Judgement calls vs "railroading"

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

Ovinomancer said:
Well stated, but the question occurs to me... isn't this just another form of illusionism?

The elegance of the interweaving (assuming it is elegant) isn't illusory - it's genuine.

If the players ask "Was that planned all along?" I'll explain my methods. They're not secret. Some of my players read at least some of the posts I make on these boards.

So what's the illusion?

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

Ilbranteloth said:
But my point isn't so much about whether it could occur one way or the other, using whatever system. My point is that the power of the story is more effective if the character Luke, and by the extension the player playing Luke, doesn't know the secret backstory until the key point.

And my point is that, as a RPGing experience, it's even more powerful if the GM doesn't know either.

So then, instead of the player discovering what it is that the GM had in mind all along, the player and GM both discover what it is that they have created together through their playing of this game.

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

Campbell said:
We can absolutely say that someone is a poor Apocalypse World GM, or a poor B/X player

I've often posted that I'm a bad B/X GM.

In the comments to this post, Luke Crane describes GMing Moldvay Basic as

a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.

I suck at impassive non-interference. When I'm GMing, I'm constantly reminding my players of what is (or might be) at stake, asking them how such-and-such relates to so-and-so's convicition about such-and-such-else, teasing and taunting them, discussing how certain moves might be made or resolved, etc.

When I ran an AD&D session not too long ago, I was using random dungeon generation and so could still mostly do the above stuff without spoiling the game. But equally, for that very reason, it wasn't an exploration game in the strictest sense of classic D&D dungeon-crawling.

(The quote is from the comments to the linked post.)

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

darkbard said:
my work as an academic

What field? (I'm law and philosophy.)

darkbard said:
I am curious as to why you think the particularities of the fiction/mechanics of a Dark Sun game might present difficulties to seamless integration in the fashion you suggest.

Short answer (like you said, it's a bit OT): I'm not sure that's there enough overt richness and "gonzo" in the setting for the players to draw on in making action declarations.

It's more of a worry at this stage. As I said, I hope I'm wrong. (If I had to guess what will prove me wrong, it will be the magical elements of the setting: psionics, defiling and the "regrowth" idea that you pointed to in relation to the druid PC in your game. Plus the relative looseness of organisations like the Veiled Alliance and the Templars.)

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

hawkeyefan said:
For instance, based just on your description, I would be concerned that authoring such details along the way may not allow for as detailed a story. I would expect that, compared to a story authored beforehand, that one authored on the fly would possibly lack verisimilitude.

Well, I've provided plenty of links to, and examples of, actual play. Having had a look at them, is that concen warranted?

I mean, I feel that my campaigns have quite a bit of detail. Re-reading this account of the PCs' exploration of the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, I don't see how pre-authoring would have yielded more detail or more verisimilitude.

Do you have examples in mind?

(I should add: I'm assuming you're not talking about details in the GM's notes. I mean, there's plenty of stuff that hasn't come out in the play of my game that might be in GM's notes for a module intended to produce the same storyline (eg the name of the mother of the Baron's niece). But that sort of detail, that never emerges in play, doesn't contribute to the play experience, does it?)

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

hawkeyefan said:
Rather than guessing at criticisms of a system like Burning World, I'd prefer togear about them from someone familiar with the game.

I've posted some of this, upthread, before and after your initial "drawback" post, but no one responded. Here it is again:

pemerton said:
By "drawbacks" do we mean "bad things"? In that case, I can't say I've encountered any.

If we're talking about weaknesses in particular systems, well that's a different topic. 4e has well-known issues about the interface between combat and non-combat resolution.

If we're talking about challenges for or demands on participants, that's a different thing too. MHRP/Cortex Heroic puts a lot of pressure on the GM to manage the Doom Pool effectively, which is often not easy to do at all. BW is demanding on players, because (i) it asks them to give so much to the game, and (ii) a lot of the time it punches them in the gut as a reward for that giving. But I wouldn't call this a "drawback" - it's the system doing exactly what it says on the tin!

Lanefan · Apr 23, 2017

pemerton said:
I've often posted that I'm a bad B/X GM.

In the comments to this post, Luke Crane describes GMing Moldvay Basic as

a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.

I suck at impassive non-interference. When I'm GMing, I'm constantly reminding my players of what is (or might be) at stake, asking them how such-and-such relates to so-and-so's convicition about such-and-such-else, teasing and taunting them, discussing how certain moves might be made or resolved, etc.

This is very enlightening, and says a lot for why we prefer different systems.

Unlike what Luke Crane says, I don't find conveying really bad news to my players about their characters that difficult at all; in part I think because they're already kind of aware that in my game bad news - just like good news - may lurk around any corner. I'm just as content to watch them make bad decisions as good ones*, and I don't much care if they "win" as long as they're having fun not winning (which is, by the way, quite possible). Were I to put them into a puzzle or maze and then solve it for them I'd probably get dice thrown at me; they want to solve it themselves via their characters, even if it takes all night.

* - it's when they make no decisions at all that I get bored.

And yes, I'll interfere too sometimes (usually through a party NPC)...though they've learned not to listen very hard as my interference is just as likely to be misleading as it is to be helpful.

Lan-"sometimes bad players make fine DMs"-efan

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

hawkeyefan said:
my game achieves a lot of what pemerton and others have attributed to the mechanics of other games. So I'm curious about the necessity of those mechanics

Mechanics are, in my view, secondary - although not irrelevant.

In my veiw, the primary thing is the tecniques and constraints/considerations that shape authorship. And the primary thing there is: who sets the agenda for the game? Does the GM hook the players, or do the players hook the GM?

The latter can be done using AD&D, although there are parts of that system that will push back if used as written (eg random encounters are not all that conducive to player-driven play, although they can perform a sort of Rorschach-blot function which needn't be totally inimical to player-driven RPGing).

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

Lanefan said:
Unlike what Luke Crane says, I don't find conveying really bad news to my players about their characters that difficult at all

Nor do I. Nor does Luke Crane. Running BW is a litany of bad news to the players.

It's the impassive bit that I find hard, and I think that is the point Luke Crane is getting at.

pemerton · Apr 23, 2017

Sadras said:
Would you dare to say you run shared-narration sandbox games?

I don't think of it as a sandbox, because to me a sandbox implies playing in something already there.

That's not to say I'm offended by that label or anything!

A tangent on shared narration: a lot of the time (including in this thread), "shared narration" gets talked about in terms of players narrating in elements of a scene, framing their own challenges, etc.

But for me, it mostly occurs in the sorts of examples I gave - ie as an assumed premise in some other action declaration. To me that's often much more "organic", and it relates to a discussion upthread about the PCs feeling like aliens or feeling like they belong in the world.

When the player of the epic-tier wizard can say, "Well, if I use this ritual with this divine entity as a focus, I can achieve such-and-such mystical effect" and then we just move to the stage of setting a DC and resolving it, it feels like the player is this PC who knows everything there is to know about the arcana of the world.

As opposed to having to ask me, as GM, how such-and-such might be done, or having to go on a quest to find the recipe that I make up (and if the NPC at the end of the quest can know it, then why not the PC in the first place?).

It shifts the focus from learning to doing. Which I personally feel makes for a better game experience.

Judgement calls vs "railroading"

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