What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Lanefan]

Nothing in the words 'roleplaying game' says it has to be first person.

Not perhaps in the words 'roleplaying game'; but when the 1e PH starts off by describing play as:

As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. [...] You act out the game as this character, staying within your [abilities and alignment]. You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic! [...] Each of you will become an artful thespian as time goes by...

It certainly seems like a pretty hard foundational shove towards first-person roleplay, and also sets the tone for everything that has come since.

What roleplaying 'is' involves putting fictional characters in situations. He desperately wants to believe - and to promote the idea - that the one true way of generating situation is for it to be dictated by the GM.

It's complete nonsense. It can be generated by players as well.

It can, though in a game type where the characters often find themselves in unpleasant or dangerous situations (i.e. most RPGs) allowing players to generate or arbitrarily meta-change these situations just doesn't work.

As an ironic aside, Saelorn is on record as saying only the GM can change the gamestate. What this means is that most of the time you, as a player, are not playing. The ability to effect the gamestate constitutes playing - and the players aren't allowed. So not only does his definition of 'roleplaying' fail to reflect anything but prejudice, his game fails the definition of 'game'.

I've never seen or heard of any table where the players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs. The PCs burn down a barn? They've just changed the gamestate through their playing of their PCs.

But can the players arbirtrarily change the game rules? Can they decide the capital city of the realm is 100 miles inland instead of on the coast where the DM's map puts it? No. These things fall outside the realm of playing the game, and are instead a part of designing the game; an undertaking not done by players but by first the professional game designers (system) and then the DM (setting and gameworld).

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

My main goal is analysis of play that talks in literal terms - ie how, in the real social world of a group of people sitting around a table talking with one another, handling some physical stuff (maps, dice, etc), does RPGing work?

And then to talk about what worldbuilding achieves in these literal terms.

It's a real DM doing real work to generate an imaginary world which the imaginary PCs can later explore and-or bash around in.

I can't put it much simpler than that.

One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work. Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session. Less work is good.

 

[Sunseeker]

One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work. Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session. Less work is good.

Unless you're good at winging it and keeping it consistent. Some people are. Some people aren't.

 

[Manbearcat]

One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work. Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session. Less work is good.

Unless you're good at winging it and keeping it consistent. Some people are. Some people aren't.

What shidaku wrote. To expound, having only what you need to begin and facilitate playing to a thematic premise and frame an opening situation allows you:

1) To hold on lightly and be surprised what emerges from play (all of the filling out of the setting, the snowballing situation, the unfolding nature of each character as decision-points turn into player action declarations, and whatever dramatic arc forms organically out of the mesh of all of that).

2) To be free of temptation to use GM Force to ensure that the hard work and time that you put into setting/metaplot before play began (that you're invariably going to be emotionally invested in) play is legitimized (both personally and with respect to the group).

3) To be free of the array of entanglements inherent to (2) (emotional weight and mental workload all in prep, retention, and in referencing/accounting) so you can let system and the players have their say. Consequently, you can be mentally fresh and focus your creative energies on introducing interesting content and refereeing in the spirit of the game you're playing.

 

[Manbearcat]

Quote Originally Posted by Lanefan View Post
Let me try an example.

There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure. They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.

Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.

DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.

Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.

I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.

What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.

And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.

Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.

So lets re-iterate this play excerpt using Dungeon World and the difference should be noticeable.

There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure.

Ok, this might be a setup for a DW game with 3 PCs; Dashing Hero (A Lover in Every Port, Daring Devil, Plan of Action), Barbarian (Mortal Pleasures and Fame and Glory appetites), Wizard (Mystical Puppet Strings, Charm Person spell).

Skulduggery City wouldn't be a place that the GM fleshed out stem to stern before play. This may be a place that was put on the map by a player prior to play and the only bit that we know about it (and have written out) is that its a den of scoundrels from the government, to the nobles, to the watch, to the clergy, to the layfolk. That, coupled with the PC build flags is plenty to work with to come up with interesting, dangerous situations on the spot and let things snowball from there.

