Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Imaro]

Decided to take a break from the Dungeon/Dragon wars annd get back to this thread.

You guys are the ones enamored with setting. I'll go with the freewheeling, serve up what the adventures need setting over your straitjacket any day.

See and I think this is totally a matter of prefrence. I'll bring up another media as an example...videogames. Don't know if anyones ever played the Jade Empire rpg, but alot of it's appeal is the world. It is a pseudo-chinese based rpg and exploring said world is just as fun as going through the actual "main quests". In fact probably moreso because I wasn't that familiar with the cultural assumptions(as far as fantasy goes) associated with it's genre,

No, you'd normally think of them because your way is the traditional way. By throwing off the shackles of setting you'd come up with "unique ideas you wouldn't normally think of", because you'd otherwise be only framing ideas in terms of the setting. As usual.

Who said a "unique" idea is a good one. A child in 1st grade can write a story full of wild adventure,and unique ideas but is it good? Throwing adventure after adventure together on a piece of paper with unrestrained "creativity" doesn't always make a game good.

Then you're doing entirely too much worldbuilding than is needed to support a D&D campaign; refer to earlier in this thread.

In your oppinion. How can you claim what is needed if you really aren't railroading your characters?

As far as work goes, an entire campaign's worth of adventures, written up, should dwarf the setting notes required. If it's the other way around for you, I suspect that your priorities perhaps need to be reviewed.

How can you state what someone's priorities should be in designing their game. Why should adventure notes( and adventure lasting 1-2 sessions) be more exspansive than a world, somewhere that you're playing for months or even years in? I think a DM/GM not doing worldbuilding is one that will sooner or later be ill-prepared for a tangent, question, etc.
Yeah you could just make it up...but there's always the chance some detail your players pick up on will be inconsistent...or it could even establish something(without much forethought) that could have ramifications later in your game that weren't apparent when you ad-hoced the idea.

This is an argument from last resort; I've stated already that it goes nowhere, because the converse is also true - a setting restricted by adventure needs will be embiggened by your logic, and I know how much importance you guys place on setting.

What about the fact that a "setting" can help to keep a GM focused and consistent within a creative framework. Adventures don't do that. This was sort of the design ideology of 1st ed. AD&D...wild(oftentimes silly and non-sensical) adventures, unrestrained in their creatiivity. This was great when I was younger, but sorry as a player and GM nowI want a little more versimilitude than this provides.

Ideas in general are cheap; it's the following through that counts, and it's much harder to write a good adventure than good setting material. I could also say that setting ideas are cheap. Why is your world so precious to you? You don't "play" a world, you "play" an adventure and a campaign arc. Why are your priorities set that way? I suspect the answer is, "because worldbuilding is fun" and "because that's the way it's always been done".

I would beg to differ here, I play in a world for much longer than I'll play in any single adventure. I thin world building structures a GM's design of adventures so you don't get jarring contradictions. Ex. We're playing in a roman-esque game of political intrigue, devastating wars and social manipulation. That week the GM sees "Killer Clowns from Outer Space" and decides to create an adventure based on these beings attacking the empire. Unless we've already established we're playing D&D Toon or something...Yeah it might be creative but it's jarring, inconsistent, and will have ramifications later in the campaign. On the other hand if he sticks to the "setting" he's created this type of thing is much less likely to happen.

 

[Psion]

I just looked up Hamilton on Wikipedia, and, after reading the synopsis of Fallen Dragon, ordered it on Amazon. Thanks for the recomendation (intentional or not)!

Cool. That's not one I've read yet. Though now that you've drawn my attention to it, I may.

I had read the Night's Dawn stuff a while back and was looking at reading his Commonwealth saga after I finish some Niven and Alastair Reynolds books I just got.

 

[The Shaman]

This is exactly the cart-before-the-horse traditional way of doing things, IMO. It's my view that thinking this way is back to front, that the adventure needs should be finalised first (or at least conceived of roughly in advance), and the setting created to suit those needs.

Adventure should trump setting if running a good D&D campaign is your objective, IMO, because plainly adventure is simply much more important to gameplay than setting. I know that this attitude is heresy for a lot of those engaged in this thread, but it makes a lot more sense than the traditional approach of setting uber alles.

rounser, you're ramping up the hyperbole a bit, don't you think?

I think I see part of the disconnet here. You seem to think that if one engages in more extensive world-building, that somehow adventures aren't considered until the end - speaking for myself, that's completely off the mark. I consider player characters, classes/careers/professions (as appropriate to the rules system), sites, encounters, monsters and other opponents, and adventure arcs (depending on the campaign) as I'm building the world.

Let me reference our Traveller game once again. The Traveller universe contains a wide variety of aliens, and the Judges Guild sectors where our game is set add several more. I wanted the players to be able to choose from many potential sophonts as characters, and I wanted many options for non-player characters as well. As I was constructing the mainworlds and star systems, I found ways to include many different alien races, providing the players with options for their characters and developing an internal logic as to why this little corner of the Imperium is so diverse.

(The players also have the option of coming from somewhere else in the Imperium or even beyond the borders, but because three of the five players had never played Traveller before, one goal was to make their characters "locals," so that they could have contacts and be our "resident experts" as an advantage - the Traveller universe is really big and tends to be a bit overwhelming to n00bs, so this was a way of compensating and getting them into the setting quickly by giving each of them a manageable chunk to call their own.)

