What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Bedrockgames]

...It's called the Socratic Method, I believe...

I don't know what to say to that. I think it is pretty clueless to think that is what is going on here.

 

[Bedrockgames]

...

...and that's how it works...

Except people have been trying to tell Pemerton and others some variation of what Arliyn just said for dozens of pages now (if not from the very start of the thread), only to be met with the kinds of tactics me and others were complaining about. I find it very puzzling if you see that post as evidence that the original question was productive or asked in good faith.

 

[Tony Vargas]

And looked what happened to Socrates

@Hemlock's not even posting on this thread.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Were I running a pure sandbox I'd drop hooks and stop there. It'd be up to the party to determine whether any particular hook led to something they could handle or not.

Yikes!

Ignoring convention games and drunken one-offs I've played maybe 55 characters in about 6 or 8 games, though some of those games (and characters) lasted for many years. Chucking in the cons and drunks it might be more like 70 in 20.

Lan-"for example Lanefan the character was rolled up in 1984 and, after a career with many fits and starts and gaps, only just last year retired to try and build his stronghold"-efan

Well, it sounds like a LOT, but I'm sure I've been in 30 different campaigns just with [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION]! Some of them were brief affairs, so I guess you'd hardly count them, but we tend to hop around and do different things fairly often. For a long time I had several overlapping player groups where we'd be doing 2-3 different campaigns at the same time with various combinations of players (which often recombined in various ways).

There have been a few fairly notable 'long' campaigns. Several come to mind which lasted 2 or more years. A couple of them 5 or more, though sometimes there were different 'phases' with different people in them and only a couple of continuous characters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This may be true of your game. It's clearly not true of everyone though, given some of the posts early in this thread.

What does to play in mean? It's not like a sandpit or a playground. The actual activity at the table is primarily the speaking of words. Until we drop metaphor for literal descriptions, very little useful analysis is going to follow.

Again, what does this mean? What actual utterances at the table are you referring to?

This is more metaphor, though. The "toys" and "parts" are purely imaginary, and the "manipulating" is talking. What does the talking look like? Who is allowed to say what? And why? What role do the GM's words play in affecting the players', and vice versa?

Again, this is metaphor. Can you describe this in literal terms?

OK, so let's talk about this. What's the difference between "players working through a story" and reading a novel?

The question's not rhetorical. Presumably there's a difference. I assume that the second-personality is part of it? Is it all of it? Is there something else going on?

There are no 'literal terms' that mean anything because this is a construct of the imagination. Its the construct itself which is held to have value. If you want to make it concrete, then we can talk about mental activity, which obviously has a concrete physical basis, but I'm not entirely sure where that analysis can go...

There's very little similarity between 'playing in a world' and 'reading a novel'. Playing in a world means depicting the actions of a character or characters, as constrained by the parameters of this artificial constructed world. The parameters are EMBODIED IN the Game Master, literally.

This is the THEORY anyway. Now, lest you think I may have suddenly changed sides in this debate, I find that the theory, and the hypothetical practice, don't actually live up to and exist in real play at real tables, for MANY reasons.

1) No two people actually agree on the content of the mental construct, the setting. They may may manage to agree on some details, but other areas, probably MAJOR ones that would have real implications, are simply imagined in different ways.

2) The world cannot possibly be imagined in enough detail, even with an army of 100 GMs working for 50 years, to be able to make any sort of realistic prediction about 'what would happen in situation X'. Thus it is ALWAYS the GM's whim/judgment, constrained only by informal understanding that the players are only willing to accept certain things.

3) The GM has a need to move the game forward, and the players have a desire for that as well, in general. So the GM will never be a really neutral arbiter.

4) The GM has a vested interest in producing something that isn't boring or frustrating to the players, meaning again he's not a neutral arbiter.

There are other things, I could go on for a long time. GMs are like 'ring masters', they orchestrate. The idea that GMs are 'referees' is prevalent but nonsense.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sigh, apparently we have to have the crisis discussion again.

By crisis, I mean that something about the characters, their goals, or the theme of the game is challenged as part of scene framing. The play is to discover something about that through the crisis it's placed in. Can you have down moments, or narration of quieter times? Sure. Crisis doesn't mean "OH DEAR GOD" it means that the play of Story Now is pointedly to draw things the player's care about into sharp focus and challenge. This is the crux of drama. So, yes, Story Now frames the characters into a crisis as part of it's game design. Crisis, not climax or never have room to breathe, but actually point where something the players care about is at stake.

