D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lanefan]

Pathfinder made their name and a VERY good reputation doing exactly that.

A good linear adventure is NOT inferior to a non-linear one. Frankly from a publishing perspective it is much easier to do a good linear adventure than a good sandbox one.

Oh, from a design and writing (and mapping!) perspective linear is absolutely easier.

From a DMing perspective linear adventures are easy<-->hard to run in direct proportion to how often the players (try to) deviate from the path. No deviation = dirt simple. Lots of deviation = tough sleddin'.

From a playing perspective (assuming prior experience with various linear and non-linear adventures) linear adventures are IME and IMO generally less interesting to play, due to there being pretty much no exploration or exploration-equivalent choices/options other than pressing forward, staying put, or retreating backward. There's exceptions, of course, but in general if given the choice I'll take non-linear or Jacqayed over linear all day long.

 

[pemerton]

What can be done to enable DMs to be less railroady? Recommend good hex crawls? Suggust improv classes? Write a capter in the DMG? Have a ton of random tables?

Or read RPGs books that explain non-railroad play in clear terms: Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Agon 2nd ed, are some of the easily available ones.

Hex crawls and random tables are all about how the GM authors backstory and uses it to adjudicate action declarations. The way to be less railroady is to reduce the default obsession with backstory, and instead think about how scenes are framed and how actions are resolved.

 

[prabe]

Oh yes, what about the stage magician though ? Isn't he lying, deceiving you, for your greater pleasure ?

Nope. The stage magicians I watch aren't charlatans. They're honest that there's no actual magic happening. They're holding up their end of the entertainment bargain, same as a novelist is (and to be clear, making fiction isn't the same as lying).

The fact that it's DM created and led doesn't mean that the PCs are not the people around whom the plot revolves.

Is the story about the PC's actions? If it's not, and the GM says it is, that's a lie--and I'd be inclined to say it's a damaging one.

That discussion was had in the other thread, and I think that the general consensus is that most tables expect a more or less strong DM plot (or plots) to play around. The PCs can (and probably should, but again YCMV) be central in that plot, but denying the GM creation at the core does not describe D&D games in their vast majority.

But if you have examples of play along that line, I would be happy to see them...

I'm not sure there was as much consensus as you say.

As for examples, check the two campaigns in my sig. I haven't updated them in a while, but both of them are very much players/PCs making stories, even if the DM (that'd be me, to be clear) made the world.

You are assuming way too much and in the wrong direction. And you are not listening to what I'm saying. No-one is saying that players should be lied to about the role of their characters in the world and the plot, how could that be conducive of players fun ? Come on.

If the DM lies to me about something, how can I trust him about anything?

Please read me in the right light, I'm not advocating lying all the time and about core things, I'm just trying to explain that some lying or railroading now and then are not so bad when done with the right intention in mind, i.e. the player's fun.

So, you keep telling me to lie to my friends, whether or not they want me to, whether or not it'd really be more fun for them, whether or not it'd be more fun for me (hint--it wouldn't).

That aside ...

There's a quotation I've seen attributed to Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." It seems applicable here, because if I'm honest with the players about the fiction, then I just need to remember the fiction--there is no difference between it and what I've told the players.

Also, while I might well be smarter than every single one of my players, I know for sure I am not smarter than all of them, together. If I try to build a campaign on lies, they will find out--and afterward, will I be able to build a campaign on honesty? Why should I take that risk?

 

[Lanefan]

If players are expecting to play this sort of game, and the GM is pretending that it's this sort of game, but is in fact just making stuff up as they go along, then we have illusionism! And players who keep careful notes, try and make sure they ask the right questions, etc, are really just wasting their time.

They're not wasting anyone's time. In fact those note-takers and map-makers are taking what the DM dreams up and locking it in for posterity, so that on returning to the same place/scene later it's already been established what is there. On-the-fly setting design!

