What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

There is also a provision for 'Player-Designed Quests', which is pretty close to being a direct player input to the fiction rule!

I just read that section. How is that different than what I described about the player who wanted to become the leader of the northern barbarians? I described how players in my games can establish goals for themselves and then pursue them, forcing me to react to their authorship. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] kept fighting me every step of the way, telling me that I was the one authoring everything and the players could only do things to cause me to respond with information. Now you're saying it's really close to direct player input into the fiction.

 

[tomBitonti]

I just want to think about this example, and how it plays out in two different systems. I am not focusing particularly upon player agency over the content of the shared fiction; I am just looking at the impact, on play, of the GM's pre-authorship of this geographic state of affairs.

In AD&D, the rules for travel begin with "miles per day". Then there are "encounters per day". There is also "food required per day", and there is "gp required per unit of food".

So, suppose that a player declares "My PC goes from AD&D New York to AD&D Boston." The movement rate - a mechanical property of the character - interacts with the GM's decision about geography to determine a number of gp the player must cross of his/her PC sheet (to get enough food) and also a number of encounter dice rolls to which the player is subject.

In Cortex+ Heroic, traveling from NY to Boston would generally be part of a transition scene. It will mostly be done by free narration, provided that fits with the PC's established backstory (eg if the game is MHRP, and one of the PCs is War Machine, then the player can just declare "We take the Stark company Jet!" - this is what happened when the PCs in my MHRP game wanted to travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo). If the player wants to make a bigger deal of it - eg wants to have the Stark company jet available to contribute to actions declared in a subsequent action scene (= roughly, in D&D terms, an encounter) - then the player can spend a player-side resource (a plot point) to establish a useful resource (generally rated at either d6 or d8).

If the player backstory doesn't simply provide for easy travel from NY to Boston (e.g. the PC in the MHRP game is Bruce Banner/the Hulk, broke and on the run from Thunderbolt Ross) then the player will have to spend a plot point to create some sort of resource to permit the travel, or otherwise is going to be stuck in NY - or, at least, is going to get caught up in some sort of action scene before making it to Boston. (In Banner's case, if an action scene results in transformation into the Hulk, then he can of course leap from NY to Boston no worries.)

With Cortex+ Heroic mechanics, basically nothing turns on the details of the geography that the GM has come up with. In mechanical terms, traveling from A to B is basically the same process whether A and B are NY and Boston or Washington, DC and Tokyo. There are no rules for movement rates; no rules for food consumption; no rules for wealth; no rules for random encounters. The mechanical framing is completely different from AD&D.

Games like HeroWars/Quest and Fate could easily be played in a way very similar to what I've just described for Cortex+ Heroic. So could 4e, if one wanted - although 4e does have a "keep track of gp" wealth system, the impact of food on that at any level above low heroic is so minimal that it can be easily ignored, and there is no exhaustion system or spell duration system or anything else like that that forces keeping track of travel time. All travel could just be resolved by a mixture of skill challenges and free narration. Likewise Burning Wheel, if some of the optional subsystems (e.g. the upkeep rules, which depend on tracking the passage of time and so generate some pressure to keep track of travel times) are ignored.

This is another reason why I find [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s insistence that the GM must tell the players about the intervening intersection (or, in the NY to Boston example, some crossroad encountered along the way), and that it is "cheapening" or "railroading" to just free narrate the travel and arrival, as bizarre. That insistence rests on very specific assumptions about the mechanics for the resolution of travel that simply aren't true for a wide range of RPGs, which (not coincidentally) also tend to be the sorts of RPGs best suited to Eero Tuovinen's "standard narrativistic model".

Most generally, I'm not seeing a big difference between those two examples (AD&D; Cortex+Heroic). AD&D will have encounter tables (generally a detail set during world building) which will be consulted. Cortex+Heroic putting in a transition scene feels to be about the same, in that a mechanic is used when changing locations. That is: Cortext+Heroic use a fact established during world building (the two cities are far apart) to decide that a transition scene is appropriate. I'm seeing "rolling on encounter table" and "insert a transition scene" as being very close.

