Those 3 x bullet points that I put forth aren't things I would put forth as
techniques. I meant them as
principled constraints and requirements.
For instance, engineers (including those in charge of aesthetics) and brand fans might say a Lotus coupe must have the following benchmarks:
- Be uniquely lightweight and possessed of x power to weight ratio.
- Produce unparalleled driver connectivity to steering and handling responsiveness.
- Strip away "cockpit cruft" and anything that distracts from or detracts from an exclusive driver-experience.
- Look (roughly) like this.
Those are the
principled constraints and requirements. How the engineers and those in charge of aesthetics implement those principled constraints and requirements are the
techniques.
Same goes for TTRPGing.
So, for instance, Duskvol is a coherently constrained space. The techniques employed in making it so are (a) generation of fictional architecture featuring a supernatural apocalypse that has rendered the outside world nigh uninhabitable, (b) thereby going outside is overwhelmingly "juice ain't worth the squeeze" (except in specific scenarios that may or may not see the light of day...typically depending upon whether the Crew takes on a Smuggling job into The Deathlands and/or some character premise becomes tied to that haunted wasteland), (c) and this situation-state is reflected by several transparent gamestate-impactors implemented in concert (rare gear requirements that are difficult to get and are heavy cost on Loadout, Volatile consequences for the Deathlands, high Magnitude dangers and an attendant higher proportion of Master Tier Threat NPCs, Ghosts everywhere which trigger inherent mechanical effect when exposed to, high Magnitude supernatural pestilence, an enormously high Magnitude desolate expanse that must be endured and traversed to get anywhere of consequence).
In another thread, I wrote about a technique I have developed that will render my first bullet point (a principled constraint and requirement) above more effective and efficient:
View attachment 403961
This was actually one of the more productive exchanges, to be honest. If we're struggling to land in the same place on the differences between
principled constraints and requirements and
techniques employed to implement the former, that is certainly going to have some explanatory power for other issues. Particularly the "actionable gamestate" impacts of "black-box resolution."
I'm just going to screen snip the below exchange between
@soviet and
@Bedrockgames , because it is relevant.
View attachment 403977
This is a back-and-forth around "black-box GM decision-making" and its impact on either
actual railroads or
players becoming oriented to play as if they are experience a railroad. The way I see it, these two states have so little daylight between the two of them that they are useless to even distinguish (except in terms of diagnoses and overt, transparent measures taken to rectify).
If the play itself feels like a railroad to players, it doesn't matter whether the GM is authentically aiming at railroading or not...the play is consequentially a railroad.
Something "wrong" is happening. Whether that something wrong is at the concept-level or at implementation level or even player-side (sometimes players don't know system as well as they should, therefore the proverbial "black box" is actually of their own making...and they should take accountability for that and rectify the situation by learning the system)...doesn't matter.
The table needs to recognize it, admit it, understand it, and resolve it.
Imo, the worst way to do this is the passive expectation that offloading this onto social contract (amongst a group of people that are possessed of one or more conflict-averse people) will just do this heavy lifting and it will all magically go away.
Imo, the best way to do this is all member parties being active, transparent, responsible for their part, and accountable to themselves and each other. All member parties here includes "system" because this is the all-important layer where (a) actual gameplay (where gamestate movement from
here to
there is facilitated) becomes coherently decipherable to all parties and (b) therefore actionable. And when it comes to gameplay being coherently decipherable and therefore actionable, players who
"don't know what is happening when we (GMs) make these kinds of choices" have their actual gameplay come undone precisely because of the associated absence of coherently decipherable and therefore actionable. Hence,
black-box GMing isn't just a problem for the perception/implementation of a railroad...it is a problem for coherently decipherable and actionable gameplay for players.
And this, of course is where we circle back to "high trust." "Just trust your GM." Trust doesn't always do the work when concerns around railroading are made manifest. And trust definitely doesn't do the work when actual gameplay ceases to become coherently decipherable and actionable...in that case you're left "trusting the GM will basically play the game for you in such a way that your desired outcome comes to pass." But
gameplay isn't about desired outcomes. Gameplay is about
actually doing the things and experiencing your doing of the things which may or may not lead to desired outcomes.
If someone else is doing the things in your stead, the actual gameplay loop becomes absent for the player.
