What is *worldbuilding* for?

[billd91]

Nor did I say that it is. I added additional qualifiers. I didn't make the qualifiers up arbitrarily. They follow from a whole line of RPG design and play.

And yet, there you were, saying that it would be a railroad because, when faced with a PC searching for secret doors, the GM referred to the map of the room and told him that no secret door had been found because it relied on the pre-established map (aka "backstory") rather than the player's rolled check. The fact that there is such a thing as secret doors and they are reasonably appropriate to the fantasy RPG setting doesn't make adhering to the pre-established room design a railroad no matter how hard the player wants there to be one. This is not a case of the GM forcing the PCs down the GM's preferred path. In fact, many GMs prefer to use such pre-established facts, set long before the PCs got into the situation of fleeing pursuit, to avoid railroading the PCs (either in or against their favor) - using the pre-established facts as the authority control so that they can be more impartial rather than succumb to the temptation to go soft on them or stick it to them.

I'm not that interested in what is "typical", given that "typical" constraints of moves in a RPG include the GM having permission to declare the search for a secret door a failure on the basis that the GM's notes do not record the presence of any such wall in the door.

As to whether or not the example you give is a railroad, it depends very heavily on context. As I said not far upthread, there are marginal cases, and much earlier in this thread I indicated my views about where the boundaries lie.

Here's my question to you: why do you think it's OK for the GM to declare the search for a secret door a failure indpendently of the check, but not think it's OK for the GM to declare the attack against the orc a failure independelty of the check (eg maybe the GM's notes record that this orc won't die the first time it is met, but will always evade and escape - I have come across modules with that sort of thing in them).

Now, if the answer is you think that the same approach to the Orc is OK, well fine - the world is populated by different people with different tastes - but are you really surprised that someone else might think that's a railroad?

But if you (as I think is more common among ENworld RPGers) would regard that treatment of an attack on the orc as a railroad, why are you so incensed by the same thing being suggested of a like treatment of the search for a secret door as an escape route?

The reason I accept that GM declaring a search attempt a failure because of the pre-established map isn't a railroad is because when I'm playing, I expect that my PC will be able to affect the world around him primarily though his actions. If my PC would like a secret door to be there when there isn't already, I expect that I'll need to either get out the tools and make one or get out the purse and pay someone more skilled than my PC to do so (or, potentially, use magic or some other power). I expect that the presence of secret doors is based on the internal logic of the location - its "backstory" if you will - not my needs at the time my PC encounters the room. If my PC is being pursued and I run into a dead end, then I run into a dead end. My choices, entered into the campaign via my PC, have put me there. The internal logic and structure of the situation may hinder the choices available to me at any one time, but I can accept that because, though secret doors are a thing in FRPGs, they aren't a thing on every wall or in ever chamber in a FRPG. They're there based on the needs of the location builder/owner, not my PC's needs as he evades pursuit.

Some of us work pretty hard at coming up with situations and locations that have a certain internal logic to them that works, that makes sense, that clever and observant players can figure out or explore to the point it makes sense to them. We also work pretty hard at being impartial toward the players and their PCs - not taking it personally when they thwart the plans of our BBEGs, boss monsters, and even their rank and file mooks and not forcing them into a story we're pre-written - but rather allowing them to decide what they want to do and exploring how the chips fall from there given the other gears working in the background. And then you come along with a loaded term like railroad to describe something as minor as using the map key to determine if a search check can succeed. And you wonder why people get incensed?

 

[Arilyn]

The term railroading has in recent years come off the rails (heh heh). It has become an insult players fling at each other, when in disagreement over playstyles. Railroading is usually a rookie mistake, and I doubt many posters actually engage in it.
Railroading is:

GM: That dwarf in the corner is insulting elves. You fling your ale mug at him.
Player: What? I'm not going to start a fight.
GM: You hit him in the head, and then his half-orc buddy leaps right at you.
Player: My mug is still in my hand...

GM: You open the door, and there's your ex-husband!
Player: What ex-husband?
GM: You kicked him out 5 years ago for being verbally abusive and a cheat.
Player: But, I don't know anything about this...

Player: Wait, what? He can't be the killer. We know for a fact, he was in Austria at the time.
GM: He snuck back to Canada.
Player: In 15 minutes?
GM: So, now he's threatening your ex-husband!

Railroading is not pre-written adventures. Railroading is not world building. Railroading is not "going where the action is." Railroading is simply the GM deciding actions for the players, or forcing a preconceived result no matter what the players do, or whether it makes sense anymore. Nobody in this thread is guilty of railroading.

I'm enjoying the debate, but could do without the trains.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In other words, I understand the contemporary view to be that we're playing a story-telling game and the players are expected to perform as actors, adopting the role of their character's personality, as though on a stage or something.

I'd say that's closer to the 90s view.

I don't think this is the purpose of the game.

The purpose of the game was small-scale fantasy wargaming. ;P

The current purpose of the game is to rehabilitate a brand tarnished by fan tantrums, by treading that always-difficult tightrope between appealing to (or at least not actively repulsing) potential new fans, and appeasing old ones. Every property that started out selling mainly to a 'cult following' has that problem at some point.

