On "Illusionism" (+)

[Committed Hero]

IF illusionism is defined as "encounter X lies at the end of both forks in the road" there can still be plenty of choice in how the PCs handle the encounter. When a GM wants an encounter to happen, I am willing to stipulate that this is because they think it will be cool. A GM should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding this as long as it's not squandered. Otherwise, why are they the GM?

However, there are any number of ways the party can act once they are aware of the possibility of this encounter, including avoiding it altogether if they are stealthy enough. Regarding that, the players should be given the courtesy of assuming that their characters would be doing what is normal for overland travel, including scouting ahead for potential ambushes.

For me, illusionism only becomes railroading when - in a situation like the one above - the party takes steps to avoid the road/encounter entirely, and the GM takes active steps to thwart this desire. Especially if successful die rolls would, in normal cases, assist in avoiding the encounter.

The solution, in both cases, is to talk about the issue out of character when it arises, rather than waste a session dancing around the problem.

 

[Celebrim]

IF illusionism is defined as "encounter X lies at the end of both forks in the road" there can still be plenty of choice in how the PCs handle the encounter. When a GM wants an encounter to happen, I am willing to stipulate that this is because they think it will be cool. A GM should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding this as long as it's not squandered. Otherwise, why are they the GM?

However, there are any number of ways the party can act once they are aware of the possibility of this encounter, including avoiding it altogether if they are stealthy enough. Regarding that, the players should be given the courtesy of assuming that their characters would be doing what is normal for overland travel, including scouting ahead for potential ambushes.

For me, illusionism only becomes railroading when - in a situation like the one above - the party takes steps to avoid the road/encounter entirely, and the GM takes active steps to thwart this desire. Especially if successful die rolls would, in normal cases, assist in avoiding the encounter.

The solution, in both cases, is to talk about the issue out of character when it arises, rather than waste a session dancing around the problem.

We don't actually disagree.

It's important to understand that I'm not setting down a hard and fast rule that either railroading in general or a particular technique for railroading is bad. I'm basically just saying, "Understand what you are doing with these techniques, what they accomplish, and what you risk when you utilize them."

When you say something like:

"For me, illusionism only becomes railroading when - in a situation like the one above - the party takes steps to avoid the road/encounter entirely, and the GM takes active steps to thwart this desire."

You practically quoting from my earlier essay on "techniques for railroading". And as far as "Encounter X lies down both forks in the road", I would actually advocating doing that if you run I3 Pyramid, using a "Schrodinger's Outdoor Map" to ensure the story if it isn't on rails, will at least have the shape it does out of player choice and not based on random chance only. That is to say, if the PC's free or don't free the ifrit, then it should be because of their actions and not a coin flip decision based on no information.

 

[GrahamWills]

It should be pointed out that there is a trivial way for a GM to arrive at an outcome they want, and yet not rely on Illusionism. You simply tell the players that you intend to arrive at a certain outcome regardless. There can then be no more illusion because you have deliberately destroyed the illusion.

This may sound like a technical solution that no GM would actually use, but it's actually not a terrible plan in many situations. It tells the players that there's a certain direction or shape to the game, and that the GM has set a "fixed point" that, since they are now aware of, they have more options to work with than if they had been unaware. In fact, for many genres I might argue that setting a known outcome increases overall player agency.

Let me take a couple of examples. Over the last weekend I had the opportunity to play in a 7 Seas game with John Wick as the GM. We started out with a scene where we were chasing and fighting a certain opponent. We then jumped back in time 3 days to the search for the creature. So the GM has let us know that a certain outcome will happen. Because of that we, as players can decide not to do things that are pointless, irrelevant or stupid. We (players, not characters) have extra knowledge that means that our decisions are goin to be more effective than if we did not know them. Without that knowledge, many actions would have resulted in the same boring failure states. With the knowledge, we made choices that were always impactful.

As a second example, I am running the Great Pendragon Campaign. In 45 years Arthur will fight in his last fight, lose and die, ending the campaign. I could use illusionism and keep Arthur alive by GM fiat for the next 45 years, but by telling the players there is a fixed point, they have better agency. They might still decide to oppose and try and destroy Arthur, but they know they will fail so that if they choose to do so, they do so within framework that is know and accepted by all parties.

