"Railroading" is just a pejorative term for...

[Ariosto]

Of course, what's "good" or "bad" depends upon the value system.

Ardent players of the actual arcade machine might call an easier imitation of Defender something pejorative. People who find the real thing so difficult as to be "unplayable" might have just the opposite opinion!

 

[The Shaman]

Well, I don't put in every encounter just because the PC can handle it (more like I have to go out of my way to include an encounter that could utilize a PC's skill). I should think an adventure contains a variety of encounters, some that are blatant "dude you have a skill for this", and some that are "I wonder how they'll solve it."

A richly-developed game-world also offers a variety of encounters for which the adventurers may or may not have appropriate skills.

Backstory is page N of the character sheet. The skills, class, equipment are all things the player wants to do or avoid getting hosed by (hence the 10' pole). the backstory is often elements the PC hopes you'll use as a hook (yay! I get to pursue an adventure that focusses on ME).

If you let the players decide the direction of the game, indeed put it on their shoulders to move the game forward by their in-character actions, then every game can be about the adventrers.

Personal traits are potentially exploitable vulnerabilities for the GM to make a situation challenging in a roleplaying (as in personality) kind of way.

Aren't "potentially exploitable vulnerabilities" exactly the reason you end up with this?

What I've seen is players who try to counter the DM leveragiing any personal weakness by creating a PC with no "holes" to exploit.

Maybe if referees would stop going out of their way to with a character's "exploitable vulnerabilities," there would be fewer orphan monks living in poverty.

At some point, the party will come across a river they need to get across, a castle with a moat just through inherent obviousness. But I may never think to mention, "oh by the way, there's a ton of spider webs covering that rare painting you want to grab." Shrodinger's Fear to paraphrase Celebrim.

If you don't mention having a fear, I won't think to have that element, thus it may only occur as a coincidence.

Okay.

Consider the Indiana Jones scene. The snakes are present BECAUSE he is afraid of them.

The snakes are present BECAUSE the screenwriter used it to set up the scene with the snakes in the temple later in the script.

Again, what I like about roleplaying games are the ways in which they are not like this.

Part of that license to rearrange is to get the PCs moving when they fritter their own time (dickering around about hat shopping, instead of finding the man who shot their pa). Or when they mis-interpret a clue, and get in the weeds, to bring in news that turns them around, or to make their dead end actually be the right direction.

This presumes that there is a "right direction" to which the adventurers must be kept.

In a "if it ain't written thusly, it ain't so" style, I gather that if the PCs go hat shopping, then they waste 4 hours of game time hat shopping unless a random encounter check turns up something.

If the players decide to spend four hours hat shopping, I'm guessing it's because they find hat shopping to be a pleasureable way to play the game for four hours, because it's not something they are driven to do in any syle of gaming with which I'm familiar.

An example of how a shopping trip played out during our last game-night: an adventurer wanted to purchase a small favor to give to one of two ladies who caught his eye - which one wasn't important at that moment. The player asked me, "I want to find something which would make a good gift." "How about a small satchel made of fine Flemish lace? It costs two livres," I replied. "That sounds good," he answered, and jotted it on his character sheet.

Are you suggesting that in 'sandbox' play that every interaction with every person an adventurer meets must be roleplayed out as an actual conversation?

If they keep digging into a dead end of a corridor, then they keep wasting time. If they pursue the wrong suspect, they do that until they stop, and they never solve the mystery. . . . I should hope a sandbox DM exercises some judgement and does something in or out of the game to correct a player stall, even those his notes don't cover it.

Giving the players freedom to drive the action means giving the players the freedom to make mistakes, and to suffer consequences for them, such as wandering down blind alleys, or barking up the wrong tree.

My feeling is that rising action isn't rising action without falling action, and that success isn't success without the possibility of failure.

The players need to use all the tools at their disposal to avoid logjams of their own creation - if they feel like they're getting nowhere with something, there's probably a good reason for that, and that's a good time for them to rethink their approach. The referee needs to create a game-world in which features existing in isolation are the exception and not the rule, that a web of interconnections join people and places so that the adventurers are not forced to follow a single tenuous line of clues to find adventure. The adventurers should be surrounded by information, though that by no means suggests that all of that information is accurate, that nothing is misleading.

