What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nah. What @pemerton is doing is not using phraseology that I don't like, he's redefining terms to suit his needs and I reject that. Especially since he then uses those terms to be dismissive and/or attack the traditional playstyle. When he does that, I turn it back on him. I understand the differences between the styles, but when push comes to shove, his style also has players declare actions to get the DM to say stuff, and so I point it out to him. That can SEEM like I'm trying to minimize differences, but I'm really not.

I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work. We have to conclude there's something you aren't grasping, or else that you're just REALLY stubborn and don't like to change your mind. I think you are a contrarian to be honest, that you simply enjoy refusing to ever accept an alternative once you've found an argument which seems to contravene them, even if it becomes untenable.

Honestly, I don't know what you are trying to DO, but the fact is, what the people are saying to each other in 'classic' play and in 'Story Now' play ARE DIFFERENT. They are different in content, different in game function, and different in intent. Of course there are some similarities, probably quite a lot of them, given that both techniques are part of a fairly limited type of activity, RPG playing. Its like basketball, a zone defense and a man-to-man defense are meaningfully different, but they're both part of the game which is played by the same rules either way. So they have a lot in common and sometimes it can be hard to say that a particular play belongs to one or the other technique. That doesn't make them the same! It isn't even particularly profound!

If he just talked about his style and what he liked and disliked about the differences, rather than trying to redefine terms so that he can attack the other playstyle, the conversation would be much different. At no point in this thread did he ever need to say things like, "The traditional playstyle is choose your own adventure", or "It's railroady", or "The players just declare actions to get the DM to read notes/say stuff." It's uncalled for and when he does it, I'm going to show how those things can also apply to his style. If he doesn't like it, he should stop doing it in the first place. If he learned the Golden Rule it would help him considerably in these conversations.

Look, someone has to define terms, so this kind of thing is fairly silly. Nobody died and left you 'god of terminology in RPGs'. Nor would you have an easy time demonstrating that your preferred shades of meaning of terms which admit of a certain degree of ambiguity in practice are so canonical that using them in a slightly different way is unequivocally decreasing comprehension.

The fact is, when someone advances a different theory of something, or even a different technique, often existing terminology is inadequate to explain it and can be ambiguous or even hold back the discussion. Thus when you encounter a set of ideas which are somewhat different from those you normally encounter it would be wise to consider how the terminology you are using is going to apply in that different paradigm. This is something that a number of people have consistently had trouble doing, and you're only one of them.

I mean, when communicating, it is the responsibility of BOTH SIDES to attempt to be clear as well as true to their conceptual structure, the argument/position they are making/taking.

Some of the things Pemerton says obviously make you uncomfortable, but its an open question whether he should not say them. Sometimes putting an idea in controversial terms is done to emphasize contrast, to focus attention on that idea, etc. In other words, when Pemerton says "declare actions to get the GM to say something" it clearly implies the resultant fiction which the GM says has specific characteristics and that is what is salient. Nor does it imply that ALL of the things that happen in the game consist only of this.

 

[eayres33]

How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?

My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!

EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning new things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.

Well wouldn't that be their back story? If they haven't bothered to write a backstory before the game, why should they expect free will to rewrite their backstory? Wouldn't they know the general idea of the world? Now for the swimming hole question I have yet to find the GM who has every city detailed to all the pools or projects. I like using a world overview, with major NPC's defined and major cities/ city buidlings defined but the rest is up to what I and the players create.

I've seen this thread go on for thousands of posts of us versus them without the thought that you can have both, an outline of major players/cities and towns created by the GM with the details to be filled in by GM and player alike. Isn't that how most people play?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Whether or not you're cheering for the PCs you're still also providing the opposition most of the time, and - one assumes - playing that opposition to the best of its abilities.

It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest - if you-as-GM are earnestly cheering for the PCs that's going to discourage you from putting anything too deadly in their path, and encourage you to provide out-clauses and getaway cars when they do get in over their heads. Put another way, it strongly encourages you to reduce* adventuring to sport rather than war.

