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

[robertsconley]

Well, there is a definitional disagreement, as well. And I'd not dismiss that in this context.

The common definition that you are quoting is what it is for reasons. Pemerton has his definition, also for his own reasons.
And, when we get to considering critique, I expect the differences between those reasons will also be indicative of differences between what pemerton cares about vs what the more common cares are.

As in, pemerton is apt to find things to be a valid critique that others will shrug at and go, "I don't see that as a big deal". In conflating the terminology, pemerton (perhaps unintentionally, but effectively) acts to co-opt other peoples' positions into his own, which will also lead to disagreement when folks run up against it happening.

I don’t dismiss that definitional disagreements can be meaningful, especially when they reflect different priorities, like what @pemerton is analyzing versus what most hobbyists care about in play. But that’s also why clarity is so important. When someone redefines a widely-used term like “railroading” without noting the shift, it leads people to think they’re being critiqued on their terms, not his. That’s where the confusion and tension come from, not just the redefinition itself, but the way it reframes the discussion around the poster’s way of thinking.

If someone is going to debate RPG theory and practice, they should be familiar with how terms are commonly used. And if they want to reframe a term like “railroading,” they need to make allowances, either by qualifying their usage or by clearly distinguishing it from the baseline understanding. Otherwise, it doesn’t advance the conversation, it just causes people to talk past each other and causes debates about definitions.

This is exactly why I call my approach a Living World Sandbox Campaign. I’ve built on the basic ideas behind sandbox play, but I have my own take. And it’s why I try to distinguish clearly when I’m speaking generally about sandbox campaigns, and when I’m speaking specifically about my own approach.

 

[thefutilist]

Because of that, my campaigns aren’t railroads in the classical sense, where player choices are blocked or overridden. And with respect to your definition, where railroading is about the GM controlling all or most of the fiction, it’s simply not a concern for us. Neither I nor my players are trying to collaboratively build a story or manage narrative control. Like with Edwards’ Impossible Thing, the premise doesn’t apply. The players are focused on experiencing the world as it is, and testing how much they can change it through what their characters actually do.

This is a common misconception. All Narrativism proper refers to is a type of fun. To be reductive:


A character chooses one value over another, (first reward). That has consequences (second reward)


In your scenario about the wolf, there's a beggar character who is trying to avenge his son. If the scenario was that the beggars are in danger by staying (and it kind of suggest they are). Then the beggar leader is caught between two values (the safety of his followers V revenge/justice). If, as a group, we're interested in what he chooses, then that's a kind of fun, Narrativist fun. Then we see what that decision brings him. Again being reductive, there are four broad outcomes:


He leaves, the beggars are safe, having given up justice they and him flourish.

He leaves but the lack of justice means they tear themselves apart in some other way.

He tries to avenge his son and maybe he fails AND the beggars are all slain.

EDIT: He does avenge his son and the beggars are safe.


For emphasis, I'm being reductive.


You can see how the two rewards fit together to create a story without ever having to try to create a story. You can get them just by playing your character(s). IF there are characters with potentially conflicting values and consequences.

 

[Campbell]

How do you figure that agency has been redefined? Because a quick search gives me the definition "Agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own choices in a given environment. It encompasses the ability to take action based on one's intentions and goals, often influenced by social structures and personal experiences."

So in a standard D&D game where the player is only responsible for their character, they have the dictionary definition of agency if they can act independently and make their own choices. It doesn't even technically mean that their decisions and actions make any difference, although I think most people think there should at least be a chance to make a difference. In other words I feel like I have agency in reality even if I can't always achieve success. I don't control the world, I don't control what other people say and feel.

So when people say that agency means anything more than what it means for a real person it seems to me that they're the ones redefining the meaning of the word.

From Meriam Webster:

• the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power
• a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved

These definitions stem from agency theory wherein a person is given authority to exert towards some particular purpose on behalf of the person they are an agent of. It also is consistent with how we talk about agency in political science and most game design texts. The ability to exert your will and create meaningful change in your environment.

The Cambridge definition you quoted is just a synonym for autonomy.

