Can the GM cheat?

[pemerton]

I can see the desire of some players to kick back, and let the GM direct, and frame scenes.

<snip>

The thing missing from such campaigns is active player involvement and investment in the campaign.

The standard "indie"-game model (Sorcerer, BW, HeroWars/Quest, etc) is the GM framing scenes in response to player-signalled cues and or player-built backstory elements. These are the poster-children for active player involveent and investment in the campaign.

Thats not what we're talking about though, we're talking about the GM putting together an anti-cultist dungeon crawl and the players saying "I dont really care what the cultists or doing, i have no interest in that". Or something like "my character doesnt like dungeons, they are full of traps and spells and its dark and as a human I cant see for crap. I'm not going down there, those cultists have to come out sometime. Lets camp and hide here by the entrance and kill them when they come out to do their nefarious deeds instead"

Who says we're talking about that? [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] didn't say antything about this.

AP's are absolutely NOT railroading. You need to read one before you claim that.

Unless I'm badly misinformed, the classic AP sets the villain from the start.

And what are you purchasing? A whole lot of pre-written scenes.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

No I havent.

Its very simple when talking to gamers what sounds more likely?

That game was awful, he railroaded the out of us

or

That was an awsome game, we were told where to go, and how to work, all day each day

"More likely?"

That wasn't an absolute. I think progress has been made.

As someone who hears stuff more in line with your second statement, though worded slightly less at a slant, even I'll admit the first is more likely.

Yay! Agreement.

This is so much better than where we started, when we were led to believe that railroading is NEVER a good thing and that the people who enjoy railroading don't exist.

That was a fun trip...not quite a railroad, per se, but it did lack in options.

 

[timASW]

Okay, I personally don't require your validation, but it is fun to participate in various discussions. I do find it odd that you would imply that players who prefer railroading don't exist because you've never seen them. Now, I don't know if you've personally and directly witnessed any of those things Umbran listed. Maybe you have. Maybe if everyone on this forum listed every possible thing in the universe, we'll find that you've personally, and directly, witnessed each and every one.

I'm going to go out on a thin very thin limb (risking being banned for the audacity of this accusation) and say that you have not personally, and directly, witnessed everything in the universe. How that might effect the credibility of your claim regarding the nonexistence of players who prefer railroading is anyone's guess.

I'll pray you're correct though, because my wife's lies are very upsetting and I am looking forward to using your infallible proof to finally put an end to her falsehoods.

Well I've played with hundreds of people over more then 20 years and while I've definitely seen players who dont care about driving the story themselves that doesnt mean the want the DM to tell them they cant do X,Y, or Z perfectly reasonable and legal according to the rules solutions to the problems that come up. Usually it means they're happy to sit back and let another PLAYER drive the direction of the story while they go along with the group.

 

[timASW]

The standard "indie"-game model (Sorcerer, BW, HeroWars/Quest, etc) is the GM framing scenes in response to player-signalled cues and or player-built backstory elements. These are the poster-children for active player involveent and investment in the campaign.

Who says we're talking about that? [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] didn't say antything about this.

Actually its exactly what he said. His example was a wizards tower full of traps and puzzles that he worked hard on and the players wanting to use magic or some other method to blast the whole thing down from the outside instead of going inside and messing with all that.

Which as a GM I can see being a bit disappointing. But the answer isnt to railroad the players in a way that they absolutely have to go into the tower or your throwing a fit and going home.

The answer is not to waste your time designing a ton of things in an adventure that players are just going to want to avoid and get annoyed by and instead spend that time building open ended places and encounters that the PC's can engage in lots of ways or not engage at all and your not emotionally invested in that particular encounter or location as the GM.

Unless I'm badly misinformed, the classic AP sets the villain from the start.

And what are you purchasing? A whole lot of pre-written scenes.

Sure they set up a villain and his plans. Doesnt make it a railroad at all. The AP's say that Villain X is doing nefarious thing Y at location Z and here's his timeline. If you follow all the clues exactly, focusing exclusively on chasing towards that villains plans here's the chain of events you will encounter.

But they are also full of well written, interesting locations that the players can deviate from the pre-ordained path and explore and possibly find other adventures in anytime they want.

Thats a sand box with a metaplot. Not a railroad.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

I don't dispute your experiences. I can be a pendantic jerk, though, and claims involving absolutes are a trigger. Claims that I can disprove by looking at evidence to contrary sitting across the room from me make me absolutely giddy.

I read Majoru Oakheart's post and thought that I would not like that game, which agreed with your take. But then, your post made me feel like I made a Royal Flush on the River, and I knew which side I was taking.

 

[Manbearcat]

GM dice-fudging in a classic railroad (skip to 30 seconds).

[video=youtube;RjOqaD5tWB0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjOqaD5tWB0[/video]

 

[S'mon]

Basically I weigh "I don't have anything planned after this tower of traps and tricks. I anticipated that it'd take about 3 sessions for the players to get through it, so I didn't think I'd need to plan beyond that. I'm really bad at improvising. I spent 3 hours mapping this tower and its traps. If I allow them to destroy the tower, I'd either have to end the session immediately so I had time to come up with something else...or I have to just start making up plot on the fly. Which always turns out poorly and with the players complaining that my game is boring. So, it's either say no to blowing up the tower and giving them a little bit of disappointment in exchange for them likely having fun solving my puzzles for the next 3 sessions....or it's end the game here and telling them to go home early since we won't be playing tonight.".

