What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]' concern here in terms of probabilities and mechanics is cogent. Its also cogent in the sense that it demonstrates a way in which 'classic' D&D and its focus on tactical rules leaves us with a vast swath of room for the GM to simply engineer things to his own liking. In fact it seems that the resolution is so firmly in the GM's hands that it can hardly be else! This illustrates my earlier noted observation of the 'incoherence' of 2e, it claims to wish to be a system focused on stories and narrative, but it lacks any mechanics to support that, providing only the same dungeon-crawl-focused D&D mechanics that originated in OD&D years earlier.

I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)!

I also don't really like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "they can't know the probability of success" notion. This is again leading back into 'hidden backstory' kind of territory, and certainly at least smacks of the DM being almost exclusively the source of story in the game.

Now, I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves. If they don't like the odds, then they can change plans, although I might still use their prep as hooks (later the guy you paid to give you the guard schedules and list of magical wards used by the King turns up dead, a week later your favorite barkeep hands you a note left by an 'unsavory character'...). However, plot hooks are never hard to come by, I wouldn't consider this to be especially increasing the character's exposure to them, just providing an easy formulation FOR them. One suggested by the players in the first place to some extent. If they simply left it at that and didn't investigate I'd probably just have their major domo later on let them know that he paid off some guy 500gp, the players are obviously not interested in engaging this story element.

Anyway, I think that an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a necessary part of the wager, and are in fact a part of the formulation of the game as such. The players get to choose what they are risking, and they obviously need in turn to know what they have to gain from taking that risk. It just won't work otherwise.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, I wanted to construct it as the kind of example that would work well in a variety of games. If I framed it as "some NPC that has a grudge against the party stemming from stuff that happened years ago frames them for assassinating/attempting to assassinate the king and..." that would fit fine within the 'domino theory', but it would obviously involve 'hidden backstory' (assuming the players had no way of discovering the plot and no inkling that they might even need to be wary of such). So we have again probably a continuum, and that illustrates how there aren't really totally distinct practices of play (as opposed to theories).


Agreed. In my formulation, the players chose the wager. The GM framed the situation in some degree "As you contemplate the various ways to thwart the King's evil plans you recall your contacts with the Assassin's Guild." (maybe this is narrated as the result of a check or in HoML it would simply be part of an interlude, since nothing is yet at stake). Once they've committed and the challenge is afoot then any consequences are theirs to bear. I have no problem with this.

OK, we're all good up to here. But then you add...

They fail the challenge and soldiers show up at their door! 4e/HoML handle this quite easily.

...and right there I start thinking you've got the challenge bit wrong.

The challenge, from the PCs' perspective, isn't to poison the king. That's eventually to be the assassin's challenge, in which the PCs (and by extension the players) are not involved at all. The PCs' challenge is to convince someone else to try to poison the king, success in which provides them a hired field operative committed to that mission.

Yeah, I think the SC (HoML General Challenge) system of 4e is fine with this. The fictional position is one of pulling the strings from the shadows. Part of the consequences of a significant enough failure is that the shadows are drawn away and the puppet master is revealed. It could be that there are lesser possibilities in a range. Failing after several successes might result in being forced to leave town to avoid being unmasked, or being forced to frame one of your allies to take the fall in your place.

Yes, these could happen during the recruiting/hiring process - on a failure a prospective operative turns the PCs in, for example. But it's less likely to happen at this stage than during the actual assassination attempt.

Limited success might produce similar results, the King dies but you or someone/something you value is lost, or even that you are fully revealed and your 'victory' becomes hollow or much more equivocal.

But now you're jumping ahead to the assassination attempt itself, which is a different challenge and out of the players/PCs' hands.

I'd note that I wouldn't have other people or the GM by himself 'play out' anything like an assassination. I'd simply have it either succeed or fail based on whatever the PCs did and the check results they got. If they plan it really well, hire the best guy, equip him with everything he needs, etc then things go off as planned (IE 12 successes and no failures).

A 12-0 success run means they've hired the best and most loyal operative they could ever hope to find. Still doesn't at all speak to whether said operative is going to be able to pull it off or not, though it might influence the odds somewhat.

