How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[hawkeyefan]

If the GM is railroading you, you can't, by definition, opt out.

The option is everything. If you aren't forced onto rails, a railroad simply does not exist. That is what is required for a railroad to exist. You have to have no option.

I don’t see a significant difference between a plotline that l, although it can be avoided, once is started cannot be stopped and a railroad. At least not enough of a difference to really dwell on.

What may make them dissatisfying to a person is the same element.

 

[pemerton]

I have never run (or read) Burning Wheel in any of its forms.

I have run a lot of D&D with player driven action, who had characters with goals and motivations and things they wanted to do.

but that wasn't what I was parodying. I was parodying the specific idea of the player generated Chekhov's Gun -- the player declares the key to story into existence. Again, I am sure some games allow for that, and I am also sure not all players can be trusted with that responsibility.

I mentioned those particular games - Burning Wheel, and 4e D&D with player-authored quests - because both permit and, indeed, encourage what you were parodying.

 

[Reynard]

I mentioned those particular games - Burning Wheel, and 4e D&D with player-authored quests - because both permit and, indeed, encourage what you were parodying.

What mechanism do those games use to allow a player to say "I want the sword hanging over the tavern's bar to be the weapon I need to defeat my old master, and I want that to happen now."?

 

[grankless]

The dictionary disagrees with you. It means to be completely absorbed in the thing. It’s typically used to mean feeling like you are really in the fiction of the thing you’re engaged with and/or so absorbed by it you don’t pay attention to the real world around you. So immersed in a horror movie you get scared, so immersed in a book you don’t hear someone talking to you, so immersed in a game…etc.

That’s not true at all. Certain mechanics are inherently more immersive than others. Fully realized and fully explorable 3D worlds are more immersive than side scrollers, as an example. First person is more immersive than third person. Anything that encourages you to focus on the fiction helps immersion; anything that pulls your focus away from the fiction hurts immersion.

Yep. Real-time games are more immersive because you as the player are using your reflexes to control your character, so you feel…in a very literal way…more connected to the character and more connected to what’s happening in the game, i.e. you’re more immersed in the game. Read up on immersion in video games. It’s one of dozens of topics video game companies spend real money researching. It’s fascinating. And no, it’s not shorthand for “I don’t like it.”

Yeah dude, I've read plenty of books on game studies. Certainly none of them care about the dictionary definition of the word, lol.

 

[pemerton]

What mechanism do those games use to allow a player to say "I want the sword hanging over the tavern's bar to be the weapon I need to defeat my old master, and I want that to happen now."?

In Burning Wheel, an action declaration of a moment of recognition - "Hang on, isn't that sword hanging over the tavern's bar exactly the weapon I need to defeat my old master?" - which could either be resolved as a Wises check (Swords-wise, Tavern-wise, Old Master-wise, even Vengeance-wise) or to which the GM might say "yes" if they don't think there is anything contrary at stake in the scene.

In 4e D&D, the relevant mechanism is a player-authored quest together with a player wish-list for magic items. How that interacts with the scene in a tavern right now is a bit more open-ended than the BW action declaration, but the rules in both DMGs repeatedly urge the GM to "say 'yes'" to these sorts of player suggestions.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It doesn’t bother me when players at my table don’t really know the rules, but I do believe that the rules should be transparent in terms of how things are adjudicated, what PCs can do, what the stakes and consequences are, etc.

In D&D that is mostly just “roll stealth DC 15, if you roll lower than 10 it’ll be worse than just alerting your target to someone creepin’”

But in my game, you have the success ladder on the front page of the character sheet, adjudication is very unified, and you know from your skill ranks what you have low/medium/high chance of success with. There’s other stuff that makes things transparent, but that’s the gist.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t see a significant difference between a plotline that l, although it can be avoided, once is started cannot be stopped and a railroad. At least not enough of a difference to really dwell on.

What may make them dissatisfying to a person is the same element.

There isn't one that can't be stopped once started as far as I'm concerned. In any event, what you are describing is a linear game and not a railroad. Railroads are involuntary.

 

[grankless]

If you feel like you're being railroaded, talk to your GM about it. Presumably, given this GM is presumably a friend, you will be able to talk about it like mature adults.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There isn't one that can't be stopped once started as far as I'm concerned. In any event, what you are describing is a linear game and not a railroad. Railroads are involuntary.

I don’t think this makes any sense. A linear game that can’t be stopped is a railroad, no?

But this is beside my point. The idea that there’s a “plotline” says to me that the game has enough in common with a railroad that folks who don’t like the railroad adventures likely won’t like it.

As I originally said, I’m not seeing much of a difference.

 

[Lanefan]

When did your party realize that they were chasing a red herring?

Never, really. I-as-player only found out a few years later while chatting with the DM over beers, and he was telling me (in non-specific terms) how far adrift we'd gone from what he originally had in mind (whatever that was, still don't know). It seems he had some adventure in mind for us but we managed to either miss or ignore every hook he dropped, instead fixating on some trivial thing we thought was important that in fact really had no relevance to anything. And all the while we were none the wiser; he's very good at keeping a poker face.

And were they able to get back on track?

I don't know if we have or not. Campaign's still running, so it may still be an open question.