Honestly, a lot of folks who do a lot of extensive worldbuilding in RPGs (when not paid to do so) would be better served by writing and publishing their epic fantasy novels instead. It'd be far less frustrating and far more likely to be engaged by the audience in a meaningful way.
That's largely how I look at it. Take the old Dragon Magazine articles "Ecology of..". Now, these were a ton of fun to read. I really enjoyed them. But, from a practical standpoint, they were about as useful as a rubber hammer. The articles ran about 3000 words - about four to six pages or so by and large. Now, imagine, for a second that the "Ecology of" articles were written by me.
The articles would have a couple of paragraphs talking about what the critter in question is. Fair enough, you need something to frame the game with. You have to define what a Throat Warbler Mangrove
is before you can use it in the game. But, my version would then have three to four encounters set up. Maybe a single encounter with the critter, a lair, and then the critter with allies. One page each, with a small map and whatnot. Four page article, one page of information, and three pages of encounters.
Now, if you're like me and you subscribed to Dragon, at the end of the year, you had 12 Ecology of articles that had lots of flavor, true, but, really didn't do much of anything to help you at the table. In my version, you'd have 12 monster descriptions and about 30-40 encounters that you could plug and play in your game. Far, far more useful IMO.
Can you show me a recent thread where the premise starts off with "choosing not to world build makes you a bad DM"? Right now there are 2 threads on the first page and they are based on the premise that worldbuilding is bad or that worldbuilding needs to be justified. I'm open to admiting it may be a bias on my part but I can't find a thread whose premise is that a DM is bad because he doesn't worldbuild, I only see that as a reaction to these types of threads...
This thread is predicated on the presumption that world building is good. It's a reaction to the common wisdom that if you are a DM, you MUST world build and anyone who doesn't do it is running a bad game. A game that lacks consistency, a game that lacks depth, etc. You can find all sorts of quotes for those points all through this thread. The whole REASON for having threads like this is because there is a basic presumption that if you DM, you will world build. Heck, the Dungeon Master Guides presume it. How much ink is spilled in any editions DMG detailing how you should build your game world? Pages upon pages upon pages. 2ed was replete with world building stuff, to the point where the 2e Monster Manual was written with one monster per page (or sometimes more). Compared to 1e where you'd get up to four monsters on a single page.
I mean, good grief, look at the reactions from the first page of this thread:
This is very relevant advice for a sci-fi writer.
This is terrible advice for most DMs.
This is somewhat appropriate advice for a small number of DMs with a very particular kind of style.
He's quite right - if you want the players to move through the world without really being in it.
Personally, I like to know that there is more to a gameworld than a series of dungeons, a list of maidens to be rescued/deflowered (depending upon alignment), etc. Games I've played in which had no depth seemed little more than multiplayer Fighting Fantasy books.
It would be interesting to have a poll on this subject.
QFT. Although some of my favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors defy that advice--Edgar Rice Burroughs, for instance. J. R. R. Tolkien. But I can see his point for an author. It's not really relevent for GMs. Running a game takes place in something closer to "realtime" than writing a story, so you need to have some details already in place when your players encounter them, becuase if you have to stop to think about them when they get there, that makes for a really boring game. It works for writing a story, but not playing a game.
The world builders took over the hobby years ago. What's being challenged now is the unspoken presumption that this was a good thing.
