Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Ovinomancer]

When I say that I don't like "GM's secret backstory", I've been talking about the use of such secret backstory as a consideration in action resolution. I think there was quite an extended discussion of this upthread,wih [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

An example (hypothetical only) of secret backstory operating as a consdieration in action resolution: the PCs try to out the advisor in a way that will damage his relationship with the baron, but fail because - unbeknownst to the players - the GM has decided that the advisor is holding the baron's niece hostage, and is thereby exercising leverage over the baron.

I think that sort of approach is fairly common in RPGing - judging from some posters in this thread, plus other threads that I have read over the years, plus reading published adventures. In this sort of game, the players tend to end up trying to unravel the mystery. [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], upthread, has talked about a style of play that involves "finding the plot". I think it sits in the same general category as what I have just described, although I'm sure there are significant nuances across individual games and styles.

As those posts upthread discussed, it is possible to have mystery and revelation without having secret backstory operate as a constraint on action resolution. I've given at least four examples in the course of this thread:

(1) A PC searches in the ruins of the tower which once was his home, hoping to find the nickel-silver mace he had been working upon when orcs attacked; instead, he finds - in the ruins of his brother's private workroom - cursed black arrows, seemingly manufactured by his brother. Later, he learns that the mace was taken from the ruin by a renegade elf.

GM commentary: The discovery of the arrows rather than the mace is a consequence of failure. The possession of the mace by the elf is an element of framing, weaving together two hitherto-distinct elememts in the shared fiction.

(2) The PCs spend 18 months eking out a living in the ruined tower in the Abor-Alz. Their only significant contact with the ouside world over that time is with some elven merchants who are passing through the hills travelling to distant lands. They report that the Gynarch of Hardby has announced her engagement to the head of a sorcerous cabal, who - as it happens - is also a nemesis of the PCs. The PCs wonder whether the Gynarch is under his magical influence.

GM commentary: The encounter with the merchants was the result of a successful Circles check by the player of the elven princess. The wedding gossip was (initially) colour, which has subsequently transmuted into an element of framing. What the utlimate reason for, and significance of, the engagement is has not yet been discovered.

(3) The baron's niece has not been seen for some days. The PCs, fearing that her fiance - the evil necromancer advisor of the baron - has done something to hurt her. They track her down to an enchanted tower in the moors (the Bloodmoors Tower from Open Grave). They enter the tower, planning to rescue her - only to discover that she herself is a Vecna-ite necromancer, trying to bring an ancient member of her order back to (un)life, and in the process instead waking Kas from a long slumber.

GM commentary: This was all framing. The missing niece, and her connection to her ancestor whom the PCs had helped when they travelled back in time, was initially part of the dinner skill challenge, and then became part of the framing of this subsequent episode.

(4) The PCs defend a homestead against goblin attackers. They learn (i) that the homestead contains a magical tapestry, and (ii) that the goblins are searching for it. (How they learn those things now escapes me, as it was many years of play ago; my best guess would be talking to NPCs.) When approaching a goblin fortress, they see a wizardly type wearing a yellow robe fly off on a flying carpet. They have heard other stories of a wizardly type in yellow robes hanging out suspiciously in the local area. In a tunnel beneath the fortress they find a torn scrap of yellow robe in a place that (they work out somehow - again, I can't remember the details) the tapestry had once hung. Somehow (perhaps a scrying spell of some sort?) they learn that the yellow-robed wizard was driven out by the gelatinous cubes which they just defeated.

GM commentary: This begins as colour: the goblins need a motivation for attacking the homestead, and the presence of the tapestry provides it. The presence of a
yellow-robed mastermind zooming around on a flying carpet adds to the colour. The colour becomes part of the framing of the skill challenge, however: the PCs play on it in the course of making skill checks (eg obliquely taunting the advisor about his defeat by the cubes, by boasting how easily they - the PCs - were able to defeat said cubes;
and then taunting him about his torn robe).​

There is no secret backstory as an element of action resolution in any of the above. The resolution follows from the framing and the checks.

I don't know that, though, because, as seems to be your wont, instead of providing clearly articulated points, you've provided play examples from your own games where there's 'always more to the story' than what you've chosen to present. So, I can't tell if the Advisor/tapestry story actually does or does not have secret backstory as part of the resolution of any challenges because all you did was present the secret backstory, not the challenges. This differs from your other examples because those present the added fiction as a direct consequence of failure, and that's what I've been assuming you do, but the Advisor story reads and seems entirely different.

