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

[Janx]

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.)

I like your term "just in time prep" (JITP) to describe the "making it up" that happens in game.

In your example, JITP is defining new game content (a new location, new monsters, and a new clue).

Celebrim's reference to Shrodinger's Trap (or any of his products), refers to JITP activity that creates an entity because the player mentioned it (probably by looking for it). Particularly such that the GM would have forgot to consider if the entity could even be present.

JITP work to create game content to cover a space that was unforseen to be needed, is different than projecting reactions, new activities, and whereabouts of NPCs. Its still subject to Shrodinger, in that if the PCs say "let's check the bar to see if Bob's been there", then the GM may think to put Bob there, so he can move the action along.

I'd like clarification on this "Linear" term.

The PCs go to the saw mill. They find 12 orcs, kill them, and find a clue leading to the Lord. How is this linear (pre-initiative?)

Is it linear because it was written in the adventure notes?
Is it linear if the PCs spontaneously decided to check the mill and I JITP the encounter?
Is it linear because I left a clue to entice the PCs to move towards my expected "final" encounter with the BBEG?
Is it linear because there is a probable outcome (orcs defeated, clue found, PCs follow the clue?
Is it linear because I shuffled some stuff around to entice them toward the BBEG?

I'm not keen on the linear term, as when the encounter itself doesn't seem linear.

Sure, I suspect they'll beat the 12 orcs and find the clue. But technically, they could parley, retreat, sneak and avoid, or even be defeated.

I'm all for content re-use/re-arrangement. I'm not for thwarting of player intent. If the PCs don't want to mess with the Lord, then I shouldn't shuffle content so they still face him.

If the PCs are trying to get to the Lord (presumably involving figuring out the BBEG is the Lord, then going to him), then shuffling some game elements to enable their quest to go forward is acceptable.

Part of that license to rearrange is to get the PCs moving when they fritter their own time (dickering around about hat shopping, instead of finding the man who shot their pa). Or when they mis-interpret a clue, and get in the weeds, to bring in news that turns them around, or to make their dead end actually be the right direction.

In a "if it ain't written thusly, it ain't so" style, I gather that if the PCs go hat shopping, then they waste 4 hours of game time hat shopping unless a random encounter check turns up something. If they keep digging into a dead end of a corridor, then they keep wasting time. If they pursue the wrong suspect, they do that until they stop, and they never solve the mystery.

Just as Shaman assuming that I literally don't put water in the game because the char sheets doesn't say they can swim is taking a concept to a ridiculous extreme, I should hope a sandbox DM exercises some judgement and does something in or out of the game to correct a player stall, even those his notes don't cover it.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I'd like clarification on this "Linear" term.

Good point. Let me unpack that. The presence of a clue doesn't make it linear, but what I was thinking of was specifically JITP where each scene only has one exit:

Location 1 only has clue(s) to Location 2.
Location 2 only has clue(s) to Location 3.
Location 3 only has clue(s) to Location 4.

This is just as linear as if you had drawn a dungeon where every room has a single exit leading to the next room. Whether you draw that dungeon before you start playing or you draw each room as the players enter it doesn't make any difference: It's still a linear structure.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Not if the players believe and trust the DM.
Im not much of a railroader when I DM, more of a dm-by-ear. In most of my campaigns I didn't roll any dice, just threw them behind the screen to make the noise and made up the results. Monster stats sheets were actually just drawings of mountains and nude women.
Was it less awesome for as a DM? Not really, I enjoyed a lot more the world building, NPC RP, dungeoncrafting and the storytelling, didn't care much about rules and numbers.
Call me a big fat phony, but those were decades of fun and epic moments.

I tried to write a response to this, but then I realized I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with "less awesome for as a DM"... if only I could unlock the secrets of that contorted incantation, I'm sure it would all become clear.

 

[Ariosto]

- double post -

 

[Ariosto]

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.

Neither do I!

As I have said many times (perhaps not in this particular thread), there is a feedback loop. There are, quite apart from preference, practical logistical considerations.

