What is *worldbuilding* for?

[hawkeyefan]

OK, so just to clear some ground - my purpose in starting the thread isn't to work out what "worldbuilding" really means. It's to ask about what a certain technique/method in RPGing might be for. And I think you realise that, so the purpose of this paragraph is just to establish that we're both on that cleared ground.

Now, the technique/method I'm interested in is the following - the description may be rough, but hopefully gets at something recognisable: the GM, in advance of play, establishes certain elements of the shared fiction - "the world" or "the setting". These details may be high level and fairly abstract ("Here's the pantheon"). They may be low level and rather gritty ("Here's a map of your inn room"). These details may or may not be shared with the players in advance of play, but that's a matter for GM discretion as governed by certain conventions (eg if we assume that none of the PCs is blind or in the dark, then there's a convention that the GM will show the players at least a rough map of the area the PCs are in, or describe it them if words are being used rather than pictures).

Okay, thanks for clarifying. I think what you're describing is pretty common, sure. I don't think that it is inherently bad, and at least in my case, it's not something the GM does alone; my group tends to determine a lot of these details together.

I think what you're describing falls into the category of worldbuilding, but there are many other things that also fall into that category which don't fit the description.

These details can be used to constrain or even veto player choices at PC generation. (That hasn't been discussed much in this thread, but is frequently discussed on these boards.) And, as has been discussed at some length in this thread, these details may be used by the GM to establish elements of fictional positioning, in the context of action resolution, which are secret from the players. The result of this is that a player can declare an action for his/her PC and have it fail not because of a bad roll (this thread has mostly been focused on dice-based action resolution) but because the framing for the declaration - unbeknownst to the player - has already been established by the GM to be such that the action can't succeed.

The recurring example of the last point is the GM's prior determination that the map is in the kitchen (hidden in the bread bins) and not in the study, and hence that an action declaration by a player "I search the study for the map" cannot succeed, in virtue of the GM establishing in advance the content of (that aspedct of) the shared fiction.

I don't like limiting player choice in character generation. Not unless there is a really compelling reason. And most of the reasons typically offered in such discussions here I would not call compelling. I think the GM should work with the players to try and incorporate whatever ideas they're trying to bring to the table. I see your point how a GM can use his authorship of the setting details to limit player choice, but I don't think it need be so.

As for the example, I don't know if I entirely agree with your assessment. I understand it, and I can see why you may not like it, but the choice of words you choose to describe it seems off to me. In that scenario, the PC searching the study has not failed. He has successfully searched the study and determined that the map is not there. I don't see this as the Gm preventing the player's success in the way that you seem to.

I do agree this is a case of the GM's authorship taking priority over the player's attempt to establish world details....but I don't think that is a problem in this case. As I mentioned above, I can see it being a problem in other areas, but details such as the location of an item being searched for seem to me to be safely in the hands of the GM.

As a GM I'm far more interested in a player contributing to the shared fiction through character actions and relationships and desires, and how all those things can impact worldbulding, rather than in a player trying to author a solution to a problem they are facing.

A further consequence of the sort of worldbuiling I've just been describing, which is important to me but has received much less attention in this thread than the above point, follows on from the idea of constraints on PC build. When the game begins from this sort of worldbuilding, the focus of play is established by the GM. The "big picture" of the campaign is established by the GM. The local, nitty-gritty moving parts of the ingame situation are established by the GM.

So here you mean things like the GM deciding this is going to be a court intrigue based game in a D&D style setting meaning that the player who wanted to be a barbarian is kind of SOL, right? I pretty much agree....I think that any such constraints are probably best established by the group beforehand. Or at the very least, the GM can share his intentions with the players and get their buy in.

A further thing is that the second and third consequences can feed into one another. So the established but secret elements of backstory which determine - in ways unbeknownst to the players, because while they may know there is secret backstory there they don't know what it is (because it's secret) - whether or not action declarations succeed or fail. So the play of the game, via action declarations, is apt to lead to outcomes that reflect the GM's establishment (in advance) of the key setting elements.

This can be the case, sure. The GM can guide things towards the outcomes he wants. Or less severely, he can nudge a bit here and there. Again, I don't think this needs to be the case. And at times, I don't think it's bad when it does happen.

Anyway, that is the sort of worldbuilding I have in mind. I think it's very common. I have played games where it occurs. I read posts about such games nearly every day on ENworld. It's inherent to any AP campaign that it have more-or-less the above character. @Lanefan has given multiple examples (both imagined and actual play) which illustrate RPGing in the above fashion.

Sure, it is common. I've played in games like it quite a bit. Most of the games I've played in have had at least some element of it. My current game that I DM certainly does. The difference is that I don't think I as the GM wield my secret knowledge like a club to bash the players with. I establish elements of the games that I think will be compelling. I don't do it simply to thwart my players and any ideas that they may have.

In the Traveller game I referred to, we started with PC gen tables: I had written up tables that mostly reflected the original ones in Book 1 and Supplement 4, but with an additional line - Special Duty - borrowed from the MegaTraveller tables; and changing a couple of skill entries on the skill roll tables to incorporate (some of) the skills introduced in Books 4, 5, 6 and 7.

And we had a patron encounter table. And world generation tables. And I had a piece of paper with stats for 4 worlds written down (Lyto-7, Byron, Enlil and Ruskin) - their existence as elements of the shared fiction was not established (and in the case of Ruskin still hasn't been - it's there if I need a comfortable, mid-tech world with a bucolic lifestyle and strong immigration restrictions, but so far I haven't).

