Forked from "An Epiphany" thread: Is World Building "Necessary"?

[Raven Crowking]

I strongly disagree with Hussar that everything must serve an overarching story/plot or it's a waste of time. I find "Adventure Paths" very boring. I like being able to explore a world (even if that world is emergent in play, not pre-written). Random encounter tables are a great tool to aid exploration.

Seconded.

Ah, here we go again with Hussar proclaiming himself arbitrator of "good gaming" using both an antagonistic tone and hyperbolic extremes... why am I not surprised.

Because this is his particular railroad, which he has taken us down countless times before?

Then perhaps you should ask yourself, just why your view of "good gaming" is so limited?

Seconded. In fact, I believe that the root source of this thread lies in exactly that question.

Depends. Do the players care about deciding where they go? Is that choice meaningful to them? If not, I don't think it counts as railroading.

On an EN World poll a while back, EN Worlders overwhelmingly voted that there was no objective criteria by which the term "railroad" could be defined. As odd as I find that, we are currently in the age of "I will define terms however I like, so that it enhances my position, but I will not provide an objective definition in the event that doing so detracts from my position."

Which is, I think, what all of this "setting" vs. "worldbuilding" is, too.....especially taken in light of the quote in the OP.


RC

 

[Scribble]

tangent

Is this a railroad:

"You are starting in Chicago. You WILL go to New Orleans, and you WILL pass through St. Louis on the way. You can take the train, or drive, or fly, or walk for all I care; and you don't even have to go in a straight line, but those cities are where you're going."

/tangent

Lan-"I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans"-efan

Remember back in the day when you first learned about "word problems" in math class, and there was always that one that the correct answer was "not enough information." That's how I see this question- Not enough information.

In my experience Railroad has always been defined, not simply as there only being one option, but when a DM actively forces players (either in game or out of game) to choose that one option depite their wanting to make another choice which should in all rights be equally valid. It's not a railroad if the players just follow the suggested option, or never wanted to make another choice in the first place.

From the way you capitalized WILL it makes it seem as if the DM is going against what players might want (in which case it would be a railroad) but I don't know.

It could also be the case that it's just the pre-amble to an adventure ina group who doesn't care much about the backstory to how they got involved. For this type of group the only time choice matters (and when railroad can happen) is once the adventure has actively started.

Another area that I question is: Is it a railroad if the DM is actively thwarting a player's choice that was made based on metagame knowledge?

 

[Kask]

tangent

Is this a railroad:

Yes, of course. As soon as the DM starts running PCs it is a railroad situation.
This will only happen though when a DM doesn't know that he isn't a player.

 

[Mallus]

I think the fetishisation of worldbuilding in fantasy roleplaying is related to the fetishisation of worldbuilding in fantasy fiction writing.

Sure is. Though a more charitable way of stating would be "detailed world-building is a convention of the genre".

There is a pervasive idea amongst a lot of people trying to write fantasy (and SF) that, because it worked so well for Tolkien etc., it is the only way, and D&D is no stranger to Tolkien obsession either.

I'd say it's a pervasive idea among the people who write fantasy and science fiction precisely because it's what the readership has demonstrated that it wants. Like I said, it's a (popular) genre convention. It's not something being foisted on the readers by misguided authors (which is kinda what I get from your statement... forgive me if that's inaccurate).

 

[Mallus]

Worldbuilding is enshrined and fetishised in D&D culture, and doesn't deserve anywhere near the status or time and attention it gets, relative to making actual adventure material or campaign arcs.

Some people prefer not to use preplanned campaign arcs. And having a (somewhat detailed and thematically coherent --ahem, and I use that word lightly) helps the DM create adventure scenarios from whatever actions the players take.

I frequently don't know what the adventure is until it's underway.

I understand why: it's fun and rewarding and offers a sense of demiurge-level power to stamp your personality on realms that never were...

Sure is.

whereas prepping for the nitty gritty of an encounter or campaign arc is often too much like hard work.

Or the DM just doesn't like the trade-off involved in using predetermined campaign arcs.

But macro-level wankery is the rule, and yes, it's bizarre (until you consider the psychology behind why that might be).

It's not wrong for a scrawny database admin to pretend he's Conan but it is wrong for another --perhaps overweight this time?-- database admin to pretend he's God?

 

[Barastrondo]

I'd say it's a pervasive idea among the people who write fantasy and science fiction precisely because it's what the readership has demonstrated that it wants. Like I said, it's a (popular) genre convention. It's not something being foisted on the readers by misguided authors (which is kinda what I get from your statement... forgive me if that's inaccurate).

The parallels between this statement and the general furor surrounding the massive changes 4E brought to the Forgotten Realms intrigue me.

Essentially, Ed Greenwood was one of the first out there to go detailing stuff that might or might not impact the players. He managed to make some decent money turning that into articles and eventually selling the Realms, but I'm pretty sure I've heard that he also managed to keep his players' interest for a long time.

Now, I do expect someone to say "Yeah, but most GMs aren't Ed Greenwood," but so? Most GMs also lack the mapping skills of an architect, the plotting skills of a novelist, the vocal range of an actor and the improvisation skills of a comedian. Yet you don't have to be a pro in that kind of field to make this sort of thing work.

It just seems silly to me to try and isolate things like "world building" or "tight adventure plotting" as themselves ignoble and unworthy facets of game mastering. The taken-to-extremes versions, yes, that's unquestionable: the person who spends lots of time on minutiae without actually ever wanting to let players contribute or the railroad conductor who has a story in mind and refuses the players any attempt to change the sequence of events or bring in an unforeseen ending. But most successful games aren't extremes, they just have priorities in different proportions. And for every player who thinks it's a waste of time to invent a new species of berry bush, there's another who loves that attention to detail.