They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming

So they've entered the town. That triggers the Dashing Hero's move:

A Lover In Every Port (CHA) When you enter a town that you’ve been to before (your call), roll +CHA. On a 10+, there’s an old flame of yours who is willing to assist you somehow. On a 7-9, they’re willing to help you, for a price. On a miss, your romantic misadventures make life more complicated for the party.

Looks like a 6- and the harlot is the romantic misadventure. I would make up some story about a hooker without a heart of gold in this city to reveal an unwelcome truth. I may ask the player to fill in the blanks about what went wrong or I may make something up myself. So my current complication is the only chance they have to avoid her wrath is by sticking to this real den of horrors ward of the city. She's so well-connected that she'll hear he is in town, but she might steer clear of that place (but, of course, it amps up the danger).

Alright, so it sounds like they have Coin to spend (on hirelings/henchman, lodgings, finery, gear, prestige). So if they do indeed go to the den of horrors ward, then I make up an appropriate inn and clientele for that setting, give it an appropriate name (maybe Rock Bottom), an appropriate staff and layabouts/rabblerousers/troublemakers. The players pay their Coin and are making the Recover move and the Carouse move:

Recover
When you do nothing but rest in comfort and safety after a day of rest you recover all your HP. After three days of rest you remove one debility of your choice. If you’re under the care of a healer (magical or otherwise) you heal a debility for every two days of rest instead.

Carouse
When you return triumphant and throw a big party, spend 100 coins and roll +1 for every extra 100 coins spent. ✴On a 10+, choose 3. ✴On a 7–9, choose 1. ✴On a miss, you still choose one, but things get really out of hand (the GM will say how).

You befriend a useful NPC.
You hear rumors of an opportunity.
You gain useful information.
You are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked.

You can only carouse when you return triumphant. That’s what draws the crowd of revelers to surround adventurers as they celebrate their latest haul. If you don’t proclaim your success or your failure, then who would want to party with you anyway?

Sounds like a 6- on Carouse!. Players mark xp, they get one thing they want and then I make things get out of hand.

and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.

Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.

DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.

Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.

This doesn't tell me much of anything about what may have happened in terms of how the content was introduced/procedurally generated. From the above, it looks like a lot of GM Force and offscreen piece-moving that in no way interacted with player knowledge or reasonably informed decision-points.

Here is something of consequence. If the players picked "you are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked" I would be breaking the rules to have this harlot be a double agent. So clearly, they didn't choose that in this situation. Lets say they chose to "gain useful information." Perhaps that useful generation was about a secret entrance in the alley to the Duke's manor house. Now this Duke must have been a relevant feature of play beforehand for this to be "useful information" for the players. Perhaps this Duke's manor house actually has his distillery where he makes spirits of which the formula was stolen from the Barbarian's people. And its time for some revenge!

So they get their info, but I get to introduce a major complication with a Hard move (given the 6-). So as the evening picks up, of course in comes the harlot with a temper a mile wide and a band of ruffians to beat the tar out of the Dashing Hero PC. Everyone is excited about the prospect of a fight (heck, maybe some rabblerousers fall in line behind her crew!) and its mayhem.

Looks like its time for our Wizard to make use of their Mystical Puppet Strings (folks charmed don't recall what you had them do and bear you no ill will) and Charm Person spell:

Cast a Spell (Int)
When you release a spell you’ve prepared, roll+Int.

✴ On a 10+, the spell is successfully cast and you do not forget the spell—you may cast it again later.

✴ On a 7-9, the spell is cast, but choose one:

You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Prepare Spells.
After it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells.
Note that maintaining spells with ongoing effects will sometimes cause a penalty to your roll to cast a spell.

So obviously a 7-9 and the player chose to draw unwelcome attention or put themselves in a spot.

So now I go with the double agent complication. Right before she gets charmed, she nods to a pair of shadowy figures at the door who quickly slip away into the night. This would be conveyed to the PCs. It would also be conveyed that they have a good headstart and there is a boisterous crowd that is just getting quelled (the harlot is quelling them at the Wizards command I guess...maybe she is table dancing or something)...taking the harlot away may turn a potential powderkeg into a blow-up (they would have to Defy Danger Charisma). So I guess they stay put rather than pursue.

