Why Worldbuilding is Bad

rounser said:

You have to make worlds in terms of component parts like cities and rabbit hills

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But if cities and rabbit hills are part of setting, then doesn't it follow that you have to make worlds in terms of crafting setting?

Whether or not that is true, you're still wrong in your claim that he said that the city or rabbit hill constituted an entire world.

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I never made a claim that anyone said a city or a rabbit hill constituted "an entire world".

Again, why would I say

Raven Crowking said:

So clearly, to Hussar, what appears in an adventure isn’t necessarily part of an adventure (see also the Five Shires reference to X1). Nor is worldbuilding something that occurs only on the scale of a world.

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(emphasis mine)

if I was trying to demonstrate that "Hussar stated that city = the world, or that hill of rabbits = the world"?

I note also that you ignore:


Do you agree, or disagree?

Hussar said:

The details of the Five Shires is completely and utterly superflous to the adventure. That's world building.

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Again - I find your statements to be consistently illogical on this point. On one hand you argue about a "spectrum" in terms that you suggest that other people don't know the defintion. And a few sentences later procede to forget what you just said apparently. Show me where the "complete and uttelry superfluous" part of the spectrum is?

Consider - the Isle of the Dread is not complete - nor are many adventures. The Isle of Dread contains nothing IIRC about the ship that you use to get to the Isle, or the folks aboard that ship - one or more of whom might be a halfling from the Five Shires. Now all of the sudden, as a result of the DM fleshing out the Isle of Dread to actually be usable in a campaign style game, the Five Shires info has gone from "complete and utterly superflous" to...something else.

But this has happened over and over again where you suggest that one thing is your philosoophy in the abstract, and then say all sorts of things that appear to contradict it. Your habits and comments previously have been much more in the "black and white" frame of mind, so I find this spectrum thing to be an unatural fit with your basic inclinations on this subject.

AFAICT the more you apply the "spectrum" philosophy to the way you talk about this issue, the less we'll have to disagree on.

Hussar said:

I hope this becomes clear because I don't know how else to say it. There is a spectrum, a continuum, a range with Keep on the Borderlands on the one side and Realmslore articles on the other.

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The problem with the spectrum in how you're using it (when you use it) here is that the light spectrum, for instance, is based on a measurable phenomena. The wavelength of light is a measurable quantity, and is useful for talking about things like energy and how the light reacts with other things. Physicists AFAIK don't argue about whether something's "red" or not because it's not a useful definition. Wavelength is useful.

The "world-buildiness" of Realmslore vs. KotB is not objective, and I don't find your definitions here to be any more useful than "red". The whole idea isn't much useful unless you're trying to tell other people how to DM or what to think about something. And compounding the error and the arrogance is telling other people what they should think about the people who write it and their motives.

You keep trying to divert attention away from this quote:

No, Hussar said "world here doesn't necessarily mean planet, it could be larger or smaller depending" which doesn't make it any different from, say, the village/dungeon/wilderness combo the PCs are currently wandering around in.

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That's the one which is an extrapolation that his words don't support. You've conclusively proved that you can't back up this assertion, so I'm satisfied.

rounser said:

If the "world" in "worldbuilding" "doesn't necessarily mean planet" but can mean such things as "city" or "hill" then it is not any different from, say, the village/dungeon/wilderness combo the PCs are currently wandering around in.

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Note that this is an IF/THEN statement.

IF the "world" in "worldbuilding" can mean "city" or "hill" THEN it is sensible to discuss the creation of a city or a hill in terms of worldbuilding.

IF the "world" in "worldbuilding" cannot mean "city" or "hill" THEN it is not sensible to discuss the creation of a city or a hill in terms of worldbuilding.

As Hussar discusses both the creation of a city and a hill in terms of worldbuilding, I conclude that the first proposition is more likely to be true than the second.

One can then make the claim that, while it is not sensible to discuss the creation of a city or a hill in terms of worldbuilding on its own it is sensible to do so within the context of a larger world.

