What is *worldbuilding* for?

[howandwhy99]

I think this is the one point on which I agree with [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - a classic dungeon isn't a plot, and the rooms aren't scenes.

A classic dungeon is closer to a gameboard, although it is not identical to one because - unlike, say, a chess or monopoly board - it also establishes content for a shared fiction, and hence fictional positioning.

But the way in which a classic dungeon resembles a gameboard is that it establishes clear parameters for player moves - "We walk down the corridor until we come to a corner or doorway" - and also clear parameters for the GM's descriptions to the players - so that when the GM says "OK, you proceed for 60' and then come to a T-intersection", the GM isn't just making that up but is reading it from the pre-prepared dungeon map. And there are conventions at work here: the referee tells the players the real distances, even though we might wonder, in the fiction, how good the PCs' ability to estimate those woudl be; and the map is a physical artefact that the players use to help play the game, although it is also has an imaginary correlate which we suppose one of the PCs to be producing in the fiction.

When the players enter a room, the GM frames a scene. Likewise when the PCs move down the corridor, the GM frames a scene - I just provided an example, in which the scene is having proceeded down the passage for 60', you're now at a T-intersection.

But the room is not itself a scene. We can easily imagine that the first time the PCs come to a room, the scene framing is like this "OK, having succesffuly forced the door open, you see a rectangular room, 20' x 10', with a chest in the middle. What do you do?" And then the second time, some time later in the session or a subsequent session, the PCs might return to the same room and the scene is like this: "OK, you think you've shaken off the pursuing goblins, and you come to the 20' x 10' room that you were heading for by following your map. The chest is still open as you left it, and the false bottom is still removed, and you can see the ladder descending down a narrow shaft about 40' or so."

Those are two different scenes - occurring at different times, with different things at stake, and posing different challenges to the players and their PCs - but both occur in the same room, which (in the GM's notes) might be written up as 20' x 10' rectangle, with a single entrance; there is a chest in the middle of the room, unlocked, with a false bottom concealing a shaft and ladder descending to the second level.

I recognise that various dungeon designers, both amateur and professional, have designed dungeons on a different principle, in which the rooms are scenes in a plot, rather than elements of a gameboard on which the players make their moves; one can see hints of this in Hickman's Pharoah adventures, for intance, and it's become more common since then.

And that is broadly how I run "dungeons" (ie interior encounters) in my 4e game.

But that is a departure from the design principles of something like B2, not a continuation of them.

You've used the mention function for me twice in this thread, so I assume you value my input and aren't just trying to drum up discussion. However, I've learned from your posting habits in your past threads you typically aren't exploring an idea, but attempt to sway posters' unformed conclusions towards your own particular preferences to determine "facts of the hobby". Or so I suspect given the falsehoods most of the hobby hold to when compared to its first two decades.

I originally posted because D&D actually used to judge the health of the entire hobby largely upon the practice of this particular form of game designing; by which I don't mean "authoring fictional settings", but the actual play-tested and designer balanced game design components DMs could trust when incorporated into their home campaigns.

 

[innerdude]

I think of things like this as - again for lack of a better term - hard-coded. The map's in the desk drawer in room 14.

**Signature snipped from a different post** -->> Lan-"though experiences tells me one of two things will happen: they'll search for weeks and find nothing, or they'll beeline right for it as soon as they're on site as if they knew where it was all along"-efan

So, this is the crux of @pemerton's problem with pre-authored backstory, especially the first half of your signature---The PCs searching for weeks of game world time, with the players making a multitude of action declarations that the GM knows to be fruitless beforehand, all to serve the purpose of "maintaining game world fidelity."

Because by golly, the map's in the desk drawer in Room 14 of Castle Vitruvious. Too bad if those stupid players were too dense to pick up on the relevant clues! If they end up wasting half a gaming session (or more) on their fruitless search, that's the player's problem, not the GM's. Next time those players better be smarter, darn it! Oh, and if the players TOTALLY MESS UP the interaction with the Chancellor that would have given them easy access to Room 14? Too bad for them, so sad!

