What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I haven't played enough DW to know how important equipment lists are in that game, but my default assumption would be "not super-important".

Right. Basically the conceit of DW is you are THE character of a class. Class is not a categorization OF characters, its a specific rule set which applies to YOU uniquely in the world. So if you play a fighter, you are THE fighter. Thus you start with the fighter's equipment list, which has a couple choices on it, but is generally fairly cut-and-dried. Things also tend to be 'kits', so you get the standard kit, plus armor and a weapon, and maybe a choice between a shield and something else (I could go look it up, but you get the idea). You get some 'coins' too, with which you can make certain types of moves, like buying more stuff. There is an encumbrance system, its very simple and clearly meant to just provide a reasonable indication of what would be a feasible load. It certainly isn't intended to be a detailed logistical game, although I guess you COULD play it that way.

In Cortex+ Heroic, for equipment to be worth noting on the sheet it has to be either:

(i) a power or power set (so Captain America has his Vibranium Alloy Shield power set; the berserker in my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game has his Melee Weapon power; the swordthane in my game has the Superhuman Durability power which reflects his drake-hide armour; all have the Gear limitation); or,

(ii) a Specialty-based resource created by spending a plot point (eg this is how The Punisher, as statted up for the game, gets to use his Battlevan - its a Vehicle Expertise-based resource; and this is how the swordthane in my game gets to have a horse - it's a Riding Expertise-based resource); or,

(iii) an Asset, resulting either from successful action resolution or granted as a "gift" by the GM for succeeding in a scene (eg the scout in my game, who ended the first "act" of the adventure by escaping the dungeon with the gold of the dark-elven kingdom, enjoyed a persistent d8 Bag of Gold asset for the whole of the second "act").
​

Right. DW has a fairly straightforward setup that way. Certain items have 'tags' which grant them properties that benefit the character in specific situations. Its pretty much like 4e keywords. Actual magic items are a little bit more interesting, such as:

Cloak of Silent Stars 1 weight
A cape of rich black velvet outside and sparkling with tiny points of
light within, this cloak bends fate, time and reality around it to protect
the wearer, who may defy danger with whatever stat they like. To do
this, the wearer invokes the cloak’s magic and their player describes
how the cloak helps “break the rules.” They can deflect a fireball with
CHA by convincing it they deserve to live or elude a fall by applying
the mighty logic of their INT to prove the fall won’t hurt. The cloak
makes it so. It can be used once for each stat before losing its magic.

(this is, in my estimate, a quite powerful item, many of them are fairly trivial). It is a good illustration of the sorts of ways that DW can work. It grants the user quite a bit of narrative power actually!

So if a player wants his/her PC to get a bonus/augment from using a rope to escape a situation, that would have to be established either as an Asset (which relies on the currently existing fiction) or a Resource (which can include "while back at base camp, I made sure to pack some rope). The details of the generation method would determine the rating of the rope.

But if a player just wants his/her PC to climb to the top of a cliff (say, to establish an Overview of the Terrain asset), and is using Outdoor Expertise to help with that, and in the course of narration includes a rope as part of it, that is fine and just part of the colour.

There is a very marked contrast here with Burning Wheel, which is super-obsessed with the equipment list (at least as much as AD&D I would say; maybe more, because losing or breaking equipment is a legitimate narration of a failure, which happens quite a bit, so there isn't necessarily the AD&D phenomenon of "growing out" of the need to maintain an accurate list once your reach 4th level or so).

4e is a bit confused in this respect because it should be more like Cortex+ Heroic, but it presents itself as more like Burning Wheel.

Yeah, 4e has a bit of an incoherent approach to basic equipment. Its all carefully laid out and priced, and then it hardly ever matters. I guess you could impose a narrative need to have the specific equipment you need in order to, say, use a skill in an SC in a certain way, so it would be fictional positioning. I preferred to generally treat it like a part of the challenge, so players failures could be narrated as missing equipment, or a success could be narrated as having been prepared and thus provided with exactly the right thing.

I think it would be reasonable to also do something like make a check to see if you had something appropriate and hold that resource in reserve for the proper moment, sort of like Cortex+ Heroic.

 

[Lanefan]

Right. Basically the conceit of DW is you are THE character of a class. Class is not a categorization OF characters, its a specific rule set which applies to YOU uniquely in the world. So if you play a fighter, you are THE fighter.

That must get messy if more than one player wants to play a Fighter...though the comedy-routine arguments could go on for days when the party first meets:

"I'm the Fighter."
"Sorry, I'm the Fighter."
"You? You're not the Fighter."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm the Fighter."
"That's impossible. I'm the Fighter."
"Hey, what about me? I'm the Fighter too."
"No, you'd be the Fighter three."
"I'm the Fighter too."
"No, you're three."
"And I'm two? No, sorry. I'm the Fighter."
"Yes; you would be the Fighter two if you were a Fighter, but you're not. Either of you."
"Why not?"
<stereo> "Because I'm the Fighter!" (etc.)

Lan-"the saving grace is that, once this inevitably escalated into battle, there would in the end only be one"-efan

 

[pemerton]

That must get messy if more than one player wants to play a Fighter

From the Dungeon World rulebook (p 49):

Look over the character classes and choose one that interests you. To start with everyone chooses a different class; there aren’t two wizards. If two people want the same class, talk it over like adults and compromise. . . .

