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

[PrecociousApprentice]

Details matter. If the GM added lot's of details beforehand then clever players can use those details.

If the DM doesn't have them preplanned, they can still be made available to the players/characters. Details are details, no matter when or how they are created. Preplanning things is not the only way that they get into the campaign. If it is in your campaign, then your campaign is more limited than the way that Kask is implying that Ourphs is. No one can plan an entire world in fantastic detail with unlimited choice and have it not crumble when it meets the PCs. We all improvise at the table.

In my experience however, unplanned details do not suddenly appear just because I had an idea, or remembered a bit of history.

You must not be paying attention, or your DM is doing a poor job. No one plans every detail before hand. Even the most detailed of campaigns has a massive amount of stuff that is emergent in play and improvised.

My experience has been that it is best to leave a lot of the campaign development to exactly when the player has the idea. The details that I focus on before hand are mostly things that can be integrated in highly flexible ways. It was called drag-and-drop upthread. Keeping the action going in whatever way it is currently going in a consistent way is the name of the game for a good DM. Some people do it with preplanned sandboxes. Some people do it with preplanned plots. I like to do it with very little worldbuilding, some light plot writing, and a crap-ton of imporvisation and drag-and-drop elements. Then I make stuff up at the table, just like the rest of you.

 

[Scribble]

I like to do it with very little worldbuilding, some light plot writing, and a crap-ton of imporvisation and drag-and-drop elements. Then I make stuff up at the table, just like the rest of you.

This is pretty much my style to a T.

 

[Lanefan]

This is one of those things I see thrown around a lot. I guess I just never considered using the same campaign world twice. We pretty much assume each and every time we start a new game that it takes place in a new world.

If I designed a world and only got one or two in-city adventures out of it, then hell yeah that world would be used again. (though maybe starting in a different city...)

Good for you. I don't mean that sarcastically. If you have the time and feel it's worthwhile then I think it's a great idea. However, since the average duration of our games tends to be 3-6 months before everyone gets bored, half the players real life concerns make them stop playing, or any number of other things...it seems silly to me to spend too much time working on a world for that game.

Ah. There's the difference.

I design my worlds to support a campaign that'll run for 5-10 years, and then fully expect it to last at least that long. Which means, other than for one-off adventures, in 25 years of DMing I've designed 3 worlds*; they're listed in my sig. Given that, taking a year for the design process isn't such a big deal as the return-on-effort ratio is pretty good.

* - full disclosure: two-and-a-half worlds. Riveria was more a nuke-and-pave of the northwest chunk of the Forgotten Realms setting (1e version), with the rest of the physical Realms and some of the major NPCs etc. (e.g. Red Wizards) left pretty much stock. That said, many creatures and all deities, history, etc. got a complete makeover.

Lanefan

 

[Piratecat]

This seems like an appropriate time to suggest an interesting essay on exposition through discovery, specifically discovery of something all D&D characters like: treasure!

Ethan, I wanted to flag this link: reading it just dumped a large pile of sneaky ideas into my brain. Thank you. That whole blog is worth reading.

 

[Kask]

Unfortunately, you're still failing to grasp what I've been saying. There are no limitations.

Sorry, but time is a limitation & a barrier. As in, waiting for you to work out an area if they want to go there. Sorry, your argument is false by the very definition of the word limitation. But, like I said, it is a matter of preference and nothing wrong with your chosen style.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

There isn't actually a wait to play there, at least in my games. There is a wait for me to prep stuff for that area. The characters can insist on going there, I just have to wing it for the rest of the session. This winging it often includes an improvised NPC or a "wandering monster", depending on the appropriateness of either.

If you are trying to tell me that you never have to wing anything, I would say that your players are not pushing the boundries so this wouldn't be a problem in Ourphs games either, or you are full of it and you have to delay or improvise like the rest of us. No one actually has a fully detailed world where there is no detail the characters could seek out that is not prepared.

You wing it like the rest of us. Delaying is not a limit. Your campaign is just as limited by what you have prepared, even if you have much more prepared than anyone ever has in the history of worldbuilding. Your world doesn't actually exist either, and Ourph's likely has more flexibility precisely because he preps less than you do. Unrestricted imagination is just as good as prepared and slightly restricted imagination when it comes to made up worlds.

 

[Rel]

Sorry, but time is a limitation & a barrier. As in, waiting for you to work out an area if they want to go there. Sorry, your argument is false by the very definition of the word limitation. But, like I said, it is a matter of preference and nothing wrong with your chosen style.

