Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Maxperson]

So I take it you think [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is wrong to have said there is a reason in favour of worldbuilding, namely, that otherwise there is a serious risk of a hodge-podge world. I assume you are going to take him to task for confusing "bad GMing" with some objective risk.

Or, alternatively, this whole pseuo-moralising attack on [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is nonsense. Yes, I think that's it.

You are assuming that a hodge-podge world is inherently bad, rather than [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] simply not liking a hodge-podge world. All of these things are just likes and dislikes of individuals. Many people don't care if some things don't line up exactly in a world. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] does.

 

[Maxperson]

What does "you by default will also have elves in your game world" mean? Who is writing them in? Is the spirit of D&D descending on the land and making unbidden entries in my note book?

And riddle me this: in my OA game I used hobgoblins and never used elves. And I don't think the players were shocked by this. Where did I specificially change the lore? At what point in time?

You and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] are advocating a type of Platonism that can make sene in mathematics (if I say there are 4 hobgoblins, then it's true that the number of hobgoblins equals 2 squared, even if I never thought of that) as if it also applies in fiction. It's ridiculous, and creates nonsense ideas like someone specifically doing something that they never even turned their mind to.

The discussion was about taking the lore "as is", meaning you didn't change it. If you put hobgoblins into your game and took the lore "as is", then elves were mentioned in your game world. If there were no elves in your game world, then the elves implied in the lore was simply in error for some reason. Maybe elves are mythological and don't exist. Maybe they left thousands of years ago. Maybe the hobgoblins call spirit folk elves for some reason. There are lots of ways that the lore implies elves, without elves actually being there.

Now, if the lore wasn't taken "as is" and elves were not mentioned in the lore of your OA hobgoblins, then you did in fact change the lore.

 

[Maxperson]

Which GM are you talking about? You might want to do this. Nothing in the Moldvay Basic rules implies that a GM might do tjhis.

So are you exhibiting selective memory and you have just "forgotten" the portion of Moldvay Basic that I quoted that does in fact imply that there are adventures above ground? I'll help you recover your memory by posting it again.

"It is the DM's job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. This setting is called a dungeon since most adventures take place in underground caverns or stone rooms beneath old ruins or castles."

Those two sentences make it a fact that in Moldvay Basic, not all adventures are in underground places and in ruins. That means that some are in other places like forests, towns and cities. Moldvay Basic just doesn't give the DM the tools to create those adventures. It's focus is on the typical dungeon.

Below are more quotes(not an exhaustive list) from Moldvay Basic that shows a world outside of the dungeon, some specifically mentioning taverns and one that lists towns as a place to adventure.

"Elves are slender, graceful demi-humans with delicate features andslightly pointed ears. They are 5 to 5'2" feet tall and weigh about120 pounds. They can be dangerous opponents, able to fight withany weapon and use magic spells as well, but prefer to spend theirtime feasting and frolicking in wooded glades. They rarely visit thecities of men. Elves are fascinated by magic and never grow tired ofcollecting spells and magic items, especially if the items are beautifullycrafted."

"HIRING: To hire a retainer, a character must first find NPCs whoare interested in the job. Characters will have to go somewherethey might find and interview interested NPCs, such as a tavern orthey must pay a fee to advertise for NPCs to come and see them."

"Acolytes are 1st level NPC clerics on a pilgrimage to or from a holy(or unholy) shrine — or perhaps merely seeking adventure."

I love this one. Talk your way out of the bolded portion here, "Bandits are NPC thieves who have joined together for the purposeof robbing others. Bandits will act as normal humans in order tosurprise their intended victims. Treasure Type (A) is only foundwhen bandits are encountered in the wilderness in their lair."

"Black bears have black fur and stand about 6' tall.They are omnivorous (will eat almost anything), but prefer rootsand berries. A black bear will not usually attack unless it is corneredand cannot escape. Adult black bears will fight to the death to protecttheir young. They have been known to raid camps, seekingfood. They are especially fond of such treats as fresh fish andsweets."

"Grizzly bears have silver-tipped brown or reddishbrown fur, and stand about 9' tall. They are fond of meat and aremuch more likely to attack than black bears. Grizzlies are found inmost climates, but are most common in mountains and forests."

"Wild boars generally prefer forested areas, but can be found nearlyeverywhere. They are omnivorous (eating almost anything), andhave extremely nasty tempers when disturbed."

"The party is hired to map unknownterritory. The area might once have been familiar butis now overrun or destroyed; a strange tower might mysteriouslyappear overnight in a familiar area."

"To remove a curse or recover asacred item, the players must travel to a shrine which hasbeen lost for ages. The characters usually have only a roughidea of its location. The players may have to consult anoracle or seer during their visit."

Kings hang out at the entrance to dungeons with quest signs do they? "This is a scenario in which a king (orother NPC) provides a reason for adventuring."

