WizarDru
Adventurer
FreeTheSlaves said:
Mary Sue is an old term with its origins in Star Trek fandom, specifically referring to fanfiction, but it's grown into larger use. Primarily, a Mary Sue character is a thinly vieled surrogate for the author, who is inserted into a story and functions basically as something like a fantasy/wish-fulfillment scenario within an established context. The characters name often is close to the authors (Mary Sue's author might be Mellisa Cheryll, for example). The classic example is a new ensign comes to the Enterprise, Mary Sue Prescott, who Captain Kirk falls madly in love with and brings her out of her shell (usually from some vague traumatic past) and then she manages to save the Enterprise when no one else can. And yes, it's very poor form, particularly in an RPG.
Pinotage said:
Railroading, as long as I've known it, commonly refers to the process of forcing the players to play out a plot, regardless of their actions or choices. Typically, the DM has conceived of a story or way that a module will play out and will actively thwart players efforts that might threaten that plot. A classic example is the DM who has NPCs take actions that are non-sensical in context of the game, but which makes sense in the metagaming sense of preventing the players from some specific goal or action.
For example: say that the DM has created a super-powerful NPC that he then has beat the party. The NPC is meant to be a long term villain and the PCs are not supposed to be able to defeat him, but a particularly clever PC thinks up a strategy using a cantrip that renders the NPC vulnerable, and is then told by the DM that the spell fails or the stratgem fails and gives a hastily, often poorly or not-at-all thought-out excuse as to why it fails.
A railroading DM will render PCs as little more than rats in a maze, following the scent of the cheese; any attempts to move outside the arbitrary boundaries are slapped down, often leaving a bad taste in the PCs mouth, and leaving them feeling that they are not actively in control of the game or their characters. The railroading DM often doesn't understand why the PCs are unhappy and often thinks them ungrateful for all the work he's done, failing to recognize that they don't appreciate becoming little more than NPCs. The lightest version of this is the "this is so cool" DM who has created a trap or combat he's incredibly proud of (and which there is no way the players can avoid, regardless of approach or strategy); the extreme version is where the PCs are actively told what their characters would do, and are told (without even an explanation) that some things fail and that this is how the story MUST progress.