The nearest recent experience I would compare it to is running a one-off AD&D session where the players rolled up 2nd level PCs and then I used the Appendix A random dungeon generation system to generate a dungeon as they went along.

In both cases, there are tecniques used to establish a setting. In the AD&D case, rolling on the tables tells us what the starting room looks like (there are six to choose from); how long the corridoors are; etc. There are charts for working out whether a room is empty or not, and if it's inhabited, by what. In the Traveller case, I rolled a starting world and the players and I worked out a sketch of it based on the rolls. Instead of the room occupants charts in Appendix A, Traveller has a patron chart, which established this scout in need of assistance as a part of the setting.

I'd say that these are techniques to help establish a setting. A small but important distinction, I think. Because the setting is largely decided when you picked a game. Traveller has many elements already determined. Same with AD&D and the random dungeon. Sure, there are big pieces missing that you fill in, and you prefer to fill them in as you go based on how the play has gone...but the bones are already there.

Because the player of the noble had already established that he'd won a yacht gambling, but had been hopsitalised as a result - which is how he had met the ex-Navy medic - it made sense that the scout would be needing the PCs' help because her old crew had lost their ship gambling! And because one of the PCs - generated on the diplomat table - was clearly a spy (skill in carousing, interrogation, streetwise, gambling, recruiting, forgery, wheeled vehicles), it made sense that the mission should have a clandestine element to it (although what that was was not established until the player of the spy had his PC seduce the scout, and succeeded in an interrogation roll, which then obliged me to make up some more backstory about the secret element of the job she was offering).

In that example, the setting is not a constraint on PC gen - it follows from it. It is not a constraint on action declaration success - it is generated in response to it. Where details are filled out as part of framing and establishing the situation, the players are contributing together with the GM, and it is this interaction of ideas that generates a setting for the (imaginary) action to occur within.

I'm all for character generation determining major elements of the game. I think the setting should help shape the characters, and then the characters should help shape the action.

I do have a good deal of secret history in my campaign. And yes, the PCs do come across bits of lore here and there that is slowly revealing he big picture. But I don't use this story to force them down specific paths. I generally don't use discovering the secret history the goal of their actions....they generally determine what they're doing and why, and then they learn some crazy things along the way. The players add just as much to the world as I do.

For instance, one player came up with an idea for a Fighter character. This was our first delve into 5E, so he kept the character simple. As we played, he slowly began to develop a history for the character. He had been in a mercenary company prior to joining the party. He'd left because the mercenary company had started to take on contracts that he found to be loathsome. He had befriended one of the other PCs with a military background when they had fought on the same side of a conflict.

So, totally separate of my pre-conceived GM backstory, the player introduced the idea of this mercenary company. I ran with that and it's become a major part of our campaign. I altered many of my ideas to fit with the idea of this mercenary company. There are similar elements in the campaign from nearly all my players (one player is pretty much along for the ride and is fine with that). It's very collaborative in that sense.

Do my ideas sometimes trump the players? Perhaps a bit. But I would say their ideas trump mine more often. It's pretty give and take.

Another, small but illustrative example: when the PCs stopped off at the world of Lyto-7 on their jump route from the starting world - Ardour-3 - to Byron, the ship owner decided to buy some cargo with the hope that he could sell it on at a profit on Byron. We rolled on the trading tables to determine values etc. But that left the question of what the cargo actually was. The world gen system had determined that the population of Lyto-7 was only a double-digit nubmer of people, and it had no government or law level, but a reasonably high tech level - so clearly it was a research station of some sort. That was my framing. The system had also decreed that the hydrographics of the world were 60%. The player therefore decided the cargo was ambergris (or something similar) collected as a byproduct of the research work being undertaken. Thta's only a modest bit of setting, but again it was not any sort of constraint on action declaration or resolution. Rather, working through those processes, in conjunction with the world gen results, yielded the setting via inputs from both GM and player.

Whether or not you want to call that "worldbuilding", it bears very little resemblance to the phenomenon I have described above. They both establish a setting, a shared fiction, which provides context for play. But the methods of doing that, and the consequences, are almost completely different.

Are they? It sounds to me like you used the setting elements that already existed to establish new elements. Planet A is rich in Z, so it makes sense that Z can be found there. A already existed, Z was a common sense call.

When you comment on the worst version of GM backstory boiling down to the Gm reading a story to the players...is that all that different from the GM reading the results of rolls on random tables to the players?

I know that's now what you're doing...I expect there is a lot more to it than that, even beyond what you've described. But maybe there is also more to what the GM has done with his secret worldbuilding? Maybe it's not him just reading his story and feeling proud when his players say wow that's cool?

So if you are asserting "RPGing needs setting" then I agree. If you are asserting "RPGing needs situation, and situation brings setting with it" then I agree. But if you are asserting "Because RPGing needs situation to get going, the GM must author some setting in advance, thereby unilaterally establishing some elements of the shared fiction", well then I disagree.

I don't see how some elements of the shared fiction are not established before hand. I feel it is fundamentally required.

But I do get your contention with the playstyle in general, especially given how you have described it. I think perhaps we agree much more than it may seem. If I had to boil it down to one major difference, I suppose it would be that I don't think the GM having written anything down beforehand means he cannot be flexible, and that his game cannot be collaborative.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Here are two examples of play in which nobody at the table did anything akin to worldbuilding, but I want to see if you have some other ideas in terms of what that entails:

1) A group of people sit down to play 1e AD&D. The DM declares, after character generation, that the PCs find themselves in a stone chamber, presumably underground. He proceeds to generate the room using the Appendix in the DMG for random dungeon generation. Play proceeds from there with no content or assumptions having been established beforehand.

