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Chekhov's Gun and the Hickman Revolution- What Type of Campaign Do You Run?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8851793" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Considering the The Alexandrian took notes on railroading from me before laying out his ideas, I'm not particularly impressed by your appeal to authority.</p><p></p><p>In any event, his essay is degenerate because it presumes the definition of railroading is forcing a player to do something he doesn't want to do, which he then strikes down as the nonsense straw man that it is and is self-satisfied about it.</p><p></p><p>The only one in this thread exhibiting abused gamer syndrome is you. You are the one that got triggered. You are the one that went all emotional. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No, there is one thing I'm not, and that's blind to RPG's. I've spent 40 years studying and thinking about them and I've gamed for countless hours and critically examined what goes on in games - my games other peoples games - for more times than I can count. And so I'm not blind to the illusionism or the techniques.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm sure you honestly mean that but it's BS. Like the Alexandrian you get to that conclusion by defining for yourself what a railroad in. What you probably actually mean is you've never ran a railroad, in as much as I'm sure with your bitterness about this that you've very much done your best to not dominate the agency in your games and you very much respect player choice. But that's not the same as never having railroaded. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Of course. What about it?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. And how is that proof you don't railroad? </p><p></p><p>I know how to run a sandbox. The essential ingredient of a sandbox is you prep much more material than you intend to use. If you aren't willing to have not just some of your prep go unused, but most of it, you aren't running a sandbox. If you say, "I don't need to prep more material than I use, because I just wing things extemporaneous", congratulations you are railroading. If you start your game and you have a dungeon and you have a rumor the discloses that there is this dungeon filled with treasure to be had, and the 1st level PC's go and get the treasure, congratulations you've conducted a railroad. If you are really good at employing railroading techniques, you can run a railroad where the players feel they've been free to make every choice. If you are really really good at it, you can even fool yourself with your own high illusionism.</p><p></p><p>I run narrow/broad/narrow games. As an example, I'm currently running a D6 Star Wars RPG where the players are bounty hunters set in BBY 15. Why am I running that? Well, because that's what my players wanted after The Mandalorian came out. My players can also do whatever they want, but also and at the same time we have so far never had them do anything that got them off a path, because fundamentally I have control over what jobs are available and taking a job means pursuing an acquisition. But then, there is no alternative to that. They can't invent their own jobs because you can't be both the player and the keeper of secrets. And I also control all the bread crumbs and all the clues that lead from A to B because who can make a mystery but the secret keeper? It's inevitable that if there are bread crumbs it's because I crafted or validated them because who else could by the one that runs the setting? So while I don't ever really know what wandering path they'll take from A to B, I do know all the paths from A to B as an inherent part of the game. And moreover, when designing those bread crumb trails I don't simulate them. I do make them conform to what is logical for the setting, but the bread crumb always gets dropped and doesn't get swept away outside the player's agency unless I also drop another bread crumb. A real world wouldn't do that. I'm self-aware enough to know that I'm choosing to keep the game going where I think it will be fun when I run the setting so that the fun is there whether they go left or right. Despite the fact that they can do whatever they want and despite the fact that they frequently do things that surprise me and solve problems in ways I didn't expect, ultimately these are all my stories. And even if they were to really go off the rails, that would still be true. They got lots of agency, but if I don't put down the rails in front of them they can't really go anywhere. </p><p></p><p>And like it or not, no matter how devoted you are to your multi-plot sandboxes (I once started a campaign with 18 different storylines I'd brainstormed up), no matter how devoted you are to creating more content than you need or how happy you are to shrug when the players don't engage with this cool thing or the other, you still are using railroading techniques to keep your game going - remarkable coincidences, false choices, small worlds, hand waving, schrodinger's maps and all the other little soft bumpers that keep the game moving instead of crashing into a gutter.</p><p></p><p>The reality is that this idea of games strictly separated into linear and not-linear or player agency or not is all bogus. The reality in every functional game is somewhere in the middle.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8851793, member: 4937"] Considering the The Alexandrian took notes on railroading from me before laying out his ideas, I'm not particularly impressed by your appeal to authority. In any event, his essay is degenerate because it presumes the definition of railroading is forcing a player to do something he doesn't want to do, which he then strikes down as the nonsense straw man that it is and is self-satisfied about it. The only one in this thread exhibiting abused gamer syndrome is you. You are the one that got triggered. You are the one that went all emotional. No, there is one thing I'm not, and that's blind to RPG's. I've spent 40 years studying and thinking about them and I've gamed for countless hours and critically examined what goes on in games - my games other peoples games - for more times than I can count. And so I'm not blind to the illusionism or the techniques. I'm sure you honestly mean that but it's BS. Like the Alexandrian you get to that conclusion by defining for yourself what a railroad in. What you probably actually mean is you've never ran a railroad, in as much as I'm sure with your bitterness about this that you've very much done your best to not dominate the agency in your games and you very much respect player choice. But that's not the same as never having railroaded. Of course. What about it? Sure. And how is that proof you don't railroad? I know how to run a sandbox. The essential ingredient of a sandbox is you prep much more material than you intend to use. If you aren't willing to have not just some of your prep go unused, but most of it, you aren't running a sandbox. If you say, "I don't need to prep more material than I use, because I just wing things extemporaneous", congratulations you are railroading. If you start your game and you have a dungeon and you have a rumor the discloses that there is this dungeon filled with treasure to be had, and the 1st level PC's go and get the treasure, congratulations you've conducted a railroad. If you are really good at employing railroading techniques, you can run a railroad where the players feel they've been free to make every choice. If you are really really good at it, you can even fool yourself with your own high illusionism. I run narrow/broad/narrow games. As an example, I'm currently running a D6 Star Wars RPG where the players are bounty hunters set in BBY 15. Why am I running that? Well, because that's what my players wanted after The Mandalorian came out. My players can also do whatever they want, but also and at the same time we have so far never had them do anything that got them off a path, because fundamentally I have control over what jobs are available and taking a job means pursuing an acquisition. But then, there is no alternative to that. They can't invent their own jobs because you can't be both the player and the keeper of secrets. And I also control all the bread crumbs and all the clues that lead from A to B because who can make a mystery but the secret keeper? It's inevitable that if there are bread crumbs it's because I crafted or validated them because who else could by the one that runs the setting? So while I don't ever really know what wandering path they'll take from A to B, I do know all the paths from A to B as an inherent part of the game. And moreover, when designing those bread crumb trails I don't simulate them. I do make them conform to what is logical for the setting, but the bread crumb always gets dropped and doesn't get swept away outside the player's agency unless I also drop another bread crumb. A real world wouldn't do that. I'm self-aware enough to know that I'm choosing to keep the game going where I think it will be fun when I run the setting so that the fun is there whether they go left or right. Despite the fact that they can do whatever they want and despite the fact that they frequently do things that surprise me and solve problems in ways I didn't expect, ultimately these are all my stories. And even if they were to really go off the rails, that would still be true. They got lots of agency, but if I don't put down the rails in front of them they can't really go anywhere. And like it or not, no matter how devoted you are to your multi-plot sandboxes (I once started a campaign with 18 different storylines I'd brainstormed up), no matter how devoted you are to creating more content than you need or how happy you are to shrug when the players don't engage with this cool thing or the other, you still are using railroading techniques to keep your game going - remarkable coincidences, false choices, small worlds, hand waving, schrodinger's maps and all the other little soft bumpers that keep the game moving instead of crashing into a gutter. The reality is that this idea of games strictly separated into linear and not-linear or player agency or not is all bogus. The reality in every functional game is somewhere in the middle. [/QUOTE]
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