D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Oofta]

Mod Note:

This is further back in the thread than we usually like to raise, but this bears mentioning...

Are you sure that's an analogy you want to make here? What do you feel the African American readers of this site might think about you likening "railroading" to that word?

Let's please keep this discussion in perspective, please and thanks.

Sorry, bad analogy. I did not mean to imply they were the same.

 

[TwoSix]

Right. There was stuff I was achieving in my play of (first) AD&D and (subsequently) Rolemaster, that I wanted to do better, and more of, without the problems those systems created for me.

I discovered Ron Edwards, who helped me discover Paul Czege's comments and games, and rediscover Robin Laws's HeroWars (which I read but didn't understand when it came out), and around the same time I discovered Burning Wheel. This stuff helped me run and complete my second "epic" RM campaign (whereas the first had come to an ignoble end after many glorious years, as I didn't have the knowledege and techniques to manage the "no myth" play that I was attempting, and every guidebook I read in the 90s told me to prep more to make my game better, which I had to work out through my own trial and error was terrible advice!).

Robin Laws in HeroWars and HeroQuest revised, and Luke Crane in the Adventure Burner for BW, were the best two bits of advice that let me run (what I think was) a great 4e D&D campaign.

And then reading Vincent Baker has helped me think more clearly about how RPGing works, and with his ideas and AW I was able to run Classic Traveller successfully (treating it in a very PbtA fashion) whereas back in the 80s it had always defeated me.

Technical insight, helpfully communicated, has absolutely made me a better GM and a better RPGer!

And just to continue the chain of inspiration, it was definitely @pemerton's posts about 4e all the way back in 2008 that shook me out of trad RPG constraints and got me to try a host of games and techniques I never would have considered otherwise.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The question remains unanswered, though: were the spellbooks in fact there (or could they have been there) and Thurgon just didn't find them, or did Thurgon's not finding them dictate to the fiction that they weren't there to be found (and thus could be later found somewhere else)?

It's the second piece that raises issues, I think.

I think the problem here is that you're looking for an answer to a question that doesn't really exist. "Were the spellbooks in fact there?" the answer is no... the spellbooks are not real, and the "there" in question is not real.

In the fictional world, the spellbooks are there and were always there.

In the real world, a roll was used to determine if that was the case or not. This roll is, in this regard, no different than the moment the trad GM decided a week before that there were spellbooks there.

When you make a decision like this about your game, do you ask yourself if the spellbooks had always been there before you decided they were?

Not quite. I'm cool with jargon being used provided its being used in a manner commonly accepted within the community that uses said jargon.

Using the jargon within that community but at the same time attempting to greatly change what it means - that's gonna get pushback.

I wouldn't say that @pemerton is attempting to redefine the term for the entire hobby. He's providing his own idea of what railroading means, and he's been clear about why. I don't think anyone is obliged to share his definition, but I also think if they disagree, they need to do a better job of refuting it.

And I guess in the systems you play there's no chance of Aedhros unexpectedly getting shipwrecked on Isle of Dread while sailing to somewhere else, and then having to both a) find a way off and b) survive; as you'd count that to be a railroad?

It depends on what determines that the shipwreck happens. Is it a consequence of play in some way? Was a roll made and the results indicated that there was a storm and that the ship was damaged?

Or did the GM just decide "well, I've prepped this island adventure... better make sure the PCs get to the island"? Because this seems exactly like railroading to me. Thing X will happen, no matter what.

 

[TwoSix]

I think the issue here is that for us, an RPG is not a film that has to be about something. It is instead a depiction of a world and the activities of characters in it.

Let's use the TV series analogy. Many characters have long term goals in a series, but not every episode is about the character working to fulfill those goals. Sometimes, there's an episode where they end up on the Isle of Dread for a little while. I can't see how they cease to be a character during that period.

No one here is confused about how trad RPG works.

I'm not really sure why these threads get so contentious. @pemerton doesn't like trad play. You and @Oofta don't like non-trad play. @Lanefan also doesn't like narrative play, but his dozen-year West Marches games are almost completely orthogonal in style to both trad AND narrative games.

It's just so weird to me that there's an emotional need to defend trad RPG's "honor" when it's already the dominant paradigm.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes it is. Action declarations involve the PCs doing things with A, B, C etc. Wondering about and looking for X, Y, Z etc.

If all the As, Bs, Cs, Xs, Ys and Zs are authored by the GM, then all the game space will be is a combination of things predetermined by the GM (plus extrapolations therefrom) - combinations of A, B, C, X, Y, Z etc plus whatever the GM has extrapolated from them.

So you're arguing that the DM authored which race, class, abilities, spells, etc. of each PC? Because if he didn't, he can't have authored everything. At least some of those letters were authored by the players. Further the players inevitably bring up things the DM didn't think of that would be in the setting. The DM isn't the sole author of those things, either.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No one here is confused about how trad RPG works.

I'm not really sure why these threads get so contentious. @pemerton doesn't like trad play. You and @Oofta don't like non-trad play. @Lanefan also doesn't like narrative play, but his dozen-year West Marches games are almost completely orthogonal in style to both trad AND narrative games.

It's just so weird to me that there's an emotional need to defend trad RPG's "honor" when it's already the dominant paradigm.

Because one side is saying that narrative play would solve the OP's problem, and the other side disagrees. It takes at least two points of view to have a discussion. Either side could choose to disengage if they feel there's nothing more to say. Clearly that hasn't happened yet.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No one here is confused about how trad RPG works.

I'm not really sure why these threads get so contentious. @pemerton doesn't like trad play. You and @Oofta don't like non-trad play. @Lanefan also doesn't like narrative play, but his dozen-year West Marches games are almost completely orthogonal in style to both trad AND narrative games.

It's just so weird to me that there's an emotional need to defend trad RPG's "honor" when it's already the dominant paradigm.

Also, the dominance of a given style has absolutely nothing to do with how you feel about it (good or bad), so I don't see the applicability of your last comment.

 

[TwoSix]

Also, the dominance of a given style has absolutely nothing to do with how you feel about it (good or bad), so I don't see the applicability of your last comment.

You don't need to defend something when you're winning.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don't need to defend something when you're winning.

I disagree. If you're being attacked, it's ok to defend yourself.

 

[Aldarc]

I disagree. If you're being attacked, it's ok to defend yourself.

You are confusing trad gaming being criticized and other play styles being advocated for with you being personally attacked. That’s not the same.