D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Lyxen]

With respect, your post is almost impossible to respond to. But I'm going to try.

"I'm sorry, but these devious tools (Illusionism and Force) become critical and almost a necessity."

Nope. Sorry. This is not what I wrote.

"I'm sorry, but these devious tools (Illusionism and Force) become critical and almost a necessity."

Repeating it just highlights the fact that you added the part which is between brackets. It's not mine.

This claim is not true. It is empirically not true. These tools are not critical for "story-oriented play, especially if you have a lot of intrigue, and therefore a lot of improvisation" (your claim).

How do I know its not true? Because I don't use them and I do exactly what you say. There are plenty of people on this very forum who have been PCs in my game who can corroborate. There are plenty of other GMs who do the exact same thing without the deployment of "these devious tools" as you put them.

Good for you. Now how do I know that your games would suit our groups ? I don't.

Its not patronising to point this out.

I'm sorry but it is when you say: "try some other games or be a player in a game with a GM who is highly proficient in this mode"

As if I'd never been. Well, I claim that I have been in more games than you have, and with GMs who were way more proficient than you. In particular multi-years campaigns of Amber Diceless Games which are all about intrigue and with almost zero fights, and where trickery is really at the core of the game. Where does this leave you?

There is no way to dispute your claim rather than either (a) playing with you and having you witness it first-hand or (b) bringing up multiple independent lines of evidence to corroborate the reality that your claim is empirically not true.

There is no such thing as "empirically" in this case you are not playing in our games and I'm not playing in yours. And there is certainly no statistical evidence either, just personal, limited experiences, and you claiming that yours are satisfactory and that you are highly proficient does not mean that you would be considered as such for me, and that they would be satisfactory to me (and the other way around, possibly).

So that is what I've done (b). You can feel about that however you'd like, but its not me patronising.

Yes, it is, see above the part about "highly skilled".

And no, this is clearly not a mode of play ("Play to Find Out" Story Now) you've been playing for a very long time (referencing your 2nd paragraph). If that were true, you wouldn't make this empirically untrue claim in the first place and we wouldn't be having this conversation!

No, sorry, that is assuming (again, patronising) that your experience is universal and applies to all games. I deny this. I have been playing in this mode for about 40 years now (admittedly, we were not there yet in our first years of play), and we are still having this conversation, as I have no special reason to believe your personal experience over mine.

I've made wrong claims in my life. I've drawn wrong inferences. I've told people who have done a thing or born witness to a thing that I doubt their conclusions. They've proven me wrong and I've revised my opinion. They weren't patronising me. They were just disputing my claim. And later, when I realized I was wrong...I was glad for their correction.

This is normal stuff.

I agree, and honestly, I'm probably the only one here who admits to making mistakes and explaining them, and being ashamed about them. I mean, real ones, not "oh yes I made a mistake but actually this is to show off how great I am" like some other contributors here.

But on this, I'm sorry, but all the theoretical discourse of players just wanting more control and feeling entitled to it (not yours, but see above about patronising), does not ring a bell with my personal experience. All these tools are just that, tools. Forbidding yourself to use them for theoretical reasons (And again, not you, but for others here at the same time being a horrible person to people you play with) is just being self-righteous. Especially since it's really easy to claim that over the internet, but I'd really like to be a little mouse to watch some games being played (especially after listening to the grand talks of some people here with one eye while reading the summary of their plays with the other).

So why don't you try for a little more modesty and open-mindedness, rather than claiming that you are highly skilled and that you have empirical proof that applies to every game ever played on the planet ?

I make no such claim, I'm just pointing out that using such tools now and then, especially with players who are aware that they might be used and have no objection, allows us to run extremely successful games in that mode where the players are enthusiastic and ask for more. So maybe it's you who could revise your position slightly rather than claim that it's absolute and all-encompassing ?

I'll leave you with a paragraph from the rules of engagement in Amber DRPG which I've always found very useful in running complex games...

