NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Bedrockgames]

This is complicated by your limited understanding of how a GM can control players, but your intention in the above is I think good even if your strict definition isn't. Let's call it railroading when the GM wants to control what the players can accomplish or how they can accomplish it, and I think we'll both be in agreement.

I am trying not to be insulted by this phrasing

I would honestly need to think about this definition. I think the real genuine definition of a railroad is the GM taking hard measures to keep a game on the course he has set. Merely wanting to control might not quite rise to railroading if the GM is allowing that control to slip. When people say railroad what they mean is the players can't get off the aventure or story path the GM has set no matter what they do: the GM is fixing the game to go in the direction he wants it to go. So the GM doing things like fudging, moving prepped material around so it is always encountered, even if they go in the direction where it wasn't initially placed, etc.

Simplistically you might think that the party that chooses to start a bootlegging enterprise in Dee instead of helping the guy obtain the Manual of the Nine Claws has more agency and if the GM says "yes" that they are letting the players go where they want to go and set the agenda.

Not just simplistically. I think this is absolutely giving the players agency. It is definitely not railroading (a railroad would be blocking the party from the bootlegging endeavor through various means until they return to the manual quest the GM has in mind).

And most of the time you would probably be right, but in both cases the GM is equally "making things happen".

Again no one is disputing that the GM makes things happen. But he didn't make the idea for bootlegging happen. That is something the players introduced. Like I said before, I think you are taking the phrasing the poster used overly literally and to listening to what they were trying to say. They were talking about a style of GMing that is reactive to the agendas and actions the players set and take. That doesn't mean the GM stops making things happen in the setting

This can be a bit of a side trek, but lets say I have envisioned this interesting story in which this guy obtaining the Manual of the Nine Claws is one step, and my players don't cooperate but decide to set their own agenda and become bootleggers. Bootlegging isn't an inherently interesting occupation. It's mostly going to be tedium with long periods establishing yourself as trustworthy business men in the black market, finding buyers, earning their respect, and basically living out a pretty normal life like going into work every day and managing finances.

But the point of the style the poster is talking about is to let the players go there and see what happens. Bootlegging is potentially filled with conflict, competition, outright wars for territory, so it need not be dull at all

So who is the railroader? The one that gives the players a realistic but boring campaign as bootleggers, or one that "makes things happen" by upon seeing that the players are excited about this theme goes ahead and begins introducing dramatic twists, foils, rivals, and interesting story lines around the player's choice? Which group of players ends up with more agency? The one that is given a realistic but boring story where nothing exciting happens, or the one where the GM is introducing plots and devices of his own imagining? The notion the players that are creating the boot legging story are creating all their own fun is a flawed one. It's not real. It's an illusion.

This is a false choice. If the issue is you don't want the game to be boring, then don't make bootlegging boring. No one is saying they are creating the story. But the GM is also not creating the story. The GM is allowing the players to do what they want. The GM had an adventure planned about a manual, but the players didn't go there, so now the game is about bootlegging. That is agency. The story is emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and system react. But I would be reluctant to use language like story here. It is an evolving situation

Yes, but you do that by making things happen. That's why I said every good GM utilizes the coincidence. Wherever the players go, there is the fun. Real life doesn't work that way. It's an aesthetic choice and you create it as a GM by making things happen.

Again, no one is saying the GM doesn't make things happen. The point is: it isn't soley the GM deciding where things go. The players have freedom to do what they want, to go where they want and the GM is expected to keep up using a variety of means. Whether the GM is utilizing things like dramatic coincidence, that will be very dependent on the kind of game the GM is running. A lot of Gms who play this way will avoid that stuff, many will be using tables, NPCs motivations, group motivations, setting details as their guideposts for what happens (and the players are always free to interfere with that however they wish and to steer things in other directions). It is an organic process.

There is a spectrum here, but it's a little more complicated that most people realize when they are for "team sandbox" or whatever. There is a difference between linear and open world games in presentation and feel, but we can't easily say which is better or which has more agency or that one doesn't involve the GM making things happen.

