D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Maxperson]

I’m sick as hell so I can’t engage my brain with any commentary.

Feel better soon!

 

[Thomas Shey]

It not, it just doesn't go in for the long detailed descriptions of what's largely unimportant.

Honestly, your "long detailed description of what's largely unimportant" sounds to me like "applying enough color and texture to the setting to give it a look and feel" and the lack of that is pretty much the definition of "schematic" in this context from where I sit.

In other words, I don't think something has to be important to resolving a scene to be relevant. YMM (and obviously does)V.

 

[pemerton]

if replacing their dead leader with a new guy is what the gang would do in the fiction, IMO that needs to be honoured

I'm not talking about a module that sets out a group of NPCs and a command structure.

I'm talking about a module that says Here's the bad guy, but if they're killed too early than drop in this back-up bad guy.

Truth be told, here the GM is honouring prep; in that the prep (in this case, the module) already has that replacement bad guy built in via the sidebar.

I though you didn't like "Schroedinger's <whatever>".

 

[pemerton]

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.

Ah, now I see what you mean. Eliding 'that and only that' part initially confused me. So flavour eagles and boulders can be established along with something that elicits more immediate reaction from the players?

I think these posts are more interesting, in reflecting on the difference between standard D&D and AW/DW, or a scene-framed game like MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, than trying to argue that DW is amenable to illusionistic railroading.

Illusionistic railroading depends upon on of two things. One is secret rolls, hp totals, etc, which the GM fudges. There are none of those in DW - the GM rolls no dice - so we can put that to one side. The other is the GM having a particular step in scene-framing and action resolution - roughly, the bit where they look to the backstory to establish what happens next and use that to then say what happens, or call for a check, or whatever - and DW doesn't have that step. It's not "backstory first"; it's "situation first".

So what are the pitfalls of DW, or other "story now" games that are more-or-less similar? (As far as the pitfalls are concerned, I think that Burning Wheel and MHRP can suffer from these too, even though they are not PbtA games and use different techniques as a result.)

One is contrivance. John Harper talks about that in this blog:

I've seen people struggle with hard moves in the moment. Like, when the dice miss, the MC stares at it like, "Crap! Now I have to invent something! Better make it dangerous and cool! Uh... some ninja... drop out of the ceiling... with poison knives! Grah!"​

​

Don't do that. Instead, when it's time for a hard move, look back at the setup move(s) you made. What was threatened? What was about to happen, before the PC took action? Follow through on that. Bring the effects on screen. Bring the consequences to fruition.​

Another, related risk is what we could call mixed signals. The GM narrates the mountains, with giant eagle nests and clouds covering the highest peaks. The GM has in mind, as their soft move here, giants who live in cloud castles and keep eagles as pets and guardians and maybe even steeds. The nests, in themselves, are mere colour. While the players treat the clouds as mere colour, and focus on the nests, getting ready to send their ranger into action with her animal handling and their druid being ready to talk to the wild eagles!

How should the GM handle this? Stick with their own intuitions and surprise the players? Adjust their own expectations to conform to the players'? I don't think there's any single right answer. Like a lot of decision-making for GMs generally, and especially in "situation first" play, it's extremely contextual. But the GM needs to at least appreciate that if they stick to their (imagined) guns then there is a risk that the players will experience the giants as more like John Harper's ninjas than would be ideal for the game.

Another risk is falling flat. That's the risk in the hypothetical narration discussed above: Before you rises a boulder-strewn mountain range. That can be OK in AD&D (say; maybe also 5e but I don't know it well enough to comment) as the players then start planning their rations, we look up movement-rate-by-terrain charts, etc. But in DW it falls flat, because nothing is put into motion, no action is provoked.

What is the cure for things falling flat? The players have to seize control. In one of these recent threads I quoted the Burning Wheel rulebooks which tell players to do just that: if the situation doesn't interest you, use the mechanics of the game to make the situation interesting! (And I gave an actual play example: my GM had narrated a thing with Elves that he thought was exciting but that didn't enthuse me much, and so I had my PC engage the Elf captain in a duel of wits to try and persuade him to bring his troop with me to liberate my ancestral estate.)