Two examples that I hope are helpful. To me, I'm of the school that says that poetry is better when it is constrained by rules as the requirement to obey the constraint requires the author to be more imaginative. Similarly, to me, setting constraints on player's agency brings out better roleplaying.

I realize that there's a situationist - narrativist split in the way people approach "future states". The situationist tends to reject a known outcome unless there's an in-game reason of it (prophecy, time-travel, etc.) For a simulationist, if they want to ensure a certain future state, they have to use illusion as they are supposed to be clockwork designers -- the moment a design is set in motion, their job is to follow the mechanism's progress without interference. But if you and your group leans to narration, setting future states by either GMs or players is a neither unusual, hard to implement, nor requires any form of deception. It's just something you do to ensure that fun happens and you don't miss it because a random dice roll deprived you of it.

 

[Celebrim]

It should be pointed out that there is a trivial way for a GM to arrive at an outcome they want, and yet not rely on Illusionism. You simply tell the players that you intend to arrive at a certain outcome regardless. There can then be no more illusion because you have deliberately destroyed the illusion.

I mention this possibility at the end of my original post. There is more than one way to play with the curtain up so that the players can see the illusion, in which case it probably isn't really illusionism.

In fact, for many genres I might argue that setting a known outcome increases overall player agency.

I don't know if I would go that far, but in my original essay on railroading techniques (linked to in my original post) I note that there are times you can railroad players in order to increase player agency because without the initial rails they don't have enough information to make an informed choice anyway.

Over the last weekend I had the opportunity to play in a 7 Seas game with John Wick as the GM...

You hardly have to say any more. I don't agree with Wick over most areas of game design and even less so on GM technique, but Wick is probably the best railroader in the business, both in terms of his ability to do it and in terms of using it artfully to accomplish some goal.

We started out with a scene where we were chasing and fighting a certain opponent. We then jumped back in time 3 days to the search for the creature. So the GM has let us know that a certain outcome will happen.

I got to admit that even I'm a bit impressed. That 'flashback' technique is not even a technique I listed in my techniques on railroading, but it's a masterful bit of metagame directing. Like I said, whatever else you can say about him, he can conduct a railroad like Tom Hanks aboard the Polar Express.

Because of that we, as players can decide not to do things that are pointless, irrelevant or stupid. We (players, not characters) have extra knowledge that means that our decisions are going to be more effective than if we did not know them. Without that knowledge, many actions would have resulted in the same boring failure states. With the knowledge, we made choices that were always impactful.

Examples please.

As a second example, I am running the Great Pendragon Campaign. In 45 years Arthur will fight in his last fight, lose and die, ending the campaign. I could use illusionism and keep Arthur alive by GM fiat for the next 45 years, but by telling the players there is a fixed point, they have better agency. They might still decide to oppose and try and destroy Arthur, but they know they will fail so that if they choose to do so, they do so within framework that is know and accepted by all parties.

See, I don't buy this. I own the Great Pendragon Campaign, and like the Chronicles of the Dragonlance campaign, I suspect it plays better if the conductor is willing to let the game go off the rails. In particular, I would consider it almost a requirement of running the GPC well that the players are allowed and even encouraged to replace the standard Knights of the Round table families and knights as major players in the story. I saw a post a few weeks back by a GM running the game whose knight was angling to replace Lancelot as Guinevere's lover, and while that's an interesting choice, that's precisely the sort of bold move that I think a storyteller should be allowing in that campaign. Indeed, I'd be running the game very open ended, with the possibility that not all of Arthur's heirs die or that Camlann (if it even happens at all) might not indeed by a pyric victory only. Probably things would happen like in the story to a large extent, but the PC's could steer things in ways that contradict Mallory. I certainly don't agree that players highly familiar with Mallory gain more agency in the story if they know that whatever they do, things will always play out exactly the same.

But if you and your group leans to narration, setting future states by either GMs or players is a neither unusual, hard to implement, nor requires any form of deception. It's just something you do to ensure that fun happens and you don't miss it because a random dice roll deprived you of it.

