Some Thoughts On World-building

    While the Open Game License allows anyone to create rules, none of the OGL games include their setting as open content.  Thus, while I have a lot of available mechanics to work with from my collection of OGL games, I don't have anywhere for the players to play in.  Now, some of the OGL games (maybe even most) don't have a specific setting anyways.  Take Dungeons & Dragons, while it has the Forgotten Realms setting as it's main, the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide don't actually refer very often to that setting.  And other games like Fate Core/ Accelerated are designed to be setting-neutral.
    I find that troubling, games that do not come with a setting.  I've seen plenty of games like that, and never really questioned it before.  But now I think that a game without a clear, concrete setting is something of a crippled offering.  After all, think about it for a minute: everything begins with a setting.  Even something like "Elf" or "Fighter" automatically conjures up some kind of description.  And it logically has to: this is fiction, thus everything begins with some level of description (after all, it's not like you can jut point to real life :).  If the game doesn't provide that context (for what an "elf" or "fighter" are) then the player will create a context out of his/her own experiences.  That's just the way it is.  That is a problem on two levels.  One, each player is different, so each is creating totally different frameworks for those concepts to fit in - which could be a problem when "the player" becomes one part of "the party" and everybody's concepts have to interact.  Two, default context building means pulling from general cultural references, which I think is a big part of why every RPG seems to be The Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off.  There is a depressing sameness to most (or at least many) RPGs.  Granted, learning a totally new world is a lot of work, so basing off a common ancestor saves brain-power, but still, there's something to be said for exploring new locations.
    And a big reason for that is that an RPG is a form of Interactive Narrative, a story that the readers participate in creating or shaping.  Thus, the story is the bedrock, the foundation, of everything that the players can do.  No elves in your story, then no playing an elf or interacting with elves.  The story, represented by the setting, creates the limits of the sandbox that the players can play in.  So when you think about it, a setting is a pretty important part of a game - which makes it surprising that so many games don't come with one.  Of course, the counter-argument is that by not having a setting the game can appeal to more players, allowing them to use the setting they want instead of the one provided by the game.  And there is something to that, but the problem is that without a concrete setting you have to create generic character options.  So we have "Fighter" and not "Highlands Raider."  More generic character options feel, well, generic - and to create a concrete character you have to do the work yourself.  Which can also be a problem when the player starts writing the story, since in most games the GM is the one who has to oversee (and usually create) said story, and something the player does may not fit in well with the GMs creations (or the other players').  A more developed shared story helps prevent that, and often character creation is done separately (though this is a good argument for having the party create characters together).
    Since I've come to appreciate the importance of setting, I've decided that along with adapting the rules of the 5e SRD I also need to be developing a setting of my own to go with it.  I'm going to release this setting as a Creative Commons document, so anyone else could use it, or elements of it, as long as they credit where it came from.  That way it will be just as open as the rules themselves.  I'm also going to keep the western mythology as a basis (since it's what I know), but I do want to mix things up and create races and classes that are at least a little different from the "vanilla fantasy world" standards, just a little.

    There is also something else to consider when world-building.  I've talked about the setting as a backdrop, as a common framework that all the players and the story fits inside.  It's more than that however, a setting isn't something static - it also has a very important active component.  I read a blog way back when (and I wish I could remember which one it was) and there was a comment from a GM saying one of his players said what they wanted from the story was "something to love, something hate and something to fear."  That stuck itself in my mind, and it's come back to me when thinking about building a new world.  In world-building you have near-infinite choices, what kinds of races, classes, what sorts of civilizations, what conflicts, and what history exists in the world.  But while debating all that stuff is fun for the world-builder (who's typically the GM), what good is any of it for the players?  I think too many games, maybe in part from the tendency to have overly-generic settings, just have the setting as background material - instead I think everything in the setting should be designed as something for the players to interact with.  Okay, let me explain.  In generic fantasy land we have villages and monsters, the players live in the village and then ride (or walk) out to fight the monsters, come home to the village to spend the treasure they slaughtered the monsters for (sure, the monsters are bad, but let's face it: would the players really be so eager to kill them if they weren't all loot pinatas?), rinse, wash, repeat.  Maybe some NPCs in the village have some sort of character, maybe a monster is a recurring villain, but overall the game does not play around the village or the rest of the world, the game is about the monsters and the actions, decisions and mechanics involved in killing them and stealing their lunch money.  Now, mind you, I said at the beginning that this was a generic game, and while it has it's appeal in simplicity, for any player who would like some "more story, please" there is a lot lacking.  In this sort of world the players don't really interact with "the world," just little fragments of it (monsters mostly, village a little)[actually, better to say they interact with the mechanics more than the story].
    I think a good, robust setting has lots of hooks for the players to grab onto the world at large and interact with it to some degree.  The fact that the world-builder chose to make the Evil Empire is not interesting in itself, but it is interesting if the players decide to overthrow the Evil Empire.  The Church of Benign Benevolence is not interesting, it's when the players decide to protect the Church of BB from the Evil Empire that's interesting.  All the races and classes and organizations in the setting, the Game World, matter only so far as the players actually interact with them in some way.  Which is hard to do if they're never defined in the first place.
    It seems to me there are 3 fundamental ways that players can interact with an element of the game world: support, change or oppose.  Players can choose to support a world-element, like defending the church from all enemies.  They can try to change an element, like bringing reform to the empire (to make it not-so-evil) or making peace between the elves and dwarves (since they always fight (or at least bicker with) each other).  Or the players can choose to oppose an element, like raising an army (or enlisting in one) to defeat the evil empire.  This is not a very radical thought, I acknowledge that, but what does amaze me is how the few settings that are defined don't seem to really address those fundamental options.  In most "world books" you get tons of information about the world, but rarely have I seen such a book talk about how to incorporate the characters into that world, for options for the players to support, change or oppose all the different elements within that world.  This is something else I want to keep in mind to do when building my own, to give the GMs and players some guidance on how they can interact with the world, how they can change it and make it their own.

    Between working on the rules and setting, I have a lot on my plate.  So, from here on every Wednesday is going to be World-building Wednesday, where I'll share the work that I've done on creating a new setting (and talk about world-building in general).