What is *worldbuilding* for?

pemerton said:

I'm not sure about the has to - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?

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Not entirely; as without a setting of some sort going in there's no backdrop to set the scene, as it were. That's work the DM has to do ahead of time.

Look at B10, for example. The main map in that thing, backed by what's written in the module, is almost a whole setting unto itself - towns, roads, people, locations, adventure sites, villains, competing factions, side quests, etc. That work has all been done for you; all you have to do is somehow narrate it to your players.

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] also asserted that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the campaign: "One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world."

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I'll back this approach.

But I'm not sure how that relates to the actual process of play. And the metaphors "exploration" is still in need of cashing out. The way that I "explore" Middle Earth is to read JRRT's books. How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.

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Yes, as the player is in theory exploring the gameworld through the eyes of her PC.

There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)

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Of course. And flavour can be subdivided further: flavour that has relevance to the PCs now or later (e.g. each day's weather, relevant whenever the PCs are a) outdoors or able to see outdoors, and b) might somehow be affected by it) and flavour that has no relevance to anything other than to help set the scene (e.g. the DM describing a harbour town the PCs are seeing for the first time might mention there's several dozen ships either docked or anchored-off to augment the atmosphere of this being a busy bustling place, even though the PCs are there for a reason completely unrelated to ships at all).

OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.

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First I'll note that even though it's the player doing the thinking, if she's looking through the eyes of her PC it's the game-world PC setting the game-world goal, not the player.

And, here I can give an in-progress example from one of my own characters in a still-active game.

She is from a Roman-Empire-based culture, and is a fully-accredited citizen of said realm (called Hestia). Over the course of her rather long and world-spanning adventuring career she's come to realize a lot of distasteful things: that much of the world is in dire need of civilizing, Hestian style; that there's far too many bloody barbarians and monsters out there; and that her own Empire's government (a Senate-run republic at the moment, no Emperor for the last century or so) might not be quite up to the task. She's done time in the Legions as a staff mage, and has (perhaps outdated) contacts in various parts of the military.

So some years ago (real time) she decided that her goal after her adventuring career was done would be to get herself a seat on the Senate. But since then she's changed a bit, and come to realize the Senate is but step one: we need to bring the true Empire back, with her or someone like her as Empress.

Realistic? In character, yes.

Achievable? Somewhere between no and extremely unlikely, though she has thought of a series of actions that might get her that Senate seat...she just needs to get the rest of the PCs (both active and inactive - a total of about 30 of them) to go along with her plan. And good luck with that - she's not that well liked and for good in-character reason: she's the only true Lawful in a quite Chaotic group. (just my luck - the one time I play a really Lawful character is the time most of the rest of 'em decide to play Chaotics!)

But she's set a goal, and it has nothing to do with anything that's come up in play so far...well, other than a while back her ambition was set back a few steps when a party she was on the fringes of unintentionally destroyed part of Hestia City (cf. Rome) by flying an indestructible buried airship straight up through whatever was above... >facepalm< ...

And note that what she's doing is all based on the gameworld the DM has given us. She's not inventing Hestia, or the Senate, or the Legions - she-as-character (and thus I-as-player) is just taking what's there and working with it.

And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.

In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.

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i and iii are exactly the same: the person who wants to throw a rock has to first find one.

iv in the game world has a direct reflection in the real world: an un-numbered step wherein you-as-you make your own internal action declaration by deciding to throw a rock.

ii in the real world has to be reflected by another un-numbered element: the game mechanics of whatever dice need to be rolled (if any) to see where/how far the rock goes and what if anything of relevance it might hit.

Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.

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Your agency as meta-player, perhaps. But your agency as PC is directly connected to the PC's ability to throw rocks.

If the GM is, in fact, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency.

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I disagree: unless the DM is a complete asshat (and for the purposes of these discussions let's ignore those, shall we) the player's agency comes not from meta-concerns but from what her PC does and the choices that PC makes, often in concert with the rest of the party. If the party decides to leave town going south to the seaport instead of east to the mountains or west to where the Orcs are raiding then you've collectively exercised agency over the story to come; and if the DM hasn't designed the seaport yet (or even given it a second thought other than mentioning it in passing) your agency has forced her to do this also.

In other words, it's not so much player agency as PC agency.

But if you want meta-player agency over the actual design of the world and what's in it: no. That's not a player's place unless the DM specifically allows it (and for minor stuff, IME most do).

I'm not talking about the imaginary agency of an imaginary person - the PC.

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But I am, because it's through that agency that the player gets her own agency.

I'm talking about the actual agency of an actual person - the player - who is engaged in a social, collaborative endeavour, namely, the generation of a shared fiction by dint of playing a RPG with others.

