D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[tetrasodium]

You took my comment about skilled play being about character development and narrative arcs and instead turned it into a statement that you'll allow players to have their own goals so long as they fit acceptably within your game as you've established it. Okay, I think you missed the point, but sure, that's a thing you can do.

Cab you elaborate on that point? I'm not sure what point your trying to make. I think that it might be one of those things where the back & forth needs to be traced back too far to see it in the full context

 

[robconley]

Further, I think that non-skillful play is rather badly looked upon at many tables. The person who constantly forgets abilities, or does things that are poorly conceived, or forgets things that could save another party member generally seems to get short shrift and isn't praised for avoiding skilled play. Heck, clever use of abilities in unexpected ways by players often gets held out as awesome moments of play! What is this if not skilled play?

I think most get the difference between a players doing foolish things and roleplaying as a character doing foolish things. Why? Because in most cases when somebody takes the effort to act as a character has a difference personality it becomes quickly obvious what is happening. It has the same trajectory as learning about an individual a real life small social group. And it distinct from who the player is in life.

However there are things a players can do to make this easier and quicker when they want to roleplay. Speaking in a different accent or voice helps a lot as it clearly indicates to others when the player is roleplaying or acting as themselves. Talking about the character out of game to let the group in on some of the plans the player have for roleplaying the character. And so on.

Also keep in mind roleplaying as a different personality is a niche taste. Just as totally focusing on the mechanics of the games as a players is a niche tastes. Most folks I found wind up roleplaying a version of themselves with the abilities and limits of the character generated. Maybe one or two quirks that are different based on the character background. Using their personal skills in coming up with tactics to further their goals.

Personally I find zero difference between the difference types when it comes to running my campaign. The only hard and fast rules that I need to make things work regard of the system I am using is that the players engage with the setting of the campaign as if they are as the character and first person roleplaying.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

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.

Exactly, which is why people talking about "player skill" overmuch irks me without fail. Player skill is manipulating the GM into not calling for a die roll or reducing the DC until the dice are superfluous. Player skill is an undeniable aspect of D&D (it's a tactical miniatures game, no matter how you slice it), and the game has a very long tradition of mingling roleplaying with player knowledge and challenge-oriented gameplay, but it is grating when GMs act like "duh, you shouldn't have done that" when player characters make a "mistake" because there was a miscommunication or lack of proper information conveyed.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think most get the difference between a players doing foolish things and roleplaying as a character doing foolish things. Why? Because in most cases when somebody takes the effort to act as a character has a difference personality it becomes quickly obvious what is happening. It has the same trajectory as learning about an individual a real life small social group. And it distinct from who the player is in life.

This is the excuse "I'm just roleplaying what my character would do" that also quite often decried in threads because it is a cover for disruptive or antisocial behaviors. Given I'm speaking to cases of players that continuously exhibit poor play with regard to skill, it's even further removed from applicable to what I'm saying. This isn't a limited set of "Oh, yeah, I Bob is afraid of spiders" thing. So, unless you're using roleplaying to justify a player that never learns their abilities, never pays attention to the situation, or that routinely makes poor choices for whatever reason (funny, etc.), then this doesn't really follow my point.

However there are things a players can do to make this easier and quicker when they want to roleplay. Speaking in a different accent or voice helps a lot as it clearly indicates to others when the player is roleplaying or acting as themselves. Talking about the character out of game to let the group in on some of the plans the player have for roleplaying the character. And so on.

Also keep in mind roleplaying as a different personality is a niche taste. Just as totally focusing on the mechanics of the games as a players is a niche tastes. Most folks I found wind up roleplaying a version of themselves with the abilities and limits of the character generated. Maybe one or two quirks that are different based on the character background. Using their personal skills in coming up with tactics to further their goals.

And this is just talking to your personal preferences for roleplaying.

Personally I find zero difference between the difference types when it comes to running my campaign. The only hard and fast rules that I need to make things work regard of the system I am using is that the players engage with the setting of the campaign as if they are as the character and first person roleplaying.

And this is making normative statements that I disagree with. In order of mild to violent disagreement, it's:

1. (mild) players have to engage the setting material for a good game. I disagree, players can instead propose things that they care about and the game can be about those things and good. The GM can start a game No Myth, ie, with few to no setting details, and fill it in in play and this can be good. Having prepped setting is not a requirement, and engagement with setting is similarly not a requirement This is sticking to D&D, even, and not mentioning other systems.

