What is *worldbuilding* for?

[pemerton]

We'll assume, since it seems to be your preferred method, that the GM has accomplished zero worldbuilding. How do you frame the opening scene?

Well, I can answer give two answers to this question.

Here's one: I told the players that I wanted to GM a game set in the default 4e setting, as it is described in the 4e PHB (mostly in the entries for the races and the gods, but with various bits also implied in some of the class descriptions).

I also told each player that (i) I wanted them to identify one loyalty for their PC; (ii) I wanted them to come up with a reason for their PC to be ready to fight goblins; and (iii) that, being D&D, we were going to be starting in a tavern. The reason for (ii) was that I wanted to use B10 Night's Dark Terror, which seemed like it had some nice encounter ideas that would work well in 4e, one of which is defending a homestead from a goblin attack. The reason for (iii) I hope is self-evident.

The PCs came up with various ideas for their PCs. One was a dwarf from the mountain dwarfholds, and - as the player explained - a dwarf does not come of age until s/he kills a goblin. But this particular dwarf had never killed a goblin. Despite serving in the dwarven army for longer than most other dwarves, he had always been in the wrong place at the wrong time whenever the goblins attacked (on leave, on kitchen duty or, as one of the other players suggested with the intention of ribbing him, on latrine duty). So he had set out to find himself a goblin to fight - and had ended up at a tavern in Kelven favoured by dwarves.

Another was a half-elven warlock. The player decided that this character had had two formative experiences prior to day 1 of the campaign: (1) he had been wandering in the forest when he received a vision of Corellon (who was his patron as a fey pact warlock); (2) when he came back to his village, it had been wiped out by raiding goblins. Having headed off to Kelven to look for work and/or guidance, he found himself at a tavern that served the find dwarven beers for which he had a certain preference.

A third was a middle-aged human mage. The player came up with the name of this mage's home city - Entekash. But Entekash was no more, having been razed by hordes of humanoids (inlcuding goblins, it seemed, although this particular player was pretty relaxed in his backstory as far as the difference between goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, gnolls etc was concerned). The mage, Malstaph, was a devotee of the Raven Queen (I can't remember if that had been true before Entekash's fall, or whether he had turned to the Raven Queen as a response to the destruction of his home). Entekash's suriving populuation was scattered. And so he found himself at a tavern in Kelven.

(There were several other PCs - two also Raven Queen devotees, plus a cleric and a paladin of Kord - but the one's I've described are the ones I recall best, with the richest backstory.)

This was all worked out before the first session, and mabye during the course of it. I showed the players the map on the inside cover of B10, so they could see where Kelven was, where the forest was that elf-y types could come from, where the mountains were, etc. Becaue I had ideas about the western mountains, as suggested by parts of the module, I told the dwarf player that he was from the eastern mountains. Entekash, we agreed, was further north and east of those mountains, a trading city that had been wiped out as the humanoids spread and the old Nerathi trade routes dried up.

With it being established, already, that the PCs were in the tavern, we did a bit of free roleplaying so they could meet one another - some of this in character, some of it out of character as people told one another about their PCs - and then I described a man entering the tavern and striking up a conversation with (as best I recall) the mage. This NPC was Stephen from B10. He was looking for some recruits for a fairly straightforward droving job (I think - its' been a while - and in any event it's just a plot device, and obviously so). He had known the mage's uncle - I can't remember whether it was me or the player who introduced the uncle into the situation, but this was a way of establishing some trust betwen the patron and one of the PCs, thus making the plot device work.

The PCs then set off by boat, and the first encounter was with Iron Ring raiders attacking their boat on the river - I had established the Iron Ring as a Bane-ite organisation, which provided some context in relation to the two Kord worshippers. And things went from there.

The other answer is from a subsequent campaign, whose first session is written up as an actual play post here. In this case, the agree setting was not default 4e, but Dark Sun. In an email I sent some stuff to the players about psionics and defiling, plus the basic ideas of the setting: sword & sandals, sword & planet, gladiators, city states, sorcerer kings, evil templars, etc.