However, in both cases (city and hill) this doesn't follow, though, because (1) the hill example is not part of a larger project, and (2) Hussar's complaint (right or wrong) about the city example (what he claims makes it worldbuilding) is that it doesn't relate to the larger project of which it is a part (the Savage Tide Adventure Path).

So, again, I must conclude the first possibility to be more likely than the second.

I could be wrong -- all communication is fraught with that peril -- but this is why I believe Hussar's comments mean what I think they mean.

RC

If the "world" in "worldbuilding" "doesn't necessarily mean planet" but can mean such things as "city" or "hill" then it is not any different from, say, the village/dungeon/wilderness combo the PCs are currently wandering around in.

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But he didn't say that. That's just your interpretation, and you've claimed that your interpretation is backed up by things he's said, like the city and the rabbit hill. Which it isn't. You can't hustle your way around that fact.

I'm not sure if this is first time either, was it you who did it to me in that railroading thread and I had to go find a direct quote to deny your misrepresentation of what I was claiming?

I don't really care, I've made the point I wanted to make about your misrepresenting people's words and I'm going to bed.

From post 919:

Hussar said:

JustinA said:

Because you are insisting that it's only world-building if some creates an entire world. This is impossible. No meaningful world can ever be described to its last detail. So, clearly, a line must be drawn at some point.

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Only if you assume that you only world build if you have a complete product. If the process of world building is creating an entire world (note, world here doesn't necessarily mean planet, it could be larger or smaller depending) with as much detail and history as possible - following the six steps outlined above - then you would be wrong.

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Now, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that JustinA is claiming that


To which Hussar responds that


We should note (and others have) that


is as impossible, leaving us with only


as Hussar's actual definition of world building. Ignoring that there are several methods of worldbuilding in every authority that Hussar has brought up, even if we follow that reasoning, the logical conclusion is that this definition


which is, not surprisingly, what I said.

You then pointed out that when he said "world here doesn't necessarily mean planet, it could be larger or smaller depending" that he could have meant, for example, a demiplane. I pointed out that this was inconsistent with his examples of worlbuilding, which included a city and a hill.

This is not to say that a city or a hill are "an entire world" because the initial context is that you do not need to create an entire world to be worldbuilding.

Regardless of what you think.

Clear?

rounser said:

But he didn't say that. That's just your interpretation, and you've claimed that your interpretation is backed up by things he's said, like the city and the rabbit hill. Which it isn't. You can't hustle your way around that fact.

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All communication is a synthesis of the speaker and the listener. There is no way to communicate without interpretting the words of the other person.

Sometimes people say things that do not convey what they mean; sometimes they do not convey what they mean specifically to the people who the person is speaking to, due to cultural or other differences.

By restating what I believe Hussar said, I give Hussar the chance to modify his communication so that I can better understand what he means. This is not unlike my restating my position several times recently so that you could get that I wasn't saying that Hussar thought a hill was an entire world.

I honestly do not believe that your position and Hussar's position are the same position.

I note that, while you have spent a great amount of effort trying to show that Hussar didn't mean what I think he meant, or doesn't have the problems of logical consistency that I find in his position, he's been silent on the issue.


RC

Ok, going to repeat myself yet again.

((If I knew the right php code to make this bigger I would use that one too))

For the rest of this conversation, can we PLEASE restrict the definition of world building to what is included in the 3rd Edition DMG?

Of course, if we did that, we would have to admit that most of what you guys call world building isn't included in the section on world building, but rather, included in the section on adventure creation. But, hey, who cares? You'll just continue to pick and choose quotes and ignore anything that contradicts you.

I am not being inconsistent here.

How you get to the Isle of Dread isn't included in the adventure, that is correct. However, it also doesn't matter within the context of the adventure as well. Very little, if anything actually changes if the party teleports to the island, sails a ship or arrives upon the backs of rocs. The adventure doesn't change. You can run the module in identical ways in any case.

However, in order to make the Five Shires relavent to the adventure, you have to change the adventure.

