D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

I've quoted Burning Wheel upthread (BW Gold, p 30):

what happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task.​

​

This is important enough to say again: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test.​

The idea of a RPG saying that GMing means doing this thing (always) and thus not doing this other thing (ever) is pretty familiar to me. That's how games state their rules!

It does seem the kinds of game you favor do tend towards this GM-perscriptive approach, yes. It is considerably less common in more traditional styled games, where this sort of thing is more often phrased as advice or suggestions IME.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Kind of like "we interrupt this horror & action D&D game of dungeon delving for a The Sims interlude." Dollhouse Play would be that interlude.

And I'm sorry, but that is not derogatory. It is merely a (correct) description of what the thing actually is. If I were to instruct someone on "how to engage in Dollhouse Play" I would be very open and exacting about it. And that above would be my detailing of the concept-space and then I would engage in the technical aspects of how to implement that concept (two of which would be "intentionally reduce the stakes/stress to zero or nearing it" and another would be "play color & affect forward, be theatricality-rich in your depictions and rendering"). It isn't derogatory in the same way that someone calling my beloved Torchbearer a "Misery Simulator" generates no offense from me. I get it. It is amusing and, though it is reductionist, there is enough "there...there" that I can totally get how some folks (even folks who have played the game aplenty) would derive "Misery Simulator" from the concept and even the play. It is actually pretty useful to start a discussion about the game's core concept-space, its various architecture, and how it does "the thing" (for some folks, that might be Simulate Misery!).

You don't think people would bristle at the dollhouse play comparison? I remember being at a table of gamers and the GM's wife busted our chops by picking up the miniatures and saying "oh you have dollies for this game" she was being facetious and it was funny but it was also chop busting because she knew grown men wouldn't like having their activity described as playing with dolls. I don't think this really needs a lot of explanation for why a lot of people would bristle at it as a label for their style of play. Now perhaps you have a set of things this label refers to that accurately describes the mode of play (I don't think getting into a side discussion on that is worthwhile but I suspect there would probably even be push back on how accurate your description is)

 

[Micah Sweet]

the definitions of sandbox and railroad that i have come to understand from my years of exposure to them:

sandbox: a game without a planned path or hard meta goals, where the characters just exist in the setting and are free to travel and do what they wish to (as much as an inhabitant of that setting is free to do anything), any goals are self-appointed.

railroad: a game where the player's choices, actions and rolls have little to no impact on how events will unfold from the way that the GM decides they should happen.

This seems rather straightforward. Can we hear specific objections to these definitions?

 

[Campbell]

Because that's a different style of game we maybe don't want to play all the time?

So that means you should lie about how that style actually works? That you not liking it means you have free cover to call it non-functional and make all sorts of declarations about how it works that don't match multiple decades of practice many of us have experienced.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here's how I approach it:

When I prep a sandbox campaign, I start by building a setting that would make sense even without the players. I populate it with factions, locations, conflicts, and situations that are plausible given the premises of the setting, not constructed around the assumption that players will interact with any specific element. This principle is crucial to avoiding railroading.

I don't see how it has any effect at all on railroading. Just because you aren't assuming the PCs will interact with it, doesn't mean you cannot be nailing down one and only one valid path forward. Design a religion that is utterly unpersuadable--by anyone, PC or not. Design a marauding horde, a reasonable thing in almost any fantasy setting, which reasonably besieges towns. Said thing can then be used to control player motions in various ways.

Populating the world with stuff without considering the PCs doesn't do anything to start or stop railroading.

This material forms part of my "Bag of Stuff": a body of prepared details that give players meaningful choices once play begins. But none of it demands players act a certain way or follow a predetermined path.

See above. It absolutely can, when they then do interact with it. And, as DM in control of what "makes sense" etc., you can ensure that such interaction eventually happens--indeed, even if you very specifically created these things without any thoughts whatsoever of the PCs or how they could potentially interact with them, an enormous chunk of that 'Bag of Stuff" can then be used as tools to control their behavior. Which is the whole point. This isn't railroad prevention. It merely furnishes setting elements. Those elements can then be used in whatever way any DM likes--including to railroad, even if not a single thought was given to railroading in their creation.

One part of my approach that often gets overlooked is how this all manifests at the table: through first-person roleplaying. I don't just describe the world abstractly. The world comes alive when I roleplay NPCs in the first person, and players respond likewise.

I genuinely don't understand how this is relevant.

