D&D General Railroading - A Different Take

[Dessert Nomad]

I haven't followed this thread all the way through. Are we really talking about really bad behavior or just various forms of munchkinism?

The particular comment you quoted was about players being unreasonable, with an example of players suddenly deciding to completely change the campaign's direction (switching from a particular plot to 'lets be pirates now') and expecting the DM to be able and willing to run the new pirate campaign right off the bat.

"Munchkinism" is one of those vaguely derogatory terms that I avoid using (way too often it means something like 'built a not-ineffective character and/or didn't fall for an obvious trap'), but I don't think the example fits any of the common definitions of the term.

 

[AlViking]

Maybe part of the reason I've had so few bad players over the years, even when running a ton of public games, is that while in general I'm easy going I don't put up with arguments or bad behavior at the table. For example I have no issue with powerful characters but if you're trying to use some known munchkin exploit by bending the rules? Not going to happen. Dislike a ruling I make? We can discuss it briefly during the game but after a minute or so and I'm clear on what the player is asking and it doesn't change anything we can discuss it after the game. Part of that is remaining calm and not getting emotional about this stuff; I calmly make it clear that disruptive behavior isn't allowed.

That did mean that for one FLGS that I DMed for there was a certain group of people that we called "the cheese weasels" - because they took advantage of every exploit and twisted every word of text to their advantage - never wanted me as their DM. It was fine. I always had people that would show up a bit early and make a bee-line to my table because they knew that while I enforced rulings I was fair about it and willing to listen to reason, just maybe hold off on it until after the game so we can continue to play the game.

 

[Deset Gled]

Treating "unreasonable player behavior" like it's part of the game environment is an antipattern. In no recreational activity is it normal to have participants informed on how to operate while including antagonists, as if the handbooks said "if the opponent boxer routinely kicks you in the nether region, you ..." or "if a player refuses to roll dice and just moves their piece onto the good spaces, you ..." --- you just stop playing with them, naturally.

This is kind of a tangent, but I disagree. It is actually extremely common for recreational activities to have participants informed on how to operate with antagonists. There are huge swaths of rules, regulations, and conduct guides for thing like school sports, chess leagues, martial arts tournaments, bar quiz nights, etc, that are all based around the idea that somebody is going to openly antagonize their opponents. In this regard, D&D really is an outlier where we give the DM and players much more responsibility and power to kick individuals out for perceived "unreasonable" behavior rather than codifying it somewhere.

Of course, people need to be coached, rules and procedures are not innately understood, mistakes will be made, etc., so some provisional exception to bad behavior is acceptable and allowable, but to contort the game or sport around uncouth behavior is ridiculous.

Sports in particular are constantly rewritten around uncouth behavior. Baseball's infield fly rule. Football's rules about uniform materials, or StickEm. Uncouth behavior has changed some sports so much they're almost unrecognizable from the incarnations played in the 70s, or earlier.

 

[tetrasodium]

Nope, doesn’t wash. If everyone had properly developed social skills they would discuss until they were on the same page, or decide the game wasn’t for them and walk away with no hard feelings. If reasonable people have a clash of social contracts, they talk it out.

Good example demonstration of how different it goes with a social contract disconnect creating a more complex less radioactive problem! You missed or ignored the bullet points describing those players where the reasons those discussions don't occur like that with an immediate red flag to trigger that discussion though, that part was not important than the developed state of social skills snippet of text you focused on. Given that your post doesn't seem to even acknowledge it I can only assume that it rejects the very idea that the second group in 687 is operating under a different social contract that only partially matches the standard d&d/ttrpg style social contract


When no single action individually raises an immediate radioactive red flag that would invite that simple discussion you think would result it's less noticable to the other players and the discussion plays out differently than when a player is post 688 style threatening staff or whatever

@AlViking that laugh is because"cheese weasels" is funny and made me laugh. High power PCs/games is cool. Video game save scumming level nova->letstakeashortrest->repeat is not (imo) high powered though.

 

[Umbran]

This is kind of a tangent, but I disagree. It is actually extremely common for recreational activities to have participants informed on how to operate with antagonists. There are huge swaths of rules, regulations, and conduct guides for thing like school sports, chess leagues, martial arts tournaments, bar quiz nights, etc, that are all based around the idea that somebody is going to openly antagonize their opponents.

Note that those are mostly organized and operated by some central agency - the school, the league, the bar, and so on.

D&D doesn't generally have that, except in organized play.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Given that your post doesn't seem to even acknowledge it I can only assume that it rejects the very idea that the second group in 687 is operating under a different social contract that only partially matches the standard d&d/ttrpg style social contract

I read it and dismissed it as irrelevant. Positions are not fixed. Reasonable people reason. They discuss there positions and either change them to one that is mutually acceptable, or they agree that no agreement is possible and separate. It is impossible for a reasonable person to be a “problem player” unless it is the DM who is unreasonable.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

This is kind of a tangent, but I disagree. It is actually extremely common for recreational activities to have participants informed on how to operate with antagonists. There are huge swaths of rules, regulations, and conduct guides for thing like school sports, chess leagues, martial arts tournaments, bar quiz nights, etc, that are all based around the idea that somebody is going to openly antagonize their opponents. In this regard, D&D really is an outlier where we give the DM and players much more responsibility and power to kick individuals out for perceived "unreasonable" behavior rather than codifying it somewhere.

