What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Guest 6801328]

I was just thinking about this last night. Having read his blog entry, he seems like any of the rest of us here. A guy who has played for a long time and has his opinions on what he likes and dislikes, and is telling people why. He doesn't seem any more knowledgeable, really. Personally, I give him about the same weight that I give you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or most of the other people here.

I really don't get why it's so important to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he be right about Eero Tuovinen. He could easily just say that Eero got it wrong like he says about the rest of us here.

Ha! I don't often agree with you, Max, but here I think you are spot on. He's just a dude with an opinion. Too often dudes with opinions get cited as authorities.

However, I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is also using him not just as a source of wisdom but also simply as a source for definition of terms, so that everybody can at least be speaking the same language.

 

[pemerton]

Looking up something else, I found this old forum post which seemed relevant to the GM narrating that the PCs arrive at the cavern of the fire giants:

The fact is that if at least one character is not fictionally present in a fictional location, with the location's immediate features described to everyone, then play can't happen. . . .

Your question is knotted up in the idea that if anyone ever says, "You wake up in a locked box," or "All right, skipping ahead to next Tuesday," or even, "When you open a door, a hydra strikes at you," then it's railroading. That is, that any kind of scene-situation or even description would be railroading. That's absurd. Without such material being established as the fiction in action, play cannot proceed. The only alternative would be to have every character's actions be laboriously described minute to minute, every damn day of his or her life, in the hopes that somehow, through no actual human agency, their situation would evolve into something fun to play. . . .

In many ways, framing a scene sometimes requires presumptions about the characters' actions. If I am the GM and I say, "All right, skipping ahead to next Tuesday," or, "Later, while you're taking a shower," then I obviously tacitly played the characters between the last moments played and the moments I'm describing. You did not, after all, laboriously describe your character going into the bathroom, taking off his clothes, turning on the shower, and getting in. You may well not even have said, "I'm going to take a shower" at all.

So is that railroading? It's a matter of three things. First, did you genuinely have something in mind that you wanted your character to do instead, or related, did you genuinely want your character not to take a shower for some reason? (And the GM didn't even ask.) Second, does the GM typically extend this kind of 'takeover' later in the scenes over consequential decisions for your character, in which case this is sort of the thin end of the wedge? And third, if you object, does your voice at the table matter, or does the GM shut you down and say, "My way, you're in the shower, I said so." If some combination of those three things is going on, then yeah, it's probably railroading.

But that doesn't mean it had to be. If the GM's statement, "Later, when you're taking a shower" is understood by everyone at the table to be a provisional opening statement of what can become a dialogue about the next scene, then by definition, it cannot be railroading. The GM is perfectly politely saying he's ready to cut to a new situation, the old one's done. The players are perfectly capable of modifying the suggested situation ("I'm in the shower with him," or "I'd rather have gone to the neighborhood bar first," or "No way I'm taking a shower! I like the smell of the nasty slime," et cetera) without it being considered a challenge, because the original statement wasn't a decree in the first place.

That kind of provisionality is very useful, especially when my #2 above (the thin end of the wedge) is not ever present. In practice, I've found that it turns into a negotiated dialogue only very rarely because no one is uptight about that mild transfer of who says what the character did. . . .

You probably know the problem with not having that understanding . . . the players become paranoid and argumentative because they are tired of having their characters played for them, and they "turtle up," insisting that their characters do nothing and react to nothing all the time.​

This is a more elaborate articulation of what I had in mind when I said that players at my table don't need permission to speak.

 

[Emerikol]

Your (2), (3) and (4) all rest on the premise that the GM has already established the details of the setting, or is the only one with authority to do that. You then come out and say as much in the last two paragraphs.

I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction. And also that a significant component of play will involve the GM telling the players about his/her world. This is what "discovery" will involve.

And this is where we keep going back and forth. The players have 100% control over what THEY do. They have 0% of the authority on any other part of the world besides their own actions. So to the degree their actions are creating events in the world they have a lot of control. They don't though have control over things their characters if they existed in that world would not have control over. Their ability to affect the world is limited to all the ways their character could affect the world if they existed in that world.

