D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Thomas Shey]

That’s fair. Everyone’s sense of what is cosmetic may vary.

But the point is that the game is about what’s in the book more than about the characters that are brought to the table.

And as I said before, that's only true if the overall plotline and steps are what's important to you. That is not a given.

Sure, but the steps along the way are predetermined. Will one group of players head to the Peaks of Flame while another group skips them? Sure. There’s room for moving about and for the steps to be rearranged. Chult is a hexcrawl, so the specific path one group takes will differ from another.

What I'm arguing is that often that level of decision is not what someone cares about.

But they’re all going to reach Omu. They’re all going to have to deal with Raz Nsi. They’re all going to have to collect the different totems to gain entry to the tomb. They’re all going to deal with the trickster gods. They’re all going to have to find the skeleton keys to progress through the dungeon. They’ll all face off with Acererak and the Soulmonger.

But again, so? If that all doesn't matter to them? That the whole point in the game is to be able to engage with the combat system and interact with other characters, both PCs and NPCs?

And again, that’s not bad by any means. There are decision points and spots for player input. And that kind of shared experience is pretty foundational to the hobby. Most (but not all) of us have some kind of fond memory of making it through White Plume Mountain or clearing the Caves of Chaos or what have you.

My only argument is that at least some of the participants are considering some things mattering more a given, and to a given player that doesn't always follow. As I said, your argument and some others is based on the assumption that the view from on high is the more important one, and its just that--an assumption. It may well be for you, but it does not follow that it does for everyone.

 

[Campbell]

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?

From my perspective a big part of this is that adventuring is not conducive to having who the characters are really matter. A substantial amount of what makes a character who they are is their personal context. You need goals, responsibilities, relationships, personal reputations. It's hard to have that alongside epic quests, big bads, and world shaking stakes.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Ovinomancer
Well, to start, I said I use some Story Now elements in my prep and adjudication of D&D, but I'd stop short of claiming the game can be entirely Story Now. The rules push back in too many places.

I agree about the lack of character connection suggestions or guidance in the rules. If you haven't played many (or any) other games you'd just assume that's the way things are always supposed to be. I find that most DMs I've played with make at least some efforts in that direction, and some DMs do rather a lot of it. The game doesn't break either way. You say the game doesn't care, and you're right, but that's not quite the same as saying that the people at the table don't care, which is the only place you'll find the kind of character engagement you are (rightly) lamenting the absence of.

I completely agree with your last statement.

 

[Malmuria]

Again, who knows what is standard practice at most tables that use adventure paths for 5e, since there are millions of players. But to the extent that actual plays are influential, they a present a game that's quite character focused. The Dice Camera Action game that I referenced above is instructive insofar as it was run by Chris Perkins and used material from adventure paths (and in fact was sort of an advertisement for those adventure paths). I listened to a chunk of it while I was painting some rooms in my house a few years ago. I would say the specifics of the character's backstories and how particular adventures played out were continually reintroduced by Perkins and made into a focal point. Even though he was the author on a lot of the APs, he adapts them to the characters (and to the time constraints of a podcast). For example, I think they sort of temporarily imprisoned Strahd when they did the CoS portion of the podcast, but then Strahd came back later and it was an ongoing theme. Again, this is not the same as the character focus of Dungeon World, and probably takes more work and has fewer mechanics available to it, but neither did it strike me as, say, challenge based Keep on the Borderlands with characters that are "pawns" and that die often. If characters were interchangeable in 5e play, I'm not sure there would be such a mechanical focus (death saves, healing word, etc) on keeping them alive.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is an argument I once made as well. The difference between a game predicated on following the GM's ideas and one where the characters are centered makes it very obvious. If you don't have that experience, then you're looking at this from the point of view of the small differences in play. But, here's a challenge for you to reconcile. In CoS, the only way out is to face and defeat Strahd. If you do this, does it matter who the characters are that do it? No, it's the same challenge, the same reward. The differences are down in the weeds of what actions were declared, how many rounds it took, etc. Strahd exists to be defeated, and is the only way out, regardless of who the characters are. The story prepared is the same.

I'm sure the AP is very linear and limited, but...

Contrast this, if you can, with a game where the entire game is built upon what characters are present -- Strahd would only ever exist if a character has that as a dramatic need. The entire game is different. Change the character, you change the entire game, not just the details of how Strahd is overcome.

Here you just directly jump to the alternative being the players being able to jettison the entire premise of the campaign and if they can't do that they don't have proper control. It would like me saying that Blades in the Dark is railroady, because the PCs can't realistically just stop being scoundrels living dangerous lives and run a peaceful coffee shop instead.

