Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Lanefan]

I think you're being serious here, but this almost reads like a parody wherein one mocks DM-driven play. I know that may sound harsh, but I genuinely don't mean it to be so; I simply wish to emphasize how far apart are the perspectives and desiderata of the two poles of this debate!

In the sort of game you're describing, the DM never gets to play to find out what happens,

Let's clear one thing up: the DM is not a player, in the sense that the players are. The DM is more a living breathing reactive (and sometimes proactive) gameboard, along with being the referee when needed.

except in the limited sense of finding out how the PCs navigate from point A to point Z, where Z was already scripted at the same time as A. (And, yes, I realize there may be various paths from A to Z, but that's not the same thing as playing to find out what will happen. The DM already knows that: Z will happen!

Well, the DM hopes that Z will happen 'cause otherwise all the planning and prep for AA to FF go out the window. Again, though, a DM isn't playing to find out what will happen; she's (ideally) setting things up so the players through their characters can find out what will happen which may or may not be what the DM had in mind in the first place.

I used to enjoy this kind of game, but I found it had become unsatisfying in ways I only recently have been able to crystallize: it leads to railroading of one sort or another (perhaps, in its less pernicious versions Illusionism, at best) and it minimizes the impulses of the player who loves to craft involved backstories and/or complex psychological personae for her PCs that she desires be relevant to what actually impacts play.

That's down to the player to make those things relevant, not the DM; and to realize that not everything is necessarily going to be or become relevant at all. Someone playing a Dwarf, for example, might write pages of history of his clan and family and personal biography etc. etc., but if all the adventuring takes place hundreds or thousands of miles away from the Dwarf's home town the chances are close to unity that little to none of this will ever become relevant. As for the complex psychological personae, that should be easy to bring out in the day to day roleplaying of the character...and here it falls to the DM to allow time for such; I've known DMs who insist on jumping from one encounter or adventure to the next with no time for anything in between such as sitting around the campfire or spending some downtime in town shopping. (and some game systems seem to encourage this jump-to-the-action in their design)

Of course, I have deliberately chosen examples from the extreme ranges of personal and sweeping character motivations here, and so the Fighter has other, more ambitious, goals, and the Druid is far more concerned with the immediate question of how to get inside the King's Gardens right now than saving the planet.

Day-to-day stuff like getting into the King's Gardens is simply a part of the adventuring life. It's the bigger goals that hold my interest here, in this case healing the planet.

The rhetorical purpose of presenting these examples, though, was to show how the player signals interests/desires/etc. for the PC and how such concerns shape the scenes the DM will frame.

For my part, I know that something told to me now about a character's goals won't be remembered (likely by either me or the player) in four years when I'm trying to build a scene.

If the Fighter finds her missing partner? Well, surely other goals will emerge from actual play to capture the player's interests (through the PC) and drive the game forward.

As the DM, I have some possible ideas for the matter: perhaps the NPC partner is being blackmailed into service as an assassin by the city Templars, who have her young sibling in custody; or perhaps the NPC partner is a secret member of the insurrectionists who overthrew the previous king and is serving as a spy amidst the city Templars.

Careful - the anti-DM-driven crowd will be on to you for this.

But the whole point is: I, as DM, don't know how this will play out. Perhaps neither of these possibilities will arise during play, and a third, perhaps more interesting option will emerge via actions the PCs take.

Where I posit that you as DM not only should have at least a vague idea of how things will go, you need to have such so as to be able to prep* for what comes afterwards.

* - as far as your prep may go, it's different for every DM.

As a player, I play to find out what happens at least in the big picture; I want to learn the overarching plot, connect the dots, and then decide what to do about it...or to it. I don't want to do what I see as the DM's job and tell her about the NPC we just met; I expect her to tell me what I know about said NPC if anything as said NPC is a part of the setting - the DM's purview.

As a DM I'm there to help the players play to find out, and enjoy for myself what happens along the way.