Those are all competitive games with opponents and D&D isn't one in it's usual format. It isn't an outlier, it's just not in the category at all, any more than a book club or sewing club or 'hang out and watch a movie' is. None of the participants are classed as opponents' or 'antagonists' of each other, even the DM is not an 'antagonist' to the players in the sense of two chess players facing each other where at the end one or the other (or neither) wins. Also those all have some sort of prize at stake (even if it's just ELO points or prestige like "Muskogee Mudcrabs are the state champions") and some have significant real money stakes, while in typical format RPGs don't bestow any out-of-game prizes or titles.

 

[Deset Gled]

Those are all competitive games with opponents and D&D isn't one in it's usual format. It isn't an outlier, it's just not in the category at all, any more than a book club or sewing club or 'hang out and watch a movie' is. None of the participants are classed as opponents' or 'antagonists' of each other, even the DM is not an 'antagonist' to the players in the sense of two chess players facing each other where at the end one or the other (or neither) wins. Also those all have some sort of prize at stake (even if it's just ELO points or prestige like "Muskogee Mudcrabs are the state champions") and some have significant real money stakes, while in typical format RPGs don't bestow any out-of-game prizes or titles.

Of course, this is moving the goalposts. The original claim was "in no recreational activity". Lots of recreational games are competitive and/or organized activities . D&D itself is only partially unique in this regard. While it is not competitive in the strict sense, it still has "opponents" that the players face, even if they are not intended to win. In any case, the point still remains that codified "don't be a jerk" rules are common outside of D&D.

Note that those are mostly organized and operated by some central agency - the school, the league, the bar, and so on.

D&D doesn't generally have that, except in organized play.

True. But even in organized play, D&D behaves differently from other activities. For example, in every gaming convention that I've ever been to, the DM at the table is not only not beholden to outside rules, they're generally encouraged to be unique. Contrast that to, say, a chess or MTG convention where adhering to league play is considered critical.

Outside of D&D, the most professional organized play is often treated as the base rule set, with less organized play trying to emulate it (schools try to match pro rules, pick-up games with kids tend to follow school rules, etc). But we consider things like the death rules from Adventurers League to be a variant set of D&D rules, and I don't know of anyone who makes an effort to adhere to AL rulings in their home games. So that's another way that D&D is unique from other recreational activities.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

It will forever be weird to me, how many times I hear or read requests for "don't be a jerk" rules to be written out. Since a jerk likely doesn't care about the rules, or they would follow unspoken social etiquette, maybe the rule should be:
"Stop playing with jerks"
Since the non-jerks are much more likely to actually read and follow such a rule. Maybe we should also add the rule "Do the math correctly" because if people need a rule about being a decent human, they might need a reminder that calculating your HP wrong is frowned upon.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Outside of D&D, the most professional organized play is often treated as the base rule set, with less organized play trying to emulate it (schools try to match pro rules, pick-up games with kids tend to follow school rules, etc). But we consider things like the death rules from Adventurers League to be a variant set of D&D rules, and I don't know of anyone who makes an effort to adhere to AL rulings in their home games. So that's another way that D&D is unique from other recreational activities.

The thing is, Adventurer's League is not professional organized play - people don't compete in Adventurer's League games for money and there's no one winning matches or going to playoffs. There are paid DMs who run AL games for money, but they're doing so as individuals providing a service to paying players, not members of a league competing to win games. So even if people were trying to emulate professional organized play, they wouldn't turn to AL rules, since AL rules simply aren't that.

It's not moving the goal posts to point out that D&D is a very different game than the ones you're comparing it to. (There was, in fact, a long thread on here arguing that D&D is not a game at all, though I think everyone eventually got exhausted of it.) It's also not really accurate to say that D&D is "unique" from other recreational activities when the examples you're using where it's different are all competitive games that have professional organized play. D&D as a recreational activity works a lot like people playing other RPGs, people playing board or card games not-for-money, book clubs, crafting clubs, people working out together, and other similar activities, and those don't emulate professional organized play, even if there is such a thing.

Also, AL rules don't even attempt to address the issues the rules being discussed try to address beyond very vague 'don't disrupt the table' guidelines. AL has a lot of rules concerning which rules sources are valid, how to build and advance PCs, what items and money are valid to acquire and use, which adventures are valid to run and what needs to be modified for them, and similar things, but doesn't directly address 'what do you do if players show up and decide to become pirates instead of playing the advertised adventure' or 'what do you do if players complain that you're railroading them by running the adventure the signup sheet said was being run'. It's not at all like formal tournament chess rules that have a lot of specifications about what devices you're allowed to access, how long you have for a turn, what attire is allowed, what specific conduct is or isn't allowed, and so on.