NPC Deception/Persuasion and player agency

[Bedrockgames]

Open world campaigns are typically defined by a single rail car that never really moves. The players are on a large stage and as they purpose to go somewhere, the GM changes the drapes and the furniture on the stage and brings in some props and new players, but there is very little in terms of defined space. You generally cut from scene to scene based on where the players say they want to be because nothing exists until the players go there, so there is generally nothing between point A and point C save a handwave. All props are manufactured as needed according to the dictates of the story as the GM sees it in the moment. At best, you might get the GM deferring some of the time to a random table as a prompt for ideas, but at worst the GM is just listening in to the players talk and deciding what ideas he thinks is clever and wants to use. The whole game is nothing but one long metagame by the GM against or for the players, but because the GM isn't cognizant of their own process of play and because they are accepting player prompts they imagine they are empowering the players. The truth though is that you are setting on a single rail car doing nothing while the stage props are moved by the windows and the GM decides to yank your chain or not depending on what he thinks at the moment is a good story.

This isn't how I envision good play. One of the reasons I am actively avoiding words like story, isn't because I don't want dramatic things in the game or fun and exciting things, it is because I don't even want to think in terms of what ideas are clever or not and therefore allowing them. I want to take an 'okay let's see what happens' approach. Again for me, I do not want to feel unsurprised. One of the experiences that really bummed me out as a GM was when I was running a lot of 3E and running adventures the way you were generally encouraged to run them (a style players at the time usually rather liked). I just kept having the feeling of what's the point, just hand the players my notes or tell them where I think the advent are is going to end up. I want this to feel like a game where I am not rigorously planning out the details of the session before hand, or striving during play to make sure some kind of structure emerges. I just want to see what happens. And through discipline you can definitely make it not about what you as the GM thinks is a good story. If you encourage players to take initiative and you reward initiative by taking it seriously and actively trying to respond in a fair way, you aren't just going to be stringing them along on a cart. It might be a disaster in some other ways. One really hard challenge of this style is it can lead to moments that aren't as exciting. And there often isn't going to be the pacing and rising tension players might have come to expect (at the very least things like that will be sporadic and dependent on circumstances, not guaranteed). So I am not saying this is a perfect approach to play. It serves agency well but it might not serve everyone's idea of fun well (which again is why i think you have to be flexible if your group isn't digging it).

Also back tot he point about paying attention to your own impulses. I find asking yourself "wait is this just what I want?" to be quite healthy. Because that helps you move away from a sense of needing to be in the drivers seat and towards letting things unfold more organically.

But all that aside, you still aren't railroading if you are letting players choose to ignore this adventure or that adventure. They still have agency if you are genuinely letting them make those kinds of choices in a campaign

 

[Bedrockgames]

This thread has strayed way too far into "that depends on what the definition of 'is' is" territory.

We could conduct the discussion in a language without the verb 'to be' and that might help us avoid the 'is' problem

 

[Thomas Shey]

All I can say is I actively don't do this. I genuinely enjoyed being surprised by where players take these things

I'm not saying you do; I'm just saying your approach doesn't make you immune to the potential risk.

I may have missed this point. But I wouldn't argue that you shouldn't try to curb your own biases and intentions. Part of being surprised is knowing how to recognize when your brain is starting to anticipate a particular line of events from an action and realizing that you need to put this in the players hands or in the hands of the dice (or some other mechanism). On social skill rolls, my main reason for wanting to curb those is I just dislike the impact they have a player's direct interaction with the NPCs and vice versa (I find having them be more about the externals than the internals helpful here)

But that is the point; when deciding things like DC or modifiers that do not have objective values, you always need to try and pay attention to your biases. This does not seem intrinsically different.

 

[Celebrim]

But that is the point; when deciding things like DC or modifiers that do not have objective values, you always need to try and pay attention to your biases. This does not seem intrinsically different.

It's not.

GM's should be conscious of all the different ways they could be potentially metagaming and conscious of why they are doing it.

Railroading is unavoidable. You won't be able to prep for everything. You won't be able to preset the difficulty for every possible challenge. You won't be able to correct for all your sources of bias or put down your authority as a GM entirely or achieve some theoretical maximum agency for the player. If you think you are doing that then you are probably blind to what you are actually doing.

What you should instead do is focus on ensuring you are empowering the players enough, that you are giving space to outcomes you didn't foresee in a way that is as fair as you can manage, and that when you consciously put your finger on the scales you are doing so artfully, minimally, and for the right reasons - for the players fun as much or more than for your own.

