Worldbuilding>Characters>Plot

[mondblut]

BTW OP, when are you going to make a non-degenerate game? You have some based takes and coding skills. Use that power for good.

Depends what you mean by non-degenerate.

Not anime.

 

[mondblut]

Can't think of any game that has been carried by "worldbuilding"

Kenshi, duh.

 

[NecroLord]

How do you write background lore without characters and conflict and plots? All that must figure into the game plot, or what is currently happening, for the worldbuilding to have any way of interfacing with the player at all, that is if you're not just going to dump it in an in-game book for them to read and at that point it's not so much a part of the game as it is irrelevant and easily ignored fluff.

ummm ever heard of forgotten realms, or any kind of game setting? It's all part of the world building.

Virgin Forgotten Realms vs Chad Greyhawk.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

But the ideal RPG would be a fully realized world that you can just run around in as a sandbox.

What neckbeards don't understand is that sandboxes can't replace good writing, that and that there is really no such thing as worldbuilding by itself. Writing is something more holistic than these categories and characters for example are a part of the world, historically or present. How do you write background lore without characters and conflict and plots? All that must figure into the game plot, or what is currently happening, for the worldbuilding to have any way of interfacing with the player at all, that is if you're not just going to dump it in an in-game book for them to read and at that point it's not so much a part of the game as it is irrelevant and easily ignored fluff. Writing in games is about the delivery of all that cool stuff you came up with to the player, you could have the most imaginative setting and still have players quit out of boredom if it is written poorly.

The source of this misconception is tabletop, it has infected novel writing as well as how people think about video games, when they think what people really want and should care about is the setting source book. Video games don't have DMs that can come up with stories and characters based on the setting though. Moreover that's not actually how neither writers nor earlier video game developers went about their creative crafts, it was much less autistic than that. Can't think of any game that has been carried by "worldbuilding", yet that's the poison meme you and others keep repeating.

Tone also isn't the RPG setting book, it's pure writing, which would include the setting, characters, dialogue, and every facet of the written word and fictitious thing in the game. It's not even limited to this but goes into art and music too. How are you even developing video games if you think tone is just setting and lore?

This goes both ways. You can’t tell a good story with good characters without a world that makes sense. A lot of writers take shortcuts by implying the setting and relying on the reader’s knowledge of Earth, and you only need to give information immediately relevant to the plot, but in more fantastical settings where more work is required then less competent writers can easily fail.

 

[0sacred]

In lore, don't give too much of a fuck about what's going on on the big stage, because the player won't either as you'll never meet the relevant characters. Give more depth to minor characters that the player actually interacts with, and can take an active interest in.

 

[v1c70r14]

ummm ever heard of forgotten realms

I'm painfully aware of Ed Greenwood's magical realm, yes, it's a good example of how little importance is placed on the worldbuilding in practice and how much the real writing matters. Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate 3, Mask of the Betrayer and Dark Alliance are all standing on the same worldbuilding foundation and yet they're very different experiences due to tone, emphasis, and that it was different people writing them. There are many older CRPGs that didn't worldbuild at all in the contemporary sense of the term and got by fine, because unless you're adapting something you have to faithfully follow, it really doesn't matter that much.

Can't think of any game that has been carried by "worldbuilding"

Kenshi, duh.

Sorry, I was talking about CRPGs if I wasn't making myself clear. In other genres it might be more appropriately referred to as theming, like how Paradox is selling the same game seventeen times and get away with it by slightly changing the mechanics for flavor but mostly just changing the art and text to reflect some era or fiction, or how you might dress up a pinball table in an aesthetic. Kenshi is from what I understand an open-world survival crafting game with semi-tactical elements and writing of any sort takes a backseat in that kind of game. CRPGs are more character focused and so narratives become more important.

This goes both ways. You can’t tell a good story with good characters without a world that makes sense. A lot of writers take shortcuts by implying the setting and relying on the reader’s knowledge of Earth, and you only need to give information immediately relevant to the plot, but in more fantastical settings where more work is required then less competent writers can easily fail.