OK, there was just a round of this discussion where it was then extrapolated by someone into an accusation of 'railroading' the players from one 'action sequence' to the next without remit or pacing, and as if they weren't picking where they went next (at least in part).

The other response to this which springs to mind is, "how is it different in practical terms from any other type of play?" I mean, even Gygaxian dungeon crawls, are effectively a 'crisis' by this sort of reckoning. I don't disagree with your employment of the term, its quite correct. It is just a question of if this is really the critical point. In any RPG, 90% of the time there's a conflict in progress. It may be at a lower level where the PCs are crawling around in the 'dungeon', but that's just "man against nature" basically, with hazards, traps, darkness, etc. The PCs 'need for treasure' in classic D&D is pitted against the abstract opposition of the dungeon. Even in later types of play where character and story appear, the characters still have basically "amass power and fortune" opposed to some cast of 'enemies'.

My TRUE fundamental proposition, which I only touched on briefly much earlier in the thread, is that story is ALWAYS the point. I find the whole 'GNS theory' (in all its forms) to be bogus because STORY IS ALWAYS EVERYTHING in all games! That is, without some sort of framework of story, the rest of an RPG can do no work! So its natural to ask why it isn't just what the rules focus on.

So, if we can agree that the point of play in Story Now is to frame the characters into situations that challenge, perhaps fundamentally but at least risk, things that the players care about, then we can continue. If you disagree, well, then, I've been playing Blades wrong and would like some help on Story Now. If we do agree, then the point that the players lose some agency due to the way Story Now frames scenes directly into drama and crisis is a valid point. The players WILL be challenged via the framing mechanism -- the DM is required to place things the player's care about in jeopardy -- as a core tenet of play. The framing mechanisms in Story Now do limit agency by forcing this case.

I remember that, back in the days when I asked players for backstory but they weren't given any sort of guarantee of agency over fiction, they were very reluctant to commit to anything concrete. I got a lot of backstories that amounted to "my character is a rootless orphan." I mean, there'd always be SOMETHING there, but it was quite often very 'slippery' and clearly the player was reluctant to create some sort of 'hook' because they were quite aware that the GM was going to grab onto those hooks and pull! This is even more so true in less story-focused games, as there's correspondingly less possibility of getting some reward, interesting story, out of taking that risk.

My point is, story was always a major thrust of things.

Again, this isn't bad -- loss of agency isn't inherently bad when it serves the purpose of the game. This loss due to the framing mechanisms is the POINT of Story Now. Claiming that it's a bad thing would be very strange. Story Now accepts this loss to avoid play that doesn't get straight to the drama; that doesn't generate the kind of play the system is designed for. This is, in fact, a good design element of Story Now. But, it is also a limitation on agency.

I think you may not have played much of this type of game if you imagine it that way. I mean, yes, you will put things in doubt. However, THE SAME IS TRUE IN OTHER GAMES, its just that the things in doubt may only matter to the players/characters because the GM wants them to, not because the players want them to.

An example: the Engagement roll in Blades. The players decide on a score and an approach and set their detail. The Engagement roll is made, and then the GM uses that roll to inform the opening scene -- which may be at ANY point in the heist the GM wants so long as it immediately puts pressure on the characters. This jumps over tedious planning (which some players like) and assumes a whole host of actions on the character's part to get to the part of the score that the GM feels best represents the nature of the score, approach, detail, and the Engagement roll. The example in the text for this is a theft that starts with the characters in the office of the target with the object desired in hand but with an alarm going off -- play now proceeds not to obtain the object but to escape with it. Regardless, the player's cares are addressed and put into crisis -- with their characters succeed in escaping the now alerted guards with the goods? But, again, to get there, a huge number of decisions are elided by the framing mechanic and agency that might exist in other games (to plan, to actually play through the opening of the heist, etc.) are skipped over to frame the crisis of play.

I don't think this is for 'Story Now' reasons, for the most part. I mean, yes, it creates a certain type of very 'immediate' story, with action scenes coming 'in media res' so to speak. This is a technique, a style of game. It isn't an absolute logical necessity of Story Now. I mean, if you are engaged by setting up the construction schedule, recruiting the workers, etc. for the build of your castle, then I don't think there's any reason to expect you will suddenly be framed into some scene where a disaster takes place! You may be framed into scenes which include some sort of key decision point or something which may later (or immediately, whichever) bear on some urgent crisis.

