Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[jonesy]

But some bit of backstory known only to the GM is not salient in the same way, in my view. if the audience (ie the players) don't even know of it, I don't see how it counts as plot.

The breadcrumbs, "flexible plots" etc are also not plots. They're not sequences of fictional events. The GM planning, or preparing, to make a certain event part of the shared fiction under certain circumstances, does not actually make it part of the shared fiction. And if it's not part of the shared fiction, then it's certainly not part of the plot of the game.

Players = audience? Your campaign sounds like audience participation theater. The play is improvised as it happens, and the director is merely there to set the themes, locations and to help with the flow of the play? Would you say that this is an accurate assessment of what you are describing?

But what happens when there's something significant going on - or about to go on - that the characters (and thus by extension the players) cannot and do not know anything about? For example; yes they might know the Dusk War is on the horizon but what if you-as-DM have predetermined that the main infantry legions of the invading army are going to be wiped out by a divinely-sent flash flood three miles into their march, rendering the whole war mostly moot?

But as GM I wouldn't. If the Dusk War is a major focus of the campaign, and if the PCs are dedicated to preventing it, then there is no divine flash flood waiting to happen independent of the actions of the PCs. That would make all their actions meaningless - it would be a negation of their choices and the significance of those choices, to re-use a phrase introduced above in discussion with [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION].

Are you saying here that there is no history in your campaign unless the players are there to witness it? Nothing is occurring in the 'background'? To have things happen beyond the fog of war the players actually have to walk into said fog?

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Using slightly more technical terminology, Gygax is advising the GM to carefully manage the introduction of content into the shared fiction. Don't put stuff in that won't conduce to a fun game. And he also says that it would be contrary to the major precepts of the game to first put stuff in, but then manipulate outcomes so that it doesn't cause problems.

To be fair to Gygax, he's not our DM or playing at our table.

With us and I'm sure many other groups, the DM is setting up the campaign world way before folks get around to playing within it. While the granularity of detail will be different, the elements are in play before the game starts. Players then explore and interact as they choose. The idea of a

As such, it is players who control how content is introduced, by choosing to go find it. And often they choose to find it in dangerous places.

For example, we recently had our players decide to engage with a faction that was better equipped. The faction was presented to a given level of detail. When one of the players decided to engage with a powerful being within that faction, additional detail was given, intended to encourage the player to re-consider their choice while still presenting the option to follow it through. Another example would be how the party was massacred after encountering a warlord and his wolf. They'd been recklessly/bravely bundling around the fallen city with much success but finally their luck and resources ran out. Sure, we could have tweaked or removed the warlord and his wolf. But we didn't - and we won't. That's what was there, they explored and found it. They chose how to interact and they died. Good stuff!

With such a style - and I do think it is a difference in style - the DM can draw attention to an element, but typically this occurs after the player has chosen to engage with it. Elements are not typically not telegraphed to the players, simply presented, unless the context would demand otherwise. (Or if we prefer, the players are given the panoramic view and then choose to zoom in on elements through their engagement with said elements). However, the key difference is the DM is not tailoring content for the characters in terms of challenge or difficulty. There's still an element of level-appropriate design of course, though this again this is made long before the players rock up and do what they do. And due to the DM not directly tailoring the level / difficulty of these elements, this is where a DM can choose to nudge a player, which we appreciate. Still, it is the players who choose to enter the Dungeon of Almost Certain Death to All But the Most Powerful, regardless of whatever level they might actually be.

And If I as the DM or whoever amongst us is DMing removed all the the things we didn't want the players to interact with, we'd be removing the game experience we've all signed up to enjoy. It's a simulation approach, granted, and one we really enjoy. Sorry Gygax, if we roll a wandering monster, you get a wandering monster.

 

[pemerton]

If I as the DM or whoever amongst us is DMing removed all the the things we didn't want the players to interact with, we'd be removing the game experience we've all signed up to enjoy. It's a simulation approach, granted, and one we really enjoy. Sorry Gygax, if we roll a wandering monster, you get a wandering monster.