So the Barbarian and the Dashing Hero break into the manor house to smash the whiskey and steal back the formula. In the course of it, they get a 6- on a result of some appropriate move and end up leaving some incriminating information at the scene that points directly to them. They only realize it the next morning when something identifying that should be on their person is missing...or torn fine silks that match the Dashing Heroes cape/longcoat (whatever)!

---

So that is how Dungeon World's play agenda/GMing ethos/action resolution and no real setting prep of any consequence/hidden backstory/offscreen moving parts by fiat can bring this situation to life. You don't have to deploy Force, you don't have to adjudicate action resolution by way of extrapolation of unknowable offscreen/unintroduced content. Stuff can just happen and you can fill in the necessary setting blanks as you go to give the players interesting decision points and thematic complications...and players can have all the necessary control over their archetypal portfolio and their decision-tree and inhabit their character's perspective and push their interests.

And GMs can play to find out what happens.

 

[pemerton]

The notion that the purpose of writing stuff down in advance is so that, during the game, you can refer to stuff you wrote down in advance is not controversial. The prejorative way in which you characterised this practice (consciously or not on your part) is what was called into doubt.

How is it pejorative to talk about it being a goal of play for the players to trigger the GM reading stuff from his/her notes, if that is in fact a signficant goal of play?

To go back to the map example, or the bribeable officials, or The Alexandrian's node-based design and three clue rule: we are talking about perhaps hours of play in which the players declare that their PCs move from place A to place B in the gameworld; this triggers the GM to tell the players stuff from his/her notes; the players contnue this until they have enough hints and clues to (eg) declare that their PCs go to the ktichen and check the breadbin, at which point the GM tells them - by reading from his/her notes - that they have found the map.

My description is not pejorative. It's accurate.

If you think that the metaphor of "exploring" or "discovering" the gameworld has some different literal meaning, what is it?

 

[pemerton]

I find it is not unusual for a table to play a medley of Gygaxian style play and contemporary style play. Do you find this practice strange?

No.

Also in the case of those that play differently to you, more often than not the map exists therefore secret fictional positioning makes sense (given the exploration of the map).

I think the more the map turns from a dungeon map in the classic sense to a wilderness or town map, the less likely Gygaxian-type "solve the maze" agency will be preserved.

To try and explain why: suppose the map is hidden in a chest in a dungeon - well, there is a convention in classic play that every chest is noted on the map and in the key, and so it is inherently salient to the player that any given chest might be a repository for the map. (There can be invisible chests, of cousre, so the players may need to use detection magic etc to find them - but this is also an established part of the conventions of game play.)

Now suppose the map is hidden in a chest buried at the base of a tree. There is no established convention of wilderness exploration - and I think for obvious reasons there couldn't be - of describing every tree, the nature of every patch of earth at the base of a tree, etc. So the ability of the players to find that map and chest through engaging the map as a maze and beating it is much reduced. They become very dependent on paying attention to the GM's narration to pick up the clues that the particular tree they should be looking for is this one rather than that one.

Town adventuring exemplifies the same phenomenon.

The map as physical artefact which the players try to duplicate and thereby solve/defeat becomes less important than the GM's narration of particular details that aren't on the map, but are the essentially clues that the players need to solve the puzzle.

The example of trying to work out whether or not any official will take bribes exemplifies this.

So at your table it might just require a singular skill challenge for the character to woo the the Princess, whereas at someone else's table it might require a greater number of lesser role-playing opportunities/skill challenges.

How it's resolved could depend on any number of things, depending on mood and system.

The key issue to me seems to be "what is a roleplaying challlenge?"

I resolve some social encounters via "free roleplaying" - that is, in effect, the GM saying "yes": the GM (as the NPC) says something, the player (as PC) says something, etc in a mechanically unmediated back-and-forth.

But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? In the fiction, that corresponds to the NPC potentially rejecting the PC's offer/request. If "roleplaying challenge" means that the player has to play his/her PC in a way that persuades the GM of the successful wooing (or whatever) then that's not really what I'm into. This is when I prefer to toggle from "saying 'yes'" to rolling the dice.

I think this has less to do with DM-driven RPGs and more to do with the adjudication process. 4e provides a mechanism which allows the DM to determine the level of complexity of the PC desired action whilst the other editions play fast and loose with such a scenario leaving it up to the DM to create the mechanic/s (if any) to be used for the PC desired action.

