What is *worldbuilding* for?

pemerton said:

I will try again, trying to build on what @Arilyn posted.

If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is a sense of being in the GM's world, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of audience membership seems like a more fruitful starting point.

I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.

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Because they are not a passive audience. They are free to interact with it in a way that is probably the closest I've felt to actually being in the thing itself. The players affect the world through their characters, but they still can affect it. And not in a 'choose your own adventure' way, but in a 'it feels like you are really there' way. The role of the GM is to mediate that (not to give them a tour of his or her world, his or her story, etc). But to adjudicate what the players try to do. I think you are minimizing the impact player actions and words can have on the world here. It is a different approach but it is still very much a question of agency. The difference between a movie and an RPG as we are describing it, is the characters have agency. In a movie they don't. They do whatever the writers and directors want them to do. This is the central problem people encountered in the 90s during the storyteller wave. And there were lots of answers to the problem. One was to go back to a more free and open approach, that played to the strengths of the medium (the strength, at least in my view, is the characters are free to do what they will). If you remove GM railroading, and give the GMs tools to manage unexpected developments (particularly through solid wolrdbuilding tools), it can work out great. And it is pretty much all about agency.

Lanefan said:

Not so universally as you might think, I'm afraid.

For example, in one of the other threads I'm into it a bit with a "Yes, and..." playstyle supporter, in whose game if someone makes a suggestion or declares an action (e.g. "we go left", or "I charge the fortress") everyone else is ultimately bound to support it - the table mechanics don't give them the agency to disagree* or to try to prevent the action or to do something else. Hence, once someone's made the suggestion or declared the action all the rest can do is respond with "Yes, and I <narrate or declare my action in support of what was declared/suggested>."

* - except for colour, but it's just going through the motions as ultimately you have to find a reason to concur.

Personally I find this a far greater denial of player agency than anything to do with co-authorship would ever amount to.

Lanefan

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See, now, I would consider any 'rule' which tries to tell you that something you could do is something you CANNOT do, just for 'mysterious game reason X' is silly. I mean, I'm fine with some slightly gamist kind concepts like daily powers in 4e, where you just aren't getting to spam some great move all over the place, but you can easily assign it some narrative explanation. Some sort of blanket 'you can never contradict anyone else' doesn't cut muster though.

I mean, maybe there's some specific mechanics involved in which you have to declare your 'interruption' before the action is resolved, or you need some resource, or SOMETHING, but if some player is about to pull a giant boner and my character can stick his arm out and save the day, then there darn well will be a provision for that to happen, or I'm writing some new rules!

I don't even consider that kind of thing properly 'story game', its just silly if it precludes obvious possibilities. Whatever else an RPG is, its a framework to adjudicate the conflicts which arise through RP, not a system to tell you that you cannot RP!

Bedrockgames said:

No it isn't. We are not just talking about gaming as it is always done. This is part of the dispute. Most games I've played in, do not allow for a 100%, go anywhere, do anything you want approach. There are usually either conceits of where the game is intended to go (i.e. players are expected to look for the obvious adventure hooks and take them, or the players are expected to stay in this area of the world, or the PCs are expected to be particular kinds of characters, etc). Games where the players are free to explore, are more popular now than they've been in the recent past, but they are far from ubiquitous and far from the default mode of play. So when people like me talk about agency in that context, we are not just saying something meaningless. It is something we hear at the table, when players don't feel freedom to explore is being honored. I've heard and seen that word thrown around countless times, at tables where the focus is something like a sandbox or a situational adventure. And it isn't meant in the way Pemerton is using it.

Again, this is the infuriating part of the discussion. We are literally saying A, and you guys respond by saying "Okay so you mean B, well that doesn't mean anything anyways".

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Well, can you see where I'm coming from? I mean, yes, I get that you don't like games where there's some sort of force/illusionism/railroad (maybe mild forms of these, perhaps) and you consider that to be cutting into your agency. I think I just take a more literalistic and less subjective position on ALL of this stuff. That is, you can declare actions that represent any possible (and some impossible) moves within the present fiction in these games. Wouldn't a GM who would certainly instantly gank your character for doing X, still say you have agency to do X, so you have total agency? That's the problem with this whole line of reasoning IMHO. It leads inevitably to some very perverse results, doesn't it?