This matters in two ways to the points you raise:

1) It grounds later discussion with players. If a question arises, we can review how I roleplayed the NPC based on the established notes and setting facts, for example, whether my portrayal of Thranduil in the Rhovanion sourcebook for AiME was consistent with the material.

I don't see how this responds to what I said in the slightest. Like I'm baffled as to why you even mention it. I cannot mount a meaningful response beyond this, because I literally don't understand any relevance of this to the thing you say it is relevant to.

2) First-person roleplaying ensures players are presented with environment where they have the full range of options that exist in real interaction. This makes it virtually impossible for me to control player choices or railroad them into specific outcomes.

It does no such thing. Again: If there's a marauding horde besieging the walls of the Merchant Republic of Aiztenev, while plague scours the people within, then that goes nearly all of the way toward controlling the players' actions: they either stay in the city and risk death, or leave by ship since the marauding horde has only limited ability to blockade the ports.

First-person narration does nothing whatsoever to prevent such an intersection of pre-established game pieces from narrowing the players' options to either one and only one path (a full, unequivocal railroad, though not the most extreme possible railroad), or to a finite set of pre-approved DM-authored options (what I call a CYOA, which is still a railroad, it's just got forks.)

This process is reinforced by my emphasis on referee impartiality. The referee's job is not to shepherd players to a "correct" outcome, but to present a living world, adjudicate fairly, and let consequences unfold naturally, even when it surprises me.

So...I'm gonna level with you, this reads as "the process is reinforced by my solemn promise not to railroad." Which really makes the argument seem both circular and superfluous, even before the things I've said above.

 

[The Firebird]

It does no such thing. Again: If there's a marauding horde besieging the walls of the Merchant Republic of Aiztenev, while plague scours the people within, then that goes nearly all of the way toward controlling the players' actions: they either stay in the city and risk death, or leave by ship since the marauding horde has only limited ability to blockade the ports.

Or they mount a defense of the walls, or try to sneak past enemy lines, or try to open negotiations, or sail to find allies...

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is an extremely radical position of GM privilege. The same privilege of protagonism that I want for my fighter should apply to the GM and his billions of NPCs?

Protagonism is a narrative term. It is orthogonal to whether or not the game is a sandbox.

 

[Campbell]

the definitions of sandbox and railroad that i have come to understand from my years of exposure to them:

sandbox: a game without a planned path or hard meta goals, where the characters just exist in the setting and are free to travel and do what they wish to (as much as an inhabitant of that setting is free to do anything), any goals are self-appointed.

railroad: a game where the player's choices, actions and rolls have little to no impact on how events will unfold from the way that the GM decides they should happen.

No problem here, as long as we accept that setup matters here. That part of how a GM can set the table for how much player's choices matter is in setting, situation and NPC design.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It can be a problem for me! And I've known - and know - other RPGers for whom it can also be a problem. I don't care how compelling the GM thinks the NPC's character is - if the likely consequences and prospects of success of my action declarations aren't knowable by me as a player, then how am I supposed to play the game?

And as a more general point, I would say that secret GM decisions about what NPCs will do in certain situations is a core part of the railroader's repertoire!

And we've returned to subjectivity and personal preference. I feel we'd see fewer arguments (and shorter threads) if this truth (IMO of course) was presented by all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This seems rather straightforward. Can we hear specific objections to these definitions?

I mean, as long as we have the recognition that:

1. an invisible railroad can happen--where the players merely think they can travel where they wish to, their goals are self-appointed, etc., but in actuality the DM is manipulating them with various techniques (illusionism, cold reading, quantum ogres, fudging, etc.) to remain on the invisible rails

and

2. there can be degrees between the two, e.g. a game where any given journey is a fixed path, but when they reach a fork in the road, they really do get a choice and that can reorient things...onto one of a set of selected fixed paths. Or for another example, a game where most things are truly self-appointed goals, but if the GM feels things have hit a snag or that the momentum has been lost, they'll throw in hooks specifically designed to get the ball rolling again.

With those two things recognized, I see no problem with those definitions. Point 2 is, as has been stressed throughout the thread, the idea that these things lie on a spectrum rather than two rigidly-defined points and ne'er the twain shall meet. Point 1 simply notes that the feeling of agency is not the only requirement for something to be closer to the ultimate sandbox (which I would say Ironsworn is either at or extremely close to) than it is to the ultimate railroad (which, as I said previously, the most rigid versions of Dragonlance play are either at or very close to).