Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[tomBitonti]

Re: The challenge of outing the Baron. The discussion is focused on how play continues after the scene in which the baron's nefarious schemes are revealed to the king. In particular, what actions the Baron might take, and whether any mitigation of the revelation are possible.

A key issue is the separation of the Baron's immediate goals (to maintain influence on the king) from the Baron's longer term goals (which are unstated, but are presumed to exist, and, since the Baron still exists, will still be pursued.

To make the example more concrete, I change it to the following:

* The kingdom fell into rebellion. Loyalists were driven to a mountain redoubt, which is under siege by forces of the Baron.

* A convoy of three airships with much needed supplies, including three arcane ballistae which are to be used to break through the walls of the redoubt, was sent to bolster the Baron's forces.

* The players undertook a challenge to prevent the airships from arriving. They were successful in meeting the challenge. Ultimately, the airships were crashed, leading to the destruction of nearly all of the supplies.

Within this example, there is no "uncrashing" the airships. The challenge was met and the airships and supplies were destroyed.

But also within this example, the kingdom is still in rebellion, and the Baron still has the redoubt under siege.

Yet, the balance of force has been changed. The Baron's forces will soon come under attack by newly mustered Loyalists and is facing likely defeat. If captured, the Baron faces a grim death after long hours of torture.

The now desperate Baron will certainly do something. Make an unwise pact. Flee. Launch a risky decapitation strike against loyalist leaders (the PCs). Something. One finds inconceivable that the Baron will not continue to try to reach his long range goal.

Out of this example I find two issues relating to the current discussion:

* "Railroading" would be a play by the GM to undo the effect of crashing the ships. Say, by announcing that there was a unknown fourth ship which arrived unhindered. Or by having a large fraction of supplies survive the crashes.

* A question of agency in regards to what happens next (with a nexus on the Baron): Will any new plot elements be introduced to the store? (Secret demonic forces allied with the Baron. A discovery of the Baron of the King's nephew, who is one of the few surviving heirs, as a hostage.) Will the introductions be driven by the players or by the GM?

As an example of a possible continuation:

Doubling down: The Baron, driven to extremes, has one of his battalions bring a village to a desolate temple, where both the villagers and the battalion are sacrificed to a greater demon, so to summon a host of demons to attack the redoubt. The PCs are informed of the sacrifice, but are unable to prevent it. The PCs face new challenges: To close the gate opened for the demons. To reveal the Baron's horrific act to his troops -- which will convert them to loyalists. To hunt down and slay the demonic forces making their way to the redoubt.

Or:

Folding: The Baron flees to a nearby country, leaving the rebellion in disarray. Order is restored in the kingdom. The chapter in the PCs story ends and a new one begins.

Thx!
TomB

 

[Imaro]

Re: The challenge of outing the Baron. The discussion is focused on how play continues after the scene in which the baron's nefarious schemes are revealed to the king. In particular, what actions the Baron might take, and whether any mitigation of the revelation are possible.

A key issue is the separation of the Baron's immediate goals (to maintain influence on the king) from the Baron's longer term goals (which are unstated, but are presumed to exist, and, since the Baron still exists, will still be pursued.

To make the example more concrete, I change it to the following:

* The kingdom fell into rebellion. Loyalists were driven to a mountain redoubt, which is under siege by forces of the Baron.

* A convoy of three airships with much needed supplies, including three arcane ballistae which are to be used to break through the walls of the redoubt, was sent to bolster the Baron's forces.

* The players undertook a challenge to prevent the airships from arriving. They were successful in meeting the challenge. Ultimately, the airships were crashed, leading to the destruction of nearly all of the supplies.

Within this example, there is no "uncrashing" the airships. The challenge was met and the airships and supplies were destroyed.

But also within this example, the kingdom is still in rebellion, and the Baron still has the redoubt under siege.

Yet, the balance of force has been changed. The Baron's forces will soon come under attack by newly mustered Loyalists and is facing likely defeat. If captured, the Baron faces a grim death after long hours of torture.

The now desperate Baron will certainly do something. Make an unwise pact. Flee. Launch a risky decapitation strike against loyalist leaders (the PCs). Something. One finds inconceivable that the Baron will not continue to try to reach his long range goal.

