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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3524085" data-attributes="member: 4937">Do you notice the shift in meaning between one sentence and the next?  You can't construct an argument around that sort of shell game and expect anyone to take it seriously.  In one sentence we are speaking of the medium of literature, and in another sentence we are speaking of a role playing game.  They have similarities, but you can't equate the two completely.  Even if I fully agree, as I have, that "one doesn't need world building in order to construct setting" in a novel, it doesn't necessarily follow that I agree that it follows that one doesn't need world building in order to construct a role playing game.  I can fully agree that one doesn't need visual effects to present a story in a novel, but it would not follow that I think that no visuals is a good way to present a movie.  They may both be the same super-type of narrative art, but they have different pecularities unique to them (otherwise we wouldn't need a separate word for 'role-playing game' when we already had novel or story or epic or whatever).  Therefore, rounsers point that world building is essential to well constructed role playing game is not at all harmed by my agreement that it is not essential to a well constructed novel.  Just how essential world-building is to a role playing game, I'm not entirely sure.  To a dungeon crawl, it is comparitively unessential, though I tend to find dungeon crawls that are based on prepared maps and notes and have some thought put into why the inhabitants of the dungeon are there and what they are doing are more compelling than ones that lack that thought.  But, to the sort of games I wish to play, I at least find it essential and do not believe I could run a game without some sort of world building.And probably for very good reason.  There maybe a handful of DMs that can improv thier way through a deep, thoughtful, and engaging setting without any of the forethought and preparation into the setting that I have previously defined as world building but if there are, and I've never met one, they are few and far between.  The vast majority of DMs require notes, thought experiments, maps, demographics, and some thought on culture its role in local government, a bit of couriousity about how the characters of the story live, and so forth before they can run a mature and engrossing campaign.  And even if you can dispense with these things, its not clear that the session might not have been better with them.As proof that the assertion that world building is not essential to a role playing is probably ill-founded, lets consider the example of a massively multiplayer online role playing game.  In this case, whatever is not in your setting bible, whatever is not added to the game in great detail, whatever is not planned simply doesn't exist.  Every detail of the world must be placed into it at every level, from the smallest to the largest, if it is to be part of the game.  It would be very hard indeed to argue that such games don't benefit from world building.World building is not as essential to pen and paper games as it is to computer games, but that doesn't mean it isn't important.That's one interpretation of this fact.  I can think of ones that are more logical.</blockquote>

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