The adjudication process directly feeds into GM-driven RPGing. If the adjudication process is "Say the thing that the GM has noted will do the trick", then I consider that GM-driven.

If the adjudcation is mechanical, but there is no mechanical framework for what counts as enough successes, that can also feed into GM driven RPGing, as it is the GM who decides when enough is enough.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not perhaps in the words 'roleplaying game'; but when the 1e PH starts off by describing play as:

It certainly seems like a pretty hard foundational shove towards first-person roleplay, and also sets the tone for everything that has come since.

Yeah, OTOH the whole rest of the structure of D&D works AGAINST it. You don't get to choose what sort of a character to play, some dice are rolled and you get what you get, at least to some extent. Its likely that Jim will roll and 8 STR and a 13 INT, so he'll end up being a wizard, and Mary will get stuck playing a cleric.

Then of course, even if you get exactly what you want, Falstaff is pretty likely to be ganked by the first batch of 4 goblins you run across. Maybe after that Jim decides to call his next character 'Falstaff Jr', and so on.

Furthermore the game definitely mires you in a lot of details and trivia that revolve around sub-games, the 'getting your numbers up by acquiring magic stuff' subgame, the equipment and supplies subgame (do we still have some more oil flasks?). There's also the whole issue of some types of characters simply being only marginally useful in play, particularly if you manage to survive and get to higher levels. Falstaff is cool and all, and has a castle, but he is hardly even a vital part of a party anymore when Filmar and her ilk can hire some lower level guys to hold the front line and blast the bad guys with powerful spells.

I'm not denigrating 1e, but it really doesn't live up to that blurb. Its a different kind of a game, still fundamentally a Gygaxian dungeon crawl in mechanical and play-structural terms. I guess what I'm saying is, there's not really much incentive to heavily identify with the character you prefer to play and spend a lot of your time in 1st person play. TBH I have only really ever seen fairly sporadic 1st person in D&D, and I've played a LOT of D&D...

It can, though in a game type where the characters often find themselves in unpleasant or dangerous situations (i.e. most RPGs) allowing players to generate or arbitrarily meta-change these situations just doesn't work.

Only if the focus and structure of play are basically Gygaxian in nature. If the expectations are different then it makes perfectly good sense to have a game which is 100% transparent (I've done this numerous times). It can work in a lot of different ways. Nor are 'dangerous and unpleasant situations' removed from consideration. They just aren't situations where PLAYER SKILL is the determinant. They might be, for example, situations where the player's aesthetic and dramatic sensibilities are fulfilled by a certain PC falling to his death, or something.

I've never seen or heard of any table where the players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs. The PCs burn down a barn? They've just changed the gamestate through their playing of their PCs.

But can the players arbirtrarily change the game rules? Can they decide the capital city of the realm is 100 miles inland instead of on the coast where the DM's map puts it? No. These things fall outside the realm of playing the game, and are instead a part of designing the game; an undertaking not done by players but by first the professional game designers (system) and then the DM (setting and gameworld).

Lanefan

Heh, I played in a campaign for YEARS with a GM of extremely great energy, creativity, and story-telling power. However that game was EXACTLY described by "players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs." Truthfully you could TAKE many actions in that game. They would generally have some localized and modest effect, though often not what you were interested in or wanted. In any greater sense, the story was writ, and you were there to experience it. No choice you would make was going to deflect that greater story even one iota. If an NPC was to play a certain role in the meta-plot, then that WAS going to happen. No amount of killin' 'em dead was going to stop it. At most some other NPC would just pop up to take on the same role, or there would be a time warp, or almost whatever it took, but the show was going to go on!

I cannot claim this wasn't a highly fun campaign, it was, but you had to be willing to just come to an understanding that you were pretty much watching the show and contributing color. Now, this guy and I were best friends and we talked through a lot of stuff outside of play and came up with ideas, etc. Sometimes things came out the way I thought they should/might/could. It was just, once his mind was made up it was going in a certain way, there wasn't much that was going to change it.