2) A group of people sit down to play classic Traveller. Again they generate characters and the GM generates a subsector map and some planetary systems using the tables in the LBBs. Play proceeds entirely by the use of these tables (which provide for generating planetary systems, creatures, NPCs, governments, random ship encounters, the ability to find ships, cargo, and patrons, buy equipment, etc.

Now, I think that 2 COULD be said to rely on the conceptual framework of an Interstellar Empire, etc inherent in Traveller's implicit setting. Of course this is probably no more worldbuilding than the implicit milieu implied by the available races, classes, and monsters which will appear in the random dungeon, though it has a wider geographical scope. Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call either one 'worldbuilding', yet there's definitely some RPG happening there. Admittedly the players are going to be a little pressed to relate their actions to any larger agenda that a more realized setting would probably facilitate, but depending on how free they are to extrapolate that might not be an impediment at all, it might even be an advantage for some types of player.

I think each certainly has some worldbuilding going on(in the more widely applied sense as opposed to Pemerton's more narrow definition in this discussion). Simply choosing the overall setting, and creating PCs has likely forced certain world elements to be established. These may be minimal, but they are there, and some may likely have larger world implications (a cleric character may imply a deity or a pantheon; an alien PC establishes that humans are not alone in the galaxy; etc.).

Now, in each case, it is very possible that there is no larger story the GM has established, or that is inherent in the setting. So the action of the PCs, and their story, may be entirely undetermined, and may be revealed as they go. I have indeed played games like this, where I have asked the players to establish bits about the characters and the world as we go.

But I don't know if a true story....any kind of narrative element beyond describing the actions of the PCs....will really emerge unless someone instigates it. very often that seems to be the job of the GM, but it could just as easily be a player. Someone has to do it though....they have to add that one element or take that one action that kind of forces things one way. It could be the reason they're in the dungeon, or it could be the mission statement of their crew, or whatever.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I believe that you do not see a functional difference between killing the orc and creating the map in the library. However, I do believe that you see a difference between killing an orc and finding a ray gun in the library. And, right there, you defeat your own argument.

To delve into this more deeply: You say that the fiction doesn't really exist. Okay, we'll leave aside the game implications of that statement for now and take it for argumentation. Since the fiction doesn't exist, then whatever you author into the fiction doesn't matter: it doesn't exist. Only the act of authoring is a real thing. So, therefore, all acts of authoring are the same. This is absurd, and counterproductive to discussion. If all acts of authoring are the same, then restrictions such as genre appropriateness or fictional positioning don't matter. You've strongly argued that these do matter, so that means that there is a difference in what is authored into the fiction -- some acts of authoring are preferred to others. Since those limitations are subjective -- there's not objective reason that genre appropriateness be a deciding limitation -- then it stands to reason that many things can impact what can be authored depending on the subjective choices of the participants. Following that to it's conclusion, it would seem that, since you yourself argue that there are some limits on authoring and those limits are subjective, that different styles of authoring can exist that serve to limit what can be authored into the fiction. This means that how the fiction is authored in game is actually based on subjective preferences of the players, and that, depending on those preferences, this can very well be a difference between killing an orc and creating a map in the library.

Returning briefly to the game implications of the fiction not existing -- I find this quasi-nihilist as the very concept of the hobby is creating and interacting withing a shared fiction. Stating that it's really a game of make believe and so has no impact in the real world is saying that RPGs can't engage our emotions and thoughts in ways that benefit us outside of telling ourselves a story. There are a number of games out there that are built on the concept of using the fiction as a separation from reality to explore things in reality -- to beat around the bush, so to speak, of emotionally fraught things and find ways to engage them. This definition also completely disregards LARPing, where there's a mix of reality and fiction ongoing. Or even SCA, where there's a fictional construct that's entirely played out in the real world. Your definition of the fiction as not existing is so against so many core tenets of the broader hobby of roleplaying that, as I said, it borders on nihilism.

That wasn't as brief as I expected.

Heh, well you are pretty clear

I think I don't really agree with you. Lets take a game of checkers as an example. Some moves are allowed by the rules of checkers, and some are not, they are invalid. That says nothing about the differences or lack of differences between the ALLOWED moves, and if you allowed more or less types of moves in your checkers game it would change the results of play, but it wouldn't change the nature of the sameness or difference in character of specific allowed moves.

In terms of that sameness or difference, the fact of making a legal move is still the same, regardless of which move it is. It is a move, made by either the red or black player. All such moves equally fulfill the "now the next player makes a legal move" structure of the game. In the same way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s assertion about the similarity of finding a map or killing an orc is an assertion about the nature of the action in terms of its place within the game.

I'm pretty sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is NOT saying that "there is no difference IN THE FICTION between killing an orc and finding a map." That wasn't what he meant (again at the risk of being the interpreter of Pemerton here). I think what he IS asserting is that when the players simply decide to open a door, without any influence over what is behind it nor knowledge of what is there vs what might lurk behind the other door down the hall, then you can't call the decision 'agency' as, from their point of view, either one might conceal an orc or a map, or nothing, and NONE of them will relate any more or less to the concerns of the players, their goals in play, etc.