I would posit, and this is from my own personal experience of course, that a world that allows anything the players can dream up to become part of the "fiction" of the world is going to lack consistency and verisimilitude. I'm not going to buy that this world feels real. I've had DM's like that and my interest soon wained. I want a world that is crafted specifically to provide connections and relationships amongst all it's residents. Even the fact I know it's being determined purely by dice is off putting to me. It is why for most of this kind of stuff I prefer the DM roll behind the screen and just state what I see. I don't want it to seem as if the DM is a portal into a real world. He provides the sensory data and I provide my characters actions.

What I don't understand is why you feel restrained because you can't force fit something into the world that doesn't make sense even if you don't know it doesn't make sense. And now it comes full circle back around to Story Creation vs Classical Roleplaying. In my games, my players always choose the easiest path to victory. Why? Because that is what their characters would do. I bet in your games sometimes your characters choose the most cinematic choice even if it's not the best ultimately when it comes to accomplishing the mission.

Anyway. It's obviously fun for you and other people so that is what matters for your group. I admit I don't see the attraction and I don't believe my fellow roleplayers would either.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What does this mean? Obviously things fall, but gravity in the real world is more than this: it's universal gravitation between all masses. (Apologies to physicists reading this thread: my physics is high school Newtonian, not properly relativistic.)

We know that lift doesnt work the same in the gameworld as in the real world (due to things like dragons, pit fiends etc); we know that a whole lot of physiology and related biochemstry is different (eg giant insects can breathe); and there's no particular reason to think that the gameworld is a c 4.5 billion year old sphere in orbit about a star.

Gygax suggested in his DMG that it might be possible to ride a pegasus to the moon - that certainly means that physical phenomean don't work like they do in the real world.

So I suggest that there is good reason to think that gameworld gravity doesn't work the same as real world gravity - things generally fall to the ground, but for some reason dragons, pit fiends and the moon don't, and that's about all we can say.

Right! I can go further. In my persistent D&D world EVERYTHING works by magical forces. Growth, life, death, decay, rain, sunshine, EVERYTHING is a magical process. This is actually, largely, how ancient people's (by which I mean virtually everyone who lived before c1600) saw the world, and a lot of people actually still do. But in Erithnoi it is literally how things ARE. When a disease strikes someone it is because of an evil influence, curse, or possibly a misdeed, maybe even simply a failure to perform proper magical rituals.

The Erth is simply a flat surface, which somehow (it was never canonically established how) exists metaphysically 'above' the Chaos, a sphere of brute physical existence and energy, filled with unordered material. There are spheres metaphysically 'above' the Erth, and they CAN be climbed up to! Flying for instance could allow you to reach various moons and then potentially to enter the 'Astral' spaces. These are however increasingly nonphysical and abstract domains, so its a little unclear what 'travel' within them actually MEANS (maybe you don't really physically go there at all, much like classic D&D's Astral Projection).

So, in this context what is gravity and how does it work? For convenience it works pretty much like real-world gravity at a local level, but it certainly isn't a universal force as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes (fairly accurately I would say). It would be wrong to draw conclusions about how it functions in the large from the small. For instance anything will fall back towards the Erth (IE down) but you can still alight on the surface of the Moon Palee and look up at the World!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

A PC joining an army isn't likely to provide the most interesting of adventuring or role-playing opportunities regardless of whether the game is story now or DM-driven or pretty much anything else.

Certainly realistic, unless you consider peeling a large mountain of vegetables to be an adventure!

One thing common to pretty much all PCs in all RPGs is that they - or at least the parties they are in - are somewhat independent free-thinking entities operating (while adventuring) largely on their own initiative. Even when they're sent on a mission for someone else (which frequently happens) it's almost universally done as "Here's what needs doing, it's up to you as to how it gets done"; and in non-mission situations it's still up to the PCs to determine how they achieve their goals/beliefs/etc. Extremely rare that any of this will happen for a PC that sticks itself in an army and stays there.

Lan-"ye gods - I think I've had more 'mention' tags come from this one thread than from the entire rest of my EnWorld history put together"-efan

This is certainly true in most classic RPG structure. Taking the early RPGs...

