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

[robertsconley]

Deleted

 

[Campbell]

The game is built so that passionate goals naturally create drama and conflict. That conflict is central to play—escalating situations, hard choices, and consequences.

The game ensures that characters and their opponents are ready for the conflict; emotionally, physically, and narratively. It’s about dramatic momentum.

Narrativism adjusts the world to support the story.

The players and GM don’t plan an ending. Instead, they follow the passions and conflicts of the characters to create a meaningful, dramatic result.

But Narrativism centers on character drama

Here the bits that feel wrong to me. The point of the conflict is not to create a dramatic story with satisfying narrative beats. The point is to put the characters through a crucible by which we find if what presumed about them is true.

Also, we are not adjusting the world to support a story. We are creating a world or setting as needed to present a premise to test. It's a question, not an answer.

This excerpt from Jesse Burneko's Play Passionately blog captures the essential appeal to me:

I want to be clear that Playing Passionately is not about drama-queening or competing for best thespian. It is about honesty and self-reflection through gaming. When real issues and feelings are on the line we are often more honest about what we really think through fictional proxies.

In the end Playing Passionately is about finding and pushing our emotional limits by investing ourselves in the characters and created fiction and expressing that investment through application of the game mechanics. In the process we learn something about ourselves and our fellow players, oh and create some pretty compelling fiction as well.

 

[pemerton]

I’ve now seen a few people suggest that the way I’ve framed my posts comes across as dismissive or exclusionary. To be clear: I’ve made structural comparisons between game systems, not moral judgments about the people who enjoy them.

If pointing out procedural differences between, say, a Living World sandbox and a narrative-forward game like Blades in the Dark reads to you as condescension, that says more about how tightly you’re tying identity to playstyle than it does about my intent.

Speaking just for myself, I was struck by this bit of your post immediately preceding the quote above:

I did not claim exclusivity over the goal of realism or world believability. I drew a contrast in methods, how different systems achieve different effects. Blades in the Dark uses flashbacks, abstracted time, and shared narrative control to evoke a specific genre experience (e.g., heist fiction). My campaigns rely on a simulated, persistent world governed by in-world logic.

When you describe BitD, you talk about actual processes of play - the use of flashbacks, abstracted time, shared narrative control (I'm not 100% sure what this last one means, but in its typical usage - eg spending a Fate Point to introduce some "fact" into the fiction that is not following from a player's declared action for their PC - then my impression is that BitD doesn't have much of it).

But when you describe your campaign you don't talk about techniques. You point to properties of the fiction: the world is persistent (but so is the world of BitD), and the world is governed by in-world logic (but so is the world of BitD). This makes it unclear what you think the contrast consists in, and tends to generate the impression that you think others' fictions don't have those properties - ie that those properties are in some fashion unique to, or distinctive of, your setting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To be clear, the response about players being “constrained” by things like distance or money misses the point entirely. It relies on a shift in meaning, what I referred to as constraint, was narrative constraint: the idea that the referee directs the story or limits player options through imposed plot structure. Reframing that to mean logistical or in-world limitations is an equivocation. Of course, players can't teleport across the map or bypass in-setting costs; that’s not what was being debated.

By substituting in-world realism for narrative structure, the reply effectively dodges the actual issue. It’s a soft strawman, replacing my point about player-driven choice within a reactive world with a much weaker claim I never made. It also assumes a false equivalence between all types of “constraints,” erasing the procedural difference between a Living World and other types of structure. Agreeing with a diluted version of my point about in-world barriers while sidestepping the structural claim is not clarification, it’s misdirection.

No, it's not misdirection. The "in world realism" can constrain "the narrative". A frozen mountain pass prevents travel to the location the PCs want to get to... okay, how do we determine when they can get there? When is the pass clear enough for travel? How long off is that? Who decides how quickly time moves? What else might happen while they wait? How long will those things take to resolve? And so on.

As the GM, you have massive amount of influence over these things. And this is before we even consider the actual procedures that are meant to handle some of these things.

And to be clear... there's nothing wrong with a GM having that control. But let's not act like it's the world that's making decisions.