As I read it, the Advisor conflict is set as (and here I feel I have to delve into overly precise language to avoid a pedantic response) the DM, to support the authored goals of the Advisor NPC, is authoring fiction that establishes the entire premise of the conflict. This premise isn't just framing, as you claim, because it persists through multiple conflicts -- whatever the players did in regards to the goblin attack gave them information about yellow robed wizards; whatever the players did in the tunnel under the fortress, they found more yellow wizard information; this all fed into the pinnacle scene described of trying to force the Advisor (the yellow robed wizard, I'm assuming) to out himself. The 'framing' here, the secret information you determined in advance, actually does impact the result of the challenges because it doesn't matter what the result of the challenge is, the next breadcrumb drops. This is exactly the kind of play you are decrying as railroading, and I'm not seen any real difference in kind between your presentation of 'framing' and what Lanefan describes as his method.

The problem with this assumption, of course, is that I fully expect the response to be some additional detail not originally presented will clearly show something different. This, again, is my issue with the presentation of play examples from personal games for discussion: they're never complete and the presenter is guaranteed to take offense to any sharp questioning (or sometimes any questioning at all).

 

[Ovinomancer]

How can the gameworld react to the players or the GM? It can be authored by them. But (being a fictional work, that is, some sort of abstract object) it can't react to them.

I believe that [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] agrees with me on this point.

Only in the most pedantic way possible.

 

[Maxperson]

An example (hypothetical only) of secret backstory operating as a consdieration in action resolution: the PCs try to out the advisor in a way that will damage his relationship with the baron, but fail because - unbeknownst to the players - the GM has decided that the advisor is holding the baron's niece hostage, and is thereby exercising leverage over the baron.

See, that's the sort of thing that makes for a great game. The PCs try something that should have worked, but didn't. That gets them thinking, "What happened? There must be something going on here that we don't know about.". They then start digging for that information, find out about the niece and rescue her. At that time the baron would be exceedingly grateful to the PCs(no damage to the rep, but rather an increase) and be out for blood against the advisor(rebounded against him nicely).

You lose out on a ton by being so against hidden backstory.

 

[Imaro]

I'm not really interested in debating the rules and procedures of 4e with you. (1) This is not the thread for it. (2) My past experience tells me it is an unrewarding exercise.

Let's suppose that you are correct, and that I have misapplied the rules of 4e. Pretend, then, that instead of telling a story about the advisor being outed, I recounted this other story about how the PCs persuaded a giant chieftain to help them on their quest rather than eat them; and that, as part of that episode, the PCs had benefitted from a giant shaman advocating on their behalf (established by a player as a PC resource). That story took place in a game of Cortex+/MHRP Fantasy Hack, which does provide for finality in social resolution.

If, in framing the next scene of the game, I had opened with the shaman and chieftain plotting how to capture and eat the PCs while they sleep in their beds, the players could have made exactly the same complaint: that I was wrongly ignoring their victory in the previous episode of play. And they would be right to do so.

Well I think anytime someone mis-characterizes something it should be pointed out. The SC is only one of 4e's resolution systems (this can't possibly be in dispute) and thus when you infer or outright state SC's are 4e's resolution system I feel that should be corrected. But fair enough let's move on...

Again you seem to be missing a subtle difference which I (as well as others) keep bringing up in my posts and you keep summarily ignoring. None of us is talking about a blatant and total reversal of what was established... we are talking actions which could mitigate or change that result. So using the above example... I'm not asking if they could in the very next scene decide to eat the PC's... but could the giant chieftain (if his independent motivations and goals coincide) choose to sell the PC's out to one of their enemies for profit once they are on their journey? If they return through the giant chieftain's land could he decide then to eat them or take whatever it is they have quested for, again if his motivations and goals (as well as the general nature of giants) makes this feasible or does this one SC in effect make the giant chieftain their ally into perpetuity?

Also... how does one of the players have a giant shaman as a PC resource??

What does it even mean for a character in a fiction to have "protagonism"? Dictionary.com gives me protagonist as "the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work." That is not an in-fiction notion: it is a meta-notion. Protagonism is also used by some commentators on RPGs to refer to a participant role: thus, the Forge provisional glossary says that protagonism is "A problematic term with two possible meanings. (1) A characteristic of the main characters of stories, regardless of who produced the stories in whatever way. (2) A characteristic set of behaviors among people during role-playing, associated with Narrativist play, with a necessary unnamed equivalent in Gamist play and possibly another in Simulationist play. In the latter sense, coined by Paul Czege." That second sense also does not describe an in-fiction notion: it is a meta notion, about how certain RPG participants do their thing.

