What is *worldbuilding* for?

[prosfilaes]

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,

Color me unexcited. It doesn't even feel like a game at that point. I don't want to leave the fiction open; I want to entangle it in the rules. Clue/Cluedo is quite simplistic, but "by a process of elimination, find the who, how and where" is way more exciting than "make a series of fiction-disconnected dice rolls". Look at D&D combat, of just about any edition; there's a host of complex decisions to make. If an ogre and goblin attack the party, do you try and bring down the ogre first to stop him from doing more damage, or do you take out the goblin quickly to avoid having to worry about him? Every good game is filled with options that interact with each other in complex ways and the odds on each option, especially in the long run, are not clear.

 

[prosfilaes]

If I've got enough people interested in WH40K to run it, then the stock material is exactly what these people are looking for.

I run and play Pathfinder because that's what I have and what people are interested in running and playing. That doesn't mean it's exactly what I'm looking for, especially not stock. Maybe some of the people like the epic science fiction fantasy, but would be happy to turn the grim-dark down, maybe way down.

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.

I find trying to count games irrelevant here. Yes, the market has tolerance for a fairly limited set of world-less games; Fate, GURPS, Hero; at a different level, D&D, Dungeon World, Stars Without Number. But the more popular of those games have dozens of settings you can play in, and a lot of the rulebooks with settings are functionally a worldbook with some rules stuck in.

I have a lot of small RPGs I can't hope to bring to the table because I can't sell reading the rules as much as the setting material, and currently run Pathfinder in the (frustratingly underdescribed) Zeitgeist setting, which my players weren't the least familiar with.

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.

To start that with "reasonably speaking" is to assume what you're trying to argue. I don't want to open a preformed can of character and dump it into the game world; I want the game world to help define my character, to make him or her feel like a real character in a real world. "Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier" will fit 90% of settings, but I don't want a backstory that fits 90% of settings, that I could have got out of a list of generic backstories on some website.

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 think you're conflating different things here. There are races that are hard to mesh with D&D rules that aren't hard to play, and there are human cultures that are completely alien to most of our mind sets, but system-wise, they're just humans.

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!

So it's hard to worldbuild a world for a group. That doesn't make it silly. I also wonder if it's a literal novel, or merely a large collection of reading material, and if the later, how large? I have no idea from this statement how much material you need, and how much is too much.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I agree this is a common technique. I think it can go in different directions., depending on other things that are going on at the table.

For instance, in "say 'yes' or roll the dice"-type adjudication, this may be an instance of the GM saying "yes".

But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? Do the players get to roll the dice? Or does the GM stipulate the fiction to be otherwise? I think this is the main crunch point from the point of view of player agency over the shared fiction.

Another element can be how this is handled at the table. If the GM is actively keeping secret the degree of influence the players have over the shared fiction, so they never know whether the GM narrated pre-authored material, or arrived at a situation in the coure of paly; and never know what significance, if any, their action declarations for their PCs have; then I think this lessens player agency. They don't really know what affect, if any, they are having on the content of the shared fiction. This will tend to drift the game, I think, towards one in which all the players are doing is making suggestions to the GM about how things might unfold.

 

[pemerton]

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

Color me unexcited. It doesn't even feel like a game at that point. I don't want to leave the fiction open; I want to entangle it in the rules.

So does [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. The fiction is not open in the framing and resolution of any given skill challenge; the point is that when you refer to a Level 7 Complexity 5 skill challenge, you haven't at that point established any fiction; just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.

 

[Sadras]

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..

I'm a little surprised the SC mechanic hasn't been explored properly in 5e, either in the additional 5e published material or in UA (especially the latest one). I would pay good money for a book which runs through numerous SC examples even if that is all it was. There really is so much content available for those in the know.

Perhaps one of the 4e luminaries should do that and sell it on the DMs Guild because WotC doesn't appear to want to go down that direction. I reckon it would sell well.

 

[Sadras]

But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? Do the players get to roll the dice? Or does the GM stipulate the fiction to be otherwise? I think this is the main crunch point from the point of view of player agency over the shared fiction.

Another element can be how this is handled at the table. If the GM is actively keeping secret the degree of influence the players have over the shared fiction, so they never know whether the GM narrated pre-authored material, or arrived at a situation in the coure of paly; and never know what significance, if any, their action declarations for their PCs have; then I think this lessens player agency. They don't really know what affect, if any, they are having on the content of the shared fiction. This will tend to drift the game, I think, towards one in which all the players are doing is making suggestions to the GM about how things might unfold.

