Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[pemerton]

In the examples you mention - you're establishing that there is an Imperial Interstellar Navy (and an Empire, for that matter), that there are barbarians who prefer greataxes and eschew armor, and that there are armored knights. None of those are necessarily givens in any particular setting. Star Trek, for example, doesn't have an Imperial Interstellar Navy - at least not on the Federation side - so you're clearly not doing a far future utopian/Star Trek campaign. A campaign based around the Three Musketeers is unlikely to have greataxe-wielding barbarians or armored knights (in the traditional Medieval Romance or Game of Thrones mode anyway) so you're probably not doing a campaign like that. By establishing the parameters of the setting, you are worldbuilding.

Ok again maybe I'm not grasping this but in establishing armoured knights or barbarians with great axes we are in fact establishing part of the world...that these things exist in said world. How is that not worldbuilding? Likewise deciding that kobolds are mini-dragons who serve dragons dictates the culture of kobolds (as a whole) in your particular world. I get you don't consider it worldbuilding but I feel like you haven't given a coherent reason as to why this doesn't count. I also think it might help if you provide some examples of what you do consider worldbuilding to contrast.

I think I have two reasons for disagreeing with this.

One is about the relationship between commercial products and actual play. I bought the 4e Monster Manual. I use it as my default source of lore for my main 4e game - I told the players that at the start of the campaign (ie "I want to run a default 4e game - who's in?"), and have stuck to it. The MM tells me that orcs worship Gruumsh, so that's the default in my game.

But there has not been a single occurence of an orc in that campaign. There have been goblins, and hobgoblins, and bugbears; ogres and various sorts of giants; I think some troglodytes; but no orcs (and no kobolds, lizardfolk, xvarts, and probably other fairly common humanoids I'm forgetting). So does the world in fact contain Gruumsh-worshipping orcs at all? Who knows? A disposition to say "yes" should it ever come up, because that's what the book says, isn't the same as it actually having come up in play.

(The same reasoning applies to PC build elements. Do wardens exist in the world of my 4e game? Who knows? No player has ever built one, and I've never used a warden-type character as a NPC.)

The second reason follows on from the first: as far as RPGing is concerned, until some concrete situation is established in which some PCs are present, the game isn't happening. And worldbuilding in the RPG context therefore has to be in service of that. So long as it stays at the abstract level ("Kobolds serve dragons") then no setting for play has been established. It's just the GM daydreaming to him-/herself. (Maybe the daydream gets written down in a notebook. It's still just a daydream.)

Once something gets written down about a dragon being here, or having done this thing in the past, with kobolds being involved in this way - now we have setting that can feed into situation, which is how I would think about RPG worldbuilding.

 

[Imaculata]

So then what is world building exactly? Lets try and narrow it down.

I'm sure there are a few things that we can agree on, that fit into the world building category. For example, adding a history to your world, would fall under world building in my opinion. A good example of this would be how Game of Thrones has a fictional history, from the very recent (The Mad King) to very long ago (The First Men). When the DM writes a history for his fictional campaign world, I feel this is part of world building.

Do religions fit in the world building category? Or only under specific conditions?

Are any deities that you make up for a homebrew campaign setting, automatically world building?

 

[Imaro]

I think I have two reasons for disagreeing with this.

One is about the relationship between commercial products and actual play. I bought the 4e Monster Manual. I use it as my default source of lore for my main 4e game - I told the players that at the start of the campaign (ie "I want to run a default 4e game - who's in?"), and have stuck to it. The MM tells me that orcs worship Gruumsh, so that's the default in my game.

But there has not been a single occurence of an orc in that campaign. There have been goblins, and hobgoblins, and bugbears; ogres and various sorts of giants; I think some troglodytes; but no orcs (and no kobolds, lizardfolk, xvarts, and probably other fairly common humanoids I'm forgetting). So does the world in fact contain Gruumsh-worshipping orcs at all? Who knows? A disposition to say "yes" should it ever come up, because that's what the book says, isn't the same as it actually having come up in play.

Yes the world does because you stated that the lore of 4e was default. The only way the world doesn't contain these orcs is if you stated or state at some point that the default orcs do not exist in your world.

(The same reasoning applies to PC build elements. Do wardens exist in the world of my 4e game? Who knows? No player has ever built one, and I've never used a warden-type character as a NPC.)

