What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Emerikol]

Maybe another helpful analogy. Imagine a cooperative military game where everyone picks up weapons, supplies, etc.. and then go together as a group into a combat zone. And then imagine they take it seriously . That is how my adventures tend to run.

 

[Maxperson]

No. An action declaration to create a secret door would be "I build a secret door". It would be tested on Stonemason or Engineering or some comparable skill, or perhaps - if being done magically (as per the D&D spell Phase Door or something similar) by testing a sorcerous ability.

As opposed to "I look for a secret door", which is tested on some sort of Perception or Search ability.

The secret door did not exist until the action was taken. It created the secret door, even if the PC didn't create it in the fiction. We're talking about backstory authorship, so pretending that I'm talking about the PC building the secret door is some bad faith arguing.

Whether it's a form of problematic "narration sharing" is a further question. I addressed this at some length in a post upthread, considering different approaches to play and what may or may not be anticlimactic and tension-draining in those contexts.

(1) If failure means capture (for instance), then the player can't keep trying.

I'm not talking about retries. What prevents a pick locks attempt from freeing him, or a diplomacy check to persuade, or checking trickery(or whatever) to bluff his way out, or a strength check to work the bars loose, or... There are lots of ways to eventually roll successfully.

(2) If the player is not allowed to declare actions to try and escape, then how do you envisage the situation actually resolving?

Who said anything about not being able to declare actions?

 

[Maxperson]

I'm still working my way through this example.

Let's say the player received a prophecy earlier that they would find a boon in an unexpected place, which was provided to the character as an option to add to the story in the future to avoid an obstacle, and the player chose to use that boon to create the secret door.

If there is an in fiction reason for the secret door to come into being, such as a divine power creating it to fulfill prophecy, then my argument goes away. Some divine(hopefully anyway) being is creating that door on behalf of the PC to fulfill a prophecy.

Or, the sense of it could be more that the player can declare that there is a secret door, but the GM still has a determination of how usable the door is: There could be locks, or a guardian, or fallen rocks to clear.

Then, the player is really declaring that they are interested in escaping a foe (rather than negotiating with them, or fighting them), with the means being a secret escape of some sort, and the GM adjusts the tension by considering how the player manages to overcome challenges introduced along with the secret escape route.

As our previous discussion of this point elucidated, there has to be something more than a single shake of a die which leads to utter unfettered success of the character for the whole rest of the narrative. Clearly that's just not how these things work. When you have a success you move somewhat closer to your goal. Now you have one guard to surprise instead of 2 guards to defeat in a frontal battle. You're still better off. Just as you would be better off if you took out your bow and slew one of those two guards with a successful attack (you see, attack roll and perception check are now equivalently balanced forward advances).

Earlier in the thread when I was discussing making off with jewels as a scenario, and I suggested that the lord might send guards searching the town, or hire an assassin or some other response to the jewels getting out, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] poo poo'd the idea as negating player success. Now you're telling me that it's an okay thing to do because multiple successes are needed to succeed. How many are needed? 2, 3, 6, X?

As I pointed out just before this in another post, there's really no likelihood that one path is just as hard as another. Difficulty isn't even the REAL focus here, but if everything was equally hard/easy then there would be no point in choosing, at least from a perspective of 'winning'.

I agree that difficulties will vary.

 

[Maxperson]

I have little to add, actually Never met Iserith, but I only took to the D&D boards when 4e was released. Wreccan and actually I think one at least of the posters in this thread were common participants there at the time, along with many others whom I mostly don't recall the names of, since its been now almost 5 years since I bowed out of that scene.

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is here as well and I think much more active closer to when the D&D boards imploded. In fact, he posted here in this thread once or twice when I mentioned him. And the reason I've mentioned him is that as [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] said, he was a big champion of this style and I think it fair to mention him when I reference something I remember him saying, so he can agree or disagree with my memory if he chooses.

