What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

So for me, the answer to the OP is always consistency and inspiration. As Tolkien pointed out, it is critical for fantasy worlds to be consistent. If they are not consistent they stop being believable, and unravel. One way to achieve consistency is to work it out beforehand i.e. world build.

Yet Middle Earth is not consistent. The economics and sociology of The Shire are absurd (there is so much metal, but where is it minded and smelted? it is isolated, and yet appears to have almost unlimited supplies of traded goods; etc). Where do the elves of Lorien get their food?

The narrative achievement of JRRT's Lorien is not to make that place consistent, but to make the "faerie queen" trope believable in the context of a more-or-less naturalistic novel. (As opposed to in what would more clasically be thought of as a fairy tale.)

The "consistency" of fantasy worlds is about tropes and genre. Which is, in fact, what most "story now" games rely upon to support framing and setting.

The springboard of a consistent world that is in some sense external to all the characters is then critical. It is a terrible lack to try to do without it.

In my experince it's actually not that hard.

But in any event, my main contention for the past 500+ posts is this: the more that the GM is authoring, and the more the GM is authoring unilaterally, then the less the players are authoring. Hence their agency over the content of the shared fiction is reduced.

If the game is mainly about establishing a shared fiction, then it follows that their agency per se is reduced. As the OP noted, not all RPGing is about establishing a shared fiction - eg classic Gygaxian D&D is closer to a type of puzzle-solving - but I think that a lot of contemporary RPGing is not classic D&D.

 

[pemerton]

IFor me, strictly, there was no need to go beyond "does". I realise he wanted to make his point clearer, but thinking is doing, just as much as opening a door is.

Thinking may be doing, but not all doing is thinking, feeling or expressing an agenda. Character advocacy is not just each player gets to delcare actions for his/her PC. It is about conveying a personality, an orientation, aspirations, for the PC.

Not all RPGs have the scope for that, even if the player is telling us what his/her PC is trying to do.

(Trying to do is also not the same thing as doing. This also matters to character advocacy, because if all trying falls flat, for GM pre-authored reasons, then it is really the GM who is telling us what this character is about - ie futiity or failure - rather than the player.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]? OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"

Same thing, ain't it?

OK, sounds great!

As long as we can all agree the same result could easily be achieved in a DM-driven or traditonal game, we're good on this one.

Lanefan

Not disagreeing with you, crossing the Pacific Ocean could be something you'd play out. Crossing the Misty Mountains COULD be something you'd skip over. There aren't some hard and fast rules about what you should do or have to do or may do or not do. That's what constitutes the art of GMing an FRPG!

I don't object to the concept of playing out things. I object to the concept of playing them out 'just because'. I want REASONS why I do these things, just like Steven Spielberg wants reasons to shoot a scene for an adventure movie. The reasoning may be different, but the overall concept is the same, tell an exciting and interesting story that has some direction and focus to it.

As for what 'can be achieved' in different games. I think both types of game often achieve similar results, but I don't think they are exactly the same.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Second, and related, it reminds us how the trip through Moria is a story of failure upon failure - as Aragorn later laments. By my count (with fails and successes bolded in my account) there are at least 5 failures, interrupted only by a success with a cost, before the players eventually succeed at a combat. The final confrontation is then another success with a cost (ie Gandalf dies). It would be quite unlucky to get this happening in 4e, as 4e is quite a mathematically generous system. BW is capable of giving this sort of thing, though. It is mathematically pretty brutal.

Failed checks is how, in "story now" RPGing, adverse consequences become part of the fiction. This is why PCs don't always get what they want; and why players' plans don't always work out. (It's not because they guessed wrong about what is in the GM's notes.) The imagined Moria recount shows how this can happen.

This brings up a fine point of game design. Where 4e tends to a theory of granting success, and thus forward continuation of the story in the direction favored by the players, BW and even DW (6 or less fails, tougher odds than 4e SCs generally have) are much less generous. I think this partly stems from 4e's equivocal position as a Story Now game. The designers seem to have more envisaged play as a kind of mix of GM-generated content with "go to the action." Where it is incoherent it suffers.

When I wrote HoML, I found that DCs really needed to be considerably higher, and there aren't 'easy', 'medium', and 'hard' DCs either. If something is worth dicing for, then its 'hard'! That doesn't mean a skilled character is super likely to fail (maybe 25% of the time, or even 35% sometimes) but there's a lot of "things didn't quite go right" and the game generally specifies that missing your check by 5 or less points is a 'soft fail'. Beyond that you probably went from frying pan directly into fire. It works a bit better than the 4e math, IMHO.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Actually it could, in that a DM narrating what you quoted would be fine except replacing "they" with "you" where relevant.

Why?