Again I disagree... if everything in the 4e default lore was only a possibility in your world why not state that from the beginning... in other words until it's established anything and everything is up for grabs? Why declare that the 4e lore is default when in fact it seems (at least by what you are posting here) that the 4e lore is only one of many possible versions of lore? It seems you are just confusing the issue by proclaiming it as the default but then only making that the case once it's been introduced in play, what's the point? Just state that there is no set lore and it's established during play.

The second reason follows on from the first: as far as RPGing is concerned, until some concrete situation is established in which some PCs are present, the game isn't happening. And worldbuilding in the RPG context therefore has to be in service of that. So long as it stays at the abstract level ("Kobolds serve dragons") then no setting for play has been established. It's just the GM daydreaming to him-/herself. (Maybe the daydream gets written down in a notebook. It's still just a daydream.)

I disagree. You seem to be implying if not outright stating that the game isn't happening unless there's a concrete situation in which PC's are present but IMO that's not the case.

As an example character creation and leveling up don't meet this criteria and yet it is a part of playing the game (or another example from 4e...quest creation by players doesn't fit your prescribed definition and yet it is definitely a part of playing the game for some). In the same way a GM creating his world is (at least for some GM's) playing the game though it does not fall into your prescribed notion of what that should be. Both the players and GM have portions of the game that they are involved in that don't necessarily fall into this narrow definition.

Once something gets written down about a dragon being here, or having done this thing in the past, with kobolds being involved in this way - now we have setting that can feed into situation, which is how I would think about RPG worldbuilding.

Eh now you have specific history. While part of worldbuilding I think worldbuilding itself is much broader than creating history.

 

[billd91]

I think I have two reasons for disagreeing with this.

One is about the relationship between commercial products and actual play. I bought the 4e Monster Manual. I use it as my default source of lore for my main 4e game - I told the players that at the start of the campaign (ie "I want to run a default 4e game - who's in?"), and have stuck to it. The MM tells me that orcs worship Gruumsh, so that's the default in my game.

But there has not been a single occurence of an orc in that campaign. There have been goblins, and hobgoblins, and bugbears; ogres and various sorts of giants; I think some troglodytes; but no orcs (and no kobolds, lizardfolk, xvarts, and probably other fairly common humanoids I'm forgetting). So does the world in fact contain Gruumsh-worshipping orcs at all? Who knows? A disposition to say "yes" should it ever come up, because that's what the book says, isn't the same as it actually having come up in play.

(The same reasoning applies to PC build elements. Do wardens exist in the world of my 4e game? Who knows? No player has ever built one, and I've never used a warden-type character as a NPC.)

The second reason follows on from the first: as far as RPGing is concerned, until some concrete situation is established in which some PCs are present, the game isn't happening. And worldbuilding in the RPG context therefore has to be in service of that. So long as it stays at the abstract level ("Kobolds serve dragons") then no setting for play has been established. It's just the GM daydreaming to him-/herself. (Maybe the daydream gets written down in a notebook. It's still just a daydream.)

Once something gets written down about a dragon being here, or having done this thing in the past, with kobolds being involved in this way - now we have setting that can feed into situation, which is how I would think about RPG worldbuilding.

I think that would indicate a fairly idiosyncratic definition of worldbuilding. I suspect for a good many of us, by defining the game as Default 4e and having an inclination to say Yes to inclusion and will to use the default settings, you've effectively done worldbuilding. Even selecting prebuilt campaigns and lore is worldbuilding your campaign simply by making that choice rather than making other choices.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think I have two reasons for disagreeing with this.

One is about the relationship between commercial products and actual play. I bought the 4e Monster Manual. I use it as my default source of lore for my main 4e game - I told the players that at the start of the campaign (ie "I want to run a default 4e game - who's in?"), and have stuck to it. The MM tells me that orcs worship Gruumsh, so that's the default in my game.

But there has not been a single occurence of an orc in that campaign. There have been goblins, and hobgoblins, and bugbears; ogres and various sorts of giants; I think some troglodytes; but no orcs (and no kobolds, lizardfolk, xvarts, and probably other fairly common humanoids I'm forgetting). So does the world in fact contain Gruumsh-worshipping orcs at all? Who knows? A disposition to say "yes" should it ever come up, because that's what the book says, isn't the same as it actually having come up in play.

(The same reasoning applies to PC build elements. Do wardens exist in the world of my 4e game? Who knows? No player has ever built one, and I've never used a warden-type character as a NPC.)

The second reason follows on from the first: as far as RPGing is concerned, until some concrete situation is established in which some PCs are present, the game isn't happening. And worldbuilding in the RPG context therefore has to be in service of that. So long as it stays at the abstract level ("Kobolds serve dragons") then no setting for play has been established. It's just the GM daydreaming to him-/herself. (Maybe the daydream gets written down in a notebook. It's still just a daydream.)

