What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

Here we will simply have to fundamentally disagree. I don't think it is the GM's purview alone to know this (and the GM will, necessarily decide it in this case). That's the GM deciding what wagers are worth taking and depriving the players of agency. What meaning do decisions have when you have no way of understanding the consequences? In the real world that might be how it is, but the real world isn't a game and lacks drama or narrative (except where we impose such after the fact).

How do you figure that there is no way to understand the consequences if the DM decides what wagers are worth? If my PC decides to have the king assassinated, I as a player immediately understand that the consequences can include any or all of the following. 1) loss of property. 2) loss of freedom. 3) loss of life. 4) dodging assassins for the rest of my PC's life. 5) hatred of the people. 6) banishment. 7) the spice girls get back together.

I don't need to be told that failure is going to result in one or more of those before I roll in order to understand the consequences, and the choices my PC makes will still have tremendous meaning to both the game world and to himself.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well, in some systems player intention is - by the rules of the game - key to establishing what the action is and what it might accomplish.
If the players declare actions intended to minimise strife, including (say) propaganda efforts, then as I said that can be factored into the check and the resolution.

Sure, but these actions could result in failure. Creating propaganda, if not carefully handled for example, can produce the opposite effect. So even if the intent was to undermine loyalty to the King, if they fail to execute that properly, it could produce more loyalty. When the assassination finally comes, the results should be based on the current situation in the game world. Not the situation the players envisioned. That's why it's important to differentiate intent (what they want to do) from action (what they actually did).

I don't see the agreement here. The "fictional positioning" is something that the GM has established, ie over which s/he has control. By drawing upon unrevealed/hidden/secret elements of the setting and backstory to adjudicate the consequences, the GM absolutely is exercising control. Whether that's a good or bad thing is orthogonal at this point - I'm just trying to get the analysis clear.

Your suggestion was that the GM was exercising more control, when the level of GM control has been unchanged. The GM was always aware of more information than the players. Acting upon what the GM knows is not exercising more control, or to phrase it differently, taking away control from the players (over, in his example, something the players should only questionably have had control over to begin with).

No. I mean, there are games that actually work more-or-less as I've described, and they have GMs.
Two things the GM does that are relevant to the current discussion are (i) establishing the framing and (ii) establishing and narrating the consequences of failure.

Not success?

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Not success?

In a game like Dungeon World, complete success means the PC action matches the player's declaration so the fiction is adjusted implicitly to match since everyone who is paying attention already knows the situation. The GM only narrates to update the fiction to account for partial success (and this is often a resource adjustment like lost health), failure (the fiction should change to prevent/disincent retrying), or to introduce new pressures on the group if the action enters a lull.

*edit*
This last item is a great reason for world-building. It provides a terrific resource to inspire the GM with appropriate and consequential new pressures to place on the characters. */edit*

 

[Jester David]

The conversations are not entirely different. They're not different at all.

If the GM establishes elements of the shared fiction ahead of time, and does not reveal those elements to the players, then they act as constraints on action declaration. To reiterate an example that has been going on now for much of the thread, if (i) the GM has authored that the map is hidden in the kitchen rather than the study, and (ii) the players declare that their PC search the study for the map, then (iii) the players are not free to have that action declaration succeed, as the GM will (presumably) automatically declare, on the basis of his/her pre-established setting, that the map is not to be found in the study.

By that logic, the dice are also a limit on action declaration. Because if they declare they're searching the study for a map but roll poorly, it's not there. The players are not free to have that action declaration succeed.

(You also make the pretty HUGE assumption that once the world has been pre-authored ahead of time that it's impossible to change. Which is not so. If the players are really focused on searching the study and not the kitchen or they roll fantastically well, perhaps the map just changes locations to reward them.)

This also assumes that the players look for what the GM planned. In this instance, the players might declare they're looking for notes and not a map, so the GM has to decide if those exist or not. Alternatively, even if they do look for a map in the wrong place, the GM doesn't have to give the players and easy win; instead they're challenged and encouraged to keep looking or think of something else that will get them to where they want to go.

