Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[howandwhy99]

Here are some relevant posts I made over at therpgsite:

I use a sort of Escher "Hands" approach like the painting. The place where the PCs begin is highly detailed and as you expand out from that spot the world becomes more and more of a sketch.

This is both macro and micro in its detail. Microscopic is easy to understand as it's the highly detailed starting area. Macroscopic comes into play regarding the big elements of the world that exist in that local area too. For example: seasons, star charts, weather patterns, physiologies, etc. You don't need to have a stack of textbooks on hand for these, but keep in mind that the underlying physics, metaphysics, magic, heavens & hells, etc. are all going to have their easily experienced elements in play from the start so be prepared to fit within these perceptions. Water is wet, magic needs a source, Gods give power, seasons pass as on Earth, whatever.

A big thing to remember is many of these, like calendars, common tongues, star charts, and religions, are all just as local as every other microscopic element. You don't need every God to start, nor do you need every type of magic. Leave room to grow and add for foreign cultures farther afield. "The Truth" is as each locale understands it. It is the culture and simply answers for the "big" questions. Medieval worlds are nice like this as there is no "shrinking world" aspect like we have in our real one.

"Time and Space" are the two vectors I use in my approach. It's not just the map that is detailed locally and sketched globally. Time, as well, is really only important for the starting point of the campaign. I sketch it out in this "Hands" way both forward and back with the future as a series of potentialities based on NPC plans and plotted actions. I don't really need ancient history, but I do want to know why this locale has come to be as it is. If their are ancient sites around I want to know generally when they came into being, but I can always make those fit as I expand with newly created histories conciding with what has come to light in game.

This technique requires some intensive preparation before a campaign begins, but not so much work during one. I like to stick 7 or so adventures in the starting area and intwine them in the setting. This means all NPCs, their histories, the dungeons, towns, everything becomes the setting. This way I never really need adventure hooks as the adventures themselves ARE a great deal of the world. By simply being within the world the PCs will run up against exciting goings on. Even if they do their own thing and ignore what's around them, the world (i.e. the adventures) doesn't go away. It remains relevant even if all aspects of the adventures are never directly experienced.

As we play time moves forward and the PCs move around the map. Between sessions I then expand the world along the time and space vectors. Like the "Hands" painting I keep the locations where the PCs are and are going to at the highest level of detail. Time moves forward too and people, places, even adventures are all slightly adjusted to take into account what happened. An adventure can completely change, but every element of it has the potential for reuse, even multiple uses. Also, if a lot of time passes in game, I'll detail more of the future as well.

The key things to watch for are PC travel speed and when Players decide to fastforward. In truth, I'd have some difficulty if the group sat for 3 years or flew half way across the globe, but I'd also have at least a sketch of what was going on then and there. Even a lightly placed adventure and setting can work for a single session. Earlier versions of D&D and some other older games had safeguards in place for this potentiality. Very fast travel was hard for most groups and almost always used Encounter tables anyways. Teleportation required viewing the intended area beforehand and risked possibly landing somewhere else (presumably somewhere you've already detailed).

Personally, I use a number of published adventures and modules and also a published setting, but there are plenty of folks who used to homebrew everything when stats didn't bog down prep time. My suggestion is: NPC generators and plenty of generic NPCs to place as needed. Just because a portion of the world wasn't in place before the PCs arrived does not mean what you winged isn't just as legitimate.

You know, I'm all for Players playing however they want to. Tons of folks are reactive in real life and it's no mystery some are equally so when playing, whatever the game. If they want to play in a RPG fantasy world, give them one. What's unrealistic is to think that fantasy world will be as unresponsive to them as they are to it. Any good DM will have it spinning around according to its own reality and bumping into the characters.

The problem occurs when the DM dreams up his own fun and attempts to serve it. Lots of players will take whatever predetermined choices have been made for them. The fun is delivered, bought, and performed for them. This style of play reinforces passive reactivity.

Imagination, however, is active creativity. It takes work, initiative, desire. If the world you create is truly interesting to the Players (not necessarily the characters), they will shop around for what they like. They will begin to take an interest, take action, which creates goals, and inevitably leads them down a path of their own choosing. They are no longer children asking "What are we supposed to do?" They are full functioning individuals and the fun they will have will be of their own devising.

Everyone already knows how to take action and make choices in the real world. RPGs are just a hypothetical realm of "What if?" actions.

In reference to the AIAAT (all improvisation, all the time) style, I gotta say, almost everything I've ever done in life was made better (or would have been made better ) by thinking about it first. Even the great, blind Homer (not Mr. Simpson), who it's said could not read or write, prepared or at least thought about his epic poems before performing them.

Whether you're the DM or a Player the game is going to require some improvisation. Otherwise we'd all have scripts to read from when it came time to speak.

In the same way, making plans and preparations before the game begins aids play. Again, whether you're the DM or a Player.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Really? Look at sites like Canonfire! or Fargoth, or a multitude of others. I've seen people on EnWorld specifically say that when one person added flying ships to Forgotten Realms that he wasn't playing the Realms anymore. (sorry, no linkie) There's a huge amount of chatter on setting canon that flies around. Try starting a thread that states you think that demons were created by the gods and see what happens.

