Does the world exist for the PCs?

Lanefan · Jun 1, 2019

jgsugden said:
Evolution is always required. PCs die. Players move. Sometimes storylines fizzle or veer in a direction tat is best abandoned. But, you can adjust, introduce new elements, close loops in different ways etc... Regardless, this is a problem you face whether the themes and stories in your games are ones you placed in front of the players and asked them to adopt or if they are themes you crafted WITH the players.

True, though if you've tailored your setting around one particular group of characters it's just that much more work to re-tailor it once 4 out of those 5 starting characters no longer exist...which might well be the case before the first adventure is done.

The more I read this thread, the odder I find it. And, the more I recommend people read chapter one of the DMG ...

Which one? There's at least five of them now...

... especially the section called, "Involving the Characters". If you have not read chapter one of the DMG - the guide for Dungeon Masters - please do so.

To me, it's largely on the players to find ways in which to involve their characters in anything beyond the here-and-now adventure(s) being played. This means putting in the effort to learn at least enough about the setting you're in to be able to find a way to integrate your character?

I'm from a Roman-based culture? Cool! Republic or Empire version? Republic? Good, my long-term goal is to become a senator, at the very least.

Backgrounds are useful here.

Another way to think about this: D&D is - at the core - improvisational acting. You're sitting at the table improvising dialogue and actions for your PCs and NPCs. What are the basic rules of improv? What is the FIRST of those rules? There are a lot of ways to say these rules, but the first one is usually either, "Say YES" or "Don't DENY". What does that mean? Why is it there?

And how, in this case, does it help in the least?

That's right, it doesn't.

In improv acting the goal is to riff off each other and generate some entertainment for a watching audience. (which is why things like Critical Role are not good guides to how to play; the first goal there is to entertain the audience, and true-to-character play suffers as a result)

In a typical RPG the goal is to play your character...a character whose aims and goals might be in direct conflict with those of another character. Saying yes to their doing what you don't want them to do seems a bit counter-productive.

Add to that you've got a game world that is out to make your life miserable and put obstacles in your way.

It is there so that the story can flow organically by allowing both scene partners to build upon the efforts of each other and create a cumulative story that flows and breathes. All up, without backtrack. When the DM dictates their world on players, without involving the characters in the development of it, they're ignoring their scene partners.

In my admittedly limited experience in theatre I never heard of the set designers (or the director) consulting the actors before building the stage and-or sets, which seems to be what you're advocating here. Most often the stage was what it was (i.e. either a permanent install or built to fit a certain space), the sets were designed to fit the stage, and the actors had to work with what they were given.

Instead, SAY YES by involving them and building with them, back and forth.

Which sounds fine in theory. In practice this runs hard aground as soon as one person's vision for the setting starts to conflict with another's - 'compromise and consensus' is merely another fine theory that rarely if ever works in practice, and so you just end up with either an argument or someone feeling over-ridden.

Better to leave 99% of the setting stuff solely to the DM; with the other 1% being things that only relate to your own character e.g. the Roman character buys or builds a villa so let the player design said villa.

Lanefan · Jun 1, 2019

Blue said:
I run a game for the players. The setting is part of what I run - and often the setting is tailored specifically to the type of campaign I want to run.

The characters are the players avatars in the setting. But the setting doesn't cater to the characters, the setting caters to my needs as DM for telling the story and supporting the campaign.

Reynard said:
This brings up a related question: to what degree does the setting exist for the campaign? ... Other settings are intentionally broad and meant to be the place where any number of individual stories or adventures might occur.

Both of these are true in my case: the setting is tailored to the type of campaign I want to run: broad, open-ended, where lots of things can happen but there's no guarantee that any or all of them will.

Put another way perhaps, it's kind of a sandbox setting but set up for either sandbox play, story-based play, or (most of the time) a combination of these.

Lanefan · Jun 1, 2019

77IM said:
The real actual world is an incredibly broad, diverse setting, and also extremely realistic*. Yet, if you watch a TV show set in the modern day, that show is often set in some corner of world that just happens to be ideal for telling those kinds of stories. Dr. House is always getting weird exotic medical cases; the CSI team is always up against some devious criminal mind; your favorite sitcom family just happens to wind up in wacky situations all the time. The writers of those shows did make the setting "just right" for telling those interesting stories. But to the audience, it looks like it's the other way around: we feel like we are watching those stories, instead of the billions of others in the world, because those are the interesting ones.

