Improvisation vs "code-breaking" in D&D

[Zak S]

Which means that GNS was a useful tool in a number of cases that claimed to be much more than it was.

Yes but people still talking about it now after it's been disproved is destructive.

Like inarticulately crying all day instead of saying what you actually want is a fine strategy when you're a month old but still doing it when you're 17 doesn't help anybody.

Forge theory and vocabulary is, in 2015, a bad thing that makes conversations slower and worse.

 

[howandwhy99]

You also have a tendency to state very broad generalisations as if they have very specific meanings, which makes it hard to follow what you are saying.

I think we're working from different vocabularies. That's why this thread might be useful rather than perhaps a "calling out"?

Here is Gygax on the strategic thinking that the players should engage in (PHB pp 107-109 ):

et an objective for the adventure. Whether the purpose is so simple as to discover a flight of stairs to the next lowest unexplored level or so difficult as to find and destroy on altar to an alien god, some firm obiective should be established and then adhered to as strongly as possible. . .

A map is very important because it helps assure that the party will be able to return to the surface. . . .

Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party has an objective, and wondering monsters are something which stand between them and it. . . .

[/i]Do not be sidetracked.[/i] A good referee will have many ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible. The mappers must note a11 such things, and another expedition might be in order another day to investigate or destroy something or some monster, but always stay with what was planned if at all possible, and wait for another day to handle the other matters. This not to say that something hanging like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked must be bypassed, but be relatively certain that what appears to be the case actually is. . . .

If the party becomes lost, the objective must immediately be changed to discovery of a way out. If the group becomes low on vital equipment or spells, it should turn back. The same is true if wounds and dead members have seriously weakened the group's strength. . . .

On the other hand, if the party gains its set goal and is still quite strong, some other objectives can be established, and pursuit of them can then be followed.​

What you are quoting is strategic advice for the players. It's like reading a strategy guide for Chess or any other wargame. It's isn't rules, but helpful insight for playing the game more capably.

1. As he is saying, Players set their objectives in D&D, not the DM. The DM must not change anything regardless of these decisions.

2. Recording what you learn (mapping) is generally useful in any game so heavily focused on memory, D&D a code breaking game, but not a requirement of play.

3. Avoiding encounters is only one goal. Seeking out encounters, even specific creatures is a large part of D&D too. Both require players to decipher the maze they are in based on all sorts of factors the DM is using. Population density. Environmentally-preferred habitats by creatures. % in lair vs. out wandering. Etc. This is directly the players "trying to work out what system of dungeon generation the GM is using".

4. "A good referee will have many ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible." (Gygax) - This doesn't mean the GM is actively improvising actions in competition with the players (though it is known Gary would do things like that). It means the map will be filled with game challenges, but new discoveries on it can be as much a source of distraction as interest. Succeed at what you have prepared yourself to succeed at. I.e. Stay Focused, as general play advice.

5. Gaming the maze is exactly why delving is what D&D players do. They run from encounters, they take short trips into dungeons as they need to cover all the needs their characters have to survive and succeed. Getting lost, even on a grassy plain, can be days or weeks of difficulty and use up all sorts of hard won wealth. (Hell, with OS you could die in a big enough field even with no wandering encounters)

6. If you have an easy success, peek around. All information the DM is giving is treasure. (They are revealing what is possible within the system even in world design alone).

There is nothing in there about trying to work out what system of dungeon generation the GM is using. And all that advice would be equally sound whether the GM determined everything in the dungeon randomly, or made up all the rooms and their contents quite deliberately, using random determination only for wandering monsters.

