D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it's bad GMing to narrate giant eagle nests when you're not interested in eagles as a threat/opportunity, but rather think that's just a naturalistic response to fantasy mountains.

I am not sure what you mean here? Would it be fine if they were, I don't know, mountain goats? Or boulders? Certainly some things are just part of the narration because those are the sort of things such places have?

 

[pemerton]

in a more prepped game, the mere fact that you are inserting clues pointing back is considered GM Force.

By whom?

If the prepped backstory includes a clue, and the GM reveals that clue when the players declare an appropriate action (eg We look at place X) then where is the force?

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

This was unclear, and I don't see how this does anything but directly weaken the concept by introducing even more arbitrary points into it. Again, timing of the ignored bits doesn't really do much for the definition. Creation of a heirarchy also doesn't do much, especially if it's based on time. All this does is introduce arguments about what is valued when and by who. That's not useful.

Heh, if you mean make more neutral then that's not what neuter means.

The definition I'm deploying is not negative. It's observational. I can look at play and say Force happened or it did not happen. The value judgement is elsewhere, especially when I've outright stated Force is a tool in the box and tolerance for Force is going to be up to the individual.

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I am arguing both neutral (non value judgment) and thus neutered (make less important a term for people). We get pages of people trying to define themselves out of GM Force because they think it's disparaging their playstyles.

This is a losing game, because people are going to have different tolerances. I have a moderate to low tolerance for Force these days (it was much higher in the past), and will have issues long before most people get to calling the game a railroad. Similarly, others may have a very high tolerance and not cry railroad when most people would. The idea that you can safe a term and make it totally neutral is, as I opened, a losing game. Someone will always complain about it being loaded, negative, or not a word they would use.

It's not about making it a safe term, it's about changing definitions to produce more useful conversations. If people are less focused on trying to convince people they don't use any GM Force, and more focused on what is the right GM Force to postive outcome equation that best suits their group, I'd consider that a win.

 

[pemerton]

My perception is that, like railroading and illusionism, these terms are commonly (though not exclusivly) used as a negative, i.e. how to produce gameplay that is not that. So, for example, is ten candles an example of participationism, given that everyone knows what's going to happen to a certain degree? What's at stake there seems to how it all goes down. In that way, it strikes me as similar to what is fun about even a very trad horror game like CoC.

As I posted upthread, I think CoC is the paradigm of participationism. I've never seen it suggested that this is a reason not to play CoC. It's the main reason to play it!

 

[pemerton]

I think this does point out a sort of gap in D&D. How the world is created and works isn't really spelled out like it is in Story games. And the PH and DMG sometimes talk about table norms, but not really about what "world creation mechanics are you adopting"

I will disagree with you here only by way of quibble (maybe I've been reading too many posts from @prabe!): I think that AD&D and Moldvay Basic/Cook-Marsh Expert are fairly clear in this respect. They explain for dungeon-based play, and mostly for hex-based wilderness play, how backstory is to be used in framing and resolution. (They are much weaker on urban/social-type play, tending to default it back to dungeon-style play as in (say) KotB.)

4e D&D tried this a bit but flounders somewhat. I assume that you had 5e forefront in your mind for your post, and it seems plausible for that edition. I don't think 3E really tackled this either, and 2nd ed AD&D actively encourages the GM to use force, including by manipulation of backstory, to achieve pre-conceived outcomes and support pre-conceived scene-framing.

 

[pemerton]

I am not sure what you mean here? Would it be fine if they were, I don't know, mountain goats? Or boulders? Certainly some things are just part of the narration because those are the sort of things such places have?

What I mean is that, in DW, when everyone looks at the GM to say what is happening now/next, the GM's job is to make a soft move. And a soft move is a prelude to a hard move. So if you narrate giant eagle nests (which can be both future badness and an opportunity, perhaps with a cost) but are not interested in following through with giant eagles, you've made a mistake. It's bad GMing.