"It is not necessary to draw a detailed map of the dungeon first, butit is useful to have a general idea of what it will look like. When decidingon the shape of the dungeon, the DM should also outlineideas for rooms or areas in the dungeon. A few common settingsinclude:1. Castle or tower 4. Crypt or tomb2. Caves or cavern 5. Ancient temple3. Abandoned mine 6. Stronghold or town"

At this point I've proven that Moldvay Basic expects the game to take place outside of the classic dungeon as it mentions going to taverns and plenty of outdoor regions and creatures for those outdoor adventures the DM creates. If you want to claim that Moldvay Basic focuses on the underground adventure, I'll agree with you. If you want to continue to claim that it's only about underground adventures, you will be continue to be wrong. Up to you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

On the other thread, when I've suggested this is one thing that worldbuilding is for, there has been a lot of disagreement. Most posters on that thread seem to deny that one function of worldbuilding is to establish stuff for the GM to tell to the players.

I think the difficulty isn't in denying that it is to 'establish stuff for the GM to tell to the players.' I think they are objecting to the entire concept of analyzing play from a standpoint of what the people at the table DO. They want to only look at what is going on fictionally. Beyond that they wanted to emphasize the tentative, provisional, and incomplete nature of what was world built in order to reduce its significance to being more of a way to establish general character knowledge, mapping of genre tropes to their instantiation within the given milieu, and as a 'convenience feature' for the GM. This lead, more or less directly, to a rather long drawn out debate between [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and others about exactly where 'world building' ended and 'adventure design' (or whatever terms you want to use, don't drag me into that) began.

Of course, YOU pretty much relegated adventure design itself to the category of world building back in the start of the other thread ('What is World Building For?'). I assume there was, long ago, a similar debate in this thread. I happen to agree with you that for the purposes of analysis the two activities are closely related, but obviously for someone who wants to kind of pass off world building as a sort of side activity it becomes convenient to draw a stronger line between them.

So that might be ANOTHER way in which worldbuilding was 'denied' to be a source of information to dictate to players, because the people who did the denying called it something else! Nevertheless, your central assertion, that material produced by the GM exists for the purpose of telling the players how things are in the game world rather than establishing it by some form of mutual collaboration is pretty much inarguable. To the extent that others claim collaboration I have to assume they are basically denying the existence, or at least significance, of pregenerated material. If it isn't something to tell the players, either directly or in some secondary received form, then what WOULD it be for?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

While I've used this same definition* forever for what represents an adventure I don't at all agree that there is an implication or suggestion or rule that there be no play outside these borders.

The "adventure" ends when they divide up treasure. Fine. But what do they spend their shares on; and where; and what do those who don't need training do while those who do need it do it; and how and when does the party decide what their next adventure will be; etc.

* - or close; as the end is when they get back to town and do treasury, I usually put the start as when they set out from town.

Given the place that Moldvay Basic has in the evolution of D&D its clear that the game was, by that time (1981 or so, I don't recall exactly, but after 1980) well extended past dungeon delves exclusively. Still, Moldvay is ONLY about delving. It literally doesn't even suggest the existence of a 'town' except maybe as an abstract concept where the players can restock their characters from whatever is in the equipment lists in the book, hire henchmen, and acquire replacement characters. I don't think Moldvay HAS a training rule BTW, though I could be wrong. If it does its pretty abstract from what I can recall. It also requires spell casters to go to town to regain their spells, stating flat out that wizards have to 'consult their spell books' and clerics have to perform religious observances and prayers.

So the assertion is correct, for Moldvay itself. I think its non-controversial to state that players were probably often familiar with overland adventuring as a concept and could extrapolate it into their Basic D&D play (IE they might have a 1e DMG or a copy of OD&D, Expert, etc. to rely on). But at that point they're not just playing 'Moldvay Basic' anymore!

All that tells us is that the designers either a) hadn't considered non-dungeon adventuring at all yet when Basic was released; or more likely b) had considered it and were intentionally saving that part of the game for the next release.

Sure, they left it out, as I said above, its not there, so it isn't part of THAT game! Moldvay Basic literally is a system for running dungeon crawls and NOTHING ELSE as-written.

I think what he's saying is that the lore tying Hobgoblins and Elves together forces one of two things to happen if you decide to use Hobgoblins in your game. Either:

1. You by default will also have Elves in your game world, as the lore states there is a known relationship between Hobs and Elves and thus the existence of one drags the other in by default; or
2. You have to specifically change the lore under "Hobgoblin" to remove the reference to Elves (and at your option put another species in their stead, or not).

