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Message: <blockquote data-quote="molonel" data-source="post: 3491745" data-attributes="member: 10412">I don't think it's an either/or proposition. You can create a dungeon for a dungeoncrawl that has no connection with anything else, and is it's own little microcosm. Arguably, it is then a sort of "world" but, in my opinion, not really.But when overarching assumptions and design elements about your world flow into what happens in the dungeon, and the dungeon is part of a larger world, and these elements exist separately and apart from any particular adventure or locale, then it's worldbuilding.You would run it differently because you wouldn't obey the design principles that dictate a certain result. Worldbuilding isn't just codification. It's the overarching world at large.For example, I freely admit that there are levels of evil too low for me to address in my adventures. I've encountered those freak gamers who want to do really heinous @#$@# with their characters. I have a female friend who has played with a DM with an actual rape fetish. (I really wish I was kidding.)I don't allow that. As part of an overarching sense of reality, I will acknowledge that terrible things happen during wars. A medieval adventure fantasy doesn't deny that. But I take a Greek/classical view. Terrible things happen, but they happen offstage, and the players may encounter the results of some of those evils, but I'm not going to go into detail or belabor it.That's part of my worldbuilding philosophy: where some evils are concerned, don't go there. Because I'm not going to delight in actual descriptions of torture, or sordid sexual occurrences. Someone else might allow those things, but they are running a different world from mine.He realized that you don't control mankind by forging a ring. He realized you control us by controlling our entertainment! That fiendish villain!Am I really the only person who found himself occasionally flipping pages in the Two Towers?</blockquote>

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