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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7411884" data-attributes="member: 42582">Many early posts in thie thread said that the purpose of worldbuilding is to underping exploration, which means - more-or-less - learning stuff from the GM about the setting s/he has established and is curating.Now that's not my favourite style of play. But if I was going to explain why it can be appealing as a type of RPGing, I wouldn't begin by emphasising how much agency it gives the players over the content of the shared fiction, because it seems to me almost self-evident that there are other approaches to RPGing that give the players greater agency of that sort.I would begin by explaining what the virtues are of having someone else tell you stuff about the setting they created. Presumably that has at least something in common with the virtues of storytelling, and the pleasures of being an audience member.Likewise, I would want to explain how players have the capacity - by choosing, eg what moves they declare for their PCs which, in the fiction, will result in those PCs moving from place to place - to trigger GM narration is a good thing. How is learning about the duergar (to pick an example) by having the GM narrate a scene in which one's PC is present different from learning about the duergar by reading an imaginary encyclopedia entry? Presumably there's an answer to that question - but is it connected to the second-personality of the narration? The imaginative projection of oneself into the narrated scene (which is not normally part of reading an ecncyclopedia)?It doesn't seem to me that there's nothing to say along these lines.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7411884, member: 42582"] Many early posts in thie thread said that the purpose of worldbuilding is to underping [I]exploration[/I], which means - more-or-less - [I]learning stuff from the GM about the setting s/he has established and is curating[/I]. Now that's not my favourite style of play. But if I was going to explain why it can be appealing as a type of RPGing, I wouldn't begin by emphasising how much agency it gives the players over the content of the shared fiction, because it seems to me almost self-evident that there are other approaches to RPGing that give the players greater agency of that sort. I would begin by explaining what the virtues are of having someone else tell you stuff about the setting they created. Presumably that has at least something in common with the virtues of storytelling, and the pleasures of being an audience member. Likewise, I would want to explain how players have the capacity - by choosing, eg what moves they declare for their PCs which, in the fiction, will result in those PCs moving from place to place - to trigger GM narration is a good thing. How is learning about the duergar (to pick an example) [I]by having the GM narrate a scene in which one's PC is present[/I] different from learning about the duergar by reading an imaginary encyclopedia entry? Presumably there's an answer to that question - but is it connected to the second-personality of the narration? The imaginative projection of oneself into the narrated scene (which is not normally part of reading an ecncyclopedia)? It doesn't seem to me that there's [I]nothing [/I]to say along these lines. [/QUOTE]

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