What is *worldbuilding* for?

[darkbard]

<snip>
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says

<snip>

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door. This just doesn't seem right to me somehow.

You continue to misunderstand how Story Now, player-facing games work. Of course, if the PC fails the roll the GM dictates the conditions of the failure, including the very real possibility that the PC fails the roll because there is no secret door to find! Now, some "fail forward" iterations of the game might consider that a weak judgment by the GM, but it's absolutely in play as one possibility.

 

[Arilyn]

So there's a lot going on in this thread and I'm working my way through it because... we'll, it's interesting and I'm nosy... but I'm wondering if anyone can clear something up for me:

Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?

If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...

The OP is talking about world building not being needed in a game where reality is shaped during play. GM frames a scene, players make moves, ie, searching for a secret door, and then dice are used to determine what happens. These games are driven by character motivations. In this kind of game there is no reason to prebuild a world, as it forms around the narrative at the table. This doesn't mean players just get what they want, and their declarations have to make sense. No machine guns in a medieval theme, for example.

DnD is not the focus of the discussion, exactly, as its a rare technique in DnD games. It keeps coming up as an example cause everyone is familiar with it.

 

[darkbard]

If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...

Also, it should be noted that while D&D is not explicitly framed in terms of such play, 4E does make overtures towards this mode in several ways, at the very least allowing Story Now principles to work in play. The basic rules set of 5E, as you note, backs away from this approach towards what most are calling "traditional" play hereabouts.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?
If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...

IDK about 'force,' contribute might be a better way of putting it. But, no, it is not a 5e thang, 5e is non-committal about stylistic choices like that, a DM could run that way if he felt like it, with or without informing players.
If you are empowering the players to knowingly do things like that, for instance by giving them resources to accomplish such things, it's more indie.

 

[pemerton]

Yup....useless or railroading, the only two types of GMs that there may be. So sad that there can't be some middle ground and that instead, everyone's game stinks because it's one extreme or the other.

Does every movie "stink" because there's someone who didn't like it (or wouldn't like it if they watched it)? I don't think it's an imperative, in creative or hobby endeavours, that they appeal to everyone.

I know nothing of [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game except from what I can infer from his posts on these boards. Given his criticism of the way I adjudicated the bazaar-feather scene in my BW game, and his hints at how he might run a somewhat similar episode in his game, I infer that I wouldn't particularly enjoy playing in his game. That's not any sort of tragedy - after all, I'm not, and as far as I know he doesn't paticularly want me to.

It similarly seems that Maxperson would not enjoy GMing a game where the GM is what he calls "useless" - ie has the job of framing, embellishing success, and adjudicating consequences for failure, but does not have the sort of authority over outcomes that he seems to favour. But, again, that doesn't seem to be a problem as he is not being forced or even (as far as I know) asked by anyone to GM such a game.

 

[pemerton]

The term railroading has in recent years come off the rails (heh heh). It has become an insult players fling at each other, when in disagreement over playstyles.

<snip>

Railroading is not pre-written adventures. Railroading is not world building. Railroading is not "going where the action is." Railroading is simply the GM deciding actions for the players, or forcing a preconceived result no matter what the players do, or whether it makes sense anymore. Nobody in this thread is guilty of railroading.

I haven't said that anyone is "guilty" of railroading. I've described a particular approach to play, and why I regard it as railroading. If others don't so regard it, that's their prerogative. In the context of RPGing, as in life more generally, "railroading" has a normative/evaluative element and so judgements in respect of it are likely to differ.

Here's one suggested meaning of railroading:

Control of a player-character's decisions, or opportunities for decisions, by another person (not the player of the character) in any way which breaks the Social Contract for that group, in the eyes of the character's player.​

That's fairly abstract. But it can clearly encompass more than simply a GM declaring an action for a PC (which is itself permissible in some systems in some contexts, eg in D&D if a dominate or similar effect is in play).

 

[pemerton]

The DM does describe imaginary nouns, and maybe even an imaginary situation they're in, the player then interact with that, said interaction being handled by an inconsistent mix of DM fiat and dysfunctional mechanical resolution.

Interaction is a misnomer here, or at best a metaphor.

The participants at the table interact with one another. But the players don't "interact" with the gameworld. They describe things that their PCs are doing, and the GM describes things that happen to, or about, their PCs.

What doesn't seem right is that it's a Schrodinger's Secret Door - it both exists and does not exist until it's found (or conclusively established not to exist, somehow, I suppose).

This is an illusion created by thinking of the gameworld as objectively and independently existing.

How many belt loops are on the trousers that Watson is wearing when he first meets Holmes (in A Study in Scarlet, I think)? To the best of my recollection, Doyle doesn't tell us. But that doesn't mean Watson's trousers have "Schroedinger's belt loops". It just means that no one has established that element of the fiction yet. This is the case in all fictions, given that no one can give a total description of anything.

What colour is the ceiling of the tavern in the Keep (of B2 fame)? I'm pretty sure Gygax doesn't mention it - but that doesn't mean it's "Schroedinger's ceiling". It just means that, if any participant in the game wants to know what colour the ceiling is, someone is going to have to make that up.

There are all sorts of ways of making things up in a RPG. The resolution of declared action is one such way.

