What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

I suppose if the fiction ended there you’d be right. But I would imagine a murderous mage may shape the fiction going forward quite a bit differently than if you’d prepped an absentminded old sage. No?

Sure. I'm not sure where you're going with this - yes, GM framing contributes to the shared fiction. The current discussion I had taken to be more about the extent to which it is the predominant or sole contribution.

 

[pemerton]

The entire idea of "player agency" vs. "player fun" when the player wants to be 100% in character remains a disconnect.

<snip>

It is the unending rejection of the idea that "shared fiction" remains awesome even where the sharing is highly asymmetrical because the player's agency is constrained to what their character can do and the DM has unlimited authority of authorship.

The fiction may be awesome or not - that seems mostly a matter of taste. If players enjoy the GM presenting them with the products of his/her imagination, no doubt that's a reason for the GM to create and present such products.

My claim is simly about agency. In that situation, the players do not seem to have a great deal of agency over the shared fiction. This was a point that was made upthread and treated as controversial. But now it seems that it is a point that attracts widespread agreement.

And yet, even with that concurrence of the vague concept of player agency, the extrapolation to "right moves" and presumption that the answer will be in DM notes is terribly off-base. My players would laugh their asses off if I told them someone claimed the games they are in worked that way.

Where do the constraints come from, then. Eg how is it determined where the map is located?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure. I'm not sure where you're going with this - yes, GM framing contributes to the shared fiction. The current discussion I had taken to be more about the extent to which it is the predominant or sole contribution.

Because your pre-authored NPC will surely influence the story going forward. And that you recognize the value of preparation by the GM prior to play. Which would indicate that you know the value of worldbuilding.

 

[Jester David]

No. My claim is that there is a difference between helping establish the shared fiction, and having someone else preauthor it and provide it to you.

And I claim that you're wrong.

You admit later to using a Monster Manual. So you admit that you don't make up monsters on the fly and tailor them for your games, to the tone of your game and world. That’s the exact same thing as an NPC or a location or an adventuring site.
If you can use the statblocks of an orc you can pull the description of a tower, a tavern with innkeeper, a city, or even an entire nation. You can pull a dungeon out of Dungeon Delves. You can use the Village of Hommlet.

As I say this in an earlier post:

Say my adventurers are travelling through the jungle. On their travels they encounter:

• The decapitated body of a giant dinosaur, killed by trophy hunters who plan on stuffing & mounting its head.
• An ancient stone druid circle with a petrified treant in the middle. A single small sapling is emerging from the dead plan's side.
• An ovoid floating island with two trees emerging from it, their stumps and roots giving it the appearance of a giant stone heart.
• An abandoned wagon with multiple crates stocked with food provisions, strips of leather, and two barrels of spoiled wine. There signs of battle around, including arrows in the wagon, but no bodies.

Does it matter which of those I created off the top of my head? Which I pulled from a WotC adventure? Which I pulled from an online forum? Which I pulled from a table of random encounters?

So… which is which? Which did I create just for this thread and which are pre-authored?
Points will be counted. Go.

I looked at a little bit of Critical Role, and it looked pretty GM-driven to me.

With 400 hours of show there’s a lot driven by the DM, Matthew Mercer, but a lot driven by the players. (We're also seeing the show as presented at the table. He has conversations with the players away from the table and sets up stuff in conjunction with them. Last week's session is a great example of that.)

Mercer does a lot of prep, but he is very reactive to the players, and created a campaign and a world that progresses. The villain doesn't sit around and cease acting when the players are elsewhere. The longer they take, the more things change.

But the point was that when the DM is reacting and improvising, it's not immediately apparent.
If your players can tell when you're improvising and using a script, that's a reflection of you.

If the GM is driving the players through a series of fetch-quests and McGuffin hunts, then what you say might be true. If the game is actually player-driven in the sorts of ways I've described, where the whole orientation of play is towards the dramatic needs of the PCs (as build and/or played by their players) then it's not so at all.

First off, you don't need to be so dismissive, by suggesting that people running a game with a story is "fetch quests" and isn't player driven.

Secondly, how exactly does the story change for your players if they're going to their sister's warehouse rather than the brother's tower? How does changing the gender change the motivation? How does altering the type of location dramatically change the tone?
The important bits remain the same. The urgency is the same. They're not going to rush slower to save their sister or have an easier time getting to a warehouse.