* - and I use that term intentionally, as to me adventuring as sport is a lesser thing than adventuring as war.

I won't take the bait on the sport vs war thing, I have long held it to be a bogus dichotomy and not useful in analysis of games/gaming.

That aside, I just don't see it as a problem. As a GM I'm a fan of the characters, but that doesn't mean I'm a fan of them WINNING ALL THE TIME. I should be an advocate for the possibility of them winning and of them being able to do cool and awesome things, but those can and should include 'fail awesomely'. I mean, I'm sure Jack Kirby was a 'fan' of all the superhero characters he wrote stories about over the decades, but he still wrote a lot of stories where they failed, sometimes even died. Usually they triumphed in the end, or someone got some justice for them, but not always. Failure was always an option in those stories, and fandom doesn't demand success.

Think dangerous
Everything in the world is a target. You’re thinking like an evil
overlord: no single life is worth anything and there is nothing
sacrosanct. Everything can be put in danger, everything can be
destroyed. Nothing you create is ever protected. Whenever your eye
falls on something you’ve created, think how it can be put in danger,
fall apart or crumble. The world changes. Without the characters’
intervention, it changes for the worse.

The above illustrates the sort of position of the GM, he's a fan of the characters, but he's not there to give them a cushy life, he's there to make them DO COOL STUFF! If they don't do cool stuff, the world 'gets worse'.

This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.

Maybe you have a '2 dimensional' view of human nature! Fact is, I have not found this to be the case. I mean, the players are definitely going to try to succeed, but in my games the OBJECT of the game, what is held up as the ideal and made to be the objective, is not character success, but good stories and fun play. Character success is often pretty cool, but we do a lot of other things in our games besides just toss that out there as many times as possible every session.

If I'm framed into a scene that looks like trouble I'm going to declare whatever actions I need to in order to reduce or evade that trouble, not enhance it!

Again, this behavior is a consequence of thinking of the game as oppositional and fundamentally as a 'maze full of gold that you can only get by skill and guile', which is the Ur of classical D&D. You've projected it out beyond the literal dungeon, but you've not updated any of your goals or expectations in the slightest. You can sit down with Gary and have a beer, eat a pretzel, and play a dungeon level That's not bad, at all, but there are other WORKABLE ways to play!

Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.

I'm not saying that players should simply 'leap into the fire' with every move, that would be as equally silly as trying to declare some sort of 'I win button' with every move. Surviving isn't inherently 'dull' anyway. Remember, there are stakes in Story Now, its not just "do I run out of hit points?" When you make a move you're staking SOMETHING, there will be consequences! So there aren't any truly 'dull' moves. Some may be 'sensible' and even 'mundane', but there's nothing wrong with being the sensible guy who shakes his head and says "why the heck do they do this crazy stuff" and then jumps through the gate behind his buddies because the alternative is to leave the fate of the world to on the shoulders of other people and shirk his duty. Its like that.

I've killed off enough of my own characters over the years to know that dying can be every bit as undramatic as running away. But then, we play adventuring as war; where the main drama is often sheer survival and death is a frequent visitor.

Well, that's the thing, if death is just "oops, a bad die roll" or "oh crap they're trolls..." then sure. Even in your kind of game though there's a certain sense of accomplishment when you held off the ogres single-handed at the gate for 4 rounds while your buddies hoofed it before they smashed you flat. Besides, death is kinda cheap in that sort of game, it should at least be notable, which that kind is.

But who runs all that "other stuff" - the NPCs, the world, whatever clashes with their own beliefs, etc.? That's right: the DM.

And yes of course the conflict should stay in character - I don't expect the players and DM to be coming to blows over this stuff - but it's still at its root adversarial. Kind of like chess is adversarial - you could be playing against your best friend but within the game you're still going to try your best to checkmate him.

