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

[Lanefan]

Well, to reiterate (since I have been dragged back into this thread quite against my preference in order to defend myself), I am not and have not ever been saying that ABSOLUTELY ANY form of "NPC who cannot be persuaded to do X task" is an example of railroading. Instead, I am saying that an NPC who cannot be persuaded for an utterly ridiculous reason is an example of railroading.

Which then, I suppose, opens up the question "at what point does a reason hit the 'utterly ridiculous' stage"; and as the answer to that is going to vary from one person to the next, never mind one table to the next, discussion on the topic will be muddy at best.

So what would make it utterly ridiculous? How about a dead end, where the map clearly shows a path should have been there, because....a continuous migration of gelatinous cubes is completely filling the passageway, streaming out of a broken pipe on one end and glorping up through a gap in the ceiling. That seems like a pretty good example of something so extreme, so bizarre, so utterly untenable, that I would hear that and be instantly skeptical. Like, really, a migration of gelatinous cubes? Right through the one spot we need so we don't have to go around the long way? And very specifically a continuous and unending migration, so there's no squeezing through or around, nor waiting for a pause or the end of said migration? Even if such a migration is something the DM has established inside their black-box prep, deploying it here, in this case, absolutely smacks of manipulating what the players are allowed to attempt, and I would be instantly skeptical.

And as your character would likely also be skeptical, an attempt to disbelieve the illusion would seem in order.

Or, if it is somehow real, the PCs have to chop their way through the Cubes in order to proceed. Even before mid-level, Gelatinous Cubes aren't much of a challenge; perhaps a solution is to knock off two of them to make a gap in the parade, and then for the PCs to carefully move into that gap and shuffle along with the parade until they get where they need to go?

It's an interesting and unusual challenge. I actually like it (and at some point down the road my players might just have to meet an endless parade of jelly...).

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the players choose to do something boneheaded like run into battle before recovering from the previous fight, I let the dice fall where they may. In that example the group ended up surrendering to avoid a TPK.

I'm not going to limit player actions to something expected or what I wanted so I don't want it for the GM either.

And I've explained the difference. If you don't accept that, you don't; my repeating it few more times is unlikely to change your mind.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Pedantic , I saw your tag. I'll try to get a response to you tomorrow.

Just going to Snip in the prior back-and-forth here for context:

Well, I'll take an example from an old sandbox campaign. We started as 16 year olds in a small town. We got to pick or roll randomly for which of the towns 10 families we came from. These had a fixed list of professions; e.g., there was a fisherman but no wizard. That town then came under attack, and we had to organize a defense (most of the adults were away). We started as level 1 characters, which was the least realistic part of the scenario, but imo worked just fine. At that level, we ended up choosing from rogue, barbarian, or fighter (non magic classes).

Ok, I'm going to make up a game called The Fisherman and the Fighter. This is a focused game that is about (a) the nature of these two PCs as well as (b) the fate of their hometown.

* The Fisherman player and Fighter player each build their character out in the normal way. That build includes Relations, Belongings, Skills, and Traits with dice # and value associated with each. The opening of play sees us going to a backstory scene for each where we play out some seminal, life-shaping conflict and derive a piece of PC build from it.

* During independent tests (against inanimate opposition like a cliff) or versus tests (animated opposition like a person), they build their dice pool based on a transparent procedure and throw the dice. There are transparent stakes for tests, a clear winner/loser, and a margin of success procedure that generates increased fallout for the loser or increase boon for the winner. Independent tests build their "obstacle rating" via a grabbing a base number that indexes what the situation is and then adding additional factors that qualify on top of that. The number derived is the number of successes the PC has to achieve to win the Indy test. In vs tests, its simply the player building their relevant PC dice pool and the GM building the opposition dice pool based on the game's procedures; winner earns the stakes and loser absorbs the fallout (with margin of success piling on more fallout or giving the winner some kind of boon for follow-on conflicts; player choice).

* Players have a very limited currency that they mark and permanently lose. It is reliable (it always does its thing), but it is very limited and not replenishable. Like 3 of these. If they mark all 3, the PC is done in this game. What that means could mean any number of things depending upon the accumulated fiction to date and the final test in which they spend this currency; death, exile, flee like a coward, become a mostly irrelevant redshirt folded in with the rest of the townfolk...no longer a driving force in the community and game (whatever).

Each time the currency is spent, the player overturns the results of a test they just lost. The player also reveals some kind of weight or burden or past event that now haunts them deeply (with the weight or haunt increasing as these 3 x currency are spent).

