Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Raven Crowking]

Only a campaign arc isn't a metaplot; that's part of a "worldbulding first" approach that usually stars NPCs (surprise surprise).

Like the A series of modules. Like the Dragonlance series of modules. You perhaps forget that Dragonlance began as a railroading adventure arc, not a series of 256-page books about the world in which those arcs take place.

 

[rounser]

It really sounds like Rounser has had a terrible experience with a bad GM. Presumably an obsessive worldbuilder. Perhaps a few of them?

Only, what gets published (256 page world bibles, that then often get metaplotted) belies that my experience is abnormal. The existence of these books suggests that it's very much the norm, as is the kneejerk "I'm starting a new campaign, which setting?" which we see all the time on these boards. "Setting first priority" goes to the heart of D&D culture so far as I can tell, and homebrewers aren't immune because they tie their egos to their worlds.

Look, I understand; it's fun, you get to create these awesome world maps, stamp your personality on the rules and implied setting by tweaking the roles of races and classes, write of empires that never were, and DMPC-by-proxy about all these powerful NPCs that have clashed over continent and history. Now, if we could just direct all that creative energy into something a lot more directly relevant to running the game, like adventures and campaign arcs...and I know that's way too much like hard work and not nearly as grand as working on worldbuilding or house rules. Heck, purportedly even a WOTC core rules designer considered himself above designing "a tower of orcs"...

 

[rounser]

Like the A series of modules. Like the Dragonlance series of modules. You perhaps forget that Dragonlance began as a railroading adventure arc, not a series of 256-page books about the world in which those arcs take place.

And it's a perfect example of how much in it's infancy campaign arc design in D&D is. The published game's idea of prepped campaign arc is so primitive that even Bioware's Baldurs Gate and Planescape Torment computer games do it far better than 3E's adventure paths, without railroading the PCs from start to finish. If so much time and energy wasn't spent on pointless worldbuilding, then maybe the state of the art would improve in this respect.

 

[Celebrim]

Totally. Wolfe is a pleasure to read, even if his stories meander weirdly. However I'd class Wolfe as a worldbuilder as much as a wordsmith.

This is one of those things where I disagree with the consensus position of both sides of this debate. While I absolutely agree that Wolfe has some of the coolest invented worlds in fiction, there is very little evidence that Wolfe uses a world building process to create them. I mean, there is some evidence. In book of the Long Sun, Wolfe has obviously done some math on the population that is sustainable on his world using certain assumptions, and he does some enumeration within the story as part of the revealing of what is really going on because in context only the world's enumeration can meaningfully shift the reader's context. But by and large, I see no evidence in Wolfe that he relies heavily on world building as I understand the term, because Wolfe seems to have relatively little desire in seeing his world 'hang together' in an orderly fashion. If you scratch his story, I think you find his setting is only plot deep. In this fashion, I disagree with both sides consensus position. Yes, you can generate an elaborate setting without a world building process, but the mere fact that you can does not render world building useless, bad, or justify the claims Mr. Harrison made directly or indirectly.

One of things I love about Wolfe is his ability to drop in subtle references to a large, intricate world and an ancient history.

I just have no reason to believe that that history actually exists. Interestingly, Mr. Harrison also has this talent (for the record, I went down to the library to check some of Mr. Harrison's work out, and once I started reading it, realized that I'd already read 'Light'. That's how much impact his work had on me the first time.) Mr. Harrison is always dropping references to technology, or history, or setting. It's just I've no reason to suspect that they actually mean anything, and in fact my understanding is that behind Mr. Harrison's work is the conviction that they cannot or should not mean anything. For example, when Tolkien drops a reference to the 'cats of Queen Beruthiel' ability to find thier way home in the dark, he's just dropping an invented reference that has no depth behind it purely for the sake of having a non-anchronistic metaphor. This is an entirely different sort of thing than when Tolkien drops a reference to Earendil the Mariner in Frodo and Sam's discussion of the meaning of stories in the central passage of the LotR. In the former, Queen Beruthiel doesn't exist and the legend is created whole cloth for the purpose of creating color. In the latter case, Tolkien's refering to an actually existing secondary creation myth which has been elaborated on both within and without the story, and which gives greater depth to Sam's insight about what stories mean.

