Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Hussar]

Actually, to be honest [MENTION=6834463]happyhermit[/MENTION], I'd say 5e is doing quite well on the world building front. There's what, 15 books for 5e now? Other than SCaG, none of them are much rooted in world building. Now, I do have an issue with the amount of world building that is in 5e core - particularly the Monster Manual which I find mostly useless to be honest. All the bits and bobs about this race being a slave race to that race (good grief that appears a lot in the Monster Manual) and that sort of thing. Granted, I do now what I've always done, ignore it completely. It's of zero use to me.

 

[Maxperson]

The last quoted sentence seems as good as any to describe what is going on. I think the current usage of "worldbuilding" in discussions of RPGing brings with it an assumption of GM authority over that process. I think this is very evident not just in many of the posts in the current threads, but other threads one reads on ENworld, blogs one reads, presentation in D&D rulebooks, etc.

It's also very often taken for granted, in RPGing, that a "gameworld" is more-or-less independent of any particular group of players or characters - which relates to the idea of "neutrality" that has been put forward by more than one poster in these threads. The process you describe for City of Mists does not produce a "neutral" setting.

People shouldn't assume. Worldbuilding is the building of the world/setting, regardless of whether the DM does it alone, or in conjunction with his players. I think you assume DM authority over the process, because most people play the game in the traditional manner still, so most worldbuilding is done by DMs.

In my opinion, you should assume less, attempt to redefine terms so that you can apply them negatively to playstyles not your own less, and simply talk about the differences in playstyles more. You'd get far more accomplished that way.

 

[Maxperson]

Fair enough, again, if you are insisting that all setting is world building.

Yes, he's probably going with the definition of worldbuilding.

However, I would draw the distinction here. KotB has virtually no world building. We have no idea where the Keep is, how many people live in the Keep, what and who supports the Keep, who does the Castellan report to? No idea. Does the Castellan have a family? No idea. So on and so forth.

It actually has a lot of worldbuilding. You don't have to have every last freaking detail down for worldbuilding to be occurring. In fact, the most detailed world/setting I know is the FR, and it only details at most 5% of the world.

Contrast with Village of Hommlet where virtually every household is described. Who is the weaver in Hommlet? Well, we have the answer to that.

Yep. More worldbuilding done in that one for sure.

See, to me, the world builders have already won this arguement and I'm largely crying in the dark here. Look at the remake of Keep in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. A 20(ish) page module is turned into a several hundred page tome. Even in 4e, when they remade Keep again with the Chaos Scar adventures in Dungeon magazine, the Keep's description is longer than the original module.

I know I lost this argument. Totally lost it. The world builders, busily constructing ships in a bottle have totally dominated the hobby. And the great clodding of nerd boots makes sure that no new ideas are ever allowed into the hobby unless it passes their sniff test first.

Overly dramatic much? Plenty of new ideas are allowed into the hobby. You just don't get to redefine terms when you do.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, he's probably going with the definition of worldbuilding.



It actually has a lot of worldbuilding. You don't have to have every last freaking detail down for worldbuilding to be occurring. In fact, the most detailed world/setting I know is the FR, and it only details at most 5% of the world.

See, this is the main part where we diverge. I wouldn't call that world building. There's no world there. There's absolutely no attempt to present a functional reality there. Which is what worldbuilding IS - an attempt to present a functioning model of a setting. Keep doesn't do that. It presents the bare bones of what a DM needs to run an adventure there. With virtually no details or extraneous information. That is not what I'd call world building.

Yep. More worldbuilding done in that one for sure.



Overly dramatic much? Plenty of new ideas are allowed into the hobby. You just don't get to redefine terms when you do.

No, not overly dramatic. You folks won this fight years ago. The fact that authors like George R. R. Martin and Tolkien are heralded as the masters of the genre. The fact that umpteen game supplements get banged out every year chock a block with world building details. The fact that you actually, at one time, HAD a six page article on the WotC site detailing the SHAPE OF WINDOWS in Forgotten Realms and people ate it up.

Yeah, I know I'm whistling in the dark here. I lost this fight years ago. Now, it's nothing but me bitching about it futilely like the impotent jerk that I am.

