D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Micah Sweet]

Micah, I understand from my own experiences that world-building can indeed be a fun exercise.

However, I don't feel like I am playing D&D (or some other TTRPG) when I do worldbuilding. IME, it was quite the opposite experience. There were many times I found myself world-building for some TTRPG precisely because I wasn't playing the game. It was all I could do in the absence of a gaming group. I may have still been engaging in the general hobby of TTRPGs by doing so, but the idea that it constituted "playing the game" is pretty absurd to my experiences. If you had told me that I was playing the game, I would have been pretty insulted, frustrated, and hurt by that idea, because in no way did it feel like I was in any way, shape, or form playing the game despite wanting to play. In retrospect, my world-building was mostly an exercise of self-indulgence.

These experiences world-building in the absence of a group plus similar experiences to what @Mort recounts of "setting tourism" helped me realize that world-building is pretty pointless self-indulgent exercise in the absence of actual play. It may be prep, but I wouldn't call it play.

I've made my position clear on this, and calling my favorite part of RPGing a pointless self-indulgent exercise until the moment I'm at the table is insulting.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I don't understand what you are saying is a false assumption.

Fair point. I seem to have misread your post.

I commonly see this claim:

I posted that "the verisimilitude of the fiction, as experienced by the players, cannot be affected by the GM knowing things that the players never learn" ...

And there seems to be an underlying assumption that the players will never experience the majority of what is designed unless it is specifically prepared at the moment, in collaboration, or for the next 2-3 sessions. Which I disagree with strongly. PCs can interact with situations and NPCs that are informed by circumstances that players may never discover.

This, however, is not what you said.

 

[Aldarc]

I've made my position clear on this, and calling my favorite part of RPGing a pointless self-indulgent exercise until the moment I'm at the table is insulting.

Did you miss that part where I said that I also enjoy it or did you choose to gloss over that so you could maintain your outrage?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Did you miss that part where I said that I also enjoy it or did you choose to gloss over that so you could maintain your outrage?

No, I didn't miss it, but couching your opinion in self-recrimation "I like this pointless self-indulgence too" doesn't change what you said. For the record, I'm in the process of making a setting right now, and my intention is to run it for my group when its finished. But if that doesn't happen for whatever reason, and the players never see it, or most of it (the only thing that seems to matter to you) I will still consider that "play time" well spent. It is a big part of my enjoyment of the game, and the hobby, and I strongly disagree with the notion that none of it counts as play unless I'm literally at the table presenting it to players.

Like I said to @pemerton , we're going to have to agree to disagree on this.

 

[Campbell]

My personal litmus test on whether or not world building is being done in a self-indulgent way is more about the motivation/purpose behind it than whether players directly find out. Some of the most self-indulgent world building is specifically targeted at players finding stuff out to appreciate rather than to interact with (when the players are not looking to engage in setting tourism).

I think there's plenty of room for setting design that is focused on building elements for players to interact with that may not see play if players do not pursue it or to provide dynamism in the setting that has knock on effects players may discover if they play skillfully. A setting element does not have to be known to be motivated by the needs of play.

I do think that if you are engaging in world building primarily for your own enjoyment it's self-indulgent. That's not to say it's like bad. It's just fundamentally no different than players who create 10-page backstories. I think within most trad games there's a certain amount of self-indulgence everyone engages in. Where those limits are for any given group just differ.

 

[Aldarc]

I'd be more likely to call game prep a creative, relaxing, enjoyable pastime than anything. I'm not sure it really matters though.

So for me? I enjoy world building for it's own sake and as it's own thing. Keeping the focus on what the players are doing and what they need to know about the world around them is a good idea but it's also an unrelated issue.

I agree here. I too would "call game prep a creative, relaxable, enjoyable pastime." It's a perfectly fine way to enjoy the hobby, and I don't take any umbrage at all for people who choose do such things in their freetime. I'm just hesitant, if not resistant, to calling world-building on its own as "playing the game."

As far as setting tourism, occasionally DMs do that I suppose but in my experience it's usually new DMs who don't know any better. There's also a pretty simple solution to it - talk to the DM and explain what the problem is. Long, long ago I has some scenes in my game that were pretty much just me monologuing and the players just sat down and told me what the issue was. It worked. I know, radical concept.

I find the various solutions utilized by narrative and OSR games to be more to my liking since they also tend to both resist GM-imposed story, which IME often co-exists with GM-imposed tourism.

 

[Faolyn]

I disagree. A door they can't enter merely presents a bigger challenge, which they may or may not be able to overcome with some creative thought and possible use of some in-character resources.