Man, don't even bother lumping me in with people like that.

Really? So, I can play my modified Warforged Ninja at your 7th Sea game no problem?

Probably. But we've already established that that is irrelevant to the merits of world building. That kind of choice can easily be hampered by "setting" alone (using your definition of setting being different than worldbuilding). Would you let me play a Care Bear in the Shackled City AP? Age of Worms?

Sorry, working backwards here. I would say yes. Most monster manuals are a complete waste of time. A book which only sees about 10% use in play is by and large, useless wouldn't you agree? The search by WOTC for monsters with traction shows how bloated the monster field is right now. People complain about feat bloat, but, come on, right now, there's THOUSANDS of monsters in print just for 3.5 edition. Most of which will never see the light of day.

So you make up all your own monsters then?

And, again, you've made your setting relevant. Fantastic. That's how it should be.

And what was that setting a product of? Worldbuilding.

The history of the Isle of Dread is tied to the main NPC's mother and the players have her journals in their greedy hands. Setting is tied to adventure, rather than simply mooching around bumming smokes.

I still don't understand how you can not consider potential to be useful. If the information is useful when you tie it to an adventure it was useful *before* you tied it to an adventure. Is your car only useful when you are driving it? Do you consider it worthless when you go to trade it in because you aren't using it anymore?

 

[rounser]

Is your car only useful when you are driving it? Do you consider it worthless when you go to trade it in because you aren't using it anymore?

I hate car analogies because they never apply to the topic at hand, but suppose if your car is a huge SUV with a ridiculous engine and all these added fittings which you never use, totally beyond the needs of going down to the corner store which is all you ever use it for because you spend so much time in the garage modifying it, and you've spent all your money on it and you can't afford groceries when you get there....or we could drop analogies and actually talk about the topic at hand, as it is.

 

[Darth Shoju]

On a smaller scale, look at Sword and Sorcery Press and Scarred Lands. Book after book of setting material. I've got most of them. Yet, for all of that, three modules. And what happened? The setting died. Why? Because it got to the point where, if you wanted to run a SL campaign, you had to wade through several hundred pages of crap to find that one nugget that might stand out and make an impression on your players.

Really? You can pinpoint its lack of success to that? That must have required a lot of research on your part.

Compare that to Freeport. Three modules, also from a d20 publisher. Later, the setting bible came, after the interest was there, mostly, again, to feed the clodding nerds who feel the need to know exactly how many widgets there are. While Freeport may not be a runaway success, the fact that it survived the move to 3.5 and is still seeing material produced for it does show that you don't need world building to have a great setting.

So a successful setting that has examples of "worldbuilding" (as you define it) is an example of how worldbuilding isn't necessary to have a successful setting?

I'm not saying that world building is bad. I believe I was wrong there. It's not bad. But, I do believe that it's an indulgence.

Of course it is. But then again, so are RPGs.

See, everyone keeps saying that if you don't world build, then your settings are contradictory and flat, lacking in depth. But, that's simply isn't true. No one would say that Freeport is lacking in depth. Or Shackled City. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil may be repetitive in places, but, it's not exactly a boring ride. City of the Spider Queen is bloody great fun.

Fun and depth aren't the same thing. You can have fun with nothing more than a set of dice and some pencil and paper. That doesn't mean what you are producing has "depth". It really depends on what you mean by depth I suppose (although I am loathe to introduce yet another definition of term tangent to this thread). If by depth you mean amount of setting material available then yes you can say that FR has more depth than Shackled City. If by depth you mean the options of play you have in each product then yes FR is deeper than SC; after all, when you use SC, then all it is good for is that particular adventure. The FRCS can be used for a nearly limitless number of different adventures. If by depth you are referring to the quality of play then that depends on the people using the information and what they do with it and isn't a commentary on the usefulness of said information (although its value to that group may be low if it isn't to their taste).

 

[Darth Shoju]

I hate car analogies because they never apply to the topic at hand, but suppose if your car is a huge SUV with a ridiculous engine and all these added fittings which you never use, totally beyond the needs of going down to the corner store which is all you ever use it for because you spend so much time in the garage modifying it, and you've spent all your money on it and you can't afford groceries when you get there....or we could drop analogies and actually talk about the topic at hand, as it is.

Or you could stop ignoring the rest of my post instead of focusing on the analogy. Besides, the analogy was relevant to the point I was making in response to Hussar.

 

[Darth Shoju]

A few observations:

1) Traditionally, 32 page adventures haven't sold, yet there seems to be a lot of interest in Adventure Paths, because rather than string together half a dozen unrelated piddling little 32 page vignettes together into a setting that's probably arbitrarily ruled over half of them out for reasons covered in this thread, Adventure Paths are the campaign, and the setting must bow to it or you may as well not bother playing it. Why it's taken 30 years to get to the point where 256 page adventures are becoming the norm and are finally taking priority over extraneous setting nonsense like "FR, GH or Eberron?" is beyond me. I'd estimate that more people have played the Paizo adventure path modules than any other set of adventures in Dungeon.