I'm now in my forties. I'm a working professional with three kids. The players in my group are all in their early thirties and beyond, four of the five with kids of their own. I don't have time to waste---either as a player or GM---in my once-every-two-weeks gaming sessions for the party to go on a fruitless search for a map.

If the map is crucial to continuing the plot of the game, then give the party the dang map already. And likewise, if I'm the GM, the LAST thing I want to do is lead the players around by the nose for a session or two just because they can't seem to figure out where the next "rail" of my plot is supposed to be.

I wholly respect that your group has a well-established social contract in place, @Lanefan, that allows for "searching for weeks and finding nothing" to be a valid outcome. And I also realize that this exaggerated example is fairly well addressed in "DM-ing 101" in any number of online blogs and resources.

But the fact is we have to keep re-iterating this because it's still happening out in the real world. Newbie GMs still make these kinds of mistakes. Sometimes even experienced GMs make these kinds of mistakes when they're trying to serve the needs of their intricate metaplot rather than the needs of the player experience.

For me, I simply do not have the luxury for this kind of thing in my group. If a GM's plot is so set in stone that he or she can't find reasonable options to give this information out, introduce interesting new hooks that relate to the PCs dramatic needs in play, and still keep a reasonably coherent sense for how these pieces fit together, then that's not a group I'm interested in playing in. And yeah, I'm willing to admit that that's a pretty high barrier to entry for a GM.

But the alternative is to waste my time in "GM setting tourist" campaign play, and that's something I will only tolerate to a certain point. Maintaining player interest, pacing, and dramatic tension are now VASTLY more important to me as a player and GM than "game world fidelity."

 

[Mercurius]

So good on you for putting up with this crap.

So good of you to come into a relatively civil discussion after a long absence and start throwing accusations around and turning it negative.

 

[Mercurius]

So a more complete answer adds information eg @Caliban says that many players don't want to contribute to establishing the backstory, so someone else has to do it; @Mercurius says that he wants the GM to tell him the backstory as part of his process of immersion (to me that seems very similar to being told a story by the GM - I think Mercurius queries that characterisation, but from my point of view I'm still working out why, and also why it's considered pejorative - I went to the pictures recently, and had a story told to me, and that doesn't make me feel offended).

I question this characterization, because it is too black-and-white. The way it works when I run a D&D campaign is that I create a setting, which gives the players a context to create characters in. They create characters, write a background based upon my setting, and there are varying degrees of negotiation and refinement of their background to fit into the setting. They participate in world-building (and creating backstory) to the degree that I, as the DM, feel it is harmonious with the internal consistency and aesthetic of the setting. I am generally pretty flexible about this, but if they say they want to play a character named Daffy of the Duck clan of pond dwarves, then I will exercise GM authority and say no. Why? Because it weakens the setting (i.e. its verisimilitude, internal consistency, aesthetic, etc), which in turn threatens immersion and the overall play experience.

But in general I am quite flexible and want the layer to not only be happy with their character, but write their own background. We will, together, develop a background that "embeds" them within the setting. I am the final arbiter, not because it is "my" setting but because I am responsible for the overall play experience. I am the "gardener," so to speak.

It may be time for another distinction, which I made in a reply to @innerdude somewhere upthread.

Not all worldbuilding is prep. Eg if the GM draws a map of the whole gameworld, but the campaign takes place only in one little geographic segment of it, then that is not prep for play.

And not all prep is worldbuilding. If you make notes of (say) 10 encounters you think might be fun to run, but you work out what to do with them, how to sequence them etc in the course of play then you didn't build a world, in the sense of establish - in advance of play - content of the shared fiction which then feeds into action resolution.

This is why a "no myth" game isn't the same thing as a "no prep" game (though in some systems could be run that way - of systems I know, Cortex+ can be run with no or virtually no prep; 4e, on the other hand, requires someone (either me or the designers) to write up all those stat blocks in advance).