I feel you are being pedantic here but ok... I am referencing the following definition of protagonist when using this word in reference to NPC's, monsters, etc.

Protagonist:an advocate or champion of a particular cause or idea...

In other words can you as the DM use the advisor to advocate or champion for a particular cause that is independent of reacting to what the PC's do... or are they simply antagonists... their only purpose, as others have stated, being to align with or oppose what the PC's do?

EDIT: To further clarify let's take 4e as a system... I feel it really doesn't work well for the type of play where the NPC's express protagonism, Why? Because as you commented on before the DM is not given the latitude to use the same tools as the players are. NPC's never use SC's and don't even get to leverage their own queslities when opposing the PC's in a SC. They instead are reduced to level appropriate DC's which must be overcome by the PC's. In contrast a game like 5e allows one to leverage the same tools and mechanics for NPC's as are used for PC's and thus, IMO, works much better for this type of thing.

I don't think the adivsor can exhibit protagonism in either sense: the NPC is, as such, not the leading character, hero or heroine of the campaign. And the GM's play of the PC cannot exhibit the characteristic behaviours of narrativist RPGing (no doubt the precise description of such behaviours is contentious, but a GM imagining the advisor to him-/herself, or narrating the advisor's actions to the players, isn't engaging in them).

I've clarified above what I meant by using the terms... can the advisor exhibit protagonism as defined above or is he just an antagonist?

The difference between the player-driven and GM-driven game is who gets to determine what happens, in the fiction, if the advisor tries to reverse his defeat? If the GM is driving, then the GM does: the players' victory in the skill challenge doesn't establish anything final in respect of the fiction, as the GM can always take retries. If the players are driving, then their successes impose constraints on the content of the shared fiction.

The issue has nothing to do with the powers of the advisor. It's about the powers of the participants at the table.

The difference, as I've stated over probably half-a-dozen posts now, concerns who has what sort of power to determine the content of the shared fiction. The difference is pretty clearly captured by the phrases "player-driven" and "GM-driven": each phrase describes some power (to "drive" the fiction) and describes the participant who wields it.

And I think you're contrast is too simplistic to make a meaningful distinction. In a GM-driven game the players can determine the content of the fiction through the actions of their PC's and the leveraging of the agreed upon mechanics of the game... and in a player driven game the GM can determine content of fiction by narration of consequences. the only time I feel your overly broad distinction applies is at the extreme edges of the two playstyles which is kind of pointless for real discussion.

NPCs can instigate whatever they want. The advisor can blow raspberries at the PCs behind their backs, hoping that the baron will join in. The salient question is: what will become of such attempts?

My answer is: the players have their victory, and so - until something takes place in the play of the game to set that back - then they are entitled to it. Hence, however hard the advisor tries, fate has decreed that he shall not get what he wants.

Upthread, I gave one example of a "something" that might reopen matters settled by the skill challenge: the players set out to capture the baron's niece, and killed her in the process. This affected their relationship with the baron (he had a nervous collapse). As I said in the earlier post, this was a case of the players staking their PCs' relationship with the baron on their attempt to end the niece's murderous depredations. They took their chances, and it didn't turn out their way.

Whereas, by way of contrast, the GM just deciding that all the NPCs turn on the PCs, after the players have won a skill challenge to establish the exact opposite, would be like fiating all the gold pieces recovered from Against the Giants into Fool's Gold. It would be tantamount to cheating. And it wouldn't become more acceptable just because the GM can come up with some clever ingame rationale for it (GM's can always do that; it's their stock-in-trade). The GM authoring some new fiction to undo the players' victory is not something taking place in the game to set the PCs back - self-evidently, it is just the GM authoring some new fiction that undoes the players' victory.

You've typed alot but still not come out and actually answered the main questrion I asked. So I'll ask it again... is it only the players and their characters that can cause a mitigation or reversal of a resolution that has been decided? If not under what circumstances (since in-game rationale's are not acceptable) can NPC's do such?

Whether or not one enjoys playing in a fashion where the GM is bound by the players' victories, I don't think it's very mysterious how it works. It's actually pretty simple: unless something happens at the table, in the game, to reopen the matter, the GM is precluded from introducing content into the fiction that would negate the players' victories.

