What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Arilyn]

Actually maybe you could, if you did it in a pure stream-of-consciousness style and could somehow find a way to write as fast as you think.

Lan-"maybe Alice in Wonderland was written in Story-Now mode"-efan

I think you are continuing to misunderstand Story Now games. Looking at literature, Tolkien engaged in exhaustive world building. Peter S. Beagle does not, and I would use his writing as a very good example of Story Now, assuming we're going to compare rpging to novels at all. Both authors have created beautiful, lasting works of literature. Beagle's body of work does not suffer in comparison to Tolkien, because his stories strongly focus on character goals and drives and less on where exactly every village lines up in a fictional space.

Surely, if players are claiming they've had rich rpging, using a Story Now approach, they are not just rushing to the end, and having things pop into existence, as implied by your Alice in Wonderland example. Their players must be making lots of decisions, and engaging in a world. It's just more of a Beagle than a Tolkien world.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

World building creates reasonable and predictable consequences for my actions, which increases my agency.

If I know about the land and its culture and politics, then I can predict that actions ("attack the innkeeper") will lead to consequences ("pursued by the town guard"), which gives me agency when deciding whether or not to attack the guy who watered down my ale.

 

[Lanefan]

Looking at literature, Tolkien engaged in exhaustive world building. Peter S. Beagle does not, and I would use his writing as a very good example of Story Now, assuming we're going to compare rpging to novels at all.

I'll have to take your word for this, having never heard of Peter S. Beagle before reading this post.

 

[Arilyn]

I'll have to take your word for this, having never heard of Peter S. Beagle before reading this post.

Most famous for "Last Unicorn", but lots of other good novels and short stories too, like "Innkeeper' s Song", "Tamsin", and "Giant Bones."

Also did the screenplay for the original "Lord of the Rings" movie, but don't hold that against him.

 

[pemerton]

All writing of fiction stories is "story now", in the sense that a person - the author - sits down now and writes a story.

Unlike RPGing, however, most published stories have been through processes of revision and editing. The relative lack of editing is one reason - obviously not the only one - why the stories generated via RPG play are likely to be less polished than those that are published by typical publishing houses.

The idea that you can't generate narratives like Tower of the Elephant or the trip through Moria via "story now" RPGing is obviously wrong. Those stories were actually written by someone, an author was attempting to convey a dramatic series of events that shine some sort of interesting light on some characters (moreso for the Moria sequence) and some themes (moreso, perhaps, for Tower of the Elephant, though hardly irrelevant for LotR). RPGing in accordance with "the standard narrativistic model" is intended to do the same thing. Where it differs is (i) it allocates different roles to different participants in the activity, and (ii) the nature of the activity is game-playing rather than pure storytelling.

The idea that you would ever produce something like the Moria sequence via dungeon-crawl type RPGing, where every corridor is mapped out and the arrival at every intersection is narrated by the GM, followed by the players describing how they cross through it, is obviously laughable. Because the Moria sequence does not contain that sort of material.

If the claim is that, by editing and revising a transcript of a dungeon-crawl type RPGing, you might get something that resembles the Moria sequence, well, that is utterly unsurrprising. All that amounts to is the claim that the Moria sequence is a writable story about fantastic personages making their way through a fantastic underworld - which claim is trivially true.

The goal of "story now" RPGing isn't to produce something that can be edited and rewritten to make a story. It's to produce a nd experience a story in the actual moment of play.

And for those who think it can't be done, well, they're wrong. How do I know? Because I've experienced it.

 

[pemerton]

More on the Moria sequence. I am now typing out the text on page 332 of my one-volume edition of LotR:

For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met no danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard's light, bobbing like a will-o'-the-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.

In this way they advanced some fifteen miles, measured in a direct line east, although they must have actually walked twenty miles or more.​

That takes less than a minute to read. In the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocate, it cannot be resolved in a minute at the table. That's sufficient to show that the style in quetsion can't deliver the Moria sequence in play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, around here that sure ain't true. We track finances as closely as we track anything else (except encumbrance, we kinda gave up on that ) and after each adventure the accumulated and carefully recorded treasure is divided evenly among the party with magic items being treated as if they were their worth in coin (a major reason we have a magic item price list!). If someone just starts putting random numbers on their finance sheet that's cheating just as much as if they arbitrarily changed their hit points.

Yeah, yet another chore in what is supposed to be fun. Its just far too easy to get it twisted up, and it has nothing to do with cheating! Half the time different people write stuff down at different times, in different places, nobody is 100% sure 3 weeks later exactly what was written where and which notes/scribbles on the margin of a character sheet, etc. are 'correct', etc. Its just not worth the trouble! I mean, basically, what we found was that we were quite capable, either by tracking it or by creating an abstract system, of knowing of the PCs were totally broke, had a few coins, enough cash to get by, plenty of cash, great loads of cash, or some gargantuan fortune. So why do the boring task of tracking actual numbers?

Not to the PCs on whose behalf we are tracking it.

