Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[pemerton]

The fact that world builders point to works like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings as examples of why we should world build just makes me dig in my heels more. The Lord of the Rings would have been a short story if I wrote it. I've tried to read it multiple times and every single time I skip entire pages because it's mind numbingly boring setting wank.

I have read LotR enought times (either in whole, or dipping in and out of bits of it) that I think I have to count as a major fan.

This doesn't stop me broadly agreeing with you about setting. As a player I want to have LotR-ish moments (eg the only PC I am currently playing in a game is a knight of a holy order who wants to redeem his family and recover their occupied homeland). But I don't want this to be something delivered by the GM. Likewise, if I'm playing Aragorn, I'll write my own backstory about being descended from Elros, wooing an Elven princess, etc - I'm not interested in slotting myself into some framework the GM has written up.

 

[pemerton]

First off, xp for that chart - that's amazing!

<snip>

As said above, this is one hell of a chart!

Thanks. As I said, one of the players maintained it so that the players could keep track of what was going on (the black squares signal matters that have been resolved). It also helped me keep track of what was going on!

Assuming - and please correct me if I'm wrong - that the bazaar example is typical, my criticisms of it lie in how anything leading up to that point is essentially skipped over, not least of which is an opportunity for the party to meet and get to know each other. Also, framing it such that the PC or party have to explore the town a bit before finding the feather merchant gives you a chance to tell them - yes, tell them - what the town's all about, so as to better inform their later decisions, approaches, and actions.

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not one prefers a world-buidling, GM-narration type approach, or a scene-framing, "go where the action is" type approach, I think it's clear that they are different approaches to establishing and using setting in play.

 

[Maxperson]

I can only speak for myself on this matter, but this may be why your posts sometimes come across to me as simply argumentation for argumentation's sake, no matter how twisted the logic to get there. This is why, at times, I have chosen to disengage with you: as I say somewhere upthread (or in the other worldbuilding thread), I don't feel this technique proceeds with intellectual honesty. You say you *infer* others are misrepresenting your words (as if you can, with 100% certainty, read their motives) and so you *deliberately* misrepresent back at them.

This doesn't make for fruitful discussion/analysis!

The first, second or even 5th time someone gets it wrong, it might be accidental or a misunderstanding, even with the explanations or corrections by people that actually play the style. The 10th, 15th and 20th+ times it happens after having it explained/corrected can be nothing other than deliberate. I have no doubts on motive at that point.

 

[Hussar]

The first, second or even 5th time someone gets it wrong, it might be accidental or a misunderstanding, even with the explanations or corrections by people that actually play the style. The 10th, 15th and 20th+ times it happens after having it explained/corrected can be nothing other than deliberate. I have no doubts on motive at that point.

Irony. Delicious.

Look, the basic problem with this conversation is that no one can actually agree on what world building actualy is. Is every single element of setting world building? For some in this thread, I think that they think so. As soon as you add anything to the setting, that's world buildling. Now, me, I disagree. Setting building and world building are not the same thing. Everyone has to do setting building. It's impossible (or at least really, really difficult) to run a game with zero setting. Godot: The Waiting is not really a good RPG. Or, I dunno, at least one I don't want to play.

However, world building, to me, goes beyond setting building. It's the stuff that come after what you actually need to run the game. Which means, for many home-brewers, they probably don't do it all that much. Not that many of us really has the time or energy to detail out a setting to the degree of, say, Forgotten Realms. For most DM's, again, and this is just my opinion, not a statement of fact, we write our campaigns, play our campaigns and a lot of the extra stuff is either yoinked from some book or movie or something and that's about that.

Take a map of the game world. Is that world building? Personally, I don't really think so. You need a map for play most of the time. You need something to show the players in order to frame the campaign and a setting map is a great way to do that. Now, if your game only ever takes place within the confines of a single location (be that a city or something like Isle of Dread or a World's Largest Dungeon), then, well, the rest of thw world can go hang. It's not going to be used.

