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

[mamba]

I simply think that DMs who believe "my mental processes for determining the next outcomes of the entire setting's fictional state are almost entirely objective" are falling prey to Dunning-Kruger. 99.9% of DMs can't do that with anything approaching "objectivity."

do you think the players are significantly better at this?

 

[thefutilist]

It isn't though. Decisions based on established fiction can still be a railroad. Not one part of "decisions based on established fiction" provides any protection against railroading. I've been told more than once that this wasn't a claim people were making, and yet here you are making it!

I've give my opinion on this before but if you're making decisions based on established fiction then by definition you aren't railroading.

My definition of railroading.

Railroading = ignoring the established fiction to get to a story outcome you want

 

[Maxperson]

And as I’ve said before, this isn’t about emotional investment, it's about advancing the conversation so we can pinpoint where different philosophical foundations lead to different approaches to running tabletop RPGs.

I think one of those foundations was discussed upthread between myself and @TwoSix. I believe that I can be impartial enough that the amount of impartiality doesn't matter. He does not. That seems very foundational to this discussion. If you don't think the DM can be impartial enough, you'd prefer resolution methods outside of the DM.

 

[The Firebird]

Because when "what the DM has written in his notebook can overrule anything else happening at the table", they have de facto unlimited authority.

I, as a DM, don't want unlimited authority. I, as a player, don't want the DM to have unlimited authority.

This gets back to the issue of trust. I don't mind them having this authority if I know they aren't going to abuse it. Indeed, the authority remaining with the GM can result in more satisfying play when they exercise it properly.

The condescension is noted and not appreciated.

Also, though I have been a player often enough, the vast amount of my experience with RPGs is as a GM. And mostly with some version of D&D. In that regard, I'm mostly commenting on my own GMing over the entirety of my time as a GM, which goes back many many years.

Many others here seem to have sprung fully formed from the mind of Gygax as perfect GMs who at most need to refine their methods a bit. That's not me... I ran games in ways I'd rather not run them now. I've made plenty of errors. I've done the kinds of things we're talking about. I've done them thinking I was doing something else.

I apologize it came off as condescending. That was not my intent.

I was thinking of the fact that some people had talked about how GMs, in their experience, never gave enough information in fixed world games, so they always felt their choices weren't informed. That was the same experience I had that turned me onto narrative games. Then @pemerton responded to my example of the players choosing between travel to the Glacier of the Worm or Forest of Tears by assuming the only information the players had was 'cold vs forest'.

That suggested to me that many people were experiencing something similar--their fixed world GMs were withholding information and made them feel they were not making meaningful choices. In that context, a lot of the complaints sounded more like complaints about this GMing failure than the specific playstyle.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure. It may or may not be a railroad. Nor is a railroad always bad. If the world needs saving, choosing not to save it is pretty silly.

That's not a railroad, though. That's just linear. The PCs can choose to sit on their rears and let the gods sort it out, or they(and probably would) opt to try and save the world.

A railroad forces the players to go down a path regardless of their wishes, and is pretty much always bad.

 

[mamba]

My point is that the more authority that the GM has, the less the players have.

if the GM exercises it without consideration of the players, yes

And regarding railroads, I disagree that it must always be a choice to do so. It may be... it also may just be a side-effect of a high amount of GM authority... where they've decided the goal of play, prepared the world ahead of time, decide exactly the consequences of player declared actions, and so on.

making these decisions was a choice

 

[TwoSix]

do you think the players are significantly better at this?

Of course not. But I also don't think that "objectivity in worldbuilding" is really a worthwhile goal for TTRPG play.

 

[AlViking]

I don't think that's an issue at all! As I posted recently, that's how I ran my Mothership campaign.



Well, I disagree a bit about how much authority you have as a player in D&D. You likely have a little bit over the world (assuming some amount of GM leeway) in the form of backstory or details about your character... NPC friends and families and the like.

You likely don't have 100% authority over your character in the sense that you are bound by the constraints placed on you during play. You can't necessarily "go anywhere" since the GM can block your means in any number of ways. Want to travel to the north port? Oh, sorry... weather prevents it. Want to enter the southern kingdom? Oh sorry a magical barrier created by the god of thwarting surrounds the kingdom. And so on.

This is why I think the amount of GM authority matters quite a bit... it impacts play quite a bit. It determines what is available and what the players are allowed to do.

I have constraints put on me as GM as well. There are certain topics I'm not going to touch, certain depictions I'm going to avoid. I had a player let me know (outside of game) that they really didn't like gothic horror so I didn't explore that option any further. There are other scenarios of <censored> that I might like to use but won't because it would make people at the table uncomfortable. It's all part of mutually agreed social contract with the group.

If a GM is constantly putting up too many roadblocks that can be a potential issue depending on the style of game you want. It's sometimes necessary in a more linear game with defined goals and endpoints. But if a DM in D&D has more control over aspects of the game, the only reason they have that control is because I chose to join their game. In the end I think it's largely semantics and different opinions on the topic are subjective and based on personal preference.

 

[AlViking]

Situations where there is only one sensible option are common in real life. It would be pretty unrealistic for there to always be a wide range of viable options.

There have been plenty of times in my games where what I had anticipated as the only sensible option available was the opposite of what the players decided to do.

 

[TwoSix]

This gets back to the issue of trust. I don't mind them having this authority if I know they aren't going to abuse it. Indeed, the authority remaining with the GM can result in more satisfying play when they exercise it properly.

For me, it's not about trust. Especially since I don't want that heightened level of authority when I am DMing.

It's because I feel play flows the best when the player and DM are both heavily involved, and when narrative control and the driving of play volleys back and forth between participants. There's no need for refs or judgements, we all just play and leave the "refereeing" to the ruleset.