In terms of practical, over-the-tabletop running the game, there's nothing wrong with the referee asking the players something like, "Tell me what it is you want to accomplish," instead of asking for single, discrete steps - "We need to find out if Baron de Bauchery was in town, so first we'll talk to the innkeeper at the Black Swan, and after that we'll take to the innkeeper at the Roe Deer, then . . . " becomes, "So you want to make the rounds of the local inns to find out if the Baron de Bauchery was staying in town when Princess Pinkflower disappeared? Tell me how you plan to approach this." Do they offer bribes? Do they attempt to intimidate the innkeepers? Do they present themselves as allies of the baron? Then resolve the action.

This wasn't at all uncommon in roleplaying games back in the day. Searching for rumors or a patron is a week-long activity in Traveller. OD&D uses the week as the basic scale of time-keeping, with one day devoted to dungeon exploration and the rest to rest and refitting. En Garde! turns are one week long, which also uses the month and the season as units of time in resolving game-play; the month carried over from En Garde! to Flashing Blades as a standard measure for resolving campaign-level action as well. A campaign turn in Boot Hill is a week or a month at the referee's discretion. The knights in Pendragon typically have one adventure per year.

When we meet next month, I'm going to ask one of the players in my game if there was anything on which he wished to follow up immediately from our last game-night; depending on what he chooses to do and how he chooses to pursue it, the action may resume where we left off, or it may jump forward a month.

Shifting time-scales and action resolution is normal and expected in status quo, 'sandbox'-y settings. In my experience, 'pixel-bitching' is more common in badly-designed linear adventures.

Btw, Janx, status quo doesn't mean 'nothing changes in the setting until the adventurers interact with it' - it means that the challenges in the game-world aren't scaled to the adventurers, so that if a party of first-level adventurers set off across the desert for the lair of an anicent blue dragon, the challenges of the desert environment and the dragon don't suddenly become CR 1-3.

 

[pemerton]

Maybe if referees would stop going out of their way to with a character's "exploitable vulnerabilities," there would be fewer orphan monks living in poverty.

The key is to mess with those vulnerabilities in a way that opens up opportunities for the player to engage the game, rather than shuts the player/PC down.

It also helps if you let the PCs prosper occassionally, as well as suffer. Many published scenarios/settings seem very hostile to the idea that the PCs should be socially powerful actors within the gameworld (even a classic like Against the Giants assumes that high level PCs are subject to coercive threats from the local king).

Btw, Janx, status quo doesn't mean 'nothing changes in the setting until the adventurers interact with it' - it means that the challenges in the game-world aren't scaled to the adventurers, so that if a party of first-level adventurers set off across the desert for the lair of an anicent blue dragon, the challenges of the desert environment and the dragon don't suddenly become CR 1-3.

Another reason I don't think of my game as a sandbox.

 

[Celebrim]

I'll call it a railroad if, when we try to high-tail it somewhere other than the hill giants' settlement, it's like trying to get out of Hobb's End (In the Mouth of Madness) -- but not due to any such supernatural feature of the world with which we can actually deal.

Is this some necessary feature of the experience? Exactly what is that sort of strawman intended to prove?

I'll call it a railroad if we are likewise arbitrarily barred from joining the giants rather than massacring them, or if we have no choice but to go all the way down the line to "the finale" with Lolth. I call it a railroad when there is such a thing as "the line" to have "the finale" in the first place!

Again, is this some necessary feature of the experience? And in any event, exactly how is this a contridiction of anything I said? In what way does your calling this a railroad, in any way effect how we describe the game played by most people who have played GDQ? While any concievable scenario can be ran as a railroad, why are you trying to invent rails where none actually exist?

That's entirely separate from a campaign.

I'm beginning to wonder about this definition of 'campaign'. It's beginning to sound so narrow as to exclude a non-trivial portion of how people actually played.

To deal with one common aspect: If one considers the GDQ modules as "an adventure" in the sense of a dramatic series of events conforming to a script in the text (which is actually not how they are written...

Well, no it isn't how they are written, so what's your point?

*** At any rate, I never met anyone who felt it necessary to run them as an "adventure path" (which jargon had yet to be invented).

The term may not have been invented, but nonetheless "adventure path" it is - right down to Gygax's some what careful calculation of the amount of treasure present so as to ensure that PC's would accrue enough XP to level up for the next episode in the series. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "run them as an adventure path", because I'm not at all sure how you think adventure paths are run or how you think GDQ was run but so far as I can tell GDQ and Desert of Desolation were largely run the way Age of Worms or the like is run today.

