What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Having recently reread the OP,ost I can affirmatively say that the question was not, in any way, limited to Story Now implicitly or explicitly. And, the discussion, right from the start, involved the OPoster evaluating traditional play's use of worldbuilding using a Story Now lens. The behavior was on both sides.

And I've called out both sides repeatedly, so I'm not trying to hypocritically defend either.

Now, see, when I reread it yesterday, after answering you, I thought somewhat differently. It doesn't literally invoke 'story now' (except maybe in the this is a tangent sblock) BUT the play he describes certainly evokes the standard narrative model, or other similar techniques. I mean, he DID contrast two styles of play, whatever they were!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That deserves laugh, and XP and a cookie.

2nd that, hehe.

 

[Maxperson]

I gotta say, Max, I think you're being more extreme than anyone else! There's a fundamental difference in the give and take in the two techniques of play. You may not LIKE the exact phraseology that Pemerton uses, but I don't think its because its 'wrong', I think its because you want to minimize the effective difference and claim he's doing basically what your doing! That certainly is how it comes across, rightly or wrongly.

Nah. What [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is doing is not using phraseology that I don't like, he's redefining terms to suit his needs and I reject that. Especially since he then uses those terms to be dismissive and/or attack the traditional playstyle. When he does that, I turn it back on him. I understand the differences between the styles, but when push comes to shove, his style also has players declare actions to get the DM to say stuff, and so I point it out to him. That can SEEM like I'm trying to minimize differences, but I'm really not.

If he just talked about his style and what he liked and disliked about the differences, rather than trying to redefine terms so that he can attack the other playstyle, the conversation would be much different. At no point in this thread did he ever need to say things like, "The traditional playstyle is choose your own adventure", or "It's railroady", or "The players just declare actions to get the DM to read notes/say stuff." It's uncalled for and when he does it, I'm going to show how those things can also apply to his style. If he doesn't like it, he should stop doing it in the first place. If he learned the Golden Rule it would help him considerably in these conversations.

 

[Sadras]

Have to agree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], imagine the pushback if I said '4e is a WoW cardgame', 'Story Now railroads the DM' or 'No Myth games are all about collaborative storytelling'

 

[pemerton]

The most I can liken my style to is a very focused limited character viewpoint. Players "see" the world through their characters eyes only. They "know" what their characters know.

How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?

My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!

EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning new things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.

 

[Lanefan]

How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?

My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!

Well, you in theory already know who and what your PC is; what you're asking the DM to tell you is where it is and what's around it both physically (where's the swimming hole) and socially (local customs).

It's a slight difference, but a very significant one.

You control who and what your PC is; the other players control who and what their PCs are; and the DM controls what's around all of you.

 

[pemerton]

Well, you in theory already know who and what your PC is; what you're asking the DM to tell you is where it is and what's around it both physically (where's the swimming hole) and socially (local customs).

What I'm saying is that, for me, that makes for unnaturally atomistic/alienated characters.

It's one thing for the GM to be my eyes; another for him/her to also be my memories and introspection and intuitive grasp of things.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but story type games, like Dungeon World, literally "just don't work that way"

There's no 'us and them' in DW, and I don't have it that way in my games either (which are closer to Pemerton's model than DW is, note the last sentence in that quote, which he wouldn't agree with IMHO is part of his style of play).

Yeah, I don't agree about the 'oppositional' part of that statement. The GM can be a fan of the characters, it works quite well in DW! It works for me! Now, do I HAVE to be easy on them? No!

Whether or not you're cheering for the PCs you're still also providing the opposition most of the time, and - one assumes - playing that opposition to the best of its abilities.

It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest - if you-as-GM are earnestly cheering for the PCs that's going to discourage you from putting anything too deadly in their path, and encourage you to provide out-clauses and getaway cars when they do get in over their heads. Put another way, it strongly encourages you to reduce* adventuring to sport rather than war.

* - and I use that term intentionally, as to me adventuring as sport is a lesser thing than adventuring as war.

Yeah, I understand where it comes from, it still falls under my rubrik of (pardon the expression) '2 dimensional thinking'.

I think I touched on this in another post, maybe one that I made after you made this one.

No matter what the players do, they're going to face another scene and another challenge. Their choices may make the challenges more interesting to them, and give them a better chance of success (or not) but authoring a 'secret door' to 'get out of' a bad situation is not going to put you in a GOOD situation automatically! The next actual meaningful scene is going to put pressure on the PCs AGAIN. This is likely to be 'whatever is on the other side of that door'. The only thing they play for is to do COOL STUFF, and learn about their characters.

This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.

They literally have NO reason to make moves which don't lead to that. Its utterly pointless.

If I'm framed into a scene that looks like trouble I'm going to declare whatever actions I need to in order to reduce or evade that trouble, not enhance it!

Is it possible a player is going to want to make a move which everyone else (and maybe even he) objectively believes isn't dramatically interesting or fun? Maybe simply because of an idle desire to accomplish some mechanical game reward (IE treasure perhaps).

Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.

Maybe, but this kind of thing turns out to be pretty much self-extinguishing too. As I say, another challenge and another dramatic situation is going to rise up immediately to replace any that are tossed away by the players. VERY quickly they learn this and the focus of play changes from 'get the gold' to 'do something cool' or 'my character sticks to his guns even if it costs his life!' or 'I die defending the door!'.