I guess if I look at my B10 game, from my perspective I do not see player agency being affected and there certainly is secret backstory at play. I see more that the players debating/arguing which route to take amongst themselves while also engaging with the motives of the NPCs in the settlement. What they do not know is that different routes will provide different parts of the puzzle which they are not aware of.

Option 1 might lead them straight to the ruined city
Option 2 might provide more clues about the goblin attacks on the homesteads
Option 3 might lead to knowledge of the secret ruined city as well as the schism within the Iron Ring (changed a little from module)
Option 4 might see them return the stolen horses and provide clues of the prisoners taken.
Option 5 etc

Obviously getting to the ruined city is the eventual goal but how/when they get there, that is on them. I as DM currently do not know which option they will take, or take next...etc. It is very open ended and I do not see player agency being stifled/lessened because I have secret backstory (schism within the Iron Ring, the magical mural...etc) or because they don't know of the ruins or how to get there.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Though it's a poor referee who intentionally kills off a character just because it's problematic in that way. For better or worse, the referee has to remain neutral even if her game world will suffer for it.

That said, IME if the party (and sometimes the players, but most of the time this stays in character and doesn't get too meta) feels a particular character is going to be annoying or problematic they'll often take care of matters themselves via PvP, either blatantly (walk up and kill it) or subtly (hang it out to dry sometime in a tough fight).

Times have changed for many people, and PCs are more complex, starting with goals and backstory.

And generally take far longer to roll up, which is a glaring red flag problem across many game systems.

PCs have become more survivable

Also a problem, but this time the root of it can come from any or all of: system; DMs giving unwarranted plot protection; players unwilling to accept the bad with the good.

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.

Agency aside, it's not acceptable for the referee to kill off PCs who are "wandering off the reservation" merely because they are doing so. It's the referee's job to hit that curveball.

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.

Yes, and if the referee has done a good enough job of worldbuilding then the game world should be robust enough to handle whatever the PCs throw at it.

Story, on the other hand, is a different question; and here a referee has to be at all times halfway prepared to rip it up and go to plan B.

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.

First off, I far prefer character-specific goals be something that arise out of the run of play as the player/PC learns more about the game world and-or plot arcs. Having a very vague career goal e.g. "I wanna be the richest man in the land" is cool, as it can help define a characters personailtiy and basic motivations, but anything more specific than that e.g. "I want to free my brother from his arranged marriage to the wizard's daughter" risks being ignored (or at best done as an out-of-session solo trip) if the rest of the PCs turn out not to give a damn and decline your request for help.

And no, the referee should never be forced to reveal twists and secrets before their time.

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.

Agreed except for the "go home and" part: characters are rolled up in front of at least the DM, thank you, if not the other players as well.

But yes, there's a bunch of somewhat generic character archetypes (both mechanical and backstory) that can fit, or be easily made to fit, into almost any game world unless said game world has something odd about it; and one hopes the DM will have made any such oddities clear up front before char-gen begins.

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.

What about a campaign that'll last over a decade but during that time there'll almost certainly be slow but steady player turnover?

This is my situation, and my answer is to have in place a solidly-built world in decreasing detail the farther one gets from the core adventuring area; with such details of geography-culture-history as an average PC would know or can easily find out posted online on the game's site for any player to read (though whether they ever do or not is up to them). As the adventuring enters or hears of new areas or learns previously-unknown historical information, that gets added in.

Example: for my current campaign, part of the historical write-up is a list of all the past Emperors of the (remains of the) empire in which the game began and is still largely based. Among them are Kallios I (ruled for several decades about 350 years ago) and Kallios II (a shorter reign about 170 years ago)...but it wasn't until some PCs actually met Kallios in the present day and learned he's a not-that-evil Vampire; that he'd been so since close to the end of his first reign; and that Kallios I, Kallios II and the person they're meeting now are all in fact one and the same that I put those particular little details next to his listings.

<side note: I'm no novel writer but I think if I ever did write any they'd center on this Kallios guy - so much story to mine around him>

I don't want to open a preformed can of character and dump it into the game world; I want the game world to help define my character, to make him or her feel like a real character in a real world. "Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier" will fit 90% of settings, but I don't want a backstory that fits 90% of settings, that I could have got out of a list of generic backstories on some website.

Props for the line "...open a preformed can of character..." - love it!

That said, something generic is always a fine place to start; which you can then flesh out as the game goes along...and again, I posit that the future story that will arise out of the run of play is more important than the backstory anyway.

