What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

In the example I gave of the player setting pacifism between races as a goal, this could easily be made to fit in: let the player find out in-character about this conflict and see if she tries to intervene or mediate and pacify both sides.

Here's what I find to be the weakness with the B2 scenario in this respect:

A conflict happens, and thus there is drama and story, when NEEDS conflict. Why do 2 countries go to war? Because they can't both get what they perceive they need, one must do without, and neither is willing. Conflict never happens without this opposition of needs (you can talk about man-vs-nature, or man-vs-self here, but character-vs-self is pretty silly, and character-vs-nature is really self-conflict in another guise, the opposing needs simply existing in the same person).

So, in order to deal with a conflict between the races in the Caves, and between them and the Keep I guess too, there have to be understood needs. The problem is that the scenario is so unrealistic that it couldn't even come to pass in the first place. How are we to gauge the needs of people (loosely speaking) in such an unrealistic scenario? How do the various humanoids make a living? What do they eat? We can't even figure this out, so we can't even make up a story about their basic vital interests being worked out, let alone anything beyond that (and nobody gives 2 shakes about ANYTHING ELSE if they have no kibble! Maselow RULES!).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is also an excellent use of GM preauthoring of content. It allows for engagement of the creative process. Coming up with ideas, thinking them over, deciding which ones are good or bad, 'polishing' them, as it were.

A reasonable point, but then they're not so directly appropriate to player-directed play! You could certainly argue in response that a GM could anticipate players, and that may well be so, particularly in specific games and situations (IE long association, situation with few choices, etc.).

I think I, fairly commonly, think of possible abstract scenarios which might fit into different places in games I'm running, and then sometimes this is handy mental preparation for the actuality of play. I might go so far as to draw up some of them now and then, though I usually, nowadays, just pick from the vast array of maps and things you can find online one that might make sense.

I ran a large 4e campaign using MapTool. I literally have 1000's of maps and related materials on the hard drive of my machine, though of course its almost easier to just find them online. Still, with MapTool you HAD to do a certain amount of prep. I now find it too constraining and don't play with any of these kinds of tools anymore, though I am happy to use something like roll20 for rolling dice and keeping track of hit points and such. I may also draw very simple on-the-fly maps during play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel the introduction of the ToA content has added a dimension that previously didn't exist in the campaign; how important is their main goal? Are they willing to set it aside to deal with another concern? Are they willing to risk the lives of half the party by ignoring the Curse?

If we consider the main goal of the PCs as the Player Introduced content, and the ToA/Death Curse as the GM Introduced content, then in that case doesn't the GM Introduced Content add meaning to the Player Introduced content? Doesn't it make a statement about how badly they want to achieve that goal? Or at least, can't it potentially say that?

How the PCs choose to prioritize these goals says something more about them than simply pursuing one goal, no?

Without GM Introduced Content, is there ever any way to present two potentially opposed goals and force the players to decide which one their characters are going to pursue? In a Story Now game, would such only be possible by taking the goals of two or more PCs and then presenting them as goals in opposition? Would having a player who came up with two goals for his character really qualify if the game placed these two goals in opposition?

If anyone wants to share their thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear.

I see nothing wrong with GM content! There is no law against it in Story Now either. GMs have agency WRT the fiction! They must, they frame all scenes.

So, you have put in place a situation where the PCs have to choose to either engage your content (Tomb of Annihilation) or something else they were wanting to do. They can, I'm gathering, either try to continue their own agenda and hope to finish it before 'doomsday' happens, or go do the side quest.

It certainly adds a type of tension, and its hard to say from here how far off the tomb is from what they want to do, maybe its just one of several interesting options for them. If not, then I guess posing it as a 'how much do you want this' question has characterization implications, yes. The idea that they might spend a number of sessions on a side issue would diverge from what I would do, but the essence of the concept is solid IMHO.

Honestly, I'm sure I've done some things sort of like this in the past. I might even do it now, though maybe in a smaller way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Both are the result of attempting a move in the game and failing. In the fiction the result is exactly the same in either instance. At the table the only differences are a) the mechanics behind said failure, and b) the level of knowledge those mechanics give to the player regarding the reason(s) for said failure.

