What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's more a statement that ME's consistency is not complete, and that was in line with what I understand of Tolkien's focus. He says that he was concerned to ensure geographic, chronological and linguistic consistency. He did not always succeed, but he was hugely helped in those goals through his prior world-building. His books would not be the achievement they are, were it not for his world-building.

Honestly, JRRT's world building never impressed me in the slightest. Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!

It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.

In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama. Its a bit like a train set, the trains go round and round, but nothing else ever changes. The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit.

This captures quite well why GNS comes under criticism for turning a blind eye to some kinds of roleplaying. I would call stories set in the Wild Card setting "shared fiction" and yet many details of that setting arrive to authors as part of the world backstory. The point being, participants can share creation of fiction in a setting that was created by a subset, or none (!) of those participants. Say we choose to play in an authentic 5th century Roman setting? None of us create that setting, but our fiction is shared. We might add some fantasy to it in specific ways. Indeed, to the extent that concepts pre-exist or arise in the minds of some and not all participants, the fiction is never shared in the sense you want.

Possibly that is because the sense you want is very purist, and it for me isn't fully admitting what is going on. If my character nominates a fictional manufacturer of her fictional grav bike, then other players should accept my fiction. They shouldn't say - no, that manufacturer doesn't exist so your character cannot be sitting on her grav bike, that said manufacturer putatively crafted. Thus, they accept something that they had no agency over. This is a constant. The only question is the scale and siting of who is doing what.

If someone comes to my group with Barker's EPT and we feel excited about that world, we can still weave our own tales into it, with full agency over our part, our fictions, without needing to have agency over the details the world-build provides. Or in our shared world, I might be obsessed with the cartography, while Alice is obsessed with the politics: a shared world-build is still a world-build.

And if we come down to - is the question really about whether a world-build can be shared? Then sure, of course it can. But not everyone wants to do it, and even when they do they frequently have different parts they are interested in. The value of the world-build remains the same. For shared fiction to work, each player must accept the fictional contributions of other players, and all must accept historical contributions they have chosen to rely on, and if that is more on one player, a DM, and less on others, the P/Cs, that is fine. It cannot be tarred "classic" DnD and mildly denigrated as "puzzle-solving"! It can and should be narratively rich.

All of this is great, but what is the common reality?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And the point I'm making is that none of that requires Story Now. All of it can and is easily done with my playstyle. None of it has any obvious Story Now goals that are plastered on the character, except for the quest to destroy the ring and becoming king. You have to rationalize that such goals were written down and then apply them, when there is no evidence of such goals existing.

OK, you COULD do it with your playstyle, I already stated that I am not excluding that possibility, how does that change any of my points? I disagree that there are no goals or perhaps they should be labeled 'themes' in this specific context of LotR. I expostulated a deep theme, the nature of evil, that it takes the form of dominance, etc. This is a deep theme which the players can explore with their characters in a setting. Tolkien DOES explore it with his characters, albeit in a novel and not an RPG. I'm not 'rationalizing' any goals. In fact I dispute that Frodo's goal is to destroy the ring! He certainly takes on a quest to do so, and I think its reasonable to assume that for SOME part of the story he works towards it steadily. I don't think it is really the core of what he is about though. In fact, you could see the final chapter of his journey to Mt Doom as a rejection. In fact I think that part of the problem he has there is he's NOT really resolved to destroy the ring. In the end it overthrows his mind. Only Gollum's intervention, fate, spares the world from a new Age of Darkness.

In the first sentence you say it's it's fairly obvious what the agenda is, and in the third you contradict yourself and say you don't know. The third sentence is correct, because you don't know and it isn't at all obvious. However, since that event(and all the other character growth and challenges) are part and parcel to my style of play, I don't need to invent hypothetical agendas to have it fit my playstyle.

We're not inventing hypothetical agendas because we're not determining some agenda after the fact and trying to view an existing story through that lens. When we RPG we are creating a story, using an agenda or a theme. Thus you have no substance for objection here.

This is a more plausible than inventing hypotheticals, but I think it's still a bit of a stretch. Exploring free will is exceptionally broad as an agenda. It literally allows everything you choose to do to be exploration of that agenda, including domination of others since you are engaging in your free will when you do so. Also, if nothing can truly be against the will of god, then domination is also a part of the will of god. Lastly, the ring is usable by anyone, free or not. Gollum used it, Frodo used it, Bilbo used it, Galadriel could have used it, Gandalf could have used it, and so on. Some of it's powers were dependent on the powers of the wielder, and it amplified those powers.

Yes, it amplified their powers, making it possible for them to DOMINATE OTHERS. Remember the words of Galadriel. "Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!"

The very spell of making of the One Ring is a spell of domination "One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them!" All of the lesser ring bearers, even mighty Isildur, descendant of higher beings though he is, falls immediately under its influence.