I think this likewise addresses [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou's observation that a game where the DM simply responds with his narration to each action and the player's simply wander in a hidden knowledge maze is about as interactive as a 'pick your own adventure' book. It does have CHOICE, but without knowledge there's no meaningful player agency, and the game doesn't, except by chance, address the concerns of the players.

 

[pemerton]

I think you've gone bang over the side on this one.

"Gygaxian dungeoneering" doesn't fall under your definition of an RPG?

No. I didn't say that. I said that my account of the "fundamental act" of RPGing has a limitation: it doesn't incorporate Gygaxian dungeoneering.

That doesn't mean that Gygaxain dungeoneering is not RPGing. It means my account of the "fundamental act" has a limitation: there is an instance of RPGing of which my account is not true. However, given that the OP expressly asked its question about non-Gygaxian play, that limitation can be set aside. (And imperfect analogy: you can send people to the moon using Newtonian mechanics, even though you know they're not accurate for reasons give by Einstein and others, because you're not doing something where those limitations become significant.)

But it's also not helpful to deny the reality of imaginary things in this case

<snip>

The world around a PC is that PC's reality; and though both are obviously products of our imagination it's far easier to visualize and discuss them when one looks through the eyes of the PC (searching a study) rather than our own eyes (looking at papers and rolling dice).

This is just loose metaphor.

I can (perhaps) look at things through your eyes (literally) if some complex bio/electronic rig was attached to your optic nerves and my brain. That would be weird, but if it's not possible that's only because the rig hasn't been invented yet.

But I can't (in any literal sense) look at anything through the eyes of an imaginary person. That's metaphysically impossible. And all that such talk means is that I imagine what that person is seeing.

And this is absolutely crucial to any sensible discussion about RPGing.

The process, in the real world, whereby it turns out that I will or won't find a map in a study, is a terrificially complex causal one - assuming it's a map drawn on paper with ink, it depends upon (i) causal processes that generate plants and minerals; (ii) causal processes whereby humans turn those into paper and ink and a building with a study; (iii) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educated into some grasp of what cartography is; (iv) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educatedinto some grasp of what a stuy is; (v) causal proceses whereby a human draws a map; (vi) causal processes whereby a human builds a building with a study in it; (vi) causal processes whereby I come into being and end up in that study; (vii) causal processes (which could involve people, pigeons, the wind, errant letters falling out of a courier's basket, or any other vast range of things) whereby that map ends up in that study for some temporal period that overlaps with my presence there.

The process, in the real world - which is where RPGing takes place - whereby it turns out that my PC will or won't find a map in a study, is overall more simple (though still complex): (i) social processes that bring a group of people together to engage in the collective activity of RPGing; (ii) those processes mentioned in (i) further leading to a consensus among the group that my PC is in a (collectively imagined) study; (iii) my forming the desire to delcare as an action that my PC searches the study; (iv) a continuation of the aformentioned social processes leading to a new concsensus that my PC is in the collectively imagined study having just found a (collectively imagined) map.

And as far as this bit of this thread is concerned, all the action is in (iv): what is the social process whereby we form a consensus that my PC has found a map in the study; or, conversely, form a consensus that s/he is mapless despite have turned the study upside down in her search? That process will have almost nothing in commmon the process that determines whether or not I find a real map in real study. It will be a process for bringing it about that a group of people all agree on the content of their shared imaginings. There are different ways to do that.

If we reach agreement because the GM decides, that's an actual process for establishing consensus. If we reach agreement because the player decides, that's a different process for establishing consensus (and I personally think can make for boring RPGing: the so-called Czege Principle; some people think this is overstated).

If we reach agreement because we agree that, if the coin lands heads the player decides, and if it lands tails the GM decides, and then we toss the coin and stick to our agreement - well, that's a different process again. Replace the coin-toss with a more nuanced way of setting odds for a dice roll, and you have the process I prefer.

None of these is more "realistic" than any other: all are actual processes that can happen in the actual world. My PC's discovery of a map in the study doesn't becomre more realistic because the GM's decision generated the consenus rather than the outcome of a dice roll.

This is what I just can't fathom, and why I refer to Schroedinger's maps.

JRRT made up Lord of the Rings. He didn't receive it handed down on a tablet.

Do you call it "Schroedinger's story"? I assume not. All fiction has a point in time before which it had not yet been authored, and after which it had been authored. Authoring it earlier in time, or later in time, relative to when you share it with someone else, doesn't make it more or less "real".

Now a DM can always make this up on the fly, but there's inherent risks involved.

Well, here are two risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.

(1) It's not interesting when eventually the GM tells it to the players.

(2) The players were really hoping the fiction would be X, but the GM tells them Y.​

((2) may lead to (1), but can also be its own thing; and (1) can happen even if (2) isn't true.)

There is also something that is certain if the GM makes up some fiction in advance: the content of the shared fiction is a manifesttaion of the GM's agency and authorship, and not the players'.

Everything in life has risks, and has consequences. I don't need protecting against my preferred approach to RPGing!

Overt knock-on effects are just that - overt, meaning obvious - and can (and should) be narrated and-or dealt with at the time.

Why?

If I punch you today, you might throw a rock at me tomorrow. Many overt consequences occur separated in time. And space.

Eg in my BW game, in the first session the PCs made a fool of a servitor called Athog. Many sessions later, when one of the PCs had a misfortune to run into a mugger in an alley, it was Athog. That's an overt consequence.