To be clear here, I am not knocking linear adventures. I am just defending the idea that a GM who says "I let the players decide" is genuinely trying to let the players have agency. I run a range of games. Sometimes I run what I call a dramatic sandbox. Sometimes I run investigative adventures or dungeon crawls. Sometimes I run monster of the week. I also will occasionally blend these approaches together. It depends very much on what I am running and why. I also played a ton of adventure path* and loved it. One frustration I had with gaming, especially my D&D gaming, in the early 2000s, was I never felt surprised enough as a GM (so that is why I explored other approaches like sandbox)

I will say this though. If you are running open world, in my opinion, both as GM and player, you are giving the players more freedom, and I would equate that with more agency. However you could argue that isn't always a good thing. You may be giving them too much freedom and not enough focus and would be happier if you constrained the freedom to operating more within a planned adventure. I am not saying sandbox is the best style (I am not even fully advocating for sandbox here). Sandbox in fact can be a pain in the ass if you aren't enjoying yourself. When I do run sandbox type games it is usually because I want a low prep, let's see where the players go, kind of thing. But sometimes I want a proper adventure with structure to it. When I do the later, there is less agency overall (I mean they can up and leave the adventure but that brings the session to a halt). But there isn't no agency, and there isn't less fun. For example I just ran this investigating adventure during Halloween. I didn't feel like running a sandbox. I wanted a proper halloween adventure. After that I ran this monster hunt that October, then this dungeon crawl to cap off the month. I think people should run whatever works for them. And I think it is a mistake to be a servant to some ideal about 'sandbox' or 'agency' that leads to a game you aren't excited about or have trouble running (generally I am wary of pure sandbox play because I think you do need to have exciting things happening to keep the game fun: but that is just my style).

*using this term loosely to just refer to that old structure of adventures built around EL/CR in the 2000s.

And remember, I start with a session zero where I get player agreement as to what sort of game we are going to play. So if suddenly in the middle of that, someone wants to change what the game is about and get off the adventure path and become a bootlegger, something probably went wrong. If I'm such a bad GM that I can't make the adventure path fun and now everyone wants to get off the train, then chances are I can't make bootlegging fun either.

That is totally fair. I am not telling you what you ought to do at the table. And I think if you are having a session zero you are honoring the agency of the players. And also to be abundantly clear I am not saying adventure paths make you a bad GM. If you and your players like that structure, then that is what you should run

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, I run investigative adventures too. I am not saying you can't have conceptualized adventures in this frame work, or even that it needs to be all sandbox. If I had to describe my approach it would be less sandbox and more situational GMing, whatever the structure I am operating in happens to be (for the the fundamental thing is I don't want to about outcomes before the players interact with things: so if I am setting up an investigation, I am going to set up what happened, what clues might exist and what the overall situation is, but let the players do as they will)

I have to delicately suggest you're still expecting them to get at that Point X sometime there, even if you're avoiding deciding routes. That means there's the potential for you to put your thumb on things that lead them toward it rather than away from it.

I am not saying that they are. I am defending the idea that a GM who 'lets the players decide' is doing so to help player agency, and that this style of GMing is very different from one where there is a much more structured approach (i.e. scenes, or some kind of linear structure). I am not saying you can't also have agency in other approaches to play. Sometimes I run monster of the week for example. When I do that, there is an adventure that is going to take place (they will deal with the werewolf of Rockport this session). But I can still run a game like that and respect player agency within that framework

Which means my original post is still relevant; if you're not really self-aware when deciding something like the effectiveness of a social influence roll, you still have intentions you have to guard against favoring.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have to delicately suggest you're still expecting them to get at that Point X sometime there, even if you're avoiding deciding routes. That means there's the potential for you to put your thumb on things that lead them toward it rather than away from it.

All I can say is I actively don't do this. I genuinely enjoyed being surprised by where players take these things

Which means my original post is still relevant; if you're not really self-aware when deciding something like the effectiveness of a social influence roll, you still have intentions you have to guard against favoring.

I may have missed this point. But I wouldn't argue that you shouldn't try to curb your own biases and intentions. Part of being surprised is knowing how to recognize when your brain is starting to anticipate a particular line of events from an action and realizing that you need to put this in the players hands or in the hands of the dice (or some other mechanism). On social skill rolls, my main reason for wanting to curb those is I just dislike the impact they have a player's direct interaction with the NPCs and vice versa (I find having them be more about the externals than the internals helpful here)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, I do. I think you are not understanding the conversation.



