Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Raven Crowking]

He sounds either jealous, lazy, or just likes the provocation. I get what he's saying, but his tone and and his logic are completely skewed and offensive.

In other words, it's no better than if I had written it.

 

[Kestrel]

On the thought that world building leads to better stories.

Ballocks.

My thoughts exactly. Its the player's actions that they remember, not the world that a GM created. Gameworlds are good as a tool for the GM to create the setting for the players, but should never be the focus of the game. The players are.

 

[Desdichado]

I just have a quick question for all you world ad-hockers, what do you do if your players go off on a tangent. I personally like for my worlds to be consistent and to a point(cause it is still fantasy) logical. Has your ad-hocing ever led to a situation where you didn't remember something you alluded to, or later wanted to change your mind about? IMHO I find this disconcerting as a player or as a GM. My players have asked for information and went about doing things in ways I would've never pictured and my worldbilding has always allowed me enough info to make it work. On a side note isn't keeping track of all these side notes on things that don't exist extra effort as well?

As for changing things once you've built your world...who says you can't? If this was true no one would houserule and change published settings, but it's done all the time. At least with the world built it gives you more ways to see a coherent way to implement the changes you want to make. I really think some people on this thread are equating world-building with rigid, uncompromising GM and they're not the same. A Gm can be just as rigid and uncompromising with any aspect of his game and they're two seperate issues.

I guess I don't understand the question completely. The possibility of players going off on a tangent is exactly why some level of ad-hoc improvisation is necessary for almost all GMs. That's the time when everyone becomes an ad-hocker, at least for a short time. Ad-hoc style GMs don't do anything different than other GMs when players go off on a tangent; what defines the ad-hoc style is how they run the game when the PC's aren't going off on a tangent.

 

[Desdichado]

Are you using the form of respected that really means maligned?

Seriously, not hearing about an author doesn't mean their work is bad, it means you're ignorant of their work. For instance, this weekend I saw the Met rebroadcast of Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky, a work that I was wholly ignorant of. Never read it, didn't know it was a famous opera. That had absolutely no bearing on its quality.

I had the same thought--I have a hard time with some of the posts in this thread that talk about Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, etc. as "respected" authors, or authors whose style should be emulated. I guess they manage to sell a fair amount, and that counts for something.

 

[edgewaters]

Frankly worldbuilding has almost nothing to do with the situation of players going off on a tangent in most cases.

Worldbuilding is macrocosmic. Whether or not you've detailed some kingdom 2000 miles from where the players are is really not going to affect things if they go off on a tangent.

Detailing the microcosm in which the players find themselves is a matter separate from worldbuilding. There's a very important distinction between worldbuilding and detailing a small kingdom.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I had the same thought--I have a hard time with some of the posts in this thread that talk about Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, etc. as "respected" authors, or authors whose style should be emulated. I guess they manage to sell a fair amount, and that counts for something.

Actually, I agree. Goodkind and Card leave me cold. Well, Card for the most part (his first two Ender novels I enjoyed).

 

[Desdichado]

Tolkien got away with it because he was a freaking professor of literature who knew what he was doing when writing literature himself, but almost all would-be authors lack this background. Thus, the danger is very real that they will get distracted by their world-building so much that they will be unable to write a coherent story, or else feel compelled to add more world building than is useful.

To nitpick, JH, Tolkien was a professor of language, not literature. Those were the two department of English within Exeter College at Oxford, and there was a bitter rivalry between them that Tolkien in many ways epitomizes. The Lord of the Rings thumbs its nose quite flagrantly at literary conventions.

And for what it's worth, the lit guys did and do say that Tolkien was distracted by his world-building so much that he was unable to write a coherent story and was obviously compelled to add more worldbuilding than was useful. One notorious criticism of Lord of the Rings is the meandering way in which the story develops, stopping for all kinds of non-essential tourist traps along the way.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And for what it's worth, the lit guys did and do say that Tolkien was distracted by his world-building so much that he was unable to write a coherent story and was obviously compelled to add more worldbuilding than was useful. One notorious criticism of Lord of the Rings is the meandering way in which the story develops, stopping for all kinds of non-essential tourist traps along the way.

This explains its lack of popularity, and must be the reason why it was voted the best book of the 20th Century.

 

[Imaro]

You know I keep seeing the assesment that players aren't into the "background" of a setting and that it is usually wasted upon them. If this is the case why are rpg's based on settiings made and sold. Star Wars, Exalted, Qin:Warring States, etc. are all games that have an inherent world attached to them, and that players enjoy interacting with. In Star Wars a player may not interact with a sith lord or go to the homeworld of the jedi council for many levels, but they're there and this adds to the enjoyment and versimilitude of playing a jedi. In Exalted a PC knows that the Wyld is the purview of the lunars, fae and mutants, they may not interact with them directly in an adventure but if they take a side trek into a Wyld area both the GM and the players know what they're most likely to encounter.

I wonder if the whole "world building is a waste" sentiment could be self perpetuating. Yeah it's a waste if it doesn't capture your players imagination, but if it does all it can do is add to the enjoyment of the game. Maybe the problem is that some people just aren't good at it. I personally am not a fan of dungeoncrawls and feel adventures more so than the actual world should be the purview of a character and their particular desires. What good is it if I've prepared the Lost Tomb of Ansakor, if the PC's instead want to spend a session jockeying for political position amongst the decadent nobles of Algoth Doure?

The world-building gives a canvas upon whic the PC's are free to paint whatever picture they want. A pre-made adveture however seems to have already painted the picture and gives the illusion that the PC's have free will. If all I have for the night is the Caverns of Maegoth Wold detailed then I've essentially forced the PC's to go into those caverns...If I've built the island of Maegoth Wold then the PC's have way more freedom in what type of adventure they want to pursue, they're motivations, passions, and interests direct what part of the island they explore or interact with instead of what I planned for them to interact with.

Is it more work? Certainly. But it's worth it IMHO to give my players that experience of a real environment.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, I think Tolkien would have felt nicely validated by that. Although honestly; he and his kind lost that war, I think. The priorities of the old philologists and their curriculum have essentially disappeared while literature is still running along nicely more or less as it was in his time.

I also got the impression from some of his Letters and whatnot that he was a bit exasperated by some of the fans he developed late in his life who loved Lord of the Rings but not for the same reasons he did.