To expand a bit on b): if the player rolls poorly she knows her failure is due to her PC's incompetence or bad luck; where if the result is simply narrated by the DM (probably after rolling some dice whether needed or not) the player doesn't know if her failure is due to incompetence/bad luck or due to there in fact being nothing there to find at all.

Lanefan

Yesterday I sat down with my friend and played chess. I lost. At the end of the game I said "Gosh, it didn't matter one bit what moves I made because I was just going to lose!" This is of course an utterly ridiculous statement. I lost BECAUSE OF the moves that I made.

If the player COULD HAVE succeeded, and he didn't, it is BECAUSE OF that failure, which is A DIFFERENT CAUSE than if the GM said 'YOU FAIL'. Different things are different. Case dismissed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It really is. While every DM has strengths and weaknesses, only bad DMs are going to shut down player goals the way you described. A mediocre DM might not engage them as well as a good DM will, but he's going to try.

No, and I must say, this is so indicative of the intellectual malaise which rots modern society. Every single thing is demoted down to some simplistic black and white pastiche of itself, which is effectively meaningless. Its shallow to be perfectly blunt.

I played with a guy, FOR DECADES, who is the utter antithesis of everything I do when I GM. The utter antithesis of everything I look for IN a GM when I play. THIS GUY IS A GOD OF GAME MASTERS!!!! You would be so lucky to ever play with a GM 1/10th as good. Rules are fine, they are great guidelines. They simply do not capture all the ground truth, all the nuances of what happens out there in the real world. Seriously, every single thing that you call 'Bad GMing' and just rule out of existence as impossible for any good GM. He does all these things. He's STILL a god of GMs. Your statements, while sometimes I agree with at least some of them, don't capture everything. Good GMs do all sorts of crazy things, and mediocre GMs can still do well and break rules. Its just true.

 

[pemerton]

Well, TBH, this is one of my beefs with this module, in terms of its suitability as more than just a basic stage for looting action.

Its an utterly illogical and pretty much bizarre situation. Here we have this keep, which houses several 100 people IIRC. Now several 100 people need about 96 people worth of full-time farmers, at about 10 acres each, so a good solid 1000 acres of tilled land, which we would assume would need to be pretty much near the castle walls, practically speaking.

Yet there's no sign of any agriculture in the area. There's no mill, no barns stuffed full of hay (they would be BIG) etc. Nothing. And there's about 150 tough, vicious, warlike humanoids 2 MILES AWAY in a series of caves. Humanoids who likewise show no signs of having any means of support or filling their bellies (and I can only imagine that humans, dwarves, elves, etc would do nicely).

I don't think this situation is stable. I don't think the scenario, as described in the module, would last even 3 days. So its hard to really understand how it all fits together and what the PCs should expect to happen if they do various things. I can't apply ANY sort of 'premise' to anything because it is all so utterly nonsensical to begin with!

in order to deal with a conflict between the races in the Caves, and between them and the Keep I guess too, there have to be understood needs. The problem is that the scenario is so unrealistic that it couldn't even come to pass in the first place. How are we to gauge the needs of people (loosely speaking) in such an unrealistic scenario? How do the various humanoids make a living? What do they eat? We can't even figure this out, so we can't even make up a story about their basic vital interests being worked out, let alone anything beyond that

you can simply ignore all that and make sure that all the players contemplate doing is playing 'murder hobo' and killing off the Caves inhabitants while they sit around and do virtually nothing about it. OK, you can do that. It is hard to base any kind of dynamic, evolving plot line on that sort of basis.

I think that all this speaks directly to the OP.

Classic D&D dungeoncrawling isn't meant to "make sense". We don't ask what the monsters eat (or, if we do, the answer - as per Old Geezer on rpg.net - is that they eat at McMonster's (? or something like that) on the bottom level). The constraints of the "puzzle"/maze are tightly confined, by a mixture of stipulation and convention.

B2 is good for that sort of game.

But as soon as we are thinking about a "living, breathing world" with a story that is meant to involve story and character in some meaningful fashion, the Caves of Chaos have nothing to offer. At best, one or two fragments might be pulled out of it and turned into something else.

 

[pemerton]

That applies to pretty much every game of pretty much every style. DMs are exceedingly unlikely to interrupt a teleport to have a visit with the Raven Queen unless she is already an important part of the game.

