What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Sadras]

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.

Interestingly, I do not think it is too unusual that while players are thinking aloud and making assumptions (usually about secret backstory) that the DM might decide to pinch an idea or two if he/she liked them better than his/her own. I have seen posters say as much on Enworld, but don't ask me to find their posts now.

I'm pretty sure I as DM have poached an idea from player during play.

 

[Jester David]

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.

How?
Either way you fail.

What if it was another player? A player passes a note to the GM describing how they hide the map. That also leads to failure.
If that's okay, why is it wrong if the GM—who is a player of the game as well—makes that call instead?

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.

How does going into a pre-written location, like Candlekeep, take away player agency? The world is just the backdrop. The story of the adventure is of the PCs and they can have great agency even in a published setting.

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.)

Not even remotely.
In a good RPG mystery you need to collect the clues, which can be done through asking questions or skill checks. This provides the information, which the DM can extrapolate on based on what is reasonable for the character to know or be able to deduce. The players make inferences and follow up those leads.
It's very much like it works in real life/ in detective fiction.

Most of the time when I plan a mystery I don't have a hard script, I just have an outline or idea of what the villain is doing. So their scheme unfolds over time, perhaps giving the players more clues. But those plans change in reaction to the PCs. I play the antagonist as a reactive character.

Also, you're pretty much equating "investigation" with "Call of Cthulhu modules". That's not always the case, since pre-written modules have their own limits, and modules tend to have to be more overt in their clues and solutions. It's a baseline, but the words are a guide that the GM has to make come alive and make responsive to the players.

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.

I can't parse the events in that summary for the life of me. What was the mystery? Was the solution to the mystery known ahead of time? How did player agency lead to the solution?

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.

Player action declarations are always suggestions. They can be blocked by the dice, the actions of other players, the GM declaring the logic doesn't work, or the GM declaring it doesn't work because of information unknown to the players.
How they are blocked is largely irrelevant. The player's reaction and emotions to failure are going to be mostly the same.

 

[innerdude]

Player action declarations are always suggestions. They can be blocked by the dice, the actions of other players, the GM declaring the logic doesn't work, or the GM declaring it doesn't work because of information unknown to the players.

How they are blocked is largely irrelevant. The player's reaction and emotions to failure are going to be mostly the same.

While I think this statement is true, I also think @pemerton's whole point is that the bolded section in your quote should be used with extreme, extreme discretion. There's a mindset for many GMs where the more information they withhold from their players, the more "intense" and "mysterious" their game will be. When in reality, much of the actual gameplay ends up being boring, snooze-fest pixel-witching trying to find just where, exactly, the GM's "railroad" is supposed to be going.

Too, something that's largely lost in this whole discussion is the level of experience most of us have as GMs. Of course we're not going to do all of these terrible, un-fun activities, because we know better.

New, inexperienced GMs don't.

I don't want to put words in @pemerton's mouth, but I think too he's saying that the hobby as a whole might be better served if inexperienced GMs could catch the vision a bit earlier to not rely so much on "hidden backstory" in their planning.

 

[Jester David]

While I think this statement is true, I also think @pemerton's whole point is that the bolded section in your quote should be used with extreme, extreme discretion. There's a mindset for many GMs where the more information they withhold from their players, the more "intense" and "mysterious" their game will be. When in reality, much of the actual gameplay ends up being boring, snooze-fest pixel-witching trying to find just where, exactly, the GM's "railroad" is supposed to be going.

Too, something that's largely lost in this whole discussion is the level of experience most of us have as GMs. Of course we're not going to do all of these terrible, un-fun activities, because we know better.

New, inexperienced GMs don't.

I don't want to put words in @pemerton's mouth, but I think too he's saying that the hobby as a whole might be better served if inexperienced GMs could catch the vision a bit earlier to not rely so much on "hidden backstory" in their planning.

It takes some skill, but so does all GMing. Running a good railroad takes some gamemastering chops. But then so does an improv sandbox. The rabbit hole of “but what about bands GMs?” is bottomless and largely a distraction.

Even leaving things to a roll involves some GM control, since they typically need to set the difficulty: picking a DC, telling the players the difficulty, setting the challenge, etc.
Excluding the rare systems with set difficulty (All Outta Bubblegum, Honey Heist, or the Tearable RPG) where you always know the requirements for success.
Is finding the clue a DC 5 or DC 10 or DC 25? Does it require 1 success or 3? Setting the difficulty too high is functionally the same thing as saying "no".

Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.
I‘ve been watching a lot of the Geek & Sundry improv RPG The Adventures of Dick & Johnson, which uses All Outta Bubblegum and is a great example of a “yes, but” RPG. But there’s a whole lotta times when the player’s really cool thing just gets shot down by a bad roll.