Wrapping it up
This pattern of reframing and tone policing doesn’t move the conversation forward. If you disagree with my structural approach, then say so and explain why. But don’t recast my statements into exaggerated or emotionally charged interpretations I never offered.

I’m happy to debate procedural structure, design goals, and playstyle differences all day long, but I expect the discussion to remain grounded in what’s actually said, not what’s inferred through rhetorical projection.

I pointed out an example and explained why it seemed the way it seemed. Others have also pointed it out.

If it wasn't your intention, you could just say that. If it was, then you could own it rather than accuse me of fallacies.

I’ve now seen a few people suggest that the way I’ve framed my posts comes across as dismissive or exclusionary. To be clear: I’ve made structural comparisons between game systems, not moral judgments about the people who enjoy them.

If pointing out procedural differences between, say, a Living World sandbox and a narrative-forward game like Blades in the Dark reads to you as condescension, that says more about how tightly you’re tying identity to playstyle than it does about my intent.

There is nothing inherently superior or inferior in preferring one approach over another. But if I can't describe how my campaigns work without being accused of dismissing others, then we’ve reached a point where even neutral analysis gets framed as an attack.

I’m not going to apologize for drawing contrasts. I’m not going to qualify every sentence just to avoid imagined slights. I’ve taken pains to be precise in my language and to define my terms. If you disagree with the structure or claims, respond to those. But if the problem is that analysis itself makes you uncomfortable, that’s not something I’m going to fix for you.

I don't care if you apologize or not. You can make any claims you like about games. You can criticize any game you like. I may disagree with you, but I won't say you need to apologize.

My point in highlighting the bit where you casually dismissed the realism of one game to highlight yours was just that you seemingly did it without even meaning it. And I can't tell based on your posts above if you meant it or not. You argue that my point was 6 types of fallacy, but then you close by saying you're not going to apologize for drawing contrasts.

But if you were drawing the contrast, then I wasn't imagining things... that'd get rid of at least three of the fallacies!

As for fear of analysis... that's interesting. All I said is that I think sandbox play as you're describing it is largely GM-driven, and provided the reasons why. You then claimed I said that sandbox play was "ideologically suspect" (talk about fallacies!).

I've run and continue to run many types of games. Not just one type. What I've noticed is that although the players have more freedom in what you're calling sandbox play, it's still very GM-focused. It relies on significant prep on the part of the GM. The players determine what they engage with and how... but everything they're engaging with is material made up by the GM prior to play. This is not a bad thing by any means. There is more freedom in this type of game than in an Adventure Path or similar model. I just think there are still similarities to that kind of game as well.

 

[robertsconley]

When I put "railroad rpg" into Google, the entries that come up offer various characterisations, that are not all consistent. And Google's AI opens with this:

In RPG (Role-Playing Game) contexts, "railroading" refers to a game design or game master approach where players have little to no agency in shaping the story or outcome. The game feels like a predetermined route, limiting player choice and potentially undermining their enjoyment.​

That AI offering is consistent with the inconsistency among the blogs and posts whose links follow it: because its first sentence and its second sentence are not equivalent. The second is about a feeling, and refers to predetermination; the first is about player agency in respect to outcome. Which is what I am referring to by the term railroad. It goes all the way back to Lewis Pulsipher's 45-year-old discussions that I quoted upthread, of players being receptive of the GM's material.

I don't treat the shared fiction as something to be authored by the group, at least in a collective sense. As I posted, there are bits of it that the GM authors, and bits that the players author. However, in multiple posts in this thread, including the one that you quoted, I have contrasted control and authority. I think that contrast is pretty fundamental to a lot of game play. For instance, in bridge, each player (but for the dummy) has the authority to play their own cards, in accordance with the rules of the game. But the skill of playing bridge is to (i) infer what cards others are holding, and (ii) play your own cards, so as (iii) to exploit the rules in order to (iv) control what others play. This is mostly about length and strength in suit - it's how your run the other players in trumps, manage your off-suit, etc.

