D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Maxperson]

That's not what's normally meant by "quantum ogre," which is where you're getting pushback. Quantum ogre assumes the players don't know about the ogre aside form a knowledge that ogres exist in DnD.

Knowledge of the ogre behind a door doesn't really change anything. That ogre is still both behind and not behind both doors until the PCs make a decision. Then it becomes fixed behind the door that they open. Schrodinger's ogre is a more appropriate name.

And regardless, the illusion of choice is still railroading.

 

[Mort]

But this assumes that the player has information about the ogres, odds etc, and that's usually not the case. It's just 'there are two doors' or 'do you go left or right?' etc.

But the question is - shouldn't the choice itself matter, informed or not?

Did the DM actually set up a fair choice? Or did he have a whatever you choose, oops there's an ogre scenario. I agree with @Maxperson that if it's the latter - that's railroading.

If the DM wants the PCs to fight the ogre - just have one door, that's linear but it's not railroading.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

In my estimation, "fair" is just as much a buzzword as "fun" - perhaps moreso, since at least "the game is fun for everyone at the table" can be a stand-in for "each participant's gameplay preferences have been at least adequately satisfied by a given instance of gameplay", whereas "fairness", insofar as it rests on how the GM configures challenges, is in many ways part of the illusion that is being weaved in gameplay.

When I describe fairness, I am applying it in the sense of a referee. I am there to be impartial in interpreting and applying the rules as well as make ad hoc judgment calls. That means:

• I don't favor particular characters or players;
• I don't offer rewards for subjective and nebulous concepts like "good roleplaying";
• I strive for openness with my rulings, dice rolls, and other gameplay aspects that might traditionally be secreted away behind the GM's screen;
• I am brutally honest about not caring one whit for balanced combat encounters, instead creating situations that have the potential for combat;
• I never fudge rolls;
• I flex the rules in accordance with good sense or reasonableness.

Lastly, and most importantly, I ban Jeremy Crawford tweets.

 

[Lyxen]

Incorrect. He blindly chose the left door in hopes that he would get lucky and avoid the ogre. The choice was to avoid the ogre via luck. Your moving the ogre negated that choice.

And then, the DM chooses whether luck applies or not, see "the role of dice", the DM is the only authority that can decide whether a dice needs to be rolled anyway. And the DM can perfectly decide that there are suddenly ogres behind both doors or behind none of the doors (it's another side-effect of quantum theory, the player is actually passing through both doors simultaneously, so the wave form of the ogre makes it possible to be behind both or none at the same time. ).

 

[niklinna]

You absolutely can. It's called improvisation. None of us NEED to roll dice at all. All of us at the game table could, if we all wanted to, just completely improvise the story we were telling-- including what happens in combat. That is all doable. It is possible to completely remove the "board game" out of D&D and produce the same stories just by everyone making stuff up. Heck... that's exactly what RPGs like Fiasco do-- they remove the dice rolling almost entirely and just let people improvise. They make up when their character does something well, they make up when their character completely fails. They decide when something happens in the story, they decide when their character completely misses noticing when said thing happened. The players improvise the entirety of the story-- the highs and the lows, the successes and the fails, when they do right and what they do wrong. And most importantly... they make up when they win... and they make up when they lose.

I vividly remember a game of Durance (a Fiasco spinoff set in prisons of whatever kind), when we had a shocking reversal come up, and it was on me to make up what happened. My character was the warden, the scene was a riot about to break out in the cafeteria...and I said to the table, I think the warden needs to die, and all hell will break loose because of that. And everybody's eyes got wide, and they nodded and said yeah that's exactly what needs to happen.

So my character died, and the story just took off from there, and it was amazing. If you've never played this kind of game, I highly recommend giving it a try.

 

[Mort]

When I describe fairness, I am applying it in the sense of a referee. I am there to be impartial in interpreting and applying the rules as well as make ad hoc judgment calls. That means:

• I don't favor particular characters or players;
• I don't offer rewards for subjective and nebulous concepts like "good roleplaying";
• I strive for openness with my rulings, dice rolls, and other gameplay aspects that might traditionally be secreted away behind the GM's screen;
• I am brutally honest about not caring one whit for balanced combat encounters, instead creating situations that have the potential for combat;
• I never fudge rolls;
• I flex the rules in accordance with good sense or reasonableness.

