Gaming Style Assumptions That Don't Make Sense

[Celebrim]

4e D&D's rules do this very successfully IMO.

4e had in my opinion a very purist design that did some things very well indeed. I fully admit that certain aspects of the 4e designed influenced my game and my thinking, even as I also admit that I hated 4e right from the very first preview of play and pretty much was one of the first edition warriors.

But if the design was geared for the sort of play you wanted to do, it was probably as close to perfect as you could want because everything was built around it. The only thing you'd have to fix would be a few small areas where they didn't actually get the math right, and maybe tweak the flexibility a bit depending on your preferences.

I think the comparison to New Coke is spot on. WotC simply misjudged their market the way Coke misjudged their market, but I don't claim New Coke or 4e was an objectively bad product and obviously for some portions of the market it was just the thing. It just wasn't the product most of their market was hoping for, and most certainly not someone as opinionated as I am.

I guess that encourages fudging to mitigate.

I'm sure it does, and I actually agree that for the sort of play that I want, that's a flaw. But I set out to solve those black swans being rather too common it in a rather different manner than 4e did when it banned them. What I did even before 4e was a thing was build in alternative mitigation mechanics, that are in some ways very similar to 5e's Legendary Saves designed to mitigate against random pointless death happening to NPCs. Just for PC's, because PC's - rather than NPCs - are what is usually legendary in my stories.

 

[delericho]

Fundamentally, we are arguing over the meaning of words.

Yes we are. So here it is: Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

(Or, if you want, railroading happens when the GM negates a player's choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.)

(And, indeed, it shouldn't strictly be when the GM does it either, since published adventures can and do do the same - the best (or worst) example I've personally seen coming in Vampire's "Transylvanian Chronicles" where at one point it outright stated that a particular event was immutable regardless of what PCs might do to prevent it.)

You are "railroading" when you use the techniques that are used to railroad. No exceptions, nor are exceptions required.

Yes, but why are we to accept your definition as being the correct one? I do believe mine is the more standard one - not least because it's not just mine (I'm not the Alexandrian).

And I did consider it; "fuzzy points of the compass" is definitely railroading. Right now I'm just trying to decide if it is a subcategory of "Schrondinger's Map" or deserves its own category. And one thing that did come out of this. I'm starting to feel I'm getting close to the Socratic definition of railroading.

Imagine you're driving around on the road network in a 4x4. You can follow the roads anywhere you want to go, and you can go off-road at any point if you really want. It would be absurd to suggest you're being railroaded.

Imagine now that your vehicle has an auto-drive feature. You can still override it a any time, you can still go off-road at any time. The only things that auto-drive won't do for you is that it won't take you off-road and it won't stop in the middle of nowhere. If you want either of those things, you need to do it yourself.

You have lost no options. Everything you could do previously you can still do. Does the addition of this auto-drive facility mean you are now being railroaded?

But don't leave me hanging. What else do you think I haven't considered?

I don't know. We're working from different axiomatic foundations.

 

[Umbran]

The problem there is that then if the GM does let the dice stand and PCs die,
it becomes his choice and his responsibility.

But, it was always their choice and responsibility. The GM sets the challenges! If the GM chooses to put in something overpowered, you die. If he or she chooses to softball it, you live. There's only a very narrow band in the middle (that's often very hard to actually hit) in which there's much question. As players, we are largely putting ourselves in the GM's hands, whether or not they fudge.

If D&D were chess, the players would each have a piece, with fixed move patterns, as normal. And the GM has an infinite number of pieces that can be added at any point in play, with any movement patters he or she wants, and he or she doesn't have to tell you how they move at the start of the game. Pardon me if at that point I don't feel their changing the movement patterns of a piece is problematic.

This is a fundamental problem with arguments against fudging. Only in the "tournament case", where the GM is handed an adventure by an outside agent, that should not be edited, does the GM does not hold major responsibility for how things turn out. If you are going to argue against fudging, you should also argue against GMs deviating from the RAW encounter-building guidelines, or not playing adventures *exactly* as written, or making rulings rather than following rules, but we rarely see those arguments made.

If you accept that the GM has huge influence in the first place, then there's not much of a point to worrying about exactly where that influence is applied, so long as it is applied in a fair and reasonable manner. That fudging is somehow fundamentally different from the rest of the GM's influence is an illusion. In my humble opinion, that is.

 

[S'mon]

If you accept that the GM has huge influence in the first place, then there's not much of a point to worrying about exactly where that influence is applied.

Well, I disagree - for me, 'only at the point of dying' (to quote Once Upon A Time in the West) does it become really problematic. The fudging GM is changing an established outcome of events the PCs have already interacted with, and to me that feels different from all influence up to that point.

