D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Crimson Longinus]

Honestly, I understand what you're saying here, and you could essentially reduce all of DW/PbtA to the absurd by silly things like making moves that simply extend to any length. OTOH the game itself doesn't, mechanically, really define exactly what constitutes the 'granularity' of moves. TO A DEGREE this may be a stylistic choice which is largely in the hands of the GM. We're really treading fairly close to the line here IMHO. So, a GM might legitimately claim that snatching the PC back to the dragon lair is a 'single move'. I think it is really a question of story telling acumen more than anything. Is that feeling like it obviates important decision points and opportunities for the other PCs to act? I'd say the "oh, and the ranger can't get his bow up in time" feels rather lame, personally, and rather smells of GM "I don't want interference with this course of events", but that may be more sloppy telling vs a really procedural issue (and I freely admit there's at best a fuzzy line there in a game like DW where fiction is a procedural part of the game).

I mean, yeah, I think one example of 'separate them' was that the character is teleported in a completely different location, and that's just one move. So it certainly is in the intended scope of the move. It is another matter whether the provided narrative makes sense with the effect.

 

[pemerton]

I see @pemerton's point, and that is he's looking at this as Force because players are expected to fall in line and declare for the goals despite what they might do otherwise. It's really participationism, though, which is willingly engaging with the content that otherwise would require Force to enact.

I've played in games where it wasn't participationism - because I (and others) ceased to participate!

The basis on which I call it a type of Force, or Force-ish, is what I have been discussing, upthread, with @Campbell: the GM is using their authority over the fiction (eg the backstory of the Rainbow Rocks) in order to try to shape the players use of their authority over action declaration (ie to have them declare actions about travelling to and exploring Dark Clouds).

I would simply call it traditional RPGing or non-sandbox play. I’m sure other people have different terms for it.

B/X dungeon crawls are also traditional in a sense, so some form of distinction from natural language is needed. Using the capital, or just Trad games to reference the Six Cultures breakdown, is sufficient. There's no Trad game that @pemerton would preferably enjoy. Sandbox is a largely useless term, though, as it's used to depict Trad games with more open station schedules and the ability to switch tracks at stations, or it's a Classic hexcrawl with no Force at all, or it's a NeoTrad thing. It's kinda a super blurry term that people seem to value because it's seen positively as the antithesis of railroading. It's not, really, the antithesis. It can be used that way, but can also be used to run something pretty railroady.

I'm not going to call the play I don't like non-sandbox play: that would also cover the RPGing I prefer, which has little in common with it as far as techniques and principles are concerned!

But when I point this out, by contrasting "situation first" with "backstory first" RPGing, I get told I'm not allowed to use that terminology either because it is demeaning or caricaturing of non-situation-first RPGing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Good question. I'm hard pressed to take seriously the idea that making decisions on a "these individuals in this setting would respond this way" is force unless you're just using it as justification for an ulterior motive (though, of course, there's "you have an ulterior motive but are kidding yourself that you're just supporting the logical reaction of setting elements").

Right, and I've long maintained that ALL of this sort of thing has some of that character because nobody can create a world so detailed that it actually constrains their declarations in any meaningful way beyond perhaps the immediate momentary scope of a scene. That is, I think it may be justified to say "Oh, the NPC cannot jump over that chasm, so he does X" and fairly describe that as a constraint imposed by the fiction. OTOH pretending that the description of the setting and characters and whatever actually constrains the long-range plans and actions of a powerful NPC? I don't buy it. Only to the extent that it will likely define what is clearly genre (in)appropriate (IE demons don't show mercy). Other than that any given GM could find a way to justify anything on any given day, and is thus simply telling a story when he or she frames a scene. The only kinds of constraints which make any sense at all are meta-game ones (IE the aforementioned genre constraints), including process and principles built into a game's design. This is the BEATING HEART of the reason why there is an unavoidable gulf between old school Gygaxian game play (which is all tactical hard constraints) and more wide-open play ala 2e and now 5e.

I'm amusedly remembering that thread about the Australians blogging about how there is 'no story in an RPG'. This is my answer, IT IS ALL STORY, ALL THE TIME, EVERY BIT OF IT, and these railroading/force kind of discussions basically happen because that is not acknowledged! This is also why I would rather play a Story Now game, they implicitly accept this as a premise, embrace it, and build on it!