And that's my point in a nutshell. If an element requires you to change the module in order to make it relevant then it stands to reason that that element wasn't relevant beforehand. As Isle of Dread stands, as written, there is no chance of the Five Shires appearing anywhere in the module. The people, culture and geography of the Five Shires isn't going to come into play without some major rewriting. It is superfluous.

However, the geography of the island is not. It is very important within the context of the adventure. Note, most people don't define adventures as only what happens during a game session. I've seen most people say that they create an adventure before a game session. I know for a fact that RC has done so on these boards. So, it's pretty strange to start defining adventure as solely what occurs during play.

Anyway, within the context of the adventure, the geography of the island is very important. A major element of the adventure is exploring the island. However, it's also true that you likely won't cover the whole island. Fair enough. However, it is possible to do so, so detailing the island beforehand isn't a terribly bad thing.

Sure, some of that work will be wasted. That's true. I've said that repeatedly that in RPG's we need to do more setting work than what is needed in a novel. But, again, it's a question of scale. RC brings up the example of the Dawn Council members in Sasserine. Never mind that that information isn't actually contained within the module, but is placed in a nice little world building package after the module.

Even the writers of the adventure pretty much know that the Dawn Council isn't needed for the adventures. But, they also want to sell magazines and not including that information would see people like the posters here frothing at the mouth, insensed that such information is not included. But, it is pretty much superfluous. Borderline perhaps, if you follow my spectrum line of thought. RC is right that it is within the realm of possibility that it might come up. Personally, I think it's pretty unlikely, but, hey, I'm willing to think I'm wrong.

My point is, and will continue to be, that you can pretty much skip Chapter 6 in the DMG and have a good campaign. That you can build a complete campaign without dealing with most of the world building elements detailed in Chapter 6.

Heck, Dungeon does it every single month. Every month we get modules (or adventures) that have little or no world building. They are, to use RC's definition, so generic that we can't call them world building. Random town faces humanoid threat and turns to the nameless heroes to save them is a pretty darn common adventure.

You could take a couple of dozen of these adventures and build one heck of a campaign. All without dealing with the extraneous bits that fill so many setting books.

Raven Crowking said:

*snip*

I note that, while you have spent a great amount of effort trying to show that Hussar didn't mean what I think he meant, or doesn't have the problems of logical consistency that I find in his position, he's been silent on the issue.


RC

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Guys I live on the other side of the world from you all. Some of us DO actually have to work from time to time.

Rounser and I have pretty much identical points of view AFAIK. We're both saying that setting construction beyond what is dictated by the adventure at hand is mostly unnecessary. If it's needed by the adventure, then by all means do it. If it's not, then don't bother. It adds a lot less to the game than you think.

I think Shamus says it best Here when he says that "Only in the context of an RPG is it possible for someone to need the Cliff Notes version of their own biography."

Hey, I've said it many times here. I stand in awe of the work that goes into a site like Fargoth, or Urbis, or a number of other works out there. And, honestly, I like reading them. I do. I enjoy reading setting books. However, just because I happen to like it, doesn't make it necessary.

We, as DM's, have to create adventures. That's part of the job. Without adventures, not a whole lot happens at the table. Even if the adventure is just a couple of random encounter tables and a map, it's still needed to run things. Heck, even if you're completely making it up as you go along, five seconds beforehand, you are still making an adventure.

What you don't have to do is go much further than that. If the adventure needs square windows in the tavern, then fine, the windows are square. If the players are facinated in botany, then perhaps 23 types of grass are needed. But, without those needs, when the information is created in a vaccuum because it might be needed if the stars line just so, then we've gone a wee further than required.

Again, I'm not saying that we don't need setting. That would be stupid. What we don't need is five thousand years (or 15 thousand) years of history of a nation that doesn't actually appear in the campaign.

Yes, there will be some question about the actual necessity of a particular element, and that's something an individual DM will have to determine on his own. But, I really don't think there's a problem in a shift in approach from Setting leading to Adventure to Adventure leading to setting.