Yeah, if the players wanted a tower for their character, then, yeah, there should *probably* be a tower. If they don't specify, then why not grab an interesting location from a published source? Even if they do have a firmer idea, why not punch it up with a few idea, combining what they have with other concepts?
The investment is the important bit. The motivation. The tie to the character. The original source of story element is irrelevant, because once it enters your game it ceases to be what it was and becomes something new. And because, when done correctly, the players won't know that you pulled the description of the tower from a novel/ sourcebook/ movie/ DeviantArt sketch/ napkin.

Preparation isn't the same thing as establishing the shared fiction.

A monster manual is preparation. A book of maps is preparation. Noting up a whole lot of NPCs (stats, personalities, either, both) is preparation. Making notes like "Orcus cultists attack if the Raven Queen devotees meet with the baron" is preparation.

A book of locations is also a preparation book. A campaign setting is a preparation book.

Having a setting prepared doesn't prevent you from telling the types of stories you want. That's just the background. The painted sets at the back of the stage.
Just because a stagehand prepared a few backdrops before the improv show doesn't mean the show suddenly becomes scripted.

Why can't you tell a player focused shared fiction campaign in the Forgotten Realms? Or New York?
Why does it matter if you create the pub at the moment or pull it from a book penned by Ed Greenwood or from a travelogue of Manhattan? Once the players decide to make that their base of operations that's what's important.

But it is not inherent in any such preparation that it establishes any element of the shared fiction. I carry a Monster Manual and Monster Vault with me to my 4e sessions. These books have orcs in them. But (as best I recall) orcs, and Gruumsh, have never figured in our campaign. So it's a completely open question whether or not the shared fiction includes them.

Lore for D&D exists in a quantum state. It both exists and doesn't exist. If the players (or you) think up better lore it overwrites the book's lore. If the players are uninterested and the you can't think of anything then what the book says works just fine.

That's what worldbuilding is for. Creating the backdrop ahead of time so you can spend time at the table managing the pace of the story, running the encounters, and wrangling the players. To save the brain power and time for what matters. So when the players are sneaking into the orc warband's territory and ask if there's a totem to an orc god they can set fire to as a distraction you don't need to create a pantheon on the spot. You can just say "Sure. There's a hideous fetish idol to Gruumsh, with its one eye being a large glass lense." (Or roll to see if the idol exists before saying that.)

For a long time I carried around notes on a possible duergar stronghold (written up by drawing from the module H2). I ended up not using them, as the occasion never arose. When the PCs eventually visited a duergar stronghold the context was completely different from one in which those notes would make sense, and so the only bit of them that I used was some NPC names. That other material is not part of the shared fiction.

In short, preparing material and ideas is not the same thing as worldbuilding, as establishing setting. But obviously some GMs treat it in that fashion - which is the topic of the OP.

If I established the duergar stronghold and presented it to the players as a location to go to, then it’s part of the world. If the players don't get involved, then whatever the duergar were planning continues. If the players leave that plot then that's fine, but it continues without them.

Which means things happen. As a result of the player's actions, and as a consequence of their choices. To do otherwise would be to diminish their actions and reduce the impact of their characters in the world.

I assume that by "PCs" you mean players.

Yes, yes. Mixing those up is a common slip (who hasn't accidentally commented on "a player dying" instead of "a character"?) Pointing that out just seems petty and pedantic.

I've got no doubt that some players like the GM to tell them a story. Presumably that's one answer to the question asked at the start of this thread: worldbuiling, in the sense of GM pre-authored setting that the GM uses to frame and adjudicate action resolution, provides the content of that story.

By "some" you probably mean "most". While I think almost all players like to have a choice in how the plot unfolds, I think most are quite happy to have the DM tell a story they really want to tell. Because when the GM is excited about a story, they're going to put more energy into the game and the excitement will be contagious.

(Plus, the GM is a player too. So they should have some say in how the story goes, just like the other players.)

By "doing better than other groups" I assume you mean that the players defeat the (pre-authored) combat encounters in fewer rounds or consuming fewer resources; or solve the puzzle more quickly, eg by finding a more optimal sequence for having the GM narrate the material, or drawing inferences more quickly from a thinner basis of GM narration - although I suspect that this latter sort of "doing better" can cause headaches in D&D if the players don't do enough of whatever it is that will earn their PCs sufficient levels to actually be able to take on the later (pre-authored) combat encounters.