But to go back to your example - of the rotating rusty portal of death - if you include that in the situation, but then the GM gives all sorts of hints and nudges to the player that investigating it is likely to be fatal - well, what was the point of including it in the first place?

 

[pemerton]

Players = audience?

one of the things that informs my views on role playing is that in any given moment all of the players (including the GM if there is one) are both participants and audience.

Narrativist play makes special use of the general role-playing principle that the participants are simultaneously authors and audience.

What I've quoted is what I have in mind.

In the context of the post about plot: if the players don't know what the backstory is - it's just something in the GM's notes - then (whatever else it might be) that backstory is not the plot of the game: it is nothing like "the main events, forming an interrelated sequence".

I have read modules that suffer from this issue (eg just recently, prompted by a thread on rpg.net, I've been looking at some of my OA modules that I've never run): they have all this backstory, which the module writer appears to regard as highly significant, but that - if the module is run more-or-less as presented - is quite unlikely to ever come out, let alone matter, at the table. Whatever we make of that stuff (eg I think of it basically as filler), it is is not going to amount to the plot of the adventure when run.

Your campaign sounds like audience participation theater. The play is improvised as it happens, and the director is merely there to set the themes, locations and to help with the flow of the play? Would you say that this is an accurate assessment of what you are describing?

Maybe, although it's not something I would ever have come up with on my own, and my knowledge of theatre is weak enough that in saying "maybe" I might be making commitments that I'm not aware of!

Christopher Kubasik's "Interactive Tookit" is one set of ideas that I have drawn from. He offers the following advice on GMing (and he uses "Story Entertainment" to describe his approach to RPGing):

Let's start with roleplaying's GM (referee, Storyteller or whatever). This is usually the person who works out the plot, the world and everything that isn't the players'. To a greater or lesser degree, she is above the other players in importance, depending on the group's temperament. In a Story Entertainment, she is just another player. Distinctly different, but no more and no less than any other player. The terms GM and referee fail to convey this spirit of equality. The term Storyteller suggests that the players are passive listeners of her tale. So here's another term for this participant - one that invokes the spirit of Story Entertainments - Fifth Business.

Fifth Business is a term that originates from European opera companies. A character from Robertson Davies' novel, The Fifth Business, describes the' term this way:

You cannot make a plot work without another man, and he is usually a baritone, and he is called in the profession Fifth Business. You must have a Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero's birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody's death, if that is part of the plot. The prima donna and the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all the best music and do all the spectacular things, but you cannot manage the plot without the Fifth Business!​

This certainly sounds a lot like a GM, but it also makes it clear that he's part of the show, not the show itself.

Let's call the players the Leads. They're not players in the GM's game. They're participants in a story. The Fifth Business has a lot more work to do than do the Leads, changing costumes and shaping the story while it's in progress. But the Leads are equal to the Fifth Business. The Leads must react to the characters, incidents and information that the Fifth Business offers, just as players must react to what the GM offers in a roleplaying game. But the Fifth Business must always be on his toes and react to what the Leads offer.

Why?

Because in a Story Entertainment the story doesn't belong to the Fifth Business. The Fifth Business can't decide what the plot is going to be and then run the players through it like mice in a maze. The Leads determine the direction of the story when they create their characters. Remember our definition of plot from the start of this article? What do the characters want? What are their goals? The story is about the attempt to gain those goals. The Fifth Business creates obstacles to those goals.​

That's not a bad account of how I prefer to GM a game.

On the issue of improvisation: as I posted somewhere upthread, I prep things (eg statblocks, maps of locations, etc - either myself, or by using the pubilshed works of others, like modules, Monster Manuals etc). So not every element that I introduce into the game is improvised in that sense. But its introduction into the game is triggered by the events of play. Eg in my BW game I had statted up a renegade elven wanderer, as (i) I'd just downloaded the relevant supplement and wanted to take it out for a spin, and (ii) one of the PCs was an elven ronin-type who had the Belief "Always keep the elven ways", and a renegade elf seemed like a good way to put pressure on that Belief in some fashion. (The fact that I knew of that Belief reveals another dimension to prep, that Kubasik also flags - the players' have set goals/orientations/themes for their PCs.)