While all quite true, what you're not saying is that this also demands a certain level of suspension of disbelief from the audience in order to ignore these elements.

Different people hit their tolerance for such things at different points on the scale...and in different media. I'll suspend my disbelief far more readily for a TV show or movie, for example, than for an RPG.

Why's that, you ask? Because my interaction with a TV show or movie is as a passive audience - I mught as well just go with it in order to enjoy it more. However my interaction with an RPG is as an active participant, and as such I look for a setting that's internally consistent and sees the PCs as integral to and part of the setting. Once I and the other players get our PCs on the move and doing things the story will, in the end, tell itself.

It's like the age-old question, "Why do the protagonists in a zombie apocalypse movie always miraculously survive, when everyone else around them is dying?" Well, because if they died, we wouldn't make a zombie apocalypse movie about them.

Protagonist plot protection is fine for a movie, but not for an RPG.

Likewise, in D&D, "Why does this village have exactly what a group of adventurers needs to serve as a base of operations?" Well, because if it didn't, we wouldn't be playing the game there; we'd be playing in one of the other thousands of villages which was better suited for being a base of operations for adventurers.

Exactly, and maybe part of the game involves going to find that village, because the one we're in now doesn't have what we need. Or, for convenience, the game/DM just assumes you've already found it and that's why you're there.

HJFudge · Jun 1, 2019

For me, the best games to play, the best gaming experiences, happen when a player character can shape the world through their in game actions and the group of players can tell a story.

As soon as I feel like I am not in control of my destiny in the game, I lose interest. When every place I turn, when every rock I uncover, is somehow revolving around me and the party? The world loses any interest for me.

Those kind of words are poorly designed, because there is no mystery, there is no choice, just a paper thin illusion that the DM crafted 'especially for us'...which is fine and all, but I want a world where I help shape through my decisions and actions, not through the fiat of someone who knows whats best for my party. If the world is properly designed, there is room for me and my party to make decisions and interact with it that feel more 'real'.

Maybe the Empire of Doom doesnt have *anything to do with us as characters*...at least at first, when its created. In fact, its better that it does not!

Because then, during ACTUAL PLAY, we the party may decide how we want to interact with the Empire of Doom. Do we want to engineer its downfall, and work against it at every turn? Or maybe, just maybe, we can ally with them to bring down someone else whom we decided we don't like? Or perhaps we want to infiltrate it from the inside? Maybe we don't care about it at all and would rather explore the wilds and find monsters and treasure.

The thing is? When play begins...we the players *do not know* what we want quite yet. Neither does the DM. So if he's designed it around us and decided that it's going to be our major nemesis? He has ripped away any agency we had regarding it. There is no choice. They are the BAD GUYS and now we must fight them. Maybe we didn't want to fight them. Maybe thats not the story that wouldve been told if the group had been allowed to make decisions.

I believe that the core of the DnD experience...indeed, most tabletop gaming experience...is allowing the players to decide what their characters are to the world. Not designing a world that forces that choice on them.

Which is what those who are 'designing the world for the specific PCs' are doing, whether they acknowledge it or not. And if that is the world building advice the DMG is giving to players? It is terrible, bad advice. This isn't a book or a play or a show, its a tabletop game. If you wanna tell a cool story go write a book, DMing isnt for you. Let the story emerge on its own, get out of its way.

S'mon · Jun 1, 2019

The game exists for the players & the GM.

The game world is indifferent; it just is.

Brashnir2 · Jun 1, 2019

HJFudge said:
For me, the best games to play, the best gaming experiences, happen when a player character can shape the world through their in game actions and the group of players can tell a story.

As soon as I feel like I am not in control of my destiny in the game, I lose interest. When every place I turn, when every rock I uncover, is somehow revolving around me and the party? The world loses any interest for me.

Those kind of words are poorly designed, because there is no mystery, there is no choice, just a paper thin illusion that the DM crafted 'especially for us'...which is fine and all, but I want a world where I help shape through my decisions and actions, not through the fiat of someone who knows whats best for my party. If the world is properly designed, there is room for me and my party to make decisions and interact with it that feel more 'real'.

Maybe the Empire of Doom doesnt have *anything to do with us as characters*...at least at first, when its created. In fact, its better that it does not!