And that's not to say my game is a hard railroad. Yes I had a storyboard going in; I'm now on V.11 of said storyboard and it bears very little resemblance to what I started with and may or may not be a good indicator of what will actually get played. That said, there's multiple parties in the campaign and one place I will sometimes put my foot down as DM is to say which one gets played next, usually so as to keep the parties vaguely parallel in game-world time.

The problem with the approach you outline is here is now no one is playing to find out what happens. The DM and players all have the script and are just riding along on the rails.

Not all the players. I'd know as a player what I put in as my own storyboard ideas but not what anyone else put in; nor would I know what the DM had done once she had all the storyboards in hand. Obviously the DM would have an idea where things would (or might) go, but as far as I'm concerned that should be the case anyway - no problem there.

The benefits I can see of doing this would be to a) integrate the players' interests better, and b) give the DM ideas she can mine for stories or adventures that she might not have otherwise thought of.

Lan-"always willing to steal a good idea from wherever it may be found"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

In addition to the outcomes you listed, what about the below:

- the PCs infiltrate the horde in some way, and target the leadership, removing the element of command from the force, which then collapses on itself with infighting
- the PCs infiltrate the horde in some way, and use misdirection and other subterfuge to issue false orders, delaying the attack long enough for the town to fully evacuate
- the PCs delay the horde per the above, while also seeking aid from allies established earlier in the game, allowing reinforcements enough time to arrive, creating a more even battle

And in addition to these outcomes, there's one more:

- the PCs decide to abandon their goal of protecting the villagers and just go off elsewhere, leaving the villagers to sink or swim on their own.

Lan-"where does it say adventuring parties always have to be heroic"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

On storyboarding

It occurs to me I should define a bit better what I mean by storyboarding for a campaign, and why I do it.

First, why do it at all? Well, my primary goal for any campaign is that it have enough depth, breadth, and potential for adventuring that it can last for the rest of my life assuming a) there's people willing to play in it, and b) the system mechanics hold up over the long run. I don't run these things as one-year wonders*, nor do I really want to; and the prep for a very long campaign is - I think - much different than for a short one or a single adventure path. And I really don't like doing things twice.

* - after a year (both as DM and player) I'm usually just nicely settling in to a campaign - can't imagine it already being over!

Another thing I have to keep firmly in mind is that in a long game there's inevitably going to be some player turnover and loads of character turnover. No plot protection here for PCs, and no guarantee of survival. So, not only can't I rely on basing a story around a character, I can't even rely on basing it around a player. Thus, any plot has to be independent of such and also able to survive such.

So with that in mind I'll come up with a series of things - game world history, politics, maps, villains, deities, cultures, inspirations, etc., etc. - which I can then mine a few long-term or really-big-picture storyline possibilities out of, and figure out if or how said possibilities might interweave or where else they might lead to.

Next I'll look for what specific adventure ideas might fit with this big picture, and make notes; I'm also looking to see if a story, or part of a story, can become a mini-adventure-path within the greater campaign as those always seem to work out well. I've also got an eye out for what levels these various adventures are suited for as I know I'll need a good spread.

Then I make a list of possible adventures that could be run as one-offs within the campaign - good fun adventures that don't really have anything to do with anything but that can be used to keep things going or even just give a chance to earn some more xp.

At this point I've got the basics for a storyboard, so I draw it up...in full awareness that it's absolutely going to change as time goes on. The only near-certainty is what the first adventure will be.

And all this happens before I know who will be playing in the campaign, whether there will be one party or several (and how many parties per week I'll be running), what sort of characters they'll have, how much infighting will happen, how serious or not the game "vibe" will be, and so forth. I also don't entirely know how interested the players will be in whatever story I've dreamed up or whether they'll have their own ideas (experience tells me to usually expect a combination of both).

Then during the campaign I update the storyboard now and then, to see what sort of "legs" the game has left and whether I need to come up with more ideas. If there's two years worth spun out in front of me at any given time, all is good.

