What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Maxperson]

I'm unaware of any such text in the 1e PHB, and I can almost quote the darned thing. Beyond that, getting 2 15's out of 6 rolls of 3d6 is actually fairly unusual. You'd have to allow at least 6 or more rerolls for most players to manage that. Nobody in my experience was doing that, although the DMG methods considerably change the odds. 1 in 3 characters using method II will have 2 15s. Method III will AVERAGE 3 15s, and Method IV should produce roughly 2 sets of stats with 2 15s. I'm not sure about method 1 exactly, I don't have dice calculator I feel like playing with to get that one, but IME 2 15s using Method I is similar to Method II. Note that not all these methods let you pick WHICH stats the 15s will be in, assuming you get them. Method III was widely considered too generous, but nice for rolling up higher level PCs (which tend to be the ones with better stats if you played them out).

Again though, no hint of this exists in PHB. I think its safe to say that the DMG tells us Gygax WAS aware of the problem, and was interested in giving players something more like what they wanted. Truthfully ability scores in OD&D pre-Greyhawk were of marginal mechanical use anyway, so he probably just didn't think it was an issue back then. It was only with the advent of Greyhawk and then the codification of stat bonuses into 1e along with the 'advanced' classes that the issue really became acute. DMG helps relieve it some, but paladins were still RARE IME.

If you think no hint exists and are unaware of any such text, you need to read page 9 under Character Abilities. Unless you think Gygax was a complete ass was taunting people by giving them 3d6 and then saying, it's usually essential to have two 15's or higher BUT HAHAHHAHA!!! YOU'RE STUCK LOSERS!, then his saying that was a statement to the DMs implying that they allow players to re-roll until they got two 15's or higher. He himself was quoted saying that he ran his own games that way, coming up with alternative methods and allowing re-rolls in order for players to have sufficient stats to have a chance to survive.

Look, I played from 1975 until the end of 2e classic D&D. In the early 1e days I was in a gaming club that had 300+ members. We played D&D sometimes continuously for a week at a time with rotating DMs even. I saw plenty of it. Characters were nothing. They died left, right, center, up, down, and all around. If you made 6th level that was rare. There were some 'easy' DMs of course, but mostly nobody even bothered to name a character at level 1, or just called it by some generic name, or maybe it was a new guy and he named his character, which we thought was funny. Usually after a session or so the character's got some kind of nickname or whatever. That's just how it was back then. Maybe where you played everyone was gung-ho to RP every character fully and the DMs let them all live, I dunno.

I played from 1983 to the end of 2e and barely saw it. Since we had two very different experiences, this cannot be a game issue, or we both would have experienced the "inevitable". Rather, this is purely a player thing. Some players will act that way and others won't.

 

[RedShirtNo5.1]

The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate player agency as I've been characterising it with not playing my PC but doing something else. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say the map is in the study; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) I look for the map in the study - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.

Pemerton, let me see if I can rephrase this. Unless the results are constrained by pre-existing shared fictional positioning, the results of action declaration statements by the players should be determined by a rule set that permits success (and presumably failure) and not constrained by the GM's notes. Would you say that's accurate?

Edit - "Should" indicating your preference, not some categorical statement.

 

[Emerikol]

I agree with 2 and 3. Metagame controls aren't that important to me: Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have the to a modest degree (but less than, say, OGL Conan); Classic Traveller and Rolemaster have them not at all.

This relates to your 1, 2 and 3.

2 and 3 are both (in my view) true.

1 is not true. When I play an RPG I want to play my character and control my character's actions. Being able to shape the world as I play in it is not a big deal. What is a big deal is that the outcomes of my character's actions aren't settled by the GM's pre-authored setting.

Upthread I described this second category as ones in which the PC is learning about the world rather than changing it. If these correlate to actions in which the player learns about the GM's authorship decisions rather than contributes, via action declaration and resolution, to the unfolding shared fiction then I find that unsatisfying both as GM and as player.

I think my #1 was an attempt to describe your words above. Since it's to a degree something hard for me to understand, I admit I am struggling to make it understandable to someone like myself.

Assuming there is some item that is necessary to completing a mission (something not inconceivable as a real challenge if such a fantasy world existed), that item is part of the world. The player characters have a variety of choices. Find the item, go back and seek other adventure, find another way to solve the mission. Admitted in some instances #3 is not easy or is perhaps impossible in some DM's campaigns. I tend to dislike single solution dungeons personally.

