D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[prabe]

But again, this assumes the story is just about the results, not how the steps along the way play out. As you can see, I don't think I can agree with that.

Since this kinda started with my observation about my experiences of AP-style play, I figure I should say that while I agree with you in principle, my experiences are more consistent with those of @hawkeyefan on this. Different tables, maybe different APs, different experiences.

 

[Malmuria]

What I'm saying is, in all cases the GM is MOSTLY and OVERWHELMINGLY subject to forces that come from constraints of what material they have available and how they envisage things, not from constraints imposed by the backstory. So, the primary driver in most traditional play (and I've run enough of it to know) is "Hmmm, it would be cool if X happened!" and then X happens. Or "hmmm, I wrote up 33 rooms of dungeon the other day, what chain of events can I invoke that will lead to the PCs going to the dungeon?" etc. None of those are inherently bad, and none of them needs to fail to respect backstory, but they aren't very constrained by it, typically.

Which leads back to my observation a few pages ago, all games are story, all the time. Every time something is introduced into the game, the primary forces leading to its introduction had to do with something the GM wanted to say, for whatever reason. The contrast being games like DW, where a large part of the forces acting on the plot are actually what the players brought to the table. In DW that rises to the extent that every move the GM makes is going to be in reference to something some PC did, or is, or maybe has. The FORM of it is up to the GM in large part, but the salience is based on "That bears on the bond between the Barbarian and the Paladin" or something along those lines. Orcs don't just appear in the corridor because it is cool from the GM's perspective, they appear because they can threaten the Barbarian with death and make the Paladin choose what to do about it. They are Orcs because the GM's front says so, perhaps, but Bugbears would have served equally well if that was what he'd written down (or pulled out of his hat).

I think that the standard way to do some of this with a traditional adventure path is for there to discussion around character creation hooking the PCs into the world and each other. I mean, who knows what's standard, but insofar as official APs seem to be including more of this character background focus it seems to be more of a point of emphasis. So if you are running Tomb of Annihilation, you and the players work to connect each character to the theme of the "death curse," and then you continually exploit and develop those connections. I only listened to some of it, but I think the Dice Camera Action podcast was a good example of how a GM can form the adventure around the characters and their ongoing concerns and relationships. None of the above makes a 5e adventure path game the same as Dungeon World! And it may be the case that DW is more elegant in the way it automatically focuses things around the characters.

There is also something to be said for the world feeling neutral and dispassionate in relation to the characters, as I think @prabe was saying as as I think is common in osr-style games. Here the bugbears are not wandering around the cave either because the GM thinks it will be cool or because it activates something about the PCs backstory, but because there is a bugbear group living nearby and that's what was rolled on the encounter table. If the PCs weren't there, the bugbears would just continue to do their thing, but the PCs are there, so what happens? Fight, make friends, run away...? From that perspective, the neutrality of the world is what makes that choice meaningful, because it's the point where the PCs disrupt the existing state of affairs.

 

[Lanefan]

See, my experience of play is that those other things don't happen--that once a table sits down to "go through" a given AP, the point of play at that table becomes getting through that AP. Obviously experiences differ, but I find that the goal of finishing the AP warps play--not just in the sense of needing to stay on the rails, but in the sense that character goals don't matter to the AP (frankly, IME, characters don't matter to APs).

I think that might just come down to individual and collective player approach: do I/we try to bang through this as quickly and efficiently as possible, or do we stop and smell some roses along the way and maybe integrate ourselves into the setting a bit.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Can you enlarge on what you mean by "interchangeable" here? Because that seems--off. Even if you end up at the same final destination, the trip is going to feel pretty different depending on the characters in play to me, and that doesn't seem to make them "interchangeable" in any sense other than "they can all fit in this game" which, frankly, describes a lot of game characters.

Will the premise of the game be completed regardless of what characters are present? That's what interchangeable means here -- it really doesn't matter to ToA if the part is a Dwarf Fighter, Eladrin Wizard, Elven Cleric, Halfling Rogue, and Human Bard or if it's a Human Barbarian, Dragonborn Druid, Human Sorcerer, Dwarven Ranger, and Half-elven Monk. The same set of things will happen in play.

I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3.x three time for different groups. The same events happened, with some differences, but the overall arc of play was the same thing. The parties were interchangeable.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I am not quite sure what I'm supposed to do with this ground-breaking observation that a writer of an adventure path who has never met me or even heard of me, who wrote the module years before I made my character, might not have perfectly incorporated the unique backstory of my character into the adventure...

It's not just APs, though, this is a common feature of many, if not most, 5e games that aren't APs. The GM's ideas of what's happening in the game world don't really care what characters are present to engage them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It's not just APs, though, this is a common feature of many, if not most, 5e games that aren't APs. The GM's ideas of what's happening in the game world don't really care what characters are present to engage them.

On what are you basing this assessment? Is there a way to satisfy your criteria of character's influencing the content of the game without the players having access to narrative level mechanics?

 

[Ovinomancer]

On what are you basing this assessment? Is there a way to satisfy your criteria of character's influencing the content of the game without the players having access to narrative level mechanics?

You moved the goalposts again. Influencing the content of the game can be trivial and would validate your statement. I'm not talking to the trivial matters of how characterization occurred or if a given challenge was overcome by force or guile. The point is that the same challenge exists the same regardless of the characters, and however it's overcome, the next one in line does as well. The challenges the game presents care nothing for what characters are present in the scene or what motivations those characters have. This only leaves that characterization -- the players have to work to put some kind of stamp on the play, because play isn't about the characters, but about the GM's challenges that exist largely unconcerned with whichever characters happen to be there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Will the premise of the game be completed regardless of what characters are present? That's what interchangeable means here -- it really doesn't matter to ToA if the part is a Dwarf Fighter, Eladrin Wizard, Elven Cleric, Halfling Rogue, and Human Bard or if it's a Human Barbarian, Dragonborn Druid, Human Sorcerer, Dwarven Ranger, and Half-elven Monk. The same set of things will happen in play.

I don't care what it matters to the course of the adventure; I care what matters in play. Unless all those play elements are identical, the characters are not interchangeable.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Since this kinda started with my observation about my experiences of AP-style play, I figure I should say that while I agree with you in principle, my experiences are more consistent with those of @hawkeyefan on this. Different tables, maybe different APs, different experiences.

That would be my guess. Your description seems like a degenerate case to me, and to be clear, degenerate cases not only can happen, they can be common under some circumstances, but that doesn't mean they're anything but degenerate cases.

 

[prabe]

That would be my guess. Your description seems like a degenerate case to me, and to be clear, degenerate cases not only can happen, they can be common under some circumstances, but that doesn't mean they're anything but degenerate cases.

I'm not going to argue that my experiences weren't degenerate, but I think they hit me so hard and so unpleasantly because I very specifically prefer for the narrative of the game to be about (and ideally center on) the PCs--and APs just don't feel to me as though they do. So, I'm not an ideal player for APs at their (or presumably my) best.