Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Hussar]

Well, I was speaking to Hussar about balancing fluff and crunch, and how one is meaningless without the other. He made a comment about designing encounters, and said something along the lines of “there’s a refuse pit....so I’ll have an Otyugh”. So my comment was about why he knew to use an Otyugh, a creature that I don’t believe has any mythological origin, and is purely a creation of D&D (I could of course be wrong, but I don’t think I am).

He knew because the creature was designed to explain where all the refuse and waste from dungeon denizens went. It’s a living toilet. That is its place in the fictional world. So yes, I’d call this worldbuilding. Not of the kind the GM or the players engage in as part of play, but of the kind a specific GM (likely Gygax, but maybe Arneson of Kuntz or one of the other OG crew) came up with to explain how his world worked.

Hussar would prefer this type of material be kept to a minimum. And that’s fine, that’s his preference. But much of it is inseperable from the game. The lore...or fluff or worldbuilding....is what goves context to things. This is why it’s so prevalent in game books, and why it’s not likely to go away.

See, that's the point I keep trying to make though and this is why we keep talking past each other. An Otyugh is a trash monster isn't world building IMO. It's simply stating what the thing is. Obviously you need that much. That's just basic setting stuff that every story must have. World building would be going beyond that. A several page treatise on the life cycle of an Otyugh such as this: On the Ecology of the Otyugh or a 15 minute video description:

[video=youtube_share;-1Wa_w4G0Pw]https://youtu.be/-1Wa_w4G0Pw[/video]

That's what I consider to be world building.

 

[pemerton]

Well, I was speaking to Hussar about balancing fluff and crunch, and how one is meaningless without the other. He made a comment about designing encounters, and said something along the lines of “there’s a refuse pit....so I’ll have an Otyugh”. So my comment was about why he knew to use an Otyugh, a creature that I don’t believe has any mythological origin, and is purely a creation of D&D (I could of course be wrong, but I don’t think I am).

He knew because the creature was designed to explain where all the refuse and waste from dungeon denizens went. It’s a living toilet. That is its place in the fictional world. So yes, I’d call this worldbuilding.

I guess this goes back to the discussion about whether it's world building to write into a gamebook that kobolds are mini-dragons.

Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I don't see this sort of sketching of the basic essence of an imaginary creature as world-building. Once we start to get some concrete assertions like "There're otyughs here but not there" I see worldbuidling.

 

[Maxperson]

See, that's the point I keep trying to make though and this is why we keep talking past each other. An Otyugh is a trash monster isn't world building IMO. It's simply stating what the thing is. Obviously you need that much. That's just basic setting stuff that every story must have. World building would be going beyond that. A several page treatise on the life cycle of an Otyugh such as this: On the Ecology of the Otyugh or a 15 minute video description:

That's what I consider to be world building.

We understand that. The reality is, though, that what you don't consider world building is worldbuilding, and what you consider to be worldbuilding is just excessive worldbuilding.

 

[Maxperson]

Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I don't see this sort of sketching of the basic essence of an imaginary creature as world-building. Once we start to get some concrete assertions like "There're otyughs here but not there" I see worldbuidling.

If it's part of building the world, then it's worldbuilding. Creating a monster, or adding an already created monster to your world, or coming up with lore for your monster like, "It's a trash monster", are all worldbuilding. All of that goes into building the world.

 

[pemerton]

If it's part of building the world, then it's worldbuilding. Creating a monster, or adding an already created monster to your world, or coming up with lore for your monster like, "It's a trash monster", are all worldbuilding. All of that goes into building the world.

How is creating a monster worldbuilding? What bit of the gameworld did I establish by buying a MM?

 

[Maxperson]

How is creating a monster worldbuilding? What bit of the gameworld did I establish by buying a MM?

You built the existence of that monster into your world. There are two possibilities when you buy the MM. All monsters in it are in your game world, in which case you just worldbuilt all of them into it, or else not all monsters in it are in your game world, so you worldbuild them in individually when you use them. In both cases you are building your world, albeit in a minor way, when you add the monsters to your game world.

 

[hawkeyefan]

See, that's the point I keep trying to make though and this is why we keep talking past each other. An Otyugh is a trash monster isn't world building IMO. It's simply stating what the thing is. Obviously you need that much. That's just basic setting stuff that every story must have. World building would be going beyond that. A several page treatise on the life cycle of an Otyugh such as this: On the Ecology of the Otyugh or a 15 minute video description:

[video=youtube_share;-1Wa_w4G0Pw]https://youtu.be/-1Wa_w4G0Pw[/video]

That's what I consider to be world building.

