Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9046224" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think this kind of illustrates a few things about my shift away from this kind of worldbuilding in my RPGing. There are other factors as well, but this summarizes a few. First, that kind of worldbuilding is just incredibly difficult to keep straight. Here's the guy who's considered the master... and he had all kinds of contradictions. His son and another professional author had trouble reconciling some of it. And this is someone who had time to do multiple drafts and revise things prior to publishing. Second, the vast majority of that information just doesn't make it into play. To stick with Tolkien, if the Lord of the Rings is play, and the Silmarillion is the GM's backstory... it's superfluous. I understand that this information can help guide a GM's judgments during play, but that's not a necessity, and it also means that things totally unseen to the players (and likely to remain so) are what's shaping play. I don't think that's ideal for what's supposed to be an exercies in shared creativity. Third, The Silmarillion is terrible. I think there's a reason that his first attempt with it was rejected, and so it became a background for a more viable story in the form of LotR. There are obviously interesting ideas in The Silmarillion, but the way it's constructed and presented is just not all that interesting. How this relates to RPGs is that presentation matters... just crafting encyclopedia style histories spanning thousands of years doesn't mean it's interesting to read, let alone to shape play. Fourth, all the effort and energy that goes into this fictional history is, in my opinion, misplaced effort. As a GM I should be creating interesting things for the players to interact with... NPCs and locations and situations and the like. Sure, some of those things may need a bit of historical context, but there's no need to lock everything in ahead of time. Doing so denies me the flexibility to incorporate the ideas of the players should a more interesting take present itself during play that I'd not thought of. These are the lessons that I've learned considering Tolkienesque worldbuilding. The pros it has on play are minimal compared to the cons.</blockquote>

Verification