Lan-"I'd type more but lunch is calling"-efan

 

[Ovinomancer]

I have repeatedly stated a clear point: no secret backstory as a consideration in action resolution.

What is unclear about that?

And I've provided actual play reports: I've linked to plenty in this thread; I've given you actual play examples in the post you replied to; I can provide more links if you like - I think I have more actual play threads on these boards than any other poster.

Well, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] clearly sees a difference, since - not very far upthread - he described me as using a "flawed system" in treating the skill challenge involving the advisor and the baron as establishing finality in respect of that matter.

I described the premise of the conflict in the post you replied to: the PCs are fighting goblins. The advisor comes into the game as the leader of the goblin army.

The backstory of the advisor is built up, over the course of play, initially - as I said - as colour, but then evolving into part of the framing.

Authoring backstory in the course of play, as part of establishing the colour around conflicts, the motivations of NPC actors, etc, is pretty-much the opposite of pre-authoring secret backstory and then using it to adjudicate action resolution.

What does this have to do with whether or not it is framing? In an ongoing campaign, story elements persist from scene to scene, from session to session. That is part of what makes something a campaign.

Yes, over the course of play the PCs (and thereby the players) learn new things about the yellow-robed wizard. This is how ongoing RPG play works. The players engage situations via their PCs. Backstory develops; goals are formed, pursued, altered, sometimes achieved.

In the game, other things have been learned too. The PCs have learned more about the Rod of Seven Parts. They've learned more about Torog, Orcus, Lolth and the Queen of Chaos. They've learned more about devils, duergar and their relationship. They've learned a lot more about the Raven Queen.

Most of my games involve this. In my MHRP campaign, the PCs learned things too: they learned that Clan Yashida was behind an attempt to steal Stark technology that was on display in the Smithsonian. This led them to break into a Clan Yashida office building in Tokyo. They also learned that Doctor Doom was behind a separate attempt to steal this technology, and furthermore that he had kidnapped Mariko Yashida. That led them to break into the Latverian embassy in Washington.

The PCs learning things is a failry standard part of RPGing. It's certainly not unique to my games, or the systems that I GM. Here, eg, is a standard player move from Dungeon World:

Spout Lore
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful.​

I don't understand what you think is the issue here.

If the players, via their action declarations for their PCs and their expressions of commitment/aspiration/etc for their PCs, are focused on XYZ, then it is the GM's job to focus the game around XYZ. To quote Eero Tuovinen (again),

The standard narrativistic model
[The GM's] job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​

In the case of my main 4e game, the "action" - as established by the players' creation and play of their PCs - includes the baron, because (among other things) the dwarf fighter/cleric "paladin" PC has establishd a relationship with him, as the notional leader of the PCs; the leader of the goblin army, who is clearly a wizard-type, who speaks especially to the interest of the wizard/invoker PC who has already seen his own home city destroyd by humanoid armies, just as Nerath was generations ago (and the same character is carrying an ancient Nerathi artefact, the Sceptre of Law/Rod of 7 Parts); Vecna, again because of the wizard/invoker's subtle relationship to the god of secrets. Presenting the leader of the goblin army as the baron's advisor is a natural way of interweaving these various concerns. That's part of a GM's job, in this sort of game.

What breadcrumbs are you talking about?

You seem to be assuming - and not based on anything I said - that the whole campaign was oriented towards the conflict with the advisor. That assumption is false.

As I posted in the post you replied to (and quoted), "When approaching a goblin fortress, they see a wizardly type wearing a yellow robe fly off on a flying carpet. They have heard other stories of a wizardly type in yellow robes hanging out suspiciously in the local area. . . . This begins as colour."

At a guess, the stories of the yellow-robed type hanging out suspiciously were introduced into the game in late 2009 or so, when the PCs spoke to a NPC burying dead goblins, who was able to learn the names of the dead by touching them. (This idea is from the LotFP module "Death Frost Doom".)

