D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Lanefan]

But I don't consider these different things AT ALL. If I can't declare actions, have enough information to say "this seems to lead to X, and this to Y", and have X and Y have more than trivial significance, then I am not making decisions AT ALL, so to me criteria one has to include all of your 2, 3, and 4. Without those it is mere pantomime, no actual decisions are being made.

To me, a random or randomly-made decision is still a decision.

And this is what I was telling @Maxperson is that every single field that deals with 'agency' outside of trad RPG DMs holds to the same definition I do, law, medicine, etc. I don't consider it a matter of opinion. Outside of some highly abstruse philosophical debate, this is a settled question.

Thing is, in most of those real-life situations the information a) exists and b) can relatively easily be made available to the decision-maker.

In a game setting where you get to the end of a hallway and find three identical doors, a) might not apply (as in, nobody knows what's beyond any of those doors) and b) quite often doesn't (as in, their investigations etc. turn up nothing useful); yet a decision must still be made between the options Door 1, Door 2, Door 3, turn around and go back, or do nothing and wait.

 

[Enrahim2]

But he's explained why he uses the term. He's been painfully clear on that. Other than possibly contradicting the common usage of the term, do you disagree with his assessment? Do you agree with it and it's just the label that bothers you?

As one of those that has very heavily tried to get @pemerton to use a different word I can say that for me it is exactly because I agree with his message. I think the concept he is pointing to as important for his enjoyment of the game is likely having wider applicability, and is valuable to talk about and have in mind. That this message is completely overshadowed by his choice of words is a loss to all of us that is interested in having a good conversation about the merits of different styles of play.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Okay... so this is moving towards what I'd like to see. What is it that makes pemerton's definition of railroad unsound?

I had to go back and find the relevant posts. Not sure if I got them all but several points were made about definitions of the railroad:

I'm talking about what happens next, in play, as a result of the players declaring actions for their PCs. And I'm saying that a game in which the totality of what happens next is either a combination of things the GM pre-authored, or the GM's extrapolations from those things, is by my lights a railroad. Because all the elements were pre-determined, or else extrapolated by the GM from their predetermined stuff.




Yes it is. Action declarations involve the PCs doing things with A, B, C etc. Wondering about and looking for X, Y, Z etc.



If all the As, Bs, Cs, Xs, Ys and Zs are authored by the GM, then all the game space will be is a combination of things predetermined by the GM (plus extrapolations therefrom) - combinations of A, B, C, X, Y, Z etc plus whatever the GM has extrapolated from them.




"Railroad", used of RPGing, describes a game in which the GM drives or coerces or forces the players into some predetermined thing.



I am identifying a type of play in which the whole game space is some sort of combination of, or pathway through, things predetermined by the GM (plus the GM's "logical" extrapolations).




I'm thinking of a game which is very much like yours as best I can tell - the existence of the choices (be they doors, or something else), and the consequences that flow from opening them or not (be that traps, alarms, toad statutes, whatever) are all authored by the GM.




That's what I am calling a railroad. By my lights.

This is very similar to the argument Ron Edwards made in his Kitty Box videos where he takes on the idea of the sandbox. To be clear here, I actually watched and enjoyed those videos even though I disagreed with his thesis. While a lot of people who are into the styles of gaming I like have issues with Ron, I've always found him to be charismatic and entertaining, even WWE in style. And I saw the kitty box video in that light. But I do think the underlying argument he was making, which if I recall correctly was pretty much the one Pemerton is making here, was very unsound. First it is a definition aimed at dismantling the sandbox. Sandbox players pride themselves on immersion and not railroading the players so if you can deconstruct those two things, you can dismantle the sandbox. With the later, the argument is all sandbox is is a series of pathways that the players can select from. But this is just the illusion of choice and the illusion of not being railroaded, because you are still choosing a path created by the GM. I think the first problem with this is it is misleading to characterize sandboxes as choosing from a variety of pathways (as if each adventure site is a linear adventure all laid out in advance by the GM). The second problem is bigger, because it mislabels a path as a railroad. Railroading is when the GM coerces or forces players into a path of action, i.e. keeps them on the rails. The existence of a path, an adventure site, a situation or conflict, none of these things are themselves railroads if the players are free to choose not to engage them or choose how to engage them. You can obviously make arguments that there are ways to expand player choice and involvement even more, but I think an argument that tries to depict something like a sandbox as a series of railroads the players are selecting from is extremely disingenuous and it isn't going to ring true to most people who have spent any amount of time playing sandboxes.