I'm sure he's still GMing although we haven't had a chance to play together in quite a few years.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the idea of "finding the map as a challenge" proveids an answer to the OP question "what is (GM-preauthored) worldbuilding for"?

Here is my understanding of what you mean by "finding the map as a challenge":

The GM writes that the map is in X place. The players "explore the gameworld" (that's metaphor), which is to say they make moves by declaring actions for their characters that trigger various bits of narration by the GM: eg "We look behind the tapestry." "There's nothing there but a whitewashed brick wall." Some of this narration contains clues that point (directly or indirectly) towards X. Eventually, the players declare "We go to X and [insert appropriate details that pertain to how one might search X] and look for the map." Assuming the details are correct, the GM tells the players "You find the map."

That's the sort of play that I personally don't enjoy.

I mentioned upthread that in my Traveller game I had to resolve an attempt to find trinkets of alien manufacture being sold in a market on a low-tech world whose inhabitants have mixed alien/human ancestry. Traveller has no generic Perception mechanic, nor does it have a Scavenging mechanic. (It has Streetwise, and maybe that's what we should have used, but it didn't quite seem to fit.)

As I said in that earlier post, I made what was probably the wrong call in adjudication method: I assigned a chance to their being such a trinket for sale and rolled that (I can't remember what it was - maybe 9+ on 2d6?), and then - when that came up affirmatively I had the relevant player roll against his PC's Education (which is high, and which was already established to represent a PhD in xeno-archaeology - his focus on this activity explained why, although quite competent, he had not been promoted in four terms of service as a navy enlistee),

If my (first) roll had been a fail, that would have been a type of block, and I'm not sure how I would have handled it (hence, as I say, I think it was the wrong call - but I was also bumping into limits of the system).

But what I can say is that the game play was never going to turn into a hunt for the right clue. The whole idea of looking for alien trinkets was invented by the players (after I dropped in the bit of fiction - in the mouth of a NPC scientist who had been DNA anaysing the inhabitants' blood - about the alien ancestry). It was an important "quest" for that episode of play, but I didn't have any idea about how it might be fulfilled. That was going to depend on plausible action declarations plus dice rolls to resolve them.

So the "challenge" in finding the trinket is not about getting to the right bit of pre-authored fiction. It's about identifying plausible (and hopefully interesting) action declarations - in this case, the players decided to check out local markets on the world in question - and then getting lucky with the dice. (Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have varying devices that allow a player to put more "oomph" behind a dice roll, in the form of various sorts of player side resources. Traveller doesn't, which is one way in which it is a very dice-driven game.)

If the players get lucky early, the game moves on to the next bit of action. If they are unlucky, a mixture of fail-forward resolution (not as much a part of Traveller as those other systems, but not impossible either) and deft framing of new scenes should keep the action moving.

 

[Lanefan]

What shidaku wrote. To expound, having only what you need to begin and facilitate playing to a thematic premise

Facilitating playing to a thematic premise means I need everything (or as much as I can) ahead of time, so I can stick to the theme and be consistent in presenting it; even if it only lasts for a few sessions before the PCs go on to somethng else entierly.

1) To hold on lightly and be surprised what emerges from play (all of the filling out of the setting, the snowballing situation, the unfolding nature of each character as decision-points turn into player action declarations, and whatever dramatic arc forms organically out of the mesh of all of that).

Replace the bolded "filling out" with "exploration" and you're a lot closer. That, and you're assuming much more serious and drama-driven players than many of us have, I think.

2) To be free of temptation to use GM Force to ensure that the hard work and time that you put into setting/metaplot before play began (that you're invariably going to be emotionally invested in) play is legitimized (both personally and with respect to the group).

3) To be free of the array of entanglements inherent to (2) (emotional weight and mental workload all in prep, retention, and in referencing/accounting) so you can let system and the players have their say.

If you subscribe to the notion that GM Force is always a bad thing, this is true. However, GM Force is not always a bad thing: the determinant of whether it's good bad or neutral lies in how it's applied and - sometimes - in hindsight when looking at what came of it in play.

Consequently, you can be mentally fresh and focus your creative energies on introducing interesting content and refereeing in the spirit of the game you're playing.

I can do that anyway, even if I already have a lot of it pre-written and ready to go.

Lanefan