Always prepare at least one extra session's worth of material. Also, have one or two events/encounters prepped to use if and only if the group go off your expected track.
Then you won't be forced to railroad your players or threaten to quit, and hopefully they will no longer think your game is boring.
Because right now frankly this does not sound great.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

Another thought for Majoru...

When creating encounters (puzzles, traps, challenges, combats, interactions, etc.) try to keep the "core" as generic and modular as possible, then wrap it in aspects of the session. If your players avoid it, that "core" can be used another time.

Railroads that I find acceptable are those that limit plots, not actions.

I prefer to run one-shots and episodes over continuous timeline continuity. I do, however, also like to give a session synopsis prior to the game, so the players can hop on the train or let me know they aren't interested.

Do I like rails? Yes, to the extent that I gladly stick with established plot (as a player) or do my best to establish accepted plot (as a GM). Of course, this doesn't take place in a vacuum...giving and soliciting feedback is important.

Relating this back to the topic of the thread... No, I don't think a GM can cheat, but a GM can cross the line and lose his players. When I set out from the train station, I try my best to allow as much freedom as possible and to react to developments, not control them.

The only time I alter this approach is with my one-on-one games with my wife, in which I may fudge and remove choices in order to provide what she wants. When she is playing in the other three games, she plays by each group's preferences.

Now, this post has rambled from advice on using modular encounter design to my railroading techniques to GM cheating to when I allow myself to fudge. I suppose it beats multi-posting.

 

[pemerton]

Actually its exactly what he said.

No. He never said that his players didn't like the dungeons he designed. In fact [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] said his players prefer engaging the dungeon to blowing it up with disintegrate, and are therefore happy when he (as GM) informs them that their PCs attempts to circumvent it via disintegrate fails.

The answer is not to waste your time designing a ton of things in an adventure that players are just going to want to avoid and get annoyed by

I'm sure that's good advice but I don't see how it bears upon what Majoru Oakheart described upthread. He never said anything about his players being annoyed.

He actually described a fairly standard feature of high level D&D play (and other gonzo fantasy games, like Rolemaster, have the same issue) - that the PCs have abilities that make it rational for them to act in ways that can make the game less than maximally entertaining at the table (disintegrating towers, scry-buff-teleport, etc - the worst example in my own RM games was "completing" whole adventures within the scope of future-oriented divination, and once a successful approach had been identified within the scope of the divination then declaring that it was undertaken by the PCs for real).

Sure they set up a villain and his plans. Doesnt make it a railroad at all. The AP's say that Villain X is doing nefarious thing Y at location Z and here's his timeline. If you follow all the clues exactly, focusing exclusively on chasing towards that villains plans here's the chain of events you will encounter.

But they are also full of well written, interesting locations that the players can deviate from the pre-ordained path and explore and possibly find other adventures in anytime they want.

Thats a sand box with a metaplot. Not a railroad.

For me, what I notice is that the locations are pre-specified. The NPCs are all pre-specified. The players have basically no authorship role, and if they try to choose their loyalties or response to situations then the whole package more-or-less falls apart.

Of more-or-less zero interest to me, and not at all what I would think of as a player-driven game.

Then you won't be forced to railroad your players or threaten to quit, and hopefully they will no longer think your game is boring.

You may have misread the post you quoted - it is only when Majoru Oakheart starts improvising that his playes complain about boring games.

 

[Mallus]

AP's are absolutely NOT railroading.

They're prewritten campaign arcs --ie, stories-- that take PCs from 1st to 18th level. That's railroading. The overall direction of the story is predetermined. If that's not included under the definition of 'railroading', you need a bigger definition!

You need to read one before you claim that.

I have. Skull & Shackles (which, from I gather, is considered, along with Kingmaker, to be one of the more sandbox-y APs). I was going to use it for my current Pathfinder campaign, but it was too much of a railroad (mind you, I don't think railroading is bad, per se, but I have more fun running bespoke adventures that go where they go, without a predetermined course).

Skull & Shackles depends on the players choosing to stay in the Shackles, ie that region. If they decide to say, do something entirely reasonable like take their ship and sail off to explore the world, then the whole thing collapses.

I also played in the tail-end of a Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign. It's the same thing, the players are tied to the Stolen Lands. If they try to move on/do something else, it all goes up in smoke.

AP's depend on the players consenting to be railroading along the AP's given meta-plot. How are you not seeing this?

They lay out a series of places and interconnected events that players may or may not interact with in pretty much anyway they want.

So long as they interact with those specific events in those specific places. In 3 level-appropriate chunks. For the next 18 levels.

Compared, to say, to the campaign I wrote --from scratch, as I we went along --for my long-running 3e campaign, APs look terribly confining, ie railroad-y.

Maybe I'm just used to homebrewing everything?

We played it sure, didnt mean we liked it.

So the classic TSR adventures are classics because we didn't enjoy them? There's something special about gamer-logic, I'll give you that!

Those adventures are often Iconic because of a mix of rose tinted nostalgia from our youth and/or as much for what they did wrong as what they did right.

Don't play the nostalgia card. It's a losing hand. You might not look back on TSR-era material fondly, and that's cool. But don't think for a minute you can talk anyone else's experiences. A few months I ran one of my groups through part of the Slavers series. Nothing rose-tinted about it. Just a few hours of present-day fun.