Well, someone is describing a series of imaginary places and events to entertain their friends. That seems like a form of storytelling.

In context (which I believe was traditional D&D), at best arguably /part/ of a form of 'storytelling' - in the 90s RPGs-should-actually-be-collective-storytelling-exercises wolfie sense. The DM does describe imaginary nouns, and maybe even an imaginary situation they're in, the player then interact with that, said interaction being handled by an inconsistent mix of DM fiat and dysfunctional mechanical resolution.

In some rare instances, the result might, in retrospect, be recounted (perhaps with the aid of some rose-colored corrective lenses) as a reasonably entertaining story. Though, more often, it's just annoying to listen to someone recounting their D&D character's exploits. The process is not a story, it's more like a rather complicated and picturesque shell game.

And if that's an important part of the point of GM-worldbuilding - ie it's to provide fiction that will be entertaining - then that's worth noting. Some posters much earlier in the thread, made this point; but others seemed committed to denying that worldbuilding is about narrating a fiction at all! It's that latter claim that makes no real sense to me.

Worldbuilding strikes me as like creating a 'bible' that writers working on a series use as a reference, to help them avoid screwing up continuity & contradicting established canon.

That, or like writing the Silmarilion, but only quoting from it, yourself, never letting anyone else actually read it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And yet, there you were, saying that it would be a railroad because, when faced with a PC searching for secret doors, the GM referred to the map of the room and told him that no secret door had been found because it relied on the pre-established map (aka "backstory") rather than the player's rolled check. The fact that there is such a thing as secret doors and they are reasonably appropriate to the fantasy RPG setting doesn't make adhering to the pre-established room design a railroad no matter how hard the player wants there to be one. This is not a case of the GM forcing the PCs down the GM's preferred path. In fact, many GMs prefer to use such pre-established facts, set long before the PCs got into the situation of fleeing pursuit, to avoid railroading the PCs (either in or against their favor) - using the pre-established facts as the authority control so that they can be more impartial rather than succumb to the temptation to go soft on them or stick it to them.




The reason I accept that GM declaring a search attempt a failure because of the pre-established map isn't a railroad is because when I'm playing, I expect that my PC will be able to affect the world around him primarily though his actions. If my PC would like a secret door to be there when there isn't already, I expect that I'll need to either get out the tools and make one or get out the purse and pay someone more skilled than my PC to do so (or, potentially, use magic or some other power). I expect that the presence of secret doors is based on the internal logic of the location - its "backstory" if you will - not my needs at the time my PC encounters the room. If my PC is being pursued and I run into a dead end, then I run into a dead end. My choices, entered into the campaign via my PC, have put me there. The internal logic and structure of the situation may hinder the choices available to me at any one time, but I can accept that because, though secret doors are a thing in FRPGs, they aren't a thing on every wall or in ever chamber in a FRPG. They're there based on the needs of the location builder/owner, not my PC's needs as he evades pursuit.

Some of us work pretty hard at coming up with situations and locations that have a certain internal logic to them that works, that makes sense, that clever and observant players can figure out or explore to the point it makes sense to them. We also work pretty hard at being impartial toward the players and their PCs - not taking it personally when they thwart the plans of our BBEGs, boss monsters, and even their rank and file mooks and not forcing them into a story we're pre-written - but rather allowing them to decide what they want to do and exploring how the chips fall from there given the other gears working in the background. And then you come along with a loaded term like railroad to describe something as minor as using the map key to determine if a search check can succeed. And you wonder why people get incensed?

It's time for me to say chess and checkers again.

Pemerton is relaying the setup from his game and then swapping to a resolution for a different game and trying to say this makes a point, but it's actually incoherent. In pem's playstyle there never is a map for the GM to consult. The blank walls don't exist until they're framed in due to a previous action declaration (likely as a consequence for a previous failure by upping the stakes: trapped in a dead-end with enemies on your heels!). This means that there's zero knowledge on the GM's part as to the state of this area, so that game uses action resolution to help create the backstory needed to advance the story. If a player searches, then a secret door may exist and it will then have been part of the backstory all along.

However, when he swaps to the GM checking notes, he's switched to an entirely different game that doesn't have the same underlying premises. In this game, backstory is more fixed and the players have been navigating the game with that understood. The switch is a shell game, he's not just looking at the resolution mechanic, he's eliding the entire prefatory structure to make a simplistic claim, and he's hoping you don't notice. In his game, the GM saying no is railroading, because every action is critical to the players and is to be resolved as such -- the search for the secret door directly speaks to a charter trait or goal and negating that is negating the focus of play.

It's not so in the more traditional playstyle, and even in some games in the Story Now mode that makes use of more GM defined backstory that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s preference. However, pemerton is more than fine moving the pea in the shell game so that he can label what isn't railroading (and is, as you note, often a tool used to prevent railroading) in one playstyle with what could be considered railroading in another.

This is exactly what I brought up before about judging checkers by the rules and assumptions of chess and therefore complaining that jumping is unnecessary to the act of taking a piece because pawns.

