"Railroading" is just a pejorative term for...

[pemerton]

Ariosto, I don't think it's only commercial practice that has led to the preponderance of non-old-style campaign play in contemporary RPGing.

Running an old-style campaign presupposes a GM with a lot of spare time and a large group of willing players who are more interested in the game as such than in the socialising among a group of friends that comes with playing the game.

It also assumes that the story dimension of play - always lurking in a game about players controlling characters who are potential vehicles for protagonism - won't come into the foreground as the main concern of play.

That the social dynamics and aesthetic dynamics tend to head in a different direction from old-style play therefore isn't that surprising, in my view, even putting commercial concerns to one side.

 

[Janx]

I have no idea how to use mult-quote. Manually quoting sux...

But as you note, in status quo settings, the challenges are what the challenges are, and it's up to the players to make up for areas where the adventurers lack necessary resources to deal with those challenges - they are in no way tailored to the adventurers' abilities, skills, or equipment.

Well, I don't put in every encounter just because the PC can handle it (more like I have to go out of my way to include an encounter that could utilize a PC's skill). I should think an adventure contains a variety of encounters, some that are blatant "dude you have a skill for this", and some that are "I wonder how they'll solve it."

I'm not sure how you get from "adventurers lack necessary skills" to "adventurers without significant backstory."

Backstory is page N of the character sheet. The skills, class, equipment are all things the player wants to do or avoid getting hosed by (hence the 10' pole). the backstory is often elements the PC hopes you'll use as a hook (yay! I get to pursue an adventure that focusses on ME). Personal traits are potentially exploitable vulnerabilities for the GM to make a situation challenging in a roleplaying (as in personality) kind of way.

What I've seen is players who try to counter the DM leveragiing any personal weakness by creating a PC with no "holes" to exploit. Not in my games, but my old GM.

Seriously? Castles don't have moats if the characters can't swim? Dungeons don't have spiders unless characters are afraid of them?Okay.

Not literally like that. At some point, the party will come across a river they need to get across, a castle with a moat just through inherent obviousness. But I may never think to mention, "oh by the way, there's a ton of spider webs covering that rare painting you want to grab." Shrodinger's Fear to paraphrase Celebrim.

If you don't mention having a fear, I won't think to have that element, thus it may only occur as a coincidence. Consider the Indiana Jones scene. The snakes are present BECAUSE he is afraid of them. Not because the bad guy put them there. But because the challenge would play against his fear.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

What I've seen is players who try to counter the DM leveragiing any personal weakness by creating a PC with no "holes" to exploit. Not in my games, but my old GM.

I have a habit of that -- more in my case because I don't want to be the centre of attention. I get enough of that at work and as the primary GM. As a player, I like to kick back and work quietly in the group.

If you don't mention having a fear, I won't think to have that element, thus it may only occur as a coincidence. Consider the Indiana Jones scene. The snakes are present BECAUSE he is afraid of them. Not because the bad guy put them there. But because the challenge would play against his fear.

Actually, if you look at the movie franchise as oppposed to just the first movie, the snakes are there because there are snakes. As passive obstacles, he faces snakes in the first, bugs in the second, and rats in the third. He's only afraid of snakes so he breezes through the other two scenes.

 

[Krensky]

Actually, if you look at the movie franchise as oppposed to just the first movie, the snakes are there because there are snakes. As passive obstacles, he faces snakes in the first, bugs in the second, and rats in the third. He's only afraid of snakes so he breezes through the other two scenes.

The only reason the snake is present at the campfire scene in Temple is because he's afraid of snakes, and the same with the snake exhibit in Last Crusade.

To get back on target, to a large degree the character sheet is a 'wishlist'. Horrible term but it'll have to do.

You take character options to build a combat monster who isn't all that hot at social interaction. This says to me "I want to rock the combat mini-game,
but i don't care if I fumble my way through talking with the barmaid or the local baron". Similarly if you put down: afraid of snakes, you will encounter snakes. I won't go out of my way to contrive encounters or scenes with them, but when presented with a choice between snakes and spiders with all other things being equal, I'll be more likely to pick snakes. If you don't like it, fine, your character doesn't have to have fears or whatever.

