Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

For the record, what did Mr. Gygax think of railroading?
We don't need to wonder.

As far as I can interpret that, he seems to be referring to framing:

there are some scenarios where a bit of that is absolutely necessary to further the whole of the adventure. This is not to say that an entire adventure should be linear and force the party into a situation with a foregone conclusion. The use of a predetermined outcome should be only to set up an interesting and challenging scenario where the players are absolutely free to manage the outcome on their own​

The "predeterined outcome to set up a scenario" looks like framing to me - eg the start of the Dungeon of the Slave Lords module. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with negating player choices.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], how can railroading possibly be about the content of the fiction?

Two PC enter a dungeon room and are killed by an orc. Was that railroading or not?

Until I tell you something about how that content was generated - eg who decided that the PCs entered the room, and how? who decided that the orc was there, and how? who decied that the orcs killed the PCs, and how? - how do you possibly think you can tell?

 

[pemerton]

"It is no exaggeration to state that the fantasy world builds itself, almost as if the milieu actually takes on a life and reality of its own."

<snip>

Surprisingly, as the personalities of player characters and non-player characters in AD&D world will take on even more of their own direction and life. What this all boils down to is that once the compaign is set in motion, you will become more of a recorder of events, while the milieu seemingly charts its own course! "

How is that not a DM driven game?

Well, I would say charting its own course and having a reality of its own, is largely at odds with is authored by the GM in advance of play and much more consistent with is generated as part of the play of the game.

I certainly don't see how life, reality and course of it own entails life, reality and course at the behest of the GM.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

These things are all matters of opinion. I would regard all the things you say are not railroading - having a plot prepared in advance, automatic failure in a context of genre-appropriate action declaration, secret backstory including NPCs with there own "character arcs" - as railroading. I wouldn't do them, and I wouldn't enjoy a game that featured them. (Outside the context of something like a CoC one-shot.)

I wasn't stating an opinion, I was describing the meaning of the word "railroading" based on how in my experience it's been used in both online and offline discussions.

I think this discussion would be much more fruitful if you were to come up for a different term for the type of game you don't want to play instead of highjacking an established term such as "railroading". I'm actually having a hard time understanding what kind of game you don't consider to be "railroaded"

 

[pemerton]

I wasn't stating an opinion, I was describing the meaning of the word "railroading" based on how in my experience it's been used in both online and offline discussions.

And I'm using the word in ways that I've encountered it being used in (mostly online) discussions.

It's a word whose usage varies, mostly depending on the extent to which the user recognises the significant presence of GM force in relation to outcomes.

This is something that I recognised in the OP, when I acknowledge that my usage is probably broader than some others'. I think this is mostly because I am more sensitive to the presence of GM force in relation to outcomes than some other posters.

I'm actually having a hard time understanding what kind of game you don't consider to be "railroaded"

One in which the GM doesn't shape outcomes towards a pre-conceived narrative. There are various reasonably well-known techniques to facilitate this eg "say 'yes' or roll the dice"; in the case of failure, narrating those consequences in the manner often called "fail forward"; whether the check succeeds or fails, "let it ride" (ie the outcome is binding on all participants until some subsequent failure puts it back into play).

I've provided plenty of examples in this thread of how these techniques work. See eg posts 286, 287 for some of the most recent ones.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In the fiction, it is either true or false that the brother was evil. That truth doesn't change.

If it was actually true that the brother was evil, or that the brother was not evil, then all evidence would always be consistent with that truth (even if it may sometimes be misleading). That's part of the definition of what makes something true, is that it is the way it is regardless of who is aware of it.

Before any investigation toward discovering the truth, that truth must already be defined in an absolute sense. How someone goes about discovering that truth cannot possibly have an effect on the nature of the truth itself. The contents of a box must already be defined before you open it and learn the contents, if you're living in any sort of normal linear-time objective reality.

