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<blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 7325387" data-attributes="member: 2656">The alternative to heavy worldbuilding is generic fantasy, which is what a lot of people who aren't interesting in worldbuilding, or lack the time for it, resort to. Generic fantasy typically has huge issues with consistency and logic (castles and flying foes, a crazy, anachronistic mix of technologies and politics, terrible geography etc etc), but these issues only bother a&nbsp; minority of the audience. For one off games and short campaigns there isn't time to impart a complex setting the players aren't already familiar with.For me the differences between a plot-important library in a dungeon and one a city concern action economy and suspension of disbelief. Dungeons constrain player decision making, and there is a more or less finite set of meaningful actions in the dungeon. Even when an action in the dungeon seems not to accomplish anything, it marks another element off the checklist. Whereas in a city there are an infinity of possible actions the players could take, most of which accomplish nothing (arguably). The risk that checking out the library is a waste of playtime is to me higher, because&nbsp; there are a million stories in the naked fantasy city, and most of them are not relevant to the pcs/ plots (in a conventional prepared game where the plot doesn't follow the PCs).The more freedom the players have, the harder it is to hook them in, so that everybody including the referee is having fun. I've seen it happen before that a game that worked fine within the confines of the dungeon, (constrained adventure space) falls apart in the wilderness/ city as the players don't notice or ignore the referees hooks and hare after red herrings and the stuff that interests them in the setting, which may not be what interests the referee.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aenghus, post: 7325387, member: 2656"] The alternative to heavy worldbuilding is generic fantasy, which is what a lot of people who aren't interesting in worldbuilding, or lack the time for it, resort to. Generic fantasy typically has huge issues with consistency and logic (castles and flying foes, a crazy, anachronistic mix of technologies and politics, terrible geography etc etc), but these issues only bother a minority of the audience. For one off games and short campaigns there isn't time to impart a complex setting the players aren't already familiar with. For me the differences between a plot-important library in a dungeon and one a city concern action economy and suspension of disbelief. Dungeons constrain player decision making, and there is a more or less finite set of meaningful actions in the dungeon. Even when an action in the dungeon seems not to accomplish anything, it marks another element off the checklist. Whereas in a city there are an infinity of possible actions the players could take, most of which accomplish nothing (arguably). The risk that checking out the library is a waste of playtime is to me higher, because there are a million stories in the naked fantasy city, and most of them are not relevant to the pcs/ plots (in a conventional prepared game where the plot doesn't follow the PCs). The more freedom the players have, the harder it is to hook them in, so that everybody including the referee is having fun. I've seen it happen before that a game that worked fine within the confines of the dungeon, (constrained adventure space) falls apart in the wilderness/ city as the players don't notice or ignore the referees hooks and hare after red herrings and the stuff that interests them in the setting, which may not be what interests the referee. [/QUOTE]

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