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Judgement calls vs "railroading"
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<blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 7051564" data-attributes="member: 99817"><p>Yes, I think this starts to get at the heart of the issue.</p><p></p><p>In general terms, railroading is <strong>a mismatch </strong>between <strong>a player's expectation of their impact</strong> on a given facet of play <strong>and their actual impact</strong> on it.</p><p></p><p>The intrinsically subjective nature of it - because we each have individual expectations in any given moment in play - creates a lot of argument and divisiveness, as well as creating a broad range of responses as already seen in this thread.</p><p></p><p>From a theory or discussion point of view, I think railroading is a distinctly unhelpful term - it looks like it's an objective thing, but it's simply playerspeak for 'Personally, I wanted and expected more say in the matter.'</p><p></p><p>Where the conversation could be useful is to take that statement: 'Personally, I wanted and expected more say in the matter' and develop language which describes <strong><em>the matter</em></strong>.</p><p></p><p>Early rpgs taught us that we got to make tactical decisions about when to use spells, when to run and hide, when to sneak and when to fall into a spiked pi.... I mean check for traps. But very soon we got games like Traveller, where the players could easily decide against whatever a 'patron' said and be in a different planetary system within minutes.</p><p></p><p>The sandbox - describing everything, everywhere, either through prep or tables - was one way of coping with player expectations of broader, more fundamental decisions about their characters' lives. There are other ways: for example, Burning Wheel (the game described in the OP) allows each player a set of written beliefs. In setting those beliefs, it offers the players not control, but a significant say in the topics of play and the broad landscape of the game - it lets them tell the GM what they consider <strong><em>the matter</em></strong>.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="chaochou, post: 7051564, member: 99817"] Yes, I think this starts to get at the heart of the issue. In general terms, railroading is [B]a mismatch [/B]between [B]a player's expectation of their impact[/B] on a given facet of play [B]and their actual impact[/B] on it. The intrinsically subjective nature of it - because we each have individual expectations in any given moment in play - creates a lot of argument and divisiveness, as well as creating a broad range of responses as already seen in this thread. From a theory or discussion point of view, I think railroading is a distinctly unhelpful term - it looks like it's an objective thing, but it's simply playerspeak for 'Personally, I wanted and expected more say in the matter.' Where the conversation could be useful is to take that statement: 'Personally, I wanted and expected more say in the matter' and develop language which describes [B][I]the matter[/I][/B]. Early rpgs taught us that we got to make tactical decisions about when to use spells, when to run and hide, when to sneak and when to fall into a spiked pi.... I mean check for traps. But very soon we got games like Traveller, where the players could easily decide against whatever a 'patron' said and be in a different planetary system within minutes. The sandbox - describing everything, everywhere, either through prep or tables - was one way of coping with player expectations of broader, more fundamental decisions about their characters' lives. There are other ways: for example, Burning Wheel (the game described in the OP) allows each player a set of written beliefs. In setting those beliefs, it offers the players not control, but a significant say in the topics of play and the broad landscape of the game - it lets them tell the GM what they consider [B][I]the matter[/I][/B]. [/QUOTE]
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