On the other hand, I agree that just because the story is on rails, doesn't mean the group isn't going to have fun. I fully understand that many groups like to and want to ride a railroad to some foreordained conclusion and that if there is a table agreement to lean into that, that that is a functional style of play. It's quite possible for a group with a strong table contract to play an RPG the way you might pass a notebook around a table and jointly compose a story, each writer adding to the story in turn. And there is nothing at all wrong with that if everyone has fun. I'm certainly not here to say something like "Railroading bad" or "Illusionism bad". What I'm really trying to say is, "Know what you are doing and what the consequences of it are and why you are doing it." I do feel that for the majority of players and the majority of aesthetics of play, railroading techniques and illusionism are like spices where a very little goes a long ways, or like salt or vinegar were a little can enhance a dish but too much ruins it. But that doesn't mean that I think other ways of playing are bad or that you are wrong for liking a very salty and vinegary dish if it is to your taste.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's nothing wrong with linear narrative campaigns and lots of groups love them. I wouldn't say you need illusionism to make them happen though, well depending on the design I guess.

 

[loverdrive]

Here in some posts, and in my tg channel, I recently argued for the players just... knowing the adventure in prep-heavy games that require battlemaps and stuff in order to be utilized for their fullest potential.

After all, it's not railroading, if the players willingly choose to stay on the train. And knowledge of a pre-defined route can allow the players to express agency within those boundaries.

If I know for a fact that all roads lead to Rome and not going there isn't on the table, then I will focus on figuring out a compelling reason why my character goes there, instead of wasting everyone's time on trying to book a ticket to Carthage instead.

 

[Starfox]

The issue of PC continuity is actually a current issue in my Candlekeep Mysteries game. My gaming style is very much focused on the story of each character. While still a conventional GM-makes-the-story game, it is still focused on the characters and the subplots developed between me and the players. PC death was bacially impossible, at least without player consent. Those who have played with for a long time are all in on this idea. We never really discussed it, its just how we played, an unstated social contract. So far, so good.

Now, we have a new player who, while creating a story around their character, doesn't stick around to play just this one character, invalidating the plots around that character. This is not really a problem. This campaign, while long, was made specifically to learn the 5E system by playing it at different levels over time. So if one player wants to play a Bladesinger/Fighter, a Kobold sorcerer, and a Warlock, that's all good as it gives us more experience with more parts of the 5E game. But it messes with my headspace. Its quite different from how I am used to games progressing. Parts of the game world focused on this character will become less relevant and fade even more into the background.

No right or wrong here, just anecdotal examples of different focus.

 

[Starfox]

IF illusionism is defined as "encounter X lies at the end of both forks in the road" there can still be plenty of choice in how the PCs handle the encounter. When a GM wants an encounter to happen...

I am not debating your point, Committed Hero, I am merely musing on it.

This can still involve relevant PC choice and can even make sense in the story. These are two different issues.

First, choosing to take the road into the wood or over the plains might lead to the same encounter, but in different terrains. Facing giant eagles or tanky dwarves might play out quite different in these two terrains.

Second, if the encounter is patrolling the area or even actually seeking/chasing the PCs, it can actually make sense in the story for them to be encountered along either road. Especially in a magic world where the enemy may have access to divination magic.

 

[GrahamWills]

@Celebrim I've noticed that when you start using game terms, you seem to use them in the most extreme version possible. When we were talking about fudging, you defined it as "anything that changes the record of the encounter", meaning that use of X-cards, deciding not to narrate a villain death scene, shortening a scene for pacing -- everything is defined as "fudging".

Similarly here, you seem to be defining any constraint placed on players actions that is not requied by the world definition as railroading.

Now here's the thing about railroads. They have rails. Lots of it, and you stay on it all the time. Having one fixed piece of track does not make a railroad -- you need it all the way. If I put a piece of track outside my front door in Chicago, and a friend in Berlin put a piece of track outside their front door, it would be ludicrous to suggest I had built a Chicago-Berlin railroad. Now perhaps some small gaps are admissible, but in the normal sense of the word, a railroad is an essentially complete system of transport on rails where little to no deviation is allowed.

In game terms, it's ok to broaden this a little bit, but for a game to be a railroad, it must remove player agency at least a high percentage of the time. Maybe not 99%+, as a real-world railroad does, but it's got to be the predominant fact of the campaign. We can debate the exact percentage of the time, but your assertion that a Pendragon campaign that lasts 5 years is a railroad because it has one fixed point in it is like my proposed Chicago-Berlin railroad. It's a ludicrous suggestion.

