D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

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.

So because premise of Blades in the Dark is fixed, the characters are interchangeable? OK.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So because premise of Blades in the Dark is fixed, the characters are interchangeable? OK.

Sigh. I saw that coming, and really hoped that you might avoid it, because it's foolish. It's why I specifically said a premise like "defeat Strahd to escape," in the hopes it would be noted and this silly rejoinder avoided.

The premise in Blades in the Dark is generic -- it's "play a criminal in a haunted, magical version of a Victorian city." There's no goal here, like in APs. The premise of an AP is "finish this quest." Surely you can note a distinct difference between a premise that is a set of genre tropes and one where there's a fixed goal for play, yes?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sigh. I saw that coming, and really hoped that you might avoid it, because it's foolish. It's why I specifically said a premise like "defeat Strahd to escape," in the hopes it would be noted and this silly rejoinder avoided.

The premise in Blades in the Dark is generic -- it's "play a criminal in a haunted, magical version of a Victorian city." There's no goal here, like in APs. The premise of an AP is "finish this quest." Surely you can note a distinct difference between a premise that is a set of genre tropes and one where there's a fixed goal for play, yes?

One has somewhat broader scope, yes. This is what I said ages ago. It is a difference of degree, not of kind.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

just responded to this again, because it is interesting to look at some of the things you have linked here. "Fronts in D&D" is interesting in that it gives a capsul definition of a DW front, but doesn't actually speak about D&D at all... I mean, admittedly it isn't rocket science, fronts can simply be utilized in D&D without needing anything special. I was hoping there would be a little more there.

The article about 'neo-trad' is interesting in that it categorizes things like Numinera (Cypher System generally I would assume) in a bucket with 7th Sea (which I know is a fairly hard Story Now game). I get that there are commonalities there, and the discussion is not primarily about the Story Now aspect, but I'm not super sure it tells me how mainstream RPGs are approaching Story Now (it does mention it).

Anti-canon is certainly a vote in favor of Zero Myth, which is definitely an element of story gaming, and the author seems to be talking about something pretty close to PbtA-style Story Now, at least in a general sense. I'd like to see a lot more about the nuts and bolts though.

I have to say, I see some ultra lightweight 'games' here, and some discussion of certain elements which are used in indie games, but aside from Anti-canon, which is pretty much about SETTING exclusively, I am not sure what makes these specifically about mixing between traditional and story now styles. Certainly there are a few indicates in a couple of them that you COULD perhaps use a front in D&D, or play a Zero Myth game of 5e. Also I don't at all doubt you when you say that there are people actively mixing elements of such games together. TBH I would call DW itself a mix up of D&D traditional themes with PbtA.

I guess what I'm saying is, I would see Indie/Story Now type games as an OUTGROWTH of traditional games to start with. I think it is an error to emphasize rejection of traditional themes and processes as key to new style games vs them more building on what came before. I mean, I started out in 1975 playing D&D, I sure have built on that myself! In fact I LIKE a lot of D&D's paradigm and am probably overly comfortable with it in a lot of ways.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

The overall arc might have been the same but I bet the details weren't - the in-party interactions, the route(s) taken*, the choices made, the tactics and strategies, the overall approach (e.g. degrees of stealth vs face-charge vs divination vs caution etc.) almost had to have been different.

It's like taking two hockey games, where one was a slow defensive stalemate with lots of grind-'em'down play while the other was an end-to-end up-tempo game with chances galore and great goaltending, and complaining they were the same because the final score in each was 3-2.

* - unless the adventure is very linear; I'm not familiar with RtToEE but I've read (all of) and run (part of) the original, and while it has chokepoints there's lots of room for different approaches and exploration choices between said chokepoints.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I'm not so sure it's all that hard, though, once scale is considered.

The epic quests, big bads, etc. is all large-scale stuff. The responsibilities, relationships, and so forth is small scale stuff; and as long as the GM allows time for both (which not all do, skipping the small stuff in favour of the large) they can coexist just fine.

An example: in the game I play in one of my PCs and his wife (another PC) recently finished putting the entire game world back together. Really. It had been split into four side-along versions by prior events, and we were quested to fix this; and in so doing we - with help - fixed the world while sinking large parts of two continents under the seas and causing who-knows-how-much carnage and damage in the process.

At the same time and underneath all this their marriage is, if not falling apart, certainly in a rough patch due to [35+ real-world years of in-play history all piling up]. Some of this was getting roleplayed out even while we were in the field on our fix-the-world mission; and so yes, even if only anecdotally, I say it can be done.

 

[Cadence]

Random things in the DMG...

DMG pg. 4 on your goal as DM in regards to the players - "create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions"

DMG pg. 6 if your players have storytelling as a goal - use the characters' backgrounds to help shape the campaign; make sure the encounters advance the story; make the character's actions help steer future events

DMG pg. 72 on published adventures has an intro paragraph on your being able to buy them, and then three paragraphs.