But surrendering random change for DM fiat, you can paradoxically *increase* player agency. By not rolling and the DM just saying “yes” the odds increase dramatically. From <100% to 100%.
When running a pre-authored scenario, like my aforementioned investigation adventures, I often don’t make players roll. They ask questions and I tell them “yes” or “no. Rolling is for when they lack questions, and they need to look for extra clues to potentially give them more questions to ask.

 

[Aenghus]

Worldbuilding can be fun in and of itself, it can help certain playstyles and some players enjoy exploring gameworlds created by other people.

Overly rigid worldbuilding that doesn't leave room for PCs to breathe, and worldbuilding that isn't appreciated by players the way the creator would like can be issues. It's my experience that most players care a lot less about the particulars of the gameworld than the creator. Occasionally there are fans, but these often focus on small parts of the setting or particular npcs or plots.

It's some time ago now, when roleplaying was a bit more primitive, but I remember a game where player enthusiasm for some proactive plans was casually crushed in a tone-deaf way because the player plans didn't fit the rigid preconceptions of the referee, and the referee was unwilling to attempt a compromise with the players for fear of revealing some of his plots or secret backstory. Player unhappiness grew until the most frustrated players, angry that they weren't allowed to affect the gameworld in to them reasonable ways, attempted some in-game vandalism to test the referee it they would be permitted to do it. and frankly to annoy him.

So some parts of the gameworld burned down, the referee got annoyed and the game ended in general disarray.

I don't think this was down to mere bad refereeing/playing, everyone was making an honest effort, it's just that the older GM advice was IMO often awful. Ridiculously adversarial, needlessly secretive, there was plenty of advice that hindered or prevented clear communication between players and referee.

There's a particular issue with worldbuilding where the referee is the creator, in that the referee is typically highly invested in the gameworld and it's details, and the players are less so, sometimes a lot less. The players are also the audience for the gameworld, and the critics of it. Players rejecting plots or gameworld elements for whatever reason can be hard on the referee, and some referees being human overreact and take revenge on the players who didn''t appreciate their wonderful creation.

It's really difficult for referees to maintain objectivity in the face of player plans they don't understand or don't agree with. I know I've failed at this a number of times, and I'm willing to talk to my players out of character to try and figure things out. Communication gaps because of concerns of secrecy and meta-gaming can make things a lot worse, IMO.

In the old days PCs were simple, and if a PC died it was quick to put a new one together. New characters often died early, so many didn't bother with a backstory until they had survived the early meat-grinder levels. So referees could kill off annoying or problematic characters without raising too many eyebrows.

Times have changed for many people, and PCs are more complex, starting with goals and backstory. PCs have become more survivable, and in more modern systems can have more agency, or different kinds of agency to that provided by earlier systems. In many game groups it's no longer acceptable to merely kill off PCs who in the referees eyes are wandering off the reservation. Just like referees can be attached to worldbuilding, players can be attached to PC backstory and goals, even when they don't quite match, or turn out to be totally incompatible some time later on.

Worldbuilding can interfere with players who are invested in their PC's backstory and goals. The PC backstory and goals can be inadvertently modified, twisted or ruined by the details of the gameworld, especially when there are big campaign secrets lurking in the background. This can destroy a player's fun in the game, especially when the referee refuses to discuss such issues, or make accommodations.

 

[Emerikol]

There's a couple different levels of free time.
There's my free time between the game sessions. But the game is also free time. I'm not at work. I'm playing with my friends. I want to maximise the fun at the game table, so that free time was well spent.

But at the game table, it's also not my free time. It's my friends' free time.
Why would I want to waste their precious free time being unprepared to run a game? Why would I gamble my friends' free time that I'll be able to improvise an adventure that's better than one I could plan ahead of time?

Oh I included all the time spent involved with the game in my statement. Of course I don't want to waste the players time either. It's why I am very upfront about my game style when I do play. I realize the hobby is full of different expectations. I'd even go so far as to say people on opposite extremes probably aren't even playing the same game.

 

[Emerikol]

Worldbuilding can be fun in and of itself, it can help certain playstyles and some players enjoy exploring gameworlds created by other people.

To me good players are those who receive what world information the DM offers and try to build a character within that framework. Early on it's good to have private DM/player one on ones to flesh out a character and develop his backstory so it really fits the world. Obviously a DM is someone who builds a world that he believes will appeal to his players. Often he mentions the type of world and gets some feedback from his potential group before he starts building.