In Boot Hill the PCs are free living cowboy/outlaw types, maybe lawmen in a land with no law, pretty much you do what you can get away with, and kill anyone who objects!

In Metamorphosis Alpha/GW 1e its pretty much the same. The PCs MIGHT belong to a 'secret society' but the implications of this are pretty much up to the GM and it is certainly a lawless world with little society.

Most D&D games consist of a 'party' which is a law unto itself essentially. They may sometimes have some 'hooks' that tie them to something, but classes and whatnot are carefully written to minimize the necessity of that (without making it impossible). Many groups are 'bands of murder hobos'.

Traveler likewise marginalizes the PCs. The chargen system severs them from whatever organizations they were tied to before play, and then usually provides the group with at least one ship, a way to move around and avoid being compelled to overt lawfulness. Most groups tend to operate as sort of 'grey area' 'free traders' who try to avoid being outrageously criminal (at least where anyone can see) and who often perform legitimate business deals. The characters are expected to be motivated by money, willing to engage in dubious acts, and always looking out for some sort of easy payday. Later expansions added mercenary forces, etc.

I think games have moved somewhat in the direction of more social PCs over time, but only to the extent that they have become more story-centered and less purely action centered or challenge centered (IE like dungeon crawls).

 

[Maxperson]

I've already said that I run RPGs along the lines of Eero Tuovinen't "standard narrativistic model". That means that, as a GM, I establish situations (= frame scenes, if you prefer that terminology) which I intend to be thematically compelling in virtue of the demands and pressures they place on the PCs' evinced dramatic needs (= agendas, goals, or beliefs, if you prefer that terminology).

I've linked to many actual play reports showing how this is done, in a variety of different systems, which use a range of different methods for evincing PC dramatic needs (some formal, some informal), for constraining GM scene-framing, for managing the narration of consequences (especially the consequences of failure), etc.

How do you do this?

I don't need to do it. Game play being fun, will result in things like the players meeting kings and such. The players are the ones that do it. They tell me their motivation for their actions or roleplay as they go about it so that I am aware at that time. The hard choices will come naturally. If Pippin has joined the army and is in formation during Sauron's attack, does he break formation, putting his comrades in jeopardy in order to help Eowyn and Merry against the Witch King, or does he keep the formation, putting the lives of his friends at risk? That flows naturally and requires no set up from me, yet presents a character defining challenge to the PC. It's not my job to railroad the players. Your players may have willingly gotten aboard the train by telling you ahead of time where they want you to take them, but it's still a railroad, albeit one that isn't bad. I refuse to engage in railroading.

Your examples where Pippin seeks out Farimir in Osgiliath and Pippin joins the army of Gondor. Those aren't thematically compelling moments.

Who died and made you the god of thematically compelling moments? Depending on why and how it happens, both of those can easily be very thematically compelling moments.

To pick up on [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example, how do you decide if Pippin, in the army, is or isn't posted to sentry duty? If he is, how, then, do you provoke a thematically compelling choice? What would that look like? How do you do it without having regard to the player's evinced agenda for the PC? How do you do it while treating the gameworld "neutrally"? Post an actual example!

First off, I don't decide if Pippin is in the army. He joins or doesn't As to how I know if he's in the thick of things or on guard duty, I know because I don't break the social contract. One of those choices is fun, the other costs me players.

You say "opportunities will knock". Who establishes them - player or GM?

Both establish them. The player establishes them by being proactive about what his PC wants and does. See again my Northern Barbarians example. The DM establishes them through creating encounters that he thinks will be fun and exciting for the players, and then letting the players engage those situations or not.

If player, how is that different from the idea of "agendas" which you are rejecting?

I never said that players in my game don't ever have agendas. I said that agendas are not required to achieve the sorts of character arcs present in the LotR.

If the GM, how is that different from what AbdulAlhazred and I have already described as the player choosing from the GM's menu?

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] already answered this quite well. It can only be a DM menu if the players are forced to select from what the DM provides, which is never the case in my game. They are free to select from any, all or none of the relatively few options I provide, or select from the millions of possible items that they can come up with themselves.

And given that that difference is fundamental, I don't see why you keep eliding it.

You also seem to ignore the fact that checks can fail, with the consequences that ensue from that.

