D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[prabe]

I'd just add that the GM isn't unilateral in that though. He has the players implicit consent to use the authority they have given him to produce framing and consequences that lead back to the adventure path when the players decide to unknowingly do things not involving the adventure path.

Is it really force/railroad if the GM is giving the players what they agreed to at the start of the game that they wanted?

To me that detail makes all the difference in the world.

First, force isn't exactly the same as railroad, in the sense that while a railroad requires force not all instances of force are railroading.

Second, if the GM is doing the things that define force, it's force. This is why even some of the people who have strong preferences for minimal/no force in the games they run/play have been clear that force isn't in itself bad. In any example that involves the people at the table agreeing to play through a given adventure/adventure path, the use of force is kinda expected. What makes it bad, best I can tell, is if/when a GM is doing it and pretending they aren't.

 

[hawkeyefan]

What makes it bad, best I can tell, is if/when a GM is doing it and pretending they aren't.

Speaking for myself, I think that’s part of it. Another would be using Force when it’s not needed. Like, if I’m playing 5e I’ve got to expect some…but like a cut scene is one thing, telling me my character’s abilities don’t work as described so that we can still have a big fight is something else entirely.

That kind of thing.

 

[Scott Christian]

I mean, if they're unfun for you or your group, then I understand that, and I would say not to use them. But if you don't use them, then what are you substituting? Sounds like "GM Decides What Happens".

Does this not sound like GM overriding the system's say? Or perhaps to be an alternate take on it? You're taking away a system to randomly determine events and replacing it with one where the GM decides. Combined with many other layers of GM decides.

How much of the game needs to be "GM decides" before it becomes railroading? I imagine that will vary from group to group, and your tolerance of it may be much higher than someone like @pemerton 's would be. My tolerance for it is somewhere between you two.

If tolerance changes the definition, and therefore, the definition changes from table to table - then the word shouldn't be used.

 

[prabe]

Speaking for myself, I think that’s part of it. Another would be using Force when it’s not needed. Like, if I’m playing 5e I’ve got to expect some…but like a cut scene is one thing, telling me my character’s abilities don’t work as described so that we can still have a big fight is something else entirely.

That kind of thing.

I think my thinking is that if the GM is being honest about using force, the players can make a more clear-eyed decision about whether that's a table they want to be at. If the GM isn't, they can't--which seems to imply that if you're endeavoring to run 5e low/no-force you should probably say so (which ... hadn't occurred to me until I was typing this).

 

[Scott Christian]

Quick question: In these other games, why is the GM there? They could easily consult the tables and just tell a story based off their fiction. In fact, why even call that player (the GM) a GM? They are not gamemastering? They are listening and then creating impromptu fiction that hopefully matches the players.
Why does the separation exist?

 

[Malmuria]

You (and others) have suggested that all or most RPGing sits on a sandbox-railroad continuum.
Is there any onus on those who continue to talk as if sandbox and linear/railroad exhaust the possibilities to recognise that they are wrong?

I wholeheartedly agree that those terms do not exhaust the possibilities of play, as I stated on the previous page:

The terminology you use and the way you employ it makes sense, and does the work of distinguishing story-now type games. When I was trying to explain to my Dnd/CoC players how to play blades in the dark, I drew a similar contrast to emphasize how blades would require a somewhat different focus from both me as gm and from the players (using the language in the book, which is more colloquial). So I can say first hand, if you are trying to play a story-now derived game, making this sort of bright contrast can be extraordinarily helpful in getting everyone on the same page.

In this and other threads I see the terminology that I have helped introduced to ENworld being used by lots of posters - "backstory", "unreaveled/secret backstory", "the fiction", "the scene/situation", "story now", etc. I reckon I'm doing my bit to contribute a shared vocabulary for analysing RPGs. It's not my job to invent terminology to describe the difference between @bert1001 fka bert1000 example where the PCs can step off the AP journey to rescue the slaves at Rainbow Rocks provided they then get back on board, and a different more "linear" AP approach where even the Rainbow Rocks detour is out of bounds. I'm sure that there are RPGers to whom that difference is super-important, but I'm not one of them.

I'm not trying to ban any particular terminology, but trying to think about the way that descriptive terminology contains (consciously or unconsciously) value judgements. That is, terms might seem to claim a descriptive neutrality but are in fact motivated by a particular preference. For example, "participationism." It's one thing to say, "I'm not very interested in CoC because I find it to be a passive experience based in 'GM storytime' " and another thing to say "The reason you like CoC is that it is a passive experience based in GM Storytime, and that's what you enjoy." Participationism is a useful and valid judgmental term to describe what you and others do not like about a certain style of game. I am not convinced that is a useful term for people who actually do enjoy that style of game; for me, at least, it doesn't get to the core of my experience with it or what I enjoy about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If tolerance changes the definition, and therefore, the definition changes from table to table - then the word shouldn't be used.

Tolerance doesn’t change the definition.

I don’t like chocolate syrup on my ice cream, but my son does. Doesn’t mean he has to call chocolate syrup or ice cream something else.

 

[Lanefan]

I think my thinking is that if the GM is being honest about using force, the players can make a more clear-eyed decision about whether that's a table they want to be at. If the GM isn't, they can't--which seems to imply that if you're endeavoring to run 5e low/no-force you should probably say so (which ... hadn't occurred to me until I was typing this).

This assumes that on your saying this they players wouldn't just sit there for a moment, then - thinking force is just something a Jedi uses to lift rocks - look at each other, shrug, and maybe ask "What the eff is he on about now?".

 

[Ovinomancer]

If tolerance changes the definition, and therefore, the definition changes from table to table - then the word shouldn't be used.

If we're getting rid of everything that has an average in a useful range, then be prepared to go back to the stone age. The internet will be gone, technically speaking.

Railroading is useful even if people are going to have slightly different definitions, there's a clear and useful average value of that tolerance.

 

[prabe]

This assumes that on your saying this they players wouldn't just sit there for a moment, then - thinking force is just something a Jedi uses to lift rocks - look at each other, shrug, and maybe ask "What the eff is he on about now?".

Well, I was presuming one could figure out how to put in language the players would understand. Of course, that still might generate that WTF response.