No, failing isn't the only option. In fact, in the most common forms of railroading failure isn't an option. The most common employment of railroading is to prevent player or party failure because the GM perceives failure as not being fun for anyone. For example, it's very common for GMs to fudge in order to prevent undramatic PC deaths, or as in my example above to avoid punishing the whole party for one player's failure of wisdom and seriousness.



I don't even understand the question in context. As I said, most of the time GMs justify railroading because they want to the party to succeed. They aren't railroading to create story failures, but to create drama. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of debate, though almost everyone agrees that some amount of loss of agency is bad and total loss of agency is always bad.



I think that's likely.



Yes, but turns out that definition of "railroading" is very very broad. And what you'd see is that different people would treat different things as unacceptable. The arguments got so bad that I even saw a particular faction say that game prep was itself railroading because if the GM prepped something the expectation would be that is what you would do. At that point, I felt I really needed to sit down and think through for myself what was going on with this whole player agency deal, and I started to realize that there is no such thing as unlimited player agency. All player agency is limited in some fashion as an inherent aspect of play, and that in many cases it is limited by conscious choice of the GM - even GMs that are running so called 'open worlds' or 'sandboxes'. The question is, what is or is not an a good conscious choice of limiting player agency? And granting that players always have limited agency, how do we go about giving them a reasonable amount of it?



No, it's really, nor is that necessarily true. Consider a game like Half-Life or Half-Life II. Despite the apparent freedom you have, you are really on a mostly linear ride. Everyone's versions of the game plays quite similarly, and even the creative ways you solve a puzzle are scripted out and in fact the way everyone solves them most of the time. You may not in fact notice this the first time through, because you are having a lot of fun for a lot of different reasons. And everyone gets to the same end, so in what sense are you having an impact?

You might say, "Well, computer games are different than roleplaying games." and to a certain extent that isn't true, but within a table top game it's entirely possible that you could be presented with a scenario, make a bunch of choices a long the way, have a lot of fun, and yet everything that happened was prescripted and the ending was foreordained based on carefully steering your choices and the expectation of player success. All the other endings were just deaths and failure. If you didn't notice the walls, would you not have fun? And could you or would you notice the wall the first time through when you weren't looking for it and weren't trying to take alternate paths?



This turns out to be a really complex topic. You said that agency is a fancy way of saying "playing the game", and I disagree. But I do think that addressing what makes for giving a player sufficient agency is pretty close to addressing the topic of "what makes for a good game".

You realize that putting quotation marks around a playstyle in the context you used ("sandbox" in this case), can easily be taken as assuming disingenuous motivation on the part of that playstyle's proponent, like it's not a real thing or they're not really doing it?

 

[Celebrim]

I am trying not to be insulted by this phrasing

LOL. I trying not to be insulting by this phrasing while still conveying my thought accurately. The problem is that I'm pretty sure a GM has enough agency that he can still keep players on a railroad while letting them choose to go on a different course. Indeed, your example of switching to bootlegging is a classic case where the GM could just let the players self-punish themselves in a small world by doing something boring and of no consequence, until they decided that they needed the funds from retrieving the Tome of Nine Claws to jump start their small business.

I would honestly need to think about this definition. I think the real genuine definition of a railroad is the GM taking hard measures to keep a game on the course he has set. Merely wanting to control might not quite rise to railroading if the GM is allowing that control to slip. When people say railroad what they mean is the players can't get off the adventure or story path the GM has set no matter what they do: the GM is fixing the game to go in the direction he wants it to go. So the GM doing things like fudging, moving prepped material around so it is always encountered, even if they go in the direction where it wasn't initially placed, etc.

Yes. You are starting to get the idea. But I think you have to distinguish between the act of railroading - moving prepped material around so it is always encountered - and running a railroad. 'Railroading' is about controlling the game. I'd call it 'Directing' except I consider directing one specific example of how to railroad. A 'railroad' is what you get when you do too much railroading and for the wrong reasons and in particular when the players are trying to get off the rails but you won't let them. In other words a 'railroad' is a quantity and not a quality and it is the quantity that people are really sensitive to. Plus people get burned by some bad GM and then they get sensitive to the techniques - "Prep is bad because he's going to use it to take my agency away." or in my case "No prep is bad because he's going to use it to take my agency away." GMs are always railroading though, it's just a matter of how much they use it, how good they are at maintaining the illusion, and what they use it for.

