What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[Crimson Longinus]

Which to me is fine because you're acting like your character, not possessing them body and soul.

Well, not with that attitude!

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm starting to see how post count is built.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I'd rather wait until a moment where it will be most dramatic and impactful to lose my cool, rather than just happen to do it when the dice land a certain way.

What game are you talking about here?

As in, what game involves dice rolls for your PC to keep/lose their cool in non-dramatic, non-impactful contexts?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, if that example....the difference between genuinely wondering why the troll scary monster keeps regenerating, and knowing exactly why but pretending you don't...doesn't explain itself, I don't know if I can.

Unless you are specifically referring to the word "artificially", in which case I guess I can offer two clarifications:

1. "Artificial" in the sense that I am pretending to not know the solution, rather than genuinely not knowing the solution
2. But also artificial in the sense of it being a problem (if one sees it as such) of the DM's own creation: it would be trivial to switch things up...modify the monsters...to make the feeling authentic

I don't actually see the authenticity of the feeling as being all that important. Just the action. As I said above, we're acting like our characters, not possessing them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

What game are you talking about here?

As in, what game involves dice rolls for your PC to keep/lose their cool in non-dramatic, non-impactful contexts?

None that I play! I was just responding to what other people were describing/proposing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't actually see the authenticity of the feeling as being all that important. Just the action. As I said above, we're acting like our characters, not possessing them.

Yeah, over the course of this thread I've been starting to understand that. And I find it super interesting.

 

[pemerton]

None that I play! I was just responding to what other people were describing/proposing.

But who in this thread - other than you - is describing, or proposing, a RPG which involves dice rolls for your PC to keep/lose their cool in non-dramatic, non-impactful contexts?

 

[pemerton]

there are some (many) games that you don't want to play in an immersive fashion.

To be clear, I was doing full inhabitation play 30 years ago; this isn't a case of people "not getting" what you're talking about.

You and Max, among others, have simply chosen (as much as anyone chooses their preferences) to find that inhabitation to be your primary goal in roleplaying; others here (such as myself) just see it as one way to play among many others.

When I play, as opposed to GM - and these days that is primarily playing in Burning Wheel - I want to inhabit my character.

One reason why I play Burning Wheel is because it makes my character so real, and the inhabitation so visceral and compelling.

I enjoy thinking, "Oh my god, why can't we kill this thing? We already tried fire and that didn't work. Do we need acid? I hope not, we don't have any. Freezing it? Pouring alcohol on it?!?!?" I'm not actually in danger for my life, unlike my character, so I'm not that close, but there's still some authentic tension there.

To me, that doesn't sound all that immersive, unless my character is also cool as a cucumber. It seems to me that only someone who was super cool would work systematically through a list of possibly effective substances like that.

To elaborate further, and in response also to this post:

Yes, but you wouldn't be able to fail on a check that explicitly questions your character's thoughts and feelings.

Yup.

And, I have to admit, even after closely following this entire thread I don't truly understand why anybody would want that. It would just yank me right out of the kind of immersion I enjoy.

Unless I'm playing a commando, or Bourne-esque assassin, the sort of cool-ness under the threat of death that's there in your example just above doesn't seem particularly immersive. Particularly if I flesh it out a bit more: it's obviously an example from D&D, and in D&D play the players will also not just be thinking through their list of stuff (acid, alcohol etc) but also thinking about how much damage it does, and how many hit points they have left, and hence how many tries they have to get it right before they're dead. None of that seems very immersive to me.

Here's an example of Burning Wheel play, where I'm playing Aedhros, an embittered Dark Elf (of the JRRT sort, not the Gygax sort):

With the morning mist rolling in, it was time to clean out the innkeeper's cash box.

<snip>

Aedhros entered the room at this point, with Heart-seeker drawn and ready for it to live up to its name.

