What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

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.

That's simply not true. It can indeed be done in our style. If you take a game played out in our style, even if it takes 2000 hours of game play to get those 15 miles, it would still be written as Tolkien wrote it. The detail of our style doesn't make for good novel writing, so you have to condense portions. You wouldn't write out every fork paused at or door examined.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Rewinding time is unsatisfactory to me as a player and as a DM. The giants had already seen them, which makes it too late to be stealthy without a rewind happening.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I agree with the second line but disagree with the first. There doesn't have to be any railroading, there merely need to be challenges put in place that the PCs are more or less likely to run across, depending where they go.

Were I a DM setting up LotR as an RPG, once the discussion of what route to take came up I'd put the known hazard Saruman and his patrols on the player's map, make sure Gandalf's player knew about the pass, make sure Gimli's player (and Gandalf's) knew about Moria in different ways, put the map on the table and ask where they're going.

I'd already know the possible things they might face if they choose to try and go by Isengard; if they choose the mountain pass; or if they choose Moria.* I already have the watcher at the gate statted out, I already know the odds for Saruman's crows spotting the party if they're caught in the open (and for Gandalf noticing them in turn), I know the chances for Saruman catching on to their attempt to cross the pass and messing it up, I've got the Balrog statted out, I've got the mines partly hard-mapped and partly randomized, I've got the orcs statted out at least by numbers and types (I'll worry about individuals if and when combat with them come sup), etc. etc.

* - and if they choose a plan D I haven't seen coming e.g. try going through Mirkwood (good luck!) and coming in from the north I've at least got enough knowledge of the game world to make up challenges on the fly for that session, then during the week I can tighten it up.

And yes I know some of what I've pre-done is going to go by the boards because their path won't take them there. Doesn't bother me.

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.

The system does seem to depend on this, yes.

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.

Er...exciting things did happen in Rohan and very likely would have even if the PCs had skipped the mountains/Lothlorien etc. entirely. But the game/book would be the poorer for having skipped all that, and nowhere near as exciting or interesting. (never mind the party would still have been nine, unless Boromir chose a different time and place to go PvP on them)

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.

Gandalf also succeeds on his resurrection roll...

All that success, however, is built upon a string of failures: everybody fails to notice Boromir (or fails to act on what they do notice), Boromir ultimately fails at everything and dies for his trouble, everyone except Sam manages to lose track of Frodo and thus the ring (in other words, blown goals for all except Frodo and Sam), Merry and Pippin fail to hide and instead get themselves captured, etc.

re the giants example:

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.

It's the 'alternate' version I've been looking at, the one where the fire giants notice the party as soon as they arrive. The version where the DM describes them arriving at the cavern entrance before any giants have been sighted is just fine in and of itself, though there's no mention of any narration of what was passed through in order to get there (see Moria exampels above).

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.

From the way you put it I read it as spending x.p. to acquire plot points which in turn could then be used to acquire needed gear, which boils down to buying gear with x.p. rather than g.p.

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.

What player is ever going to narrate their PC as running out of ammunition when she doesn't have to?

Lanefan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

I think what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is getting at is that in a game which is so player-centered the players are really the ones in charge of how the next scene is going to be framed, because it will address THEIR interests.

So, if they're a bunch of sneaky bastards who wouldn't march straight into trouble for any money, then the GM could be faulted for the narration that was presented, because it would clearly be missing what the PCs are all about! OTOH it would be a fine narration of a bunch of bold warriors marching to glory! Lord Jus of Demonland would most certainly approve! Maybe more realistically a party that was interested in a more 'wargame like' kind of tactical maximization approach might be flexible, but then I would expect THAT party to ask about what they are in store for, deliberately gather intel, perform recon, etc. I wouldn't expect them to just say "yes" when GM asks if they're heading to the giant cave. I would expect, again in a player-centered game, for these players to start elaborating plans and etc. Soon they should be making checks to find the Giant's defenses, the weaknesses in such, and the ways around them, etc. etc. etc. not just saying 'yes we approach'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

I would, personally, think that genre logic and associated "things by default should make sense in the world" would be enough. The fact that an inn can exist, and a keeper run it implies that there is some degree of law and order. That in turn implies authorities (as does the existence of legal tender, another necessity for inns). Genre logic then supplies a form for those authorities, like 'town guard', or 'kingsmen' or whatever. I agree that these conventions do work as you state, and help to create agency. I'm just not sure that specifically named inns, in specifically mapped out towns, positioned in a known geographical relation to other things, etc. is really all that critical an element of that.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Neither backgammon nor five hundred (whatever that is) are RPGs and thus neither is relevant here.

Not all RPGs involve resource management.

Maybe not, but they should. Part of playing a character's role is to manage its possessions along with its abilities and personality; and an RPG that eschews this is ignoring a key aspect of what playing a role entails. Ditto for the party as a whole: its collective possessions etc. e.g. acquired treasure also need to be carefully managed.

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).

These then aren't fully living up to the RP part of RPG.

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!"

If ammunition isn't tracked there's two obvious possible results:

- the character can shoot an infinite number of times, or
- the character cannot shoot at all as there is no ammuniton listed on its sheet.

Something like your idea quoted above is a third option, to be sure; but mechanically much clunkier than just tracking the ammo would be in that each time a shot is taken there'll be an extra roll involved: the check for successfully getting the shot away and then the more usual roll to hit.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I happen to live in the middle of the most geologically complex bit of western NA and from what I can tell they've got what's going on mostly figured out in terms of what is moving where and how fast, and what has resulted from which particular events in the past. They've also got a handle on what will happen next - the Juan de Fuca plate, for example, will eventually disappear - but they're no closer to predicting specific events e.g. earthquakes than before.