There are no intersections: "no openings to other galleries and tunnels on either side"; no distractions; no rubble or unsound ceiling, no danger. All of this is neatly summed up in that narration, which also doesn't just plop the characters at the end of the passage but describes what they are passing through to get there.

We did exactly this in the game I play in, last session: we walked through two days worth of almost-uniform boring straight-line passage. Thing was, we'd been warned by the locals that this passage was full of dangers - orcs used it as a hiding place, giant crocodiles roamed its length, etc. - and so we were on our guard the whole time and expecting trouble all the way. But in the end the only stops were, in order:

- we found a crack big enough to cause concern, the Dwarf checked for stability and all was good (very quick at the table)
- we found a campsite used by orcs; a quick look around and we carried on (took a minute or two at most at the table)
- ws stopped for an overnight rest (this took some time at the table due to some ongoing inter-PC role-play, due to the clerics having a hard time getting their spells back each monring, and due to us all having to check against a quasi-permanent local effect that wants to mess with our minds)
- we found a second, larger crack that led outdoors; a druid shapeshifted into a small bird and went out to see what was going on and where we were in relation to our destination, then came back (this took a few minutes at the table while what he saw was narrated)

The last noteworthy thing:

- we found a dead orc with its back burnt; this told us we were nearing the passage's end as we know from local info-gathering (and our own observation from a great distance) there be dragons ahead where the passage comes out; and very soon after this we also found a couple of landmarks within the passage the locals had told us about as signs we were nearing the end

This caused us to stop and camp out again, and the session ended there with us still making plans. Next session (and next morning) we spell up and then go take on - or evade - something like 15 (!) dragons that we need to get past in order to get where we're going.

Lan-"to tell the story of why we need to go where we're going would take far too long for me to want to type out"-efan

 

[Maxperson]

This is why I describe GM-driven play as "the GM reading out his/her notes to the players".

Thereby demonstrating that you completely got what I said wrong. I actually believe it was a genuine mistake this time, though, so I'll explain further.

I wasn't saying it was all or mainly pre-authored, as your post implies. Rather, after the game plays out you can see from beginning to end what happened and write it down. It's not at all about the DM reading out of notes. Our style of play doesn't skip a huge portion of what would be interesting in a novel, though, like yours does.

 

[Maxperson]

The gameworld is not "neutral". Nor "biased". Those are properties of judges, or of policies, but not of authored works.

The game world is the game world. It's absurd for the PCs to always have an easy, instant journey to wherever they have interest, but that's exactly what happens in your style of play if the players don't have an interest in travel. It stretches belief. It's like red coming up 1000 times in a row at roulette, because the players aren't interested in black or green.

You are claiming, in effect, that RPGers have a moral duty to play in a style that you like. It's absurd.

LOL (the only response this deserves)

Your use of the word "force" is also absurd. "Hey everyone, should the story be about X?" "Yep, OK!" "OK, you come upon this Xiness. What do you do?" Are you really saying that everyone was forced to engage with X?

It was a bit odd. That's what I get for posting in a hurry this morning. I mean that you are forced into the absurdity of always allowing them to get where they are interested in going, despite possible and probably dangers along the way at least SOME of the time, just because they have no interest in travel and want to cut to the chase.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The adventures of the 9 members of the company were important, but they were not goals. Pippin did not have the goal of becoming a guard to the steward. That happened as a result of the journey not being rushed to the conclusion, but instead being walked out. Merry and Pippin did not have goals to go to Fangorn and meet ents, but rather that also happened as a result of the journey. The same with the rest of them. The only two real goals were destroy the ring at Mt. Doom and the lesser goal of become king for Aragorn. This is a great example of the style that I and @Lanefan espouse. The journey can result in all kinds of awesome roleplaying, character changing, and world changing events. Those events are missed out on in Story Now when you just put the PCs at the giants, because that's what the interest/goal is.

I don't really agree with this. I mean, I can't say what in theory is possible in GM-centered play, it TOTALLY depends on what the specific GM pre-authored, how they relate that to the PCs, etc.

But I think that all the characters have significant motivations. Merry and Pippin are the least developed characters, besides Legolas who is almost really a minor character. They seem to be the quintessential "just along to have an adventure" types TBH. Even they find things which challenge them. Pippin comes face to face with madness and grief, and becomes torn between duty founded on honoring his oath to Denethor and love and pity for Faramir. I don't think this is just random stuff! Tolkien is turning Pippin into a fully-formed character here and creating a profound human conflict which he must resolve. Later he's expelled from service to the Tower for his actions, though clearly everyone finds those actions laudable.

Likewise Merry learns about true bravery and loyalty and about pushing yourself beyond the normal bounds of what is possible. He picks himself up and hews the flesh of the Ring Wraith regardless of terror, all for the love of an old man whom he hardly knows, and a woman he doesn't know at all! In the process he fulfills a prophecy, which is to say in Tolkien's parlance he plays his part in God's Plan of his own free will. This is not random stuff!

