Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Darth Shoju]

You could never do Hamlet in the Forgotten Realms.

edit: Not that that is a bad thing, it's just an example of how the setting can dictate the plot.

Forgive me if I'm missing something (it's been a while since I read Hamlet), but why couldn't you do it in FR?

 

[The Green Adam]

I must say I disagree with Shaman to some extent. Specifically this statement...

The "infinitely creative referee" who can adapt to whatever the players do on-the-fly, who can make up a bill of fare full of exotic dishes and the styles of dress of traders from foreign lands at the drop of a hat and keep it all straight a month later, is a myth, a strawman, exceptional beyond reasonable measure. Most refs in my experience tend to fall back on familiar schticks as well when faced with the unexpected from their players, leading to a pretty homogenous (and, for me, dull) environment pretty quickly.(Emphasis added.)

This year I celebrate my 30th year gaming and if I fell back on familiar schticks at this point, none of my players, who travel the vast distances they do, would play at our table. What I tend to do is establish certain parameters of my own to maintain consistancy and then ad-lib nearly everything after that. I love it when players do the unexpected and thank goodness my group (some members having been with me for over 15 years) can still stun me with their innovative approaches to the situations they face.

Granted I am well aware my group is atypical. We have older players, several women and D&D is not one of our staples. But I'll be damned if my players ever walk into a space port bar and I can't name the bar, come up with colorful patrons and start an adventure based on what they do there in a moments notice. As a matter of fact, I don't really design adventures. I outline ideas I'm interested in exploring and then place the players on a world and see what they want to do. Without some predetermined elements (notes on the planet, it's major cities, it's people, etc.) this wouldn't work, but I don't find it exceptional beyond measure.

Case in point...A group of PCs were in a firefight after being double-crossed by their employers. Concerned they were loosing, the lead PC gathered the group. made a break for the spaceport, got in their ship and left the planet (and the adventure). They hadn't gotten their money, cleared their names or completed other 'adventure goals'. Once far enough away and ready to 'jump to lightspeed', I asked where they wanted to go.

"Where can we go?" they asked.
"Anywhere your ship can reach on the fuel you have." I replied.

Looking at a quick map that had about 6 or 7 planets, one player suggested I couldn't possibly have a set up on all 7 worlds. They seemed to pick one world at random and I said great and went from there. I did not have a set up for each world but I did have an idea of what the ruling power in the region was, the kind of aliens there and the theme or feel of the campaign. Presto! Ideas flood in.

Maybe this is why fantasy never appealed to me. The worldbuilding element is often done in a fashion that is far to rigid for me. Funny that scifi worlds are generalized and worlds of myth and magic are often defined in exacting detail.

AD

 

[Darth Shoju]

And open-sandbox games can be even better without much worldbuilding or pre-game prep. It makes it so that even if the PC's spend all day shopping at the market, you can inject some drama and tension on the fly, rather than relying on there being some proactive element in the party that night (as a for instance).

So railroading has no inherent effect on worldbuilding.

So what about running a game in Eberron would stop me from making a trip to the market interesting?

 

[Darth Shoju]

I guess every setting does to a certain extent. I can't tell a gothic political thriller about vampires in Dark Sun, and a tale of intrigue aboard intercontinental magical mass transit would be slightly out of place in Greyhawk. I'd have trouble talking about Caribbean pirates in Planescape, and a story of a pop star and her entourage facing cutthroat record labels wouldn't work too well coming out of Hyperborea.

Are any of these limitations bad in some way?

 

[Set]

But, if you write up a six page back story to your elf and then NEVER refer to it in game, that's completely wasted effort.

Well, there's were we fall away from each other.

I write poetry.

I never 'use it' for anything. Ever. It's not really a usable thing. But I derive enjoyment from the act of creating, and occasionally other people enjoy it as well, I've been told.

But hey, one man's 'wasted effort' is, to me, what makes human beings different from worker ants. We sometimes create things out of the sheer joy of creating.

I'll be over here wasting my life.

 

[LostSoul]

Forgive me if I'm missing something (it's been a while since I read Hamlet), but why couldn't you do it in FR?

They'd just True Res the King. Hamlet wouldn't have anything to cry about.

You could do Hamlet in a lower-powered world, but that's not FR.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Are any of these limitations bad in some way?

