D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[pemerton]

And no one has been advocating such and repeatedly labelling perspectives differing from yours as such is both dishonest and disrespectful.

If the GM doesn't have a story to tell, why are they using force vis-a-vis giant birds, the AP villain, or anything else?

 

[FrogReaver]

If the GM doesn't have a story to tell, why are they using force vis-a-vis giant birds, the AP villain, or anything else?

The answer is that the DM is trying to [Insert any set of GMing principles here].

 

[pemerton]

I don't think this is best practice in a trad game either, even with a module. When you play CoC, do you experience the game as being told a story by the GM?

Yes. That's what it's for!

Here is a quote from The Traveller Book (1982):

Here is a passage from The Traveller Book (1982, p 123); it is found in a description of types of scenario/adventure:

The choreographed novel [my emphasis] involves a setting already thought out by the referee and presented to the players; it may be any of the above settings [ship, location or world], but contains predetermined elements. As such, the referee has already developed characters and setting which bear on the group's activities, and they are guided gently to the proper locations. Properly done, the players never know that the referee has manipulated them to a fore-ordained goal​

The "gentle guidance" and "manipulation" referred to here are exactly instances of what gets labelled GM force. The aspiration that the players not know about it, if it is "properly done", is exactly what gets labelled illusionism. (It is consistent with illusionism that the players know, in general terms, that it is going on - eg it won't be spoiled by a player having read this passage in The Traveller Book. The aspiration for player ignorance is not in respect of the general phenomenon, but rather at the point of application of GM force.)

This passage has no equivalent in the 1977 version of Classic Traveller.

Traveller, in 1982, was one of the biggest RPGs around. And here we see the GM being advised to run the players through their "fore-ordained" story.

This is not the only RPG text to advocate this. In the same thread I've just quoted from, @Doug McCrae has just quoted passages from Alarums & Excursions advocating the same thing.

Whatever you want to call this sort of RPGing, it's what I don't want. If you won't let me call it use of Force and you won't let me call it GM storytelling or GM "storytelling please provide me with your approved terminology. Because it's a thing that really happens at 100s and 1000s of RPG tables, and I don't want to be sitting at any of them!

 

[pemerton]

The answer is that the DM is trying to [Insert any set of GMing principles here].

What principle? @Crimson Longinus referred to a bird capturing a PC and taking the PC to a pre-determined location. What principle dictates that, other than the principle of telling a preconceived story?

 

[prabe]

I don't think unrevealed backstory is necessarily force

Nor do I. Does anyone?

Sometimes it's difficult to tell--it certainly seems that some of the most-commonly-cited uses of force involve unrevealed backstory.

A serious question: Outside of something with a keyed map of some sort (like a dungeon or a hexcrawl) how could one use unrevealed backstory in a way that wasn't force? I guess using it to frame a situation wouldn't be force (leaving aside any debate/s about situation-first or backstory-first). I think I've seen it said that using unrevealed backstory to adjudicate action resolution is force--is this only true if the GM is using that unrevealed backstory to point the narrative of the game in a specific direction, or toward a specific outcome?

 

[pemerton]

Had our weekly 5e game last night. Let me run this new one by you; it irked me, but I’m curious if others will agree with my reason.

Did I mention that you're a tolerant person?

EDIT: @Crimson Longinus, @Malmuria, @FrogReaver. Read hawkeyefan's account of play. Then tell me how it is unreasonable to describe that as "GM storytelling".

 

[Campbell]

Sometimes it's difficult to tell--it certainly seems that some of the most-commonly-cited uses of force involve unrevealed backstory.

A serious question: Outside of something with a keyed map of some sort (like a dungeon or a hexcrawl) how could one use unrevealed backstory in a way that wasn't force? I guess using it to frame a situation wouldn't be force (leaving aside any debate/s about situation-first or backstory-first). I think I've seen it said that using unrevealed backstory to adjudicate action resolution is force--is this only true if the GM is using that unrevealed backstory to point the narrative of the game in a specific direction, or toward a specific outcome?

From my perspective pretty much any genuine sandbox play does not involve GM Force as I would use it. There's no GM Force in the process described in World Without Number for instance, which is often not map and key. I think the sort of social crawls you see in some Vampire games (where the rules are treated seriously) are another example. I would put my own Vampire - The Requiem games in this category.

Social crawl is a term of art I first heard from Paul Czege. I want to make sure I credit him for it.

 

[pemerton]

My question was, and remains, who gets to decide what happens next - once the grab-and-fly-away sequence has been properly resolved

What do you mean by "properly resolved"? AD&D and AW handle this completely differently. For instance, movement rates and action economy are a big deal in AD&D. They don't exist in AW.

 

[Maxperson]

What principle? @Crimson Longinus referred to a bird capturing a PC and taking the PC to a pre-determined location. What principle dictates that, other than the principle of telling a preconceived story?

Okay. Perhaps that example is one where story was behind it. Your question, though, was open ended. It was just a blanket, why would a DM apply force if not for story(paraphrasing)? Maybe the DM just feels like a hard encounter would be fun for the players. No story involved there. The force still exists, though.

 

[Malmuria]

Did I mention that you're a tolerant person?

EDIT: @Crimson Longinus, @Malmuria, @FrogReaver. Read hawkeyefan's account of play. Then tell me how it is unreasonable to describe that as "GM storytelling".

My point of confusion is that I think you can be fully on with, say, using an adventure path and also not be ok with the GM calling for rolls and then ignoring them, or fudging dice rolls, or any number of similar GM practices that are annoying. So I read @hawkeyefan 's account as an example (or at this point, examples plural) of bad GMing rather than endemic to 5e. Or to use my above example: I enjoy CoC, but I would not enjoy a keeper who ignores dice rolls in a similar way. I find a term like "GM storytelling" to be too vague to really capture the variety of playstyles and practices available within "trad" games.

(Further, it has been stated that it's easier to tell or more obvious when a gm is using Force in, say, Dungeon World, but I'm not sure it's all that difficult in trad games either, as the account shows.)