regularly. Part of the reason is that i knew any given issue may only offer me a little bit of material to use. So I’d grab one now and again when they seemed to offer something that I knew would be up my alley. Occasionally, I’d find some unexpected inspiration in the kind of article I’d usually avoid.

So I get the preference....people like what they like, and use what they like in their game. But the expectation is what seems odd to me. Something like Dragon Magazine is already a niche product. They can’t further limit their potential audience by focusing on a subsection of their niche audience.

 

[TwoSix]

Do you not see the offense and condescension in your own posts?

It can be difficult to spot, what with the beams in the eye making it more difficult.

 

[Sunseeker]

But,
is dead on target. I'm not reading the Monster Manual for enjoyment. I'm reading it because I need a critter to eat my PC's. I don't know about anyone else, but, I generally start writing the adventure first, and then populate that adventure with critters. "Hey, there's a hole over here, let's chuck an Otyugh in here. Oh, wizard's storage room, what kind of weird goodies can I have crawl out of that box?

I've never gone the other way - "Hrm, this bit of backstory about this monster is really interesting, let's write an entire adventure around this". I've certainly taken novels and short stories that I've read and turned them into adventures. But, the Monster Manual has almost never led to anything in play.

Do people just not read very much?

I don't think the MM is really aimed at experienced game-masters, to be honest. I don't even use the stat blocks and tend to conclude that I just spend $50 on an art-book. I suspect someone is probably inspired by the flavor of the monsters in the book. I buy the book for the art, you buy it for the stats, I'm sure someone buys it for the fluff. If nothing else, the little fluff block can provide a new DM unfamiliar with the history of the creature or D&D, some guidelines on how to situate a Dragon Turtle in their games. And for people with lower-levels of inspired ideas floating around in their heads (again due to their newness to the material) it may provide some exciting inspiration.

And to your final question: no, I think a lot of people in this day and age expect their information to be very sound-bytey. Compressed into relevant chunks of information that can be quickly assimilated.

But then, I don't really think the fluff that comes along in the Monster Manual is quite the same as the setting lore that comes in a Campaign Book. For example: when I run Ravenloft, I care nothing for the mechanics of the monsters, what is entirely important is getting the right feel and style to the campaign, which is 100% from those fluff nuggets. And in that context, I most certainly have used elements of the fluff as jumping-off points to spin new adventures within the setting (and without) and alter certain elements of the game (such as removing the Raven-kin and revamping their related religion to one based around the Raven Queen).

As was also mentioned, some folks enjoy being authorities on setting lore (see: Star Trek or Star Wars fans and those setting lore books). And I think some players also expect the DM to be a setting authority. The latter is a place I always struggle with in campaigns because I like to leave my homebrew worlds fairly open until its absolutely necessary to have specific information about parts of them, but there's always that guy​....

Also in your mentioning of the Dragon Turtle I thought it would be interesting to have Dragon Turtles based on different types of real turtles, which then took my mind to silly places (not Camelot but NYC) and I thought up Teenage Mutant Ninja Dragon Turtles. And the fact that Pathfinder has both a Ninja class and a Kappa race, and I have an upcoming Pathfinder game, I thought it ought to fun to include some little side-adventure related to TMN Dragon Turtles. No, the fluff in the book had nothing to do with this. But again, I doubt you or I are really the target for the little block of fluff in the book.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, @Hussar is on record as not enjoying LotR for much the same reasons he doesn't care to read the dragon turtle's backstory. But also, I think implicit in @Hussar's comment is the suggestion that setting background in RPG books is not inspirational literature on a par with JRRT or REH or whichver fantasy author one prefers.

Certainly, for my part, if I want to read a story I will do that. If I want a set of RPG rules, I will acquire those. I want my RPG rules to be inspirational, but inspirational of play. I want rules that, when I read them, inspire me to imagine moments of play that might occur at my table. (Eg because of the sorts of situations they will allow me to frame, because of how they handle resolution, etc.) I don't want to pick up a RPG rulebook and find myself reading a second-rate short story. (I would put the Essentials books for 4e in this category, and also quite a bit of The Plane Below and The Plane Above.)

IMHO there are two problems with game publisher published setting material. 1) There are maybe 100 guys out there putting out these things, and they've been doing it for 30 years. There are 1000s, maybe 10s of 1000s of fantasy authors, and they and their predecessors have been cranking this stuff out for FIVE THOUSAND YEARS. What we have available to us today is the creme of a vast crop of fantasy material (and basically the same argument goes with other genres). I mean, sure, there's STILL a lot of junk out there, I've read some complete garbage, and most of the FR novels and such generally fall into that category too.

Still, if I want high quality imagination to be inspired by, I'm FAR FAR better off to go to the shelves of my library's fantasy section than to drivethrurpg.com. No offense to anyone who's putting out RPG material, there certainly IS some good material, but proportionately its hard to find anything that holds a candle to anything in Gygax's much vaunted Appendix N (and that's a very tiny sample of some of the good stuff).

2) Now, when it comes to actual adventures and such, well then I can't buy one written by Robert Silverberg, more is the pity, but at least I can get something competently put together by someone who has some understanding of RPGs. Even then though it probably is only useful if I take it apart and use the bits. Still, I can do as well as they can in that department, and with the right game mechanics it isn't even hard (4e, your great selling point!).