Not just simplistically. I think this is absolutely giving the players agency. It is definitely not railroading

I know it seems like that should be the case, but it's definitely not the case. I don't have to block the party from the bootlegging endeavor. I just have to not make it fun for them. All I have to do to stop it is not validate that choice. I don't in this case really have to go out of my way to stomp on the idea. For the vast majority of PCs, it's a terrible idea.
They don't have the craft skills. They don't have the business skills. They don't have the contacts. Putting that together won't necessarily be more entertaining than starting up a flower arranging business. And really, from a purely neutral referee stance, why should I make bootlegging fun for them? Is it realistic that working as a bootlegger is a ton of fun?

Honestly, I'd probably have to railroad more than usual just to make the choice of bootlegging fun, regardless of whether I was annoyed by the fact the players didn't signal to me sooner that this is something they wanted.

Again no one is disputing that the GM makes things happen.

Someone did.

But he didn't make the idea for bootlegging happen. That is something the players introduced. Like I said before, I think you are taking the phrasing the poster used overly literally and to listening to what they were trying to say. They were talking about a style of GMing that is reactive to the agendas and actions the players set and take. That doesn't mean the GM stops making things happen in the setting.

I know what they were trying to say and said so when I responded. But I also think it's very important to speak with precision about this topic because we as GMs need to be able to accurately assess what we are doing in the game if we are to improve our skill at it. You can't get better at something if you aren't understanding what you are doing. It's like being a pole vaulter or something. You need too look at footage of yourself in order to consciously improve your technique.

But the point of the style the poster is talking about is to let the players go there and see what happens. Bootlegging is potentially filled with conflict, competition, outright wars for territory, so it need not be dull at all.

Potentially, yes. But all that potential is really created by the GM. It's tailored to be fun. It's not (and must insist on this) just letting the players go there and see what happens. That's an utterly false understanding of what is happening. You as the GM have to fill in that part of the game world artfully and in a way that all that potential comes into being. If the players then think that they've made all their own fun and take pride in the course the campaign is taking, so much the better, but that's not what actually happened.

This is a false choice. If the issue is you don't want the game to be boring, then don't make bootlegging boring. No one is saying they are creating the story. But the GM is also not creating the story. The GM is allowing the players to do what they want. The GM had an adventure planned about a manual, but the players didn't go there, so now the game is about bootlegging. That is agency.

I don't disagree, but...

The story is emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and system react. But I would be reluctant to use language like story here. It is an evolving situation.

the story is always emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and the system react to it. And darn it, it's still a story however reluctant you are to use that language. It's even got a plot. Just as soon as the GM backstories a setting or an NPC to create some dramatic conflict, you've got a plot. If I say, "The bootlegging in this region is controlled by J.C. Wilhelm and his gang. J.C. moved into the area thirty years ago, back when this was just a small prospector's outpost and built a fortune in illegal alcohol. Now he guards his turf jealously.", then I've made a plot. I the GM have set the terms of the conflict. And really, I need to do that because one thing you need to avoid in any functional RPG is the same player who creates the terms of a conflict also creates the terms of resolving it. It's much more fun and (FUNctional) if the person who creates the conflict isn't the one that decides how the conflict works out.

Again, no one is saying the GM doesn't make things happen. The point is: it isn't solely the GM deciding where things go. The players have freedom to do what they want, to go where they want and the GM is expected to keep up using a variety of means. Whether the GM is utilizing things like dramatic coincidence, that will be very dependent on the kind of game the GM is running. A lot of Gms who play this way will avoid that stuff, many will be using tables, NPCs motivations, group motivations, setting details as their guideposts for what happens (and the players are always free to interfere with that however they wish and to steer things in other directions). It is an organic process.

I agree you are describing a functional way to play. The problem I find is that a lot of GMs that play this way don't understand what they are doing or how it works, and as a consequence I find a lot of GMs in my experience say that they play this way but don't. You can still railroad the heck out of scenarios which you got out of player propositions and suggestions. And worse, you can run Rowboat Worlds on the grounds that you don't "railroad" where you have a sandbox but nothing in that sandbox to play with or engage with.

To be clear here, I am not knocking linear adventures. I am just defending the idea that a GM who says "I let the players decide" is genuinely trying to let the players have agency.