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In other words, you're talking meta where I'm talking in-character. OK.

Meta: it's the DM's world to design as she likes. End of story, drop the mike.
In-character: it's the PC's right to - within the rules of the system in use - do anything he or she wants both to and within the game world including make a complete mess of it. (see above example re destroying part of Hestia City)

If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then in what sense is the GM telling a story?

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If nothing else, the DM is providing the stage and scenery; the specifics of which will by default go a long way towards determining the type of story that gets told, if not necessarily any specifics of such.

As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!

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Except I'm not discovering that. I as player have known it all along, as I wrote it into my goals and backstory way back at char-gen! Not much of a reveal...

If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.

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What, that I don't want to be spoilered? Come on, man!

When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!

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Given how many times you've posted how you so dislike fiction coming from pre-determined notes and-or being pre-authored by the DM I really have to challenge that last sentence.

I think you worry about this more than anyone else I've ever encountered.

Lanefan

pemerton said:

I have basically no familiarity with modern computer games other than having watched some friends play WOW aroudn a decade ago, and having watched some kids play minecraft. So I don't know how powerful modern games are in terms of allowing fictional positioning to be a significant factor in action declaration and resolution. I'm going to guess, however, that humans are still better at that particular aspect of adjudication (even if the computer is obviously better at managing many other aspects of refereeing, like all the arithemtic ones).

Anyway, my point is that a "living, breathing, world" isn't the only attraction of a RPG over a video game, and I think - among the proponents of the wargming style - it was that ability to play on fictional positioning that was the predominant significance of the shared fiction, rather than its character as a "living, breathing world".

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Playing modern RPG games like Fallout or Skyrim is interesting in that regard because you do have more tools at your disposal: stealth, magic, or weaponry. Often you can eliminate threats from a distance with a ranged weapon. But, most important for this conversation, the NPCs have schedules: they get up, go to their work, and then go to bed occasionally stopping at other places for a time. If you want to rob the town store, it's easiest to go a night, pick the lock (because it locks after dark) and steal everything not nailed down.

The world is dramatically more living and organic than anything in an early static D&D module.

pemerton said:

As our discussion of dates and styles shows, I think it's hard to put a precise timeframe around changes in typical approaches to RPGing. No doubt Runequest is a significant publication event, but it comes out of a prior culture of play (the West Coast D&Ders, I think, whom Lewis Pulsiher was rather critical off in his essays/articles around that time).

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I imagine the difference between West and East Coast D&D is the spacial difference between the source game. The more the game itself played "Telephone" when passing from gamer-to-gamer across the country, the less it resembled a wargame and the more people made it their own. More people playing the game how they wanted and less playing it how Gygax expected them to play.
But I imagine that distinction was short lived, and after a couple years of introducing the game, the East Coast gamers likely adopted some West Coast design ideas.

At the time, the distinction likely seemed large and the division pronounced, as RPG gaming was still so new, and everyone was bringing in their own ideas and desires. That that was such a short period of history in the game, measured in years or potentially even just months, compared to the overall 40+ years the game has now been in existence.

And while RuneQuest was a significant event, it was by no means alone. There was no shortage of games released at the time which were basically D&D with a slightly different rules tweak. Different rules for attacking, using a percentile die, a different way of tracking health. Which were, generally speaking, shifting rules away from legacy wargaming rules that existed in D&D.

pemerton said:

It's a puzle in this sense: the players have to decide whether this is really a social encounter, which they can use to their benefit; or whether it's a combat encounter, in which case kneeling before the queen is almost certainly going to impose some sort of disadvantage (as it turns out it turns her into a vorpal backstabber, but I'm prepared to treat that as a quirk of classic D&D's relative shortage of systematic resolution mechanics).

The puzzle can be solved by such devices as a Wand of Enemy Detection, or a Medallion of ESP, or a Detect Evil or ESP spelll, etc. Or, less mechanically and more fictional positioning based, the PCs might capture and interrogate one of her maid servants - who could tell them about the Queen's pets, and perhaps even her penchant for asking intruders to kneel so she can decapitate them.

This sort of play, which engages the fiction even though the fiction is artificial/inane, is more viable if the scope of the fiction is relatively confined.

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Not really. That sort of "puzzle" can happen in a localized and confined room of a dungeon or in a giant player sandbox as they encounter an ambassador to a neighbouring kingdom or meet the Queen's royal advisory or even just bump into a pie merchant with curiously large and cheap pies.

pemerton said:

I think comparisons to reality are unhelpful. In reality, I learn the situation by looking around and scanning with my eyes; by listening carefully; by smelling the air; etc. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk in some forested hills outside Melbourne. When I heard rustlinging in the bushes, I stopped and looked. On a few occasions I saw birds. On one occasion I could see the foliage moving, but couldn't see what it was that was moving it. On another occasion, I saw an echidna.

