What is *worldbuilding* for?

Caliban said:

Yup. Bias.

And I'm getting the impression from your posts that you think this is somehow a bad thing. It sounds like you think GM's shouldn't engage in "worldbuilding".

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Well, shidaku seemed to get the point of my post - thanks shidaku!

shidaku said:

The audience would be the players yes. And the "adventure" refers to both what the audience (players) partake of, and what is available within the game. Like art, not all outcomes will be the same.

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Can you elaborate on this?

Here's a way that I'm thinking about it, but it may not be the same as you:

If I have to model the RPG session to art, I'm thinking of it as somewhere between an AV installation and a happening. So the audience's role in observing/experiencing the artwork is also, in some fashion, constitutive of the art event itself. Linking that to worldbuiling, how do you see the audience/player role changing the artwork itself (ie the built world?)

MarkB said:

Well, for one thing, it can make players' choices feel meaningful, and reward them for smart play. If you already know where the NPC has hidden his map, and the PCs use deduction based upon what you've told them of him and his residence to narrow it down to the most likely location, they'll gain a sense of achievement if their deduction is correct.

If finding the map is basically just a matter of searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total, then they're basically just playing a slot machine and hoping they'll hit the jackpot before they run out of tokens (in this case, rooms). Their choices don't matter, because those choices didn't dictate the outcome.

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When I started reading your post, I thought you were using "meaningful in a similar way to shidaku - but then you go on to talk about "smart play", which seems to be what I called "puzzle solving" in the OP.

In my posts upthread of this one, I've explained a bit my thoughts on the challenges of running a puzzle game outside the context of a dungeon. Any thoughts on that would be very welcome!

(Btw way, I don't know of any RPG that works by way of the players (via their PCs) "searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total" - do you have an example in mind?)

pemerton said:

In classic D&D, where the fiction in quetion is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, reples (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.

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In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places. I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.

redrick said:

If I were going to play a game where 90% of worldbuilding was handled collaboratively with the players, I would rather do that in the context of a specific game, preferably with mechanics and guidance on how to handle that collaboration, particularly with regards to conflict between players on how the world should look. "Classic" RPGs handle this conflict with clearly defined purviews for the different participants. (As a player, I and I alone control my PC, and you, the DM, control the world and and its not my place to tell you how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate.)

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I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "handling worldbuilding collaboratively with the players".

I don't know of any game in which the player is simply authorised to tell the GM how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate, but part of the context for this is a lack of context for the suggestion ie I'm not able to think of a context in which action declaration by a player for his/her PCs would entail determining how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate (eg if, in the game, there is a trivia contest on, it seems unlikely that the actual answer to the question would matter, and so it seems unlikely that anything would be at stake in the player rather than the GM deciding on what that number is.)

I do know, though, of a game where the player can delcare a Bars-wise check for his/her PC to find a particular bar, or to recall the famous bars of Baldur's Gate - if the check succeeds, the players declaration succeeds; if it fails, the GM is entitled to establish some fact about bars in Baldur's Gate that will thwart the player's intention in declaring that action. That game is Burning Wheel.

I also know of a game in which a player can declare a Streetwise check to find a speak-easy or an illegal casino, and if the check succeeds then the PC finds what s/he is looking for - that game is Classic Traveller (at least in its 1977 version).

And I also know of a game in which a player can spend a resource (fate point, from memory) to have his/her PC recall the existence and location of a friendly bar - that game is Mongoose OGL Conan.

Even AD&D has at least two contexts in which a player can, by engaging an approriate player-facing mechanic/system, bring about certain elements of the setting:

The first is the development of a stronghold: from Gygax's DMG (p 93):


Here we see the player enjoying authority to establish minor points of geographic detail, provided it is not "totally foreign" to the established fiction about the campaign world.