I guess in short I see the players dealing with what's in their PCs' range to be involved with (in this case the hiring and equipping of an assassin) and then not being involved in what their PCs are not involved in (here, the actual infiltration and assassination attempt).

I never roll dice between one NPC and another

I don't do this very often*, but in a case like this I think I'd have to - there's just too many variables. It'd end up working more like a flowchart; in that both successes and failures could be mitigated or overcome by other factors arising then or later. There's no way I could beat this down to just one die roll, even if I wanted to, without really shortchanging the game.

* - most common occurrence is during 3-way combats where the PCs are fighting two opposing groups who are also fighting each other - if someone from foe group A is fighting someone from foe group B I'll play out their initiatives, swings etc. right along with the rest of the combat, mostly so I know what will be left of either or both should one or more PCs end up fighting them later.

the relevant part of the game is what the players do.

True, only here they've conceded the ability to do very much of anything other than wait for developments; developments which they neither get to author nor influence.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

In your example, the player isn't stipulating anything but his/her PC's action: the PC searches for a secret door.

And in so doing is opening up the possibility of there being one, which possibility (in a player-driven system) would not have opened up had nobody said anything. In a prepared set-up, however, the DM already knows the exact chance (0% or 100%) of a secret door being in that wall, because she put one there...or didn't.

Never mind what comes next: on the establishment in the fiction of a secret door, what's beyond it? And who gets to determine that?

That's the whole point: the player doesn't have to think about the gameworld expect as a place his/her PC is engaging with: "I look around for a vessel to catch the blood!" "I search for a secret door so we can get out of here!" "I search the study for the map!"

The action resolution tells us whether the attempt succeeds or fails: does the PC find a vessel or not? a secret door, or not? the map, or not?

And in so doing also authors the here-and-now presence of these items on a success and mostly leaves their existence uncertain on a failure.

Only a rotten metagamer would be spending time outside the PC perspective to worry about the process whereby the shared fiction is established!

But isn't that exactly what you're doing every time you worry about whether something is coming from the DM's notes or not?

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)!

Well, a really up-there MU could simply Wish the king dead; but that's hardly the point here.

I also don't really like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "they can't know the probability of success" notion.

OK, you say this in disagreement with me, but then...

Now, I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves.

...go on to say exactly the same thing I did only using different words: that they can use their abilities and observations and knowledge to give themselves an educated guess. Even the ease or difficulty encountered in finding and-or hiring a killer may add useful knowledge.

Anyway, I think that an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a necessary part of the wager, and are in fact a part of the formulation of the game as such. The players get to choose what they are risking, and they obviously need in turn to know what they have to gain from taking that risk. It just won't work otherwise.

I'll change that a bit, to read: an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a nice-to-have part of the wager, but true accuracy isn't always possible; and sometimes it really does come down to a gamble against unknown or very poorly-known odds.

Lan-"though you can mitigate or tweak the odds all you like, in the end any game involving dice is still at its heart a game of luck"-efan

 

[Emerikol]

In my current game I try not to plan *that* much, not unless I'm doing a dungeon crawl or the like. I tend to plan some encounters mostly because I use minis and drawing the maps in advance saves time, but depending on how much time I have to prep I can run a session largely improv.
As it's a reactive sandbox game, I also don't plan more than a session ahead, so I can tailor things to the players.

However, the world is a heavily detailed homebrew setting. So much of my planning is just writing NPCs and expanding elements of the setting.
And because I'm a worldbuilding snob who hates the illogical results of spontaneously created campaign settings. It invariably leads to unnatural ecologies and impossible rivers.

You did a lot of planning. You just did it ahead of time. I’m not a snob but I do know what I like and if it’s my free time at stake then I care to have what I like.

 

[Sunseeker]

Personally, I would regard all this as a sign of something having gone pretty badly wrong at the table.

EDIT: I just read your follow-up post which talks about the GM narrating success as failure (eg the assassination succeeds, but the outcome still thwarts the players eg because of the outbreak of civil war or similar). That, to me, is another sign of things having gone badly wrong.

The idea that success is success, not just another mode of failure established by the GM deploying hidden backstory material, is the first step towards establishing genuine player agency over the shared fiction.

(Obviously this also connects directly to what @AbdulAlhazred has talked about as GM-gated stories.)

