What is *worldbuilding* for?

Maxperson said:

In 2e it was 1 round per level. Were rounds still 1 minute in 2e? I can't remember. 3e had it also at 1 round per level, which means 2 minutes at 20th level.

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That's quite possible. I'm not going to get out my 2e stuff to find out This is one of the reasons I love 4e, it never does this kind of thing! Powers have quite specific ranges of allowable effect, and there are none which can bork entire game worlds just because they're used outdoors. Rituals could run into these sorts of problems, but they are intended to be much more supporting/bolstering/informational or maybe strategic (the transport type ones) but never have any overt combat effect.

Lanefan said:

And now back to our previously-scheduled programming...
I'm more the mechanist type, I guess.

And dealing with one fireball can take way longer than 5 minutes, if any magic-laden PCs fail their saves...

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Yeah, I ran in horror from that part of the rules. Even in my most rules-loving youth THAT was a step too far! I mean, I can see how it creates an extreme high risk game to go with the extreme high reward you might generate out of 100% random rolls on the treasure tables. We did use the saves, but only when something 'catastrophic' happened to someone, like they got crushed, burned completely up, or frozen into a block of ice or something.

My example is trying to hold the line in a 10'-wide passage. The game assumes two normal-size people are all that's needed for this; but three is far more realistic (some SCA types I used to know played around with this once) as two leave far too big a gap. Never mind the issue of little spindly Elves and little tiny Hobbits being part of the equation...

That said, if the two people holding the line are both using greatswords that's a different matter.

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Well, this may be true. I think my feeling is what you're saying makes sense. You could of course go with 1 square = 1 yard (or meter). Then hallways would be 3 squares wide typically, etc. It wouldn't really break 4e's rules, though you might have to assume a round was 4 seconds vs 6 in order for the movement rates to make sense, and let people jump a little further, etc.

1e rules are famous for their disorganization, but seeing as I/we have pretty much rewritten them over the last 35+ years we've been able to work on that a bit.

The trick is to have all the most commonly-referenced charts and tables nailed to (or printed directly on) the back of your DM screen.

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Well, I just started playing at an early enough age that I could memorize the books in a week, lol. And yes, I had (still have) the standard 1e DM screen. Eventually I pasted copies of extra tables all over the illustrations and then pasted 2e stuff over that! its ugly, but its a good 2e reference, and I left a lot of the old 1e DMG tables on there that 2e 'lost'. It was well enough organized for the time period, and not as haphazard as 5e by a long shot.

I think I might have had this same argument with pemerton about 2 months and 1000 posts ago in this thread: lack of knowledge is not a test of player skill.

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I think the test part was partly the idea that smart players would FIGURE IT OUT. Dumb ones would just miss all the good treasure.

Conversely: if they're playing to find out, what's the point if they already know?

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Depends on what it is they are playing to find out! If its 'play to find out what the map looks like' that's obviously not possible if you already know. If its 'play to find out if the wizard's crazy plan to go 10 miles in 1 hour works' then maybe knowing the map wouldn't matter one way or the other.

The substance (or lack of) of any decision isn't always known until after the fact; sometimes well after the fact.

Left or right could have massive substance: left means you shortcut around most of the dangers and right means you plow straight into them. But you won't know this until you've done it, or done some divinations if you're really suspicious.

Or conversely, there might be no substance to it at all: the passages rejoin after 50 linear feet of curving hallway. Again, though, you don't know until you explore it and make some decisions.

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The point is, there's no drama to it. From the standpoint of a story about characters, what would normally be CALLED a story, it isn't really relevant. Its either a coin toss, or else you're playing in a game/situation where the players know enough to make fraught choices, ones that speak to their character's core CHARACTER. The former is just a waste of column inches in print, and some unknown amount of time at the table.

Okay, I have not read this entire thread, or any of it really except the first post. To me players mapping the dungeon or the adventure is NOT what worldbuilding is about - having nothing to do with the subject at all. To me world building is the exercise done primarily by the game master or the creator of a setting (in case the creator is not the GM, but is a writer or publisher of a world publication). World building is what the name implies you're building the entire planet where adventures designed to use it takes place. Some do a top down design, creating the planet or other defined maximum area, dividing it into continents, nation states, wilderness regions, then designing the nations specifically, their capitals, major cities, eventually working your way down to villages, and individual dungeon locations. Then there is bottom up design, which starts at the village the party was born into, or find themselves at the start of given campaign of adventures. You design from their upwards, to the local shire, the local barony, working your way up to the nation state the village belongs. Then designing the neighboring states that may affect the village's nation state - then at some point fully (as full are reasonably possible) fill your world. I kind of mix the two starting at nation states and working both down and up from starting villages and getting as much nuance as possible - including origin myths, history, laws, culture, religion, economy, ecology, those concepts that help define the world, as well as maps of each level up to a world map.

