D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Crimson Longinus]

It seems the default assumption when it comes to GM fiat or railroading is that it is done to minimize player agency at the expense of the players. This makes sense, as it maybe speaks to rpghorrorstories we may have experienced at some point in the past. But I get just as annoyed, as a player, when I feel DMs are fudging things in our favor. I'm most content when the world feels neutral: reacting to our character's actions but not revolving around them. For example, and per the earlier (or in another thread) example of "I search the room"


My character may be a rouge who wants to do rouge-ish things but this feels...forced.

But does it feel forced when you're playing that rogue? Presumably you suspected that there might be trap as you declared you search for one, so finding it would seem perfectly natural.

Now sure, sometimes there might be dead ends and wild goose chases that lead nowhere and not everything needs to have meaning. But as a player I feel that one of the most frustrating experiences is when you can in theory do anything, but you manage to miss the interesting thing and the GM just lets you aimlessly wander around doing inconsequential things that lead nowhere. I hate this and one of my personal guiding principles as GM is 'whatever you do, something interesting will happen.' Now granted, usually have pretty rich environments planned and plant plenty of hooks, so normally interesting things will follow naturally. But if it would seem that the players would fixate on 'wrong thing' that is about to go nowhere, then that is the instance I would deploy illusionism/fiat/force/whatever to make it significant. I am fully convinced that it results better player experience.

 

[iserith]

It seems the default assumption when it comes to GM fiat or railroading is that it is done to minimize player agency at the expense of the players. This makes sense, as it maybe speaks to rpghorrorstories we may have experienced at some point in the past. But I get just as annoyed, as a player, when I feel DMs are fudging things in our favor. I'm most content when the world feels neutral: reacting to our character's actions but not revolving around them. For example, and per the earlier (or in another thread) example of "I search the room"


My character may be a rouge who wants to do rouge-ish things but this feels...forced.

This (the tweet) feels gross to me as a player and as a DM both.

 

[pemerton]

In another recent thread I said a bit about GM improvisation of setting:

A sandbox, as I understand it and as I believe @Manbearcat understands it, depends upon the GM establishing a relatively large amount of setting/backstory in advance. The players, in play, declare actions - especially actions of the form We go to such-and-such a place and We look at such-and-such a thing - and in response to these declarations the GM (i) provides the players with information that the GM takes from their notes, and/or (ii) frames the PCs into scenes/situations that were latent in those notes, but become "activated" in virtue of the PCs turning up at, and/or looking into, that place.

The best-known model/example of this sort of thing is a classic map-and-key dungeon, and the quintessential example of an action declaration that triggers the "activation" of a situation hitherto latent in the GM's notes is We open the door - what do we see?

Another feature of this sort of approach is that the pre-authored backstory provides answers to action resolution beyond the activation of hitherto latent situations. Eg if the GM has described a table, and the players say We look under the table to see if anything is hidden there, the GM generally responds to that action declaration by reading of their notes. (Because notes often run out, especially for minor details, many GMs have a range of techniques used for off-the-cuff extrapolation eg random charts to see what is in a kitchen drawer, or making something up with the goal that it be colourful and entertaining - eg Under the table you see some crudely scratched graffiti - "Shagrat sucks goat b___s" - but not be misleading or confusing vis-a-vis the rest of the fiction the GM has prepared in their notes.

what is the point of the improvisation? And what principles govern it? I gave an example of the graffiti under the table where the point is to give a non-boring payoff for the players' action declaration "We look under the table" and the main principle is don't introduce anything that will be misleading or confusing relative to the prepared notes. The upshot <snippage> is a bit of colour. In No Myth play, the point of improvisation is generally to drive play forward by engaging players' evinced priorities/goals/aspirations for their PCs, and the principles are things like go where the action is, apply pressure, honour success and failure, and in 4e at least say 'yes' or roll the dice.

The GM who introduces a trap because they think it would be fun given that the rogue player decided to declare a search is going a bit beyond the graffiti, because it is more than mere colour - but how much more? That might depend on the details of the trap.

There is probably also a greater risk of misleading and confusing by including a trap rather than graffiti, but that is very contextual.

We've had various notions of force in this thread. I tend to think of it in the same way Ron Edwards does:

Force: the final authority that any person who is not playing a particular player-character has over decisions and actions made by that player-character. This is distinct from information that the GM imparts or chooses not to impart to play . . .

