Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9543373">I am trying not to be insulted by this phrasing <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I would honestly need to think about this definition. I think the real genuine definition of a railroad is the GM taking hard measures to keep a game on the course he has set. Merely wanting to control might not quite rise to railroading if the GM is allowing that control to slip. When people say railroad what they mean is the players can't get off the aventure or story path the GM has set no matter what they do: the GM is fixing the game to go in the direction he wants it to go. So the GM doing things like fudging, moving prepped material around so it is always encountered, even if they go in the direction where it wasn't initially placed, etc. Not just simplistically. I think this is absolutely giving the players agency. It is definitely not railroading (a railroad would be blocking the party from the bootlegging endeavor through various means until they return to the manual quest the GM has in mind). Again no one is disputing that the GM makes things happen. But he didn't make the idea for bootlegging happen. That is something the players introduced. Like I said before, I think you are taking the phrasing the poster used overly literally and to listening to what they were trying to say. They were talking about a style of GMing that is reactive to the agendas and actions the players set and take. That doesn't mean the GM stops making things happen in the setting But the point of the style the poster is talking about is to let the players go there and see what happens. Bootlegging is potentially filled with conflict, competition, outright wars for territory, so it need not be dull at all This is a false choice. If the issue is you don't want the game to be boring, then don't make bootlegging boring. No one is saying they are creating the story. But the GM is also not creating the story. The GM is allowing the players to do what they want. The GM had an adventure planned about a manual, but the players didn't go there, so now the game is about bootlegging. That is agency. The story is emerging as a back and forth between what the players decide to do and how the GM and system react. But I would be reluctant to use language like story here. It is an evolving situation Again, no one is saying the GM doesn't make things happen. The point is: it isn't soley the GM deciding where things go. The players have freedom to do what they want, to go where they want and the GM is expected to keep up using a variety of means. Whether the GM is utilizing things like dramatic coincidence, that will be very dependent on the kind of game the GM is running. A lot of Gms who play this way will avoid that stuff, many will be using tables, NPCs motivations, group motivations, setting details as their guideposts for what happens (and the players are always free to interfere with that however they wish and to steer things in other directions). It is an organic process. To be clear here, I am not knocking linear adventures. I am just defending the idea that a GM who says "I let the players decide" is genuinely trying to let the players have agency. I run a range of games. Sometimes I run what I call a dramatic sandbox. Sometimes I run investigative adventures or dungeon crawls. Sometimes I run monster of the week. I also will occasionally blend these approaches together. It depends very much on what I am running and why. I also played a ton of adventure path* and loved it. One frustration I had with gaming, especially my D&D gaming, in the early 2000s, was I never felt surprised enough as a GM (so that is why I explored other approaches like sandbox)I will say this though. If you are running open world, in my opinion, both as GM and player, you are giving the players more freedom, and I would equate that with more agency. However you could argue that isn't always a good thing. You may be giving them too much freedom and not enough focus and would be happier if you constrained the freedom to operating more within a planned adventure. I am not saying sandbox is the best style (I am not even fully advocating for sandbox here). Sandbox in fact can be a pain in the ass if you aren't enjoying yourself. When I do run sandbox type games it is usually because I want a low prep, let's see where the players go, kind of thing. But sometimes I want a proper adventure with structure to it. When I do the later, there is less agency overall (I mean they can up and leave the adventure but that brings the session to a halt). But there isn't no agency, and there isn't less fun. For example I just <a href="https://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-bride-of-liao-manor.html" target="_blank">ran this investigating adventure during Hallowee</a>n. I didn't feel like running a sandbox. I wanted a proper halloween adventure. After that I ran <a href="https://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-frog-gods-daughter.html" target="_blank">this monster hunt that October</a>, then <a href="https://thebedrockblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/temple-of-18-arhats.html" target="_blank">this dungeon crawl</a> to cap off the month. I think people should run whatever works for them. And I think it is a mistake to be a servant to some ideal about 'sandbox' or 'agency' that leads to a game you aren't excited about or have trouble running (generally I am wary of pure sandbox play because I think you do need to have exciting things happening to keep the game fun: but that is just my style). *using this term loosely to just refer to that old structure of adventures built around EL/CR in the 2000s.That is totally fair. I am not telling you what you ought to do at the table. And I think if you are having a session zero you are honoring the agency of the players. And also to be abundantly clear I am not saying adventure paths make you a bad GM. If you and your players like that structure, then that is what you should run</blockquote>

Verification