Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[hawkeyefan]

"Setting Tourism" would more likely be a frequent symptom of excess.

The problem is that your definition of 'worldbuilding' makes the term so broad that the term is simultaneously rendered virtually meaningless. It reminds me of Schopenhauer's criticism of pantheism: "to call the world 'God' is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'world'." In this case, however, it is about the term 'worldbuilding,' where you seemingly take it to mean "everything inside and outside of a game," in which 'worldbuilding' becomes synonymous and superfluous with 'fiction' or 'creative writing.'

But again, in so doing, it seems as your primary motivator for making "worldbuilding" so vaguely broad and meaningless is to protect "worldbuilding" from any and all reproach.

Not to speak for Maxperson, but as someone who also holds a broader view of worldbuilding, I absolutely understand your point and I agree with it. It is an incredibly broad way to view the term.

It's clear from the OP and most of the rest of the thread that the criticism is actually about worldbuilding to excess. This seems a perfectly valid criticism, in my opinion. I even share it. I think it's been established at this point that most people agree.

But what constitutes excessive is what varies. For some, anything beyond the bare minimum needed to grant context to a monster stat block seems to be excessive. For others, it's anything that won't actually come up in play. For others, it's excessive when the material in question becomes the focus of the game regardless of player interest. This is probably where I would come in. To me, it's a tail wagging the dog situation.

If the game serves the worldbuilding rather than the worldbuilding serving the game, that's a problem.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And, this is why I have such a problem with your definition [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]. You're including STORY in world building? Seriously? That's plot. That's not world building AT ALL. Basically, you're trying to say that every single thing committed to paper is world building. Heck, you've even included character here as well with "inhabitants". That's far, far too broad of a definition of world building.

I got say, I think your definition of world building is far too narrow. I don't know any GM who doesn't include the creation of characters in the setting as a basic element of world building. Cities, towns, dungeons, other locations, cultures, NPCs, groups, institutions, history, etc; these are all part of world building. How deep you need to go, is totally up to you. Everyone is different. But world building has a definite use in game. Even things that don't come up, but could, are helpful to create a world that feels a bit more real (otherwise the setting can feel like a set in a movie studio, where a parking lot exists beyond that wall or curtain). And all that stuff can be very useful. Knowing what is important to locals in a given area in terms of survival and economy, gives you very important motivations for why people even leave their village to do things like seek out adventurers. Understanding how institutions work also is important for similar reasons (what officials would PCs deal with in this case? what powers do they have? what rewards can they offer in this society?). Again, you don't have to go any more deep than you need on this stuff, but a lot of these are things that may never emerge in play. When they do, that information is very useful to have on hand or in your memory. And it makes great fuel for building adventures.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Your second sentence fails to provide convincing support in favor for your first sentence as it does little to dissuade that your definition is not superfluous, redundant, and synonymous to the process of creative writing or fiction-making.

This is a bad argument. Do you seriously need him to support the assertion that broad does not equate to meaningless?. Because by any rational definition of those words, they have distinct meanings. I think the onus is on you to prove his definition is meaningless. You didn't. You simply asserted it.

Either way, this isn't a logic class. We're speaking in plain language and expressing opinions here. We don't need to construct syllogisms for teacher.

 

[Aldarc]

This is a bad argument. Do you seriously need him to support the assertion that broad does not equate to meaningless?. Because by any rational definition of those words, they have distinct meanings. I think the onus is on you to prove his definition is meaningless. You didn't. You simply asserted it.

Either way, this isn't a logic class. We're speaking in plain language and expressing opinions here. We don't need to construct syllogisms for teacher.

His statement "broad does not mean meaningless" is a bad argument when that is not what I said, but I'm so glad that you failed to pick up on that, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]. I think the onus is on you to actually read.

 

[Bedrockgames]

His statement "broad does not mean meaningless" is a bad argument when that is not what I said, but I'm so glad that you failed to pick up on that, @Bedrockgames. I think the onus is on you to actually read.

I am struggling to understand what you meant then. His first sentence was "Broad does not mean meaningless" when you accused him of having a definition of world building so broad, it became meaningless. You then said his second sentence didn't support his first. I am assuming what you wanted from him was a sentence that helped prove his case that broad does not mean meaningless. If you meant something else, that is fine. I am not trying to pin you to something you didn't intend. My main point was we are getting lost in the thickets of minutiae and definitions (which I think this exchange helps demonstrate).

Mainly what I am taking issue with is the definition game people are playing in these threads. Every step of the way people are redefining words, and narrowing them down to points that don't really match how I see them getting used at the table, in regular conversations with gamers etc. If you are going to take language away from people in a discussion, number one, you just confuse things, number two, people will react negatively. I think people can reasonably quibble over whether 'adventures' are part of world building. But I don't think you can remove basic stuff like characters from world building.

 

[Lanefan]

See, that's the thing though. It doesn't need to be. Back in the day, you had the town and you had the dungeon. That was it.

To be fair, while the town and dungeon might have been the only things written up in the module there was always an assumption that there was more "out there", if for no other reason than most of the early dungeons were either implicitly or explicitly set in either Greyhawk or Blackmoor (or City State... for Judges' Guild stuff).