Out of this example I find two issues relating to the current discussion:

* "Railroading" would be a play by the GM to undo the effect of crashing the ships. Say, by announcing that there was a unknown fourth ship which arrived unhindered. Or by having a large fraction of supplies survive the crashes.

* A question of agency in regards to what happens next (with a nexus on the Baron): Will any new plot elements be introduced to the store? (Secret demonic forces allied with the Baron. A discovery of the Baron of the King's nephew, who is one of the few surviving heirs, as a hostage.) Will the introductions be driven by the players or by the GM?

As an example of a possible continuation:

Doubling down: The Baron, driven to extremes, has one of his battalions bring a village to a desolate temple, where both the villagers and the battalion are sacrificed to a greater demon, so to summon a host of demons to attack the redoubt. The PCs are informed of the sacrifice, but are unable to prevent it. The PCs face new challenges: To close the gate opened for the demons. To reveal the Baron's horrific act to his troops -- which will convert them to loyalists. To hunt down and slay the demonic forces making their way to the redoubt.

Or:

Folding: The Baron flees to a nearby country, leaving the rebellion in disarray. Order is restored in the kingdom. The chapter in the PCs story ends and a new one begins.

Thx!
TomB

Can the baron seek supplies from elsewhere?

 

[tomBitonti]

Can the baron seek supplies from elsewhere?

One would presume so, although, the details of whether this is possible and whether it would be in time depend on details which we don't have available.

My concern would be in adding this response in a manner which is consistent with the story details, and not blatantly added as the GM undoing the players achievement. Then, the Baron can keep trying to bring in supplies, but that cannot have the same effect as the original supplies arriving on time. There must be a durable consequence to the Baron.

This seems to be an example of a slightly different problem: The GM laying out a scenario in which, no matter what the players do, a particular result will occur. Not quite railroading, since that is more about the GM forcing the player's actions. Say, railroading as no agency compared with forced outcomes as fictional agency?

Thx!
TomB

 

[Imaro]

One would presume so, although, the details of whether this is possible and whether it would be in time depend on details which we don't have available.

True and this is one of the differences in those who leverage pre-prep or randomness vs those who are building fiction off the cuff/improvising. Especially if this conflict is central to the campaign and thus more likely to have prep done around it or random tables created for it. I think this is a much harder question (at least as it relates to fairness) for those who primarily improvise fiction creation in the moment (as opposed to those who have already pre-prepped or who use random tables)... knowing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] prefers this method of creating fiction content perhaps that may be why he has such a hard stance... unless a setback created by the players allows this as a consequence...

My concern would be in adding this response in a manner which is consistent with the story details, and not blatantly added as the GM undoing the players achievement. Then, the Baron can keep trying to bring in supplies, but that cannot have the same effect as the original supplies arriving on time. There must be a durable consequence to the Baron.

Well I think anyone running the game with integrity, whatever their playstyle, would want to be consistent with the story details as well as to avoid undoing the players achievements. I also agree with you that there should be a durable consequence for players victories. This I think is why in the previous example it was asked if the advisor could mitigate (not undo) the ramifications of his outing by the PC's... IMO this was a key difference in how the question was presented vs. how it was answered (as if a total nullification of the players achievements was being asked for).

This seems to be an example of a slightly different problem: The GM laying out a scenario in which, no matter what the players do, a particular result will occur. Not quite railroading, since that is more about the GM forcing the player's actions. Say, railroading as no agency compared with forced outcomes as fictional agency?

Thx!
TomB

That could be an issue... if that's what is driving the situation but if something like that is feasible in the fiction and through the mechanics of the game and you choose not to engage it as DM then you risk a world where as [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said you have retarded or what I'd liken to cartoon villains (as in the looney tunes villains who have good ideas but are never willing to correct or retry their plans while adjusting for previous mistakes)... these villains never fully utilize their resources or push the PC's to go above and beyond to defeat them. Now don't get me wrong I don't think every villain should be of this caliber but I think there should be some that are made of better stuff than the rules of finality seems to allow for.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can't remember the precise details - at the start of the following session, when the advisor, having failed socially, turned to sheer magical power to try and establish dominance over the PCs, combat ensued. The baron and other NPCs were in the room, and I think it was something that I said about them and their response to the violence. The player's point was that, as the upshot of success in the skill challenge, it was clear to all the witnesses that responsibility for the violence fell on the advisor, not the PCs - the advisor was the one who had been revealed as a traitor, and was now turning to magic to try and get what he wanted by force.