Encounters were also considered during world-building (worlds-building, in this case). The game starts off with the four adventurers (one character is introduced later) crewing a small free trader - their immediate priority is to make enough credits to keep their ship flying more-or-less intact while avoid the perils of pirates, trade wars, and bureaucrats. That means that encounters needed to include customs officials, naval officers, pirates and privateers, hijackers, rival traders, smugglers, brokers and merchants, patrons, and so on, and would take place anywhere on planet or in space. In order to make some of these encounters work, it was necessary to give the players reasons explore beyond the mainworlds, so that meant giving some stars companions, working out systems with multiple habitable worlds, developing outposts in outer orbits, placing planetoid belts with mining operations, and so on. And then there were potential encounter sites that had nothing to do with core premise of the campaign, such as Ancient ruins, uncharted brown dwarfs, hidden supply caches, a huge mostly-mothballed space station, and many others, that could still work their way in through patrons or other encounters, or the players simply wanting to explore a bit.

It was planning the physical realm that proved so inspiring as I worked out the whys and wherefores of the different worlds. The planets Upsikeria and Zaleris have almost identical physical stats, but the former is an industrial world with a population in the billions and the latter is home to just a few thousand residents - why? Because "cursed" Zaleris is ringed by the debris of a shattered moon that makes a huge swath of the planet uninhabitable due to meteor strikes. That little bit of world-building opened up several potential encounters - a distress call from a damaged trader caught in the ring zone, playing a very dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a patrol ship or a pirate, et cetera.

And then there are cultures, distinct to each world, which provide fodder for intrigue, political maneuvering, espionage, comedic misunderstanding and pratfalls, and so on.

World-building for me is as much about providing player and referee options as it is setting boundaries. I think about encounters and adventures as I world-build so that I have all the options I want available, including leaving a few areas vaguely defined so that I can insert new ideas later, and providing the players with depth and breadth to explore and pursue their character goals.

The idea that world-building automatically ignores adventure planning is wildly off the mark - in my experience, and in my practice, the exact opposite is true.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Okay, question from the other side - are there any good books on world building out there?

 

[Psion]

Okay, question from the other side - are there any good books on world building out there?

That's a bit of a broad question. Most of the resources I have in this vein are specific in context.

My favorite world building books are for SF games and/or novels. My preferred references in this vein are:

D&D/Fantasy:
World Builder's Guide Book (oop, but is available through reseller
Fantasy Hero for hero 4e or 5e

SF/Future:
GURPS Space
GURPS Traveller First In (OOP and somewhat hard to find)
World Builder's Handbook (for Traveller by DGP; hard to find)
World Building by Stephen Gillet (for SF authors, see here)

 

[Greg K]

D&D/Fantasy:
World Builder's Guide Book (oop, but is available through reseller
Fantasy Hero for hero 4e or 5e

I like ICE's Rolemaster Character/Campaign Law and their Rolemaster RMSS/FRP GM Law

 

[Abisashi]

You guys are the ones enamored with setting. I'll go with the freewheeling, serve up what the adventures need setting over your straitjacket any day.

I think you misunderstand my position; like you, I think the adventures are what matter. I differ in that I think world-building actually leads to better adventures.

As far as work goes, an entire campaign's worth of adventures, written up, should dwarf the setting notes required. If it's the other way around for you, I suspect that your priorities perhaps need to be reviewed.

I'm not sure this should always be the case. Regardless, I don't think a 1,000 page essay is necessary to achieve good worldbuilding. I think after a while the returns from world-building do diminish - but they don't start at zero.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Just a thought about Conan and world building.

One of the stock descriptions of Conan is the last son of Atlantis. (or something to that effect.) It's a great line, properly mythic that turns Conan from just a big barbarian to something of a superhero. Yet, throughout the Conan stories, Atlantis is never explored. No information is given about Atlantis. It is left entirely to the reader to gain meaning from the line. In other words, the work hasn't been done for the reader.

Um....Actually, King Kull and the Atlantis mythos appeared in Howard's writing before Conan did, and would have been familiar to his readers at the time the stories were published. Indeed, we have a good deal more than "a few paragraphs detailing the history of the rise and eventual fall of Atlantis". We know about Conan's ancestors and how they relate to Atlantis. And his descendents. If this is your line of reasoning, I hope you will therefore acknowledge Howard among the ranks of worldbuilders.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Here's another example from Conan. Think of one of the most famous cities in the Conan stories - Shadrizar. Shadrizar the wicked. The wicked city. Not once is it detailed in the stories. Beyond Shadrizar the Wicked, we know nothing about this city. IIRC, it isn't even marked on the maps. It is left entirely to the reader to fill in the blanks and, as readers, we have done so.

Is mentioning Shadrizar without any detail world building? Not IMO. It's simply a setting device - a means of telling the reader that the stories take place Somewhere Else. The same is true for the details RC listed about Tatooine in Star Wars ANH. None of the elements are explored in the movie.

So, is it a setting device (rather than worldbuilding) when it ties into the plot, or is is a setting device (rather than worldbuilding) when it does not?

It seems you want it both ways. If an author details something and makes it integral to the work, then it is "setting" and not worldbuilding, but when an author fails to detail something and make it integral to the work, then it is "setting" and not worldbuilding.

Perhaps the chunks of Tolkein you skipped prevented you from seeing how the details were tied into the plot, and hence, by your criteria, Tolkein wasn't a worldbuilder?

Color me confused here.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You guys are the ones enamored with setting. I'll go with the freewheeling, serve up what the adventures need setting over your straitjacket any day.

Designing setting before adventure allows the players to choose what they are interested from a plethora of choices. I'll go with the freewheeling, allow the players to choose their own adventure needs over your straightjacket any day.

I mean, we are talking adventure paths, right? The term itself is almost a definition of the world "railroad".