Why Worldbuilding is Bad

[Hussar]

Hey Khyron - Long time no see. ((Waves!))

On the whole KM sidebar. Come on, get with the program here. While it's true that players do surprise the DM from time to time, I'm willing to bet that everyone posting in this thread can generally predict their player's behavior the majority of the time. Not because we're bloody geniuses or anything like that, but because, by and large, it's isn't a huge leap to figure out what someone's going to do. Hrm, as DM, I set the scenario and I've been playing with the same people for some time. So, if I start with a similar scenario as the one I did a couple of weeks ago, it's fairly likely that the players will react in similar ways. Or, if not, at least fairly predictable ways.

It ain't rocket science. Very few players, when faced with a closed door will begin yodelling.

 

[Baron Opal]

So, what kind of adventures are being taken into account in twenty some thousand pages of Forgotten Realms material? When I pick up the Ghelspad Gazetteer, I get 300 (ish) pages that paints the nations and city states of Scarn with a very broad brush. What kind of adventures are being taken into account there?

Hussar, you've done me the favor of drawing the line between setting and worldbuilding when I asked, and I a appreciate that. Allow me to return the favor. I can't imagine that I would write 300 pages on my campaign world. I think about it a lot, and I make some notes on a pad at work when my muse strikes me, but may campaign guide is about twenty pages in length. About five pages of that are house rules, class tweaks, &c. I think that if I copied what I stole from Planescape, Eberron, Iron Kingdoms, Greyhawk, &c. and imported it into Adobe I would probably reach about 120-150 pages of material. That would be the whole ball of wax, cosmology, important places, the works. So, let me be on the record and say that ~200 pages of professional material is a reasonable upper limit on a campaign milieu considering sole authorship and for personal use.

You can't really take Forgotten Realms as a true example of "great clomping nerdism", or whatever that jerk was quoted in the first post. It's a commercial product. However, I do agree that after reams and reams of notes you will tend to get lost in the details. I maintain that my notes are the adventure seeds for a lifetime and that the geography, cultures and other details inform me how things will play out. This helps me create the adventures, in which plots are resolved and details are fine tuned.

Here's the thing,

1. Some dude I've never heard of,
2. insults something I do for fun,
3. that reinforces something else that I do for fun,
4. while writing about something that's only tangentally related.

That stuck in my craw just a bit.

But, I realize that there is a continuum of detail. The amount prepared before a game ranges from Kamikaze Midget's white write-as-you-go to Khyron's black Encyclopedia Homebrewica. Does the dread specter of nerdism arise with a continental map and five pages of geo-political notes? Or with my fifty or so pages of typed and hand-written notes? Perhaps the Jester's 500 page opus of home rules and background? Where upon this grey continuum do we get to apply the stamp of the nerd and reject and ignore the fool as a sad and obsessed gamer?

I've got quote for you.

"I've been called worse from better people."

Hrumpf.

 

[Hussar]

Oh hey, I wear my badge of great clomping nerd with some pride. I don't really care that much about Harrison's original screed to be honest. It was a jump off point for me to see the debate. I'm actually truthfully somewhat surprised by the impassioned defense of world building. I knew that it was important to some people, but, not to the point where they would state that campaigns lacking world building are flat/railroads.

Now, where the turning point is will really vary from person to person. I honestly don't want to create/copy a couple of hundred pages of setting bible anymore. If I crafted a couple of hundred pages of adventures and called that a campaign, I'd be more happy. On the downside, doing that is a heck of a lot of work.

But, maybe, with the large number of adventures getting cranked out, and the number of large adventures hitting the shelves, I can create a sort of matrix that Rounser is talking about and then see what sort of setting arises from that.

I've got 11 issues of Dungeon or Dragon coming to me in September. (Sorry guys, didn't opt into Pathfinder - 11 back issues with free delivery was just too tempting vs 4 issues of Pathfinder - bloody international post) Anyone want to give me some suggestions for good Dungeon back issues for this sort of thing? I've only got the STAP Dungeon issues. I figure with 11 more Dungeons, I would have 30+ adventures in my greedy little hands. That's gotta be enough for a complete campaign.

 

[JustinA]

Only if you assume that you only world build if you have a complete product. If the process of world building is creating an entire world (note, world here doesn't necessarily mean planet, it could be larger or smaller depending) with as much detail and history as possible - following the six steps outlined above - then you would be wrong.

Actually, no, then you would be wrong, since that completely contradicts the distinction you were trying to draw between "setting creation" and "world building".

