Forked from "An Epiphany" thread: Is World Building "Necessary"?

[Hussar]

So you determine what is "above and beyond" what is "required" by the game... and here I thought each persons game was a unique thing, if not in all ways at least in some. How do you know your PC's won't decide that a Thieve's Guild is the perfect place to get some info from? Or to get a loan for better equipment? Or even to take over? (NOTE: My Pc's have decided to do each of these things at one time or another and didn't necessarily tell me before game that was their plan.) That's the problem with pre-determining what is necessary or required as a general thing. In my game the Thieve's Guild isn't a story it is a situation which can and might be interacted with in any way the PC's might decide to. It actually empowers their creativity by offering another option to interact with in the game.

So, you're saying that your players, with no preamble, with no pre-existing ideas, suddenly decided to take over the Thieve's Guild with absolutely no warning? Wow, that's pretty much completely alien to my games.

For me, it would be, "Hey, is there a thieves guild in this town?" "umm, sure, why do you ask?" "Well, I'd really like to get involved in that, cos, it would totally fit with my character and I have some great ideas." "Ok, that's cool. You're going to have to do a bit of background searching into the town, make some contacts first."

And, since that's going to take some in game time, we'll come back to that next week and poof, now there's a thieves guild in the town, because that's what the players wanted to interact with.

And here's the thing. At no time did I have to detail up the heirarchy of the thieves guild until such time as the players made it an issue. Not world building, setting construction, because the plot of the game now focuses on the thieves guild. If the players never brought up the thieves guild and I as the DM had no intention of using a storyline with a thieves guild, the theives guild never exists.

That's not a choice. That's just passive-aggressive railroading.

So, all the NPC's in your world are just frozen in Final Fantasy style limbo until such time as the PC's interact with them? The Baron never tries to take over his neighbour independent of your PC's actions? There are no plots OTHER than what the players interact with?

And this is what you consider world building?

 

[TwinBahamut]

It was a totally different thread with totally different main point (well, maybe not totally different), but the post I made here covers a lot of how I feel regarding this thread. It even says "I agree with Hussar" (in so many words).

Well, I do think that Hussar overstates his case a bit, but I do agree with his basic idea. It is better to build a campaign, rather than a world. One of the most important parts of world-building is creating options the players need in order to make their own choices and controlling their own fates. However, this is a part of world-building that can't be done until the campaign has already started. Locking in details before the campaign has started limits the options available to both the players and the DM, so in order to create a flexible and fun game experience it is often best to delay setting things in stone until it is absolutely necessary (which is often in the middle of play).

While I agree with many posters here that letting the players control the pace of the campaign is essential to having a fun game, I just don't think it is at all necessary or even helpful to create a detailed world beforehand in order to have such a campaign.

Of course, it is very fun to worldbuild. I create settings and worlds rather compulsively. However, I think that worldbuilding in great detail without the context of a specific campaign leads you astray more than it helps. I have long since given up the notion that every world I create in my head is appropriate for a D&D campaign.

 

[Nightson]

So, all the NPC's in your world are just frozen in Final Fantasy style limbo until such time as the PC's interact with them? The Baron never tries to take over his neighbour independent of your PC's actions? There are no plots OTHER than what the players interact with?

And this is what you consider world building?

Option A: The DM's plothook
Option B: The world is destroyed

That's not a meaningful choice.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Imaro,
I tried to give you an XP for your post.

Gotcha covered there.

 

[Hussar]

It was a totally different thread with totally different main point (well, maybe not totally different), but the post I made here covers a lot of how I feel regarding this thread. It even says "I agree with Hussar" (in so many words).

Well, I do think that Hussar overstates his case a bit, but I do agree with his basic idea. It is better to build a campaign, rather than a world. One of the most important parts of world-building is creating options the players need in order to make their own choices and controlling their own fates. However, this is a part of world-building that can't be done until the campaign has already started. Locking in details before the campaign has started limits the options available to both the players and the DM, so in order to create a flexible and fun game experience it is often best to delay setting things in stone until it is absolutely necessary (which is often in the middle of play).

While I agree with many posters here that letting the players control the pace of the campaign is essential to having a fun game, I just don't think it is at all necessary or even helpful to create a detailed world beforehand in order to have such a campaign.

Of course, it is very fun to worldbuild. I create settings and worlds rather compulsively. However, I think that worldbuilding in great detail without the context of a specific campaign leads you astray more than it helps. I have long since given up the notion that every world I create in my head is appropriate for a D&D campaign.

I fully endorse this. And thank you for toning down my rhetoric.

My personal gripe is with the rather large body of DM advice that you see dispensed either in Dungeon, or on various blogs or forums, or, heck, even in the DMG, which places World Building as a requirement for campaign creation. I disagree (obviously) with this way of thinking.

Not that world building is necessarily bad. And, sorry Imaro, reading my own posts, I can see why you would think that I think that. I have no real beef with world building in and of itself. I just think that its place in campaign creation has been too ... errr ... pronounced over the years. It has been enshrined into the collective minds of gamers and I really question whether it should be.

Option A: The DM's plothook
Option B: The world is destroyed

That's not a meaningful choice.

