I disagree. I think having a base to work from is helpful, both to players and DMs.
For example I don’t want to create a pantheon of gods. I might want to create a few unique gods within my setting, and if they conflict I’ll change some rules accordingly, but I want something to build off of. Similarly if a player wants to create a paladin or cleric they can just pull from the standard list.
Also if the official lore is fun, it’s more fun to build off of. I’ll enjoy reading it more and I’ll enjoy using it.
Absolutely agree. I set a game in the real(ish) world once, so it was a setting where everyone knew the base “lore.” It was so nice! I could reference things, name-drop countries, and introduce old grudges without having to exposition it all. People just got things. We’ve since done enough games on the sword coast that that works too, now.
Slightly surprised I didn’t get more disagreement.
A prebuilt system has one benefit: the players and DM come to the table with a shared set of expectations. This is crucial for things like adventurer’s league, where the players are all strangers, more or less engaging in a tournament without winners, each using the others to get their RPG rocks off, and can be useful to skip the mechanical design level of play-making. It also makes sense for a corporation to try to hit that lowest common denominator to maximise their audience.
However, I maintain, if no one at the table is creative enough to want to world-build beyond that, they might as well all just stick with consumer media. Those who don’t feel the drive to create aren’t suited to DMing, and a table without a DM is a hetero orgy without a woman.
Sounds like you have a table where the worldbuilding has a big place. That’s awesome but I really feel that worldbuilding is only one, arguably secondary, aspect of RPGs and not even the only one where creativity expresses itself.
Even if we stay focused on the world building aspect of the game, when playing in a pre-defined setting, you can still find plenty of uses for your creativity to fill the gaps that will present themselves as your game unfolds (that is if you’re not playing at a table full of FR nerds that read every single novel and campaign setting out there several times over).
Plus, many come to a point in life where it’s complicated to spend more than a few hours each week on TTRPGs. I’d rather spend time fleshing out characters, scenes and encounters than coming up with a pantheon of gods, most of whom will never come up in game. Sure, worldbuilding doesn’t have to imply heaps of prep ; you can improvise a lot on the spot. But I’ve already got enough shit to track and remember before/during/after game time.
Personally, I also feel much more confortable GMing in a world that’s well fleshed out. Sure, I can do it myself but it will simply take me down way too many rabbit holes and will proabably end up with me delaying sessions because I was too busy writing the grand history of that neighborhing kingdom the PCs probably won’t visit rather than doing proper prep.
Not to mention that there is a lot of creativity to be expressed when you have actual constraints, constraints like an existing world for example. And if that world is too bland or consensual to my taste I’m always free to spice it up as I please, because you know, creativity.
Certainly, RPGs are first and foremost a game of creativity and imagination but I don’t think that the want to worldbuild is, on its own, a really good metric of how creative you are, nor that prefering pre-defined settings makes people wholly unworthy of the hobby.
And I want to add that if the fact that no women showed up at your hetero orgy ruined it for you, I think it’s because you clearly haven’t been creative enough.
Succinctly, I would say any GM who says ‘I don’t want to spend my time thinking about the in-game world’ is just someone who would be happier as a player but is taking one for the team. In the metaphor, he’s the guy at the orgy squeezing a fleshlight between his thighs and wearing a wig so his buddies can pretend. He’s trying to be creative with what’s lying around. However, everyone would be happier if he wasn’t in that position. They’re all just too desperate to go elsewhere. I mean, it’s really nice of the guy to do that for his friends, but it’s not really what they showed up for.
You seem to be implying that I said or meant to say that. No way have I advocated that GMs should not think about the in-game world or that a GM that doesn’t think or want to think about the in-game world wouldn’t possibly be better off as a player.
Please don’t move the posts too much. There is a huge difference between simply thinking about the in-game world and building your own from scratch. Using a pre-defined setting does not mean that you cannot mull over it or adapt it to your tastes and needs, possibly investing significant time and creativity, possibly more than what some GMs invest into their homebrew worlds.
Is world-building a worthy endeavor to undertake or advocate for? Certainly. Does world-building generally demonstrate significant investment on behalf of the GM (and of the players if they participate)? Certainly.
Does world-building from scratch automatically make your game better? I’ve seen enough people coming in with their rather bland and boring homebrew world that just rehash plenty of overdone tropes to seriously doubt that (tough I’m certainly not arguing that pre-defined settings are automatically better either). And even if it did, one of my points is that there is a lot of others things, arguably more important, that contribute to the overall quality of a given campaign.
