Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7390471" data-attributes="member: 42582">To me, your analysis doesn't seem to distinguish between shared storytelling and RPGing. (Or, at least, it seems not to be sensitive to some significant differences between them.)I am not terribly experienced in cooperative storytelling games, but fairly recently I played a session of "A Penny for My Thoughts", and <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?611305-What-is-*worldbuilding*-for/page52&p=7352459&viewfull=1#post7352459" target="_blank">I posted about that in this thread.</a>Unlike RPGing, in this game there are no action declarations. Thus there is no fictional positioning, and no action resolution. There is just free narration, undertaken within the game's framework for allocating authority from moment to moment within the game. The sequence of narration is established by a mixture of mechanics and choices that (at various points) one particular player gets to make about who goes next. Much of what is said by prior players creates both constraint and resource as far as further contributions are concerned, although - at certain points in the game - one player has the authority to choose between alternatives put forward by two other players.In contrast to this game, RPGing does involve action declarations. In RPGs that follow traditional/mainstream conventions, those action declarations are made by players in the context of situations that have been established/framed by a GM. There is, thus, already an assymetry of roles as far as introducing fictional content is concerned.Furthermore, when action declarations in a RPG are resolved, fictional positioning is a factor. And again, in most mainsream RPGs, the GM has a special responsibility to keep track of, and articulate, and ultimately (if there are disagreements) to adjudicate the fictional positioning.This is where the OP sees the significance of worldbuilding. In classic D&D play (ie dungeon exploration) it is absolutely crucial that fictional positioning includes elements which (i) the GM has established in advance of the action declaration (typically by drawing and keying up a dungeon in advance of play), and (ii) the GM does not reveal to the players until they delcare actions for their PCs which oblige the GM to narrate it to them.Examples of this which have been discussed at length in this thread include searching for a secret door, and searching for a map. In classic D&D, it is crucial to the way the game works that the success or failure of such attempts depends (perhaps not solely) upon whether the place that is being searched is the place the GM has recorded as the place where the map is, or a place where a secret door exists. This unrevealed fictional positioning becomes a key element in action resolution.The GM is therefore entitled, and indeed obliged, to declare an action a failure ("No, you don't find a secret door/the map you are looking for") although there is no violation of genre credibility, no invoking of out-of-line tropes (beam weaponry in the duke's toilet), and the fictional positioning that underpins the failure of the action is not something to which the player has access except by inference from the fact that the action failed.The OP contends that this approach to worldbuiling, and its use as an element of fictional positioning used to resolve action declarations by way of "hidden" or "secret" GM-preauthored backstory/fictional elements, makes sense in classic play because a big part of the point of classic play is to learn this stuff. It's a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise, where the principal reward for learning the stuff that begins as unrevealed is gp which translate into XP.The OP also contends that most contemporary RPGing is not this sort of puzzle/maze-solving play; that it's more focused on "stories" about interesting characters doing narratively interesting stuff. (A further but to some extent secondary contention is that, once you start playing in non-dungeonesque "living, breathing worlds", the puzzle/maze-solving approach to play becomes rather impractical, as there are too many parameters potentially unknown to the players to prevent them drawing the sorts of inferences that classic play depends upon.)The OP then asks, in this contemporary style of RPGing, what is the point of worldbuilding of the classic sort? - ie of the GM establishing fictional elements that serve as unrevealed fictional positionioning which therefore (i) constrain success in action declaration, and (ii) produce a dynamic of play where a significant amount of the play experience is declaring actions which will oblige the GM to reveal some of this hitherto-unrevealed stuff (many RPGers describe this using in-fiction rather than at-the-table language like "exploration", "gathering information", "scouting", etc).This is not a question (rhetorical or otherwise) about "fun-killing" worldbuilding, because it seems pretty clear that a lot of RPGers find this fun. It's not a question which can be answered independent of who does the worldbuilding, because the allocation of roles in relation to framing, action declaration and adjudication is fundamental to the phenomenon being asked about.It's also a question about something different from genre constrains, or even fictional positioning constraints, in general. These don't rely upon being unrevealed to the players. When the player asks "Do I find any beam weapons in the duke's toilet?", the GM doesn't have to consult (or pretend to consult) notes and answer "No" in a sphinx-like manner: s/he can reply, "Of course not - we're playing D&D, not Star Frontiers!" When the player whose PC is on a flying ship declares "I attack the NPC on the ground beneath me", and the GM asks "Do you have any missile weapons on you?", and then a check of the PC sheet reveals the answer to be "no", the GM can reply "Well, you can't attack the NPC with a sword while you're up in the air, can you?" without having to rely on anything unrevealed. This is straightforward fictional positioning, which is common knowledge among everyone at the table.It's a particular style of worldbuilding, based on "hidden" backstory that serves as unrevealed fictional positioning, and which was crucial to the play of classic D&D, that the OP is asking about.</blockquote>

Verification