2. (moderate) players have to speak in 1st person for roleplaying. I don't find this to be necessary or even enhancing at all to get great characters well evoked. It's a thespian hangup to the hobby. Some people can evoke awesome characters and have zero interest in playacting. My engagement with playacting is hit and miss. Some of the most evocative moments of character from me involve third person description. Playacting is a fetish, not a requirement for good and engaging roleplay.

3. (violent) The claim that system doesn't really matter. This is totally ignoring just how much system can impact play. Sure, there's not much difference between D&D and CoC, for instance, but there's a good bit of space between D&D and FATE, and even more between D&D and Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. There's space between Blades and AW as well, and certainly between those two and FATE. If you try to run Apocalypse World with your claims here, that game will fall flat on it's face. Because of the system, and the fact that AW is aligned to entirely different play goals that what you're espousing here align to.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Exactly, which is why people talking about "player skill" overmuch irks me without fail. Player skill is manipulating the GM into not calling for a die roll or reducing the DC until the dice are superfluous. Player skill is an undeniable aspect of D&D (it's a tactical miniatures game, no matter how you slice it), and the game has a very long tradition of mingling roleplaying with player knowledge and challenge-oriented gameplay, but it is grating when GMs act like "duh, you shouldn't have done that" when player characters make a "mistake" because there was a miscommunication or lack of proper information conveyed.

Huh. We have very different ideas of what player skill is in 5e. To me, it's represented by pacing your spell slots and abilities. It's about manipulating the fiction to get rests when needed. It's about engaging with the play to achieve your character goals. I find it to be rather cynical to the system to categorize player skill as bonus stacking and playing the GM. To me, if those are on the table as primary modes of engagement, we're already in the weeds -- something has already gone wrong.

In other words, some of my 5e games focus very heavily on skilled play, but they also focus heavily on map and key style resolution and marshalling resources and engaging in player-side pacing. In these, most of my play as GM is very player-facing, with only notes kept secret until engaged.

 

[robconley]

Deleted

 

[DEFCON 1]

So, you aren't skeeved out by skilled play per se, but rather by game modes that do not align with your play goals? And, while you support many of the things that skilled play represents (solid use of rules, good use of resources to solve challenges, leaning into genre conceits to achieve goals) you've decided to associate skilled play primarily with these particular game modes and view any mention of skilled play as supportive of those game modes?

Play that doesn't align to the table is a problem with play goals, not in skilled play.

Yes, "skilled play" might have a lot of different definitions depending on who is the one calling it that. But I tried to make it clear what I was seeing as "skilled play" and it was that view that I thought was lame. But this is no different than the people who say they get ill from the ideas of "force" and "railroading"-- both of those do not have one specific agreed-upon definition either and indeed one person's railroad is another person's not-railroad. So saying you hate "railroading" or the "use of force" in an RPG does not in any way actually define what it is you hate. You'd have to actually delve into the weeds. Which is what I tried to do with my use of "Skilled play".

If someone wants to say skilled play isn't inherently a bad thing and then defines it in such a way that is different than how I was using it... more power to them. But doing that ain't changing my own feelings on the matter.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes, "skilled play" might have a lot of different definitions depending on who is the one calling it that. But I tried to make it clear what I was seeing as "skilled play" and it was that view that I thought was lame. But this is no different than the people who say they get ill from the ideas of "force" and "railroading"-- both of those do not have one specific agreed-upon definition either and indeed one person's railroad is another person's not-railroad. So saying you hate "railroading" or the "use of force" in an RPG does not in any way actually define what it is you hate. You'd have to actually delve into the weeds. Which is what I tried to do with my use of "Skilled play".

If someone wants to say skilled play isn't inherently a bad thing and then defines it in such a way that is different than how I was using it... more power to them. But doing that ain't changing my own feelings on the matter.

Actually, Force is pretty well defined. Railroading isn't, but the concept isn't questionable. If I tell someone railroading they know what I'm talking about, at least in general.

However, the use you're making of "skilled play" is pretty divergent. You're using it to mean powergaming and focusing on mechanical abuses of the system to "win". This isn't how it's used by most people, they just call that powergaming. And, again, that problem is mostly about play goal misalignment at the table or a system misalignment with the table's play goals. Insisting that you get to just say "skilled play" is bad because you have the idiosyncratic definition is kinda weird.