A Little History.
Back in World War I, in the war for East Africa, the Germans would send raiders across the desert, to harass and loot the better-equipped, but poorly defended, British outposts. The survival of these commando missions, and the men who performed them, depended on an exact knowledge of the whereabouts of fresh water holes. In the African heat, that water was the difference between life and death, because a light, fast-moving force couldn't carry enough water. This fact was obvious to both sides.
Eventually the Germans were forced to abandon their raids. One by one, all the critical water holes were found marked with Skull-and-Crossbones signs reading "POISON!" in several languages, and surrounded with the bloated bodies of dead animals.
After the war, the Germans protested. "The use of poison," they said, "is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Convention. You have broken the rules of conduct and should be charged as war criminals!"
The British protested that they were completely innocent. They never used poison. As they pointed out, "Where in the rules of the Geneva
Convention does it prohibit posting signs and scattering around a few dead animals?"
If you want to keep someone from using a water hole, it doesn't matter if it contains poison. What matters is whether or not you can get them to believe that the hole is poison.
Nothing in the rules prevented the British from lying.

There are "Rules of Engagement" in role-playing as well. They define what a Game Master can and cannot do. Abiding by the Rules of Engagement assures the players that the roleplaying will be conducted fairly. However, fair doesn't necessarily mean honest. The British forces succeeded in making the Germans believe their water was poisoned, without breaking the rules! It's up to the Game Master to feed the players everything they see, hear, smell, taste, feel, sense and remember. According to the Rules of Engagement, these must always be
reported honestly. Game Masters don't cheat, because that would be breaking the rules. There's nothing in the rules prohibiting lies.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And praytell, how are you improvising the intrigues of supra-geniuses like Orcus and the Raven Queen or even their minions ? The answer is you don't if you're not at least a bit devious, otherwise you can of course play a game which is heavily focussed about combat like the examples that you have provided.

Being devious about in-story events =/= deceiving your players. Being devious is often necessary for maintaining a mystery, for example, but I can be quite devious without ever uttering a lie. (Indeed, the best liars always tell the truth--just not the whole truth. I have one such NPC in the game. The players hate him, but know that he's useful. It's delightful.)

But surely, and obviously, you can, so you are multiple evil geniuses rolled into one...

Your sarcasm is unproductive and comes across as petty, rather than incisive.

What I can tell you I find really, really , REALLY bad is players deciding to slam the door on a DM's face for a bit of railroading. That is humanly absolutely unjustifiable and the mark of a level of entitlement that none of them members and GMs of our groups would suffer. Especially for DMs who were probably beginners or unsure of themselves.

If a DM tells me they run things fairly (which I will ask), and then I find out they lied to my face when they said that? I don't see any reason why I shouldn't walk. I expect every referee to be honest. I expect that if a system is being used, it is being used consistently, or that I will be told if and when we stop using that system (e.g., what house rules there are). If "yeah sometimes I'll just pretend a crit didn't happen so the party won't die, but I won't tell you about it or ever let you have the chance of knowing" is one of those house rules, I'm not gonna play at that table--and if the DM thinks that concealing this from me so I'll be a happy player is a good idea, then I really don't want to play at that table.

Again, If I'm a beginner DM offering to run "Keep on the Borderlands", which is a basic a module as ever written, and do it out of the box, what makes you think I feel up to improvising a heist in the nearby town on the spot ? Who violated the social contract first there ?

Obviously one should be gentle with new DMs. New DMs are going to make mistakes. But I also don't expect a new DM to lie to my face either; I expect them to get flustered and not know how to handle a situation, rather than act like they know best and that deceiving me, while preventing even the possibility of ever knowing that I was deceived, is in my best interest. I actually find that it is really only the "old hand" DMs, people who have run many games, who think their perception of what is "fun" is more important than playing honestly with their players.

But when I'm keeping tracks of the actions of dozens of arch-devils and Demon Princes, not to mention Rakshasa, Night Hags, Ultro- and Arcana-daemons, archmages, etc., all of which are devious and scheming against each other and against the PCs, I'll use every trick I know of to create verisimilitude, and make the players feel the threat of all that scheming.