Lastly, and most importantly, I ban Jeremy Crawford tweets.

I'm in agreement with most of these (especially banning Crawford tweets) but I'd like to single out two:

• I don't offer rewards for subjective and nebulous concepts like "good roleplaying";

I like the concept of the Ideals, bonds and flaws. They can help quantify a PC without having a massive background (I rarely ask for more than a paragraph). To help with this, I find giving inspiration for playing up these traits works well (small but tangible benefit). And since I'm often way to preoccupied to track this, I just let the players decide if they think they have inspiration from playing up the traits (frankly they're much stricter than I would be anyway). Got the idea from @iserith and have found it works well.

• I am brutally honest about not caring one whit for balanced combat encounters, instead creating situations that have the potential for combat;

This works great with proper telegraphing and with the possibility of escape (something you actively have to provide in 5e, it's not always easy for PCs to get the heck out of dodge). Also for me, It greatly depends on the type of game I'm running. Sometimes I want the PCs to feel that rushing into danger is ok.

 

[Lyxen]

Not quite. The difference is subtle but important. A magician sets out to entertain first and foremost, deception misdirection showmanship & so on are simply tools used to entertain the audience.

And this is exactly what I want to do to my players, entertain first and foremost !

A magician who goes out to deceive as the goal rather than entertain would be like a surgeon going into the OR with the goal of causing pain rather than a goal of healing. Sure an orthopedic surgeon (I think?) Might cause someone months of excruciating tears in the eyes grown macho men whimpering in a room full of people rehab, but the goal was to repair their screwy knee with knee surgery because nobody is going to get knee surgery just to enjoy the rehab if they dont need it.

Wow wow wow, I never said that the magician nor the DM should have deceiving as a goal, both have entertainment and fun as a goal, and both can use deception to get the result.

I agree that a DM who runs a game only to deceive is possibly dangerous, but my hypothesis is that you should trust the DM, as he is here for you to have fun. And it's symptomatic that every time I ask someone here who claims to have had a "bad DM" using "nasty things" like railroading what was actually the intent of the DM, I never get any answer.

 

[Lyxen]

Is it Schrodinger's Ogre?

You can have tons of fun with Quantum physics and the wave form of the ogre.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Knowledge of the ogre behind a door doesn't really change anything. That ogre is still both behind and not behind both doors until the PCs make a decision. Then it becomes fixed behind the door that they open. Schrodinger's ogre is a more appropriate name.

And regardless, the illusion of choice is still railroading.

Disagree - illusion of choice that bother players is railroading. If no one's annoyed, then no bad gaming has occurred, and I define railroading as bad gaming - it's not bad because it's railroading, it's railroading because it's bad.

If the players didn't know about the ogre, or did know there was one behind one of the doors but not which and decided to flip a coin on which door to pick... then you're probably not doing anything bad. No meaningful choice was made, therefore no meaningful choice was invalidated.

If the players carefully listened at the door, smelled the ogre on the left, chose the right door and found an ogre anyway, you've railroaded because the dm has invalidated a (seemingly meaningful) choice by the players.

 

[Oofta]

But the question is - shouldn't the choice itself matter, informed or not?

Did the DM actually set up a fair choice? Or did he have a whatever you choose, oops there's an ogre scenario. I agree with @Maxperson that if it's the latter - that's railroading.

If the DM wants the PCs to fight the ogre - just have one door, that's linear but it's not railroading.

Whereas I would try to broad cast that there's an ogre behind the door or there's a longer route that bypasses the ogre at the cost of a significant (to the current situation) time. So as a DM I haven't decided that the PCs will fight the ogre, just that it's one of the optional paths to their goal(s).

An example would be that I had a recent scenario where the PCs needed to get from point A to point B. They had an alternative to go along the road which would be faster but they knew patrols were looking for them. It was likely (not inevitable) that they would have to have some tough fights and potentially let the opposition know where they were and where they were likely headed. The alternative was to go through the "old road" which took longer and had it's own dangers, likely more less deadly encounters. However, the odds of their opposition finding out about any encounter was significantly less.

To me, that was a significant choice. Random result is just the illusion of control over your fate. Not the same as railroading, still an illusion.

Besides, I'd rather focus my game time on things that matter. Exploring empty rooms with nary an ogre in sight, to me, does not add anything to the game. YMMV of course.