Everything the DM does to create that map is rule following. Everything the DM is allowed to tell the players is from that map. The system is the game. It is an algorithm that results in a function map in which the playable pattern is inherent. Everything the players do to game the game as a design is deciphering those repeating patterns the DM uses to generate a design. (And in so many, many ways, how the proverbial "dungeon" is stocked)

Players are playing a massive grand strategy system that enables results in many minor skirmishes, treasure finds, magic explorations, dialogues, and chances for, well, outright robbery. That's because it isn't a simulation of "everything" anyone could ever think of, but solely systems covering everything relevant to the roles (class) players are expected to play. Their improvement through play of the game is directly related to their game score, per role, and thereby level. This is why Munchkins are people who showed up at a game with a 9th level character without no working understanding of the game. They didn't play that character in a game which led them to increasing their own game mastery of it. They just showed up at another gaming group claiming the character was legitimate. (That no campaign should use the same system wasn't en vogue then I believe, given the proclamation of the official "real D&D" AD&D rules to allow tournament and cross group play. I don't believe that is functionally possible.)

Quite frankly, I don't see how any of the advice you listed could in any way be considered credible in an entirely improvised game that had no underlying design for players to game. What are you seeing in those points?

As I've posted more than once now, I am not looking for an amusing pastime for "telling or retelling imagined events". I am looking for a game which, in virtue of being played, will generate stories - that is to say, will give rise to a telling of imagined events which has a tolerably recognisable dramatic content and structure.

Fair enough.

Even Gygax, in the passage I quoted, is referring to imagined as well as real things. The maps he talks about, for instance, are real, but the "alien gods" are imaginary. And the players are meant to think of them in imaginary terms - eg it matters to the play of the game whether an altar is to an "alien god" or an ordinary god, and players are expected to engage with those differences.

Players' imagination in D&D are being tested. That's because their capability to imagine a highly complex design and remember it directly relates to their ability to play the game successfully. Don't pay attention, and you lose out. All the things Gary is referring to are real things in that they are really on a gameboard before play begins. If you want an "Alien God" you need to design what deity and alien mean in your game prior to play - or the players during campaign creation, if they want it added. In that way D&D is a symbolic language referring not to our world, but the game world/board. All the common language is jargon to it.

Where my preference differs from Gygaxian skilled play is that I am not that interested in the sort of dungeon exploration and strategy that he describes. The rules of the systems I prefer have different purposes.

For reasons I don't understand - maybe you're not familiar with them? - you seem to think that those systems don't involve game play in the sense of testing the player's personal abilities. (Which is what Edwards called "stepping on up". So you seem to agree with him at least on that point.)

All game play is skill play. That is the purpose of game design, to enable players to improve themselves against the structure of the game.

Playing many Indie games to achieve ends within their designs may enable actual game play for players seeking those ends. I think it's a case by case judgment. But almost all of those games' rules do not refer to a design to be played by the players, but a collaborative narrative to be invented by all participants. The games can be very tight, well balanced systems. But they are still storygames focusing on making up stories which are not part of the game system rather than playing the actual game which is.

The key difference here is invention rather than discovery. D&D players are involved endless Eureka moments as their comprehension of the underlying pattern comes together over and over. That the design is so gargantuan in 1000 hour games (wargames too) of such complexity is the pleasure of such moments. That happens by learning the game through play. (The game of Chess, card games, boardgames, etc...) That everything that ever happened in the entire length of the campaign informs, relates, and may even effect everything else that ever happens for the rest of the campaign is the awe inspiring accomplishment of D&D design. ---Something missing in non-design, improv sessions called games.

Here is a self-quote from an actual play post:
SNIP

What game time and entropy (chaos) are in the D&D game should be understood by the DM for their own system. That may sound like a non sequitur, but if you've been building functional D&D world designs, you know these come up. The result of the effect your player is proposing is still limited to what is possible within the system. If it isn't, the Player's explanation would need to be described until such terms are covered by the game and then proper results could be determined. If "entropy" is already a design element in the game, one that can be swapped out according to game rules, then those suppositions by the player were him sussing out the pre-existing game design. However, I'm guessing they weren't so. That you were simply adding an untested, unbalanced game effect into the system by the player's rationale rather than what was possible in the game.

While there is a lot of terminology in your story about what happened, symbols that could relate to design elements, playing a broken game system until anyone involved "just makes it up" is still disabling of game play. That this was a basic understanding of what all games could not do was not missed by Gygax. I think this understanding not only enabled him to use previous and create highly insightful game mechanics, but also drove him to create as many encompassing subsystems as he did.

