What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

Look, I'm trying to have a good discussion here, .

So why do you say that I provide examples of post-hoc consequence mitigation when I provided not a single example of that? Or why do you say that tactics don't matter in BW, when clearly they do? What points are you trying to make?

 

[pemerton]

YThe purpose of playing an RPG is to play the characters and bring them to life, sure, but also to see what kind of story can be collectively woven by the party these characters are a part of for however long they last. And to weave that story requires a solid and consistent backdrop...the game-world or setting built either by [insert favoured RPG publisher here] or the DM.

What is your evidence for this? What do you think is going on with those of us who have RPGs with interesting, powerful, engaging stories but didn't use the techniques you recommend here?

 

[pemerton]

We had a guy in our crew who ran a 3.xe game for a while, and it was just like that - finish one set-piece scene, jump straight to the next

What you're describing here is massively GM-driven RPGing. It has basically nothing in common with what I (or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) is talking about.

I'm reminded of that game every time you guys describe this story-now stuff and how it works, as the end result seems so similar.

This is why I think you haven't actually processed the words you have read on the various blogs I've linked to, or even in the descriptions of actual play that I've given.

 

[pemerton]

If the game, here somewhat paraphrased, proceeds thusly:

1. Player during char-gen specifies goals, beliefs etc. for her character, at least one of which includes a specific end point or problem to solve (e.g. free my brother from possession by a balrog).

2. Player during play can set the success condition for an action declaraction to be a step toward solving that problem (I check the feather to see if it'll help against balrogs)

3. Player can in effect repeat this as necessary, with variants, until the action declaration succeeds (PC has moved one step closer to freeing her brother)

4. Player can repeat 2 and 3 above, each time getting another step closer to solving the problem provided the dice co-operate, until the fiction reaches a climax point

5. At that climax point, player can specify the success condition being that the problem is solved (e.g. no more balrog in my brother).

My question then is, particularly if the dice rolls go well for this player isn't this all just a slow-motion violation of Czege?

Because you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks, and (2) that the GM introduces no complications into the situation. You are posting a conch-passing game where there is no constraint on the players ability to narrate success for his/her PC. This is not how most RPGs work.

 

[Maxperson]

Why would the GM pre-author the feather being cursed? The existence of the feather in the fiction was established after the player's build their PCs, as part of the opening scene of the campaign. The feather was only introduced into that scene, by me as GM, because I was following the lead of the player who decided that one of his PC's Beliefs was that he would acquire an item useful for confronting a balrog. And how would I know that the player is going to decide to have his PC read the aura (as opposed to, say, just buy it? or try and steal it? or ask the peddler more about it?). Pre-authorship of outcomes is not consistent with the idea that the players have genuine choice in action declaration, with that action declaration yielding genuine answers to the questions it poses about the fiction.

So forget the feather then if you literally made characters and started the campaign in the same moment. The rest of my examples stand. The wolf and such.

Whether novel or film is a better model for RPGing is an open question. But even focusing on a novel, in fact LotR does not describe every detail. How many flagstones are in the hallway of Bag End?

Eleventy-one.

I would suggest that in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game, if the GM mentions an uneven flagstone then it is de rigeur to search for traps or secret doors. Does that mean that, by not mentioning every flagstone in the tavern, Lanefan is railroading the players?

This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position. In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.

Or to put it in the form of direct assertion rather than rhetorical question: there is a finite amount of time available in which the GM tells the players stuff. To spend most of that time telling them stuff that speaks to PCs' dramatic needs, rather than stuff that invites them simply to get the GM to tell them more stuff ("You're at an intersection - which way do you go?" "You notice an uneven flagstone on the floor between your table and the bar - what do you do?") doesn't lessen the players' contributions to the content of the shared fiction. It increases it.

If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.

This all rests on an illusion, namely, that the gameworld is real. But it's not. In the approach you are advocating, it's authored by the GM.

When you narrate that the PC is in a "neutral place", you have determined where the PC is. If the PC says "I look for a sage - is there a library nearby" you, as GM, tell the player what the PCs sees, and establish the parameters within which the player can make choices. The whole fiction here is GM-authored, and the player choices are all confined within GM-established parameters. As soon as the GM has one of the NPCs s/he is narrating do stuff (eg decides that someone at the library lies about where a sage might be found), the GM is also starting to drive events on some GM-desired course.

So, my position does not rest on the game world being real. It rests on the game world being rational. What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.

When I narrate that the PC is in a neutral place in the very first moment of the campaign, it's because I have no choice but to place them somewhere, just as you do. Which is again why I said "After the beginning of the campaign..." After that, it's the choice of the players. If they tell me that they are going to the city of Baldur's Gate, they will travel there by the route that they determine. When they arrive, they will arrive at the gates of the city, because I'm not going to railroad them into a place such as the bazaar or merchant guild.

