D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Ovinomancer]

I have to say, the more description of PbtA structure I hear, the more schematic it sounds to me.

It not, it just doesn't go in for the long detailed descriptions of what's largely unimportant. A scene for DW is going to be about something that needs to be addressed now -- there's a problem and you need to solve it. That should get the description. Something that's not important to the actual obstacle being framed is, well, not important.

 

[Manbearcat]

Yup, we're saying the same thing, just phrasing it differently.

Yup.

The reason I like the arrangement of words I've called out is because it expressly gives effect to the rider of thematic, tactical, and strategic to player's input.

Quantum Ogres don't matter to scene framing if there is no thematic, tactical, or strategic input by players that should propel play away from framing the next scene as <Ogre Conflict at x location with y implications/stakes> . Now, in the bulk of games there either IS or there SHOULD be. For instance, in a Dungeon World game with a Perilous Journey move, if you're going through the wilderness and ogres might be a complication to the Scout or Navigator move, then you either make a soft move portending ogres as prospective dangers or outright "tell them the complications and then ask what they want to do about it." Then they do something like reroute away from that Danger which may make for a longer trek with more Ration use and/or different Dangers/Discoveries, or stay the course but try to ensure Ogre Danger isn't on the menu with a move or an action. Maybe they actually want ogres (a thematic decision that turns into a strategic one) so they seek them out on the Perilous Journey. Then we roll dice to see if Ogres are there.

HOWEVER...

If you're just eliding any kind of journey mechanics and attendant decision-points in a D&D game (which you shouldn't be doing in a Hexcrawl, but you might do in a game where these sorts of decision-points cease to be relevant)? "Schrodinger's Ogre as Force" ceases to be a thing of relevance because there isn't any strategic, tactical, or thematic input by the players or system's say (eg Wandering Monsters) that is being subordinated by the GM.

Now, I don't love that type of game and I don't run them (if I run D&D its either RC Hexcrawls, Moldvay Dungeon Crawls, 4e, DW, TB, or when I was standing-in as a 5e GM running his Hexcrawl game). But that game is out there aplenty (where decision-points around journeys and journey mechanics are elided and the GM basically rolls a random encounter and/or transitions to a framed wilderness scene). These games are typically Participationist in nature and this eliding of journeys into "Random encounter" roll or "GM's choice" framed wilderness scene or "AP's linked encounter."

These are low agency games but not because Force is being deployed to subordinate input. They're low agency games because they're fundamentally low agency games (because the input stage just isn't in play in the first place)!

EDIT - I think this is something that we (ENWorld users) need to carefully dilineate:

The difference between no agency moments of play (eg there is no tactical, strategic, thematic input to subordinate and the system has nothing to say about this particular moment of content generation/gamestate evolution) vs actual deployment of Force. I mean, effectively, you end up at the same place (the GM has exclusive control over the trajectory of play), but in the former the GM isn't wresting agency from the players or system because there was never any to be had in the first place!

 

[Lanefan]

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.

This sounds like an extension of the stage maxim "never put a prop on stage if it isn't going to be used".

And I can't stand this maxim, either in stagecraft or in gaming! I want extraneous stuff, clutter, colour/fluff pieces, and other assorted bits that give the setting (be it stage or game) a sense of having more to it than just what the key actors are touching; and also to make it less obvious what's going to happen and-or which of the props will become relevant as the show goes along.

 

[Scott Christian]

Yes, D&D tends toward a hegemonic play approach. This is largely due to the received wisdom of D&D. What I've found is that players that haven't been steeped in D&D approach other games with ease, while those well steeped in D&D bounce off or have trouble adapting.

I have found this to be true for 20 years.

The fact that the hobby has a primary mode of play that's widely shared through the single massive IP that dominates it is not at all surprising, nor is the immediately pushback by those that are inside that comforting blanket of social conformity towards anything that suggests it's not the pinnacle of play.

I would offer the reason the play has been so consistent is because they used to script it (still do in many cases) for the people reading the rulebook. As a kid, I loved those dialogue parts. I can still vaguely remember the one from the Blue Box even though I haven't seen it in 30 years.

It's why I have to spend so much time repeating that I play 5e, I like 5e, and that my games look like your games. It's to somewhat placate this effect and prevent some of that 'you just hate 5e' comments. Not all, mind, because the pushback is real and strong and overcomes what meager tactics I have to hold it off, so it's pretty much bound to come out. I appreciate that you've gone the "I've never seen anything different, so why are you bothering" route. It's nicer than the 'you must hate D&D' one.