I mean, in the Blades game I play in, we just leveraged two NPCs we knew to get an advantage for us on a score. We didn't have to do this, but doing so is skilled play -- we utilized our resources to maximize the likelihood we achieved our goal. In fiction, we chatted up one of the PC's good friends who was a bouncer at a hotel to find out who the clerk on duty that night was, and we also chatted up a Bluecoat Sergeant to get the skinny on some notables from his district. Later, we leveraged the existing fiction of student unrest and demonstrations about the working conditions in Coalridge to enflame them and get a diversionary protest started so we had a good excuse to reroute a cab. All of this is skilled play. None of it involves numbers. Kinda hard to say that this is abusive or not what you want from an RPG -- talking to friends for info and using the established fiction to create an opportunity, yeah? We could have not done this, but would have been in a worse position going into and during the score and had to use PC resources instead (which, since that score resulted in two of the three of us Trauma-ing out at the finale, would likely have meant failure).

 

[DEFCON 1]

Actually, Force is pretty well defined. Railroading isn't, but the concept isn't questionable. If I tell someone railroading they know what I'm talking about, at least in general.

However, the use you're making of "skilled play" is pretty divergent. You're using it to mean powergaming and focusing on mechanical abuses of the system to "win". This isn't how it's used by most people, they just call that powergaming. And, again, that problem is mostly about play goal misalignment at the table or a system misalignment with the table's play goals. Insisting that you get to just say "skilled play" is bad because you have the idiosyncratic definition is kinda weird.

I mean, in the Blades game I play in, we just leveraged two NPCs we knew to get an advantage for us on a score. We didn't have to do this, but doing so is skilled play -- we utilized our resources to maximize the likelihood we achieved our goal. In fiction, we chatted up one of the PC's good friends who was a bouncer at a hotel to find out who the clerk on duty that night was, and we also chatted up a Bluecoat Sergeant to get the skinny on some notables from his district. Later, we leveraged the existing fiction of student unrest and demonstrations about the working conditions in Coalridge to enflame them and get a diversionary protest started so we had a good excuse to reroute a cab. All of this is skilled play. None of it involves numbers. Kinda hard to say that this is abusive or not what you want from an RPG -- talking to friends for info and using the established fiction to create an opportunity, yeah? We could have not done this, but would have been in a worse position going into and during the score and had to use PC resources instead (which, since that score resulted in two of the three of us Trauma-ing out at the finale, would likely have meant failure).

 

[robconley]

This is the excuse "I'm just roleplaying what my character would do" that also quite often decried in threads because it is a cover for disruptive or antisocial behaviors. Given I'm speaking to cases of players that continuously exhibit poor play with regard to skill, it's even further removed from applicable to what I'm saying. This isn't a limited set of "Oh, yeah, I Bob is afraid of spiders" thing. So, unless you're using roleplaying to justify a player that never learns their abilities, never pays attention to the situation, or that routinely makes poor choices for whatever reason (funny, etc.), then this doesn't really follow my point.

It not a valid assumption that inability to learn game mechanics and continually exhibiting poor play a result of disruptive or antisocial behavior. That is a simplistic thesis. Reality is more nuanced and each situation is unique. I encountered and had in my campaigns many players who are not disruptive or antisocial yet never personally understood tactics or how the game mechanics work. Who when left to their own devices make very poor choices.

And this is just talking to your personal preferences for roleplaying.

Read I wrote again. While I have my preferences, I didn't state what they were in my reply.

However there are things a players can do to make this easier and quicker when they want to roleplay. Speaking in a different accent or voice helps a lot as it clearly indicates to others when the player is roleplaying or acting as themselves. Talking about the character out of game to let the group in on some of the plans the player have for roleplaying the character. And so on.

I guess I wasn't clear, the point of this is to communicate clearly to other around the table as to what you are doing in context. The examples are specific to roleplaying a character with a personality different than your own. And based in part on what I have observed others doing that was successful in keeping the session fun.

Also keep in mind roleplaying as a different personality is a niche taste. Just as totally focusing on the mechanics of the games as a players is a niche tastes. Most folks I found wind up roleplaying a version of themselves with the abilities and limits of the character generated. Maybe one or two quirks that are different based on the character background. Using their personal skills in coming up with tactics to further their goals.

This is an observation not a preference. Your observations may differ. But dismissing my points as "preferences" is a poor way to support your thesis.