That is: Both system have a measurement of distance (AD&D: Chance of encounter per distance traveled; Cortex+Heroic: Big enough to call for a transition scene) and a consequence of large enough distances.

In either case, the game style will dictate whether a quick transition is acceptable. I'm thinking this case doesn't really invoke agency, other than, perhaps the players *are* looking for trouble along the way, or need an amount of player downtime to train or craft or finish up side deals. When I have this sort of case, if an event free transition works, I'll ask the players if they are alright to shift ahead a week to the destination, and only do so if there are no objections. That gives room for player agency (Player 1: Sure, but can I get a first class room to myself so that I can unpack my portable lab and make some potions?) The objection that I heard about the transition was not about the transition per se, but rather, that the general transition was made and was alright (getting the players close to the Fire Giant's lair), then a transition from the general to the detail was made which was not alright (where the players approached the lair and were spotted). That second part is spot on a circumstance which will infuriate a lot of players.

Whether intermediate encounters must occur rather seems more a style issue. Maybe the story is reaching a climax point and the encounters would distract from the rising tension. Or maybe the players are short of experience and supplies, and the GM wants to bolster them before the next major challenge. Or maybe there haven't been any meaty fights in a while, and players want to simply lay into a thick fight. Or, maybe the Fire Giants have spies on the route, and the GM needs cover to potentially have the player's approach discovered, while at the same time making sure the players have the ability to notice and react to the spies. Having the players arrive at the Lair only to find out they were trailed by a spy along the way, but providing no opportunity to figure that out, would upset a lot of players.

Thx!
TomB

 

[tomBitonti]

To followup: There is another case where encounters are appropriate. That is when the players are in exploratory mode. I'm thinking, for example, of players wandering into the Isle of Dread, and having to explore heretofore unknown hexes.

(There was a board game which combined this with random hex generation: Source of the Nile, where the contents of each hex were randomly generated and would be crayoned in to the board on first discovery. There were some constraints on hex generation, for example, if an adjacent hex was a river hex, but otherwise hexes were discovered as you explored the continent.)

Then, in exploratory mode, encounters are both appropriate and should be expected.

Thx!
TomB

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That seems more like a social contract thing, rather than a PC can't perform an action thing. Outside of highly limited situations like a PC whose entire body is bound attempting to run, the vast majority of actions, even ones impossible to achieve, can at least be attempted. The social contract, though, will keep certain actions from being attempted in the first place. Heck, even with the bound PC example, the PC can struggle in the attempt and then I'd just narrate failure.

I would propose that MOST of what happens at the table in ANY RPG is a 'social contract thing'. Genre conventions, codes of behavior for players WRT other player's characters, etc. are all basically a big code of conduct.

Beyond that though, I think its either understood or codified into the rules of most games using Story Now (4e for instance does reiterate 'rule 0') that when players attempt to resolve some check, or spend a resource, etc. to create some input to the narrative outside of their character's purview, then there's a constraint of GM acceptance. Likewise the GM cannot simply frame any old scene, it has to address a player concern, or a thematic concern of the game in question. 4e doesn't really have a 'rule' to enforce this, as it doesn't explicitly deal with this kind of play. So there are obviously games where both things are convention and convention alone. I would say table conventions are STRONGER than rules (they often result in the ignoring or changing of rules).

 

[pemerton]

Most generally, I'm not seeing a big difference between those two examples (AD&D; Cortex+Heroic).

Have you ever played Cortex+ Heroic? Or read its rules?

AD&D will have encounter tables (generally a detail set during world building) which will be consulted.