I'm not suggesting you aren't trying to let the players have agency. I'm just saying that it takes more than a sandbox to have agency, and that if the game is linear isn't proof the players don't have agency.

When I do run sandbox type games it is usually because I want a low prep, let's see where the players go, kind of thing.

I take it back. You just convinced me you don't run a sandbox and you don't understand how they work. Functional sandboxes are the highest level of prep you can run. It sounds like you actually run what I call "open world" games, and almost all of those are what I would consider full bore railroads that rely heavily on illusionism and often self-deception by the GMs. I have never seen one that doesn't, no matter what the GM tells me about it ahead of time. If you don't prep, you run a railroad. Pretty much full stop.

 

[Micah Sweet]

LOL. I trying not to be insulting by this phrasing while still conveying my thought accurately. The problem is that I'm pretty sure a GM has enough agency that he can still keep players on a railroad while letting them choose to go on a different course. Indeed, your example of switching to bootlegging is a classic case where the GM could just let the players self-punish themselves in a small world by doing something boring and of no consequence, until they decided that they needed the funds from retrieving the Tome of Nine Claws to jump start their small business.



Yes. You are starting to get the idea. But I think you have to distinguish between the act of railroading - moving prepped material around so it is always encountered - and running a railroad. 'Railroading' is about controlling the game. I'd call it 'Directing' except I consider directing one specific example of how to railroad. A 'railroad' is what you get when you do too much railroading and for the wrong reasons and in particular when the players are trying to get off the rails but you won't let them. In other words a 'railroad' is a quantity and not a quality and it is the quantity that people are really sensitive to. Plus people get burned by some bad GM and then they get sensitive to the techniques - "Prep is bad because he's going to use it to take my agency away." or in my case "No prep is bad because he's going to use it to take my agency away." GMs are always railroading though, it's just a matter of how much they use it, how good they are at maintaining the illusion, and what they use it for.



I know it seems like that should be the case, but it's definitely not the case. I don't have to block the party from the bootlegging endeavor. I just have to not make it fun for them. All I have to do to stop it is not validate that choice. I don't in this case really have to go out of my way to stomp on the idea. For the vast majority of PCs, it's a terrible idea.
They don't have the craft skills. They don't have the business skills. They don't have the contacts. Putting that together won't necessarily be more entertaining than starting up a flower arranging business. And really, from a purely neutral referee stance, why should I make bootlegging fun for them? Is it realistic that working as a bootlegger is a ton of fun?

Honestly, I'd probably have to railroad more than usual just to make the choice of bootlegging fun, regardless of whether I was annoyed by the fact the players didn't signal to me sooner that this is something they wanted.



Someone did.



I know what they were trying to say and said so when I responded. But I also think it's very important to speak with precision about this topic because we as GMs need to be able to accurately assess what we are doing in the game if we are to improve our skill at it. You can't get better at something if you aren't understanding what you are doing. It's like being a pole vaulter or something. You need too look at footage of yourself in order to consciously improve your technique.



Potentially, yes. But all that potential is really created by the GM. It's tailored to be fun. It's not (and must insist on this) just letting the players go there and see what happens. That's an utterly false understanding of what is happening. You as the GM have to fill in that part of the game world artfully and in a way that all that potential comes into being. If the players then think that they've made all their own fun and take pride in the course the campaign is taking, so much the better, but that's not what actually happened.



I don't disagree, but...



the story is always emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and the system react to it. And darn it, it's still a story however reluctant you are to use that language. It's even got a plot. Just as soon as the GM backstories a setting or an NPC to create some dramatic conflict, you've got a plot. If I say, "The bootlegging in this region is controlled by J.C. Wilhelm and his gang. J.C. moved into the area thirty years ago, back when this was just a small prospector's outpost and built a fortune in illegal alcohol. Now he guards his turf jealously.", then I've made a plot. I the GM have set the terms of the conflict. And really, I need to do that because one thing you need to avoid in any functional RPG is the same player who creates the terms of a conflict also creates the terms of resolving it. It's much more fun and (FUNctional) if the person who creates the conflict isn't the one that decides how the conflict works out.