 

[pemerton]

Earlier in the thread when I was discussing making off with jewels as a scenario, and I suggested that the lord might send guards searching the town, or hire an assassin or some other response to the jewels getting out, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] poo poo'd the idea as negating player success. Now you're telling me that it's an okay thing to do because multiple successes are needed to succeed. How many are needed? 2, 3, 6, X?

I won't speak for anyone else. IMHO what that means is you don't literally reverse things that PCs have accomplished. However, they might not turn out to be, in the long run, the best outcomes. I think its perfectly OK to have a guard at the end of the secret passage. It seems to me that the most likely reasonable way for things to be is that finding the secret passage and sneaking up on the guard, etc. should provide the same tension and sense of danger and accomplishment as taking out the two guards in the foyer that you just bypassed.

AbdulAlhazred is speaking for himself, just as I'm speaking for myself.

He's also envisaging a skill challenge-type structure, where getting to the ultimate goal (whatever that is) requires X successes before 3 failures. In the structure of a skill challenge, getting a success by way of finding a secret door might change the narrative trajectory, and might change the difficulty (by allowing a player to exploit stronger capabilities), but doesn't obviate the need to generate successes.

 

[pemerton]

The secret door did not exist until the action was taken.

The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.

We're talking about backstory authorship

No. We're talking about establishing fiction. But not all fiction is backstory. Not all fictional elements which, in the story, precede the present moment of action declaration, are backstory - at least in the sense that Eero Tuovinen uses that term.

What prevents a pick locks attempt from freeing him, or a diplomacy check to persuade, or checking trickery(or whatever) to bluff his way out, or a strength check to work the bars loose, or... There are lots of ways to eventually roll successfully.

<snip>

Who said anything about not being able to declare actions?

The two sides of the snippage sit in some sort of tension.

If the PCs search for a secret door, and fail to find one, and hence get captured, and then escape capture by picking locks or breaking bars or charming or tricking their captors, what are you saying is the problem? How is that remotely anti-climactic?

You seem to be saying that action declarations are allowed, and that it's not a railroad - except that all that stuff is off-limits.

 

[Aenghus]

#firstworldbuildingproblems


I regret nothing.

 

[Lanefan]

I remember Wreccan. I also think LaneFan was on.

Not guilty, y'r honour.

The only other RPG board I've ever really had anything to do with - and not much, at that - is Dragonsfoot.

The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.

Will you PLEASE get off this!

After the search action is resolved as a success the secret door exists in the fiction, which for the purposes of these discussions means it now exists as an element of the game being played and - even though it's not sitting there on your game table - is still going to have influence on what happens going forward in the game. (and if you must keep it real-world, it'll probably cause players to say different words than they otherwise would have)

To say otherwise is nothing more than obfuscation. We're all completely aware that none of the imaginary stuff exists in the real world, but what exists in the real world is utterly irrelevant when the point of the conversation is what exists in the fictional world and by whose authorship and-or what means it comes to be there.

Lanefan

 

[Tony Vargas]

We're all completely aware that none of the imaginary stuff exists in the real world, but what exists in the real world is utterly irrelevant when the point of the conversation is what exists in the fictional world and by whose authorship and-or what means it comes to be there.

It doesn't exist in the fictional world until it's been established, either. So there's no reason to favor one authorship or timing of that establishment over another, innately.

 

[Nagol]

It doesn't exist in the fictional world until it's been established, either. So there's no reason to favor one authorship or timing of that establishment over another, innately.

Completely agree. Innately, player-facing and DM-facing designs are different tools that serve similar yet different purposes like a cake pan vs. a spring-form pan. Innately, one is not better than the other, but if one bakes a cheesecake, one will preferentially use a spring-form pan.

Pick the tool that best fits the experience desired.

If DM-facing, once the secret door is established it can begin to pressure the other fictional elements even if the players are unaware of its existence. If player-facing, it won't.