So, all NPC's in your world are frozen in place, never making any decisions until such time as the PC's interact with them?

Sure, it's a bit cheezy, but, the only difference between that plothook and any other plothook is scale. There is no difference between someone trying to summon the Elder Gods to destroy the world and Baron Von Nasty trying to kill the king on a practical game level.

So, unless you never use doom cults in your game, you don't really get the point.

 

[Nightson]

There is no difference between someone trying to summon the Elder Gods to destroy the world and Baron Von Nasty trying to kill the king on a practical game level.

In one your players get to keep playing in the other they don't? Seems like a pretty big practical difference to me.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

While I agree with many posters here that letting the players control the pace of the campaign is essential to having a fun game, I just don't think it is at all necessary or even helpful to create a detailed world beforehand in order to have such a campaign.

Have to agree. I'm a recovering worldbuilder ( ) who spent way too much time and effort tinkering with stuff the players never knew or cared about. So, my answer to the question in the thread subject would be "Only as much as it improves the game."

Of course, it is very fun to worldbuild. I create settings and worlds rather compulsively. However, I think that worldbuilding in great detail without the context of a specific campaign leads you astray more than it helps. I have long since given up the notion that every world I create in my head is appropriate for a D&D campaign.

Also very true. I haven't given up on worldbuilding, I just have recognized that it doesn't have to be in the context of gaming!

 

[Andor]

I really do disagree with that approach. I think a far better approach, and much better advice to new DM's out there, is "start with a story. Think about what events would be important to that story. Then, start building from there." Even if the story is just, "Go out and see what's over that next hill", it's better to start from the story angle than to design the other side of the hill and then work backwards.

You're giving me nightmares. No, wait... those are memories. Like the time we captured the Sherriff who had hired humanoids raiding the commerce coming into his own town. We questioned him. Gm's reply? "I never thought to give him a motivation." Dead campaign.

Or the very last D&D game I played in we were trying to identify which of the King's 5 councilors was the traitor. So I asked what there names were and what they were like. GM's reply? "He tells you."
Me: Uhh ... I want that information.
GM: He gives it to you.
Me: What are their names?
GM: He tell you the names.
...Only at this point did it dawn on me that the GM had set up a political intrigue without bothering to flesh out actual names and faces of the actors. How the hell we were supposed to tell nameless good guy one from nameless bad guy 3 I have no idea.

So count me in the 'World building good' camp, please.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

You're giving me nightmares. No, wait... those are memories. Like the time we captured the Sherriff who had hired humanoids raiding the commerce coming into his own town. We questioned him. Gm's reply? "I never thought to give him a motivation." Dead campaign.

Or the very last D&D game I played in we were trying to identify which of the King's 5 councilors was the traitor. So I asked what there names were and what they were like. GM's reply? "He tells you."
Me: Uhh ... I want that information.
GM: He gives it to you.
Me: What are their names?
GM: He tell you the names.
...Only at this point did it dawn on me that the GM had set up a political intrigue without bothering to flesh out actual names and faces of the actors. How the hell we were supposed to tell nameless good guy one from nameless bad guy 3 I have no idea.

So count me in the 'World building good' camp, please.

These are examples of lousy GMing, for sure, but they're not arguments for or against world building - they're arguments for putting a moment of thought in your adventure building!

 

[Hussar]

In one your players get to keep playing in the other they don't? Seems like a pretty big practical difference to me.

There's no difference in the context of inside the game world though. In both cases, NPC's are taking actions that are beyond the scope of PC involvement. In both cases, the bad guy wins if the PC's do nothing about it (presuming of course their plans go the way they want them to, and, well, as a DM, most of the time they do.)

You're giving me nightmares. No, wait... those are memories. Like the time we captured the Sherriff who had hired humanoids raiding the commerce coming into his own town. We questioned him. Gm's reply? "I never thought to give him a motivation." Dead campaign.

Or the very last D&D game I played in we were trying to identify which of the King's 5 councilors was the traitor. So I asked what there names were and what they were like. GM's reply? "He tells you."
Me: Uhh ... I want that information.
GM: He gives it to you.
Me: What are their names?
GM: He tell you the names.
...Only at this point did it dawn on me that the GM had set up a political intrigue without bothering to flesh out actual names and faces of the actors. How the hell we were supposed to tell nameless good guy one from nameless bad guy 3 I have no idea.

So count me in the 'World building good' camp, please.

But, world building has nothing to do with this. He neglected setting. But, the names and motivations of the people the PC's are directly interacting with have nothing to do with world building and everything to do with plot and setting.

World building would be detailing the family trees of those five councilors. It has nothing to do with the plot (Find the traitor) and exists pretty much independently. The names of the councilors OTOH, DOES directly impact the plot (if for no other reason than reducing confusion) and is required.

Look, again, I'm not saying that you can go with Father Generic the Cleric of Good Gawd B gives you Quest B17 to recover Macguffin 12. That's ridiculous. It breaks mood for one thing. Totally ruins feel. Good DMing advice would be to have at least a little more detail than that.

However, bad DMing advice says that you need to create an entire church of Good Gawd B before you even sit down at the table.