While the difference is significant, it doesn't keep both from being backstory authored by players. And no, I'm not ignoring failures and the consequences of failure. I'm saying success is authoring backstory since it is the player deciding that a secret door should be in the wall right over there.

And to repeat, again - making a check is not authoring backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. It is not preauthoring, and it is not a heuristic proxy for pre-authoring.

Obama kept repeating that we could keep our doctors, too.

Stuff that is established by the players in the course of play is not backstory. And Eero Tuovinen doesn't call it backstory, either. He says "I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks". The reason it sucks, in his view, is because having the player establish the fiction that constitutes framing, or consequences, is at odds with the dynamics of player character advocacy in a "standard narrativistic" game: "[the standard narrativistic model] works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice."

He also gives those three examples as players authoring backstory, which included authoring backstory through mechanical means, which would include your search check.

Eero gives a number of examples, some pertaining to framing (eg the ToC and "orcs in the next room" examples) and some pertaining to consequences (the 3:16 example looks like this, and likewise some aspects of the ToC example, if finding a clue is treated as consequence rather than framing). In discussing one framing example (ie the NPC declaration of parenthood of the PC) he says that it won't work for the "standard narrativistic model" because "a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters."

All of those examples were of players authoring backstory. He says the following right after those exampled, "The problem we have here(in direct reference to the three examples), specifically, is that when you apply narration sharing to backstory authority, you require the player to both establish and resolve a conflict, which runs counter to the Czege principle."

In the previous sentence I used the words "may not." That is deliberate: Eero is not a fetishist. He is not fetishising GM authority over backstory - he even notes that he designed a game without it (Zombie Cinema). He has a particular concern expressed in concrete terms: certain sorts of player authorship of framing and consequence are at odds with the "standard narrativistic model".

He very strongly feels that the D&D method of splitting DM and player roles is the proper way to do things. He says this in his blog.

"This is pretty much just my own opinion, call it an observation – I think that a logical division of tasks is important for a roleplaying game to such a degree that it actually prescribes and explains much of what we find interesting in the game in the first place. Specifically, I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship. This is why many people find conch-passing games to pale next to a proper roleplaying game; the advocacy/referee/antagonism division of responsibilities is simply a more dynamic, interactive, emergent and fun way of crafting stories than undiluted and complete dramatic control for many of us. Authorship is work, advocacy is game."

He's very much describing the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and I run as being a "proper roleplaying game".

Other consequences - "I found a secret door in the wall in front of me" - are not. They implicate gameworld elements that (i) were not already established at the table (ie the players didn't know about them), and (ii) the existence of those gameworld elements is not a causal consequences of the PC's action in the game (ie the PC didn't build the secret door).

Correct. That's why the PLAYER is authoring the secret door into the backstory, not the PC. The player is just using the PC's mechanics to do so(assuming success).

Are consequences of the second sort problematic narration sharing? That is, do they have the adverse effect upon the player's interaction with the GM's framed scene that Eero identifies?

I don't consider it to be problematic in your playstyle, but it is narration sharing and does allow the authoring of backstory.

Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose that the PCs have come to a city looking for information, and the GM establishes that there is a temple in the city that might be helpful to them. So the GM tells the players, "You've all heard of the Temple of the Moon. Do you want to go there to see if they have the information you're looking for?" That is an exercise of backstory authority. It doesn't matter whether the GM came up with this idea years ago, and has been waiting to use it; or whether the GM came up with it on the spot - it is presented as something that is to form part of the "arena" of play. It is not itself a product of play.

Now suppose one of the players responds, "I've heard rumours of these Moon cultists - it's said they sneak out of their temple on the night of the new moon, to kill the unwary who linger out of doors." That's not backstory. It wasn't preauthored. And the player isn't generating it using some proxy for preauthorship. Clearly, the player is making a move in the game.

It's not pre-authored, but it is heuristically authored in the moment by the player and is a use of backstory authority. It's literally no different than the DM coming up with the temple in the moment, except for who authored it.

Should the game permit this move?

Depends on the game.

