Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[pemerton]

Would it kill Game Theorist to pick labels remotely intuitively suggestive of the content of their theories...?

It's a model. It's standard (Eero Tuovinen lists a number of games that instantiate it, the best known of which is probably Dogs in the Vineyard). It's narrativistic because it is a model for experiencing/producing/enjoying a play experience that Eero, following Ron Edwards, is calling narrativist - meaning that the goal of play is to produce story in the moment of play, through the interaction of GM-framed situation and player-declared PC action.

Another term for the same sort of play experience is "story now" (which contrast with "story before" - think Dragonlance or any other AP - or "story after" - think retellings of the experience of playing through the Caves of Chaos or the Tomb of Horrors).

If there is any obstacle to working out what Eero Tuovinen is talking about, it's not his terminology. It's that some RPGers seem to think that games like DitV don't exist, or even that it's impossible that they should exist.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's a model. It's standard (Eero Tuovinen lists a number of games that instantiate it, the best known of which is probably Dogs in the Vineyard). ... It's that some RPGers seem to think that games like DitV don't exist, or even that it's impossible that they should exist.

A lot of gamers don't know that DitV exists, or, if they do, know little more about it - that it'd represent a 'standard' is pretty unintuitive.

Maybe obscure, rarefied, or alternative?

 

[Ovinomancer]

A lot of gamers don't know that DitV exists, or, if they do, know little more about it - that it'd represent a 'standard' is pretty unintuitive.

Maybe obscure, rarefied, or alternative?

Niche. It's a niche game.

What I find amusing is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is now excluding Powered by the Apocalypse from the standard narrativist model.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now given that it's a PbtA game, I suspect (without having read it) that the emphasis on scene framing is less than in the standard narrativistic model. But I think in the context of this thread that's probably a minor point. I think the difference between what you describe, and a traditional GM-heavy-worldbuilding game, is fairly striking.

I think PbtA is a pretty flexible framework, though it is going to obviously depend on which elements you consider necessary to call it 'PbtA'. In other words, if you were to have the 'move structure' of PbtA (I'm just imagining if you had a set of DW characters) you could have the players generate backstory (they kind of have to already since they need bonds, though you can get pretty skimpy if you wish) and then generate the entirety of play as a series of soft and hard moves by the GM. These moves would provide the scene framing and consequences of action resolution.

Now, DW at least, has a bunch of other 'stuff' that is attached to the GM role, but its all really more in the nature of "here's things that will help you get the job done", at least IMHO. In other words you are still playing DW if you don't make up fronts and etc, or if you only create them on the fly as part of framing. Its not the process that the GM guide for DW outlines, but it won't undermine the process of play.

So I think PbtA already implies at least the possibility of a fully Story Now standard narrative method game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, the mystery was entirely written by the GM. The players did a lot of writing but this was mostly theories. Paul, the GM, also developed a lot of theories in his role as the Professor. He told me recently that producing those theories was a lot more work than creating what was actually going on, which I found quite surprising.

Yes we were making moves to try to get the GM to reveal information though we thought of it in game world terms. One such move occurred in the very first DGC dream intrusion when the players' dream personae discovered the 'dream enemy' of an External and were able to question it. There would sometimes be joking about getting Paul drunk and trying to persuade him to reveal the game's secrets but he always, even after the first phase of the DGC ended, kept them well hidden.

It always felt like a sandbox game where we had a great deal of freedom, which I think is what it was. Towards the end of the first phase of the DGC our available moves were severely reduced as the Professor was hospitalised, we were under attack in the physical world, we'd burned our bridges with the Brotherhood (a secretive NPC organisation that seemed to possess psychic talents), and as the example of play in the previous post shows had even become reluctant to dream intrude. As that was happening, Pix's character's own clairvoyant abilities were developing and these became our main source of information. There was a noticeable difference in the gameplay when this happened as the visions Pix received were entirely dependent on the GM. Pix had no power to trigger them. For all we know he may have been able to develop that capability but by that time we were gunshy when it came to such things. Rereading the old journals, at that point the game starts to feel a bit more like the GM telling the players a story.

Things had taken a very downward turn by the end of the first phase of the DGC. The Professor and the in-game version of Paul were dead. The Brotherhood had been decimated. Mark had become alienated from most of the rest of the group and, infected by an External, was then sectioned at our behest. The DGC had clearly reached an ending, an extremely downbeat one, where the surviving characters could barely function as they had in the past. The very last paragraph in the journals (written by Pix) reads:

But such patients, such successes, belong to the past. The only good thing we can do now is retreat before the onslaught. I very much hope that if we stop pushing, then whatever is on the other side will stop pushing back. Whatever it is, it's too strong for us.​

You say it was like a sandbox, but it strikes me that it seems almost more like a narrativist exercise. Perhaps what Paul was giving you was exactly what you wanted! Or at least the results of your failures were to lose your stakes and move on to new areas of engagement. I take it that there was a 'second phase of the DGC', and that seems to imply to me that the players made some kind of a comeback.

There does seem, from your descriptions, to have been a sort of bathos, to the degree of existential horror to the whole thing. I can see why you would compare it to something like CoC, which certainly tries to evoke that.

 

[Campbell]

Niche. It's a niche game.

What I find amusing is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is now excluding Powered by the Apocalypse from the standard narrativist model.

He's not like wrong to do so. The Standard Narrativist Model basically lays down the framework for what most people in the indie scene at the time saw as The Alternative to orthodox 1990's style design. Apocalypse World uses a fundamentally different set of techniques and principles of play. Unlike the clear protagonists with clearly defined dramatic needs that thrown into conflict Apocalypse World places the player characters into a pressure cooker situation where we find out who they are and uses a more naturalistic pace that is centered more on character exploration than conflict resolution. It does so in part by embracing a combination of principles and techniques that are reflective of Story Now games in some places, but in other places are more reminiscent of the play principles and techniques of Moldvay B/X that Vincent Baker cut his teeth on. It also leans on techniques more familiar to the free form community in other places.