Can they dig through the wall (or floor, or ceiling) and bypass the door? Can at least one of them get behind it somehow (via short-range teleport, gaseous form, whatever) to see if it's easily openable from the other side? Can they go back to town and hire or recruit a better lock-picker? Can they get a good enough impression of the lock to get a key made; or via divination find if any keys still exist and if so where they are? Can they beat the door down using sheer brute force? Do they have, or can they access, other magic that could remove the door as an obstacle? Is there some specific thing that must be done or said in order to gain entry, and if so what is it?

So this rather ignores what I was saying, since it's obvious that if the players know those options are possible--and we are talking players here, not PCs, unless you're the type of DM to insist that a PC wouldn't think of those things because they've never encountered them before in-character, unless they first made an Int check or something--that if they find a door with a lock they couldn't pick, they would try a different method.

The point is, if you have a door you can't get past--and it doesn't matter if they can't pick the lock or break it down or teleport past it, or if they
or don't think to --then "nothing happens" is annoying and boring, and, honestly, indicates either that the GM didn't intend for the players to go in that direction and can't improv something, or that the GM is adversarial.

Especially since the question of if they get past the door relies almost entirely on a random die roll.

Or - and this is a big one for me - can or will they bring themselves to admit they failed, and give up on getting at whatever is behind the door? I'm not the sort of DM who thinks the PCs must necessarily succeed at every mission, and sometimes for whatever reason it's just not meant to be.

But that's up to the players to decide, not for the GM to force them to decide.

It also begs another question: if it's "just not meant to be," then why is it there in the first place? What good does it do for either the adventure or the players? How does including it make the adventure better or more interesting? If it's possible to get past the door, then it is, in fact, meant to be. If it's not, then it means that you as a GM have wasted your time putting it there but not having it gotten past.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So this rather ignores what I was saying, since it's obvious that if the players know those options are possible--and we are talking players here, not PCs, unless you're the type of DM to insist that a PC wouldn't think of those things because they've never encountered them before in-character, unless they first made an Int check or something--that if they find a door with a lock they couldn't pick, they would try a different method.

The point is, if you have a door you can't get past--and it doesn't matter if they can't pick the lock or break it down or teleport past it, or if they
or don't think to --then "nothing happens" is annoying and boring, and, honestly, indicates either that the GM didn't intend for the players to go in that direction and can't improv something, or that the GM is adversarial.

Especially since the question of if they get past the door relies almost entirely on a random die roll.


But that's up to the players to decide, not for the GM to force them to decide.

It also begs another question: if it's "just not meant to be," then why is it there in the first place? What good does it do for either the adventure or the players? How does including it make the adventure better or more interesting? If it's possible to get past the door, then it is, in fact, meant to be. If it's not, then it means that you as a GM have wasted your time putting it there but not having it gotten past.

Because no one knows if the PCs are going through that door until they encounter it and try. And if they can't, either because the dice don't favor them or they don't think of a way that works, so be it. That becomes a mystery that remains unresolved. The setting doesn't exist solely for the entertainment of the players, and its not worthless if it doesn't make into "the adventure", if there even is such a thing outside of what the PCs do. For all we know, some other party might make it through that door.

The PCs are not special in my opinion. They're just the characters the camera happens to be on, and it could just as easily be someone else.

 

[Faolyn]

Because no one knows if the PCs are going through that door until they encounter it and try. And if they can't, either because the dice don't favor them or they don't think of a way that works, so be it. That becomes a mystery that remains unresolved. The setting doesn't exist solely for the entertainment of the players, and its not worthless if it doesn't make into "the adventure", if there even is such a thing outside of what the PCs do. For all we know, some other party might make it through that door.

Not worthless; pointless. Especially for something like a room behind a locked door in a dungeon.

Having a door there, and having "nothing happens" when the PCs fail to open it, means that the time spent in that section of the dungeon was wasted. Whereas having something happen--such as a monster being alerted to the noise the PCs make when they try to get past the door--means that the time spent isn't wasted, because something happens.

And that is something that has long been a part of D&D, as one of the many tips for making your games more exciting. It just got codified in PbtA games front-and-center in the core book instead of being stuck in the back of the DMG or in an issue of an old Dragon Magazine.

The PCs are not special in my opinion. They're just the characters the camera happens to be on, and it could just as easily be someone else.

Except the camera doesn't switch to someone else so no, it won't just as easily be someone else. Unless you have a very unusual setting, the camera consistently focuses on this one group of people. Things may happen in the background, but they will never been seen by anyone other than you, the world-builder, unless you choose to bring them or their after-effects to the attention of the PCs.

 

[Lanefan]

Micah, I understand from my own experiences that world-building can indeed be a fun exercise.

However, I don't feel like I am playing D&D (or some other TTRPG) when I do worldbuilding.

Same here; but at the same time I like to (and do) think that the worldbuilding I'm doing now will improve the play experience for both myself and the players later, after puck-drop.

And if it turns out that world doesn't get played, then so be it - I still have it in place should I or anyone else ever have a use for it later.