What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Imaro]

I'm already well familiar with Fate, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], so there is no need to lecture me on it. Maxperson and Hawkeye clarified your reading.

I was just trying to clarify my position and provide insight into the FATE system for others who might have been following the post and weren't aware of how FATE worked including yourself (which you have now clarified isn't the case)... sorry it came off as lecturing but that wasn't my intent.

IME with those systems, "What flaws?"

Well, why would the player choose the flaw if they didn't want to play it? That seems more a disconnect with the character the player actually wanted vs. the the one they created. My point of comparison was whether the player vs. the GM should be in control of determining when and where those flaws are expressed.

 

[Aldarc]

I was just trying to clarify my position and provide insight into the FATE system for others who might have been following the post and weren't aware of how FATE worked including yourself (which you have now clarified isn't the case)... sorry it came off as lecturing but that wasn't my intent.

Ah, I see (said the blind man). My apologies.

Well, why would the player choose the flaw if they didn't want to play it? That seems more a disconnect with the character the player actually wanted vs. the the one they created. My point of comparison was whether the player vs. the GM should be in control of determining when and where those flaws are expressed.

Oh, I meant that in unenforced or "flaws/troubles optional" systems, I often see players attempt to marginalize all potential weaknesses or ignore any flaws. So the roleplaying of flaws tends to be negligible and the "roleplayed" characters tend to be flat. One possible hypothesis may be rooted the system goals, rewards system, and incentives. D&D, for example, has its roots in wargaming, and so there is often an underlying sense in play of "winning the game" through appropriate adjudication of resources, minizing weaknesses, and maximizing strengths. It also explains why so many GMs here and elsewhere have bemoaned certain backstory tropes, such as the lone wolf with no parents or loved ones, because players often have a subliminal fear that their attachments will be weaponized against the player. No flaws, no losses. But perhaps you have your own experiences or explanations about this phenomenon.

On your last sentence, players in Fate can propose to the GM story complications or roleplay with their Troubles for the sake of drama, Fate points, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, I see (said the blind man). My apologies.

Oh, I meant that in unenforced or "flaws/troubles optional" systems, I often see players attempt to marginalize all potential weaknesses or ignore any flaws. So the roleplaying of flaws tends to be negligible and the "roleplayed" characters tend to be flat. One possible hypothesis may be rooted the system goals, rewards system, and incentives. D&D, for example, has its roots in wargaming, and so there is often an underlying sense in play of "winning the game" through appropriate adjudication of resources, minizing weaknesses, and maximizing strengths. It also explains why so many GMs here and elsewhere have bemoaned certain backstory tropes, such as the lone wolf with no parents or loved ones, because players often have a subliminal fear that their attachments will be weaponized against the player. No flaws, no losses. But perhaps you have your own experiences or explanations about this phenomenon.

On your last sentence, players in Fate can propose to the GM story complications or roleplay with their Troubles for the sake of drama, Fate points, etc.

For my part, I incentivize roleplaying your character, flaws and all. I hand out bonus exp when those flaws come up in game, especially if they come up at a time that could be detrimental to the PC. For example, if the PC has a flaw of getting drunk in the evenings and gets invited(along with the rest of the party) to dinner with the local lord, I will give bonus exp if he gets drunk at the dinner party and makes a fool of himself. Now, these flaws don't exist in isolation, so other roleplaying factors can also be brought into play. There are a lot of variables. For example, if said PC has an 18 wisdom and the player says to me, "I know that I usually get drunk in these situations, but I'm wise enough to know that if I take even a single sip of alcohol tonight I won't be able to stop, so I use my willpower to resist drinking.", that would also be roleplaying his character. Now, if he had a 6 wisdom, was an alcoholic and didn't drink, basically having no reasonable justification for not roleplaying that flaw, I wouldn't award any of the bonus exp.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The ibcreased focus on flaws and bonds in game design has been great, I think. These are things I’ve tried to get my players to commit to over the years, and whenever they’ve done it, it’s enriched the game and the story we’re telling. I’m very glad that D&D has adopted this element from other games, and added a mechanical aspect to it. I think maybe a bit more could be done with the system than simple Inspiration, but I have no problem increasing the importance in my game.

These are the kinds of elements that really enhance the worldbuilding, in my opinion. Even in a game like D&D that tends to be played very traditionally (I mean, it pretty much defined the tradition), these bits can really serve to have the players contribute elements to the game world. For me, Ihave always loved when my players add things to the fiction, and appreciate their investment, and I do my best to reward that effort.

 

[Aldarc]

Note: This thread has some amazing people and some excellent game theory discussion. Party on, dudes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I do mostly agree with your summation. My point of contention is how the Troubles/Compels are being characterized as hurdles for play. Troubles are self-selected to engender the play experiences the player wants for their character. So it seems unintuitive for how Fate works to say that Troubles are preventing a player from playing their character as they envision them. Why should a player be frustrated by Troubles they selected themselves?

