D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[FrozenNorth]

I'm not trying to favor anything. As I said above, I'm actually trying to neuter GM Force, as I don't want it associated purely negatively.

Favour is perhaps not the best word. Let’s go back to my Athletics example. Player seeks to use Acrobatics instead of Athletics to parkour up a wall. This is against the system rules, but the DM likes the idea.

I think most people agree this is not GM Force. Why isn’t it under your definition, since the GM is enforcing their preferred outcome against the system constraints?

From my experience, Story games tend to have very little GM Force because they aren't heavily prepped and the GM "moves" are part of the game structure.

To me, the moves goes to the transparency to the Force being used, not the existence of Force.

 

[Campbell]

I don't remember saying that, but who knows at this point! But what I have meant is that all GMs direct the course of the game to some degree. It might not be via actual force though. Though that again depends on the definition of force.

Of course GMs are going to impact the fiction. That's vital and necessary for dynamic play of any role playing game. This is fundamentally a conversation about to what ends the GM is directing the part of the game they have authority over. It's about what we can expect from them.

The answer here can be, but does not need to be curating a story. It's one reasonable expectation, but there are plenty of reasonable expectations including being a curious explorer of the fiction, challenging player skill, et al. There are all sorts of ways to play role playing games. GM Storytelling is one. One that is no more or less valid than any other approach.

Fundamentally treating scene framing in an indie game as the same sort of thing as nudging, fudging, or railroading to a curated story ignores that they are fundamentally acts with different ends. That's incredibly important (to me at least). Sure, they are both exercises of GM authority in their respective games that impacts the scope of the fiction. That's not fundamentally what most people who want to play or run games that do not involve GM Storytelling are seeking to avoid. A strong GM role is a feature of pretty much all the play I enjoy. I just want to generally play in and run games where that particularly end is not something the GM is concerned with (which is often me). I do not see that as fundamentally unreasonable.

Might make finding games more difficult. That's a cross I am willing to bear. Have done so for more than 15 years.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly. I'd also add that it doesn't make much sense to me that something preplanned 1 week ago is any different in nature than something preplanned 1 second ago.

Eh. I think there's something to be said about preplanning that's been directly influenced by the thrust and tone of the session that's going on being a different beast than preplanning done that distant in time.

 

[FrogReaver]

Eh. I think there's something to be said about preplanning that's been directly influenced by the thrust and tone of the session that's going on being a different beast than preplanning done that distant in time.

Sure, I don't mean they will both have the same feel. But we aren't really talking about feels.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

I don't agree. I don't agree even if we confine the discussion to D&D. As a 4e D&D GM I didn't use force. I've GMed AD&D without using force.

Where's the force? A hard move is the GM doing their job to either narrate consequences of action resolution, or to establish an unhappy situation where the player hands them the opportunity on a golden platter.

According to @Ovinomancer's definition of force, whereby a preferred outcome is enacted regardless of player input. The blurred line comes from the GM having a hard move planned (dragon flies away with person) and essentially waiting for an opportunity to use it. It may be justified fictionally, it may be sanctioned by the rules, but according to that definition, it's a method of force.

It is, hmm, argumentatively unfair to insist that the scenario playing out in a PbtA game vs. a D&D game is different because of the rules prescriptions in PbtA games. If the GM opts for a dragon flying off with the player in a D&D game, it does not become more forceful than if he does so in a PbtA game, other considerations remaining roughly equivalent.

Does it follow from the fiction? Is it implemented mechanically similarly (e.g., a "hard move" translating to a consequence for failure on a low roll, a "golden opportunity" when the players look to the GM)? Is player agency otherwise respected?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, I don't mean they will both have the same feel. But we aren't really talking about feels.

I'm not just talking about feel, but about the degree of steering going on; the preplanning 1 second ago is still going to have more ability to deflect events that have already happened in a direction the GM wants than the preplanning a GM did a week ago (which can't account for that).

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

Also, for those who haven't played a good PbtA game, it is difficult to describe how the play process differs from D&D because it's more than the sum of its parts. The mechanics are interlocking and structured to create a gameplay experience in a way that modern D&D mechanics do not. Masks, Monsterhearts, and Apocalypse World use the same system, but each is tailored to a genre and works to cultivate gameplay that diverges greatly from one another.

Various older editions of D&D have elements that create a very different gameplay experience, an experience that has been largely discarded in modern editions. It is striking how the almost incoherent mechanical systems in D&D managed to work together beautifully to craft this experience, long before designers and theorizers had refined their ideas about roleplaying. The combination of random character generation, high lethality, gold-for-XP, random encounters, time tracking, etc. worked together magnificently to create a game that a lot of players rejected in favor of a heavier emphasis on character customization and story-based play.

 

[FrozenNorth]

The purpose of all this is transparently to soften the definition of force so that the distinctions are blurred and the application of force is transformed from a decision to merely a matter of degree.

In reality, aren’t most things a matter of degrees rather than being cut and dried?

 

[Maxperson]

IMO no.

Yeah. 6 sessions to get to level 3? If you spit on an ant you make level 2. That PC is moving very slowly.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe the best way to say what I'm saying is: 'Authorship is one type of Force'. Why you asked? Because if you don't have the ability to force the fiction to adhere to your will then you don't have authorship.

Force is removing agency. Authorship when used incorrectly can remove agency and be force, but if used with the rules and/or accepted social contract is not force. If we agreed(social contract) to play a game where the rules allow the player to author A, B and C, and the DM to author X, Y and Z, authoring under those rules isn't forcing anyone. They've all agreed to be bound by those rules, so agreement to be "forced" is assumed. If you agree with something, you are not being forced to do it, nor is your agency removed.