What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

World building is for exploration & discovery

When you say discovery, do you mean that the players discover what the GM has written?

 

[howandwhy99]

I know I've been saying things like the OP does about old school D&D for years. But it's nice to read others saying it too.

In early D&D the game didn't stop being a game when the rules were hidden behind a screen: the seminal moment of the hobby's creation. What D&D became was the world's first hidden design game. Just like most every computer game, D&D automated a game design players play to beat the game. Where every objective accomplished was a legitimate game success because the rewards were balanced within the design.

What Arneson and Gary did was to fully realize all that extensive wargaming theory and design mechanics could be simplified, pre-drawn and pre-calculated during game preparation to allow for nearly everything imaginable to be gamed. Sure, not actually everything, but everything structurally coherent and expressible. And it would still remain a satisfyingly fair game as the referees would track the playing of it behind the screen.

In old school D&D all of the rules are about the operation of the design. Most of that could be called world behavior. So "world building" is actually game designing in D&D. In our current improv storytelling hobby "world building" is treated like the term's place in narrative culture instead. Here are a few ideas I've heard:
1. For shared narrative continuity.
2. To maintain a coherent setting for a group improvised story.
3. Group creation eases the burden and allows more voices in setting making.

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To your aside:
"Everything in D&D is a maze". In other words there is no outside the mechanical design if you are playing D&D. Wilderness exploration is one form of game play, but traditionally at a different time and distance scale than most others. Whatever moves great distances still has to navigate the paths upon the wilderness game board. What happens in wilderness play is longer term mechanics come to the forefront and shorter term ones tend to abstract into the background (like combat rules when navigating the dungeon). To be clear, long term mechanics like food and water consumption, sleep, and fatigue are still applied during during every moment of the game. But they are at the forefront and commonly arising during long term wilderness treks. Just as many days of combat and traipsing through a dungeon will incur long term travel effects if no rest is taken.

Hommlet, BTW, is also dungeon design. It is simply the Lawful dungeon. You can try and kill the monsters there and take their treasure too.

 

[Lanefan]

In classic D&D, the dungeon was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.

The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.

I'm not quite sure you do.

Worldbuilding is about making the universe and world and kingdom in which the maze is located; and about making the history of how these things (and maybe the maze, too) came to be what they are, and about making the cultures and peoples and creatures and climates and terrain that a PC encounters en route to the maze.

By the time you get down to designing the dungeon maze itself you've already done 99% of the work. (or, if using a pre-fab setting e.g. Greyhawk, had 99% of it done for you)

But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).

In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.

Cool stories, bro, but nothing to do with worldbuilding. These are more related to game-mechanic-rules system building, which most worldbuilding doesn't really care about except as regards nailing down the setting's vague historical era (medieval, modern, far future, etc.).

I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.

Again this has almost nothing to do with worldbuilding. Character building, maybe, but that's yet another different thing; and again its only real interaction with worldbuilding is the world's intended historical era defining what the character can be and-or do.

Worldbuilding gives you the stage on which you play out all this character development.

So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?

It gives the game a backdrop, a history, a sense of continuity and consistency and place.

And here's a final thought: In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.

I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building for once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?

Without worldbuilding you have no wilderness to explore, nor seas to sail across, nor kingdoms to live in or to overthrow. You have no history, no deities (which kinda screws over any Clerics in the game!), no moons or weather or cities or kings. You have no raiding Vikings to the north, no cultured Romans, no desert marauders, no pleasant Hobbit-filled valleys, no Elven woods.

All you have is...nothing.

Lan-"and worst of all you have no monsters to kill so you can take their stuff"-efan

 

[MarkB]

I'm talking about the GM writing up the setting. Most RPGs posit some sort of setting - an imaginary place in which the PCs live, and where their adventures occur. That's the "world". [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post gives examples - maps and other details of places; descriptions of personages; etc.

Because it's a fictional world, it has to be authored/written. When the GM does that in advance, that's "worldbuilding". Or, if you prefer, "setting design". But I see "worldbuilding" used more often, so I chose that word.

I'm pretty sure I know what that setting design is for in classic Gygaxian dungeoneering - it creates the maze/puzzle that the players have to "solve" (by mapping it; by cleverly raiding it; by looting it; all without having their PCs die, and rather accruing XP and hence being able to tackle harder dungeon levels). But in the OP I posit that this style of play is comparatively rare these days; so what is setting design for now?

Yeah, those are definitely two completely different things that you're trying to conflate into the same term. Worldbuilding has nothing to do with the physical structure of the dungeon, or the rules about how to solve or survive it. Worldbuilding is about how that dungeon came to be there, why the people who are currently occupying it are doing what they're doing, and what's important enough about it that someone pointed a group of adventurers at it and told them to go deal with it.

To me, "worldbuilding" as a term has two usages in common practice. For the DM, during game set-up, it's about establishing the world and setting within which the adventure takes place - who lives there, what are their motivations, what are the major current conflicts and sources of contention. It's not even about defining specific NPCs - it's about defining the societies and cultures in which they live.

And for the players, in-game, "worldbuilding" means those moments when the DM spins that extra information into their descriptions and dialogue, giving the players a glimpse of that wider setting and a sense of having a coherent world around them.

