QUOTE=pemerton;7053743]Sure. In the OP I expressly stated that I imagine others will see things differently.
But in replying to your posts I haven't taken any particular issue with your differing view from mine over what is a railroad. I've objected to your claims about what
always must be the case (around plot, GM authorship, etc).[/QUOTE]
I kinda do though.
Because it's not just a "differing view", it's redefining a phrase, which I take umbrage with. When everyone can just change the meaning of terms and phrases we lose the ability to communicate meaningfully. It's not only unhelpful, it's actively harmful to our ability to interact. Especially on message boards where we don't even have tone or body language or inflection to rely on. Language and shared terminology is super important.
Additionally, "railroading" is almost a pejorative in the D&D community. So you coming along and saying the DM making any decision for the campaign that isn't narration (i.e. flavour), decided random, or determined by the player is railroading is poking people in a very sensitive topic.
It's arguably the most inflammatory statement you could make without involving 4e, warlords, or hit points.
I actually find this very hard to take seriously. It seems to completely disregard most of what I've posted in this thread.
And yet some groups do it.
There are quite a few games that exist and play without a gamemaster. The big one being
Fiasco. And now with tools for random dungeon generators and the like it's easy to do for D&D.
Your group sounds like they would enjoy it.
(1) How can the players determine the odds of success as well as me? They have an obvious and deep conflict of interest.
The argument could be made that how can one person determine odds of success as well as four or five? Plus, the DM is arguably biased and unable to accurately determine the odds of success.
If one or even two players are being favourable to themselves the others can shut them down. Because they'll want things to be fair for them when they try and do something. Because everyone has a stake, it's a self-policing system.
(2) What would make you say that "I'm not making any decisions"? Narrating consequences of failure, and framing the situation, are key decisions.
Many GMs move the narration of actions to the player side. Some systems, like FATE, require it for the mechanics. The players can describe their own stress and consequences.
If events have no unforeseen or expected consequences then descriptions of success and failure are just flavour. Like narrating a successful hit. Any PC can do that. They can take turns describing and narrating, and determining the social consequences of failure.
But they're not decisions that establish the plot.
Actions have ripples. Unforeseen consequences. Killing a warlord creates a vacuum of power that is filled by someone. Deciding what happens for each of those actions is a decision.
If failure doesn't have many consequences between the immediate and visible, the players can easily narrate those.
(3) What makes you refer to "randomly determining events in the game"? No where in any post have I referred to random determination of events. In fact, it's all deliberate. Hence a thread about GM judgement calls. (The players roll dice, which determines whether they succeed or fail. But the consequences of success aren't random - they've been chosen by the player. And the consequences of failure aren't random - they've been chosen by the GM.)
If you set the consequences of failure and success then that's a judgement call. You're deciding what happens in each instance based on your ideas and opinions.
(5) This particular post makes me wonder whether you have any experience of playing the sort of game I'm describing, or even have any exposure to it as a phenomenon. It makes me wonder what you think games like Marvel Heroic, Burning Wheel, Dungeon World and the rest of the PtbA stable, etc, are actually about.
I have not played all those games but I have played some. But this is a 5th Edition D&D forums. We're here to talk 5e D&D. This is not a general/generic RPG forum.
If I wanted to talk 4e I'd be posting here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumd...-1E-OD-amp-D)-D-amp-D-Variants-and-OSR-Gaming
If I wanted to talk other RPGs I'd be posting here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?2-Roleplaying-Games-General-Discussion
I don't have experience playing the exact time of game you're describing. But I have run a wide variety of d20 campaigns ranging in degree of railroading, from the original
Dragonlance modules and
Rise of the Runelords to several homebrew sandboxes, some where I established a firm plot that the players could interact with and some where the plot(s) is just events occurring in the background that can be engaged with or not.
The campaign I'm running now is very player centric, focusing on personal goals and aspirations. Of the dozen sessions so far, 2/3rds have been based entirely on goals set by the players based on their backstories or generated spontaneously during play.
In the last session one of the players managed some business dealings he initiated. He's involved himself in the kobold dragon blood trade (dragon blood is used to make sorcerers in my campaign setting). Another player arranged to supply a merchant with several casks of dragon blood on a regular basis in exchange for some magical items.
Now, in this instance, there's no success or failure to negotiate. The dice barely left the table that session as I roleplayed and reacted as the NPCs. I could have rolled I suppose, but people in real life make trade agreements without dice all the time. The deal benefited both, so I say "yes".