I'm pretty much referring to running pre-published adventures and comparin how your group did compared to others. A tradition that goes back to the old Tournament mods of the mid-70s.
Because when a bunch of gamers sit around a table they can't talk about their characters, but they can compare notes about how each did in the Tomb of Horrors or how they handled the kobolds in the Caves of Chaos

What about having their dramatic needs addressed? In my 4e game, the player of the invoker/wizard, tasked by Erathis and the Raven Queen to restore the Rod of Seven Parts, and to work with Bane and Levistus so as to ensure the Abyss is not inadventently let loose, may soon have to choose whether or not to add the final piece of the Rod to the six currently-assembled pieceds. In some earlier episodes of play, the same player had to decide what to do with the Eye of Vecna (he implanted it in his imp familiar), and whether to allow Vecna, or the Raven Queen, to receive the flow of soul energy that had been feeding Torog's Soul Abattoir until the PCs destroyed that piece of magical apparatus.

That sure sounds like you used a heck of a lot of D&D lore. Aka… worldbuilding.

If you feel comfortable including Bane and Levistus, the Rod of Seven Parts and the Abyss, why not the town of Daggerdale? A dungeon adapted from Hoard of the Dragon Queen where the motives of the NPCs are changed? An NPC from a PDF of NPCs sold on the DMsGuild?

The game is not a puzzle.

That's not what you said in the first page.

The idea of such choices seems to be fundamentally absent from your conception of RPGing. But it is fundamental to what I enjoy about RPGing, both as a player and a GM.

Quite the opposite really.

I have a big prewritten campaign setting but I write the adventure based on the players and their choices. And their actions and choices shape the world: for their characters, for their next characters, and the characters of future parties playing in the world. The players in my 4e game impacted the world by their successes and failures, which *might* impact the players of the current campaign, if they choose to go to that location.
The catch is, half my players don't really have characters with strong motivations. They just want to play. So the story becomes all about the other players who do have strong motivations and character desires. So, as a good GM, I need to invent stories for the other players to keep them involved and prevent them from just being sidekicks to the more extroverted players. The stories are still focused on the PCs, but I'm more active in initiating and doing the backstory.

My 5e game is just going on a break so I can do some Star Wars and then another DM can take over to tell a story he really wants to tell. After that I'm working the Tomb of Annihilation adventure into the campaign, moving the location to a place in my world and tying a PCs' quest to the Tomb. Do they have a choice? Sure. Walking away and going elsewhere is totally a choice. It will just kill a couple PCs. But then the campaign will shift to adventures set wherever they head towards.

 

[pemerton]

Because your pre-authored NPC will surely influence the story going forward. And that you recognize the value of preparation by the GM prior to play. Which would indicate that you know the value of worldbuilding.

But that murderous mage could have been introduced in any number of ways. Likewise the dark elf from the same campaign.

As it happens, the murderous mage was the vendor of the angel feather, and was also sheltering in Jabal's tower. But given that the angel feather and the tower were both authored in the course of play, this particular mode in which the murderous mage was introduced couldn't be established until the game was actually underway.

That's the contrast between having an idea, and pre-authoring setting elements.

EDIT: [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], the above also answers the questions you ask in your post: the difference between preparation and establishing a setting.

But you have provided another answer to the question: a reason for worldbuilding is so that group A can play through the same story as group B and compare notes about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

But that murderous mage could have been introduced in any number of ways. Likewise the dark elf from the same campaign.

As it happens, the murderous mage was the vendor of the angel feather, and was also sheltering in Jabal's tower. But given that the angel feather and the tower were both authored in the course of play, this particular mode in which the murderous mage was introduced couldn't be established until the game was actually underway.

That's the contrast between having an idea, and pre-authoring setting elements.

EDIT: @Jester David, the above also answers the questions you ask in your post: the difference between preparation and establishing a setting.

But you have provided another answer to the question: a reason for worldbuilding is so that group A can play through the same story as group B and compare notes about it.

So you came up with the idea of te NPC beforehand, but because you used two ideas introduced during play to introduce him, you claim that the NPC is an idea and not a pre-authored element?

I don’t agree with that at all. Sounds to me like the setting elements in question were one third GM authored prior to play. Those other two elements don’t erase the fact that you came up with major traits for this character that will influence his role in the game. The feather and the tower help define him more, for sure...they serve to fix him in the world to some extent, they grant context by which he interacts with the PCs.