Players will engage a world that engages them and yes starting out that means a teeeny tiny part of the world. A good DM though will weave in off screen personalities as the game progresses. Think about Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones. That character was really completely developed off camera so that when he walks into the scene the reader holds their breath in anticipation. When I first started playing the Castellion of Keep on the Borderlands was that sort of character. We kept hearing about him but it was some time before we actually got to meet him.

I find that players who think they can develop a character without any reference to the world and object if that comes into conflict after the fact are players I avoid. A character is a product of his environment which is the world. It's nonsensical to develop something without at minimum tying it to the underlying world. It makes it a lot more rich and enjoyable when your not just a thief but your are the famous burgler of a nearby local village.

I find the spotlight is one key to making sure the player is engaged. I don't think you really want them to be big time heroes at the beginning. I prefer the rise from nothing trope. I do though think you can still have a very interesting backstory.

I think NPCs are vital in party development. They need to have people they love and people they hate. A fair number can come from the backstory but not all of them.

I guess what I'm saying is you need to do it well and be interesting. For some that is hard and I sympathize.

 

[Manbearcat]

I have an awful lot to catch up on and some posts to respond to, but I don't have the time to now. Just skimming to catch up and I want to respond to this right quickly because it won't take more than a moment:

Originally Posted by pemerton View Post
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.

How?

Either way you fail.

Your response is a bit of a head-scratcher here for two reasons Jester:

1) It seems by disagreeing with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] here (and in the alternative position you're espousing) that you're denying the existence (or at least the implications on play integrity) of Calvinball as a meme.

2) Since Cops and Robbers and Army/War have been played (or any sort of game where there isn't an actual resolution method to mediate disputes over outcomes), children have learned that there is a stark difference between the experience (in both agency and competitive integrity) of loss/failure by dictatorial fiat ("I shot you!" "NO YOU DIDN'T, I SHOT YOU!") and loss by way of some sort of (non-cooked) dispute-mediating resolution procedure (eg "Ok, let's play rock > paper > scissors and loser is dead" or <introduce thrown eggs>).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It takes some skill, but so does all GMing. Running a good railroad takes some gamemastering chops. But then so does an improv sandbox. The rabbit hole of “but what about bands GMs?” is bottomless and largely a distraction.

Eh, just because something may never be easy to do well doesn't mean you can't make it easier to do better.

Even leaving things to a roll involves some GM control, since they typically need to set the difficulty: picking a DC, telling the players the difficulty, setting the challenge, etc.
Excluding the rare systems with set difficulty (All Outta Bubblegum, Honey Heist, or the Tearable RPG) where you always know the requirements for success.
Is finding the clue a DC 5 or DC 10 or DC 25? Does it require 1 success or 3? Setting the difficulty too high is functionally the same thing as saying "no".

And, IMHO, this is simply a matter of good game design. 4e answered this question. As of the RC that answer is completely detailed. You run an SC, the GM has the liberty to set the complexity and the level of the RC (though in all fairness 4e doesn't actually discuss using SCs of a level different from the party one must assume this is a possibility and it is done in practice). Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance. That leaves the matter of the fiction open, and the GM still has choices about how and when to deploy the different easy/medium/hard DCs (but the number of each is fixed). Likewise the players have room to decide when and how to deploy their advantages, secondary skill uses, and any other resources they may want to expend, given that they still need to explain how their fictional positioning warrants their employment in each situation. I always thought this was a HUGE advance over the situation in all prior editions, and 5e, where its just "however many checks of whatever difficulty and type the GM feels like until he decides what happened". I always found that to be rather lacking...

Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.
I‘ve been watching a lot of the Geek & Sundry improv RPG The Adventures of Dick & Johnson, which uses All Outta Bubblegum and is a great example of a “yes, but” RPG. But there’s a whole lotta times when the player’s really cool thing just gets shot down by a bad roll.

Sure, but this is why the players define the stakes and then make the wager against some narrative or mechanical reward they can presumably set a value on. This requires that the mechanics guarantee there won't be a GM presented "Oh, but too bad, you spent your potion and there's still no chance of success, what a bummer..." sort of thing. Again, blind wagers are always possible, but I'd say they pretty much always come in the context of a larger cost/benefit trade off by the player (IE I won't wait to be sure if this is a good idea because the cost in fictional positioning of doing so is greater than the added risk). There's also "I just want to do it, I don't care if I fail" which GMs should generally respect.

But surrendering random change for DM fiat, you can paradoxically *increase* player agency. By not rolling and the DM just saying “yes” the odds increase dramatically. From <100% to 100%.
When running a pre-authored scenario, like my aforementioned investigation adventures, I often don’t make players roll. They ask questions and I tell them “yes” or “no. Rolling is for when they lack questions, and they need to look for extra clues to potentially give them more questions to ask.

