What is *worldbuilding* for?

pemerton said:

I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis. For instance, Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised both have lingering consequences although they have no "per day" mechanic at all.

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I kind of agree with this - as lingering effects should in theory work pretty much the same for all characters their impact on overall class balance should be about zero.

They will, however, greatly impact character balance within an encounter if one or more PCs carry lingering effects into said encounter and are thus weakened somehow. This is not a bad thing.

I am not saying that "per encounter" balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?)

I'm saying that "per-encounter" balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas "per day" balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the "future" of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance).

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Yet another difference in our philosophies, I guess; as I've no problem whatsoever with rather severe class imbalance in an encounter.

Sometimes an encounter's setup favours the casters and blasters (1). Other times it best suits the front-line tanks (2). Other times, the stealthies and sneakies (3). Yet other times, the talkers and thinkers (4). And in each of these cases those who the particular encounter doesn't suit can either try to find ways to contribute as best they can or just leave it to the trained professionals.

Examples:
(1) An enemy physically separated from the PCs yet able to affect them e.g. a squad of arbalestiers across a canyon taking target practice on the PCs. Casters and shooters, open fire.
(2) A close-quarters battle in a narrow passage with poor visibility and no room to cross through or skirt around the fighting. Front-line tanks, this is all yours.
(3) You need to cross a cavern, but it's full of giants who are 99% likely to smear the PCs across the walls in any sort of fight. Sneakies and stealthies, find us a way around this please.
(4) The dragon whose lair you've just crept into wakes up, but in a good mood as she's well-fed and happy. Diplomatic types, use your brains and silver tongues to get us out of this one.

It's on the DM to at least vaguely try to ensure each type of encounter comes up more or less regularly, along of course with other more-conventional encounters where everyone can weigh in.

Lanefan

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], my concern about class balance of mechanical effectiveness isn't so much about the sort of idiosyncratic tactical scenarios you describe, but systemic effects. Eg if one PC has a whole suite of spells that s/he can bring to bear on the situation, while the other PC has only his/her wits, then (everything else being equal) the first PC seems to have a mechanical advantage.

The typical solution to this in D&D (and the prescribed solution in 5e) is to set things up so that the second PC has to string those spells out over X encounters. Which is the whole "fixing of the future" thing I mentioned in my post.

(I would add: this issue is not unique to D&D. Eg it comes up in Rolemaster too.)

Maxperson said:

5th level. Once a wizard hit 5th level he was gold, especially if you were playing 2e and specialized. 7th and you were platinum. Higher levels were not required for the power to come out.

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They get 1 third level spell at 5th. I think they are much more survivable at that level, but they still have to mind what they cast. But at 9th level you get stuff like teleport. Their powers keep increasing considerably. Sure they get good at 5th level. It is still quite nice being a fighter or thief at 5th too.

People can quibble over the details all day. My experience at the table is wizards are pretty pitiful at the start and increase overtime. When you get to the higher levels they have truly powerful magic (not just good combat magic but strange, reality altering magic). Personally I like the way 1E and 2E balanced the classes. But that wasn't the point of my post. My point was simply that things are balanced more in terms of experience over a campaign. For instance, sometimes I'd choose a thief just because I wanted to advance faster.

For my own sake following here, how does this current discussion on encounter design/balance connect with the overarching discussion of what worldbuilding is for?

And though some of you are indeed doing this, it may also be helpful to look more broadly at how other game systems (other than iterations of D&D) have designed their encounter/day assumptions for characters.

Aldarc said:

For my own sake following here, how does this current discussion on encounter design/balance connect with the overarching discussion of what worldbuilding is for?

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Why oh why, would you want them to return to that topic!??

EDIT: Besides [MENTION=4303]Sepulchrave II[/MENTION] pretty much nailed it.

Bedrockgames said:

They get 1 third level spell at 5th. I think they are much more survivable at that level, but they still have to mind what they cast. But at 9th level you get stuff like teleport. Their powers keep increasing considerably. Sure they get good at 5th level. It is still quite nice being a fighter or thief at 5th too.

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By 5th, even in AD&D you were almost uniquivocally in the sweet spot, in which most characters were able to contribute and have some fun. IMHO, it started at 3rd (2nd level spells were a landmark for both clerics - no Cure...Wounds at 2nd, you can actually use your own spells for your own purposes! XOMG! - and magic-users - you got quite meaningful combat spells like Web, and quite meaningful utility spells like Invisibility, and systematically exploitable ones like Continual Light), and, yeah, might end by 7th or 9th or 12th, depending on how you feel about the various break-points various classes hit...

.... My point was simply that things are balanced more in terms of experience over a campaign. For instance, sometimes I'd choose a thief just because I wanted to advance faster.