In DW, the way a player might try and respond to something that is a bit flat is via having their PC ponder the situation, thus invoking Spout Lore, or look around more carefully, thus invoking Discern Realities.

Notice how, in a lot of discussion of D&D play (not all of it), attempts by players to take control or to shift the focus of play are often presented as problematic. Either they are attempts by players to derail things; or they put demands on the GM (eg of improvisation) that are seen as hard, as more demanding than working from prepped backstory. But in AW/DW or BW these aren't problems at all - they are the game working as intended.

Talking about the vulnerability of these games to railroading is just silly. They're not backstory first, and so they don't have the points in their process for illusionism to be performed. The useful discussion is about how to introduce content that is engaging, makes sense, follows from the fiction etc.

I'll conclude with another example, from the same Harper blog:

When you make a regular MC move, all three:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It gives the player an opportunity to react.
3. It sets you up for a future harder move.

This means, say what happens but stop before the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

• He swings the chainsaw right at your head. What do you do?
• You sneak into the garage but there's Plover right there, about to notice you any second now. What do you do?
• She stares at you coldly. 'Leave me alone,' she says. What do you do?

When you make a hard MC move, both:
1. It follows logically from the fiction.
2. It's irrevocable.

This means, say what happens, including the effect, then ask "What do you do?"

• The chainsaw bites into your face, spraying chunks of bloody flesh all over the room. 3-harm and make the harm move!
• Plover sees you and starts yelling like mad. Intruder!
• 'Don't come back here again.' She slams the door in your face and you hear the locks click home.

​

Now remember how Vincent Baker, in AW, says "Best is: make it irrevocable." Harper reiterates that above: "It's irrevocable." Getting cut by a chainsaw is pretty irrevocable? But what about her slamming the door and telling you not to come back? Is that really irrevocable? Can the PC sneak in through the window? Try to threaten, where pleasantries failed? Etc. Baker gives a simple example of "no retries" in the AW rulebook - once you've rolled to Read a Situation, you can't roll again - but what about this much more complicated scenario?

I don't think there's a canonical answer. But I think, for a given context of play, there are probably better or worse GMing approaches. These are the discussions that make sense about DW; not trying to argue that it is vulnerable to railroading.

 

[pemerton]

What clash? If I walk into any convention, D&D club, adventure's league, hobby store, or home where there are 5 people with 5e books on the table and they are roleplaying and rolling d20, and I say: "What are you all playing?" There is no one that is going to say: "Uh, technically play is too broad of a term to describe what we are doing. We are running a participationism style game." No one.

I lived through the clash between ToH-style play and DL-style play. And it's various offshoots, like "rolllplaying" vs "roleplaying". The clash was real.

If I walk into a club and want to know what sort of D&D game is being played, part of what I want to know is Will the GM fudge rolls and/or fiction for the sake of the story? A good proxy 30 years ago was whether their copy of the rulebooks was AD&D or AD&D 2nd ed. I don't know now quite what the comparable proxy would be; but the conversation is certainly one that I would want to have!

EDIT:

D&D tends toward a hegemonic play approach. This is largely due to the received wisdom of D&D.

I don't think this has always been true, though. It was still unfolding back when I was a regular AD&D player in the early to mid 90s. At that time the DL-approach was clearly coming to predominate, but I don't think it had become so hegemonic that other approaches were invisible.

 

[pemerton]

This is getting very close to what I see as a very contentious but rather obvious bit of truth -- in fiction, almost all acts of authoring are pretty much the same thing. RPGs are really about the constraints on how that authoring takes place - what can be authored, who can author it, when can it be authored, and how do they author it?

Hmm - I have memories of a poster whose been saying this for lo these many long years! What was his name again . . .?

