D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[overgeeked]

Another way of putting this is: If you're in a relationship (be it romantic, platonic, economic, whatever) and the other person misrepresents their actions, actively prevents you from trying to find out about it, and if/when called out tells you that "it's for your own good" or "it's in your best interest," you should get out of there immediately. That's an incredibly dangerous thing in any relationship that affects your real life. I consider "the game group" another relationship that affects my real life.

Absolutely.

 

[pemerton]

The reason I hate doing anything like this is that it makes the world unreliable. The world not only can, but will change every single time the DM thinks it's a good idea, at which point things like truth and consequences cease to have meaning. Consequences evaporate because the consequences are only what I secretly permit them to be. Truth evaporates because there are no facts--there are only provisional appearances that I, as DM, can secretly overwrite whenever and wherever I feel like.

<snip>

I have a much more stringent standard of "established in play" than you do, I think. That is, as soon as the clues are even brought to the party's attention, they're locked in. They exist in the world as objects (or states or whatever: see "knife wound didn't bleed, clearly a fake cause of death"), and the instant those objects are perceptible to the players, even if the players don't notice or mess up investigating them, they're established.

I found this puzzling. The first paragraph suggests that it is prep, not established in play, that is sacrosanct. But then you say it is established in play that is sacrosanct. But then you say that things are established even if the players don't notice them. I'm not 100% clear what you mean by the players don't notice them - that would make sense if you were showing your players pictures but that's a fairly distinctive and uncommon technique, and so I'm assuming that's not what you have in mind. So this looks like you're moving back from established in play (ie part of the shared fiction) to established by the GM as part of prep.

To elaborate: if you tell the players the knife wound didn't bleed, that's now part of the shared fiction. But if the only person who thinks clearly a fake cause of death is you, then that second bit is not part of the shared fiction. Eg maybe the players are thinking that the person who was stabbed was a zombie or spirit of some sort and hence didn't bleed. To hold fake cause of death as fixed would be holding on to your prep, not imposing a stringent standard of established in play.

Have I missed something?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Have I missed something?

It's entirely possible I have explained myself badly, or that I just have a not-fully-coherent idea of what I'm doing. (This is, after all, only the second campaign I've ever run.)

I consider both things--"the knife wound didn't bleed" and "clearly a fake cause of death"--to be established simultaneously. Now, of course, part of me thinking that was that I knew one of my players would know this. (His college education focused on biology and physical anthropology, and his character has been trained as a healer, so this was well-justified.) Even if I hadn't, though, I would still consider this part of the shared fiction, just one the players haven't fully understood. (I'll come back to this "even if I hadn't known this" later.)

Fully understanding something in the world is not required for it to be established--merely being furnished the opportunity to understand it is enough. I mentioned that untrusted-but-useful NPC earlier. He's concealing a LOT of things from the party, but very rarely (if ever) actually lies to them. Some of these concealed things, the party could learn more about, if they tried, but they haven't chosen to yet. That doesn't mean that these things are not already established, they just aren't well-known or well-understood yet. A fact can become well-known in the same moment that it became established (as often happens when I improvise things)

It may be that I am using the word "established" in a way that doesn't conform to the standard use of the term in technical circles, as I don't really engage with those things. For me, "established" fiction has been made available for discovery, even if it isn't actually discovered. Until they found the body, the knife-wound (and its status as a fake cause of death) could not possibly be discovered. Once they did find it, then its status as a fake could be possibly discovered. I consider that "establishing" that fact. If there is a different word for that "it can now potentially be learned," I could use it if you prefer?

Circling back to the hypothetical above, there are two things I could've done if I had thought my players would not know this was weird. The first would be to draw on the explicit expertise of the characters. One of them has lived much of his adult life as a hunter in the waste, hunting and butchering his own food. He would be well-acquainted with the fact that a wound made before (or at) the moment of death will bleed profusely, while a wound made a good while after the moment of death will just ooze blood. (That could, of course, still result in a lot of leaked blood depending on the orientation of the body--but in this case, the victim was seated in a chair, the knife sticking up out of his slumped back.) Thus, if I feared my players might miss the significance, I could have said, "Hey, Ranger: you've got enough hunting experience to know there's something fishy here. Stab wounds should have a lot more blood that that...unless they happen a while after death."

Alternatively, I could have just let it slide. Sometimes, the players don't figure everything out the first time. Sometimes, they don't figure everything out period. That's okay. Once the opportunity to know the truth (or falsehood) of something arises, it doesn't really matter, at least to me, whether they actually know it's true or not. What matters is always preserving the potential to learn it--or, if it does change, the potential to learn how and why it changes.

To be clear, here, when I say "potential to learn it," I am not speaking in an airy theoretical sense. This is not classic modal logic possibility, where there might be some accessible possible world where it could be learned, we just don't happen to live in that world. I'm talking something closer to physical or "nomic" possibility, in that the players have been furnished with a direct (though not necessarily flagged) opportunity to learn. Prior to having that opportunity, it is not meaningfully possible for the players to know anything. After that opportunity, even if it is bungled or overlooked or forgotten, it is meaningfully possible that they could know something.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm using a Wiki, which allows the players to create pages but the DM (me and the other DMs, I've got a group per campaign, for example here and here and here) can also create his own, and there is access control. That way, when the players of one campaign search, they will search only their pages, but when the DM searches, it's the whole campaign.