Plus, one of my favourite types of story to write are investigations. Finding the killer, deducing why the ghost is restless, tracking down the monster, etc. Those stories fall flat if I don't work out the clues and details ahead of time. While they can shift as needed to keep the action moving, evidence shouldn't shift because the players declare an action. There's no challenge there. The challenge of the game is solving the crime and finding the criminal, or setting a trap and catching the monster. How they solve things is dependant on them and their action declarations, but they still need to figure out who the bad guy in my notes is.

To say that the players have the "freedom to go wherever" is just to say that they can trigger different episodes of narration from the GM. It doesn't show that they have significant agency over the actual content of the shared fiction.

So?
Again, the players don't know what is a triggered episode or what is improvised unless they're looking over your screen. (Or, unless the DM has a tell like reciting their notes in a monotone voice or stalling and stammering as they improvise.)

This is why I did not frame the OP in terms of "improv" vs "prep", and have consistently explained why I don't see this as a very critical distinction for the purposes of this thread. The question I asked in the OP was about the GM establishing, in advance, the setting and backstory elements of the game.

This and your above statmente assumes the NARRATIVE is pre-made along with the world. Which is two different things.

Again, the campaign could be a giant sandbox set in the Realms where the entire setting and every location is pre-written and prepared, but the actual narrative and course taken by the players could be entirely driven by the players. Moreso, since they have access to the world lore as well and can decide to see places they like ("We need lore. Let's go to Candlekeep!)

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] - it is true that propaganda efforts can go wrong. That's what a Streetwise check (or whatever other PC ability might be relevant) is for. If the check fails, then perhaps the consequence (in the fiction) is that the people of the kingdom become more loyal.

If the check succeeds, however, then - in the approach that I prefer - the PCs (and, thereby, the players) have attained their goal - in this case, quelling potential unrest.

That is the essence of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" - either the GM says "yes" and the action declaration succeeds (generally used for low-stakes stuff, managing narrative continuity, etc) or else a check is made. If it succeeds, the intention is realised. If not, the GM establishes the consequences of failure

This contrast between success and failure - success = players get what they wanted; failure = GM establishes some adverse consequence - also feeds into the issue of player agency over the shared fiction:

The players can declare any action they like for their PCs. The DM, however, is constrained by her own notes/the module as to how that declaration is resolved and narrated: the map's not in this room so she's forced to narrate something amounting to "You don't find it here" no matter what any dice may say.

I think this is the crux: if you think that player agency consists solely in declaring actions, then every RPG has unlimited player agency (subject to background genre constraints): the players can always declare that their PCs are doing whatever the players might conceive of from time-to-time.

But, as [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] posted somewhere upthread, I tend to think of agency, in the context of a game, as a capacity to change the actual state of play by making moves. In a RPG, at the core is the shared fiction. If the players can't change that by making moves, they have no agency. If they can't change it except by making particular sequences of moves that have been pre-established by the GM (eg the "I search for a map" move can only succeed if it is preceded by the "I go into the kitchen" move) then they have only limited agency.

the choices they make followed by the DM narration those choices provoke are what builds the story of the game

This is true for a choose-your-own adventure book. If that's what passes for player agency, you're setting a very low threshold!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Mmmm eeeyup, think I agree with everything you said there.

BUT, to do more than just up my post count and bring this back to the subject of world-building...

I think this is in part why I like to only ever sketch in my worlds, putting detail only in the start and finish points. (There's a guy looking for lost children in City A, and there's a Lich who's been eating the souls of children in Ruins Z.) Obviously the players will need to discover this, adventure from City A to Ruins Z and formulate a plan, but that's all up to them. I'm here to respond to their moves as best as is reasonably possible within the setting I've created. They're here to to an extent, navigate the pathways they discover within it and to another lay their own path.

It's definitely the domain of the players to determine their approach. It's my domain to determine the difficulty/impact of that approach and determine what information regarding that difficulty the players will be able to uncover.