The relevant question is, why is the Raven Queen important? Because the GM said so; or because the players said so?

Teleportation is an instantaneous and uninterrupted transport from one location to another. It's only final if that happens. If you interrupt it, not only is it not final, but it's no different than what I described with trying to find the bazaar instead of just putting the PCs there. You've added a step, which you described as not being final earlier in this discussion. You can't have it both ways.

It's absolutely different. The players didn't have to do anything but write down the goodies the Raven Queen gave them. There is no change to the structure of resolution - the PCs leave point A and arrive at point B - except that an intermediate step is narrated.

The players didn't have to "find" anything, declare any additional actions, etc.

In mechanical terms, the items are purely a contribution to PC build; the gifting of them by the Raven Queen is a moment of pure colour. It's not a scene at all.

it's not just a story being told. Giving them the option of which way to go at an intersection invovles more than just story.

Telling the players about the intersection is telling them a piece of fiction: "As you walk down the tunnel, you come to an intersection."

The players then have the "option" as to which way to go - but this word "option" is (again) a metaphor, because this is not a real intersection with which real people are interacting. It's a piece of fiction narrated by the GM, and if the players say "We go left" or "We go right", well that is a trigger for the GM to narrate some more fiction.

Why is this more important, more interesting and worth spending time on, compared to actually having the PCs meet the giants that they are interested in interacting with?

You also persist in "overlooking" that during the journey to the giants, things will happen that will aid them in their ultimate goal of defeating said giants, so it's not just "writing down stuff about intersections and gems".

I'm not overlooking it. I'm making the point that if the players aren't interested in that - because they want to confront the giants, not make friends with some other persons - then why spend time on it at the table? You'll note that, in my example, the players made potions that they wanted. If they had wanted to meet allies, they could have talked about that. But they didn't.

It's not hard for players to have their PCs seek out help if the want to. Here's an actual play example:

The invoker-wizard also came through the gate, in order to Thunderwave some elementals into the lava, but this turned out to expose him to their vicious melee and he, too, got cut down. In desperate straits as he lay on the ground next to his Gate (he was brought back to consciousness via some sort of healing effect), being hacked down by fire archons, he spoke a prayer to Erathis (one of his patron deities). After speaking the prayer, and after the player succeeded at a Hard Religion check, as the PC looked up into the rock cleft high above him, he saw a duergar standing on a ledge looking down. The PC already knew that the duergar revere Erathis (as well as Asmodeus). The duergar gave the Deep Speech hand sign for "I will offer you aid", and the PC replied with the sign for "The dues will be paid". The duergar then dropped a potion vial down to the PC. (I had already decided that I could place a duergar in the cleft if I wanted some sort of 3rd-party intervention into the fight. The successful prayer was the trigger for implementing that prior decision.)

The invoker took himself and his potion back through the Gate, and he too stayed on the far side of the river for the rest of the fight.

<snip>

At the point where the fighter and wizard went back to the ledge, the general mood was of impending TPK, but there is nothing like a flying ranger to turn the tide!

<snip>

They are now hoping to create a Hallowed Temple and take an extended rest, but (unbeknownst to them) will have to deal with the duergar first. After all, the invoker promised that the dues would be repaid!

Your whole presentation of the situation seems to assume a GM-driven game, in which the defeat of the giants is a goal of predetermined difficulty, which therefore might require "aid" of various sorts that will be introduced into the fiction by the GM. As opposed to a player-driven approach, where the players decide whether their PCs are the sort to seek aid or not, and the question of whether or not aid might be needed is settled via the actual play of the game, as in the example I just posted.

It's a given for my example. Maybe they are in the south, east, west, equator. It doesn't matter. The setting will have barbarians established in it somewhere. As for framing, I am forcing the framing to happen by stating to the DM that I am going north(or east, west, etc.) to take over the barbarians. The DM has to respond. As with the wine example, he has no choice by to address my goal.

Now, as for your bad DM examples, those need not apply. As I said to [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION], bad DMs are bad and any game they run is going to be bupkis. Assuming that the DM is not bad, I'm not going to encounter no boats every time I look for one, or every pass blocked by snow, etc.

Why do you guys persist in constantly giving examples of bad DMing as if they actually mean something to the discussion?

You are the one who keep insisting that your game is different from mine. I don't have any independent knowledge of it.