In my 4e game, when the PCs were 10th level they travelled back in time and rescued a young mage who'd been trapped in a mirror by her mad teacher. Some time later (about six months of play and two or three levels) they learned that she had become a Vecna-worshipping necromancer. Some further time later they learned that she had become an archlich and Vecna's leading exarch (it may be that they didn't learn that until they were 30th level, so probably another 4 years of play later). Those are overt consequences.

Part of being a good GM in a player driven game is keeping track of the pressure points that the players have generated for their PCs, and then bringing them to bear in subsequent framing or subsequent failure narration. That's what is meant when "indie"-type RPGers refer to "going where the action is". This is also how you avoid risks (1) and (2) that I identified.

I'm talking about covert knock-on effects - things that happen that the PCs (and thus players) don't know about until later, if ever at all.

One point of [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s post is this: if the stuff is never known by the players then how is it part of the gameplay at all. I mean, a GM can imagine, if s/he wants to, that a PC's horse squashed a bug as the PCs was riding along, and this bug was very precious to the Faerie Queen, who is therefore very mad at the PC. But that GM, in imaging those things, is not playing a RPG with his/her friends. S/he's just me telling herself a story.

Suppose this actually matters to play: the GM decides that the Faerie Queen sends some pixies to kill the PC with their invisible archery.

If the player never gave any indication that s/he wanted to play a game where bugs might be precious; never sought for, or displayed any interest in, any sign that the Faerie Queen was after his/her PC; then we have an utterly GM-driven game. This is a literal case of the GM reading a story to the players - a story about the PC squashing a bug, making the Faerie Queen angry, and therefore being the target of a pixie SWAT team.

That may be a good story, or not. The players may enjoy it, or not. But clearly there is no significant player agency involved in RPGing like that. Which was [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]achou's main point.

this is the sort of thing I always end up doing if I try to make stuff like this up on the fly[/I] - I'll have said earlier when the party was still outside that the structure appears to be about 20' high, but now hours or even sessions later when they enter a room and I'm asked "what do I see" I'll forget what I said before and narrate a 25' high room with a spiral staircase leading up through the ceiling to what looks like another room above! And quite rightly a player will call me on this; as it's horrible DMing.

OK. That's a fact about you. I can tell you that it doesn't generalise.

Besides quirks of individual memory, there are techniques that can be used to avoid what you describe here. For instance, by focusing the fiction on stuff that the players are committed to - by going where the action is - you increase the likelihood that details that get established will be salient to all involved. (Eg if it matters to the players how high the structure and ceiling are - let's say they know the map is in a room with a 25' ceiling - then they'll remember that the room didn't have a ceiling that high, and so you'll never get to the point of narrating your 25' ceiling and stiarcase.)

A technique that 4e uses is to use a tier system for escalation of the fiction, which means that the likelihood of replaying the same place is fairly low, for any given place. (It's almost the opposite of 4e in that respect.)

Of course a tried-and-true method that is independent of game systems is to write stuff down. Or to get the players to do so.

If she decides that behind the door is an old larder full of rotting food the obvious response from the players is "We should have been able to smell that", leading to either a retcon (absolutely unacceptable) or some quick backpedalling by the DM.

Four things:

(1) People don't always notice every smell that in principle they might, so the players' claim about his/her PC is not actually true. (Now if it's his/her PC's schtick to have a high Smell/Taste Perception bonus, that's a different story - in one of my RM games one of the players built such a PC, so that he would be able to notice poisons or drugs in his food; and I think we may have had another PC who had a high bonus in this skill to help with cooking. But part of being a good GM is adapting your narration to the salient abilities of the PCs.)

(2) This could happen just as easily if the GM had already written that down in her notes. Writing it down in advance doesn't create some guarantee that you'll (i) remember it before you read it out, nor (ii) that you'll think of all the implications of what you've written down.

(3) There might be some reason why it couldn't be smelled (eg maybe it's a visual illusion).

(4) Retcons happen all the time. I've had GMs tell me that the room is X by Y feet, then realise they've miscounted the squares and correct it. I've had GMs not mention something that should have been obvious, and therefore let us take back action declarations which make no sense in light of the thing that wasn't mentioned at the start. Etc. So you're going to have to tell me more about why this retcon is not acceptable.

one of the keys to any of these discussions is trying to get the imaginary reality to mirror real reality where and how it can.

That's completely orthongal. It's also contentious.

Why is it orthongal? An imaginary reality in which my PC finds a map in the study mirrors reality relatively plausibly (studies are good places to find maps, if there are any to be found in the neighbourhood). It doesn't become more plausible because we agreed on that shared fiction because the GM said so, rather than agreeing on it because of the outcome of a dice roll.

Why is it contentious? D&D does not mirror reality in many places. It has different biology (eg dragons can fly and breathe fire; there are giant arthropods). It has different physics (eg conservation laws don't apply; there are other "planes" of existence). It has different sociology (eg societies are primarily pre-modern in technology yet very often modern in some of their basic attitudes and behavious). It has different economics and ecology (eg large numbers of being that are essentially humans are able to live without, it seems, hunting, gathering, rearing animals or growing crops). Etc.

Yet D&D is the most popular of all RPGs.

Player: "I open the door and look beyond it. What do I see?"
DM: "What are you looking for?"
Player: "I'll tell you what I'm looking for once you tell me what I'm looking at."

Translation: the player can't say what she's looking for until the DM tells her at least the basics of what she can already see.