Er...huh? 200 g.p. is 200 g.p.

I'm pretty sure you know what my response is to anything claiming any sort of 'existence' or 'facts' about a made up world...

As do I, but there's these annoying things called game mechanics we also have to deal with. My preferences certainly run toward less mechanics rather than more but I'll still admit there have to be some. Many of these are numbers which for the game to function have to be carefully tracked and recorded...and among these tracking money is among the least of the problems.

No, we don't have to deal with them, not beyond what actually makes the game play the way we want it to! There's no requirement beyond that, its pure entertainment nothing is mandated. I frequently employ a system, PACE, which is 4 pages long and has 2 permanent numbers, and one resource pool per player (and one for the GM). That's it. No money, no tracking things, nothing. It works VERY VERY well for many types of games. It doesn't even use dice.

I seem to keep coming back to my assertion that the boring bits, while boring, are still an essential part of the game and shouldn't be ignored or handwaved. This includes long-distance travel during which things might happen. This includes tracking wealth and arrows and time and distance. This includes resting for three days in the wilderness because the party's all just been beat to ratpoop and need to recover.

Yeah, but as with all the other times you have asserted this, you can only assert that you have this preference for tracking and handling lots of things. There's no inherent reason for that. When Gygax wrote all that stuff in the DMG about how you HAD to track time, etc. etc. etc. EVEN THEN my 16yr-old self chuckled and wondered what he was smoking.

Same level and type of essential as the bass player who only plays a repeating three note riff through the whole song - boring as hell for him but the song wouldn't be any good without his contribution.

Yeah, I think you can get all the same results without all the tedium and trouble.

Random sea monsters might not have been on that list but travel was, and if that travel takes 'em through sea monster territory there's a chance they're gonna find trouble...or trouble is gonna find them.

Right, so when this journey starts, or gets to the ocean, there COULD be a scene where the PCs decide that getting to Tokyo faster/cheaper/whatever is worth some chance of sea monsters. That's a potential play for a GM in a Story Now type of game, particularly if there are players who have some interest in the subject. It will depend on the game, which is what I've maintained the whole time. You simply cannot make these blanket statements about what is important in an RPG.

Oddly enough, I rarely use them for that purpose. In most of my dungeon-type adventures I've usually got the occupants accounted for, and few are "wandering". Some might be doing guard patrols or whatever, but even then I'll know thier routes etc.

What I do use wandering monsters for most often is situations just like this - a party is travelling through some potentially dangerous territory, let's see what finds them. So: wandering monsters, meet wandering party.

Which is fine, if the party wants to wander around and explore and meet stuff. There's this forest in my campaign. It is a dangerous place. One of the PCs learned that his missing brother was probably held in this forest somewhere. The deal was that he could wander around in the forest looking for his brother, but he was going to run into trouble. Still, none of the trouble was RANDOM, I just made a list, and when he failed in the SC to find his brother, the next monster on the list showed up, wherever he was physically located at that time (I do have a map of this area, made in the 1980's, so I could actually guestimate what location he was in and describe it. This worked well, it was basically "Here are the stakes, take your chances." I am not sure I'd call it 'wandering' monsters, though it probably does something similar to what you did.

 

[pemerton]

This is great as long as you can guarantee there will be some failures along the way to make things interesting and-or challenging. But one assumes the players are within reason maxing their odds of success as best they can, meaning that what has the potential to be an exciting and interesting adventure (LotR as written) could instead turn into a rather boring cakewalk (they just go around the south end of the mountains and reach the Rohan unopposed) if the dice allow it.

I thought you didn't like railroads? But now you're asserting that there must be railroading lest things be boring!

Of course there is no guarantee that, when you sit down to play, any particular set of events will occur.

Ron Edwards pointed that out back in 2004

when he said "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 bolding is mine, the italics are his.)

But because the players will fail checks (unless their dice are loaded or the maths and system of the game are broken) things will happen. Why would it be boring for the Fellowship to reach Rohan unopposed? It wasn't boring for them to reach the Misty Mountains unopposed, because then exciting things happened. Well, exciting things might happen in Rohan too.

As Tolkien writes it, there is a lot of success in Rohan: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimili succeed in tracking the orcs, and succeed in finding a brooch (therefore ensuring that it is true, in the fiction, that the hobbits were still alive at that point), and succeed in befriend Eomer and getting horses from him, and succeed in finding signs of the hobbits where the orcs were burned, and succeed in meeting Gandalf. Gandalf and the hobbits succeed in activating the Ents. Gandalf then succeeds in activating Theoden and the Rohirrim, succceeds again in bringing Erkenbrand to Helm's Deep, and succeeds in besting Saruman on the steps of Isengard.

Failure at any of those points would produce exciting fiction. It would be different from what JRRT wrote. But that's the point of "story now" RPGing - to play to find out, rather than to be railroaded through the GM"s preconceived exciting story.

the failure vs. the giants is not the players' fault this time - it's on the DM for not giving the players a chance to prepare and-or determine the PCs' method and direction of approach.

