Constraints of the Real World

The goal remains to foster the creation of characters and game opportunities, promote the DM's storytelling, enable the players to cut their own way through the forest and encourage them to work together as a team in a rich, three-dimensional world.

I think I see a different way to the beach, so I'll follow that path and see how it goes.

Brandon addressed the subject of worldbuilding yesterday with regards to things written down.  I answered that my attention in writing things down applies to the rules ... and in retrospect, it occurs to me to explain that — present company excepted, of course — worldbuilding is not only a matter of building the physical game world.  That's needed, of course ... but there is a great deal more to the world than maps and dungeons.

This last year the systematisation of the wiki format has enabled me to build a list of 2,683 wanted pages for eventual writing.  Obviously, a considerable number of these are spells, monsters and knowledge-based abilities ... but other large segments include geographical features, organisations, provincial regions, religious subjects, goods and services, occupations, pieces of equipment and theoretical rule proposals.  It's a spectacular list; much too large for me to keep track of ... but thankfully, the wiki does the work.  On any particular day, I need only focus on those subjects that come up most often in the wiki's existing text.

If I had the money, I'd set up an office and hire approximately ten persons to develop and expand the wiki: five writers, two editors, two artists to create page-relevant artworks and a draughtsperson to do nothing except draw exhaustively detailed floorplans for castles, inns, temples, barracks, villages, towns, fields and so on, creating a game world so detailed that players and DMs could tromp hither and yon for scores of sessions.  I can see these phenomenal bull-sessions where we brainstorm how some village could be structured for open game play in a manner different than the other five or six villages that have already been mapped, populated, sketched and described in one vast wiki.

Not going to happen.  Nevertheless, it's how I envision the game world.  The places of the world are real to me, as real as any historical figure whom I only know second hand, or any scientific truth that I only know second hand, or any promise that I've been given by a friend ... that I more or less have to have faith in rather than direct knowledge.  When I write a post or a book, it's something real; but it's also real, to me, before it's written down.

But, if we can cease berrypicking for the time being, this isn't getting us to the beach.  As I was saying, a game world is more than making maps.  It's also designing the rule systems, which build constraining conditions on the players, some permanent and some temporary until the players expand their list of abilities.  For example, the players are subject to the roll of the die in any circumstance where the outcome is necessarily uncertain, such as, "Can they hit an enemy?" or "Can they find a needle in a haystack given a set amount of time?"  They must adhere to the die whether they like it or not; and likewise as DM I must adhere to the die, whether I like it or not.  It's a hard boundary.  Hard boundaries exist everywhere in video games and players don't quit playing games on their account ... whereas the removal of boundaries in video games make them so boring than few desire to play.  D&D must adhere to the same principle.

But consider this: apart from the game's conventional rules relating to such like the creation of a character, which kinds of characters are available, the resolution of combat, the fixed potentiality of spells and such, there is other sets of rules inherent in the game's play which are not dictated by the game's rule books.  Understanding these other rules is central to understanding how to create scenarios and NPCs that can be effectively embraced by the players.

Let's start with reality.  To a lot of readers, this seems immediately counterfactual.  There are monsters, spells, unreal supernatural forces, la-di-da, so "obviously" D&D cannot possibly be "real."  However, I'm not talking about superficial elements and entities.  I'm speaking of laws of reality.  The game world must be livable, it must include gravity, it operates according to the principles of time and space.   There are fundamental facets to play that must not be circumvented with spells and monsters.

Normally, when we start to play, these things are taken for granted.  Rarely, I would imagine, does the DM begin a session zero by explaining that the game world operates as a physical universe constructed of atoms and electro-magnetic energy.  However magic in the game works, whatever the monsters do, whatever the supernatural forces are, they must manifest in some way that perpetrates and acts in tandem with forces we associate with reality.  Otherwise, it would be impossible for the game's participants to relate to the game world.  Therefore, water is water, everyone drinks it to sustain life.  The trees consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide.  Food is grown and eaten.  Characters get hungry.  Characters and every other living thing eliminates its waste accordingly.  

It seems so obvious that it needn't be stated ... but if it IS true, then physics and momentum are also a part of our universe, which means that a halfling CANNOT climb a giant while the giant is in motion without accumulating so many vectors of acceleration as to make the halfling useless while clinging to the giant and simultaneously as helpless a defender as an infant hanging onto my arm.  That infant on my arm is NOT in a superior fighting position.  Instead, it is largely dependent on my not shaking it off and causing it to land on the floor and sustain grievous injury.