We made PCs and chose themes together. One of the PCs was an eladrin bard (who I had said counted as psionic rather than arcane) with wizard multiclass (and had spent a background option to be a preserver - I had already said that I was not using the WotC versions "preserving for free"). He was an envoy trying to meet with the veiled alliance.

Another PC was a half-giant barbarian wilder gladiator.

I asked each player to come up with a "kicker" - ie a starting situation for their PC - which would fit into the idea of starting in Tyr following the overthrow of the sorcerer king. One player asked "How much after?" and the barbarian player decided his kicker was that, as he was about to behead his opponent in the arena, earning the adulation of the crowd, the cries of revolution and the death of the tyrant suddenly broke out, and so he was deprived of his moment of glory. So that established the timeline - the campaign begins at the moment of the tyrant's death - and also the location - at least that PC was in the arena.

The eladrin player's kicker was that, as he about to meet his Veiled Alliance contact - the secret signal having been given and acknowledged - the contact dropped dead just feet away from him. I set this in the arena, and - together with the kicker for a third PC - it established further context for the opening scene. (They ended up killing some templars and escaping from the arena as rebel fugitives.)

Another player who couldn't join us to the second session also played an eladrin, but wrote into his backstory that he had been taken by the templars at a young age and turned into a thrall assassin - and it was he who had killed the Veiled Alliance contact! This provided material that was a main focus for the next couple of sessions.

What I think both examples have in common is that the initial establishment of the setting is relatively light touch, based on a few key sources that the players have been pointed to, and with the group coming up with ideas (the players, naturally enough, focusing on their PCs) which are melded together (with the GM, I think unsurprisingly, taking the lead in this melding). I have no idea whether in canonical Dark Sun the eladrin send envoys to the Veiled Alliance, and whether the templars create thrall assassins from young waifs (I christened them "Shadow Templars") - just as with the map from B10 which became our Nerath, we're using the setting as a source of ideas and themes and tropes which we'll then build on in actual play.

EDIT: to give another illustration of that last point - when the shadow templar PC, having now repented of his wrongdoing when he saw the devastation caused to his fellow eladrin, led the PCs to his safe house so they could hide from the templars hunting them, we didn't resolve this by consulting established Dark Sun lore about templar safe houses in Tyr. We pulled out the map, and I explained the different "quarters" including the slumm-y one where an assassin was likely to have his safe house, and then we used a Streetwise skill check to determine whether the PCs got there safely. The check was a success, which established that they did indeed find their way safely to his safehouse, which (in virtue of the successful check) was not immediately swarmed by templars - which itself suggests new fiction, like that only his Shadow Templar handler knows where his safehouse is, and so they won't be attacked there until the handler learns that his thrall has turned, and then gets a team together to assault them.

 

[chaochou]

It's worth noting that there are games which feature collective, collaborative world-building. And which do so as part of play, giving players a central role in creating the terrain - geographic, political, social and economic - that will underlie events.

Diaspora, the sci-fi version of Fate, starts Chapter 2 like this (p13):

The first session of a Diaspora campaign is used to create the setting and the characters. This is intended as a full group activity - Diaspora is not a game that rewards lonely character creation and lonely setting design. Rather, this is a game that rewards social interaction to create co-operatively.

It goes on to note that during world-building the group need not have decided who will referee. Each person has full narrative authority over the elements they create. And it gives a procedure for developing solar systems, with dice rolls for stats, free description, and aspects. Everyone is describing to each other what they create as they do so, completely transparently. After this the players are fully able to create dramatic characters who are invested in the tensions, problems and struggles they've just created in the universe.

What does this tell us about Diaspora? Well, it tells us it's not a game about discovering the hidden content of the GMs notes. It's not a game in which a GM contrives a 'plot' and players are expected to reverse engineer reasons to follow that plot. It's not a game where action resolution outcomes can be revised to conform with the GM's notion of an pre-existent 'reality'.