They couldn't, unless they were rude and interrupted you while you were talking.

I'll repost for what I think is the fourth time:

Are you really saying the following is railroading?

GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?

Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.

GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.

<players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​

<snip>

Let's consider a variation of the above:

. . .

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​

The players had ample chance to say they wanted to be stealthy. When they mentioned the making of potions before they left. When the <stuff> happened. When the GM described them arriving at the entrance to a massive cavern.

I think I asked [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] whether players at his table need permission to speak. I can tell you that my players, if they were intending to be stealthy upon arriving at the cavern entrance, would let me know. We might then frame a check in which they try to (say) create a Wizard's Screen before the fire giant sentries notice them.

it's come full circle from 1e D&D - there g.p. = x.p. and here x.p. = g.p.

I don't understand. Earning XP in Cortex+ Heroic has nothing in particular to do with gp, or wealth. XP get spent to change the PC sheet (eg change distinctions, change affiliations) or to add new abilities or to step up existing ones.

What about ammunition e.g. arrows, bolts, bullets - is that tracked?

No. If an ability has the Gear limit then it can be shut down (at the instigation of the player or the GM). That could be narrrated as running out of ammunition.

I was originally talking about a medieval-fantasy journey from Washington to Tokyo (in comparison with a similar journey from Boston to New York) and even joked there about not having the Stark jet available.

Yes, a jet plane makes the trip quite a trivial thing. But having to do it on foot/wagon/ship is not trivial at all, which was and still is my point.

Yet some people made those trips and - whatever rigours they suffered along the way - arrived in relatively good health. There's nothing unrealistic about the PCs doing the same.

That their arrival in good health is a matter of narrative stipulation is not especially shocking. Most fiction is the result of stipulation, even when RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

Not all games involve resource management. Backgammon is my favourite board game; it has no resource management. Five hundred is my favourite card game; it has no resource management.

Not all RPGs involve resource management. Burning Wheel has very little. Cortex+ Heroic has some on the GM-side (the Doom Pool) but almost none on the player side. Obviously there are mechanically simpler games with none at all (eg Cthulhu Dark).

The idea that you have to track (say) ammunition is bizarre. It's a preference, not an iron law of fantasy RPGing.

The idea that unless you track ammunition then characters can get off infiintely many shots is also bizarre. That just shows an ignorance of the range of actual and posssible RPG mechanics. Here's one I just made up: the player delcares a missile attack. The dice are rolled; the check fails. The GM declares "You go to draw an arrow from your quiver, only to realise that it's empty!"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think we know enough about how Earth works and almost enough about how some other planets work to be able to more or less conjecture a consistent pattern as to how they're formed and what they're probably made of...and from there working out the basic geology isn't a big stretch.

That said, I've put my geology knowledge (of which I've a bit - it was my field in college) to a severe test when designing my current world; along the lines of "If this gets done to an otherwise innocent and ordinary planet, what happens? OK, how about this? And then this? [etc.]" The Godswall is a result of one of these "this"es.

Well, I was a chem major, but I ate science for breakfast and I still read a lot about many subjects. So the other day I read on Ars Technica all about yet another (of several) theories and advances in the understanding of Western North America. What did I get out of it? We know almost squat. SOME sort of really complex plate tectonics is going on, but its like trying to decipher where all the swirls came from in the chocolate chip swirl ice cream. Except its a giant 4.5 billion yr old pudding.

Its not that we know NOTHING, but from first principles we're not even close to being able to figure out what sort of terrain would result from a given set of conditions, nor if some hypothesized terrain is realistically possible or not, beyond a certain point.

As for other planets, we have very little understanding of the basic planetary geology of Mars, like how its crust is structured, what layers it has, etc. Anything beyond that? We can deduce something about the various moons of Jupiter/Saturn from gravimetry, but we're still just guessing about the processes involved in surface formations and why the various moons all look so different when they are effectively all made from very similar starting materials.

The point is, you could hypothesize almost anything that wasn't stupidly extreme like 500 mile tall mountains with an Earth-level gravity, and nobody could really call it 'impossible', or even be sure if its improbable, given that we have one sample Earth to judge by. In terms of more local smaller-scale features, I think there's a certain understanding "this basin was formed because of crustal extension, see those extension faults over there that you call hills?" but WHY was there extension? Nobody is quite sure...

Yep, and if we make the same trip next year it should take roughly the same amount of time and we should arrive in roughly the same place.

I've never been there but I've heard of it, and there's a few similarities with the Godswall in my world. A few.

I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.

I've yet to be called on anything. I have mile-tall trees in my campaign, floating chunks of rock (only one that anyone has found so far, but still) etc. I expect if I hand you my largest-scale map you'd mostly decree the geography to be modestly plausible, but nobody has ever bothered to comment on it, and I think only 2-3 players ever got interested enough to even look at it for more than 5 seconds.