Once something gets written down about a dragon being here, or having done this thing in the past, with kobolds being involved in this way - now we have setting that can feed into situation, which is how I would think about RPG worldbuilding.

I don’t think the distinction you are making here is significant. Kobolds serving Infyrana in Dragon Mountain is far more specific, but it’s just as subject to having to be introduced in play as the basic kovolds serve dragons as general bit of lore. Both are simply concepts or ideas.

If your assessment is that worldbuilding only happens once these elements come up in actual play, and that the GM thinking them up ahead of time, or the group deciding to play in a specific setting with those default assumptions do not actually constitute worldbuilding, then it applies to both examples, the general and the specific.

If my PCs hear mention of kobolds, and they then ask about what they are, they can learn a broad detail or a specific.

Either one is worldbuilding. It establishes the elements of the fictional world and the relationships of those elements to one another.

 

[Mallus]

First, how much I miss the presence of RC at Enworld.

Raven Crowking?! I... I... I can't believe I'm about to write this, but so do I. My recollection is me & RC disagreed on almost everything, but I'd love to play in one of his games if given the chance or just go out for a beer and a conversation about nerdery. He had a passion for the hobby that enlivened this place (even if his specific arguments might have had me reaching for a flask of flaming oil, metaphorically-speaking).

And secondly, how much I miss when at Enworld we argued over games and other "great clomping nerdiness".

I don't mind the more recent arguments as much, but yeah, agree with this, too.

Re: M. John Harrison: in the years since this thread started he completed his "Kefahuchi Tract" series - Light, Nova Swing, and Empty Space: A Haunting. If you're curious to see an elaboration of his blog post, these novels provide one. The ironic thing is they contain some fabulous worldbuilding, even down to the kind of made-up terminology that SF fans (myself included) gravitate towards. He may not like worldbuilding, but he added to my inner dork lexicon things like K-Ship, rickshaw girl, and entradista. Words that share a space with ornithopter, Guild Navigator, and Sardaukar and the rest of the Dune-isms that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life, odd little treasures from someone else's imagination.

The three novels, taken together, make an argument about the uses and limitations of SF as a genre. And regardless of whether you agree with the argument, it's made using relentless lovely prose and sheer inventiveness. Harrison is one of the best prose writers working in SF. Up there with Gibson, Delany, Wolfe, Cordwainer Smith, Vance, John Crowley, and the rest that I regard but am presently forgetting.

 

[Celebrim]

Raven Crowking?! I... I... I can't believe I'm about to write this, but so do I.

This is the standard I use to judge a poster.

Do you offer content? If someone yells, "Help!", are you sure to find that poster in the thread, offering up some useful constructive advice or something that you can use to make your game go?

Raven Crowking was simply the most helpful, most generous, most overflowing with ideas poster ENWorld has ever had. Sure, in this thread, he was mostly contrarian, but RC at his finest was just some guy that would come and say, "Sure, I'll help your game." And honestly, even his contrarianism in this thread is still I think RC saying, "This won't help your game."

Re: M. John Harrison: in the years since this thread started he completed his "Kefahuchi Tract" series - Light,...

I mentioned this in the thread, but on two separate occasions I have checked out 'Light' from the library based on book reviews or glowing recommendations of this book I had to read, and I get the book home, open it up and realize after a few pages that I've tried to read this book before. Three times now, and I've never been able to get further than 30 pages or so. I can scarcely think of a book that has made me less interested in completing it, but a few years will go buy, the title of the book will drop out of my head, and I'll end up trying again because of the hype.

I enjoy prose smiths, but I'd probably have to plod back to the library before you'd convince me Harrison is one, because I have no recollection of anything he said just wowing me. I have a bunch of Wolfe on the shelf, Vance's complete works, and among others a signed copy of Delany that I got when I went to hear him speak in person. And of course Vonnegut is fun, at least in small doses, and also Mieville or Letham. But if you don't have a good story, I'm really not that interested. All the pretty sentences in the world aren't worth anything, if they don't add up to something more than themselves. And likewise, at least by my aesthetic standards, a bunch of ordinary sentences that put together make the sort of story cavemen would tell each other around a campfire in the dark night of the world is a higher pinnacle of storytelling achievement than any number of deconstructions of what it means to have a story. I can appreciate writerly craftsmanship, but I love stories.