Imaro said:

I'm confused here... are you claiming that in a game based around worldbuilding there must necessarily be a "plot" (in quotations because perhaps I'm not understanding the definition being used here)? Because I can assure you from actual play that's not the case. I can only speak to my style of running a game but I have run traditional games that leaned heavily on worldbuilding and what they had wasn't plot but instead situations that the PC's were free to deal with, not deal with or do something else entirely. I don't think what can happen in DL1 is enough to describe either of our styles and thus why there's umbrage around the statement that a traditional game with worldbuilding is a "Choose your own adventure" game. It's like me claiming Story Now is just a "Let the dice make whatever up in the moment" game. It's a simplistic statement that's mildly insulting and fails to capture the nuances of the playstyle.

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Well, there are a LOT of different variations on types of games, so I'm not sure I can cover them all with any blanket statement, and we all often get into this problem where we talk in somewhat general terms and then there's some games where X doesn't apply.

So, like here, sure, if its a PURE sandbox, and the GM is really seriously good at being a purely neutral arbiter, then that might be entirely the case, but that seems almost impossible. I mean, the GM in a game like that is STILL going to drop some story hooks, right? Which ones does she drop? Is it pretty much never the ones that might fool the party into going to the 'place of certain death?' Is it pretty much always the ones that lead to the 'place of level-appropriate lootz?' I mean this is how you run these games, I've done 100's of them myself, so I have a fairly good idea.

Even if we are less harsh in our analysis, its still hard to find a game that REALLY lives up completely to your standards, because it means there virtually isn't going to be any sort of backstory. I mean, your problem now is actually that story creeps in so easily, and its so hard not to draw it along and help it happen.

So, I don't want to be argumentative with you, I think your commentary is pretty fair and its not like its ridiculous or anything. I do get what you are saying. I think its, again, one of those things where there's a degree of truth in what different people say. Maybe nobody is precisely correct all the time. I think a built world implies a lot of things, including plots, which are likely to become actual in play. Sometimes that will be because a player wanted it thus, and sometimes not.

Yes and I (as well as a few other posters who have addressed this)am recognizing that qualitative component by addressing the fact that @pemerton's limiters on player agency are different. However when one starts from a position of wanting to understand something (I assume that was the point of the OP in this thread) but then turns it into a comparison/competition where not only do they use negatively skewed language to describe the other playstyle but also define the parameters of the comparison and the nature of the "win" conditions well it's apt to irritate those who probabnly feel like the entire thread was a bait and switch that has been pulled on them in bad faith. It feels less like I want to understand and more like I drew you in to this so I could tell you how much better my style is and force you to defend your own.

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Yeah, I don't feel defensive. I feel misunderstood by some people, but I think there's actually a pretty reasonable amount of mutual understanding here. Some people got chapped a little and I think some of them talked themselves into some questionable positions that kind of irritated me a little bit. These things tend to take over threads unless we just move on.

I can't speak specifically to @Maxperson 's games but he's free to comment on this if he wants... What I can say is that as far as I can tell @pemerton doesn't run a game where players can just create things on the fly. They create characters with certain themes, interests, etc. and @pemerton runs adventures around those things. Again as I stated in a previous post... the same thing can be (and at least by me often is) done with a traditional style of play both implicitly and explicitly.

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I think its fair to state that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s players can only 'create' that which is logically consistent with the state of the fiction and the nature of the fiction. That doesn't mean they cannot 'author' anything, they can certainly author a secret door, with a good Perception check. From there its a mixture of simply character choices (where things which are natural and not contested simply happen, and the player is expressing his interests) and conflicted actions where checks are required. These are often simply 'character agency' things, but they help tell the GM what direction to take the fiction in. I mean, such things can be VERY powerful and you can see how with a system like Cortex+ Heroic they can have a very large impact on how the story unfolds. A character in that game could invent a 'girlfriend resource' for instance, or a 'historical event' resource, or a 'the town is burning' resource, etc.!

As an example... I have players who want to play in Planescape, they pick whether they are planar/prime... pick race...pick class...pick faction... background and so on... we discuss their characters before the game starts and I in turn set up situations within the Planescape campaign setting around these things. When session zero + inherent world themes (from worldbuilding) come together for character creation I find it hard to find a good faith scenario where the players interests and concerns don't naturally flow during the actual game sessions. How does @pemerton's game give a higher level of input than this (and note this is all session zero stuff that I think alot of GM's with traditional playstyles use when their players want to be that invested).

