I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Hussar said: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
In an ideal scenario, this is exactly how I prefer to DM; as a reaction rather than as a proaction. The PC's create characters, I figure out how they're linked. The PC's choose to do something, I figure out what happens after they do it. I don't know what they're going to do beforehand, all I can do is be prepared to leap along with them. They want to do something I didn't anticipate? The answer, as in all good improv, is always and forever will be, "Yes."
Ideally, everything they do is something I didn't anticipate, because I don't enjoy it as much when I have to anticipate their actions.
Honestly, for the "casual crowd," this is how D&D has to be played. No pre-prep, just game. If you run a module, a lot of this work has presumably been done beforehand, but even then, PC's can always take a course that the adventure writer didn't have in mind.
The "casual crowd" is probably a statistical rarity for D&D, but it probably shouldn't be, going forward. If D&D ever wants to grab the broader, non-obsessive segment of the market, they're going to have to eliminate the concept of pre-prep almost entirely, so that all a DM has to do for the game is sit down at the table and PLAY.
In that respect, worldbuilding cannot be necessary, even a little bit, if that is to be a goal. It can be helpful and fun for those who are into it (so that if you like it, you can do it, and it can be rewarding), but it can't be something that every DM has to do a little bit of. It has to be something that can be ignored.
For that, you're going to need to teach DM's how to completely wing it. Worldbuilding is a luxury that most people don't have (though it's something fun for some as well, so you probably shouldn't remove it; just remove the NEED for it).