I'm also going to repeat this.........again. It's not entirely DM authored, nor is it within DM established parameters. I don't detail the entire world(again), so I often don't know if there's a specific thing the players are looking for. If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there. I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things. The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being. I'm simply adjudicating the chances.

I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them. It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie. It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go. I literally don't care. My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.

The idea that it is more railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!

It's not bizarre. You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go. In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.

I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that. They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it. Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So forget the feather then if you literally made characters and started the campaign in the same moment. The rest of my examples stand. The wolf and such.



Eleventy-one.



This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position. In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.



If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.



So, my position does not rest on the game world being real. It rests on the game world being rational. What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.

When I narrate that the PC is in a neutral place in the very first moment of the campaign, it's because I have no choice but to place them somewhere, just as you do. Which is again why I said "After the beginning of the campaign..." After that, it's the choice of the players. If they tell me that they are going to the city of Baldur's Gate, they will travel there by the route that they determine. When they arrive, they will arrive at the gates of the city, because I'm not going to railroad them into a place such as the bazaar or merchant guild.

I'm also going to repeat this.........again. It's not entirely DM authored, nor is it within DM established parameters. I don't detail the entire world(again), so I often don't know if there's a specific thing the players are looking for. If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there. I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things. The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being. I'm simply adjudicating the chances.

I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them. It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie. It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go. I literally don't care. My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.


It's not bizarre. You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go. In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.

I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that. They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it. Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.

How much of a railroad is it of the players indicate they want to go to wherever but the GM makes them play through every intersection on the way there because the GM wrote down that those intersections exist?

I strongly think you're barking up the wrong tree, here. Player facing ganes are built so that the next scene is created out of the resolution of the current scene, either by the players expressing a new interest or dealing with the complications created in the current scene. It falls the definition of railroad, which is the GM forcing outcomes the GM prefers.

The framing into crisis method does, however, reduce some kinds of agency while focusing on and increasing pemertonian agency. Pointing out the missing agency is a valid point, but it doesn't create a railroad.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So why do you say that I provide examples of post-hoc consequence mitigation when I provided not a single example of that? Or why do you say that tactics don't matter in BW, when clearly they do? What points are you trying to make?

Go back and read the parts of my pasts you snipped out, it's pretty obvious.

I never said they didn't matter, I said player facing ganes tend to minimize tactical agency. BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics. For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering. Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning. Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A. Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes. That's random, not tactics.



Add for my points, if you'd stop snipping them, they'd be obvious. Your getting confused because your cherry picking what I say and then applying statement it of context to topics they weren't referencing. For example, the post hoc mitigation point I made was never in direct with BW Fight! mechanics -- you snipped the statement out and then treated it as if it was.

 

[Lanefan]

Travel times and distances don't matter in this game. In John Boorman's Excalibur, how far did the knights ride on the Grail Quest? It doesn't matter. How long did it take Arthur to ride from Camelot to his final confrontation with Mordred? It doesn't matter.

In a novel with only one moving piece, it doesn't matter. In an RPG where one assumes at least a passing nod to realism is being given (and if it isn't, I'm out) if the main party goes north for three days (say, 45 miles made good) and the PC with the villagers goes south for two days (20 miles, they're moving slowly) before finding a refuge for them, if the PC with the villagers now wants to leave them and catch up to the main party how long is that gonna take? 65 miles...assuming normal movement rates etc. that's 3 quite long days or more likely 4 reasonable ones; and that's assuming the main party stays put and doesn't go further north.

Going back to the Middle Earth example - this would have been something JRRT paid meticulous attention to, with all the different pieces in motion across the setting: time and distance.

As best I recall, everything that is learned about the history of the Ring comes out either through Gandalf telling Frodo, or through various speakers at the Council of Elrond. Unlike the film version, there is no abstracted narrator who tells us this stuff.

But notice that we never learn (for instance) the history of the mayors of the Shire, nor the history of the rulers of the Southrons, nor the nature of agriculture near Laketown and Dale, nor exactly how hobbits get their cheese. There is an indefinite amount of stuff about the world which is not part of the story.

And passing mention is made of a surprising amount of it in JRRT's books, leaving the reader often wondering "what's the story behind that?". This is why his estate has been able to keep churning out supplemental books, is to answer these questions.

And in game play, all the stuff that anyone cares about can come out in play, by focusing on the actual concerns of play. Mechanics that can produce it of course vary from system to system, but plenty of systems have mechanics of the right sort: whether those are Lore mechanics, or contacts mechanics, or mechanics for influencing NPCs, or perception/search mechanics, or whatever.

I say it's still good to have those passing mentions in there, if only to fuel curiosity either then or later.