I couldn't do this myself and keep it the least bit consistent but I'm sure there's those as can, and I envy them.

There is an assumption, in typical D&D play, that geography matters. This is inherited from dungeon- and hex-crawling. The basic idea is that the GM prepares a setting that consists of a map and a key, and that the key includes "latent"/incipient scenes/situations which the players "activate" by declaring actions that move their PCs to the relevant part of the map.

Geography matters is to me so obvious a statement that I'm surprised it even warrants a mention.

Without geography there's no exploration, as there's nothing to explore; thus negating what 5e has (quite rightly IMO) defined as one of the three core pillars of the game.

But this sort of play isn't required for RPGing. Here are two possible departures from it:

(1) A setting can matter, for play, in other ways than its geography - see eg the importance, in my Prince Valiant excerpt, of religion and culture/heritage.

(2) Player skill/engagement can manifest itself in ways other than trying to "activate" particular scenes/situations. If the players want a particular (sort of) scene or situation then the GM can just establish it (as I did, in my Prince Valiant game) and then the skill and engagement operate not in the attempt to get the scene, but in the attempt to resolve it. In scene-framing-type play - as in the RPGs I mentioned above - it is the scene that carries the weight of the action. (Eg in DitV the players don't need to worry about finding a town; in Agon they don't need to worry about finding an island - play begins with the GM framing the PCs into a town, or an island, and then the action starts.)

Of course we have some narration to establish the framing - like my narration of the storm that washes the PC knights onto the Dalmation coast - but that's just colour.

Where's the exploration piece in any of this? Where's the part where the PCs/players get to choose when and-or by what means and-or by what route they travel from scene to scene? Where's the point at which, having decided to go from scene A to scene B, something seen or encountered during the journey can prompt a detour or a change of mind on the part of the PCs/players?

This is my main argument against "scene-framing" - it simply skips over far too much in between the scenes, and takes away the players' ability to explore the (geographical!) setting on their own terms and at their own pace.

 

[payn]

Oh, from a design and writing (and mapping!) perspective linear is absolutely easier.

From a DMing perspective linear adventures are easy<-->hard to run in direct proportion to how often the players (try to) deviate from the path. No deviation = dirt simple. Lots of deviation = tough sleddin'.

From a playing perspective (assuming prior experience with various linear and non-linear adventures) linear adventures are IME and IMO generally less interesting to play, due to there being pretty much no exploration or exploration-equivalent choices/options other than pressing forward, staying put, or retreating backward. There's exceptions, of course, but in general if given the choice I'll take non-linear or Jacqayed over linear all day long.

Oh, I've heard this many times. Get to the table and the GM cant make sandbox interesting, and even more players are likely to wander around aimlessly wishing they were in a linear adventure instead. Both styles require GM skills to be honed and player proactivity to be successful. Both can be uninteresting due to lack of exploration and meaningful choices. It's entirely on the group and not the style.

 

[pemerton]

Let's say the only thing the PCs know is that there are two doors, and they plan to open both of them to find out what is behind each door. The DM has notes on what is behind the doors, but didn't actually specify which door is which.

If the players arbitrarily choose to open the left-hand door first, how do you think the DM should decide which room from their notes to present first without railroading?

From my standpoint, since neither the DM nor the players care which room is encountered first, railroading is impossible in this scenario, no matter what method the DM uses. (The players weren't trying to express agency, so there can be no denial of said agency.) But I'm not sure that you'd agree with that so I'm interested in hearing your perspective.

Don't we need more information to answer the question?

For instance, let's say this is a game of B/X D&D with PCs of (say) 5th level. The doors are in a dungeon they are exploring. The goal of dungeon exploration is to earn XP, mostly by finding treasure and taking it out of the dungeon. Some treasure is guarded, but not all of it. Fighting monsters is also worth XP, but generally it's more efficient - if perhaps also a bit more boring - to circumvent monsters and/or find unguarded treasures.

