Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

My interests in a lack of a preplanned narrative are just as much for the sake of the GM's experience of play as it is for the other players' experience.

100% this. As a RPGer I'm overwhelmingly a GM. I don't want to run a GM-driven game.

 

[pemerton]

if the PCs move to/stay in an environment where the change should be noticeable, the DM is obligated to bring the change to their attention. Which means the DM is obligated to track those situations when out of sight of the players OR to introduce changes specifically as he feels the players would appreciate. Although both can be sandboxing, the first strategy tends to produce more long-term consistency and appreciation in my experience.

In that case our experiences differ. I've never found (as a player or GM) that "tracking situations out of sight of the players" produces a better game than the GM narrating the unfolding situation in a way that responds to the dynamics and concerns of the actual play at the table.

I posted an example some way upthread in a reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (for me, it's post 298, but may not be the same for you), of the PCs in my main 4e game returning to the underdark after various excursions on the Abyss. I narrated the changes they noticed: roiling chaos due to the death of Torog; the duergar a somewhat destroyed society (as on of the PCs had, far earlier, predicted - because the same thing had happened to his devil-worshipping people, the tieflings) who were easily led by the PCs (somewhat against the PCs' better judgement) to through their lot in with the renegade archdevil Levistus; the drow mad and purposeless following the death of Lolth, but ready to be led back to the surface of the world (as had been the aspiration of one of the PCs since he was introduced into the game at 3rd level).

A very different example arose out of the 18-month break period in the OP game, that I mentioned to Lanefan not too far upthread: the PCs spent 18 months in a ruined tower in the Abor-Alz, training, in one case healing, and in a couple of other cases eking out a living by selling cheap magical charms and doing minor mending works for the local hillfolk. In this time, their only real contact with the outside world was via a caravn of elven traders (whom they met as a result of the player of the elven princess succeeding at a Circles check) - and among the news from the elves was that the Gynarch of Hardby had become engaged to marry the leader of another PC's sorcerous cabal. Needless to say, the PCs have a generally poor relationship with that individual, and their last interaction with him had been killing his familiar when it was spying on them in the Bright Desert.

In both cases these are changes in the situation which establish the "living, breathing" world, without being the result of behind-the-scenes tracking.

 

[pemerton]

I haven't seen anything so far to indicate that the players can't choose to go their own way with their own ideas on what to do.

Perhaps you missed this post:

If a character's next logical in-character move is to do something that takes it out of the party, then out it goes. I've role-played myself out of many a party in the past.

If a single PC decides to pack it in and become a local magistrate, or take over the local mercenaries' guild, that's just fine - the PC retires from adventuring (and the player either already has a replacement or rolls one up, assuming she is staying in the game) and at some point we'll update it to see how its magisterial or mercenary career might be going.

 

[pemerton]

If the DM doesn't get to play in the sandbox, too, what's the point?

This question seems like it's meant to be rhetorical, but I don't quite follow. Isn't the GM plays in the sandbox, under the assumption that the GM authors the shared fiction that constitutes the "sandbox", equivalent to the GM writes a novel or the GM engages in solitaire rolling of dice?

I'd always assumed that the main point of creating a world for RPGing is to engage the players (via their PCs) to find out what they do. As a GM, I don't "play in my world". I play a game with the other players, which has (as one of its goals, and one of its consequences) the creation of a shared fiction. The gameworld is a means to that end.

my examples do engage the beliefs. The belief that you'll return to your ruined tower and find the mace you were looking on is engaged on a failure if I say 'no, and a demon appears'.

If no player has a belief about demons, how does that engage a Belief?

Having the DM adjudicate how the world moves absent player involvement doesn't flip a switch from 'Player driven' to 'DM driven.' Otherwise you're now calling games that involve things like Fronts DM driven.

You keep talking about "Fronts". Do you play PbtA games? What is your experience with Fronts?

I've played a bit of DW. My experience is that "Fronts" are nothing like the player declaring his/her PC goes to the militia HQ to be told (by the GM, playing a NPC) what possible stuff the PC might do to have some action in the game.

having events that occur off camera that then impact the players, or having events that pivot on 'secret' information doesn't make a game DM driven, it just tilts a little more in that direction. These components, by and of themselves, do not rise to the level of automatic definition.

The only difference, as presented, is the setup. Lanefan takes on the overhead and prep to set the world up, and lets the players loose to find out what happens. You share the load up front, and then proceed in the same manner. How the game actually runs could be very similar.