Lanefan

Well, I'm not saying that GMs and players in any game become ENEMIES, of course not. I mean that they don't even have to be '2 different sides'. The GM is going to PLAY some things that are on the 'other side' from PCs at times, yes. His goal is not necessarily to 'checkmate them'. His goal is good story, and fun play. Even hard core OSR Gygax play isn't REALLY opposed play, not fundamentally. All the participants are operating under a set of rules of conduct and implicit behavior which is intended to make the game work. In fact its clear this is so, as VAST tracts of this board have been taken up with the discussions of what happens when that conduct and implicit contract fails!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm pretty sure that AbdulAlhazred was referring to a passage I quoted from Ron Edwards's essay about how to do setting-heavy "story now" - I think in the other thread. The key bits (sblocked for length):

I think so, yes.

Of well-known D&D settings, this would seem to be a way to do Dark Sun.

DS is a very adventure-filled setting indeed. There are basically no 'normal people' in DS, stuff happens to EVERYONE, and thus you don't have to go looking for adventure, it comes to you! This is an easy sort of milieu in which to do Story Now, as you can put hard pressure on the PCs constantly. Even a hike to the next town is filled with lethal danger.

PoL has a similar sort of implication, the world is a BAD place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As far as dull vs cool moves are concerned, this seems to be a system thing. What you say is true for AD&D and 3E. It's not true for 4e or Cortex+ Heroic. (And BW is too complicated in this respect to make a simple evaluation.)

Actually, it has all sorts of ways of managing that potential conflict of interest, eg by establishing when the GM is expected to make moves. Cortex+ does a similar thing with the Doom Pool.

...

Right. At least in my experience, provided the systems creates the mechanical space for it, players aren't going to declare boring stuff or silly stuff when exciting and/or interesting stuff is also possible!

The proviso is one reason why I choose some systems over others.

Yeah, this is a whole other discussion that is tangent to world building, so I never focused on it, but it is very true. AD&D CREATES the sort of quotidian detail sort of logistical contest game and other sorts of not-explicitly-very-dramatic modes of play by its nature. 3e even more so, though it sort of goes crazy at high levels.

4e GENERATES cool situations in play. You have to nurture it to get the very best, but the game sets out from the start to help you.

Not that any of them are locked into one mode, but rules and settings/genre go together to support different play techniques.

 

[Maxperson]

Funny how you invoke the Golden Rule to defend doing unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.

Apparently you don't understand the Golden Rule. It has two application. Initial action which is you doing to others what you would have them do to you. And the second application which is doing back others what they want you to do to them by doing it to you in the first place. I'm engaging in the second application here.

 

[Maxperson]

I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work. We have to conclude there's something you aren't grasping, or else that you're just REALLY stubborn and don't like to change your mind. I think you are a contrarian to be honest, that you simply enjoy refusing to ever accept an alternative once you've found an argument which seems to contravene them, even if it becomes untenable.

Honestly, I don't know what you are trying to DO, but the fact is, what the people are saying to each other in 'classic' play and in 'Story Now' play ARE DIFFERENT. They are different in content, different in game function, and different in intent. Of course there are some similarities, probably quite a lot of them, given that both techniques are part of a fairly limited type of activity, RPG playing. Its like basketball, a zone defense and a man-to-man defense are meaningfully different, but they're both part of the game which is played by the same rules either way. So they have a lot in common and sometimes it can be hard to say that a particular play belongs to one or the other technique. That doesn't make them the same! It isn't even particularly profound!

Or you can ditch your False Dichotomy and go with what I said it is. Up to you. I can lead you to the truth, but I can't make you drink it.

Look, someone has to define terms, so this kind of thing is fairly silly. Nobody died and left you 'god of terminology in RPGs'. Nor would you have an easy time demonstrating that your preferred shades of meaning of terms which admit of a certain degree of ambiguity in practice are so canonical that using them in a slightly different way is unequivocally decreasing comprehension.

When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] comes to me holding an apple and calls it an orange, I'm under no obligation to also call it an orange to increase dialogue. I'm going to point out that he's holding an apple.

