What is *worldbuilding* for?

pemerton said:

I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.

I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.

Scenario 1
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?

Scenario 2
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?

My contention
The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.

It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).

There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 1 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.

If scenario 1 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.

Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because the map being in the kitchen (or wherever) is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.

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Scenario 2 suffers the same fate as scenario 1. If the GM tells the player he sees an orc in the room, GM fiat can dictate the attack's success. Perhaps the orc is an illusion and the swing cannot connect. Perhaps an invisible wall of force separates the two and the weapon will bounce off with no effect. Perhaps the orc goes first and flees. Perhaps the orc was previously wounded and can offer no reasonable defence and drops immediately.

The issue is the players want to do something using partial information. The DM is privy to more information (perhaps from pre-authoring [its it the bedroom! or the BBEG carries it on its person!], perhaps as a consequence of previous action [the PC's plan were uncovered and the map has been destroyed!], perhaps as a consequence of previous die rolls [the partial failure entering the home resulted in a rival thief fleeing with the map] , perhaps the GM does not believe the party has "earned" this dramatic moment whatever that means, or maybe the party has "earned" the dramatic moment and it's time to move on -- why and how the information has been created is immaterial). The party with more information determines what happens in a manner consistent with what is known as a whole. Dice only come into the adjudication if an appeal to randomness is warranted.

Now is pre-authoring different than improvisational creation in these cases? Probably not from the player's perspective. They know they got into the home and haven't found the map they expected. Is the scene framing going to be different? Maybe. It depends on what the table prefers. Will the play after this scene vary? Probably. But, there are situations where the pre-authoring later scenes and the improvisational later scenes are the same. "The dice said the map isn't here, I know! I'll give it to the rival thief they encountered 2 sessions ago!" vs. "The party is going to kick itself when they figure out the map was stolen by that rival thief they ran into 2 days ago! Let's see what they do when they find the map isn't in the home."

DM-facing games offer players less agency than say FATE offers since they cannot inject declared additions to the world outside their player characters. However, the players' PCs have similar levels of agency. The DM is not restricting the PC agency any more than a fighter's agency is restricted when sees the opponent is 100 feet away on the other side of a chasm. PCs must operate within the constraints of the scene framing and rule set. With pre-authoring, some of the constraints may be initially hidden from the players and are included to provide something for the player to react against when discovered. Other pre-authored constraints are not hidden and exist to provide thematic and genre landscape that the player may choose to -- or not -- engage.

Now, could scenario 1 be determined by dice? Sure! If the parties are operating from the same partial information and the study is a plausible location for the map roll the dice and see if its found. But it needn't be determined by dice any more than any other situation needs to be determined by dice. GM fiat can rely on pre-authoring, gut feelings, sudden inspiration, or listening to the players and agreeing with their ideas. In the end why the fiat happens is immaterial to the players.

Lanefan said:

The problem we're up against, however, is that for some of these guys game worlds and other imaginary constructs don't have facts.

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This is not correct.

(I mean, as a technical matter it's probably clearer to describe a fiction as having content rather than facts, but that's orthogonal to the main point.)

No one is disputing that the game world has content. What is being discussed is who gets to author it. To say that if the GM says there are no footprints there, that's a fact you have to deal with is simply to say the GM gets to author that without regard to play input (eg input delivered in the form of action declarations). No one is disputing that a RPG can be adjudicated in that fashion. The OP simply asks "why"? And it doesn't answer that question to say "Well, because that's how we do it." I mean, I know that's how you do it, but why do it that way?

(And to make it clear, some posters have given interesting answers to the question - most recently, [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)

pemerton said:

This is just confused.

There is no difference between your PC and Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle authors stuff about Holmes. You and your friend author stuff about your PC. You, the human being Lanefan, do not do anything "within the fiction" - you write the fiction. Or perhaps your GM does.

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Incorrect, A player attempts an action to change the fiction "I try to hit him with my sword" <-- attempting something inside the fiction. Adjudication of that attempt writes the fiction. "Sir Bargle swings and misses, nearly cutting off his own toes in the attempt" <-- the actual fiction that develops.