From my point of view, questions about whether or not I want to play a game that is run in a certain way are not primarily questions about words. Or about logic, or concepts, or similar things.

They're questions about actual experiences at a table of RPGers; about actual processes for introducing content into the shared fiction, and the results of those processes. When we look at those things, as articulated by various posters in this thread, we can see that the differences are not limited to set-up.
[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has told me several things about his game: (i) there are periods where the PCs (and thereby the players) are at a "loose end", ie have no inherent motivations that keep the game moving; (ii) that one important way (maybe the principal way?) of reactivating the game in those periods is for the players (via their PCs visiting the militia HQ or whatever) to learn, from the GM, what story elements and events are available for them to engage with (eg orcs raiding the farmsteads); (iii) that those plot elements are authored by the GM, who is - among other things - doing behind-the-scenes management of backstory, to ensure a "living, breathing" world; (iv) that in various circumstances where the players establish and pursue goals for their PCs that don't fit with those GM-authored story elements, the PC has to leave the party and become a NPC; (v) that the players might succeed at a check, yet find the result overall inimical to what they wanted (eg they succeed in helping the baron, but it turns out the baron is evil).

A further thing has not, I think, been expressly stated, but is strongly implied by what Lanefan has posted: namely, (vi) that in narrating the consequences of failure, the GM's focus is on the internal logic of the gameworld (which will include backstory that is secret to the players), not on the goals, aspirations etc of the PCs (and thereby of the players).

Those are not abstract logical propositions: they're rather concrete things that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has posted, in this thread, about his game (or implied, in the case of (vi)). Those are the things that lead me to label it "GM-driven".

There are other aspects of Lanefan's game that have come out in this (and other) threads, like the multiple competing parties, and the player-vs-player elements, that don't seem to be GM-driven. If [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] were to elaborate on how those sorts of things interact with (i) to (vi) above, I would read those posts with interest.

Given that Lanefan's game runs with 9-year campaigns for (I believe) multiple interacting parties, I'm guessing that those players enjoy it. I think that Lanefan enjoys it too - he posts with candour, with enthusiasm, and with witty signature sign-offs.

I try to post with the same degree of candour and enthusiasm about my play, and what I enjoy about it. And in a series of posts over the last 100 or so posts in this thread, I've tried to give some very concrete examples of the techniques that I use. I think it's obvious how they're different from Lanefan's, and produce a different experience at the table from (i) to (vi) above. Whether or not that experience is less fun, as fun, or more fun, barely even makes sense to ask!, given that we're talking about two different groups of RPGers separated by 1000s of km of Pacific Ocean.

 

[billd91]

I haven't seen anything so far to indicate that the players can't choose to go their own way with their own ideas on what to do.

Perhaps you missed this post:

If a character's next logical in-character move is to do something that takes it out of the party, then out it goes. I've role-played myself out of many a party in the past.

If a single PC decides to pack it in and become a local magistrate, or take over the local mercenaries' guild, that's just fine - the PC retires from adventuring (and the player either already has a replacement or rolls one up, assuming she is staying in the game) and at some point we'll update it to see how its magisterial or mercenary career might be going.

???
Are you trying to say that Lanefan's post somehow contradicts Maxperson's statement? Because it looks to me that Lanefan isn't saying players can't choose to go their own way with their own ideas - rather, that they can even if it means taking themselves out of gameplay.

 

[pemerton]

there are certain players who get very upset if their character dies. In some cases, the only real way around that is to fudge die rolls, for example.

If players don't want their PCs to die, then why are they running a system that runs a risk of producing that outcome? It just seems a bit weird - as if the GM fudging is an ad hoc compensation for inadequate mechanics.

In D&D this ought to be trivial - just treat PC "death" (however your particular iteration of D&D defines that) as unconsciousness for some indeterminate moment of time - then the PC regains consciousness being nursed by his/her friends, hanging upside down in an ice cave, or whatever else makes sense in the fiction.

 

[pemerton]

Are you trying to say that Lanefan's post somehow contradicts Maxperson's statement?

Yes.

Because it looks to me that Lanefan isn't saying players can't choose to go their own way with their own ideas - rather, that they can even if it means taking themselves out of gameplay.

Being free to write yourself out of the game isn't a way of being free to drive the game in your preferred direction. It's a clear limit on that!

