What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Aenghus]

D&D is not an adversarial game. If it was, the players lose......always. The DM can drop a dragon on them at first level and win the game. D&D is collaborative, but with different roles for the players and the DM. If the DM, or players for that matter, are viewing the game as adversarial, something has gone terribly wrong. The goal of the collaboration is enjoyment for those playing it. It makes it really easy to trust the DM if you realize that you are all working towards a common goal.

That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.

What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage. The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules. To some this might be their default style of D&D.

But a common downside of this style of play is communication problems. The competition between participants can discourage communications and increase the amount of misinformation. Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

All true. Only so far as the particular NPC I'm running at that time has extra knowledge, if any.

Simple example: the vizier is secretly plotting to take down the king; both are NPCs. If the PCs talk to both, what they hear from the king will be in blissful ignorance of any such plot while what they hear from the vizier may well be tainted with that knowledge.

If done right (and I freely admit it isn't always) any NPC is only operating with the knowledge it would reasonably have in any given situation, and the DM has to thus constrain herself when running an NPC whose knowledge is incomplete e.g. the king, above.

But this is, again, IMHO, a very dicey proposition indeed. Given the vast number of possible ways that different NPCs could know things, and the possible relationships between them, even in a setting where the GM has created a lot of detail, it beggars the imagination to believe that you can judge on any other basis than narrative/aesthetic concerns who knows what. I mean, yes, that means you can play each NPC in terms of what they know and don't know, relative to others, but you're not really constrained in terms of what that is, nor can you really reason about it in any causal way beyond some very trivial "this is common sense" possibilities (IE my ally probably knows my plan kind of thing).

And also be a badly-run game, if the DM isn't being consistent with what she decides and-or isn't consistent with the already-established fiction.

I don't think this observation is relevant. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point is that the GM would be deciding EVERYTHING in that situation, yet your definition of player agency considers the players to have 'agency' of some sort. As I said in an earlier post yesterday, I think this is confusing fictional PC agency with real player agency. The later can be completely lacking, or exist to whatever degree, and the former can be complete. I can imagine a game where the PC's actions are totally unconstrained, and yet the player makes no meaningful decisions at all. Consistency with fiction isn't even related to this. As to what is a 'good' or 'bad' game, that's totally a matter of taste.

This gap can happen in any game or system - the character I want to play just doesn't suit the party or the story, or violates the morals of the DM and-or other players, or simply can't be made (or made well) in that system.

I mean, I'm willing to bet that if I came into your game wanting to play a happy-go-lucky character without really a care in the world who just wanted to go out adventuring for the fun of it (I've played this one), that might not work out so well. Your game is looking for characters with well-defined goals and, dare I say, a certain amount of angst to them.

Well, you have to posit some sort of motivation or goal that makes your character interesting enough to play. I mean, if you want to just play the town drunk who sits in the bar all evening and never does a thing is that really something anyone would bother to do? Its OK as a hypothetical, but its really sort of a 'spherical cow' kind of a thing.

Side question that came up in a chat with a friend/fellow DM tonight: how in your game do you handle it when during char-gen or at session 1 two players present you with goals for their characters that are vastly different in scope and scale? For example:
- character one has placed lots of importance on home and family and thus its goal in life is to save the family farm from foreclosure (a nice, small-scale goal likely achievable at low PC level after not too many game sessions)

- character two is all about religion and has made its goal in life to completely change the faith of the entire realm from one pantheon over to another using means up to and including killing the currently-worshipped deities (a huge-scale goal likely unachievable until very high PC level and after years of play, and maybe not even then)

Its a reasonable question. My reaction is that surely the 2nd PC's goal will have some effect on the family farm! This might create tension between the two, or their aims might be aligned. There's still the question of what might happen 'in the middle' to keep them both hooked, but I think there are likely a range of threats to the farm which cover all levels. The first PC might also 'grow' in terms of her ambitions, so that once she saves the farm then she saves the town, the barony, the kingdom, and eventually the whole of creation! This would be a VERY 4e-type of conception of heroic story arc.