 

[Maxperson]

See, this is the main part where we diverge. I wouldn't call that world building. There's no world there. There's absolutely no attempt to present a functional reality there. Which is what worldbuilding IS - an attempt to present a functioning model of a setting. Keep doesn't do that. It presents the bare bones of what a DM needs to run an adventure there. With virtually no details or extraneous information. That is not what I'd call world building.

No, functional as you put it here is no required for worl building. No functional reality need be present. Worldbuilding is simply the creation of the setting, however complete or incomplete it is. The creation of a single NPC is an act of worldbuilding. I would also argue that the bare bones of what you need to run an adventure there IS a functional reality. You can buy a car that barely runs, or one that is fully loaded and both are functional cars. That one has more functions doesn't keep the car that barely runs from being functional.

No, not overly dramatic. You folks won this fight years ago. The fact that authors like George R. R. Martin and Tolkien are heralded as the masters of the genre. The fact that umpteen game supplements get banged out every year chock a block with world building details. The fact that you actually, at one time, HAD a six page article on the WotC site detailing the SHAPE OF WINDOWS in Forgotten Realms and people ate it up.

Yeah, I know I'm whistling in the dark here. I lost this fight years ago. Now, it's nothing but me bitching about it futilely like the impotent jerk that I am.

The myriad of different RPGs out there with all the different ways to play says something different to me. If this is how you choose to feel about it, though, that's up to you. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

 

[Sadras]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] I'm not understanding your somewhat stubborn dislike to lore/myth whether it be for monsters, setting or cosmology.
The lore/myth allows us to have shared experiences and discussions over settings, monsters and modules which is a relatively good thing for the hobby I think.

I mean when we were reading the DL novels (I assume you have) and all that setting content came up - regarding gnomes, gully dwarves, death knights, irda and the pantheon it is not considered as a negative. So why the sour bent towards worldbuilding in our rpgs. We are trying to emulate fantasy novels and movies...etc

We, the player-base, often change the content (worldbuilding), system (edition) and difficulty (levels) of published adventures so I'm not sure where you seem to see difficulty.

There is the other benefit of lore/myth you seem to ignore.
When we look at fantasy artwork we gain inspiration and ideas - many of us hobbyists do the same with the lore/myth the publishers provide us with.

Given the positives (shared experience, discussion and inspiration) as well as the malleability of it all, I find your attitude on this topic bizarre.

 

[billd91]

Fair enough, again, if you are insisting that all setting is world building. However, I would draw the distinction here. KotB has virtually no world building. We have no idea where the Keep is, how many people live in the Keep, what and who supports the Keep, who does the Castellan report to? No idea. Does the Castellan have a family? No idea. So on and so forth.

Contrast with Village of Hommlet where virtually every household is described. Who is the weaver in Hommlet? Well, we have the answer to that.

Yeah, Hommlet is a lot more detailed. You could have said that you found that level of worldbuilding excessive and not what you favored and left it like that.

See, to me, the world builders have already won this arguement and I'm largely crying in the dark here. Look at the remake of Keep in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. A 20(ish) page module is turned into a several hundred page tome. Even in 4e, when they remade Keep again with the Chaos Scar adventures in Dungeon magazine, the Keep's description is longer than the original module.

I wouldn't know about the Chaos Scar adventures, but Return to Keep on the Borderlands wasn't a several hundred page tome. It was 64 pages - a substantial amount of it advice for new GMs about running adventures. It's actually a very good introductory module, well worth checking out when not being exaggerated into a monstrosity of the much maligned world-building.

I know I lost this argument. Totally lost it. The world builders, busily constructing ships in a bottle have totally dominated the hobby. And the great clodding of nerd boots makes sure that no new ideas are ever allowed into the hobby unless it passes their sniff test first.

No new ideas? There are new ideas all the time in this hobby. The fact that there are people who like to deep dive into detail doesn't negate new ideas. I think you need to reassess your relationship with hyperbole.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I saw first hand how much new ideas could get past the gate keepers with 4e, thanks.

Good grief, 5e hasn't had an original module yet. Three years of rehashes of existing modules. Yeah, new ideas are what gamers want. Sure.