I wrote a whole essay in reply to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] discussing this. If the game system and conventions of play permit the player to ask the GM to introduce more fiction than s/he can. As I said, this happens fairly often in my 4e game.

If the GM wants to force the player to commit, because that's what the game expects - why are you looking behind that door? what are you hoping for? - then your player who won't commit is simply refusing to play the game. For instance, a player who won't commit simply can't play Burning Wheel as it is written. And is going to have trouble with Cortex+ Heroic also. And will probably come unstuck in 4e skill challenges.

Part of exercising your agency over the fiction, as a player, is to commit. A player can't wait to find out whether or not a blow will be a killing one before rolling an attack die. There's no in principle reason why looking through a door should be different.

 

[pemerton]

Of course. But someone (and were I a player, I'll guarantee it'd be me) is almost immediately going to ask the DM what we as PCs know of the local and-or regional geography and culture, if we haven't yet been told such:

- how big is the city / town / village / waystation we're in
- what's its population mix (as in, vague ratio of humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) and how well do they generally get along
- what realm are we in
- who's in charge locally / regionally / nationally
- what's the local culture (as in, is it based on a historical human culture or just generic medieval or are we even in human-held lands at all) and ethos (as in, chaotic gold rush frontier or peaceful placid farm town or orderly military borderpost etc.)
- what local / regional / national history do we need to know about
- what's the general climate / terrain like here (as in, are we in a desert or the arctic or temperate forests or a jungle, etc.; and is it mountainous or flat or hilly or a seacoast etc.)
- etc.

And the DM can make this all up now (difficult) or she can have it determined ahead of time (much easier)

Not that difficult. In Traveller you've got population as part of the world gen system (in D&D the PC woudn't know the populatoin - demography didn't exist as a discipline in the mediaeval period - and so it shouldn't come up). You've also got atmosphere and hydographics, which allows you to say something about climate. You've got government type and law levels, and can easily make up the name of a ruler if it comes up.

Another option is, if the player cares so much, to ask her: "Your PC grew up here - who's in charge?"

I mean, this stuff can't be impossible, right, because there are actually people in the real world who are doing it!

 

[pemerton]

I think this is a case of the rules of classic D&D getting in the way of playing classic D&D.

The ranger's 'never get lost' ability was described in a very early article in SR back in 1975 IIRC, definitely in the days of OD&D. In the context of exploratory hexcrawl play governed by the AH: Survival game this was a reasonable ability. It negated the regular 'getting lost' checks which were a significant random hazard of this procedure, and only within a single type of terrain. Gygax imported this class almost verbatim into 1e, but at the same time dropped the use of Survival as a mechanic (and references to any other external rules, like Chainmail). There was a process for getting lost also in 1e, so IN THEORY nothing changed.

In reality most groups, by the 1e era (say DMG release, so 1979) had started to leave behind the procedural exploration puzzle Gygaxian player skill game paradigm behind. In view of the reality of a lot of play at that time, semi-directed plots with a mixture of GM fiat/fudging, fixed maps/encounters, and some of the original random hazard generation, you are correct.

Is there a "non" missing in you first sentence - classic rules getting in the way of non-classic play?

In any event, I agree with the rest of what I've quoted - that's what I said in my OP - except for one bit. I looked up my copy of SR v1, no 2, Summer 1975, and there's no mention of the ranger not being able to get lost. I'm 99% sure it's not in the AD&D books either, as I'm not familiar with the ability and I am familiar with those books.

If the ability did exist, though, then your analysis is spot-on.

Since the GM and players are 'Playing to see what happens' any argument that a 'challenge has been bypassed' is moot, it just isn't part of the agenda. If the players WANT a mechanically and tactically challenging encounter, then that is bound to be provided, assuming I as the DM am doing my job.

Absolutely. It's not like I'm going to run out of encounter ideas and so we all have to give up the game!

Here are two examples of play in which nobody at the table did anything akin to worldbuilding, but I want to see if you have some other ideas in terms of what that entails:

1) A group of people sit down to play 1e AD&D. The DM declares, after character generation, that the PCs find themselves in a stone chamber, presumably underground. He proceeds to generate the room using the Appendix in the DMG for random dungeon generation. Play proceeds from there with no content or assumptions having been established beforehand.

2) A group of people sit down to play classic Traveller. Again they generate characters and the GM generates a subsector map and some planetary systems using the tables in the LBBs. Play proceeds entirely by the use of these tables (which provide for generating planetary systems, creatures, NPCs, governments, random ship encounters, the ability to find ships, cargo, and patrons, buy equipment, etc.

Now, I think that 2 COULD be said to rely on the conceptual framework of an Interstellar Empire, etc inherent in Traveller's implicit setting. Of course this is probably no more worldbuilding than the implicit milieu implied by the available races, classes, and monsters which will appear in the random dungeon, though it has a wider geographical scope. Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call either one 'worldbuilding', yet there's definitely some RPG happening there. Admittedly the players are going to be a little pressed to relate their actions to any larger agenda that a more realized setting would probably facilitate, but depending on how free they are to extrapolate that might not be an impediment at all, it might even be an advantage for some types of player.

I gave exactly these two examples upthread (well, in our Traveller game we only rolled up a starting world, and I had four worlds already rolled up that I dropped in when I needed the; but it's pretty close; our AD&D session was just as you describe).