OK, sure, and...? Just wondering how this relates to the overall conversation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So, here's my thoughts, based on how this conversation has ranged: this is really [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] coming back to the concept of "secret backstory" using a different appropriation of terms, redefined into what pemerton wants to get at rather than the broader definition more commonly used.

Most the rancor in the thread (and a good bit of the confusion) is the appropriate of "worldbuilding", which already has a useful and widely understood definition,. pemerton has instead defined worldbuilding as that part of the fiction the DM has prewritten and kept secret from the players, which may then mean that player action declarations may fail or succeed due to things not determined by the game mechanics, but instead on this secret truth that DM hasn't revealed. pemerton greatly prefers a playstyle where such secret knowledge doesn't exist and everything is determine in play.

Is this correct? Because the rest of this is going to be based on that understanding.

I have no problem with this as a position -- it's fair, understandable, and I can see the appeal. I've even played in such games, and enjoyed them. I also play and run (mostly run these days) games where there is secret backstory. My current group has at least 2 players that would very much dislike the style of game pemerton (and others) enjoys -- they would very much dislike having to author fiction as part of their action declarations, and would feel that the world was too subject to whim to be enjoyable. I know this because I've discussed it with them, and tried to play some icebreaker games that go down this path: Fiasco was, for one of them, a fiasco, he didn't enjoy it at all. I love Fiasco, and all of its fiaconess, but I see their point: if everything not already nailed down is up for grabs, then it doesn't really matter much. You can disagree with that, and believe differently, but you need to accept that some, maybe even many, people do think this. Enough, at least, that the predominate playstyle is secret backstory and not more story now methods.

What doesn't help this discussion is that you (pemerton) keep casting the use of secret backstory in the worst light -- as a tool bluntly wielded by the DM in defiance of his players. And, you're right, it can be that. I think that's enough for you to dislike it, but it remains that the vast majority of DMs don't use it that way. They use it to build a world to be explored, which is what their players are looking for (mine are -- they don't want to make a world through play, they want to play in a made world). Further, it's not very helpful that you ignore that your chosen method does some fiat negating of actions as well -- you just hand wave that away under the guise of good play. The ray gun example is on topic, here. Declaring that you look for a ray gun in the study of a game that has the setting of Greyhawk and the genre conventions of low fantasy sword and sorcery would be negated, and also an example of play that violated the agreed social contract for the game. Well, using secret backstory in inappropriate ways to confound players is also generally viewed as poor play. Not finding the map in the study is fine, because it's in the library, and the scene that's framed isn't just the study, but the whole mansion, so the map is to be found in the scene, when the fictional positioning is good for map finding. Much like finding ray guns is good when the fictional positioning and scene framing allows for it (provided that the play has led there). You have a habit of insisting that things are impossible in your playstyle when, in reality, it's just that such play violates the assumptions of your play. Well, same goes for the other side: most of the egregious examples you posit are bad play as well.

The real crux here is to cater to the players. I'd be fine playing in a story now style game. One of my DMs essentially ran this style of game behind the curtains as presented it as a secret backstory game. Essentially, he crafted a great illusion that we, as players, were finding out things he's written down, but this wasn't the truth, he adapted to player action descriptions and responded much more like a story now game than anything more traditional. He made it up on the fly, for the most part. But, because of the desires of some of our group, he did a really good job of presenting it as a planned game rather than something he just made up. That, and we all trusted him to run an entertaining game.