Nagol said:

DM-facing games offer players less agency than say FATE offers since they cannot inject declared additions to the world outside their player characters. However, the players' PCs have similar levels of agency. The DM is not restricting the PC agency any more than a fighter's agency is restricted when sees the opponent is 100 feet away on the other side of a chasm. PCs must operate within the constraints of the scene framing and rule set.

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I don't understand (i) what exactly you mean by "PC agency" and (ii) why it matters to anything.

As I've posted already upthread, in one of my active campaigns a PC is in thrall (by way of a Force of Will spell) to a dark naga. That PC, consequently, has very little agency. Howevr, the player has plenty of agency: having written a Belief for his character that reflects his ensorcellment, he plays the game in just the same way, and with just the same agency, as any other player.

If a GM frames a situation in which (a) a PC is 100' from an opponent with a great chasm in the way, and (b) it is established that the PC is equipped with, or capable with, melee weapons only, then that is a framing which reduces the agency of that player in certain respects. The extent of that reduction depends heavily on many other facets of play, though (eg in a D&D the player may have access to resources - in the fiction, they would be flight magic or teleportation magic or distance distortion or whatever - that allow him/her to change the fictional positioning).

One difference between this and the map example is that the player has the capacity to appraise the game state and express his/her agency through decisions about the use of resources to change the fictional positioning. (In the map example I'm assuming that the map is not within range of a Locate Object spell which the PCs are able to cast.)

Upthread I made some extensive posts about my own view as to when secret elements of the fictional position become burdens on player agency of the sort I personally do not prefer: I prefer the secret be (i) knowable with the current context of play (the "scene" or "encounter"), and (ii) salient, and (iii) not overly severe in its consequences if not identified. Under these conditions, it's likewise reasonable to expect players to expend their resources to fully establish, or to change, the fictional positioning. An invisible foe, and even an illusory orc, may often satisfy these desiderata.

As part of those posts I also explained why I don't think the map example (assuming that it is not within range of a Locate Object spell that the PCs are able to case) satisfies those desiderata.

Imaro said:

I guess my question would be if scenario 2 has instead of an orc...a monster the PC can't beat, no matter how well the dice roll in his favor (Let's say an ancient red dragon and a 1st level PC who can't hit it's armor class). Is that example then comparable to the map that can't be found in the study?

In the example I'm presenting... the only thing that stops the PC from defeating the dragon is pre-written stats, correct? Do these take away player agency in the same way a GM with secret backstory does (is this determined by whether the player has knowledge of the creatures stats or not?)? Or are you saying in the type of game you play the PC's could never run into something that they couldn't overcome... that there is in fact never a situation where they can't beat or do something with a high enough roll?

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I don't know how much work you are intending the words "beat" and "overcome" to do in your example.

My view is that an encounter in which the players don't have a range of meaningful options as to how they engage it and might resolve it is a poorly framed encounter. Whether or not your dragon encounter fits that description depends on many points of detail or context - eg maybe the players can run from the dragon, or befriend it, or pledge fealty to it, or hide from it.

In a recent session of my Traveller game the PCs found themselves under laser bombardment from an orbiting starship. The PCs were not in a position to attack the vessel - it was in orbit, and it's forward observer was in a small craft flying quite high above the ground. But they had a range of options, some of which they exercised: they fled in their ATVs to cover (we resolved these by application of the quickie combat rules for small craft); and they called in the local air force to deal with the attackers (from memory this was a simple case of "saying 'yes'" - one of the PCs was a recently retired senior military commander on the world in question). They NPCs tried to open negotiation with the PCs (over radio) but the players (as their PCs) refused to engage (so as best I recall this didn't actually get to the reaction roll/social mechanics stage).

pemerton said:

This is not correct.

(I mean, as a technical matter it's probably clearer to describe a fiction as having content rather than facts, but that's orthogonal to the main point.)

No one is disputing that the game world has content. What is being discussed is who gets to author it. To say that if the GM says there are no footprints there, that's a fact you have to deal with is simply to say the GM gets to author that without regard to play input (eg input delivered in the form of action declarations). No one is disputing that a RPG can be adjudicated in that fashion. The OP simply asks "why"? And it doesn't answer that question to say "Well, because that's how we do it." I mean, I know that's how you do it, but why do it that way?