It also tells us that the universe in Diaspora does not consist of the little bit that the players have discovered and the submerged iceberg of material the referee keeps secret. Everyone starts out knowing all that is known, and both players and referee set out together to discover all the things that are not yet known, focused around what happens to the characters as they pursue their own agendas.

Collective world-building can be used to great effect in any similar game where the players generate the themes and key conflicts which will drive play as part of character creation. Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel both shift in this direction without the explicit procedures of Fate.

 

[pemerton]

Most campaigns I've played in or heard of have the agreement that the GM does the "behind scenes" production work, sets the stage, and the players act within it but don't do much "production" other than through character creation and, perhaps, coming up with their own backstory--usually within parameters given by the GM.

<snip>

But having the players do it has a rather different result than if the GM does it. I'm not saying it is a better or worse result, just different. And from my experience, the expectations and even desires of most players is that they do not have much say in building the world in which they interact. The general assumption I see most often is that players show up to interact in a world and story of the GM's design, or at least one that the GM has bought and read.

I see a spectrum. On one side is a novel. You read the novel, which is pre-written with a singular story that the reader cannot diverge from. It is, in a sense, a complete "railroad" in that you (the reader) cannot change the course of the story. On the other side of the spectrum is a blank slate; you can to do whatever you want, sort of like Harold and his purple crayon (if you remember the children's book).

Between the two poles are variations from choose-your-own-adventure, adventure paths, classic D&D modules, hex-crawls, etc. In a way it is how power is distributed among the participants.

<snip>

Now would you agree that the "GM authority" and "co-creative player" approaches have different strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limitations? And what if we use world-building as a context?

I would argue that the GM authority approach to world building offers certain distinct advantages over the co-creative player approach (just as it may have certain disadvantages), and I'll use the novel analogy to illustrate. When I read a novel I don't want to know how it ends. I like the feeling that I am entering a story that is new and fresh, that I don't know about before hand. Furthermore, I am entering the imagination of another human being.

On the other hand, when I am writing my own stories, I also often don't know how it is going to end - but I am within my own imaginative space, so I have some control in how it is formed and unfolds.

<snip>

But when I join a campaign with the assumption of GM authority, I get to enjoy the pleasure of entering another's imagination; something another has created. I do have some authority in that world, but similar authority as you or I have in the real world: I cannot magically decide what is around that next corner in the road like in a lucid dream; it is already there, pre-made.

<snip>

So the point of world-building, in this context, is similar to the point of creating a setting for a novel: it provides a context for story, and a space for the reader (or player) to explore and enjoy.

So the point of worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination?

EDIT: For what's it worth, I don't find the notion of "strengths and weaknesses" that helpful in this context.

If the point of GM worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination, then I think it's easier just to identify that - that's what it's for - then to frame that as a strength, as if it's instrumental to some other goal (what would that other goal be?).

You also seem to be saying that the point of the GM doing the worldbuiling is to ensure a certain sort of passivityi/non-creation on the party of the players. But you talk about the players "interacting" with the world. Given that that's metaphor, are you able to make it more literal? Eg should we think of action declaration by a player for a PC as something like a suggestion to the GM to change or develop the fiction in a certain way?

 

[pemerton]

during world-building the group need not have decided who will referee.

<snip>

Collective world-building can be used to great effect in any similar game where the players generate the themes and key conflicts which will drive play as part of character creation. Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel both shift in this direction without the explicit procedures of Fate.

This is interesting. I think a Traveller game could be kicked off in the way you describe for Diaspora. The only bit of world generation tha the books assume will involve GM secrets from the players is the presence (or otherwise) of branches of the Psionics Institute; but the whole psionics "module" can fairly easily be ignored.

Burning Wheel, as written, assumes a referee from the start who will do the work of - or, at least, take the lead in - integrating all the players' ideas for their PCs, their relationships, etc into a cohesive whole. I think changing it in the way you describe would be interesting, and feasible - but definitely a departure from what the rules present as the default.