 

[Lanefan]

Here's the sort of thing I have in mind - it's a bit underdescribed but hopefully clear enough to get us on the same page in respect of it:

<the prior events of play, together with GM narration, establish (i) that the PCs are in a stone building facing some bare walls, (ii) thay the PCs are being pursued through the building, and (iii) leave it open what might be behind the walls in question>

Player: "There might be a secret door that we could escape through in one of those bare walls - I seach for signs of one."

GM: "Make a [Perception, Search, Architecture, as appropriate to system] check."

<player makes check>

<GM consults notes, notes that the notes describe these walls as nothing more than plain walls with no secret doors in them>

GM: "You don't find any signs of secret doors."​

Here's why I characterise this as a railroad.

We don't know exactly how it has come about that the PCs are being pursued through the buiilding - most typically, I think, that would be a consequence resulting from some recent bit of past play. But in any event, that pursuit is now the salient pressure on the PCs (and hence the players) in the game. In response to that pressue, this particular player has expressed an interest in the fiction developing in a certain direction - namely, that his/her PC finds signs of a secret door in the bare wall, so that the PCs might escape though it.

Now, because we're playing a game with "moves" and dice and stuff, rather than just round-robin storytelling, the player's desire about the fiction doesn't happen automatically. Rather, the player declares an action for his/her PC that folows from that desire. Success in that action declaration will meant that the player gets want s/he wants vis-a-vis the fiction (ie the PC finds signs of a secret door); failure means s/he won't.

(Note that this action declaration satisfies other typical constraints on player-side moves in a FRPG. For instnace, it is declared from the first-person perspective of the PC. And it's a well-establshed trope of fantasy gaming that bare stone walls can in fact have secret doors in them.)

In the example I've given, the player's action declaration does not succeed, but not because s/he rolled too low on the dice. (This contrasts with a failed attack roll.) It fails because the GM has already decicded that it can't succeed.

And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.

In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:

1. A door is found.
2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)

In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door. This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it. Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps? Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?

That is the limit on the players' choice - his/her choice to have escape occur by way of secret door has been vetoed by the GM, by application of the prior worldbuilding/setting authorship. That is why I call it a railroad.

By that definition the real world is a railroad. Is that really what you mean to say?

You seem to have missed the way that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" actually works.

If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised, and so the only work the GM did was to contribute to the framing, to call for a check in response to the action declaration, and to set the DC. It is the player's desire for the fiction that comes to pass (just the same as in combat: a successful disarm roll, for instance, isn't just a cue to the GM to make something up: it establishes a definite outcome in the fiction, namely, that the foe is disarmed).

If the check fails, the player's intent is not realised, and rather the GM narrates some consequence which, ideally (ie from the pont of view of a satisfactory aesthetic experience), was implicit in the framing of the situation In this latter case, the GM does all the work done for a successful check, plus has to establish and narrate the consequence of failure.

The role of the GM is therefore pretty clear, I think.

You are, I think, the only person I've ever met who thinks that saying "yes" to someone's request is railroading them!

Other way around. The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say. In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.

Lanefan

 

[Ovinomancer]

And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.

In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:

1. A door is found.
2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)

In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door. This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it. Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps? Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?

By that definition the real world is a railroad. Is that really what you mean to say?

Other way around. The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say. In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.

Lanefan

And this is the other side, with a checkers player complaining that rooks just can't move like that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door. This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it. Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps? Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?

It is a little tricky.

It's not too easy an escape clause unless the roll is too easy, so it depends on balancing the resolution mechanic. In contrast, if a DM is faced with a PC who's 'too good' at finding secret doors, he just stops placing secret doors - they're just doors at that point, anyway.

There's no likelihood of finding lots of secret doors in every wall, because there's no impetus to search every wall for a secret door. It's not like traditional play, where the player has to guess right at where a secret door may be (for instance, by completing a map of the dungeon and noting 'holes' where a room might be), before the character's skill at finding secret doors can come into play.

What doesn't seem right is that it's a Schrodinger's Secret Door - it both exists and does not exist until it's found (or conclusively established not to exist, somehow, I suppose).

By that definition the real world is a railroad.

It sure feels that way, sometimes. ;P

 

[happyhermit]

This is the province of Wises and similar skills. (In the Adventure Burner, I think it is Architecture skill that is referenced in the context of trying to learn of a secret entrance into a fortress.)

"Architecture" doesn't actually indicate anything of the kind though. It is used to (in game); Draw plans for a proposed structure, attempt to draw structural plans for an existing building, or use existing plans to navigate. Seems an awful big stretch given how extremely specific skills are in BW.

The target is humiliated and the GM tells the player how.

This is an important part.

 

[Nagol]

And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.

In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:

1. A door is found.
2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)

In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door. This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it. Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps? Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?

<snip>

In a player-facing game, no one (including the GM) will know whether the result is a #2 or 3. If the players fail to find a door, a later result can generate one anyway to fulfil a new consequence in a plausible way.

 

[Simon T. Vesper]

So there's a lot going on in this thread and I'm working my way through it because... we'll, it's interesting and I'm nosy... but I'm wondering if anyone can clear something up for me:

Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?

If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...