You can do literally 100% of this without ever using deceptions. The deceptions are unnecessary, but are very likely to cause players to be upset if they discover them. To use your own sarcastic example, my players collectively are much more intelligent than I am (well, that and I'm a bad liar). I'm not enough of an evil genius to hide any illusionism from them forever. They'd figure it out eventually, and then they'd be very upset, because they'd know they couldn't actually trust me to keep my word to them or treat them fairly.

Moreover, listening in on the plotting and discussions of the PC and building on this makes sure that I'm listening to them. And of course, I will use this to create even better plots, because using 7 brains is much better than using just mine to generate great ideas.

On this, for sure. My game couldn't exist without my players. But that's because I ensure that I am always playing 100% perfectly fairly with them. They know that, if they go looking for clues, then as long as there are clues to find, they'll find them (assuming a roll doesn't go badly or the like). They know that, if events happen in the world, they have at least a chance to figure out the who/where/what/why/how. My NPCs may lie all the livelong day (some do, some don't, some are selective), but I, as DM? I will never lie to them. I may push for them to ask the right questions, or give them incomplete answers if their tactics or actions (whether defined in the fiction or in the rules) are inadequate to the task they desire to achieve. But I will never make them believe their choices matter if they don't, I will never secretly modify monster stats or roll resuts, and I will never manipulate the facts of the world once they're established.

But then, I trust my DMs, and I'm absolutely ready to be understanding and forgiving if something is not entirely up to my expectations. Can you say the same ?

DMs earn my trust by refusing to deceive me-as-a-player. My character is quite easily deceived (and being at least a little deceived is kind of the point, much of the time). But me, purely as a player playing a game? I trust DMs who act in trustworthy ways. Not deceiving me-as-a-player is part of being trustworthy at the table.

Fudging is quite clearly cheating when players do it. Rewriting your backstory on the fly (secret retconning) in order to do, be, or achieve something is clearly not okay when players do it. I fail to see why the DM should get a special pass on these things.

 

[Mannahnin]

Welp. I'm using the Ignore function for the first time.

 

[Campbell]

I have made plenty of mistakes as a GM. I continue to make mistakes as a GM. I will continue to make mistakes as a GM.

I regularly show my ass. The scene framing might be off here. I might misjudge how difficult I think the encounter might be over there. I make bad rulings from time to time. I do this in plain view where the people I play with can see it. That makes me accountable to them. It also means that I can see plainly what mistakes I have made and endeavor to not make the same ones again.

I do not think I'm special or uniquely talented. I have put in a lot of reps and gained specific skills at running the type of games I run. I could not run a linear game if I tried. Highly skilled is in the specific context of character focused play that relies on scene framing techniques. It's not highly skilled at running all games. It's highly skilled in running specific games in specific ways with particular sorts of (not passive) players.

 

[Lyxen]

Being devious about in-story events =/= deceiving your players. Being devious is often necessary for maintaining a mystery, for example, but I can be quite devious without ever uttering a lie. (Indeed, the best liars always tell the truth--just not the whole truth. I have one such NPC in the game. The players hate him, but know that he's useful. It's delightful.)

Yes, of course, always these great examples (But it's like poker, I'll wait to see it before believing it), I'm sure that all you people are way better at it than everyone I've ever encountered.

Your sarcasm is unproductive and comes across as petty, rather than incisive.

It's funny, because there are some topics that I'm asking about and that no-one ever answers, preferring to attack the way I post instead. So I'll ask again without sarcasm this time, how do you play multiple evil geniuses "honestly" and convincingly at the same time, especially when you need to improvise ?

If a DM tells me they run things fairly (which I will ask), and then I find out they lied to my face when they said that?

And again, was it the case in all these examples ? Did the players really put that in session 0 and have the DM put it in the table rules ? Do you really do this ?

Besides, running things fairly has nothing to do with using devious techniques. I'm always fair between the players, and always doing things for their own fun (although, obviously, I make mistakes sometimes like anyone else). That does not mean that I cannot deceive them.