Now I think that Traveller provides resources (the implied setting, the world generation, random patrons, the implied backstory of a randomly rolled lifepath-generated PC) that lead more quickly to a more rich setting than AD&D. (That's one reason why our AD&D was one session whereas Traveller is still going.)

But AD&D isn't devoid of them. In my AD&D session the cleric player took the Know History spell. (I think it's from OA originally, but I had a combined spell list written down.) And the player's backstory for the LN cleric entering the dungeon was to look for ancient scrolls of his order believed to be in the dungeon. So when I rolled up an octagonal but otherwise boring room on the random tables, I spiced it up with narration of some weird runes and the like. And the player had his PC cast Know History, and I made up some more stuff: the PC (and player) learned that the sigils were sigils of Chaos, and that the octagon (and other figures featuring the number 8, like 8 crossed arrows) was a sign of Chaos. The chaotic origins of the dungeon also explained its weird architecture (an inevitable outcome of Appendix A), and suggested that the scrolls of Law that the cleric was looking for must have been taken here as loot or for destruction by the chaotics.

I'll admit it's not going to win a prize, but enough of that sort of stuff and in a few sessions a picture of the world would start to emerge.

 

[pemerton]

I'm pretty sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is NOT saying that "there is no difference IN THE FICTION between killing an orc and finding a map." That wasn't what he meant (again at the risk of being the interpreter of Pemerton here). I think what he IS asserting is that when the players simply decide to open a door, without any influence over what is behind it nor knowledge of what is there vs what might lurk behind the other door down the hall, then you can't call the decision 'agency' as, from their point of view, either one might conceal an orc or a map, or nothing, and NONE of them will relate any more or less to the concerns of the players, their goals in play, etc.

I think this likewise addresses [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou's observation that a game where the DM simply responds with his narration to each action and the player's simply wander in a hidden knowledge maze is about as interactive as a 'pick your own adventure' book. It does have CHOICE, but without knowledge there's no meaningful player agency, and the game doesn't, except by chance, address the concerns of the players.

Right, that's my point about agency. Triggering the GM to tell you more stuff isn't agency, except in the most mininal sense that it's an alternative to everyone just sitting there silently.

And you're right that I don't think killing an orc is, of necessity, the same thing in the fiction as finding a map. It might be more significant. It might be less significant. Obviously they involve different imagined causal processes.

The reason I say they're structurally equivalent is not just that they're legal moves, but that they're legal moves for the same reason: both add new information to the description in a way that is genre faithful, consistent with already established fiction, salient to the game participants, etc.

People can have any number of reasons for saying that only the GM can make one of those moves. But those reasons can't include anything about what is "realistic", or any allged necessary consequence for resolution methods resulting from the metaphysics of actual maps and actual deaths.

******************************************
[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], I'm replying only to those bits of your post where I think I've got something interesting to say in reponse.

So here you mean things like the GM deciding this is going to be a court intrigue based game in a D&D style setting meaning that the player who wanted to be a barbarian is kind of SOL, right?

<snp>

I don't think I as the GM wield my secret knowledge like a club to bash the players with. I establish elements of the games that I think will be compelling. I don't do it simply to thwart my players and any ideas that they may have.

<snip>

When you comment on the worst version of GM backstory boiling down to the Gm reading a story to the players...is that all that different from the GM reading the results of rolls on random tables to the players?

Here I think I just want to say a bit more about how I see things.

By GM control over "big picture" I don't mean so much the setting/genre conventions you raise - I see that as more about reaching group consensus on setting basics (eg my Cortex+ Fantasy game started with a vote for Japan vs vikings, because I'd written pre-gens in a way to deliberately leave either option open). I mean stuff like who the nemesis will be, what the basic trajectory of play will be (eg the final fight will be against Tiamat). Then the nitty-gritty stuff is things like (to go back to an upthread example) whether there are bribeable officials around. So whereever the players look to engage the fiction, they find stuff that's there because the GM put it there. (Your mercenary comany example is more-or-less the opposite of what I'm talking about here.)

APs are obvious examples of what I've just described, but not the only one.

Now, on club-bashing: that's not my issue (at least, if that's similar to "fairness" which [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] raised not too far upthread). The GM can be fair with secret backstory and I stil wouldn't like it. My issue is that it makes the game about what the GM wants it to be about. So it's a concern that's cumulative with the stuff about framing (both big picture framing and "nitty-gritty" framing.

And on random tables - I agree that they are no panacea, and I'm using them in Traveller because without them it wouldn't be Traveller! But I think they're different from pre-authorship, because (i) they don't lock the GM into one track of fiction, so don't cause the same GM-focus issue that pre-authored framing tends to (the players can even help make sense of the random roll, as with the ambergris example), and (ii) because they happen in the course of play, often triggered by player action declarations (eg roll for a starship encouner when you leave the system), they don't generate declaration-blocking/defeating secret backstory, but rather feed into the resolution of the declared action.

As for the example, I don't know if I entirely agree with your assessment. I understand it, and I can see why you may not like it, but the choice of words you choose to describe it seems off to me. In that scenario, the PC searching the study has not failed. He has successfully searched the study and determined that the map is not there. I don't see this as the Gm preventing the player's success in the way that you seem to.

I do agree this is a case of the GM's authorship taking priority over the player's attempt to establish world details....but I don't think that is a problem in this case. As I mentioned above, I can see it being a problem in other areas, but details such as the location of an item being searched for seem to me to be safely in the hands of the GM.

