What is worldbuilding for?

Ovinomancer · Jan 18, 2018

Nagol said:
I tend to disagree. It is entirely possible the whole of the explorable world is a single dungeon. Indeed there are games with that premise. In that case, I'd like to think you'd agree that the dungeon design is world-building. World-building occurs whenever an element is added that potentially affects more than a single locale. The king of a realm may reside in a dungeon equivalent. Defining the king's personality, motivations, and capabilities is world-building even if he is placed at a specific locale.

I think the line between locale construction and world-building is an artificial one. The locale exists inside the world and needs to conform to any precepts already established. Its design may suggest new precepts to be added to the world. Determining that the cult of <fill in the blank> always has at least three separate entrances for all major buildings is world-building even if the decision comes about because of the design of the first building as part of a locale.

That said, I agree every wall and door placement in a locale is not world-building.

No, I would not agree that the design of the differing parts (or the whole) of the dungeon is the worldbuilding. It may be so, but is not necessarily so. To me, the world building started in the development of the premise that the entirety of the explorable world is this dungeon and the necessary co-assumptions this entails. The actual windings of the dungeon are details based on that premise, and could be authored prior to play (DM driven) or during play (player driven).

Now, I will stipulate that once those details of the dungeon are established, they become part of the worldbuilding -- ie, they are now established parts of the world that future play is expected to respect. But, when you build the world sized dungeon, you've already decided on the premise that the world is the dungeon. I would go so far as to say this holds even if your reverse the creation process -- if you built a dungeon and then decided that it was the world, the world building aspects as presented to your players is that the entire explorable world is a dungeon. That's the hook the game turns on, to mix metaphors.

pemerton · Jan 18, 2018

Nagol said:
Depending on the situation, I may have created a trajectory to evolve the situation in the absence of player input.

How do the players learn this? In my mind, I'm linking this to the Luke Crane comment I sblocked in the OP, and to the role of divination.

When the "world" is very confined (both in fictional terms - making relevant fictional positioning fairly easy to achieve - and in corresponding mechanical terms, eg the ranges are short enough for Locate Object and other divination effects to work) then there are clear player moves available to learn stuff like this, and therefore use it as a "tool" for their goals.

But in a much more open-ended world, how do you manage this? Personally, I see this as one of the big challenges in GMing; my own response tends to be to dial back the "worldbuilding" and to generate the content as needed - so knowledge skills, interrogation skill, divination abilities, and the like in my game tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes.

Nagol said:
When the PCs first encountered him, he was working on an investigation peripheral to the PCs primary mission. The PCs stumbled onto clues pointing to his monster, but couldn't figure out how those tied in with what they were working on (it did, but the puzzle was quite large and they had few pieces at that time). Harry completed his investigation and took care of the problem without the PCs direct involvement as they took a direct course for their own investigation. Although they knew he was the reporter sniffing around and getting underfoot with their investigation, I don't think any of the players ever worked out he was responsible for the arson that destroyed potential evidence (i.e. killed the creature they didn't know was there). His later appearances have shown him to have greater depths, but they've never asked about that first mission.

This bit is very interesting.

If I rephrase it in terms of play, rather than in in-fiction terms, then it looks like: GM narrates some stuff to players that includes fictional elements with hints of relevance to the players' current concerns with the fiction; the players (correctly, if I've got it right) infer that the GM has in mind some genuine connection beneath/behind those hints, but can't discern them (and don't make the moves, in terms of fictional positioning, that would trigger more narration).

The GM then establishes some additional fiction without telling the players ("Harry completes his investigation") and this triggers a change in the fiction accessible to the players for their purposes ("the arson that destroyed potential evidence"). This is the bit I'm especially intrigued by, because it relates back to your earlier remarks about GM force, and fairness; and also to issues of "scope" in the fiction. How did you decide to change the fictional situation in this way, with this (minor?) adverse consequence for the players?

Lanefan · Jan 18, 2018

pemerton said:
But this clearly isn't true - you can have a game with any or all of those things without the GM writing up some fiction in advance.

If there's no game world for the PCs to inhabit then when you go to characterize and-or play those PCs you're doing so in a vacuum. It's the DM's job to describe what the PCs already know, and see now, and learn later; meaning the DM is going to have a game world or setting in mind even if she hasn't made notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier.

Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village. You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work?