Here is an actual play post

<...>

I don't think that is lacking in depth or colour. But it did not depend upon the GM introducing random details of intersections and beaten slaves.

That looks like some cool stuff there.

However, it's perhaps a tangential example to what I'm saying, for these reasons:

1. In your write-up it seems the various locations referenced are quite close together - each a staircase apart, if I read it right - and so there's very limited opportunity (or need) to introduce intersections and-or other geographical features.

2. This seems to be an example of epic-level play (one of the PCs is already a god, for Pete's sake!) near or at the end of a campaign, which implies most of the fundamental choices have already been made and any earlier distractions long since dealt with. It's a bit late to be introducing something as trivial as a slave being beaten. Yet with that said, you were still introducing DM-driven complications...

3. Further to 2 above, we don't see here how direct or indirect the party's path has been to get to this point; how often they veered off course, or whether there was any point when they could have lost the trail of the story entirely and thus never got this far at all.

You are assuming that, in RPGing, this sort of dynamism can only be the result of GM-driven play. But there is simply no evidence that that is the case!

The PCs in my Cortex+ Heroic game set off to find out why the Northern Lights were behaving strangely, but have not yet got very far north. They arrived at a dungeon and entered it, but learned nothing of relevance to their mission. Instead, after getting teleported to the depths by a Crypt Thing, they ended up in dark elf caverns and one of them tricked the drow out of their gold while the others had to fight their way out and trudge home. Since then, they have been caught up trying to save the villagers whose village was destroyed by Ragnarok cultists that the PCs could not defeat.

Your analysis and assumptions completely ignores the significance of player choice (eg a player chooses to go for the gold rather than continue with the quest) and of failed action resolution (the PCs fail to save the village, and so now - if they want to rescue the captured villagers - have to postpone their quest).

Quite to the contrary, I'm not ignoring the significance of player choice at all - I'm advocating that they get the opportunity to make those choices in the first place! They see a slave being beaten - do they divert to help the slave or not? They pass numerous intersections while traversing a passage with the angels - do they divert to explore these or not? While sneaking through the castle halls to a place where they can eavesdrop on the king's council they pass an open door to a bedroom full of treasure - do they (or does the party thief) divert to steal some or not? We'll never know if you-as-DM don't mention these little vignettes in passing and give them the opportunity.

This is what I'm after, and it has to come from the DM.

This is all assuming a GM-driven game. It shows a complete failure to grasp how player-driven RPGing actually works.

You may have read these blogs, but I don't think you actually processed what they are saying:

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​

Frame situations that will provoke choices (and not just requests for more setting download), let the players make choices, establish consequences (which may be what the players want, if checks succeed; or not what they want, if checks fail), and then frame something new in light of that. It's pretty simple. And it will produce a story that no one new in advance was going to come. Without the GM having to provide a menu of setting elements for the players to choose from.

That sort of game really seems to assume the players will be quite goal-oriented; and if so I'd rather see the DM framing scenes and introducing vignettes in passing that are intended to try and divert them from their goals or frustrate them from achieving such, rather than just relying on the luck of the dice to provide you with these opportunities.

And if a group of players aren't necessarily that goal-oriented and just want to play for gits and shiggles, how's that gonna work?

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Because you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks,

Yes I am, that's what point 3 (repeat until success) covers.

and (2) that the GM introduces no complications into the situation.

Any such complications just make point 3 (repeat until success) take longer.

You are posting a conch-passing game where there is no constraint on the players ability to narrate success for his/her PC.

To a large degree there isn't, provided the dice co-operate.

I check the feather to see if it can help me defeat a balrog. Check:

Succeeds - I'm one step closer to my goal and just narrated that step myself.

Fails - I'm where I was before in relation to my goal (and have a cursed feather) but can always try again; I go to the jewelry merchant and (after some interaction etc.) check the opal to see if it can help me defeat a balrog...

This is not how most RPGs work.

No it isn't...only story-now ones, from what I can see.

Lan-"I stopped by the bazaar today - seems like they had a market-wide special on curses. In related news, I just melted my d20 with a blowtorch"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

How much of a railroad is it of the players indicate they want to go to wherever but the GM makes them play through every intersection on the way there because the GM wrote down that those intersections exist?

Fair point, but I still say it's incumbent on the DM to at least mention that those intersections exist and thus give the players/PCs a choice on whether to do anything differently given this new information. (e.g. maybe one of these intersections provides a safer path to where we're going...we'll never know if we don't explore...)

Player facing ganes are built so that the next scene is created out of the resolution of the current scene, either by the players expressing a new interest or dealing with the complications created in the current scene. It falls the definition of railroad, which is the GM forcing outcomes the GM prefers.

But passes the definition of railroad if the definition includes undue reduction or elimination of player/PC choices or options, which IMO it does.