But, I run for a group that enjoys the tactical aspects of D&D combat. They like the role-playing, too, but all have expressed a sincere desire to play on a grid rather than TotM. This puts hard limitations on the ability to 'wing it'. In playing D&D, as you've noted, stats are important. So is encounter design, lest you have boring combats or combats that are unfair to the players. Both are fine to have, in moderation (and with good foreshadowing) but too many of either is a problem. Then you have encounter maps, which are hard to do well on the fly, and the preference that encounter maps encourage dynamic fights, so they have elements that can be utilized by either side: cover, obscurement, environmental hazards, z-axis elements, etc. This is all very hard to do and provide in response to player declared actions, on the fly and without prep. So, I prep a bit. I build a few maps that I can use, I build a few encounters I can use, etc, etc. But, to do this usefully, I have to understand how they might fit together in play, so I reference the maps and information I've already generated. This spirals outward until I have built up a few layers of secret DM knowledge, and this is important because I'm providing information to my players on what possible threats they may encounter in an area so that they can prepare. A good example from last week's game: the players decided to explore towards a distant tower-like structure from the outpost they're currently based in. I had rolled a number of random encounters for the area to prep ahead of time, and, because this area has dangers above what the part can handle, I generated a few higher level encounters as well. I like the T-Rex encounter so generated, but spriging a T-Rex on a 2nd level party is not nice, so I had the outpost leader tell the group before they headed out to watch out, a large dangerous beast (and I then described a T-Rex) had been seen in the upper grasslands in the direction of the tower-like thing as foreshadowing. The party then can plan and take precautions if the T-Rex encounter came up.

So, that part of secret backstory is useful to me, because I play and enjoy a game that requires more prep than some others. I also had the tower mapped out, with encounters, because that's easier for me to do. Still, this is a guideline for me, and pretty much every encounter in the tower deviated or expanded on notes due to play rather than a slavish adherence to the sketch I made. The initial room had a barricade that wasn't trapped until a player declared they were checking for traps and failed their check - I added a noisemaker to alert the floor above because of this. The encounter on the next floor had the NPC they interacted with shift away from my notes to better match the kinds of questions they were asking him -- he was mostly there to maybe become a future resource for the players and to warn them about the encounter on the third floor -- a golem the party had not real hope of defeating without extreme luck. Still, they went up to investigate the golem and ended up setting it free (it was locked in a warded room) because they were trying to drill a hole through the door to look into the room with the golem and failed another check to recognize the arcane wards on the door. This caused the wards to fail and the golem to burst out.

And the entire tower was built the way it was because I have unique magic item rules that need power sources appropriate to what you want to create, and electricity was something that one player in interested in, so this tower marker on the map (I placed it there without any idea what it might become) because a source of lightning energy through the destroyed wizard's lab where the wizard was making flesh golems so the tower has a huge iron spike at the top to attract and channel lightning -- useful to the player for creating magic items based on electricity, as soon as they figure out how to deal with the golem (which they ran away from, btw).

So, yeah, I have to have secret backstory, because I have to have at least a framework to build my prep for games onto -- some concept of how they fit together so that I can provide the necessary foreshadowing to the players so they can effectively plan and engage the world on their terms. I leave a lot out and figure it out in play, but sometimes things are a certain way because changing that detail means that my prep no longer makes any sense. So, lets say, the players declare that they're going to investigate the tower because they think it was a storage place for magic weapons, I'm not going to let mechanics or a check validate that -- firstly because magic weapons are personally created and unique to each person (no sharing) as a genre convention, but secondly because would need to do a different set of prep to prepare a tower that has appropriate guardians for a stash of magical weapons (assuming that was a thing, of course).

To sum up: the amount of needed secret backstory, or DM determining facts outside of play (which I think is a better descriptor of what you're talking about), really does depend somewhat on the game being played. It depends even more on what the players want. Not everyone wants to 'find out' during play. Some want to figure out the DM's puzzle. You are one of the latter, and that's fine, but you should, by this point and after all of these threads, at least come to a grudging understanding that not everyone is you.

And, finally, I think there's a lot to this about putting trust in the DM's hands. Many statements you've made over many threads leads me to believe that you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do. I think you fundamentally do not trust that any DM can provide good enough play over you having control over what gets introduced (and this is true both through you successful action declarations and that the GMs in your preferred playstyle is restricted to narrating failures by engaging your character build hooks). And, that's absolutely fine. I've had the unfortunate experience of some pretty bad DMs over time (I was one those, once <shudder>), so I can grok that desire. I don't share it, but I do understand it.