When the players were trekking across the Bright Desert to the Abor-Alz, and failed a relevant check, I got my chance: when they arrived at the waterhole at the edge of the desert (where the streams pool before flowing on again and draining into the desert sands), they found that it had been fouled - someone had anticipated their arrival. Investigation revealed that this was the work of an elf, but only a filthy renegade elf would do such a thing! (As it turned out, the elf was working for the dark naga - when the PCs later captured and killed him, that created the context in which the naga needed a new servant, and hence dominated the PC who therefore needed a vessel to catch the blood.)

So the elf as a stat block and concept was not improvised. But the elf as an antagonist in the fiction was introduced in an improvisational way. As a general rule, in a "fail forward" style of play the consequences of failure can't be narrated except in light of what is at stake in the check; and that can't be known until the check is declared; and hence all checks have (of necessity) an improvisational dimension to their resolution.

Are you saying here that there is no history in your campaign unless the players are there to witness it?

No. The PCs might learn of it in other ways. (See eg this actual play post, where I describe a session in which the PC's explored the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, and learned quite a bit of history in the process.)

But if the players don't know something, than - by definition, almost - it is not part of the shared fiction.

Nothing is occurring in the 'background'?

Well, presumably all sorts of things are happening in the gameworld that the PCs don't know about. But in so far as the players don't know about those things, they're not part of the shared fiction of the game.

To have things happen beyond the fog of war the players actually have to walk into said fog?

That sort of stuff would be a consequence of action resolution, not an input into it. Or it might be an element in framing.

For instance, in this session the PCs - having received warning while in the Raven Queen's Mausoleum that the tarrasque had returned to the world - went out to hunt said tarrasque. They found it easily enough, but accompanying it (at a safe distance) were some maruts, who explained that, in accordance with a contract made with the Raven Queen millenia ago, they were there to ensure the realisation of the end times, and to stop anyone interfering with the tarrasque as an engine of this destruction and a herald of the beginning of the end times and the arrival of the Dusk War.

Or, in an earlier session, the PCs spoke to a demon imprisoned on the Feywild, and learned from it that learned that it had been summoned long ago during the Dawn War ("When Miska's armies were marshalling on the Plain of a Thousand Portals") by a powerful drow who had come into the Abyss, in order to ambush a strong and cruel sorceress. But the sorceress had defeated it and trapped it in the grove. (When they asked it the name of the sorceress, it replied that the name had been erased from its memory - and so they worked out that the "sorceress" was the Raven Queen, and hence that the summoner must be Lolth. They later saw a mural in the Raven Queen's mausoleum recording her victory over this demon.)

The backstory is something that informs framing and emerges as part of the process of play. It is not a separate and prior element that I, as GM, use to adjudicate action resolution.

 

[pemerton]

Another comment on "theatre" or "cooperative storytelling": these aren't games. They don't use dice. They don't involve players making "moves".

The games I run are games. More precisely, they're RPGs. They have rules that establish the "moves" the participants are allowed to make. It is the resolution of those moves that generates the events of play, and especially the significant outcomes that (taken as a whole) constitute the "plot" of the game.

 

[pemerton]

First, "nonlinear narratives" are a thing. First example off the top of my head is Memento but there are so many others.

Memento has a linear plot. It unfolds in temporal order. The gimmick of the film is that the plot is presented with the sequence of events reversed.

"railroading" is almost a pejorative in the D&D community. So you coming along and saying the DM making any decision for the campaign that isn't narration (i.e. flavour), decided random, or determined by the player is railroading is poking people in a very sensitive topic.

I didn't say that.

The example of a GM judgement call that I gave in the OP, and expressly denied to be railroading, was of setting a DC.

In subsequent posts I've talked about approaches to framing, and to narrating consequences of failure. At some length.

There are quite a few games that exist and play without a gamemaster.

Sure. But that doesn't respond to my incredulity - which is why, in a thread where I have talked about the role of GM judgement calls in my RPGing, and specified in some detail the role of the GM as I understand and apply it, you would suggest that a GM is not needed.