I think it's interesting, as a bit of game design history, that Traveller is - as presented - more flexible in this way than BW, despite being 25-odd years older. It's curious that the Traveller approach to "worldbuilding" didn't seem to become more mainstream.

 

[Nagol]

@Nagol

Ron Edwars has a couple of interesting posts about the role of ingame time in play:

Metagame time . . . refers to time-lapse among really-played scenes: can someone get to the castle before someone else kills the king; can someone fly across Detroit before someone else detonates the Mind Bomb. Metagame time isn't "played," but its management is a central issue for scene-framing and the outcome of the session as a whole.

in-game time . . is a causal constraint . . . it constrains metagame time. In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book.​

​

I think this is somewhat backward. In-game time is constrained by meta-game time. If I know, for example, that the game expects set-piece combats that will take more than an hour to resolve but I'm playing at lunch hour then I can't have more than a single battle even though less than a minute of game time has passed. Additionally, a group may decide to have a half-hour discussion over the value of a particular tactic in the space of a single character's combat move. In-game time offers no constraint to the meta-game time. Meta-game constraints affect all elements in-game.

In most games, in-game time, like time we experience, is a causal constraint. you won't see effect before cause. But, that's not particularly meaningful. Breaking that causality is limited to specific genres like Gumshoe's Timewatch game.

Many games play with the notion of time is foundational and even more tables adopt this approach in games that nominally treat time as a concrete constraint. More cinematic styles presume in-game time is more like a canvas for drama than a constraint: the ships can reach the BBEG guy before the attack starts, defusing the bomb will complete with one second to spare, etc, Tales of the Floating Vagabond explicitly calls this out with the shtick "Just-in-time Drive" where the PC will always arrive... just in time.

[An example of adjudicating in this fashion - ie prioritising in-game time as a constraint on "metagame time" and hence scene-framing and the possibilities for action declaration]:

The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).

Would this be one possible example of your idea of world-building setting constraints and providing levers?

It depends on context. If player choices led to the point where the PCs are out of position sufficiently that they can't thwart the villain's plan then it is certainly a world-setting constraint. It's not really a lever in the sense I was meaning though.

Levers are those instabilities constructed into the game world that, once detected by the players, the PCs can try to use to change the current circumstances. A few examples follow:

• Beneath the castle in a forgotten room is a summoning circle containing a demon bound for a century or more. If freed, she will attempt to destroy the conjurer's heirs.
• The queen is having a torrid affair with the king's most powerful and most trusted knight. Exposure of the infidelity will banish that knight from the realm at a minimum. If the PCs discover the adultery, do they expose it or help cover it up?
• The kingdom is currently ruled by a Steward even though there is a known heir to the throne. The heir doesn't want the position, but can be persuaded to make the claim if he is convinced that is the only way to save the kingdom. Do the PCs try to install the heir?
• The king is strong. The king's brother is known to be ambitious but cowardly. He would never attempt to seize control from his brother, but if the king was held for ransom...
• The people are restive. The king's authority is granted by the jagged crown he wears at court. If that were stolen...
• There is a book that provides a first-hand account of the formation of the major religion. It differs from the official history and lends support to a major heretical splinter. Do the PCs keep it hidden or expose its contents?
• There is a device that can be used to make a desolate region fertile. It destroys all constructs already present though. Do the PCs use it and where?

 

[chaochou]

Burning Wheel, as written, assumes a referee from the start who will do the work of - or, at least, take the lead in - integrating all the players' ideas for their PCs, their relationships, etc into a cohesive whole. I think changing it in the way you describe would be interesting, and feasible - but definitely a departure from what the rules present as the default.

You've probably run it more recently than me

But my memory is that the books don't offer a lot of detail on exactly how play starts. In other words, they don't say: As GM you create and own the world and everything in it

They say something more like: Sit down as a group and discuss what the game's going to be. Are you going to be a bunch of criminals in a big city, or hardened adventurers delving into forgotten ruins?

