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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8695786" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Why do these people play together if they (a) hate one another's preferences so much and (b) cannot actually communicate enough to have an adult conversation about the problems they have with one another? The (much bigger) problem here is the railroad being used as a kludgy bandaid over the group being dysfunctional and not actually respecting one another. (Bob doesn't respect the others' time and preferences, the others don't respect Bob's interests.)Don't railroad this. Have a conversation with the players, preferably a set of one-on-one chats before meeting up as a group and trying to address the issues with forthrightness and respect. The railroad is just glossing over a very serious group dynamic problem.Evidently, some people consider certain actions "railroading" when I absolutely do not, just as some people apparently have such a casual definition of "fudging" as to, in my opinion, water the term down until it's nearly meaningless.So, in the interest of hopefully clearer communication, I'm going to use the terms "fakeoutism," "forgery," and "enthrallment." All of these are clearly distinct from the usual terms, so I'll have to define them.Fakeoutism is a style of DMing where the DM is, metaphorically, "selling a bill of goods," that is, intentionally presenting a situation that is misleading to the players, not just their characters. A rather obviously unkind example of fakeoutism is when a DM dislikes a particular option (such as a class or race) but, instead of banning it, instead chooses to make the game unpleasant and/or unfairly ultra-difficult for any player who chooses that option, rather than just banning it or having a conversation and trying to reach consensus. That is, the "fake-out" is that the DM is not actually allowing that option to play, they simply want to give the (false) impression that they allow such things while instead actually banning them in practice. This was rather unfortunately displayed in some of Gygax's early DMG text on how to get players to only play humans, "allowing" them to play powerful non-human options only to constantly kill off or unfairly target those characters until the player either leaves in frustration or wises up and starts choosing the right option (namely, humans.)Many other forms of fakeoutism exist, however. It's any form of hollow pretense designed to fool players into thinking something matters or is respected by the DM when it is not. Note, again, the utterly critical difference between fooling the characters and fooling the players. The characters may have incomplete or incorrect understanding of the world, that is perfectly fine (in moderation of course) and can lead to a great deal of fun gaming. Characters, despite being played by humans, are not actual people and do not have agency or thoughts of their own, being personae worn by the players. Even though a character being fooled is usually a surprise or even a shock to the person playing them, this reaction is (in general) desirable and consented to by the player in advance. If everything we're perfectly predictable all the time, it would likely get dull, that's part of why we use dice.The players, on the other hand, ARE actual people and thus should be equipped with full information about what kinds of things they are playing: theme, tone, rules, DM style/methods, etc., the stuff that should always be covered in detail during Session 0 and pre-game discussion. Much as, for example, if you're watching a movie, revealing the plot details ahead of time is usually considered a bad move (not always, but usually), while giving a trigger warning if there are deeply unpleasant or graphic scenes is generally wise. The former is in the realm of "fooling the character," as referenced above, while intentionally hiding any unpleasant scenes so that they will shock and apall someone would be "fooling the audience(/players, for games)." I hope we can agree that intentionally trying to upset someone more by having them watch something that contains (frex) a graphic dismemberment without telling them is a disrespectful, possibly even cruel, deception.This leads to "forgery." Forgery is a DM technique in the fakeoutism toolbox that fools the players by explicitly appearing to use the rules consistently and fairly, while secretly not actually doing that. Hence the name: the results are a forgery, a fake document or account passed off as though it were true. Many DMs recommend the use of forgery (by other names), but absolutely all who do so will explicitly tell you to never, EVER let the players find out that you forge the results of the rules. The "fake-out" here is that players in general (NOT everyone, but certainly a large plurality) want to play a game where the rules are understood and can be learned, reasoned about, and applied reliably and consistently, but they are only given the superfical appearance of rules that meet this standard, when in truth they do not. Forgery prevents the possibility of having rules that can do these three things. Firstly, because forgery is almost always covered up, the players cannot actually learn how the game really works; they can only learn the false pretense that is presented to them. Secondly, because forgery is necessarily unknown to the players due to being hidden from them, they cannot actually reason about it, meaning the conclusions they draw will necessarily be faulty. Finally, because the true rules are unknown to them (and likely, though not guaranteed, to be inconsistent), the players cannot actually apply the rules, they can only apply the false pretense they have been given.This is why forgery is so easily eliminated simply by having an honest conversation (so there is no pretense) or by establishing ways in which the true rules can me discovered and potentially exploited/defeated. If you tell people what is going on, then they have been informed and can see what the "real" rules are. E.g., to use the extremely common example, it is emphatically not forgery to end a combat earlier than "when every enemy has 0 HP," even though that is the official rule, IF you let your players know that you are doing so. "This fight is over, there's no way the ogre can defeat you now. Fighter, tell me how gruesomely you kill this bandit filth." Yes, the official rules are set aside, but they are set aside openly, allowing the players to know what's going on. Likewise, telling the player, "I just rolled a crit, but frankly that's not interesting, so I'm going to say that you just got protected by Athena from that blow. A golden nimbus of light surrounds you, looking almost like a hoplite's shield, and the blow is deflected away harmlessly. The goddess is apparently watching over you today and has decided this is not your time to die...which may come with strings attached. You know how the Olympians are." This is not forgery, even though it is blatantly disregarding the text of the rules, because the player knows what is going on.A third, more subtle case would be extending the life of an interesting "boss" creature that died "too quickly." Doing so by simply upping the creature's HP secretly would be forgery, plain and simple. However, if you make the change diegetic and support the players trying to find out what the hell that was and how it happened, it is no longer forgery: you are making that transformation a real part of the world, and more importantly making it learnable, which ensures that it can, at least in theory, be reasoned about and applied to future plans (whether to exploit it or to prevent it.)