However, you are also guilty of tautology. Setting is good because you need setting.

If I had ever said that, I would be guilty of tautology. In reality, of course, I never said that.

But, please, don't let that dissuade you from punching those strawmen around.

World building is a specific process that is not necessarily the same as setting construction.

So you keep insisting with tautological fervor. But, like I said, I'm deeply suspicious of people who try to redefine commonly used terms in order to prove some sort of nebulous and ill-conceived point.

So, what kind of adventures are being taken into account in twenty some thousand pages of Forgotten Realms material? When I pick up the Ghelspad Gazetteer, I get 300 (ish) pages that paints the nations and city states of Scarn with a very broad brush. What kind of adventures are being taken into account there?

Lots of them? Was this meant to be a trick question?

Y'know what? I'm fairly willing to think that the entirety of The Border Kindoms articles are pretty much indulgence.

Really? Because they would seem to be directly pertinent to anyone running a campaign set in the Border Kingdoms.

/edit - found it. How about four separate articles detailing architecture in the rural areas of FR? Can we not at least agree that here, in this one case, we have found something that is pretty much pure indulgence?

Are you kidding? Do you never run adventures in rural locations? Or do your PCs never find themselves in buildings when you do so?

Let's just take two random facts from the first article you link to:

(1) "In Calimshan and Tethyr (and less prevalently elsewhere, as ideas spread from the Sword Coast), windows tend to be rectangular, with rough-cast metal frames crossed diagonally by three or four bars, with small panes of glass leaded into place between the bars."

Well, now I know what happens when someone gets defenestrated (which seems to happen at least three times in every campaign I've ever run) or when the PCs want to make a hasty escape out the window.

(2) "So glass pieces and fragments of all sizes are sold in markets all across the Realms. Merchants transport these wrapped in oilcloth or scraps of old clothing and laid in layers in wood "presses" of boards bound tightly together with leather straps."

Having the PCs act as merchant caravan guards is a cliche for a reason. Now we know what they're guarding.

Now, I suspect your answer to this will be: "Can't you just make these types of details up on the fly?" Please feel free to do so. It will give me the opportunity to completely destroy your position yet again.

It's not about being precient. But, come on. Let's be honest here. Do you REALLY think that 32 and counting articles are really necessary?

Necessary for what? My personal campaign? Probably not. But, on the other hand, Ed Greenwood isn't writing the column just for me. But do I think that pretty much everything in those columns will be useful to somebody at some point (or would be if they knew the resource existed)? Sure.

When you try to switch the focus from what I prep for my personal campaign to what a professional game company preps for their entire consumer base, you're trying to pull a fast one in any case.

For example, I have absolutely no plans to include assassins in my current campaign. Does that mean it was "indulgent" of WotC to include an assassin class in the DMG? Of course not. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people have found that assassin class immediately useful in their games.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[JustinA]

No, he's saying that he can make up fun stuff to do faster than the players can do it. There is no insult here, real or implied, merely the claim of honed skill. Which, if you've been making stuff up for a long time, I imagine you would become quite good at tale telling after a while.

And, honestly, this isn't a particularly elite skill. It takes me almost no time at all to come up with a concept for a basic fight scene. It'll take half and hour for that to play out at the game table, which should give me more than enough time to plot out my next move.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[Wayside]

Now, I suspect your answer to this will be: "Can't you just make these types of details up on the fly?" Please feel free to do so. It will give me the opportunity to completely destroy your position yet again.

Your (unintentionally comedic) summaries of whose words are doing what aren't really helping your position.

 

[rounser]

I've got 11 issues of Dungeon or Dragon coming to me in September. (Sorry guys, didn't opt into Pathfinder - 11 back issues with free delivery was just too tempting vs 4 issues of Pathfinder - bloody international post) Anyone want to give me some suggestions for good Dungeon back issues for this sort of thing? I've only got the STAP Dungeon issues. I figure with 11 more Dungeons, I would have 30+ adventures in my greedy little hands. That's gotta be enough for a complete campaign.

Modified versions of A Wrastle With Bertrum, At The Spottle Parlor, Asflag's Unintentional Emporium, Irongard and Nbod's Room are nice strong flavour starting points for a quilted-adventures-campaign. Secrets of the Towers can provide an ongoing theme for wilderness travel, and Granite Mountain Prison is a good place to put an NPC important to the PCs. King Oleg's Dilemma and The Siege of Kratys Freehold can be tied together into a "defend the keep" thread. The Shrine of Isildahur, Herme's Bridge, Troll Bridge and The Elven Home are nice "just stumbled upon" locations in the wilderness. I like Welcome to Krypthome more as a location than a plot (gotta love honkmoss).

