How much worldbuilding should novice GMs do? (forked thread)

[Andor]

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

I'm not sure 100% improv gaming is a good fit for the "casual" gamer crowd. It seems to me that learning to improvise an entertaining adventure completely off the cuff requires a lot more work than familiarizing yourself with a pre-written adventure well enough to deal with unexpected player solutions to the challenges while running it.

Ok, I notice a trend amoung the advocates of the 'No world building" school of games design, mostly they've been playing for years. I.E. they have vast reserviors of experience and bits and pieces of buildings, settings, characters and maps floating around in thier heads. I would expect someone like that to be able to handle a improved game, or to scrape by with less prep than another might require.

But the worldbuilding debate is not for such people anyway. Someone who has been running games for 20 years does not need to read "How to make a game 050" in the DMG 4.25 II.

So my question is would any of you seriously suggest to the novice GM that he do no world building before running his first game?

 

[Piratecat]

(I edited the thread title. Feel free to change it if that isn't what you wanted.)

World building is fun. It's not really essential for novice GMs, though. I managed for almost three years with a minimal world and Dungeon Magazine, just linking together different adventures.

 

[Cadfan]

Ok, I notice a trend amoung the advocates of the 'No world building" school of games design, mostly they've been playing for years. I.E. they have vast reserviors of experience and bits and pieces of buildings, settings, characters and maps floating around in thier heads. I would expect someone like that to be able to handle a improved game, or to scrape by with less prep than another might require.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. Yes, many have a lot of experience, but I think that's just ENWorld for you. Many of the advocates of world building as a vocation are also extensively experienced DMs.

But the worldbuilding debate is not for such people anyway. Someone who has been running games for 20 years does not need to read "How to make a game 050" in the DMG 4.25 II.

Well, yeah. Actually a lot of them might benefit, but I do agree, the DMG should serve novices first. That doesn't necessarily mean that it should advise novices to world build. It should advise them on HOW to world build, since that advice should be somewhere since its a thing that some DMs do. But that doesn't imply that novices should be using it.

So my question is would any of you seriously suggest to the novice GM that he do no world building before running his first game?

Absolutely! I think world building, as its commonly discussed on this forum, is campaign suicide for the new DM!

The biggest, hands down biggest flaw in world building is that you are looking forwards in time, anticipating what would be fun and interesting for the players to encounter, and putting it into place. If you lack experience on what is interesting for players, what's balanced, what enhances player freedom instead of just providing them with artfully disguised walls, what bits of flavor will hook a player versus which ones will be ignored or even turn them off, what should be excluded from the setting versus what will be missed... its almost inevitable that you'll choose poorly at least some of the time, if not most of the time.

Its far better to wait, write something short and simple, and then grow the campaign world as the game progresses. This allows you to get to know your players, your player's characters, and to see what works and what doesn't before you emotionally wed yourself (some world builders seem to ethically wed themselves to a "no changes" ethos...) to a world building idea that you may later regret.

Seriously, new DMs should go in for the "points of light" ethos. Write a nice adventure for some PCs in or around a small town. Let them kick around there for a while. Then expand when they outgrow it. Write the next city when they get to it. Let things grow organically based on immediate need. Its true that you might eventually write yourself into a corner, but that's better than writing yourself into a corner before you even begin.

Preserve for yourself the freedom to change things without feeling like you're betraying your vision. For all you know, what you write might suck! Preserve the freedom to tear up the entire setting without feeling like you wasted all kinds of work! If you are an author, your first writing shouldn't be a trilogy. If you are a composer your first piece shouldn't be a symphony.

Never start with your magnum opus.

 

[Mallus]

My advice to the fledgling DM is 'do what you find enjoyable'.

If that means exhaustively detailing your own elf-ridden world that's been floating around your head since you memorized the Silmarillion, go for it! If it means saying f-all to in-depth world-building and flying by the seat of your pants, by all means do.

But whatever you choose to do, remember that once you begin playing in the world, it ceases to be entirely yours. Once the game's afoot, the setting as depicted during the course of play, needs to account for the interests, preferences, and play styles of the players. That might mean ignoring some of the 10,000 years of Elven history you've cooked up, or conversely, it might mean adding more geography and history to what was only a flimsy slam-bang adventure premise.

 

[S'mon]

I'd recommend creating a wilderness map on a sheet of paper, with lots of cool stuff on it (goblins! dragon cave! the lost shrine! the troll swamp!) and maybe a map of a dungeon on the other side, with rooms labelled (goblins! dwarves! kidnapped maiden! treasure!). Put the dungeon in the wilderness. Put a village or other safe start locale in the wilderness.

Voila, job done.