(And to make it clear, some posters have given interesting answers to the question - most recently, [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)

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To put it simply: Because too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.

You can see this in all manner of works, from movies to novels to video games and more. There needs to be a cohesive vision for the end product, and no matter what level of life you function on, that cohesive vision is almost always created by top-down declaration. Consider weddings, battle strategies, product marketing, building design. That's not to say that the functionaries beneath the "head" do not have input into the vision, and that they may not have significant input into the vision, but ultimately, they are facilitators of the vision, not creators.

The same dynamic functions at the table. The DM determines the vision. "A heroic campaign against The Ultimate Evil!" The players have input on how this vision is facilitated: do they join with the lesser of two evils? Do they stand by only the truest of the true? Do they make their own path?

This system exists in real life for the same reason it exists in D&D: because it is the simplest and most efficient system, and a system to which the majority of human society has practiced and finds acceptable. Compare to communal systems: they function to a degree on the micro level only in part because the few people who take part in them have an incredibly similar vision.

If the group has a very cohesive vision (they all like to play do-gooders, they all want to play murderhobos, they all want to do *thing*) then you can sometimes have communal games. But getting even a handful of people together who innately share a similar vision of the game is incredibly difficult. Which is why most systems operate on the idea that someone builds a playground and lets people play around in it.

When people respond to you with statements of "Well, that's just how we do it." it is because they are having difficulty, or are perhaps in some sort of wonderment over the fact that you find this difficult to understand. The answer to your question is obvious. It may be the "worst system except for all the others" but it's fairly workable so it's what we go with.

Lanefan said:

as a consumer of Sir ACD's fiction I have no control at all over what Sherlock Holmes does next or how he reacts to a given situation; but as a consumer of the fiction presented in the game I do have control over what my PC does next or how she reacts to a given situation.

<snip>

Were this to happen in an RPG rather than a novel then NPC Watson says "Hello" (as directed and narrated by the DM, his player) and I-as-Holmes might reply, or moodily ignore him, or launch into a tirade, whatever...as directed and narrated by me as his player.

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Yes. This isn't a difference in the fiction - it's a difference in the real world! You are not an author of Hound of the Baskervilles. You are one of the authors when you play RPGs. If you were playing Holmes as your PC, then you would author his reply to Watson. Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was free to author Holmes's reply as the fancy took him.

Look at it another way - if some future archaeologist were to discover a manuscript of The Hound of the Baskervilles, simply from reading it s/he wouldn't be able to tell who wrote it, or by what process. Was it written by a committee? A single person? Is it in fact a retelling of a RPG episode? These different possibilities are to do with real world processes of authorship - they have nothing to do with the "agency" of Holmes, or Watson, as a character within the fiction.

Nagol said:

A player attempts an action to change the fiction "I try to hit him with my sword" <-- attempting something inside the fiction.

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"I try to hit him with my sword" is a move in the game. It's a move that is declared in the real world, at the table. Declaring the move also establishes something in the fiction (at a minimum, that the PC desires to hit the opponent with his/her sword; at most tables, probably also that the PC is performing physical movements of a sword-fighting nature).

Declaring the move also signals a desire as to the future state of the fiction, namely, the defeat of the opponent by the PC by means of swordfighting.

Nagol said:

Adjudication of that attempt writes the fiction. "Sir Bargle swings and misses, nearly cutting off his own toes in the attempt" <-- the actual fiction that develops.

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At most tables, Sir Bargle swings became an element of the fiction when the player made the action declaration, and so didn't depend on eg the roll of any dice. (I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is an exception to this, but I'm also pretty confident that his is a minority view.)

As I posted not too far upthread, the resolution mechanics mediate between the players' expressed desire as to the future state of the fiction -ie that his/her PC defeat the opponent by use of a sword - and the actual formation of a consensus, at the table, as to whether or not that desired fiction actually becomes part of the shared fiction.

This is why it is possible to collectively generate a shared fiction without engaging in collaborative storytelling - because the process can be mediated by way of action declarations and resolution.

Also, at the current level of description of these processes, there is nothing that makes "I try to hit him with my sword" any different from "I search the study for the map we've been looking for."