Social checks are closely connected to this because they can very powerfully change the game. One of the reasons that I think many GMs don't like them is that they can short cut all sorts of gameplay. For example, I'm finding that especially with Force Points playing social skills as I'm used to playing them in Star Wars can get really surprising results. Spend a force point to get 12D in Persuade, and you can achieve a lot pretty consistently. I'm generally OK with that, but I can definitely see how people might find that to be 'easy mode'. Plus, really, what objectively is the difficulty of say convincing Darth Vader to turn to the light side? Should you even allow something like that? Or is it just that 35 is overly conservative regarding just how difficult some things actually are?

 

[KYRON45]

Thirty years of arguing RPG theory I've learned that some of the biggest misunderstandings come from the fact that someone heard some term of art somewhere and knew only from some context and whatever loan words were involved what the word meant and so evolved their own private definition. It's not like railroading as RPG term of art is found in a dictionary. If you look it up in a dictionary you'll find a common definition of it like: "to force somebody to do something before they have had enough time to decide whether or not they want to do it." In a tabletop RPG setting, that's not even "railroading" as the term is usually meant. That's just time pressure, and time pressure may be a perfectly valid thing for a GM to do if the player is taking too long to make a decision in a scene where the character would only have a few moments to decide what to do. If the player is dithering and losing the excitement of the game you may well need to "railroad" them according to the Oxford English dictionary version for the good of the game.

Twenty or so years ago after the upteenth argument on EnWorld as to what constituted railroading where it seemed literally no one was using the same definition and half of them couldn't even coherently articulate what they meant, I started thinking seriously about what the term actually meant and whether it meant anything at all other than "badwrongfun".

If you aren't interested in what I discovered, OK. If you have something to add to what I'm saying, or some corrective thought to introduce, then even better. But as it stands, you don't seem to be doing either one.

I was just making an observation. The word count in this thread is staggering.

I don't think railroading (as i and it seems like most others understand the term) is any kind of bad. Some people prefer it. Some people require it. Some people don't even notice its happening. Some people feel guilty for doing it. Some people resent it. It's just another style of play. Like most things in the human condition it all comes down to its implementation and the personalities involved.

It's at this point in the conversation (i'm not arguing with anyone) that i remind myself that i'm not even really sure what anyone is talking about anymore. That being said i hope you find the joy that you are looking for. I wish you good gaming and a happy new year.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I was just making an observation. The word count in this thread is staggering.

I don't think railroading (as i and it seems like most others understand the term) is any kind of bad. Some people prefer it. Some people require it. Some people don't even notice its happening. Some people feel guilty for doing it. Some people resent it. It's just another style of play. Like most things in the human condition it all comes down to its implementation and the personalities involved.

It's at this point in the conversation (i'm not arguing with anyone) that i remind myself that i'm not even really sure what anyone is talking about anymore. That being said i hope you find the joy that you are looking for. I wish you good gaming and a happy new year.

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to drag this back to discussion of social skills

 

[KYRON45]

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to drag this back to discussion of social skills

Just be polite and people will like you.

Oh no wait, you probably meant like skill check skills.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just be polite and people will like you.

Brushing also helps

 

[Celebrim]

I was just making an observation. The word count in this thread is staggering.

Oh that. Yeah, I'm just getting warmed up. I haven't even had the need for an essay that can't fit in a single post yet.

I don't think railroading (as i and it seems like most others understand the term) is any kind of bad.

As I understand the term, railroading is set of techniques and yes in and of itself it is neither bad nor good. Some of those techniques are more artless than others, but some of them are inevitable results of human limitations. What's bad is creating with your railroading a "railroad" which is the result of overusing those techniques. A "railroad" is a dysfunctional linear adventure in which the participants are feeling constrained by the rails and forced into choices they don't want to make especially when it seems their characters would not make those choices. In a railroad you notice your lack of agency. When you first start to notice it and care depends on you the player. I've been on railroads that other participants seemed to enjoy.

What you shouldn't however do is equate a linear adventure like an Adventure Path with a railroad. Railroads are dysfunctional linear adventures, but not every linear adventure is dysfunctional.

The other mistake is to assume that non-linear adventures are inherently functional and inherently allow agency by virtue of being non-linear. You can have dysfunctional non-linear adventures that lack agency as well. I refer to them by the term "rowboat worlds". The metaphor here is you are placed in a seemingly endless ocean without landmarks, given a rowboat and told you can go anywhere you want.

Happy New Year.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But I don't think you are understanding what the poster is really saying. Unless that person has in mind a game where the GM and players share narrative control or something, I think the point was more about being responsive to player actions and not forcing what you want to happen on them

That is in fact what I was trying to say. I'll also note that this is a principle, an ideal of playstyle, and exceptions always have to be made.