Not necessarily. They're, y'know, *limiting*, and that itself can be a bad thing in many numerous ways, but it isn't always and doesn't have to be, especially if a group just doesn't care if they're always telling the same type of story at the table.

But they are settings that tell you what kinds of stories you can tell in them, which can lead to obsessive cataloging and information-worship that Harrison is criticizing. He is, very vocally, saying that you should not care more about a setting than you do a story. So if your setting doesn't support the story your group wants to create, you should change it or destroy it for the sake of the game. That if no one but you cares about your elven tea ceremonies, it's selfish narcissism to develop these tea ceremonies as campaign elements.

Where fiction and D&D dramatically differ on the issue, I think, is that D&D works okay as selfish narcissism, as long as everyone's needs are met. D&D players tend to be great clomping nerds who worship trivial information, so if that's fun, do it. Fiction needs to appeal to a much wider audience than your weekend D&D session, and what's fun for a group of six might not be fun for an audience of millions.

The "infinitely creative referee" who can adapt to whatever the players do on-the-fly, who can make up a bill of fare full of exotic dishes and the styles of dress of traders from foreign lands at the drop of a hat and keep it all straight a month later, is a myth, a strawman, exceptional beyond reasonable measure. Most refs in my experience tend to fall back on familiar schticks as well when faced with the unexpected from their players, leading to a pretty homogenous (and, for me, dull) environment pretty quickly.(Emphasis added.)

I don't know where The Shaman posted that, but I'm with you, Green Adam. Improv is not an elusive skill, and it's a skill one can develop with practice. This DM isn't mythical, he's actually very common, and all good DMs share a certain amount of this skill (which can be nurtured into a more significant amount with the right desire and practice).

 

[Hussar]

Well, there's were we fall away from each other.

I write poetry.

I never 'use it' for anything. Ever. It's not really a usable thing. But I derive enjoyment from the act of creating, and occasionally other people enjoy it as well, I've been told.

But hey, one man's 'wasted effort' is, to me, what makes human beings different from worker ants. We sometimes create things out of the sheer joy of creating.

I'll be over here wasting my life.

And that's fine. You are creating for an audience of one. Do whatever makes you happy.

A writer, OTOH, has to be aware that his works are intended for a larger audience. A player or DM as well. Sure, it's fine to write up a six page backstory for your character, but, if it never comes up in play, who cares? You just forced the DM to read it, which he may not want to do for one.

I've actually had players complain that I hadn't wrapped my adventures around their backstories. My response is invariably to ask how they expected me to do so when they themselves have made no effort to make their backstories important. When a player hands me a backstory longer than a paragraph, I don't even usually read it anymore. I have better things to do than plow through fan fiction. That may seem cold, but, I've made it abundantly clear that character motivations are the player's job, not mine. I have adventures that I intend to run - usually more than a few with plenty of hooks to motivate the players in one direction or another.

What I'm not going to do is rewrite my entire evening's plans to accommodate a single player.

Really, and I think RC and I agree on this point, the problem is one of scale. There's nothing wrong with spending hours and hours on world building in and of itself. However, if the adventure suffers because the DM spent that time detailing trivia rather than focusing on the adventure, then it is wasted time. If the rest of the players are snoring in the corner because someone wants to have special treatment based on their five page fanfic, that's a problem.

 

[I'm A Banana]

However, if the adventure suffers because the DM spent that time detailing trivia rather than focusing on the adventure, then it is wasted time

Or, as Harrison (almost) puts it: he's being a great clomping nerd who is doing the PC's job for them and filling in needless detail because he is obsessive about his imaginary world and is completely ignoring the reason the players are tolerating his imaginary world to begin with: it amuses them to do so.

 

[EditorBFG]

Or, as Harrison (almost) puts it: he's being a great clomping nerd who is doing the PC's job for them and filling in needless detail because he is obsessive about his imaginary world...

Well, there is a difference between spending your free time working on the stuff outside the next adventure's map, which is a fine way to spend one's time if the person is so inclined, and spending time at the gaming table telling the PCs world info. Only the second is in any way the same thing Harrison is talking about.

With all due respect, while I appreciate your sentiment, I do think you've done Harrison's article a disservice by applying it to RPG's, and GM prep-work specifically, rather than fiction or storytelling, which is clearly the intent.