A Hot Day In L'Trel, Goblin Fever and Bzallin's Blacksphere are very dynamic events to build cities around. If you're feeling adventurous, doing all three to the same city at different parts of the campaign is a possibility, though it risks the PCs beginning to not care about saving said city. Legacy of the Liosalfar plus The Standing Stones of Sundown, Nightshade, Blood on the Plow and A Wizard's Fate provide a lot to do in villages. Horror's Harvest can be set up long beforehand as a perfectly normal home village for the PCs - they see the comet whilst on adventure and hoo boy, things have changed when they return.

Dungeon also has a lot of adventures with the "seeking immortality" theme, and they can be tied together into a loose campaign arc, perhaps with a coterie of villains and lost souls at the heart of it. There are several adventures involving wererat infestations, which could be tracked over the course of the campaign through a single infested NPC villain. Raiders of the Chanth provides an Egg of Coot-style villain and it's demesne. The Challenge of Champions series provides another ongoing campaign theme in urban areas. Hrothgar's Resting Place, Forbidden Mountain, Deadly Treasure, Thunder Under Needlespire, A Rose for Talakara and many others on the tip of my tongue also shouldn't go unmentioned as excellent campaign-making fodder.

Combined with your own adventure ideas, it should result in something very dynamic and packed to the gills with adventure, which is what D&D should be all about IMO.

 

[howandwhy99]

So world building is a specific practice of creating a simulated environment. I gotta say, all 6 of the Wiki listed elements routinely enter into my designs. I don't see this as separate from what you are terming "setting" however. Why?

In a word: Relevancy.

All 6 of those aspects will be in my game. Will every specific detail be designed? Of course not. I've mentioned I build by proximity. Will every detail I create be encountered? No too. But the players aren't expected to suss out every last tunnel in every dungeon either. This isn't Zelda.

What about the "23 grasses of the Shaar plains"? Yeah, Greenwood is a great, clomping nerd. He isn't designing for relevance. He's just futzing around with his world and fanboys read all about it. Does that mean a game cannot be played there? No. Does it mean the 23 grasses are wasted creation? I say no to that too. But they are extraordinarily irrelevant until a PC takes interest in grassland botany.

IMO, relevancy changes as soon as the players take an interest. To your yodeling example.

Some folks yodel in front of doors. They ask around for the most popular yodel songs in town. Am I to have that ready? I'd say, no way, no how. Can I improvise? Sure, and I might just indulge the player with yodeling contests in the vicinity or, at the very least, I'll insert a few leads on where other yodelers might be found. If Bluegrass Willy keeps it up all session or seriously shows interest, guess what? I'm world-building yodels for next session.

Oh, the great, clomping nerdism of it all.

But seeing as the point is fun. And this element became fun. I'm indulging the players.

 

[gizmo33]

At least I understand where you guys are coming from, even if I don't agree.

But then...

I suppose it makes sense, worldbuilding is the metahobby which DMs indulge in, and so an attack on that is an attack on the heart of D&D tradition.

So what is it that you understand? You're trying to take some sort of "moral high-ground" at times but it's going to take some will-power to keep from slipping back into these imaginary excursions into other people's motivations.

It's easier for you to believe that the firmness of people's objections is due to some flaw in their personality rather than simply finding your reasoning to be strange, your fears exaggerated, and your definitions of words unusable.

I could just make up a conspiracy theory, say that kobolds controlled the world. People who deny it work for the kobolds. This sort of thing has, built into it, a narrative that you can use to completely dismiss objections to your theory. In fact, the more people object, the more you can convince yourself that you're on to something. A person doing that is not actually listening anymore to what people are saying, just absorbing comments into their framework and using it to build up the fantasy.

 

[Brentos]

worldbuilding and being a nerd

Why is worldbuilding ahead of time any more nerdy then worldbuilding while improvising?

Seems that playing a game, such as D&D already implies nerdy-ism, so whichever method I'm using is more about preference and personal fun. "I'm an orc wizard!" We really can't much nerdy-er, I imagine.

I like world-building, though, because I can do it more then I can play, but most of it is not relevant, and through improvising, things may change on the fly--yes, I'm nerdy from both end of the spectrum!