Yeah, though I would say that I'd be happy if the players engaged with the initial plot, and if it turned out to be the Lich, that's cool, but it could turn out to be explained some other way. Or it might just not turn out to be the central aspect of the campaign.

I think, for me, there's also 2 sort of different types of games that I tend to pitch. There's some shorter and more tightly thematic ones, where I don't think the campaign is going to go on for years, and there's a pretty well-defined theme/genre. The actual narrative could still go in ways that the players express a desire to engage in, but there could be a pretty central concept that shapes things. I like to set these up every couple years. I don't tend to run them using D&D, though 4e can work.

Then there are the more open-ended sorts of games, "lets just start some PCs in one of the towns on my old campaign map that hasn't ever gotten fleshed out and see what happens" or something like that. Last one I had a concept of 'Draconic Intrigue' that I threw in, where there were several dragons openly or secretly fighting it out for dominance, with their various allies, servants, etc. The party sometimes paid some attention to that, sometimes not. They eventually killed ONE of the dragons, and another one consequently burned down a good bit of their town! I guess that was as close to 'hidden' backstory as I get, but the players were helping to figure out who was allied with whom, "wouldn't it be cool if Joe over there was really working for the Green Dragon?!!!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK, then how do you determine whether the assassin succeeded or not?

Then what's the point?

If you don't have an internally consistent world where relevant things can be theoretically counted on to work offstage the same way they do onstage, using the same rules and limitations and process as when the PCs are present and involved, then you might as well throw out the rulebook entirely. Even if in most cases all the offstage stuff is either ignored or fiated to a result achievable within the rules and process, in cases like this where the eventual outcome is a) highly uncertain and b) possibly life-or-death relevant to the PCs it's incumbent on the DM to at least vaguely try to follow the process - which means roll some flippin' dice and figure out what happens behind the scenes so you can usefully narrate what the PCs see and experience.
they are used as they would be in any gamble of skill and chance, to introduce uncertainty and transform the exercise into one where the outcomes are not forgone conclusions, but have an element of tension.

Hehe, yes, we have very different approaches to RPGs, in some respects. Its still fun that we can play basically the same game in cool different ways. For the record, I don't mind being a player in some well-considered games of the type you're talking about. As long as my PC can accomplish something and build a little on his accomplishments, I don't feel its a huge big deal.

But I just don't like to run games like they're world simulators. I think there's still a good deal of basic consistency in most of my games, the players and I assume that the world works basically in some way that we define, and if the PCs are 'special' that's OK.

I don't NEED to play out something that is offstage between NPCs because it only needs to be established in relation to how it works in the story. So, if the PCs picked a good assassin and gave him good info and enough incentive to do the job right, then it will get done. I don't even think that is at odds with process sim. There is SOME point in any resolution sequence where the PC has 'done enough' to succeed. The assassin example is a bit indirect, but I don't think that really makes it somehow 'wrong' to assume something set in motion was successful. Rolling more dice doesn't make it somehow 'more accurately simulated' or something like that (I would argue there's no meaningful level of accuracy in RPGs anyway, but that's a topic for a different day).

As sometimes the importance of any given story element isn't known until well after the fact (if ever!), I tend to want to even out the level of detail where I can such that it's not always obvious. That said, there's also times when it's blatantly obvious that ***THIS IS A BOSS FIGHT!*** and we play it as such.

This is an interesting point. I understand that it represents a fairly often cited reason why everything has to follow some set kind of process where some platonic ideal of a 'PC neutral world' exists. IMHO though no such world ever exists, or even close to exists, so its mostly moot. Still, it seems to be a strong leg of the conceptual framework that supports a certain type of play. As I said, interesting.

 

[prosfilaes]

What's 1+1?