To me, that's the dividing line. And it primarily applies to published works, much more than what people do in their home games. Endless pages of elven tea ceremonies with virtually nothing of practical value.

Heck, I'm running Primeval Thule right now. It's a published setting, so, there's a fair bit of world building in there. The guide details in pretty broad terms, several nation states and city states. Funny thing is, in the Kickstarter that I backed, the setting came with five or six modules.

Now, I've used all of the modules (or nearly all, I think there's one or two in the main book I haven't used) and the world building stuff? Yeah, that's been largely left on the cutting room floor. Not important and not needed. The players couldn't even be bothered reading it and even when I do try to bring it into the game, they largely forget it immediately because it's just not that important.

The truly funny thing is, Primeval Thule, on the PT map, labels dozens of dungeons. Lots and lots of them. Some of them, about half, get a one paragraph write up in the setting guide. I would have gotten much more value from this setting if they had reversed things. A paragraph detailing different nation states and pages of material detailing those dungeons.

Worldbuilding is where practicality ends and self-indulgence begins.

 

[happyhermit]

It sounds very much to me like people who don't like "Worldbuilding" are just defining it as "You know, that stuff I don't like" "That stuff over there that looks very much like worldbuilding? Nah, that's just... building the world... yeah that's it. That stuffs fine."

 

[Hussar]

It sounds very much to me like people who don't like "Worldbuilding" are just defining it as "You know, that stuff I don't like" "That stuff over there that looks very much like worldbuilding? Nah, that's just... building the world... yeah that's it. That stuffs fine."

And that's a fair criticism. World building, is, in my mind, bad, because I take all the elements of setting building that I don't like and don't think are needed and label that "world building".

OTOH, the reverse is true. If we simply say that anything to do with building a setting is world building, then, of course world building is a good thing. It's all in how people draw the distinctions. I tend to not buy into the idea that setting building and world building are the same. Every game needs a setting. Not every game needs world building.

 

[Riley37]

Godot: The Waiting is not really a good RPG. Or, I dunno, at least one I don't want to play.

Five characters appear on stage, therefore there are five archetypes, perfect for a World of Darkness game.

 

[Lanefan]

And that's a fair criticism. World building, is, in my mind, bad, because I take all the elements of setting building that I don't like and don't think are needed and label that "world building".

OTOH, the reverse is true. If we simply say that anything to do with building a setting is world building, then, of course world building is a good thing. It's all in how people draw the distinctions. I tend to not buy into the idea that setting building and world building are the same. Every game needs a setting. Not every game needs world building.

I think that puts your definition of world building somewhat at odds with (most of?) the rest of us.

To me, there's two elements:

Adventure design - this includes - obviously - designing the adventures themselves (or tweaking a canned module to suit one's own game/campaign/rule-set), and also placing them somewhere.
World building - this includes designing everything between and beyond* the adventury bits, along with providing locales and surroundings in which the adventures can be put.

* - this part can be done to overkill; you seem to want to just call the overkill bits world building and the rest something else, where to me it's all part of the same process.

Where the larger disagreement is coming from in here is that some seem not to like any pre-done world building or setting design, never mind the overkill bits.

Lanefan

 

[hawkeyefan]

My view of it is that anything done to establish the game world that the characters inhabit is worldbuilding. So yes, for me it is an essential part of every single RPG. It cannot be avoided, and is certainly not bad.

I don’t think that the world in worldbuilding means the planet the characters live on. It can encompass that, but such details may never come up. So if a game takes place entirely in a magical labyrinth of some kind, hidden below the surface, then that IS the world the characters inhabit. The game world can be as small as one room or as large as the multiverse.

In traditional play, labeled “worldbuilding” in this thread, the world is likely largely established or decided by the GM ahead of time.

In Story Now games (the ones I’m familiar with, anyway) the world is implied by the setting, and then the details are established by the GM and players together in the first session.

