D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Maxperson]

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?".

Star Wars messes up everything. The last time I mentioned the dark side, one of the players was like, "You mean that guy that beats up Superman?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't understand how these preferences are playing out in your cult weapon example. I thought you said that there is no fiction (neither established and revealed, hor authored by you or as yet unrevealed) about where there weapons are coming from, etc.

Have I misunderstood you vis-a-vis the cult and its weapons? Or are you saying that killings and possessions are different?

I have a vague idea of what's going on with them, but honestly not any more than the players do. It's a nebulous "they have evil plans" sort of thing. Past rolls, and/or me filling in details in response to player questions, have established that the cultists have more than once had to fight against the orthodoxy, so there are some reasonable extrapolations one can make, but I've written nothing down nor planned anything out about it. I don't really see this as a "mystery." It is certainly unknown, but not every unknown thing is a "mystery." (I think this may be a case of me using a term fairly narrowly, "mystery" as in "caper" or "whodunnit," and you using mystery very broadly, as in "any interesting thing not currently known.")

And yes, a whodunnit (be it a murder or a theft or whatever else) feels radically different to me than a Faustian tragedy, even though both in theory have a causal structure. I don't know why "Faustian tragedy" feels fine to invent answers as you go, while "murder whodunnit" feels completely horrible to do so. But the two things feel worlds apart to me.

Well, I just made up the example in the course of my post. But I thought the PC was waking up in a manor that they recognised. I don't think I said anything that establishes anyone's guilt, or even who put them in the manor.

Going back to the text (which may easily have been made in haste):
When you regain consciousness, you're in a room with a locked door and barred window. Looking out the window, you recognise the grounds - you're in <prior established and suspicious NPC's> manor!

The second sentence is what read to me like massive use of force. If that's where you're waking up...it seems pretty obvious to me that that suspicious NPC is guilty, fixing a particular desired result. If that was not the intent, and it was just meant to be color, that's fine. But I think it shows a weakness either way: something that can seem to be just window dressing to one person can look like blatant force to another.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

I respectfully ask that you read the post I was responding to:

How much of the game needs to be "GM decides" before it becomes railroading? I imagine that will vary from group to group,

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.

I am not getting rid of words that are useful. I am dismantling a word (and in this case, probably a few words) that are used to either:

A) promote a theory that is too thin to stand up on its own.
or
B) promote a philosophy which attached negative connotations to the majority style of play.

I do not buy the claim that it is to educate oneself to become a better DM. Instead, we have 72 pages of people just trying to understand the definitions proposed and the differences. And it still hasn't resolved. If 72 pages, basically the entirety of the rules of a game like D&D, can't accurately create clear pictures and delineations, then perhaps the wrong road was travelled down.

 

[pemerton]

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.

That's why I used the word consensual.

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?

I've posted multiple posts on this upthread, including those using the phrase "paradox of Participationism". As I said in those posts, I don't really think the terminology is worth much angst. The point is that a particular technique - or suite of techniques - is being used.

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

To what?

It doesn't change the techniques. It doesn't change my interest in playing that game. It changes my estimation of whether the group is likely to bust up.

As I asked in the post to which you replied, is my description of it controversial? I don't see why it should be.

 

[pemerton]

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?

What games are you asking about? Mainstream RPGs like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic?

Or something else?

 

[pemerton]

Instead, we have 72 pages of people just trying to understand the definitions proposed and the differences.

That's not how I see it.

The difference between the players can declare whatever actions they like for their PCs and the players are expected to declare actions that conform to a pre-established sequence of events is clear.

The difference between the GM secretly changes mechanical details like dice rolls and hp totals on the fly and the GM doesn't alter those details, and/or manages them in the open, is clear.

The difference between the GM creates new bits of backstory - second-stringers to replace defeated BBEGs, or clues to prompt the players to make the "right" action declarations - in order to keep play "on track", and the GM doesn't do that, is clear.

The difference between the GM uses their authority over scene-framing to ensure that a series of pre-authored scenes take place and the GM frames scenes in accordance with some other principle - eg extrapolating from the prior backstory (as in a sandbox or map-and-key dungeon) or following player cues (as in Burning Wheel) or building on the fiction and the action declarations in a soft-then-hard-move pattern (as in AW or DW) - is clear.

Who is confused about these differences? The controversy, as best I can tell, is around asserting that these difference might matter to someone's engagement with RPGing. Actually spelling out these differences, and asserting an unequivocal preference in respect of them, is taken to be some sort of tactless faux pas.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I respectfully ask that you read the post I was responding to:


I am not getting rid of words that are useful. I am dismantling a word (and in this case, probably a few words) that are used to either:

A) promote a theory that is too thin to stand up on its own.
or
B) promote a philosophy which attached negative connotations to the majority style of play.

I do not buy the claim that it is to educate oneself to become a better DM. Instead, we have 72 pages of people just trying to understand the definitions proposed and the differences. And it still hasn't resolved. If 72 pages, basically the entirety of the rules of a game like D&D, can't accurately create clear pictures and delineations, then perhaps the wrong road was travelled down.