Playing a RPG in which my PC is scouting is nothing like this. The way I learn what is going on is by making moves - that is, fictionally positoining my PC, or declaring actions, or both - which then trigger narration from the GM. There is no sensory input independent of the desires of human beings. Generally, there is little narration independent of my desires, as I have to do stuff - make the moves - to trigger the GM's narration.

And the GM's narration will almost inevitably focus on mattes that the GM regards as interesting and/or salient. In the course of a 4-hour wnader through the woods, I spent perhaps 15 or 20 minutes paying attention to the things I had heard rustling - the largest block of that time was spent looking at the echidna, as it's the closest I've ever come to one oustide a zoo. But if the PCs go on a four hour scouting mission, almost no GM is going to spend 20 minutes (or more, if they want to cover all the sensory inputs that I was taking in simultaneously) describing all that stuff, and letting the players decide what to make of it.

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The point of invoking the real world is that people do what you say is impossible all the time in the real world. It just becomes less of a certainty and more of a gamble. More skill is required to anticipate the likely variables and overcome them.

If you really think your players are unable to handle the idea of a world that changes slightly with their enemies going to sleep and not remaining in the exact same place 24/7 until encountered by the PCs... you need to find smarter players. Or you need to stop going so easy on them.

pemerton said:

Well, classic dungeon crawling didn't really involve moving through the adventure's plot. As we see in Gygax's PHB, the players set an objective for the session (eg finding a staricase to the next level down), and then try to achieve that objective without getting lost in the dungeon, beaten up by monsters, or foolishly lured into trouble by the GM's clever tricks, wandering monsters, etc.

The setting is the framework in which the making and carrying out of these plans happens. Describing it as a maze or puzzle isn't perfect, but is an attempt to convey the idea.

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The catch being, not everyone played dungeon crawls just as dungeon crawls in a complete vacuum where nothing exists outside the dungeon, save as one-shots with disposable characters. And not everyone played the classic dungeon crawls in a way that didn't advance the plot. To many, the appeal of the classic modules was being able to add a plot.
And even then, very early modules, like Against the Giants began to include plot, with a narrative that ran through and led to the next story.

What you're describing as "classic dungeon crawling" really matches closest to tournament play. Which is pretty niche.

pemerton said:

(Luke Crane describes it thus: "Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.")

I think creating the provinces of a kingdom (oustide the contxt of a Diplomacy-type game, where the players play the kingdoms or their rulers) is quite different. Whatever exactly it is for, it's not part of a game that is a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.

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Not really.... The game is still driven entirely by the DM telling the players what is going on, which the players interpret through a personal lens. And there are still what you describe as puzzles: encounters where you are uncertain if someone is hostile or friendly.

Okay, here's the thing about plot... dungeons are a plot. Each room in a dungeon is a scene. And encounter or moment where something happens. The dungeon map is basically a flowchart of the plot that's missing arrows dictating the direction. You can chart the plot by drawing a line through the dungeon, telling the story of that dungeon.
If you take the plot of an entirely narrative adventure (say, a murder mystery) and make a flowchart, denoting every scene or encounter with a box, you can chart the variable paths to concluding the adventure. (Which is useful for ensuring there's no plot chockpoint where there's only a single route to the solution.) That plot flowchart... is basically the same as a dungeon map. The difference is instead of moving from room to room you're moving from scene to scene, with each scene having its own puzzle and challenge, be it roleplaying or character skill or player skill.

On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can feel different.
Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.

Jester David said:

<snip>

On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can feel different.
Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.

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While I agree with almost everything else, I don't agree with the functional equivalence. The difference is similar between to the difference between a spatial dimension and the time dimension: the narrative chart will typically have arrows that require one-way transit. You can confront the butler after finding the brandy, but you won't get a scene to discover the brandy after confronting the butler.

The spatial map will more often have links without dependencies (in fact, multiple paths are desirable - the linear approach is less appreciated). You can explore rooms in A-B-C-D order or you can explore in B-D-C-A order. The narrative graph will typically funnel to one or more end states. The spatial graph typically won't.

pemerton said:

I'm not sure about the has to - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?

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Sure it can. However, in my experience, a setting generated prior to play is much richer than one generated on the fly - whether it's the GM or the players doing the generating.

pemerton said:

How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.

