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

[CreamCloud0]

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.

could you elaborate/clarify? which of the definitions is your caveat meant to apply to? or is it both?

 

[Manbearcat]

I didn't mention railroading at all. My position is that the form of decision making being presented ('there's a world simulation running in my head, it is impartial and inevitable') is impossible. It doesn't work as a cover for railroading but it also doesn't work for any other abrogation of responsibility. It's a GM making some stuff up.

I just meant that you guys' back-and-forth was embedded in this greater conversation around railroading and black box GMing. Therefore there are parallels and implications. For instance, A GM's orientation to play of "I have a world simulation running in my head, it is impartial and inevitable" is irrelevant to the players' orientation to and experience of that exact same play. GM might be sure of, or convince themselves, "this is a totally legit simulation and therefore totally not a railroad!" Meanwhile, the player might be "uh...this is all absurd and a railroad."

And the same thing goes equally for actual decipherable and actionable gamestate (probably moreso to be honest).

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)

It becomes impossible to discuss these things when we get utterly preoccupied by things like Dollhouse Play for brief interludes of D&D play or Misery Simulator for all of the experience of Torchbearer.

Yes, labels are reductionist. That is the point. They have to be. They also have to be provocative in some sense because short-hand for a large information set needs to convey complex concepts with enormous economy.

If folks relabeled Dollhouse Play to The Sims Play, you would (a) be losing out on an enormous swathe of your audience who has no exposure to that niche game while (b) simultaneously potentially leading their thoughts astray a bit because The Sims has a higher breadth of play than Dollhouse Play and more iterations.

If folks relabeled Dollhouse Play to Toy Models or Transformers or Making Sandcastles, it would be equally deranging to the concept-space for various reasons.

The reasons why Dollhouse Play does the necessary work is because (i) virtually everybody knows exactly what it entails and (ii) it is a nearly exact analogue for the TTRPG interlude form. You brought up Magical Tea Party before. You know why that works? I know you do. It works for the same reasons Dollhouse Play works. It works for the same reason that Misery Simulator works as a reductionist descriptor of Torchbearer.

Now we can talk about concepts and techniques. Like I can take that reductionist term reductionist term Misery Simulator (that I could easily take offense to and abrogate my responsibility to have a functional conversation where our indivudal and collective information sets have expanded) and use "Misery" and "Simulator" to discuss the how/why/what of Torchbearer. Or I could quagmire any potential useful conversation in offense-taking and moderation-baiting!

 

[Bedrockgames]

It becomes impossible to discuss these things when we get utterly preoccupied by things like Dollhouse Play for brief interludes of D&D play or Misery Simulator for all of the experience of Torchbearer.

Yes, labels are reductionist. That is the point. They have to be. They also have to be provocative in some sense because short-hand for a large information set needs to convey complex concepts with enormous economy.

If folks relabeled Dollhouse Play to The Sims Play, you would (a) be losing out on an enormous swathe of your audience who has no exposure to that niche game while (b) simultaneously potentially leading their thoughts astray a bit because The Sims has a higher breadth of play than Dollhouse Play and more iterations.

If folks relabeled Dollhouse Play to Toy Models or Transformers or Making Sandcastles, it would be equally deranging to the concept-space for various reasons.

The reasons why Dollhouse Play does the necessary work is because (i) virtually everybody knows exactly what it entails and (ii) it is a nearly exact analogue for the TTRPG interlude form. You brought up Magical Tea Party before. You know why that works? I know you do. It works for the same reasons Dollhouse Play works. It works for the same reason that Misery Simulator works as a reductionist descriptor of Torchbearer.

Now we can talk about concepts and techniques. Like I can take that reductionist term reductionist term Misery Simulator (that I could easily take offense to and abrogate my responsibility to have a functional conversation where our indivudal and collective information sets have expanded) and use "Misery" and "Simulator" to discuss the how/why/what of Torchbearer. Or I could quagmire any potential useful conversation in offense-taking and moderation-baiting!

