What is *worldbuilding* for?

[AbdulAlhazred]

But assuming a typical medieval-fantasy setting where the PCs can't just hop on the Stark jet and get there in an hour or three, any journey of any length at all is going to take significant time; and time is important. Washington DC to Tokyo could take several months travelling overland followed by several weeks at sea during which if nothing else seasonal variations and weather could become huge factors; not to mention the possibilities of disease, environment-caused mishap e.g. a flood or landslide, or - and here's yer random encounters - encounters with local wildlife or inhabitants.

Handwaving a journey like this is going a bit far. Boston to New York? Not quite so bad unless it's winter.

Why is it 'a bit far', but the trip to the privy isn't? I don't understand... (really, I don't). If there's nothing expected to be particularly interesting happening in the 5 months it takes to get to Tokyo it is perfectly acceptable to simply narrate "you have a long, tedious, sometimes dangerous, and often uncomfortable trip to Tokyo" and be done with it. I'm not saying that HAS to be the right answer, but it is perfectly acceptable in a wide variety of games.

Does "no rules for wealth" apply just in this sort of case, as in there's no rules for minor wealth spent during travel; or are there no rules for wealth at all in that system?

MANY RPGs have only abstract wealth systems, or maybe even no explicit wealth system at all. d6 Space (old d6 Star Wars basically) has an abstract wealth system. Characters have a number of dice which represent their 'wealth', and various classes of expenditures require checks of a given level in order to successfully buy something. Buying a pair of boots might be a difficulty 3 check, buying a small merchant type starship might be a difficulty 40 check. Some actions can also cause some depletion of wealth (like buying a starship probably will). There is also income in that system, which gives you an idea of your affordable ongoing expenses (starships have upkeep). There actually are cited credit cost values of things, so you can compare and use the numbers in fiction, but PCs don't normally track specific quantities of cash, unless it has a very specific function in a given story.

How I'd do this would depend on the situation. Let's say that the Boston-NY corridor is fairly safe, while anything much west of that is wild land and the Pacific Ocean is thought to be full of beasties.

For a Boston to New York trip in summer I'd probably roll once to see if anything untoward happens, work out how long the trip takes based on a consistent speed of travel, ask what they're doing for food and lodging along the way, and get 'em to knock off some arbitrary small amount of g.p. if food and lodging are being purchased.

For the same trip in winter I'd be a lot more stringent on what's being done and how, and would be rolling for weather each day. Speed of travel would not at all be guaranteed - weather conditions could slow them down or even stop them at any time - and I'd be more careful about food and lodging costs and requirements.

For Washington to Tokyo I'd almost look at the journey as a mini-adventure in itself - there's the prairies (possible risks: local inhabitants, stampedes, weather e.g. tornadoes in summer and bitter cold in winter), the western mountains (possible risks: local wildlife, navigational woes, flash floods in summer, weather e.g. thunder and lightning in summer and snowstorms in winter), the coast (fewer risks but I'd want to know what they're doing about a sturdy boat to get across the ocean, 'cause I'm betting they didn't bring one with them!), and the ocean (possible risks: sea monsters, pirates, weather, navigational woes, rocks reefs and shoals near land).

Lan-"I've driven from here almost to the east coast and that's bad enough; I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk it"-efan

See, what bothers me about this as a technique is there's NO reference at all to what the particular scenario is about, any relation to player interests/agenda, stakes (IE does it matter how long the trip takes, narratively) etc. The only consideration is some empty notion that you have to serve some kind of non-existent requirement to present the PC's experience with no appreciable gaps at all. This is just not a genuine need in RPGs.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Your entire example was a misrepresentation. Games simply don't play out like that........ever. At least not without a bad DM abusing the playstyle.



They're acting on it from the 1st step forward towards the giants. None of the encounters along the way stops that.

You still didn't answer the question. How does the GM know he's put enough opportunities in the player's path to 'think of everything' or 'do all the possible interesting things', or 'enough interesting things' along the way? Isn't this an AESTHETIC CHOICE, and thus ONLY subject to taste???!!! Yes! In our case we have an aesthetic that indicates things should MOVE ALONG and that's at least got the advantage of giving a consistent unambiguous answer to how many digressions are too many, ANY AT ALL!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, that's a rule/concept I threw out before I even started DMing.

Well, we pretty much ignored it as well. Still, the point stands, even Gygax had some sort of reward of 'good RP' in mind when he developed his game. I guess we could theorize it was actually a deliberately-unworkable sop to people he disagreed with, intended to scuttle their arguments and be unworkable and thus never used in practice. Who knows?