I guess I've never had a group of players who felt entitled to immediately go anywhere in the world, instantly, for no foreseeable reason, and expect me to be able to provide highly detailed information about that location. That's probably for the best I think because my GMing style wouldn't support that very well.

 

[Barastrondo]

I've been talking with a friend about these issues lately, and he mentioned something that I thought was quite useful: There is broad prep and there's deep prep.

What constitutes breadth and depth depends on the scale of what you're prepping, but in general you need to broad prep so that you have a framework to build on, but you should only do deep prep into those areas that the players are eminently going to see.

A very important distinction, and one I'm glad to see raised. I think a lot of the pure unadulterated fun of world-building tends to come from broad prep, though deep prep is also entertaining. I definitely tend to do broad prep when I'm just mucking around with a game world, and deep prep only when I have an ongoing campaign and the next session weighs heavy on my mind (or when designing a starting point for a new campaign).

Ethan, I wanted to flag this link: reading it just dumped a large pile of sneaky ideas into my brain. Thank you. That whole blog is worth reading.

Glad to be of service! Robbins is a very clever fellow, and I find his observations really interesting. I am also, like many, fond of his West Marches posts, which kind of make me wish I had the kind of free time necessary to run a game like that without having to give up on all other games I might like to run until it reached a stopping point.

In fact, I think I'll link that into the discussion as well, for any other interested parties: West Marches, the beginning. Short version: It was a grand experiment of a game almost 100% about exploration, with dense worldbuilding and almost 0% plot over and above "the players go to places and stir up trouble." It certainly wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but it reads like some of the most classic D&D ever, in a good way. If you don't get the appeal of "exploration" as a primary incentive, check it out, see how the other side lives.

 

[Kask]

I guess I've never had a group of players who felt entitled to immediately go anywhere in the world, instantly, for no foreseeable reason, and expect me to be able to provide highly detailed information about that location. That's probably for the best I think because my GMing style wouldn't support that very well.

Right. Different groups game differently.

 

[Hussar]

Couple of points first.

Kask - I did take your original comments to me as questioning my experience gaming and trying to set yourself upon your own credentials. If I misread that, I appologize. I strongly dislike piddling contests in this manner, because they actually prove nothing. For the record, I started gaming in 1980.

Imaro - when I said 3-5 hours to develop an adventure, I didn't specify edition. My bad, I was thinking 3e. However, that being said, if you can develop an entire adventure - presuming something that will last, say, 2-4 sessions, in under 3-5 hours, including maps, and everything else, that's pretty damn quick. However, all that being said, when I go back and look at what you call world building, I'd pretty much do the same thing. So, you call that world building, I do not. Since you refuse to define what you mean by world building, we cannot really proceed.

He recommends thinking of prep in three tiers: The broad strokes, the details, and the development.

For example, if you're designing a village for sandbox play your broad prep might be the name of the village; a map; maybe some quick notes on the town's general history, purpose, location, etc. Your detailed prep might be a dozen or so NPCs and a few locations that the PCs are likely to interact with.

Then, at that point, you wait and see what happens when the PCs actually interact with the village. What inn do they decide to stay at? Which NPCs do they seem to really like interacting with? Those are the things that you should come back in and develop with even greater depth. Everything else (the locations and people they're less interested in) you can leave sketchy.

This sounds pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. The broad strokes, of course, have to be done. You have no choice there really, in most campaigns. Since you are advocating the deeper development following player interactions, I wouldn't call this world building at all - it's setting building. It is directly tied to the story that is developing within the group. For me, world building is when you, as Precocious Apprentice very excellently said, try to develop the campaign world separate from the characters in the campaign.

I design my worlds to support a campaign that'll run for 5-10 years, and then fully expect it to last at least that long. Which means, other than for one-off adventures, in 25 years of DMing I've designed 3 worlds*; they're listed in my sig. Given that, taking a year for the design process isn't such a big deal as the return-on-effort ratio is pretty good.

As a question Lanefan, do you think this would be good advice to give to DM's? To tell them that they should do this much work with the expectation that their campaigns will last for so long?

Yes, this works for you and that's great. But, I'm thinking you are very much an outlier here.

Right. Different groups game differently.

True, but, I'd be pretty surprised to learn that any group out there has actually done what you are suggesting. To walk into the session and abandon all ongoing campaign elements to do something that is a complete surprise to the DM? If this has ever happened, I'm going to file it under statistical anomoly and ignore it for this conversation. I really, really doubt that any DM has to deal with this on a regular basis.