catsclaw227 said:
There are many things that exist within the immediate world of the PCs that are not readily quantifiable or easily improvised without some preliminary planning.
The (predictable) response is that the players can make up deities and cultures their characters worship, thereby adding to the game-world and saving the referee the trouble of making them herself, that technologies can be made up on the fly as needed, and that unless you are planning to run a game in which the characters are going to be trading extensively, things like local commodities and caravan routes only need to be detailed if they directly impact the adventure, in which case they can be added as needed.
Two thoughts:
1. Several posters have complained that the quote in the original post is being taken "too literally," and offering various explanations for what the author really meant. That may be (but by no means assuredly is) true, but consider for a moment that the quote is offered in support of the thesis, "
Why worldbuilding is bad."
Taken by itself, the quote can be interpreted a couple of ways, rather like the JRRT quote I offered upthread. However, the OP doesn't attempt to make that fine a point of it: worldbuilding is
bad, and here's a quote from a science fiction author that supports my premise. It's not hard to see understand the more severe interpretation applied to it, since that's exactly the way the OP intended it to be interpreted.
2. Some science fiction roleplaying games include mechanics for world-generation - examples include
Burning Empires and
Traveller.
In the case of
Traveller, the rules include mechanics for generating a "universal world profile," or UWP, that includes the following: starport type, planet size, atmosphere composition, hydrographic cover, population, government, law level, and tech level, plus trade codes and the presence of gas giants and military bases. The UWP focuses on information that the players and their characters need to know: can I get fuel for my starship? can I breathe the air? how many people live there? can I carry a fusion gun and a tac missle around startown? how bribable are the bureaucrats? can I buy an air/raft here? will I get a good price on my trade goods?
In my experience it is possible to run a perfectly satisfying
Traveller game using nothing more than the UWP data and some improvisation. Do the players care why an atmosphere is tainted or not, or do they just want to know if they need filter masks or not? Does the title of the charismatic dictator who is the head of government for the world really matter if the only government representatives the players are likely to encounter is the starport staff and the local law enforcement? And no matter her title, isn't a cop a cop for that matter? If the question comes up, it's possible for a
Traveller referee to come up with an answer on the fly, or with only a minimum of planning, because the UWP answers a great many of the players' most likely questions straight out of the gate, leaving the referee to focus on the adventure instead of background that isn't directly relevant to the characters.
Traveller also provides additional rules to assist the referee with building upon the UWP to create entire star systems in remarkable detail. From the primary star's mass, temperature, age, and luminosity to the mainworld's orbit, climate, density, escape velocity, natural resources and manufactured gods, population distribution, and political institutions to all of the system's companion stars, outworlds and satellites.
I am co-refereeing a
Traveller game right now, and I spent the time to detail out eighteen different systems, soup to nuts, before we began play. What I found is that the additional detail provides me with much more inspiration for challenges to present the players and their characters, more bolts for my quiver (or missles for my magazine, if you like) than just relying on the UWP and the inspiration of the moment. The time spent on world-building (or star cluster-building, in this case) revealed facets about the setting to me that would not be readily available from just the UWP or supporting tables in the basic rules - for example, for most of the systems the time spent travelling from the jump point to the starport is of a longer duration than the basic rules infeer, meaning there are more opportunities for encounters in space along the way than might be expected using just the simple flight time chart. I am also able to provide the players with more meaningful informationwithout relying on the referee(s) because so much is available to them for the asking.
This is particularly important given that there is no "adventure"
per se in this game - all of the encounters, patrons, and so forth are generated randomly using the tables in the rules or supplements. There is a strongly improvisational element in this game, and the setting details go a long way toward making that work by providing a stage on which those random encounters play out.
Will I use everything I wrote for each system? No, not by a long shot - then again, since I have only a vague idea what the crew will do before they do it, I don't know exactly what information I will
need either, so by giving myself a leg up on the setting details, I find it much easier to adjudicate the results of their choices. I don't consider any of that effort "wasted," since I learned more about the setting than I originally conceived through the process of building.
I think that the referee or dungeon master or storyteller should work with their strengths, and where improvisation works for some, more detailed planning works for others. If the end result is a satisfying game, then that's what matters. With that in mind, I completely reject the thesis that "worldbuilding is badwrongfun."
It's exactly what I've been toying with for my next campaign. I'm really happy to see you take something away from the event.