Are you a ‘bad’ GM unworthy of the title and of your friends time if you don’t build your own world? This is just a form of patronizing gate-keeping. You are certainly entitled to prefer homebrew worlds, to express no interest in playing a campaign in a pre-defined setting, to have beef with any or all existing settings, or generally finding that world-building is the only thing you really like about ttrpgs. But not only is the diversity of approaches, foci, and overall nature of tables a wonderful thing about ttrpgs, I strongly believe we can leave players decide for themselves whether or not their GM is ‘suitable’ as you put it, and this based on their own criteria. In a world where GMs only have a finite prep time during sessions, I find it rather unfair and a little rude to imply that they are running shitty games if they choose to rely on preexisting material to help them run their game.
Besides, GMing relies on a huge skill-set that extends far beyond the ability or desire to world-build and far beyond what most human beings can master. Like I said, you can certainly decide which skills a GM needs to have to be ‘suitable’ to run a game for you. In practice, it is just not tenable to expect any GM to master all of them, so while you can certainly argue that worldbuilding is a fundamental part of ttrpgs, I find it unbeckoning to automatically dismiss any GM that choose to focus their efforts on other aspects.
I’m running a campaign now and jmit takes place in the Underdark. Guess what, they worship Lolth and are pretty evil. I’ve got some Duergar down there too. I took ideas of the Drow city straight from the Into the Abyss module. I didn’t use the exact city, but it was my base of ideas.
Additionally I’ve taken ideas from the Acquisitions Incorporated book and made the item “Orrery of the Wanderer” a key part of my story. The reason I did that was because I found it to be an interesting item with interesting lore.
Look at it like Legos. If someone handed you a big crate full of Legos you could build something really cool. In fact you could build anything.
However if, instead of a big crate, someone handed me three medieval sets and a ninja set. If I build them exactly as instructed, I still get a cool set. Sure I would have a hard time making a WW2 fighter out of the medieval and ninja sets, but that’s ok. And if I tweak the sets a little I still get something that is my own.
I disagree. I think having a base to work from is helpful, both to players and DMs.
For example I don’t want to create a pantheon of gods. I might want to create a few unique gods within my setting, and if they conflict I’ll change some rules accordingly, but I want something to build off of. Similarly if a player wants to create a paladin or cleric they can just pull from the standard list.
Also if the official lore is fun, it’s more fun to build off of. I’ll enjoy reading it more and I’ll enjoy using it.
Absolutely agree. I set a game in the real(ish) world once, so it was a setting where everyone knew the base “lore.” It was so nice! I could reference things, name-drop countries, and introduce old grudges without having to exposition it all. People just got things. We’ve since done enough games on the sword coast that that works too, now.
Slightly surprised I didn’t get more disagreement.
A prebuilt system has one benefit: the players and DM come to the table with a shared set of expectations. This is crucial for things like adventurer’s league, where the players are all strangers, more or less engaging in a tournament without winners, each using the others to get their RPG rocks off, and can be useful to skip the mechanical design level of play-making. It also makes sense for a corporation to try to hit that lowest common denominator to maximise their audience.
However, I maintain, if no one at the table is creative enough to want to world-build beyond that, they might as well all just stick with consumer media. Those who don’t feel the drive to create aren’t suited to DMing, and a table without a DM is a hetero orgy without a woman.
Sounds like you have a table where the worldbuilding has a big place. That’s awesome but I really feel that worldbuilding is only one, arguably secondary, aspect of RPGs and not even the only one where creativity expresses itself.
Even if we stay focused on the world building aspect of the game, when playing in a pre-defined setting, you can still find plenty of uses for your creativity to fill the gaps that will present themselves as your game unfolds (that is if you’re not playing at a table full of FR nerds that read every single novel and campaign setting out there several times over).
Plus, many come to a point in life where it’s complicated to spend more than a few hours each week on TTRPGs. I’d rather spend time fleshing out characters, scenes and encounters than coming up with a pantheon of gods, most of whom will never come up in game. Sure, worldbuilding doesn’t have to imply heaps of prep ; you can improvise a lot on the spot. But I’ve already got enough shit to track and remember before/during/after game time.