The GM's decision as to geographic distance affects the following:

* How many encounters (because these are proportionate to ingame time, which is in turn proportionate to ingame distance assuing a constant PC movement rate);

* How much gp spent (because gp is proportionate to unit of food, which is proportionate to ingame time, which is in turn proportionate to ingame distance assuing a constant PC movement rate).​

GP spent is a direct depletion of player-side resources. Encounter checks have a mediated (by dice rolls and resolution processes) affect on player-side resources (hit points, if damage suffered is greater than available healing spells; magic item charges, scrolls, etc; flaming oil; etc).

Cortex+Heroic putting in a transition scene feels to be about the same, in that a mechanic is used when changing locations.

What do you mean by "a mechanic"?

That is: Cortext+Heroic use a fact established during world building (the two cities are far apart) to decide that a transition scene is appropriate. I'm seeing "rolling on encounter table" and "insert a transition scene" as being very close.

This is what makes me ask whether you've played or read Cortex+ Heroic.

The "insertion" of a transition scene has nothing to do with the cities being far apart. In the first session of MHRP that I ran, War Machine and Titanium Man fought an aerial duel which began above Washington, DC and ended over Florida, in the course of a single Action Scene.

The reason that the travel involves a transition scene has nothing to do with the distance, but is the result of what is taking place in the fiction: traveling from NY to Boston would generally be part of a transition scene (to requote from my post that you quoted). Generally (not universally) travel is transition between action scenes, rather than an element of action in itself. (What would be examples of departures from this generality? I gave one already; another might be if the action is taking place on a train or a plane travelling from NY to Boston.)

That is: Both system have a measurement of distance (AD&D: Chance of encounter per distance traveled; Cortex+Heroic: Big enough to call for a transition scene) and a consequence of large enough distances.

In Cortex+ Heroic, there is no big enough to call for a transition scene. From the MHRP rulebook (pp OM33 OM40):

Transition Scenes connect Action Scenes together and are usually used to recover, gather information, or plan the next Scene. . . .

Action and adventure is what most of us think of when we imagine a super hero story set in the Marvel Universe, but these stories are more than just big brawls and conflict. Between these Scenes, linking them together are Scenes of reflection, recovery, and regrouping. We call these Transition Scenes, and they allow the characters involved to do something with what they’ve learned before the next conflict is met head-on.

As well as being used for recovery actions, a Transition Scene’s purpose is to determine what the next Action Scene is. If this is already settled, then the Transition Scene helps to put that into context.​

So within the context of Cortex+ Heroic, there are three ways to establish a new geographic location:

(1) The location changes in the course of an action scene (as per the above examples);

(2) The location changes in the course of a transition scene;

(3) The framing of a new act establishes a change in location.​

(3) can be understood as a special case of (2), as the end of the previous act will have involved a transiation scene (in which the PCs can recover, the players can spend XP, etc).

(The Fantasy Hack version of Cortex+ Heroic in the Hacker's Guide allows for a variant form of transition scene called an "Exploration Scene". It doesn't make any difference of substance to what I've said above.)

In either case, the game style will dictate whether a quick transition is acceptable.

I dont understand what you mean by this.

if an event free transition works

I don't know what you mean by this either. The only "events" that occur during a Cortex+ Heroic transition scene are events of PCs acquiring resources, which is the result of the pkayer spending a Plot Point.

I'll ask the players if they are alright to shift ahead a week to the destination, and only do so if there are no objections. That gives room for player agency (Player 1: Sure, but can I get a first class room to myself so that I can unpack my portable lab and make some potions?)

What system are you envisaging here? I assume AD&D or some similar version of D&D.

In Cortex+ Heroic, "making some potions" is simply spending a plot point to create a resource.

Whether intermediate encounters must occur rather seems more a style issue.

I don't know what you mean by an "intermedieate encounter". Can you explain what this means in a game of Cortex+ Heroic?

Are you suggesting, for instance, that the GM and players (i) establish that, in the course of a transition scene, the PCs travel from NY to Boston, and then (ii) the GM frames an action scene that takes place somewhere between NY and Boston? Because that makes no sense!

maybe the players are short of experience and supplies, and the GM wants to bolster them before the next major challenge.