The game includes resources that reflect this set-up: Detect Magic and ESP spells that work at dungeon-useful ranges; potions of treasure finding and wands of metal and mineral detection; etc.

In this sort of game, the GM should have notes on what is behind each door: ogre, treasure, ogre + treasure, something else, nothing at all, etc. The players are expected to use their wits, their resources and their luck to find out what is where and do their best in accruing XP. This includes using ESP to find ogres, using detect magic to find good treasures, etc. So in this sort of game, changing what's behind the doors seems to me like bad GMing, whether or not the players are in fact making an informed choice, because they could be.

But of course there are other approaches to play, particularly ones which emphasise GM authority over situation/scene-framing, where what you say would be quite right: ie the decision as to which door to open is mere colour, and it doesn't matter where the GM puts the ogre.

 

[pemerton]

An addendum to my post just upthread of this one:

I think it needs to be stressed that whether geography, architecture, furniture etc is meaningful to play, or is mere colour, is a choice.

There are approaches to RPGing which absolutely centre this sort of thing: most pre-1983 D&D modules are examples.

There are approaches to RPGing in which this sort of thing is mere colour: Prince Valiant is an example, and so might be a "dungeon crawl" resolved as a skill challenge in 4e.

Neither is better or worse in an inherent sense.

But I think it's pretty helpful to know what sort of game you're playing, both as player and as GM. For instance, in the first sort of game playing a ranger with favoured terrain is going to turn out differently from how it is in the second sort of game, I would think. (Eg in the second sort of game, it might make sense to replace the existing favoured terrain rules with something like advantage on checks in favoured terrain - maybe excluding CHA checks not made against animals and/or INT checks not made to interpret the immediate surroundings.)

 

[Malmuria]

They then set sail again.

Exercising GM fiat, I declared that as they were crossing between Italy and the Balkan Peninsula the storms were incredibly fierce, and the captain of their ships decided to cut his losses, and dock and sell his cargo in Dalmatia. The PCs therefore set of on the overland trek to Constantinople.

This was a fairly obvious contrivance to seed some scenarios. The players didn't object.

The core rulebook has three scenarios that involve fighting Huns, and I used the first of them: the PCs and their band (by this point 13 mounted men-at-arms plus the three knight PCs, and 42 footmen) were crossing through fairly rough and mountainous country when they were set upon by a band of 50-odd Huns. I allowed the player of the Grand Master PC - Sir Justin - to make a Battle check to take up an effective formation in the rough terrain and he succeeded, putting the Huns at a -1 die penalty.

What it is, is relatively standard scene-framing - besides Prince Valiant, some reasonably well-known RPGs that use this technique are Agon, The Dying Earth, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, and 4e D&D (at least on a certain approach suggested in the rulebooks).

So coming back to the "quantum ogre", and assumptions:

There is an assumption, in typical D&D play, that geography matters. This is inherited from dungeon- and hex-crawling. The basic idea is that the GM prepares a setting that consists of a map and a key, and that the key includes "latent"/incipient scenes/situations which the players "activate" by declaring actions that move their PCs to the relevant part of the map.

I appreciate the long example, but I can't imagine this answer would be satisfying for anyone concerned with the denial of choice in the quantum ogre scenario. The premise of your PV report is that the players don't object to GM fiat in setting the scene. So you put the ogre down in front of them and then start playing. But if you are bothered by the quantum ogre situation, you want the choice to go right or left, and you want that choice to matter. So, what counts as legitimate hard scene framing in a game where players don't care about certain kinds of "obvious contrivances" will read as a GM forcing content in any "-crawl" type dnd game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh yes, what about the stage magician though ? Isn't he lying, deceiving you, for your greater pleasure ?

Not the person you replied to, but I share many of their opinions on this matter. A magician that tells you they're performing a "trick" is not lying. They are, almost surely, manipulating the economy of attention and employing skillful distraction or obfuscation in order to entertain. But those things are not, in and of themselves, deceptions. It would be deceptive for the magician to assert, "No, I truly, physically did saw that man in half, and have just now reassembled him."