Just for fun, my understanding would be absolute entropy is not just the end of time, but the end of everything. Entropy of is the absencing of stuff. It's like coming to the edge of the universe. There isn't even space beyond. There is no "beyond". IMO, such a powerful effect would require very high level ability and not be "swappable" for alternate game damage or conditions or however the system you used worked. (Terminology generalizations aren't the actual design for D&D anyways, but useful abstractions for fast calculations by the DM. There is supposed to be an actual design pattern underlying those scores and abilities)

How is that not a game? There is a rules structure. There is dice rolling to find out what happens (so in that respect it resembles gambling). There is the making of decisions by a player so as to change the probabilities, and those decisions include elements of resource management (in this case, trading of healing surges for bonuses). The player is also having to think about, and within the context of, the fiction - which is the same sort of game-playing as is involved in my daughter setting up her imaginary cake shop.

There is no game design the rules are referring to, the field of play. The actual design upon which a person moves themselves (a sport) or a piece of the design. Cards are their own field. So too are game boards and the pieces upon them. I feel like in your game players are projecting their desires and gaming for the right to have their imaginings be added to the "game", i.e. narrative. They are not attempting to decipher, discover, and game the system based upon their current understanding of it.

Can such actual gaming happen in part with a partial system? Yes, but any game that allows players to add elements to it is about adding rules specifically, not "narrative content". That way new rules can be accounted for by players in planning their future strategies. Not to mention new rules cannot usually contradict old rules.

A new spell or weapon in D&D would require the DM to assign all the design elements for it to be covered by the rules. Take a new weapon for example, Size, shape, weight, substance, length, sharpness/pointedness/flatness, hit points, AC, saves, etc., etc. And then the player needs to playtest the item in the system to see how it ranks compared to others. Not to mention how it was created in the game world and the costs commonly involved, material components, crafting effects tools must do... Like everything else in D&D, that stuff can be later abstracted for quick judgements. We know it requires steel, at this level we don't need to get hung up on the quality of the steel. (I got carried away here)

For instance, the player has had to come up with an in-fiction rationale for how he can pull off the stunt that he wants to pull off. This belongs to that time-honoured D&D category of "the creative use of spells".

No, every caster casting a spell is learning the effects of what that spell does in a particular game situation based upon the current design of the board behind the screen. Gravity pulls the ice wall down on people. We know the stats for the people, for the ice wall, and how high it was cast above them (ask when necessary). In a highly complex game there may be several more factors for the DM to keep track of too. But that scale is up to the individual DM. Creativity for D&D players means doing something in a personally novel way and learning what that means in the pre-existing game, not making stuff up and playing a game for the right to say it. The former increases player knowledge of viable game strategies and is vital to scoring (XP) as a player.

To me, what is sounds like you were doing applied to D&D was allowing a player to create a spell without study, cost, or time requirement - which is built in to so you can do work out of session to test the balance of such. Or whether they could even create such a level of effect in the first place.

You say that I'm interfering with the fixing of the RPG hobby. I think what I've quoted shows that I'm pretty squarely part of the RPG hobby!

I'm saying the RPG hobby has been usurped by the story making hobby. Anyone can choose to look for recognition of that fact and stop perpetuating it.

 

[howandwhy99]

OK, I am going to jump in again. Guys, it's not either/or, not if it's done right. It's BOTH - the best games/campaigns/groups that I have ever been a part of for greater than 30 years now is when it IS a game and it IS collaborative storytelling - at the same time.

Well for the first dozen years of the hobby D&D had nothing whatsoever to do with stories, but was a game. That it was terribly dysfunctional under 2e and then dysfunctionally designed, however well-meaningly, and then finally dropped from the D&D brand altogether doesn't mean D&D the game applies to what you're saying. It doesn't.

edited for clarity

 

[Zak S]

Dismissing the value others have found just because you don't like it is the non-reality-based step here.

