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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 7322257" data-attributes="member: 3192">I know I've been saying things like the OP does about old school D&D for years. But it's nice to read others saying it too. In early D&D the game didn't stop being a game when the rules were hidden behind a screen: the seminal moment of the hobby's creation. What D&D became was the world's first hidden design game. Just like most every computer game, D&D automated a game design players play to beat the game. Where every objective accomplished was a legitimate game success because the rewards were balanced within the design. What Arneson and Gary did was to fully realize all that extensive wargaming theory and design mechanics could be simplified, pre-drawn and pre-calculated during game preparation to allow for nearly everything imaginable to be gamed. Sure, not actually everything, but everything structurally coherent and expressible. And it would still remain a satisfyingly fair game as the referees would track the playing of it behind the screen.In old school D&D all of the rules are about the operation of the design. Most of that could be called world behavior. So "world building" is actually game designing in D&D. In our current improv storytelling hobby "world building" is treated like the term's place in narrative culture instead. Here are a few ideas I've heard:1. For shared narrative continuity.2. To maintain a coherent setting for a group improvised story.3. Group creation eases the burden and allows more voices in setting making.---------To your aside:"Everything in D&D is a maze". In other words there is no outside the mechanical design if you are playing D&D. Wilderness exploration is one form of game play, but traditionally at a different time and distance scale than most others. Whatever moves great distances still has to navigate the paths upon the wilderness game board. What happens in wilderness play is longer term mechanics come to the forefront and shorter term ones tend to abstract into the background (like combat rules when navigating the dungeon). To be clear, long term mechanics like food and water consumption, sleep, and fatigue are still applied during during every moment of the game. But they are at the forefront and commonly arising during long term wilderness treks. Just as many days of combat and traipsing through a dungeon will incur long term travel effects if no rest is taken. Hommlet, BTW, is also dungeon design. It is simply the Lawful dungeon. You can try and kill the monsters there and take their treasure too.</blockquote>

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