Comments on: Howling Tower: Question #1

By: Charles Carrier

Charles Carrier — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 01:33:20 +0000

My world has elements from all of the article’s examples!

As for getting the players involved in the world, I think the answer is NPC’s. Let the PC’s have friends; people who aren’t put in the world just to be cannon fodder. I’ve been running my game world since 1978, and this seems to work pretty well for me.

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:18:33 +0000

Troy — Building an RPG setting absolutely should be a cooperative effort. I think the days of DMs acting as absolute monarchs over their campaigns are largely gone, just as players no longer jump from campaign to campaign, taking their characters with them, as they used to in the bad old days. Some people seem to see that as a betrayal of what RPGs were meant to be, through some odd logic. I’m not one of them (clearly you aren’t, either). I’m still naive enough to think that people can make a difference in THIS world, so they certainly ought to be able to help shape an imaginary one.

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:11:57 +0000

I’d like to believe that “formula for getting them to care” is an oxymoron, but we know it’s not. Television series have been manipulating emotions formulaically for half a century. So the formula is pretty well known. It hasn’t made many inroads into RPG settings because tabletop game designers tend to focus on material things that don’t build emotional attachments. Video game designers are more at home with pulling emotional strings.

By: Troy

Troy — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:06:19 +0000

An interesting point. Though, sometimes, it’s a bit of a chicken and an egg type of question. From my experience, the players themselves are prime movers in the world that is being built. Perhaps they are answering the question for the worldbuilder organically through play.

What’s more important than determining who (players or GM) sets the adventurers’ role in a world, is what the worldbuilder does next. Does he answer the players call/his own muse and actually create adventures that fit that expectation? And what comes of that meshed approach?

Let me add one more thing. I think whether the players like to roll dice can be a determining factor in world building. Maybe that sounds odd — or is indicative of something else, but, as a generalization, dice rollers like dungeon crawling and nondicers like intrigue and investigations. Both can exist in the same world that is being built, true enough, but handing them adventures in a reflection of that aspect of the world can be tricky.

By: Ben.

Ben. — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 05:47:44 +0000

Building investment is the lightning in the bottle. If you can figure out a formula for getting them to care, then you don’t need the article.