If in fact you're playing a no myth, player-driven game where the GM introduces story elements and frames scenes in response to the PC goals that players express, well, OK. But then why do you keep insisting that it's GM-driven and different from what I and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are talking about?

 

[pemerton]

What is the difference between not finding the passage (and the passage may or may not be there) and not finding the passage (because it is resolutely not there)? Or perhaps not finding the passage (which exists, just not where the player expected it to be; or maybe it is there but the player isn't skillful enough to find it).

Because one is the result of making a move in the game, and having the dice roll fail; and the other is the result of someone else authoring your failure and telling you a story about it.

Both are the result of attempting a move in the game and failing. In the fiction the result is exactly the same in either instance. At the table the only differences are a) the mechanics behind said failure, and b) the level of knowledge those mechanics give to the player regarding the reason(s) for said failure.

You say this as if differences in mechanics and techniques don't matter! That is, as if all that matters in a RPG is what fiction results.

But that obviously isn't the case. RPGing is about playing a game. Who makes the moves, and how they are resolved, is fundamental to the whole activity.

In your example, what does the rogue player add to the fiction - nothing except that his/her PC looked around and found nothing. As far as RPGing is concerned, that's the most minimal result a player can achieve by declaring a move - my PC did this thing and nothing interesting resulted from it. I mean, suppose that a RPG session consisted of nothing but that. What sort of session would that be?

Frustrating, and at the same time realistic - sometimes things just don't pan out the way you want them to.

Upthread, you suggested that your approach to RPGing can yield "story now". But here we see one reason why not.

Four hours (or whatever) of nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do is not a story. It might resemble an Andy Warhol movie, but those are deliberate repudiations of story! (And I'm not sure that anyone actually watches Empire.)

And it's these times of frustration that makes times of success all the more rewarding.

Failure is not the same things as nothing interesting resulting from what is attempted.

If the player's agenda is for her PC to get rich or to accumulate magic items then you're wide open to this sort of thing.

Silly, perhaps, but legal by the letter of this narrativistic type of system where success on an action declaration cannot be denied.

If everyone at the table knows that the game is not silly, then everyone equally knows that (in the absence of some context, such as searching the home of a fairy) there is no point looking for wands in trees, as there won't be any there.

This repeated concern, from you and now [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.

One of the true appeals of RPGs is that as player you're (in theory) free to try anything, no matter how ridiculous. There shouldn't be any system-based limits on the actions players can declare or have thier PCs attempt.

I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.

What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?

There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG. (The main one that trips people up in classic D&D is stuff like letting fighters move silently with a DEX check, or climb with a STR check, while forcing thief PCs to use the generally weaker percentage chances - even Luke Crane fell into this rookie trap GMing Moldvay Basic, as he reports in one of his blogs.)

The whole idea of "treasure parcels" just makes it all sound so predetermined in the meta-game...do this much adventuring and you'll get this much treasure. Kind of like a salary for adventurers.

It is predetermined in the metagame. It's a bit like "hit dice" in AD&D: you don't need to earn your hit dice independent of gaining levels - rolling for additional hit points is part-and-parcel of gaining a level.

But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - provided you actually play the game (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC will go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.

How dull.

Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character. It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend, or the Iliad, or the Silmarillion, in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to do stuff with their gear.

Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.

One question that's been bugging me about this example: where were the rest of the PCs during this sequence? Or had the party not yet formed?

Read the actual play report.

 

[Maxperson]

No, and I must say, this is so indicative of the intellectual malaise which rots modern society. Every single thing is demoted down to some simplistic black and white pastiche of itself, which is effectively meaningless. Its shallow to be perfectly blunt.

I played with a guy, FOR DECADES, who is the utter antithesis of everything I do when I GM. The utter antithesis of everything I look for IN a GM when I play. THIS GUY IS A GOD OF GAME MASTERS!!!! You would be so lucky to ever play with a GM 1/10th as good. Rules are fine, they are great guidelines. They simply do not capture all the ground truth, all the nuances of what happens out there in the real world. Seriously, every single thing that you call 'Bad GMing' and just rule out of existence as impossible for any good GM. He does all these things. He's STILL a god of GMs. Your statements, while sometimes I agree with at least some of them, don't capture everything. Good GMs do all sorts of crazy things, and mediocre GMs can still do well and break rules. Its just true.