Incorrect:

Forge theory doesn't just make claims about what some people experienced. It makes broad claims about how all games work.
For example: "It's impossible to equally serve multiple GNS goals (at all) simultaneously in one instance of play"

There is *nothing* valuable to a theory except in its use.

And its use has slowed down hundreds if not thousands of conversations about games, delayed useful insights and elevated and encouraged people who have bad ideas and can't make good things. It's use has been a disaster.

That Mr Edwards made claims far beyond its actual usefulness is irrelevant.

It's super-relevant and here's why:

Since his theory was wrong and it can be proved, everyone who believed it or encouraged the community arounf it SHOULD be considered someone who is less trustworthy and less reliable (like having believed in a flat-earth theory) than other people in a conversation. Their ideas should be considered less important, their contributions should be weighted as less relevant. They should only be taken seriously after publicly going "Ok, that whole flat-earth thing was a bad idea and I shouldn't have believed it, encouraged it in others, it was bad for the community as a whole".

Instead in many cases the opposite happened--postForgies were just numerous enough (and just over-represented in online discussion enough, for obvious reasons) to create a clique of folks who saw having believed in this flat earth theory as a mark of sophisticated IndieNess rather than an embarassment and that legacy continues today.

Everyone should be LESS likely to believe any proposition floated by a person who once believed and encouraged Mr Flat Earth whereas in many cases folks are MORE likely to believe them--and this is a bad outcome for the game community.

 

[Celebrim]

Incorrect:

Forge theory doesn't just make claims about what some people experienced. It makes broad claims about how all games work.
For example: "It's impossible to equally serve multiple GNS goals (at all) simultaneously in one instance of play"

I don't agree with everything you say, but I do agree with that.

Forge's grand theory of RPGs wasn't intended to describe what people had experienced inclusively, but rather defined from the basis of theory the limits of what people could experience. A succession of bad words were invented to then belittle and slander anyone that claimed to experience anything other than what they were supposed to experience, and in essence anyone that claimed to be running (for example) process simulation and to have story goals that were being successfully met by that system was mocked as being self-deluded. System mattered, thus how you approached play or how you thought about play didn't matter but instead was limited by the system. If something didn't fit the theory, it had to be deconstructed, diminished, and ultimately denigrated. No one in the history of gaming of any prominence has developed more synonyms for 'badwrongfun', nor been considered a credible commentator despite the games he was producing and not because of them, than Ron Edwards.

That was the bad side of the Forge culture and it should not be overlooked just how corrosive it was when it was at full bore.

But, for all of that, I do think that some good things came out of the Forge's work. They did either invent or introduce me to a lot of useful terminology that they'd coopted for talking about games - agency for example - that I otherwise didn't have. I think it's possible to employ at least some Forge speak in a constructive manner, without endorsing the larger theory or its specifics. And some of the Indy games that came out of that dialogue did invent or formalize new techniques and methods of play resolution that are really valuable in some cases and for some purposes. And while I don't strictly believe in "System Matters" the way Forge defined it, I think it did cause people to take harder looks at what there system was actually achieving and thinking about what it was intended to achieve in a way that was rare and more sporadic in the first 10-15 years of game design. I'm not sure that the degree to which all of that is positive can be appreciated unless you go back and look and older designs and also how people talked about older design.

 

[howandwhy99]

"Game" is a natural language word, not technical jargon. There are many definitions. Bernard Suits would probably agree with you, but Wittgenstein probably would not. And those are just the philosophers, not the natural users of the word.

If Wittgenstein included the mind as part of The world in his Tractatus, I doubt it. I feel he was trying desperately to "climb back into the world" with his later stuff. As the references of D&D are as much to imaginings of the Ref as to the board outside him/her, I don't feel there is a dichotomy. One can be the aid to the other as long as one retains a pattern identity.

Bernard Suits is new to me, but looks perfectly applicable.

You don't own the definition of "game". Yours is one definition of many. Thus, your repeated assertion is not terribly constructive, as it is only true for those who are using your particular definition of the word.