The second is a paladin class feature. From the DMG (p 18):


Here we see that the player has the authority to require the GM to introduce certain elements into the gameworld (ie the existence of a magical steed, destined to be the faithful servant of the paladin who calls for it, in a circumstance that will impose some not-isurmountable challenge to the paladin in obtaining it).

The examples from Traveller and AD&D also show that the allocation of roles that you attribute to "classic" RPGs is not as straightforward as is sometimes suggested. I think it's true of classic dungeon-exploration D&D. But once you get to other aspects of D&D, like stronghold development and a paladin's warhorse, the picture changes. And Traveller makes it pretty clear, and not just in its rules for Streetwise skill, that the players are expected to contriburte to establishing elements and details of the setting (eg when a world is rolled, and its properties seem strange, the players as well as the referee are expected to help make sense of the overall picture - see Classic Traveller, Book 3).

billd91 said:

In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places.

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The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms).

billd91 said:

I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.

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Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?

pemerton said:

Well, shidaku seemed to get the point of my post - thanks shidaku!

Can you elaborate on this?

Here's a way that I'm thinking about it, but it may not be the same as you:

If I have to model the RPG session to art, I'm thinking of it as somewhere between an AV installation and a happening. So the audience's role in observing/experiencing the artwork is also, in some fashion, constitutive of the art event itself. Linking that to worldbuiling, how do you see the audience/player role changing the artwork itself (ie the built world?)

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It's not so much that they alter the art, but they alter the perception of it. I mean yes some tables fundamentally change the world the campaign takes place in...but really that was part of the art to being with, the ability to change what exists within it. There are some worlds where this is not a fundamental aspect of the art and play is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure story, there are pre-written "holes" that the players are expected to fill. In other campaigns the players are a "new variable" capable of changing up the existing dynamic written into the campaign.

The "art" of the built world is either designed with the players ability to change the world, or it isn't. The latter can range anywhere from something more akin to an art viewing to a choose-your-own-adventure.

When you walk away from looking at some art, you come away with certain thoughts. If someone viewed the art with you, you may come away with different thoughts. That's what I'm getting at here.

innerdude said:

Be careful, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , not to mistake "world building" as "just the stuff I, the GM, have to make up in my head." One of the powerful effects of using known settings is that you can sidestep so much of the need to explain to players just what the world is and what lives within it contextually. They already know.

Many settings use real-world cultural analogues for this reason exactly---if I want the players to be immersed in a place that's highly compatible with 18th century France, I'm going to say, "picture 18th century France," and the players immediately get it. It's powdered wigs and fighting with rapiers and muskets, with orchestral string music playing at the royal ball. I don't have to "worldbuild" any of that context/milieu, it's already there.

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Well, in the OP and a few posts that followed it, I tried to make clear what I mean by worldbuilding - namely, establishing setting information in advance of play.

Telling the players "Imagine an 18th century salon" doesn't, on its face, sound like an instance of that. It sounds like it's happening in the course of actual play, and is inviting them to draw upon some commonly understood tropes and references. It's not that different fromm saying "The NPC is wearing a long-sleeved dress and carrying a cutlass."

Ovinomancer said:

your Marvel game example had a immense amount of worldbuilding, not a little. You leveraged the entire ouevre of Marvel, which, in turn, leverages the real world. You had Stark, B,A,D,, Washington DC, the Washington monument, the Smithsonian, bars, streets, buildings, a cast reservoir of bystanders, etc, all as predefined and established pays off ther fiction. The world you actually played in had almost everything predefined and leveragable by both the GM and the players.

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Well, obviously you can mean by "worldbuilding" whatever you want (within the parameters of meaningful conversation in Enlgish), but in the OP and subsequent posts I tried to explain what I had in mind.

Saying, "Let's play Marvel Heroic" isn't worldbuilding - it's pitching a game. And when we're discussing how to introduce NIghcrawler into the situation (it was already established that Bobby and War Machine were in DC), and Nightcrawler's player suggests "I phone Bobby, telling him I'm coming to see him in DC, and suggest we meet in a bar" that's not worldbuiling either, in the sense of the GM establishing setting elements in advance. The player (who doesn't read comics) has read Nightcrawler's sheet, sees that he's a roguish romantic type, and so naturally suggests an outing to a bar.

