When I started at TSR in the ‘90s, 2nd Edition D&D was still in full swing. But I had started playing 15-20 years before that, with the little brown booklets. A lot had changed a lot in that time, and there are lessons for today in those changes.
This is super interesting and it may explain why I like playing with new player so much more: they do not have a definition yet for many monsters and tropes, they live for the descriptions much, much more!
Thanks for sharing. This really is a lovely piece. I both play a 5e campaign in Sword coast as a DM and a rediculous conan/mork borg as a solo player and I love the simplicity and evocativeness of the “the return to the dungeon” style of play of the latter. Would you compare “the return to the dungeon” style to what Sly Flourish for instance calls "prepare situations, not story"?
The email on the weird today reminded me that, what you describe here deffinently was a reason for me to get behind something like the weird. To get more fantastical with my stuff. :D
As someone now responsible for the world of Tekumel, I immediately noticed that Empire of the Petal Throne, published in 1975, may have contributed to this situation. EPT describes and defines Tekumel very deeply, but Prof. Barker uses a lot of literary devices to limit the definitions, for example prefacing statements with "rumor has it..." and "It is said that..." - I think a lot of that got lost in players' fascination with the world and wanting The Real Answer. As you note this has happened with other gaming settings, which is unfortunate.
This is something i have felt on myself, the need to explain things and over the years i have lost my sense of fantasy. In my early 20's i made those weird dungeons and places and it's only gotten more and more mundane as the years have gone by. I'm trying more consciously to reconnect with my teen-twenties imagination, when a dungeons walls could be made from flattened beholders.
I really appreciate this perspective of description vs definition. It really outlines how not to limit a collective space when working with others by how you provide information to players and / or readers.
I agree that definitions should not be limiting, but they most certainly don't have to be. In my games, any stated definitions are just recorded beliefs of a particular people of a particular time and culture. These can be great springboards for future adventures.
"The dwarven smiths of the world work exclusively with a material called duramite, which resists the power of magic," as far as anyone in your players' home country knows, and man are they ever going to be surprised to learn about the other dwarven cultures that DON'T.
"The worm thing with three horns is one of the six types of demons.” Sweet! This prompts so many questions. What are the six types of demons, then, and who was this Pliny the Elder who first classified them? How did he come into this knowledge, and was it truthful? What are the exceptions to the rule (because there are always exceptions, like the platypus to the mammal). What happens when historians/the players learn that this definition is imprecise, or even outright false? Will there be a religious or political backlash? There's a whole story—maybe even a campaign—waiting right here!
I personally use Faerûn as the setting for my campaign, as there is so much established lore that I can draw on. But my players have learned that not everything recorded in the sacred texts is truthful, and it's those discoveries that have fueled their adventure.
I love this. All the more reason to keep my descriptions grounded in the sensory experience of the PCs. What do they see/hear/smell/taste/feel in this moment? 1) It makes my life easier, 2) It creates opportunities for emergent storytelling, and 3) It gives my players a chance to be curious about their experiences.
Related to this, I wrote a blog article, Your Game's Lore? Make it Actionable. In it I looked at how many older books and some current ones will create a ton of lore that can't be really put to use by players or the GM. We might be told about the founding of the Cult of the Dragon and its long-dead leader, none of which impacts the characters or players. Descriptive lore tends to be more actionable, because it begs further development. Even better is lore, whether descriptive or definitive, which when written is deliberately actionable. It is there to facilitate play.
1990 was when we switched from 1e to 2e. I was an engineering student, 19yo. No extra time. I bought all the 1e modules and chopped them up, carved them and strung them together to make one campaign inside the Forgotten Realms world. Never noticed 1e to 2e incompatibilities. In Scotland, no internet then, nobody helping, tiny games section inside a department store.
It was a glorious time, each night with 7 friends was all about a series of light RP, puzzles, exploration, fights and then the end of night test, a huge battle where they were theoretically on paper per the math, going to die. Sometimes a character did, and that was a huge deal to make there resurrection roll, which ever got harder. And over the years a few characters died permanently. It was perfect D&D.
Love this article, it puts words on something I've had in the back of my mind for a while, which is that worldbuilding is overrated. Because the point of an RPG isn't the world, it's the story of the PCs. As a corollary, especially in the days of D&D 2E and 3E, I felt that adventures were underrated. "Adventures don't make money" seemed to be the mantra, so TSR/WoTC didn't focus on them (I think...obviously you know better than me!) and they were relegated to community content. One thing I like with 5E is that adventures are a big area of focus again. Adventures are where the "description" is, it seems more directly relevant to the player's enjoyment at the table than details about the setting. And perhaps we should judge games not only by their rules and the coolness of their settings, but also by the quality of their adventures.
Would you mind writing an article on how to create descriptions that are evocative of the world building? I find myself often defaulting to the "hasty world building" by giving the feeling I'm trying to evoke away instead of describing it and letting the players come to their own conclusions. For example I've caught myself saying "OOC this town is kinda like a Victorian age industrial mining village", instead of a gradual unfolding of sooty faces, ruthless mine owners and an exploited working class.
I'm assuming a lot of that is going to be in the upcoming The Weird title, but I'd like to see it applied to other themed settings as well.
> I was the champion of something we called “the return to the dungeon.” In retrospect, what I was really after was the less-catchy “return to giving DMs the freedom to make encounters based on fun more than anything else.”