We all own definitions. I'll agree, everyone's definitions are only true for those who share a worldview, but I too could smurf the word game into anything I want it to be. As a label it has boundless applications. All of which makes languages a balance between a wondrous utility and being mockingly useless. I feel my definition is more applicable to more games for what players historically want from games.

But no philosophy is to be an absolute. That is treating it as a god. That is the problem with deliberate disinformation campaigns like Edwards'. Not only do I believe he actually believes in his extremist point of view. He has no air for anything outside it. Games are one of the things historically that required reception and manipulation. But for him, science is about inventing narratives, history is inventing narratives, politics are invented narratives, economics is invented narratives. There is no "outside narrative theory" in his theory. He's a Foucouldian power ethicist. A person who sees any trivia game or code breaking game or anything with an impartial referee as inherently tyrannical. So the entire practice of games as predictive enterprises is dutifully erased in a massive jumble of near incomprehensible jargon.

 

[Zak S]

I don't agree with everything you say, but I do agree with that.

Forge's grand theory of RPGs wasn't intended to describe what people had experienced inclusively, but rather defined from the basis of theory the limits of what people could experience. A succession of bad words were invented to then belittle and slander anyone that claimed to experience anything other than what they were supposed to experience, and in essence anyone that claimed to be running (for example) process simulation and to have story goals that were being successfully met by that system was mocked as being self-deluded. System mattered, thus how you approached play or how you thought about play didn't matter but instead was limited by the system. If something didn't fit the theory, it had to be deconstructed, diminished, and ultimately denigrated. No one in the history of gaming of any prominence has developed more synonyms for 'badwrongfun', nor been considered a credible commentator despite the games he was producing and not because of them, than Ron Edwards.

That was the bad side of the Forge culture and it should not be overlooked just how corrosive it was when it was at full bore.

But, for all of that, I do think that some good things came out of the Forge's work. They did either invent or introduce me to a lot of useful terminology that they'd coopted for talking about games - agency for example - that I otherwise didn't have. I think it's possible to employ at least some Forge speak in a constructive manner, without endorsing the larger theory or its specifics. And some of the Indy games that came out of that dialogue did invent or formalize new techniques and methods of play resolution that are really valuable in some cases and for some purposes. And while I don't strictly believe in "System Matters" the way Forge defined it, I think it did cause people to take harder looks at what there system was actually achieving and thinking about what it was intended to achieve in a way that was rare and more sporadic in the first 10-15 years of game design. I'm not sure that the degree to which all of that is positive can be appreciated unless you go back and look and older designs and also how people talked about older design.

Then what needs to happen going forward, now, in 2015, is everybody who encouraged the Forge should go "I'm sorry this was a mistake, I won't ever refer to Forge terminology ever again, it's connected to a toxic hellbroth of bad assumptions used by very bad people to very bad ends--or at least as bad as "Talking about games" can get.".

Whether or not the theory that the four elements were Earth Air Fire and Water helped anyone back in the day, we know it isn't true NOW, and the way to move forward into a smarter discussion of games (and new, better game designs) involves admitting that and not constantly going "Ok, well D&D is an Earth game with Fire assumptions and...." and dragging the conversation back to the Middle Ages.

 

[howandwhy99]

Thirdly, I don't think anyone is arguing that narratives are the inevitable result of the play of all games.

That's exactly what the borders are for the Big Model. In it, Tetris is scene shifting to create a narrative, or some such BS.

Even in the case of an RPG, I don't think anyone is arguing that a story is inevitable.

Roleplaying is treated as a synonym for storytelling by that crowd. Not performing a social role.

Games are real, of course. Not fiction or non-fictions at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Games are simply patterns existent in the world which we treat accordingly within the culture of games. We decipher the pattern to achieve goals in it. "Race you to that tree!" or per your own history of the term "game": Betting on the odds of a random even with a design to it. Atheletes vying against each other in contests with predefined goals to be achieved. Hunters seeking game. All of these things are real, not expressions of truth or falseness. It's language which can get in the way.

Sure, but this statement is so broad as to be meaningless.