Lanefan

 

[prosfilaes]

just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.

For a simplified version of a fairly trivial combat, you've used twice as many numbers (as "Level 7 Complexity 5"), and you have established some fiction, however vague. There's two individuals, and guy one is much weaker and a little bit easier to hit than guy two. Given an actual stat block, like from B1:

1. Orcs (1-4)-AC 6, HD 1, hp 6,4,3,1, #AT 1, D 1-6 or by weapon, MV 90' (30'), Save F1, ML 8
2. Giant Centipedes (1-2)-AC 9, HD 1/2, hp 2,2, #AT 1, D poison, MV 60' (20'), Save NM, ML 7

Fiction starts to appear out of numbers. Even dropping the "orcs" and "giant centipedes" part, we have two very different sets of attackers, one that attack by hand but also uses weapons, and the other is trying to poison you.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Well, I personally don't like "hidden backstory". Clearly plenty of D&D players and GMs do.

This thread wasn't started to serve as a warning or caution. The interest was in analysis of play techniques - there's a common technique of pre-authorship, what is it for?

What I feel created some struggles early in the thread was that many answers offered to that question were metaphorical (eg "The players explore the world") and it took quite a bit of time and effort to get them rendered in more literal terms (eg "The players make moves with their PCs to trigger the GM to narrate to them a certain bit of information which is recorded, either literally or notionally, in the GM's notes").

I don't necessarily think that the hobby is better served by having less hidden backstory in RPGing, but I do think it is better served by actually recognising, in literal rather than metaphorical terms, how various techniques work and what sort of play experience they might deliver. I think this helps break down ungrounded misconceptions: eg that the action declaration "I search the study for the map" is different from the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword". Of course in real life, looking for something is a very different causal process from trying to decapitate someone. But in RPGing, both action declarations expressions of desire as to the future state of the shared fiction (I found a map or I killed an orc), they can both be declared from a purely first-person RP perspective ("actor stance", to use some jargon), and it's possible to establish rules for resolving either that don't rely on hidden backstory-based adjudication.

So if, in fact, we are going to resolve them differently - the map one by referring to the GM's notes; the orc one by rolling dice - well, it's worth asking why we do it that way.

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

Whether or not they are two different things depends heavily on (i) what is pre-authored, and (ii) what the goal of play is.

If the pre-authorship is a whole lot of chests with gp in them and monsters guarding them, and the goal of play is to get lots of gp out of chests so as to earn XP, then the pre-authorship doesn't establish the narrative. White Plume Mountain is a well-known module that illustrates this.

But (to recycle some examples from upthread) if the goal of play is to find the map, and the pre-authroship is that the map is in the kitchen and not the study, then the pre-authorship does significantly establish the narrative. Likewise if the goal of play is to avoid arrest and conviction, and the pre-authorship is of the dispositions of the police, the attitudes of the magistracy towards bribes, etc: the attempt by the players to bribe their way out of trouble will succeed or fail based on that pre-authored content.

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.

I assume that you are referring to player agency rather than the agency of the PCs. The agency of the PCs is a purely imaginary property of purely imaginary people, and can be interesting as part of the shared fiction (one of the PCs in my BW game is dominated by a dark naga, and that's an important part of the current situation) but is completely orthogonal to player agency.

When you say "the world is just the backdrop" that is a metaphor, because RPGing does not take place on a stage with a literal backdrop. If the action of the game is constrained by the pre-established fiction of Candlekeep, so that player action declarations either (i) fail, because the GM reads the book and sees (eg) that the officials of Candlekeep cannot be bribed, and/or (ii) consist to a significant degree in trying to prompt the GM to tell them stuff about Candlekeep so they can establish the parameters for feasible successful action declarations. Neither (i) nor (ii) exhibits a great deal of player agency over the content of the shared fiction.

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?

<snip>

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.

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.

<snip>

Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.

<snip>

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.

It's true that saying "yes" increases the odds of player success to 100%. Saying no, though, reduces them to zero - so I'm not sure how telling "yes" or "no" based on pre-authorship is meant to increase agency.

In "say 'yes' or roll the dice" games, there are a collection of techniques used to sustain player agency: framing that has regard to the signals (around theme, tropes, character motivation, etc) sent by the players in the build and play of their PCs; narration of failure consequences that likewise build on those signals to contribute to new framing that continues to "go where the action is"; and of course allowing the players to get what they were going for if their checks succeed.