FURTHER EDIT:

A micro version of this is when the GM doesn't treat any non-combat resolution as final - so eg the NPCs surrender and promise compliance, but then betray the PCs as soon as possible. Or the PCs find the map, but its withered parchment turns to dust in their hands. Etc.

Maybe, but BIG Action Declarations like "I hire an assassin to kill the King." need to be followed with subsequent specificity from the players. The DM can be much like the genie with the action declaration being a badly worded wish. If you don't clearly state your goals, how can the DM adjudicate the results? Things like overthrowing a King (through death or other means) requires a series of action declarations, no matter if we address them via role-play or roll-play. Yes, statistically the more rolls you make the more likely you are to fail (that's statistics for you).

But BIG Action Declarations should be more prone to failure.
Players may not be aware of fictional positioning of the King distrusting them (I mean, they wanna kill this guy for a reason that we're assuming isn't "the players are jerks", and if they are well...I suspect the King knows this), sending spies to watch them, intercept their moves.
Perhaps the King has no interest in the party (which is often another reason the party wants to kill someone in power), and just happens to catch them looking to buy an assassin in the kingdom's routine checks on the Thieves Guild.
Perhaps another noble is paying the Assassins League good money to keep the disliked King alive (maybe the King himself is doing this) and that funding is more valuable to the Assassins League than the coin the players are throwing out.
Perhaps a rival kingdom is seeking to overthrow the King as well, and some ne'er-do-well PCs are just the right guys at the right time.

Declaring an action for something simple and immediate is easy, and similarly easy to adjudicate. (I drink the beer!....okay, you drink the beer, what's your Con? 16? *Auto-pass* Okay, it's tasty and you don't feel a buzz.)
The larger the action declaration, the more likely players are to experience side effects. In this example, the DM declaring that the death of the King has thrown the society into chaos should be keeping in line with what the players should have been able to learn about the Kingdom. It is not terribly difficult for an observant PC to pick up signs of internal strain in a land and perhaps after a chance encounter with the King, learn he's holding the country together with both hands.

For BIG Action Declarations, I like to follow this simple guide:
The are Known Knowns: These are the things the party knows. They don't require checks and finding this information is relatively easy. This information tends to remain consistent and if it changes, then the that new knowledge is likely to be a "known known" as well.
-In this situation, the "known known" should be the fact that the country is under heavy strain and the King is all that is keeping the land together.

There are Known Unknowns: These are things the party can find out, but can be subject to rapid change. This also includes information the party can reasonably intuit exists somewhere but lack specifics. (There is a Princess...therefore there must be a Queen. There is an Army, therefore there must be a General. There are 5 Noble Houses, two of which the King likes, two of which the King does not like, and one Switzerland.)
-The example scenario lacks these, but any of these could be applicable, and are worth serious consideration when declaring "I hire an assassin to kill the King!". Such as "Who is next in line to assume the throne?" We know someone will, but we don't know who, or how, or how much competition there is.

Finally, there are Unknown Unknowns: These are the sort of "secret fictional story positioning" ya'll keep coming back to. Players can't reasonably know everything that's going on in the Kingdom. Such as an enemy nation also seeking to assassinate the King. Or that the King as a secret heir born to a Tiefling woman who lives in the slums. Or that the bartender they've been so fond of yapping in front of is a Royal Spy.

Utilizing these three basic elements, it's fairly easy for a player or a DM to determine the potential side-effects of a BIG Action Declaration. Many players get in the habit of expecting success to come without strings. But you cannot truly make BIG Action Declarations and hold that expectation. I would find it incredibly unbelievable were a player to declare they wish to assassinate the King, have the DM roll a single d20, happen to roll a success, even a crit! And declare that the King is dead with no ill consequences to the country, or no caveats to the success of that assassination.

The problem is of course, getting players to "think of the big picture". Few do. Which is why we end up with games with BIG Action Declarations that function like small action declarations, with no or inconsequential side effects in comparison to the actual act the players just took.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes. I've been posting about the contrast between preparation and establishing setting for much of the thread.

To give more examples: the murderous mage could have been introduced as a potential ally of the PCs. Or: when the player failed the Circles check to make contact with Jabal, instead of taking the approach that I did (Jabal sends Athog to tell the PCs to leave town) I could have had the murderous mage approach the PC ("Jabal's after me - I hear you can help me get away from him!").