First, I'm not talking about game rules. I house rule the heck out of my games. Breaking a game rule isn't that big of a deal. I'm talking about shutting down players when they want to do things with their PCs. That's just bad, even if the person is amazing at the rest of the game, it still makes him a bad DM. An analogy would be if a man was generous to a fault. Donated time and money to charities. Did all kinds of amazing things that make him a great person, but had a thing where he molested children in his basement. That person would be a bad person, despite all of the other amazing things that he does. You could argue, and rightly so that he does great good for the world, but he's still a bad guy.

 

[Maxperson]

The relevant question is, why is the Raven Queen important? Because the GM said so; or because the players said so?

Not really. As you mentioned up thread, things the DM introduces become important to the players and vice versa. That's how the game is played. It's a mutual thing.

It's absolutely different. The players didn't have to do anything but write down the goodies the Raven Queen gave them. There is no change to the structure of resolution - the PCs leave point A and arrive at point B - except that an intermediate step is narrated.

The players didn't have to "find" anything, declare any additional actions, etc.

In mechanical terms, the items are purely a contribution to PC build; the gifting of them by the Raven Queen is a moment of pure colour. It's not a scene at all.

I guess I just didn't realize how passive your players are, and it floors me that not one of them would even try to talk to her. I would, as would all of my players. You still interrupted the spell that doesn't get interrupted, though, which prevented final resolution until AFTER you were done narrating what you did. There's no way around that. What the players tried to do was not final until after your narration.

Telling the players about the intersection is telling them a piece of fiction: "As you walk down the tunnel, you come to an intersection."

The players then have the "option" as to which way to go - but this word "option" is (again) a metaphor, because this is not a real intersection with which real people are interacting. It's a piece of fiction narrated by the GM, and if the players say "We go left" or "We go right", well that is a trigger for the GM to narrate some more fiction.

Why is this more important, more interesting and worth spending time on, compared to actually having the PCs meet the giants that they are interested in interacting with?

If you want to call it a metaphor, go for it. It's simply not relevant to anything in this discussion whether it is or is not a metaphor.

What it does do, is give real options. Even if the intersection is imaginary, the options the players take exist in the real world. They make the decision on which way to go here, and tell me what it is here.

As for your your question, you sound like my wife. She will often not like it if I give up a game night with my friends to do something with her, because she knows that I enjoy gaming and want to be there gaming with them. The thing is, I am fully capable of wanting more than one thing that are in conflict with one another. Just because I want to and am interested in gaming, doesn't mean that I do not also want to spend time with her and go out to a movie.

The trip to the giants through the Underdark will garner the players experiences that add to their enjoyment of the game, as well as add to their PCs ability to handle the giants once they arrive. That makes it both interesting and makes it so that it addresses the goal of defeating the giants. It's simplistic to try and boil down game enjoyment/interest to a rush to immediately resolve a stated goal.

I'm not overlooking it. I'm making the point that if the players aren't interested in that - because they want to confront the giants, not make friends with some other persons - then why spend time on it at the table? You'll note that, in my example, the players made potions that they wanted. If they had wanted to meet allies, they could have talked about that. But they didn't.

Players never think of everything. How do you know that they don't want to meet allies, as opposed to not thinking of something that they would have wanted to do had they thought of it?

Your whole presentation of the situation seems to assume a GM-driven game, in which the defeat of the giants is a goal of predetermined difficulty, which therefore might require "aid" of various sorts that will be introduced into the fiction by the GM. As opposed to a player-driven approach, where the players decide whether their PCs are the sort to seek aid or not, and the question of whether or not aid might be needed is settled via the actual play of the game, as in the example I just posted.

While the example is cool and all, it appears that the player did not seek aid, but rather aid came as a result of his actions. Nor does it mean that the player will always remember aid as a possibility and mention it to you.

You are the one who keep insisting that your game is different from mine. I don't have any independent knowledge of it.

If in fact you're playing a no myth, player-driven game where the GM introduces story elements and frames scenes in response to the PC goals that players express, well, OK. But then why do you keep insisting that it's GM-driven and different from what I and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are talking about?

What does this have to do with you guys giving examples of bad DMing?