This is super interesting and it may explain why I like playing with new player so much more: they do not have a definition yet for many monsters and tropes, they live for the descriptions much, much more!
Thanks for sharing. This really is a lovely piece. I both play a 5e campaign in Sword coast as a DM and a rediculous conan/mork borg as a solo player and I love the simplicity and evocativeness of the “the return to the dungeon” style of play of the latter. Would you compare “the return to the dungeon” style to what Sly Flourish for instance calls "prepare situations, not story"?
The email on the weird today reminded me that, what you describe here deffinently was a reason for me to get behind something like the weird. To get more fantastical with my stuff. :D
As someone now responsible for the world of Tekumel, I immediately noticed that Empire of the Petal Throne, published in 1975, may have contributed to this situation. EPT describes and defines Tekumel very deeply, but Prof. Barker uses a lot of literary devices to limit the definitions, for example prefacing statements with "rumor has it..." and "It is said that..." - I think a lot of that got lost in players' fascination with the world and wanting The Real Answer. As you note this has happened with other gaming settings, which is unfortunate.
This is something i have felt on myself, the need to explain things and over the years i have lost my sense of fantasy. In my early 20's i made those weird dungeons and places and it's only gotten more and more mundane as the years have gone by. I'm trying more consciously to reconnect with my teen-twenties imagination, when a dungeons walls could be made from flattened beholders.
I really appreciate this perspective of description vs definition. It really outlines how not to limit a collective space when working with others by how you provide information to players and / or readers.
I agree that definitions should not be limiting, but they most certainly don't have to be. In my games, any stated definitions are just recorded beliefs of a particular people of a particular time and culture. These can be great springboards for future adventures.
"The dwarven smiths of the world work exclusively with a material called duramite, which resists the power of magic," as far as anyone in your players' home country knows, and man are they ever going to be surprised to learn about the other dwarven cultures that DON'T.
"The worm thing with three horns is one of the six types of demons.” Sweet! This prompts so many questions. What are the six types of demons, then, and who was this Pliny the Elder who first classified them? How did he come into this knowledge, and was it truthful? What are the exceptions to the rule (because there are always exceptions, like the platypus to the mammal). What happens when historians/the players learn that this definition is imprecise, or even outright false? Will there be a religious or political backlash? There's a whole story—maybe even a campaign—waiting right here!
I personally use Faerûn as the setting for my campaign, as there is so much established lore that I can draw on. But my players have learned that not everything recorded in the sacred texts is truthful, and it's those discoveries that have fueled their adventure.
I love this. All the more reason to keep my descriptions grounded in the sensory experience of the PCs. What do they see/hear/smell/taste/feel in this moment? 1) It makes my life easier, 2) It creates opportunities for emergent storytelling, and 3) It gives my players a chance to be curious about their experiences.
Related to this, I wrote a blog article, Your Game's Lore? Make it Actionable. In it I looked at how many older books and some current ones will create a ton of lore that can't be really put to use by players or the GM. We might be told about the founding of the Cult of the Dragon and its long-dead leader, none of which impacts the characters or players. Descriptive lore tends to be more actionable, because it begs further development. Even better is lore, whether descriptive or definitive, which when written is deliberately actionable. It is there to facilitate play.
Thank you for this. Figuring out how to have get back to the 'uncarved block' of gaming seems to me the Holy Grail of better games.
I had no time for world building back then.
1990 was when we switched from 1e to 2e. I was an engineering student, 19yo. No extra time. I bought all the 1e modules and chopped them up, carved them and strung them together to make one campaign inside the Forgotten Realms world. Never noticed 1e to 2e incompatibilities. In Scotland, no internet then, nobody helping, tiny games section inside a department store.
It was a glorious time, each night with 7 friends was all about a series of light RP, puzzles, exploration, fights and then the end of night test, a huge battle where they were theoretically on paper per the math, going to die. Sometimes a character did, and that was a huge deal to make there resurrection roll, which ever got harder. And over the years a few characters died permanently. It was perfect D&D.
Love this article, it puts words on something I've had in the back of my mind for a while, which is that worldbuilding is overrated. Because the point of an RPG isn't the world, it's the story of the PCs. As a corollary, especially in the days of D&D 2E and 3E, I felt that adventures were underrated. "Adventures don't make money" seemed to be the mantra, so TSR/WoTC didn't focus on them (I think...obviously you know better than me!) and they were relegated to community content. One thing I like with 5E is that adventures are a big area of focus again. Adventures are where the "description" is, it seems more directly relevant to the player's enjoyment at the table than details about the setting. And perhaps we should judge games not only by their rules and the coolness of their settings, but also by the quality of their adventures.
Hi Monte, great article.
Would you mind writing an article on how to create descriptions that are evocative of the world building? I find myself often defaulting to the "hasty world building" by giving the feeling I'm trying to evoke away instead of describing it and letting the players come to their own conclusions. For example I've caught myself saying "OOC this town is kinda like a Victorian age industrial mining village", instead of a gradual unfolding of sooty faces, ruthless mine owners and an exploited working class.
I'm assuming a lot of that is going to be in the upcoming The Weird title, but I'd like to see it applied to other themed settings as well.
> I was the champion of something we called “the return to the dungeon.” In retrospect, what I was really after was the less-catchy “return to giving DMs the freedom to make encounters based on fun more than anything else.”
How about “fungeon”?