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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7354263" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I'm not sure I agree with your description of classic D&D. I never played through the BECMI system (although I owned all of them and the adventures), so if the presentation was so focused on the dungeon and only the dungeon, that was a later development and I'm not sure I would consider it the "classic" game. If anything, OD&D > AD&D is what I'd consider classic. In any event, I'll have to check out that post...Nor would I agree worldbuilding is about "making the maze."It might seem early D&D was focused on the dungeon, but even from the earliest TSR and third party releases (like Judges' Guild) it went beyond that. Gary and TSR early on thought that published adventures wouldn't sell, since the DM can just make their own. Even more when talking about a campaign world. That is, world-building was specifically in the domain of the DM, and not the publisher. This aspect of the game might not have been as obvious to those purchasing it, but it would be explicitly spelled out in adventures like B1 "In Search of the Unknown." For example:"Most good dungeons (and indeed, entire game campaigns) rest upon a firm basis of interesting background and "history" as set for the players by the game moderator, or Dungeon Master."That's the most basic part of worldbuilding. Setting the dungeon in a world. The first published adventure, Temple of the Frog in the Blackmoor supplement essentially provided a template that was copied by DMs thousands of times over. There was nearly two pages of background, setting the story, and a bit of worldbuilding. The rules already spoke of a campaign, where the characters would explore the world around them in a continuous fashion, and new characters would explore the same world of that DM. That is, if you were playing in Gary's campaign you were in the World of Greyhawk, and in Dave's campaign, Blackmoor. The original D&D set had rules for dungeon and wilderness adventures, including keeps, castles, etc.And the earliest adventures accentuated this serial nature of adventures within a known world, although the thrust at that time was still for DMs to create their own world. So I think worldbuilding has always been the intended domain of the DM, and what changed was that people began to play in published worlds more and more. If anything, I think that D&D has moved away from worldbuilding over the years. I started with the Holmes Basic Set and a Monster Manual. Of course, like many, many others my initial adventure was B2 Keep on the Borderlands, and like so many other DMs, that was my template for how to build a campaign. You start with a place in the world, an outpost in the wilderness. A Keep. And the first adventure your first characters take is, to find the adventure. It's a wilderness adventure, with several written encounters, and explicit instructions to make your own as a DM (and even has another dungeon "complex" indicated on the map specifically for the DM's use). The PCs are in search of the Caves of Chaos, but they don't know where it is.In fact, looking at OD&D, and how I, at least, learned to play in the late '70s, I'd characterize the spirit of the game as:DM: Dungeon/Campaign/WorldbuildingPlayers: Exploration.That is, the DM was there to provide the place to explore (however big or small), and the players/characters purpose was to explore. Treasure was a goal to encourage exploration, and monsters, traps, and tricks the challenges. Combat was one way to overcome challenges. But most dungeons had plenty of non-combat challenges too.But what specifically characterized D&D as unique is that it was designed to be a campaign. Wargames were about the current battle. This army against that one, and the next game is a different one. Sometimes you'd have a campaign, such as playing through a series of battles in WWII. But eventually the game and campaign would end.But D&D was different - you had a character. And after you finished one adventure, that same character would go on another adventure. And when somebody new joined, they would go on adventures with that character, and in the same world. And when your character died, a new one would enter the same campaign. And players would leave, but the campaign continued. New players joined, and the campaign continued. The game itself has no end. Now, the DM is mostly viewed as a referee. They have always been the referee of course, but their creative input is often more limited. They utilize a published world, or part of it, to run a published adventure. And since the APs tend to level a character from start to finish, there isn't a continuous campaign, you build new characters for the next AP. Now, at least from what I see on the forums and many local groups, I'd say the focus is:DM: RefereePlayers: (Mechanical) Character DesignersThe focus of players has shifted to Character Design. That is, designing a cool character, with cool abilities, and leveraging the rules to make that character shine...mechanically. It's not about their place in the world, it's about them. More importantly, more options that directly engage the rules. If it doesn't have a mechanical benefit, then it's not necessary. Now, players expect to be able to use any published material for their character, leveraging online "build guides" on how to maximize the mechanical aspects of character building. There are so many choices, and they don't want to make "trap" decisions, nor do they quietly accept the DM "nerfing" their choice by disallowing or changing a rule. In the past, the DM designed the world and the campaign, deciding the races, classes, modifications, and the rest of it. While there were always optional rules, in AD&D, and especially 2e, the DM could decide entire rule systems. This even extends to the rules themselves. Where once were there not only bonuses, but penalties, and everything was designed to be a trade-off, now there are complaints that a given race/class combination is "unplayable" because the ability score bonus is for the wrong stat. Instead of the Bilbo Baggins model, the modern RPG character is the Harry Potter model. Destined to be better than the average person in the world from birth.The focus shift, I think, started with marketing. TSR figured out that for every game there's one DM and 4-8 players. And there might be ancillary players beyond that in a given campaign. Write a book for the DM and you sell one per table. Write it for the players, and you might sell 4 or 5. In the TSR years, each book (and often in many places through the book) were disclaimers informing players that this is all cool stuff, but you can only use it if your DM agrees. Ask them first. WotC again, I think, looked at this from a marketing perspective. First, there were too many different rules, and despite the fact that they were all supposed to work together, they didn't. But I think there was a bigger issue at play. If the book you're selling says "you can only use