This is a style of dungeon though more than a style of play. You could run in my style and never create such a dungeon. So objecting to that style of challenge is perhaps a dungeon taste more than an overarching campaign style choice. I've rarely seen the case though where every single adventure is one of these sorts. Perhaps I just haven't seen enough. I'd consider a DM who made such adventures exclusively to be a poor DM for sure.

What I meant by "controlling" the fiction as a player character though is the ability to add to the campaign setting on the fly and as long as it doesn't dispute what is already known by the party it can stand. Perhaps with some limits agreed to ahead of time on the flavor of campaign you are running. I get the feeling that you want at least some of this ability.

 

[Emerikol]

I was responding to the assertion that 1e, specifically, is a game where you play your chosen hero and have heroic type adventures (which I would characterize as having at least some elements which correspond with other genre where characters are considered 'heroes', which could be Super Hero Comics, Classic Mythology, Arthurian Legend, Classic Fantasy, Modern Fantasy, etc.).
.

I think the 1e D&D approach was about becoming heroes. I never bought into the premise that 1st level or even 5th level characters where great heroes. Maybe at 5th they are local heroes like a countywide football star.

If you look at modules 7th level and above in 1e, most of them were the stuff of heroes. If you look at lower level modules, they were not. So D&D was about becoming a hero. I think that was one of it's greatest appeals. The idea of growing in power over time. In fact I consider it the fundamental conceit that put D&D on the map as a generational phenomena.

My only point though really was to dispute that the elements in discussion could not lead to a heroic game. And it seems we agree on that. So enough said.

 

[Manbearcat]

I openly disagreed with Lanefan about the game being “the DM’s game”.

As I said when I first jumped into this thread, I was a little hesitant to do so because usually it becomes two camps. But I am very much in the middle on this.

So it’s tough when someone mentally places me on one “side” of the debate and then decides I share the opinion of others on that side, despite not having expressed those opinions.

So, while I understand that sometimes boiling things down to sides can be convenient, it limits nuance.

Few thoughts on this:

1) I'm really not looking to establish "who is in the general consensus of those 7 points", "who agrees with a few, who disagrees with others", "who actually agrees with all 9 points." The only reason that this became an issue at all is because it somehow became contentious while the same few users who were declaring it contentious were actually agreeing with it in their other posts (and one was challenging my integrity in even outlining "the worldbuilding ethos" - which again, was almost entirely aggregation and not extrapolation on my end - in the course of that odd exchange)!

But none of that is interesting. Its obfuscatory and derails interesting conversation about the discussed subjects. You can have two people agree with the Anthropgenic Global Warming Hypothesis (say agreement on radiative heat transfer and forcing related to the properties of carbon molecules, and general agreement on positive feedbacks) while they disagree on finer points of the hypothesis (such as net albedo and the total dynamics of ocean heat uptake/transfer). But bogging down conversation with THERE IS NO CONSENSUS detracts from fine analysis on the dynamics/fundamentals of the system is neither helpful nor interesting. It just gives us biographical facts about various users (which isn't very interesting in a technical discussion).

I mean, @pemerton and I definitely have some nuanced disagreements on our play (he mentioned The Czege Principle above) such as the viability of proliferate player-authored kickers (scene-openers/framing) in the course of play. And that is fine. But we have never bothered to dispute our overlap and general consensus on GMing (even when its come up in conversations on these boards with folks "putting us into the same broad box"). It just doesn't matter that we don't agree completely on The Czege Principle or certain versions of Success With Complications. Maybe if we started a thread to focus precisely on those nuanced disagreements it might...but I suspect the involved users and total interest would be sparse on these boards (therefore we don't), whereas something like "Fail Forward" or "how setting generation impacts play (this thread)" would get a lot more action.

2) With that out of the way, how about something interesting to talk about! @chaochou and @Lanefan had an exchange about either a play excerpt or a hypothetical one above. It involved questions of:

(a) setting generation
(b) initial situation generation and related framing
(c) offscreen-part moving/move-making by the GM
(d) information (or lacktherof) and player decision-points/action declarations
(e) the evolution of the gamestate from the initial state to subsequent states.

Now this is extremely relevant to this conversation, so I took that play excerpt (or hypothetical one) and rendered it into a Dungeon World format to contrast the differences with respect to a-e above. Do you have any thoughts on this? I'll grab both and sblock them below:

[sblock]

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.[/sblock]

 

[hawkeyefan]

The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate player agency as I've been characterising it with not playing my PC but doing something else. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say the map is in the study; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) I look for the map in the study - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.