That is my definition of World Building. The party mapper created during game-play is just that - the party mapper, having absolutely nothing to do with "world building".

pemerton said:

I'm not the one who said "opportunities will knock" - that was @Maxperson's phrase. I asked him where they come from - player (in which case it's the agendas he claims to reject) or GM (in which case it's the menu he claims to reject). The fact that the player might ignore any given opportunity doesn't actually answer my question.

How is that not "informally signalling an agenda"? What do you think "informally signalling an agenda" looks like, if not the sort of thing you describe here?

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I've come to the conclusion that what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] really needs is to play in a No Myth Story Now mode for a month as a player and see for himself. Complete with GM explication of the reasoning behind framing specific scenes, etc. I think he's going to see that he's already trying to do it, and his issue is really just one of not having been really exposed to the technique in a way that is conducive to his understanding it. He seems to WANT not to understand, and yet at the same time to DO what he claims he doesn't do and doesn't want to do!

I really need to make good on my offer to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] to do some kind of a demo game.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Yeah, I ran in horror from that part of the rules. Even in my most rules-loving youth THAT was a step too far! I mean, I can see how it creates an extreme high risk game to go with the extreme high reward you might generate out of 100% random rolls on the treasure tables. We did use the saves, but only when something 'catastrophic' happened to someone, like they got crushed, burned completely up, or frozen into a block of ice or something.

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I much prefer the high risk high reward model. Without it I'd really have to tone down the amount of magic items the PCs can find, and where's the fun in that?

Well, this may be true. I think my feeling is what you're saying makes sense. You could of course go with 1 square = 1 yard (or meter). Then hallways would be 3 squares wide typically, etc. It wouldn't really break 4e's rules, though you might have to assume a round was 4 seconds vs 6 in order for the movement rates to make sense, and let people jump a little further, etc.

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I do everything in feet - none of this squares business - and so movement rates are independent of square size. If I was ever to run 4e (perish the thought!) I'd still convert everything to feet - it's just easier to work with.

One thing about 3e-forward going to 5' squares - counting those squares on a map of a large room can be a [female dog]. And they never put the room size in the write-up!

Well, I just started playing at an early enough age that I could memorize the books in a week, lol. And yes, I had (still have) the standard 1e DM screen. Eventually I pasted copies of extra tables all over the illustrations ...

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Ditto, particularly as I've supplanted all the original 1e tables with my own. Never did 2e, though I have (or had) the books.

I think the test part was partly the idea that smart players would FIGURE IT OUT. Dumb ones would just miss all the good treasure.

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I prefer modules that are set up such that even the smart ones will probably miss some of the treasure...and you know it's really been done well if what's missed is different each time on repeated run-throughs.

Depends on what it is they are playing to find out! If its 'play to find out what the map looks like' that's obviously not possible if you already know. If its 'play to find out if the wizard's crazy plan to go 10 miles in 1 hour works' then maybe knowing the map wouldn't matter one way or the other.

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Situationally dependent; and if the PCs have reason to know the map already (e.g. it's an outdoor setting and they've the ability to pre-scout from the air) then no problem.

Other than cases like that, I'm always playing to find out what the map looks like - that's the exploration side of the game.

The point is, there's no drama to it. From the standpoint of a story about characters, what would normally be CALLED a story, it isn't really relevant. Its either a coin toss, or else you're playing in a game/situation where the players know enough to make fraught choices, ones that speak to their character's core CHARACTER. The former is just a waste of column inches in print, and some unknown amount of time at the table.

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I don't at all believe that every choice has to be fraught, or dramatic, or that it has to speak to something important about a character. But I do believe that the unfraught and undramatic ones still need the opportunity to be made rather than ignored, and that even when there is drama and fraughtness* it doesn't have to be apparent right then; it can always come to light later.

* - there's yer new word for the day, you're welcome.

Lanefan

Maxperson said:

That's not true, though. There is tension in not knowing how you are going to get into a place, or how you are going to escape. Being able to pop a convenient secret door into place right next to you diffuses that tension quite effectively and makes the escape very anti-climactic.

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Lets analyze what's happening here. First of all I'll pass on the question of whether or not what you're suggesting is actually a good idea in terms of acceptable player agency. Lets just say it comes to pass through SOME means, but remember, failure was an option, and that would be hard on the character's chances.

Now, by creating a secret door the player is signaling a desire to move beyond the current situation. That is it isn't, in its existing framing, where he wants the character to be. This is a perfectly legitimate position for a player to take!

Next, consider what was ongoing, some attempt by the player to achieve something that was important to her. Creating the secret door is either abandoning that attempt (which is consequential and probably will have some blowback) or it could be an attempt to 'get away with the goods'. In EITHER case the GM is free to frame the next scene. What has she escaped from by passing through the secret door? The frying pan? Is she now in the fire? Lets play to find out! I'm missing where the tension was lost here...

