Search results

The purpose of my question and hypothetical was to increase my understanding of how @Maxperson defines the term "railroad" in practice. Based on what I understand of their views on railroading so far, I don't think their answer to my question is going to be variable based on campaign style...

Question for you: Let's say the only thing the PCs know is that there are two doors, and they plan to open both of them to find out what is behind each door. The DM has notes on what is behind the doors, but didn't actually specify which door is which. If the players arbitrarily choose to...

In my original post where I specifically defined the spectrum, I'm using the phrase "options presented by the GM" to mean options laid out for the PCs at the time of the players' decision. The spectrum runs from campaigns where players are always expected to always choose from among the options...

I've tried (evidently unsuccessfully) to avoid any such implication. I specified the 0% sandbox end of the spectrum as campaigns where under the social contract players are expected to make strategy-level decisions exclusively from among the choices presented by the GM. This contrasted with the...

That's a large part of it. More broadly I'm trying to point out that the degree to which a campaign supports open-ended strategic choices is a useful parameter to consider rather than useless and misleading, as pemerton contended. In this discussion it's useful specifically because degree of...

Many editions of D&D are flexible enough to be run in a wide variety of styles. In several such styles commonly discussed on these forums, the only constraint on players' strategy-level choices is an expectation that at least some of those choices are made among the options the DM has presented...

With regards to placing an ogre, I personally would consider it railroading to place the ogre in the PCs' path only if by doing so the DM is thwarting the actions the players have declared in furtherance of their characters' goals. So if the PCs have taken action to avoid the ogre, or to avoid...

I suspect it's because, while the negative emotions people react with to a perceived denial of agency are quite consistent, the details of the situations that lead to such perceived denial of agency are incredibly idiosyncratic. So we can talk about the emotional outcome of railroading...

As I acknowledged in the second of the posts you quoted, campaigns with certain styles of play may not fit on the spectrum I am promoting. Given that AW and BW campaigns are frequently (always?) run in such styles, those campaigns don't fit on the spectrum, and thus can't and don't contradict my...

That's one of the reasons I defined the spectrum I'm promoting on a sandbox to non-sandbox range, rather than sandbox to linear. But yes, there are certainly styles of play that cannot be easily mapped to that spectrum. The existence of such styles, however, doesn't make the spectrum less useful...

I disagree--I think viewing sandboxiness on a spectrum is extremely helpful to understanding how authority is distributed between the GM and players concerning the direction of the campaign. For specificity, I'm defining the spectrum by the percentage* of strategy-level character decisions...

(Bold emphasis added.) Quick note: the rules do say that being unseen gives you advantage and others disadvantage. It's in the "Unseen Attackers and Targets" section of the PHB. And yes, that makes the second bullet point of the Invisibile condition redundant--I thus think the best reading of...

Personally speaking, it's because I have more fun when I'm less consciously focused on the game mechanics than I am focused on trying to imagine the fiction from my character's perspective. The more the mechanics feel like an abstraction of a self-consistent game world, the easier I find it to...

My very first DM told me to roll 3d6 six times, and that, no matter what, he wouldn't let me reroll. I proceeded to roll all six stats under 10. He watched the rolls, looked at me in horror, and told me to reroll.

Also, the more NPC casters deviate from the PC spellcasting systen, the harder it is to make effective use of standard anti-spellcaster tactics, like attacking them when they're low on slots. An NPC that can effectively cast an uncounterable Fireball at-will (and many of their other spells...

To clarify: the purpose of my response to @hawkeyefan was to communicate why I'm personally fine with mechanics that determine if your character knows a particular bit of lore, while simultaneously not liking mechanics that tell you how your character feels or reacts. So to answer your...

Before I respond to the rest of your well-written post, if it's ok with you I'd like to take a moment to double-check that we're discussing the same thing. :) The way I see the current line of discussion, you've successfully explained to me why the distinction doesn't exist from your...

Because my point that you bolded is specific to my approach to defining a character as a person, I don't think it makes sense to apply it to the wider discourse. Everyone is going to have their own opinion on what defines a character as a person. From my perspective, having the quality of being...

Then I apologize for not being clear: I was not intending to make a general assertion about "what defines character" for everyone. I was trying to assert what I feel defines a character as a person for me. I entirely agree that my idiosyncratic perspective on what defines a character is "not...

That's cool. There's a huge diversity of perspectives on what defines individual identity. It would not surprise me at all if differing philosophical approaches to the concept of self underlie our differing preferences for RPG mechanics. As far as where we differ, I agree that knowledge is a...