Paragraph 1 - make adjustments to published adventures so that they better suit your campaign and appeals to your players
Paragraph 2 - published adventures can't account for every action your characters might take
Paragraph 3 - you might not use it as a single adventure, but use it for inspiration instead

In general about adventure structure later on the page

Beginning - An adventure starts with a hook that piques the interest of the players
Middle - The characters are the heroes of the story, never let them become mere spectators, watching as events unfold around them that they can't influence
Ending - The outcome should hinge on the characters actions and decisions should never be a forgone conclusion.

Page 75-77 on event based adventures with a villain, #5 is about the villain reacting to what the adventurers do

(And then they cancel that out somewhat with some things that I would call Illusionism in the section on between adventures on page 125...)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Now I'm going to take the other side of this: you don't have to have access to narrative level mechanics for the result of a game to come out differently; they just have to be allowed to come out differently. That's operating on a different level than what I've been talking about regarding the events-in-play, and its something APs are absolutely not going to do, and my interpretation is that Ovinomancer is talking about how things actually play out, not only in final result but in steps along the way; if those steps are going to be the same no matter what the PCs do, then in practice the individual adventure the GM is running might as well be an AP even if he's doing it entirely himself.

I think that is pretty well put. You could say something similar about a sandbox, it is (definitionally I would say) not responsive to whom it is engaged by. The players can certainly look at it as "Oh, our all thief party of course went to the place where they were told was a maze full of traps and treasure!"; and indeed that could serve as a mechanism to produce a more player-directed and character dramatic focus, though in a bit of an odd way compared with Story Now games. Anyway, I think you are right in your interpretation, A1-4 is a railroady AP, basically. I don't think it matters who the PCs are, nor does how they progress through the encounters make much difference, either way they go to the next area and each one pretty much stands alone. IIRC there are a couple points where there may be some notes outlining how a few details might change contingent on the outcomes of previous encounters (IE if guards escaped or whatever).

 

[soviet]

Random things in the DMG...

DMG pg. 4 on your goal as DM in regards to the players - "create a campaign world that revolves around their actions and decisions"

DMG pg. 6 if your players have storytelling as a goal - use the characters' backgrounds to help shape the campaign; make sure the encounters advance the story; make the character's actions help steer future events

DMG pg. 72 on published adventures has an intro paragraph on your being able to buy them, and then three paragraphs.

Paragraph 1 - make adjustments to published adventures so that they better suit your campaign and appeals to your players
Paragraph 2 - published adventures can't account for every action your characters might take
Paragraph 3 - you might not use it as a single adventure, but use it for inspiration instead

In general about adventure structure later on the page

Beginning - An adventure starts with a hook that piques the interest of the players
Middle - The characters are the heroes of the story, never let them become mere spectators, watching as events unfold around them that they can't influence
Ending - The outcome should hinge on the characters actions and decisions should never be a forgone conclusion.

Page 75-77 on event based adventures with a villain, #5 is about the villain reacting to what the adventurers do

(And then they cancel that out somewhat with some things that I would call Illusionism in the section on between adventures on page 125...)

If the D&D 5.5 DMG said it granted the owner immortality, would that also become true?

It's nice to have these brief words of guidance but we should judge a game by what it does, not what it says it does.

 

[pemerton]

I would go further than that. My impression is that a lot of people don’t play their APs like straitjackets. The AP forms the backbone of the campaign, but the PCs are free to wander, try different things and interact with the environment.

Like in Rime of the Frostmaiden, there is an important element in the background (the unending winter), but the players are free to spend their time interacting with the Ten-Towns.

This is said, but it's not taken further to examine what play is being allowed. Interacting with the Ten Towns in Rime doesn't do anything on it's own, especially if the level of interaction is engaging in the prepared material and/or some improved shopping/free roleplay. In this interaction, what is the focus of play? Can the players enacts real and lasting change to the course of the game (and this doesn't mean that they make a friend that stays a friend, I'm actually talking about changing what future play is about)? Can interaction in the Ten Towns actually change who the villain is or alter the current plans of the 1st act transition bad guys?

If you are still requiring play go through the end wicket, what have you really changed about the structure of the game? You've allowed maybe some player stuff, but it's not the important parts, it's mostly at the level of color or minor interest -- some side plots. This is akin to the train pulling into the station and you can get out and tour the area before reboarding. Does any amount of this touring actually change the structure of the trip?

<snip>

such kinds of minor freedoms to do minor sideplots don't really change the nature of the overall play. Add in that all sideplots require GM approval and we're still in the same kind of playspace.

What Ovinomancer says here pretty much covers it.

All I'd add is this: if the AP is really just providing material for a "living sandbox" - ie locations and NPC plans and NPC-driven events - but there is no commitment to actually using all or even a good chunk of the scenes that are set out in the AP, then I don't know that I would call that "playing the AP". Certainly the impression I get from that phrase tends to be something much closer to what @hawkeyefan has described in some posts not too far upthread.