I am also speaking to real life agency, wherein we all have different amounts over different things. When I speak about agency I'm also speaking mostly in terms of the character. But it's about their ability to impact things in the way the player sets out - to achieve their ends.

 

[robertsconley]

Unfortunately, when terms have been redefined, one may not realize that things aren't clear for some time, such that argument and ill-will is generated before anyone realizes the actual problem.

There are times and places in which an author can demand readers use the author's particular/idiosyncratic definition - an open messageboard isn't usually one of them.

I agree, and that’s exactly why I emphasized that clarity is the responsibility of everyone involved. Redefinitions aren’t always obvious at first, and I’ve been in plenty of discussions where it takes time to realize we’re not even using the same language. That’s no one person’s fault.

But I’d add: if someone knows they’re using a term in a nonstandard or specialized way, especially on a public forum, it’s on them to flag that early. Otherwise, it’s not just a communication issue; it becomes a framing problem. People feel like they’re being critiqued for using a term in its common, hobby-wide sense, when the criticism is really coming from a different analytical model. That disconnect is what leads to long chains of posts debating definitions and people talking past each other, as we’ve seen in this thread.

 

[Umbran]

I don’t dismiss that definitional disagreements can be meaningful, especially when they reflect different priorities, like what @pemerton is analyzing versus what most hobbyists care about in play. But that’s also why clarity is so important. When someone redefines a widely-used term like “railroading” without noting the shift, it leads people to think they’re being critiqued on their terms, not his. That’s where the confusion and tension come from, not just the redefinition itself, but the way it reframes the discussion around the poster’s way of thinking.

I pretty thoroughly agree with you.

If someone is going to debate RPG theory and practice, they should be familiar with how terms are commonly used.

I would find it... nigh-incredible if pemerton claimed to be unfamiliar with the more common use of the term.

And if they want to reframe a term like “railroading,” they need to make allowances, either by qualifying their usage or by clearly distinguishing it from the baseline understanding. Otherwise, it doesn’t advance the conversation, it just causes people to talk past each other and causes debates about definitions.

Again, I agree. It can be important to note that, as a practical matter, for pretty much anyone, there are times when they aren't particularly interested in "advancing" a conversation.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As GM I have a lot going on and I may or may not remember at the end of the game every question someone asked. As far as I'm concerned it's up to the player to remind me at which point I'll be happy to discuss. I don't expect GM's to be perfect though, or to always rule the way I would.

That's great when the GM actually leaves time to do it, and the player hasn't been made to feel unwelcome to bring it up again. As you might gather, there's many cases where one or the other of those aren't the case.

I also don't see how there's much you can do to resolve issues in whatever style of game you play or methodology you use unless you stop the game for a drawn out discussion during the middle of the session. It doesn't really have much to do with GM authority, if 2 people disagree on how a rule works, a decision has to be made somehow.

The problem is I don't usually agree with what most people liable to use that phrase consider a "drawn out" discussion. Even when I do, sometimes I think it just needs to be done.

 

[robertsconley]

Again, I agree. It can be important to note that, as a practical matter, for pretty much anyone, there are times when they aren't particularly interested in "advancing" a conversation.

Yes, and that’s unfortunate. Despite what some of my more critical posts might suggest, I genuinely believe most people can be drawn into a productive conversation by engaging with their concerns and showing that those concerns are taken seriously. And for those who aren’t responsive to that, the conversation tends to end on its own soon enough.

The challenge is often figuring out what those concerns actually are, and that’s where my experience in technical support has helped.

I would find it... nigh-incredible if pemerton claimed to be unfamiliar with the more common use of the term.

I agree. Based on our past exchanges, I’d also find it highly unlikely that he’s unfamiliar with the more common usage of the term.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What you are both engaging in is not neutral analysis but rhetorical sleight of hand. When you frame sandbox campaigns, particularly those rooted in traditional procedures, as “vehicles for GM prep,” and then position that as ideologically suspect, you are not offering critique; you are advancing a position through mischaracterization.

Your broader commentary regarding Dungeons & Dragons fans being “too conservative” makes the subtext of your argument quite plain. The implication is that adherence to traditional forms of campaign structure is a symptom of stagnation or fear, a claim that presumes psychological deficiency rather than acknowledging a legitimate difference in design preference.