Eero Tuovinen gives an argument that it is probably not a sound move to permit in an investigation-focused game, because it is the player making up his/her own clue. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has disagreed, not far upthread. I don't have a strong view on who is right out of Eero and Abdul, because I don't run investigation-focused games. All I'll add on this point is that investigation-based games run on the basis of strong pre-authorship of clues are likely not to conform to the "standard narrativistic model" because a number of scenes and consequences are likely to be driven by a concern with finding out rather than thematically compelling, choice-provoking situations.

That has the same effect on other sort of games as well. Let's say that instead of investigation, the player was looking for potions and said, "I've heard rumors of these Moon cultists - it's said they brew powerful potions on the night of the new moon, to sell to those who are in need." The player is still creating the solution to his need, even if that need isn't information.

 

[Maxperson]

However, I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is also using him not just as a source of wisdom but also simply as a source for definition of terms, so that everybody can at least be speaking the same language.

It's not working out all that well. We don't agree on what the guy is trying to say.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I guess I've just been doing this for so long it's become second nature for me. Once I know the "detonation" point I can usually pretty much eyeball the board (which is marked in 10' squares) and say right away who's in or out; and if there's one or more creatures close to the edge I'll get more finicky and if that doesn't help I'll leave it to the dice.

As for whether someone near the edge is in or out, I'll just give a big bonus on the saving throw and if the bonus gets you to 20+ then you were outside the area and take no damage. Obviously the same goes for the opponents. (your example reverses the mechanics, using the 4e method of attack for damage rather than defensive saving throws).

OK, well, my feeling is that these things tend to become focal points for arguments, because of course its a big deal if I take 10d6 damage or not! GMs tend to fall into camps. There's the 'hard ass' who rules with a bloody hand, the 'soft heart' who usually rules so that the PC lives, and the 'mechanist' who adds some die rolls and modifiers and may take 5 minutes to deal with one fireball.

Never mind that the idea of only one human-sized bipedal creature being able to occupy a 5x5' space is itself kinda silly unless said person is waving a very large weapon around.

Which is exactly when 4e says this, outside of combat there are no such rules. I'd note that many PCs can move THROUGH a square, and in some cases its possible to occupy the same space too, though its not common. I mean, sure, I can see a point that says "a halfling with a dagger and a wizard with a wand could probably stand back to back in a square". I've just seen so few, if any, situations where it MATTERED if it was one square or two that I find the whole thing academic. I'm highly into the 'what works in practice' camp.

A complexity I don't mind.

The trick is not to remember it all, but to remember where to look it up when needed. And, over the years I've gone through and rewritten absolutely every spell in the game, and put them online so they're easy for us all to look up.

Meh, I don't terribly mind looking some things up, but AD&D is a PITA! I mean, with 4e I barely HAVE to look anything up, and WotC designed the presentation so it would fit nicely into an online database which I didn't have to write! Frankly, D&D has one nice feature that has pretty consistently been true, its an easy game to reference. 5e TBH I find a bit of an exception here, its rules are not well organized.

Shrug - to me, that's just how the game is played.

And when the outcome is possibly the difference between life and death for your PC, wouldn't you want to dive into the minutae and make sure things were done right?

No, actually. I mean, I want it done in a way that is consistent with the way the game is intended to work. I'm fairly gamist and I enjoy exercising the workings of the game. Do I want to have to enforce rules on exactly how many arrows the orc fired before I got pigstuck? Nope, not really. If I invent some tactic that leverages "he's going to run out of arrows eventually" of course I want that to be feasible, but it can work on a check that represents how good I am at making such a plan, for example.

I don't deny it helps with agency. On the contrary, I think it helps too much.

My point is simply that if the PCs aren't in a position to know all the consequences then the players shouldn't be either, and thus there'll sometimes be some agency they just have to do without.

Right, this is the 'player test of skill' aspect of the original classic dungeon crawl, which is a very necessary part of that type of play (and when I say 'dungeon crawl' it can also encompass other similar kinds of exploration/looting situations, like hex crawls, certain kinds of intrigue, etc.). I think when it is projected beyond that, then it becomes an impediment. This is part of what is problematic with 2e.