Later on, if you’re making a replacement character, you can choose a class someone else is already playing.​

And with respect to NPCs, there is this (p 178):

Are there other wizards? Not really. There are other workers of arcane magic, and the common folk may call them wizards, but they’re not like you. They don’t have the same abilities, though they may be similar. Later on there may be another player character with the same class but no GM character will ever really be a wizard (or any other class).​

So the issue you raise isn't generally going to come up!

 

[Doug McCrae]

I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.

 

[pemerton]

I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.

The first system I know of that has a "one unique thing" element to PC building is Over the Edge (also Jonathan Tweet, about 20 years before 13th Age!).

But there may be earlier versions of the idea. (I'm not counting points-buy or lifepath games, which allow any given PC to be unique but get there via a universal process.)

 

[Ilbranteloth]

The words you quote aren't mine, they're Vincent Baker's.

And of course he's putting them forward in explaining why he thinks the game is better if the GM avoids using "secret backstory".

I know, and I'm happy that you brought them to my attention. And I understand that's what he was using them for, which is why I'm using them to point out that they also apply quite well for the exact opposite.

Because pre-authored material and secret backstory can still be fluid and flexible, not only rigid and unchangeable.

He has his preferences, I have mine. I (and my players) are having a blast with the game we run, the way we run it. I hope he does too. That's not to say I can't learn anything from him, you or others. But I have yet to see a valid reason that applies to all RPGs, much less my own game, that proves all secret backstory is bad.

I don't care if my brain came up with an idea 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago. If it adds cool stuff to the game, fits the moment, and the narrative, then I'm a happy DM. It's exciting from the DM side to know something they don't know (I am not left handed), and it's just as much fun when the tables are turned, and the PCs do something I don't expect (pretty much every time).

As I've noted, I'm finding that I do give the players a lot more input into the fiction as it's happening than I thought, and that the framework we have in place to divide different aspects of the narrative is also working very well. To me, these are all just tools available to help me run the best game I can for my players. To a large degree, it has to do with avoiding extremes. I don't want the players having control over the secret backstory (written or not), and I don't want to make any ideas I put together too rigid and inflexible. The fact is, though, at times the players have had a greater degree of control over the secret backstory of the game too.

Just like the players often find their characters develop in unexpected directions, my ideas about a villain, an organization, a scheme, or whatever morphs well beyond what I ever though of on my own.

What I'm really coming around to is that my main complaints about Story Now games is that they seem to want to take away many of the tools that I find work well for us. I'm looking for new tools, or to refine the way I use the tools I've got. In most cases I'm not looking to throw out those tools.

But his quote really gets to the heart of the matter. That regardless of whatever tools we use, whatever game mechanics, pre-published information, whatever it might be, it's all in the quest to share cool stuff with the players.

If you are the sort where pre-authored material inhibits your ability as a GM to provide that experience, then don't use it. But to rebut another thread - that doesn't make world-building bad (I might as well come back to the actual thread...). If you don't feel you need it, and your players agree. Then don't. But we love the idea that there's a greater world out there to explore, and that as players and characters we can experience it. As players, they can read the books, the blogs, the wikis, and come to the table with something that others know too. That there's a consistency to the world and its lore, and yet it's flexible too. That not everything that's written is 100% true. Some parts may be 100% false. That I can pull out a map and they can see what lies along that road, or that river, and they can consult Faeroogle to get answers anytime they want.

So it absolutely says it all, "My job as the DM is to share cool stuff with the players."

 

[Lanefan]

From the Dungeon World rulebook (p 49):

Look over the character classes and choose one that interests you. To start with everyone chooses a different class; there aren’t two wizards. If two people want the same class, talk it over like adults and compromise. . . .

Later on, if you’re making a replacement character, you can choose a class someone else is already playing.​

And with respect to NPCs, there is this (p 178):

Are there other wizards? Not really. There are other workers of arcane magic, and the common folk may call them wizards, but they’re not like you. They don’t have the same abilities, though they may be similar. Later on there may be another player character with the same class but no GM character will ever really be a wizard (or any other class).​

So the issue you raise isn't generally going to come up!

Clearly, then, an example of the game system trying to (for better or worse, could be either) enforce some metagame conceits in campaign play: that there will be relatively few PCs (at most, one per class) and thus no very-large parties or numbers of players at the table, that PC turnover will be very low to zero (because otherwise you'll run out of classes to play), that there will be a wide range of classes within any party (all-rogue or all-fighter parties, for example, are in effect banned), and so on.

Curious...

 

[Lanefan]

I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.

This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?

 

[Doug McCrae]

This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?

In 13th Age only PCs get One Unique Thing but the GM is certainly free to make NPCs equally unique if they like. To an extent I think this is a good idea - NPCs should certainly be interesting - but not so interesting that they step on the PCs' toes. 13th Age very much takes the view that the PCs are The Heroes, analogous to the protagonists in fiction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?

Why would a character with no player need to be a special snowflake? It's just there to be a challenge or a help or a source of exposition or whatever, the DM plays it for a bit, then the next one...