I seriously have to disagree with this, fictional worlds don't have to make sense, stories do. I kinda want to go on a long rant about how stories used to be told and how nerds misunderstood storytelling on a fundamental level due to commercialization of it by in part pen and paper RPGs, but I know that people on this forum don't want to hear it and I'd probably be just as misunderstood myself. And no, relying on real life knowledge in any direction is not a shortcut.

 

[MerchantKing]

gameplay > worldbuilding

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I seriously have to disagree with this, fictional worlds don't have to make sense, stories do. I kinda want to go on a long rant about how stories used to be told and how nerds misunderstood storytelling on a fundamental level due to commercialization of it by in part pen and paper RPGs, but I know that people on this forum don't want to hear it and I'd probably be just as misunderstood myself. And no, relying on real life knowledge in any direction is not a shortcut.

You misunderstand me. What I mean is, the context must still be convincing enough for the audience to suspend disbelief. This isn’t a result of tabletop games, it goes back to Tolkien’s Arda and even earlier mythology. Worldbuilding is a huge part of speculative fiction. You don’t need to go into detail about Aragorn’s tax policy, but you’ll need to give context relevant to the story in order for the stakes to be understood.

It’s especially important if you’re telling a story about, say, a war. For example, RTS stories are usually pretty crappy because they make it about soap operatic capeshit and skimp on the politics, faction dynamics, and other basic world building. Even a mecha franchise like Gundam still puts effort into the politics justifying the mecha battles.

I’m not saying you need to write a lore bible for every story. The amount of necessary context is gonna vary by story. Like, a fairy tale doesn’t need to explain that it works in fairy logic. Yes, it’s easy for writers to go overboard and waste words on irrelevant expositions dumps. But far too often I see writers giving too little context and making obviously shallow theme park worlds. This has killed my interest in a number of franchises

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Sorry, I was talking about CRPGs if I wasn't making myself clear. In other genres it might be more appropriately referred to as theming, like how Paradox is selling the same game seventeen times and get away with it by slightly changing the mechanics for flavor but mostly just changing the art and text to reflect some era or fiction, or how you might dress up a pinball table in an aesthetic. Kenshi is from what I understand an open-world survival crafting game with semi-tactical elements and writing of any sort takes a backseat in that kind of game. CRPGs are more character focused and so narratives become more important.

Kenshi is a CRPG. It doesn't matter if it's a sandbox, the focus is on roleplaying.

You don't need a single line of text to have "worldbuilding".

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I can think of many games with great characters and worldbuilding.

I can think of some games with great worldbuilding but unremarkable characters: Arcanum, Dark Sun, Piranha Bytes games, Kenshi, Geneforge perhaps.

I can't think of any games with great characters but unremarkable worldbuilding. Maybe Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, but honestly, the world becomes interesting because of the characters. It's almost a contradiction to talk about good characters in a boring world. I also think that making good characters is one of the "broadest" skills you can have, because a character is a world into himself, but also exists in relation to the world at large. In comparison, "writing well" in the technical sense is a "narrow" skill. Lots of people come out of academia that can write well, but they can't write anything interesting because their characters are boring--they spent their time in academia learning how to write instead of living.

 

[mondblut]

Kenshi is from what I understand an open-world survival crafting game with semi-tactical elements

Wrong. You create a character or a party of characters out of a variety of races and with variety of stats and skills that develop with use, and control them directly to explore the world, have adventures, fight enemies and find loot. That's what RPGs do.

CRPGs are more character focused and so narratives become more important.

Nice circular logic.

What about the characters and the plot of the first Wizardry? (not like it got much in the way of worldbuilding either, but dungeon crawlers always make johnny-come-lately storyfags aching to hijack our genre expose themselves)

 

[Vic]

There are many older CRPGs that didn't worldbuild at all

like what? off the top of my head all RPGs I played had a lore/world building.

 

[S.torch]

The source of this misconception is tabletop, it has infected novel writing as well as how people think about video games, when they think what people really want and should care about is the setting source book.

I think this is an important point that is too often overlooked. Tabletop RPGs have sucked for almost 20 years now. These days every time you heard of tabletops RPGs is because they're reconnecting plots, rewriting lore, rewriting characters, removing features, dumbing down rules, or in general just making things worse for fitting a supposedly modern audience than doesn't exist. And these awful changes are always made for the most absurd and petty reasons. You NEVER heard of tabletop RPGs because they made something actually new or novel, is always about destroying or sullying something that was already there.