This is a mighty theme! A wonderful theme! Filled with all kinds of potential. Here is the whole reason for Boromir, with his "don't you see! The Ring is a gift..." and finally "It should be mine! It WILL be mine!" I don't know that such a lofty theme can be utilized successfully in an RPG, it would take a very specific sort of players to execute that kind of play, but that doesn't make thematic play invalid. It just means that GM's and players need to consider their aims carefully in order to have fun. I don't see how that is different from the idea that a GM such as yourself needs to construct interesting adventures.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So the absurd examples is really to have you answer this question: If it's not obvious by the fiction, and the rules don't give clarity, who decides yes or no?

Some systems have definite answers to this, or it may depend. So, for instance, if 2 players contradict one another, it could be that they are only stating possible consequences of actions they wish to resolve. Usually someone will have to decide who goes first, and once the action is established in fiction then the other player will have to respect it. They could still fail to cooperate in terms of getting in each other's way. There's no known formula for a rule that effectively says "players have to cooperate" in ANY RPG.

And it's not so much about people doing absurd things like giving themselves a holy sword. It's about the players who aren't as fully invested in the story or the direction it's going and decides they are going to go someplace else. It's also about stories that aren't driven by these types of motivations. Maybe they're just serving their two weeks in the town militia on guard duty. Or the story model is more like a TV show where there are weekly things that are going on, life, if you will, and then there are the long-term motivations of the characters that are separate story arcs that are addressed as well, although not necessarily every week. Or even if there are strong motivations, the characters don't share the same motivations.

There are so many types of stories to tell, and that's what I still can't wrap my head around. Are these other types of stories possible in a Story Now game? If something is unclear in terms of success or failure, or a player authors something that other players don't like or agree with, then how is that addressed? If that's part of the job of the GM, then explain how that's really different than what we're talking about, other than perhaps the threshold where the GM steps in.

I would suggest that

A) most players DO become invested in the story when given a chance, though poor play or an exceedingly uninterested player might not. I would venture that those aren't system problems per-se.

B) Episodic play can work. It has some advantages and disadvantages. One advantage might be facilitating more varied goals. A game like that might play out like 'Star Trek' where there's an overall theme and character relationships, but each episode challenges specific characters and has a specific central theme. A question them becomes who regulates the setting of these themes and the plot? I would devise an RPG specifically for this purpose, though it would be easy enough to do so based on existing games, like BW or Cortex (or FATE, FUDGE, PACE, etc.).

C) GMs 'step in' in terms of framing scenes. So they have a lot of thematic input into the game. Their job is primarily to translate what the game is about into a concrete description of situations and consequences of actions which speak to the characters and help define them. The players then answer these descriptions as their characters, further defining them. Should a GM 'step in' to resolve some sort of issue between players? I think its a table thing, it could as easily be another player.

 

[pemerton]

So the first time I miss I might be out of ammo? Hmmm

Why would the GM narrate nonsense?

But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.

So the first time I miss I might be out of ammo? Hmmm[/quote]Why would the GM narrate nonsense?

But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.

There's a question of relevance here. In hard game mechanical terms it rarely if ever matters why a shot didn't hit for damage, only that it binarily hit or did not hit. This means going into detail as to why a shot missed is, while quite possible as I've shown, not mechanically necessary. The game doesn't care if you handwave it.

But knowing whether I've got any ammo left is mechanically necessary as without it missile fire ceases to be a useful option for me until I acquire some.

You present this as if it's a justification of D&D's mechancis, but it's just a reiteration of them.

In RQ it's crucial to distinguish dodging and parrying from armour, because you get to make a dodge or shield parry check to avoid being hit by an arrow, and only if you are hit does your armour factor in (by way of damage reduction). Also, RQ (and BW) have rules for degradation of armour due to being repeatedly struck by weapons - and that is another reason why, in those systems, it is quite important to know why a shot didn't hit for damage.

Conversely, though, in both BW and Cortex+ Heroic there is a mechanic for determining whether or not a character runs out of ammunition which does not depend upon tracking it, and so it's simply not true, in those systems, that you need to track ammunition in order to know whether or not you have ammunition left.

I think as a player I'd be tracking it anyway, regardless of system; if for no other reason that it's part of my agency as a player to control and record my character's resources even if the game system in use doesn't require me to.

Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).

Your tracking would be purely colour, like a D&D player keeping track of how many brusies his/her PC has.I think as a player I'd be tracking it anyway, regardless of system; if for no other reason that it's part of my agency as a player to control and record my character's resources even if the game system in use doesn't require me to.[/quote]Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).

Your tracking would be purely colour, like a D&D player keeping track of how many brusies his/her PC has.