The fact is, when someone advances a different theory of something, or even a different technique, often existing terminology is inadequate to explain it and can be ambiguous or even hold back the discussion. Thus when you encounter a set of ideas which are somewhat different from those you normally encounter it would be wise to consider how the terminology you are using is going to apply in that different paradigm. This is something that a number of people have consistently had trouble doing, and you're only one of them.

I mean, when communicating, it is the responsibility of BOTH SIDES to attempt to be clear as well as true to their conceptual structure, the argument/position they are making/taking.

The terms are adequate already. Completely redefining the long standing definitions in order to use the new definitions to attack other playstyles isn't helpful. Nor does it clear things up to call an apple an orange.

 

[Lanefan]

When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] comes to me holding an apple and calls it an orange ...

If someone came up to me holding what they thought was an apple and calling it an orange, I'd ask first what they've been smoking and second if I could please have some; as what they're holding is clearly a samsung....

 

[pemerton]

Sometimes putting an idea in controversial terms is done to emphasize contrast, to focus attention on that idea, etc. In other words, when Pemerton says "declare actions to get the GM to say something" it clearly implies the resultant fiction which the GM says has specific characteristics and that is what is salient. Nor does it imply that ALL of the things that happen in the game consist only of this.

This is nicely put.

 

[pemerton]

The terms are adequate already. Completely redefining the long standing definitions in order to use the new definitions to attack other playstyles isn't helpful. Nor does it clear things up to call an apple an orange.

Which terms? What "long standing definitions"? Where are these found? What makes you think you've got better cognitive access to them than I do?

And following on from these questions . . .

Except that it doesn't. Agency is another word that you are attempting to redefine for your personal needs in order to be dismissive of the traditional playstyle. The fact is, agency doesn't mean what you say it means. Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs, and without a true railroad(not your altered definition), agency is unfettered in both styles of play.

According to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], the concept of "player agency" was invented at The Forge and means more-or-less what I use it to mean. I don't have my own independent recollection of the use of the term at The Forge - I'm more familiar with their notion of "protagonism", which has a similar (but maybe not identical) meaning.

I've just gone to check The Forge Provisional Glossary, and found that it generally uses the word "control" rather than "agency" - but it defines force as

The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. When Force is applied in a manner which disrupts the Social Contract, the result is Railroading.​

No definition is offered of "thematically-significant decision", but "theme" is defined as

The point, message, or key emotional conclusion perceived by an audience member, about a fictional series of events.​

Now you insist that Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs. I don't disagree with your description as a description - it entails that when there is force, players lack agency, and that seems right. (We could quibble over whether "decision" and "action" co-refer, but I'm not going to.)

All the action consists in the following: what does it mean for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?

My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player does not have control over his/her PC's actions. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.

The previous paragraph states a real view - that is, an opinion that I really have. You have a different view, reflecting different RPGing preferences - fine! But that doesn't stop me having, and stating, my view, using English words to express it.

I have some further views, too. If an action declaration doesn't pertain to anything of thematic/dramatic significance, and puts nothing at stake, then sometimes I think it is appropriate for the GM to say "no" and move things on. A paradigm of this, which [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] mentioned not far upthread and which I think I may have mentioned a long way upthread, is - in my 4e game - searching bodies or rooms for generic loot. That is the sort of no-stake irrelevance that I'm not interested in spending time on at the table, and the alternative to "You find 12 cp" is "No, there's nothing there, now can we get on with it?!"

And here's another one: if the GM is adjudicating action resolutions by reference to a prior conception of the details of the gameworld - whether in the notes, or made up on the spot - then ascertaining those details starts to become a focus of play. Which, per se, means that thematically-significant action declarations becomes less of a focus of play. That makes RPGing less enjoyable for me.

And for fun and completeness, here's one example of how "say 'yes' or roll the dice" can be applied in the context of thematically significant action declarations in relation to loot:

the discussion then shifted to defeating Osterneth. The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it, as the necessary cost of preventing Osterneth coming in and defiling the body.