Another way to come at the distinction is this: who sold the angel feather to the peddler? In the session I ran, it turned out that the murderous mage did so. But what if the players had decided to investigate this directly - so that it becomes like the map? There is no established setting element that it was the murderous mage who did so, which would then become part of the (unrevealed) ficitonal positioning that would inform adjudication of actions delcared in that investigation attempt.

Yes.

But identifying a trope, or an idea, as being potentially interesting is different from establishing the setting in advance of play.

Sure, you could have used any NPC to fill that role. You could have come up with one on the fly. In this instance, you chose to use one that you had conceived beforehand (or that you lifted from another source, as the case may be).

Why did you do that?

Because there is value in preparing ahead of time. That’s the answer. Forget your GM force/secret backstory denying player agency concerns for a minute. I’m not addressing that.

What I’m saying is that you understand the value of preparation. So even if preparation is of a type you don’t like, or leads to a style of play you’re not crazy about....you understand that it’s useful to have some ideas ready ahead of time.

And that is what “worldbuilding”, in the limited sense that you’ve defined, is for. Because it is useful to prepare. The degree of preparation and how it is used in the game are separate matters.

 

[pemerton]

I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)!

This is a general feature of D&D-type spellcasting - it is player-side fiat/stipulation, but given an in-fiction rationalisation as magical power.

One practical consequence is that (at least in my experience) most seasoned D&D players who want to exercise significant and reliable agency over the fiction play spellcasters. (This was a phenomenon that was being noted, although under a slightly different description, at least as far back as the late 70s.)

Another consequence is that, in D&D culture, the gameplay aspect of this - ie the player exercising fiat/stipulation over the shared fiction - gets subordinated beneath a focus on its in-fiction character. Which then means that the attempt to establish comparable sorts of agency for non-caster PCs gets analysed not in gameplay terms but under labels like "martial mind control" or "Schroedinger's dungeon".

I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves. If they don't like the odds, then they can change plans, although I might still use their prep as hooks (later the guy you paid to give you the guard schedules and list of magical wards used by the King turns up dead, a week later your favorite barkeep hands you a note left by an 'unsavory character'...). However, plot hooks are never hard to come by, I wouldn't consider this to be especially increasing the character's exposure to them, just providing an easy formulation FOR them.

To me, at least, the last sentence here is the most important.

The whole point of RPGing in the "Standard Narrativistic Model" or any similar approach is for the players to be confronted by hard choices that put pressure on their PCs. (The hardness can be thematic/trope-derived hardness - 4e tends towards this - or more personal/intimate hardness - BW tends a bit more towards this lattter.)

If the players decide to have their PCs assassinate the king, that is one source of hardness, but - everything else being equal - it's not as if, but for that, there would be no challenges in the game. Nor is there any gameplay reason why the challenges that result from it should be distinctively hard. It's just that the players have chosen this, rather than some other thing, to be the fiction that they are going to engage in.

(There can be fictional positioning elements to this - that is, everything else may not be equal. And in some systems that fictional positioning is mechanically expressed. For instance, in default 4e, heroic tier PCs are simply not going to be in a position to attempt to assassinate the king, at least most of the time. The village elders or orc chieftain are closer to their league. But that is not a consequence of secret backstory. It's a game conceit that is known to all the participants.)

EDIT: shidaku's post seemed relevant here:

Maybe, but BIG Action Declarations like "I hire an assassin to kill the King." need to be followed with subsequent specificity from the players.

<snip>

Declaring an action for something simple and immediate is easy, and similarly easy to adjudicate.

<snip>

The larger the action declaration, the more likely players are to experience side effects. In this example, the DM declaring that the death of the King has thrown the society into chaos should be keeping in line with what the players should have been able to learn about the Kingdom. It is not terribly difficult for an observant PC to pick up signs of internal strain in a land and perhaps after a chance encounter with the King, learn he's holding the country together with both hands.

<snip>

Players can't reasonably know everything that's going on in the Kingdom. Such as an enemy nation also seeking to assassinate the King. Or that the King as a secret heir born to a Tiefling woman who lives in the slums. Or that the bartender they've been so fond of yapping in front of is a Royal Spy.