 

[S'mon]

Yes we are. So here it is: Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

Yes, I agree - and this is different from eg setting scenario start conditions, unless doing so negated previous player action (the way Alien 3 negated the outcome of Aliens - if I was Ripley's player I'd definitely be
yelling RAILROAD!!).

 

[Celebrim]

Yes we are. So here it is: Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

Then I rest my case on your own terms. The railroad to Mount Fire negates a players choice in order enforce a preconceived outcome. You rationalized using some fuzziness in the player's proposition to "go generally" north to move the player to your desired location Mount Fire. You were not required to rule thusly or handle the fuzziness in this manner. You did so precisely because you wished to negate player choice, because you feared their choice would be less interesting for everyone than your own ideas.

Since you refuse to distinguish between the act of railroading and railroad as a category of thing, you are both railroading and the campaign is a railroad under your own terms.

(And, indeed, it shouldn't strictly be when the GM does it either, since published adventures can and do do the same...

I think we can both agree that a GM can't plead the excuse, "But the module made me do it. I was just following orders." The module is just a thing. The GM is the one making the decisions.

Yes, but why are we to accept your definition as being the correct one?

I think I've already explained that. Because the standard one is predicated on several assumptions I believe are false, and consequently in my opinion leads to shallow thinking that hinders the hobby and harms the enjoyment of individual tables.

Incidentally, the link you link to is March 13, 2015. My essay predates it by years. I don't even concede that my definition is the less standard one or did not influence The Alexandrian's manifesto, nor for that matter do I concede that The Alexandrian has offered a definition that is incongruent with mine. In fact, reading the essay, we much more disagree over the definition of a Sandbox than we do over a Railroad, and indeed I have to smile that The Alexandrian has an agenda in redefining Sandbox at least as tangential to the normal use of the word as my agenda with my existing definition of Railroad.

You have lost no options. Everything you could do previously you can still do. Does the addition of this auto-drive facility mean you are now being railroaded?

I tend to loathe argument through analogy, as analogies almost invariably end up being less clear than the thing that they describe, but I'll humor you by saying that the auto-drive facility would indeed be described by mean as railroading me, if it choses its own destinations based on its own preferences.

I don't know. We're working from different axiomatic foundations.

If you don't know what I haven't considered, how do you know there are things I haven't considered beyond what I've admitted to? I mean as a general rule, yes, most people haven't considered everything, but people don't usually go around giving that as advice unless they have something in mind.

Or was it just snark?

 

[delericho]

Then I rest my case on your own terms. The railroad to Mount Fire negates a players choice in order enforce a preconceived outcome.

No, I didn't. They chose to go North, so they've gone to a location to their north. They can change that decision at any time. And if they get to Mount Fire and decide "nah", they can do that too.

I would only have negated their decision if they decided not to go to Mount Fire, or to move on to somewhere else, and then I prevented them from doing so.

I think we can both agree that a GM can't plead the excuse, "But the module made me do it. I was just following orders."

It's not about making excuses. But if the definition restricts itself to when the GM does this thing then that means a pre-written adventure cannot be a railroad. I don't agree, because they can indeed have a pre-conceived plot and can negate player choices to achieve it - as my example shows.

Incidentally, the link you link to is March 13, 2015.

So? The Alexandrian didn't define railroading; all he provides here is a handy restatement of it.

I think I've already explained that. Because the standard one is predicated on several assumptions I believe are false, and consequently in my opinion leads to shallow thinking that hinders the hobby and harms the enjoyment of individual tables.

In your opinion. I don't share it.

 

[Umbran]

You did so precisely because you wished to negate player choice...

Hold on a second. I'm not sure that's true. More importantly, I don't think we can say that with the information provided.

The player said they wanted the characters to go North, right? But nothing else? I'll continue as if they said nothing else, and you may discard the rest if that's not correct...

So, we have a couple ways to take our consideration from here - we could go down a rabbit hole of semantics. Did he mean "go *exactly* due north, with no deviation whatsoever?" What do people usually mean when they say they want to go North? We could discuss literal interpretations and liberal interpretations of "north". And so on. I don't think that'll be constructive, so I won't.

I will instead ask, Why did he want to go North? That'll tell us whether we are actually negating player choice. Because the player's choice, and the player's stated action are not necessarily synonymous.

For example:

If he went north because he heard BigCity was to the north, and he ultimately wanted to end up there, taking him to some other ultimate destination is thwarting player choice. The GM may perhaps be forgiven if the player didn't say that BigCity was the goal, and we can quibble over whether the GM should have sought additional information - but that's a communications issue, not a "negating player choice" issue.

If he went north in the hopes of finding otherwise unspecified action and adventure, whatever is in that direction, and the mountain is *mostly* north, and maybe a bit east, I'd have a hard time saying that the player's choice was negated. Indeed, it looks a lot like the players choice was fulfilled!