If events have no unforeseen or expected consequences then descriptions of success and failure are just flavour.

I literally do not understand what basis this statement could rest on.

First, if read literally, an event that has neither unforeseen nor expected consequences has no consequences. Which is to say it's an event that is entirely causally contained within itself. I haven't talked about any such events, and there very existence must be highly controversial. I assume that by "expected" you meant "unexpected"?

But that still leaves me utterly puzzled. For instance, finding a Ring of Protection in a Basic D&D dungeon has no unforeseen or unexpected consequences. It gives you a +1 to AC and to saves, full stop. But it's hardly just flavour!

Furthermore, who said that events have no unforeseen or unexpected consequences? I have posted an example of an unforeseen consequence in this very thread - as a result of trying to carry bodies and blood across town, two PCs have been apprehended by the night watch and taken back to the watch house. That was not foreseen or expected by anyone at the table!

If failure doesn't have many consequences between the immediate and visible, the players can easily narrate those.

How do you know this? Have you tried to run an indie-style RPG in which the players negate their own consequences of failure? And did it work?

I personally think that it raises multiple issues, all of which would tend to conduce towards a less good game. The main one is the so-called "Czege Principle", which is Paul Czege's conjecture, based on experience, that "it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict."

If the players are going to play their PCs hard, doing their best to eke out success, it undercuts that to also have them adopting a "birds eye view" approach of trying to adjudicate failures that will pose challenges to the very characters for whom they are advocating in play. Hence the role of the GM.

If you set the consequences of failure and success then that's a judgement call. You're deciding what happens in each instance based on your ideas and opinions.

The consequences of success are set by the player, not the GM: the player declares an action for his/her PC, a check is framed, and if the check succeeds then the PC gets what s/he hoped for. (Eg a vessel to catch blood in.)

The consequences of failure are narrated by the GM in relation to the action declared by the player, the broader stakes and theme of the game as established by the players, etc. The GM has to make a judgement call, and exercise creativity, but the parameters within which this takes place are not set by the GM. (Eg in the account described upthread, of the PC looking for the mace but instead finding cursed black arrows made by his brother, the parameters for that failure - the existence of cursed arrows, the brother as a mage who got possessed by a balrog, the towers as a place in whose ruins enchanted items might be found - all that was established by the player. Which is why the revelation of the arrows was such a punch in the gut.)

Actions have ripples. Unforeseen consequences. Killing a warlord creates a vacuum of power that is filled by someone. Deciding what happens for each of those actions is a decision.

Sure. The question is when and how are these established?

The PCs in my main 4e game killed Torog. What consequences did this have? Some of these were established by way of framing - eg the emergence of the tarrasque into the world, now that Torog is not there to constrain the imprisoned primordials and other elemental beings. Others are candidates to be narrated as consequences for failure, although - to date - that hasn't come up.

There is no need for me as GM to work out a whole lot of secret stuff in my notebook that records all the consequences of Torog's downfall that I then use to (eg) make secret adjustments to the consequences of player action declarations. And there is certainly no need for me to write down that stuff so I can have the satisfaction of admiring this gameworld that exists only in my head and my notebook and is not part of the actual play of the game at the table!

I'm still making a decision about what the merchant decides to do next. And it's an unforeseen consequence that the players would not/ did not anticipate at the table, allowing the campaign to surprise them.

The key question as far as my approach is concerned is whether you are planning matters of framing; or establishing secret backstory that will be used as a "filter" for resolution of player action declarations that is unknown to them.

It boggles my mind that you've been playing for thirty years for over a half-dozen game systems and running the same campaign for each.
Haven't you played in games run by other DMs? Haven't you ever run a prepublished adventure with a story?

I don't know what you mean by "the same campaign".

I've run OA campaigns (two of them, quite different - one was worldly, the other cosmological); GH campaigns (again, two of them; again, quite different); have a current Dark Sun campaign; have a current MHRP campaign; plus other dribs and drabs. I've run systems including Rolemaster, Runequest, AD&D, 3E, 4e, Burning Wheel, MHRP, maybe a couple of others I'm forgetting at the moment.