This is also a reason why I'm a bit less concerned with the players having some real control. Its not like the GM gave up the right to frame scenes. Some GMs might squirm at the thought of the character escaping through the secret door with the crown jewels, I'm just wondering who's waiting at the other end of the secret passage to relieve her of them!

gamerprinter said:

I kind of mix the two starting at nation states and working both down and up from starting villages and getting as much nuance as possible - including origin myths, history, laws, culture, religion, economy, ecology, those concepts that help define the world, as well as maps of each level up to a world map.

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On reading this I realized this is how I've always done it too kind of without being aware of it - I start at about the nation-state level then work both outwards to the region/continent (though I don't usually bother much about the whole world) and inwards to the province/city/village level.

Next time I do one, whenever that is, I'll have to think about mixing it up - start either from a very local level or from the world-as-a-whole level, and see what comes of it.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Lets analyze what's happening here. First of all I'll pass on the question of whether or not what you're suggesting is actually a good idea in terms of acceptable player agency. Lets just say it comes to pass through SOME means, but remember, failure was an option, and that would be hard on the character's chances.

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By my definition, failure here means there's no door; with the obvious ensuing complication being that now our erstwhile Thief has to face whatever she was trying to avoid.

However, let's assume a secret door is successfully found, and proceed.

Now, by creating a secret door the player is signaling a desire to move beyond the current situation. That is it isn't, in its existing framing, where he wants the character to be. This is a perfectly legitimate position for a player to take!

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And for a bunch of different reasons. My example earlier was the player/PC was trying to escape from a losing combat. But the same desire could arise from the player/PC trying to get into somewhere, and a secret door would nicely avoid all those nasty guards and their dogs. Or that the passage has come to what looks to be a dead end and the player/PC is testing whether it really is. And so on...

Next, consider what was ongoing, some attempt by the player to achieve something that was important to her. Creating the secret door is either abandoning that attempt (which is consequential and probably will have some blowback) or it could be an attempt to 'get away with the goods'.

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Or it could still be part of an attempt to achieve that important something.

In EITHER case the GM is free to frame the next scene. What has she escaped from by passing through the secret door? The frying pan? Is she now in the fire? Lets play to find out! I'm missing where the tension was lost here...

This is also a reason why I'm a bit less concerned with the players having some real control. Its not like the GM gave up the right to frame scenes. Some GMs might squirm at the thought of the character escaping through the secret door with the crown jewels, I'm just wondering who's waiting at the other end of the secret passage to relieve her of them!

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I think that has to depend on how much leeway is given in narrating what a success means and how far forward it can carry the fiction.

Finding a secret door (success) doesn't give the DM the right to frame someone waiting at the other end of the passage (a complication), does it? I mean, if it does there might be hope for this stuff yet! But the impressions I've been given is that the DM isn't allowed to mitigate successes, only add complications to failures.

But if the DM knows ahead of time a) whether there's a secret door there, b) where and what it leads to, and c) what if anything awaits beyond it, then there's no need to think about how much leeway a successful action provides as the answers are already in place.

Lan-"this hypothetical castle we've built must have so many secret doors in it by now that its structural integrity is in serious question"-efan

AbdulAlhazred said:

But is that allowed? It might be in SOME games, but there are many possibilities:

In 4e it isn't specifically allowed, and depending on how you approach the rules, may be completely disallowed. If you play 4e ala [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] then a player could make something, a Religion check maybe, or undertake an SC, to find out if the Moon Cultists make potions as stated or not. Failure will have consequences, success will probably establish this as lore.

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That's what I was saying. I had [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in mind when I wrote that.

I'm quite fond of classic D&D puzzles, so I can see your point about dungeons, but I suggest you to have a proper look at the really classic D&D dungeons that became the prototype of them all: have a proper look at Castle Blackmoor (First Fantasy Campaign), or at the Temple of the Frog (DA2), or, if you want to leave Dave Arneson on a side, you could take the super-classic Caverns of Thracia, by the Judges Guild.

They are puzzles to be solved, sure, but behind their configuration (choice of monsters, traps, levels, staircases, bypasses, etc.) there is a HUGE amount of world building! Quite a lot of that is explained openly in the gaming modules (just check how long backstories can be), but even more is not, but it becomes obvious studying the adventure.
They are NOT random constructions made by a mechanical mastermind, as if they were chess problems proposed by an enigmistic journal, but all (yeah, almost all...) has a sense in that crazy puzzles in the shape of dungeons!
That's *worldbuilding* too!

I know I answered just to half your question with this, but I think these points are sometimes forgotten by the lovers of classic D&D (like me too).