 

[Celebrim]

Hold on a second. I'm not sure that's true. More importantly, I don't think we can say that with the information provided.

Ok, I can concede that is possible. It's a vague hypothetical scenario with out a lot of details.

Here is the original post:

Railroading isn't necessarily needed: the PCs could simply be allowed to pick a general direction, with the DM redirecting that to whatever the nearest adventure site is. The players thus get the choice (no railroad) - it's just you skip the "boring chapters".

I would argue that instead of validating the choice to "go north" that is negating the choice. The DM specifically "redirects" the northern journey to "the nearest adventure site" in order to "skip the boring chapters". The purpose of the journey wasn't specified, but to me it reads like the purpose wasn't important. Though granted, it seems to matter to delericho that they weren't looking for a specific place, as he later specified that in the scenario where they specifically declare that they want to go to BigCity, that he wouldn't redirect them Mount Fire (though I wonder in this case if it matters if they know the way to BigCity, or only if BigCity is "generally North" and you decided to spice up the journey with an interlude at Mount Fire).

Let's simplify the situation down and say that there are 7 hexes, the center one being labeled Haven Town, where the players are. There are 3 hexes to the North of this Hex: Big City, Mount Fire, and Sage's Tower. The party declares that they leave Haven Town to explore. The DM asks which way they go, and they answer, "Generally north."

I've previously outlined a bunch of different ways this scenario could have been handled where arriving at Mount Fire wouldn't be a railroad, however those processes of play weren't what was used. How it was actually handled in this situation according to the original scenario, is that the GM looked at the map, decided that the part should be redirected to Mount Fire even though it wasn't due north of Haven Town, because it was the nearest adventure location and the DM though the other two locations would be more boring locations to visit this scenario. If that's all we've got to go on, how is that not a railroad?

Sure, I grant that the DM could allow the party to now leave and go somewhere else, but at that point they've already gotten off at Mount Fire station.

Moreover, the technique used to adjudicate this scenario is a railroading technique and not a mechanical process of play. The DM put his finger on the scale to get what he wanted. We can quibble over which technique is employed, and the name we should give it, but it is pretty obvious its a technique that is associated with railroading. delericho is already more or less agreed that the technique would be "commonly associated with railroads". He just doesn't concede that railroading techniques are always associated with railroads - something that I'm not sure that the essay by TheAlexandrian he's citing as his definition would concede to (not the least of which being I'm reasonably convinced Justin has read my essay before writing his manifesto). But if if looks like a duck and smells like a duck, it's probably a duck.

Now, I don't necessarily think the technique employed here is bad. But I think it is important to know it for what is.

 

[Umbran]

I would argue that instead of validating the choice to "go north" that is negating the choice.

How? Did they go north? Yes they did! If someone said, "I want a doughnut", and I hand them one that happens to be chocolate frosted, am I negating their choice to have a doughnut because I handed them a specific doughnut? Is there some "non-specific doughnut" I was supposed to hand them instead?

Let's simplify the situation down and say that there are 7 hexes, the center one being labeled Haven Town, where the players are. There are 3 hexes to the North of this Hex: Big City, Mount Fire, and Sage's Tower. The party declares that they leave Haven Town to explore. The DM asks which way they go, and they answer, "Generally north."

I've previously outlined a bunch of different ways this scenario could have been handled where arriving at Mount Fire wouldn't be a railroad, however those processes of play weren't what was used. How it was actually handled in this situation according to the original scenario, is that the GM looked at the map, decided that the part should be redirected to Mount Fire even though it wasn't due north of Haven Town, because it was the nearest adventure location and the DM though the other two locations would be more boring locations to visit this scenario. If that's all we've got to go on, how is that not a railroad?

Moreover, the technique used to adjudicate this scenario is a railroading technique and not a mechanical process of play.

Well, the players, by your own scenario, said, *generally* north. So, Mount Fire is most definitely a valid place for them to go, in no way contrary to what they did choose.

Then: was there an agreed-upon mechanical process, a set of rules for wilderness travel that was expected to be used? If not, then he's not violating players' expectations. It is explicitly the case in RPGs that that which is not covered by the rules *must* be covered by the GM. We do not have mechanical processes for everything. That's pretty much why we have GMs, because we cannot cover everything with a finite set of rules! The GM is *required* to fill in the gaps.

So, here's the clincher - the players *actively* left a gap. The gap of "generally" north. This is not an artifact of them being unintentionally vague, but an explicit *part of their choice*. Acting *as everyone agrees the GM should in this case* cannot be considered the GM negating anything.

If it isn't negating player choice, it isn't really railroading.