I do not accept your extremist definition of railroading. One piece of track does not make a railroad. To be railroading, you need to be continually removing player agency to ensure a given fixed point.
So, just to be clear, unless you can find community support for your extreme definition, I am not using it.

I don't know if I would go that far, but in my original essay on railroading techniques (linked to in my original post) I note that there are times you can railroad players in order to increase player agency because without the initial rails they don't have enough information to make an informed choice anyway.

The usual definition requires that a railroad reduces player agency. The fact that under your definition it can increase it makes it even more clear that your definition is basically just not a good one.

Re: Flashback techniques

I got to admit that even I'm a bit impressed. That 'flashback' technique is not even a technique I listed in my techniques on railroading, but it's a masterful bit of metagame directing. Like I said, whatever else you can say about him, he can conduct a railroad like Tom Hanks aboard the Polar Express.

Does anyone else think that the classic "fade to 3 days previously" is an example of railroading? That it takes away from player agency so much that it puts the whole adventure on rails? Again, your extreme use of the term means that even exceptionally common GM techniques that most people would agree are cool and fun fall into the pejorative term "railroading"

I stated that knowing the 'what happens in 3 days' increases my players' ability to act effectively

Examples please.

I don't actually need to, as you stated "there are times you can railroad players in order to increase player agency", so you have already agreed that it can. But since you ask:

• Because we knew that the target was definitely non-human, we did not spend a few hours following false leads or making enquiries that were going to lead into dead-ends. Our agency was not reduced because our characters were not stopped from doing so (there was no railroading), but with the additional knowledge, the players could concentrate on taking actions that were less likely to run into dead ends

I describe that in my GPC, I have one fixed point: Arthur will lose the final battle and die


See, I don't buy this. I own the Great Pendragon Campaign, and like the Chronicles of the Dragonlance campaign, I suspect it plays better if the conductor is willing to let the game go off the rails.

Again, the extremism. I state that I plan, in probably 5 years of game time, to have a one fixed final scene, and Celebrim translates that to being a campaign running on rails. If I correlate time with distance, this is like saying that if lay 20 miles of track into Berlin, that is enough to establish a railroad between Chicago and Berlin.

In particular, I would consider it almost a requirement of running the GPC well that the players are allowed and even encouraged to replace the standard Knights of the Round table families and knights as major players in the story.

Yeah, they have. That has no conflict with the final battle fixed point.

I saw a post a few weeks back by a GM running the game whose knight was angling to replace Lancelot as Guinevere's lover, and while that's an interesting choice, that's precisely the sort of bold move that I think a storyteller should be allowing in that campaign.

Amusingly, this might have been me. Certainly I posted somewhere that exact potential storyline (Sir Hwyel critted his Lustful roll on seeing her, then rolled 17 on 3d6 for his degree of effect -- I think he's on Amor (Gwenhyver) 26.

But again, no conflict with the final battle fixed point.

Indeed, I'd be running the game very open ended, with the possibility that not all of Arthur's heirs die or that Camlann (if it even happens at all) might not indeed by a pyric victory only. Probably things would happen like in the story to a large extent, but the PC's could steer things in ways that contradict Mallory. I certainly don't agree that players highly familiar with Mallory gain more agency in the story if they know that whatever they do, things will always play out exactly the same.

Again, no conflict with the final battle fixed point.

I fully understand that many groups like to and want to ride a railroad to some foreordained conclusion

I'll finish this response with your quote, because I think it shows the problem you are generating for yourself. You feel that a foreordained conclusion is exactly equivalent to a railroad -- indeed, anything anywhere along the way that is foreordained makes things a railroad.

As the quote goes -- "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does". Now, maybe I'm wrong and one instance of fixed point means a "campaign on rails". But I'd need to hear that from a larger pool of people

 

[Celebrim]

@Celebrim I've noticed that when you start using game terms, you seem to use them in the most extreme version possible.

That's not my impression. I try to use game terms in a very accurate way rather than relying on subjective sentiment. And I try to use the terms consistently. But very often my position is far less extreme than those that base their definitions on feelings and opinions.

