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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7415520" data-attributes="member: 42582">Introducing an otyugh for the same reason - ie specifying that, in such-and-such a place an otyugh is to be found performing sanitation services - would be worldbuilding (on a similarly modest scale).I was contrasting actually describing a part of the gameworld as including an otyugh with writing up a monster description that includes notes about the ecological role that otyught's serve. I don't think that the latter is worldbuidling.  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] regards writing up a monster desctiption which says "this monster is/was a servant of this other monster" as worlduilding (eg kobolds as slaves of dragons). I don't think I agree: the AD&D MM tells me that hobgbolins hate elves, that goblins hate gnomes, etc, but I don't really see that as worldbuidlding either.That said, maybe the difference is this: hobgoblins hate elves doesn't mean that if you use hobgoblins you have to use elves; it just means that if you don't use elves you have a "gap" in your account of hobgoblins (they have no one to hate). Whereas kobolds typically serve as slaves to dragons tends to imply that if there are kobolds, there are also dragons. So using a kobold commits you also to using a dragon. I can see how that's more like wordlbuilding.Using an otyugh commits you to there being refuse - but that's hardly anything specific about a world at all, and so I don't think that using an otyugh is, per se, worldbuilding beyond the bare fact of the otyugh being there.</blockquote>

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