There must be something about the James Tiptree award that I can't fathom. For example, "The Knife of Never Letting Go" is on my short list for dumbest books every written.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have never experienced this in any of my games (which are pretty heavy on worldbuilding). Isn't the DM in charge of the lore? Why would the players try and police the DM's lore?

It's the GM's attachment to the lore which is the problem. Here is born all the illusionism, GM force, etc. No Myth play CANNOT by definition suffer from this. I mean, yes, a GM can railroad and lie and whatever in order to monopolize all the narrative control of where the game goes, but he's got no iron in that fire, 'cept ego. Years of backstory is a pretty big incentive to all sorts of deviltry.

So what I get from this, is the impression that you're mostly against official D&D lore (in other words, when WotC does world building). But that is very different from a DM doing world building for his own campaign setting. If I say that my campaign has dragons that don't keep slaves, and that don't talk, no one is going to complain about it. It's my setting, I can do what I want.

Again though, if the players decide their characters are going to overthrow the 'Great Kingdom' and you don't like the implications of that, all of a sudden 10 dozen crazy roadblocks show up, but if you DO like the idea, its on rails. This is so typical its really unremarkable.

At least if its WotC doing the world building, they have no more agenda than 'this could be fun' or at least 'it will sell a lot'. GMs need not really be invested in that stuff, even if they use it. Not to say it can't create issues, but there are, plainly, some uses to lore. I mean, running a Story Now game with 'Minimal Myth' I still can find D&D-type lore pretty handy for framing. It also helps establish genre conventions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Every element in a RPG has fictional meaning - that what's distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame or wargame.

As soon as you set out parameters for PC build, you are establishing "lore" in the sense of patterns of fictional elements (eg there will be armoured knights, or barbarians who fighter with great axes unarmoured, or officers in an Imperial Interstellar Navy, or whatever it might be).

But I don't think that really counts as world building. Likewise deciding that kobolds are min-dragons who serve dragons.

None of that establishes any actual setting or stage for the action of a RPG to take place on. Which is to say it doesn't create a world.

Its establishing genre and milieu, which certainly verge into setting, and also influencing tone (IE lore that includes wacky kazoo playing clowns that fight undead is quite different from orcs and goblins). Clearly there's still things like history, geography, politics, locations, events, characters, etc. that would all make up the 'meat' of a classic setting. Clearly you don't have a setting without that stuff, as WoG and FR clearly demonstrate (two settings which use virtually identical lore, often share lore, and yet are clearly distinct in some ways).

In some cases the combination of 'lore' and mechanics can also virtually define the setting. This is most clearly illustrated by Classic Traveler, where the Imperium simply 'emerges' from the combination of mechanical systems for character generation, adjudication of various activities (trading, bribing, finding patrons), and creation of local setting details (subsector mapping, system mapping, planet mapping, creation of local flora and fauna, etc.). If you simply follow these rules, a subsector of the Third Imperium WILL emerge! Some things are left open, exactly what the Empire IS, etc. but its society and economy, and some aspects of its military/government, are very clearly defined in terms of their effects on the PCs and their environment. I mean, you can spin things differently, but you have to consciously frame things in a way that produces a different interpretation, and even then some things are really pretty hard-coded (IE Social Standing as a basic character stat and its meaning).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In the examples you mention - you're establishing that there is an Imperial Interstellar Navy (and an Empire, for that matter), that there are barbarians who prefer greataxes and eschew armor, and that there are armored knights. None of those are necessarily givens in any particular setting. Star Trek, for example, doesn't have an Imperial Interstellar Navy - at least not on the Federation side - so you're clearly not doing a far future utopian/Star Trek campaign. A campaign based around the Three Musketeers is unlikely to have greataxe-wielding barbarians or armored knights (in the traditional Medieval Romance or Game of Thrones mode anyway) so you're probably not doing a campaign like that. By establishing the parameters of the setting, you are worldbuilding.

Well, now I'll take [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s side of this discussion. Again, compare WoG with FR. They utilize almost entirely the same lore. They have the same overall cosmology, same lists of creatures, etc. Yet they are not the same world, at all. Sure, "there are armored knights in my world" says SOMETHING, like chunks of hand-made mild steel plate are effective protection, and thus weapons technology is pretty limited. Clearly it says there's some region where a class of people serve as heavily-armored soldiery. Depending on the amount of detail it might define a system of honor, preferred types of weapons and steeds, and possibly even some social details. That still leaves a WIDE field for the actual building of a world! I mean, 'armored warrior with a code of honor' could describe any of 20 different historical societies spanning a period of time as wide as 1000 years or more.