(1) I've never talked about a "right way" to play. I started a thread with a question: some posters answered it (@Nagol, @Caliban, etc). Some other posters - @Mercurius, @Lanefan - asserted or implied that by asking the question I was insulting them. To be frank, that's on them, not on me. If they don't want to answer the question "what is GM worldbuiling for", or think that the answer is so self-evident that to ask the question is to commit some RPG faux pas, well, no one is forcing them to post in the thread.

A new player is capable of not understanding why GMs worldbuild. You do, in fact, have some understanding of why GMs worldbuild. You probably have more than many GMs have. You could have asked "why do you worldbuild as a GM", and that would have felt like you're willing to listen. You could have said "Worldbuilding is overrated" and people would have expected a strong opinion. But "what is GM worldbuilding for" feels like, and is, a bit of a trap; you're not interested in the answers people have, you're interested in arguing with the answers. So, yes, that's on you; if you use a question to start a discussion you have a solid opinion in, instead of elicit information, then some people are going to be annoyed.

I don't feel people jumped forward to answer the question I put at the top of this post, and I wouldn't have. It's because I can see two distinct responses the poster might give, the first being:

Really? Without knowing what + is, you're going to brashly assume that the answer is 2, and not 1 (if + is or) or 0 (if + is and, or addition over Z_2). In mathematics, you've got to investigate what the question means before you jump in naively assuming you understand it...

and if I wanted to post that, I should have just posted it.

 

[Lanefan]

What's 1+1?

Easy.

It's the number of beer I'll have. And then I'll have a third.

 

[pemerton]

By that logic, the dice are also a limit on action declaration. Because if they declare they're searching the study for a map but roll poorly, it's not there. The players are not free to have that action declaration succeed.

Clearly the dice are a limit. But in most games I'm familiar with, it's understood that losing a dice roll is different from having another participant stipulate that you fail.

This also assumes that the players look for what the GM planned. In this instance, the players might declare they're looking for notes and not a map, so the GM has to decide if those exist or not. Alternatively, even if they do look for a map in the wrong place, the GM doesn't have to give the players and easy win; instead they're challenged and encouraged to keep looking or think of something else that will get them to where they want to go.

<snip>

the campaign could be a giant sandbox set in the Realms where the entire setting and every location is pre-written and prepared, but the actual narrative and course taken by the players could be entirely driven by the players.

I don't see how this is meant to be disagreeing with me. Yes, the players can make other moves that may trigger the GM to narrate different bits of the pre-established shared fiction. That is not player agency over the shared fiction - it is the GM (or Ed Greenwood, or . . .) who establishes the shared fiction. The players are learning what that fiction is.

one of my favourite types of story to write are investigations. Finding the killer, deducing why the ghost is restless, tracking down the monster, etc. Those stories fall flat if I don't work out the clues and details ahead of time. While they can shift as needed to keep the action moving, evidence shouldn't shift because the players declare an action. There's no challenge there.

In real life, the challenge of solving a mystery is collecting information by inspecting the environment, making inferences about what caused what, etc.

In a RPG, the challenge of solving a mystery in the style you describe is making moves that lead the GM to narrate salient bits of fiction. CoC modules are exemplars of this. Player agency in this sort of adventure is rather limited, being largely confined to triggering the sequence of GM narrations. (To avoid distractions: this is not a criticism of CoC. I can enjoy playing CoC modules. But they don't give the player any significant agency in respect of the shared fiction.)

It is possible to run a mystery scenario in which the players do have agency over the shared fiction (see eg this actual play example), but the techniques are different from what you describe.

You also make the pretty HUGE assumption that once the world has been pre-authored ahead of time that it's impossible to change. Which is not so. If the players are really focused on searching the study and not the kitchen or they roll fantastically well, perhaps the map just changes locations to reward them.

This was discussed rather extensively upthread.

This sort of approach just emphasises the GM's control over outcomes - the GM is entitled to "block" by sticking to the original material, or to "say 'yes'" if s/he wants to by changing that material. As I posted uptreahd, this style of GMing means that player action declarations are really best understood as suggestions to the GM as to how the shared fiction might unfold.