 

[Maxperson]

You'd have to ask the players at the table in the example what their practice is!

It seems like you think it's a really demanding thing for the players to declare meaningful actions in the back-and-forth of play, but that's so different from my experience that obviously there's no uniform practice here. At my table, if I mentioned giant sentries the players would not have any trouble responding or interjecting something like "OK, can we hide? - Maybe, I could cast Wizard's Screen" or "OK, I'll move in and take them down" or "I call out a greeting in Deep Speech" or whatever else seems sensible to them, and then we'd work out together what's going on.

It's not some sort of RPG equivalent of "touch it, move it" chess.

I didn't ask you what they did. I asked you what YOU did. Do you expect them to think of a response and then interrupt you in under half a second, or do you pause to allow them the time to say those things?

 

[pemerton]

Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!

It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.

In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama.

I think this is right, and very nicely put.

The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit.

That's because they're the people of England, for whom the myths are being written!

 

[Lanefan]

Why would the GM narrate nonsense?

But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.

In RQ it's crucial to distinguish dodging and parrying from armour, because you get to make a dodge or shield parry check to avoid being hit by an arrow, and only if you are hit does your armour factor in (by way of damage reduction). Also, RQ (and BW) have rules for degradation of armour due to being repeatedly struck by weapons - and that is another reason why, in those systems, it is quite important to know why a shot didn't hit for damage.

OK, so those systems force more detail - cool. Within reason, forcing more detail is almost always fine with me. I just don't want to see less detail to the point where important things like ammunition and wealth are getting handwaved.

Conversely, though, in both BW and Cortex+ Heroic there is a mechanic for determining whether or not a character runs out of ammunition which does not depend upon tracking it, and so it's simply not true, in those systems, that you need to track ammunition in order to know whether or not you have ammunition left.

Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).

The strap breaking on the quiver, or the bowstring snapping, are both essentially fumbles - which tells me that any time I miss a DM can just narrate a fumble if the mood strikes her?

And if I've been tracking my ammunition and think I have 12 shots left yet on a miss the DM arbitrarily says I'm out of ammo, the conversation that came next would not be pleasant.

Your tracking would be purely colour...

Which seems an odd statement coming from you, who is always such a champion of player agency. Curious.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

In this thread I am talking about declaring actions "through the character's eyes". When I say "As we travel along the river, I look out for any signs of fellow members of my order", that is an action declaration through my character's eyes. It is not an attempt to "author a story".

One way to answer my question is for the GM to just tell me. (Based on his/her notes, or his/her best guess, or his/her random rol, or whatever.) Another way is for me to make a Circles check, with the result of the check being binding on the GM as well as the player.

The second approach doesn't require me to step outside my character viewpoint anymore than rolling an attack die does.

Yes but you can't possibly know in all cases what the odds of someone from your Circle being along that river. You don't know the world. So here are the possible cases.

1. Nobody knows anything about it and a roll is made. This is a sign of a poor DM though who knows nothing about it.

2. The DM thinks it's possible given the setting, determines a probability BASED ON THE WORLD and rolls.

3. The DM knows it's impossible or extremely unlikely. Perhaps your example this case is unlikely but it is true in some situations. For example, he knows that a particular sect of a particular religion will not be out on a particular night. The player does not know this yet because he hasn't discovered it.

4. The DM knows it is certain. For example in your case, the DM had already known someone was traveling down the trail at that time. Again not a perfect example but there are times the DM knows with certainty and those times he doesn't roll.

The problem with "forcing" a DM to accept some random roll to change the nature of his campaign world is that he knows a lot about that world. Some random roll could throw all that effort out the window.

The players just don't know everything. Discovery is half the fun. And while I exercise my DM authority with restraint, I do consider the final say on something in the campaign to be the DMs.

Your (2), (3) and (4) all rest on the premise that the GM has already established the details of the setting, or is the only one with authority to do that. You then come out and say as much in the last two paragraphs.

I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction. And also that a significant component of play will involve the GM telling the players about his/her world. This is what "discovery" will involve.

Now the original point I was making, which I want to reiterate, is this: it is possible to move away from that sort of GM authority without the players having to do anything besides declare actions from the character point of view. That was why I gave the example of the Circles check: I can declare a Circles check without having to depart from the character point of view (As we ride alongside the river, I keep my eyes peeled for any signs of members of my order, or their passage.)

The technique that permits moving away from that sort of GM authority yet allows players to declare actions from their PC point of view is to have robust mechanics for things like Circles, Lore, Perception, Searching etc which allow actions to be declared by players, and adjudicated by GMs, without anyone having to know in advance what the resulting content will be. So the "discovery" becomes mutual between players and GM: everyone is "playing to find out" what exactly the setting is, and contains.