Ah. Yeah, that clears it up.

But in the context of RPGing, at least as I prefer it, those reversals of fortune have to result from the players failing at something.

Not an unreasonable preference. I do like tapping the odd melodrama trope, precisely because it is so cliched, though.

Even in classic D&D, the reversal of fortunes comes eg from having got the treasure, but now suffering an unlucky wandering monster check.

Or some of the treasure is cursed...

Not just from the GM fiating away the tresasure for a lark.

Well... I guess I was in some bad games back in the day.

 

[Lanefan]

If it helps I'm not really shooting for Oscar or fine art novel level fiction when I play roleplaying games. I want things to be emotionally charged, but there is still plenty of bloody catharsis and action involved. As Play Passionately put it "I like to be emotionally conflicted while I punch zombies in the face." I'm really looking for the game to play out like a Netflix, HBO, AMC, Showtime, or FX Drama. Street Level Marvel and Vertigo Comics are also inspirations. I also dearly love Swords and Sorcery fiction. Common media touchstones include Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy, Mad Max: Fury Road, Penny Dreadful, Game of Thrones, Vikings, Hellblazer, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, American Gods, Conan, Elric, Black Company, Taboo, and The Walking Dead. Not super deep stuff, but still like compelling character focused stories. There are games that aim higher, but I generally don't play them that much.

I guess I'm somewhat lower-brow, in that if I can (often unintentionally) hit some Tolkein, Xena-Hercules, Game of Thrones, Vikings and a dash or two of Robert Jordan I'll say things are going well.

When I talk about mainstream gaming culture

Question: I've always seen B/X, original D&D, and 1e as being bery much the same in terms of play at the table, just with varying degrees of rules complexity; yet you and others seem to see them as quite different. How so?

... Walking vs. Running Towards Conflict. I like a bit more introspection and strategy in my games.

There's lots of sense in that passage you quoted. Sometimes either one or more individual characters or the game as a whole just need to sit back and take a deep breath...take a break for a moment. This tangentially gets at a question I had for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] about 30 pages ago regarding whether the PCs in his game ever get any downtime or breaks in which the stress is off and they can just kick back and relax for a while.

When it comes to resolving the apparent contradiction between vigorous collaborative agreement and the possibility for competitive play and sometimes even open conflict here's what I have to say: I view it like a friendly poker game. We are all there fundamentally for the same reasons. Connections and relationships between Player Characters need not be warm and fuzzy. They might even be overtly hostile. In the moment we might be working at cross purposes, but we all want to find out what happens more than we want to win. It's not cut throat. We are motivated more by the challenge and strategy involved than a need to win. There is a strong fair play and good sportsmanship element. Even in games like Masks and Blades in the Dark where group play is assumed there will often be a measure of competition and conflict driven in part by the rules of the game.

We want overwhelming unity of player interests with sustained in game conflict of interest just like when we play Poker. In this conception the GM is a player too for when group play is like a thing!

The players co-operate when it comes to pouring each other's beer and getting the snacks onto the table. Once the game starts however, sometimes both player and character in-game co-operation wanders out the window, and as long as it all stays in character that's just fine. And it can get cut-throat (literally!) sometimes - PCs killing off other PCs is not unheard of - while at other times (usually when under severe threat) they can run like a well-oiled machine.

I know. I know. There goes [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] with his data science and overanalysis!

As long as you're not offended when I chop out lots of it when I reply, all is good.

Lan-"sometimes a good poker face is essential"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I tend to agree. There should have really been several splinter threads.

Truth be told, I prefer it all in one...less chasing around to do.

 

[Lanefan]

The NPC may decide to take a course that I myself would not take were I to make the same decision on my own.

