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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 7323000" data-attributes="member: 85870">Here's my take, @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=42582" target="_blank">pemerton</a> --- Interestingly, I think worldbuilding is actually ONLY relevant in the context of playing a character, in the sense that you care about the character's motivations, drives, the history that shaped that character to be the way he or she is now. It's only when you come out of the dungeon and start looking around that  it even matters---if you're the type of player that actually wants to  place his or her character into some kind of setting context. If you don't care about any of those things, I don't know that worldbuilding is truly all that relevant. And classic "Gygaxian" D&D seems to agree with this. As long as your character/player is head down, delving deep into the dungeon, none of that fiction-y, character backstory context matters much. It's purely about meeting the challenge in front of you. My secondary group has been playing D&D 5 using Curse of Strahd  straight by the book. It's strictly beer and pretzels, puzzles and  combat. And the last time I played with that group, it was possibly the  worst D&D game I've played in my life. No context. No life. No real  explanation for anything. "This is the stuff that's here, you're the  player, go pull those levers because I'm the GM and I put them there."I've just started playing Assassin's Creed 2 again, since I never managed to finish it the first time around. I think about how much time and energy the developers put into creating the fictional cities that exist in Ezio's world. How much of the fun of Assassin's Creed 2 is tied to the emotional stakes set in the worldbuilding around Ezio's family, the politics of the time, and the "NPCs"? Take away the back story and setting, and it's not much more than a game about climbing buildings and killing people and taking their stuff . . . gee, that sounds familiar . . . .The real question is, how much backstory is necessary to create high enough emotional stakes to make gameplay interesting? Some people only want the minimum amount possible and no more. Some want considerably more than that. The best RPG groups I've ever played in were in settings where the players had an immediate, familiar connection to the world. Character only matters when there's a context for the character to matter in. Worldbuilding is about creating that context.</blockquote>

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