 

[Imaro]

My advice to the fledgling DM is 'do what you find enjoyable'.

If that means exhaustively detailing your own elf-ridden world that's been floating around your head since you memorized the Silmarillion, go for it! If it means saying f-all to in-depth world-building and flying by the seat of your pants, by all means do.

But whatever you choose to do, remember that once you begin playing in the world, it ceases to be entirely yours. Once the game's afoot, the setting as depicted during the course of play, needs to account for the interests, preferences, and play styles of the players. That might mean ignoring some of the 10,000 years of Elven history you've cooked up, or conversely, it might mean adding more geography and history to what was only a flimsy slam-bang adventure premise.

Mallus, I know we don't always see eye to eye on these boards but this post is exactly what I planned on typing up. Tossed you some well deserved XP

Too many times I see on this subject the words "need", "should" and "necessary" bandied around, when really you should be doing the type of and whatever prep gets you ready and excited to run a game that will be fun for you and your particular group of players.

 

[Drowbane]

I didn't do any world-building when I first started DMing. I had some towns near dungeon locations in mind (used towns and cities from novels I'd read).

World Building is something that I personally didn't get interested in until some 6 years after I'd started DMing.

 

[Woas]

Here's my little story.

When I first starting playing D&D (D&D 3.0, Thomas the human cleric of St. Cuthbert!) I had a DM that was totally into the build-as-you-play/no prep mentality. It was horrible. And frustrating. We would be attacked by random monsters at night for no reason other than because it was in the book. Towns would just spring up out of nowhere. When asked, all the towns were named, "Uhhhhhhh.... [insert name of real life local suburb]". It was bad no prep/improv to it's finest but at the time, being so new to all this I couldn't see it as that.

Then I became the DM for the group and I vowed to not run games like that. So what did I do? Jumped on the pendulum and rode it hard the complete opposite way. Oh I went all out. Hand drawn poster maps of the continent... detailed histories of imaginary fairy people... custom deities... dress codes... heraldic symbols for known families...
All that work.. and it was a LOT of work (especially the lovely hand drawn maps which I kept) would be thrown at a bunch of late teen/early 20 something dudes and it would just completely get wasted on all of them. I don't know... four, six, ten campaigns I tried out this way? Nope, didn't like that last slew of information? Want more wizardry this time around? Riiiippp start again, see ya in a month with my new creation. This one too hard to follow? Riiiippp start again...

So I did this for like 4-5 years then like some sort of movie scene I read one sentence of GM Advice and it was like the skies opened and I saw the way. The piece of advice was from Ray Winninger's "Dungeoncraft" Essays. It was Rule 1 of Dungeoncraft: Never create more than you must or need.
So that's how I started the next campaign after the previous prep-zilla failed yet again and it instantly became the most successful games I'm ran.

And that's it. That's my answer. I would tell any novice GM 10 out of 10 times, "Never create more than you must or need."

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

So my question is would any of you seriously suggest to the novice GM that he do no world building before running his first game?

Absolutely! I think world building, as its commonly discussed on this forum, is campaign suicide for the new DM!

Cadfan gives a great warning for potential worldbuilders. This warning shoud be disregarded at your own peril.

I would tell any novice GM 10 out of 10 times, "Never create more than you must or need."

Woas gives some great advice. This is the most often ignored peice of advice by self professed worldbuilders. Ignoring this will not make your game better.

I would add that each person feels that they need a different amount of prep and feel comfortable with different amounts of improv. "Necessity" varies.

I would advise that they focus on adventures, let the world be emergent from playing those adventures, communicate with their players about what they find enjoyable and what their goals of play are, and don't stress about building a world.

That being said, keep lots of notes during play. They will help you become consistent, and allows for a cohesive world to be emergent from your play. Nothing sucks worse than improving some great details, only to forget what you said later. It makes you look like an idiot. I have been there.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

My advice to the fledgling DM is 'do what you find enjoyable'.

If that means exhaustively detailing your own elf-ridden world that's been floating around your head since you memorized the Silmarillion, go for it! If it means saying f-all to in-depth world-building and flying by the seat of your pants, by all means do.

But whatever you choose to do, remember that once you begin playing in the world, it ceases to be entirely yours. Once the game's afoot, the setting as depicted during the course of play, needs to account for the interests, preferences, and play styles of the players. That might mean ignoring some of the 10,000 years of Elven history you've cooked up, or conversely, it might mean adding more geography and history to what was only a flimsy slam-bang adventure premise.

Really?

This is finally the advice I need: so many other sources tell you what's a good idea to do when world-building, but they never give you advice as to whether it's a good idea. Finally, some advice in that direction!