I think the reason this keeps coming up is due to the example itself. I admit to not recalling if there were more details when this example was first put forth, but whenever it has been brought up since, it’s boiled down to “the PCs need a map, a player searches the stoudy for the needed map, the presence of the map is determined by the success or failure of the relevant check.”

So finding the map had been positioned as a goal, and the player’s skill check determines whether the goal is achieved.

To me, the example seems too simple to really tell us much. What’s the point of making the map hidden unless a search for it can result? And should a search for the map, if intended to be a goal involving any kind f challenge, be resolved with one check? If finding the map is a goal of the party, then allowing a skill check to determine its presence does imply that the player can control obstacle resolution through action declaration.

If the character’s stated goal is to find the presence of alien life, then does he simply ask to search for signs of alien life every time he enters a room? Or are there other parameters at play not addressed in the map example?

I’d like to offer another example that perhaps will help.

A character has fallen from a cliff. This may be diring the course of battle, or it may be due to some mishap while exploring. At this point, the character’s goal is to not die.

So the player indicates that they’d like to make a check or a saving throw or whatever relevant roll the game mechanics call for the PC to avoid falling to his doom.

Would a classic GM driven game simply say “the cliff face is sheer and there is nothing to grab....you die”? Meaning the GM had determined this prior and consults his notes and that’s that? I would not expect most games to play out that way. Only the most extreme version of such a style.

I would expect that the result of the check would determine the fiction, so that a successful check indicates the presence of a root that the character manages to grab. I’d kind of expect this approach in either tyle of game. Or at least in most games using eother style.

To me, this seems a better example of a player attempting to introduce an element to the fiction through action declaration.

 

[hawkeyefan]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] I think your translation of Lanefan’s example to a DW framework and how it would play out there is interesting. I’m actually impressed that you could make such a direct correlation.

But I don’t know if it helps with the OP question all that much. All it says is that the results determined by Approach A can also be achieved using Approach B.

My goal in this conversation is to advocate for creative use of Secret Backstory tagged as “worldbuilding” by Permetton in the OP. Tome, the presence of such material does not necessarily prevent the GM from playing to find out.

To me, Secret Backstory is clearly usefulfor a few reasons:
- to help establish the scope of play via setting
- to help establish long term thematic elements
- to help guide the course of play when the players have not shown a desire or ability to do so

I think in the course of this comversation that Agency has been conflated with Engagement. And I don’t think that should be te case. Players can be very much engaged by any style of game, even the purest of railroads. To look atanother medium, moviegoers are passive, but movies can of course be engaging.

I think the differences between writing a novel and reading a novel are pretty apropros to the discussion. Yet I don’t think most games must correlate to one or the other, or that thise who enjoy one cannot enjoy the other.

 

[TwoSix]

I think the lesson here is that you're able to describe, distill, clarify a discipline if you are a card-carrying member (and even use language that can only be described as extreme), but if you're not, then bad feelings and you're wrong.

Well, this does tend to be the default assumption whenever people feel some kind of tribal lines are being drawn. Two Eagles fans can commiserate about shared Nick Foles concerns; they're not going to accept that same critique from a Patriots fan.

 

[TwoSix]

- to help guide the course of play when the players have not shown a desire or ability to do so

To my mind, this is the most salient point. Player-driven play is hard, certainly much harder than a GM-driven adventure path, unless you have a group where the majority of your players are skilled and motivated role-players. (Having a critical mass of skilled, motivated players tends to motivate the others to be more creative, I've observed.)

If your group has been brought up in a tradition of ambivalently adversarial exploration focused play, player-driven play is going to seem downright alien.

 

[Arilyn]

I'm sitting moderately in the middle of things. I appreciate pemerton's style and his, and others' posts, are giving me tips on how to manage that style of game better. The idea that this style of play leads to players narrating their way out of trouble and getting what they want is obviously not true. Nobody would play that way. It seems like the nay sayers should at least give it a whirl.

On the other hand, I am not throwing away traditional GMing. If I have a cool idea for a ghost story that requires hidden back story to make the story hang together properly, I'm going to do it.

What's really becoming a pet peeve is the accusations of railroading being flung about like confetti, as well as meta-gaming. Next time my players are going to be on a train, and will be encouraged to meta-game to their heart's' content!