The contrast is also important in RPGing. It's fundamental to Gygax's account of Successful Adventures: the GM is the one who has authored the dungeon; but the players - if they play well - exercise a lot of control over how play unfolds, by (i) gathering information, (ii) planning and then (iii) enacting those plans. By choosing which levels to explore, which doors to open, etc, the players are able to control which scenes get framed, even though it is the GM who is the author of those scenes.

To turn from classic D&D to Burning Wheel, it is the GM who has the principal responsibility for framing scenes. But the players exercise control over the GM, by establishing priorities for their PCs, which the GM is obliged to have regard to in the exercise of scene-framing authority. This is how BW is able to use a very conventional RPGing allocation of authority, while reducing the GM control over the shared fiction compared to some other non-dungeon-crawl approaches to RPGing.

The problem with asking any AI is that all it tells you is what is in its training data. Paleontologists have long taught that the fossil record often doesn't represent how life was in the past, but represents what is preserved about life in the past. For example, we are far more likely to have a clearer picture of life in river valleys then we are with the life of a mountain valley as fossilization is rare in that biome. The same issue lies with AI Training Data, particularly with niche hobbies like ours.

Which is why one has to rely on primary sources written by people. With that thought in mind, I wanted to see what Luke Crane had to say on the subject of the railroad. Thanks to plain old Google Search, I found this interview on Gnomestew done in 2005.

Interview with Luke Crane

Luke Crane is the creator of Burning Wheel, one of the most successful small press RPGs ever published. A frequent contributor to the Forge, Luke is at the heart of the indie gaming community. He's also the most passionate GM I've ever had the privilege of playing with, and his GMing style is as...

gnomestew.com

With Luke Crane having this to say.

Luke: I’m the most dysfunctional, railroading, “this is my naughty word story” GM I’ve even seen. I designed BW so I’d stop that.

Seriously, I designed BW to force the players to naughty word talk to each other, to think about each other as people at the table, not just numbers to naughty word over. Even in BW, every rule in there is about make choices about another person, not a character. Fight, artha, Beliefs, Trait votes, help, all of it.

BW is designed to speak to the people playing the game at the table. It demands that they recognize that they are all human beings and that they are responsible for each other’s fun.

I did all of that to try to mend the horrible dysfunction at my own table. Because I’m a terrible GM. Or used to be. Maybe I’m better now. I dunno. How you like them apples?

Which aligns with what I stated about how railroad is traditionally defined. As well being an interesting read about Luke Crane's creative goals with Burning Wheel.

Generally, when I post a general description, or in terms of "if . . . then . . .", I am not setting out to describe any particular person's RPGing. Whether any given poster feels that their RPGing fits under the descriptions I am setting out is something from them to judge, not me!

We’re analyzing theories of play, not people’s feelings. If you think my Living World sandbox fits your model or contradicts it in some way, say so directly. I don’t take criticism of my approach as a personal attack, so there’s no need to tiptoe around it.

From what you have posted that I have quoted, what I can see is that the players choose to "activate" certain of the GM's prepared elements - eg the players have their PCs go to the castle, or go to the village, or perform a ritual at the shrine, or whatever else. But it seems - though it not entirely clear - that it is the GM who decides what happens when an element is activated (that is, it seems that it is the GM who decides how "the world reacts").

What's not fully clear to me is how much knowledge the players have, or are expected to have (eg if the play well) of how "the world reacts" in advance of prompting its reactions (ie prompting the GM to say what happens next). It is the element of knowledge that is crucial in Gygax's account of Successful Adventures, in making dungeon-crawling play player-driven rather than an essentially blind exploration of the GM's set-up. From how you describe your sandbox play, I can't tell how much player knowledge is supposed to figure.

(There are other posters who, as I read them, have expressly disavowed the significance of player knowledge. That gives me the impression that the play in their sandboxes involves quite a bit of blind activation of things by the players, with the result that it is predominantly the GM who is controlling what happens in the shared fiction.)

This still doesn’t make it clear whether you think my Living World sandbox qualifies as a railroad by your standard, or why it would. You describe conditions that might lead to that conclusion, but you don’t say whether they apply here. If you think it is, then a direct explanation is in order. If not, then a clarification would help, so we don’t keep talking past each other.