But, there could be consequences. Now the rich, ambitious nobleman has numerous sorcerers under his control. The fallout from that is directly the result of the players and their actions. But I'm still making a decision about what the merchant decides to do next. And it's an unforeseen consequence that the players would not/ did not anticipate at the table, allowing the campaign to surprise them.
I didn't say otherwise. I said that a sandbox game may not have a plot.
It may not have a plot *in advance* but it will have a plot in retrospect. Which means it has an unfolding plot in the present.
Your life doesn't have a plot. But, if you write an autobiography, it will.
That is to say, it may not have main events, as in a film or novel, forming an interrelated sequence. It may be a series of largely unconnected events with little narrative cohesion. I suspect that quite a bit of classic dungeon crawling was like this. And some contemporary OSR gaming is like this also: there are events (in the sense that play occurs), but not an interrelated sequence of main events as in a novel or film.
Well, we are using imperfect terms. There's no singular word to describe branching, nonlinear disociated RPG plotlines.
All plots are, by definition, linear - they are sequences of main events. (I'm putting to one side extreme avant garde novels and films. No one in this thread seems to be articulating that sort of approach to RPGing.) When the players summarise the events of the sandbox, they will fit into a linear (probably temporal) order.
First, "nonlinear narratives" are a thing. First example off the top of my head is
Memento but there are so many others. Which is hardly "avant garde". As are Choose Your Own Adventure novels.
Sandbox RPG plots do not conform to the conventions of traditional narrative. Much like videogames. Open world video games have a sprawling net of a plot, with alternate routes and options. The first and third
DragonAge games were very nonlinear in the middle, as do all three
Mass Effect games. But they all have a plot. The experiences and life of my dovahkiin in
Skyrim are going to be very different from other players, but my playing still had a "plot".
But from the point of view of the story elements of a RPG game, what you describe sounds like backstory. But it's only a plot - in the literary sense - if it is "the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence." If the PCs never interact with said backstory, it can hardly be said to constitute the main events of the RPG considered as a work similar to a novel or film. If no one at the table but the GM knows or cares about them, they're manifestly not the main events. The stuff the PCs do is what makes up the main events of a RPG campaign.
In my sandbox game the gnolls are causing trouble, being manipulated by the yuan-ti through magic into capturing human and elven slaves. As such, the gnolls are raiding human caravans and settlements for prisoners.
Meanwhile, because the gnolls are busing themselves with the west, the eastern human nation is being left alone and is free to fortify its borders, and is becoming expansionist. It's claiming a few satellite towns and establishing watch posts.
And the rich merchant king of a second human nation is thinking of claiming the barony, using an army of sorcerers to seize power.
All that is "the plot". Or, arguably, "the metaplot". It's all going on in the world, plus numerous other events and side quests. The players can *choose* to focus on those plots or ignore them and make their own quests - which they have so far. More or less. If they ignore it, the plot progresses and changes, as time passses and events transpire. The world moves on. The stories that the players latch onto become the main plot, the main events of the narrative, while the rest does just become backstory. I don't know in advance, but I'm still generating the events.
Is it a railroad? Well, I'm determining all the world events, a generated the entire campaign setting, I have a rough idea of some of the yuan-ti's plans and seldom randomly choose if things exist or don't. I often (continually, really) make judgement calls throughout the sessions.
And yet, if my players decide to say "eff it, I'm tired of the desert and the gnolls. Let's see what's to the south!" then the campaign moves to the south and the current story fades into the background while new ones emerge.
If the "plot" is flexible in the way you describe, then it seems that ipso facto it's not a plot. It is one of several candidate plots. Until the actual sequence of main events is established, the plot isn't established.
But what you describe is still, in my view, a railroad. If the end point is already known to the GM, then however colourful and exciting the detours along the way, they are ultimately being driven by the GM, with a pre-given outcome in mind.
That's splitting hairs.
We're describing RPG stories with terms and definitions used for books, film, and other traditional narratives. They don't apply as well to RPGs or non-traditional stoytelling. It's always going to be an imperfect fit.
Serialized television certainly has a plot. Sometimes it's planned and has an end set in advance. Other times they make it up as they go along. But the shows still have a continuous narrative. When they start a season, the fact that there's several "candidate plots" doesn't negate the main narrative or cancel out the final narrative at the end of the season.