And They're All Made Out Of Ticky-Tacky
Also, it's a boondoggle to equate "contemporary RPGing" with D&D, or any other particular game. If the hobby really were just a homogenized pudding, then we should have no use for such particularity as actually naming one glop or another.

I don't go trying to "evangelize" Issaries, White Wolf, etc., into changing their games into D&D -- and I'm not seeing a lot of good coming from the opposite phenomenon. That "One True Wayism" is a pernicious weed in the hobby/industry.

Female Dwarves Have Beards
The shift to dependence on the commercial presentation was, as a practical necessity, afoot as early as the influx of 1977 due to the wide publication of Holmes Basic and the MM.

What the shift in commercial presentation has done is impose the selection pressure I mentioned, and thereby ensure the demographic in question. It increasingly deprecates the old game -- if that gets mentioned at all -- and pushes the railroad as the right way to play.

Welcome To The Party
The fundamental stumbling block, the notion of "the adventure" as a prearranged sequence of events orchestrated by the DM, seems widely already to have become not merely doubleplusgood but so "essential" that doing without it is almost literally unthinkable. People try to get out of that mental box, but can barely touch the edge before falling back in.

Those who are able to grasp it often find this oldest of modes revolutionary. "Look at the Wilderlands! Look at the West Marches! Look at Kingmaker! Look at Points of Light!" The excitement is gratifying, because that's akin to the kind of excitement that got me and many others into D&D in the first place. It's also an indication that TSR and WotC have not just 'lost' but *buried* what made the brand.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

In a "if it ain't written thusly, it ain't so" style, I gather that if the PCs go hat shopping, then they waste 4 hours of game time hat shopping unless a random encounter check turns up something. If they keep digging into a dead end of a corridor, then they keep wasting time. If they pursue the wrong suspect, they do that until they stop, and they never solve the mystery.

Just as Shaman assuming that I literally don't put water in the game because the char sheets doesn't say they can swim is taking a concept to a ridiculous extreme, I should hope a sandbox DM exercises some judgement and does something in or out of the game to correct a player stall, even those his notes don't cover it.

Not just the DM, but the players too. What works is very much going to depend on the group and their preferences. Some people want subtle, social clues, and want everyone to pay attention to them. Others don't mind something about as subtle as a brick to the forehead: "Hey, were you trying to accomplish something with this shopping, because it has been going on for 10 minutes now..." In our group, we start very subtle, but rapidly escalate to OOC statements. I had one incident where I pushed the players too far, asked them which way they wanted to go, and they said, "where the main monster is."

Personally, I've found the most effective means to be OOC, precisely because we are talking player issues here, not character issues. That is, if the players want their characters to shop in town for a whole week, in game--well, that's fine. A week will pass, and any NPCs with an agenda will meanwhile be pursuing it without interference. But we aren't going to spend more than a few minutes of game time on it, because it bores most of the players at the table. Same way with searching that dead end. If the players really want to push it, they can waste as much of their characters' lives searching a dead end, as they want. I'll just cut it off after a few minutes and asked them, search to the max or stop?

 

[pemerton]

It took me a very long time to realize that "making it up as you go along" has multiple meanings.

<snip elaboration of this point>

Nice post - unfortunately I can't XP you at this time.

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.

Like I said upthread, the way I GM approximates to No Myth, but also to the Paul Czege quote I posted - so some prep, often fairly loose as to details of NPC personalities and motivations, and a readiness to revise/precisify in response to play.

On the other hand, as far as likely anatagonists are concerned, my approach is probably closer to just-in-time prep (if I haven't prepped in advance) because 4e doesn't reward on the spot improvisation of combat encounters.

As I see it, the key to avoiding railroading in this sort of play is to be open to a range of resolutions of the scene/encounter. What introduces the No Myth element is that some of those possible resolutions are shaped in the course of play (eg a player decides to have his PC Mind Probe one of the orcs, or to inspect an ancient idol lying under sawdust shavings more closely, or . . . and now I as GM use that to introduce some interesting complication into the situation, and the players respond to that, and I respond to their response . . .).