And I've just realised that it's been running for almost 20 years now...

Looks good!

I see the page framework is in English but the content is in French, and though I'm Canadian (supposedly a bilingual country) my French is pretty much non-existent meaning much of the content is lost on me.

 

[Lanefan]

I and @Hussar did not leave games because of "theoretical principles". We left because they were bad games that we were not enjoying. And leaving a game is not "behaving horribly".

That kinda depends. If the DM is a friend and perhaps a bit sensitive, leaving that game can put strains on the friendship no matter how diplomatic one is. Been there, done that.

The most awkward leaving-of-game I ever did was a situation where the game was being held at my home every week, and I-as-player wanted out. Not only did I have to tell the DM I wanted out, I had to ask that the game be held elsewhere. Yeah, that went over well.....

We don't owe our leisure time to others in the way that you seem to think; they don't have any moral demand on us.

Again, to some extent I'm not so sure. When I sign up for a campaign I feel I'm committing to it for the long haul; which means if I end up not enjoying it much I have to weigh that lack of enjoyment against the commitment I made, as if I leave I'll be breaking said commitment and that's not something I like doing.

At the very least I feel I should make sure there's someone ready and willing to take my place.

 

[pemerton]

If the DM is a friend and perhaps a bit sensitive, leaving that game can put strains on the friendship no matter how diplomatic one is. Been there, done that.

<snip>

When I sign up for a campaign I feel I'm committing to it for the long haul

The kobold GM was someone I had known for about 3 weeks - ie the duration of the campaign. The week after his players (including me) left his game, and he declined to join the new game we were starting, he seemed to have attracted a new group of players.

I think framing this as any sort of moral wrong is frankly asinine.

 

[pemerton]

@EzekielRaiden

Nothing in your post catches me by surprise. It's what I took you to be saying. But I still don't really get your use of established: if it's established that the wound didn't bleed, but no one at the table but you has speculated as to why, then that why is part of your notes or associated mental apparatus, but I don't see how it is part of any shared fiction.

I can draw a direct comparison to the starship murder mystery I've mentioned already upthread (I think): the murder was [SPOILERS FOR A 30+ YEAR OLD MEGATRAVELLER ADVENTURE] committed by the unrevealed twin sister of one of the NPC antagonists. A clue for that was that the revealed NPC ordered two dinners.

Once it is established in play that two dinners were ordered, that's that. But the fact that the reason for that is that she has her sister hiding in her cabin is not part of the shared fiction: it's part of my notes/prep/backstory. Now because of the sort of game I was running - ie a puzzle-solving whodunnit - I held that backstory solid from the start. The goal of play, for the players, was to try and infer to it from the clues I provided.

But in a different sort of play context - eg a fairly standard approach to Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World (in the latter case depending perhaps on details of prepped fronts and threats) - I might have introduced the two dinners, had in mind as a possible explanation to be revealed down the track that there is a twin sister, but changed my mind when the opportunity for some more dramatically fitting reveal if that suited the direction things took (eg maybe the revealed antagonist has been infected by an Alien and is eating more than normal!).

Nomic possibility isn't supersalient, I don't think, because it's rare that a fictional event admits of only one nomic explanation within the context of the overarching fiction. I've just flagged an alternative possibility, to that of a twin sister, to explain eating two meals. And as I already posted upthread I think there can be alternative nomic explanations of why a knife wound doesn't bleed - like that the victim had no blood for some other reason (eg some sort of unnatural spirit being, or an alien morphed into human form, or something else that fits the genre - relatively few RPGs seems to be run in super-realistic genres where no fantastic/supernatural explanation would be possible).

What is salient is what reason, if any, does a GM have (i) to do prep, and (ii) to hold onto it? These are extremely important questions from the point of view of approaching RPG, and different ways of answering them will produce very different RPG experiences (such as, to reiterate, the difference between spending a couple of relaxed hours solving a whodunnit, and getting caught up in the emotionally intense play typical of BW or AW).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Nomic possibility isn't supersalient, I don't think, because it's rare that a fictional event admits of only one nomic explanation within the context of the overarching fiction. I've just flagged an alternative possibility, to that of a twin sister, to explain eating two meals. And as I already posted upthread I think there can be alternative nomic explanations of why a knife wound doesn't bleed - like that the victim had no blood for some other reason (eg some sort of unnatural spirit being, or an alien morphed into human form, or something else that fits the genre - relatively few RPGs seems to be run in super-realistic genres where no fantastic/supernatural explanation would be possible).

I mean, yes, those are theoretically valid alternative explanations....but not actually valid in context. The victim was an earth genie, and not a noble one (he had a position within the royal court, but was not ascended as is required for being "noble" in this setting). Meaning, he had a body which functions exactly like any other body.