I am not saying we should have a conversation about it. I am just saying don't be surprised when people react strongly to having their play style labeled Dollhouse Play

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

But game design is not simply a matter of preference. There can be a contrast of techniques. There can be criticism of techniques. A game system can set out to pursue a goal and then objectively fail to meet that goal. (Consider, for example, that 3rd edition was designed very specifically in order to be MORE balanced than 2e was, and it objectively failed to do so, given 3e gave us such delights as Pun-Pun and the Wish and the Word.) A game's rules are not merely a matter of preference, they need to achieve things, that's the whole point of designing them.

And it's why, even people I have seen be far to the extreme end of "system doesn't matter" still complain about something or other being "overpowered" or the like, a claim that only makes sense if system does, in fact, matter!

 

[Pedantic]

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...

Right, the limits of the situation are what make the gameplay interesting. You get faced with a board you can make limited moves on, and try to resolve it favorably.

That can't be sufficient for a "railroad." Getting faced with obstacles and overcoming them is the gameplay loop. The point being danced around is that you could engineer a situation with only one acceptable action input, and apparently do so by accident.

I'm disinclined to think the unintentional case is realistic, given a sufficiently explicated system that provides enough baseline power to player characters, and the former is obviously malicious and should be bounded by principle.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't recall telling anyone their style of play was nonfunctional. I can't say the same about others in every case.

 

[Bedrockgames]

To be clear then, you're saying that when you decide for example that 'Bob can never be bribed, it's a defining character trait that cannot be moved' you've already determined every possible factor that could affect that. His cardiovascular and mental health. Any changes in the weather this season that has affected his crops and so his likely financial position later in the year. Whether he's ever heard about wizards before and might be swayed by meeting one in the flesh. Whether the people that normally watch for him and keep him honest have gone away for the week. Whether he had a run-in with the suspect this morning and thinks, you know what that guy has it coming. All these and other factors are known to you and form part of your decision making?

If you are making the character you can account for all these things. If he is Giles Corey levels of stubborn, me writing "He can't be bribed" would mean he can't be bribed even if his cardiovascular health starts to fail. There are people who are that stubborn. I don't think 99.9999 percent of people are as stubborn as Giles Corey was, so most aren't going to be that unrbibable. I just think it is fair and not railroading for a GM to say an NPC isn't someone who takes bribes any circumstances. Just as a Player can do the same for their PC. If the detail is strong enough that it is "They cannot be bribed" then it isn't going to matter if they have people around who can keep them honest: they don't need people to keep them honest because they aren't bribable by nature. That is going to be a very rare NPC though. I think most will have other potentially competing motives. And the GM would be expected to factor in those competing motives.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not saying we should have a conversation about it. I am just saying don't be surprised when people react strongly to having their play style labeled Dollhouse Play

I mean, okay? I love sessions that involve this sort of stuff--I'd say about a third of my DW sessions include it--and I have no problem calling it that.

It's one thing to react to stuff which is obviously or overtly offensive. This, to me, reads like getting mad about an accurate metaphor. Like it's pretty reasonable to find the "pretend elfgames" descriptor irritating and insulting, because that's quite literally the point (it's an attempt to claim that TTRPGs aren't and shouldn't be considered serious, which is a major mistake IMO; they are often not serious, but that's quite different!) But...like...doing that sort of pure "we are just two people talking to each other about imaginary aesthetics in a way that only affects play by establishing that two characters relate to one another"...that's what playing in a dollhouse is! Like that's very literally what playing with dolls is all about--and I would know, I played with dolls as a child even though my parents didn't approve (they were somewhat more conservative then than they are now.)

When a descriptor is both accurate to the actions conducted and accurate with regard to the point and purpose of the thing being analogized, why is that an insult? I genuinely don't understand.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't recall telling anyone their style of play was nonfunctional. I can't say the same about others in every case.

Then you clearly didn't see the multiple people saying that PbtA games (amongst various others) are inherently opposed to realistic, self-consistent worlds.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.


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.


I genuinely don't understand how this is relevant.


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.


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.)


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.

If you can't trust your GM, I really don't know why you play. It seems like it wouldn't be fun.