Lanefan said:

while the end consumers (the players) have some control over the story they do not have much if any control over the setting or backdrop against which that story takes place

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Well, that's the whole focus of this thread, isn't it.

shidaku said:

To put it simply: Because too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.

<snip>

The DM determines the vision. "A heroic campaign against The Ultimate Evil!" The players have input on how this vision is facilitated: do they join with the lesser of two evils? Do they stand by only the truest of the true? Do they make their own path?

This system exists in real life for the same reason it exists in D&D: because it is the simplest and most efficient system, and a system to which the majority of human society has practiced and finds acceptable.

<snip>

If the group has a very cohesive vision (they all like to play do-gooders, they all want to play murderhobos, they all want to do *thing*) then you can sometimes have communal games. But getting even a handful of people together who innately share a similar vision of the game is incredibly difficult.

<snip>

When people respond to you with statements of "Well, that's just how we do it." it is because they are having difficulty, or are perhaps in some sort of wonderment over the fact that you find this difficult to understand. The answer to your question is obvious. It may be the "worst system except for all the others" but it's fairly workable so it's what we go with.

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Interesting answer. It's utterly at odds with my own experience. So just as you may wonder that I can't see how obvious the need for this solution is, I wonder what sort of terrible experiences you've had that makes you think that players in a RPG can't be entrusted with agency over the content of the shared fiction lest they spoil the broth.

shidaku said:

Which is why most systems operate on the idea that someone builds a playground and lets people play around in it.

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I do want to mention once again that this is metaphor. There's no actual playground which the players actually play in. There's a fiction established by the GM, and under certain conditions related to game moves performed by the players, the GM tells them some or other bit of that fiction.

Sadras said:

I guess, for me, the hidden backstory provides the 'mystery and adventure' I would desire as a player. If its just all part of a collaborative creative process amongst players and DM then it is far less mysterious. The challenge and enjoyment for me is to uncover the mystery AND survive the adventure.
It seems like the challenge in your adventures (and I do not mean to sound disparaging) is to 'win' on the skill challenge for the story (collaborative narrative) to be true AND survive the adventure. There is no mystery to be discovered, but the 'yes but complications' which need to be overcome. Again, do not mean to insult here.

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Mmmm, I don't think 'win' is a word I would ever use in an RPG, except to describe something that happened in-character. IMHO success in an SC vs failure is more about who's contribution to the narrative is going to be established next. While the CHARACTERS succeed or fail, the players just play. They may be partisan and thus try to have their PCs win, but some sort of interesting story should continue, and character development should continue, etc. regardless.

In fact even character advancement should continue regardless of failure or success, though perhaps in different pathways. In the game I run, HoML, my own self-authored hack of 4e, there isn't anything like XP or something you have to win to advance. Narratively various situations present the PCs with additional 'stuff' (boons in my lingo). Get a boon, advance a level. Now, maybe you aren't getting the finest possible loot by failing to defeat your opponents, but nothing in literature, legends, etc. actually suggests this is even a dominant trope. In fact I'd say fantasy material is FULL of instances of the Hero failing miserably, going out and acquiring some new magic or training or whatever, and coming back for more. Succeed maybe you win the fabled Zip Zap Sword, fail and you relentlessly track down the Greatest Swordsman and he teaches you some new moves, so you can go back and try again.

Because the one is about the survival of combat (the tactical part of the game) and the other is part of the intrigue, the location to explore, the mystery to unravel the puzzle to solve.

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Its interesting that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks in game structure and theory terms, and you guys come back at him with narrative concepts. The two simply don't equate. You aren't wrong by any means, but he's asking for hay for his horse and you're telling him you don't have a tire pump...

Because we have hit points for combat, but don’t have social points and exploration points for the other pillars. That is not to say I'm not fond of SC mechanic.

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Now this is SOMEWHAT more relevant, in that you are now both discussing things that are in the realm of game design. So, yes, the detailed mechanics of the two situations, at least in something like 4e D&D which you seem to be referring to mostly, are different. If we were talking about a different system, then the procedure might well be identical. Even with some mechanical difference they still summarize to pretty much the same thing, declare an intent, roll some dice, succeed or fail based on the results.

