NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Celebrim]

Hmm. If we define railroading to apply to preparation for play, as opposed to actions (or really reactions) taken once play has commenced, then yeah it's a meaningless term.

My thoughts on railroading began with the realization that it was a meaningless term and yet the thing people were trying to describe was real.

So I think I'll stick with the stricter definition.

Your stricter definition won't work, and it won't be me alone noticing that. One of the long running sources of comedy in Knights of the Dinner Table is B.A.'s efforts to railroad the players into the stories he images and the players forever evading those stories in various ways. At one point B.A. gets fed up and prepares a linear adventure with a single path to follow with literally impenetrable forests and literally impassable mountains. Of course, the party gets derailed thinking the impenetrable forest is a puzzle to solve and spends all their time uselessly attacking it or trying to bypass it. B.A. gets frustrated and leaves, and the frustrated players thinking they've been presented with an unfair problem check his notes to find that he's written something like "No action taken by the players allows them to pass into the forest".

You're trying to tell me that it's only a railroad if I react and not if I literally prepare a linear adventure that can't be deviated from? Does that really make sense? How does it matter how I achieve the PC's having no agency so that I get the story I wanted? Isn't the outcome what's important?

Then again, there's clearly a distinction between traditional adventure/dungeon preparation and the Dungeon World (AW) approach of Fronts.

Oh, there is, but whether or not they are a railroad isn't the distinction.

 

[KYRON45]

You're trying to tell me that it's only a railroad if I react and not if I literally prepare a linear adventure that can't be deviated from? Does that really make sense? How does it matter how I achieve the PC's having no agency so that I get the story I wanted? Isn't the outcome what's important?

One might say how you achieve the outcome is just as important.

 

[Celebrim]

One might say how you achieve the outcome is just as important.

Even if I don't want to dispute that, if I decide ahead of time that everything I don't want to have succeed is either impossible or has impossibly high difficulty, how is that very different from deciding on the spur of the moment that everything I don't want to have succeed is impossible or has impossibly high difficulty? Am I not achieving the outcome through the same technique?

 

[KYRON45]

Even if I don't want to dispute that, if I decide ahead of time that everything I don't want to have succeed is either impossible or has impossibly high difficulty, how is that very different from deciding on the spur of the moment that everything I don't want to have succeed is impossible or has impossibly high difficulty? Am I not achieving the outcome through the same technique?

Don't you want your game to be fun?
Is failing the only option?
I learned that RPGs are about solving problems and having fun doing so.
What is gained by the GM not wanting the party to succeed?

It is of course possible that I don't understand what this conversation is about at all.
The classic definition of "railroading" used to be that the GM doesn't allow the players to make their own decisions either outright or otherwise. Sometimes players do things you don't want them to do. That's just how it goes.

But i'm an old man and definitions change. Player agency is just a new fancy way of saying "playing the game." I would not continue in a game where i wasn't allowed to have an impact.

I hope you find the answers you are looking for.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Many effective persuasion attempts are perceived as by the one being persuaded as someone "simply presenting facts."

That doesn't mean I don't think you can make the distinction between trying to convince someone and supplying information.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't mean to be rude, I really don't, but it also feels that there is not enough common ground that any sort of understanding can be reached. Like we do not even seem to agree what roleplaying in its core actually is.

Why is that a surprise? There are people who consider it impossible to properly roleplay while presenting things in third person even though other people have found that a satisfactory way to do that for decades.

 

[KYRON45]

RPGs have been around for something like 50 years. This should tell us that everyone's way of playing is the right way. Wouldn't the genre have died off otherwise?

 

[Thomas Shey]

All the world is more complex than the rules of a TTRPG, which are an abstraction meant to help facilitate a fun experience at the table.

An example I sometimes use is that climbing a cliff face effectively, especially a high one, has a rather lot of important factors and individual decision making. It also can be quite fraught, especially if freeclimbing. Yet we still often resolve it with one roll with limited input by a player.

In the end, what people want mechanics to cover and in how much detail is always going to be an individual choice, and in extreme cases like some participants in this thread, bridging those differences is probably functionally impossible.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Even if I don't want to dispute that, if I decide ahead of time that everything I don't want to have succeed is either impossible or has impossibly high difficulty, how is that very different from deciding on the spur of the moment that everything I don't want to have succeed is impossible or has impossibly high difficulty? Am I not achieving the outcome through the same technique?

But if you're not doing that as the GM, in what way is your game somehow still a railroad?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would say that searching is different on one dimension (your point about transcripts) but similar on another: just like we can search behind the painting, or come up with a strategy for bypassing the pressure plates on the floor, we can also threaten to expose the old man's affair. We don't need to reduce either of those things to a description-less abstraction of a die roll. Whereas we can't really describe a way to swing a sword that hits without requiring a roll. Or, if we do, it's pure narrative flavor with no logical impact on its success rate.

That's not strictly true. Its entirely possible to build a matrix resolution system for sword engagement where the specifics of attempt, some rating of skill rank (and this is important, because some of the other things you can describe during searching won't automatically work just because you do the right actions), specifics of opponent action and skill rank and generate an outcome. It won't have the proper random elements (which represent things below the resolution level of the matrix), but I'd argue there are things like that in the search and the threat too; differences of mood, elements of surrounding, and others.