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Sure. If the player/PC wants to know what's down that road, they declare their action of walking down that road. The GM then describes what's at the end of the road - whether that's pregenerated or decided in the moment. If the player decides what's down that road, are they really discovering anything? I'd argue they're creating, not exploring. And, in that case, what is the role of the GM? Are they simply there to adjudicate dice roles?

pemerton said:

If the villain doesn't fail, has something gone wrong?

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In the sense that villain failure is shorthand for the PCs achieving their goals, yes. Either the players messed up or the dice did not fall in their favor. It's up to the PCs, assuming they're still alive, to come up with a new plan and try again - keeping in mind that their failure likely altered the world in some way.

pemerton said:

And in what sense is the campaign world a "challenge" for the players to overcome? I'm not asking this rhetorically, or to deny it.

To elaborate - I understand how the Caves of Chaos are a challenge for the players to overcome. And in a slightly oblique sense, I can see how this is true for the trader in the Keep (after all, sensible equipment purchasing decisions is an important part of classic D&D). But I'm not clear how (say) the cleric in a contemporary game who sells the PCs potions on the cheap, or heals their wounds, is a challenge to overcome.

Or the NPC patron who sends them on a mission.

There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)

OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.

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The setting is a challenge to overcome in the sense that the setting, at start of play, possesses a status quo as determined by the GM. A well-written setting will progress beyond that status quo in a particular direction without input from the PCs. The challenge lies in the player's desire to alter that status quo based on the goals and aspirations of their PCs. The example you described is a long-term and potentially world-altering goal. The very first step would be to convince the rest of the players and the GM to a pursue a campaign with that theme. Let's assume that all of the players and I, as the GM, agree to play that campaign.

I would work with the player to develop those religious organizations and the world in which they exist based on the player's assumptions. In some cases, I'd deliberately subvert the player's assumptions to keep things interesting and challenging. We'd play out the scenario, and I would use that predetermined setting information to inform my adjudication of the players' actions and the consequences thereof.

pemerton said:

If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then in what sense is the GM telling a story?

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It is a wrong question, Mr. Pemerton. You seem to have this black or white view of the situation: either the GM is telling the story or the players are. Neither are correct. The GM and the players are collaborating to tell the story as a team. The players declare actions and the GM determines how the world reacts.

How is the GM to determine how the world reacts without first determining the nature of the world? Assuming we agree that determination must take place, why do you care whether it is done preemptively or in play?

Jester David said:

Okay, here's the thing about plot... dungeons are a plot. Each room in a dungeon is a scene. And encounter or moment where something happens. The dungeon map is basically a flowchart of the plot that's missing arrows dictating the direction. You can chart the plot by drawing a line through the dungeon, telling the story of that dungeon.
If you take the plot of an entirely narrative adventure (say, a murder mystery) and make a flowchart, denoting every scene or encounter with a box, you can chart the variable paths to concluding the adventure. (Which is useful for ensuring there's no plot chockpoint where there's only a single route to the solution.) That plot flowchart... is basically the same as a dungeon map. The difference is instead of moving from room to room you're moving from scene to scene, with each scene having its own puzzle and challenge, be it roleplaying or character skill or player skill.

On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can feel different.
Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.

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What you say can be true from a referee point of view, but I don't think it's necessarily true from a player perspective.

A dungeon plot has physical walls and junctions to enforce decision points, and the only way for the players to reject the plot is to leave the dungeon (assuming that's possible).

A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally. Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means, can be more noticeable in an open world scenario, and can be seen as railroading. Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.

Nagol said:

While I agree with almost everything else, I don't agree with the functional equivalence. The difference is similar between to the difference between a spatial dimension and the time dimension: the narrative chart will typically have arrows that require one-way transit. You can confront the butler after finding the brandy, but you won't get a scene to discover the brandy after confronting the butler.

The spatial map will more often have links without dependencies (in fact, multiple paths are desirable - the linear approach is less appreciated). You can explore rooms in A-B-C-D order or you can explore in B-D-C-A order. The narrative graph will typically funnel to one or more end states. The spatial graph typically won't.

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Now, we are talking about a stripped down foundational level. The skeletal framework of the story, when you pull away everything but the basics of scene-scene-scene. The stuff built atop adds a wealth of complexity that changes the dynamics.

With that in mind, a spatial map can totally have dependencies. Finding a locked door and then finding a key is functionally the same as seeing the butler but not finding the brandy. And just like you can skip the brandy scene by confronting the butler early, you can skip the key scene by picking the lock or casting knock.

And, yes, the big difference is that you can't go backwards in a plot like you can in a dungeon. Kinda… often in a story you can return to a location or individual and resume a scene. Which is both creating a new scene but also carrying on where a prior scene ended. It's functionally the same thing as returning to a room and represented in the flowchart not by a new box but an arrow going back to an old box.