No, I don't find the discussion anywhere near that. I just find it thin. Thin enough to where I think if any weight is pushed on it, it falls through the ice.
As stated earlier, I don't mind bringing other games into the discussion. I think it is smart. But at some point, if we are playing D&D, then we need to compare apples to apples. But I get what you guys have said, and thank you for taking the time to explain it.

 

[Scott Christian]

The GM allowed it? I dunno what you're going for, here. Allowing players the ability to suggest things (that the GM must approve) and taking some of them doesn't offset other facets of play. It's not a zero-sum game where you can fight towards zero by offsetting Force and Railroading with a touch of letting players author some details here and there.

I wouldn't call it zero sum. But it goes back to the question of how may roads is enough to make it not railroading? How much does the player have to author to make it story now? How much leeway does the DM have to give to say they aren't using force?

None of those things can be answered. In my opinion, that is a problem when trying to promote a philosophy based on definitions.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I wouldn't call it zero sum. But it goes back to the question of how may roads is enough to make it not railroading? How much does the player have to author to make it story now? How much leeway does the DM have to give to say they aren't using force?

None of those things can be answered. In my opinion, that is a problem when trying to promote a philosophy based on definitions.

Number of roads is not the consideration for railroading. It's how the path is made. It's not the destination, but the way you get there. I'm not calling that storyboard a railroad because it has three endings, I'm calling it a railroad because there are clear tracks that are followed, with the only apparent choices to be which train you catch.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I have found this to be true for 20 years.

I would offer the reason the play has been so consistent is because they used to script it (still do in many cases) for the people reading the rulebook. As a kid, I loved those dialogue parts. I can still vaguely remember the one from the Blue Box even though I haven't seen it in 30 years.

No, I don't find the discussion anywhere near that. I just find it thin. Thin enough to where I think if any weight is pushed on it, it falls through the ice.
As stated earlier, I don't mind bringing other games into the discussion. I think it is smart. But at some point, if we are playing D&D, then we need to compare apples to apples. But I get what you guys have said, and thank you for taking the time to explain it.

It's thin to you because it doesn't do much differentiation between D&D games. This is to be expected, though, as there's rarely much difference between D&D games. The biggest argument about difference is the plotted game versus the sandbox, but functionally, in the moments of play, there's very little difference here in how play occurs.

 

[Manbearcat]

My like was because this is not far off from my aforementioned "there's been a murder but you have a quantum murderer until the party declares who the murderer was" issue. That is, I don't at all mind (nor consider it "easy mode") that the player can declare elements of the setting in general. But certain kinds of them break any semblance of groundedness or verisimilitude for me, and those things can't just be "player declares whatever makes sense."

I just can't wrap my head around the idea of "solve a mystery" where the "solution" is invented by the players. That rings as so obviously, inherently hollow that I literally cannot imagine enjoying an experience where that's how a mystery got resolved. How can you collect clues and draw valid inferences when not just the clues but the inferences themselves are causing the truth? It would be like if an absolutely omnipotent deity (that is, one not bound by the rules of logic) tried to do science. How can you perform an experiment and record the results in order to learn something when you, personally, are directly making the results happen, and you, personally, are creating the true state of affairs that the experiment is attempting to ascertain? Indeed, you personally are deciding what logic itself is permitted to relate? That's just...not solving a mystery. It's re-writing history so that whatever you believe to be true not only is true, but always was.

We've talked the mystery angle to death here in the past and you've gotten a few posts about it in here (with @Ovinomancer mentioning The Between...I encourage you to look into that and give your thoughts on how its sort of a Story Now meets procedurally generated mystery play).

However, I'd like to point out the following:

* Spout Lore isn't about 1st order mystery creation. Mystery creation may be procedurally generated and may procedurally unfold downstream of a Spout Lore move, but it isn't fundamentally about that.

* Spout Lore is about content creation (setting and/or situation and/or character). I think your feeling on this is pretty illuminating because Story Now games that are low prep or outright No Myth (Story Now games vary on the continuum of prep and backstory and structure vs freeform) are engineered to create content during play in the exact way that Spout Lore does this.

Your second paragraph is one shared by a certain cross-section of the gaming community, but it is not shared by me.