I have never heard of B.A.D. except in the context of some "datafile" descriptions in the back of my copy of MHRP Civil War. When the players decided they were going to a bar, I flipped through the (several) pages of characters at the back of the book, noticed Asp (she comes early in the alphabetical listing) as someone who might be suitable for meeting in a bar, and then threw in the other B.A.D. characters that are referenced in Asp's description.

As far as relying on my (rather sketchy) knowledge of DC - the Washington Monument, the Capitol Dome (which also came up in the game), and the Smithsonian aren't elements of any worldbuilding. They're actual places which some of the players (not me) have visited, and which we all have some basic familiarity with from images on TV and in movies. They're in the same category as [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s reference to 18th century France.

Ovinomancer said:

Your second example ignores that Greyhawk was used as a world and only focuses on the tree created by a player. Sure, the tree is important, but you already leveraged the vast work and world of Greyhawk before the tree was even introduced

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In what way? Showing someone (the player) a map with a little village on it called Five Oak isn't "leveragign the vast work" of anything. It's leveraging a single map and place name. There's no description of any powerful recluse wizards in the GH City boxed set description of Five Oak.

Sadras said:

Besides all the myriad of other reasons provided by posters above, the table doesn't waste precious play time on worldbuilding.

For example, if I as DM establish a map, the setting calendar, the seasons, where various settlements lie on a map, the general terrain and distance between these settlements, then it will be easy to work out the length of time required to travel from one settlement to another when a player asks me. I could then work out the date of arrival and what that would mean, the number of random encounters I could perhaps roll for and the weather patterns and how that would affect travel - instead of trying to work this all out at the table wasting precious real time.

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Would the players generally have access to all that information - the distance, the weather patterns, the frequency of encounter, etc?

If they do, then it creates a puzzle of a sort, provided the parameters and possibilities aren't so complex and open-ended that trying to optimise a response is impossible.

If the players don't know that stuff, so it's really just a tool for the GM telling them some stuff about what happens to the players' characters, then it seems maybe like a device for the GM to keep his/her storytelling consistent (similar to how REH wrote himself an essay on "The Hyborian Age" to help him manage the backstory for his Conan stories).

Sadras said:

Add a little backstory and some setting lore to the above details and you have B10, one of your favourite modules (as you have stated many times on this forum).

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I have to ask why you like B10 so much given your roleplaying style, if you don't necessarily use the established story and you 'ignore' pretty much all the other worldbuilding information provided in the module in favour of the skill challenge mechanic?
Speaking for myself, I think the module is great specifically for the world-building information provided.

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I like Night's Dark Terror because it has some very nice vignettes - the river attack; the goblin assault; the little dungeon under the hillock; the island with the statue the elves want back. It also has a good evil organisation - the Iron Ring.

I think the stuff with the Hutakaans is not very interesting, and in my game the "ancient civilisation" I used was minotaurs (drawing on elements of H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth).

When I used the module, I made a lot of the backstory known to the players. So the player of the cleric of Kord knew that there was an evil organisation of Bane-ites called The Iron Ring. The player of the dwarf, who already established elements of backstory about dwarven culture/civilisation, knew that before the dwarves the minotaurs lived in and under the mountains, and tutored the dwarves in many arts (this "dependent" status of the dwarves, elaborating both on ideas the player had come up with and the idea of dwarves as slaves of the giants, was a recurrent theme for most of Heroic tier; at Paragon tier the dwarf PC broke out of it through a series of events, and it ceased to be a part of the game). And I told the players that their PCs had to have some reason to be ready to fight goblins - and at least one of them, who had played the module 20-something years ago, knew why this was (not to mention the cover somewhat giving it away!).