Here's the thing. This type of game could VERY WELL actually be more realistic in some cases than simply playing out every little choice. This is because, in general, there are certain choices and options which are critical, and the rest really aren't. Its hard to achieve that in the sort of play you are advocating. In my kind of game though, while building the castle the key points might be if you chose the cheap mortar, if you paid off the Carpenter's Guild or not, whether you got the gnome's permission to mine the quarry, etc. These choices could be framed in terms of conflicts with the character's greed, or his obligations, or his desire to be fair while having marginal amounts of funding, etc.

THIS is what I mean by 'frame into crisis' and why I say it reduces some agency. Blades adds in on the backside with mechanics to offset the inability to mitigate risk a priori with lots of mechanics to mitigate outcomes post hoc. Blades trades play to reduce risk with play that modifies outcomes, and so offers some new tools that add agency while at the same time reducing it in other places. Traditional play would allow a lot of agency on the front end and during play but almost no ability to mitigate outcomes post hoc. Traditional play puts the agency more out in front while Story Now games tend to have more on the backend of play or ad hoc during play. I don't think you could say that one style has 'more' than the other in regards to agency so much as you can say that specific instances of agency exist differently between the two. The claim that Story Now has MORE agency with respect to players adding to the fiction is nonsensical; rather it's more reasonable to say that Story Now typically has agency for players to add to the fiction while traditional play typically does not. This is a category of agency, not a measure of it. Traditional play tends to have agency to meticulously plan and for players to have a lot of control over pacing. Story Now offers almost no agency to plan and almost no agency to control pace. This doesn't mean one has MOAR AGENCYS! It means that they have different focuses of play and the agencies granted are aimed at those focuses of play.

I think BitD is a certain type of game. I am again not at all sure that Story Now prevents one from engaging in up front risk mitigation. It doesn't in HoML. In fact I specifically designed my game to allow planning and thus a more narratively focused type of strategic thinking to be an important element. Now, it isn't like tons of people have played this game, its just something I run myself in my spare time, but it seems to work and it wasn't exactly HARD (I am no genius game designer).

 

[Lanefan]

My TRUE fundamental proposition, which I only touched on briefly much earlier in the thread, is that story is ALWAYS the point. I find the whole 'GNS theory' (in all its forms) to be bogus because STORY IS ALWAYS EVERYTHING in all games! That is, without some sort of framework of story, the rest of an RPG can do no work! So its natural to ask why it isn't just what the rules focus on.

Is it always as absolute as that, though?

Sometimes, e.g. in a sandbox-style campaign, there doesn't really have to be a story* at all for play to begin and in fact it's the game itself that does the work to build a story as a simple telling of the tale of what the PCs do/encounter/say/etc. over time. It's story-after.

* - beyond a simple static background with no ongoing plots behind the scenes.

Now if you're talking about story-first type of campaign e.g. a hard AP then yes, without the pre-authored story the game won't accomplish much.

And even in story-now you are, like with story-after, building the story as you go along. You say that without a story an RPG can do no work, but in two of three possibilities (story-first, -now, or -after) the work of the game (and the people playing it) is in fact the building of the story. Only in story-first is the story built...well, first; leaving the actual run of play with a lot less work to do.

Lanefan

 

[Nagol]

Is it always as absolute as that, though?

Sometimes, e.g. in a sandbox-style campaign, there doesn't really have to be a story* at all for play to begin and in fact it's the game itself that does the work to build a story as a simple telling of the tale of what the PCs do/encounter/say/etc. over time. It's story-after.

* - beyond a simple static background with no ongoing plots behind the scenes.

Now if you're talking about story-first type of campaign e.g. a hard AP then yes, without the pre-authored story the game won't accomplish much.

And even in story-now you are, like with story-after, building the story as you go along. You say that without a story an RPG can do no work, but in two of three possibilities (story-first, -now, or -after) the work of the game (and the people playing it) is in fact the building of the story. Only in story-first is the story built...well, first; leaving the actual run of play with a lot less work to do.

Lanefan

Of course not. Story can be useful to provide context, it can be helpful to provide external impetus, it is one of the things that can be recounted at a later date, but it is not particularly necessary. You can (and I have) run RPG sessions with a few characters new to each other in effectively a locked room or featureless plain. There is no external story; nothing is driving the group forward other than whatever motives the characters bring. The only interaction is the players among themselves.