2) Refer to my point about people liking to buy products as much or moreso for daydreaming purposes as for actual use in play. Setting material is marvellous for this purpose, because it's a good read (adventures generally aren't save for the DM's background), letting you dream of grandious campaigns that never might be etc. No wonder it sells better than adventures. It sells well for the same reason that homebrew worldbuilding is so popular - you can focus on and daydream about the sexy macro aspects of the game, and ignore the tedious nitty gritty of stats and encounters. I wonder how many people who bought the FR Underdark book went on to run an Underdark campaign? I suspect that plenty of them just toyed with the idea, and said "one day" before shelving the book. But I could be wrong.

3) Good fully prepped adventures are hard to write, and as a result many published adventures kind of suck. Setting tomes can hide their flaws in wishy-washiness and broadly painted strokes, and even if the material sucks for actual play purposes it can always end up a good read regardless. Adventure design has no such luxury, because it has to be specific - it's what actually gets played, and doesn't lend itself to being a good read beyond the intro, so can't fall back on that. No wonder people often look at what's on offer and think "I can do better", especially if they're mostly 32 pagers that need adapting, making it even less worth the effort.

Perhaps the settings sell because they have a wider appeal due to their large amount of potential uses. If my group doesn't want to play an AP because they don't like it, then it is useless to us. Even if we do want to play it, then it gets used once and only once. On the other hand, the Greyhawk Gazeteer gets used by all of the players and the DM and can continue to be used as long as we play in Greyhawk. How can that which has a narrower range of use be considered *more* useful than something with broader applications?

 

[rounser]

How can that which has a narrower range of use be considered *more* useful than something with broader applications?

Because arguably, with the exception of roleplaying talk to NPCs and PCs, the game doesn't really exist until you're interacting with something low level. Disarming a trap, fighting a monster, quelling a riot, chasing a thief, navigating a dungeon, puzzling over a mystery. Goggling at the DM's cool world isn't playing D&D, it's just decoration to the main event.

You can't avoid the specifics unless your campaign is a vacuum, as many a worldbuilder's campaign seems to be because they're painted in such broad macro strokes rather than the down and dirty meat of the game, the specifics of adventure.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, there's a lot more play straight off the bat with no more prep needed using Age of Worms plus a 32 page setting like Thunder Rift than there is with the FRCS plus a 32 page module like Sunless Citadel. As far as running a game now goes, rather than the possibility of a campaign sometime in the future, the former is, yes, a lot more useful than the latter. If you don't want to play, now, then that's not the case, but that just points out that your priorities are not about actually playing the game - they're about worldbuilding fetishism (and if that weren't the case you'd be more interested in making your own homebrew adventure campaign arc equivalent if Age of Worms didn't do it for you, but no, you're too busy making a "world"). But we already knew that.

 

[rounser]

Perhaps the settings sell because they have a wider appeal due to their large amount of potential uses.

Or, you could just cut out the middle man and make an "actual use" straight off the bat from first principles, ignoring worldbuilding trivia and making the damn adventure and campaign arc already. Worldbuilding is often superfluous, and the value it adds comes at a price that, as the OP points out, isn't really worth paying, except in terms of self-indulgence. You're going to have to make the damn adventure to some degree anyway, unless you're an improvisation savant.

And don't bother falling back on the old saw we've seen in this thread already that "worldbuilding inspires adventures", because the converse is just as true, and at least by putting adventure needs first you're not imposing arbitrary restrictions on the quality of the game just because some setting doesn't have a city there, or there are no boggarts in the area.

 

[Baron Opal]

Why does a lack of world building equate with improv DMing though? That's only true if you assume that all setting creation is world building.

Well, yes. What is the difference between establishing setting and worldbuilding? Where in your mind is the dividing line? Merely one of utility? If certain details are extraneous, that then is "worldbuilding"?

On a smaller scale, look at Sword and Sorcery Press and Scarred Lands. Book after book of setting material. I've got most of them. Yet, for all of that, three modules. And what happened? The setting died. Why? Because it got to the point where, if you wanted to run a SL campaign, you had to wade through several hundred pages of crap to find that one nugget that might stand out and make an impression on your players.

I think you are right, there. There was practically no adventure support for Scarred Lands and that was a major problem of the product line. However, in that particular case, the setting material was scattered over many books. There wasn't a true campaign setting book until Ghelspad, you had to mine the setting from the monster books, spell books, &c.

 

[rounser]

Well, yes. What is the difference between establishing setting and worldbuilding? Where in your mind is the dividing line? Merely one of utility? If certain details are extraneous, that then is "worldbuilding"?

The OP's point is that, yes, worldbuilding for it's own sake with no story purpose and that the author then self-indulgently forces into the narrative at the expense of the actual story kind of sucks. I suppose we'll keep obfuscating and splitting hairs in order to avoid the logic of this point like you're doing there, though.