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I think that's perfectly fair. In that, not insignificant, respect you are playing in a narrativistic fashion, to create a story. Its when games sidetrack into the sorts of things that Lanefan and Maxperson sometimes describe that I think the big difference arises. In my games you won't end up spending lots of time dwelling on blind alleys and loose ends that aren't tied to any kind of interest of the players. Now, I don't know the particulars of your games enough to know if that is true for yours or not. Beyond that, I'm not trying to condemn it, I'm just saying it got old for me. I have played 1000 characters in 1000 games (conservatively!) and I just like to get on to the 'good stuff'.

Imaro said:

I don't either and this is one of the problems with trying to define a "playstyle" as a singular monolithic thing... but we do love our us vs. them time, don't we?



Could you explain what encompasses "narrativist techniques"? I'd like to make sure we are on the same page for further discussion.

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I mean techniques which are intended to concentrate the focus of the game on story considerations. I would say that PbtA games like Dungeon World are narrativist (there's very little 'crunch' in DW really). It talks almost entirely about how things relate to the story. In fact 'moves' in DW have only the thinnest amount of mechanics. The text of a move is pretty much all about how it alters the story. For example:

Discern Realities
When you closely study a situation or
person, roll+Wis. On a 10+ ask the GM
three questions from the list below. On a
7–9 ask only one. Take +1 forward when
acting on the answers.
What happened here recently?
What is about to happen?
What should I be on the lookout for?
What here is useful or valuable to me?
Who’s really in control here?
What here is not what it appears to be?

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But why does that matter? If you claim a style cannot do something but it can why does whether it does it informally. accidentally or implicitly? You are claiming it lacks this thing if it can in fact produce said thing then the new conversation (and a much more interesting and civil one) would have been how are these things brough out and handled in a traditional vs. Story Now game...

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Sometimes emergent behavior is fine and does what you want, but I think it is likely to be a lot easier to 'get it right' if you just say what you want right on the front cover of the book, so to speak. I'm not putting anything down, I just stated that there's a set of techniques which reliably produces X, Y, and Z. It seemed to me that I was then told that was so much balderdash by some, and how it was insulting their style of play that I said that.

And I get you preference but that's not the same as claiming these games don't have that level of player agency or can't achieve it.

Emphasis Mine: No see in the same way we have to assume that a player in the Story Now style knows the genre, concerns and interests he wants to explore... We should also for the other style practice good faith and assume the same thing. If their interests and concerns lie in exploring the Tomb of Horror as opposed to the Tomb of Horror modified with mummies or Yuan-ti. Otherwise couldn't a player who isn't upfront about his interests and concerns create the same situation in a Story Now game?

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They could, but the GM who runs Tomb of Horror is probably just saying to himself "I have this module, its written this way, I'm going to run it..." right? I mean, even I might say that under the circumstances. I might well have said it years ago at the very least. So, yes, I think its true, if the player was very specific about wanting a lich-built death-maze, then he got exactly what he wanted. Most players aren't that explicit right up front, and in fact its hard to actually BE that explicit, as you don't really know what about the pre-built adventure differs from your expectations or interests.

I mean, its quite plausible to imagine a party who was just looking for a little fun stumbling into Tomb of Horrors and getting utterly decimated without ever wishing to engage in that kind of story at all. So plausible in fact that I've witnessed it myself! I would never use that unfortunate incident to tar all play of a given type, but I don't think its unfair to point out that it is a hazard of this sort of play (and in lesser forms I think a pretty common one).

Hriston said:

I think it was @Aldarc who said that stuff, not me, but I'm generally in agreement. I think @Maxperson's "100% agency" argument is silly and seems designed to stifle analysis by positing a sameness for all systems/games with regard to agency, which he seems to define as whatever that particular game lets the player do. I mean, sure, in a game of chess I have "100% agency" to move my knight according to the rules of chess. That really doesn't tell us anything of value about chess relative to Monopoly, for example.

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Yeah, my mistake. Thanks for catching that! Sorry [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]!

AbdulAlhazred said:

I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.

Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.

I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.

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Arilyn said:

The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. Why then, are there arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency. And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.