There was no real attempt to create a functional world (which is the goal of world building)

The authors of the modules already by and large had a setting behind them and so they didn't need to (re-)create it. That they didn't refer to it much if at all in the modules (notable exception: X1 Isle of Dread) just left each DM free to use her own ideas for what filled in the blank bits between dungeon sites.

and it wasn't even remotely expected that you would.

Unless you were running a campaign set entirely in a single mega-dungeon, some worldbuilding would end up being inevitable as the campaign went along. Sure, you could keep it to a minimum if you liked, but it would still be there:

- what's the terrain etc. like between the Hill Giant Steading and the Glacial Rift?
- the Village of Hommlet doesn't have the supplies we need, where else can we go to acquire them?
- where is Restenford (L1 Bone Hill's town) in relation to the borderlands keep?

And so on....

IOW, you certainly don't need a world to run a campaign. Particularly if you run episodic campaigns. It's just completely unnecessary.

Only until you hit questions like my examples above; and those questions can be self-asked by the DM or asked of a DM by the players.

Obviously you don't need volumes of work to give the answers you need, but you need something - even just a knocked-off map on a scrap of paper.

Lanefan

 

[Bedrockgames]

To be fair, while the town and dungeon might have been the only things written up in the module there was always an assumption that there was more "out there", if for no other reason than most of the early dungeons were either implicitly or explicitly set in either Greyhawk or Blackmoor (or City State... for Judges' Guild stuff).

Lanefan

Whenever I ran published material, I always assumed maps were just a sketch of the things the writer considered important for that particular book, but that there was more there. If you look at most world maps for TSR in the 90s for instance, there would be enormous gaps between cities and towns. I always fleshed out the areas in between. Heck, when I make my own published world maps, it is assumed there is more there, but you give the GM room to work with.

 

[pemerton]

What makes it worldbuilding (albeit modest) when Gygax does it, but not worldbuilding when another DM decides to introduce that monster for that same reason?

Introducing an otyugh for the same reason - ie specifying that, in such-and-such a place an otyugh is to be found performing sanitation services - would be worldbuilding (on a similarly modest scale).

I was contrasting actually describing a part of the gameworld as including an otyugh with writing up a monster description that includes notes about the ecological role that otyught's serve. I don't think that the latter is worldbuidling.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] regards writing up a monster desctiption which says "this monster is/was a servant of this other monster" as worlduilding (eg kobolds as slaves of dragons). I don't think I agree: the AD&D MM tells me that hobgbolins hate elves, that goblins hate gnomes, etc, but I don't really see that as worldbuidlding either.

That said, maybe the difference is this: hobgoblins hate elves doesn't mean that if you use hobgoblins you have to use elves; it just means that if you don't use elves you have a "gap" in your account of hobgoblins (they have no one to hate). Whereas kobolds typically serve as slaves to dragons tends to imply that if there are kobolds, there are also dragons. So using a kobold commits you also to using a dragon. I can see how that's more like wordlbuilding.

Using an otyugh commits you to there being refuse - but that's hardly anything specific about a world at all, and so I don't think that using an otyugh is, per se, worldbuilding beyond the bare fact of the otyugh being there.

 

[Tony Vargas]

His first sentence was "Broad does not mean meaningless" when you accused him of having a definition of world building so broad, it became meaningless.

We're talking about an aspect of writing (be it fiction or RPGs), if you broaden the definition to include the whole thing, well, it's become meaningless. It's a neat way of building a defense, you can't say 'world building' is bad if 'world building' is part of everything that makes an RPG, well, exist, because then you're just arguing that all RPGs are bad...

...which, come to think of it, would still be a tenable argument. Darn.

...hm... maybe I'll try again later...

To be fair, while the town and dungeon might have been the only things written up in the module there was always an assumption that there was more "out there"...

...could we, perhaps, break out world-implication from world-building?

IDK.

 

[Bedrockgames]

We're talking about an aspect of writing (be it fiction or RPGs), if you broaden the definition to include the whole thing, well, it's become meaningless. It's a neat way of building a defense, you can't say 'world building' is bad if 'world building' is part of everything that makes an RPG, well, exist, because then you're just arguing that all RPGs are bad...
.

I think we keep stumbling into this somehow. People use a word for what it generally means in the hobby, then it gets labeled so broad it encompasses all of roleplaying. I am not really sure how we can proceed here. World building naturally includes characters and groups. All the things I listed. I think the only questionable entries on his list were adventures and stories. But characters, groups, locations, history, culture, institutions, etc. That is pretty much a given and a very basic aspect of world building. If you are ignoring all those things that belong to world building, to argue that world building isn't useful, then you are not making a real argument against world building. Further, if you are arguing that world building=excessive world building. I don't think that is much of an argument either. The reason people are reacting so strongly to this notion by the way, is world building is incredibly useful to most GMs. From my own experience, how much fun and easy to run a given session or campaign is, is almost always directly proportional to the amount of world building I invest into it.

I think what people are arguing is "At what point is world building unneccessary or counter productive.". I think the answer to that really depends on your needs as a GM and the needs of your group. But most people probably want enough world building to give a sense of depth to the world, without having too much content that it becomes unwieldy (or at least having content easy to find during play).

Personally I think arguments against world building as navel gazing, while they can definitely apply well to fiction, apply less well to gaming. Because in gaming that stuff under the surface that may or may not come up or be relevant, is incredibly important.