Because that is how the game was originally envisioned. And despite the OP which is an attempt to differentiate between old and contemporary style of D&D – it is still roleplayed very much the same rather than different.

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Mmmm, I think since I started playing D&D in 1975 or so, things have evolved a good bit. I mean, you can play 5e in a way that is fairly evocative of early D&D (although there are some definite significant differences) but I don't think that equates to "most everyone plays the same old game." Just look at the vastly greater amount of character options that exist in 5e vs OD&D. Clearly there's a considerable difference. Nor have I seen an adventure published in recent years that is much like B1, B2, or to go back even further, Temple of the Frog. The reference 5e module, Phandelver, is a much different affair. It does contain elements that would probably be present in most OD&D games, but in a very different mix and with a radically different structure to the adventure.

I think character development and RP are much more important in the agenda of most groups now vs in 1970's or 80's play. Those things existed then, and could be very significant, but there was a whole mode of play that really isn't much encountered now, unless you play with people who are consciously enacting 'OSR' games. Even then the thematics and genre concepts are often much more refined. I mean OD&D is mechanically not too different from 'Lamentations of the Flame Princess', but they are still radically different games thematically.

Ovinomancer said:

In player driven games, it's both easier and weirder. Here, the endpoint cannot be determined, just the initial setup. At that point it's off to the races as the players invent their own clues and test them against the mechanics. The end result is wildly (but often entertainingly) unpredictable. System mechanics can act to constrain and funnel some of this, but the result is that you're not really solving a mystery in the classic sense, but rather building one as you go along and finding out the ending as a surprise.

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The players don't necessarily invent their own clues (depending, I guess, how broadly you interpret that phrase). For instance, the players might declare "We look to see if there is anything interesting in the [place XYZ]." That can then be resolved, and if the check succeeds the GM narrates something which (if the GM gets it right) will be interesting. Because what counts as interesting is going to be highly contextual, depending on what has already happened in play and what other backstory has been established; and because it has to be consistent with whatever else has been established about [place XYZ]; pre-authorship is not likely to provide much help, although preparation of some basic ideas may well be useful.

Whether the "looking for something interesting" action declaration is a permissible game move is of course a further thing. In Cortex+ Heroic it really isn't - the player has to declare what particular asset s/he is trying to establish. I've been re-reading the Fate Core rulebook over the past few days, and I think in Fate it is permissible - the player can fish for a GM-authored aspect rather than try to establish one him-/herself. In 4e it is absolutely permissible, and quite common in my 4e game. From a practical point of view, I regard the pressure point in that sort of action declaration in 4e being between asking the GM to provide more framing and backstory - all well and good - and asking the GM to provide an answer to the players' problem (eg the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen has to choose between Osterneth and Kas, and wants the GM to tell him/her which way the Raven Queen advises his PC to choose - I turn such things back on the player, as I don't regard it as my job to relive the player from the burden of thematically hard choices).

I agree that playing or GMing this sort of RPG episode is not like solving a mystery in real life - no detective work is taking place. And I agree that it is not like trying to solve a mystery in the way that watching Gosford Park or playing a CoC module is - there is no parcelling out of bits of the story from which the reader/listener/viewer might then draw inferences as to how the murder happened. It's its own thing. It can certainly result in moments of revelation, moments of surprise, recognition of foreshadowing, etc.

pemerton said:

Interesting answer. It's utterly at odds with my own experience. So just as you may wonder that I can't see how obvious the need for this solution is, I wonder what sort of terrible experiences you've had that makes you think that players in a RPG can't be entrusted with agency over the content of the shared fiction lest they spoil the broth.

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I find that...terribly difficult to believe. You'd either have to be in incredibly unique gaming circles or...well I don't know.

To the latter part, I never actually said any of that. Perhaps you should re-read my post and what I did write, as it might give a clearer idea of how I think a game should function than ya know, whatever it is you think I think.

I do want to mention once again that this is metaphor. There's no actual playground which the players actually play in. There's a fiction established by the GM, and under certain conditions related to game moves performed by the players, the GM tells them some or other bit of that fiction.

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Yes I believe I'm aware of that.