This is doubly so in games where you get extra build points (or whatever). If you take Arachnophobia as a drawback, it's my duty to make sure you encounter spider semi regularly. Why? Because otherwise it's just free points. A drawback that doesn't come up isn't a drawback. If you don't like it, don't take any drawbacks.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Someone upthread suggested "linear" means "pre-determined". As a general rule, making it up as you go along doesn't involve pre-determination, especially if many of the constraints on what can be added (eg because elements of the gameworld have already been stipulated) are introduced by the players in the course of play...

If, as the game progresses, the GM makes things up in response to the players' choices, so as to foreground elements and themes that the players bring into play and to background elements and themes which they don't, where is the railroad (as in, where is the vitiation of player choice?) Undoubtedly exploratory choices (like in the secret door example) aren't being validated, but then we're not talking about exploratory play here, are we?

It took me a very long time to realize that "making it up as you go along" has multiple meanings. Granted, not as many meanings as "story" to roleplayers, but enough differences to cause confusion in this kind of discussion.

For example, what it means to me is usually not some form of, "pull X out of my subconscious as a quasi-reaction to player A having his character do Z." It seems that is what some people mean, though. Nor does it mean, "treat the player A choosing Z as a choice of what he wants explored, so I'll react with Y, which seems thematically appropriate." No, what it usually means for me is, "I don't have something definitively prepped for player A doing Z, but I do have very clear ideas of how this world works and what the relevant NPCs think and plan. So in that context, I'll have them do K--which is what I probably would have chosen had I thought to prep this material absent any player input."

It is a somewhat "simulation" technique, and obviously different from what most people mean as, "making it up as you go along," which on the surface would normally seem to be the ultimate "anti-sim" technique. Yet, this is so important to me, that I think of it as a tool for "setting integrity," and the players in the game can rarely tell whether I'm working off of prewritten notes, ad hoc decisions, or a mixture.

When discussing, "making it up as you go along," the antecedent of "it" should be precise.

Related, per the Champions disadvantage example, I'll note that we sometimes ran rather traditional (gaming style) Fantasy Hero games where the disadvantages were deliberately somewhat vague. Instead of every character being Hunted by someone they had ticked off prior to play, we gave every character a 20 point generic hunted on the not unreasonable expectation (based on the nature of the players) that they would be ticking off someone on a regular basis. Note that this is not a change of characterization or players having narrative control, but a way to manage a game where most of the interesting things happen in play.

So here we have an explicit flag on the character sheet, negotiated as part of the explicit contract before the game starts, that we will, "make up some antagonists as we go along."

 

[Janx]

good golly, this thread goes on for centuries.

The OT was basically implying that if you don't railroad, nothing gets done. I call BS.

I'm certain that stuff can get done in a sandbox, and in a "quest" focussed game. I really hate all these extra terms floating around.

I write my adventures with an assumption that the party will pursue the goal I wrote my material for. To Find the Murderer, for example. Not a sandbox. I take a chance on knowing the party will pursue the goal I wrote for, but in reality, I chose the goal based on what I think the player's/PC's goals are.

It's worked out thus far.

The OT implied that a session in which the party didn't accomplish anything, was a waste of time, a bad session. I think that can happen in my style, and in a sandbox style. All that has to happen is for the party to refuse to pursue any activity of significance. Sitting in the bar all night, shopping for clothes, etc. Game style doesn't prevent time wasting by players...

Talk about Status Quo or No Myth or Making It Up are just parameters to how a GM runs his game, not as to whether players dick around and get nothing done, to the detriment of their own goals.

I don't like the term Status Quo, as it implies a game world that is unchanging and not PC oriented. I suspect what it really means, a sandbox DM makes a game space with lots of stuff to do, without expectation of the PCs he'll be having. Then the PCs show up and he makes the world react to them.