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.

Perhaps, but that "certain point" is more than good enough for our world-design purposes.

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.

True, though I think we know or can deduce a bit more than you're allowing for.

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...

The why in this case doesn't matter all too much, just the end results that show up on the map.

But, in game design a DM can always toss in the why if she feels like it.

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.

I guess I'd be that guy, then - I'd call you on the floating rocks for sure, if only to ask in-character "How the ...?".

As for the map, I'd gladly critique it if asked but otherwise wouldn't call you on it, though I might inwardly cringe if there was anything egregiously wrong.

Same as I do with most of the maps included at the front of various fantasy novels - they're almost always cringe-worthy. Even Middle Earth has at least one bit that makes me wince every time I see it: the rectangular mountain range around Mordor looks more than a bit artificial...

Lanefan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

Well, A fine and Private Place, and The Last Unicorn, both written before he was 30 are definitely in the same literary league as LotR. In fact he was the author of Ralph Bakshi's screenplay for LotR as well! He has won multiple literary awards, a Hugo, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, etc.

So, you have a new treat in order! His stories are quite interesting, but it is true, world building is not a big part of these stories. The Last Unicorn is a bit reminiscent of the works of people like David Lindsay, though much less abstract and vastly more readable. Maybe Doris Lessing would be another comparison point, though very different in many respects.

That reminds me: Lindsay was a central influence on non other than JRR Tolkien! This shows that Tolkien was not simply a fantasist, his work is founded in deep philosophical and spiritual concerns. I guess his association with C. S. Lewis would already be enough to establish that, as Lewis is certainly as much philosopher and fantasy author (though again this is often not appreciated by many casual readers).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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...)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

All of this just goes to show that we play a completely different game, despite any similarities. I'm mystified by your insistence that it is basically impossible to run a campaign without all this tracking and pretend 'realism' and such. And yet, I've been doing it for decades... It works FINE. It is certainly working great for me! I have no interest in making anyone else do it my way, but it can only make me chuckle when you effectively tell me I'm doing it wrong!

 

[pemerton]

Our style of play doesn't skip a huge portion of what would be interesting in a novel, though, like yours does.

This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the passage of time in real life isn't, or oughtn't to be, a factor in game design. Ie it seems completely untenable.

What "huge portion" is skipped in my imaginary novel which contains the episode about the fire giants? (And for the sake of argument, let's suppose that it's already at 1,500 pages.) are you really saying the novel would be even more awesome if it contained an extra 50-page section describing the trip from the dwarfhold to the giants' cavern, noting all the intersections that the protagonists passed by and through, wondering whether they should proceed down them but eventually choosing to continue on to the cavern?

All published fiction involves editing. Choices about pacing. About when the protagonists fail, and when they succeed. A "story now" game (I emphasise that word deliberately) does not involve choices about failure - that is dictated by mechanics. It only involves choices about success when the stakes are low (such as the trip from the dwarves to the giants' cavern); when the stakes are high, success is also dictated by mechanics.

It does involve choices about pacing. By choosing to "say 'yes'" a referee can signal that the stakes are low, and thereby affect pacing. By narrating the consequences of failure as "hard" or "soft" moves (to use the DW terminology), the GM can affect pacing. Decisions about framing and the introduction of complications affect pacing. Because RPGing doesn't involve any editing, these pacing choices made in real time become all the more important.

Because the fire giant example is MADE UP (by his own testimony, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] spent whole seconds on it; I spent a couple of minutes), NO ONE knows anything about the pacing of that session, the pacing conventions at that (imaginary) table, etc. It's therefore obviously impossible to assert that there is anything objectionable about the GM's decision to "say 'yes'" to the desire to arrive at the cavern.

To assert, therefore, that it skips "a huge portion" of what might be interesting is just silly. Do you really lie in bed at night wondering what fascinating things happened to the Fellowship on their trek across Eregion, that JRRT didn't bother to tell you?

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.

How do the players know there are no secret doors? Did the GM just "railroad them through" without letting them check? Heresy!

Did the GM roll for wandering monsters? Every 3 turns? That's 16 checks - even if none of them came up 6 (a 1 in 20 chance, or thereabouts), that would take more than a minute to do.

And how wide is the corridor? Without having been told that, how were the players meant to make sensible choices about marching order?

I don't see how you can possibly think that the JRRT-style narration would be OK, yet object to the fire giant example. Suppose a player asks, "Did we pass any intersections?" the Gm can simply answer "No, you didn't - it was just a gradually descending tunnel the whole time."


EDIT: I wrote the above before reading the following post from Maxperson:

If you take a game played out in our style, even if it takes 2000 hours of game play to get those 15 miles, it would still be written as Tolkien wrote it. The detail of our style doesn't make for good novel writing, so you have to condense portions. You wouldn't write out every fork paused at or door examined.

So your game plays just like JRRT wrote it provided that you rewrite what actually happened to cut out the 1999 hours and 59 minutes of detail. That's my point: your style of play does not give the Moria sequence. It doesn't give "story now", and it only gives "story later" with editing and rewriting.

That's fine if you like it: but when I say "story now" I mean what I say. I play RPGs in a way that can actually yield the Moria sequence, or something like it, in play.