Lanefan

Yeah, I think the whole debate is preposterous! People ignore lore all the time if they want to, so merely stating that you "have hobgoblins in your campaign" doesn't automatically demand that you have elves too. What the Game Police are going to enforce lore? LOL.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, if someone says "worldbuilding isn't necessary for RPGing", and you agree that it's not necessary for a one-shot, then why would you just assume they're talking about something else?

Er...because that's how the game is usually played, perhaps?

Sure one-shots happen - convention play wouldn't exist without 'em - but you're not going to get much story out of them. And as we've been more or less talking about story for these last many pages and the means to generate a backdrop for such, an assumption that we're by default talking about games that go on long enough* to generate a story seems reasonable.

* - doesn't have to be all that long - a few decent-length sessions might even be enough, but a one-session one-off doesn't usually have time to generate much beyond a couple of combats and maybe a boss battle if the party gets that far.

And now, once we've got that possibility on the table, what about a campaign in which the players turn up each session and either (1) recommence where they left off in the current dungeon, or else (2) find out which new adventure the GM has planned for today. That sort of campaign doesn't seem like it would need worldbuilding either.

Bracketed numbers added by me.

(1) is how I've played forever.

(2) needs clarification on one point: are the adventures run each week supposed to be connected in any way (e.g. the same PCs, and-or a continuing storyline) or are they completely independent of each other. If the latter then you're talking about each week just being a one-shot. If the former, then sooner or later someone - be it the DM or one or more players - is going to start considering how these various adventures might be connected plot-wise or in-game-world history-wise or geographically. Add to this the need for (a) town(s) to support treasury division, training (if used) and downtime** and you're well on your way to building a setting whether you intended to or not.

** - an essential component, I think. A campaign where play stops at the end of one dungeon and starts at the entrance to the next with nothing in between is, I posit, severely lacking.

And now, are there other sorts of campaigns that (unlike the one described in the previous paragraph) involve scenario-to-scenario continuity, but don't require worldbuilding? I can report from experience that there are.

Depends on what one defines as scenario-to-scenario continuity.

Sure I can have one scene where the party agree to recover the Baron's stolen treasure from the orcs and then jump to the next scene where the party approach the orcs' lair...but in that jump I've skipped a lot, and what I've skipped (the travel, the preparations, the planning, etc.) just happens to be the part that demands some setting foundation. Fancy that.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

What does "you by default will also have elves in your game world" mean? Who is writing them in?

The default lore of the game is writing them in.

Is the spirit of D&D descending on the land and making unbidden entries in my note book?

No, it's merely pointing you to what's already written in the MM.

And riddle me this: in my OA game I used hobgoblins and never used elves. And I don't think the players were shocked by this. Where did I specificially change the lore? At what point in time?

You specifically changed the lore if-when you banned Elves as PCs and gave as the reason that the setting doesn't have any. If Elves were allowed as PCs you didn't change anything; it just happened that no Elves ever entered the PCs' view during that campaign.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, if someone says "worldbuilding isn't necessary for RPGing", and you agree that it's not necessary for a one-shot, then why would you just assume they're talking about something else?

And now, once we've got that possibility on the table, what about a campaign in which the players turn up each session and either recommence where they left off in the current dungeon, or else find out which new adventure the GM has planned for today. That sort of campaign doesn't seem like it would need worldbuilding either.

And now, are there other sorts of campaigns that (unlike the one described in the previous paragraph) involve scenario-to-scenario continuity, but don't require worldbuilding? I can report from experience that there are.

My experience is that 'episodic play' which focuses on a series of fairly unrelated incidents, often featuring a 'cast' of recurring characters, but not always is one of these. I like to use the example of the good old Stargate series. Each episode generally begins with the protagonists (a mostly continuing cast of characters, though which ones are involved on any given episode varies) opening the Stargate to a new set of coordinates. There's usually some backstory to WHY, but often its just exploration. The whole thing is tied together by a set of global assumptions (the Goa'uld, etc.) which provide fodder for the elements of each successive episode. There's usually a modest meta-plot in most of these things, but it can be very weak to basically non-existent, as desired. Usually the early stages of a campaign of this type would be largely exploratory or highly mission-oriented, with the characters developing and acquiring more complex links to an emerging overall context.

OFTEN, I would estimate USUALLY, the overall world is not defined at the start in any great detail. Star Trek, for example, starts in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and establishes only the existence of the ship, its bridge crew, the existence of a 'United Federation of Planets', and that's about it. A few additional details are established during the episode, that the USS Enterprise is on a long-range exploration mission, that without its warp drive it is decades or centuries of travel time to home, etc. Now, SOME additional things were established by the show's producers by this time, but most of the detailed 'lore' of the milieu was established by writers in their scripts on a weekly basis from whole cloth. I expect the same would be true for Stargate SG1, etc.

The same pattern holds for other genre. In the D&D cartoon stuff is pretty much established as it happens. Mission Impossible simply created whatever organizations, locations, geopolitical situations, countries, etc. that were required for each week's episode.