A GM who just narrates boulders has - typically - also made a mistake because typically that's not any sort of move at all. It's the merest of colour.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What I mean is that, in DW, when everyone looks at the GM to say what is happening now/next, the GM's job is to make a soft move. And a soft move is a prelude to a hard move. So if you narrate giant eagle nests (which can be both future badness and an opportunity, perhaps with a cost) but are not interested in following through with giant eagles, you've made a mistake. It's bad GMing.

A GM who just narrates boulders has - typically - also made a mistake because typically that's not any sort of move at all. It's the merest of colour.

Right. But what if was just framing and not a soft move? Presumably perfectly harmless boulders and giant eagles are things that can exist? But of course once they've been established, they can be incorporated into description of further moves, either by the GM or the players.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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I am arguing both neutral (non value judgment) and thus neutered (make less important a term for people). We get pages of people trying to define themselves out of GM Force because they think it's disparaging their playstyles.

Oh, well, I think Force is a very useful descriptor of play, and have no interest in rendering it less useful.

It's not about making it a safe term, it's about changing definitions to produce more useful conversations. If people are less focused on trying to convince people they don't use any GM Force, and more focused on what is the right GM Force to postive outcome equation that best suits their group, I'd consider that a win.

I don't see how making a term less descriptive of play and less useful improves conversations. This would posit that conversations are more useful if people lack the ability to accurately describe the topic of conversation. I've never really found this to be true.

As for not using Force, I absolutely use it when I run 5e. I plan on deploying a metric truckload of Force when I start my Aliens one-shot this coming weekend. I very much tolerate Force when I play 5e. And I absolutely do not use nor would I tolerate any Force when I run/play Blades in the Dark. I wouldn't tolerate any Force in the The Between game I play in. Different games approach play in different ways. If we muddy down Force to an inoffensive term that doesn't describe play, then it's harder to make these distinctions in play.

 

[pemerton]

@Ovinomancer, @bert1001 fka bert1000

GM Force is neutral, in the sense that it's a technique - namely, the use of certain authority (over mechanics and/or adjudication and/or the fiction) in order to achieve outcomes and/or frame scenes without regard to the players' declared actions and the goals at which those declared actions aim.

Because of that without regard clause (and the two of you have your own wordings, but I haven't seen anything huge at stake in that respect) it's perhaps a necessarily suspect tool or technique, because we might have a default assumption that it's best to have regard to what the other game participants are doing in their play of the game.

Illusionism inherits that feature, and in a way doubles down by introducing also the element of concealment - concealment isn't per se suspect (we hide the presents we've bought from our loved ones, until we give them to them), but it lives in the same neighbourhood as deceit which is closer to suspect per se.

I see railroading as a label that is primarily pejorative because, rhetorically, it embraces and reinforces the negative judgement.

I see participationism as a label that seeks to rescue Force and Illusionism from the suspicion they engender, by emphasising that the other game participants (i) are happy to be "deceived" (as in stage magic and at least some other theatre) and (ii) expect their contributions by way of declared actions and the aims of those actions to be manipulated behind the scenes to keep everything "on track".

There's at least a modest paradox in Participationism, because arguably the participationist players are ceding some of their authority to the GM, at which point the GM doing their thing is no longer Force because the players declared actions are not really game moves at all any more, but closer to colour that the GM weaves into the overall sequence of events. (CoC play has a lot of this, I think.) My impression is that at least some D&D players look at D&D through this lens.

I don't think the paradox of Partcipationism is worth much angst. Whatever the best label, and whether we call it Force or call it a reallocation of authority among participants, it's pretty clear what the actual techniques are - and in particular, it's clear that player action declarations and their "surface-level" outcomes don't have the same standing that they do in other, non-participationist and non-Force based, RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

Right. But what if was just framing and not a soft move? Presumably perfectly harmless boulders and giant eagles are things that can exist? But of course once they've been established, they can be incorporated into description of further moves, either by the GM or the players.

In AW, and I think also in DW, there is no just framing.