We still have training requirements, but the whole "good play" bit is long, long gone. It was also tied to 'properly' playing to your alignment, which when no two people can ever agree on what each alignment defines as is just ripe for headaches.

Well, yeah, we pretty much ignored alignment from day 2. It was, at best, a sort of 'character trait' you wrote on your sheet. I never utilized any of the silly alignment languages and nonsense either. In fact I simply scrapped the whole 'Great Wheel' pretty much from day one. That did make a few items and spells ambiguous, but that was OK, they just didn't work reliably! lol. I mean, if you hit a demon with something that hurt CE beings, it would hurt! If you hit a PC with it, they better be incredibly depraved and actively engaged in some really depraved activity.

I'll take your word for that - I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first 4e DMG and even more so by the PH. The MM was worthwhile, as is any book that has monsters I haven't seen before that I can scoop and convert.

Lanefan

The 4e DMG1 has a LOT of great stuff in it. Chapters 6 and 7 are excellent for example. The places where it seems to fall down a bit are in the respect of actually expounding a single consistent concept of play. It is rather undecided there. First it says "go to the action!" "say yes" "let the player's invent their own quests" etc. And then it also provides rules for exactly how you break down doors, jump a certain number of feet, how much food you need every day and how many miles you can walk. It describes pre-generated content as an expected norm, and yet presents all the process and material you would need to play Story Now and even No Myth. Plus some of the rules are really not quite fully tested.

DMG2 is just more polished, but similar overall.

The PHB1 is a good solid book. It isn't the most exciting book to read, but it works and does its job. I think all 3 core books could have used a whole additional PT and editing cycle though. 4e should have been slated for 2010, not 2008.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I just read that section. How is that different than what I described about the player who wanted to become the leader of the northern barbarians? I described how players in my games can establish goals for themselves and then pursue them, forcing me to react to their authorship. @pemerton kept fighting me every step of the way, telling me that I was the one authoring everything and the players could only do things to cause me to respond with information. Now you're saying it's really close to direct player input into the fiction.

I think his commentary was in respect to the conventions of GM-directed play. 1) there may be established fiction which could lead the GM to block these actions. 2) The GM is not obliged to cater to the player's agenda, at all. 3) The GM is free to, even expected to, interject other material concerning his own interests or what he considers may be interesting.

These points establish the overall point, the GM isn't obliged or expected to allow for the PC to become king of barbarians. In Story Now it will CERTAINLY become a point of narrative, though the PC may still never accomplish it he is virtually guaranteed to at least have a narrative path which leads there.

 

[Maxperson]

So, basically, the players are some lesser form of beast that doesn't have the ability to decide for itself what it wants? If they want an Altar, they can, by gosh, come up with a story element that potentially involves an altar! Lets suppose one of the PCs is a dwarf cleric of Moradin and he has an established interest in such things, then perhaps that interest will be addressed at this time, its at least a possibility.

Yes, except for the part that's no, which is all of it. How come it's so hard for you to understand that people can enjoy something that they didn't think of? Do you become some sort of lesser beast whenever something comes up in real life that you didn't think of, but enjoy? I sure don't, and neither have any of the hundreds of players that I've played with over the decades.

NO they are not!!!! They are simply 'missing out' on lots of things being irrelevant to their expressed interests in the game. Remember, interests don't have to be narrowly conceived. For instance there was another [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] example of the guy who wanted to conquer the world, remember? That kind of goal could be leveraged for a vast, unlimited, set of possible elements that the GM thinks to add to the game. The giants, the altar, the 'knight hung from the wall', any of those things could be intended as a hook to engage that interest (I'd generally formulate such things in terms of OTHER interests, consequences of past actions, related to known story elements, etc. but that isn't a hard rule).

So as long as you can connect it to a PC interest, however tenuous, it's okay?

You guys, and maybe there's a subtle distinction here with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], certainly claimed we were railroading players by only presenting specific elements. I think you're splitting hairs here personally. I fully endorse Pemerton's technique, though I stated it could possibly be worth providing an explicit chance for the PCs to do some last-minute prep/tactics in that one situation. RAILROADING is crud like when the GM says "Yeah, that NPC you hired last week was really a spy for the bad guy and he knows all your secret plans, too bad I guess you'll have to assault the castle instead of sneaking in, sorry guys!" or even worse "You missed!" (when you actually hit the NPC that the GM is now giving plot armor to because it protects his backstory).

Railroading is also taking control of the PCs without having an in game reason for the control, eliminating choices, and more.