Aenghus said:

What you say can be true from a referee point of view, but I don't think it's necessarily true from a player perspective.

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Right. But that's an illusion. To the players, there is only a single path: the one they took. They may not explore all the choices in a mystery anymore than they may discover every secret treasure room in a dungeon.

Aenghus said:

A dungeon plot has physical walls and junctions to enforce decision points, and the only way for the players to reject the plot is to leave the dungeon (assuming that's possible).

A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally. Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means, can be more noticeable in an open world scenario, and be seen as railroading. Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.

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A plot lacks physical walls, but it has virtual ones. Scenes are enclosed in the location they take place, effectively bounded by the walls of the stage. And while you could theoretically go anywhere, often times your choices are effectively limited by the realistic options that get you to your goal.

As for the railroading aspect, if they wander off the rails, they're still creating a scene. You effectively add a new box or two to the chart, hoping to bridge them back into the main story seamlessly. (Again, assuming the players *want* to be in the plot and aren't trying to escape…)
While the above seems unlikely in a dungeon, it's actually rather not. You can get a similar effect with teleportation, shaping stone, becoming ethereal, polymorphing into badgers and digging through the walls, and the like. Situations where the players skip over one set of rooms for another. When the cosmetic elements are stripped away, the flow chart pattern remains.

So, I think there's several trains of thought scattered throughout all the responses that answer @pemerton's original question, "What is worldbuilding for?"

• To add immersive flavor -- to spur players' imaginations a little more deeply into the shared fiction.
• To provide story "hooks," whether done as pure "sandbox" or based on clues from characters' builds/background.
• To create a fictional space where character motivations have real stakes -- i.e., the group social contract agrees that they want something more than just being "heads-down in the dungeon" all the time.
• To give the GM the opportunity to plan certain challenges ahead of time to maximize the challenge, tension, and impact.
• To allow the GM a creative opportunity that is different from being a player within the campaign.

There could be more, but these seem to be a condensed summary of the primary points.

I think your question, @pemerton, really boils down to----"Does pre-rendered worldbuilding actually serve any of these interests and the overall fun/enjoyment of the group, or are there more effective methods for doing the same thing?"

I've got to be honest, I have a really hard time with a pure "no myth" approach to pen-and-paper RPGs. I wholeheartedly embrace the Dungeon World ethos of "create fronts, not plots." I wholeheartedly believe in the concept of scene framing and fictional positioning, and "play to see what happens." In the past eight years of GM-ing, I've never once pre-determined an encounter outcome. I've tried very much to use "say yes or roll the dice" as a primary component of my GM-ing style.

And I still can't completely get behind the idea that worldbuilding isn't a necessary component of a "good" RPG campaign, because I've played in games where there was none, and they absolutely SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED----they were the suckiest campaigns that ever sucked.

I've also played campaigns where the GM simply couldn't let go of his pre-built storyline, and when players "went off the rails," he basically lost interest in GM-ing. We'd get 6-8 sessions in, and suddenly he'd be saying, "Eh, I'm bored with this, let's start something new." For a GM who is unwilling to embrace scene framing / "say yes or roll the dice" principles, this is actually probably the "best case scenario," as at least he or she never forces the players to follow the plot rails willy nilly.

The worst case scenario is boring "plot tourism" campaigns. This was how I felt around 40% of the way through the last Savage Worlds Shaintar campaign in which I was a player. At that point I was no longer interested in what the GM was dispensing, but had no choice to get off the rails. Eventually I sort of just accepted it and still managed to have some fun, but its conclusion was far less satisfying than I wanted it to be or it could have been.

But having now actually managed to GM two highly successful fantasy campaigns, one in Pathfinder and one in Savage Worlds, using the general principles I've outlined, I'm totally comfortable with the idea that you can find a middle ground between doing worldbuilding while still allowing player freedom, improvisation, and not being married to any particular narrative outcome.

pemerton said:

And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.

In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.

Those are completely different processes. Just to give two reasons as to why, (i) is frequently independent of human will, where as (iii) neer is; and (ii) does not require establishing any human consensus, but (iv) does.

Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.

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Aside from that I don't see how the processes are "completely" different, the main difference between your approach and the "traditional" approach (for lack of a better term), seems to be the degree to which the player has power over whether the rock exists, where it is, etc, and also the degree to which the GM doesn't have power, yes?

In the traditional approach, the player declares what action he or she wants to take, and the GM decides how resolution will occur in whatever fashion he or she deems appropriate given the situation (that is, uses judgement), and the player resolves the action through either doing it ("I pick up the rock"), rolling dice, etc. But it seems that in your approach, one or both of two things is true: 1) the player has more power over whether the rock is there, and where it is, and 2) the GM has less power over the same, and/or is constrained by the rules.

pemerton said:

If the GM is, in fact, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency.