Utilizing these three basic elements, it's fairly easy for a player or a DM to determine the potential side-effects of a BIG Action Declaration. Many players get in the habit of expecting success to come without strings. But you cannot truly make BIG Action Declarations and hold that expectation.

<snip>

The problem is of course, getting players to "think of the big picture". Few do. Which is why we end up with games with BIG Action Declarations that function like small action declarations, with no or inconsequential side effects in comparison to the actual act the players just took.

I think this clearly goes to different approaches to resolution and to (subsequent) framing.

Whether the attempt is resolved in one roll, or multiple, I see as a function of system. 4e, for instance, would normally have this be a skill challenge. In BW it might be one roll, or multiple, depending on how big a deal the group wants to make it.

What the consequences are I see as primarily a function of player intent. Which also feeds back into resolution - the resolution has to be consonant with the intent (eg if the players want the assassination not to provoke unrest, they have to factor the appropriate efforts into their approach to resolution - eg a Streetwise element to spread appropriately calming rumours). This might speak in favour of a more complex approach to resolution - eg a skill challenge, with the Streetwise attempt as one part of that.

The fact that it's a big deal doesn't, to me, seem to create a reason in and of itself for the GM to exercise more control over the outcome.

 

[pemerton]

there is value in preparing ahead of time.

<snip>

What I’m saying is that you understand the value of preparation. So even if preparation is of a type you don’t like, or leads to a style of play you’re not crazy about....you understand that it’s useful to have some ideas ready ahead of time.

And that is what “worldbuilding”, in the limited sense that you’ve defined, is for. Because it is useful to prepare. The degree of preparation and how it is used in the game are separate matters.

Well, I know why it is useful to have ideas or elements for framing prepared in advance (can help with tropes, can help with mechanics, can help with provoking choices).

But why is it useful to have outcomes of action declarations prepared in advance? Helps with what - directing the story? That's seems to be one answer provided by some posters in this thread.

 

[pemerton]

And in so doing is opening up the possibility of there being one

<snip>

And in so doing also authors the here-and-now presence of these items on a success and mostly leaves their existence uncertain on a failure.

Well, clearly that's possible, within the context of the fiction as established in play, or else the player wouldn't have delcared his/her PC to be looking for one (because otherwise s/he would know it's impossible to find one there).

As for failure, whether or not that leaves the existence of a secret door uncertain depends on how failure is narrated. That will depend upon the details of system and what it permits on narration of a failure. In Burning Wheel, for instance, it is open to the GM to narrate the failure as resulting from the absence of a secret door in the wall. But that is not the only permitted narration of failure.

on the establishment in the fiction of a secret door, what's beyond it? And who gets to determine that?

That's a system question. You ask the question as if it's rhetorical - but given that, in fact, game systems which work this way are out there, you just need to consult them to get your answers.

Only a rotten metagamer would be spending time outside the PC perspective to worry about the process whereby the shared fiction is established!

But isn't that exactly what you're doing every time you worry about whether something is coming from the DM's notes or not?

Well, as I've posted repeatedly, mostly I'm a GM. So I'm talking about my preference for how to GM a game.

And as a player, as I've said, I want to play a game where my character, and my character's choices, matter. [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] thinks that I can't tell whether or not this is happening in a game; I know from esxperience that he is wrong. I've been part of GM sackings, and have quit games, because GMs don't want to run that sort of game.

A 12-0 success run means they've hired the best and most loyal operative they could ever hope to find. Still doesn't at all speak to whether said operative is going to be able to pull it off or not, though it might influence the odds somewhat.

I guess in short I see the players dealing with what's in their PCs' range to be involved with (in this case the hiring and equipping of an assassin) and then not being involved in what their PCs are not involved in (here, the actual infiltration and assassination attempt).

I don't do this very often [roll dice between one NPC and another], but in a case like this I think I'd have to - there's just too many variables. It'd end up working more like a flowchart; in that both successes and failures could be mitigated or overcome by other factors arising then or later. There's no way I could beat this down to just one die roll, even if I wanted to, without really shortchanging the game.

Who is being "shortchanged" by you not rolling against yourself?