D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Micah Sweet]

The post you quoted was actually talking about what GMs do. But anyway, I don't know why you think I'm unaware of your point. Upthread I posted (more than once) that I have played AD&D and 4e in ways that are not railroads.

It is other posters - @Oofta, and now apparently you - who are falsely imputing the belief to me that D&D must be played as a railroad.

Ways that don't feel like railroads to you.

 

[Faolyn]

Because achieving a goal the hard way, after failures and nothing happening can be rewarding. Because it doesn't feel as artificial; when the logical outcome of not succeeding on a lockpick check is that the lock isn't opened but nothing else it feels more natural.

There's a difference between earning a reward after trying times and going through a dull slog.

It's not like the campaign comes to a screeching halt (if it could I have different advice for that). The players just didn't accomplish a goal as easily as they thought they would.

Have you never felt an extra surge of excitement when you find a different way of accomplishing a goal?

Sure. But usually not when it was because we completely failed to accomplish it because of bad dice rolls or because we hadn't figured out exactly what the DM wanted us to do.

My favorite example was in a GURPs game set in Golarian and using what I think was a Pathfinder AP (at the very least, it was a d20 adventure, converted). We had to get an artifact that was being held in an extradimensional bank vault. The adventure expected that we do a heist and get past terrible traps and powerful golem guards. Instead, we found the grave of the artifact's original owner, hired a lawyer, and then I cast the GURPS version of speak with dead to get the dead owner's permission. That was cool. If we had tried to do the heist, failed, and then tried the legal route, I don't think I would have been quite so pleased.

 

[Gradine]

Because achieving a goal the hard way, after failures and nothing happening can be rewarding. Because it doesn't feel as artificial; when the logical outcome of not succeeding on a lockpick check is that the lock isn't opened but nothing else it feels more natural.

It's definitely a different way to wrap your head around the concept of role-playing. But on the other hand... I can't remember a single piece of fiction I've consumed where somebody has tried to pick a lock and completely failed that wasn't also based on D&D. The idea that somebody proficient at picking locks will find some basic locks easy to open and other, nearly identical locks fully impossible... that feels more artificial to me than a lot of the ways a "fail forward" approach would take. Creating complications like making noise, taking longer than usual, breaking a tool, etc.

I'm not saying one approach or the either is universally "better" or "more natural" or "more rewarding" than the other. They are definitely different preferences, and it's awesome that there are plenty of options out there for fans of both (and others as well!)

 

[pemerton]

Where is it written that a character can't decide to pursue their own personal interests in a game with GM-created adventure choices? If a PC decides they'd rather confront Captain Foswell over in hex 03.12, who is having an affair with his wife, then investigate the missing settlers in hex 06.09, more power to them! The options are still there.

It's not written. But to repost:

This is the railroad. The player has to jump through hoops established by the GM (they have to "do things to find it") in order to get to the play that speaks to their concerns.

In non-railroading play, as I understand it, it is the GM's job to frame scenes that speak directly to those player-authored concerns. This is what be a fan of the characters (a slogan from AW/DW) means. The rulebook for Burning Wheel (my favourite RPG) doesn't use the slogan but similarly has instructions to the GM which explain that it is the GM's job to frame scenes in this fashion.

The 4e DMG also has similar advice, when it tells the GM that it is best to "say 'yes'" to player-authored quests for their PCs.

I appreciate that the sort of RPGing I prefer, that is spelled out in these various rulebooks, is a minority taste on these boards and, as far as I can tell, in the RPGing hobby more generally. But it's not confused or impossible. And nor - despite what @Oofta keeps saying - does it require the players to have a power to author fiction beyond their PCs' actions and mental states.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that can be the case, certainly. But I don't think that the drive for many in this thread is about maintaining gamism. It seems more about setting integrity or verisimilitude. That the setting is somehow more important than the characters.

The setting is at least as important as the characters. It's just not as important as the players.

 

[pemerton]

The things are, in that the GM authored the castle, but the events certainly aren't.

But the elements those events include are. And the events are just combinations of those elements, plus GM-authored extrapolations from them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you're allowed to call certain structures of play "artificial", "forced" and "unnatural", why am I not allowed to call certain structure of play "railroads"?

I mean, I make the effort to understand your posts even though the feelings you evince are foreign to me - there is nothing unnatural or artificial to me about running non-railroad games.

Are you not able to do the same in return?

Because I'm using the generally agreed upon definitions of those words, even if you don't agree they should be used, which your specific definition of "railroad" is not.

 

[Faolyn]

They, just like their characters, probably say something like "Finally!".

I hit this once as a player - our party had been very careful and sneaky in our approach to a castle we (for some forgotten reason) needed to get into. We scoped it all out, found a long-forgotten and unguarded sewer entrance, and (literally) waded in. We eventually found a way up, got to a big room with a set of huge double doors; and after knocking off a couple of guards we - thinking that because the doors were big and imposing they had to lead to somewhere useful - set to work on them.

Worth noting we hadn't bothered mapping our path in through the sewers and had become somewhat disoriented.

Quite some time later (real time) after numerous trials and tribulatons we finally got those damn doors open...to blinding sunlight: they were the castle's heavily-guarded front doors leading outside! And of course all the door guards we had so carefully sneaked past were now turning around and looking at us sideways...

Biggest face-palm moment ever. To this day I don't know how the DM kept a straight face through all that.

See, this is what I mean. This wasn't the PCs being stymied because they couldn't get past a door. This was the DM effectively using a move to put the players in trouble once they opened the door. You winding up directly in front a bunch of guards may (or may not) have been averted if you'd mapped, but you did a thing, and as a result, the DM did another thing.

And honestly, this would have been interesting whether or not you rolled each of those attempts or if the GM had just said "after trying a dozen different things over the course of a few hours..."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Both are terms of ordinary English. The verb to visit something upon someone means to bring it to them. Grief, used colloquially, means harm or, more generally, bad things.

Charged, of a situation, means that it is laden with potential for action or emotional response, as in "the atmosphere at the meeting was highly charged".

Cute. You don't think at least that the phrase, "to visit grief upon them" would engender a little question or comment? Its not like you hear people say that every day outside of period romantic literature.

 

[pemerton]

Okay, but this definition does not necessarily include pre-defined settings/locations/NPCs, including several examples you have expressly declared a railroad earlier in this thread.

Upthread I did not say that predefined settings, locations and NPCs are railroads. I know you're not setting out to be hostile, and so I believe that you have not deliberately attributed to me a view I don't hold. But I'd be grateful if you could refrain from doing so nevertheless.

What I said upthread is that if the fiction and stakes and consequences are all authored by the GM, it is a railroad.

I also said that the way to avoid a railroad is for the GM, in their authorship of the fiction, to respond to player-author concerns manifested through the build and play of their PCs. In this thread, the only example that has been given of such player-authored concerns is my posting of a part of my Burning Wheel PC sheet. In this thread, two examples of how the GM does the job I've just described have been discussed: AW/DW moves; and BW intent-and-task, fail forward resolution.

None of that has anything to say about pre-defined settings, locations or NPCs per se.

It does have something to say about the way those are used to establish stakes and consequences.