Force techniques include IIEE [ie, roughly, action declaration and resolution] manipulation, fudged/ignored rolls, perception management, clue moving, scene framing as a form of reducing options, directions as to character's actions using voiced and unvoiced signals, modifying features of various NPCs during play, and authority over using textual rules. . . .

Force Techniques often include permitting pseudo-decisions . . . Also, Force Techniques do vary in how flexible a scene's outcome is permitted to be. Some GMs (to use the classic single-GM context) might do anything up to actually picking up your dice for you in order for you to talk to "that guy," or he might let the characters miss the clue, either 'porting it to another character or letting its absence go ahead and affect the outcome. . . .

Force: Originally called "GM-oomph" (Ron Edwards), then "GM-Force" (Mike Holmes) - Control over the protagonist characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. The Force is an especially good term for this phenomenon, due to (1) its sense of imposed mandate and strength-in-control (not just input), and (2) its parodic Star Wars connotation - whatever you want the plot to be, "use the Force!"​

So is the improvised trap an instance of Force? It is not reducing options or directing actions. It is really a type of framing technique - treating the declaration I search the room as an implicit request for a scene with a trap in it. (Contrast: I search the room to see if it is the trapped treasure chamber we've been looking for - typically that is not a request for a particular framing, it's an attempt to gather information about the GM's pre-authored backstory.)

Part of the issue here is that in D&D search/perception checks play a wide range of possible functions and the rulebooks don't call any of them out. Without knowing much more about context, my default assumption is that introducing the trap need not be, and probably is not, Force. It's more like accepting a suggestion/request to have a scene with a trap in it.

 

[Mannahnin]

Force is a singular instance of a GM subordinating a player’s thematic/strategic/tactical input or subbing the GM’s own say for the “system’s say” (when by rule and principle, the system should have its say), thus sufficiently wresting control of the trajectory of play from one party to the GM.

A Railroad is a sufficient number/magnitude of instances of Force (could be in sequence, could be spread out, could be the magnitude) to pass the player’s particular litmus test.

I think these are a pretty nice, succinct pair of definitions.

For me, Railroading definitionally involves resistance to and negation of player choices.

Player: "Hey, I just thought of this alternate way we could [logically, in accord with the established fiction] obtain the McGuffin!"
DM: "Nope, won't work because [newly invented reason]".)

Players: "This town and its elders suck. We'd rather skip town than help them with their orc problem. Wasn't the mage's guild back in Restenford looking for someone to capture a manticore? Let's go do that!"
DM: [negates all options to leave the town and follow a different plot thread]

I agree that Force is not always bad, and can be used judiciously to make the game more fun. But Railroading is when it's done on an ongoing basis, in a way that consistently forces the players regardless of their expressed or intended choices.

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton

My issue with the above is as follows:

1) I saw another instance of a tweet by this person that was basically a self-gratified deployment of Force.

2) Given the context of that prior tweet + the framing of this tweet + the framing of D&D dungeon crawling generally (with skilled play as the apex priority) = my sense that this was a themed/stocked/mapped/keyed dungeon that was changed on the fly as a response to player input (thereby calling into question the legitimacy of all dungeoneering apparatus in this instance of play…thereby de-legitimizing skilled play as the apex priority of the delve).

If the above is not true (eg, this was basically content generation in the form of PBtA in a no myth dungeon experience whereby a player is “siting” this moment as “let’s have dungeon delve conflict”), then I feel differently about the excerpt.

But, given all of the above, my expectation is that excerpt depicts the former; players expecting dungeoneering and skilled play and the GM deployed the above.

This is a sort of play priority issue like the Extended Rest vs Storyteller Imperative though nuanced differently.

@Campbell might call this “GM mistakenly following breadcrumbs to player-side railroading (where the player was actually genuinely dungeoneering and expecting skilled play priorities governing the instance of play).”

 

[pemerton]

@Manbearcat, I don't know any context for that particular tweet beyond what I've just read in your post.

As you know, I think a fair bit of D&D play is "illusionistic" in the following sense: it presents itself as map-and-key resolution "skilled play" dungeoncrawling, but in the actual moment of play the notes are treated as suggestions rather than binding on scene-framing, and a fair bit of consequence narration is likewise just made up.

Notionally, in this sort of play decisions about where the PCs go and what they look at should "matter" because they are the triggers for activating the situations latent in the prepared backstory. But in practice the GM's decision-making often overrides or at least heavily supplements them. That looks like Force.