Likewise the character with the grandiose plans probably doesn't start with that as their main focus. Clearly they're not out there god-killing in episode one. In 4e terms they're going to spend heroic tier maybe struggling against the evils of the current faith (at least as they perceive it), and maybe in paragon they overthrow the kingdom's religious institution and institute the new one, and in epic they deal with the repercussions of that leading up to a necessary war against the 'old gods' or something like that.

Why do I ever EVER need to look at the entire forever endless chain of causality when all I'm after is the simple link or two or three between cause A and effect B, whether in fiction or in reality?

I don't at this point care what causes brought about A to begin with, nor do I care about what B might itself cause later. If something forces me to look at either of these, then I will; otherwise I'm happy not caring.

Because, if you examine how things work in the real world, any given effect has many complex causes, and these causes are themselves interrelated in complex ways because they share earlier causes with other things, and each other. The point isn't that you care about them, but that you can pretty much decree anything and construct some causal process that is compatible with that outcome and your initial world state. That state and that outcome are simply not tightly enough constrained to bind you in any appreciable degree.

Go back to the example of the sword being swung at the orc. I can create an almost unimaginably large number of narratives which describe an equally large number of outcomes to that act which are all plausible. Thus the idea of 'causality' in the fictional world isn't ACTUALLY binding on the GM. It doesn't form any meaningful constraint on the narrative he can describe at any point, and it has almost no value to the players as a means of predicting what will come next. All that we are left with is narrative sensibility, genre tropes, table conventions, and a willingness to stick to whatever rules the game may present which apply in a given situation. Fictional causality is powerless, it has no teeth, it is an illusion, nothing more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was said in context of a specific example, that of the map that had been brought up throughout the thread. I gave a couple of different examples of the map situation. I’ll share again because it seems I was not clear.

Bob the Fighter’s goal is to recover his father’s sword. It was stolen years before, but Bob is unsure by whom or why. So through the course of play, the characters learn that a noble who is suspected of illicit and dark dealings may have a map that indicates where the sword may be. So the PCs are going to the noble’s manor to try and find this map.

Now, in a player driven game, the GM would frame this and then ask “what do you do?” Going off of Pemerton’s earlier comments, it seems that the players can indicate that they search the kitchen for the map, and if their Perception or Search roll indicates a success, then the map is found in the kitchen.

This just seems boring to me. Which is why I’ve been citing this example as not being particularly useful without context. Now, I’ve added context to it, but perhaps this is far different context than what Pemerton had in mind. And I’m sure that if asked, Pemerton might say that this would not happen because the players in his game are not likely to attempt such an action. They are experienced players and their thoughts are focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative. In which case, the example seems not very useful to describe play.

Now, the same example applied to a more GM driven, D&D style game is equally useless. The players are not likely to try and manufacture the map through a search of the kitchen. Instead, they would simply indicate that they search the kitchen, and leave the results of their search up to the GM. So in this case, the GM is not actually denying any agency on the players’ part because none is expected in this manner wen playibg this type of game. This goes back to Ovinomancer’s chess move in a checkers game analogy.

So my question is if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different?

Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?

OK, so this is a general type of question about the technique of 'scene framing' and how you generate an interesting narrative using a player-driven approach.

First of all, I'd say that the players are assumed to have SOME interest in an interesting narrative. If they don't, why are they playing?

To expostulate a bit on this and how this fits into D&D as a game, in the beginning Arnesonian play involved a GM putting players through a 'skill test gauntlet' and there was a fundamental opposition. The player's goal was to amass treasure and gain XP to go up in levels. Clearly the GM had to act as a foil to this, to an extent. Consider the much-maligned 'Monty Haul Dungeon' where the GM just gives away the store. But this isn't material to a narrative fiction where character development and the story itself are primary goals! This is why 2e is incoherent. It has the structure of OD&D, the opposed DM and players and the mechanics to go with that, and an avowed agenda of story-telling which doesn't fit with that.

So, what do we actually have to fear? If the players simply give themselves the whole store, then its their own fault if the game is boring and pointless! What the exact balance is and how the relationship between GM and players works can be structured in numerous ways. I could run, say, 4e D&D as pretty much classic D&D, and I can run it with the players dicing to add elements to the story, like Vinny the Weasel, or I could even just let them insert stuff any way they want whenever they want, though some people will prefer specific structures (@Pemerton sticks strictly to the Czege Principle as he calls it, maybe [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] doesn't).