The reason not to say "yes" all the time is to allow for a dramatic rhythm of success and failure; it's part of what distinguishes an RPG from straight-out collaborative storytelling. The reason for the framing and consequence-narration techniques is to allow player agency to feed into the game even when action declarations are not succeeding.

The idea that there is no difference between this sort of RPGing, and the GM declaring an action unsuccessful ("No, you don't find the map" "No, there are no bribeable officials") on the basis of his/her notes, is just silly. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has made the general point with the reference to Calvinball; but examples closer to home will do. No one thinks it makes no difference to combat resolution that the GM decides by fiat whether or not the attack hits, rather than the player rolling the dice. Very few D&D tables treat the declaration of an attack and the making of a to hit roll as simply having the status of a suggestion to the GM; it's a move in the game. Likewise for finding maps - the difference between being able to make a move, and being able to make a suggestion to the only player who actually enjoys the power to make moves, holds just the same.

That's not an argument that finding maps and attacking orcs should be resolved the same way; but it is an argument that resolving the differently has very obvious consequences for the degree of player agency in one or the other domains of action declaration.

As far as the PvP issue is concerned, there are any number of ways to resolve that: opposed checks are one common one. But two game participants competing with one another on a more-or-less level playing field is quite different from the GM - who at least notionally is not a competitor, and who enjoys vastly more authority to establish the fiction in any relatively mainstream RPG - using his/her authority to stipulate an action as unsuccessful.

 

[pemerton]

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.

It's very little like real life. In real life I can, for instance, try and find foot prints and draw inferences from those; or try and dig up a new witness who might know something; or try and outwit a suspect through a clever interrogation.

In a RPG, though, the "world" has no independent causal power. So - in a "hidden backstory" game - if the GM hasn't authored any foot prints, there are none to draw inference from. If the GM hasn't authored any further witnesses, there are none to find. If the GM doesn't find my interrogation sufficiently clever or threatening or overbearing or whatever, then I don't outwit the suspect.

This is nothing like real life. It's very much as I described - the players declare moves for their PCs that try to trigger the narration of salient bits of info. (GUMSHOE strips out some of this through its "automatic clue" rule; but you can spend resources to get extra info narrated to you.) The GUMSHOE rules (I'm copying from p 52 of Trail of Cthulhu) actually make the process very clear:

Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:

1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,
2. Have the right ability to discover the clue, and
3. Tell the Keeper that you’re using it.​

In other word, you have to (1) declare moves that establish an appropriate fictional positioning for your PC vis-a-vis the hidden backstory, and (2)+(3) declare an action that will trigger the GM to narrate you some of that hidden backstory.

I'm not saying that this is or isn't fun, but I think it's clearly not all that agentic on the part of the player. The player is not establishing the content of the shared fiction; s/he is learning it by triggering narrations on the part of the GM.

plans change in reaction to the PCs. I play the antagonist as a reactive character.

This is a description of GM agency. It doesn't show any player agency, though. To the extent that the players have a reason to try to learn who the antagonist might react, that is more obtaining of hidden backstory from the GM.

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?

The principal mysteries were what happened, and why? The answer to the first was known, by me as GM, ahead of time: The manor became abandoned when the pending fall of Nerath to gnoll invaders (the downstream consequences of which have been a bit part of the campaign to date) led its wizard owner to go mad with the strain and kill his apprentices.

The answer to the second was established during play, and the PCs learned it by piecing together clues that were also established during play: the last work the wizard who owned the manor had been undertaking before he went mad was to try to find a way of harnessing the power of the Raven Queen without compromising the principles of his cult, in order to create more powerful defences by which Nerath might resist the invading gnolls - he snapped when his most religiously devout apprentice learned what he was doing and accused him of treachery.

Other things that were unknown by the players and PCs at the start of the scenario, but were learned on the way through to solving the big mystery of why?, included that the religion of the dead mage was a particular cult combining worship of Bahamut (god of the east wind and also of the dragonborn), Kord, Pelor and Ioun; and that the burial practices of the cult had the intention of trying to avoid the dead being dealt with by the Raven Queen, instead going directly to Mount Celestia or Hestavar as exalted.

These elements of the fiction were also established not in advance but in the course of play. Thus, as the post concludes, "I learned that while sandboxing might rely heavily upon exploration, exploration can be done without sandboxing. Most of the interesting details of the exploration were worked out by me on the fly, whether as needed or even in response to player actions (like the invisible ink)."