Except for one possible wrinkle: if everyone at the table knows that this is going on then are those decisions thematically significant? Or mere colour? In which (latter) case, maybe it's not Force after all? I don't think Edwards's definition is tight enough to really let us unpack this in some canonical fashion; in any event, the same Edwards essay I linked to just upthread has this:

Force (Illusionist or not) isn't necessarily dyfunctional: it works well when the GM's main role is to make sure that the transcript ends up being a story, with little pressure or expectation for the players to do so beyond accepting the GM's Techniques. I think that a shared "agreement to be deceived" is typically involved, i.e., the players agree not to look behind the Black Curtain. I suggest that people who like Illusionist play are very good at establishing and abiding by their tolerable degree of Force . . .​

So I think it's clear that Edwards wants to use Force to cover contexts where the surface-level appearance of thematic significance is undercut by the reality - which every knows but doesn't talk about overtly during play - that the GM is making stuff up.

In the sort of D&D play I'm describing, then, we can say that the GM uses improvisation as an alternative to map-and-key resolution and framing, while still maintaining the appearance/illusion of map-and-key resolution.

I would assume that this has been a good number of D&D tables, possibly even a majority of them, since some time in the mid 1980s.

 

[niklinna]

So is the improvised trap an instance of Force? It is not reducing options or directing actions. It is really a type of framing technique - treating the declaration I search the room as an implicit request for a scene with a trap in it. (Contrast: I search the room to see if it is the trapped treasure chamber we've been looking for - typically that is not a request for a particular framing, it's an attempt to gather information about the GM's pre-authored backstory.)

Part of the issue here is that in D&D search/perception checks play a wide range of possible functions and the rulebooks don't call any of them out. Without knowing much more about context, my default assumption is that introducing the trap need not be, and probably is not, Force. It's more like accepting a suggestion/request to have a scene with a trap in it.

This is interesting in comparison to the earlier example of players looking under a table and the GM inserting that graffiti about Shagrat, just so they find something colorful and entertaining. A trap can be a minor detail that doesn't affect the fiction (much), but provides something colorful and entertaining (at least for the rogue). That "(much)" is significant though—there's a scale of effect on fiction, it isn't always a binary thing.

 

[Manbearcat]

This is interesting in comparison to the earlier example of players looking under a table and the GM inserting that graffiti about Shagrat, just so they find something colorful and entertaining. A trap can be a minor detail that doesn't affect the fiction (much), but provides something colorful and entertaining (at least for the rogue). That "(much)" is significant though—there's a scale of effect on fiction, it isn't always a binary thing.

It really depends upon what the play priorities are in question here.

What @pemerton is depicting above is basically an instance of Story Now techniques, either "player-authored kicker" or "ask questions and use the answers"

In a No (or very low) Myth Story Now game that isn't underwritten by the skilled play priorities of competitive dungeoneering, "I'm checking for traps" is the equivalent of either of the two above. The player is siting this moment as an arena of conflict. In Dungeon World, they would then make the Trap Expert move if they're a Thief or the Discern Realities move if not. Then we would collectively find out what happens (and the conflict might snowball). The same thing happens with Spout Lore and other items. They are as much content generators as they are action resolution.

In skilled play D&D dungeoneering with a themed/stocked/mapped/keyed dungeon, that move is just basically a Thief (etc) spending their Exploration Turn. If there is no trap there, the cost is time (resource attrition in the form of light and a tick on the Wandering Monster clock). If there is a trap there, then its good return on investment (as they might evade it now).

But some third way that is kind of a shifting version of the two? That really ends up being neither because (a) you can't know at any given moment of play whether this instance is governed by skilled play or Story Now imperatives and, because of that, (b) the input + output regime and feedback loops of skilled play is perturbed...the competitive integrity foundation upon which distilling skilled play (vs less skilled or unskilled) is built becomes destabilized.

 

[niklinna]

It really depends upon what the play priorities are in question here.

What @pemerton is depicting above is basically an instance of Story Now techniques, either "player-authored kicker" or "ask questions and use the answers"

In a No (or very low) Myth Story Now game that isn't underwritten by the skilled play priorities of competitive dungeoneering, "I'm checking for traps" is the equivalent of either of the two above. The player is siting this moment as an arena of conflict. In Dungeon World, they would then make the Trap Expert move if they're a Thief or the Discern Realities move if not. Then we would collectively find out what happens (and the conflict might snowball). The same thing happens with Spout Lore and other items. They are as much content generators as they are action resolution.

