Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[Lanefan]

With the prevalence of technology, I find it very easy to run multiple threads simultaneously. My players keep their character sheets on their iPhones or iPads.

Ours are on paper, and stay with the DM between sessions.

Text messaging and email work nicely for communication, and dice rolling apps help resolve challenges. We still run a four-hour session every other week, but modern technology has enhanced our ability to engage D&D in the interim. Now, players only retire their character when said character has completed its goal(s).

For something like this, where one PC takes off to go after what might be a long-term goal, a night in the pub sounds fine.

If a PC gets cut off from the party in mid-adventure, however, and we need to know what it's doing right now then yes: email works sort-of fine. (I say sort-of as I just recently had a situation where a party of ten characters got split into ten parties of one character each, all in the same dungeon; and sorting all that out by email pretty much swore me off of ever running a game by email again)

Lan-"pubs work better"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, if the PC wants to go by himself to become king, that's how I would do it as well. What if the entire party had wanted to go along with the idea to set Cormam up as the barbarian king? Would you still have done it that way, or would you have just adjusted the direction of the campaign towards the north?

If the whole party wants to go with Cormam then I DM the party going with Cormam.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Lan-"pubs work better"-efan

Except for the $100.00 dinner/drinks tab!

 

[Manbearcat]

Don't get me wrong. I like Dungeon World a lot. It's one of the systems I'll run when I want a more cinematic / scene framed games. It is just not as immune to DM force as you often present and that force can be at least as difficult to pick up on as Illusionism is in more outcome-based games like D&D. The power of the DM to pick the resultant moves that fit the narrative is central to the game and can be easily used by the DM to garner a particular play experience. This is beneficial when the DM is using it to maintain a genre convention. It is more problematic when the DM wants to take a game in a particular direction.


Your first example (copied below because the board doesn't do quotes in quotes) appears to be a great example of GM force moving resolution / scene framing towards a specific goal.

Saerie is attempting to win over the dog and outright fails. Which should presumably take the dog out of the scene as an ally/friend. A hard move of Harm is probably unwarranted considering the fiction, though not completely out of character for the animal type. A more typical move would be for the animal to snap at the person, grab the food, and hightail it leaving the two-leg to flounder in the snow. Instead, the move chosen a soft one: the introduction of a previously disclosed (but unconnected to the current scene) environmental hazard that is approaching, but does not require instant reaction (the herd is still far). So the failure -- which would be immutable as a hard move result -- is negated. The DM keeps the dog in play as a potential friend/ally and even signals the animal is still approachable through the description of body language and positioning. Sort of "You failed, but the universe is worse than you so try again".

One might begin to think the DM wants the dog befriended/rescued.

Good. This is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to talk about.

So here are my thoughts on the above situation. First, the

Fiction:

1) Starving, old, deaf sheepdog that has been living in a state of trapped terror for who knows how long.

2) What would a creature like this want? Food, companionship, safety.

3) The Ranger knows animal posture/behavior, entreats the dog with an appropriate show of lack of aggression/sincerity, offers food.

4) That is very powerful leverage in this situation.

Mechanics:

1) Unlike Fate, Cortex+, 4e, DW (and most PbtA conflict resolution) doesn't have formal closure to every scene trope (save for where clocks and things like HP are involved). So here we're just left to follow the game's Agenda and Principles rather than closing out a scene. A few moves will pin you down tightly on a 6- (this thing happens). Most, Parley included, leave it open for the players (through their action/inaction), the fiction, and GM fidelity to Agenda/Principles will tell us when we're done. It certainly isn't a system that mandates for binary responses to moves; a or b are the only permissible outcomes for success failure. In fact, it expects the opposite.

2) This dog would yield no danger whatsoever to the Ranger (Starving Old Dog @ 1 HP, 0 Armor, w[2d4-1] damage. Instinct; to cower in fear or run from danger). If she wanted to kill it, it would be a trivial thing to do so.

3) So having it be aggressive toward her (a) doesn't make a lot of sense to me and (b) doesn't yield any action/adventure/danger.

All together now:

So then, given all of the above together, how do I resolve this situation? Further chase is boring. And she is on top of it, she could track it down again no problem. That doesn't change the situation enough. I look at that sort of resolution in the same way that I look at people who fail to dynamically change the situation in a 4e Skill Challenge and then blame the system for the uninspiring play results ("the king looks uninterested in your in your historical account of his family's oath to take in the refugees of war").

What does Saerie want? She wants to functionally communicate with the dog. What (a) most threatens what she wants, (b) follows from the fiction, and (c) ensures that the game/her life is filled with action/adventure/danger?

To me, the answer is something that will take the dog out completely. I put maddened animals and mutates on the table as an ominous portent earlier in the game. So, how about a herd of stampeding reindeer? Maybe they're mad. Maybe they're running from the coming storm. Maybe something even worse is chasing them? I don't know. However, what I do know and what Saerie's player knows (and obviously Saerie within the fiction) is that a stampede (10) of monstrous reindeer are an absolute deadly threat to a level 3 Dungeon World character. If she has to engage them by herself on the open tundra...it is very, very likely curtains for the PC. And (Far) as a range band isn't significant for a reindeer (you're talking up to 50 MPH in our world). So while they're not "whites of your eyes" range (Near), they are what would be the fictional equivalent of "right on top of you in short order."

