Counter-duality

Coming back to worldbuilding.

Let's put all the detailed structural work surrounding geography, politics, sociology and such upon a shelf today and talk about "function."  The world is a setting where things happen, but the world is also a tool designed to be practical and useful for game purposes.  The goal is to get the world up and running so that it's applications can serve both the DM and the Players, and other aspects of the game aside.

As a DM, I need the built world to provide me with inspiration at a glance whenever I need it, specifically during the course of the game.  This means that if I look at a map, that map is constructed in a way that upon looking at it, answers to questions and possibilities emerge within a few seconds, leading me to present situations for the players that I may have had no thought of 60 seconds prior ... but which some part of the work and preparation I've done regarding building my world has just provided.

Let's take a familiar example.  A dungeon room is a highly recognisable D&D construct.  Most DMs, having the map of a dungeon at their elbow, can visualise a number of monsters that could be placed on the fly in that dungeon room; what they're doing in the room is fairly evident as well, since there are only a few things that a group of orcs, say, or an ochre jelly, can possibly be doing as the players arrive.  While the structure of the dungeon is limited, that structure provides a clear-cut functional purpose.  The players are here to fight, they're here to find things in the room, they're here to seek passage to the next room.

If I take a random dungeon map, say the sort that Dyson regularly creates, as experienced DMs we can reason easily what ought to be there and, as the game session begins and gets going, the shape of the walls, the small incorporated details, whatever beasties we've inserted and so on sets in motion a fertile degree of invention ... one that we're used to because dungeons are such a large part of our gaming experience.  Plock any dungeon graphic in front of a DM with a mere two or three years of experience and running a single session without notice is not a difficult task.

Unfortunately, DMs tend to rely so much upon dungeons that they gain little experience with other possibly functional locations.  For many, a town encounter fails to produce an adequate experience because there are NO comparable, useful resources on par with what a dungeon layout provides.  Likewise with a wilderness or an occupied rural landscape.  This disconnect occurs because such places are not structurally limited like a dungeon.  A village or a town dictates that virtually anything that's done will be observed by someone, since these places are full of people; and if the act is observed, it's bound to be reported.  Many players, comfortable with doing whatever they want in a dungeon, suddenly become stymied by the lack of "freedom" a town offers.

And that itself is a strange happenstance.  We might suppose that the dungeon is the constrained environment, but it's not.  The consequence provided by a dungeon is whether or not our side can win in a fight ... whereas the consequence in a town is usually the recognition that if the whole town turns out in force, we're definitely going to lose.  Let us fight 20 orcs and not a hundred guards.

Taking the wilderness, it's a question of exposure.  Fight those 20 orcs in a dungeon and afterwards we can spike the doors and make our retreat, confident that once we're outside the orcs will lose our track ... and if the DM isn't the sort to hurl wilderness encounters, or run a strictly wilderness outdoor adventure, we're "safe" as soon as we get outside.  But if, when we're outside, a monster of any size, and particularly of great size because the outdoors gives lots of room, attacks us while we're recovering, um, we're fucked.  Players who lack experience with long-term outdoor situations also lack knowledge of how to protect themselves, while DMs who also lack experience tend to think the only thing one can do is throw large beasties as encounters.

In short, a dungeon seems rich and full of possibilities, while other parts of the setting feel repetitive and the players excessively vulnerable.  In response, many DMs choose to discard any conflict in towns altogether, along with any use of wandering monsters in the wilderness.  It's simply easier to ditch these adventure ideas and get the players out to the dungeon, where the DM is happier and the players as well.

These are setting-function deficiencies.  Because DMs have never been taught or even seen another point of view, they tend to perceive every setting in terms of the dungeon's combat-puzzle-trap model.  Or they turn to the dualism that if the game isn't combat, it's role-playing ... so that town encounters become long drawn-out chat exercises, where most of the party has no idea what to say and everyone is worried that saying one wrong thing will land everyone in loads of trouble.  This IS possible; there's no pretending it isn't.  But likewise, it's just as possible to make one incredibly stupid move in a dungeon and be in loads of trouble.  It's only that most of us have seen what those stupid dungeon moves are ... whereas we have next to no idea what they might be in a town.