Pemerton seems to take this even a step further and is saying anything that the players declare, if the decision about what happens next is made by the GM that is somehow a railroad. So you have a choice of three doors in a dungeon and being one is a demon, behind another is a trapped pit, behind another is a clear path to a lower level of the dungeon. I don't think anyone would seriously define that as a railroad. The mere fact that the GM decided in advance what is behind the door? You are still choosing between concrete choices, and the players have the option to select any door or none at all. But he also applies this to on the fly extrapolations, which I really don't get. The whole point of extrapolating is to expand player choice. You have three potential adventure sites planned for the session, but the players decide not to go to those and instead go to The Blue City by the Sea. So you look at your notes and try to extrapolate what might be happening in the blue city by the sea, come up with some stuff, etc. The players go to the Blue City by the Sea, see what is cooking there and decide what they want to do. In a railroad, the GM wouldn't even have done that. He would have had one choice for the night and if the players did go to the blue city by the sea, they would have found nothing to do and been bored till they went back on track with the railroad.

All Pemerton is really saying is in these games we are describing the GM is the one who decides what is on the map, how NPCs behave, what is going on in a particular region, and he is then saying that is railroad because it is authored by the GM. I don't see how that is a useful definition of railroad. I do see how it is a useful argument for a particular style of play.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. That there will be different outcomes doesn't mean that the player is making a meaningful choice. Based on what they know, there is no difference... they may as well flip a coin. That's just luck. It has nothing to do with exercising agency.

Not in my view - see below...

What agency are you exercising with a random choice?

The agency to make that choice at all, and in later hindsight see that choice - even made randomly - led to an outcome that was materially different than had I (at random) chosen differently.

What game do you think denies these things?

On the surface, games where the PCs are framed into scenes with limited if any ability to control anything around how-where-when those scenes appear.

For example, if the next move toward our party's* goal is to meet with a contact at 3 p.m. in the square, framing us straight into that meeting denies us the agency to scout the site out ahead of time (risk reduction), or to maybe ID and follow/check out the contact beforehand (info gathering), or to change our minds and only send some of us - or nobody - based on either some new info or on just a "bad feeling about this" (risk reduction and-or simple mind-changing).

And that hammers our agency pretty hard.

Now I understand that simple mind-changing might be seen as violating the precept "If you do it, you do it" (a precept I can certainly get behind!), and that's fair; but I don't think that precept goes so far as to include "If you plan to do it, you do it" as plans can (and ought to be allowed to) change.

* - or that of an individual character, whichever.

 

[pemerton]

Do the players have say over what this game is about? Does play chase what the players are interested, which they've signaled either directly via words or indirectly via system components (like relationships and dramatic needs) within character build? This one transcends serious. Its pretty profound in its impact. If this is not true, that is a an extremely substantial reduction in player (or system) say.

<snip>

Can the players consult the accumulated wisdom of their played character via (a) putting something provisional out there about the shared imagined space that could end up being interesting and useful to their situation, (b) staking the prospect of their memories/education (etc) being erroneous and the actual truth of things complicating their lives (via GM getting to say what is actually true), and (c) putting that to the test via action resolution mechanics (of one form or another). Do players have the say to attempt to stipulate consequential things their characters know and have that impact the gamestate/trajectory of play? If this is not true, that is a reduction in player (or system) say.

These points illustrate how the railroad issue can overlap with the "feels like playing a space alien" issue.

 

[pemerton]

I see my role as creating an environment where everyone, myself included,  can have fun.

I do that by turning up with my dice and books. My friend does that by letting us meet at his house. Etc.