I disagree that it is 'weaker on options'. It is STRONGER on options! Players have an infinite number of things they can think of which are fun. They are JUST AS CAPABLE OF DOING SO as the GM!!!!!

It can't be stronger on options. Players in both styles can think of all the same things, but only one of the styles has a DM also thinking of things for the players to have fun with. Also, nice bit of hyperbole with the whole infinite fun things. People are flat out incapable of even coming close to thinking of infinite things, let alone infinite things that are fun. Heck, at any given moment they aren't even capable of thinking of all the things that they have had fun with in their lives.

To claim that this is not so isn't to claim a weakness in Story Now, it is to claim that players, as a type of game participant, are uniquely unqualified to come up with fun material.

No, that's provably false. If you can think of even one thing that is fun, your statement there is false. I never said they couldn't think of fun things. I said they can't think of all things that they would find fun, and that's a fact. People are limited, even geniuses.

But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.

Yes, I know that you can opt to miss out on the fun things along the trip in an RPG. My point with the example was to demonstrate through an analogy that you can encounter enjoyable things along a trip that you didn't think of yourself. This is a fact. In an RPG you can indeed not think of something, have the DM think of it, and still enjoy it.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, in every game the player's actions are likely to elicit different responses from the GM, and vice versa. This is the fundamental nature of all human interactions.

Which is why I give an example of play [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s statements that, "The players are saying things to get the DM to give information." are so bloody worthless. It doesn't mean anything. He should be specifying things that matter, not making a statement that applies to all RPGs.

The QUALITY of the interaction is vastly different, which is what is important here. In a GM-centered game, the GM always presents whatever fiction suites him, aside from cases dictated by the rules (IE in D&D usually the combat system, maybe some others to an extent).

This is false. I run a GM centered game, and I often present fictions that don't suit me, but have to be presented because of what the players have their PCs do. If a player tells me that his PC is walking north to take over the ice barbarians, I have no choice but to present fictions that fall in line with that. To do anything else is to both break the social contract and be a bad DM.

The GM is perfectly free to, and probably should if it will improve the story, challenge the character's beliefs by placing a 'damsel in distress' along the way.

The vast majority of things that I add to a journey can be related to a PC is some way, even if it's sometimes a stretch. Remember, my goal is for the players to have fun.

And where did anyone say that you have to go to 'the end of the story' right away? Why do you think this absurd thing? What even IS the end of the story when no story has yet been written??!!

No idea man. I didn't say anything about "the end of the story". I specifically said journey.

Furthermore, in the WA cosmology, Torog is pretty much explicitly set up to be challenged. He's probably the weakest of the gods (except Lolth, and maybe Zehir, both evil gods designed to be opponents). He's certainly the most accessible, in theory you can literally trudge on foot to his realm and meet him in person without any supernatural anything. He literally just lives in a cave (albeit a huge cave very deep in the Earth, etc.).

Okay. What does this have to do with what I said?

 

[Maxperson]

You still didn't answer the question. How does the GM know he's put enough opportunities in the player's path to 'think of everything' or 'do all the possible interesting things', or 'enough interesting things' along the way? Isn't this an AESTHETIC CHOICE, and thus ONLY subject to taste???!!! Yes! In our case we have an aesthetic that indicates things should MOVE ALONG and that's at least got the advantage of giving a consistent unambiguous answer to how many digressions are too many, ANY AT ALL!

There isn't such a thing as "all the possible", "enough", "not enough", "think of everything", etc. The question doesn't apply. The DM simply places some things that he thinks the players will find interesting. If they do, they engage. If they don't, they pass it by.

 

[Maxperson]

I think his commentary was in respect to the conventions of GM-directed play. 1) there may be established fiction which could lead the GM to block these actions. 2) The GM is not obliged to cater to the player's agenda, at all. 3) The GM is free to, even expected to, interject other material concerning his own interests or what he considers may be interesting.

These points establish the overall point, the GM isn't obliged or expected to allow for the PC to become king of barbarians. In Story Now it will CERTAINLY become a point of narrative, though the PC may still never accomplish it he is virtually guaranteed to at least have a narrative path which leads there.

That's not correct though. To point number 1, 30+ years of play, I haven't seen any established fiction that would block all possible ways to accomplish the PC's goals, without B) being established in such a way that the player wouldn't be breaking the social contract with his declaration. An example of B would be if the campaign world didn't have barbarians. A player would be violating the social contract by declaring the goal in the first place. To point number 2, the DM is obliged by the social contract to do so. Not doing so is being an asshat and a bad DM. To point number 3, the DM really shouldn't be putting in things for himself. The DM's job is to provide an entertaining game for the players, so while yes, he can put in stuff that he thinks is interesting to the players, he is not going to be running the game with his own interests in mind, since that would also be a violation of the social contract.