* The players may fail to learn all there is to know or may bungle their attempts or the like, what matters is that they had the genuine, no-fakeout opportunity to try. And, as I've mentioned before, for things where there is no intersection with player agency at all, then there's no pretense in the first place and thus no false pretenses.Now we come to "enthrallment." And yes, I chose this word very intentionally. When a DM engages in enthrallment, they are practicing a form of fakeoutism on the level of semantic content (the meaning, purpose, or value of the game) rather than on the syntactic content (the rules and structures of play.) Consider the first sentence of the OP: "What if I told you it was possible to lock your players on a tight [predefined pathway], but make them think every decision they made mattered?" Notice the terms involved here: "lock," "tight," "make them think every decision they made mattered." This is very clearly the language of control, controlling the players' beliefs and, consequently, their actions; the OP even recognizes this in the very next sentence, saying, "While this may sound like the evil GM speaking, I have my reasons." It sounds like that for the very excellent reason that that's exactly what it is, manipulative and coercive DMing. That it is manipulative or coercive with good intentions (or, in some unfortunate cases, allegedly good intentions) does not erase the manipulative or coercive nature--just because you want to make an enthralling (as in exciting, fully-engaging, indeed spellbinding) experience does not mean you are not putting the players in thrall to you.Enthrallment manifests in a variety of ways, some benevolent, some less so. As noted above, I consider the "but I worked so hard on this" response highly unconvincing, because (a) I think it's important for creators to not be so precious about their work, and (b) there are plenty of things you can do with that prep that don't involve a whiff of forcing that prep to happen exactly the way you originally envisioned. Again, though, even with that situation, there is specifically an ingrained element of control: "If players realise nothing they do changes the story, then the adventure will quickly lose its allure. But as long as they don’t realise what is happening they will think every choice matters and the story is entirely in their hands." Explicitly, it's recognized that this technique is risky--if you're caught, it's not just bad, but very bad--and that it requires deception, specifically so "they will think every choice matters" (a phrase the OP has now used twice, so it's no accident.) Fooling your players into believing they have freedom and control when they actually don't is clearly the point, particularly in that the players are never supposed to "realize" that they don't. That's quite clear from the OP: the invisible rails must stay invisible at all costs, and the players should never be told that they will be on invisible rails, that fact should be kept completely secret from them.That bit I mentioned earlier about methods that don't involve any DM force at all is particularly important because, if you actually run a game where player choice matters, you should be running into a LOT of so-called "wasted" prep work. Answers to questions players never thought to ask, locations players never visited, treasures players unknowingly missed, NPCs they forgot to speak to, etc. Instead of treating these as a stumbling block that must be obliterated with fakeoutism, it's much better to treat them as learning opportunities. So the players missed a treasure--surely other people will come through the lair later, looking for whatever pickings they can find, and will discover that treasure instead. That creates an opportunity: perhaps the treasure is powerful and was found(/bought/stolen/etc.) by a rival of the players, leading to a more powerful and dangerous opponent down the line; or perhaps this powerful treasure sets the adventurer who found it on a dangerous path because they're able to take on threats they aren't experienced enough to deal with but which the are now powerful enough to deal with, making them dangerous to themselves and others. As above with my example molten-obsidian-golem fight, perhaps a "missed" fight gets filed away to be recycled into something new, as with my Raven-Shadows doing a "how did we screw up" analysis on the place, finding the solidified ex-golem, and trying to replicate its accidental creation in a more controlled manner.**But--again, this is the critical component--if you DO actually make it clear that you do this, if you actually have a real, sincere conversation with your players and inform them, then you're golden. They get a chance to push back. They get the opportunity to express their concerns or talk about their preferences with you. There is no deception, because no false pretense is presented to begin with. The OP explicitly and repeatedly refers (in different terms) to creating, and maintaining, a false pretense, knowing that if its falsehood is revealed, the players will be upset and their pleasure in the game will be damaged. (Well, knowing that that's true for some players. Obviously not all players feel that way...but a large enough group does to warrant the warning to never let it slip!)That's all that is required to avoid fakeoutism: either communicate, or have the game be what it actually appears to be. Don't rely on implications and conventions and "well they should just know" etc. Those things are exactly what support the worst, most problematic false pretenses in the world. Be respectful and forthright with your players. That doesn't mean giving away every single little secret or exhaustively detailing every single statistic or feature. It just means....playing fairly, letting the players know exactly what they're signing up for, and making sure you have affirmative consent, not presumed implicit acceptance.*I once did the reverse of this: diegetically reducing a fight. Long story short, the players had chosen to burst down the most dangerous threat, and nearly killed it, but the tide of little nasties would probably have done them in. So the big shadow tried to save itself by vamping most of the small shadows and then bolting. That didn't end well for the big shadow! This power had not been absolutely explicitly described in advance, but shadow-spirits like this had stolen health from living things before, so it wasn't a stretch.**This idea came to me as a result of participating in this thread, and I'm excited to see where it leads. My players will, hopefully, also be excited, as it kinda lets them have their cake and eat it too (they got to outsmart me, and yet will also--YEARS later IRL--get a taste of what they "missed" before.)</blockquote>

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