The argument that Story Now gamers actually have less agency is even stranger. It seems to come from the idea that players are being flung from one crisis to another, with no choice or room to breathe. I'm sure that if the players desired some time to explore a bazaar or share a "family" meal aboard their spaceship, it would happen. I'm sure Story Now GMs aren't anymore tyrannical than regular ones.

The other objection is the idea that multiple players having multiple goals is going to cause less agency for the players who don't get their own way. How is this any different from every other rpg out there? Players compromise and GMs assure no one player dominates the table.

Although, some of these posts are getting a little heated, I think we need to also remember that good debators ask challenging questions. It's not necessarily personal attacks, or "one true wayism."

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Sigh, apparently we have to have the crisis discussion again.

By crisis, I mean that something about the characters, their goals, or the theme of the game is challenged as part of scene framing. The play is to discover something about that through the crisis it's placed in. Can you have down moments, or narration of quieter times? Sure. Crisis doesn't mean "OH DEAR GOD" it means that the play of Story Now is pointedly to draw things the player's care about into sharp focus and challenge. This is the crux of drama. So, yes, Story Now frames the characters into a crisis as part of it's game design. Crisis, not climax or never have room to breathe, but actually point where something the players care about is at stake.

So, if we can agree that the point of play in Story Now is to frame the characters into situations that challenge, perhaps fundamentally but at least risk, things that the players care about, then we can continue. If you disagree, well, then, I've been playing Blades wrong and would like some help on Story Now. If we do agree, then the point that the players lose some agency due to the way Story Now frames scenes directly into drama and crisis is a valid point. The players WILL be challenged via the framing mechanism -- the DM is required to place things the player's care about in jeopardy -- as a core tenet of play. The framing mechanisms in Story Now do limit agency by forcing this case.

Again, this isn't bad -- loss of agency isn't inherently bad when it serves the purpose of the game. This loss due to the framing mechanisms is the POINT of Story Now. Claiming that it's a bad thing would be very strange. Story Now accepts this loss to avoid play that doesn't get straight to the drama; that doesn't generate the kind of play the system is designed for. This is, in fact, a good design element of Story Now. But, it is also a limitation on agency.

An example: the Engagement roll in Blades. The players decide on a score and an approach and set their detail. The Engagement roll is made, and then the GM uses that roll to inform the opening scene -- which may be at ANY point in the heist the GM wants so long as it immediately puts pressure on the characters. This jumps over tedious planning (which some players like) and assumes a whole host of actions on the character's part to get to the part of the score that the GM feels best represents the nature of the score, approach, detail, and the Engagement roll. The example in the text for this is a theft that starts with the characters in the office of the target with the object desired in hand but with an alarm going off -- play now proceeds not to obtain the object but to escape with it. Regardless, the player's cares are addressed and put into crisis -- with their characters succeed in escaping the now alerted guards with the goods? But, again, to get there, a huge number of decisions are elided by the framing mechanic and agency that might exist in other games (to plan, to actually play through the opening of the heist, etc.) are skipped over to frame the crisis of play.

THIS is what I mean by 'frame into crisis' and why I say it reduces some agency. Blades adds in on the backside with mechanics to offset the inability to mitigate risk a priori with lots of mechanics to mitigate outcomes post hoc. Blades trades play to reduce risk with play that modifies outcomes, and so offers some new tools that add agency while at the same time reducing it in other places. Traditional play would allow a lot of agency on the front end and during play but almost no ability to mitigate outcomes post hoc. Traditional play puts the agency more out in front while Story Now games tend to have more on the backend of play or ad hoc during play. I don't think you could say that one style has 'more' than the other in regards to agency so much as you can say that specific instances of agency exist differently between the two. The claim that Story Now has MORE agency with respect to players adding to the fiction is nonsensical; rather it's more reasonable to say that Story Now typically has agency for players to add to the fiction while traditional play typically does not. This is a category of agency, not a measure of it. Traditional play tends to have agency to meticulously plan and for players to have a lot of control over pacing. Story Now offers almost no agency to plan and almost no agency to control pace. This doesn't mean one has MOAR AGENCYS! It means that they have different focuses of play and the agencies granted are aimed at those focuses of play.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.

Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.

I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.

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pemerton said:

I will try again, trying to build on what [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] posted.

If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is a sense of being in the GM's world, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of audience membership seems like a more fruitful starting point.

I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.

If the purposes of worldbuilding include establishing material for the GM to present to the players, is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?

