S
Sunseeker
Guest
The audience would be the players yes. And the "adventure" refers to both what the audience (players) partake of, and what is available within the game. Like art, not all outcomes will be the same.
What is *worldbuilding* for?
The audience would be the players yes. And the "adventure" refers to both what the audience (players) partake of, and what is available within the game. Like art, not all outcomes will be the same.
MarkB
Legend
Well, for one thing, it can make players' choices feel meaningful, and reward them for smart play. If you already know where the NPC has hidden his map, and the PCs use deduction based upon what you've told them of him and his residence to narrow it down to the most likely location, they'll gain a sense of achievement if their deduction is correct.
If finding the map is basically just a matter of searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total, then they're basically just playing a slot machine and hoping they'll hit the jackpot before they run out of tokens (in this case, rooms). Their choices don't matter, because those choices didn't dictate the outcome.
redrick
First Post
If I were going to play a game where 90% of worldbuilding was handled collaboratively with the players, I would rather do that in the context of a specific game, preferably with mechanics and guidance on how to handle that collaboration, particularly with regards to conflict between players on how the world should look. "Classic" RPGs handle this conflict with clearly defined purviews for the different participants. (As a player, I and I alone control my PC, and you, the DM, control the world and and its not my place to tell you how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate.) Dramatically shifting the responsibilities of worldbuilding could be cool, but it requires a big shift in expectations. If the experiment were a success, I could see bringing those techniques back into a more traditional RPG, but I wouldn't want to start there.
innerdude
Legend
I was going to comment on exactly this.
Be careful, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , not to mistake "world building" as "just the stuff I, the GM, have to make up in my head." One of the powerful effects of using known settings is that you can sidestep so much of the need to explain to players just what the world is and what lives within it contextually. They already know.
Many settings use real-world cultural analogues for this reason exactly---if I want the players to be immersed in a place that's highly compatible with 18th century France, I'm going to say, "picture 18th century France," and the players immediately get it. It's powdered wigs and fighting with rapiers and muskets, with orchestral string music playing at the royal ball. I don't have to "worldbuild" any of that context/milieu, it's already there.
In my experience, the best RPGs I've played in have leveraged this heavily, because as [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mentions, doing this creates instantly accessible cues for the players without the GM having to do a ton of work. It's much easier for players to "plug in" to the world and its basic expectations.
Aenghus
Explorer
I see world-building in a variety of contexts, including a bunch of non-RPG contexts. Model villages, towns, cities by themselves or as part of a diorama. Fictional places where the peoples, cultures, politics, architecture etc may be explored in a variety of detail levels. One element of fantasy and science fiction stories is the world-building. Then there's the world -building in RPGs, both deliberately written setting material and the snowball effect of successful products for a setting that seize the customers interest, that may influence and change future products in that setting.
After all, there's more than one method of world-building. From an abstract point of view, we have top down development, where the overarching themes and conflicts within the world are detailed, countries and peoples, and then the creator fills in details - cities, towns, villages etc, while ideally being consistent with the established background and major plots.
But there's also the bottom-up method, where you start small, with one dungeon, or settlement and detail that, probably with the agreement or understanding that the players will keep their PCs in that small setting at the start. The idea is that slowly the detailed world expands, in a relatively organic way.
I suspect many people use a hybrid approach, where they have some idea of the overall world, but prioritise detailing the elements relevant to the current game. It's definitely normal to have some sort of world map and synopsis history at a minimum.
The detail level and and degree of zoom in can vary a lot. Few people would expect every single peasant in a setting to be detailed, for instance, but some would expect details on the heads of major factions in a setting, while still others might expect the names of a number of npcs at the top of each faction and some notes on internal politics.
Consistency is another spectrum, IMO I've seen DMs care about this a lot more than players on average, and not always in a rational way. I've seen more than one referee tantrum when players don't appreciate the setting, logical fallacies are exposed in their world-building, or the players actively try to vandalise the setting.
Abstract world-building can be a goal unto itself, and may not need players. When there are players the referee need to balance the jollies they get from world-building and the needs of the players, who on average will be less invested in that world-building, sometimes a lot less.
IMO in prepared, high detail worlds, the players ideally will enjoy exploration of the intricacies of the setting, and the high detail helps ensure that there are discoveries to make and information to impart.
Some players feel claustrophobic about high-detail settings, whether it's because they have their own plans which the setting details can invalidate or make implausible, or just because they get in the way of their game style eg roleplay-heavy, beer & pretzels, hack and slack etc etc.
After all, there's more than one method of world-building. From an abstract point of view, we have top down development, where the overarching themes and conflicts within the world are detailed, countries and peoples, and then the creator fills in details - cities, towns, villages etc, while ideally being consistent with the established background and major plots.
But there's also the bottom-up method, where you start small, with one dungeon, or settlement and detail that, probably with the agreement or understanding that the players will keep their PCs in that small setting at the start. The idea is that slowly the detailed world expands, in a relatively organic way.
I suspect many people use a hybrid approach, where they have some idea of the overall world, but prioritise detailing the elements relevant to the current game. It's definitely normal to have some sort of world map and synopsis history at a minimum.
The detail level and and degree of zoom in can vary a lot. Few people would expect every single peasant in a setting to be detailed, for instance, but some would expect details on the heads of major factions in a setting, while still others might expect the names of a number of npcs at the top of each faction and some notes on internal politics.
Consistency is another spectrum, IMO I've seen DMs care about this a lot more than players on average, and not always in a rational way. I've seen more than one referee tantrum when players don't appreciate the setting, logical fallacies are exposed in their world-building, or the players actively try to vandalise the setting.