This seems to be assuming AD&D or a similar game. What you say barely makes sense in 4e (because the measure of "supplies" is treasure parcels, and the GM could just have had the dwarves gift these, as the Raven Queen did in my game; and stepping down the level of a creature or an encounter is trivial). It makes no sense in Cortex+ Heroic or Burning Wheel.

The objection that I heard about the transition was not about the transition per se, but rather, that the general transition was made and was alright (getting the players close to the Fire Giant's lair), then a transition from the general to the detail was made which was not alright (where the players approached the lair and were spotted). That second part is spot on a circumstance which will infuriate a lot of players.

There are so many assumptions here - about system and other things - that again it is hard for me to make sense of what you mean.

You seem to be assuming that the GM has a map drawn, and will (at a certain stage in the narration) tell the players something about where their PCs are which is read off the map; and then the players will describe where their PCs are going by reference to what they have learned of the GM's map.

In Cortex+ Heroic there is no clost to versus approaches. Likewise if the travel is being resolved as a skill challenge in 4e.

As to what will or won't "infurate a lot of players" - if the players know that the GM is not going to use a lot of GM-authored padding, then they will equally know that if (eg) they want to approach the giants stealthily than all they have to do is declare something to that effect. Eg in Cortex+ Heroic, the player can spend a point in the preceding transition scene to establish an appropriate resource (like Secret Entrance to Giants' Cavern) which can then contribute to their pool in the following action scene. In 4e, if a skill challenge is being used then a Stealth check might be made as part of that; or the players can just say "When we feel the tunnels warming up, we advance stealthily."

Having the players arrive at the Lair only to find out they were trailed by a spy along the way, but providing no opportunity to figure that out, would upset a lot of players.

Again, there seem to be so many assumptions about system and technique built into this that it's hard to know where to start.

Here's just one example of what I mean: AD&D has no way for the GM to establish what you describe except by GM fiat.

In 4e, though, it would be the sort of consequence to be narrated as the result of a failed Stealth check, or a failure in a skill challenge. Burning Wheel would be similar - it is the sort of thing that will follow from a failed check. In Cortex+ Heroic it would probably be a scene complication (Tracked by Fire Giant Spies) which the GM has to spend a die from the doom pool to establish.

Etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, yes, yes! Why? It goes back to the players not being capable(at any table) of thinking of everything. Sure, they told you they wanted to go to the giants. What they didn't tell you, because they didn't think of it, was what a cool thing it would be to examine an ancient dwarven altar lost near the giant lands as they pass by. But thank you DM for putting it there. It was a blast we didn't consider.

So, basically, the players are some lesser form of beast that doesn't have the ability to decide for itself what it wants? If they want an Altar, they can, by gosh, come up with a story element that potentially involves an altar! Lets suppose one of the PCs is a dwarf cleric of Moradin and he has an established interest in such things, then perhaps that interest will be addressed at this time, its at least a possibility.

As much as they enjoy your game, your players are missing out on a lot of great fun exploring.

NO they are not!!!! They are simply 'missing out' on lots of things being irrelevant to their expressed interests in the game. Remember, interests don't have to be narrowly conceived. For instance there was another [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] example of the guy who wanted to conquer the world, remember? That kind of goal could be leveraged for a vast, unlimited, set of possible elements that the GM thinks to add to the game. The giants, the altar, the 'knight hung from the wall', any of those things could be intended as a hook to engage that interest (I'd generally formulate such things in terms of OTHER interests, consequences of past actions, related to known story elements, etc. but that isn't a hard rule).

P.S. it was @pemerton who glossed over the trip to the giants, not you, so there is no "we" there. Also, he was not accused of railroading(at least not by me) for glossing over the trip. It was railroading because he made decisions on behalf of the PCs in their approach to the giants.