Personally, I also feel much more confortable GMing in a world that’s well fleshed out. Sure, I can do it myself but it will simply take me down way too many rabbit holes and will proabably end up with me delaying sessions because I was too busy writing the grand history of that neighborhing kingdom the PCs probably won’t visit rather than doing proper prep.
Not to mention that there is a lot of creativity to be expressed when you have actual constraints, constraints like an existing world for example. And if that world is too bland or consensual to my taste I’m always free to spice it up as I please, because you know, creativity.
Certainly, RPGs are first and foremost a game of creativity and imagination but I don’t think that the want to worldbuild is, on its own, a really good metric of how creative you are, nor that prefering pre-defined settings makes people wholly unworthy of the hobby.
And I want to add that if the fact that no women showed up at your hetero orgy ruined it for you, I think it’s because you clearly haven’t been creative enough.
Succinctly, I would say any GM who says ‘I don’t want to spend my time thinking about the in-game world’ is just someone who would be happier as a player but is taking one for the team. In the metaphor, he’s the guy at the orgy squeezing a fleshlight between his thighs and wearing a wig so his buddies can pretend. He’s trying to be creative with what’s lying around. However, everyone would be happier if he wasn’t in that position. They’re all just too desperate to go elsewhere. I mean, it’s really nice of the guy to do that for his friends, but it’s not really what they showed up for.
You seem to be implying that I said or meant to say that. No way have I advocated that GMs should not think about the in-game world or that a GM that doesn’t think or want to think about the in-game world wouldn’t possibly be better off as a player.
Please don’t move the posts too much. There is a huge difference between simply thinking about the in-game world and building your own from scratch. Using a pre-defined setting does not mean that you cannot mull over it or adapt it to your tastes and needs, possibly investing significant time and creativity, possibly more than what some GMs invest into their homebrew worlds.
Is world-building a worthy endeavor to undertake or advocate for? Certainly. Does world-building generally demonstrate significant investment on behalf of the GM (and of the players if they participate)? Certainly.
Does world-building from scratch automatically make your game better? I’ve seen enough people coming in with their rather bland and boring homebrew world that just rehash plenty of overdone tropes to seriously doubt that (tough I’m certainly not arguing that pre-defined settings are automatically better either). And even if it did, one of my points is that there is a lot of others things, arguably more important, that contribute to the overall quality of a given campaign.
Are you a ‘bad’ GM unworthy of the title and of your friends time if you don’t build your own world? This is just a form of patronizing gate-keeping. You are certainly entitled to prefer homebrew worlds, to express no interest in playing a campaign in a pre-defined setting, to have beef with any or all existing settings, or generally finding that world-building is the only thing you really like about ttrpgs. But not only is the diversity of approaches, foci, and overall nature of tables a wonderful thing about ttrpgs, I strongly believe we can leave players decide for themselves whether or not their GM is ‘suitable’ as you put it, and this based on their own criteria. In a world where GMs only have a finite prep time during sessions, I find it rather unfair and a little rude to imply that they are running shitty games if they choose to rely on preexisting material to help them run their game.
Besides, GMing relies on a huge skill-set that extends far beyond the ability or desire to world-build and far beyond what most human beings can master. Like I said, you can certainly decide which skills a GM needs to have to be ‘suitable’ to run a game for you. In practice, it is just not tenable to expect any GM to master all of them, so while you can certainly argue that worldbuilding is a fundamental part of ttrpgs, I find it unbeckoning to automatically dismiss any GM that choose to focus their efforts on other aspects.
I’m also surprised and disagree again.
I’m running a campaign now and jmit takes place in the Underdark. Guess what, they worship Lolth and are pretty evil. I’ve got some Duergar down there too. I took ideas of the Drow city straight from the Into the Abyss module. I didn’t use the exact city, but it was my base of ideas.
Additionally I’ve taken ideas from the Acquisitions Incorporated book and made the item “Orrery of the Wanderer” a key part of my story. The reason I did that was because I found it to be an interesting item with interesting lore.
Look at it like Legos. If someone handed you a big crate full of Legos you could build something really cool. In fact you could build anything.
However if, instead of a big crate, someone handed me three medieval sets and a ninja set. If I build them exactly as instructed, I still get a cool set. Sure I would have a hard time making a WW2 fighter out of the medieval and ninja sets, but that’s ok. And if I tweak the sets a little I still get something that is my own.