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OK, main problem here is that you seem to take issue with the very idea of the GM as "omnipotent," as if that means he or she is inherently tyrannical. It seems that you are an "RPG Libertarian" ;-). I would argue that one of a GM's main obligations is "others' desires about the content of the shared fiction." The power of the GM is held in check by the degree to which the players enjoy the game experience, so if a GM wants to continuing GMing, then they won't (or shouldn't) abuse their power.

A player only has no agency if the GM exercises their omnipotence in every moment - that is, simply tells a story. Then it ceases to be an RPG and becomes story-time, albeit in second person narration.

pemerton said:

I suspect no one actually plays RPGs in which the GM's power is so total, but one doesn't expain the limits on the GM's power, or the GM's obligation to have regard to contributions from other participants, by comparing throwing a rock in the real world to collectively generating a fiction in which a rock gets thrown.

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I think you're missing the point re: such analogies; they aren't about "explaining the limits of GM power" but explaining player agency. A player's agency in the fictional world is roughly the same as our agency in the real world, and even slightly more so, as I explained. The difference, though, is that in the fictional world, there's a GM - who is akin to a hypothetical supreme being in our world.

Or a better way to put it, I think, is that the GM "play's" the setting as a kind of conscious, interactive entity. In other words, the GM is the setting, and the setting is the GM, just as the GM is all NPCs.

pemerton said:

If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then in what sense is the GM telling a story?

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Responsively. The "script" is co-created, improvised, along certain guidelines which vary in terms of how strongly they are adhered to (this is where "railroading" comes in).

pemerton said:

Here is an excellent summary of the "indie"-style of RPGing, under the heading "The Standard Narrativistic Model":

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All of which could be applied to a number of approaches - not just "indie." In other words, I don't see how that description applies to indie and not traditional. Again, to me it is more useful to think of this on a spectrum rather than as binary (e.g. indie vs. traditional).

pemerton said:

Character-as-pawn is not part of the model. (It is the default for classic dungeoneering, however.)

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I stand corrected.

pemerton said:

As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!

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Sure. Where I think we are differing, or at least explaining two different styles along the spectrum, is the degree to which the player has power in deciding/determining whether the mace is there, without having previously said they placed it there within either their backstory or game play.

pemerton said:

If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.

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That's not really what I'm saying, and I think you know this. You continue to push the "traditional" view into a kind of absolutist GM dictatorship...I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think anyone is arguing for that.

I think whether my PC finds the mace depends upon any number of factors: 1) Is it there as part of backstory? 2) Did I place it there in game play? 3) Did some NPC, via the GM's choice, find it and take it?

If none of the above applies and I ask the GM to retroactively place it there, then it is up to the GM's judgement to both i) decide whether he or she will allow that as a possibility, and ii) decide on how to determine whether it is there or not, whether through just saying "Sure, why not?" Or a dice roll, or somesuch.

What the "traditional approach" does not generally include is the player saying "The mace is there because I want it to be, because this is a collaborative game and I have co-creative agency, goshdarnit!" Again, nothing wrong with that, and it is certainly a valid way of playing, but it isn't the traditional approach, and is also what I feel like diminishes immersion.

(And yes, I realize I'm being an instant of my own complaint by making your approach more extreme than it actually is).

The crucial difference is--and I think what you take issue with as a general rule--the role of GM as final arbiter.

pemerton said:

Personally, I find it easiest to immerse when I'm engaging the situation as my character would - so when I'm playing my Knight of the Iron Tower, riding through the lands that my order once controlled, I look for signs of any members of my order still being about. The GM sets a difficulty for my Circles check, and I roll it - and then the GM tells me what occurs as a result (either I do find a member of my order, if the check succeeds; or something goes wrong, if the check fails). What is relevant to my immersion is the relationship between the imagined situation and my character, as mediated through the gameplay. So when I put together my dice pool and roll, I feel the same hope that my characer does - is there a fellow knight somewhere here in the wilderness, to give me succor? Or have the gods forsaken it completely? When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!

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Great, and more power to you. I'm not saying your approach is wrong or inherently less immersive, and it obviously works for you.

Remember, this thread started with you asking a question which seemed to imply that certain traditional approaches to world-building were lacking in some way, or pointless, or about GM authority, or reducing player agency, etc etc.

These sorts of conversations can be interesting if we are able to see how different styles can work, and even may be more efficient in producing certain results, but start getting edgy when pejorative implications start arising, or at least are being perceived. It does seem like you are in several ongoing conversations which have elements of such -for-tatting, on both sides of the "aisle."