* The bad guys are coming (whatever they are). We have limited information on what that entails. We (the group) generate keywords that tells us what they are, and why they're coming. Fictional parameters. There is also a procedure for developing their actual statistics that will impact play downstream. This is an open procedure with bounded values/resources for "the bad guys." But we don't resolve yet. We resolve at the very end if we do, in fact, take them on... with the prospect of these values "popping off" such that defending our hometown and our people could be nearly mechanically impossible (though we'll still play it out if we decide to Make a Stand). This is because we want to find out about the nature of the PCs in the face of extreme odds as well as the scary unknown. Is one of them courageous to the point of being a stubborn fool that will end up sacrificing the whole town in a meaningless stand over a plot of land? Is one of them a secret coward will to give up their home at the slightest specter of looming violence? Is the town consisted of vulnerable folk and mobilized exodus without laboring the enemy is just not realistic...in this case, we find out The Fisherman is a hero and makes a stand with the watch and his strategic use of their mighty reservoir and his traps...while The Fighter flees with the vulnerable and the meek. Etc etc etc, all kinds of configurations could spin out in play, up to and including a stand made and a repulsion of "the bad guys" at minimal cost to the town.

* The GM procedurally generates the town according to the rules. This creates various town qualities and various, key members who have motivations and dice pools not dissimilar to the PCs. The GM actively reveals these through play by provoking and challenging The Fighter and The Fisherman with the backdrop of this looming siege.

* We have a codified Early Game where we (i) find out who these characters are and (ii) the associated overt play (situation-framing > tests or vs tests to decide what happens > fallout > follow-on conflicts which cascade forward) with the machinery as above. Once that resolves and we know (iii) how the town is mobilized and mustered and (iv) who these two PCs are, we advance to the codified End Game.

* Now, through the process and accumulated fiction of the Early Game, the nature of the town and the two PCs have been mostly revealed and we know if we're taking a stand, or fleeing, or both, and who has been mustered and who has been revealed a coward or a heady leader.

Here, we do go through the process of generating "the bad guys." Depending upon how the Early Game went, the End Game features one or two codified conflict resolution procedures; a Flee/Chase conflict (if that is part of things) and/or a Make a Stand conflict (if that is part of things)

* Once the End Game is resolved, the nature of the Fighter, the Fisherman, the town, and the fate all parties has been decided and cemented.

---

Ok, that ran long. I didn't anticipate that. So I'm going to leave this here as an exemplar of the sort of play I'm depicting and I'll circle back to it sometime tomorrow and "black box-ificate" and "GM decides-ificate" the above in key ways that change the parameters and nature of play in ways that I find undesirable.

If you have any questions about any of the above, I'll answer those tomorrow when I get back in here and reference the above made-up game and then revise it away from the above described paradigm.

 

[Lanefan]

I have a possible term that might help instead of railroading. Railroading, to me, is a somewhat different animal in that the DM is forcing play to a specific end when there are plausible other paths forward.

Might the term "roadblocking" not be apt here. It's a term I use for DM's who insist on forcing the players to resolve certain challenges with no possibility of bypassing the challenge, for no other reason than the DM has simply decided that this should be a challenge.

There are times when DM's get a bit too deep in the weeds and need to realize that not every single thing needs to be a challenge and not every single thing has to be resolved with mechanics. Sometimes it's fine to just say yes.

As long as sometimes it's also fine to just say no, we're in agreement here.

It's not really railroading because the DM does actually want the player to resolve this challenge, whatever it is. But, is insisting that this challenge MUST be resolved even though no one really cares and there are no real stakes in the challenge.

Hrm.... As I'm writing this, I'm wandering into the weeds so this might not be as good of a term as I think it is.

Linear adventures, where the rooms-encounters-challenges are set up like a string of beads leaving no choice but to deal with them in the sequence intended, would seem to be a good example of roadblocking through adventure design.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Limited knowledge of the world forms a significant part of the "ideal" when it comes to sandbox campaigns. And is critical in ensuring that the campaign unfolds through what the players choose. Why? Because the players are aware of their lack of knowledge and it motivates them to discover whether it is the exploration of physical geography or exploring a town's social network.

It depends on how it is used in play. I rarely find the discovery of physical geography to be all that compelling in play. Not saying it never can be for me, and certainly I know others may enjoy it... but that's not what I generally enjoy about play.