In skilled play D&D dungeoneering with a themed/stocked/mapped/keyed dungeon, that move is just basically a Thief (etc) spending their Exploration Turn. If there is no trap there, the cost is time (resource attrition in the form of light and a tick on the Wandering Monster clock). If there is a trap there, then its good return on investment (as they might evade it now).

But some third way that is kind of a shifting version of the two? That really ends up being neither because (a) you can't know at any given moment of play whether this instance is governed by skilled play or Story Now imperatives and, because of that, (b) the input + output regime and feedback loops of skilled play is perturbed...the competitive integrity foundation upon which distilling skilled play (vs less skilled or unskilled) is built becomes destabilized.

Ah yeah, this opens the matter up quite a bit. It was the "colorful and entertaining" qualifier (otherwise non-consequential) that initially prompted my comment. Knowing what kind of b___s Shagrat sucks is irrelevant to either No/Low Myth Story Now or skillled play/competitive dungeoneering (usually, and especially if intended as such by the GM). But the second it's about something that could be consequential—however minor the consequence—priorities become very significant. I had the impression that the GM who inserted the trap—it was a tweet after all—simply told the rogue, "You find a trap and disable it", just so they could feel good about doing their job. Mildly colorful and entertaining (for the rogue player), but a break in the border between those two approaches to play. And, well, you probably had an emotional reaction to the phrase "just so they could feel good about doing their job"....

 

[pemerton]

I had the impression that the GM who inserted the trap—it was a tweet after all—simply told the rogue, "You find a trap and disable it

I wasn't sure about the and disable it. At first I thought maybe that was implied; but then when I wrote my posts (563 and 566 not far upthread) I just focused on the you find a trap. That's why I said "it is more than mere colour - but how much more? That might depend on the details of the trap." Because disarming it, or perhaps narrating how all the PCs walk carefully past it without triggering it, is a tiny bit of non-colour but not-very-big-deal action resolution.

Now, a content warning: the next bit of this post is rather Forge-y:

It really depends upon what the play priorities are in question here.

What @pemerton is depicting above is basically an instance of Story Now techniques, either "player-authored kicker" or "ask questions and use the answers"

In a No (or very low) Myth Story Now game that isn't underwritten by the skilled play priorities of competitive dungeoneering, "I'm checking for traps" is the equivalent of either of the two above.

<snip>

In skilled play D&D dungeoneering with a themed/stocked/mapped/keyed dungeon, that move is just basically a Thief (etc) spending their Exploration Turn

<snip>

But some third way that is kind of a shifting version of the two? That really ends up being neither

Correct - it's neither "story now" nor "step on up"! It's a third type of play priority, where the goal is to "be" one's character wandering through a dungeon having an exciting time finding and disarming traps.

I found this passage from someone on the interwebs:

The key word is "genre," which in this case refers to a certain combination of the five elements [character, setting, situation, system, colour] as well as an unstated Theme. How do they get to this goal? All rely heavily on inspiration or kewlness as the big motivator, to get the content processed via art, prose style, and more. "Story," in this context, refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of recognizing and enjoying the genre during play.

This sort of game design will be familiar to almost anyone, represented by Arrowflight (Setting), Pax Draconis (Setting), Godlike (Setting), Sun & Storm (Setting + Situation), Dreamwalker (Situation), The Godsend Agenda (Character-Setting tug-of-war), The Collectors (applied Fudge, Situation + Character), Heartquest (applied Fudge; Character), Children of the Sun (Setting), Fvlminata (Setting), and Dread (Situation + Character), Fading Suns (Setting), Earthdawn (Setting), Space: 1889 (Setting), Mutant Chronicles (Setting), Mage first edition (Character), Mage second edition (Setting), Ironclaw (Setting), and Continuum (Setting with a touch of System). Many Fantasy Heartbreakers fall into this category, almost all Setting-based. Some of the best-known games of this type include Tekumel, Jorune, Traveller (specifically in its mid-80s through mid-90s form), Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Nephilim, Feng Shui, the various secondary settings for AD&D2 like Al-Qadim, and quite a few D20 or WEG games which rely on licensing.​

In this particular case, the emphasised elements are probably Situation + Character, but if it's heavy FR then maybe we have Setting + Character (and the reason for narrating the trap is to inject a little bit more character-relevant situation and/or colour).