Personally, I think its fun if the players set the general agenda based on their character backstory and build choices, and then indicate the direction to go in by introducing elements to play which are plausible and connect with their action declarations. This is one reason I added the 'Inspiration' mechanic to HoML, it provides a specifically measured element of player manipulation of the plot which is mechanically constrained. I find this is easier for a lot of players to handle than simply "do anything you want with the story" as it keeps them more focused on doing relevant things (my version of this requires that the player relate any narrative element they produce to an existing character trait, and if they wish to exercise this option more than once per session they have to generate some kind of narrative element that is related to the character but contrary to their interests in order to regain Inspiration). I find this rule works pretty well, and its rather similar to how things like FATE and (I suppose) BW and Cortex+ work in some degree.

 

[Lanefan]

Most games don't even mention that form of consideration as a player obligation.

As a player of many types of RPGs, I despise being "focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative". If there is drama, I'm failing to keep the situation under control. A lot of my table time is devoted to investigation and planning phases as opposed to execution so as to reduce or eliminate dramatic impact. I do not care if the narrative is boring. I do not care the table play makes a good story. I care about accomplishing the tasks at hand -- preferably with aplomb and deftness. I would be the type to say 'the first room we come to' when asked 'where are you searching?'. A confrontation in the den with the roaring fireplace, towering bookshelves, and hung weaponry culminating in grabbing for the map as it's tossed into the fire may be more dramatic than finding the map in the spare cold kitchen, but I wouldn't care.

Now this is a very interesting approach.

4e D&D and (from what I can tell) some of the 'indie' games referenced in this thread have an underlying philosophy of 'go where the action is'. The DM is expected to frame dramatic scenes and the players are expected to deal with these scenes via means appropriate to their characters.

Yet here we have a player who would rather use exploration and wise information gathering in order to go where the action isn't; in effect mitigating or sometimes entirely denying the DM the opportunity to frame these dramatic scenes as long as doing so allows character goals to be met, missions accomplished, etc.

This to me is an important form of player agency that is entirely denied by 'go where the action is'. I rather badly waved at this idea a long way upthread; I'll try again here, using the example from [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's game where the PCs were looking for a reliquary, and met some angels en route that showed them the way to get there. As written, the PCs conversed with the angels after which pemerton-as-GM went where the action is and framed the scene in the reliquary; and things proceeded from there. (note this might not be the best example to use but it's one I can remember the gist of without having to dig around)

A player using [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] 's approach loses out on gobs of agency here:
- s/he doesn't get the opportunity to explore the approaches to and surroundings of the reliquary before arriving at the drama; which means
- - s/he doesn't get a chance to explore the area around the reliquary to determine whether there's more than one possible approach or exit
- - s/he doesn't get an opportunity to pre-scout the reliquary itself via stealth or scrying or whatever other means might be available in order to assess its occupants, threats, hazards, etc.
- - because of this lack of knowledge s/he isn't able to mitigate potential risks or prepare for a potential encounter via pre-casting spells, downing potions, or whatever other means might be available
- before all this, s/he also loses out on any opportunity to explore whatever might lie between the angel encounter site and the reliquary - by bypassing this the GM has arbitrarily decided there's nothing there of relevance rather than allowing the players to find out for themselves

In short, there's no opportunity given for the players to force the GM to change his initial framing of the reliquary scene from what it ended up being; or delay it until more information could be gathered.

Now pemerton's players are probably fine with this as it's what they're used to: cut to the action and skip the rest. But I wonder if they even realize how much agency they're giving up in the process?

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

IMO trust is more difficult in an adversarial game IMO, as it is in a game that values intra-party conflict.

Not IME, and our games are both of these.

That said, I'm playing with people I know as friends outside the game; so the trust is kind of already there to begin with. When playing with strangers, yeah, there's going to be a feeling-out period during which some stuff will by necessity have to be downplayed.

Monolithic parties are to some eyes unrealistic but they are an attempt to sidestep some of the trust issues, and streamline play by avoiding a bunch of the drama such conflict creates. I realise some people like such drama and conflict, but there are others who don't and are willing to take steps to avoid it.