But still....you authored the NPC beforehand. It seems you did so because you found the character interesting, perhaps you wanted to see how the PCs would deal with such a character, or perhaps you were intrigued by the idea of roleplaying the character.

Whatever the actual reason, I think this can probably be considered another answer to the worldbuilding question. The GM may introduce elements to the story because he thinks they are interesting.

Which is absolutely fine.

I’d even go so far as to replace “may” in the sentence above with “must”, but perhaps that’s a separate discussion.

 

[Lanefan]

This thread keeps getting side-tracked by assumptions that don't hold good, and that I and you and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] have already posted about.

"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is an approach to resolving action declarations: if the GM frames a situation (eg "OK, so you're in the cartographer's study - what are you doing?"), and the player then declares an action for his/her PC that is congruent with the established framing (eg "I search for the map!"), the GM has two options: either the GM says "yes", or the GM calls for a check. The GM says "yes" if nothing is at stake - essentially we're establishing some colour, or narrating some transition in the situation on our way to the crunch; the GM calls for a check when something is at stake.

Plenty of RPGs can be run in this way: 4e seems to me to encourage it; Burning Wheel mandates it; Cortex+ Heroic appears to presuppose it. Classic Traveller can tolerate it (but defaults fairly heavily to rolling the dice, as it has a very liberal conception of when something is at stake).

The use of this technique is quite separate from allowing the players to stipulate new elements of the fiction. That is not a default part of any of the above-mentioned systems.

It sure seems to be, when coupled with rolling the dice.

An example that has come up in other discussions is searching for a secret door. A player declares her PC is searching for a secret door at the end of a dead-end passage, after which the DM can respond in one of two ways depending on the situation:

1. Say yes. On this the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction.
2. Roll the dice. On success, the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction. On failure quite likely she has not, but she still may have.

While the player can't usually bypass the check if the DM calls for one, the success (automatic on say-yes) or failure of the check itself establishes whether the player's attempt to stipulate a new fiction element works or not. But the result remains: sometimes players can stipulate fiction elements, or try to.

Lanefan

 

[Aenghus]

This is surely true.

But it would seem odd to also assert that those players are exerting a lot of agency in play!

So long as they are satisfied with the amount of agency they do end up with, it doesn't matter. More agency isn't objectively better, it's only better if that's what the players want, and the referee (if there is one) is OK with it. More agency means more or bigger decisions, and players who don't want these decisions often balk at them like a horse refusing a jump.

For such players pre-authored backstory can be an advantage, as such worlds can have enough detail to allow them to keep making a bunch of small incremental decisions, rather than much smaller number of big dramatic ones.

I want to write something about boxed text, which are a feature of old-fashioned adventure modules. Such adventures often feature a linear adventure model and some railroading may be useful or necessary to keep the players on track. Node or scene based adventures can feature boxed text as well, and may require less railroading.

Done right, boxed text allows newbie GMs to run a tolerable game, and newbie players to figure out how to play. When the players make some progress in the adventure, it's often signified by a new passage of boxed text. When run in this style pretty quickly players associate boxed text with adventure progress. Depending on the system, GM and adventure, there may be non-boxed parts of the adventure that the players still find fun, but the GM may downplay excursions off the main adventure path.

For better or worse, IMO some players associate boxed text with rookie GMing. They conceal it with improved exposition or avoid it entirely by various means, including just not having boxed text at all. Boxed text doesn't need to be delivered in a monotone, or be boring, or be in a single easily identifiable block.

Concealing or removing boxed text potentially removes clear signals to players that they are on the right path (assuming a right path exists-I have to say it annoys me when a referee says there's no right path when the game itself clearly illustrates there is one). It might be necessary to replace missing signals so players have enought information to make meaningful decisions. I'm a big fan of transparency in games, among other things because I've seen so much time wasted in games when the players and referee were at loggerheads but unwilling to talk things out out of character.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Writing up some NPC ideas is preparation. Whether ot not that is also establishing setting is a further matter. Before my first BW session, I had an idea for a NPC taken from a Penumbra d20 module - a renegade murdering mage. I wrote up a BW version of that character.

During the course of play, as the situation with the peddler, the feather, the curse, and Jabal the red unfolded, I introduced that NPC into the situation as part of the framing - as the dishevelled figure visible on Jabal' staircase, and as the person who sold the feather to the peddler.