All comes back to one of the cardinal rules of gaming: play with people who like what you like.

 

[Lanefan]

Remember back in the day when you first learned about "word problems" in math class, and there was always that one that the correct answer was "not enough information." That's how I see this question- Not enough information.

In my experience Railroad has always been defined, not simply as there only being one option, but when a DM actively forces players (either in game or out of game) to choose that one option depite their wanting to make another choice which should in all rights be equally valid. It's not a railroad if the players just follow the suggested option, or never wanted to make another choice in the first place.

From the way you capitalized WILL it makes it seem as if the DM is going against what players might want (in which case it would be a railroad) but I don't know.

I'm taking the tack that the DM has decided going in that the campaign is going to go through Point A on the way to Point B regardless whatever else might happen and regardless what intervening choices the players/characters might make. Thus, even if on leaving Chicago the players decide they're going to New York and in fact get there, St. Louis is still waiting and New Orleans after that; and sooner or later they're gonna get ther no matter what.

Another area that I question is: Is it a railroad if the DM is actively thwarting a player's choice that was made based on metagame knowledge?

Railroad or not, it *should* come under the heading of smackdown. If players are making choices based on knowledge their characters wouldn't and-or couldn't have, that's smackdown time; and an easy (if harsh) option is to simply ban that choice.

As for world-building vs. setting building (and for the life of me I can't see the difference), while I *could* run a game with nothing more than a village and a dungeon to start with, 6 months in I'll find myself having a hard time mining stories out of it and will have to do all the heavy lifting then anyway. So why not get it out of the way before dropping the puck in the first place?

Lan-"building the world one story at a time"-efan

 

[rounser]

It's not wrong for a scrawny database admin to pretend he's Conan but it is wrong for another --perhaps overweight this time?-- database admin to pretend he's God?

This has nothing do so with what I said.

To reiterate, macro-level setting material for it's own sake is unlikely to impact play enough to justify the time and effort many DMs spend on it. But it can be rewarding in itself, even if it is often an inefficient use of prep time in terms of running a game...thus, the "wankery" term. It's best not to fool yourself with regard to it's actual utility in terms of prepping for a game, IMO.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You know I'm curious concerning Hussar and Majoru and a few others, when do you start designing a campaign. I see you all talk about the time limit and work and how no one could possibly detail all the stuff world builders claim, but I design my campaign world before actual play starts.

Yeah, most of my campaigns started like this:

Friend 1: "Hey, I'm free on Tuesdays now due to a change in work schedule. I was thinking I hadn't played D&D in a while. Maybe we should start a home game that runs every Tuesday."
Me: "Sounds like fun. I'm in."
Friend 2: "Me too"
Friend 3: "I can do that."
Friend 1: "Alright, we can start next week."
Me: "Yeah, sounds good."
Friend 1: "I'm glad you decided to DM, this'll be awesome."
Me: "What? DM? I...umm...guess I could come up with something by next week..."
Friend 1: "Perfect. I can't wait...what races and classes are you allowing? What level do we start at?"
Me: "I...Umm...1st level, I guess and any race and class."
Friend 1: "Cool, see you next week."

And then I have 1 week(or less), filled with working, any other plans I had already made to come up with what happens during the first session. I also have to find a player 4 and 5 and possibly a player 6. So I have to call nearly everyone I know who plays D&D and ask them if they are willing to commit to a weekly game. Which takes a while.

I try to think of something cool to happen while driving from place to place and in between calls at work. In about a week, I normally come up with something like "Some monsters....whichever ones are appropriate for 1st level characters attack the town and kidnap someone...who will be important to all of the PCs. They'll fight off the attackers but not before some of them get away with the person(which happens on the other side of town, so the PCs won't be able to physically stop it) and then there will be a skill challenge to chase the creatures down, they'll have a face off against the chief of the tribe and save the kidnapped person. That should be enough for one session."

That, incidentally, was EXACTLY the plot for my last 4e home game. And the total amount of prep work I had done before the first session. At the beginning of the session, I looked up what creatures were appropriate(goblins) and came up with relatively balanced encounters on the fly.

Did I have any idea what country the village was in? Nope. The name of the world even? Nope. I didn't even know what the name of the village was.

But I improvised details as they were asked for. Of course, no one asked what the name of the village or world was. They were only concerned about the goblins attacking. And everyone had fun. It just didn't have any relevance to the session at hand whether the village was in a kingdom, an elected democracy, or the dark empire of a lich. I had enough time to come up with those details for next session or the session after, when, and if they came up.

My brother came up with a sandbox campaign where he built a world in advance. And I admit, it was a lot of fun, there was all sorts of details there that I could never have come up with on the fly. He's a really good DM and I loved that game. But it took him a good couple of months without a job, hanging around the house writing up details to come up with that much background. I could never do that. I don't have any desire to do that even if I had the time. I really don't have a problem with worldbuilding as an activity, and it does add to games. I just don't see it as necessary. It also takes a lot of time.

 

[Fenes]

One can do world building by improvisation. Start small, and create what you need - and keep it. Note down what you did, and after the first campaign you have a decent proto-setting. The next campaign can build on that, maybe start in another area, build that up, then tie the two together.

After a few campaigns you'll have a complete setting, with details, and didn't "waste" time doing it.