If the world does not react to the PCs, I'd say that's a lousy game style, as I can get that in Oblivion on my Xbox.

The No Myth style, that seems like you'd have to be prepared to make up everything on the fly, and as Celebrim has discussed had tendencies to suffer from Shrodinger's Product Line due to the nature of having a human GM. The gist is, the party gets what they look for, because the GM has so much he has to create, that ideas handed to him save him work, thus he bites them.

The whole Making It Up thing is funny, because we're talking about a game where everything in it is made up.

The GM is making up stuff before the game, some of it stays in his head, some of it gets written down. Then the game starts.

The PCs decide to go to an undocumented place (say a hat store). The GM now has to invent a hat shop, on the fly.

The PCs decide to go see the mayor, an NPC he has stats for, but wasn't expected to be involved in the game (because nothing presently going on is related to the mayor). Now the GM has to make up dialog, and potential reactions to what the PCs do.

Even the most documented game world has stuff the GM is making up, if not physical entities, their reactions, the causal outcomes of player actions, the present location relative to the players (are they at the bar the PCs go to when looking for them?).

Making it up is just not definitive enough in a game where the GM is making all of it up. The difference is whether there's a foundation of planned data the GM is working from, or is the whole thing spontaneously generated and decided.

 

[HeinorNY]

DMing is also a type of illusionism.
If you run a railroad adventure, but give to the players the illusion of choice, that it's a sandbox and they can do whatever they want, and they buy it, than you're golden.

The best DM I played with were also good liers.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

DMing is also a type of illusionism.
If you run a railroad adventure, but give to the players the illusion of choice, that it's a sandbox and they can do whatever they want, and they buy it, than you're golden.

The best DM I played with were also good liers.

All the players that have enjoyed my games? If you tried this with them, they'd have you hanging upside down from the ceiling, faster than BA's cat could maul Dave after he tried to run a game for the Knights of the Dinner Table.

Because, as you said, if they buy it. And as with a lot of such techniques, it works just fine right up until the moment that it doesn't. Then it fails completely. The problems with illusionism are analogous to an incident I read about several years ago involving a fatal bungie jumping incident. The local police officer was asked if the victim being drunk as a skunk, using bad knots, and using a too-stiff rope contributed to the accident. He allowed as how those didn't help much, but the real problem was bungie jumping off a 40' bridge with a 50' rope.

You can get away with illusionism for a long time, if you stay sober, tie good knots, and use appropriate ropes.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Someone upthread suggested "linear" means "pre-determined". As a general rule, making it up as you go along doesn't involve pre-determination,

Probably depends on how "pre" the pre-determined needs to be. I can make up scenes on the fly, and still have each scene only have one path leading out of it.

But I would tend to agree that for "linear" to have any meaning in terms of scenario design, it has to refer to a planned structure. If you attempt to assign it after the fact it becomes meaningless, because all games follow a single sequence of events.

I guess I'm drawing a distinction between "just in time prep" and true "no myth" play. With "just in time prep" you say, "They're heading to the Old Sawmill. I'll put 12 orcs there and they can find a clue implicating Lord Turshill." (You could use "just in time prep" to create non-linear structures, of course.)

With "no myth" play you say, "You arrive at the Old Sawmill." There may be orcs; there may be a clue. We'll find out together. Such a form is inherently non-linear because there's an essentially infinite number of ways for the PCs to exit a given scene/sequence.

DMing is also a type of illusionism.
If you run a railroad adventure, but give to the players the illusion of choice, that it's a sandbox and they can do whatever they want, and they buy it, than you're golden.

Whether players know it or not, this still has a huge impact on the game.

IME, it tends to make the game significantly less awesome, insofar as it removes the entire point of playing a roleplaying game (as opposed to writing a short story).

 

[HeinorNY]

IME, it tends to make the game significantly less awesome, insofar as it removes the entire point of playing a roleplaying game (as opposed to writing a short story).

Not if the players believe and trust the DM.