But mostly here I'm annoyed that I suggested you go back and read the OP as well as the linked essay on railroading and you clearly didn't do so, and are so now off on a tangent of your own making where you try to tell me what I believe in ways that are clearly at odds with what I actually wrote.

When we were talking about fudging, you defined it as "anything that changes the record of the encounter", meaning that use of X-cards, deciding not to narrate a villain death scene, shortening a scene for pacing -- everything is defined as "fudging".

This is a good example, because I use fudging in a very technical way to mean "ignoring or altering the fortune mechanic by fiat". Fudging is one participant in the game - whether player or GM - ignores the result of the fortune mechanic and reports something different for whatever reason. And I never would have said "record of the encounter". The term I use for that would be "transcript". So, what you are half remembering here is not an accurate account of what I wrote, or what we discussed, or really anything. It's a mixed up jumble of half-remembered thoughts taken out of context that has nothing at all to do with my actual use of game terms or how I define them.

Similarly here, you seem to be defining any constraint placed on players actions that is not requied by the world definition as railroading.

I have rarely offered a Socratic definition of railroading, as I prefer to define railroading by example. But to the extent that I offer a Socratic definition, it generally has to do with techniques the GM employs in order to reduce player agency in order to get the story to go where the GM wants it to go. Note that if you actually read anything I wrote and were actually reporting on it and actually understood it, you would realize that this can include the world definition! (See examples like "Omnipotent NPCs", "Endurium Walls" and "Small World").

But if you had actually read the essay I suggested, you would have noted that right at the beginning I wrote:

"Some distinction should be made in my opinion between the act of limiting player choice (“railroading”) and a game which has limited or no player choice as its most salient feature (a “railroad”)."

If you had read that and understood it, then you would never have preached to me about the following as if that had never occurred to me:

Now here's the thing about railroads. They have rails. Lots of it, and you stay on it all the time. Having one fixed piece of track does not make a railroad -- you need it all the way...In game terms, it's ok to broaden this a little bit, but for a game to be a railroad, it must remove player agency at least a high percentage of the time. Maybe not 99%+, as a real-world railroad does, but it's got to be the predominant fact of the campaign.

Duh! I said so 13 years ago now! The distinction between employing railroading and actually having a railroad is highly important to understanding what I'm talking about both in this essay and generally. Now you are trying to lecture me on something that is core to the actual thing I wrote! And then having absolutely and completely ignored everything I wrote, and having set up a straw man, you proceed to call me an extremist in my opinions?

So, just to be clear, unless you can find community support for your extreme definition, I am not using it.

HAHAHAHAHA! The reason I find this funny is in the 13 years since I wrote the essay on railroading techniques, I repeatedly get in conversations with people who try to direct me off to community discussions of railroading which were clearly influenced by and in some cases plagiarize the ideas in the original discussion.

The usual definition requires that a railroad reduces player agency. The fact that under your definition it can increase it makes it even more clear that your definition is basically just not a good one.

I grant that that my claim is a very strange and not intuitive one especially since I defined "railroading" as limiting player agency for a particular purpose, but since you didn't even read the essay much less the discussion, allow me to explain. I claim that there are times that railroading can on the net increase player agency. That is to say that there are times when the players are lost and lack information, where at that moment railroading them to a transportation hub with maps, kiosks, and various ticket agents selling different destinations can in the long run increase their overall agency. I make this argument by noting that uninformed decisions are basically random and lack real agency, whereas informed decisions can have real agency. Now obviously, the same technique of steering the players to a railway station could be used to provide "False Choice" and "Small World" situations where the player now has to buy a ticket and get on the one train that is available (or all trains actually go to the same place, "Schrodinger's Map" style), but if the new location really does provide more choice then that's better than leaving the party in a rowboat with no landmarks and no map.

Does anyone else think that the classic "fade to 3 days previously" is an example of railroading?

Does anyone not think it does? The implication of "fade to 3 days previously" is that no matter what you do, in three days the foretold encounter is going to take place without fail. It forces the players to buy into the scene as a goal of their activities, with the recognition that they can't significantly alter the course of preplanned events, only play out and discover what those events are. There is a huge amount of social pressure to conform that pulling that trick does. Like any time a GM offers a hook up, there is social pressure at the table to go along with the GM and play the offered adventure. But this takes it a step further, because now there is social pressure to not only play the adventure, but to play it in such a manner that it leads to the desired conclusion.