I disagree... When you state... "unless something happens at the table, in the game, to reopen the matter"... actually isn't all that simple and the parameters of it (even though I've asked in multiple replies) around mitigation vs. reversal and who can institute said "something" have remained murky and nebulous...

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm going to be without Internet and phone for a bit starting in a few short minutes, so I won't be able to respond to any responses to this for 5 days, just FYI.

On closed scene resolution:

1) Whether you like the play procedures and their impact on play is not relevant to their nature.

With that out of the way:

2) Consider each scene a discrete mini-game and a discrete parcel of fiction. Like the results of an actual professional match/game, once one has concluded, its results are cemented into the continuity. They cannot be overturned.

3) In RPG terms, a scene win effectively grants immunity from GM veto of the results.

4) Each scene will have a goal and obstacles to that goal. For instance:

A) A perilous journey through hostile territory has topographical elements like terrain, hazards, weather, exposure, dangerous denizens.

B) An effort to sway the king may have obstructing chamberlains, nefarious advisors, a skeptical court, passive-aggressive nobility, a conflicted queen, a skeleton in the closet, a coup-in-waiting, etc.

Once the scene is resolved in the positive for the PCs (whatever mechanical "finish line" is crossed), they successfully navigate the hostile terrain and emerge on the other side or they win the favor of/sway the king toward their sought end.

5) Now these imaginary obstacles may still "persist" within the fiction (a mountain hasn't been sundered to rubble or a queen might still be conflicted). However, their "persistence" is now rendered irrelevant to the earned victory in the fiction. The GM doesn't get to "un-navigate the terrain" or "unsway the king" by deploying those or any new obstacles. The conflicted queen might start up different trouble, but she can't nullify the social currency won (of her own -through the will of the GM - volition).

Realism and persistence has nothing to do with it. The integrity of the game component and the principles/spirit of the RPG is the only relevant bit here (it seems the two are being conflated).

 

[Imaro]

I'm going to be without Internet and phone for a bit starting in a few short minutes, so I won't be able to respond to any responses to this for 5 days, just FYI.

On closed scene resolution:

1) Whether you like the play procedures and their impact on play is not relevant to their nature.

With that out of the way:

2) Consider each scene a discrete mini-game and a discrete parcel of fiction. Like the results of an actual professional match/game, once one has concluded, its results are cemented into the continuity. They cannot be overturned.

3) In RPG terms, a scene win effectively grants immunity from GM veto of the results.

4) Each scene will have a goal and obstacles to that goal. For instance:

A) A perilous journey through hostile territory has topographical elements like terrain, hazards, weather, exposure, dangerous denizens.

B) An effort to sway the king may have obstructing chamberlains, nefarious advisors, a skeptical court, passive-aggressive nobility, a conflicted queen, a skeleton in the closet, a coup-in-waiting, etc.

Once the scene is resolved in the positive for the PCs (whatever mechanical "finish line" is crossed), they successfully navigate the hostile terrain and emerge on the other side or they win the favor of/sway the king toward their sought end.

5) Now these imaginary obstacles may still "persist" within the fiction (a mountain hasn't been sundered to rubble or a queen might still be conflicted). However, their "persistence" is now rendered irrelevant to the earned victory in the fiction. The GM doesn't get to "un-navigate the terrain" or "unsway the king" by deploying those or any new obstacles. The conflicted queen might start up different trouble, but she can't nullify the social currency won (of her own -through the will of the GM - volition).

Realism and persistence has nothing to do with it. The integrity of the game component and the principles/spirit of the RPG is the only relevant bit here (it seems the two are being conflated).

Quick question... if the PC's fail, is that result also final and who decides the resulting consequence of said failure?

 

[darkbard]

EDIT: To further clarify let's take 4e as a system... I feel it really doesn't work well for the type of play where the NPC's express protagonism, Why? Because as you commented on before the DM is not given the latitude to use the same tools as the players are. NPC's never use SC's and don't even get to leverage their own queslities when opposing the PC's in a SC. They instead are reduced to level appropriate DC's which must be overcome by the PC's.

