What is *worldbuilding* for?

[darkbard]

In our session today we had only 3 players (others couldn't make it) and so I suggested we try something different. I bought A Penny for My Thoughts years ago now - it has very catching visual design - but had never played it. But for whatever reason I've been re-reading it over the past week, and knowing that our crew would be a bit short I brought it along.

<snip>

So this is not a RPG, it's a pure cooperative storytelling game.

<snip>

This experience, plus similar experiences in the tamer context of RPGing, are what make me think concerns that GM control over setting is necessary to maintin consistency (of causation, of story events more generally) are exaggerated.

EDIT: I also thought I would try and say something about how quickly setting and character emerge in this game.

<snip>

That's not completely dissimilar to how a GM's framing can interact with a player's establishment of theme/agenda in the context of a RPG.

Super instructive post about how the principles of games in entirely different genres can be used to shed light on what's possible in RPGs, generally. Especially useful wrt how multiple authors and no preauthored story/plot, beyond genre tropes, can nevertheless allow a cohesive story to emerge.

 

[pemerton]

actor stance does prevent "I play my 'Unexpected Aid' card. Who would have thought the map is in the kitchen of all places!".

But that is not an essential element of player-driven RPGIng. Eg I've repeatedly pointed out that it is not a part of any game that I GM.

If the answer lies within base player play then the declaration was incorrect or at least incomplete. Complete declarations would be "I find the map in the study for the map while searching" and "I catch the blood in a handy nearby vessel".

If we assume the declarations are complete for the type of play then there are two remaining possibilities: the answer is going to consume player resources or the GM the arbiter of answers.

I'm not going to address the first case because I consider it trivial.

In the second case, the GM has a few possible modes of preparation:
1) Prepare the position of objects considered meaningful to the game ahead of time. For the first declaration, having decided where the map is, for the second, having a inventory of room contents.
2) Develop a model (random or not) that an be applied to answer any declaration dependent on the environment
3) Respond to how the table "feels" at that particular moment in the game.

I don't follow.

I GMed a session where the player declared "I look around the room fov a vessel to catch the blood." In BW that is a complete action declaratoin. I (as GM) set a difficulty. The check was made and succeeded. So the PC saw a vessel.

That did not require the player to step out of actor stance.

 

[pemerton]

Well here’s the thing....the GM need not decide everything about the world ahead of time. I’m just saying he should not be excluded from adding story elements.

I feel like dismissing any GM input to the story simply because there can be risk involved in that type of play is not all that different from dismissing player input.

In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s technique, for 4e at least, the GM is actually authoring almost all of the content, just at the behest of the players, so I think GMs have probably STILL the majority of the input. Player wants to conquer the world, the GM brings in a cult of Vecna to facilitate that (maybe the player suggested that particular detail, but I'm guessing most of the particulars and how it was brought into the scenes was on the GM).

What AbdulAlhazred said.

No one in this thread that I can recall has talked about "excluding the GM from adding story elements" nor "dismissed any GM input". I, at least, have repeatedly posted actual play examples which illustrate such input (eg a wizard's tower; a dark naga; black arrows in a mage's workroom; a duergar stronghold; components of the Rod of Seven Parts; etc).

Framingt is, by default in a mainstream RPG, GM authorship of story elements.

The thread is expressly about worldbuilding, or - for those who don't like that use of that term - about the role of GM pre-authorship of setting. Which is not a synonym for GM authorship of story elements - it's a quite distinctive mode of that.

 

[Maxperson]

My experience with GMs and playing inside THEIR agenda is that a lot of them don't like this kind of thing too much. They feel like its a cheap way to get rid of the orcs. Maybe they allow it, but they punish it or they just decide that the orcs have some other water supply or whatever. They already decided on a story arc where the orcs menace the town and there's a battle, which they're invested in. I'm not saying this GM is a 'bad' GM, just that this is VERY typical and the weakness of GM-centered play is this tendency to want to stick to their story arc because they've put a lot of work into it. Moderately good GMs will maybe give some ground, some of the orcs are poisoned, or you win the first round but more orcs come back later, although you now maybe get some other new options too as a reward. Still, things tend to get stuck in certain patterns VERY easily. I know it doesn't HAVE to be that way, the technique is not hopeless or even bad, it just has its weaknesses.

See, this hasn't been my experience at all. Including myself, the last 10 DMs that I've played with all use my style of DMing and would not have punished or countered that. Depending the DM, there would have been varying levels of difficulty, but not as much as you described. We would have had to get past the orc sentries and there probably would be a few guards who may or may not be sleeping while guarding the water. It would have been a challenge, but not impossible. There also probably would have been some sort of roll to see just how effective the poisoning was(ie how many orcs drank before it was discovered). Maybe here in Los Angeles we have a more enlightened sort of DM.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What AbdulAlhazred said.

No one in this thread that I can recall has talked about "excluding the GM from adding story elements" nor "dismissed any GM input". I, at least, have repeatedly posted actual play examples which illustrate such input (eg a wizard's tower; a dark naga; black arrows in a mage's workroom; a duergar stronghold; components of the Rod of Seven Parts; etc).

Framingt is, by default in a mainstream RPG, GM authorship of story elements.

The thread is expressly about worldbuilding, or - for those who don't like that use of that term - about the role of GM pre-authorship of setting. Which is not a synonym for GM authorship of story elements - it's a quite distinctive mode of that.

So backstory created by the GM is acceptable?

 

[pemerton]

So backstory created by the GM is acceptable?

What have you got in mind?

The PCs arrive in a duergar stronghold. The duergar who has accompanied them there warns them "Our ruler, Murkelmor, and I don't always see eye to eye." That's backstory, and is part of framing. When the PCs in my main 4e game arrived in the duergar stronghold I narrated a reasonable amount of backstory of this general sort. Two PCs - the wielder of the Sceptre of Law, and the tiefling paladin - were treated more favourably by the duergar than the other PCs, and the reasons for this (eg the duergar are devil worshippers who hate chaos) were clearly established at that point.

If you mean the GM establishing unrevealed backstory to use as a constraint on the success of action declarations - well, that's a different thing.

 

[darkbard]

<snip>

That's backstory, and is part of framing. When the PCs in my main 4e game arrived in the duergar stronghold I narrated a reasonable amount of backstory of this general sort.

<snip>

If you mean the GM establishing unrevealed backstory to use as a constraint on the success of action declarations - well, that's a different thing.

I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!

 

[pemerton]

I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!

I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").

But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between pre-authorship of the setting and preparation seemed to generate a lot of contention.

For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe).

fPart of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the "memory trigger" about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it.

I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing. One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously.

 

[Maxperson]

I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").

But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between pre-authorship of the setting and preparation seemed to generate a lot of contention.

It's human nature for people who are repeatedly insulted to resist what the one doing the insulting is trying to say. Perhaps if you stopped saying that our style of play amounts to a choose your own adventure book(and other similar statements), you'd get less resistance. That characterization is false and insulting.

 

[darkbard]

It's human nature for people who are repeatedly insulted to resist what the one doing the insulting is trying to say.

And it astounds me that, despite [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's consistently measured tone, sometimes in the face of blatant hostility, that some continue to mistake honest analysis for insult.