Back in the day the indie community all questioned orthodox play in basically the same way. What's exciting now is that there's an interest in experimenting with the form in different ways. I love Sorcerer, but I don't always want to play Sorcerer. The sort of experimentation with the form we are seeing with Blades in the Dark, Masks, Dream Askew, Murderous Ghosts, The Quiet Year, and Undying just within the vaguely Powered By The apocalypse sphere is amazing.

Note: There is such a wild variety in Powered By The Apocalypse games I would hesitate to address them collectively. It's mostly a design language rather than a family of games. You can't really or at least should not run Dungeon World in the same way you would run Apocalypse World. Same goes for Masks. Or Blades. Or Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn. The only real requirement to be Powered By The Apocalypse is to say you are. It's more like saying you want to be part of a particular design community and culture than saying something in particular about your game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Niche. It's a niche game.

What I find amusing is that @pemerton is now excluding Powered by the Apocalypse from the standard narrativist model.

Well, you have probably read my previous post on PbtA, but I can also give some other perspective. PbtA is intended to be at least 'Some Story Now', but it also (at least Dungeon World) allows for and assumes that there IS some setting building that the GM does. It is assumed that there is at least a general map. It should have 'lots of blank spaces', but it does represent SOME sort of a 'world' (it could literally be just a dungeon level). 'Fronts' (which are organizations and some notions of how they interact and conflict) are also a typical part of DW. Its also not clear that DW players have a specific level of narrative authority. The GM USUALLY narrates the 'facts of the world', although there are specific exceptions. There are also theoretical reasons to assume that players are allowed to do things along the lines of 'find a secret door even though none has been established as existing yet'.

I think you could play DW in a pretty NON-narrativist way. That is with a lot of pre-generated setting, large rosters of detailed NPCs and their relationships, etc. I think that verges on being a different sort of game, but I don't think I'd say it isn't DW, though it is probably not Story Now.

So, maybe its not so simple as 'this game is of type X'.

 

[Hussar]

The difference between Keep on the Borderlands and Village of Hommlet is the amount of worldbuilding.

Fair enough, again, if you are insisting that all setting is world building. However, I would draw the distinction here. KotB has virtually no world building. We have no idea where the Keep is, how many people live in the Keep, what and who supports the Keep, who does the Castellan report to? No idea. Does the Castellan have a family? No idea. So on and so forth.

Contrast with Village of Hommlet where virtually every household is described. Who is the weaver in Hommlet? Well, we have the answer to that.

See, to me, the world builders have already won this arguement and I'm largely crying in the dark here. Look at the remake of Keep in Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. A 20(ish) page module is turned into a several hundred page tome. Even in 4e, when they remade Keep again with the Chaos Scar adventures in Dungeon magazine, the Keep's description is longer than the original module.

I know I lost this argument. Totally lost it. The world builders, busily constructing ships in a bottle have totally dominated the hobby. And the great clodding of nerd boots makes sure that no new ideas are ever allowed into the hobby unless it passes their sniff test first.

 

[pemerton]

What I find amusing is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is now excluding Powered by the Apocalypse from the standard narrativist model.

All standard narrativistic games are "story now" in the Forge sense, but not all "story now" games are standard narrativistic ones.

As far as thinking about PbtA goes, I am the faithful student of [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]. The "standard narrativistic model" is about scene-framed RPGing. PbtA is not scene-framing - I don't have a terrific handle on how best to describe it, but Campbell has explained it well, I think in a post or two in the other worldbuilding thread, and also in the protagonism thread a year or so ago. Another feature that Campbell has pointed to, that I recall as I type this, is the different role of player intent in resolution for PbtA compared to scene-framed (ie "standard narrativistic model") games.

It's not a criticism of PbtA to say that it uses techniques different from DitV, Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, etc. It's an analytical observation.

Why do you find this amusing? Do you disagree, and take the view that PbtA is a scene-framed game? What do you think is at stake in identifying a game as "standard narrativistic model"?


EDIT because I saw this:

I think you could play DW in a pretty NON-narrativist way. That is with a lot of pre-generated setting, large rosters of detailed NPCs and their relationships, etc. I think that verges on being a different sort of game, but I don't think I'd say it isn't DW, though it is probably not Story Now.

I think the need to generate narrations as the outcome of various moves would push a bit against what you describe, but that's mostly speculation rather than experience talking.

 

[happyhermit]

... And the great clodding of nerd boots makes sure that no new ideas are ever allowed into the hobby unless it passes their sniff test first.

Methinks you are tilting at windmills a bit here. There are all kinds of materials out there for all kinds of RPGs and while D&D does get looked down on a lot in some circles, there is exceedingly little in way of "that shouldn't even exist" or even "that type of game is objectively bad". Certainly not any masses such as they are in ttrpgs. New ideas have always been allowed in "the hobby" even if a lot of people don't enjoy them.

Heck, look at this whole "story now" discussion here. People act like it's this new discovery that if only the masses were exposed to would sweep over them like the dawning of a new age of enlightenment. In reality, we messed around playing D&D and other games like that soon after the hobby came into existence. Plenty of games have worked to codify and tweak it in the decades since. There are literally options in the 5e DMG that if used allow players to spend a point to declare that they find a secret door, no roll necessary, options for musical chair GMing, etc. Are there people outraged that such a thing could be included (in D&D of all places)? I suppose there are, nerdrage knows no bounds, but they seem exceedingly few and far between, because the only criticisms of those rules I have heard come from people who wish they went further/were done "better".