In having an NPC do X rather than Y, a GM is making a choice. In extrapolating one way rather than another from established fiction, the GM is making a choice. Every day, all over the world, real people makes choices that no one would readily foresee based on a passing familiarity with their previous history and behaviour. A RPG doesn't become less verisimilitudinous because it has NPCs with similar degrees of unpredicatability!

Er...aren't you two in effect saying the same thing here; that an NPC has its own personality and unpredictability just like a PC does, and might not always do the rational thing or make theperfect choice?

(2) You ask Have you given us any reason to believe the advisor's agendas, whatever they are, are permanently and conclusively foiled other than to say the players passed some mechanical test that exposed the advisor? As I've already mentioned upthread, I find this an especially strange question from D&D players.

In D&D combat, what reason do we have to believe that the ogre is dead, except that a player passed some mechanical test that reduced it to zero hp? Answer: none. The health of beings in D&D combat is not determined via fictional positioning and following the logic of the fiction; it's determined via an abstract mechanical process, to which - by the rules of the game - the fiction must then conform.

Yes, but in the D&D I'm familiar with social encounters are not finality-based resolved the same way as combat is! You keep trying to tell us that they are, hence the disconnect - at least on my part.

Combat almost always ends up with one participant or side rendered completely non-functional - usually dead, sometimes just knocked out or captured or whatever - or with one participant or side completely absent as they have fled.

Social interactions by themselves - i.e. that don't descend into combat - almost never end up with one participant or side rendered completely non-functional (though fleeing is still very much a possible outcome). Thus, except in the case of someone leaving the scene, any sort of finality-based resolution system is simply the wrong tool for the job as the "losing" side or person is - within the fiction - able to keep going, try to mitigate the losses, try a different gambit, and so on.

Imagine, for example, someone trying to impose a finality-based resolution on to this thread...

(3) I've posted upthread about some of the circumstances in which successes might be re-opened. I see this as one application of a more general "no retries" rule. AD&D has no general prohibition on retries, but lots of particular ones: a retry is never permitted when it comes to bending bars or lifting a gate, nor when it comes to finding or removing a trap; but a retry is permitted with a level gained, in the case of opening a lock.

Retries are permitted in 1e when something has significantly changed - this includes a level gain - such as if someone fails a bars-gates roll then downs a potion of giant strength (a significant change) they'd be allowed to try again should they so desire.

Lan-"NPCs are people too"-efan

 

[darkbard]

Yes, but in the D&D I'm familiar with social encounters are not finality-based resolved the same way as combat is! You keep trying to tell us that they are, hence the disconnect - at least on my part.

This is why I said (now far) upthread that many of us are talking at cross-purposes because of how system-design philosophy impacts how we view what the game does or does not do. In 4E (and Dungeon World and Burning Wheel, too, I guess, though I have only passing familiarity with those systems), social encounters do have a resolution mechanic that can be utilized in such scenarios: the skill challenge, which, admittedly, is quite the departure from how social interactions are handled in many other (previous and succeeding) iterations of D&D.

Social interactions by themselves - i.e. that don't descend into combat - almost never end up with one participant or side rendered completely non-functional (though fleeing is still very much a possible outcome).

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of what pemerton has been saying, time and time again. The advisor is not rendered "completely non-functional"; but the outcome of this one particular contest between the PCs and the advisor has been locked in as a result of the resolution mechanic.

 

[Lanefan]

Connecting this to the topic of the thread: I think it is a significant source of distortion in discussion/analysis of RPG methods to refer to elements of the fiction as if they have causal power. Yet it happens very frequently: eg you'll see someone say that the reason something-or-other happened at the table was [such-and-such], where [such-and-such] is not a description of events in the real world, but simply a recount of the fiction. And hence is incapable of being a reason that anything happened in the real world.

This one baffles me.

What happens in the game world can clearly and obviously affect what happens in the real world - the most basic example of which might be where a monster barges through a door in the game world thus causing real-world people to pick up real-world dice and roll for initiative!

Beyond this, I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here.

Lan-"failed save vs. confusion, now wandering aimlessly"-efan