But for the past 30 years I have used more-or-less the same GMing technique, of using the players expressed or implicit concerns/goals/aspirations for their PCs to inform my framing of scenes and narration of consequences. My campaigns also have a recurrent tendency to use a lot of history and/or cosmology as framing devices to generate motivations for antagonists, to inform the meaning of the actions of the protagonists, and to give "depth" to the gameworld and support immersion into it. (I would add: for backstory to serve this purpose it has to be known to the players as part of their experience of playing the game. Hence it has to figure in some fashion in both the framing of ingame situations and action resolution. And it has to be available to the players for them to buy into in the play of their PCs.)

In that time I've never run a module strictly as written, as a story to be played through: the closest I've come was running Castle Amber in 3E, but (i) that was not "as written" because I had to convert to 3E on the fly, and (ii) it's a classic D&D module and so doesn't really have a story - it's an exploration crawl. (The Averoigne section gets the closest to having a story, but really it's just a looser setting for a MacGuffin quest.)

When I use modules, I use them as sources of backstory elements, maps, creatures, ideas for situations to run. Modules I have used in this way and would recommend include Bastion of Broken Souls (but ignore the dungeon crawl at the end, and ignore the repeated advice that the interesting NPCs can't be bargained with and must be fought); Night's Dark Terror; H2 and P2 of the 4e modules; Wonders out of Time (a d20 module); G2; D2; B2; and again there are probably others that I'm forgetting.

It's almost a theoretical example. An unrealistic extreme at two ends of the scale.
Much like a true railroad where the players are just running through the game master's novel. It happens but the vast majority most games aren't remotely that bad and the presence of the dice will always cause things not to unfold as planned.

What's the point of the planning? Why plan in the way you describe? What's it for?

 

[Manbearcat]

But what happens when there's something significant going on - or about to go on - that the characters (and thus by extension the players) cannot and do not know anything about? For example; yes they might know the Dusk War is on the horizon but what if you-as-DM have predetermined that the main infantry legions of the invading army are going to be wiped out by a divinely-sent flash flood three miles into their march, rendering the whole war mostly moot?

If this conflict is to be a primary premise which is to be addressed in play * , then yes, the GM subordinating the autonomy of actual play results (where the other participants and system have the say they're supposed to have) is 100 % a moment of GM Force application. This might be enough to tip the scales so the other participants feel the game is a railroad. If its not, further deployment of this kind of Force will surely produce a tipping point.


* Addressed meaning:

1) situation framed
2) PCs advocating for their themes/interested by declaring actions
3) resolution mechanics consulted in-line with the game's procedures
4) scene evolved post-resolution in-line with the game's principles
5) rinse/repeat until all relevent questions are answered
6) tally the fallout and advance to the next action

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

But to go back to your example - of the rotating rusty portal of death - if you include that in the situation, but then the GM gives all sorts of hints and nudges to the player that investigating it is likely to be fatal - well, what was the point of including it in the first place?

Why wouldn't they? If the party wander into a The Dungeon of High Level Monsters and Stuff, then they're going to encounter high level monsters and stuff. Likewise, if a local contains things that might kill, then the local will include such things. The players choose where they go, and will encounter horrible things if they are there to be found (and likewise, if they travel to lovely places, enjoy finding and engaging with lovely things!)

If the DM begins to remove such elements, starts tailoring events to adjust the difficulty/challenge to the player's level or actions then they've move from presenting the world and its elements 'as is' and have begun presenting the world and events, 'as best suits the party'. We tried that - it got old really quickly. To edit the content of the world to accommodate to the PCs level range/power levels, for me as a DM and a player, would be to deny them of the style of play which we enjoy, one where the players can truly tailor their adventure by choosing where they go and what they do.

Now, thankfully none of our DMs label our dungeons 'The Dungeon of High Level Monsters and Stuff'. Nor do we have a habit of calling out what can and can't kill a party member within a local, or the circumstances that might contribute to a death. Simply present, describe and add a touch of creative flourish. The players then state their intent and how they wish to achieve it. After this has been done, here is where the DM may nudge a player by elaborating on some detail or point while setting a challenge rating, if required.