You know that this depth is driving the story, even if you only catch tantalizing glimpses of it.

There is clearly some depth driving the story, but its not clear to me that its necessarily world building. Like Tolkien, Wolfe's writing is being driven by some really deep philosophical thinking, some of which is obvious and some less so, but less like Tolkien Wolfe is not worried so much about the consistancy of the setting. In fact, Wolfe is probably deliberately creating a vague setting to enhance the alienness of the setting. Wolfe wouldn't expect you to understand a setting that occurs in that distant of a future time.

 

[rounser]

I mean are you building your adventures to "show off" to the PC's?

In the process of playing them, yes, they are being shown. Worldbuilding for it's own sake is often extraneous to the adventures (or "story" in the case of a book), so special efforts often have to be made to show the work that has gone into it, because they're simply not relevant to what's going on - a collection of dry facts about what amounts to stage props. And that's the author quoted by the OP's point, and a very salient one it is.

 

[Imaro]

Only, what gets published (256 page world bibles, that then often get metaplotted) belies that my experience is abnormal. The existence of these books suggests that it's very much the norm, as is the kneejerk "I'm starting a new campaign, which setting?" which we see all the time on these boards. "Setting first priority" goes to the heart of D&D culture so far as I can tell, and homebrewers aren't immune because they tie their egos to their worlds.

Again...ASSUMPTION OF PLAYSTYLE. Why does the existence of a setting book automatically determie how it's information will be used? Do any published settings actually say "don't change anything.", my experience is the opposite. You are making numerous assumptions based off...well actually nothing but ancedotal evidence. I don't really think most DM's slavishly keep their world or a published setting from changing. Maybe you should do a poll so we can actually have some basis to refer to when you speak about these things.

 

[rounser]

Again...ASSUMPTION OF PLAYSTYLE. Why does the existence of a setting book automatically determie how it's information will be used? Do any published settings actually say "don't change anything.", my experience is the opposite. You are making numerous assumptions based off...well actually nothing but ancedotal evidence. I don't really think most DM's slavishly keep their world or a published setting from changing. Maybe you should do a poll so we can actually have some basis to refer to when you speak about these things.

You're right, it's all in my head. No-one's obsessed with canon, or anything like that, are they...

 

[Raven Crowking]

You're right, it's all in my head. No-one's obsessed with canon, or anything like that, are they...

Of course there are people like that (on both, and on no, sides of the screen). OTOH, that's a personality/playstyle thing. Obsessing about any particular facet of the game to the exclusion of others isn't going to result in a great game. IMHO. YMMV.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

You're right, it's all in my head. No-one's obsessed with canon, or anything like that, are they...

Bingo. That's one of the reasons that I refuse to run or play in FR games. I know that not all of the GM's who run FR games are like that, obsessed with canon, but the majority of he ones that I've run into are. It's one of the reasons that I don't use published settings (as is) even though I own quite a few of them. It feels like so much homework having to keep track of what happens in the novels, the latest sourcebook etc, and then to have to reflect that in the game. No thanks.

On the other hand setting sourcebooks are amazing for putting things together piecemeal. When you dont have the time and/or inclination to put stuff together yourself, just peruse and take what you like from other settings, change a location name and youre good to go.

 

[Imaro]

You know what's funny...setting obsession can be a player thing as well.

I was playing in a star wars campaign set after the events of episode III but before episode IV. We we're all playing Jedi fugitives who we're basically following orders from Obi wan to perform cetain missions. Halfway through the campaign, me and my brother decided to break from the remnants of the Jedi order and form our own order called the Gray Order...basically finding a balance between the Dark side and Jedi teachings. The GM was cool with it, but one of the players had a fit. Hollering about how this never happened, and wasn't star wars, etc. The game crashed and burned from there as this player made it his obsession to try and stop everything we did in building our new order. It's actually kind of hillarious now that I tink back on it.