Like...these things you mention are exactly the "there's a justification why this isn't the case" things that I was talking about. Either I have to keep the thing as it is, or I have to give it a real, meaningful justification for why it's not. I can't just decide "nope, different perp, just 'cause I feel like it." Even if the reason I feel like it is because the players have come up with a really really cool theory, I have to actually do the work of justifying that theory. Otherwise, I'm pulling the wool over my players' eyes; I'm making them believe that there is a real, durable, understandable, predictable world, when there isn't one, there's just "stuff I said before" and "stuff I'm saying now," and the stuff I said before is literally 100% completely malleable if it sounds better for what I'm saying now.

What is salient is what reason, if any, does a GM have (i) to do prep, and (ii) to hold onto it? These are extremely important questions from the point of view of approaching RPG, and different ways of answering them will produce very different RPG experiences (such as, to reiterate, the difference between spending a couple of relaxed hours solving a whodunnit, and getting caught up in the emotionally intense play typical of BW or AW).

Well, for me, the answers, in order, are:
1. Because, by preparing, I have more to leverage. I can improvise, but I find that I only have a finite amount of improv in me before I have to tap out. This amount is usually sufficient to get me through the vast majority of sessions, but there have been a few times where I've had to say, "Alright guys, we'll break a little early today, and I'll do some prep work for next week." Or something to that effect. A secondary reason is, well, that the DW rules tell me to prep--one of my DM moves is "exploit your prep," after all. But I try to keep that prep work focused and relatively light, so that I can respond to what the players do, not make them jump through pre-established hoops.

2. I assume this means "adhere to" rather than "keep secret." My reason for adhering to prep is that I want my players to know that the world is (in some sense) real, durable, predictable. That they can always attempt to validly reason from the information they have. Any errors in that reasoning will never be because I altered anything about the world, but because they were mistaken about something--a mistake they could have avoided, it just happened to be the case that they did not.

This is why I use the murder-mystery example. If I switch up the killer solely because the players had a good idea, then one of two things happened. The first, as previously discussed, is that I screwed up really badly (and that isn't impossible! My players totally have outsmarted me, more than once!) The second is that I'm now changing what stuff is in the world, but in a way that the players should never be able to determine even in principle, because while last week they would have been wrong to accuse the Princess, this week they're now correct, but nothing about the things they found has changed in any way. The past events have changed, but literally all the evidence available to them has not.

That's why, as I've said, I see "my players have found a theory which is straight-up superior to mine, and which uses the exact same evidence to point to a different perpetrator" as such a massive failure on my part. It means that I have provided evidence that was supposed to enable clear, rational, reliable reasoning to determine the truth. Instead, not only did it fail to accomplish that task, but it actively works better to support something that is supposed to be false.

Like...if we turn this into a real-world thing, it would be as if a physics professor assigned a lab to her students that was supposed to demonstrate the conservation of energy, and instead ended up giving the appearance (under rigorous and well-performed scientific analysis) that energy can be created from nothing, repeatably, every time they conduct this experiment as presented. That would be an absolute, unequivocal, abject failure of an experiment! It has not only failed to demonstrate a true thing, it has convinced the students that the exact opposite of it is true!

Edit:
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I try to avoid over-prepping as much as possible. If I haven't got prepped evidence to examine, then it literally cannot be the case that I am giving them evidence that doesn't "work." The players and I are discovering, together, what evidence "works." When I do prep evidence in advance, as I did for this murder mystery, I put a great deal of effort into ensuring that, though it may be a challenge, it should be possible to piece together the truth, just like a good mystery novel. Otherwise, one runs into the problem that Asimov was presented on the subject of science fiction mysteries: that is, that it is not possible to write a "fair" sci-fi mystery, because the author can always pull out some bogus technobabble to justify whatever conclusion they want, and the reader can't really argue because that's how sci-fi works. I don't want my game to ever be the tabletop equivalent of a bogus mystery novel, so I either avoid unnecessary prep (so that I'm learning the truth right alongside my players), or very thoroughly review my prep to make sure it "works."

 

[pemerton]

@EzekielRaiden, I hope to get a chance to reply more fully tomorrow. But I just wanted to pick up on the first thing that struck me in your post:

I mean, yes, those are theoretically valid alternative explanations....but not actually valid in context. The victim was an earth genie, and not a noble one (he had a position within the royal court, but was not ascended as is required for being "noble" in this setting). Meaning, he had a body which functions exactly like any other body

<snip>

I can't just decide "nope, different perp, just 'cause I feel like it.

This all seems to be sticking to prep, not to what is established during play.

 

[jmartkdr2]

No the context is important. way back many pages ago someone asked a question along the lines of what a game where a gm doesn't railroad & doesn't use xyz type things only to have another poster say that it would probably look like one of these systems. THat of course resulted in the "So - to not railroad, don't play DnD?" I quoted where I noted the kinds of mechanical differences. tht cause that

So the difference between railroading and not railroading is a system difference? Like, you need to change to core assumptions of DnD (the core game loop, really) to not railroad?

Given that "railroading" is a pejorative term, whether you want it to be or not, that's a rather powerful claim to make. It's pretty easy to see why this reads as "Dungeons and Dragons is badwrongfun."