Moreover, as DMs want to stress the importance of role-playing in their campaigns (if they're the type), they will up the stakes with every conversation until we're at the baker's, ready to draw our swords while discussing the cost of a dozen biscuits.  Overmuch ballyhooing is the bread-and-butter to many a role-playing DM, struggling to assign tension and difficulty where, in fact, there ought to be very little.  Most conversation isn't, and shouldn't be, stressful.  It should be interesting, full of enlightening details and suggestions for social and status advance ... but my own experience has shown that even if my foot isn't on the gas, the player's will be automatically.  Time and again I've had to explain to players that nothing bad is going to happen if they trust someone.  This is clearly a taught habit, as multiple DMs in the player's past has taken advantage of the player's trust at every opportunity.

The approach to role-playing, again, pushes the players back to the dungeon — where they need only worry about bloodsucking monsters and insidious pendulum traps.  Thank gawd, we're back where things make sense!

Caught between the game being either a dungeon crawl or an uncomfortable chat with townsfolk, it's difficult for most to glance at a map like the one shown and come up with anything except, obviously, to visualise a dungeon located near Reni or Macin or Ibraila.  The rest is a smattering of places and names, without a sense of "D&D" going on.

I've touched on this element before, but it's worth repeating.  The dualism of the dungeon/role-play model is that BOTH place the player firmly in the passive role, waiting for the DM to do something that makes the game go.  The players wait for the next dungeon room.  The players wait for the other side to start the conversation that decides what the players will do next.  And the players, used to this functional structure, dutifully wait to be told what expectations have fallen upon them.  "I need YOU to go to this dungeon;  I need YOU to fetch this object to me; I need YOU to rescue the princess."  The players are a foil in the hands of the DM, who arranges the targets, or obstacles, for the foil to overcome, all the while being in full grip of the foil's handle.  The players get the delicious promise of being the tip, the part that actually touches the enemy; the part whose whirling around in the air feels exciting.  But all the while, the tip possesses no actual control; the control is in the DM's subtle wrist.

Plenty exist to argue this ought to be the case, both DM and Player.  Virtually every player has  experienced only this form of play.  And having had only one sort of experience, it stands to reason that players loving the game would argue against a change.  After all, they don't know what they'd be getting.

When I look at the map, I don't see a passive experience for the player.  Given sufficient wealth, time, freedom from responsibility, freedom from worrying seriously about death — all of which is the player character's perspective — I see a place where I can freeboot around as much as I please, witnessing and personally experiencing the local culture, making arrangements, bartering, intervening as I please against any wrong I see and always confident that my escape is assured ... as planning my escape comes before taking the hazardous step to intervene.  For every enemy I make I'll be sure to make three friends ... and if I am a player in this location where the DM is a fellow like myself, then I have every reason to believe my friends ARE friends, and not a trick of the DM who cannot keep his hand off the foil.  I see half a dozen opportunities in the map for plunder, investment, piracy, trade and settlement ... with plenty of wilderness to clear out mere footsteps from my front door.  That is, wherever I happen to put my front door, which might be anywhere.

Freed of the worry that I might say the wrong thing in a "gotcha" campaign — as these are just people and I've spoken with people all my life — and equally confident of defending myself in a wilderness, I'm not beholden to the DM's instigation of a pre-planned campaign ... nor do I have to approach the DM to beg him to run such and such a module because I'd like to run in it.  I will, thank-you, write my own "module" on the fly, because I think I can do a better job.

And taking the DM's perspective, all the opportunities I've just cited are there:  the little village run by an petty overlord, the lake monster that needs killing so the barges can roll past safely, the beach where the players can lie in wait for a small river craft to seize, the hamlet they can pillage before making haste to another part of the marsh, the dock they can have built, the smuggling in which they can partake, the bay where they can build their lair and so on ... and of course, if it's really necessary, the half-drowned dungeon they'll find somewhere in this part of the world.

The map gives me this; the little symbols on the map as well; the perspective of how a world works; and the readiness to let the players do as they like without arbitrarily restricted their behaviour on any account.  This is worldbuilding to me.  Every part of the human experience laid out, good and bad, with clues baked right into the design that I can see clearly and reveal to the players as they set out to explore.