Oh, and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], are you sure about your definition? Wikipedia gives this one:

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe.[1] The resulting world may be called a constructed world. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.[2] Worldbuilding often involves the creation of maps, a backstory, and people for the world. Constructed worlds can enrich the backstory and history of fictional works

Mirriam Webster:

Today, world-building is most often used to describe a component of a work of fiction, much like plot or character; unlike the word setting, world-building emphasizes that the world being created is entirely new.

TV Tropes has the definition I tend to work from:

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a fictional universe. Strictly speaking, anything that happens in that universe "builds" it, so "worldbuilding" is only used to describe the invention of fictional details for some reason other than the convenience of a currently ongoing story, up to and including simply engaging in worldbuilding for its own sake

Yuppers, that last one is pretty much my exact take. World building is when you go beyond the needs of the story. And very, very much of it is for its own sake.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You say it was like a sandbox, but it strikes me that it seems almost more like a narrativist exercise. Perhaps what Paul was giving you was exactly what you wanted! Or at least the results of your failures were to lose your stakes and move on to new areas of engagement. I take it that there was a 'second phase of the DGC', and that seems to imply to me that the players made some kind of a comeback.

There does seem, from your descriptions, to have been a sort of bathos, to the degree of existential horror to the whole thing. I can see why you would compare it to something like CoC, which certainly tries to evoke that.

I think the game contained some Story Before elements, to use the terminology [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] introduced upthread, and most of the journals are Story After. In my view there wasn't any Story Now. The Story Before components take the form of dramatic scenes, such as Pix's clairvoyant visions, and other reveals that Paul must have prepped beforehand. Pix's endpiece, which gives an account of Paul and the Professor's death, and the split between Mark and the rest of the team, is powerfully written. Tragedy or pathos would probably be a more appropriate term for it than bathos imo. I got quite emotional when Pix describes a young child we had previously saved among the mourners at the Professor's funeral.

The way I believe Paul preps rpgs is to start from a detailed simulationist base. He then translates that into something that will work as a game (for example he doesn't just have the bad guys murder all the PCs in their sleep) and he also adds some 'units' of storytelling. The really noticeable storytelling - the complete scenes - became more frequent and more dramatic late on in the DGC. Two involved the deaths of members of the Brotherhood at the hands of the Fallen. The most dramatic of all was Paul's death, which had been foreshadowed by a precognitive dream much earlier in the campaign. The in-game Paul attempted to kill several PCs by running us over with a car, then, when he believed he had murdered my PC, took his own life.

Paul certainly met us in the middle, in terms of creating content that aligned with our interests and that was a response to our actions, but I think that's true of all rpgs that aren't railroads.

I didn't participate in the second phase of the DGC so unfortunately I can't say anything about it. I'd be surprised if it was as dark as the first phase though.

 

[Aldarc]

And, on hearing it, I equate out to worldbuilding.

While I agree with all of your other points, I cannot agree with you about terminology. If someone wishes to talk about a topic with more specificity than the general term had, then it's on them to highlight the specificity, not redefine the term to be specific to only their meaning. That way llies the exact problem in this thread where most people actually agree but are arguing and argung because of all the different and idiosyncratic definitions of the general term.

I can't say that I agree with this particular assertion, but that's just because this fails in common practice of speech where terms are constantly redefined, sometimes broadened and othertimes specified, for the sake of engaging in more meaningful discourse with greater clarity. In this case, the terms "worldbuilding" and "setting building" are assigned more particular sets of meaning within our parole for the sake of distinguishing a lot of differences of activity, function, emphasis, etc. in the broader discourse of "fictive space construction," for lack of a better term. I personally find the creation of the term "setting building" and its associated distinctions useful, because at the very least it attempts to further define the term "worldbuilding" rather than have it continually serve as a bafflingly ambiguous term that led to the aformentioned disagreements.

If you want to disect out different kinds of prep, that's laudable and interesting. If we can't have a discussion about it because you've chosen to do so by redefining terms to mean different things, then those laudable and interesting things are going to go misunderstood. That's not good.

If he provides you his definition of the term(s) or the meaning that he assigns to the term(s), then it seems that you would be intentionally choosing to misunderstand him for the sake of perpetuating the confusion or sidestepping his argument without good faith.