Because then, during ACTUAL PLAY, we the party may decide how we want to interact with the Empire of Doom. Do we want to engineer its downfall, and work against it at every turn? Or maybe, just maybe, we can ally with them to bring down someone else whom we decided we don't like? Or perhaps we want to infiltrate it from the inside? Maybe we don't care about it at all and would rather explore the wilds and find monsters and treasure.

The thing is? When play begins...we the players *do not know* what we want quite yet. Neither does the DM. So if he's designed it around us and decided that it's going to be our major nemesis? He has ripped away any agency we had regarding it. There is no choice. They are the BAD GUYS and now we must fight them. Maybe we didn't want to fight them. Maybe thats not the story that wouldve been told if the group had been allowed to make decisions.

I believe that the core of the DnD experience...indeed, most tabletop gaming experience...is allowing the players to decide what their characters are to the world. Not designing a world that forces that choice on them.

Which is what those who are 'designing the world for the specific PCs' are doing, whether they acknowledge it or not. And if that is the world building advice the DMG is giving to players? It is terrible, bad advice. This isn't a book or a play or a show, its a tabletop game. If you wanna tell a cool story go write a book, DMing isnt for you. Let the story emerge on its own, get out of its way.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what the notion of designing the world around the actions of the players is about. Of course the players have choices and the ability to leave their imprint on the world. Putting an "Empire of Doom" in the world, and then expecting the players to not act upon it is bad GMing. If it's there, of course it's an option for the players to try and interfere with it.

But the idea of designing around the players isn't to take away player agency, it's to limit the required planning on the part of the GM to the things that the players take an interest in. I'm not going to spend 3 weeks building cities and demography for a region of the world that the players are never expected to encounter. That said, if the players' actions start leading them in that direction, I'll take the time to start fleshing that stuff out.

I don't have time to build every NPC in every city that the party could possibly decide to venture to. Nobody does. The role of the DM is to present scenarios and options, and then roll with the party's choices, even if it wasn't included among the expected options.

HJFudge · Jun 1, 2019

Brashnir2 said:
I think you fundamentally misunderstand what the notion of designing the world around the actions of the players is about. Of course the players have choices and the ability to leave their imprint on the world. Putting an "Empire of Doom" in the world, and then expecting the players to not act upon it is bad GMing. If it's there, of course it's an option for the players to try and interfere with it.

But the idea of designing around the players isn't to take away player agency, it's to limit the required planning on the part of the GM to the things that the players take an interest in. I'm not going to spend 3 weeks building cities and demography for a region of the world that the players are never expected to encounter. That said, if the players' actions start leading them in that direction, I'll take the time to start fleshing that stuff out.

I don't have time to build every NPC in every city that the party could possibly decide to venture to. Nobody does. The role of the DM is to present scenarios and options, and then roll with the party's choices, even if it wasn't included among the expected options.

When I place a thing in my world, I have no expectation on if the players will or will not act upon it. Because that is not my decision to make. Expecting the players to do ANYTHING is probably going to lead to a disappointed DM, if you've spent any time at a table this is known lol.

I expect the players to make their own choices, I merely present a world full of options. A buffet table, if you will. And when my players ask for something not on the menu? Having the bones of the world there allows you the tools to present options that you don't have to worry if they fit in the world and make sense or not. You KNOW they do. Because you've taken the time and done the prep work previously to have a general idea whats over those mountains, or whats across that sea.

Do you have every little detail? No that is foolish. But I do know in general that beyond the mountains is a wasteland ruled by the Demon Lord or whatever. This...doesn't change, either, depending on what PCs backgrounds are or what type of characters they are. It is what is there. Whether they are pirates or shepherds, clerics or rogues, whether there family was all killed by demons or if they were orphans from some war, it doesn't matter.

And worlds like that feel real.

Also, yes. This does take more work. It does take more time. But you get what you put in. If you spend 20 minutes prepping for a campaign, its gonna show, the players are going to see it, and it's going to be much poorer quality than if you just sit down for a long weekend and plan some real basic stuff. No one is asking you to put in a full work week here with super detailed stuff. Honestly, I could probably come up with some good bones for a setting and have the prep work done for it in a single day. It comes with practice...but again, it is not easy. There are only so many shortcuts one should take.

Are there parts of the world no one will ever see? Sure. But that just means you have things that perhaps a year or two down the line someone else will see. Or that you can transfer to another world entirely. This basic world building prep-work makes the game run much smoother and efficiently at the table. I don't have to pause and hem and haw or just pull something out of thin air that may contradict something else I said about the world 5 sessions ago. Nope, its there and I can draw upon it and flesh it out as needed.