I don't think you've shown A. Railroading isn't a new term, it's been around almost as long as the game has, and been used well for that time to describe a specific kind of play. B follows this. It's really only recently that the railroad has become a majority approach with the advent of the large APs, especially the 1-20 APs of the 3.x and Pathfinder eras. So, you're dealing with not a term made to vilify play, but an interesting shift in play that has aligned against an older term. The term is still very useful in describing play.

 

[pemerton]

Going back to the text (which may easily have been made in haste):
When you regain consciousness, you're in a room with a locked door and barred window. Looking out the window, you recognise the grounds - you're in <prior established and suspicious NPC's> manor!

The second sentence is what read to me like massive use of force. If that's where you're waking up...it seems pretty obvious to me that that suspicious NPC is guilty, fixing a particular desired result. If that was not the intent, and it was just meant to be color, that's fine. But I think it shows a weakness either way: something that can seem to be just window dressing to one person can look like blatant force to another.

Where's the force?

Let's suppose the game being played is AW or a variant thereof that includes manors. (Or let's suppose that instead of a manor, it is <prior established and suspicious NPC's> compound out past the Burn Flats.)

One hard move in AW is Capture Someone. Why is having the capture occur in the manor (or compound) Force?

Why does it become Force because the manor (or compound) is recognised as that belonging to <prior established and suspicious NPC>? And what is objectionable about the GM, as a soft move, announcing the possible badness that <prior established and suspicious NPC> might be <the killer, the kidnapper, whatever>?

To me, that just seems like the sort of thing that AW takes in its stride.

Here're a couple of example custom moves, from the AW rulebook pp 144, 269:

When one of Siso’s Children touches you, roll+weird. On a 10+, your brain protects you and it’s just a touch. On a 7–9, I tell you what to do: if you do it, mark experience; if you don’t, you’re acting under fire from brain-weirdness. On a miss, you come to, some time later, having done whatever Siso’s child wants you to have done.​

​

If Grome gets his hands on you, he ties you to a table and you know he’s really ******* good at that. If you try to escape, roll+hard. On a hit, you can escape, but at a cost. On a 10+, choose 1; on a 7–9, choose 2:​

• it takes you over an hour and leaves you exhausted. Take s-harm (ap).​

• you suffer for it; your arms and legs are torn bloody before you’re done. Take 1-harm (ap).​

• ultimately you need to bribe Ipe, Grome’s sister, to help you. It costs you 1-barter.​

I don't see why waking up from unconsciousness in some sinister person's house is any different, in its fundamentals, from these. (EDIT: And my memory was also correct, that I said nothing about who put the PC in the manor, nor who might be guilty of anything. All I did was describe waking up from unconsciousness in a particular, recognisable and salient place. Which as I said seems to me like standard AW GMing.)

 

[pemerton]

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

Well, I enjoy a well-GMed CoC session as much as the next person.

It's been quite a while. I wouldn't describe the experience as passive - the player (ie me) has a job to do, namely, portraying their PC's descent into madness and leaning into the GM's scenes and story.

But it's obvious that the player's (ie my) action declarations are not having an impact on the overall trajectory of play.

 

[Malmuria]

That's not how I see it.

The difference between the players can declare whatever actions they like for their PCs and the players are expected to declare actions that conform to a pre-established sequence of events is clear.

The difference between the GM secretly changes mechanical details like dice rolls and hp totals on the fly and the GM doesn't alter those details, and/or manages them in the open, is clear.

The difference between the GM creates new bits of backstory - second-stringers to replace defeated BBEGs, or clues to prompt the players to make the "right" action declarations - in order to keep play "on track", and the GM doesn't do that, is clear.

The difference between the GM uses their authority over scene-framing to ensure that a series of pre-authored scenes take place and the GM frames scenes in accordance with some other principle - eg extrapolating from the prior backstory (as in a sandbox or map-and-key dungeon) or following player cues (as in Burning Wheel) or building on the fiction and the action declarations in a soft-the-hard-move pattern (as in AW or DW) - is clear.

Who is confused about these differences? The controversy, as best I can tell, is around asserting that these difference might matter to someone's engagement with RPGing. Actually spelling out these differences, and asserting an unequivocal preference in respect of them, is taken to be some sort of tactless faux pas.

All very valid questions! And all questions that are being thoroughly hashed out in 5e-centric spaces among people who both object to the blatant use of GM force and railroading and also genuinely want to play the 5e adventure paths. Or people who have been genuinely influenced by games like Dungeon World and want to bring some of those principles to bear even when running 5e adventure paths. Or people who watch critical role and are "using" dnd as the base to create more open experiences. Or, OSR spaces where people are rethinking the role of what you call backstory and how it is developed. (Or people in those spaces going further and mixing their experiences with games like blades in the dark and rules-lite OSR.)

One reaction to your questions is to give up on "trad" games and play story-now games. But there's lots of interesting cross-pollination and experimentation going on that I think is worth paying attention to, personally.