The implication that an adventure path is not a railroad to "fans of classic play" may be an inference from a false premise.

Please explain, because I'm beginning to find your definition of 'classic play' to be sorely limiting if it excludes GDQ.

 

[Ariosto]

Is this some necessary feature of the experience? Exactly what is that sort of strawman intended to prove?

I don't understand your question. Please try asking it in another way.

These adventurers must deliver a sharp check, deal a lesson to the clan of hill giants nearby, or else return and put their heads upon the block for the headsman's axe!

Riiiiiight ... We're level 9 to 14, bubelah; we can easily come up with other alternatives ... and in a campaign, being able to act on those is basic to the game. In a tournament or similar scenario, that back-story is just "fluff"; of course we are going to do whatever the scenario is!

While any concievable scenario can be ran as a railroad, why are you trying to invent rails where none actually exist?

Why do you make a big deal of GDQ "not being considered a railroad"? I don't consider it a railroad because it's not a railroad in my experience! If there is some quality of "adventure paths" that is of railroad nature, then you're talking about something that has nothing to do with what "classic gaming fans" -- or whatever you called us -- actually dig, or why we presumably don't dig some things you call "adventure paths". You are just arbitrarily conflating different things.

I'm beginning to wonder about this definition of 'campaign'. It's beginning to sound so narrow as to exclude a non-trivial portion of how people actually played.

It was what it was, and nobody ever claimed that it did not "exclude a non-trivial portion" of other instances of playing the game. For heaven's sake, I very recently posted in this very thread a quote to that effect from the foreword written in November of 1973. Naturally the denotation excludes things other than what it denotes; that is what makes it useful in communication!

When it became confusing, because people were calling utterly different things "D&D campaigns" (with a pretty narrow set of assumptions, too), we used the term "sandbox" instead for the old denotation.

Please explain, because I'm beginning to find your definition of 'classic play' to be sorely limiting if it excludes GDQ.

What I'm saying is that you may be -- now, I will say probably are -- confusing different things.

In that post, I gave quite a number of illustrations, so maybe you could try reading it again.

For now, suffice that there are different phenomena:
(A) There is a scenario that is, "you are going to attack the hill giants". That's the game, one of sharply limited scope.
(B) There is a linear sequence of scenarios. In the tournament, the winners are definitely going on to play the next round, and the losers are not, regardless of any other considerations. There is no real causality to it other than that; any "in the imagined world" rationale is just tacked on (and nifty when it turns out to be at least plausible).
(C) There is the plot-coherent linear sequence of scenarios, such as the Dragonlance Saga. In this, the DM is supposed to rig things so that there is apparent causality and continuity to the sequence -- but not to let it get aborted. The players are not allowed to "fail" to go through scenarios 1,2,3 ... 11, 12, 13 (or whatever).
(D) There is the campaign as described by Gygax, Arneson and others, in keeping with prior art and usage in the wargames hobby. In this, the steading, glacial rift, hall, deep fastnesses of the drow and the kuo-toa people, and so on, are all parts of an encompassing environment. Players decide for themselves where to go and what to do, and when.

 

[Ariosto]

If your game is openly billed as a scenario -- "The Musgrave Ritual" or "Battle of the Five Armies" or what have you -- then anyone who pejoratively calls it on that account "a railroad" simply has no business signing up for it and then complaining about its being just what was advertised.

If you claim, "You are free to move about not only the cabin but all of Madagascar," but it turns out there's really nowhere to go except down the trap door under the rug in the sitting room ... then people may reasonably resent being misled.

 

[bert1000]

The sort of responsiveness I was talking about is the GM developing things and introducing game elements based not on ingame causal logic but metagaming logic, the idea being to keep the thematic pressure up to the players. This is at odds, I think, with exploration - because the GM is manipulating motives and backstory behind the scenes - and hence, I think, at odds with sandboxing.

This always trips me up in these discussions. It seems to me that most people associate sandbox play with pre-determined (or randomly determined) places, NPCs, etc. The "ultimate sandbox DM" would then have the entire world mapped out before hand in every detail, large and small. In reality, however, no one can do this. At some point a DM has to make up details that were not pre-determined or there isn't a random table for. And many of these times, there are a multitude of choices that would not, in fact, be at odds with ingame causal logic. It's just a choice.

