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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4166807" data-attributes="member: 32536">Wow... Your posts are really starting to have a negative tone that is making even me feel uncomforatable and insulted, even though I don't agree with Lizard at all in his bigger points... Maybe it would help if you stopped trying to sweep so many negative and flawed generalizations under the terms "worldbuilding" and "worldbuilders". I don't think lizard was even being rude or dismissive at all there...Anyways, regarding the post you made in response to my question...I admit that I still don't particularly understand your viewpoint, especially when you condemn things like "bottom-up design" and the Dungeoncraft articles as bad exercises that lead to hundreds of hours before you can even start a campaign. The very point of bottom-up design is to avoid that situation, and just about every Dungeoncraft article I have ever read uses "don't create more than you need at the moment" as a core guiding principle.The bottom-up method of worldbuilding is based on the idea that you create just enough setting to run the next session's game. You make a town with a few people, an adventure hook, and an adventure, call it a day, and run the D&D session. After that session, you expand the setting a little, add a few more story hooks, add in another adventure, and then run the next session. If the PCs move on from the starting town, you make up another one, fill it with some details, and add more story hooks and adventures. It is worldbuilding that can be done completely independent of an existing setting (and in fact, even existing settings require that you do this kind of building), but it is directly linked to the process of running a campaign. It has none of the flaws that you complain about in your post.Unless you can claim that you don't create any original towns, adventure sites, or characters of any kind while DMing, then you worldbuild as part of DMing. If you find creating anything of that sort to be fun, then you have fun worldbuilding. At least, that is the definition I use for the term, and is the definition most other people seem to use.I love worldbuilding. I will admit that, along with my brother, I created a fairly complex and detailed setting using the top-down approach, with a lot of detailed history, many unique characters, and many nations, cultures, and religions. At the same time, I am looking forward to 4E as a great chance to just make up a whole setting as I go along, with only a little bit of preparation (and more of the preparation is focused on laying down plot hooks than detailing setting elements). If I can make up a setting entirely from on-the-fly decisions made in the middle of game sessions, and have a lot of fun doing so, I don't think I agree that worldbuilding is this terrible hundred-hour chore inflicted upon DMs by the game. It is only a chore if you enjoy the task and volunteer for it, since there are many alternatives, even without a default setting or buying a setting book.</blockquote>

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