This is an oversimplification and, thus, a mischaracterization of the latitude the DM has when setting skill challenges in 4E. A SC may be of any level, not just "level appropriate" (by which I take you to mean = the PCs' level), though, like with combat encounters, 4E provides guidelines for challenge levels not deviating too far above or below the level of the PCs (level +3 is usually the upper limit, for example). Even more importantly, the complexity of the skill challenge sets the number of successes needed from as low as 4 to as high as 12 before 3 failures. I would hardly call the DM handcuffed with such flexible tools at her disposal. Through utilizing these tools the DM mechanically "opposes" the PCs through a game representation of the NPC's skills in such encounters.

Trying to sneak past some generic guards and into the bedroom of the burgermeister? Maybe a simple, level 1 complexity, at-level skill challenge (or even level -1 or -2) suffices. In pemerton's example, though, involving a cunning court advisor, a baron, and high stakes, unless I'm mistaken, he set the challenge at complexity 5. I don't think he specified the level comparative to the PCs, but that could have been another way he represented the NPC's "leverage" of his own qualities, as you call it.

 

[Imaro]

This is an oversimplification and, thus, a mischaracterization of the latitude the DM has when setting skill challenges in 4E. A SC may be of any level, not just "level appropriate" (by which I take you to mean = the PCs' level), though, like with combat encounters, 4E provides guidelines for challenge levels not deviating too far above or below the level of the PCs (level +3 is usually the upper limit, for example). Even more importantly, the complexity of the skill challenge sets the number of successes needed from as low as 4 to as high as 12 before 3 failures. I would hardly call the DM handcuffed with such flexible tools at her disposal. Through utilizing these tools the DM mechanically "opposes" the PCs through a game representation of the NPC's skills in such encounters.

Trying to sneak past some generic guards and into the bedroom of the burgermeister? Maybe a simple, level 1 complexity, at-level skill challenge (or even level -1 or -2) suffices. In pemerton's example, though, involving a cunning court advisor, a baron, and high stakes, unless I'm mistaken, he set the challenge at complexity 5. I don't think he specified the level comparative to the PCs, but that could have been another way he represented the NPC's "leverage" of his own qualities, as you call it.

I don't really feel like you're addressing my point mainly how is this tool leveraged by the DM in order for his NPC's to proactively and with their complete capabilities represented to enact change on the fiction... and no raising a DC or adding an extra roll is not the same as bringing a specific power or ability to bear. This is why I'm glad SC;s aren't the resolution system for 4e.

EDIT: I'll concede my original post was a simplification but not by much. A SC is DM sets DC, and DM sets number of times DC must be beaten. That in a nutshell is the skeleton of a SC. What it doesn't do is say hey this advisor has a Charisma of 20 so set the DC based on his Charisma or the advisor has a power that causes one creature he talks to for a round to be charmed by him... allow him to use this in the SC. That's what I mean by capabilities.

 

[Campbell]

Only in the most pedantic way possible.

I do not view this distinction as pedantry. The way we think and talk about these things matter. In the moment of play we can disclaim decision making and make decisions for our characters as if we were them. We can choose to advocate for them, but that does not absolve us from the responsibility of the real impact those decisions have on real players sitting at a real table playing a real game. In my preferred mode of play we follow the fiction where it leads, but we should be cognizant that we are making that choice and respond to player inquiries with empathy and compassion - not defensiveness. I was following the fiction - not I didn't do that.

Disclaiming decision making in the moment is one thing. Disclaiming responsibility for the decisions we make is another thing altogether.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How can the gameworld react to the players or the GM? It can be authored by them. But (being a fictional work, that is, some sort of abstract object) it can't react to them.

I believe that @Ovinomancer agrees with me on this point.

Well, I cannot say if @Ovinomancer agrees with you or not, but I'll go ahead and repost the bit I quoted from him.

You would call the second method DM driven. I've used DM centric, largely because I believe the -driven categories are too binary. But, regardless of terminology, I think the primary distinction between DM and player driven is the reactionary status of the gameworld -- if the world only every reacts to the players, it's player driven. If it exists outside of the players, and acts without player input, then it's DM driven. I'm okay with this, with the clear caveat that nothing is fully one or the other -- it's a spectrum. My games are both -- the macro is DM driven, in that there's a plot ongoing that will continue without player involvement, and on the micro in that I break my arcs down into sandboxes that largely react to the players.

I imagine that this is along the lines of having to explain that as a fictional thing, of course the game world does not react to anyone, but rather what is being discussed is the GM's judgment in regards to the game world.

So looking at his post again, would you agree or disagree with his assessment? It seems pretty relevant to the overall topic to me.