One key for successful worldbuilding

Ben pointed out that collaborative worldbuilding is his preferred method of gaming. I’m of a similar mindset — indeed, our local group is poised to build our own sci-fi setting for Wild Talents — but there’s a huge concern that GMs should keep in mind when embarking on this sort of venture.

Basically, the GM can’t keep very many secrets from the players. In a setting that’s only been sketched out on a legal pad or typed up as a quick Word doc, there will be precious few crunchy bits for players to chew on. As such, the GM needs to lay all the cards on the table so players can create nuanced characters with real goals. The GM shouldn't, for example, reveal a shadowy government organization six sessions into a campaign — because the commando player would be confused as to why his character didn’t have at least passing knowledge of the group initially. Little things are fine, but big story elements leave players scratching their heads thinking, "Huh? OK, I guess that's part of the game now." Get me?

Luckily, this quandary is really just an excuse to further fine-tune a collaborative setting. For the Sovereigns superhero setting I created with some friends back in 2002, we ended up codifying everything into a sourcebook that we then shared around the table. It’s also a great excuse to snatch ideas from published settings, which I do with great prejudice pretty much all the damn time. Need a space station for a character’s backstory? Flip open Transhuman Space, grab and idea and then present it to the players. Chances are that at least one other player will seize the concept and incorporate it into his or her character — and then you’re off and running.

Old-school worldbuilding

It's really tough for me to claim the "old school" mantra for pretty much anything relating to gaming, seeing as how I picked up my first game book in 1995 (Star Wars d6, 2nd ed., revised & expanded). That's hardly old school. But looking back over my comparatively brief gaming career, I was out front in at least one trend: collaborative worldbuilding.

Games like Burning Wheel and Shock make a lot of hay over the opportunity to sit down with your buddies and build a complex gaming world from the ground up, and rightly so: It ties the players intimately to the setting and equips them (early on) with the tools they need to push the story forward.

For me, the opportunity to try this out came in 2002. I was in college at the University of Missouri and my local group was jonesing to try out Silver Age Sentinels, which most folks remember as the precursor to Mutants & Masterminds. At the time, we wanted a setting considerably darker than the Silver Age fare offered up in SAS. (Really, we wanted to play Watchmen.) We started tossing around ideas for the ideal setting, and before too long we were caught up in a full-blown collaborative worldbuilding effort.

The result was the world of the Sovereigns, a hard-edged team of supers who mixed 21st-century sensibilities with the heroic ideals of times past. I'm going to start posting bits and pieces of what eventually came to be known as our Sovereigns Sourcebook. It'll be tagged "Sovereigns," for ease of searching. Look for more over the weeks and months ahead.