D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[pemerton]

Wait, what? No I haven't!

I thought in this or one of the other recent parallel threads you said that all sucessful GMing uses Force to some or other degree. If I'm wrong I'm sorry about that - my memory may be attributing something to you that someone else posted.

 

[FrogReaver]

The OSR alternative to the adventure-path playstyle is to have a world that is as neutral and dispassionate as possible when it comes to the PCs, so that the GMs role is largely reactive, as there is not set “story” to pursue. This is the worlds without number approach. Terms like “story” or “story-before” or “backstory” are a bit unclear for me because I feel they don’t distinguish very much between the build a world and then react approach, on the one hand, and the here’s the plot that will be followed approach on the other. This is the tomb of horrors/dragon lance split that you reference above. Anyway, when running an OSR game I find my use of force is very meta: I think the players are getting bored so I present a challenge or skip to the next interesting scene, or we are in rl running out of time and I want the players to finish whatever they were working on. But its interesting because in that context at least, force will appear exactly as hard scene framing. I’m almost inclined to say scene framing beyond “you wake up and its raining today, what do you do” would be perceived as infringing on agency.

I like the term “story absent,” but again, there is a world to be built, so it’s unclear if that applies

Exactly. I'd summarize this as:
1. You've recognized you have bored players
2. You want to alleviate their boredom
3. You use your power to frame scenes to force into the game an exciting scene

This use of framing to force an exciting scene obviously benefited the players. It's also something they like implicitly agreed to in the social contract when they started playing - 'we allow the GM to use scene framing to force exciting situations upon us'. It's my speculation that in linear or near-linear adventures the GM is implicitly given permission to keep the game going down written adventure path. Even with this implicit permission he's still accused of using force to railroad the players.

It's also my speculation that story now games explicitly give the GM permission to frame exciting scenes. It seems to me that those scenes are not being called force because the GM has explicit permission to frame exciting scenes in such games. I also don't think that implicit vs explicit permission has any bearing on one being force and the other not. Which ultimately leaves me with the conclusion that the definition of force being used isn't being applied equitably to linear games vs story now games.

To produce equity we either need to either:

1. equally apply the 'permission exclusion criteria' to all games (this leads to linear/near-linear games not being defined as producing force when scenes are being framed to keep the game moving through it's linear/near-linear scenes)
2. equally refrain from applying the 'permission exclusion criteria' to all games (this leads to story now games being defined as producing some force to keep exciting scenes coming in)

I'm not particular which way this goes so long as equity in applying the definitions is achieved.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I thought in this or one of the other recent parallel threads you said that all sucessful GMing uses Force to some or other degree. If I'm wrong I'm sorry about that - my memory may be attributing something to you that someone else posted.

I don't remember saying that, but who knows at this point! But what I have meant is that all GMs direct the course of the game to some degree. It might not be via actual force though. Though that again depends on the definition of force.

 

[FrogReaver]

The purpose of all this is transparently to soften the definition of force so that the distinctions are blurred and the application of force is transformed from a decision to merely a matter of degree.

I understand how it could seem that way - but it's more about demanding the term be applied equally to all games.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't remember saying that, but who knows at this point! But what I have meant is that all GMs direct the course of the game to some degree. It might not be via actual force though. Though that again depends on the definition of force.

If you are like me you use your own definitions in discussing sometimes and adopt others definitions when talking to them. So if you are trying to derive my position from what I say about force you are going to stay very confused because half the time I'm speaking from the position of using a different definition than my own.

 

[FrozenNorth]

You seem to be describing GM consequence narration. There is no manipulation of mechanics. There is no manipulation of established fiction or unrevealed backstory. There is no introduction of new fictional elements to undercut the significance of a declared and resolved action. There is no social manipulation to get the players to exercise their authority over action declaration in one particular way.

What am I missing? Where are you seeing force?

At the time, I did not appreciate that @Ovinomancer ’s definition had two components: 1) DM’s preferred outcome and 2) overriding player action, player backstory and system mechanics.

While I quibble with @Ovinomancer ’s definition (I don’t think all interference with system mechanics is GM Force), I can recognize that while the first is inherently a risk whenever the DM chooses an action, in this case, there is no overriding of player action, player backstory or system mechanics.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This is an interesting point if I follow you--basically, that GM improv can still appear like Force or railroading even if there was not a pre-planned set of events. That is, just by the nature of the role the GM has more authority to direct the narrative even if they are improvising within the bounds of the conversation. I'm sure there are probably GM-less story-now games; are there any that have gained traction/an audience? I could see that being an ideal for some groups

Exactly. Being overly concerned with GM Force can lead us to assume GM Force where there isn’t any. There is an example a couple of posts up, where @prabe suggests that the DM mentioning eagle nests then having eagles grab a character that fails an Athletics check is an example of GM Force, rather than seizing on a background element following a failed roll.

Edit. And just to elaborate on why I think this is important, if one of our goals is to share tips to become better GMs, we should definitely be encouraging GMs to be more active listeners and mine their players’ prep, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should stop playing linear adventures or throw out their own prep.

 

[FrogReaver]

What risk do you think Is associated with authorship?

This is a great question. I would say the risk of authorial force is when you use that authorial force outside the bounds agreed to either implicitly or explicitly by the players. That's when it breaks down and becomes 'bad'.

 

[FrogReaver]

Exactly. Being overly concerned with GM Force can lead us to assume GM Force where there isn’t any. There is an example a couple of posts up, where @prabe suggests that the DM mentioning eagle nests then having eagles grab a character that fails an Athletics check is an example of GM Force, rather than seizing on a background element following a failed roll.

IMO, it can be both.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So lets take that giant bird example to D&D.

Let's say a party of 5e characters are traversing mountains, and the GM has giant bird to show up and drag one of them away. What factors could make this force and how should the decision to be made for it not to be so? Let's exclude the obvious and say no dice were fudged and grapple checks and such were handled appropriately.