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is a difference, but I don't think it is force either way. GMs job is to decide certain things and them doing so is not force.

I think how its aimed very much matters here, but as I recall, you've already indicated you don't, so...

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean, I don't know if I see a meaningful difference there. I can describe a wall that's difficult to climb, I can describe a person who is difficult to read. But really I wouldn't say there can never be a justifiable reason, for me it's about what that decision adds, and what it takes away.

But that's the gig; the really good liar won't be obvious that they're difficult to read; in fact they'll look like they're just what you're getting (or in more subtle cases, seem like they're hesitating but in ways that suggest something different). Telling someone a target number absolutely tells you someone is a difficult case right out the gate. With the wall, there's rarely a case where the information on difficulty tells you anything you don't already know, but other types of rolls do, indeed, in my view, supply information I don't think should come for free.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I see @pemerton's point, and that is he's looking at this as Force because players are expected to fall in line and declare for the goals despite what they might do otherwise. It's really participationism, though, which is willingly engaging with the content that otherwise would require Force to enact.

This is a step beyond GM Force as defined. Now simply the fact that a situation could potentially impact player actions, in the absence of player actions being declared, constitutes GM Force.

The difference here being that in PbtA games this is how the game works -- it's the rules, so if you're fighting that it's not on the order of what fiction is being presented by rather whether or not you should be playing the game. With the AP, following it or not is just fine with the game -- it doesn't have anything to say here.

To me, this goes back to @pemerton ’s earlier question. He is not asking what I would call more traditional games or more linear games, he’s asking what I would call non-Story Now! games.

Calling them non-Story Now! games fits the bill.

Principles are rules, just usually at a higher level of abstraction.

Agreed. Although the higher level of abstraction generally mean that there os considerable more leeway in interpretation.

 

[FrozenNorth]

But even that doesn't really hold up because of the way saving throws work in 5e....they're made every round against ongoing effects, so there's no way to expect that we'd all continue to fail long enough for those purposes.

A Hypnotic Pattern-like effect would be on brand for fey and does not allow a saving throw every round.

That why I kind of agree with @Maxperson , better to give the DM the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, and I've long maintained that ALL of this sort of thing has some of that character because nobody can create a world so detailed that it actually constrains their declarations in any meaningful way beyond perhaps the immediate momentary scope of a scene. That is, I think it may be justified to say "Oh, the NPC cannot jump over that chasm, so he does X" and fairly describe that as a constraint imposed by the fiction. OTOH pretending that the description of the setting and characters and whatever actually constrains the long-range plans and actions of a powerful NPC? I don't buy it.

Then we disagree. When I'm creating a major powerful NPC, one of the first things I do is consider what they can't do, and that isn't going to change just because its inconvenient. It might change because of PC actions in the game, but even then I'm cautious about how I assess that.

To my view, if you haven't considered what things are beyond an enemy, you haven't really considered the enemy.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

Actually I hit post in error on this when I meant to change a quote and apparenly I can't delete. So I'm editing this and in a timey wimey warping of the space time continuum going to resond to the post posted after this.
I agree that if players want to resign from Star Fleet and go their own way they should of course be free to do so (and to be honest I'd consider resigning from Star Fleet to always be the correct choice. smug overbearing b@&*#&ds that they are. )but if we had discussed running a set AP or a cetain style of game I'd want to know what had changed the player's minds or why they wanted to go a different way. I know a lot of posts just pick random theoretical examples but in practice if the players have agreed to a more linear style adventure (and I wouldn't run one unless they had) they understand what that entails and will follow the adventure as best they can. if they are clearly ignoring the "here is the door you are supposed to follow" route something more major is going on and I'd probably have a break and see what it is so it can be fixed as soon as possible.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

About APs and players being able to declare actions that affect the direction and subject matter of the game: I don't run APs and in my game if PCs want to explore Rainbow Caves, then I guess the game is about that then. So in that sense players certainly have a lot of freedom to affect the direction of the game. And I'm sure in some other people's game players could have even more such freedom. APs on the other hand by their nature have limited scope. But ultimately every game has limited scope; they have a premise. If we decide to play Star Trek game about Starfleet officers working on a starship and boldly going, but the PCs decide that actually the best way to better themselves is resign from Starfleet and become non-profit horga'hn merchants on Risa, then what? So I don't really see any stark binary divides here, merely scopes of different breadth.