I mentioned my campaign of Spire earlier in the thread... how 75% of play took place in one district of the city. The geography was not unknown to the players... their characters were all raised there, that's why they were chosen to be involved by their minister. So geographical knowledge was assumed. They knew the established locations on the map, and because the map we used doesn't detail every single building, I granted them a lot of leeway in asking about other locations.

The social network of the district, on the other hand, was something they did have to deal with. It had been several years since the characters had lived there, so they were unfamiliar with many things. Having said that, I didn't make them hunt and peck for a lot of it... I just shared it with them as it became relevant. For example, crime is a huge factor in the district... so I let them know the three major factions in the criminal underworld. I didn't hide that from them... why would I? It's common enough knowledge that I assume they learn it.

Individual NPCs and their goals? Those weren't always as obvious. But even still... sometimes, they're still pretty clear. Most criminals want to make a profit and not get caught... safe to assume those goals. Still left plenty of other stuff to be discovered through play.

What do you think the ethos behind it is?

As you described it, it seemed that your idea of realism or setting consistency or plausibility is what mattered most.

 

[hawkeyefan]

So, this sounds to me like, contra your previous post, the information 'being discoverable' by the PCs is insufficient. If the detail is minor, it should be revealed to them without effort on their part. Correct?

As I said, it depends. I described how I would do it. I wouldn't bother with it "being discoverable", I'd just portray it.

If another GM instead wanted to leave it up to the players to discover, then that's fine... I'd expect some kind of chance to learn the information, though. Again... such an opportunity depends on the GM granting it as well as how difficult it may be, how many other details might be needed... and on and on.

This is why I said the complexity I'd apply to this situation depends on the importance of the interaction. With a guard? The players are simply trying to move on to the next step toward their goal? I just tell them what they need to know, they decide what to do, and then we roll to see how it goes.

I don't think your characterization of "a GM's novice mystery novel" is fair, nor do I see how including a half dozen people in authorship improves the situation.

Why is that characterization not fair?

 

[Bedrockgames]

As you described it, it seemed that your idea of realism or setting consistency or plausibility is what mattered most.

I woudldn't say that is the ethos. I think in these sandboxes, setting matters, but so does player agency, so does a sense of fairness and impartiality. There is also an ethos of not having the players feel like they are just passively part of the GMs story and of not railroading. I think this is a style that considers a range of things crucial to play. And by the way, it doesn't exclude what you are talking about. Some sandbox GMs will use things like skill rolls. But because role-play and characterization are extremely important in a living world, some will prefer lighter social interaction rules or no social interaction. As I said in a prior post, the agency of the player characters matters and so does the agency of the NPCs. Ideally the players have a sense of a world populated by people who as active forces like themselves

 

[Lanefan]

The problem is something thinking they know what you have to own up to. Because it is like you are trying to psychoanalyze other peoples games. You are trying to get into peoples heads, and assuming you know what biases are in operation. This isn't therapy, this isn't confession, or an interrogation. And it isn't that your analysis is a threat, it is that that kind of language in a conversation about game styles, bothers people because you are telling them you know more about what is going on in their own mind than they do

What bothers me is the heavily-implied suggestion that each of our games and-or our DMing methods needs to be analysed in the first place.

I'm a DM, dammit, not a scientist's lab rat.

The other issue is I think a lot of us reject your method of analysis. So insisting people stop using language, accusing them of using 'vague platitudes' is not helpful in having a conversation. If people have failed to persuade you that is fair. But this stuff starts feeling insulting after a while. You don't have to like how I describe my games. I don't expect to persuade you. I do think it is fair though that I don't feel like I am in an interrogation seat when I try to explain how I run a game to you

Hear hear.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What bothers me is the heavily-implied suggestion that each of our games and-or our DMing methods needs to be analysed in the first place.

At some point, if you're going to talk about them at least, they kind of do. You don't have to want to do that, of course.

 

[Lanefan]

You misunderstand me. There is nothing “wrong” with the way @Lanefan runs his game. But it is absolutely a choice.

If you as a GM choose to not share some crucial bit of information with the players, then you’ve chosen to do so.

Or - and hell knows it's certainly possible - I've made a mistake of omission and forgot to mention or skipped over something important. It happens.

That said, if the players ever feel they don't have the information they think they (in-character) should have, I fully expect them to ask questions in order to fill those gaps before proceeding.

Own the choice. Don’t blame it on realism.

Statements like "own the choice" make this feel like a trial or hearing. Is that your intent?

It’s just as realistic for any number of other things to happen. The GM is choosing to do what they do.

To the bolded: such as?