You guys, and maybe there's a subtle distinction here with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], certainly claimed we were railroading players by only presenting specific elements. I think you're splitting hairs here personally. I fully endorse Pemerton's technique, though I stated it could possibly be worth providing an explicit chance for the PCs to do some last-minute prep/tactics in that one situation. RAILROADING is crud like when the GM says "Yeah, that NPC you hired last week was really a spy for the bad guy and he knows all your secret plans, too bad I guess you'll have to assault the castle instead of sneaking in, sorry guys!" or even worse "You missed!" (when you actually hit the NPC that the GM is now giving plot armor to because it protects his backstory).

Which is fine. Every playstyle has pros and cons, and one con of the Story Now style is that it is weaker on options. If the players fail to think of something they would find fun, they miss out. The DM who knows them and knows what they find enjoyable doesn't get to set up fun things for the players outside of what they say they want to do.

I disagree that it is 'weaker on options'. It is STRONGER on options! Players have an infinite number of things they can think of which are fun. They are JUST AS CAPABLE OF DOING SO as the GM!!!!! To claim that this is not so isn't to claim a weakness in Story Now, it is to claim that players, as a type of game participant, are uniquely unqualified to come up with fun material. This is IMHO just balderdash, not even you actually believe it, but again you're going out on these weird limbs because you simply want to make certain unsupportable rhetorical points, I guess. It simply won't fly, players can take care of themselves.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Again with the misrepresentations of the playstyle. It has nothing to do with anything paternalistic, or the DM knowing best. And when you get down to it, X+2 is greater than X, right?

No, actually too many choices degrades most experiences. Its better to keep focused and have specific openings to change directions and a limited menu of explicit options. If the players want to make other choices, they can quite easily break in and nominate those choices.

If I'm buying a car, I'm driving to the car lot to view and test drive. On the way I pass a great food place and I didn't realize that I was hungry, so I stop and get food. Alternatively, I pass a great food place, make a note of it since I'm not hungry and might be later, and keep driving. That could not have happened if Scotty had just beamed me to the car lot. Nobody is running roughshod over anyone else. It's not about DM control or any other misrepresentation you'd like to come up with next.

I'd love it if for once, rather than misrepresenting the playstyle and responding to your own misrepresentations, you'd actually respond to what we are saying.

But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.

You are free to imagine that your way is 'better', and to the extent it is purely a matter of taste there's no dispute. Its not providing 'more choices' though. In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.

 

[pemerton]

To followup: There is another case where encounters are appropriate. That is when the players are in exploratory mode. I'm thinking, for example, of players wandering into the Isle of Dread, and having to explore heretofore unknown hexes.

(There was a board game which combined this with random hex generation: Source of the Nile, where the contents of each hex were randomly generated and would be crayoned in to the board on first discovery. There were some constraints on hex generation, for example, if an adjacent hex was a river hex, but otherwise hexes were discovered as you explored the continent.)

Then, in exploratory mode, encounters are both appropriate and should be expected.

Again, you are making very strong assumptions about system and technique here.

In 4e, one natural way to do "exploratory mode" is via a skill challenge. But because, in 4e, encounters aren't (by default) a bad or undesired thing, how the skill challenge consequences interact with the occurence of encounters isn't a straightforward matter. Just for starters, it would depend upon what exactly the stakes of the skill challenge were.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Except that we've already determined that making moves to trigger the DM to tell you stuff is also what happens in your game, so that doesn't mean anything. If you aren't making moves that trigger the DM to tell you stuff, you aren't playing a game that has a DM. It's just a game with players at that point.

This is a mischaracterization which is pretty fundamental. You REALLY believe this??!!! I'm skeptical!