This "went where the action is" because many of the PCs are Raven Queen cultists. She has deliberately hidden her name to protect herself against her enemies. The ability to learn her name by touching her dead (mortal) body would therefore be very significant. The yellow-robed skulker was - as I said - a piece of colour.

Probably three or so months later - so sometime in the first hald of 2010, I would say - the PCs approached a goblin fortress (I was adapting elements of the 4e module Thunderspire Labyrinth, particularly the Chamber of Eyes). I described a yellow-robed figure flying off on a carpet as the PCs approached. I think, but am not certain after 7 years, that this was in the context of a skill challenge to approach unspotted (the only definite recollection I have of that skill challenge is that it was the first instance in our game of a successful skill check being resolved as "minionising" a NPC, so that a single hit would then take said NPC out).

This obviously drew upon the early reference to a yellow-robed skulker, and established him as the wizard leader of the goblins. (There may also have been some prior interrogation of goblin prisoners. I don't remember now.)

A year or so of play later, the PCs - having defended a village against goblin attack, with partial success - head to the city of Threshold. My presentation of the city combines three published sources: Night's Dark Terror; the Dungeon adventure Heath, with the city of Adakmi; and the 3E module Speaker in Dreams (I can't remember what name it gives to the city). I decide that the city is ruled by a baron (taken from Speaker in Dreams) in an uneasy balance of power with a patriarch (taken from Night's Dark Terror). As best I recall the players chose, at first, to ally with the patriarch. Hence, when I describe the PCs receiving an invitation to dinner with the baron, that is already applying a degree of pressure. When the players arrive at dinner and see the advisor there, and recognise him as the goblin leader, the pressure increases.

I can't remember how many hours or days before running the baron and advisor skill challenge I decided to have the baron's advisor be the PCs' yellow-robed nemesis. I just looked at a file, dated April 21st 2011, which has notes on possible background and framing elements for Threshold, and it doesn't say anthying about the evil wizard being the baron's advisor: the only comment on him is "During Baron’s funeral (or celebration), the PCs will notice Paldemar in the crowd (with Jolenta, if she survived)". So my best guess is, at that time, I hadn't thought of using the wizard as the baron's traitorous advisor.

The actual play post is dated Thursday August 11th 2011, and refers to the session taking place "on the weekend", which would by Sunday August 7th. So some time between April 21st and August 7th - a 108 day window - I got the idea of using the wizard leader of the goblins, the PCs' nemesis, as the baron's advisor, thereby increasing the pressure of the dinner invitation.

It may be that I had that idea first, and then came up with idea of the dinner invitation to bring it into play; or it may be that I first came up with the idea of the dinner invitation - which would have been somewhere in the couple of weeks preceding August 7th - and then decided that the wizard being present, as the baron's treacherous advisor, would increase the pressure even more. I don't now recall - we are talking about stuff nearly six years ago, so I've run over a 100 RPG sessions since then.

In the OP, I characterised railroading as "the GM shaping outcomes to fit a pre-conceived narrative". I have not described - either in the post you quoted, or prior posts, or this post - any shaping of outcomes to fit a pre-conceived narrative. I have described introducing elements of colour, which - in subsequent moments of play - become elements of framing. There is no shaping of outcomes and no preconception of outcomes.

Upthread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and some other posters (maybe [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]?) expresed doubt that running a game in the way I described - ie building up the backstory in response by following the players' leads, by narrating consequences of checks, by framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into conflict - could produce a coherent, rich world. I disagreed (as did some other posters, I think, eg [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]).

You appear to be assuming that, because the skill challenge involving the advisor and the baron incorporated established backstory as part of its framing, that all that backstory must have been authored in advance, with the purpose of pushing the players towards this event. (That is the best sense I am making of your reference to "breadcrumbs".) As I have tried to explain in this post, that (apparent) assumption is mistaken.