The DM isn't obliged or expected to ensure that the PC becomes the king of the barbarians, but he is obliged and expected to allow and support the attempt.

 

[Lanefan]

No, actually too many choices degrades most experiences. Its better to keep focused and have specific openings to change directions and a limited menu of explicit options. If the players want to make other choices, they can quite easily break in and nominate those choices.

In theory, yes. In practice, most of the time players will only make other choices, or even consider making other choices or changes of course, if they know a) the option to make those choices exists and b) what options they have to choose from.

But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works.

And that's also the way a fictional world would work for its inhabitants, were it somewhat realistic.

In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.

In an RPG one of the goals is to have fun playing your character. It's not the only goal by any means.

You are free to imagine that your way is 'better', and to the extent it is purely a matter of taste there's no dispute. Its not providing 'more choices' though. In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.

I guess the difference is that in one game type it's on the DM to provide some choices and distractions and options thus giving the players knowledge that such exist, where in the second game type it's more on the players to author their own choices and distractions and options...which can be more or less hard to do depending on how open the table is to such authorship.

 

[Lanefan]

Why is it 'a bit far', but the trip to the privy isn't? I don't understand... (really, I don't). If there's nothing expected to be particularly interesting happening in the 5 months it takes to get to Tokyo it is perfectly acceptable to simply narrate "you have a long, tedious, sometimes dangerous, and often uncomfortable trip to Tokyo" and be done with it. I'm not saying that HAS to be the right answer, but it is perfectly acceptable in a wide variety of games.

My point is that the bits I bolded contradict each other. "Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play; with all the attendant risks of bad dice luck leading to someone dying or losing a pile of gear or whatever.

And, even though there might not in the end have been any risk to the PCs at all you and they can't know this until the trip is over; and assuming your game world has weather patterns similar to ours the odds are very good that at least one or two significant weather hazards would arise during a trip that long. Never mind monsters or hostile inhabitants of an area.

MANY RPGs have only abstract wealth systems, or maybe even no explicit wealth system at all. d6 Space (old d6 Star Wars basically) has an abstract wealth system. Characters have a number of dice which represent their 'wealth', and various classes of expenditures require checks of a given level in order to successfully buy something. Buying a pair of boots might be a difficulty 3 check, buying a small merchant type starship might be a difficulty 40 check. Some actions can also cause some depletion of wealth (like buying a starship probably will). There is also income in that system, which gives you an idea of your affordable ongoing expenses (starships have upkeep). There actually are cited credit cost values of things, so you can compare and use the numbers in fiction, but PCs don't normally track specific quantities of cash, unless it has a very specific function in a given story.

In a futuristic game I can sort of see wealth being handled differently - part of the whole 'futuristic' thing - but in a typical coin-based medieval-fantasy setting I can't imagine not tracking wealth.

Besides, if people don't have wealth what are the thieves supposed to steal?

See, what bothers me about this as a technique is there's NO reference at all to what the particular scenario is about,

I've no clue on any of that - it was your example to start with.

any relation to player interests/agenda, stakes (IE does it matter how long the trip takes, narratively) etc. The only consideration is some empty notion that you have to serve some kind of non-existent requirement to present the PC's experience with no appreciable gaps at all. This is just not a genuine need in RPGs.

The relation to player agenda/stakes etc. is that they want to get to Tokyo and this is what's involved in getting there.

In a setting where a journey from Washington to Tokyo is potentially dangerous and certainly time-consuming, when the players state they want their PCs to make this journey, a DM who says in response words to the effect of "OK, you're in Tokyo" is being far too easy on his PCs via bypassing all the risk and danger of the trip. (though he's also denying them some possible xp they might have accrued in dealing with said risks...)

Just because the players say they want to go to Tokyo doesn't mean the PCs have to get there right now, or even this session.

Your point about presenting the PCs' experience without appreciable gaps is also valid...I hate it when something (e.g. research or item-crafting or whatever) becomes relevant later and players want to retcon into gaps and say "Oh, I could have done it during those four months of travel it took us to get here". I reply with something like "You can't have done it then because you didn't think of it then", and boom: instant argument. Bleah.

I've learned that the way to prevent this is to a) not leave big gaps behind whenever possible, and b) get players to tell you clearly what their PCs are doing during downtime, at least in general terms.

Lanefan