Spontaneous content creation happens in all games, whether its a a Reaction roll to find out what this kobold is like in a Moldvay dungeon, a Random Encounter roll in an RC Hexcrawl, or a Streetwise move in 4e D&D, or a Spout Lore move in DW. The logic of the gameworld that we're all collectively creating is imbued only with the internal consistency that we give it (or that we fail to give it) after the participants have had their say and system has had its say. There are no inherent causal chains because the shared imagined space fundamentally does not exist (as we all know). This isn't a model that we are parameterizing and then letting the algorithm perform a run (and then rejiggering parameters to curve fit if things are unphysical). We're humans and system manufacturing all of this in real time.

So whether you feel sensitive to a causal chain (eg this forge only exists in this particular instantiation because of this spontaneous Spout Lore result vs this forge only exists in this particular instantiation because of pre-play prep) is a autobiographical feature of your cognitive disposition as it pertains to content generation in TTRPGs. It isn't an objective thing (just like a feeling of verisimilitude).

If we fail as a group to achieve physical coherency, backstory coherency, or thematic potency/procovation with our newly introduced content (whether its a Reaction Roll with an NPC or a Random Encounter roll in a Hexcrawl or any of the myriad of content generating procedures in a PBtA game like DW), that failure is shared by the group collectively. We should own it and resolve it.

* After the new content is created during play, we either (a) chase it like a crazed dog after a firetruck or we (b) repurpose/reorient it so that we're inclined to do (a).

* But this is principled, structured content creation with constraints and rules we must observe.


The game is littered with this sort of principled, structured, procedural generation of thematic content. If a GM or a group doesn't like this approach, you're going to have to do some significant drifting in order to get to a play paradigm that is more palatable for you.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I necessarily don't. Or I don't care if it is as the definition is nebulous. But you agree that by this means the GM can direct the game in their desired direction?


How much of tabula rasa should the GMs mind be for Story Now game then? Because We all have ideas, influences etc. If the GM has watched a ghost themed horror film on the previous night and start describing things in a manner evoking ghost story themes and introducing ghost-related phenomena as complications is this GM directing the game to their desired direction? And is this a bad thing?

The GM should be framing things that are relevant to the characters. If that allows for ghosts and such, or some element of play has introduced the idea of ghosts, then sure, have at it.

But if it's just that the GM has decided he'd like to include ghosts....that's less easy to say. It should flow from the fiction or from the characters, right? If there's nothing about this that contradicts what's been established, then it may be okay.

Sure. I am kinda thinking about softer influences here, where the GM directs the and nudges the game without explicit force (at least as defined by @Ovinomancer.)

I can't say without some sense of what you mean. Like I get what you're saying, but I don't really see how it happens in Dungeon World or similar games.

Right. And I don't of course think people should actively try to work against the system. But again, see my ghost example, it's not that clear cut, yes?


Presumably in a game which benefits from some prep, they're to prepare the GM for most likely events that might occur in the game.

Okay. Do you think you need to know in session 3 what may be likely in session 10? Can you even accurately say? Should you accurately say?

To me, they don't seem like a "rough idea of where things may go" so much as a "Rough idea of where they will go". To me, that's the difference, and why I would suggest against it if anyone is looking to avoid Force in their play. Don't prep that far ahead. There is no need.

I feel that more developed the characters and their surroundings become, more will interesting things develop organically.

That's an interesting thought, and I think I agree. But what do you mean here? What does organically mean in this sense for 5e?

Perhaps. Then again, if it is done subtly enough, is it a problem? And I don't know if that is even necessarily the case. For my last game I prepped five and half combat encounters. Two fights actually occurred, the PCs resolved other situations peacefully.

I don't know. By invoking subtlety, you're hinting at illusionism being okay, which is something that may or may not fly at a given table. If the table is cool with it, then yeah, it's okay.

I personally don't much like that. But that's my preference.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Bad roll on the climb --> bird shows up
PCs declare they're going to try to drive the bird off.
Bad roll on driving the bird away --> bird grabs a PC in its talons
PCs (including the one grabbed!) declare they're going to try to save the grabbed PC
Bad roll on trying to save the PC --> bird flies off into the sunset with its new prize.

This all seems story-now enough, doesn't it?

But now what happens? Who gets to decide where the bird ultimately goes and-or what it does (and what becomes of the captured PC) when it gets there? All highly relevant, if the remaining PCs want to try and rescue their buddy, but also all offscreen (even more truly offscreen if the captive is an NPC).

It depends on how things go, let's say the PCs attack the monster in some way, the results of that attack can determine what move the GM makes next. There are other moves the players can declare to try and catch up or follow the bird, those rolls may determine what happens next.

The GM is going to let those rolls dictate what moves he makes and if they're soft or hard moves, and then what those mean. This could be any number of things based on genre and established fiction.