 

[robertsconley]

Here are three different ways to resolve a journey from A to B, in a RPG. I don't claim that they cover all the possibilities (eg Marvel Heroic RP has a way of doing this which is none of the below), but they do illustrated a variety of approaches. Each approach assumes that the PCs begin in A, and that the players explain their PCs' intention to make the journey, perhaps say a bit about their prep, and then declare "OK, we set off!"

* The GM describes the PCs arriving in B, perhaps adding a bit of colourful narration about the journey, perhaps even calling for a saving throw or similar to see if a PC is tired or injured when they arrive at B.​

​

* The GM calls for a roll - perhaps a WIS (Survival) check, in 5e D&D - against an appropriate DC, and then adjudicates success or failure in the typical way: on a success, the PCs arrive at B; on a failure, something goes wrong (which may include arriving at B but having suffered some sort of setback - this will depend on the details of the resolution system).​

​

* The GM refers to their hex map that shows A, B and the terrain in between, and begins applying the overland travel procedure found in classic D&D (it's roughly the same procedure found in the original books, in Gygax's DMG, and in Cook/Marsh Expert) - tracking travel in terms of hexes per day, making encounter rolls and rolls for getting lost, expecting the players to make a map of their PC's journey that will also assist them in working out if their PCs have become lost, etc.​

Now, I don't know if @hawkeyefan has these different possibilities in mind when making his post to which you replied. But they occurred to me straight away upon reading your reply. And to me they completely undercut the idea that in-world realism is an alternative to some sort of game-play structure (be that "narrative" or something else). Each approach is quite consistent with in-world realism. None of them involves players or PCs "teleporting across the map". But each involves a pretty different relationship between (i) the "logistical and in-world limitations" of travel and distance, and (ii) the play of the game, and what counts as a limit to, constraint on, or obstacle to, the players achieving their declared action of their PCs journeying from A to B.

You’ve laid out different procedures for resolving travel, and yes, each of those represents a kind of structure. But that’s not what was under discussion.

When I said players “aren’t constrained,” I was referring to narrative constraint, meaning the referee doesn’t dictate story arcs, scenes, or outcomes. That’s a procedural claim about how control flows during play, not about whether travel rules exist.

Bringing up various ways of handling travel, from hex crawls to single-roll abstractions, doesn’t refute my point. Those are differences in how a fictional action is resolved, not in who decides what the players can pursue.

The idea that “logistical limitations are also structure” is true, but it conflates types of structure. A movement rate isn’t the same thing as a plot hook with a forced follow-up scene. If we're going to have a productive conversation about sandbox vs. narrative play, we need to keep those distinctions intact.

 

[pemerton]

The problem with asking any AI is that all it tells you is what is in its training data.

Yes. That was my point: Google's AI answer contains an inconsistency, which reflects the inconsistency of use of the term among RPG hobbyists.

You are insisting that there is one unique, or at least principal, usage which I am departing from. But I don't agree, and I adduce my Google search as evidence to the contrary.

This still doesn’t make it clear whether you think my Living World sandbox qualifies as a railroad by your standard, or why it would. You describe conditions that might lead to that conclusion, but you don’t say whether they apply here. If you think it is, then a direct explanation is in order. If not, then a clarification would help, so we don’t keep talking past each other.

You just quoted this, from me:

From what you have posted that I have quoted, what I can see is that the players choose to "activate" certain of the GM's prepared elements - eg the players have their PCs go to the castle, or go to the village, or perform a ritual at the shrine, or whatever else. But it seems - though it not entirely clear - that it is the GM who decides what happens when an element is activated (that is, it seems that it is the GM who decides how "the world reacts").

What's not fully clear to me is how much knowledge the players have, or are expected to have (eg if the play well) of how "the world reacts" in advance of prompting its reactions (ie prompting the GM to say what happens next). It is the element of knowledge that is crucial in Gygax's account of Successful Adventures, in making dungeon-crawling play player-driven rather than an essentially blind exploration of the GM's set-up. From how you describe your sandbox play, I can't tell how much player knowledge is supposed to figure.