For the whole of our 30-level 4e game, the mortal world has never expanded beyond the inside cover map of the module (the underdark is beneath the mountains) - and the only two (above ground) cities the PCs have interacted with have been Kelven and Threshold (which has combined stuff from B10 with stuff from the 3E module Speaker in Dreams with stuff from the Dungeon module Heathen). That map, with mountains, swamps, hills, plains, forests, cities, ruins, etc, is another thing I like about the module.

So what was it all for? The setting established a way of contextualising, for our particular game, the broader historical/cosmological backstory in the 4e PHB; gave a sense of place for events to unfold in; and gave us some NPCs and organisations as elements of our game. The only bit that was interestingly secret from the PCs was Golthar: at first he was just a yellow-robed mage who was referred to by other NPCs as the PCs interacted with them; then a figure they saw flying away from the goblin/hobgoblin ruined city base before they assaulted it; and then when they arrrived in Threshold, they learned that (under the name Paldemar) he was the advisor to the Baron. (I can't recall when I made up that last bit; probably a couple of weeks before running that session, as part of the prep for it.)

Personally, I find in RPGing that there is a big difference between using setting material to establish a common ground among the game participants, and as part of the fleshing out of character details; and using it as an element in adjudication of action resolution. Ie these are very different answers to the questio "What is worldbuilding for?"

shidaku said:

It's not so much that they alter the art, but they alter the perception of it.

<snip>

When you walk away from looking at some art, you come away with certain thoughts. If someone viewed the art with you, you may come away with different thoughts. That's what I'm getting at here.

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Understood, I think. This means that the GM is playing a very big role - s/he is the artist, and the players the (crtically engaged) audience.

shidaku said:

I mean yes some tables fundamentally change the world the campaign takes place in...but really that was part of the art to being with, the ability to change what exists within it. There are some worlds where this is not a fundamental aspect of the art and play is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure story, there are pre-written "holes" that the players are expected to fill. In other campaigns the players are a "new variable" capable of changing up the existing dynamic written into the campaign.

The "art" of the built world is either designed with the players ability to change the world, or it isn't. The latter can range anywhere from something more akin to an art viewing to a choose-your-own-adventure.

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This is very clear, thank you. I'm interested to see what others think of it (eg [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION], [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=6777696]redrick[/MENTION]).

World building has almost nothing to do with "puzzle solving play". That's adventure/dungeon design.

Worldbuilding is simply that - building the world that the PC's adventure in. The gods, the cultures, the races, geopolitical relations, secret organizations vying for power, forgotten tombs and mad liches, etc, etc. A world plus problems for PC's to solve and monsters to fight.

Or it can just be a small village the PC's start in and a few threats for them to deal with, with the rest of the world being created as the PC's level up and explore.

Or the world building can be rather limited as the DM uses a pre-written campaign (taking advantage of someone else's world building efforts) and inserts their own adventure scenarios into it.

Any of these approaches work for worldbuilding - it's mainly up to the DM and their personal preference. Some of us really like creating worlds and societies (usually with an interesting premise or twist) and working out how everything fits together. Some of us just want to create a dungeon and have some interesting combats.

I can't speak for @redrick, but in my experience most of the "collaborative worldbuilding with players" comes from their backstories when they create their characters, before the campaign starts. I give them the basics of the campaign world, they give me their character background (if they feel like making one), and I fit that into the world (or rarely - if they make something that really doesn't fit - I tell them to go back to the drawing board).

My current campaign - a new player decided he wanted to have a character with a Native American themed background, with his tribe living in a forest. I picked an area of the continent that I didn't have any specific plans for, and that is now "Verdania, Land of the Forest People" with a history that goes back a thousand years. Or will when I finish writing it. Another player gave me a background where his character befriended a goddess (despite being told the gods had been distant and remote for centuries) and became her favored follower, gained a unique mithral sword with stats better than the PHB version and defeated a dragon. All before his 3rd level character started play. I explained that his character was prone to hallucinations and had recently escaped from a local madhouse before joining the party.