I don't see any reason why I shouldn't walk. I expect every referee to be honest.

And I don't. I expect every referee to make sure that I enjoy myself. If that means deceiving me (again, stage magician), then fine, I know that he'll do it so that I enjoy the game more.

I expect that if a system is being used, it is being used consistently, or that I will be told if and when we stop using that system (e.g., what house rules there are).

And that is something totally different, but I was sort of expecting it. This is not the type of game I run, technical, about rules and house rules and respecting the game system. I run games about the players stories, the world story and consistency, and rules are waaaayyy down the line in terms of priority, I will bend them and break them if it means a better story.

If "yeah sometimes I'll just pretend a crit didn't happen so the party won't die, but I won't tell you about it or ever let you have the chance of knowing" is one of those house rules, I'm not gonna play at that table--and if the DM thinks that concealing this from me so I'll be a happy player is a good idea, then I really don't want to play at that table.

Fine if it's your style of play, but it's not superior in ANY way to the games I run. This is where I draw the line, you make it sound like these are absolute rules, BUT THEY ARE NOT. These are rules that come from 3e when people started to worry about RAW and playing the game like a combat boardgame, CaS. Why not, and I'll be honest and say that if this is what you are looking for in a game (and I think that you are playing 4e which is totally suited to that kind of gaming), I understand your position I think perfectly.

But don't you dare badwrongfun our style of gaming by using negative words like "conceal", "cheat", "fudge", because I could very easily find really negative epithets about your style of gaming. It's not what this thread is about anyway.

Obviously one should be gentle with new DMs. New DMs are going to make mistakes. But I also don't expect a new DM to lie to my face either;

Did they ? No, sorry, they did not. The two appalling examples that we've had here of people slamming the door on a DM's face were about a group trying to force the DM to reveal his plan and not accepting that a kobold would be too stupid to count and point directions (when I posted a perfectly RAW example of a module saying exactly this), and a group walking out on a DM running Keep on the Borderlands and being incapable of running a town heist for them instead. WHERE IS THE F****G LIE IN THIS ?!!??@???!??@

I expect them to get flustered and not know how to handle a situation, rather than act like they know best and that deceiving me, while preventing even the possibility of ever knowing that I was deceived, is in my best interest. I actually find that it is really only the "old hand" DMs, people who have run many games, who think their perception of what is "fun" is more important than playing honestly with their players.

And I find that it's mostly the newbies who want to play CaS who expect full transparency and auditing about what is happening in the game.

And once more, your tendency to badwrongfun that type of gaming shows with the use of the word "honest", meaning that we are "dishonest" ? I'm sorry, but this is totally unacceptable.

You can do literally 100% of this without ever using deceptions. The deceptions are unnecessary, but are very likely to cause players to be upset if they discover them. To use your own sarcastic example, my players collectively are much more intelligent than I am (well, that and I'm a bad liar). I'm not enough of an evil genius to hide any illusionism from them forever. They'd figure it out eventually, and then they'd be very upset, because they'd know they couldn't actually trust me to keep my word to them or treat them fairly.

And again who says I'm not treating them fairly ? You are running a very specialised kind of game, but it's not superior to ANY other sort of game.

On this, for sure. My game couldn't exist without my players. But that's because I ensure that I am always playing 100% perfectly fairly with them. They know that, if they go looking for clues, then as long as there are clues to find, they'll find them (assuming a roll doesn't go badly or the like). They know that, if events happen in the world, they have at least a chance to figure out the who/where/what/why/how. My NPCs may lie all the livelong day (some do, some don't, some are selective), but I, as DM? I will never lie to them. I may push for them to ask the right questions, or give them incomplete answers if their tactics or actions (whether defined in the fiction or in the rules) are inadequate to the task they desire to achieve. But I will never make them believe their choices matter if they don't, I will never secretly modify monster stats or roll resuts, and I will never manipulate the facts of the world once they're established.