In fact, my story now 'D&D' games are the most deadly of all. Turns out players are perfectly willing to trade a boring character sheet for a noble death story!

I've killed off enough of my own characters over the years to know that dying can be every bit as undramatic as running away. But then, we play adventuring as war; where the main drama is often sheer survival and death is a frequent visitor.

Sure, but the root of all conflict is in the beliefs and core values of the characters. That is the point of 'go to the story'. Grab the character by the metaphorical hair and toss him to the story wolves! It doesn't require conflict between the GM and the players, only between PCs and 'other stuff' (NPCs, their own beliefs, the world, fate, etc.).

But who runs all that "other stuff" - the NPCs, the world, whatever clashes with their own beliefs, etc.? That's right: the DM.

And yes of course the conflict should stay in character - I don't expect the players and DM to be coming to blows over this stuff - but it's still at its root adversarial. Kind of like chess is adversarial - you could be playing against your best friend but within the game you're still going to try your best to checkmate him.

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where @pemerton quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.

I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where @pemerton quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.

Well, I don't want to misappropriate anyone's words... I thought it was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoting something that Ron Edwards said about the design of Sorcerer.

I'm pretty sure that AbdulAlhazred was referring to a passage I quoted from Ron Edwards's essay about how to do setting-heavy "story now" - I think in the other thread. The key bits (sblocked for length):

[sblock]

Story Now play does not merely inject a dose of flexibility or improvisation into Story Before play. It’s a different animal entirely. For example, the classic “play my character vs. play for the story” dichotomy is literally impossible. There simply isn’t any “the” story. The only way to get a story is through people playing their characters. . . .

It relies heavily on situational crisis within the fiction, and not only the knowledge among the players that their characters are significantly embedded in it, but their enjoyment of that because the characters’ allegiances and priorities are free to unfold and change during play . . .

Character-centric Story Now play is consistent with epic literature and myth, classical drama, and adventure fiction of all kinds. . . .

[H]istorically, it was developed first as an explicit alternative to the Story Before methods described earlier. Therefore in early Forge discussions, a perceived dichotomy formed which contrasted Setting with Story Now (Narrativism). Here, I’m firmly calling this dichotomy false and showing that Story Now play can function very well using a setting-centric approach. . . .

[T]the game I first really applied this model with . . . [was] Hero Wars. . . . [R]ight off the bat, making characters draws directly and consequentially upon the available cultures in the chosen location. In other words, the first thing you do to play is pick a spot on the world map, which provides the options for character creation in addition to the particular political and religious crises hitting flashpoint at that time – as opposed to having a character-type list spanning the whole setting to pick from. . . .

Enjoying the setting isn’t an end-stage outcome, it’s a starting and prevailing commitment. Nor is a single person expected to be the docent for the textual setting; rather, it belongs to everyone for inspiration and use. Play deepens it and provides nuances, and most importantly, changes it. . . .

One concern that crops up a lot for playing this way is how expert people have to be even to get started. Although not everyone must be expert, certainly no one can be ignorant either. . . .

In my experience, the solution begins with a single person choosing the location, at least when the group is playing the game for the first time. He or she should provide a brief but inspirational handout which summarizes the entire setting, focusing on colorful and thematic points; if the opening text of the game book provides this, a quick photocopy will do. . . .

Although the organizing person should provide more detailed handouts or photocopies as an ongoing feature of preparation, everyone else must definitely be oriented and enthusiastic concerning the prevailing thematic crises that are made concrete in setting terms. The good news is that full expertise isn’t necessary to achieve this, and in my experience, asking and answering questions about the options for the geographically-limited character creation usually generate sufficient knowledge for the first sessions of play. . . .

I want to focus on several game texts that present explicitly powerful settings which as I see it simply scream out to be utilized as I’ve described above, but which are also saddled with play-advice that undercuts the potential. . . .

[O]ne consistent problem with such texts is being forced to reconcile the deeply community-oriented problems of a given location for play with the inappropriate assumption that player-characters are a team of outsiders who’ve just arrived from very far away. Since these can’t be reconciled, each text repeats a whole circular and unsuccessful mantra about it without managing to deliver meaningful or even engaging instructions.

I will now provide a set of concepts and practices to bring out what seem to me to be these games’ best features for setting-centric Story Now play. The idea is to embrace the setting as a genuine, central source of the colorful thematic dilemmas explicit in the games’ introductory text, and to resist the retraction and retreat to comparatively tame Story Before which are explicit in the later GM-advice and scenario-preparation text.​

He then goes on to suggest a concrete set of steps for PC gen, prep, and play: ignore "adventurers" and "adventure", but rather create PCs who belong in the particular chosen place, and have connections ("Each [PC] carries a few NPCs along, implied by various details, and those NPCs should be identified. It is helpful for at least one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas"); and establish scenes that put these characters (PCs and NPCs) under pressure (in terms of the relationships to one another, the community, the location) and see what happens.[/sblock]

Of well-known D&D settings, this would seem to be a way to do Dark Sun.

 

[pemerton]

Have to agree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], imagine the pushback if I said '4e is a WoW cardgame', 'Story Now railroads the DM' or 'No Myth games are all about collaborative storytelling'

I have read, and read, those things all the time!

(Which maybe was your point - I wasn't sure if your post was ironic or literal!)