That it takes away from player agency so much that it puts the whole adventure on rails?

Maybe. It's hard to know without more details to see what was behind the screen. Ideally, this leads to a narrow, broad, narrow structure where it just so happens that the narrow entry point is the narrow exit point! Practically though, this is much much more constrained than a typical narrow, broad, narrow structure because the GM has essentially told you through subtle metagame direction how you are supposed to behave. You've been put on rails. And, oddly, you seem to recognize this.

Again, your extreme use of the term means that even exceptionally common GM techniques that most people would agree are cool and fun fall into the pejorative term "railroading"

Again, I don't use "railroading" as a pejorative term. Indeed, much of the impetus of the original essay was to call out the people who only used the term in a pejorative fashion and basically meant only by it "things I don't like" to show that in reality railroading if objectively defined extended to include many techniques that most people would agree are at times cool and fun. The intention was to get people to objectively look at those techniques and decide for themselves when they would be appropriate and justified and when they would not. After all, almost all of them are used by almost all GMs some of the time, and the real issue is not the technique but the overuse and over employment of the technique by the GM.

I don't actually need to, as you stated "there are times you can railroad players in order to increase player agency", so you have already agreed that it can.

Oh for the love of... I didn't ask you because I didn't agree with you over that point. I asked you out of genuine curiosity because as much as I don't like John Wick's gaming philosophy, I do admire his technique at times and wanted concrete examples I could potentially learn from and apply in my own games.

[*]Because we knew that the target was definitely non-human, we did not spend a few hours following false leads or making enquiries that were going to lead into dead-ends. Our agency was not reduced because our characters were not stopped from doing so (there was no railroading), but with the additional knowledge, the players could concentrate on taking actions that were less likely to run into dead ends
[/LIST]

I could go into great detail on that, but that is extremely subtle both as railroading technique and over whether or not it actually puts you on rails or as in my example, took you to a transportation hub to let you make informed choices. However, I think it more interesting if I just leave you to chew over it.

Again, the extremism. I state that I plan, in probably 5 years of game time, to have a one fixed final scene, and Celebrim translates that to being a campaign running on rails. If I correlate time with distance, this is like saying that if lay 20 miles of track into Berlin, that is enough to establish a railroad between Chicago and Berlin.

To get to a final fixed scene after 5 years time requires by some mechanism that the players not be allowed to mess with the timeline in important ways. You can't for example kill Arthur before that point, or kill any of the major villains (Mordred for example), or keep alive Arthur's heirs, or generally change the actions or opinions of the major characters. Or else you the conductor must no matter what happens rearrange everything so that basically the same thing happens. And the longer you run the game, the harder it will be to ensure any fixed point.

I'll finish this response with your quote, because I think it shows the problem you are generating for yourself. You feel that a foreordained conclusion is exactly equivalent to a railroad -- indeed, anything anywhere along the way that is foreordained makes things a railroad.

I don't know that I do feel that way, and it's certainly not how I would state it. What I would state is that if you are going to have some fixed point in the future that the campaign is going to go through, you need to a lot of railroading to ensure it happens. And the more narrow that fixed point, and the more distant it is, the more railroading you need to do to stay on target. So the fixed point might be, "The PC's enter some room in a long forgotten dungeon" and that could work with minimal railroading if the dungeon exists in basically a static state until the PCs enter it, such that no matter what happens in the world, that encounter is always available in future. But if the fixed point is dependent on complex dynastic politics and the PC's are actually going to be or potentially be important figures and not merely observers of important events, then you REALLY have to railroad to get there. If you for example run major battles in the campaign using Battle System and with the PCs the determining factor in whether the battle is won or lost, and without NPC plot armor, and so forth, well you could potentially hew very far from Mallory and the GPC. In my opinion, I'd rather run the game with the PC's more influential than not, perhaps a little less CoC hopelessness than is implied by the base rules and the base campaign, and actually let the PC's and their dynasty flourish and alter the course of events (if they choose to) rather than play a grand campaign in which the PCs can do whatever they like, but they can only observe great events and never change them.