And just to be clear I'm talking about, 'all sorts of nudging'. The vast majority of the time, a simple, clear nudge is enough. Akin to a program prompting you with, 'Are you sure you wish to close this application without saving?' We are simply given an option, supported by some additional details and the possible dire consequences hinted at. We can still exercise our power of choice - and our players do - be it for roleplay reasons (Fred the the 2nd Level Wizard doesn't take truck from anything or anyone, so yes, he tells the Pit Fiend where to shove it) or simply because they want to see what happens.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't get it.

I mean, what if I asserted the following, that completely contradicts what you said:

GM Tolkien railroaded Isildur's player into keeping the ring, because Isildur's player didn't think of it until after the players said "Yes" to the GM's question "So, do you return home from Mordor", and GM Tolkien wouldn't allow a takeback. And then GM Tolkien railroaded Isildur's player by saying, "When the orcs attack you, you put on the ring and turn invisible." And then, when Isildur's player said that he retreated invisibly into the river, the GM said "The ring comes off, and so the orcs can see you and shoot you dead!" and didn't even roll dice for the orc's attacks!, despite the fact that Isildur was a 10th level paladin with 80 hit points.

Etc, etc.​

You'd be wrong if you asserted that since the written plot contradicts you. The written plot was take the ring to Mt. Doom to be destroyed. That is clear. Allowing both Frodo and Isildur to change their minds is the DM actively deciding not to railroad. Tolkien's ever changing notes also indicate that he isn't married to a one true way to tell his story.

 

[Manbearcat]

Players = audience? Your campaign sounds like audience participation theater. The play is improvised as it happens, and the director is merely there to set the themes, locations and to help with the flow of the play? Would you say that this is an accurate assessment of what you are describing?


Are you saying here that there is no history in your campaign unless the players are there to witness it? Nothing is occurring in the 'background'? To have things happen beyond the fog of war the players actually have to walk into said fog?

I know the games @pemerton runs (I run them myself...or rather I run Mouse Guard and Torchbearer instead of Burning Wheel), so I'll jump in on this:

1) Players do not equal audience. All parties at the table equal both participant and audience with different responsibilities. Audience only in the sense that none of us know precisely what comes next (oftentimes "precisely" is a descriptor too far).

2) The play has a proportionately high degree of improv (governed by system) and the backstory is malleable enough that (if something has not yet been firmly established in play) it can be amended as required (with homage to established continuity) in order to escalate or establish thematic conflict/obstacles. The purpose of backstory is (a) to hook into the game's premise and (b) have just enough meat and enough agile mutability to provide obastacles/adversaries for the PCs' interests as the game evolves.

It is in no way a setting for the PCs to be chew scenery in, be passive tourists in, or to engage with"conflict/theme-neutral" stuff in.

3) The players and the game generally establish the themes/premise. The players build their PCs which are laden with thematic interests. They "hook" the GM rather than the inverse (a primary GMing principle of these games is that "the action" is always about what the players have signaled they care about). The system then has various feedbacks that come into play when their thematic interests are at stake/made manifest.

4) The GM's job is to (a) frame conflicts that the players have signaled their PCs care about/are interested in, (b) interpose relevant obstacles/antagonists between the PCs and their goals, (c) advocate for their obstacles/antagonists while the PCs advocate for their protagonists, (d) stridently observe the rules of the game/GMing principles, (e) coherently evolve the fiction after the conflict resolution mechanics, the players, and the GM have all had their say (and the situation has been resolved), then (e) rinse/repeat.

It isn't "cooperative storytelling." No one who plays these games would use that descriptor (and the designers don't use that descriptor either). When it’s done deftly, the immersion factor for the players (through the siege of what their PCs care about...through their own active role in deciding how things turn out/what they're willing to put up to protect/defend it....and through the system's coherent reward cycles that plug into all of that) is extremely high. And all participants are typically surprised by what spins out of play.