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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3518024" data-attributes="member: 22779">The point is,  I don't.  I've repeatedly said that there is no line.  That "something else" is called setting.  That's the term that's used pretty commonly when discussing literature.  When I talk about where the action is happening, I don't use the word "world building" I use setting.  Maybe there has been a drastic shift in English since I last went to uni, but, I don't think so.For exactly the same reason that we have two terms like art and porn.  No one can state empiracally where art becomes porn, but, we certainly can use the terms when discussing a picture.I could easily be wrong, but, I think it's far and away more likely that you'll get DM's who are in love with setting porn than a group of players who insist on it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  But, yes, you would be right.  If the DM is insisting that he run great adventures while the players are insisting that they want more Elven Tea Ceremonies, then, yes, the DM is forcing his playstyle on the players.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />If that was universally true, then Dungeon magazine would have gone out of business long ago.  And Goodman Games.  Necromancer games.  And TSR once upon a time.  Again, you conflate setting with world building.  Something I don't think is true.  Saying that your fighter comes from town X is part of setting.  Although, to be fair, most of the character background I see are pure world building in that the players write them and then never refer to them ever again after first level.  However, if the information you create is actually used, then it's setting.  It's not an indulgence, it's actually necessary for the character you want to play.I'm reminded of the many discussions James Jacobs had with Takasi about the inclusion of Eberron adventures in Dungeon.  James' point was essentially that simply dropping a proper noun is not enough to make something an Eberron encounter.  It's not enough to say that the action happens in Breland, but, you also need to include setting specific elements such as Quori or lightning rails in order to make it an Eberron adventure.  I take a similar view of world building.  It's not enough to drop a proper noun.  Writing Dragotha on the top of a players map is not world building.  It's no different than writing "here be monsters".  It adds atmosphere and the word itself connotes all sorts of bad things like Golgotha and dragons.  That's simply part of setting.  You are adding to the atmosphere.  RC wants to say that world building is pretty much synonomous with setting.  I strongly disagree with this.  But, I also appreciate that it appears that most people see them as almost exactly the same thing.  I think this is a misuse of the language.  We have a perfectly good word in setting.  I also admit freely that there is no exact cutoff where setting becomes world building and that's fine.  We can generally agree on the far ends, it's just the bits in the middle that are causing difficulties.I would point to wiki here and say that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_building" target="_blank">world building</a> is certainly not used synonomously with setting as RC suggests.  World building is the process of developing an entire world.  To be fair though, following the link to Holly Lisle, she does pretty much agree with Celebrim.  However, I think that RC takes a far too broad of a view of world building.  It's more than just some proper nouns and a map.  There's a number of steps listed in world building that goes beyond simple setting.</blockquote>

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