I don't remember BW explaining step-by-step how you get from that initial idea (let's call it the theme), to having enough explicit detail about the setting to write character beliefs. But, I think it's clear from actual play that it doesn't involve secret GM setting creation. Instead you start with the theme and have a conversation, until the back and forth of ideas and suggestions coalesces into an opening situation.

I think it's interesting, as a bit of game design history, that Traveller is - as presented - more flexible in this way than BW, despite being 25-odd years older. It's curious that the Traveller approach to "worldbuilding" didn't seem to become more mainstream.

I've said it before - Traveller is the one game of its era I admire more and more with each passing year. It's a superb piece of game design, years ahead of its time, with equally wonderful and evocative graphic design.

 

[pemerton]

But my memory is that the books don't offer a lot of detail on exactly how play starts. In other words, they don't say: As GM you create and own the world and everything in it

They say something more like: Sit down as a group and discuss what the game's going to be. Are you going to be a bunch of criminals in a big city, or hardened adventurers delving into forgotten ruins?

I don't remember BW explaining step-by-step how you get from that initial idea (let's call it the theme), to having enough explicit detail about the setting to write character beliefs. But, I think it's clear from actual play that it doesn't involve secret GM setting creation.

You're right about that - no secret settting creation. But the GM is expected to bring the "big picture", and to use that as a basis for the pitch - with the players then expanding/adapting/modifying.

One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!).

That's the sort of thing I'm getting at when I say that the book expects - by default, at least - that the GM will play an integrating role vis-a-vis player beliefs, relationships, backstories etc.

The Adventure Burner gives more detail on how Luke et al approach it (and recommend approaching it). It emphasises tropes and "big picture" over detail, because the detail needs to get filled in as part of action resolution and scene framing in the course of actual play.

The main departure from the AB advice in my own BW game is that we use a pre-prepared map (Greyhawk). That said, the portion of the map we're using is the middle bit - which has GH city, a big lake/inland sea to the north, forest to the south-west, a wild coast with pirate-prone waters to the south, desert with ancient tribes across the bay and then hills to the north of that (ie east of GH). So basically every fantasy trope can be handled within that bit of the map - which is why I chose that rather than (say) Keoland or the Great Kingdom. (I assume it's deliberate on Gygax's part to have designed this bit of the map this way.)

But the map's not secret - when we need to work something out in terms of the map (eg how far is it to X, and what does that suggest about the difficult of the required Orienteering or whatever check), I pull it out and we all look at it and work out what's going on.

To relate this back to the thread topic: a number of posters have talked about the role of backstory in providing depth/context. It seems to do that better if shared rather than secret.

I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc.

 

[chaochou]

One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!).

Yes - exactly. This is a perfect illustration of the 'conversation' in action which takes an initial idea (magic has gone) and develops it through the introduction of characters to create a situation with drama and conflict.

I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc.

I usually have a big, blank artist's pad in the centre of the table - A1 or A2 size - and a load of coloured markers. It starts with everyone adding their ideas to a map until we have enough of a sketch to begin play, but it quickly becomes more than that. It's really the campaign book. So as things get narrated (by whoever) they get added - places on the map, features, names, npcs, factions, rumours, sketches of equipment... new maps get drawn on other pages, combat scenes get fleshed out in corners, names and notes get scribbled.

So, while it nearly always starts as a map, in time it grows across the pages into a central library of 'knowledge' about the current game, as well as the collective memory of events and characters.

It's a method that's worked well for me for more than a decade. It has the added benefit that you end up with almost a scrapbook of the campaign, something shared which everyone has put their marks on.

 

[Sebastrd]

What I think both examples have in common is that the initial establishment of the setting is relatively light touch, based on a few key sources that the players have been pointed to, and with the group coming up with ideas (the players, naturally enough, focusing on their PCs) which are melded together (with the GM, I think unsurprisingly, taking the lead in this melding). I have no idea whether in canonical Dark Sun the eladrin send envoys to the Veiled Alliance, and whether the templars create thrall assassins from young waifs (I christened them "Shadow Templars") - just as with the map from B10 which became our Nerath, we're using the setting as a source of ideas and themes and tropes which we'll then build on in actual play.