My experience, for what it's worth, is that this assertion will generate a lot of pushback if you actually try and do any reasoning or analysis that rests on it as a premise.

 

[pemerton]

Force is a very blurry continuum, and I think that all GMs utilize force

I don't agree. I don't agree even if we confine the discussion to D&D. As a 4e D&D GM I didn't use force. I've GMed AD&D without using force.

Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World creator) would surely believe that force as described by @Ovinomancer is a gaming negative, yet hard and soft moves can both be used to "enforce a preferred outcome," regardless of player input. When the GM makes a hard move, the players can't change the outcome.

Where's the force? A hard move is the GM doing their job to either narrate consequences of action resolution, or to establish an unhappy situation where the player hands them the opportunity on a golden platter.

 

[prabe]

I don't agree. I don't agree even if we confine the discussion to D&D. As a 4e D&D GM I didn't use force. I've GMed AD&D without using force.

I think something consistent with @Helpful NPC Thom's statement is the idea that GMs will use whatever tools and techniques they have available to them that they find appropriate in order to make the narrative of the game ... palatable to them.

You don't like force, so you don't use it. Force (as typically defined) doesn't work in PbtA games because the system clashes with it so hard, so PbtA GMs don't use it. There are other ways for a GM to have input into the narrative--and I'm sure you've used at least some of those, which you found appropriate.

Different GMs, running different games at different tables, will find different tools and techniques to be available and appropriate. I think the vast majority of GMs want to have some input into the narrative of the game--some seem to want the majority of the input. In your previous example of the giant eagle nests, you made the point that if the DW GM didn't actively want giant eagles as a threat, they shouldn't have put them in the mountains with the PCs; that seems to be arguing the GM should have some input into the narrative.

Where's the force? A hard move is the GM doing their job to either narrate consequences of action resolution, or to establish an unhappy situation where the player hands them the opportunity on a golden platter.

The reason it's so hard to argue that PbtA games are vulnerable to force is because force is usually described as happening after actions and resolutions--and that's when the GM in a PbtA game is doing stuff anyway. They might be doing other bad-faith GMing, but they won't be using force.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think something consistent with @Helpful NPC Thom's statement is the idea that GMs will use whatever tools and techniques they have available to them that they find appropriate in order to make the narrative of the game ... palatable to them.

You don't like force, so you don't use it. Force (as typically) doesn't work in PbtA games because the system clashes with it so hard, so PbtA GMs don't use it. There are other ways for a GM to have input into the narrative--and I'm sure you've used at least some of those, which you found appropriate.

Different GMs, running different games at different tables, will find different tools and techniques to be available and appropriate. I think the vast majority of GMs want to have some input into the narrative of the game--some seem to want the majority of the input. In your previous example of the giant eagle nests, you made the point that if the DW GM didn't actively want giant eagles as a threat, they shouldn't have put them in the mountains with the PCs; that seems to be arguing the GM should have some input into the narrative.

Exactly. I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to me that something preplanned 1 week ago is any different in nature than something preplanned 1 second ago.

That is, all fictional framing and consequences in both story now and traditional games only exist because the GM wanted to include those fictional details in those games and then had the power to actually include them.

*IMO improv (framing or consequences) is just the preplanning of fiction momentarily before needed as opposed to long before needed.

The reason it's so hard to argue that PbtA games are vulnerable to force is because force is usually described as happening after actions and resolutions--and that's when the GM in a PbtA game is doing stuff anyway. They might be doing other bad-faith GMing, but they won't be using force.

If D&D told the DM to fudge and railroad players into particular framing and consequences we wouldn't say that's not railroading just because the D&D system (or module) is having the DM do those things.

So I don't find the excuse that 'the system had me do it' as a persuasive excuse for why something isn't force. It might very well not be force, but there's some other reason it's not.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not talking about a module that sets out a group of NPCs and a command structure.

I'm talking about a module that says Here's the bad guy, but if they're killed too early than drop in this back-up bad guy.

To me that sounds like exactly the same thing.