Brashnir2 · Jun 1, 2019

HJFudge said:
When I place a thing in my world, I have no expectation on if the players will or will not act upon it. Because that is not my decision to make. Expecting the players to do ANYTHING is probably going to lead to a disappointed DM, if you've spent any time at a table this is known lol.

I expect the players to make their own choices, I merely present a world full of options. A buffet table, if you will. And when my players ask for something not on the menu? Having the bones of the world there allows you the tools to present options that you don't have to worry if they fit in the world and make sense or not. You KNOW they do. Because you've taken the time and done the prep work previously to have a general idea whats over those mountains, or whats across that sea.

Do you have every little detail? No that is foolish. But I do know in general that beyond the mountains is a wasteland ruled by the Demon Lord or whatever. This...doesn't change, either, depending on what PCs backgrounds are or what type of characters they are. It is what is there. Whether they are pirates or shepherds, clerics or rogues, whether there family was all killed by demons or if they were orphans from some war, it doesn't matter.

And worlds like that feel real.

Also, yes. This does take more work. It does take more time. But you get what you put in. If you spend 20 minutes prepping for a campaign, its gonna show, the players are going to see it, and it's going to be much poorer quality than if you just sit down for a long weekend and plan some real basic stuff. No one is asking you to put in a full work week here with super detailed stuff. Honestly, I could probably come up with some good bones for a setting and have the prep work done for it in a single day. It comes with practice...but again, it is not easy. There are only so many shortcuts one should take.

Are there parts of the world no one will ever see? Sure. But that just means you have things that perhaps a year or two down the line someone else will see. Or that you can transfer to another world entirely. This basic world building prep-work makes the game run much smoother and efficiently at the table. I don't have to pause and hem and haw or just pull something out of thin air that may contradict something else I said about the world 5 sessions ago. Nope, its there and I can draw upon it and flesh it out as needed.

I think ultimately we are pretty similar in our approaches, with the exception that anything I planned that no longer fits or makes sense is ultimately subject to change if I get a better idea. I feel that having things set in stone only helps verisimilitude if those things set in stone are still the best option once discovered.

I couldn't tell you the number of times that I something I had planned ended up seeming anticlimactic once the PCs got around to it, so I changed it to something that made way more sense given the context of the present situation.

While I do have a good deal of respect for your approach, I would never use it myself. I get way more ideas than my players ever see, and I will always choose the best idea for the situation once it presents itself, no matter if it was the first thing I wrote down in the outline 6 months ago, or something I thought of 2 hours before the session.

Reynard · Jun 1, 2019

Brashnir2 said:
I couldn't tell you the number of times that I something I had planned ended up seeming anticlimactic once the PCs got around to it, so I changed it to something that made way more sense given the context of the present situation.

I think some of us would suggest your first mistake was planning an ending in the first place. I strongly believe that RPG play is NOT storytelling. We tell stories about play, and that's awesome, but we are playing a game. Sometimes, to some degree or another, that game borrows narrative tools as part of the play process.

HJFudge · Jun 1, 2019

Brashnir2 said:
I think ultimately we are pretty similar in our approaches, with the exception that anything I planned that no longer fits or makes sense is ultimately subject to change if I get a better idea. I feel that having things set in stone only helps verisimilitude if those things set in stone are still the best option once discovered.

I couldn't tell you the number of times that I something I had planned ended up seeming anticlimactic once the PCs got around to it, so I changed it to something that made way more sense given the context of the present situation.

While I do have a good deal of respect for your approach, I would never use it myself. I get way more ideas than my players ever see, and I will always choose the best idea for the situation once it presents itself, no matter if it was the first thing I wrote down in the outline 6 months ago, or something I thought of 2 hours before the session.

And thats fine. At the end of the day, there is no One True Way for any of this. And, as always, the adage "If it aint broke don't fix it" can really come to mind here. Most players don't care about most of this stuff, as long as they can kill monsters and find treasure and laugh along the way, they are fine.

I just try to make it as interesting and exciting as I know how. I'm always looking to discuss different ideas, because most of what I do now I have stolen from the Great DMs Ive seen, played with and worked with in the past. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. How are we going to improve if we aren't willing to have our ideas discussed and challenged, ya?

Does the world exist for the PCs?

Lanefan

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