Lost still has a plot. And at the end it was pretty tightly plotted. Near the end, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje decided to leave the show and the writers had to suddenly move the plot points planned for Mr Eko to other characters. Suddenly the existing plot dramatically shifted in favour of a plot that wasn't even a "candidate plot". But the show still had an overall plot.
The idea that a game in which the GM chooses the villain, the overarching story, what the campaign is about, might not be a railroad is extremely foreign to me. I take it for granted that the players will choose the villains (ie their PCs' enemies), that what the campaign is about will be some sort of collaborative thing, and that the overarching story will be established via play. That's how I've been GMing since about 1986.
It boggles my mind that you've been playing for thirty years for over a half-dozen game systems and running the same campaign for each.
Haven't you played in games run by other DMs? Haven't you ever run a prepublished adventure with a story?
That you haven't changed your DMing style also flabbergasts me. I think back to how I used to DM back in 1992ish and how I Dungeon Master now and it's night and day. I've run and played in so many completely different games. How I run and plan and write adventures is so completely and totally different now...
Okay… how you play is fine. You can play however you like. I'm not going to dissuade you. Or even try to. Life is short: do what makes you happy.
But... just because you play that way and give the players that much more narrative control than the norm does not mean people who don't do the same are all railroading.
It's not your way or the railway.
If player agency is a vital part of a sandbox, then I don't see how it can be on a Z-axis that is independent of the X-Y axis from sandbox to railroad.
I goofed there. Late night. Sleepy.
It should be sandbox/railroad is the horizontal X axis while player determination is the vertical Y axis.
So you have a cross shape with four quadrants of gameplay styles.
How are they independent? Because the existence/ nonexistence of player choice determines if a game is a sandbox or railroad. The player involvement in the creation of plot points determines the other.
Claiming that the DM generating plot points is railroading is akin to claiming the DM building the world rather than collaboratively generating it with the players is railroading.
"Oh, you're using the Forgotten Realms? A prepublished campaign setting? All aboard!! Whooo-wooh!"
I simply don't see the rationale (other than unfamiliarity with other RPG styles) for asserting that sandbox and railroad form a spectrum.
Because life isn't all-or-nothing. (Only the Sith deal in absolutes.)
Because you can deprive your players of one choice in your sandbox game and a switch doesn't flip, making the campaign a railroad. How far down the spectrum of sandbox to railroad your game is depends on the percentage of choices you give your players and the percentage of the time you coerce them into a particular plot. The number of false choices and invisible walls the DM erects.
You can start with a hard scripted plot for a session or two, to establish the characters and the world, and then move into a sandbox. Or you can start with a sandbox until a plot coalesces and then moves more on the rails. Or the DM might know how the story should end, but is leaving the middle open and letting the players find their own way to the set destination.
The modern indie-RPG scene is a reaction against White Wolf-era railroading and metaplot. These games are designed to deliberately differ from those railroads, precisely in being player driven.
That you describe the White Wolf metaplot - that is literally in the background and can have zero impact on the game - as railroading speaks volumes.
Indie RPGs are more about narrative control than railroads. Being able to spend a Plot Point to retroactively have done something or invent a connection between the PC and an NPC is unrelated to the campaign being a sandbox or a railroad game.
No it wouldn't. If one player drove all the action it might be a poor game, but it wouldn't be a player-driven railroad, because that player wouldn't know what was going to happen. That can't be known until the actions are declared, the dice rolled and the consequences thereby established.
If a player comes into a game with a firm backstory and motivation ("My father was murdered before my eyes by the Warlord Schell for his piece of an artifact. And the warlord is marshalling an army to conquer the known lands") they're kinda railroading. They have an arc or story for their player planned.
Pair someone like that with a passive table of people who just want to hang out, roll dice, and play and don't have strong urges to contribute to the narrative. And you have a player driven railroad.
Can you explain how the "player-driven railroad" you describe would work?
How would the players communicate to the GM what is in their head? Who would control worldbuilding? What would the point of action resolution be? Why would the players even declare actions for their PCs, if they know in advance what the answer from the GM is going to be?
I'm having some trouble envisaging what you have in mind here.
It's almost a theoretical example. An unrealistic extreme at two ends of the scale.
Much like a true railroad where the players are just running through the game master's novel. It happens but the vast majority most games aren't remotely that bad and the presence of the dice will always cause things not to unfold as planned.
The vast, vast, vast majority of games are going to fall in the middle of the spectrum.