I agree you are describing a functional way to play. The problem I find is that a lot of GMs that play this way don't understand what they are doing or how it works, and as a consequence I find a lot of GMs in my experience say that they play this way but don't. You can still railroad the heck out of scenarios which you got out of player propositions and suggestions. And worse, you can run Rowboat Worlds on the grounds that you don't "railroad" where you have a sandbox but nothing in that sandbox to play with or engage with.



I'm not suggesting you aren't trying to let the players have agency. I'm just saying that it takes more than a sandbox to have agency, and that if the game is linear isn't proof the players don't have agency.



I take it back. You just convinced me you don't run a sandbox and you don't understand how they work. Functional sandboxes are the highest level of prep you can run. It sounds like you actually run what I call "open world" games, and almost all of those are what I would consider full bore railroads that rely heavily on illusionism and often self-deception by the GMs. I have never seen one that doesn't, no matter what the GM tells me about it ahead of time. If you don't prep, you run a railroad. Pretty much full stop.

How is all of this not busting chops?

 

[Celebrim]

How is all of this not busting chops?

Ok, yes, I did some chop busting in that and especially in that last paragraph. I confess I get really annoyed when someone tells me that they run a sandbox because it means low or no prep. It's like telling me that bricks don't weigh all that much.

But on the core idea, what he said of: "I think the real genuine definition of a railroad is the GM taking hard measures to keep a game on the course he has set. Merely wanting to control might not quite rise to railroading if the GM is allowing that control to slip. When people say railroad what they mean is the players can't get off the adventure or story path the GM has set no matter what they do: the GM is fixing the game to go in the direction he wants it to go. So the GM doing things like fudging, moving prepped material around so it is always encountered, even if they go in the direction where it wasn't initially placed, etc." I think we are very much in agreement.

I'm trying to construct a shared language so that we can accurately talk about this. It gets frustrating though in trying to hammer out agreement on terms, someone tells me that the gravity depends on density or that kinetic energy is linear with velocity. I get why you'd think that. In some sense that's a very intuitive way to look at things. Plenty of smart people thought those things at one time. But I see them as false understanding.

Let me provide a slightly alternative definition to railroading but one which I consider actually congruent with what I've said so far: railroading is metagaming by the GM for or against the players.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I know it seems like that should be the case, but it's definitely not the case. I don't have to block the party from the bootlegging endeavor. I just have to not make it fun for them. All I have to do to stop it is not validate that choice. I don't in this case really have to go out of my way to stomp on the idea. For the vast majority of PCs, it's a terrible idea.

But then you actively railroading them. Even if you are just letting boredom be the thing that blocks that path, you are railroading. You are effectively saying: you can do that but nothing happens because the real adventure is over here. That isn't what I am advocating doing. I am saying now the focus of the campaign shifts to bootlegging. The players have escaped the rails because they were on a quest for a manual and now they are launching a bootlegging enterprise and dealign with whatever challenges that presents (which will likely be entirely different from adventures centered on manual hunting)

 

[Bedrockgames]

Someone did.

But I don't think you are understanding what the poster is really saying. Unless that person has in mind a game where the GM and players share narrative control or something, I think the point was more about being responsive to player actions and not forcing what you want to happen on them

 

[Bedrockgames]

I know what they were trying to say and said so when I responded. But I also think it's very important to speak with precision about this topic because we as GMs need to be able to accurately assess what we are doing in the game if we are to improve our skill at it. You can't get better at something if you aren't understanding what you are doing. It's like being a pole vaulter or something. You need too look at footage of yourself in order to consciously improve your technique.

But this seems needlessly pedantic if you understood his meaning. I think a lot of these debates actually revolve around this. While I appreciate your desire for precision and understand that is what some people want, not everyone writes, speaks or reads that way. I don't want precise language from gaming manuals. I actually want more metaphor and colorful language that helps give me the idea. And I even like vagueness in my game books. I get there is a whole approach to design and to talking about gaming, where you look at the pole vault footage. That isn't how everyone learns this stuff. I approach it more like stand up comedy, where I pay attention to what works and what doesn't at the table but I don't break down the process into discrete parts (I find it loses its spirit and organic quality when you do that). If this kind of assessment of GMing works for you, that is fine. But not everyone needs or wants this kind of approach

Potentially, yes. But all that potential is really created by the GM. It's tailored to be fun. It's not (and must insist on this) just letting the players go there and see what happens. That's an utterly false understanding of what is happening. You as the GM have to fill in that part of the game world artfully and in a way that all that potential comes into being. If the players then think that they've made all their own fun and take pride in the course the campaign is taking, so much the better, but that's not what actually happened.