I'm saying source doesn't matter. A garden maze is a made up game real as it is, but so is a forest when we treat it like game.

But I haven't a clue regarding what "revolution" you are talking about. I have long been critical of Forge Theory and GNS. But GNS by and large has not been very influential over how or what the average game plays, nor is it even possible for GNS to reach back in the past and alter what people have played.

(I take this to have meant "game(r) plays")
The indie population at large found god somehow and needed to tell others what to believe, what they were *really* doing. "You're telling a story!" That it is steeped in revolutionary phrases and banners is obvious. What are they revolting against? What must be overturned?

No we don't. Modules weren't invented as part of D&D play until half a decade after D&D play began

The first was Palace of the Vampire Queen 1975, TSR's first was in Blackmoor Supplement 2.

Of course we need modules to play. In the early years people ran the same modules many times over having to get more creative with them to challenge the same players again. The Keep on the Borderlands in the icy north. Lost in a jungle. Etc.

This is a typical example of you taking a specific tool and implement for being the broad and general case. You could make a reasonable argument that we need a secret keeper who keeps secret the information and parcels out that information to the players as the game progresses, but you can't make the case that that secret keeper needs a physical screen to hide the information. The screen is merely one specific sort of tool that is entirely optional. I've known plenty of DMs even ones running dungeon crawls that did without one and simply relied on players not to peek, or simply set on the sofa while everyone else was across the room, or simply used a long dining room table.

You wanted evidence of intention in the design of D&D. Screens are evidence. Modules are evidence. Quotes in responses to other posters in this thread include more evidence. That you deny screens and other game components as unnecessary doesn't disprove their need in the actual game.

Perhaps scoring points is how you define winning D&D, but its not how the game itself defined 'winning' - which by the way is a rather odd notion given that D&D doesn't define how it ends. I would argue that to the extent D&D defines winning at all, it defines it as, "When everyone at the table is satisfied that the game is complete." Exactly what satisfies a group that this is the time to stop and declare victory is going to vary from group to group, but since you formerly argued that modules are necessary for play, I think a good argument could be made that "when the module is complete" is a very common definition of "winning D&D". And yet, if that is the definition of winning, it has nothing to do with how many points you scored.

Each player scores points separately. Each succeeds individually. The game is cooperative because players can work together to score points better when working as a group. The game is a cooperative game, not a collaborative one. And if you've played modules you know modules aren't "episodic" but continually transitioning as the game is played. Even if you clear a dungeon level, you need to fight to keep the monsters from repopulating it. The modules never go away, but are simply tightly balanced designs within the larger game. (of course, so too are the PCs, monsters, treasure...)

Ok sure. But this does no harm to the statement D&D was invented as a game with a story engine way back in 1973 when Ron Edwards was memorizing multiplication tables and had probably never even imagined an RPG. So what does GNS have to do with any of this?

The redefining of an RPG as a storygame, to the point even you don't seem to remember or understand what RPGing is.

Why don't we just confine ourselves to looking at those modules you claim are so necessary to play and see what they tell us about whether D&D has a story? Let's begin with UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave, shall we?

Okay, but that is well known as being a campaign destroying module. "You are trapped in ice for 1000s of years". Wow! We might as well just quit the game. Maybe someone could have come from a previous time and then began class training when they arrived in the campaign, pre-game stuff, but UK1's design is a campaign ender.

In 1961, Caillois in his highly influential book 'Les jeux et les hommes' defined games as being a human activity that was fun, circumscribed, uncertain, non-productive, governed by rules, and fictitious. More to the point, a game is a form of play, and play is always fictitious. "A play" is literally a piece of fiction. The theatrical definition of "a play" and the verb "to play" have a common origin. To play is to exercise ones imagination. To game is to exercise that imagination in a manner circumscribed by goals and rules, but despite goals and rules it still remains a fiction.

Games are fantasy because they include people, the ideas in their minds. Fiction is a term about stories.

But even then, I don't think Edwards would claim "memory" was an RPG. He was making a theory of RPGs; not a theory of games generally.