Everything in tabletop has only been trying to apt D&D or World of Darkness. Systems that have been done to death and stopped being good long time ago. Yet tabletop is treated like this sort of golden goose that makes anything better. When is just endless regurgitation of the same.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The source of this misconception is tabletop, it has infected novel writing as well as how people think about video games, when they think what people really want and should care about is the setting source book.

I think this is an important point that is too often overlooked. Tabletop RPGs have sucked for almost 20 years now. These days every time you heard of tabletops RPGs is because they're reconnecting plots, rewriting lore, rewriting characters, removing features, dumbing down rules, or in general just making things worse for fitting a supposedly modern audience than doesn't exist. And these awful changes are always made for the most absurd and petty reasons. You NEVER heard of tabletop RPGs because they made something actually new or novel, is always about destroying or sullying something that was already there.

Everything in tabletop has only been trying to apt D&D or World of Darkness. Systems that have been done to death and stopped being good long time ago. Yet tabletop is treated like this sort of golden goose that makes anything better. When is just endless regurgitation of the same.

People have said this about every new edition that came out since the 1970s. You try publishing a ttrpg for 50 years straight without doing any of those things you criticize. Every single long running franchise does that, not just ttrpgs.

The problem isn’t that franchises are inherently subject to this inescapable entropy. The problem is that people can’t let franchises end naturally, but instead have to turn them into zombies that last decades past their expiry date. Maybe we should stop doing that and start making new things instead?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

CRPGs are more character focused and so narratives become more important.

JRPGs are more character-focused; other subgenres of CRPGs are focused on some combination of combat and exploration, with character-related elements as a foundation.

 

[JarlFrank]

As an explorefag I fully agree. Morrowind remains one of my favorite RPGs ever, and the Tamriel Rebuilt/Project Tamriel mods elevate it to the top spot. It's all about giving you a cool world with lots of things to discover. The TR/PT mods are very true to the vanilla Morrowind approach of focusing on factions and events over individual characters. You get to explore a world where everything makes sense and is connected - factions that either conflict or collaborate, locations with a history, farms and other facilities that show you where the food comes from, etc. I love just exploring the world and discovering things. It's such a joy to walk through a well-realized fantasy world where all the little details are accounted for.

I also enjoy From Software's games, which are extremely light on story. They just have visually cool locations and good level design, that's more than enough for me. Discovering the underground Siofra River area in Elden Ring without any guidance from the game telling you to go there was a 1000000000 times more impressive experience than any story could ever be. It's such a cool area, and it's completely optional and missable if you don't explore. Perfection.

 

[Vic]

Discovering the underground Siofra River area in Elden Ring without any guidance from the game telling you to go there was a 1000000000 times more impressive experience than any story could ever be

yeah but that's not story but exploration. Tho it was cool riding the elevator down and seeing there is a whole underground world that looks like the underdark. I put it in spoilers, aren't I nice?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Virgin Forgotten Realms vs Chad Greyhawk.

Vs Thad Birthright.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I think Thief would be one of the best example of worldbuilding combined with emergent gameplay.

 

[NecroLord]

I think Thief would be one of the best example of worldbuilding combined with emergent gameplay.

Indeed.
Lore is conveyed through those wonderful cutscenes made by Daniel Thron and various books and documents you find throughout the game.

 

[the mole]

I like the storybook sections of pathfinder and poe, that's the only cutscene that is acceptable in my gameplay, everything else can choke on it

if I wanted to watch a movie I'd do it, I'm a gamer, any time I'm not playing the game I'm mashing buttons until I'm able to play the game again

 

[Skinwalker]

What the fuck is worldbuilding?

 

[the mole]

What the fuck is worldbuilding?

the grimgangs of the northtide were known to stalk their prey, but they've been acting strangely lately, wearing dresses, engaging in 37 different types of pronouns, some never even considered by other civilizations

 

[Vic]

What the fuck is worldbuilding?

the setting of the game

 

[Skinwalker]

What the fuck is worldbuilding?

the setting of the game

But that's largely in service to the gameplay, plot and characters.