You also seem to think I'm lying about how I GM. Why? Instead of accusing me of lying, you could just ask how one establishes and manages backstory without using it to adjudicate action resolution via "behind the scenes" determinations of player success or failure.

I'm not going to counter-fisk, so here goes.

I'm pretty sure your entire response is covered by the reasons I dislike play reports from personal games. I did point out clearly that the example provided about the Advisor story differed distinctly from the other examples because, as a summation of story rather than a specific example of when/how a single element was introduced, it did not seem to follow the pattern of story provided only in response to player intents. That you added that detail was also predicted by me in the post you responded to, but you elided that to stick to taking offense. Ce la vie.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've responded to both these things in multiple posts, begining way upthread when I noted the same apparent category error in a post made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

I will do so again.

Taken at face value the claim that "the gameworld only reacts to the players" makes no sense to me. Adding in the adverb "as determined by the GM" doesn't help, because it's still the case that the gameworld doesn't react to anything. Apparently it's clear to you what is meant, but unfortunately that doesn't help me! (I know that you believe that noone "should need to clarify" these things. All I can do is apologise for my difficulty in making sense of the claim. The metaphor is not working for me.)

In a post following yours [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] refers to "the viewpoint being used to create the fiction". "Viewpoint" here is itself a metaphor - my best reading of it is as a reference to purposes or considerations that guide the authoring of the fiction. If I am misunderstanding what was meant, Ovinomancer no doubt will let me know once again!

So anyway, with that interpretation in mind, here is the nearest true thing that I can see in the general neighbourhood:

Player-driven: The GM authors the gameworld (i) having regard to consistency with the fiction already established in the course of play, (ii) having regard to the concerns/interests of the players as manifested through their creation and their play of their PCs (this is especially relevant when framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into challenging situations, when narrating consequences of failed checks, and the like), and (iii) bound by the outcomes of action resolution. It is worth noting that (iii) cuts both ways: if the players succeed, the GM is bound by that; if the players fail, the GM is bound by that - no retries is a fairly hard rule, whilr no softballing I would say is generally a softer but still important rule.

(NB [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] may disgree with my ranking of the importance of these rules - if so, I think that would reflect some of the differences in our preferences that have come out in this thread eg "scene-framing" vs "MCing".)

GM-driven: The GM authors the gameworld having regard to consistency with the established fiction, where this includes not only fiction already established in the course of play but also fiction authored secretly by the GM. This requirement of consistency can extend to rendering player action declarations for their PCs failures simply on the basis of fictional positioning that is unknown to the players because part of this GM's secret backstory. And a fortiori there is certainly no obligation on the GM, in authoring the gameworld, to have regard to the concerns/interests of the players.​

I haven't gone back through the thread to see the first time I stated something along those lines, but I believe that it's implicit in most of my posts, and especially the discussion with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] earlier in the thread.

Is this what you and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mean? As I've said, it's the nearest true thing in the neighbourhood that I can think of. But because it is basically a restatement of stuff that was already established hundreds of posts ago, I feel that it probably is not what you are saying.

I kinda agree with the poster that said that the division you propose above is more 'good DM' vs 'poor DM'. To me, it seems that your biggest beef with the concept of secret backstory is that you assume it's used to negate player intent and action declaration without the players knowing beforehand. To me, that's just bad DMing -- I've failed as a DM if an element of the backstory acts in this way. I do everything possible to prevent it -- I foreshadow these things, and limit surprises to things discovered by player actions, not their thwarting. Or, I build in the discovery of the secret as part of the challenge so that some failures are accounted for. This is commonly used by me when encountering an unknown enemy that has some ability that would negate a player ability. In these cases, the setting would include strong clues and/or I would modify the difficulty to account for a 'figuring out process'. For social encounters, rumor usually suffices, ("The Baron is accounted to be afraid of nothing. His fearlessness is legendary!") So, while I may engage in the practice of 'secret backstory', it doesn't function in any way like you've presented. Instead, it gives me a way to know what I need to foreshadow, how to best plan encounters, and a lynchpin for immersive and natural storytelling. I don't do as well with off the cuff as I do with a bit of backstory, even if it's a set of mannerisms and a motivation. Heck, mannerism and a goal or motivation are pretty much the majority of my NPC prep. I do it for combatants as well, so even if the players never find out, I know that this group of wandering goblins is looking for a new watering hole to camp and hunt for awhile.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Trade-off is not a synonym for drawback. A trade-off of living in Austaralia is that I don't live in Miami. Which is not, for me, a drawback, as I have no desire to live in Miami, never have done, and don't expect ever to do so.