Check it over again, The Big Model claims to be a theory on what every game is. If you can't find it, ask someone in the know.

 

[pemerton]

its discussion of simulationism is ... bad.

For whom? As I've already posted, I'm a 20-year Rolemaster player, and so am pretty familiar with pretty hardcore sim. And I think the discussion of sim is pretty insightful. It helped me steer through a lot of recurring and tricky issues that come up in process-sim play.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think anyone is arguing that narratives are the inevitable result of the play of all games. Parcheesi for example doesn't seem to have a story component to it. Among other things, it lacks anything that might be called 'characters', nor would it's board be mistaken for a 'setting' nor does its play end up creating through transcription anything like a plot or narrative. It's components of play have no correspondence to the components of a story. Even in the case of an RPG, I don't think anyone is arguing that a story is inevitable. All that is being argued is that story is not nor was not seen even from the beginning to be incompatible with playing a game.

<snip>

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Books are of course real as well, but I can still classify them as fiction or non-fiction. But games never can be non-fiction in the sense that a book can be, where as they often are fictitious in the same sense that a book can be.

<snip>

GNS has nothing at all to do with whether or not people wanted to have game plus story at the same time. If anything, you are here advancing GNS far more than I am. GNS argued that you couldn't have game and story at the same time, something I felt was as ridiculous then as your argument now is.

<snip>

You don't need a module to play D&D.

<snip>

since the beginning of play a significant number of events occur outside of or off any prepared map. Quite often you have encounters that just occur in an abstract space like, "On a road"

<snip>

You could make a reasonable argument that we need a secret keeper who keeps secret the information and parcels out that information to the players as the game progresses, but you can't make the case that that secret keeper needs a physical screen to hide the information. The screen is merely one specific sort of tool that is entirely optional. I've known plenty of DMs even ones running dungeon crawls that did without one and simply relied on players not to peek, or simply set on the sofa while everyone else was across the room, or simply used a long dining room table.

Celebrim, the above are not the only points in your post I agree with but they're the main ones.

The stuff about modules, maps and screens I especially relate to. I have played D&D using modules and not-using modules. The encounter "on a road" or "in an inn" or "in the upper floor of the wizard's tower" is very typical. And I think I've used a GM screen once in the hundreds of sessions that I've GMed - otherwise I use the various techniques you describe if I have anything I want to keep secret from the players.

That I'm really curious about. Would you explain that further?

pemerton is an advocate of 'no myth' and for the DMing creating content in response to the player's declared goals and actions. In this way, he thinks by improvising in reaction to the players, the DM is prioritizing the players interests and desires for the setting over his own. Ironically, I find pemerton's methods more railroad-y than traditional open sandbox play and much more prone to illusionism (and DM rationalizing his biases)

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], Celebrim is basically right but a few extra comments:

My "advocacy" isn't in the form of you should do this but more some people do this. Particularly during some of the discussions around 4e, it was common to see posts explaining why 4e is not an RPG that took for granted approaches to RPGing (including that the GM sets all the backstory and fiction-to-mechanics correlation in advance) that aren't universal.

My game isn't fully "no myth". Eg in my BW game we are using the Greyhawk maps; in my 4e game we use the default 4e backstory (Dawn War etc) plus the regional map from the module Night's Dark Terror. The non-mythiness is more in the details of backstory (town details, NPC and PC backstories, etc).

I don't fully follow Celebrim's comment about "the DM rationalising his biases", but in my case my players know my biases pretty well. That's why they tend to build PCs who are oriented towards engaging with supernatural threats like undead and demons. That said, system makes a difference here. My BW game has much more human politics than my 4e one, because BW has better mechanics than 4e for handling relatively mundane social conflict.

Anyway, tying this back to railroading: in his AP thread, [MENTION=6673408]Zak[/MENTION]S defined "railroading" along the lines of "the constraints on play become a problem". The constraint on play introduced by typical sand-boxing is that the players have to engaged the content the GM has pre-written for them. For me that's a problem.