D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Gradine]

It's not that I don't understand any part of it, I just don't see it as being consistent with the concept of the controller of any character always rolls for that character, which seems so blindingly obvious as a precept it's unexpected that I have to type it out.

Combine that with the idea of no mechanical in-play difference between a PC and an NPC, (a.k.a. what's good for the goose is good for the gander) and yes, this is the type of rule I'll fight against.

These are cool as preferences, but they're definitely not unwritten laws to be unbroken across the genre. It could be argued that most editions of D&D don't follow these precepts (at least not perfectly).

 

[Lanefan]

The contention you and others really seem to be making is that, if the PC is ignorant in the fiction, then it is fine for the player to be ignorant at the table.

Yes, I for one will make that contention all day long.

In other words, that it doesn't matter if it is the GM who is deciding all the consequences. Now of course anyone who wants to is free to play that way, but it can hardly be surprising that there might be others who regard that sort of play as a railroad: everything in the fiction is coming from the GM, with the players making essentially random suggestions as to which bit of their stuff the GM should bring into play.

So can I read this to be that you're advocating for player knowledge to deliberately exceed character knowledge?

 

[Maxperson]

That's silly. Lack of any knowledge at all precludes agency, but having limited information is certainly sufficient to allow for agency.

If you think other people are posting that omniscience is required for agency, I don't think you tried very hard to understand people's posts.

I don't think they intend for omniscience to be required. The problem is that their stated requirement includes the need to be omniscient. What they have said is they need to be informed so as to be able to make a meaningful decision. Well, what does informed mean? It it enough to be informed that one of the two doors is locked and the other isn't? Is it enough to hear something behind the right door(ogres are noisy), but not the left door? At what point are they informed enough?

Just saying informed without a limited means that you would need that omniscience to make a truly informed decision. Anything less and your decision is going to be flawed by lack of knowledge and therefore less meaningful. Omniscience is the logical end of their rather open and vague requirement.

 

[Lanefan]

These are cool as preferences, but they're definitely not unwritten laws to be unbroken across the genre. It could be argued that most editions of D&D don't follow these precepts (at least not perfectly).

Agreed, D&D doesn't follow them perefctly. Still, one can always shoot for an ideal world, right?

 

[Pedantic]

That's why I said "probably most board games" instead of "all board games."

If there are cooperative card games--and I do mean the standard deck of 52 cards you can buy at any store--I'm not aware of them.

Actually, there's a quite well respected design for a cooperative game played with a standard deck of cards called Regicide that generated a ton of buzz. It is very difficult, and there has been some professionally illustrated decks designed for play with it, but the rules were very much built with a standard deck in mind.

That super specific counter example aside though I still don't think competition is the significant factor that differentiates conventional games and TTRPGs, and I'm very much not in the camp that's willing to yield "narrative" as the significant dividing factor. I do think TTRPGs have a distinct, specific ludic function that makes them different from other games, but I don't think there's actually any need to alter one's understanding of player agency in game terms. There are no/low agency card and board games, something like War being the ur-example of a no-agency game that fundamentally could be played with a random number generator as well as humans. A low agency game might be something like Klondike Solitaire, wherein the outcome can be changed by pursuing different lines of play, but will not necessarily be, and might have been lost at the initial deal.

I don't think TTRPGs need a special definition of standard ludic agency, is my point. I think the same criteria that works in other games applies just fine here.

 

[Maxperson]

I believe the relevant terminology there is participationism - yes it's a linear adventure but we have signed up willingly. As opposed to illusionism where we are unaware that's what we're playing.

Even if you sign on willingly a linear adventure is still not a railroad. With a linear adventure that you signed on to, you can still step off the line and go do something else. With a railroad you can't.

 

[Lanefan]

Which ones. Moldvay Basic doesn't, as best I recall: in any event, the whole idea of railroading has no purchase in the sort of play Moldvay sets out. If the GM is doing what Moldvay says to do - ie designing a dungeon, and then refereeing the players' exploration of it - railroading doesn't come into it, any more than I can "railroad" you when playing hangman.

I don't recall Gygax talking about it in his rulebooks.

He doesn't use the term "railroad" (I'm not sure it was even a thing in 1978) but he does talk here and there about giving players actual choices...and also about sometimes not giving players choice if doing so would give better* results.

* - in the eyes of the DM; and remember that in the DMG he's speaking very specifically to DMs - that book was in theory off-limits to players.

 

[Lanefan]

Because we’re talking about a game. Someone playing a game. This idea gets lost a bit because players are also playing roles.

Which brings us back to the same question that's been asked since about 1975: "Which takes precedence: the roleplay, or the game?"; and for this we'll each have different answers.

First, I don’t know if the argument you want to make is “sometimes you get railroaded in life, so why not in a game as well?” It’s kind of the opposite of a counterargument.

Maybe, but IMO it's a valid argument notwithstanding; and covers off those occasions when a bit of railroading in fact does add more than it subtracts.

 

[Xamnam]

see the main difference between linear games and being railroaded IMO is that linear games state upfront that there is an established path of events and places laid out for you to encounter that you basically agree to follow but it typically grants you as much freedom to find methods and solutions within that path that you can devise yourself.
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this is unlike a railroaded adventure where anything you try will fail unless it is the GM's pre-approved solution or all solutions/choices ultimately result in the same outcome,

I agree with this perspective a lot, but I'd personally go one step farther, and split the distinctions into three:

• Linear adventure: A pre-set goal/direction, with flexibility in how you approach it (with admittedly varying degrees of flexibility depending on the GM/adventure). LMoP feels like a decent example of this.
• Railroad adventure: You go from scene A to scene B to scene C, in that order and only ever in that order because the adventure is quite structured and will fall apart if you don't (or you're running a one-shot/convention game and really want to make sure it's seen through). I've seen folks call this a 'theme park adventure,' both charitably and not.
• Railroading: When a GM chooses to actively enforce a railroad adventure structure by unreasonably negating the players attempts to take it in a different direction, like you describe at length.

Where I'll go out on a limb is that if none of the players ever push against the limits and are invalidated in response, they might be on a railroad, but they are not being railroaded. The value in the term as a verb is that it is an action being done by someone to others, that the players are being forced down a specific lane of track. Being on a railroad is not inherently a bad thing, unless you're actively trying to go somewhere, anywhere, else.

Heck, if you never encounter that pushback, from the players' perspective, they might very well not view their path as on tracks at all, and I'm not going to say they're wrong.

 

[Lanefan]

The way that I make a game about (say) the bitter, self-deluded Dark Elf Aedhros is by framing him into situations which will reveal, through their resolution, how bitter, self-deluded, and willing to hurt the world he really is. Quests have nothing to do with that.

Haaaaaang on a minute, here. You were framing him into situations?? As in, you were the GM of the game where Aedhros was played? Or how did that dynamic work?

Seems to me, if true, you also being the GM puts a whole new light on all this.