 

[Ovinomancer]

More I'm arguing that the differences aren't small in play. That is to say for the majority of the play experience, they're more pronounced than whatever the final result is. So, essentially, I'm disagreeing with part of your premise.

They aren't. The challenges faced don't change, the results of the challenges don't change, the only thing that changes are the details of how the challenges are faced. So, for CoS, the stories told are all about defeating Strahd. In large part, you get the sun sword, you get the ally, you get the raven amulet and you face Strahd. Doesn't matter what characters are there, this is the story told. The details change, but, honestly, these are about as important as the description of how your character is dressed to the end story.

Another way to look at this: Strahd doesn't care what your character's goal is. He doesn't change. He doesn't care what you did earlier, Strahd doesn't change. Strahd's castle doesn't change. It doesn't matter if you're a wizard or a fighter, dwarf or elf, boy or girl or neither, Strahd doesn't care. He doesn't change, the challenge doesn't change, the castle doesn't change. Regardless of what your character is, you face the exact same thing as another character. The difference in the story told is going to be one of details, not anything substantive. The characters are effectively interchangeable -- regardless of what character you start as, nothing in CoS changes because of that. The shape of the story is the same, the challenges are the same, the actions required are the same. The details of that, the individual moments, sure, those change, but if this is the threshold for you for character's mattering, then it's a very low bar.

And?

You're missing my point that how important that is turns on what part of the game is more interesting to you. Its not a given that the latter actually provides a more interesting game than the former; that depends on where the focus of the player is. If what a player cares about is individual tactical decisions and interactions with other PCs mostly, the difference between whether the opposition is customized toward them or generalized toward a random D&D party is, effectively, trivial.

This is a non sequitur. I'm talking about how the characters present don't change the game in Trad play and you've shifted to an argument about whether or not players want to play a game where this is so over a game where it is not. Okay, that's a trivially true argument and it doesn't go to the point I'm making. I'm not saying one is better than the other -- at no point in this entire thread has this been an intent or argument mine. I'm pointing out how games can be different! The interchangeability of character is, in my opinion, actually a selling point for D&D -- it creates a shared set of experiences that create social bonds between hobbyists. Just knowing you've done the same story as others is a bonding moment, even if it isn't discussed or compared. It's a shared experience. This is valuable. Individuals may like or dislike it, though, so it's useful to point it out as a feature of play. I have no problems with people preferring this over other approaches -- none at all. That would be like thinking people are terrible people for not admitting that South Carolina mustard-based barbeque is the best in the world. Okay, bad example, as that's obviously true, but the point stands!

 

[Aldarc]

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 think it’s way too easy to dismiss these sorts of things as “degenerate play.” It’s basically “No True Scotsman” by another name.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

From my perspective a big part of this is that adventuring is not conducive to having who the characters are really matter. A substantial amount of what makes a character who they are is their personal context. You need goals, responsibilities, relationships, personal reputations. It's hard to have that alongside epic quests, big bads, and world shaking stakes.

That certainly is a novel take! I would imagine that adventuring is all about being put into challenging situations and having to make hard decisions, and that, I feel, is pretty conductive of revealing and moulding one's nature, and testing and forming personal bonds.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm sure the AP is very linear and limited, but...

CoS is held out as an exemplar of a sandbox. It's pretty decent, actually. I like it. To me, though, this speaks more to the limited spread in nature between sandboxes and linear play, but that's a different topic.

Here you just directly jump to the alternative being the players being able to jettison the entire premise of the campaign and if they can't do that they don't have proper control. It would like me saying that Blades in the Dark is railroady, because the PCs can't realistically just stop being scoundrels living dangerous lives and run a peaceful coffee shop instead.

This is a strange insistence -- that the premise be fixed for arguments to matter. The premise of the game in CoS is imposed by the GM, which is why the characters present for it are interchangeable. If the premise of the game is about the characters, then they are not interchangeable. I didn't jettison the premise, because it's not required that it be the same and was not ever the basis of any of my arguments. I'll agree with you, though; if the premise is fixed to something like "defeat Strahd to escape" then this is a big clue that characters will be interchangeable.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That certainly is a novel take! I would imagine that adventuring is all about being put into challenging situations and having to make hard decisions, and that, I feel, is pretty conductive of revealing and moulding one's nature, and test and form personal bonds.

Any such testing is incidental to the challenge, though.