 

[pemerton]

So there's a lot going on in this thread

Agreed!

Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?

If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...

This is a thread in General RPGs, not 5e or other D&D editions - so it's not particularly about D&D.

That said, I don't think I'm the only 4e GM to have used action resolution as a device for establishing elements of the fiction. For instance (I've quoted enough to give some context, and have bolded the relevant part):

they entered Mal Arundak by making it past the demon hordes via a mixture of sneakiness (Seeming and flying Phantom Steeds), and then combat (fighting a couple of demon horde swarms (elite 24th level brutes) while the invoker/wizard opened the doors to Mal Arundak). On the other side of the gates the bastion's self-deluded corrupted-angel guardians were waiting to welcome these heroic figures sent by Pelor to relieve the siege. The PCs had already learned that the siege was ages old, and upon inspecting it close-up and then talking to the guardians it seemed even clearer that its principal purpose was not to actual break into and sack Mal Arundak. They speculated as to why this might be, and concluded that its purposes was, perhaps, to corrupt the guardians.

It also became clear to them that there were chaotic forces within Mal Arundak as well as outside it - connected, they assumed, to the Ebon Flame, which they knew to be locked up inside the bastion and believed to contain the essence of the Elder Elemental Eye.

The "angels" showed the weary travellers to a room where they could rest and freshen up. The invoker/wizard used Purify Water to remove the corrupting sludge from the fountain in the room, and they took a long rest (they also may have done some divination, but the details escape me).

Reinvigorated, they went back out to speak to the angels, and presented as their principal concern the need to check the bastion's defences, and reinvigorate them if necessary. The paranoid "angels" began to suspect them, however, of wanting to be shown the way to the Flame so they could steal it. Matters came to something of a head when the invoker/wizard, as part of "reinforcing the magic wards", raised a Magic Circle vs Demons at the entrance to the reliquary where the Flame was stored - the angels could sense that they couldn't cross it, and accused him of treachery, but he (and his fellows) retorted that the angels has been corrupted by their long labours on the Abyss, and insisted that they join in a ritual of purification and reinvigoration in the spirit of Pelor. (This had been resolved a social skill challenge, in which the PCs were successful so far.)

The invoker/wizard then used his Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes to recall a teleport sigil from Pelor's hold in Hestavar, and opened a Planar Portal directly to that point (successful Arcana check), allowing Pelor's divine power to wash over the PCs and the angels. A successful Religion check purged them of their corruption, and they duly thanked the PCs for purifying them, and allowed them to enter the reliquary to learn where the chaos was coming from.

I wouldn't call this "forcing a specific reality on the game" - it is about establishing some element of the shared fiction by way of action declaration. That is very common in combat - "I attack the orc <rolls dice, reports results>" "OK, it's dead."

In the bolded example, the action declaration is along the lines of "I recall a teleport sigil that I saw once in Hestavar, many lifetimes ago, through which Pelor's holy raidance will flow if I open a portal to it!"

 

[Tony Vargas]

. But the players don't "interact" with the gameworld. ...

This is an illusion created by thinking of the gameworld as objectively and independently existing.

Exactly, that's why it seems off in some way if you've been thinking like that for 30 years.

But, you're still not being told, or telling, even cooperatively, a Story. A story worth hearing may or may not result, and finally be told, when you recount what 'happened.'

 

[pemerton]

By that definition the real world is a railroad. Is that really what you mean to say?

Putting theological conundrums to one side, the real world is not a game, and the causal forces in the real world are actual causal forces, not imagined proxies for someone's authorial decisions.

Being captured by pursuers because one reached a dead end is something that sometimes happens in the real world, due to the way the world is.

Being captured by pursuers because one reached a dead end might also be something that happens in a RPG. But that is not because of "objective" causal forces. It's because someone, via some process, established that there is no secret door in the blank stone wall. We're discussing different forms that process might take.

In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:

1. A door is found.
2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)

In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen

3 can happen.

Possible failure narrations could include, in no particular order, any of the following (depending on what the GM thinks up and how it seems to fit the unfolding situation):

(A) You start to search for a door - but then it finds you before you find it! A secret door opens and a squad of guards comes through it. It's the pursuers on one side and this squad on the other! - what do you do?

(B) You search for a door, but there seems to be nothing there. Or, at least, nothing you find before you hear the sounds of closing pursuers. What do you do?

(C) As you search desperately for a door, your pursuers catch up to you. The one in the lead mocks you: "If you'd done your homework, you'd know there are no secret ways in or out of this fortress!" What do you do?​

(B) and (C) are both consistent with your (3) as well as your (2), and (C) makes (3) more likely than (2), assuming the lead pursuer is a reliable source of information about the fortress.

Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?

Why wouldn't it make sense that a bare stone wall in a D&D-type building has a secret door in it. They're pretty standard architectural features!

As for too many - I just don't think it's going to come up that often. Unless you're playing Gosford Park - the RPG, and then secret doors/passages/priest holes/maid creeps should be pretty common, shouldn't they?

The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say. In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.

This is the first time I've heard player success in action resolution described as "railroading the GM". So when the players kill all the orcs you put into your dungeon, they're railroading you? Because you have to accept the outcome of the combat mechanics?