Now, I don't mind surprising players, but I'm OK with them having knowledge that PCs don't. If they are playing to see what the PCs will do, then they're going to play in character, and it may be advantageous for them to know certain things in order to do that.

Something basic like swinging a sword at a foe: yeah, the usual consequences are obvious - you're either going to hurt the foe, kill the foe, or do nothing to the foe. There's also possible unusual consequences - you might fumble and do something you didn't want to do, or you might hit the foe so hard your swing follows through into something else (a.k.a. Cleave in 3e), or you might diasrm the foe, or trip it, etc., depending on system.

But something basic like going left instead of right at an intersection - assuming no pre-scouting or other foreknowledge - the PCs have no way of knowing what consequences will arise from that decision, and thus neither should the players.

I just don't see the value of a decision in which there's no real substance. I mean, again, this is an artifact of the 'explore the dungeon maze' paradigm, where the PCs may well choose left simply because it gives them a chance to fill in a part of the map and search for a suspected secret room or something. Anyway, at least there will be map consequences that may eventually matter down the road. In a narrative focus on characters its color.

Yeah, don't get me started on falling damage; it's bugged me since day 1.

Ditto with whichever boneheaded edition it was that gave the spell Reverse Gravity a duration of 10 minutes. The idea, I'm sure, was that this would for 10 minutes just cause anyone entering the area (or the individual target, it's been done both ways) to crash to the ceiling. But what happens if it's cast outdoors where there is no ceiling? Think about it.....

A 10-minute upward "fall" doesn't quite put you into space, but you'll have long since suffocated by the time you come back down...and for the time you're falling upward you would always keep accelerating a bit, as terminal velocity is caused by air resistance which steadily decreases as you go higher. I really don't think they quite thought this one through...

LOL! Which edition did that? I think it lasts 1 segment in 1e, making it kind of a weak 7th level spell, actually. However, it has several interesting characteristics. The main one being it affects an AREA not a target, so there are no saves. Questioner of All Things used to memorize it as a fairly stock ploy to deal with nasty high level save problems. Usually you can get some advantage out of it. Overall a weak spell in that edition.

None of it is perfect, but if you take an average you'll at least have a guideline to start from - which is indisputably better than nothing.

Again, I think you're being a bit pessimistic. I mean, I'm sure I've got it down at least past the 99.6% point...

Lanefan

hehe, well, I could be a pessimist! I mean, I did make a price chart. It was mostly just me fooling around though. I don't really intend to use it in a game, and its fairly arbitrary. However, it would work. Honestly the 1e chart is not terrible.

 

[Maxperson]

So is that railroading? It's a matter of three things. First, did you genuinely have something in mind that you wanted your character to do instead, or related, did you genuinely want your character not to take a shower for some reason? (And the GM didn't even ask.) Second, does the GM typically extend this kind of 'takeover' later in the scenes over consequential decisions for your character, in which case this is sort of the thin end of the wedge? And third, if you object, does your voice at the table matter, or does the GM shut you down and say, "My way, you're in the shower, I said so." If some combination of those three things is going on, then yeah, it's probably railroading.

I don't think the first question is really appropriate. If I had to list all of the things I didn't want my character to do so that you would avoid doing them for me, we'd be sitting for several entire sessions as I droned on with the entire list. With regard to the giant scenario, the answer the second question is yes, as how they approach the giants is a very consequential decision for the PCs. As for the third, I've already said that re-winding time isn't something that I personally find acceptable, and there wasn't enough time to interrupt the DM in-between arrival and being spotted. Even if the DM didn't shut me down and re-wound time to allow for a stealthy approach, that encounter is already blown for me. I fully realize that this last objection is totally personal and may not apply to your players.

 

[Maxperson]

LOL! Which edition did that? I think it lasts 1 segment in 1e, making it kind of a weak 7th level spell, actually. However, it has several interesting characteristics. The main one being it affects an AREA not a target, so there are no saves. Questioner of All Things used to memorize it as a fairly stock ploy to deal with nasty high level save problems. Usually you can get some advantage out of it. Overall a weak spell in that edition.

In 2e it was 1 round per level. Were rounds still 1 minute in 2e? I can't remember. 3e had it also at 1 round per level, which means 2 minutes at 20th level.