No Myth is a take where no world details are considered canon until introduced in play. The GM and players build the world as they play.

Now, what is actually needed in order to establish whatever world the characters are going to inhabit is what’s debatable. It will vary by the needs of the game and the scope of the world, but how much is actually needed? Totally a matter of preference.

All that’s needed is what is required for the adventure at hand. So in that sense, I can see the criticism of establishing the lineage of the local ruler and the major exports out of the area and so on. Most likely, such details are superfluous. And if they did somehow cone up in play, the GM can establish it at that time.

But at the same time, if the GM has decided all these details ahead of time, I don’t really see how it negatively impacts the players. They interact with the details that are relevant and ignore or never even become aware of the rest.

In a more open sandbox approach, it likely helps for the GM to have a good deal of high level details sketched out so that whichever way play goes, he has something to lean on. Again, we don’t need a Silmarillion’s worth of details, but things like the surrounding areas, possible points of interest, potential dangers, and the like are a good idea to have in mind.

I really don’t see how having these high level, likely relevant world details at the ready is a negative. Leaning on them seems no different to me than leaning on genre expectations or player introduced material, for the most part. This is one of the advantages of usibg a published game world; a lot of these details are already established. The work is already done...and yet the GM can still change things to suit the needs of his specific game.

If the GM decides that his details are what really matters and he forces the game in a direction so that they continue to come up....I think this is a GM issue more than a worldbuilding one.

So while I do think many GMs of traditional style games can probably ease off on detailing their world, and depending on their players and the expectations for the game, can likely start involving the players in the worldbuilding in order to connect their characters more firmly to the game world, I don’t think that worldbuilding is really a problem at all. Generally, it’s a good thing...a necessity for the game. You could even argue it is the very point of the game. But just like with anything good, it can be overdone or it can be limited to one person, which may impact the game negatively.

I personally do a bit of everything. I lean on my players’ ideas, published material, genre, and also my own ideas. It seems to work for my players and me.

 

[Maxperson]

My view of it is that anything done to establish the game world that the characters inhabit is worldbuilding. So yes, for me it is an essential part of every single RPG. It cannot be avoided, and is certainly not bad.

I don’t think that the world in worldbuilding means the planet the characters live on. It can encompass that, but such details may never come up. So if a game takes place entirely in a magical labyrinth of some kind, hidden below the surface, then that IS the world the characters inhabit. The game world can be as small as one room or as large as the multiverse.

Based on posts here, I think a lot of people against worldbuilding don't understand this. It's not required that the entire world be built in order for worldbuilding to occur.

Personally, even if the campaign is going to take place within a city and it's environs, I like to have more information out there. First, because like you noted later in the post, but which I cut out, in a sandbox type of game, it helps to have things prepared if the party goes in a direction anyway or information comes up from outside of the city area.

In a game that I once ran, the players had come up with a campaign idea for me that involved them staying in a city and it's outlying areas. One of the people they ran into and spoke with mentioned that he had moved there from another city that we will call Oakdale since I can't remember the actual name. Later in the campaign they wanted something that they knew wasn't to be found in their city, as they had thoroughly explored it by then. They came to me one game and apologized and said, "We know we said we didn't want to leave this city during the campaign, but we really want to see if Oakdale his this thing we want." I of course said that it was no problem and if I hadn't had Oakdale at least somewhat detailed out, would have been at a loss.

It also helps me to know allies and enemies to the city, trading partners and routes, and other things that the players may or may not encounter, so that not only do I have answers for player questions, but can plan adventures and day to day goings on with the city they are self-confined in. In the case above, I didn't need to create the ENTIRE world, but I did need to know about the countries and cities that surrounded their city to a reasonable distance for the reasons above. When they left to head to Oakdale, I worked on stuff beyond Oakdale in case they decided to go further for whatever reason. They didn't. The rest of the campaign was handled in their own city with a few more trips to Oakdale.