Good for you. Now please prove to me that your games are superior to the ones we run, that we would have more fun playing them and that it's the only way to run games while being totally devoted to their fun.

I have tried that kind of game when playing 4e and I found them boring and limited. Personal taste, do you have anything to say about this ?

DMs earn my trust by refusing to deceive me-as-a-player. My character is quite easily deceived (and being at least a little deceived is kind of the point, much of the time). But me, purely as a player playing a game? I trust DMs who act in trustworthy ways. Not deceiving me-as-a-player is part of being trustworthy at the table.

No, it's the way of being trustworthy at YOUR table. At ours, if you are running a game for us, we do not put conditions, you are trustworthy because you are the DM and we trust that you are doing this for our pleasure. How is that worse, pray tell ?

Fudging is quite clearly cheating when players do it. Rewriting your backstory on the fly (secret retconning) in order to do, be, or achieve something is clearly not okay when players do it.

Is it ? Where is it written, in which holy book ?

I fail to see why the DM should get a special pass on these things.

Because he's doing it for the fun of the players, which is the intent of the game. Now you might want to run the game with additional constraints, but I'm sorry, the game designers themselves disagree with you. Fun is the ultimate intent and I'll use any means I can find to make it more fun. Prove to me that it's wrong, I'll be waiting...

 

[Xetheral]

(The example I usually give for "secret retconning" is the changing killer in a mystery story. That is, you've set up a murder mystery where there are multiple suspects, and you know who is guilty. Say the Crown Prince has been murdered, and his sister the (now-Crown) Princess, his step-father the King-Consort, the Duchess, and the Baron are all implicated, but you know that the Baron is the real killer. You have prepared clues to that effect, and the party has collected some of them. One player then, in a flash of insight, figures out the full story...when you're only a third of the way through. It would be secret retconning to change it so that no, the Baron was always innocent but being framed by the Princess, even though the party had found evidence that, prior to this change, was 100% legitimate and pointing toward the correct killer. Such actions are justified by (at least some) pro-illusionism GMs as "maintaining the fun" or "making sure the game is satisfying" or whatever. I, of course, don't really accept those justifications.

Out of curiosity, what if the player's flash of insight was wrong according to the DM's notes, but was both better-supported by the clues thus far and made for a better, more entertaining story?

Specifically, let's say the player suddenly realizes that the Princess is framing the Baron, and explains their character's reasoning to the other players. Upon hearing the reasoning, the DM realizes that the clues they had intended to point towards the Baron point even more strongly towards the framed-by-Princess theory. The other players are excited, and start exclaiming about how awesome the solution to the mystery is.

Would you object to the DM "secretly retconning" the framed-by-Princess theory to be correct in this circumstance?

(For reference, from my standpoint my notes are just suggestions until established in play or in the player-facing campaign documentation, so no "retconning" would be required to proceed with the framed-by-Princess scenario. But I'm using your terminology since I know we differ on that point.)

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

This claim is not true. It is empirically not true. These tools are not critical for "story-oriented play, especially if you have a lot of intrigue, and therefore a lot of improvisation" (your claim).

How do I know its not true? Because I don't use them and I do exactly what you say. There are plenty of people on this very forum who have been PCs in my game who can corroborate. There are plenty of other GMs who do the exact same thing without the deployment of "these devious tools" as you put them.

Bingo. I do not run games that are illusionist or participationist in my home games. I let the player characters direct and drive things, and I allow the dice to fall where they may. If a pre-published adventure requires some degree of participationism, I will advise the players that there is an assumed path/flow of the adventure module and they'll need to work within those confines as part of the adventure. However, I will almost always alter the module to accommodate the actions and desires of the players overall.

I don't think force is inherently problematic or problematic at all.

While I agree it is acceptable within the appropriate context, the term "force" is loaded with a negative connotation. But the inherent badwrongness of force is a cultural phenomenon in the same way that the discussion of "authority" at the game table leaves most gamers feeling "icky." But the application of force and assertion of authority are neutral at worst; it matters entirely their implementation and the ends to which they are implemented.