We must not cherry pick which forces of reality exist in the game world and which do not.  They all do.  Ignoring those forces doesn't make the game "cool" or "fun" or "interesting," it ludicrously ignores the constraints of game play and turns everything that happens into a ridiculous farce.  Now I understand that many "players" seem to enjoy the farce; they pursue it vigorously.  To do so myself, however, would require my resuming many levels of stupid, restoring me to infancy.  Thank you, no.

With the rules of reality, come rules of culture.  A mere ten human beings cannot manage themselves without electing an intelligent leader, as any slasher film proves.  Forty human beings absolutely cannot, and with as many as a hundred human beings there are multiple levels of authority that are automatically pursued.  Therefore, the game world operates under "laws" as defined by the inhabitants of the game world — which are quite able to contravene the laws of reality AND the rules of the game.  Nevertheless, the characters must still adhere to these game culture laws, such as do not kill, do not carry weapons in town, do not say bad things to women, do not threaten children, do not set the bar on fire, do not blatantly cast spells in front of witnesses, do not be an ogre and walk into town like you're a human, do not kill, do not steal, do not pretend there are no laws, do not imagine that the town guard, watch, mercenaries, captains, outriders and bounty hunters are not capable of kicking your ninth level ass from here to creation.  Etcetera.  Flout these laws at your peril.

Because we are creatures with limited intelligence and senses, we have the law of ignorance.  No, you don't know where the nearest dungeon is.  No, you're not entitled to "rumours."  No, you have no special knowledge about the area.  No, you must actually seek knowledge and earn it.  No, there are no short cuts.  In addition, where there is knowledge, there are lies.  Many, many, many lies.  So do not trust one person.  Get a second opinion.  Always, always, always get a second opinion.  And watch your brother's six.

There are other cultural certainties.  Governments are always unstable.  As an effort to maintain stability through tradition and morality, there are always religions poking their noses into everything.  There is never enough money.  There is always a criminal class because there's never enough money and there are always those ready to break the law.  The criminal class is never made of nice people, because they those who don't respect law, traditional, morality, et al, tend to be very selfish.

When designing game environments, it pays to consider these constraints on the players' freedoms as opportunities to create stories.  There are stories about criminals and about why religion is important.  There are stories about falling governments and governments that sustained themselves.  There are stories about ignorant people learning things, and about why laws are passed.  There are many, many stories about leaders, and whom they led, and what they did, and why no one today is as great a leader as those people in the past.  Stories that encourage players to stop criminals or be them; that encourage players to embrace religion or fight it; that encourage players to discover and explore; that make them want to be leaders and pass their own laws.  There are a lot of stories and they already exist.  We just need to scratch out a few names and labels before writing in new ones.

Constraints create the need for ambition.  When the players haven't enough of something, they will always have to get ambitious about getting more.  When they want to do something, and can't, because they're not recognized in the eyes of the world, or because they haven't enough money, or because they don't know how to change their stars, then they'll have to overcome those failings.

Everytime they do, the DM can be right there, showing them a number of paths they could take, letting them decide how to accumulate, get recognized, power up and force their way in, whatever it takes and however the party wants to handle it.  Dealing with the constraints of a real world is not like poking around a set-piece dungeon, where all the routes are clear and obvious, and everything's waiting to be killed or picked up.  The real world is way more complicated ... but if the reader thinks of the game world as the real world, I think you can see plainly HOW the real world is complicated.  After all, you live in it.  It's right outside your front door.

The Other D&D was never about fetching things from dungeons.  I know that's what the game's makers thought it ought to be, but none of the participants I played with in the early 80's played that way.  We all saw the game world as THE world, with all the opportunities and possibilities the real world offered.  Yet there were things D&D couldn't provide in its early days.  There were no lap tops, no easy way to keep track of tons of data; no easy way to research and filter the knowledge of the world from the internet; no easy way to watch any film or read any book just by wanting to; no easy way to keep in touch with other DMs, or seek the advice from other DMs.  The isolation was just too ... intense.  So those players enjoyed their time in the sun until they finished school, then put "childish things" aside and got on with starting their careers and families.  And somewhere along the way, the Other D&D that I continued to play got lost.

Sometimes I think it'll never be found.

Well, we got to the beach.  And the water is nice.  I believe I'll be putting down this series for a while.