And that's what's happening with the pro-illusionism DM. They are not merely providing entertaining obfuscation or distraction. They are explicitly communicating falsehoods, knowing that they are falsehoods.

It is also worth noting, as Prabe said, that there is a HUGE HUGE HUGE gulf between storytelling and lying. Fiction is not lying. Despite his vast efforts at language construction and building a "legendarium," Tolkien very obviously never intended anyone to believe that these things were in any way "real." Fiction is not literally true, but it is not presenting itself as such; instead, it is intended to communicate more abstract truths, e.g. that old Chesterton quote, "The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." Or, as Gaiman so colorfully misquoted, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." (I think Chesterton would approve of this misquotation.)

The fact that it's DM created and led doesn't mean that the PCs are not the people around whom the plot revolves.

While fair, rather a non-sequitur to Prabe's point. A social relation (which is what every gaming group is) built on honesty is, strictly, better than one built on deceit, even if that deceit is well-intentioned. Just about the only place where so-called "lies" are appropriate is in teaching, as it is often necessary to start with a falsely restrictive view of things (like math, science, or history) so children can develop the tools and understanding necessary to grapple with the complete picture. But even there, the goal ever and always remains to pursue honesty; the "lies" will eventually be revealed. (I, personally, do not actually like using "lies to children"--I instead prefer to tell them up front, "This way of doing things is not perfect, but it is a good start. Later, when you've learned more, we'll talk about where this breaks, and how a more complicated thing can do better." Then there is no lie; you are open about the gap between presentation and reality, and specify that that gap will be addressed.)

That discussion was had in the other thread, and I think that the general consensus is that most tables expect a more or less strong DM plot (or plots) to play around. The PCs can (and probably should, but again YCMV) be central in that plot, but denying the GM creation at the core does not describe D&D games in their vast majority.

I'd like to see your statistics for such declarations of "vast majority." Such claims are quite strong, so I assume your data is comprehensive? Alternatively, if (as I suspect) you are just saying this because that's your perception of it, you may want to lay off such strong claims.

But if you have examples of play along that line, I would be happy to see them...

Well, I don't think my own game would fit Prabe's requirements, but it is definitely a hell of a lot closer--and it definitely, absolutely could not exist without my players' contributions. I value everything my players contribute to the game world, it is more precious than diamond, because those contributions are the best evidence I will ever have that they care about playing this game.

You are assuming way too much and in the wrong direction. And you are not listening to what I'm saying. No-one is saying that players should be lied to about the role of their characters in the world and the plot, how could that be conducive of players fun ? Come on.

Isn't that what illusionism requires, though? You present (for example) the choice to turn left or right at a fork in the road--but that choice is completely false. It is presented as though it were a real choice. Yet the players are denied even the possibility of learning that it is not a real choice.

That is the fundamental deception of illusionism for me. Unlike the magician, who makes no pretense of realism--we call them "magic tricks" for God's sake!--the illusionism-focused GM makes a pretense of agency where there is none. This applies just as well to things like fudging (whether against the party or for it! I hate beneficial fudging no less than detrimental fudging!) and secret retconning as it does to choices presented as real but actually meaningless.

Please read me in the right light, I'm not advocating lying all the time and about core things, I'm just trying to explain that some lying or railroading now and then are not so bad when done with the right intention in mind, i.e. the player's fun.

How could anything be more core to the process of play than, "What you, the player, choose to do matters"?

 

[Umbran]

Oh yes, what about the stage magician though ? Isn't he lying, deceiving you, for your greater pleasure ?

Only in the sense that Christopher Lloyd was lying when he claimed to be King Lear on the stage this summer.

We are not Thermians, and differentiate between a lie, and presentation of fiction for entertainment.