Why are people always so concerned with streamlining play?

I mean hell, if something doesn't get done in this session there's always next week, and the week after that, and...

Most games aren't playing to a schedule "this campaign has to be over by June", are they?

 

[Lanefan]

That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.

Seconded.

What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage.

With smiles on our faces, we do this all the time.

The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules.

But this, not so much. We're not really a crunch-driven group.

But a common downside of this style of play is communication problems. The competition between participants can discourage communications and increase the amount of misinformation. Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.

This happens surprisingly infrequently IME - mostly because it's easy to tell when the DM is joking and when he isn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And to take that one step further. If it is principled play by the players which keeps his style in check, then why isn't principled play by the DM not to railroad the players into a choose your own adventure book equally sufficient?

I think this misses the entire point of the whole thread from the start. Nobody argued that GM-centered play, and any attendant world building, couldn't be 'principled'. The assertion is that it HAS A DIFFERENT AGENDA. There are different characteristics inherent to these techniques. In a GM-centered play system it is axiomatic that the focus is in terms of what the GM is presenting. In a player-centric game it is axiomatic that the focus is on the agenda brought to the table by the players. This is a qualitative difference that is not related to how well each GM sticks to his principles. If such a qualitative difference does not exist, then what are we discussing here?

It seems to me that the controversial point, to some of you, is the assertion by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al that, to the extent that a game addresses player concerns, it becomes a player-driven game. I think there are finer points that can be discussed, but this too seems kind of self evident. The counter assertion seems to be that as long as the CHARACTERS are fictionally not depicted as being forced to do something, and their choices appear meaningful from character stance, that the players have agency. This seems to be IMHO incoherent, if the players choices of moves cannot produce fiction of the player's choosing, then they're really only choosing between the GM's options, and they are dependent on the GM to address their agenda, entirely.

I think its reasonable to ask your question "given that player's power is not unlimited, to what extent is the game still dependent on the GM for the agenda?" and this is a GOOD question! In some systems, like Cortex+ and BW there are actual rules that stipulate that the GM only has a specific amount of power over the fiction, so clearly if you play a game like that then the answer must be "there's a balance of power between them and they share it." In D&D, with its 'rule 0' type of structure, that isn't the case from pure mechanics, the GM could just steamroller everyone in mechanical terms, even if that GM is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. So, yes, it requires principled play by a GM in D&D, NO MATTER WHAT way you play it! That's just a characteristic of D&D! It isn't a characteristic of Cortex+...

 

[Lanefan]

But this is, again, IMHO, a very dicey proposition indeed. Given the vast number of possible ways that different NPCs could know things, and the possible relationships between them, even in a setting where the GM has created a lot of detail, it beggars the imagination to believe that you can judge on any other basis than narrative/aesthetic concerns who knows what. I mean, yes, that means you can play each NPC in terms of what they know and don't know, relative to others, but you're not really constrained in terms of what that is, nor can you really reason about it in any causal way beyond some very trivial "this is common sense" possibilities (IE my ally probably knows my plan kind of thing).

Like I said (and you quoted), I don't always get it right. But at least I make the attempt, which is all one can ask.

I don't think this observation is relevant. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point is that the GM would be deciding EVERYTHING in that situation, yet your definition of player agency considers the players to have 'agency' of some sort. As I said in an earlier post yesterday, I think this is confusing fictional PC agency with real player agency. The later can be completely lacking, or exist to whatever degree, and the former can be complete. I can imagine a game where the PC's actions are totally unconstrained, and yet the player makes no meaningful decisions at all.

Seeing as how in theory the players are being represented by their PCs, I'd say 'PC agency' and player agency are joined at the hip.

Well, you have to posit some sort of motivation or goal that makes your character interesting enough to play. I mean, if you want to just play the town drunk who sits in the bar all evening and never does a thing is that really something anyone would bother to do? Its OK as a hypothetical, but its really sort of a 'spherical cow' kind of a thing.

Ah, but now you're taking a playable example (a happy-go-lucky chap who wants to adventure for the fun and excitement of it) and throwing back an unplayable example (the town drunk who does nothing) to try and prove me wrong.