<snip>

[The GM] insisted that I make a Steel check to commit cold-blooded murder. This failed, and so I hesitated for 4 actions. Handily, that is the casting time for Persuasion, and so Alicia "told" Aedhros not to kill the innkeeper. The casting check succeeded, but the Tax check was one success against an obstacle of 4. With only 1 Forte left, that was 3 Tax which would be 2 overtax, or an 8-point wound, which would be Traumatic for Alicia. But! - the Tax check also was the final check needed for her Forte 3 to step up to Forte 4 (wizard's get lots of juicy Forte checks because of all their Tax - in this case from the three spells cast), which made the overtax only 1, or a 4-point wound which was merely Superficial. Still, she collapsed unconscious.

Aedhros opened the strongbox and took the cash. We agreed that no check was required; and given his Belief that he can tolerate Alicia's company only because she's broken and poor, and given that it aggravates his Spite to suffer her incompetence in fainting, he kept all the money for himself. He then carried out the unconscious Alicia (again, no check required). He also took the innkeeper's boots, being sick of going about barefoot. But he will continue to wear his tattered clothes.

Aedhros enters the innkeeper's room, intent on murdering him. The Steel check drive home the sense of what is happening here - me (Aedhros), black metal long-knife in hand, looking down at the inn-keeper in his bed. The failed roll, and resulting hesitation, doesn't "yank me out of my immersion". It reinforces the sense of being there, hesitating to commit such a terrible deed.

It also contributes to my subsequent in-character decision-making. There are two things that Aedhros is feeling/thinking - both his own hesitation to kill, and the magical instruction not to kill. This shapes the way I (as Aedhros) respond to Alicia fainting from Tax: one of Aedhros's Beliefs is I will never admit that I am wrong, and so I (as Aedhros) don't second-guess or revisit the decision not to kill. Rather, I (as Aedhros) internalise it as part of a broader contempt and disregard for others - as if they're not even worth killing. And so just takes the money, and carry off the unconscious Alicia.

I think I'm describing something different here from what @TwoSix has described over the the past several pages. I'm not sure exactly how close it is to @hawkeyefan's account of playing Clara in The Between, but perhaps there might be some similarity? I know - because I was there - that I'm describing something that is immersive, in the sense that I am inhabiting this character and internalising (without being overwhelmed by) these feelings of desire to kill, hesitation to kill, contemptuous disregard for others, etc.

 

[hawkeyefan]

In my mind it's in precisely the same category of pretending to be deceived by an NPC that you (the player) actually believe is lying, or pretending to be traumatized about an event you don't actually care about.

I wouldn't really do that, either. What a player decides their character believes is almost always and entirely up to them. In D&D or similar games that have skills like Deception and Insight and the like, all I would say is that "there's nothing about what he says or how he behaves that indicates to you he's lying".

Again, this is why D&D is such a poor example... because the fears that people are expressing about social mechanics aren't really the way people play D&D.

EDIT: And, even then, it's fine if it's what you choose to do. It's the idea that other players at the table frown at you for not playing your character as deceived or traumatized that makes me roll my eyes.

Oh, I agree. I'm not saying that all players must have a mental model that they adhere to, and that I am able to infer whether or not they do based on how they play. Whilst simultaneously claiming that as a player, only I can know my character in full.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I wouldn't really do that, either. What a player decides their character believes is almost always and entirely up to them. In D&D or similar games that have skills like Deception and Insight and the like, all I would say is that "there's nothing about what he says or how he behaves that indicates to you he's lying".

Again, this is why D&D is such a poor example... because the fears that people are expressing about social mechanics aren't really the way people play

I don't know if you have half of the people here blocked or something, but you seem to be missing a big part of the conversation. Yes, what you describe is how D&D works, and that's fine by me. But there were several people who said that it should not work that way, and they want social mechanics that are more binding to the player. That if NPC's deception beats the PC insight, then it would mean that the character must believe what the NPC says, or at minimum suffer some sort of a penalty if they behaved like they didn't believe the NPC.

D&D.Oh, I agree. I'm not saying that all players must have a mental model that they adhere to, and that I am able to infer whether or not they do based on how they play. Whilst simultaneously claiming that as a player, only I can know my character in full.

The person who has the mental model of the character is the one who knows the character. So that's the player if they have such a model and no one if they don't.