Of course, that's just the start; if the PCs in the Viking camp immediately decide to go someplace warmer then the DM has to react to that. (one hopes she has a broad-strokes regional or continental map showing areas beyond a short radius around the camp!)

Are you able to say more about how you see the GM's work on the setting in advance of play feeding through to give the players that sense?

[MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] might see it differently, but for my part it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into. If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well.

But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in. We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview.

And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point? What happened before our PCs became PCs? What major events shaped their lives? (it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any).

Lanefan

pemerton · Jan 18, 2018

redrick said:
Maintain a world that extends beyond the immediate POV of the PCs. I want PCs to feel like the main characters, but I don't want it to feel like the world is constantly being ordered around them. I want a world where there is something different behind Door #1, Door #2 and Door #3 and I know what that is without knowing what the players are going to do.

This was the part of your reply that especially stood out to me.

I don't know if you've read [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post just upthread of yours, which I've replied to just upthread of this post. You'll see that I've honed in on a particular episode of play that Nagol describes, that seems like it might be an instance of what you describe in the passage of yours I've quoted. I've asked Nagol some questions about that; if you have any thoughts that are relevant to those questions I've asked, I'd be keen to read them.

redrick said:
My understanding is that this is more or less the standard approach to RPG adventure prep these days.

I don't really know what the contemporary standard is. I tend to prepare authors, perhaps locations, and ideas for vignettes, that I think might be interesting to use in the game.

Lanefan · Jan 18, 2018

pemerton said:
... tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes.

And this is what I just don't get: from the player side, what's the difference? The players/PCs are obtaining access to new information; why does it matter in the slightest on the player side what its metagame source might be?

Either way, the DM is going to narrate the hopefully-informative results of whatever the PCs have tried to divinate. Whether from notes or from top-of-mind that narration in theory should be and sound the same, though IME stuff made up on the fly can involve a lot more humming and hawing on the DM's part if she's caught off guard.

Where the notes come in useful is from the DM side. You've done the work ahead of time thus making it much easier to be consistent and clear with your narrations, and thus during the actual play you can focus on the here and now - action resolution, rules questions, playing NPCs and monsters, stuff like that. This is where canned adventure modules come in handy - much of the pre-work is often also done for you. And I'm all about the lazy.

Ideally, though unfortunately wa-a-ay less often than I'd like, by the time I get behind the screen I've got things to the point where I can sit back and enjoy the entertainment.

=========

Thinking about it another way: I'm starting to realize you see your role in your game as much more of an actual participant - a player - than I do. You want to share in the unexpected plot twists, and be surprised at how the story goes. You don't want any spoilers, as it were; and you want your own game world to organically unfold around you just as if you were a player.

Conversely I'm not there to play in my own game (other than via NPCs), I'm there to provide a game* for my players to play in; and if I want to be a player I need to find another game under a different DM in order to do so. In my own game I already know all the spoilers, as such is my place and my job, and I know how the story might go at least for the time being. I don't know how it *will* go - the PCs can certainly surprise me with what they do, and when that happens I have to react accordingly. But that reaction is as a neutral arbiter, not as a fellow player.

* - 'provide a game' includes pre-designing the world (maps, history, cultures), pre-designing and tweaking the rules (mostly homebrew these days) and then providing access to them, coming up with a possible storyline or three, and usually hosting.

Lan-"I can have cake, or I can eat cake, but I can't do both"-efan

pemerton · Jan 18, 2018

Bawylie said:
I’m not sure how to answer that. In a very narrow, literal sense, the answer is necessarily “yes.”

I think that’s too reductive though, so the good and proper answer is “no, not really.”

Are you able to elaborate?

An example of what I'm thinking of, but it may not be applicable to you: in my RPGing, a player's successful use of a PC's knowledge skill is often a trigger for GM narration. Sometimes (in some systems moreso than other - eg Cortex+ and Burning Wheel moreso than Traveller) it isinstead be a trigger for player narration.

An example of the former: the PCs are in what seems to be a ruined temple, and a player asks "Can I recognise what god was worshipped here?" A successful check can trigger the response "Yes, it was so-and-so." That might be made up on the spot by the GM; or it might be the GM reading from notes. If it's made up, it's not really worldbuilding in the sense I'm talking about, though it might draw on that worldbuilding (eg maybe there's already an established list of gods for the gameworld, like the list in the front of the 4e PHB).