Well, its a common technique in this sort of adventure to have a 'floor' at which the character gains the requisite information needed to proceed to the next step. This is, for example, the entire process in Gumshoe, which is a game all about investigations. It is how a good CoC adventure SHOULD work as well (and one reason why the Gumshoe-based Trail of Cthulhu is a MUCH MUCH MUCH better game than CoC IMHO).

In fact, I ran a CoC mini-campaign a couple years ago. I honestly will never touch that game again. It is just antiquated. Even the latest edition, which tones down the worst problems somewhat, is still awkward and antiquated by comparison to modern story-telling games of all sorts. I just found it literally painful to run and try to sort out the mess of different overlapping skills and dope out how to deal with the constant failures and figure out why we were even bothering with skill checks at all (outside of combat anyway).

 

[Sunseeker]

To me good players are those who receive what world information the DM offers and try to build a character within that framework. Early on it's good to have private DM/player one on ones to flesh out a character and develop his backstory so it really fits the world. Obviously a DM is someone who builds a world that he believes will appeal to his players. Often he mentions the type of world and gets some feedback from his potential group before he starts building.

This works for those of you who have been playing with the same group for decades. You likely don't even need to ask. For those of us with shorter-lived groups, you take the same approach D&D has always taken: create generic fantasy settings and populate them with some spice.

I would never build a campaign world for a single group. Waste of time. I'd more than happily build one that will generally appeal to people who like to play the game I'm building the setting for. D&D gets generic fantasy. And to be honest, I don't need to build a world for the vast majority of systems out there. Only a few actually require it because the world is only implied through the content. Other games, Warhammer, Deadlands, CoC, Star Wars, Star Trek, the world is explicit in the material. When we all sit down to play Warhammer 40K, we know what kind of universe we're stepping into. It will ALWAYS be that universe.

Building a campaign for a specific group? I don't even think I'd do that either. If I've got enough people interested in WH40K to run it, then the stock material is exactly what these people are looking for. Making it an enjoyable, interesting experience? That's at-the-table work. The best laid plans at home can never guarantee an enjoyable session.

I find that players who think they can develop a character without any reference to the world and object if that comes into conflict after the fact are players I avoid. A character is a product of his environment which is the world. It's nonsensical to develop something without at minimum tying it to the underlying world. It makes it a lot more rich and enjoyable when your not just a thief but your are the famous burgler of a nearby local village.

There are a lot of nobodies in the world. Again, this goes back to my previous point: the number of games that actually require worldbuilding are few. They're some of the bigger names in the industry, but they make up a smaller number of titles than the many other games which are often explicitly stated to be The Federation, The New Republic, The Weird West, or Modern Times. You can easily develop characters for these games because the world-lore is readily available to players. The theme of the game is "Adventures in the Delta Quadrant"? Are Delta Quadrant races playable? Yes/No? Then I can easily go research them, and build a character, with ZERO input for this particular campaign. Are we making alien-hunting agents of the Human Imperium? Easy peesy.

Minor, and I mean minor input may be required to fit a specific theme (We're all smugglers! We're all Sith Lords! We're all Romulans!) but the character itsself can be easily assembled in those games.

And frankly, Session Zero is, IMO, part of the problem sometimes in these homebrew worlds. Reasonably speaking, even with D&D, you should be able to go home, build a character (mechanically) and then write some generic backstory (Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier) and fit it into 90% of any possible world. But some worlds step far out of line with the traditional elements of the game, making it difficult to create a character because Session Zero isn't a Session, it's a two-month long series of seminars on how radically different New World is from TraditionalLand.

I wrote about this a long time ago and I'll bring it up again: being creative is great, but there is a point when it becomes too much. When you are so far outside of the box that it becomes more difficult to parse the world, because it is so out-of-like with the system expectations.

I've played in several of these games (am in one now) the worlds are vast, creative, but the DM varies between information overload and playing his cards tight to the chest. It makes it difficult to operate because in many cases, we quite literally know nothing about how the game world functions. Which gods are commonly worshipped, what the laws of the land are like, how non-humans are treated, what sort of races are unique to this world, the history of the world. All those simple things that can help frame the kind of character you make aren't handed out, and when we finally press for them, it's a frikken novel!

Anyway. I just wanted to point out that I find the idea of worldbuilding well..a world for a specific group to be silly. If you know what game book is going to be brought to the table, you know what kind of content those players will generally enjoy. There should be no impetus to make a game just​ for that group unless you plan on gaming with them for ya know, a decade. Take some of their preferences into consideration as the game grows? Sure. Tailor it just for them? Don't waste your time.