At the table, that element of the shared fiction has to be settled through some process or other - fictions don't just write themselves! At my table, it was settled by narrating the consequences of the failure. Up to that point, the relevant element of the ficton hadn't been written, and so - not having been written - I was in no better position to know it than anyone else.

At your table, the true nature of the universe in which the characters exist is that there is no objective reality, and anything a character does can have spectacular repercussions at any point along the time-stream. It is literally, objectively true that the brother retroactively became evil-all-along as the result of a failed perception-based check. We know this because we have access to the source code by which that reality was generated. The characters are entirely oblivious to the fact that they live in such a world, because malevolent higher-dimensional entities are conspiring to trick them. They live in the Matrix, or in the philosophy of Descartes.

And all that is fine, whatever, you can have fun however you want. It does necessarily mean that everything in that game is determined by fiat, though. There is no DM who can make a judgment call about what makes sense based on everything they know about the world, and assign a probability if necessary, in order to figure out what should happen as the result of any given action. Your game lacks the pre-requisite of a DM who actually does know all of the relevant factors involved in making that sort of call.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I would say charting its own course and having a reality of its own, is largely at odds with is authored by the GM in advance of play and much more consistent with is generated as part of the play of the game.

I certainly don't see how life, reality and course of it own entails life, reality and course at the behest of the GM.

Sure, if you skip the myriad of other quotes I listed, the way you did. And you also skip the craptons of other quotes by Gygax that tell the DM to control things. But hey, feel free to just use the few quotes that only kinda sorta back you up on this.

 

[Jester David]

As far as I can interpret that, he seems to be referring to framing:

there are some scenarios where a bit of that is absolutely necessary to further the whole of the adventure. This is not to say that an entire adventure should be linear and force the party into a situation with a foregone conclusion. The use of a predetermined outcome should be only to set up an interesting and challenging scenario where the players are absolutely free to manage the outcome on their own​

The "predeterined outcome to set up a scenario" looks like framing to me - eg the start of the Dungeon of the Slave Lords module. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with negating player choices.

Why on earth would anyone use "outcome" to describe a set-up??? You use "outcome" to describe outcomes.

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], how can railroading possibly be about the content of the fiction?

Two PC enter a dungeon room and are killed by an orc. Was that railroading or not?

That's not enough for anyone to know if that's railroading.

[MENTION=37579]Until I tell you something about how that content was generated - eg who decided that the PCs entered the room, and how? who decided that the orc was there, and how? who decied that the orcs killed the PCs, and how? - how do you possibly think you can tell?

Knowing most of those doesn't tell if it was railroading either.

If I can answer that the DM created the dungeon. That she also knew the orc was there, as she decided the orc was present. That bad rolls caused the party to lose. That the DM decided to have her orc kill the PCs rather than have them taken them prison. Then I know almost all the answers, but I still don't know if it was railroading.

The only question that can determine if it was railroading was "who decided that the PCs entered the room, and how?" But even then that barely answers the question since how they arrived at that decision and the decisions (if any) that led up to it are unknown.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Can you explain what you have in mind?

Well, the options presented as failing forward options could conceivably be ones designed to get the players "back on track", could they not?

It certainly seems that the DM can just as easily nudge or steer the PCs using the method that you described as he can with other methods.

So...the search for a vessel fails...but the DM wants the players to pursue the assassin rather than get wrapped up in the attempt to catch the mage's blood. So he says "the assassin's tunic was surely splattered by the blood...perhaps some could be retrieved from his clothes?"

The DM can use any means to try and get the story back on his rails if he so desires. In this instance, I wouldn't even say it's a bad thing since he's taken the PC desired path and combined it with the DM desired path.

 

[Jester David]

No one posting in this thread is confused about the existence of your preferred style. But some people posting in this thread seem confused that other approaches exist, or that others might think your preferred GM-driven style is too railroad-y for their taste.

I don't give a flying eff about your preferred style, your campaign, or if you like my style.

I care about you describing my style with derogatory terms. And misappropriating those terms to do so.