Obviously in an RPG context it can easily work the same way. All that need be established at first is the bare minimum framework to allow for the basic episode structure to be established. The rest will take care of itself. In a Story Now kind of rendition the nature of the episodic format will be partly dictated by the player's stated goals and interests, or perhaps by an overall campaign theme that is agreed on by the participants before it starts. Genre conventions can take care of much of the details, and the rest will come out through play. Each episode would probably address a specific character's or several character's dramatic needs. Judging by the kinds of things seen in the TV shows I mentioned there would likely be existential threats, moral quandries, physical danger, possibly threats to the status quo of the 'team' itself, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

My experience is that 'episodic play' which focuses on a series of fairly unrelated incidents, often featuring a 'cast' of recurring characters, but not always is one of these. I like to use the example of the good old Stargate series. Each episode generally begins with the protagonists (a mostly continuing cast of characters, though which ones are involved on any given episode varies) opening the Stargate to a new set of coordinates. There's usually some backstory to WHY, but often its just exploration. The whole thing is tied together by a set of global assumptions (the Goa'uld, etc.) which provide fodder for the elements of each successive episode. There's usually a modest meta-plot in most of these things, but it can be very weak to basically non-existent, as desired. Usually the early stages of a campaign of this type would be largely exploratory or highly mission-oriented, with the characters developing and acquiring more complex links to an emerging overall context.

OFTEN, I would estimate USUALLY, the overall world is not defined at the start in any great detail. Star Trek, for example, starts in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and establishes only the existence of the ship, its bridge crew, the existence of a 'United Federation of Planets', and that's about it. A few additional details are established during the episode, that the USS Enterprise is on a long-range exploration mission, that without its warp drive it is decades or centuries of travel time to home, etc. Now, SOME additional things were established by the show's producers by this time, but most of the detailed 'lore' of the milieu was established by writers in their scripts on a weekly basis from whole cloth. I expect the same would be true for Stargate SG1, etc.

The same pattern holds for other genre. In the D&D cartoon stuff is pretty much established as it happens. Mission Impossible simply created whatever organizations, locations, geopolitical situations, countries, etc. that were required for each week's episode.

Obviously in an RPG context it can easily work the same way. All that need be established at first is the bare minimum framework to allow for the basic episode structure to be established. The rest will take care of itself. In a Story Now kind of rendition the nature of the episodic format will be partly dictated by the player's stated goals and interests, or perhaps by an overall campaign theme that is agreed on by the participants before it starts. Genre conventions can take care of much of the details, and the rest will come out through play. Each episode would probably address a specific character's or several character's dramatic needs. Judging by the kinds of things seen in the TV shows I mentioned there would likely be existential threats, moral quandries, physical danger, possibly threats to the status quo of the 'team' itself, etc.

But all those details are thought about, developed and then put into an episode. It is very hard to write star trek style on the fly, because there is an element of thought experiment to most of the alien races they end up facing. I think you could just as easily take this analogy and liken it to a GM world building between sessions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But all those details are thought about, developed and then put into an episode. It is very hard to write star trek style on the fly, because there is an element of thought experiment to most of the alien races they end up facing. I think you could just as easily take this analogy and liken it to a GM world building between sessions.

I think you COULD world build between sessions. I think you can also play in a Story Now fashion. My point was that pre-established world details are not that big a deal in this kind of format. Things are generally established incrementally during each 'episode'.

Imagine that I created a game of episodic space exploration ala Star Trek, but without the existing 'Trek Universe'. The players would then be free to establish goals and resolve conflicts for their characters without reference to specific 'facts' beyond "we're explorers" and the bare essentials of the episodic framework (a starship operating far beyond routine trade routes and such, finding new things each episode). They would be free to establish the parameters of the sponsoring organization, how the economy, laws, society, and probably a lot of the tech, work in their milieu.

Again, this is roughly analogous to how TOS was experienced, the first episode established the major characters and the core concept. Each additional episode established more details. The Romulans, for example, were established in IIRC the next episode to be aired, along with some facts about Federation history and its basic nature and core values. Some things were really NEVER established. The only mentions of the economy of the 22nd Century in TOS are the existence of merchant ships, Orion Traders, and the suggestion of some shady dealings implied by things like Mudd and the trader in 'The Trouble with Tribbles' for instance. I'm not even sure 'credits' were actually mentioned even once in that series, and if they were it was very much in passing. TNG developed the whole milieu much more, but it was also much less episodic in its format.

That's my point, episodic formats are good for minimal initial world building. Obviously SOME things are going to be established during play. Its possible a LOT of things will be, if the game goes on long enough. SG1 and TNG both ran for around 10 years and their lore became pretty well established by the end of that time.