A different example of the former: the PCs are in the temple, and a player asks "Are there any signs of Orcus worship here?" A successful check can trigger the resopnse "Yes, yes there are" not as a reading of notes, but as an affirmation by the GM of the player's suggetion for introduction of fictional content. That's not worldbuiling in my sense - the fictio is clearly being established in the course of play, in a back-and-forth between players and GM.

An example of player content introduction: "Haven't I heard that all the temples of Isis have secret doors under the altar? I look around for the one here." If the check succeeds, the player's content introduction becomes part of the gameworld; if the check fails, the GM is free to do something else (eg if using "fail forward" techniques, to twist the player's intention in some fashion that is adverse to the PC's desires).

But there are probalby other forms of GM-player dynamics around worldbuilding and establishing the content of the fiction that I've not covered above.

MarkB · Jan 18, 2018

Ovinomancer said:
Right... didn't I say pretty much that in the two paragraphs you didn't include in the quote? Perhaps your intent wasn't to appear to disagree with me?

I wasn't aware of giving that appearance. I was elaborating upon your point, not disagreeing with it.

pemerton · Jan 18, 2018

Nagol said:
I tend to disagree. It is entirely possible the whole of the explorable world is a single dungeon.

Yes - this is the basic premise of Moldvay Basic.

Nagol said:
I think the line between locale construction and world-building is an artificial one.

<snip>

That said, I agree every wall and door placement in a locale is not world-building.

WIthout wanting to quibble too much over definitions, I want to extend your critique of artificial distinctions all the way! Establishing that the world was shaped by great migrations (as per the first few pages of the World of Greyhawk folio), and establishing that the front door of the dungeon is made of adamantine, are both acts of authoring the fiction. They establish setting - the world in which the PCs have their adventures.

To summarise it in a way that is probabaly open to myriad counter-examples, I think that nouns = worldbuilding, establishing a setting. Once you also get a verb that takes a PC as its object - then you have situation. If the verb is very big and the subject noun tends to drop out of sight then you can get RPGing where setting really becomes just colour and backdrop (and doesn't do the work you identified upthread, of providing tools for the players to use in their RPGing). I'm not thinking of a D&D example off-hand - maybe arena-oriented play? - but I think The Dying Earth RPG probably tends towards this, and I would say that Cortex+ Heroic does also, though maybe not quite as much as The Dying Earth.

Bawylie · Jan 18, 2018

I’d include those elements as part of World-building, absolutely. There’s also the things your players show interest in, the stuff their characters like, and the out-of-game signals they send about what they’d be keen on. Those things also inform World building. I take note of these interests and try to incorporate them for the players. Sometimes it’s not about the world itself at all, but a thematic exploration. And sometimes it’s general backdrop stuff that doesn’t have much to do with the adventure at all. And sometimes it’s like the examples you’ve given where the players’ input might affect what’s discovered during play.

pemerton · Jan 18, 2018

Lanefan said:
If there's no game world for the PCs to inhabit then when you go to characterize and-or play those PCs you're doing so in a vacuum. It's the DM's job to describe what the PCs already know, and see now, and learn later; meaning the DM is going to have a game world or setting in mind even if she hasn't made notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier.

Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village.

<snip>

it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into. If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well.

<snip>

And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point? What happened before our PCs became PCs? What major events shaped their lives?

The player could write all this - in my BW game, the player of the mage PC established that he "came of age" living in a hilltop tower with his older brother (the player emailed a picture of a ruined Indian castle/tower as the model he was working with - in game terms, I suggested it would be in the Abor-Alz) when they were attacked by orcs. It was in trying to call down a mighty storm of lightning that his brother was instead possessed by a demon. The PC mage had to flee, and had spent the next 14 years as a wandering rogue wizard.

Or the group could work it out together (that's how my Cortex+ Heroic game started). Or everyone might read a loose pre0fab setting description and then go from there - that's how my main 4e game started, and it's been the players of particular PCs as much as me who have elaborated on what the Raven Queen is all about, what the empire of Nerath was about, what is at stake in the conflict between gods and primordials, etc.

Lanefan said:
You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work?

<snip>

But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in. We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview.

<snip>

it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any

Well, I've given some examples of how else it can work. Of course they're not available if you allocate functions in the way you describe - but one way of thinking about the question in the OP is, why allocate functions that way? I'm interested in answers to that question.