So what do you think? Where to go from here? If we go back to the original question, what are you left wondering, asking, wanting to talk about?

Aenghus said:

A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally.

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Which leaves the DM pretty much two options.

This is one:

Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means

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And the other is to hit the curveball the players have pitched, and play out whatever and wherever their wanderings take them to. Sometimes (actually surprisingly often IME) a new or modified story will soon suggest itself, other times you-as-DM might have to come up with something; and most times it's a combination of both: a story idea suggests itself through what the players have done and-or where thier interests seem to lie, and then the DM fleshes it out and expands it into something that'll keep the game going for a while.

Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.

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All of this is quite true.

The ideal, of course, is that the players voluntarily stay on plot because they find said plot/story interesting and-or engaging enough to want to play it out. Which means that in a DM-driven game it's squarely on the DM to come up with a plot/story good enough to capture the interest and imagination of her players, if this is going to work.

EDIT to add: another aspect of this is that if a story doesn't seem to be capturing the interest of the players (and gawds know I've had my share of these!) it's usually pretty easy to find a way to drop that story or shunt it into the background and replace it with something else, or a side trek.

Lan-"sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't"-efan

Lanefan said:

They can do all of these things - they just have to realize that the information they're working from was only valid at the time it was obtained and things may well have changed since.

<snip>

And there'd be developments, of course. The Ogres are going to notice their hunters aren't coming back (and nor is the food they bring in!) and will send out search parties. If a search party finds the corpses of a hunting group the alert will go up. And so on...

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A lot of the action here seems to be in the "And so on . . ."

That seems to depende very heavily on GM decision-making to which the players don't have even in-principle cognitive access.

Sadras said:

The problem here is, that you seem to have a very narrow definition of puzzle-solving. Columbo and Magnum PI did not puzzle-solve?

<snip>

But that is all I'm saying, the classical dungeon and the later adventures specifically MiBG and LoftCS are puzzles and can be run as such. Certainly many Ravenloft adventures (specifically 2e) that I have seen are puzzles (definitely mysteries) and yes the range of possible actions in those is wider than your typical dungeon but how is worldbuilding less important in those?

How can you create a mystery adventure without lore (worldbuilding)?

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OK, that's helps - I think we are using puzzle-solving in slightly different ways.

I'll try to elaborate on what I'm getting at - it may or may not work!

When I say the classic dungeon is a puzzle/maze for the players to solve and beat, I'm not meaning that it's like a Call of Cthulhu mystery. The players aren't trying to gather clues to lead the to a conclusion. Rather, it's a collection of good stuff (treasure) that can't be gained except by (i) winning some combats (against wandering monsters who can't be avoided, or against placed monsters), and (ii) avoiding/outwitting/etc various tricks/traps that get in the way of that (like secret doors, misleading architectural features, stuff that looks like treasure but is really cursed, etc).

So, unlike (say) a murder mystery, there's no single goal - there are lots of sources of treasure in the dungeon - and there's no single solution - there can be many ways to beat the monsters, to avoid the traps, to work out how to turn the teleport portal into a help rather than a hindrance, etc.

But the situation is relatively static over retries, so that the players can learn and improve. To the extent that the situation is not static, its path of evolution is itself knowable and can be turned into a component of a solution.

A rotating room where the number of turns corresponds to the number of times the PCs have passed through a certain door would be an example of this. But a room where the number of turns corresponds to the number of creatures that have passed through a certain door, where that number is something the GM works out secretly for him-/herself wouldn't be knowable in the right sense - from the players's point of view it would just be random.

The reason I doubt that a world/setting with a large and verisimilitudinous scope can provide a maze/puzzle in the same way is that nearly all the situations are evolving rather than static, and nearly all are evolving essentially in accordancde with GM fiat/extrapolation that is not knowable to the players - like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "And so on . . ." - the players can't control or manipulate that. All they can do is take rather generic steps like concealing their camp and mounting a watch. Whether there are 5 or 20 ogres after them; whether the ogres are searching in the spot where the PCs are hiding; whether the ogres have tracker dogs with them or not; whether the ogres include a shaman-type who can cast Augury; etc - all these things are important parameters of the situation which are entirely under GM control (assuming a GM-worldbuilding approach) and which the players don't know and can't effectively learn in a way that makes it exploitable/manipulable information.

Sadras said:

T1 may offer rumours about the Moathouse and its occupants, about the possible relationship of the 2 merchants in the village to the evil forces beyond, lore about the various ideologies and cults, possible rewards for various tasks/quests...etc

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Understood. What puzzles me about T1 (and I've just pulled out my copy to have a re-look at it) is the 9 or so pages devoted to spelling out its contents like a dungeon. Eg what is the point, in the play of the game, of being told (p 11 of my copy) that the Chief Priest's chamber is no. 14 on the amp of the church of St Cuthbert, and that there is a secret compartment under the mantlepiece with a 10000 gp jewelled neck ornament inside it?

