The Art and Science of Worldbuilding For Gameplay [+]

[Reynard]

Depending how we conceive of the gameplay intended to take place in the world being built, it seems to me that a whole range of different considerations might apply.

Yes. Precisely.

If you are world building for playability for D&D, your world building is necessarily going to be different than if you are world building for Call of Cthulhu or Champions or Vampire. Some games actively encourage world building, while others don't. Some games even tell you to do as little world building as possible prior to starting play. Incorporating the game the world is intended for, therefore, is an essential part of the process.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How is this not equivalent to 'leave blanks' in a general sense? That is, some things are simply not determined. In fact the most general principle is nothing that hasn't entered play is really established as 'truth'.

General principle of what? Your preference? Certainly not of gaming in general.

 

[TwoSix]

To my mind, the primary factor for playability when it comes to worldbuilding is "Don't bombard your players with it."

If you've got a 1000 page gazetteer and atlas and histories of the 23 countries on your continent, that's great. No issues. But don't expect your players to learn that stuff before they sit down to make characters.

If you've added 10 new subclasses to each class to further flesh out your factions and cultures, that's great, but expect that your players are still going to be playing battle master fighters and evocation wizards.

If you want your players to buy into your setting, add mechanical options as rewards, not as starting options. Make those knightly orders and arcane societies you've labored on the source of feats and magic items that are stronger and more compelling than the PHB/DMG options, but are contingent on actually "getting involved".

Another option is to go with an OSR approach, and make only simple character options available at the start, and new races and classes become unlockable as rewards. Completing quests for the Temple of the Mother of Mercy will let your fighter become a paladin of Mercy, with specialized bonuses. And yes, absolutely make them stronger than the starting options. If you want players to live and breathe your setting, you use a big carrot of crunchy goodness to reward them for buying in.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For adventuring gameplay purposes I am a fan of points of light settings like 4e D&D which can have huge fleshed out multiple fallen civilizations and extensive history, but the current setup is lots of isolated areas fairly on their own.

This sets up the PCs as the natural potential heroes when problems arise as there are no armies or other organizations to take care of things.

Fleshing out the worldbuilding of the fallen empires can set up things like the ruins and dungeons of the world so they hang together or tell an unspooling story for exploration.

I feel this ties in well to a lot of default D&D adventuring which are often rescue missions, stop the evil missions, and/or dungeon explorations of some type.

Points of Light was definitely well-designed for playability of the game it was made for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My most recent BW play has been two players, co-GMed. The characters goals pertain predominantly to revenge (in one case) and acquiring wealth to buy a ship (in the other case). The action of the game has focused primarily on small scale robbery, exploiting opportunities that present themselves to vagrants living on the docks.

I don't really see this as adventure.

I certainly would, because it's what the PCs decided to do in that game. What's your definition?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What makes this true? What are the implications? I would say that one thing which is important is that the world doesn't constrain the shape of that one story too much.

But if I just want to tell one story about the impact of the Mourning, then I don't care.

Sure, but in the end most worlds are just vessels for the story their authors wanted to tell.

In what way is this a response in support of a "+" thread's premise?

 

[Reynard]

To my mind, the primary factor for playability when it comes to worldbuilding is "Don't bombard your players with it."

If you've got a 1000 page gazetteer and atlas and histories of the 23 countries on your continent, that's great. No issues. But don't expect your players to learn that stuff before they sit down to make characters.

Good advice. Give an overview and then ask them what sorts of things they want to do, what sorts of characters they want to play, and what sorts of places they would like to visit. Use that answers to give them a little more info. Unspool information as it appears in play.

This of course isn't actually world building technique so much as GMing technique, but it is relevant.

If you've added 10 new subclasses to each class to further flesh out your factions and cultures, that's great, but expect that your players are still going to be playing battle master fighters and evocation wizards.

If you want your players to buy into your setting, add mechanical options as rewards, not as starting options. Make those knightly orders and arcane societies you've labored on the source of feats and magic items that are stronger and more compelling than the PHB/DMG options, but are contingent on actually "getting involved".

Another option is to go with an OSR approach, and make only simple character options available at the start, and new races and classes become unlockable as rewards. Completing quests for the Temple of the Mother of Mercy will let your fighter become a paladin of Mercy, with specialized bonuses. And yes, absolutely make them stronger than the starting options. If you want players to live and breathe your setting, you use a big carrot of crunchy goodness to reward them for buying in.

I am not sure about all this. If you made up a special subclass aimed at PCs to represent the kinds of wizards that exist in the setting, that feels like a thing the players need to know about going in.

 

[pemerton]

Other aspects that are important and help playability are strong themes, as you said, but also connections between setting elements, a world structure that emphasizes places and people and things to play with, and tropes that lean into whatever sort of adventures the setting is ostensibly about. For my own part, the most important aspect is the relationship between elements, how this ties to that and leads you to the other. That makes a setting useful for me as a GM, because it enables easy improvisation as players do the things players are wont to do.

In principle, might some of this be carried by system rather than by setting?

An example I've got in mind is from Traveller (1977) - the rules for Admin skill and Streetwise skill relieve the world-building GM of the need to detail particular sorts of setting elements and their relationships (roughly, the bulk of urban society).

 

[TwoSix]

I certainly would, because it's what the PCs decided to do in that game. What's your definition?

If you want to use adventure as a metagame term for any events that occur to PCs, that makes sense.

But if you want to use the plain English definition, it would generally involve going to novel places in search of opportunities and experiences, with a solid dash of some assumed risk.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It seems like you are disagreeing with the premise then, if you think detailed worldbuilding harms playability. Remember that this is a "+" thread.

Yes, I know. I’ve engaged with the topic in a positive way. My initial answer was to not prepare everything before involving the players. Which seems pretty obvious if we’re concerned about playability… get some input from the folks who will be playing.

If it was a plus thread about the GM having lonely fun in between game sessions, then my advice would be different!