What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Aldarc]

I have an answer: by advocating for your style and not trying to use reductive analysis on other styles without first honestly critiquing your own.

If posters stuck to "here's how I play and have fun!" we'd be better off, and that goes to both sides.

Alternatively, if you ask what a particular tool is used for by other players, maybe just acknowledge their uses rather than reduce it to terms like choose-your-own-adventure? Inviting people to give you honest input and then belittling that input is generally going to cause a backlash. If this is surprising to you....

And you were doing so well until your final paragraph where you couldn't help but get your final passive aggressive barbs and cuts into others. Oh well.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And you were doing so well until your final paragraph where you couldn't help but get your final passive aggressive barbs and cuts into others. Oh well.

It wasn't that passive. I could be more explicit, if it would make it better for you? [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] asking the question in the OP and then taking honest responses and characterizing then in a negative way is NOT how this topic should be engaged.
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s posts yelling "railroad" at pemerton's play examples is NOT how this topic should be engaged.

Better?

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Worldbuilding is for the enjoyment of the DM.

It's that part of the game where the pleasure of writing and creating coincides with planning out how to generate fun and a good time for others.

Even with established campaign worlds like the Forgotten Realms, worldbuilding is a blast.

 

[Emerikol]

The problem with the OP's premise and some of his defenders is him asserting the superiority of his style and arguing that it gives more freedom in some way that should be cherished. First it is cherished if you enjoy his style and it is hated if you do not enjoy his style. So it is a matter of preference. I think most people are willing to concede that people like different things and enjoy what you like. It only becomes a conflict when those assertions are made as if a fact.

I do think the term authorship should be used instead of freedom. Because honestly my players have tons of freedom and they'd look bewildered if you said they didn't. I think they would agree wholeheartedly that they do no authoring of the setting. So the term to use I believe in this situation is the level of player authorship. And I also agree that even with DM's that allow some player authorship the amount varies so there are nuances within that playstyle.

 

[Campbell]

On Heresy: I am not certain religious language is the best way to frame it, but I have encountered a certain sense of orthodoxy or at least attachment to the mainstream in our shared hobby. There is a certain sense that there is one way to play a role playing game instead of many ways. It also feels like more leniency is provided to use of less mainstream techniques when you do not specifically set yourself apart from the mainstream of the hobby. I am not particularly wedded to this way of framing the cultural zeitgeist, but the overall sense of resistance I have gotten in the past when I have tried to explain why I have experienced deep dissatisfaction in gaming before I discovered Sorcerer, Apocalypse World and Moldvay B/X.

It feels like instead of having conversations where we actually analyze and discuss play techniques and how they shape play we often forced to defend our right to even share our perspective or forced to use language that makes it entirely too difficult to draw meaningful distinctions to the things that are personally very important to me. A lot of the terminology including things like world building over setting design or game master over referee are inherently skewed towards mainstream techniques. Beyond that it often seems to me like discussion often seems to consist of merely attacking the framing of analysis over actually discussing the substance behind the analysis.

That all being said as I have discussed elsewhere discussing agency generally without regard to what it is over is something that I have little interest in. In fact discussing how games work based on power relationships is not all that interesting to me, particularly from a stance that seems far more interested in theoretical power dynamics over real ones mediated by social expectations. I think it far more interesting to speak in terms of responsibilities and expectations that shape play. That conversation is often more difficult to have, often due to strong shared but unspoken assumptions that underlay much of mainstream play.

I'll have more later.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I definitely think there are questionable arguments being made in that respect (I think my posts have made that clear). But I think the larger problem there is his reducing our position and our definition to "a player character taking an action".

They don't want our kind of agency in their games. I am not interested in converting people to my style of play. If they don't want what I like in a game, that is their business. I have no interest in trying to convince them to adopt what I do. All I care about in these conversations is we allow for the multitude of play style and that people don't try to weasel their play style into other peoples' tables by making bad linguistic arguments. If they are finding pleasure in the kind of agency Pemerton is talking about. more power to them. If others see that and think it is something they might like, more power to them. I just don't want them misrepresenting what we mean by agency. We've stated out definition multiple times and it keeps getting met with "so you mean any kind of roleplaying that happens in 100% of all campaigns anyways." or some variation on that. That is the infuriating bit.

I guess what bothers me in so many of these discussion is it is almost like people are trying to take away what pleasure others have found at the table. It would be one thing to say "Hey I have this cool style of play, here is how it works, give it a shot". But so many of these conversations feel like attempts to convert people to a religion. It is just a game.

And I find it entirely puzzling why anyone would imagine that anything I've said would count as that! I have nothing against 'your kind of agency', as I've said several times, and I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said it too, probably others, 'your kind of agency' (lets call it character agency) is simply the core activity of playing an RPG, so OF COURSE I approve of it!

I mean, don't we BOTH AGREE, that a GM who isn't giving the players a chance to make basic types of choices, not even going near "inventing some new element of the setting" or whatever, just basic "I go here, I do this, I say X", that such a GM is not what exemplifies ANYONE's method of play. That GM is applying force, or something close to it. Maybe we can live with that, and maybe there's a theory for when that's OK, but it isn't what either of us are talking about. So of course we agree that players exercise 'character agency'. Its a given!