Matt Mercer certainly calls upon The Force (TM) when running Critical Role, yet people adore him. Matt Mercer is a talented gamemaster, yet he is required to use The Force when gamemastering because he's taken on a position as a writer, entertainer, and stageshow magician to craft an experience for his players and audience.

Why, yes, I'd like to reiterate that statement: Critical Role is less of a D&D game and more of a D&D experience.

(This, btw, is why I enjoy these discussions. That little fact hadn't occurred to me until now, but it's true, relevant, and deserves a blogpost. My goodness, I'm quite the smart cookie. )

 

[Lyxen]

Out of curiosity, what if the player's flash of insight was wrong according to the DM's notes, but was both better-supported by the clues thus far and made for a better, more entertaining story?

Exactly, thanks for putting it out this clearly. ESPECIALLY if the new alternative story actually makes the PC look better and the players feel better, maybe through some of the hypothesis that they voiced during their investigation...

 

[Maxperson]

Out of curiosity, what if the player's flash of insight was wrong according to the DM's notes, but was both better-supported by the clues thus far and made for a better, more entertaining story?

Specifically, let's say the player suddenly realizes that the Princess is framing the Baron, and explains their character's reasoning to the other players. Upon hearing the reasoning, the DM realizes that the clues they had intended to point towards the Baron point even more strongly towards the framed-by-Princess theory. The other players are excited, and start exclaiming about how awesome the solution to the mystery is.

Would you object to the DM "secretly retconning" the framed-by-Princess theory to be correct in this circumstance?

(For reference, from my standpoint my notes are just suggestions until established in play or in the player-facing campaign documentation, so no "retconning" would be required to proceed with the framed-by-Princess scenario. But I'm using your terminology since I know we differ on that point.)

You aren't asking me, but I'll give my opinion, because it's what we do in threads like this.

I would be upset if I found out about it. First, sometimes evidence does more strongly point at the wrong person. Second, getting it wrong results in different stories, but ones that are often as good or better. I'd hate to lose out on those stories.

If I found out later that the DM had changed things, I'd be really disappointed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

<snip>


It's funny, because there are some topics that I'm asking about and that no-one ever answers, preferring to attack the way I post instead. So I'll ask again without sarcasm this time, how do you play multiple evil geniuses "honestly" and convincingly at the same time, especially when you need to improvise ?

People have answered, you're just not listening. You can easily do this by establishing the fiction that this guy is a super-genius clearly. This already strongly constrains the action-declaration space because the established fiction means that this guy doesn't fall for easy gambits. And you've established that this guy is playing hard and well, so you've foreshadowed the danger. Then you can make very hard moves on the players for any failures they make with this established. I don't have to prep anything, or lie, or deceive, just reveal new fiction when called for that's aligned with the resolution process and the established ficiton.

How this works specifically is going to depend on the game. In 5e, for instance, I could very easily just say that Super-Genius-Guy has an ability called "superior intellect" that imposes disadvantage on all checks that try to manipulate, deceive, or coerce SGG. Then, when actions are attempted that engage this trait, and fail, I deploy painful consequences to represent exactly how, in this case, SGG planned for exactly this contingency. On a success, the players actually get on over. This lets the players engage the fiction directly, in a thematic way, without me having to craft a web of Force and Illusionism or actually pre-guess their moves, and let's players stack resources for important actions, which is thematically appropriate. What they don't have to do is solve my prepared puzzle.

In other games, this is even easier because there's already mechanical structures in place for this.

Because he's doing it for the fun of the players, which is the intent of the game. Now you might want to run the game with additional constraints, but I'm sorry, the game designers themselves disagree with you. Fun is the ultimate intent and I'll use any means I can find to make it more fun. Prove to me that it's wrong, I'll be waiting...

Fun can be achieved in many ways, so stating fun is the reason to do a specific thing is immediately obvious as a bad argument. It can be equally fun to do a different thing. So, fun is just not a reasoned answer to the question nor is it sufficient justification. Anyone can deploy this answer for any argument.