 

[Lanefan]

So, this is the crux of @pemerton's problem with pre-authored backstory, especially the first half of your signature---The PCs searching for weeks of game world time, with the players making a multitude of action declarations that the GM knows to be fruitless beforehand, all to serve the purpose of "maintaining game world fidelity."

Because by golly, the map's in the desk drawer in Room 14 of Castle Vitruvious. Too bad if those stupid players were too dense to pick up on the relevant clues! If they end up wasting half a gaming session (or more) on their fruitless search, that's the player's problem, not the GM's. Next time those players better be smarter, darn it! Oh, and if the players TOTALLY MESS UP the interaction with the Chancellor that would have given them easy access to Room 14? Too bad for them, so sad!

I detect a bit of good-nautred sarcasm in there, but underneath (and not as extreme) yes, you're about right.

I'm now in my forties. I'm a working professional with three kids. The players in my group are all in their early thirties and beyond, four of the five with kids of their own. I don't have time to waste---either as a player or GM---in my once-every-two-weeks gaming sessions for the party to go on a fruitless search for a map.

If the map is crucial to continuing the plot of the game, then give the party the dang map already.

Ah, there's perhaps the difference. You see, for my part as long as we're having fun* it doesn't matter what amount of adventuring or "progress" gets done this session, because there'll always be another session...and another after that, repeat ad infinitum. I see any campaign I enter, be it as player or DM, as something that will go on open-endedly far into the real-world future - thus if the pace of play slows down for a while, then so be it.

* - and yes, fun can include being frustrated sometimes - there's no law against frustrated players / PCs.

I wholly respect that your group has a well-established social contract in place, @Lanefan, that allows for "searching for weeks and finding nothing" to be a valid outcome. And I also realize that this exaggerated example is fairly well addressed in "DM-ing 101" in any number of online blogs and resources.

But the fact is we have to keep re-iterating this because it's still happening out in the real world. Newbie GMs still make these kinds of mistakes. Sometimes even experienced GMs make these kinds of mistakes

Except I don't think it's a mistake. I think it's part of presenting a more realistic and immersive situation in which not everything is handed to the PCs and in which sometimes they're flat-out going to fail - just like real life.

For me, I simply do not have the luxury for this kind of thing in my group. If a GM's plot is so set in stone that he or she can't find reasonable options to give this information out, introduce interesting new hooks that relate to the PCs dramatic needs in play, and still keep a reasonably coherent sense for how these pieces fit together, then that's not a group I'm interested in playing in. And yeah, I'm willing to admit that that's a pretty high barrier to entry for a GM.

But the alternative is to waste my time in "GM setting tourist" campaign play, and that's something I will only tolerate to a certain point. Maintaining player interest, pacing, and dramatic tension are now VASTLY more important to me as a player and GM than "game world fidelity."

They're tied together, though. Player interest and game-world fidelity go hand in hand - if the game world is inconsistent or unrealistic the players IME start to treat it as a joke. Pacing - that's determined by both the players and the DM at different times, and it falls to the slowest common denominator. To explain: if the players want to dive into the minutae of haggling over mundane equipment prices the DM has to go along with that; conversely if the DM has set up a situation where the PCs have to spend some time investigating and searching then the players have to go along with that.

Lanefan

 

[Sebastrd]

So, here's my thoughts, based on how this conversation has ranged....

Great summation, and mirrors both my thoughts and experiences exactly.

 

[Lanefan]

While I've quoted [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] here as the points raised lead nicely into what I want to say, this is mainly for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .

What doesn't help this discussion is that you (pemerton) keep casting the use of secret backstory in the worst light -- as a tool bluntly wielded by the DM in defiance of his players.

This, along with consistently referencing "Gygaxian play" as if it's something to be avoided at all costs (while, ironically, quoting Gygax when it bolsters his argument), is the foundation for my comment a few pages back about slighting other forms of play.