this book if your DM says it's OK" discourages players to pick them up. Publish everything as canon, with optional rules scattered within, means that every book has something for the players that they can use.Want another sign that world-building or characters engaging in the world isn't the focus anymore. Questions like, "what do I spend gold on since I can't buy magic items in 5e?"Let's think through that a bit. First, who said you can't buy magic items anymore. If I'm playing a 3e or 4e game, and we convert to 5e, and we're in the same campaign, why are magic items suddenly not for sale anymore? Why did the world change? Just because the rules don't spell out a specific system for buying and selling magic items? It's character-building, at least on a mechanical level. If the character was being built on an actual character level, then they would have goals, likes, perhaps some debts or responsibilities, and all sorts of other reasons to spend gold. Many characters in our campaigns retire after a few adventures, because they've gained more riches than they could have imagined, and literally buy the farm and find a nice girl (guy) to settle down with and have a family. And then they sometimes un-retire when a reason presents itself. In the meantime, they act as a direct sort of world-building because not only do the characters know this NPC, but so do the players. If world-building was the current focus of the game, then the answer to the question would be obvious. "The same thing everybody else spends gold on." But world-building is clearly not the focus when that question is asked. Buying a keep, throwing a birthday party and inviting the whole of Hobbiton, getting fancy armor that cost 10 times more than is practical because you can have your plate gilded in gold, paying tithes, etc. But none of that helps you in the next combat, and in this world people are only focused on work (adventuring) 24x7.It's either the 15 MWD, or, "but the PHB doesn't say you actually have to sleep to take a long rest." The point, once again, is that the focus is on the mechanics and the rules, not on the world and the characters as people within it.In my opinion 2e was, paradoxically, the height of world-building in D&D, and the cause of its demise. With books like Leaves from the Inn of the Lost Home and Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, not to mention the Volo's Guides, the bulk of releases for the world were fluff. Things that helped flesh out a public campaign world, but also served as inspiration for those that made their own world. Because, my world should have unique kinds of cheese too. And Ale. And Trees. And songs, legends, and recipes. The problem was, it also got to the point where most DMs couldn't design such a richly detailed world. It's easier to hop aboard the Forgotten Realms train than to try and design it all yourself. I did, and then I proceeded to modify it heavily. All that is great, except that by the time 3e came around, the content shifted. Every single book had to have new playable races, new spells, new magic items, new prestige classes, new monsters, etc. Of course in terms of the spells, items and monsters many were old monsters updated. But the races and classes, well that was new. We have more options in the quest for the perfect character build. Character creation grew to be extremely complex. No more sitting down at a new table and rolling up a character in a few minutes. Even the complexity of the game has an impact. There are more rules for the DM to know. Way more. And that's less time world-building. Combats became complex, hour-or-more-long set pieces. Instead of combat just being a hurdle on the way to more exploration, it became the focus of much of the game. If there wasn't a battle mat for it, it didn't exist. Not only less world-building, but less time interacting with the world. The more complex the game has become, the more the players and the DM interact with the rules and the mechanics, instead of the world that the DM may or may not have created. This, of course, is not limited to D&D. Indie games often push worldbuilding to the side (don't design anything that doesn't come into play, or even until it comes into play), or takes it into a cooperative approach, giving the players a larger hand in the process. Again, neither are bad/wrong/fun, but they do provide a very different experience. These can still be strung together into a campaign, maintaining the established lore from earlier games. But in many cases the games discourage this, particularly as new players come into the game because it would limit their creative input.Some of it is to free up time for the DM, to avoid spending hours prepping for a game, only to learn that all of that prep went to waste. Here's the thing, though. Good DM prep work never goes to waste - if you're world-building. Building the world for the characters to explore, the people, the cultures, the ecological interactions of monsters and such, then you provide a framework not only for exploration, but for better DM improvisation. Instead of prepping (in great detail) this place or that, we look back to the brilliance of the early approach to dungeon and world design. Look back to early dungeons, or the Judges' Guild City State of the Invincible Overlord. There isn't a lot of detail, just a sentence or two with the basics.To me, good world-building is to identify things that are in the area, and their typical behaviors. For example, a displacer beast has a range of 40 miles, hunts in a small pack much like a lion, then you have some information to work with when you roll a random encounter (or decide there should be one here). If you determine that orcs don't have a monetary-based economy, finding things that you have to carry and can't hit things with useless, then you know that food, shelter, and weapons are better negotiating tactics when confronting an orc. World building isn't about placing every last tree and rock, it's about making the world come alive.  Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with wanting to engage in the rules and build the perfect character. It's a lot of fun. And the game (and RPGs) have evolved into games that a great many people like. I think that 5e has done a lot of simplify the rules, and bring the game back to that exploration, if not entirely to the campaign/world-building roots. I think that AL is more in tune with the campaign approach, with shorter adventures that tie together, but also tie into a greater world where you can have a group of characters and choose which character you want to use for a given adventure. What it often lacks is a cohesiveness and the ties into the greater world, since there isn't really any "between adventures" periods. But that's understandable due to the format. The other thing that seems to be on the upswing is the exploration style of play. Tomb of Annihilation, Out of the Abyss, and Storm King's Thunder in particular accentuate this aspect well, I think.</blockquote>

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