The preparation did not establish any element of the shared fiction. The moments of framing and narration, in the course of play, did.

There's always the danger here that such prep will graduate onto the level of being canonicalized by the GM and thus become a driver of play for the GM. Of course this isn't universally bad, GMs are allowed to want to express specific agendas in play like anyone else, but it can interfere with their other tasks.

It would be interesting to create a game/table procedures where all these various GM tasks were parsed up in different ways. What if there was someone who introduced material in response to PC dramatic needs, and someone who established color, and someone else who dealt with pacing? I mean I don't know how to parse it actually, but who's done this analysis?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This thread keeps getting side-tracked by assumptions that don't hold good, and that I and you and @Manbearcat and @chaochou have already posted about.

"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is an approach to resolving action declarations: if the GM frames a situation (eg "OK, so you're in the cartographer's study - what are you doing?"), and the player then declares an action for his/her PC that is congruent with the established framing (eg "I search for the map!"), the GM has two options: either the GM says "yes", or the GM calls for a check. The GM says "yes" if nothing is at stake - essentially we're establishing some colour, or narrating some transition in the situation on our way to the crunch; the GM calls for a check when something is at stake.

Plenty of RPGs can be run in this way: 4e seems to me to encourage it; Burning Wheel mandates it; Cortex+ Heroic appears to presuppose it. Classic Traveller can tolerate it (but defaults fairly heavily to rolling the dice, as it has a very liberal conception of when something is at stake).

The use of this technique is quite separate from allowing the players to stipulate new elements of the fiction. That is not a default part of any of the above-mentioned systems. (Contrast, say Fate, or OGL Conan, which do allow this as a core system element, by way of fate point expenditure.)

Sometimes saying "yes" may allow the player to, incidentally to the action declaration, establish some part of the fiction (eg "I collect herbs as we walk through the forest" "OK, no worries"). If the GM thinks this is controversial, of course s/he can call for a check ("OK, roll Foraging").

Also, the GM in BW is encouraged to allow a player a bonus die if s/he asks for it by reference to some element of the fictional positioning (eg "I use those herbs I collected to flavour the soup" grants +1D to cooking), and in some context that could allow the player to establish modest elements of the situation (eg if events are unfolding a kitchen, the player might say "I take up a position near the oven, so they risk getting burned if they attack my flank" "OK, have +1D to block").

But the player can't, by default, just specify something like "OK, my friend is here to help me" (in BW that would be a Circles check; in 4e the GM might call for a Streetwise check, or just say no).

This is a signifcant difference between RPGing and improv theatre. RPGing, at least in its mainstream form, has distinct player and GM roles, and the player role is based around declaring actions for a particular character in the shared fiction. You don't need to move beyond that in order to have player-driven play (resulting from "say 'yes' or roll the diced adjudication of declared actions).

Yeah, in my HoML 4e hack I provided some means. So for instance a player might say "OK, I'll search for some herbs along the way, and I want to use my Overconfident weakness to acquire Inspiration. I am SURE that the pixies won't find me as I search for the herbs! After all I'm sure I got away clean from them..." Now the GM can author the consequences. The player gets her inspiration point, and the character presumably runs into the pixies (or maybe some other variation of getting in trouble 'You see some bear sign, but you're confident you can avoid encountering the bear, then you hear a roar behind you!') or something like that. Maybe the suggested pixies factor in, its not really up to the player to dictate exactly how.

Alternatively a player might establish that they DID gather herbs, leveraging 'Always be prepared' so that they can gain fictional positioning in some later situation "I am always prepared, I gathered herbs as we moved through the forest and now I use them to achieve a success in curing the disease!", this time EXPENDING inspiration. Its a limited resources which you can't stockpile (you have it or not) but it lets players establish some narrative in relation to their characters which builds on the character concept in a fairly natural way. This is of course very FATE-like (or actually FUDGE-like, but whatever).

One thing I have found with this is it works better with a lot of players than more thorough-going 'story telling' focused systems such as some of those you've mentioned. You can play HoML and it can feel pretty close to 4e or even 5e if you are a player comfortable with that paradigm, but it has the tools needed to do more than that. 4e LETS you do these things, kind of, HoML has actual procedures and its structure being very conflict-focused means things are almost always moving towards rising action. I took away all the crutches that I as a GM could use to dilly-dally around or overtly control the narrative. Still working on the ideal way to formulate some subsystems though, like 'rituals'.