The Art and Science of Worldbuilding For Gameplay [+]

[Krachek]

The harder to create are NPcs and organization with flaws and incompetence.
Flaws and incompetence are the key to provide an environment for good adventure.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I keep meaning to pick up Spire.

Spire is excellent. From a worldbuilding perspective, it’s just amazing. Just idea after idea on every page.

 

[pemerton]

If you want to use adventure as a metagame term for any events that occur to PCs, that makes sense.

So just to be clear - the metagame term for metagame terms is jargon?

 

[pemerton]

Seems very limited to me.

Here's what I get from Oxford Languages via Google:

an unusual and exciting or daring experience.
"her recent adventures in Italy"

excitement associated with danger or the taking of risks.
"she travelled the world in search of adventure"

a reckless or potentially hazardous action or enterprise.
"in any military adventure, the first casualty is truth"​

Cambridge gives:

an unusual, exciting, and possibly dangerous activity, such as a trip or experience, or the excitement produced by such an activity​

The key idea of an adventure is a departure from the usual, that courts danger and generates excitement. Not all RPGing, and not all FRPGing, is about adventure.

 

[pemerton]

Worldbuilding enriches gameplay, it does not limit it.

I don't see the contradiction that you do.

 

[pemerton]

And to add, what Im speaking to as a problem with the idea that worldbuilding is meant to "limit" gameplay, is that it is missing the point of why constraints are valuable in games, and conflating it with how the world the game exists in is built.

It seems self evident to say that any definition (setting or system) is going to limit gameplay in the sense that we are not (and never have been) talking about a completely unbounded form of play. We knew from the outset, if by context alone, that we were talking about TTRPGs (it is right there next to the title of the thread). Therefore, it seems like a non sequitur at best to have this discussion in this thread.

What might be a valuable discussion is how to use boundaries developed in world building to enhance gameplay by reinforcing the things that the game in question (whatever it may be) does well.

"Spire: The City Must Fall" is a game that's about society, inequality, oppression, and revolution and its cost. It's a game about espionage, subterfuge, and resistance.

There are several worldbuilding choices made to reinforce those themes. The game takes place in the eponymous Spire, a mile high city of unknown origin (called an Arcology, of which there are several others in the world) that once belonged to the Drow, but has now been taken over by the high-elves, or Aelfir. The Aelfir rule the city and the Drow, using them for labor, entertainment, and conscripting many to fight in a war against the Gnolls of Far Nujab. Some Gnolls have made their way to Spire, as have many Humans, who are curious by nature and tend to tinker with the Arcologies like Spire and other technological remnants.

Of those racial options, the game requires that all PCs be Drow. This is a choice to help focus the themes of the game by making the players take on the roles of those for whom they're most relevant.

The PCs are also members of a secret cabal devoted to resisting Aelfir rule, the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress. This puts them directly into situations that will require espionage and resistance. They’re meant to actively involve themselves in resisting high-elf rule.

The phrase "limit on gameplay" was used upthread by another poster - maybe @Reynard - and doesn't seem to me to be especially magical. "Constraint" and "restriction" seems like synonyms for "limit in this context.

Anyway, the example of Spire is interesting - we have a limit on gameplay that flows from the setting (the only character are High Elves, Drow, Gnolls and humans) and we have an additional limit on gameplay that is imposed in order to generate a certain sort of playable situation (all PCs are Drow who are members of a secret cabal).

Prince Valiant has a similar structure - the setting is the world of Prince Arthur as portrayed by Hal Foster in his Prince Valiant comic strip (so the only characters are various sorts of faux-mediaeval humans), and the game places an additional limit on gameplay in order to generate easily playable situations (all PCs must be knights). The "advanced game" relaxes the additional limit, but with advice about the risks to playability of doing so. There is no relaxing, though, of the rule that although the setting contains some sorcerers, players may not play them.

Deciding in advance where the secret ways in and out of buildings are is a different way of placing limits on situations, in order to generate a certain sort of play. I'm surprised that this is controversial!

 

[Emberashh]

"Constraint" and "restriction" seems like synonyms for "limit in this context.

Your confusion stems from you not engaging that we aren't trying to dispute this. We're telling you that constraints are a part of gameplay and that nothing that is a part of gameplay can limit it.

Idk if you're just getting confused because you can't understand how a constraint can exist within a system but not limit that system, which as noted earlier is not intuitive, or if you're just not following the conversation at all.

You keep trying to reiterate whatever point you're trying to make but you're not really engaging with us by doing that; you're just talking at us and not really demonstrating you're trying to understand the points that have been provided.

 

[pemerton]

Your confusion stems from you not engaging that we aren't trying to dispute this. We're telling you that constraints are a part of gameplay and that nothing that is a part of gameplay can limit it.

Idk if you're just getting confused because you can't understand how a constraint can exist within a system but not limit that system, which as noted earlier is not intuitive, or if you're just not following the conversation at all.

You keep trying to reiterate whatever point you're trying to make but you're not really engaging with us by doing that; you're just talking at us and not really demonstrating you're trying to understand the points that have been provided.

I have gone back and reviewed the posts.

First, there was this:

If all your world is filled in, maybe some people feel that's limiting the direction of gameplay. At a minimum, the stuff that never matters to gameplay doesn't seem as though it's adding to it.

Then this reply:

I am not sure how this would occur.

And I explained how it would occur. As best I can tell, @prabe agrees with me at least in broad terms. So I feel I have at least understood his point correctly!

If you want to assert that nothing in a setting can limit gameplay because it is inherent to the gameplay to be limited by the setting, knock yourself out! But I don't think that such metaphysical pondering is at all responsive to @prabe's much more practically-oriented point.

 

[MichaelSomething]

It's easy to substitute money for time. You don't have to write up stuff if you don't want to.

You can just buy pre made towns/events/NPCs/etc. until you had enough.

On the higher end, I could spend up to two thousand dollars buying physical stuff on Golarion. Out of all the adventure paths, setting guides, mini books, or whatever, I would have more then enough setting material for PCs no matter where they go.

On the cheaper end, there's humble bundle and other product grab bags. With a hundred dollars and some patience, I could stock pile a life times' worth of setting material.

 

[Voadam]

It's easy to substitute money for time. You don't have to write up stuff if you don't want to.

You can just buy pre made towns/events/NPCs/etc. until you had enough.

On the higher end, I could spend up to two thousand dollars buying physical stuff on Golarion. Out of all the adventure paths, setting guides, mini books, or whatever, I would have more then enough setting material for PCs no matter where they go.

On the cheaper end, there's humble bundle and other product grab bags. With a hundred dollars and some patience, I could stock pile a life times' worth of setting material.

There are also free wikis for a lot of stuff like Golarion or the Forgotten Realms or others with a lot of material if you want to go lore heavy and free.