Is this really a dungeon, that the players are going to explore and loot? That seems completely unrealistic for 1st level PCs, given the level of some of the NPCs. But if the Chief Priest is intended to figure as a NPC quest giver, or as an element of backstory, then by all means tell us that he wears a magnificent neck ornament with a bejewelled cudgel hanging from it, but we don't need to know about his secret compartment, do we?

Sadras said:

Okay, this might relate more to the other thread we are discussing (which I haven't yet got back to), but I have to ask. Given that the characters CAN attempt to deviate from the intended plot line, is the gaming style a railroad?

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Well, different people have different views as to what counts as a railroad.

An interesting discussion came up in this thread, which I had started to get some ideas on the current situation in my Classic Traveller game.

When [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] started suggesting some ideas about how the players might try and infiltrate and take the NPC starship, [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] replied by explaining why - given various elements of the GM-authored backstory that he was imputing (not based on anything I'd said about my game, but based on his own intuitions, I think, plus maybe some 1980s Traveller sourcebooks) - chaochou's ideas wouldn't work.

Derren kept saying that the players should look for more information. chaochou and I made the point that, in the context of a RPG, "looking for more information" means, in effect, making moves that will trigger the GM to read out/paraphrase/make up more backstory. And the point of this seemed as Derren was calling for it seemed to be, in effect, to channel the players towards Derren-as-GM's preferred resolution of the situation. (Ie finding the "right" answer for how to defeat the NPC conspiracy.)

chaochou described this as a railroad, on the basis that the GM has already conceived of a correct series of outcomes, and the players can't succeed unless they go along with that preconception. The fact that the players can declare other actions is ultimately neither here nor there, given that those actions will fail (if Derren is GM) because Derren has already come up with, or is making up as he goes along, backstory which explains why they are impossible. I agree with chaochou on this.

One exampe that was discussed in that thread: chaochou suggested the PCs fake a mayday in their starship, as the pretext for getting aboard the NPC ship in a non-suspicious way. Derren said that this would never work, due to naval/scout protocols, etc, etc. chaochou responded "Well, maybe the NPC captain was himself generously rescued as a young spacehand, and so has a disposition to respond sympathetically and very proactively to mayday signals." Derren retorted that the PCs couldn't know that, and should have to do more research (ie trigger the GM telling them more backstory) in order to learn it.

My view is that what Derren is describing is at odds with the game as written (I'm using Classic Traveller 1977, in a 1978 printing, but adapting a few elements of the weapons table and starship construction and misjump rules from the 1980 revised edition). The game as written has a reaction table - so if the players (as their PCs) fake a mayday, the way we learn what the NPC captain does is to roll on the reaction table. If the captain is surprisingly enthusiastic (given that he's a naval or scout officer on a covert mission), well then that must mean that some conjecture along chaochou's lines is correct - there is something about the captain that makes him unexpectedly sympathetic to spacefarers in trouble. Conversely, if the reaction is hostile then Derren is correct - he is following protocols about not risking his ship by allowing strangers on board.

That's my own view as to what makes a game not a railroad - that the action declarations of the players can change the significant outcomes. And as the example shows, I think it depends upon leaving significant parts of the backstory open-ended until the action is resolved, so that it can be fleshed out and given content that makes sense of the results of resolution.

And to head off an anticipated retort from Lanefan - obviously backstory that has been established in play is established. So if the NPC captain is someone whom the PCs have already dealt with and made an enemy of, then the mayday plan is unlikely to work (assuming that the captain knows it is the PCs sending the distress call). I'm talking about the introduction of a new element (in this case, the NPC captain), into the fiction.

Also, upthread I asked about how the players (via their PCs) could go about instigating conflict in a religious sect - not meaning "How could the PCs do this in the fiction?" but "How could the players do this at the table?" One way would be Derren's approach - the players declare lots of "moves" that trigger the referee telling them stuff from his/her backtory, until the "right" solution emerges - or perhaps they learn that it can't be done. I would think of that as a railroad.

The other way would be the approach that I prefer, and that chaochou seems to prefer: the players declare actions (like searching through the libraries to find accounts of theological disputes; or taking particular individuals to dinner to sow rumours of discord; etc) and if these succeed (based on the standard resolution procedures - if a game doesn't have these, then obviously my method can't work!) then the PCs learn about the disputes, get the rumours circulating, etc and achieve their goal of causing rifts in the sect.