In other words - a trade-off is not a drawback if the thing you are missing out on is not something that you wanted.

Well, I can't answer that for you or for [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]. But I can tell you why I started the thread: to discuss with other posters what connection, if any, they see between GM judgement calls and railroading.

Did you enter the thread to discuss this, or did you enter the thread so that you could enlighten me about trade-offs you thought I was ignorant of?

Of course it's not a synonym for drawback, but it is a compromise. It means that you don't get everything you want, you make a concession and are now missing something that you'd prefer to have. So, if you have no desire to live in Miami, it's not a trade-off for living in Australia.

And, if you've given something up that's positive for something else that's positive, then it can be said of your preferred system that not having the other positive thing is a drawback -- after all, the best possible outcome is all good things, yes?

 

[Campbell]

Why?

The best (and sometimes only) opportunity to find out something is a bad idea* is when you actually do it!

* - well, badder idea than usual; punching the local ruler in the face usually qualifies as a bad idea to start with...

There's no manipulation of anything to simply not tell a player something her PC has no way of knowing, and letting the consequences fall where they may should said PC blunder into finding it out the hard way. It's simple realism.

On a larger scale, the current discussion in the 5e forum about sandbox play and what happens if a party goes straight into the deep end has some things to say that would also apply to a small-scale example like this.

Lan-"there is nothing wrong with trial-and-error adventuring"-efan

It severely cuts against my interests.

It has severe impacts on skilled play of fictional positioning in order to meaningfully effect change in the game world. If I cannot trust finely honed and well developed skills at playing the fiction to have a significant impact on how things turn out than I cannot meaningfully play the game on a strategic level. If I cannot trust the GM to provide real information I can use to reward my efforts to interrogate the fiction than the entire enterprise becomes suspect. If I cannot rely upon the fiction I feel forced to rely upon the mechanisms of the game. When those mechanisms are also not reliable than I must resort to playing the GM. I don't want to play against the GM. It leads to a social environment at the table I emphatically do not care for.

I should note that I feel the same way about victory that comes out of nowhere as I do about defeat that comes out of nowhere. Nothing takes the winds out of my sails more than unearned success or winning because someone was taking it easy on me. I want my decisions and those of my fellow players to be the most significant factor in determining outcomes.

It severely undercuts my ability to effectively advocate for my character. While related to the above, this is slightly different. In order to play my character as hard as I want to I need to be able to reason about the situations they find themselves in an authentic way. That means reasoning about the fictional world, their place within it, relationships, their intuitions, their knowledge base, and innumerable other details I can not have direct access to.

It has a severe impact on the fantasy of being there in the moment and cuts across my understanding of the world we live in. Sure, we miss things all the time. Usually we should have seen things coming long before they actually reared their heads. There are also a wealth of resources out there for understanding the world in which we live. If something eludes us we can generally learn more about it. People are basically simple animals driven by basically desires, belief systems, and emotions. It's the complex relationships that make things interesting.

It results in severely unsatisfying fiction. Strong narratives hang together and feel meaningfully organic, not contrived. As an audience member when I am hit with a big reveal that was not effectively foreshadowed it feels like a narrative kidney punch. This is not a pleasant experience for me. I have thrown remotes, tossed books across the room, and walked out of movie theaters when writers pull these cheap tricks for shock value. The most effective reveals are things we should have seen coming. I can watch a movie like Fight Club that has a dramatic reveal again and again, enjoying it on new levels because it hangs together organically rather than relying on contrivance.