My campaign has a region or bit of history that was specifically created because of the background of each of the player characters (except for the delusional one). If the campaign runs long enough, each of those regions will have a plot line that directly ties into the character's background. So far I've had plots directly tied two of the PC's and dropped hints of things to come for the others. Plus the usual monster fights and side quests, and an overall campaign storyline.

None of that world building is strictly necessary or even needed. But it's something I enjoy doing - it's the main reason I run my own game. And so far, my players appreciate it - having a sense of connection to the world outside the dungeon gives them a sense of investment in their characters beyond just upping a few numbers on their character sheet and getting a new piece of loot (although loot is definitely appreciated).

Lanefan said:

The GM shouldn't be playing to find out (if that's her goal she should become a player and let someone else GM), the GM should be providing the stage and scene and background and world in which the players can play to find out.

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Why? As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] has said, this is a statement of personal preference presented as if it has universal normative force. What's the basis for that univ

Lanefan said:

No, it's also literal. The maps, the history write-ups, the culture write-ups, the pantheons - provided you accept something that's online as being real then they're all every bit as real as that swimming pool.

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They're not real, they're imaginary.

What's real is the text. But you're not inviting your players to take your text and edit it or rewrite it or write a sequel to it. When you talk about the history, culture etc as elements of play, you're clearly referring to the fiction that they express. That that is so is illustrated by the following from your post:

Lanefan said:

I've already neutrally determined in advance that the map is somewhere else. I know where it is, and I know that in this case there's ultimately only two possible outcomes: they'll sooner or later find it, or they won't. If they find it, great: they can take it back to their sponsor and get paid for it, or they can try following it on their own, or whatever. If they don't find it, great: they can return to their sponsor empty-handed, or they can blow him off and go elsewhere, or they can try making a fake map, or whatever.

Somebody declaring they're searching for a given thing and banging off a natural 20 on a search check doesn't mean squat if that given thing isn't there to find.

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This is simple realism - you can't find what's not there. This idea of "say yes or roll the dice" kicks this to the curb, as now all they need to do in a game-mechanics sense is keep rolling (there's obviously doubt involved, so roll the dice) until they hit a 20 and the Crown will appear regardless of where they are as long as they're somewhere in or near the castle. I find this ridiculous.

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Let's put to one side that you're assuming, here (i) that the players have unlimited retries (even in AD&D there are all sorts of limits on retries - for many thief abilities, for trying to open magically locked doors, for bending bars, for listening at doors), and (ii) that the consequence of failure will permit a retry (as opposed to be, say, that they search and it's not there to be found).

The whole idea of "there being nothing there to find", of the GM "knowing" this in advance, and of it being "unrealistic" for it to be otherwise, is again metaphor at best, nonsense at worst. Consider, for instance, an author who stages a competition to determine some feature of the sequel - the readers get to vote on whether the first novel's protagonist will live or die. The idea that this is "unreaslistic", because either the hero dies or s/he doesn't, is obviously absurd - nothing is true about the hero until it is written.

I've already mentioned the example of Great Expectations, where Dickens rewrote the ending on the advice of his editor/publisher - that's an instance of the same phenomenon.

If the GM decides whether or not the map is there by using some technique in which the players participate, it's no different from what my imaginary author is doing, or what Dickens did. You may or may not want to establish your RPGing fiction in that fashion, but it's clearly not impossible, and certainly not unrealistic - it's something that has actually happened in the history of fiction-writing, and among RPGers.

Caliban said:

None of that world building is strictly necessary or even needed. But it's something I enjoy doing - it's the main reason I run my own game. And so far, my players appreciate it - having a sense of connection to the world outside the dungeon gives them a sense of investment in their characters beyond just upping a few numbers on their character sheet and getting a new piece of loot

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Is it important that the GM do it for the players to have this sense?