Yeah, I get your preference.

I don’t like Sushi, Sushi is Food, therefore Food is disgusting.

I absolutely understand your preference. My point is that worldbuilding (not in your definition where only the negative aspects are included, but all aspects are included) is essential, and therefore will always be prevalent. The line for each person is what’s different, and that’s fine, but it’s also why we continue to get this kind of material. Obviously, the average line drawn by customers is a bit higher than yours. Or at least, it has been in the past. For the current edition, I’m not really sure it’s as bad as you think. However, since you haven’t purchased any of the books beside’s Xanathar’s, it’s hard to determine.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I guess this goes back to the discussion about whether it's world building to write into a gamebook that kobolds are mini-dragons.

Like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I don't see this sort of sketching of the basic essence of an imaginary creature as world-building. Once we start to get some concrete assertions like "There're otyughs here but not there" I see worldbuidling.

Okay....don’t you feel you’ve edited out part of my comment that would go a long way toward addressing this? I know you may claim that you edit posts for the sake of brevity, but please....you clearly are not concerned with brevity based on many of your posts which sometimes require an index and visits to multiple websites. Which is fine, they are very informed and insightful. But that makes it odd when you only seem to be concerned with brevity when quoting others.

Would you say that when Gygax (let’s assume it was him for the purpose of discussion) introduced the Otyugh into a game with the intention of explaining where all the waste from the dungeon’s denizens went, that this was an instance of worldbuilding?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Considering my very strong dislike for Planescape, no, I haven't looked at it. Sorry. I see Planescape as probably one of the biggest examples of "Material to Read rather than Play".

My impression of it at the time was that it was overtly derivative of what WWGS had been doing with the WoD. Which was understandable, as that's what was selling well in the 90s: books that were a better read than a resource.

It makes sense, really: it's easier to find a little time now and then to read a book then it is to find a few hours to game, when that also requires a circle of friends who can also set aside the same few hours and are all interested in playing that same game.

But the result was still a terrible setting, whether you love* worldbuidling or hate it, Planescape was an awful place to try to run or play in a campaign.

Hrm, a setting where the players are completely incapable of making any lasting changes, wrapped in a system that completely fails to address the central themes of the setting. No thanks. I'm not terribly interested in reading about settings. I want to play them.

Making setting material a good read across multiple supplements (as many as a book a month in the 90s, it was) was like keeping a good novel series going, you had to have continuity & interest across the series, which meant keeping authorial control over the setting, which further limited what a given GM could do for stories in that setting....








* and, really, if you love world/building/ you'd be building your own - consumers of WoD, Planescape, and the like aren't building those worlds.

 

[Bedrockgames]

My impression of it at the time was that it was overtly derivative of what WWGS had been doing with the WoD. Which was understandable, as that's what was selling well in the 90s: books that were a better read than a resource.

It makes sense, really: it's easier to find a little time now and then to read a book then it is to find a few hours to game, when that also requires a circle of friends who can also set aside the same few hours and are all interested in playing that same game.

But the result was still a terrible setting, whether you love* worldbuidling or hate it, Planescape was an awful place to try to run or play in a campaign.


Making setting material a good read across multiple supplements (as many as a book a month in the 90s, it was) was like keeping a good novel series going, you had to have continuity & interest across the series, which meant keeping authorial control over the setting, which further limited what a given GM could do for stories in that setting....








* and, really, if you love world/building/ you'd be building your own - consumers of WoD, Planescape, and the like aren't building those worlds.

I gamed all through the 90s, with lots of different people, and my experience was most everyone in my game group who bought these books and settings were also running them (I played in Planescape campaigns, Darksun campaigns, WoD campaigns, etc). They were designed to be enjoyable to read, and that has downsides when it comes to running them on the table. But most of the people I encountered were reading them to run (I knew one person who only read the books and setting material for fun but even that person was a player in our games on occasion). I can't speak to the quality of planescape from a GMing point of view, since I never ran it. But the GM who did run it, didn't seem to have a lot of trouble doing so. Most of the GMs I knew at the time, just didn't mind reading hundreds of pages of setting material between games. I think where the stuff had more of an issue was being friendly to play at the table. Again though, I tend to come back to a 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater' with all this stuff. You need material that is easy to deploy in the chaos of the gaming table, but it is also very helpful to have deeper, inspirational material to draw on.