As a GM I'm far more interested in a player contributing to the shared fiction through character actions and relationships and desires, and how all those things can impact worldbulding, rather than in a player trying to author a solution to a problem they are facing.

I've broken this out because I think it's probably the biggest deal, and has generated the most discussion in the thread.

So first, the player trying to author a solution to a problem. If the problem is a charging orc, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by rolling the combat dice. If the problem is lack of a map, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by looking for the map in the study and rolling a perception (or whatever is appropriate) check.

As I said to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], and have just reiterated above to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I think these have the same structure as moves in the game. If one is acceptable from the pont of view of abstract principle, so is the other.

Now there can be reasons more particular than abstract principle that someone allows one but not the other. You have reasons for the GM specifying the locations of maps, but not the deaths of orcs. What I'm saying is that I don't see how that reason can be aversion to players authoring solutions to problems, given that (I'm assuming) you are happy with that in the orc case.

As to whether this sort of pre-authorship used to adjudicate action declaration is "thwarting" or not - I discussed this in some long replies to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].

If the player's Perception/Search/whatever check is for the purpose of triggering the GM to describe what is in the room - to narrate more fiction - then saying "There's no map here" is not thwarting. It's givng the player what s/he wanted in making a good roll.

If the player's Perception check is with the desire that the fiction be along the lines of my PC finds a map in this study then saying, without regard to the results of the check, "There's no map here", is thwarting. Because the fiction does not take the form the player wanted. (It would be like vetoing - overtly or via rolling secretly or whatver - the attack roll on the orc, and just narrating to the player, "It dodges your blow" without actually having regard to the result of the to hit roll.)

If players never declare perception checks (or Streetwise checks to find bribeable officials, or . . .) hoping that the fiction will be X rather than Y then this won't come up. But equally a game in which the players spend a significant amount of time declaring checks whose function is to trigger GM narration rather than impose their own will on the fiction are, in my estimation of the situation, being rather passive. They're not really exercising agency.

 

[pemerton]

Before we climb too high up the badwrongfun bandwagon, the GM does, at times, have to GM for him own enjoyment as well as the players. Thinking through the implications of PC actions is a fun thought-exercise and can really help stimulate ideas for how to connect events and people within the campaign world and enrich the experience for him players.

In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example, the connections are to events and people that have never been salient in play (the assassins, the attempt on the Duke's life) and that the players have no knowledge of, let alone agency in respect of.

I don't really see how this enriches the experience for the players, unless the players are looking for the GM, in due course, to tell them some fiction that has little or no connection to actual play. Now the unless is real here - ie I'm not asserting there are no such players - but I don't see that it's unfair to describe this as the GM telling the players a story.

But it also can have a more direct benefit for the players as well even if that isn't immediately realized. They may not know they had a brush with an assassination plot right away, but the GM doesn't know when or how the PCs might circle around in their careers and interact with the same general locale or NPCs again. Seeing how the actions of the PCs have affected the game world beyond their immediate reach can really be satisfying.

Satisfying for whom? If the GM, that gets back to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s point about playing the game without need for players. If the players, then - as I said above - their satisfaction is resulting from the GM telling them a story.

I also think there is a metaphor-induced illusion at work here. In the real world, if I do something, and then later on learn of some suprising consequence it had, there can be a satisfaction in observing my causal power at work.

But in the RPG case that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] describes, the players aren't seeing their causal power at work. They're seeing the GM's power to write fiction at work. Again, it's the satisfaction of being told a story by the GM in which your PC happens to figure.

the idea of a small action or chance encounter having broader implications is part of the inspiration literature, particularly with projects like the Thieves' World anthology.

But that doesn't depend at all on the sort of thing [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] talks about.

 

[Sadras]

Well, here are two risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.

(1) It's not interesting when eventually the GM tells it to the players.

(2) The players were really hoping the fiction would be X, but the GM tells them Y.​

((2) may lead to (1), but can also be its own thing; and (1) can happen even if (2) isn't true.)

There is also something that is certain if the GM makes up some fiction in advance: the content of the shared fiction is a manifesttaion of the GM's agency and authorship, and not the players'.

...(snip)...

In my 4e game, when the PCs were 10th level they travelled back in time and rescued a young mage who'd been trapped in a mirror by her mad teacher. Some time later (about six months of play and two or three levels) they learned that she had become a Vecna-worshipping necromancer. Some further time later they learned that she had become an archlich and Vecna's leading exarch (it may be that they didn't learn that until they were 30th level, so probably another 4 years of play later). Those are overt consequences.

Part of being a good GM in a player driven game is keeping track of the pressure points that the players have generated for their PCs, and then bringing them to bear in subsequent framing or subsequent failure narration. That's what is meant when "indie"-type RPGers refer to "going where the action is". This is also how you avoid risks (1) and (2) that I identified.

Doesn't your GM-introduced fiction of the young mage becoming a Vecna-worshipping necro and then an archlich have the same risk of (1) and (2) in your points above?

EDIT: I don't see (1) and (2) as exclusive risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.

 

[Caliban]

I've got multiple posts in this thread, plus links to others, which explain the start for the Traveller game.

The "universe" consisted of some PC-gen and world gen rules, and the implicit flavour of those. I dropped some worlds I'd already rolled up into the setting as we needed them.

You mean you thwarted player agency by having secret information in the form of pre-generated worlds that would trigger GM narration when the players traveled there - instead of letting the players impose their will on the fiction by declaring what kind of worlds they wanted to find.