(There are other posters who, as I read them, have expressly disavowed the significance of player knowledge. That gives me the impression that the play in their sandboxes involves quite a bit of blind activation of things by the players, with the result that it is predominantly the GM who is controlling what happens in the shared fiction.)

So, to reiterate: I have an impression that it is the GM who decides what happens when an element is activated - but you haven't confirmed or corrected this impression.

And I have stated that it's not fully clear to me how much knowledge the players have, or are expected to have, such that their activations are informed and controlling, rather than blind. And you have not provided me with any extra information about this.

You're the one* who has knowledge of the conditions and "whether they apply here". Whereas I don't. So, in the absence of information that would let me form a reasoned opinion, I refrain from forming an opinion.

When I said players “aren’t constrained,” I was referring to narrative constraint, meaning the referee doesn’t dictate story arcs, scenes, or outcomes. That’s a procedural claim about how control flows during play, not about whether travel rules exist.

<snip>

The idea that “logistical limitations are also structure” is true, but it conflates types of structure. A movement rate isn’t the same thing as a plot hook with a forced follow-up scene. If we're going to have a productive conversation about sandbox vs. narrative play, we need to keep those distinctions intact.

See, what you describe here as "narrative play" - story arcs, dictation of outcomes, plot hooks with forced follow-up scenes - are foreign to any RPGing I've GMed since maybe 1985, and to any RPG play that I've done this century.

And as far as I know, @hawkeyefan does very little GMing, if any, where those things occur.

So I'm not sure who you think you're engaging with in this discussion by talking about those things.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you have anything to say about the actual points of my post?

The point of your original post seems to be to argue with @Bedrockgames who was using game design correctly to conflate game design with setting and playstyle, and then wonder why you'd try to separate setting and playstyle from setting and playstyle. That or you think game design, setting design and playstyle are all intertwined.

If it's the former, then I don't know what to say.

If it's the latter, then I strongly disagree with it. While there are exceptions, for the most part all three components are separate from one another.

I can take D&D and make whatever setting I want and run various playstyles. I couldn't do that if the mechanics of the game(game design) were intertwined with the other two, or even one of the other two.

Sandbox(playstyle) can be combined with just about any setting, and with many different rule sets, including both narrative and traditional games. We can do that because they are not mixed together, and therefore there's nothing to separate. They are layered one on top of the other, not mixed.

 

[Lanefan]

The DM guide also covers player exploits/various examples of poor play when it talks directly to players, as covered on this site and across the internet. We're now hitting directly at the OP of this thread here - 2024 has taken some big steps forward to try and place guidelines and limits for all players around the table in a way we haven't seen since the 4e DMG (in many areas it's directly paraphrasing said), and surpassing that in certain areas. It's great, even if as I've said multiple times in this thread, the emphasis on "fun" is rather subjective (but perhaps that's part of the point).

I haven't bought* the 2024 DMG yet, nor anything else 2024, so I can't speak to anything in there other than what's quoted in posts here. I do have the first 4e DMG (of two? three?) but it's a long while since I looked at it.

But now I'm curions as to what other guidelines and limits they're laying down and whether I, as something of an anything-goes player and DM, would see anything the least bit useful in them.

* - and likely never will, I have the 2014 core three which would seem to be close enough; similar to my not buying the 3.5 books as I already had 3e.

 

[pemerton]

I can take D&D and make whatever setting I want and run various playstyles. I couldn't do that if the mechanics of the game(game design) were intertwined with the other two, or even one of the other two.

D&D is not infinitely malleable.

It is clearly oriented towards a particular sort of setting - magic-rich fantasy - and tropes - adventuring undertaken by parties whose bonds to one another are stronger than any bonds to other elements in the setting.

Departing from these orientations requires adding new rules, or new procedures, or both. (D20 Cthulhu is one illustration of what this might look like. And even then, one can doubt whether the mechanical framework is really that good a fit for the procedures of play and the genre that the game is aiming at.)