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

[The Firebird]

I take you to mean here, not exclusively in the hands of the GM.

I mean the decision making about where the PCs go and what they attempt is exclusively in the hands of the players. The GM defines and adjudicates the world. The players act within that world.

And the unfolding of the framework, by way of adjudication and also the operation of the "world in motion" also continues to be very heavily shaped by the GM's decision-making.

Right--this is why I figured you'd see the statements "the GM adjudicates the rules" and "the GM adjudicates the world" as railroading.

I think that your suggested phrasing entails that Gygaxian dungeon-crawling is railroading, which I don't think it is.

But I am quite confused about your point here. The salient thing I got from your text was that a dungeon is relatively small, so the decisions can all be made beforehand, but the world is too big for that to happen. Because the world is big, decisions will have to be made on the fly, and they are railroading. Is that your view?

Without more context, I can't tell. What do the players know? What is at stake? How was the state of the world arrived at?

What specifically would make the difference?

Here's an example to try and illustrate:

I appreciate the effort you put into your example. But I'm afraid I found it long and it was hard to understand what specifically you were getting at. What made this example not railroading for you, and how would a similar scenario play out in a non-narrative game that was railroading?

 

[zakael19]

I'm not saying my way of doing things is the only way they can be done. I'm not even saying that I or any GM is 100% unbiased, we just try to be as unbiased as possible. There have been many times when the players completely bypassed something I thought would be cool, nerfed my encounter through clever play, went left when I really expected them to go right. I don't take their goals into consideration when designing obstacles or determining success or failure.

If, instead of GM judgement calls, you fall back on a chart or rule (i.e. a list of how much it costs to bribe a bureaucrat for what favors), that just means that the authors of that chart decided how to present and codify the information in order to funnel the players towards certain goals. In other words if you know what it takes to bribe a bureaucrat, what the outcome is going to be, then the players' default behavior will be to make the bribe if they can afford it. It's not a railroad but it is establishing narrative goals for how the game is played.

The point of a chart or rule is to allow the GM to be a referee in play. If you don't have this prep to fall back on, you're not refereeing, you're making stuff up. This reduces impartiality, and to be clear the point of "impartial refereeing" is to facilitate skills-based play where it's player vs world (not DM! but world design to facilitate clever player decision making with no presupposition of what they'll do).

Note that we're not talking "press DC15 to bribe" usually here; we're talking stuff like "statue in corner, if explored carefully has colored buttons" or "room has 3d6 skeletons walking about" or what have you. Details about the game world that let the players make informed declarations of action such that they can explore the world through question and answer. I think if we had some OSR fans in here they'd be getting the knives out at teh suggestion that this sort of principled prep leads to "narrative goals."

 

[Bedrockgames]

The point of a chart or rule is to allow the GM to be a referee in play. If you don't have this prep to fall back on, you're not refereeing, you're making stuff up. This reduces impartiality, and to be clear the point of "impartial refereeing" is to facilitate skills-based play where it's player vs world (not DM! but world design to facilitate clever player decision making with no presupposition of what they'll do).

Note that we're not talking "press DC15 to bribe" usually here; we're talking stuff like "statue in corner, if explored carefully has colored buttons" or "room has 3d6 skeletons walking about" or what have you. Details about the game world that let the players make informed declarations of action such that they can explore the world through question and answer. I think if we had some OSR fans in here they'd be getting the knives out at teh suggestion that this sort of principled prep leads to "narrative goals."

A lot of OSR people do sandbox. And there is tremendous crossover. And prep like you describe certainly exists. But I think sandbox tries to treat that stuff as dynamic as possible. So I am going to prep things like:

Empires and kingdoms
Provinces
Regions
Cities
Inns
Teahouses
Dungeons
Sect headquarters
Martial sects (structure, leaders, member stats, disciple stat blocks, beliefs, history, etc)
NPCs

If you go to Iron Temple, that is a prepped location. But I treat any intelligent entity as live.

 

[Maxperson]

Sorry for swimming way upthread. Holy moley you guys are fast.

But, I'd point out that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how player driven play works.

Take the cliche of bribing the gate guard. In traditional play, the DM/GM knows if this guard is bribable or not. Thus, the advice to investigate further, check other sources, etc. All of those things are meant to exist in the game world and the DM is meant to have answers to those actions.

I'm going to dispute absoluteness there. Sometimes we may know. Usually it's uncertain and depends on how the players go about it and rolls.

