Earlier this week I was a guest, along with the illustrious Colin McComb, on the Gamers Tavern podcast hosted by Ross Watson and Darryl Mott Jr. We were discussing world-building — specifically world-building in tabletop roleplaying games — which is a topic on which I’ve been known to have a few thoughts.
One aspect of world-building that came up was the question of what to do when you run out of room in your world? When the world is done and there are no more mysterious regions or blank spots on the map. The areas that used to say “Here be dragons” now read “Dragonopolis, population 3206, established in 1302 and ruled by a council of elders who are elected by popular vote and gladiatorial combat every ten years.”
It’s an odd problem, in that it’s mostly one that only occurs in tabletop RPGs. In fiction, movies, and other non-interactive media, the world is only truly defined as far as necessary to deliver the story. Oh, there may be story bibles and other behind-the-scenes documents that keep the details coherent, but those can be changed or expanded as necessary, so long as the new bits don’t contradict what’s already been published. And in video games, players are used to being limited in where they can go and how they can interact with the setting.
But it’s in tabletop RPGs, where players are free to wander the world as they wish, that this becomes a problem. While players may be set out to explore a blank area of the map, if the map’s filled in, there’s less room for adventure. By defining a setting, the creator defines what sorts of conflict and adventure work best there. If those sorts don’t match up with what the players would like to do, we’ve got a problem.
“I’d like to kill monsters in underground tunnels, please.”
“Sorry, we’re all out of monster tunnels. But we’ve got courtly intrigue and six factions vying for political favor.”
“Can I kill monstrous politicians?”
“Sorry, no, that would throw the region into turmoil that would invalidate the Region of Courtly Intrigue sourcebook that I just spent $30 on.”
That last exchange, I think, gets to the heart of the problem. In tabletop RPGs, publishers want to sell books. Players want to learn about the world, so they buy the books. But if the books describe a world that the players can’t change without invalidating some or all of what’s written in those books, then players are forced to either ignore the books or restrict their adventures to the margins of the established setting, where what they do doesn’t change things in a large way.
There are solutions to this problem. We discuss several of them on the podcast (coming soon!), so I won’t go into them here, but will encourage you to listen to it when you can, if only to listen to Ross geek out over Birthright again.