Also, it kinda sounds - and here I do exaggerate - like you are depicting the other side as "I want to play Spider-Man but suffer none of the flaws or consequences. It's just as Uncle Ben said, 'With great power comes great...' You know what? Screw that, and give me back that symbiote suit. I was ways more powerful that way. It's a clear upgrade on the stats, and I don't have to reload my webs. Score."

I don't think that the late/end game character is necessarily what my players have in mind here. Since we have been talking about Spider-Man, let's stick with that and superheroes for a second. If we were playing a supers game, they would likely have a basic power set in mind for playing Spider-Man. But the issue would be akin to leveling three levels as a mundane Peter Parker high school dork before getting your Spider-Man of "spider-sense" and maybe wall-crawling, but then having to wait another four levels before you unlock your web-slinging, and then another set of levels before you get your super physique. Sure, superheroes power-up/level, but most heroes start out with their set of powers realized. And most people wanting to a Spider-Man-esque character - maybe an off-brand character called the "The Bug" - would want to jump into that character concept right away rather than slog through months of play before they can play the character concept they had in mind. For some of my players in D&D 5E, they may have to wait until level 3 or later - depending on archetype features or sufficient multiclassing - before they get what they consider the core of their character concept realized. The "process of getting there" can come across as a begrudging tax rather than an exciting feature, and I don't think that this makes them bad players for wanting to play what they actually have in mind for their character as soon as possible and being disappointed with that "process." In contrast, there are other games where players can jump right in at "level 0" with their realized character concepts and basic suite of features for that concept.

This is what I liked best about 4e (well, I say that about a lot of things, but so what?). It did a very good job of making you 'fully realized' at level 1. You were LIMITED, but in an essential way every class did its iconic thematic 'stuff' right out of the box. Later elements of design of this game were built around that concept too, like PP and ED, where you get ANOTHER set of thematic and iconic choices, as opposed to just finally fulfilling the original ones (AD&D for example makes the fighter go to level 9 before he gets his stronghold, but its still just the same thing every fighter gets, and thus part of the AD&D fighter archetype).

In 4e something similar would be a PP, one of any number of choices you could make at that level to become a new sort of character. You could even steal the PP from a different class (some don't even care about what class you are). Maybe 'Stronghold Lord' is a PP that assumes a warlord by default, but a fighter or ranger (or even a wizard) could easily use a MC feat to access it, and be effective with it if the player was reasonably thoughtful about his other choices.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But there's nothing stopping a game from having a different approach than D&D.

Couldn't a fantasy game allow a certain character class or type to have a variety of abilities from the very beginning of play, and then rather than gaining new abilities over time, the character can simply get better at them, or perhaps decide which ones to improve?

This is of course assuming that there is any progression expected in the game. I don't see why a game can't just start with fully realized characters, with little to no advancement in mind for play. Sure, I think such a game would lack something, but there's no reason a game couldn't function that way.

Well, Traveler effectively DOES work that way. In the original Classic game there was literally no mechanism at all for character advancement, EXCEPT if you had psionics, which could only be acquired by training (they were considered to be highly prejudiced against and thus unavailable in normal play). I always thought of that system as basically tacked on though, sort of like D&D's, maybe even inspired by it in that sense.

The problems with Traveler were ones of game stagnation. Either there was great difficulty and peril involved in advancing your character's wealth, or it was relatively easy. Either way you either lingered in the poorhouse or quickly became rather boringly wealthy. Even social advancement was basically precluded as it was determined by a pre-generated stat. In Traveler society you literally CANNOT change your social standing!

I found that campaigns tended to start drifting and peter out fairly predictably after 8 or 10 sessions.

Frankly I think D&D's great success is MOSTLY due to the steep power curve you can climb, and that it is pretty heavily regulated to produce a steady but lengthy advance during which new 'stuff' is (mostly) steadily acquired. Few other RPGs, maybe none really, have done this with the same consistency that D&D does. This was central genius of Arneson/Gygax design.

Yes, you could start fully-realized heroic/mythical/whatever characters. Many games do this. Its hard to get the same sort of player buy-in and difficult to sustain longer term story arcs and campaigns. I think D&D's steady replay value comes from this very fact, it draws you into a long-term commitment to play your character and develop it mechanically.

 

[pemerton]

In the original Classic game there was literally no mechanism at all for character advancement, EXCEPT if you had psionics

Not quite true. There are the rules for improving skills or stats in Book 2. Having recently used them, I can report that they're not much like D&D!

 

[Aldarc]

Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks.

When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story.

Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect:
* Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble.
* Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold?
* Player: Maybe a prince.
* Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them?
* Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled?

Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics.

This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that the collective group often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.

 

[clearstream]

Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks.

When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story.

Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect:
* Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble.
* Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold?
* Player: Maybe a prince.
* Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them?
* Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled?

Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics.

This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that the collective group often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.

Are you essentially saying that world-building gains value for you as a group activity?