Yes, in every game the player's actions are likely to elicit different responses from the GM, and vice versa. This is the fundamental nature of all human interactions. So your assertion is ridiculous on the face of it, and obfuscatory at best. The QUALITY of the interaction is vastly different, which is what is important here. In a GM-centered game, the GM always presents whatever fiction suites him, aside from cases dictated by the rules (IE in D&D usually the combat system, maybe some others to an extent). In a Story Now game the GM is inventing a scene frame, or consequences of an action resolution, from whole cloth purely in response and answer to the player's elicitation of fiction ON THAT SUBJECT.

Now, sometimes in GM-centered play the fiction is a direct response to the players, though it is fairly often unrelated to their agenda (IE it is pre-defined content and thus unresponsive to player's story desires), or even contrary to it and quashing it in some cases. Sometimes in Story Now the GM might relate something that is only tangentially or incidentally related to the player's immediate concerns. The RQ interrupting a teleport is sort of like that, although it is a brief interjection and does bear pretty clearly on the following action.

I never realized that the only way to learn about that was to reach the destination. There's NEVER an innocent that needs defending anywhere along the way. The values of your got and honor of your family can't possibly come to the fore during the journey.

But of course Story Now absolutely DEMANDS that we do NOTHING ELSE but go directly to the most central climactic point in the story IMMEDIATELY (even though said thing doesn't even exist yet). Don't be silly. The GM is perfectly free to, and probably should if it will improve the story, challenge the character's beliefs by placing a 'damsel in distress' along the way.

It's not as if you can't engage in that during the journey. Why is it that you think that the end point of the journey is the only place that will be accomplished?

And where did anyone say that you have to go to 'the end of the story' right away? Why do you think this absurd thing? What even IS the end of the story when no story has yet been written??!!

I don't trivialize gods by having them hunted down and killed, so that's not really a viewpoint I had considered. That said, even if I was a demigod or person of equal stature, I'd still tread very lightly near a full god, especially one like the Raven Queen. Even epic PCs are still less than she is. In fact, it's a testament to being epic that I'd try to talk to her, rather than just pee my pants and pass out like a lower level PC would likely do.

Oh, come now, you're just trying to nitpick, nobody takes this seriously. Furthermore, in the WA cosmology, Torog is pretty much explicitly set up to be challenged. He's probably the weakest of the gods (except Lolth, and maybe Zehir, both evil gods designed to be opponents). He's certainly the most accessible, in theory you can literally trudge on foot to his realm and meet him in person without any supernatural anything. He literally just lives in a cave (albeit a huge cave very deep in the Earth, etc.).

What I meant was that if everything is important, then important is reduced to common place and average. Again with the misrepresentations, since I wasn't talking about bad, boring or anything else negative. I'm just saying that if every moment shines with importance, the moments drown each other out in the light. It's okay, even good for there to be average moments that allow the moments that shine to be seen in the best light.

Again, this seems itself like a mischaracterization. There will be a wide variety of significance and degree of relevance to the character's core issues in the various scenes and actions in a Story Now game. The action is guaranteed to relate to SOME character's 'needs', or to a central theme of the genre, or something like that, but 4 out of 5 PCs probably aren't fully engaged by any one scene, and a scene might be only a tiny step on a way to some goal.

Consider, 4e assumes 8 encounters per level x30 levels = 240 encounters (plus at least 2 quests per level = 60 quests) in a full campaign before the narrative reaches its resolution. PLENTY of those are bound to be scenes where the characters are simply working through some situation many steps removed from any final resolution of even intermediate goals.

 

[pemerton]

But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.

I feel I have made this point to an ad nauseum extent, in reply both to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.

And I feel I've made this point to, especially in reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. While the players in one game are learning more about an intersection, the players in another game are deciding what to do about the giants. By the time the players in the first game actualy get to make choices about the giants, the players in the second game are making some choice about some other thematically/dramatically salient thing.

The intersection doesn't give more choice, it just makes the choices less thematically/dramatically salient, and makes the GM's interests (in architecture; in the stuff the GM writes up as being at the end of each corridor; etc) a bigger part of the fiction than it otherwise would be.