 

[Lanefan]

It severely cuts against my interests.

It has severe impacts on skilled play of fictional positioning in order to meaningfully effect change in the game world. If I cannot trust finely honed and well developed skills at playing the fiction to have a significant impact on how things turn out than I cannot meaningfully play the game on a strategic level. If I cannot trust the GM to provide real information I can use to reward my efforts to interrogate the fiction than the entire enterprise becomes suspect. If I cannot rely upon the fiction I feel forced to rely upon the mechanisms of the game. When those mechanisms are also not reliable than I must resort to playing the GM. I don't want to play against the GM. It leads to a social environment at the table I emphatically do not care for.

I should note that I feel the same way about victory that comes out of nowhere as I do about defeat that comes out of nowhere. Nothing takes the winds out of my sails more than unearned success or winning because someone was taking it easy on me. I want my decisions and those of my fellow players to be the most significant factor in determining outcomes.

Yet sometimes those same things happen simply due to dice luck. What then? Sometimes you're simply going to lose - or win - no matter what you do, just because the dice have decided it that way. I don't claim to have "finely honed and well developed skills at playing" and nor do I really want to, as mistakes are a lot of what makes it fun; in that way I suspect I qualify as more of a "casual" player type in that the more seriously I take it all the less fun it becomes.

And I favour some realism where possible, and realism tells me you're simply not always going to have all the information you really need. Sometimes you will. Sometimes you'll have more than you need, false rumours and so on being what they are. If in the fiction the Baron is secretly possessed by a demon and your character has no way of knowing that until (for whatever insane reason) you walk up and hit him in the face, so be it. Same goes in reverse: if the fiction (via rumour etc.) has it that the Baron's been possessed and you try to deal with him on that basis only to find there's no demon at all, he's just evil in his own right, so be it.

It severely undercuts my ability to effectively advocate for my character. While related to the above, this is slightly different. In order to play my character as hard as I want to I need to be able to reason about the situations they find themselves in an authentic way. That means reasoning about the fictional world, their place within it, relationships, their intuitions, their knowledge base, and innumerable other details I can not have direct access to.

I just don't think this deeply about it. I know pretty well what makes my character(s) tick, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what they have in mind as goals if anything, and if there's anything specific I need regarding game-world information I'll just ask. I don't see my role as a player as advocating for my character so much as simply playing it according to what it would reasonably (if not always rationally ) do.

It has a severe impact on the fantasy of being there in the moment and cuts across my understanding of the world we live in. Sure, we miss things all the time. Usually we should have seen things coming long before they actually reared their heads.

Ah, now here we come to it. If there's to be foreshadowing in any effective way that means someone (and I nominate the DM) has to know ahead of time what's coming so as to be able to drop in those hints and breadcrumbs and foreshadows.

There are also a wealth of resources out there for understanding the world in which we live. If something eludes us we can generally learn more about it.

In this real-world age of the internet, perhaps. Our characters, usually in a low- or no-tech medieval setting, don't have that. Sure, some divinatory magic can compensate (though in more recent games divinatory magic seems to be a dying art) but it's not the same. So, to play our characters we have to think like they would...largely (and wonderfully!) unburdened by the information overload we have in real life.

It results in severely unsatisfying fiction. Strong narratives hang together and feel meaningfully organic, not contrived. As an audience member when I am hit with a big reveal that was not effectively foreshadowed it feels like a narrative kidney punch. This is not a pleasant experience for me. I have thrown remotes, tossed books across the room, and walked out of movie theaters when writers pull these cheap tricks for shock value. The most effective reveals are things we should have seen coming. I can watch a movie like Fight Club that has a dramatic reveal again and again, enjoying it on new levels because it hangs together organically rather than relying on contrivance.