To put it another way, the environment in which we have fun is a real place in the real world that we jointly create by doing things in the real world.

And then what we do actually have the fun that we've made possible is play the game.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Nope. That there will be different outcomes doesn't mean that the player is making a meaningful choice. Based on what they know, there is no difference... they may as well flip a coin. That's just luck. It has nothing to do with exercising agency.

I deal with choice a lot in my campaigns. I am very conscious of choice when it arises and I try to make it significant. I think some choices are going to boil down to 'do we go left or right', without knowing anything more. I still think that is meaningful if it is a real choice (i.e. the GM has concretely determined what those choices mean before the players make their decision). But I will say that is operating at a lower level of meaning and most choices span more of a spectrum. So you will have scenarios like choosing between two doors with zero information, you will have scenarios of choosing between two doors with more information, and you will have scenarios where players no what is behind each of those doors and decide which course to take. Another thing here is we sometimes miss what choice means when we stick with examples like this, because a lot of the more important choices in my campaigns are things like players deciding who they ally with, if they should tell a high ranking member of an organization information they just received, if they should devote their energy to going to region B and dealing with problem x, going to region A and dealing with problem Y (knowing that the world moves on and tending to one and not the other could have different consequences).

 

[pemerton]

I think the reasons people are upset about his definition is because it defines very non-railroad methods of play as railroad and it is used in a way almost no one in the hobby uses the term.

Some people seem to be upset is because there exists at least one person in the world (me) who might well experience their preferred games as a railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

It's Schrodinger's spellbooks!

I tried bringing that up before in another thread. May your fate with it be better than was mine.

But I guess this is another question: does the existence of the spellbooks, if they're not found, actually matter? Because that's something I would say depends heavily on the plot of the game. Is something interesting going to happen if the books aren't found?

I seem to recall that finding those spellbooks was quite important to (Aramina?), so it would seem that not finding them carries some relevance.

If no--if the books are just going to sit there, gathering dust for eternity once Thurgon and Aramina leave--then they might as well not even exist unless they roll well enough to find them. I've certainly invented things on the fly when the PCs have said "I look for X" because it seems logical X exists in that location. I haven't done it with a spellbook, but I could see it happening.

If yes--say, an NPC will find the books and use them for themselves, possibly causing complications down the line--then certainly the book should be placed and exists whether or not it's found. I've done this as well. In fact, I'm doing it now. The first MotW adventure, the players never thought to search the house once they killed the monster (they thought they found his ritual site, but they really only found the place where the monster made sacrifices), so I decided a particular NPC has found them and this will cause problems for the PCs.

Nice.

One thing I always look for is reasons to send a party back to a site because they missed something the first time. If nothing else the adventure then gives me a bit more bang for the buck.

I have no idea if Burning Wheel allows for such a thing, though.

Ditto.

 

[pemerton]

You can't make people have fun. Sometimes they're just having a bad day or are distracted and are just not in a good place. It's inevitable, and when it happens it can feel like a failure as a GM if you believe that your purpose is to make sure the players are having fun. All you can really do is try to create an environment where, hopefully, fun can be had by everyone involved, including you.

Talk about changing horses in midstream!

I also play with human beings who sometimes are tired or distracted or don't find the fiction I authored as interesting as I'd hoped.

But that's a point about the foibles of human endeavour and human relationships. It has ZERO relevance to the question what principle should govern my authorship decisions as GM.

I mean, upthread you outright said that there is something undesirable or ill-advised about the fact that I made a decision about the consequences of my players failure in the ritual undertaken by their PCs, because I deliberately invented something that they found interesting. And you even guessed (correctly) that they did find it interesting - you weren't worried then that my efforts might have fizzled because they were tired and distracted.

It's perfectly feasible, as GM, to set out to produce material in play that will be interesting and exciting and compelling because of how it relates to the goals and concerns that the players have staked through their play. I know, because I've been doing it, sometimes with more success than other times, for nearly 40 years of GMing. The advice that me and my players would be better off if I decided just to ignore those player-driven concerns is just about the worst possible GMing advice I could imagine.