A happy-go-lucky character is very playable, believe me! Arguably the best character I've ever had was like this: her wisdom was so low that she just thought most of the time adventuring was all just good fun (except when her friends died, then the tears came); and afterwards spending the treasure was wonderful! She lasted for years, in a 3e game that wasn't always nice to its PCs.

Its a reasonable question. My reaction is that surely the 2nd PC's goal will have some effect on the family farm! This might create tension between the two, or their aims might be aligned. There's still the question of what might happen 'in the middle' to keep them both hooked, but I think there are likely a range of threats to the farm which cover all levels. The first PC might also 'grow' in terms of her ambitions, so that once she saves the farm then she saves the town, the barony, the kingdom, and eventually the whole of creation! This would be a VERY 4e-type of conception of heroic story arc.

Assuming the player was cool with that, sure. But if the player (in character) takes the attitude of "OK, farm's saved, I'm done here - and they need help with the harvest, besides", then what? I'd hazard a guess games like this don't handle PC turnover quite as easily as a more traditional system.

Likewise the character with the grandiose plans probably doesn't start with that as their main focus. Clearly they're not out there god-killing in episode one. In 4e terms they're going to spend heroic tier maybe struggling against the evils of the current faith (at least as they perceive it), and maybe in paragon they overthrow the kingdom's religious institution and institute the new one, and in epic they deal with the repercussions of that leading up to a necessary war against the 'old gods' or something like that.

Very true. My point was more that character one can fulfill its goals without ever leaving heroic tier while character two has to get to epic and even then might be up against it.

Because, if you examine how things work in the real world, any given effect has many complex causes, and these causes are themselves interrelated in complex ways because they share earlier causes with other things, and each other. The point isn't that you care about them, but that you can pretty much decree anything and construct some causal process that is compatible with that outcome and your initial world state. That state and that outcome are simply not tightly enough constrained to bind you in any appreciable degree.

So strip away all that and just look only at cause A and effect B. Your brain will thank you for it.

Go back to the example of the sword being swung at the orc. I can create an almost unimaginably large number of narratives which describe an equally large number of outcomes to that act which are all plausible. Thus the idea of 'causality' in the fictional world isn't ACTUALLY binding on the GM. It doesn't form any meaningful constraint on the narrative he can describe at any point, and it has almost no value to the players as a means of predicting what will come next. All that we are left with is narrative sensibility, genre tropes, table conventions, and a willingness to stick to whatever rules the game may present which apply in a given situation. Fictional causality is powerless, it has no teeth, it is an illusion, nothing more.

I think it's binding not only on the DM but the players as well. If I swing my sword at an orc and the sword turns into a bunch of flowers in mid-swing there'd better be a cause behind that: a curse, a spell, a hallucination, whatever. If it just happens 'because' then there's little point in playing further.

Lan-"this has just given me a wonderful idea for a curse on a weapon"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

OK, so this is a general type of question about the technique of 'scene framing' and how you generate an interesting narrative using a player-driven approach.

First of all, I'd say that the players are assumed to have SOME interest in an interesting narrative. If they don't, why are they playing?

Oh, I don't know...beer, chips, hang out with friends, kick some fictional butt, haul home some loot, and tell war stories about it later.

Sure, a good narrative might well improve the whole thing but it's not always essential.

 

[Maxperson]

That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.

What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage. The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules. To some this might be their default style of D&D.

So you say that isn't what you meant by adversarial game, and then posted examples if it being like I said. There is no competitive element built into D&D between the players and the DM. It's not at all one vs. the other in any way. You are describing PvP, and It's really PvE.

If a DM bragged about his PC body count to me, I wouldn't play in that game, because he couldn't be trusted to act fairly. Winning against the players is too important to him. The same if they bragged about building killer dungeons. Fun trash talk is not competitive at all. It's just having a good time. Building PCs for tactics, etc. is competitive, but not against the DM. It's against the environment.

D&D was not designed to be the DM vs. the players. It was designed as players vs. the game world, with the DM as the one who sets up the game world challenges for the enjoyment of the players.

Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.

That's not trash talk. That's deception by DM to the players in an out of game adversarial way, and is another sign of a horrible DM, and one that I wouldn't play with again.