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... outside the sweet spot, that idea is, the classes that languish on one side do well on the other, yes. In AD&D, fighters & non-/demi-humans do particularly well on the low-level side of the sweet spot, magic-user and humans shine brighter on the other side. It theoretically balanced out if you were playing the whole campaign in each moment (picking a race & class taking into account what the character might be like past name level, for instance), and if the DM delivered on those expectations (as opposed to, oh, hey, the 2e DMG just came out, and that elf wizard that was going to be limited to 11th can now make it to 18th!). Similarly, 5e is balanced over a 'day' (or two, if we worry about HD), of 6-8 encounters & 2-3 short rests - if you play the whole day in each moment of that day, and if the DM delivers that kind of day and that perfect mix of challenges consistently enough.

OTOH, I'm not so sure the Thief ever did much shining at any level - except when he tried to Hide in Shadows, of course. ;P

pemerton said:

I'm not sure who you are positing this as an ideal for - a designer? a game publisher? an individual table, or GM?

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Yes.

I don't know the 4e-version of Gamma World very well, so I don't know whether it had any sort of lingering consequence mechanic

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It was, like, the 7th ed of GW, but, no, not much in the lingering-consequences department. If you used ammo in an encounter or your omega tech burned out you didn't have it until you found some more. That was about it. Alpha Mutations were encounter powers that randomly changed on you. Hps re-set between encounters (no surges or anything required). Powers from your Origins were either at-will or encounter.

I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis.

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They're similar in kind, in that they both aim to limit balance to only a sub-set of the potential range of play. Balanced at X amount challenge in Y unit of time is simply imbalanced everywhere else. The whole idea your or ovinomancer or whoever posited of a 'unit of balance' is a little off that way, I think.

Aldarc said:

This sounds nice and all, but sadly correlation does not equal causation.

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Ramming my head into a brick wall would have provided more value than reading the first sentence of your reply, Aldarc.

It's wise, I've found, to be mindful of the fact that people you're interacting with have their own gaming experiences--some of us going back 30 years or more--so when people say something to the effect of, "If the DM is having fun worldbuilding, it shows in the level of fun the players have at the gaming table," there may just be some truth to it.

And that truth, however anecdotal it may be, isn't some sort of attempt to establish an all-encompassing gaming truth to which everyone else must agree.

Turning every conversation into a binary, win/lose conversation is stupid.

Aldarc said:

Even then, I don't think that a GM's "fun" in worldbuilding necessarily correlates to the resultant fun for the players.

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OK, why? I mean, there's no value to your statement if you don't include some kind of explanation of why you feel the way you do.

But since I'm in a charitable mood, I'll do your work for you.

So, why doesn't worldbuilding correlate to fun for the players? Let's see...

Sometimes DMs get it wrong at the gaming table. E.g., what seemed like a good idea during the design phase turns out to be the opposite during play.

Sometimes DMs fail on the execution side. E.g., good idea, but a failure at the gaming to run the adventure as planned.

Sometimes players don't like the world the DM has built (whether she's using a published campaign world or one of her own devising), no matter the DM's level of enthusiasm and good intentions.

Sometimes players are snots that ruin an otherwise fantastic campaign for the other players and the DM.

And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:

So, why doesn't worldbuilding correlate to fun for the players? Let's see...

Sometimes DMs get it wrong at the gaming table. E.g., what seemed like a good idea during the design phase turns out to be the opposite during play.

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This is the one that trips me up every time and reduces my fun as DM running the game, never mind the players!

One of these years I'll design a campaign world that six months or a year into the campaign doesn't leave me facepalming and asking myself "what in the name of sweet Cheetoes was I thinking?"....

Sometimes players don't like the world the DM has built (whether she's using a published campaign world or one of her own devising), no matter the DM's level of enthusiasm and good intentions.

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This one can come up if there's significant player turnover during the campaign's life - you design with the starting players in mind but by year 4 three of five of those are gone and you've picked up replacements, one of whom has already himself left and been replaced... Yeah, been there, still doing that.

And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.

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"Going to"? Not necessarily.

"Is more likely to"? Absolutely.

Lanefan

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:

And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.

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All too often a DM who gets a little too into building his world will provide an experience that is, at best, boring (sorry, the world's just not as interesting to anyone esle), and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.

I enjoy worldbuilding, for it's own sake, even, but I've seen it go horribly wrong, too....

Tony Vargas said:

All too often a DM who gets a little too into building his world will provide an experience that is, at best, boring (sorry, the world's just not as interesting to anyone esle), and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.

I enjoy worldbuilding, for it's own sake, even, but I've seen it go horribly wrong, too....

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Anything can be taken too far and handled in a bad way. I just don't know that I understand what people are cautioning in this thread. Obviously if you are boring your players, you are doing something wrong. But just because some GMs have used world building in a way that is boring, that doesn't mean we should avoid world building. A lot of the worst gaming advice, and even game design, I've encountered is built around the worst edge cases in the hobby. On the whole, I get more fun when the GM engages in good world building than when the GM goes too light on world building. If it just amounts to "look at the interesting tavern I made", sure that is dull. But I don't usually see GMs world build to literally give people a tour. There are usually hooks, drama, conflict and adventure that result from the world building details.