Now, in Story Now there are other kinds of things players can do, usually, besides just say "my character opens the door", but THAT can and does happen too, all the time. The reasons for engaging in that sort of activity may be different for different types of games, but we've already been over many times how the various game types are ALL PRETTY SIMILAR in many basic respects! So really, there is no need for all this hand wringing and vilifying of anyone else.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But so are his games, the difference is that his game is limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result based on strict adherence to genre, theme, player concerns, etc... right? So is it just that the 2 playstyles are just 2 different types of choose your own adventure books?

No, because, for one thing, the genre of, lets say, 'Epic High Fantasy' is MUCH MUCH larger than 'what can happen in DL1' (Dragon Lance being Epic High Fantasy, though I'm sure we could hair split about that, but lets not). You understand the difference? In Story Now there's no 'plot', there's no 'adventures you can go on', or even well-established world-facts that can't be contravened for the sake of story.

The very genesis of the story is also QUALITATIVELY different, and this gets back to what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] said before, there's a qualitative dimension to this whole 'agency debate' thing. You cannot simply spit out numbers, or even relative measures, like [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing. It simply doesn't work. He's also correct, IMHO, in his analysis of the very nature of 'agency' itself, which is that nobody who seriously has the sort of philosophical credentials to be serious about defining it is going to say that actual humans have '100% agency'. Many might say exactly the opposite!

The point is, players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game are not simply given choices of circumstances within which they must have their characters navigate. They have a higher level input, to help determine what those circumstances are, the very process of creation of them, from the very beginning. It may be that in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game you can burn down the building and change the scenario, or walk away and go elsewhere, but, unless you engage him outside the realm of the narrative, you can't actually engage in the creative process of picking the elements that will go into the story, ab initio.

This is a real difference, and its a dimension in which there is a quality which is existing in Story Now and not existing in Story Before or Story Later, or etc.

The problem is his playstyle has it's own set of limitations on all of these things that have been (by various posters arguing for said playstyle throughout the thread) ignored... promoted as "good" limitations" or brushed aside as an accepted part of the playstyle... when in fact none of that stops them from limiting player agency.

The problem is, when you take the kinds of 'limitations' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has in his game, you are simply stating that 'if its a game at all, then its just as limited as ANY game." By this notion there's no meaningful difference of any kind between any two RPGs.

THREAD IS OVER!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I believe (and I have no stats to back this statement) that the majority of us play a combination of both when given the opportunity by the players*.
Many tables run the traditional combo Sandbox-Railroad and not a strict one or another, I feel Story Now also emerges in general play as players' interests start becoming increasingly more important in a campaign.
Maybe I'm self-reflecting too much, but I don't think so based on what I have read on Enworld.

*requires players' input to run Story Now arcs

Yeah, I think this is something of a counterpoint that has been present in the thread all along. There are, in the real world, few pure examples of one way of playing. I can remember back to the oldest games I ran, and there was always a time when the players started making up MOST of the stuff that was going on, but it was definitely not systematic like what we do now.

I think some games, some genre, etc. are more likely to evoke a sort of Emergent Story Now than others, high level D&D play seems one where it can happen. Traveler, a game Pemerton sometimes talks about, can be another.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're forgetting the mandate on the GM to frame into crisis. Yes, the player's have additional knot into the themes of okay and may have additional ability to write to backstory with actions ( ie, secret door creation) , but this is countered by the fact that the GM is required to frame the PCs into crisis over these points. The players lose the ability to mitigate issues with planning and are instead thrust into crisis regardless.

This is often dismissed because it's assumed that the players buy into this and desire it (and this is true), but a similar argument for traditional play is dismissed. Many Story Now games actually build in mechanics to mitigate this very issue by giving players extra story levers to mitigate bad things that happen to their PCs. Strangely, this is seem as more agency over traditional games rather than mechanics implemented to directly offset the agency restrictions built into the framing mechanisms of Story Now.

Don't get me wrong, here, I dont think this is a negative to Story Now. It aims for a target and hits it with the play it generates.

I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.

Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.

I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.

 

[Lanefan]

And I find it entirely puzzling why anyone would imagine that anything I've said would count as that! I have nothing against 'your kind of agency', as I've said several times, and I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said it too, probably others, 'your kind of agency' (lets call it character agency) is simply the core activity of playing an RPG, so OF COURSE I approve of it!

I mean, don't we BOTH AGREE, that a GM who isn't giving the players a chance to make basic types of choices, not even going near "inventing some new element of the setting" or whatever, just basic "I go here, I do this, I say X", that such a GM is not what exemplifies ANYONE's method of play. That GM is applying force, or something close to it. Maybe we can live with that, and maybe there's a theory for when that's OK, but it isn't what either of us are talking about. So of course we agree that players exercise 'character agency'. Its a given!

Not so universally as you might think, I'm afraid.

For example, in one of the other threads I'm into it a bit with a "Yes, and..." playstyle supporter, in whose game if someone makes a suggestion or declares an action (e.g. "we go left", or "I charge the fortress") everyone else is ultimately bound to support it - the table mechanics don't give them the agency to disagree* or to try to prevent the action or to do something else. Hence, once someone's made the suggestion or declared the action all the rest can do is respond with "Yes, and I <narrate or declare my action in support of what was declared/suggested>."

* - except for colour, but it's just going through the motions as ultimately you have to find a reason to concur.

Personally I find this a far greater denial of player agency than anything to do with co-authorship would ever amount to.

Lanefan