Abstract world-building can be a goal unto itself, and may not need players. When there are players the referee need to balance the jollies they get from world-building and the needs of the players, who on average will be less invested in that world-building, sometimes a lot less.
IMO in prepared, high detail worlds, the players ideally will enjoy exploration of the intricacies of the setting, and the high detail helps ensure that there are discoveries to make and information to impart.
Some players feel claustrophobic about high-detail settings, whether it's because they have their own plans which the setting details can invalidate or make implausible, or just because they get in the way of their game style eg roleplay-heavy, beer & pretzels, hack and slack etc etc.
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Grog-Orcman01
First Post
Mythipalagia
Hey guys, this is a really cool forum, me and my team are working on a really cool world known as mythipalagia. It’s a really great fantasy world that we plan to work on for a long time. If anyone has any ideas for us, we have a subreddit that you can comment in and give us suggestions, it would really help, and I’m sure that you’ll like our fantasy world. Here’s the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mythipalagia/
Hey guys, this is a really cool forum, me and my team are working on a really cool world known as mythipalagia. It’s a really great fantasy world that we plan to work on for a long time. If anyone has any ideas for us, we have a subreddit that you can comment in and give us suggestions, it would really help, and I’m sure that you’ll like our fantasy world. Here’s the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mythipalagia/
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Sadras
Legend
You differentiate between a dungeon puzzle and non-dungeon puzzle. You seem to be ok or at least understand the need to 'world building' a dungeon but not world-building beyond that? Why is that?
The intrigue of a faction filled-city with a who-done-it theme is not a puzzle-solving game?
Using an old map to journey through the dangerous Altan Tepes mountains is not similar enough to you to dungeon crawling (but on a much larger scale)?
Rightly you say alignment is built into the puzzle of the AD&D dungeon game, but you seemingly dismiss it if one is slaughtering/torturing dryads in a quest to find the Tree of Life? Do you assume, for most tables, there will be no consequences in the latter example?
Players are not necessarily mapping a maze in a non-dungeon game, but they are establishing connections/relationships between themselves and others, discovering how widespread the evil organisation is, exploring an underwater lake, or traversing the open seas searching for that elusive island...etc
With regards to player moves -
Old School: I search for secret doors by doing x? Roll a Die
5e DMG page 236-237 under the heading The Middle Path
DMG said:
As you can see Old School style of play is not all together removed. It is actually listed as one of the options (Ignoring the Dice) along with the most preferred style, The Middle Path.
As for dungeon inventory you listed the 10 foot pole and torches.
Wilderness/urban inventory includes horses and 5e tools (disguise kit, gaming sets, navigators tools, healers kit, vehicles). The equipment list didn't suddenly disappear after Basic.
Sure gaming styles have evolved, but worldbuilding is important now as it was then (dungeon or no dungeon), whether you establish it before or during play.
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billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
I think it depends on where you start. You could certainly start with a dungeon without the rest of the world. As you developed that, you'd be engaging in world building - just at a very specific end of it. Does it include a dragon in it? Then you've established that dragons are in the world. Gargoyles? Then you've established gargoyles are part of the world. It may be a very sketchy build to the world, but it's a build - everything added is now part of the built world.
It's mainly a question of which direction the build is happening - is a comprehensive top-down build, or piecemeal bottom-up build? Both can be worldbuilding, just in different style and scope.
Well, I offered some reasons for thinking they might be different, and tried to bring these out further in the discussion with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION].
In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined. There is a maze. The maze has "nodes" (rooms) whose contents are largely static until the players interact with them (in the fiction, this means opening doors, dealing with inhabitants, taking loot, etc). This means that players can solve the puzzle over time by first scouting and divining; then raiding; using different equipment load-outs, spell load-outs, etc for each stage. (Gygax gives detailed advice about this in the final section of his PHB before the appendices.)
Once the setting changes to something like a wilderness or a city, the parameters change dramatically if the setting is going to be even remotely verisimilitudinous. So techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become far more dependent on the GM to dispense information (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc). Call of Cthulhu adventures, for instance, aren't puzzle-solving like classic D&D. They're much closer to the GM telling the players a story. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite enjoy CoC one-shots with a good GM - but it's a different thing.)
Well, the point of the thread is (in part) to ask whether it is? If you think it is, tell me about it!
I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it seems like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.
These are extremely different things.
A model railroad is a physical artefact. I can "explore" it by looking at it, noticing the intricacies of the track network, seeing if there are configurations of signals and vehicle movements that will engender collisions, etc.
But a fantasy or sci-fi story is not a physical artefact (the book itself is, obviously, but the story is not the book - it's the abstract object "encoded" by the words which are physically expressed by the type in the book). And I can't "explore" it other than by reading it, or having it read to me.
In RPGing, the players don't (generally) just sit down and read a book (be it a novel, or a fictional encyclopedia) written by the GM. There is a back-and-forth of conversation, and at certain points the GM tells the players stuff about the setting. In many games, some of that stuff is read by the GM from notes (or recited from memory; that difference isn't important at present, I don't think).
Also, in many circumstances, when the players canvass or declare actions for their PCs, the GM will adjudicate by reference to those same notes - eg "We go to the shop to ask that guy we met there yesterday" "Sorry, when you get there you see the shop has been burned down" - the GM doesn't decied the shop has been burned down as an outcome of the action resolution (eg the player failed a "Talk to contact in shop" test) but rather has notes that say that, on such-and-such a day, or triggered by such-and-such an event, the shop will burn down.
That is an example of the GM using the fiction that s/he has prepared in advance to determine the outcome of a player action declaration.
In classic D&D, where the fiction in quetion is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, reples (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.
(For more on that last point, see my reply just upthread to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)
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