And this is making normative statements that I disagree with. In order of mild to violent disagreement, it's:

1. (mild) players have to engage the setting material for a good game. I disagree, players can instead propose things that they care about and the game can be about those things and good. The GM can start a game No Myth, ie, with few to no setting details, and fill it in in play and this can be good. Having prepped setting is not a requirement, and engagement with setting is similarly not a requirement This is sticking to D&D, even, and not mentioning other systems.

I disagree, the point of RPGs is to pretend to be a character doing something interesting within a setting. Otherwise it is a game that is little different than Shadowrun Crossfire, Gloomhaven, or Tomb. If you don't have a setting then the players don't have anything on which to make decisions as their character. However in practice all games that market themselves as RPGs have a setting however loosely defined. Even Generics such as GURPS, Hero System, and Savage Worlds make assumptions about the settings that will be used with the game. Giving each of these a particular bias that they are known for.

And this is making normative statements that I disagree with.

What I weigh and talk about is how much work it takes to do X in the context of gaming.The next I weigh are consequences of doing X. I leave it up to the reader to decide whether putting that amount of work and those consequences are thing they would enjoy. Whether what I talk about save them time and work for their hobby. For example my comments on cues to to let other know you are roleplaying a character and when you are not. This goes to what one has to do to keep things enjoyable for a small group working together on a hobby.

So yes I am making normative statements based on specific criteria, for specific reasons, based on things I have done or observed. I replied your post to point out that there other reasons why a players appears to have poor skills or doesn't know the mechanics. If you are not convinced then so be it. If you find my observations at odds with your own that is fine it is a big hobby and a big world.

2. (moderate) players have to speak in 1st person for roleplaying. I don't find this to be necessary or even enhancing at all to get great characters well evoked. It's a thespian hangup to the hobby. Some people can evoke awesome characters and have zero interest in playacting. My engagement with playacting is hit and miss. Some of the most evocative moments of character from me involve third person description. Playacting is a fetish, not a requirement for good and engaging roleplay.

It is a common misconception that first person roleplaying requires one to be a thespian. It still works out the same in my campaigns if you interact as yourself with the abilities of the character.

The reason for this that without this the average player is more apt to treat their character as a piece on a game board and make decisions that don't make sense for the setting if you were there witnessing the action. As a result the experience feel more like playing a board game than tabletop roleplaying.

To be clear this is an average. Observed across many campaigns and many players over the decades. I can't go to a convention, game store, or play with a group and say for a specific group or individual "Yup if you don't first person roleplay, the session will feel like a boardgame.". It doesn't work like that. I do the things I do to increase the odds of people having fun while pretending to be characters doing interesting things in a setting. But odds are not equate to certainty. If things don't work out then it time to have a out of game discussion as a group and hash things out one way or the other. I had talks where it was decided that the campaign I ran wasn't for them. I had talks where it was decided that most of the campaign was fun but it would be better with another set of rules. And so on.

I am quite comfortable in asserting that if the goal is for the players to feel like if they actually visited the setting and had interesting adventures as bunch of characters. Then first person roleplaying whether one choose to be a thespian on down the scale to where one is just playing a version of themselves with different abilities is the most likely way to make it happen.

3. (violent) The claim that system doesn't really matter. This is totally ignoring just how much system can impact play. Sure, there's not much difference between D&D and CoC, for instance, but there's a good bit of space between D&D and FATE, and even more between D&D and Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World. There's space between Blades and AW as well, and certainly between those two and FATE. If you try to run Apocalypse World with your claims here, that game will fall flat on it's face. Because of the system, and the fact that AW is aligned to entirely different play goals that what you're espousing here align to.

What makes a roleplaying game is focus not mechanics. Focus on fighting out battles as giant robots you have Battletech, focus on playing characters in the time of the Succession Wars who happen to pilot giant robots into combat, you have mechwarrior. The authors of FATE, Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World focus on the different things beyond pretending to be a character having adventures in a setting.

Railroading, illusionism, and participation as outlined in the OP are only relevant when the focus on pretending to be characters having adventures in a setting. FATE, Blade in Dark, and Apocalypse World have their own considerations when used for a campaign as the authors intended.

In most of them railroading is all but impossible because the campaign is built around collaboration at every step. The same with skilled play in these games. The skills prized are creative cooperation and storytelling not whether one learns the the mechanics and tactics well enough to use the various combos of abilities to win encounters.