And again no one denies the creative role the GM has here. But there are different ways to do this. There are ways that make it about "Something dramatic will happen and it will be X" versus "here's a conflict, or better yet, here is another NPC who wants something that interferes with things, let's see what happens". You are still throwing the ball back to the players and trying to adapt in good faith to their actions. It isn't just the GM making stuff up. The Players are actively involved, through their characters, in where this campaign goes (none of them are under any illusion that they created "Brick McCoy" who tried to take over their business, but their actions and choices clearly led to that even being viable for the GM to do.

I don't disagree, but...



the story is always emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and the system react to it. And darn it, it's still a story however reluctant you are to use that language. It's even got a plot. Just as soon as the GM backstories a setting or an NPC to create some dramatic conflict, you've got a plot.

If I say, "The bootlegging in this region is controlled by J.C. Wilhelm and his gang. J.C. moved into the area thirty years ago, back when this was just a small prospector's outpost and built a fortune in illegal alcohol. Now he guards his turf jealously.", then I've made a plot.

You've made history and a situation. That isn't a story in my view. Now if you say "the story so far is..." and go into that. I won't stop you. I get what you mean but that. But once we get into what ought to be happening on the GM side of things, I am wary of adopting that language.

I the GM have set the terms of the conflict. And really, I need to do that because one thing you need to avoid in any functional RPG is the same player who creates the terms of a conflict also creates the terms of resolving it. It's much more fun and (FUNctional) if the person who creates the conflict isn't the one that decides how the conflict works out.

I am with you half way here. You absolutely should be creating the side of the conflict involving characters other than the party. But they are a part of this conflict, and they will have a say in how it could be resolved. I don't mean the player out of character ought to be setting the terms for how this conflict is to be resolved, but the GM shouldn't just dictate that this or that is the way for this conflict to be resolved. The GM doesn't even know what the players are going to do yet to resolve it. He should be open to their efforts

I agree you are describing a functional way to play. The problem I find is that a lot of GMs that play this way don't understand what they are doing or how it works, and as a consequence I find a lot of GMs in my experience say that they play this way but don't. You can still railroad the heck out of scenarios which you got out of player propositions and suggestions. And worse, you can run Rowboat Worlds on the grounds that you don't "railroad" where you have a sandbox but nothing in that sandbox to play with or engage with.

I can't speak to those GMs. I am sure plenty of GMs either say they play one way but play another. And yes some GMs run a very boring sandbox (though if you find yourself in that game you should look around the table and make sure it isn't just you being bored because sometimes a group likes things you don't). But I also think the style of gaming I am talking about can be tremendous fun. One thing I will say is you should never let online gaming ideologies control your table. If you are trying to run a sandbox and intentionally avoiding story or plot or dramatic twists, but your game is dull as hell, you need to throw in something dramatic. It is great to talk about these things, but ultimately you have to serve the table and players you have before you and adapt

I'm not suggesting you aren't trying to let the players have agency. I'm just saying that it takes more than a sandbox to have agency, and that if the game is linear isn't proof the players don't have agency.

Sure, I don't disagree with this.

I take it back. You just convinced me you don't run a sandbox and you don't understand how they work. Functional sandboxes are the highest level of prep you can run. It sounds like you actually run what I call "open world" games, and almost all of those are what I would consider full bore railroads that rely heavily on illusionism and often self-deception by the GMs. I have never seen one that doesn't, no matter what the GM tells me about it ahead of time. If you don't prep, you run a railroad. Pretty much full stop.

I would throw this back at you (but to be clear no insult intended). But either you don't understand sandbox, or you don't understand how I run sandboxes. I have to run, but if you are running a sandbox and prep it right, there may be a lot of prep before hand, but sandboxes become very low prep once the world starts to come alive with power groups, conflict, etc. I do maintenance prep week to week as things develop, but every session my goal is to respond to the players and let things play out organically. The worldbuidling before a sandbox is heavy. It requires effort. My point is you can have a very low prep campaign in a sandbox once it starts and it can go on for years that way (because you aren't planing an entire adventure week to week but letting the players actions dictate where things go)