 

[pemerton]

If you take an RPG map at it's most basic, it is a series of sites connected by lines, yes?

Yes, but then so is a drawing of a carousel or of a Ferris wheel.

When we move from visual similarity to actual representational function, the lines on the map don't represent trajectories or processes. The lines on a flowchart do. One can overlay lines with arrows on a map to depict the path one took; and make notes at various points on a map to record events that occurred at those places (and the same place might have multiple notes, if multiple noteworthy events occurred there over some period of time). A flowchart, serving a different representational function, isn't apt to have that sort of additional representation overlayed on it in the same way.

There are certain ways of designing and GMing a dungeon that tend to push the map into being a flowchart. I seem to remember threads about this in the context of The Sunless Citadel, and contrasts being drawn with Jaquays-style maps. But even with a dungeon that is essentially a list of rooms that (given the design) can't but be encountered in sequence, there is still the option to retreat and try again. (I've seen plenty of published dungeon scenarios where this will break the module, in the sense that the GM now just has to make stuff up to keep the game going - but that's a further point.)

framing entails the GM making decisions that can steer the game. Your example of the PC who can shapechange into a falcon being imprisoned....you can frame the situation with there being a window or a small port in the door for the falcon to fly through thereby allowing the PC to escape, or you can frame it so that the door is one continuous piece, meaning the the PC will remain imprisoned and must figure out another means of escape.

I've already commented on the prison scenario upthread - the framing of the door as unable to be passed through in falcon form responds directly to (i) the player having failed a series of checks in relation to carrying the bodies through the city (failure results in a meeting with the watch) and trying to persuade the watch to help with this rather than treat it as a cause for suspicion (failure results in imprisonment), and (ii) the PC being able to cast Falconskin, such that a prison with holes a falcon might pass through wouldn't be a prison at all for that character.

But here is another thing - an email received from the same player after the first session of that particular campaign, in which the PCs had their first encounter with the leader of the sorcerous cabal - which went badly because one of them (the mage PC) was carrying a cursed feather he'd bought in the Hardby marketplace - and subseqently broke into his tower and stole a spellbook from him:

pretty cool how the world gets shaped by the character’s beliefs and instincts and the dice rolls! Just thinking through Jobe’s B’s and I’s and rolls … The feather existed because of its trait and hence X sold it. It was cursed because the aura reading failed. Jabal existed because we sought out a member of the cabal (affiliation). Athog gave us trouble because that circles test failed. Jabal lived in a tower because of an instinct about casting falcon skin if falling. I didn’t understand how those things worked until we did the session. If we had turned up with different characters, then I think the world would have been quite different too.​

Using the same sort of language: the door lacked falcon-sized exits because the PC can cast falconskin. If the player had turned up with a different character; or if the player's had succeeded at rather than failed various checks; then the "world" (ie the shared fiction) would have been quite different.

That's a pretty clear explication of what I am trying to get at as a "player-driven" game. The fact that - as GM - I chose the dwelling place as a tower rather than (say) a house atop a cliff, with windows overlooking the ocean, is (from my point of view) a secondary consideration: the fact that there are multiple ways of narrating a world that is shaped by the choices the players have made doesn't change the fact that it is the players' choices that are driving the narration.

 

[Maxperson]

???
Are you trying to say that Lanefan's post somehow contradicts Maxperson's statement? Because it looks to me that Lanefan isn't saying players can't choose to go their own way with their own ideas - rather, that they can even if it means taking themselves out of gameplay.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. Billd91 is exactly right. The players are still capable of making those choices if they want. He's not stopping them. All he's saying is that he'd do the reasonable thing if one player took actions to remove himself from the group. Were I to set up my PC as the shopkeeper in a town when the rest of the group is going out adventuring, I'd expect my PC to be removed. The DM isn't obligated to create and run two separate games. One for me, and one for everyone else.

Nothing I have seen indicates that the players cannot make their own choices and pursue their own goals.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes.

Being free to write yourself out of the game isn't a way of being free to drive the game in your preferred direction. It's a clear limit on that!

The entire game is fraught with limits. You can't be three different races. You can't be 12 different classes at first level. You can't use 6 swords. You can't cast spells as a pure fighter. Saying the DM won't run two separate games just because YOU want to go off your own way is a perfectly acceptable limitation.

As for it being a limit, it really isn't. I've roleplayed my PCs out of games multiple times over the years. I knew what would happen and I did it anyway since it was what my PC would do in that situation.