Much like literature, most RPG games have story first (since it is such a useful tool for providing context to the players and external pressure to act), but there are genres where story takes a back seat to character study, where continuity cannot be relied upon and the story is only the immediate situation, or where some other facet of the game is completely at the forefront.

The only thing that is always the point is for the participants to enjoy themselves.

 

[Maxperson]

This is the THEORY anyway. Now, lest you think I may have suddenly changed sides in this debate, I find that the theory, and the hypothetical practice, don't actually live up to and exist in real play at real tables, for MANY reasons.

1) No two people actually agree on the content of the mental construct, the setting. They may may manage to agree on some details, but other areas, probably MAJOR ones that would have real implications, are simply imagined in different ways.

2) The world cannot possibly be imagined in enough detail, even with an army of 100 GMs working for 50 years, to be able to make any sort of realistic prediction about 'what would happen in situation X'. Thus it is ALWAYS the GM's whim/judgment, constrained only by informal understanding that the players are only willing to accept certain things.

3) The GM has a need to move the game forward, and the players have a desire for that as well, in general. So the GM will never be a really neutral arbiter.

4) The GM has a vested interest in producing something that isn't boring or frustrating to the players, meaning again he's not a neutral arbiter.

There are other things, I could go on for a long time. GMs are like 'ring masters', they orchestrate. The idea that GMs are 'referees' is prevalent but nonsense.

1) The mental construct will never be perfectly imagined by all involved, but in my experience this only rarely results in a conflict of imagination that needs to be resolved. The vast majority of time what is imagined by those involved is close enough that the game runs smoothly and nobody every really realizes what those differences are.

2) That level of detail is just not necessary and it hasn't been since at least 1e when I started playing the game. If a detail becomes important, or at least worth looking at in some way, the DM will say yes, no, or if the outcome is in doubt call for a roll to see if the detail is present.

3 & 4 and your last statement) I'm putting these together since "arbiter" and "referee" are synonyms. The DM should strive to be neutral, meaning that he's not putting his wants and desires into the game, but is instead trying to make things fun and interesting for all of the players as equally as possible. In that regard he is neutral. As for "referee" and "arbiter", the DM is those things. He just isn't ONLY those things. When the rules don't cover a situation, cover it badly or inadequately, or come into conflict with other rules, the DM does act as a referee and make a ruling. It's one of his hats.

 

[Maxperson]

OK, there was just a round of this discussion where it was then extrapolated by someone into an accusation of 'railroading' the players from one 'action sequence' to the next without remit or pacing, and as if they weren't picking where they went next (at least in part).

The other response to this which springs to mind is, "how is it different in practical terms from any other type of play?" I mean, even Gygaxian dungeon crawls, are effectively a 'crisis' by this sort of reckoning. I don't disagree with your employment of the term, its quite correct. It is just a question of if this is really the critical point. In any RPG, 90% of the time there's a conflict in progress. It may be at a lower level where the PCs are crawling around in the 'dungeon', but that's just "man against nature" basically, with hazards, traps, darkness, etc. The PCs 'need for treasure' in classic D&D is pitted against the abstract opposition of the dungeon. Even in later types of play where character and story appear, the characters still have basically "amass power and fortune" opposed to some cast of 'enemies'.

That's not the sort of conflict he's talking about. He's talking about situations where things important to the character are put into conflict with other things in the game.

In one game I was playing a ranger of Mielikki who was trying to become a multi-class ranger/cleric of Mielikki(in 2e). I had established him as having a hatred of slavers as they took away freedom from others and freedom was a critical issue for my character. At one point while scouting for the party, he encountered a small caravan of slavers and wiped out the slaver in surprise attack. He showed them no mercy, even when they surrendered. After it was done, he told the slaves to gather the weapons, money and food that was there and get as far away as possible as they would be killed if they were close by when this was discovered. Then he left them free to do as they wished and went back to the party.

Later he found a grove sacred to Mielikki and went out to pray and dwell there for a while. After a few days he had a dream. In that dream I was in a large field where there was a group of slavers carrying slaves away towards a city. Across the field there was also a group of orcs surrounding a bound unicorn, about kill it. I had a choice. What do I do? THAT'S the sort of conflict he's talking about. The sort of conflict where the decision is tough and no matter which way it goes, you learn something about the character.