Funny you should mention this, as I just watched Fight Club the other night for the very first time. Sure, thinking back over it it's easy to see the foreshadowing and breadcrumbs, but at the time they meant nothing.

But again, though, if nobody including the DM knows what the twist is it's impossible to foreshadow to it or build up to it. With Fight Club, obviously pretty much the whole thing is building to the reveal right from the beginning and that's possible only because it has a DM (a.k.a. author) who has a specific end point in mind and has figured out an interesting way to get there. How can you replicate that sort of long-term foreshadowing in a game where nobody knows what's coming next?

I do agree with you in that a strong reveal-based narrative shouldn't rely on contrivance. At the same time, however, in the game setting there's far more likely going to be things one doesn't know than in the real world; and so what may on the surface appear to be contrivance may in fact be a simple inability to either gather or parse enough informaton...you can't find the breadcrumbs either because you didn't notice them (your characters had always put the rumours of the Baron being evil down as malicious gossip, as he'd always been upright with you) or couldn't notice them as they too were hidden (until going to dinner with the Baron you really knew nothing about him beyond his name, and even that was hard to learn as he lives in a shroud of reclusive secrecy).

Lan-"and sometimes what seems like a breadcrumb can in fact just be a red herring"-efan

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Can I ask - what would a RPG look like that was different from this?

As in, what would a game look like that was focused on parts of the gameworld that have not come into play and have not impacted the PCs?

The question is not rhetorical. And I could guess at possible answers, based on my own experience, but I'm wondering what you had in mind.

Well, the Forgotten Realms. There has been an enormous amount published, and I've never run anything in the Great Glacier, for example. Or Maztica for that matter. I haven't actually run a campaign in Calimshan either, but the region has had an indirect influence on the campaign from time to time.

One of the things that I do in my world is that there aren't really +1/2/3 magic items. They are masterwork items, although not all masterwork items have to have a bonus to hit or damage (sometimes they are just decorated with gems, precious metals, etc.). But some of those are due to exotic metals or forging techniques. It's the equivalent of Damascus Steel.

If you're running an Arthurian campaign in England, treasures brought back from the Crusades and weapons made of Damascus Steel are worth something. The tales of those that were there also play into the lore of the campaign and world. Another factor is how the history of those lands plays into the current era. The migration of humans and other races, for example, have an impact on what sort of dungeons and the contents thereof.

The point is, there is a lot of lore and information that is detailed that may never come into play. But in some cases it might have an indirect impact. On the other hand, whatever the payers choose to follow might actually lead them to such a faraway land. In the Realms, with a large number of magical portals, it's also possible to end up there unintentionally. Having that detail available makes it easier for me.

So the intention is not to write or have material available that never comes into play. It's to have such material available in case it might come into play. The other end of the spectrum are those games (or DM advice) that recommends just-in-time authoring of such things. There's a lot of such advice that highlights adventures or supplements that have all sorts of lore and detail that is intended for the DM, but won't necessarily be provided to the players. The advice being that it's wasteful and unnecessary. I disagree, because that sort of depth helps me portray that differently. Could I do that without it? Yes. But I think I do it better when I have more of that available to me. Just the way my brain works.

Then there's the fact that I just like reading/writing about more of the world, and that it's just an enjoyable pastime on its own.

 

[tomBitonti]

And in addition to these outcomes, there's one more:

- the PCs decide to abandon their goal of protecting the villagers and just go off elsewhere, leaving the villagers to sink or swim on their own.

Lan-"where does it say adventuring parties always have to be heroic"-efan

Which is what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said happened in their game. But, which would wreck the current Pathfinder adventure path (Ironfang Invasion). And, which would wreck a lot of tournament or organized play games. For a lot of play, I think, there is an expectation that a number of key moments will be forced by the GM, with players expected to go along with it. Other cases are much more open.

A problem that I have personally with totally open play is having the PC's (not the players) reasonably want to be together. A certain amount of meta-planning seems necessary.

Thx!
TomB