 

[Lanefan]

I would agree with not the goals of the DM, the player goals should factor in


A player wants to climb a wall and the DM calls for a check, how is the outcome not based on the player’s goal? The impartial part is hopefully the DC and definitely the roll


as much as if the DM decided it would automatically fail


it does matter that the DM decided either way instead of being impartial

Auto-succeed or auto-fail can still be an impartial decision depending on the circumstances.

Situation: rickety-looking floor, narrated as such in order to give the PCs reason to be cautious (and maybe delay them a bit), that the DM knows is in fact sound.
Player: "I carefully walk across the floor."
DM: "Good. It creaks a bit, and now you're on the other side of the room. Now what?"

Seems impartial enough from here.

 

[mamba]

Auto-succeed or auto-fail can still be an impartial decision depending on the circumstances.

yes, but the premise was that the decision was not impartial to begin with (“If a GM is railroading and the players make an attempt to overcome an obstacle that follows the rails and the GM decides that it automatically succeeds, is that not still a railroad?”)

 

[pemerton]

If, instead of GM judgement calls, you fall back on a chart or rule (i.e. a list of how much it costs to bribe a bureaucrat for what favors), that just means that the authors of that chart decided how to present and codify the information in order to funnel the players towards certain goals. In other words if you know what it takes to bribe a bureaucrat, what the outcome is going to be, then the players' default behavior will be to make the bribe if they can afford it. It's not a railroad but it is establishing narrative goals for how the game is played.

I've never played a game with that sort of chart (the closest I can think of is the example difficulties in the Classic Traveller Streetwise skill rules); that said, is it very different from a chart for the price of equipment?

For me, the main function of a chart of difficulty levels - for those games that use them - is to create a "transmission belt" between the "heft" that things have in the fiction, and the "heft" they have at the table in resolution. As in, in the fiction this obstacle is a really hard one to overcome, and at the table we are looking at a punishingly high difficulty number.

For RPGs that don't use difficulty levels - eg Apocalypse World, or Marvel Heroic RP - other techniques are needed to drive home that sense of "heft".

So anyway, I would look at a chart of difficulties-to-bribe in that sort of way: it's job is to say something about the setting, and to help transmit that feel out of the fiction and into the play at the table.

I don't believe we ever really achieve a true sandbox. I do think we get closer if we don't think in terms of goals other than to give the players more free reign on setting their own goals. If you, or anyone else, has a different preference on how to achieve a sandbox that's fine as well.

What I take issue with is anyone saying that because I don't run the game like they do that I cannot be running a sandbox.

I don't think I've suggested that you're not running a sandbox.

But as I've already said, this thread has expanded my concept of what can count as a sandbox.

 

[Lanefan]

yes, but the premise was that the decision was not impartial to begin with (“If a GM is railroading and the players make an attempt to overcome an obstacle that follows the rails and the GM decides that it automatically succeeds, is that not still a railroad?”)

If the obstacle's apparent difficulty, even after investigation, doesn't match what the DM decides then there's a problem.

A stupidly-extreme example: a three-foot-high stone wall that a human-size character wants to step up and over, yet the DM says "No". Magic detection reveals nothing, meaning there's neither illusion nor Wall of Force in play; the DM just wants the PCs to go around to the front door.

Flip-side example: it's a rainy night and the PCs are staring at a 30-foot-high wall the DM needs them to get over so his plot can progress. Normally, to climb this wet wall would need a roll of some sort but the DM just says "Right, you're over the wall and in the courtyard".

Both of these are bad news. The first should be an auto-success all day long while the second should be determined by the usual climbing rules of the edition in use; with the DM ready and willing to accept the PCs failing to get over the wall if that's what the dice declare.

 

[Hussar]

Exploring the world makes it feel more alive. It gives a sense of discovery and makes the world feel realistic before and after the dungeon.


Ime OotA is a pretty poor sandbox precisely because of the way it is setup. It gives the players a goal which is opposed to exploration and gives them time pressure to move as fast as possible.


My apologies that it came off poorly. I didn't mean it that way. I just meant "people who enjoy this conception of sandbox".

Just to clarify. There is no time pressure in Out of the Abyss.

 

[The Firebird]

Just to clarify. There is no time pressure in Out of the Abyss.

As written yes. But it's expressed to the players that the drow are chasing them and they're given numerous signs of this. They have to guess that it's just a dramatic element and no matter they do they will not get caught until just before they leave.