This is not a new tactic. It echoes the now-infamous remarks made by Ron Edwards, who suggested that players committed to traditional RPGs suffered literal “brain damage,” and required “prosthetic” games to compensate for their dysfunction. That line of argumentation was not a critique; it was a rhetorical power play. It attempted to win the debate by disqualifying the opposition as damaged or abnormal rather than engaging them on procedural or creative merit.

You repeat this approach here. Rather than accurately representing how a sandbox campaign functions, you substitute your own framing. You recast this structure as backward, compromised, or somehow pathological, in order to make your preferred method appear more enlightened by comparison.

This is not a good-faith discussion of mechanics or play culture. It is a redefinition campaign, designed to capture the rhetorical high ground through insinuation rather than argument. If your preferred playstyle has merit, and I assume you believe it does, it should not require this kind of positioning to stand.

In short: if you wish to critique sandbox procedures, do so directly. But do not pretend that reframing them through ideological innuendo is anything other than what it is, an attempt to win the argument by discrediting the alternative rather than understanding it.

OK, sandbox: the GM authors an environment filled with locations. This environment generally allows for fairly free navigation, such that the PCs, acting as a group, have the option to interact with these locations when and if they wish.

That's a part of it, but what is ALSO relevant, and gets pushback is the question of the direction and content of play. I assert that, absent certain types of techniques which are not usually present in trad forms of play that the GM generally has an outsized role here. You can describe that how you want, ideology be damned.

Heck, Doskvol (BitD) has the first part of this, albeit created by the game's developer. But it plays far differently than Majestic Wilderlands due to different techniques used in play to decide what happens, and who decides it. Nobody is attacking sandbox by describing that as more player driven and this, reasonably, higher player autonomy. It's just a logical way for us to describe it.

 

[AlViking]

From Meriam Webster:



These definitions stem from agency theory wherein a person is given authority to exert towards some particular purpose on behalf of the person they are an agent of. It also is consistent with how we talk about agency in political science and most game design texts. The ability to exert your will and create meaningful change in your environment.

The Cambridge definition you quoted is just a synonym for autonomy.

I am also speaking to real life agency, wherein we all have different amounts over different things. When I speak about agency I'm also speaking mostly in terms of the character. But it's about their ability to impact things in the way the player sets out - to achieve their ends.

There are circumstances where people in real life have very limited agency. A prisoner in jail only has a small amount, someone who is very poor will typically have less than someone who is financially stable and so on. But no person in real life is always going to achieve their goals, they are not always going to know the odds of success, will not always know the outcomes. Those things can be added to a game, but at that point you're no longer talking about the real world definition of agency.

In a linear games you're very limited on what options you have to have real long term impact, in my living world sandbox game you have far more options. Infinite options? No, because we all agreed on broad outlines of the campaign when we started the game. Control over how other NPCs react, or fictional world events that you haven't interacted with? Again, in my game, no. Just like I can't control whether my wife wants to go to a movie, all I can do is ask and attempt to convince her to go. I can exert my will and have a meaningful chance to change my environment but there are no guarantees of success.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Honestly, I have to fall back on what @hawkeyefan says. I've played a lot of what I would call 'trad' play nowadays, along with various other flavors. I'm not hostile to it, maybe a little bored with some of it. I'm not here to bash anything.

I've played in 5e campaigns, several times, that I would categorize as probably very similar to what you or RC or others here generally run. Those games absolutely are different in character from Narrativist ones. Yet when I articulate that plainly and in an effective fashion, I'm told I've committed some sort of ideological sin. Sorry, but nobody owns language.

I don't think any of us disagree that they are different, but what ends up happening is we start debating which ones give more agency, which ones give less railroading, when to me what it looks like is both are trying to do that and just address the problems of agency and railroads in different ways. Where I get annoyed is when you end up having things like the Zeno Paradox like arguments that sandboxes are all actually just made up of little railroads, that literally the GM can't avoid railroading unless the GM is somehow constrained or the players mechanically empowered. Those are the places where these linguistic issues become a problem for me