So consider the example of the Circles check. The rules of the game (Burning Wheel) say that base obstacle is 1. I am looking around for signs of any members of my order, or their passage. That falls under the category "The NPC is somewhere local to you, and it is an unusual location for him/her, and you make contact in the current game session" (which is +2 Ob) but not "The NPC turns up here and now, however unlikely or in an utterly unlikely place" (which would be +3 Ob). That is an overall obstacle of 3.

My PC's base circle rating is 3 dice. I have a +1D reputation (last knight of the Iron Tower) and a +1D affiliation (Order of the Iron Tower) which are both relevant in this context, making it more likely I will meet members of my order. So the final check is 5 dice against an obstacle of 3, a 50% chance of success (ie at least 3 of the dice showing 4+) before any dice pool manipulation by spending fate or persona points.

If the check succeeds (as it actually did when I declared it at the game table), then my intention is realised and I meet a knight of my order. If the check fails then, by the rules of the game, the GM has two options to choose from: the PC meets no one; or the PC does meet someone (perhaps the sort of person sought; perhaps someone different), but they are hostile or opposed in some fashion. The GM who takes this second option is expected to make the enmity speak, in some fashion, to the agenda and dramatic needs of the PC. So had my Circles check failed, the GM might have decided that I do meet a member of my order, but someone who is angry at me (the last knight of the Iron Tower) for having allowed the order to come to an end; or the GM might have decided that I meet someone who is hostile to my order. If the GM couldn't think of anything interesting along those lines, or already had some other idea in mind for what was going to happen in the game before I declared the Circles check, then he is allowed to simply say that nothing happens, but generally that's the more boring option.

This is one example of how a consistent, "living breathing" world can be built up out of the resolution of players' action declarations for their PCs, in a way that (i) gives the players, as well as the GM, significant agency over the content of the shared fiction, but (ii) does not require the players to do anything but declare actions from the point of view of their PCs.

 

[clearstream]

Honestly, JRRT's world building never impressed me in the slightest. Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!

I wouldn't conflate world-building with realism or argue that it need be complete in order to be valuable.

It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.

Tolkien wasn't interested in those things. He says in his various lectures, letters and articles that he was concerned with a consistent map (this seems more about the location of things, than deeper details like geology), chronology, languages and genealogies. I can't recall a statement from him about wanting a working economy or any concerns about technology. He failed in a few places to achieve even the ends he sought, which I think is reasonable. His prior and ongoing world-build was invaluable in his impressive and influential achievements.

In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama. Its a bit like a train set, the trains go round and round, but nothing else ever changes. The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit.

Here we can simply assert that no fantasy world ever created by a human has been complete and real. That's partly an issue with simulation: a simulation can't map 1:1 to the real without being the real. Partly an issue with available effort. Fortunately neither of those things need to be ideal, because it is also a result of what is necessary. A valuable, inspiring world like Glorantha can be created and used. Or if we choose to set our play in Dickensian London then we have either Dickens (incomplete, not entirely realistic), or recorded history (also incomplete, and by degrees a distortion of reality), or both, to thank. Progressive shared fiction relies on shared points of reference. World-building helps supply those. It doesn't need to end when the game starts. And who does what is scalable.

All of this is great, but what is the common reality?

That seems like a non-sequitur. Could you expand on your question? What are you trying to get at?

 

[clearstream]

I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction. And also that a significant component of play will involve the GM telling the players about his/her world. This is what "discovery" will involve.

It seems controversial to me because I really don't believe that creators need to create every part in order to be "doing fiction properly". If a group chooses to set their play in the universe of Frank Herbert's Dune, then there will be parts that they relinquish agency over. They do that in order to be inspired. Their fiction-making efforts, or more accurately the fiction arising as a side-effect of their play, is just as genuine and complete. I feel like this is an important point of divergence between us. If I play in Dickensian London, I relinquish agency about some things in that setting, while retaining agency about everything I care about (my character's motives, choices, acts etc). How is it that drawing on ideas like knights and orders is not surrendering agency, while drawing on say warforged would be? Is it that it is only agency if it comes out of the player's own knowledge and creativity, no matter what would be gained by furbishing them with other sources of inspiration?

A group can move away from GM authority, but for me that is moot. (At least in respect of one of your core concerns.) MOLAD was intensively focused on character journey, and that is an important reason why the game was successful for our group. I ran that game in the 80s and 90s. But the question was never whether or not authority was equal at the table, but whether interest, time and tolerance was given for players to explore character concerns within their game, other than if they can spot a pit trap before stepping on it, etc!

There is a separate line of argument that needs to be unpacked, which is that of resolution. What is different about acquiescing to Luke Crane's stipulated obstacle levels, from acquiescing to some other person's nominated obstacle level?