She could most likely get out of this pinch on her own, but the dog is a liability here. So I'm basically just proposing the question of "what is this worth to you? How much are you willing to put up for this?" This is the sort of advance/escalation that I would do in Dogs in the Vineyard and I think it applies best (all things considered) here.

So while this is effectively "Show signs of an approaching threat", it is the most amped up version of "approaching threat" as you can legitimately get away with (I did the same with a Rhemorraz later but I foreshadowed it aplenty before). It is a lethal threat to not just the asset she is trying to secure, but also to the PC herself.

QUICK EDIT - If the player would have used aggression as leverage (eg "I advanced threateningly and corner the dog, hoping it will go belly up and submit), I would have definitely attacked. Attacking would have removed the prospects of gaining the dog as an asset (as it would have effectively been suicide).

The context of Leverage/approach, the greater fiction (including the creature's Instinct) surrounding things, and how best to achieve action/adventure/danger (not just to the PC but toward thwarting its intent), means a great deal for the follow-up move that should be made on a 6- Parley move result.

 

[Corwin]

Sometime back, in our OoTA campaign, while in Gauntlgrym it became clear we would need to head back down into the Underdark. More specifically, we'd likely have to eventually go to Menzoberranzan. Well, my exiled drow PC had absolutely zero interest in going anywhere back down there. So instead he decided to strike out on his own, with Glabbagool as his trusty sidekick.

A goliath EK coincidentally joined the group not long after.

IC, the group occasionally ponders how Zak & Glabba might be fairing out in the world and what they're up to.

 

[Maxperson]

GAAAHHH!!!

You use "player" interchangeably to mean both player and character above...they are different things!!!

CHARACTER A runs the city as a magistrate. CHARACTERS B-D keep on adventuring. PLAYER A needs to roll up a replacement character if she wants to be involved in what characters (and players) B-D are doing.

Lan-"yes this is a pet peeve of mine - can you tell?"-efan

LOL My bad

 

[Maxperson]

If the whole party wants to go with Cormam then I DM the party going with Cormam.

That's what I figured.

 

[Lanefan]

Except for the $100.00 dinner/drinks tab!

Way cheaper if one eats at home first...

 

[Xetheral]

Using the same sort of language: the door lacked falcon-sized exits because the PC can cast falconskin. If the player had turned up with a different character; or if the player's had succeeded at rather than failed various checks; then the "world" (ie the shared fiction) would have been quite different.

That's a pretty clear explication of what I am trying to get at as a "player-driven" game. The fact that - as GM - I chose the dwelling place as a tower rather than (say) a house atop a cliff, with windows overlooking the ocean, is (from my point of view) a secondary consideration: the fact that there are multiple ways of narrating a world that is shaped by the choices the players have made doesn't change the fact that it is the players' choices that are driving the narration.

Out of curiousity, did the fact that the player had the ability to cast falconskin increase the odds of success on their check(s) to escape? Because if not, it sounds like the player's ability--which should be excellent for escaping prisons--was instead rendered entirely useless in that circumstance.

When the GM negates player build choices (selecting the ability to cast falconskin) and/or PC actions (wanting to cast falconskin to escape) to achieve a particular result (inability to escape the prison), I consider that the very essence of railroading.

In your game, it wasn't GM fiat that led you to want to keep the PCs in prison--instead it was the rule that required you to thwart the PCs' intention to escape due to the failed roll. But--required to by the system or not--you still made the prison falcon-proof explicitly to negate the PC's ability. If I were the player, I would absolutely feel railroaded in that situation.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that "thwarting player intent" is railroading when it's dictated by the dice just as much as when it's dictated by the GM's plans for the story.

 

[pemerton]

The DM doesn't make all of those decisions. The players can tell the DM that they are going to find a sage that knows about wild men in order to find out where those barbarians live, as well as what their beliefs and social structure consist of. They may or may not be able to find such a sage in the place they are at, but they would be able to go find one somewhere and get things going.

But, as best I can tell, at [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s table the GM makes all those decisions - is there a sage? are there northern barbarians? does the former know anything of the latter? etc.

This is all part of the GM's behind-the-scenes worldbuilding.

Which means that the player action declaration "We look for a sage to try and learn about such-and-such" is, in effect, a request from the players to the GM for the GM to dispense some of that backstory. It's not a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction.

Or there's a bit of stuff sprinkled about by the DM and others suggested by the players.

I'm only going by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s posts. They haven't mentioned this. They've consistently reiterated that the GM authors the campaign backstory.

Just as one instance:

If the party have done their diligence and found 4 or 5 different possibilities for adventure and then decide as a party to ignore them all and instead go north to take over the barbarian tribes then - unless I in fact do want to railroad them for some reason - I'm DMing an attempted takeover of the barbarian tribes. And this might be all complete speculation on the players'/PCs' part - "Hey, lets go see if there's any barbarian tribes we can take over - we can make 'em into our own private army!" - without any actual knowledge of whether such tribes exist or if they do what they might have going for them.

I've bolded the bit that makes it clear that the GM is the author of the gameworld, while the players learn what it is that the GM has authored.