 

[pemerton]

What works is very much going to depend on the group and their preferences.

<snip>

Personally, I've found the most effective means to be OOC, precisely because we are talking player issues here, not character issues. That is, if the players want their characters to shop in town for a whole week, in game--well, that's fine. A week will pass, and any NPCs with an agenda will meanwhile be pursuing it without interference. But we aren't going to spend more than a few minutes of game time on it, because it bores most of the players at the table. Same way with searching that dead end. If the players really want to push it, they can waste as much of their characters' lives searching a dead end, as they want. I'll just cut it off after a few minutes and asked them, search to the max or stop?

Another good post.

I tend to take a similar approach. I think it's easier with the shopping than the searching, because almost never (in my experience, at least) is the shopping central to player protagonism, whereas searching can be, at least in some circumstances.

I think game mechanics can help with the search thing - for exampe, even in 4e there seems to be an implicit assumption that multiple Perception checks can be rolled to search a given space, whereas I would prefer a "let it ride" approach where a single check is made and that is taken to subsume the whole of the PC's effort to find something in the space concerned. In this way the action resolution mechanics would better conduce to the desired pacing of the game.

 

[Janx]

Good point. Let me unpack that. The presence of a clue doesn't make it linear, but what I was thinking of was specifically JITP where each scene only has one exit:

Location 1 only has clue(s) to Location 2.
Location 2 only has clue(s) to Location 3.
Location 3 only has clue(s) to Location 4.

This is just as linear as if you had drawn a dungeon where every room has a single exit leading to the next room. Whether you draw that dungeon before you start playing or you draw each room as the players enter it doesn't make any difference: It's still a linear structure.

Hmm.. I don't think that's a JITP issue. I can write an adventure on paper that way.

What you've designed is certainly a projected linear path to a goal of meet the BBEG at Location 4.

It doesn't mean that's how it'll play out, given possibilities of defeat, retreat, abandoning the the quest. It also isn't much different than a travel to ThereVille session. Where in the Gm rolled up 4 encounters on the road to ThereVille, the player's stated destination from the end of the last session.

In both scenarios, the players are very likely to hit each encounter, barring an unexpected change. That would definitely be a linear plan.

Though not necessarily a railroad by my definition of FORCING them to go to location 4, or to go to ThereVille. They are welcome to use divinitation, information gathering, teleport spells to find alternatives. In addition, there may be a number of possible choices to get from each location to the next (or clue to clue).

After the fact, what HAS transpired is obviously linear. Before the fact, there's a lot of activities that have probable trajectories, therefore naturally being linear.

The PCs are going to look for clues to who the BBEG is
The PCs are going to then find the BBEG
the PCs are going to confront the BBEG

Pretty linear. Assuming the players goal is "confront BBEGs" that's pretty much how it will play out, until the party fails, aborts, or succeeds.

But I think I have defined Linear at the Macro level, in that the path to any player goal tends to be linear, and BotE is defining the Micro level, where within the chain of encounters to pursue that goal, a tightly linear assumption is undesirable.


I suspect then, that a discussion of "Linear" in terms of GMing approach and adoptance of generally accepted best practices is to minimize the amount of Linear game expectation at the micro level.

 

[Ariosto]

"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."

Same here.

Prof. M.A.R. Barker has published reams of material on Tékumel, but his ability to do that depended on the world first "living" in his mind. Even Ed Greenwood, whose Forgotten Realms have been detailed extensively by many other hands, does not (from what I have read) bury himself in reference works.

E. Gary Gygax for many years resisted pleas for his Greyhawk Castle dungeons partly because they had never existed in anything near the form he would expect to present as a commercial product. His co-DM, Rob Kuntz, has released some relatively "raw" examples of his own maps and keys from Kalibruhn/Greyhawk.

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.

With 3E, it seemed to me that the new D&D was rather reminiscent of the perennial Champions -- albeit not as well engineered, in my view. However, the trend in D&D over the past decade has been more and more away from "a game where most of the interesting things happen in play". The sub-game of "builds" and "back story" has come to loom almost as the main event!