In both of your examples, you accomplish a minute amount of general worldbuilding before play begins, allow your players to add some of the specifics, and then jointly accomplish the rest during actual play. Does that about sum it up?

The default in D&D and in most campaigns is that the DM accomplishes the worldbuilding with little, if any, input from the players before play actually begins. If I understand th point of this thread, you're wondering why games default to GM-centric worldbuilding prior to play instead of player-centric worldbuilding during the course of the game.

Assuming I'm correct, the answer is, "Relatively few players desire to engage in the worldbuilding exercise, so that task falls to the GM. Developing the world during play is a rare talent, so most GMs do their worldbuilding beforehand."

Personally, I view the campaign setting and NPCs as the GM's "characters". I "roll" them up just as a player rolls his/her PC, I give them traits and motivations, then I let them loose in the game. I consider my worldbuilding notes the world's character sheet. I refer to those notes when I have questions about how situations might unfold.

Most of the players I've GM'd for over the years enjoy exploration. They want to find out what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room. They enjoy the thrill of discovery. They can't get that kind of fun if they're deciding what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room.

 

[Sadras]

In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined.

Do you imagine the maze is populated or is just filled with doors to open, chairs to sit on and chest lids to open? So a dungeon is just a dungeon is just a dungeon, the non-player characters are about as animate as stone tiles and do not offer any story, rumours or intrigue in your adventures?

Once the settingSo techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become far more dependent on the GM to dispense information (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc).

What a strange thing to say (bolded part). Who dispenses information when a character opens a door, lifts the lid of a chest or peeps through a peephole?

I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it seems like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.

Perhaps the player characters have a choice of travelling as passengers on a barge, alone on horseback or guards as part of a travelling caravan as they have to be discreet for story reasons. Perhaps they have to take the fastest possible route due to x or they desire to take the safest route. The goblins tracks split, some continue along the river, but a small contingent is now heading towards the mountains... These examples are similar in fashion to your typical T-junction decisions in a dungeon.

Perhaps they encounter a sea vessel in flames, a recently attacked caravan or a wounded horse = your typical dungeon prisoner. Do they now assist?

Also empty rooms in a dungeon - can just be the minute or two narrations of a journey from A to B.

Where you see differences, I see similarities.

Saying, "Let's play Marvel Heroic" isn't worldbuilding - it's pitching a game.

Let's play in Mystara isn't worldbuilding it's pitching a game despite the fact that this setting has a unique cosmos with its own planes and includes specific races and concepts and excludes others. Is that how you see it?

Does Marvel Heroic include any DC character? (I've never played the game, so I'm asking)

In what way? Showing someone (the player) a map with a little village on it called Five Oak isn't "leveragign the vast work" of anything. It's leveraging a single map and place name. There's no description of any powerful recluse wizards in the GH City boxed set description of Five Oak.

I see, so in your personalised definition of worldbuilding introducing a 'map with names' is not worldbuilding. So worldbuilding depends on the extent of the worldbuilding. So 1 map is fine, 3 is borderline but 5+ is definitely worldbuilding?
I like how you decide on the limits of what is worldbuilding depending on the amount of setting content introduced.

So 1 map is not worldbuilding. Got it!
In a probably 5+ year old thread ago you mentioned that because the paladin in 1e may summon his mount in a quest = 'forced content' injected by player somehow 1e was very much about player injected content. In that instance 1 example was all it took and was indeed needed to satsify your 'player content push' which is your preferred style of play.
Now when people argue that using a map is worldbuilding (by your own words establishing setting information in advance of play) you change the parameters and say hang-on 1 example (map and a few names) is not enough to call me out on my worldbuilding.

Can you honestly not see, how one might look at this and call your entire thread polony?