Felix said:
You had said something about a strawman? Perhaps you refer to my T-intersection metaphor? Where the DM controls the environment and the PCs must react? How is that telling the PCs what they have to do?
I never argued that setting up an environment is railroading. Again, you are resorting to strawmandering.
If the DM controls how his team will react, would you mind telling me how the players will know what the DM's team would have done differently had they chosen differently? What is the difference in game experience for the players?
It's not when the DM controls the NPCs, it's when he decides what the PCs will do (regardless of what the players have to say about it) before the game begins.
Oh. Huh. My DMG must have left out that page. Would you mind citing it for me?
I'm not very familiar with 3E, but there's nothing in 1E, 2E or OD&D about rigging the game. The fact that all versions of (A)D&D are billed as a game shows that predermined outcomes are the antithesis of what the creators of the game had in mind.
Oh, you mean BADWRONGFUN. Right, right. Is there anyone besides yourself who knows you hold the divining rod to what is Real Gaming(tm) and what isn't? You should call WotC.
A game is an activity undertaken or regarded as a contest involving rivalry, strategy, or struggle. Rigged outcomes are not a game.
Yeah. Because stories with villains that have certain goals... like a goal to bring the world under the domination of undead, I don't know, Centipedes for an age... that's not real gaming. It's not possible.
Stories are stories; games are games. They are not the same thing.
I mean, how stupid would a linear story line and adventure hook after adventure hook keeping you on task to make sure that you avert the coming of the undead Age of Centipedes be? Who would play that? Pfft.
Nobody interested in playing a game, that's for certain. If group storytelling or amateur theatre are your thing, fine. Just don't pretend it's a contest or game when it isn't.
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The players would not know the difference based only on play experience, no. Suckers walk away from Three-Card-Monty games thinking that they were beaten because the dealer's hands were quick. To them it didn't matter that the fix was in: they thought they were playing a straight-up game, and their experience was of a game where they had full control of things. Do you suggest that simply because someone loses at a game of cards, they'll be justified in crying foul? Because if all it took was to lose to know that you had been set up, then nobody would deal card games because if the dealer won, they'd be branded a cheater.
Three-Card Monte is not a card game, it's a scam in which a shill and a dishonest card dealer cheat people out of their money through sleight of hand. Police often arrest people they catch performing this kind of thievery. I'll stick to honest gaming, thank you very much.
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You suggest you didn't do this? You didn't propose an example of railroading (1); you didn't quickly follow that showing how that railroading ruined the game (2); you didn't conclude your argument with a generalized theory based on one specific example (3)?
Since you didn't understand the first time:
Railroading takes a game (you know -a contest or struggle) and turns it into something that is no longer a game. That's just a fact. If someone was looking to play a game and ended up being a bit player in a DMs predetermined melodrama, I'd say that person was cheated. Just as someone looking to play a game of cards who gets baited and switched by a dishonest dealer. I think just about everyone prefers honest gaming. I challenge you to name someone who was happy about wasting his time and money playing a game of poker with a dealer who used marked cards because said dealer had a "story" in mind.
Yep. And a most unbecoming one, too.
When you watch WWE, do you see empty seats?
I don't watch WWE. I watch sports -not clown acts.
I'm still waiting for your explanation of how railroading is a blight on the game and, heh, "not real gaming" but only a clown act when the only thing you can support that with is your misdirected passion. You don't like railroading in your games? Ok. Go nuts playing "real games" over there. But you have some damn inconsideration to come into my game and tell me I'm ruining the game and staging a clown act. Who do you think you are?
If you're railroading, you're not playing a game. Pretending to play a game when you aren't is by it's very nature absurd at best and dishonest at worst. I wonder how many railroading enthusiasts are frank with their players and tell them up front:
"It doesn't really matter what you decide to do with your PCs. I already made up my mind how things are going to go. "
If not, why not? They could at least save their players the trouble of lugging around the rulebooks and dice.