If the purpose of worldbuilding is - in metaphorical terms - to give the players stuff to interact with via their PCs, which means - in literal terms - to establish frameworks for declaring actions which then affect the way the GM narrates his/her setting - is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?

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I think you're still stuck on worldbuilding being outcome determining -- ie, not just setting information but planned story outcomes. And, yes, that is a style of traditional play, and, yes, you're not wrong in describing this kind of play. However, that kind of play is not the sum of traditional playstyles. In sandbox play, your formulation is incorrect, as the worldbuilding only informs the framing -- player actions lead to narration of outcomes when then change the setting. In this formulation, worldbuilding is there to provide information so that players can plan for success, a type of play that is absent in Story Now (by design, not by fault). Traditional playstyle systems lack the more neutral resolution mechanics (where, regardless of situation, a success is X, a mixed success is <X but >Y and a failure is <Y) and the often strong mechanics to offset outcomes after the fact (systems where you can choose to lose a resource rather than accept an outcome from a failure). Instead, they feature the ability to learn what's ahead and to mitigate risk via preparation and planning and approach. If a Story Now group declares they're being stealthy, this really doesn't make much difference -- the GM will still frame a scene into drama/crisis and all the stealthy approach does is alter the framing a bit. Whereas in traditional play, a stealthy approach can trivialize a challenge that would otherwise be much more risky.

So, what's the purpose of worldbuilding in traditional games? To provide the player's information and foreshadowing so that they can make meaningful choices and alter the setting. I point back to my 'negotiate with the orcs' example from much earlier in this thread, where I used the worldbuilding I had set up to provide the framework for when the characters unexpectedly decided to negotiate with orcs. The outcome of that negotiation was a group of orc allies for the players. The fact that this could easily have happened in Story Now goes a good way towards showing that backstory that informs framing but not outcomes can still have player action declarations that have a lot of impact on the fiction. Now, true, you aren't finding a secret door by succeeding, but, again, I strongly contend that's an exercise in the player engaging in backstory authoring as part of their action declaration and not just a simple action declaration. There's a different element to that. And, as [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] just said, the offer for players to create backstory in traditional play can also be present.

AbdulAlhazred said:

See, now, I would consider any 'rule' which tries to tell you that something you could do is something you CANNOT do, just for 'mysterious game reason X' is silly. I mean, I'm fine with some slightly gamist kind concepts like daily powers in 4e, where you just aren't getting to spam some great move all over the place, but you can easily assign it some narrative explanation. Some sort of blanket 'you can never contradict anyone else' doesn't cut muster though.

I mean, maybe there's some specific mechanics involved in which you have to declare your 'interruption' before the action is resolved, or you need some resource, or SOMETHING, but if some player is about to pull a giant boner and my character can stick his arm out and save the day, then there darn well will be a provision for that to happen, or I'm writing some new rules!

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For that game, start writing.

I don't even consider that kind of thing properly 'story game', its just silly if it precludes obvious possibilities. Whatever else an RPG is, its a framework to adjudicate the conflicts which arise through RP, not a system to tell you that you cannot RP!

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I don't think the game in question is any sort of story-now game; it's just the violation of agency in it that - in a general I'm-not-in-that-game-but-it's-the-principle-that-matters-kind-of-way - annoys me.

AbdulAlhazred said:

So, like here, sure, if its a PURE sandbox, and the GM is really seriously good at being a purely neutral arbiter, then that might be entirely the case, but that seems almost impossible. I mean, the GM in a game like that is STILL going to drop some story hooks, right? Which ones does she drop? Is it pretty much never the ones that might fool the party into going to the 'place of certain death?' Is it pretty much always the ones that lead to the 'place of level-appropriate lootz?' I mean this is how you run these games, I've done 100's of them myself, so I have a fairly good idea.

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Were I running a pure sandbox I'd drop hooks and stop there. It'd be up to the party to determine whether any particular hook led to something they could handle or not.

I have played 1000 characters in 1000 games (conservatively!) and I just like to get on to the 'good stuff'.

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Yikes!

Ignoring convention games and drunken one-offs I've played maybe 55 characters in about 6 or 8 games, though some of those games (and characters) lasted for many years. Chucking in the cons and drunks it might be more like 70 in 20.

Lan-"for example Lanefan the character was rolled up in 1984 and, after a career with many fits and starts and gaps, only just last year retired to try and build his stronghold"-efan