The real crux here is to cater to the players. I'd be fine playing in a story now style game. One of my DMs essentially ran this style of game behind the curtains as presented it as a secret backstory game. Essentially, he crafted a great illusion that we, as players, were finding out things he's written down, but this wasn't the truth, he adapted to player action descriptions and responded much more like a story now game than anything more traditional. He made it up on the fly, for the most part. But, because of the desires of some of our group, he did a really good job of presenting it as a planned game rather than something he just made up.

This is way cool, and points again to my repeated assertion that with a half-decent DM the players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between prepped content and on-the-fly content. (though my questions then become 1. why are they looking for the difference, and 2. why do they care)

That, and we all trusted him to run an entertaining game.

<...>

And, finally, I think there's a lot to this about putting trust in the DM's hands. Many statements you've made over many threads leads me to believe that you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do. I think you fundamentally do not trust that any DM can provide good enough play over you having control over what gets introduced (and this is true both through you successful action declarations and that the GMs in your preferred playstyle is restricted to narrating failures by engaging your character build hooks). And, that's absolutely fine. I've had the unfortunate experience of some pretty bad DMs over time (I was one those, once <shudder>), so I can grok that desire. I don't share it, but I do understand it.

And this. If you don't trust the DM, what's the point?

When I get on an airplane I trust that the pilot is going to get us into the air and, later, get us back on the ground in one piece at the airport we're supposed to be flying to.

Similarly, when I sit down at a D&D table I trust that the DM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent (or maybe a better term is reliable?) setting and that - despite occasional moments of unfairness that may be generated from either side of the screen - the game will be fair in an overall sense. I trust her to have come up with an interesting story or plot or reason for us to go adventuring. I also trust her to be able to accept that her storyline might be abandoned by the players / PCs in favour of something else that catches our interest (in the airplane analogy, sometimes the passengers choose or change the destination mid-flight), and to be able to run with that (set course for a different airport and keep on flyin').

I'm also aware that no DM is perfect, and mistakes happen on both a small (rule misinterpretation) and large (man this adventure sucks!) scale; and can live with that. If she realizes and owns up to her mistakes either now or later, even better!

On the flip side, when I'm the DM I try (and succeed most but by no means all of the time) to be the DM I'd want to have as a player.

Lanefan

 

[Ovinomancer]

While I've quoted [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] here as the points raised lead nicely into what I want to say, this is mainly for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .

This, along with consistently referencing "Gygaxian play" as if it's something to be avoided at all costs (while, ironically, quoting Gygax when it bolsters his argument), is the foundation for my comment a few pages back about slighting other forms of play.

This is way cool, and points again to my repeated assertion that with a half-decent DM the players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between prepped content and on-the-fly content. (though my questions then become 1. why are they looking for the difference, and 2. why do they care)

And this. If you don't trust the DM, what's the point?

When I get on an airplane I trust that the pilot is going to get us into the air and, later, get us back on the ground in one piece at the airport we're supposed to be flying to.

Similarly, when I sit down at a D&D table I trust that the DM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent (or maybe a better term is reliable?) setting and that - despite occasional moments of unfairness that may be generated from either side of the screen - the game will be fair in an overall sense. I trust her to have come up with an interesting story or plot or reason for us to go adventuring. I also trust her to be able to accept that her storyline might be abandoned by the players / PCs in favour of something else that catches our interest (in the airplane analogy, sometimes the passengers choose or change the destination mid-flight), and to be able to run with that (set course for a different airport and keep on flyin').

I'm also aware that no DM is perfect, and mistakes happen on both a small (rule misinterpretation) and large (man this adventure sucks!) scale; and can live with that. If she realizes and owns up to her mistakes either now or later, even better!

On the flip side, when I'm the DM I try (and succeed most but by no means all of the time) to be the DM I'd want to have as a player.

Lanefan

To be fair to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], thers lots of reasons to not trust to GM, and his preferred games have less of a GM rather than another player with asymmetrical narrative tools.

 

[Shasarak]

But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D

How can you play contemporary DnD in the spirit of classic DnD when the rules have been specifically changed to counter classic DnD play?