Now, what agendas do hypothetical players of these 'characters' have? Well, at the point where those things happen, that's fairly obvious. What was Pippin's motivation when he hooked up with Frodo on his way to Took Land? We don't know, maybe just to find out how a foolish young man would mature in the face of danger.

I think, partly, the trouble here is in not having a full explication of all the elements of Story Now. While we talk a lot about player agenda and character goals and relate the two, there ARE other formulations of Story Now. Eero Tuovinen mentioned some in passing. The entire milieu could present a question/challenge/agenda for example. I think this is a central point of Tolkien's work BTW, the question of free will and the 'playing of a part' in the unfurling of Illuvatar's plan, as shaped by the Great Music even before the founding of Arda. Melkor's great crime isn't opposing Illuvatar, his 'rebellion' is a vital part of Illuvatar's plan, NOTHING can truly be against the will of God! No, Melkor's great crime is the imposition of his will onto others. The evil that Sauron represents in LotR is just that, the will to dominate others and force them to do your bidding. This is the very reason why the Ring is unusable by free people, because its power is domination, it cannot be anything BUT evil and do anything but evil in accord with Tolkien's conception of good and evil.

The point is that this makes the actions and plot of all the events in LotR quite central and vitally important. They directly address the central question. When Merry and Pippin arrive in Fangorn they become the catalyst which finally drives the Ents to assert THEIR free will, one of many such acts which collectively lead to the downfall of Sauron.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I guess I look for a somewhat more robust form of tracking that notes and scribbles in the margin.

And IME getting it twisted up has a lot to do with cheating, because the twistings almost invariably end up in the PC's favour - sometimes massively so. (one instance: our DM got suspicious of one player's PC wealth and ran a quick audit - he added up the treasury shares the PC would have received over its career then compared the total to what was on the character sheet. The character sheet number was higher just in coin alone, never mind what had been spent in addition on magic items, gear, etc. along the way! Suffice to say that player wasn't in that game for much longer...)

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?

In the game I play in our last couple of adventures have been pretty lucrative; yet one of my characters is nearly out of g.p. again because she's spent it all on magic items, spell acquisition, MU-guild dues, and other expenses. If I didn't track her wealth carefully I could easily have spent far more than she had available...which is unfair.

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

All that tells me is that you're not seeing any of this through the eyes of the PCs, to whom all of this is quite real.

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.

Were it not for the goal of trying to make the game world a believable place I'd probably be on board with this train of thought. But requirement number one is that the game world be believable - or at least as believable as it can be, given the nature of fantasy - and that's what many of the game mechanics I've been referring to are in aid of.

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.

Where I took that to be one of his truly solid bits of advice. Unfortunately he then himself goes on to overturn it when he says that each day between game sessions should also represent a day passing in the game world, which makes no in-game sense whatsoever! That's the bit which caused me to question his choice of recreational mind-benders.

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.

Sure I can; when coming from the basis that having a sound, consistent game-world or setting in which to play is a foundational requirement of any RPG and without which at least one big aspect of an RPG - exploration - simply cannot work as intended. Despite what you and others have claimed here, I maintain you just can't make it all up on the fly and hope to remain forward- and backward-consistent for any length of time, for two reasons:

1. Nobody's memory is good enough to remember it all unless the campaign is just a few sessions long, and
2. There's so much risk of backward inconsistency (e.g. my example earlier of the Godswall) that it's pretty much inevitable that it will happen at some point in a big enough way as to invalidate something that happened earlier in play, which is unacceptable.

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.

Had you rolled on the list for what he met instead of just taking the next one up you'd be very close to a wandering monster set-up.

Lanefan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Odds of success at what? Making the game boring?!

Here let me note that for YEARS, during the Great Edition Wars, whenever someone would contrast 4e's balanced PCs against 3e's crazy disparities and potentially monstrously overpowered things like 'CoDzilla' we were told that this was of no concern because players simply aren't interested in ruining games, or at the very least the GM can just give them a 'slap' or something and its all just OK. But the very notion that it could be in the player's hands when its Story Now is a terrible failing of the whole technique. Now, I am certainly not accusing you of taking the former position on 3e, but it is amusing how ANYTHING can be argued against!

The point is, I think its perfectly feasible to give players some credit. Maybe its also best to provide them with mechanics that don't tempt them to bend the game that way, as they are likely to be advocates of their characters and thus the temptation exists. I do firmly advocate for a system where 'creating a dramatically interesting character' and 'creating a mechanically useful character' are consistent goals. I'd say it points out that coherent games with rules centered on character exposition and definition are probably a good thing!