And that's what it's there for in modern settings - to give the players a sense of the place their characters live within, a framework within which they can build upon their character's motivations and beliefs, establish connections, and discover and determine what they care about and want to achieve.

 

[Sadras]

That's a curious use of the term 'worldbuilding'. Before reading the OP, I'd have answered "to entertain the GM."

I was, perhaps cheekily, thinking that exact same thing. And I'd be answering as a DM

 

[Nagol]

Can I push a bit more on this. Eg what is the exploration for?

Is it to establish "win" conditions (or tools that can be used to win?) - that is in the neighbourhood of the classic maze/puzzle solving, but how do you deal with the issue that Luke Crane implies (in the bit above that I sblocked), that once you leave the dungeon context the parameters and situation are so loose that the players can't make clear choices or reach their own clear solutions?

Or is it for its own sake? In which case "favouring one player over another" might mean writing a world/backstory that player A will enjoy learning about more than player B.

I worry this post has come out a bit more tendentiously than was intended (!), but the pushing is meant to be friendly/analytic, not hostile.

I would say it is meant to provide potential resources and hindrances.

Exploration play and thus world-building covers many dimensions. The most obvious set are three dimensional -- the walls and contents of an isolated environment like a dungeon. World-building best serves exploration play when the time investment is made across the same dimensions the PCs can perceive and affect. So the physical world surrounding them, the social and spiritual worlds they can interact with, etc.

If the world is larger and less constrained then the world-building needs to be as well though it can set at a lower resolution the longer it will take information to reach the PCs or for PC action to affect that part of the world.

In my view, exploration play works best when the players have the agency to set goals and act upon them, proactive in other words. It tends to be a difficult mode to develop when the PCs are expected to be highly reactive in play. The more reactive the PCs get, the smaller the world-building can be. If the PCs don't have the ability to take advantage of the world then it is at best foreshadowing and at worst a tool for the application of GM force when things aren't going as he expects.

World-building for its own sake can serve two personal goals: (1) defined environments for later inspiration on campaign adventures and opening situations and (2) fulfilling a desire to write fiction. I don't do much of the second.

Favouring one over the other doesn't refer to player enjoyment ratios. It's more about making certain any player is not favoured more than any other in taking advantage of in-game resources and being affected by in-game hindrances. In effect, it helps me limit player charisma and personal relationship from affecting the game world.

 

[pemerton]

That's a curious use of the term 'worldbuilding'. Before reading the OP, I'd have answered "to entertain the GM".

Actually, the answer may be the same, even though 'dungeon design' is closer to what you're trying to describe.

I think your second sentence is true at least sometimes.

One thing I really liked about the 'mega-dungeon' module "The Eyes of the Stone Thief" for 13th Age is that it doesn't have fixed maps.
I.e. the authors clearly understand that the way RPGs are played have changed. The GM can arrange the described locations in whatever way makes sense for her and the kind of story she's trying to tell.

That doesn't sound like worlbuilding, because it's not establishing a truth about the setting in advance of play. It's prep, but not worldbuilding. (Though the "living dungeon" conceit does blur the lines a bit.)

 

[pemerton]

It gives the game a backdrop, a history, a sense of continuity and consistency and place.

Without worldbuilding you have no wilderness to explore, nor seas to sail across, nor kingdoms to live in or to overthrow. You have no history, no deities (which kinda screws over any Clerics in the game!), no moons or weather or cities or kings. You have no raiding Vikings to the north, no cultured Romans, no desert marauders, no pleasant Hobbit-filled valleys, no Elven woods.

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.

And that's what it's there for in modern settings - to give the players a sense of the place their characters live within, a framework within which they can build upon their character's motivations and beliefs, establish connections, and discover and determine what they care about and want to achieve.

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?

 

[pemerton]

exploration play works best when the players have the agency to set goals and act upon them, proactive in other words. It tends to be a difficult mode to develop when the PCs are expected to be highly reactive in play. The more reactive the PCs get, the smaller the world-building can be. If the PCs don't have the ability to take advantage of the world then it is at best foreshadowing and at worst a tool for the application of GM force when things aren't going as he expects.

<snip>

Favouring one over the other doesn't refer to player enjoyment ratios. It's more about making certain any player is not favoured more than any other in taking advantage of in-game resources and being affected by in-game hindrances.

If the world that is being built is big or complex, then it probably has forces at work that the players (and their PCs) don't know about. How does the presence of those forces affect, or interact with, player proactivity, and the use of world elements as tools to achieve player goals for the game?

 

[1of3]

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In a game with a goal along those lines, ie where the goal isn't to beat the dungeon but rather to express/develop my character and find out what s/he does and becomes, what is the point of pre-authored setting?

Thank you. Now I see.

In that case setting can provide these:
- Create save metaphors. Discussing racism might not be to everyones taste. Discrimination against mutants (cf. X-Men) can help.
- Allow for exploration of fantastic situation. How is it to be a dragon rider? What if gods walked the earth? How does that change my character's outlook?
- Start everyone of with certain situation. The Last War ended two years ago. These were the factions...

Note that for the goal you just named you don't need that much setting. You don't need several hundred years of history.