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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7391643" data-attributes="member: 71699">Reflecting on that point, I think it is because I see it as a continuum.This assertion doesn't pan out for me because I can think of evidence to the contrary, both in form and intent. Contrast the world-building in Griffin Mountain, X1 Isle of Dread, MOLAD, Burning Wheel: Jihad, Lionheart, and Chivalry and Sorcery. The designers of Griffin Mountain open up a landscape for stories, whereas the designer of Isle of Dread presents specific problems. The world-build artifacts for MOLAD were two pages of notable characters and their ranks, and one  sketch of the core plane showing some of their domains. Players maintained notes on their characters and whatever else interested them: their canon. Burning Wheel: Jihad focuses on points of inspiration, but undeniably offers anchoring framing. Then look at the RPG sourcebook Lionheart - "The philosophy of Lionheart is to provide an organized, accessible view of 1190 England" which it does admirably - perfect for framing stories, and there are no pre-fab adventures in that book. Look at the world-build material in Chivalry and Sorcery, which guide players to create their own medieval world, rather than presenting one out of the box. Or look at Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide where I see maps, images and narration intended to help a group bring an imagined world to life. I hadn't paid attention before to the wide variety of ways world-building happens before this thread, and most especially find that it is diverse and ongoing. This thread opens with something like GNS' argument for the incoherence of creative agendas: claiming world-building to be an activity and artifact of gamism or simulationism, and irrelevant for narrativism. For me there are two obvious problems for that. First and most strongly, I find claims of incoherence between those creative agendas disingenuous or idiosyncratic, as they jar with my experience of play. We may lean into one agenda more than others, but our agendas do not repel each other as vigorously as the claimed incoherence envisions. The way we lean is also far from static. Rather those agendas (and perhaps others) define a multidimensional volume that we occupy and move around within. From time to time leaning more into one part than another.Secondly, whatever we think about incoherence, the activities and artifacts of world-building are valuable and in fact unavoidably part of narrativism. Even if the agendas are incoherent, world-building still has value for narrativism, only with an altered preferred focus and form. Which makes sense.What I think the OP has been most successful in illuminating is that the way world-building will occur, and the forms it takes, when we are leaning into narrativism, is going to differ from the process and forms when leaning into other creative agendas.</blockquote>

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