So, does using prior details of the play up until then to choose these elements that need to be made up on the spot somehow make it less sandboxy? I guess so, but it's unavoidable at some level so not sure it should count against sandboxing.

For example, what if the PCs decide to see if there are any unplundered tombs in an unexplored hex far to the north and the DM hasn't really pre-populated that hex yet. There is nothing that has been revealed to the players up to now that would indicate that there is or isn't a tomb there. They are playing in a world with lots of old ruins, so there certainly could be a tomb there -- it isn't at odds with the inworld logic. The DM needs to make a choice. Or even if rolling randomly, has to assign a percentage (a choice).

Back to the snake example above. The PCs seek out a tomb to plunder. The DM didn't flesh out this tomb before the PCs made their characters. In fact, the DM is creating this tomb now for the next session since he didn't expect the PCs to go there. One PC is afraid of snakes. It is perfectly within the inworld logic that there could be snakes in a tomb (or spiders, or undead, etc.). Unless the DM creates a completely random dungeon, then how can the DM populate the dungeon without being effected by the knowledge (one way or the other) that the PC is afraid of snakes?

 

[Ariosto]

I think the concern might make more sense if one presumes that pemerton really meant "to keep the thematic pressure up on (not 'to') the players".

Still, the attention may be misplaced. The purpose of the design is to provide the players with a fun, challenging game, so trying to characterize that intent as somehow unwholesome is a wrong turn.

I can understand the temptation as arising from a temperament or taste that happens to find the challenges of an old-style game "not fun".

The potential problem is in neglecting the expectation of a fun, challenging game. Capriciously changing rules undermines that.

Whether the rules are "ingame causal" or "metagaming" has in itself not much to do with that. It certainly has to do with the degree of "role-playing" in the sense of treating things from the perspective of the role being played, but that is something else.

 

[Ariosto]

The factors can be closely associated, though.

Unless one's literary model is a parody, one probably does not expect "the hero of the story" to go about self-consciously "breaking the third wall".

So, someone interested in turning the game into a literary device is probably on that account interested in acting at a remove from an "in those shoes" point of view.

Furthermore, having preconceptions to meet, one may find that the world's "internal logic" is no more cooperative than dice that insist on generating random numbers. Miracles on demand are needed.

Ideally, perhaps, there should be no great distinction. When the rules of the game and the rules of the imagined world are severely at odds, I reckon that's probably an example of bad game design.

Note that I include among the designers the GM and whoever else was involved in setting up whatever the game proximately and practically is. We can't very well blame the writers of Rules Set X for problems we have made for ourselves.

 

[pemerton]

At some point a DM has to make up details that were not pre-determined or there isn't a random table for. And many of these times, there are a multitude of choices that would not, in fact, be at odds with ingame causal logic. It's just a choice.

<snip>

Unless the DM creates a completely random dungeon, then how can the DM populate the dungeon without being effected by the knowledge (one way or the other) that the PC is afraid of snakes?

These are fair points. I'll leave it to the sandbox players/GMs to talk about how they handle these issues. What I was trying to say is that, in the way I play, the choice is made not by considering ingame consistency, but on the sort of metagame basis I described.

(Of course one doesn't want to contradict ingame consistency - but in a fantasy RPG I tend to find that ingame consistency is pretty forgiving.)

Capriciously changing rules undermines that.

I've got no interest in doing that. In this thread most of the discussion has been about scenario/world design, and in 4e there is no rule that has to be broken or changed to make it snakes rather than spiders.

When the rules of the game and the rules of the imagined world are severely at odds, I reckon that's probably an example of bad game design.

Luckily I don't have this problem. I don't play a game where the rules of the game are at odds with the ingame causal logic of the gameworld. But nor do the rules of the game model that logic. They are to a significant extent external to it. For example, resolving a skill challenge doesn't model ingame processes - rather, it tells us at the table whether or not ingame actions have achieved certain things, and specifies the parameters within which the GM and players can stipulate various states of the gameworld.

The burden of maintaining the coherence of the gameworld falls on the GM and players when they undertake that stipulation within the parameters that the action resolution mechanics yield. (For example, if the skill challenge involved a PC going from A to B, the player of that PC cannot in the next stage of the skill challenge declare some action which presupposes the PC being located at point A.) Again, I find that this is typically not all that hard to achieve.