Seems as though as a GM, you'd be more likely to find not knowing a thing limiting. I think there are others posting who'd find not knowing that same thing to be liberating. This does not seem like a distance that can easily be bridged.
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The Art and Science of Worldbuilding For Gameplay [+]
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
I do not think these are as mutually exclusive as you seem to.
I don't believe I was marking anything as being mutually exclusive. I was relating that worldbuilding is not limiting to gameplay.
It fundamentally can't be unless you're making an anti-game thats not supposed to be fun.
If you have a specific kind of gameplay in mind, your world must support it. Period, end of story, stop trying to fight it.
Aldarc
Legend
Another danger IME of too much world-building lore is that there can even be more chances for the lore to be, how shall we say, off-putting for various reasons.
Me finding out the big mystery of the Icons in Coriolos while reading the adventure I was interested in running kinda killed all my enthusiasm for the setting. The mystique of the setting just died for me then and there.
And to add, what Im speaking to as a problem with the idea that worldbuilding is meant to "limit" gameplay, is that it is missing the point of why constraints are valuable in games, and conflating it with how the world the game exists in is built.
These are not the same thing, and you would be approaching this topic going backwards with the pedal bolted to the floor if you treated them as if they were.
Constraints are a part of gameplay, they are not separate from it, and the worldbuilding that arises from those constraints, if any at all, is not something you can incorporate backwards. You won't create good gameplay doing that.
Worldbuilding contextualizes, emphasizes, and reinforces gameplay. It does not create it wholesale because it can't, and as such to try and use worldbuilding to limit gameplay is just going to result in a dissonant, unfun mess.
But constraints, as said, are a part of gameplay. They are no more limiting than worldbuilding is, and that misconception is born in what I assume to be a misunderstanding of what gameplay is.
These are not the same thing, and you would be approaching this topic going backwards with the pedal bolted to the floor if you treated them as if they were.
Constraints are a part of gameplay, they are not separate from it, and the worldbuilding that arises from those constraints, if any at all, is not something you can incorporate backwards. You won't create good gameplay doing that.
Worldbuilding contextualizes, emphasizes, and reinforces gameplay. It does not create it wholesale because it can't, and as such to try and use worldbuilding to limit gameplay is just going to result in a dissonant, unfun mess.
But constraints, as said, are a part of gameplay. They are no more limiting than worldbuilding is, and that misconception is born in what I assume to be a misunderstanding of what gameplay is.
If in worldbuilding, you decide what a thing is, it seems to me that you are limiting it to being that thing. If you are deciding what the reasons for a conflict are, you are very probably limiting the ways it can be resolved; at least, you are limiting the obvious resolutions.
Limitations are not inherently bad--I think the core of the Oblique Strategies is to embrace them--and I agree that your setting must support the gameplay you want.
Composer99
Hero
Speaking of semantic quibbles, "constrain" and "limit" are synonyms. It's a bit rich to pretend they're not for the sake of scoring rhetorical points in an online discussion.
TwoSix
Dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer
When it comes to word definitions, I find specific and limited generally works better than "vague and open-ended".
If you don't see how those limit gameplay, there's really no point, is there?
