D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes. Exactly that. Because I want the world to feel like it's a real place where the choice the players make matter. If they go north that's a completely different choice than going south...because different things exist to the north than to the south.

The sort of overprepping you suggest is not needed for the world to feel real to the players. If they go north and see an mysterious ruined tower it doesn't affect their experience one bit whether you made that tower on the spot, had prelpanned it but placed in the direction they decided to go, rolled it from random chart with 66 locations or it was one of the 66 locations you had preplanned and meticulously placed on the map beforehand. The players will not experience your wasted prep. It is meaningless to them.

 

[Mannahnin]

But for the player who cares about winning... the player who constantly complains that the Monk and Ranger are underpowered classes (because their characters in those classes are not in the best position to help the party win)... the player who wants every hit point tallied, every damage roll applied, every rule in the game followed... the player whose only concern about "drama" is the results of how the dice game is played... the player who needs every single encounter placed in time and space and only comes up when the "playing pieces" of their characters move over the space on the "game board" where those encounters are found...

...the improvisor and "story-first" DM is an anathema to everything they play the game for. Because improv is not a game.

Needless to say... in my case, as someone who is and has been a professional theatrical improvisor for more than 25 years... I can tell you that improv is just as much a game as Monopoly is. It might not be random... but randomness is in no way a requirement for a game to be a game. So I can be both an improvisor and a gamer at the same exact time in the exact same game, and thus that DM who makes arbitrary decisions when a monster fall down is playing the game just as much as the other DMs who won't fudge anything.

Eh. I agree, but it's not necessarily about winning. One of the virtues of playing a game by the rules, using the random number generators, to see what happens rather than narrating it collectively in a group storytelling exercise, is that it creates a different feel.

Akin to why some folks like watching sports more or in a different way than watching a movie. A movie is scripted. But when a sports game gets dramatic, it feels more real. The audience is aware that no one has plotted this two minute drill, come from behind drive at the end of the football game. The players and coaches on both sides have fought hard and had the lucky and unlucky breaks to come down to this dramatic moment, and we do not know the outcome until it happens. Of course, on a larger level the drama is over a game still designed to be entertaining. It's not real life or death. But it's still categorically different from a script.

D&D can create a very similar feel, especially when dice are rolled in the open. Did one side make an improbably, miraculously successful or bungled move? We can see it on the dice! A neutral arbiter has determined the outcome rather than it being scripted.

Obviously DMs have a lot of latitude to fool around with this, especially with hidden dice rolls and other concealed information, as we've been discussing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Seems like that rapscallion @Snarf Zagyg is behind all the big threads despite his mild and inoffensive posting style. Stirring up the gamers with his old school wisdom.

This may be due to his habit of creating new threads to reframe an already ongoing discussion so that it's more under his control. Of course, if you try to argue against Snarf, his mild and inoffensive posting style rapidly changes. YMMV.

 

[Oofta]

You can't have one without the other unless there's only one way in or out...and then once outside...you can go any direction you want, provided the terrain isn't impassible.

Yes. Exactly that. Because I want the world to feel like it's a real place where the choice the players make matter. If they go north that's a completely different choice than going south...because different things exist to the north than to the south.

Absolutely. If there's a village to the north and the farmers are coming to your town from there...they're going to be on the north road...not the south road. If the ogre is staking out the south road to waylay people...he's going to be on the south road...not the north road.

Not every choice made is informed.

Space-time. They're connected. You cannot have space without time, nor time without space. Disconnecting an encounter from one or the other give you a quantum ogre problem. If you as the DM decide that the players will encounter an ogre regardless of which door they open (space) or regardless of when they open the door (time)...you're still deciding to use illusionism. Their choice doesn't matter, this encounter is predetermined. Period. It's a bad tool to use.

So what? DMs do it all the time. Players do it all the time. Real people in real life do it all the time.

If you want your world to feel real, yes, they should. Sometimes the PCs will miss things. That's okay. The farmers had important info about some thing and the PCs will find out when they get back to town...if they get back to town.

Yes, they can. But that's still illusionism.

The question is: was there any reason for the players to know that there was a village to the south and not the north before they chose a direction.

If something exists only in the DM's head or notes and has never been confirmed to the players, it doesn't exist yet.

 

[el-remmen]

Aside from at least one person's strikingly absurd one-true-way-ism and humorously arbitrary rules for verisimilitude (which I will admit was once my ideal), what I mostly get from this thread is that many, if not most, people use a range of these tools in different ways, at different times, to different degrees, sometimes more or less expertly than other times or other people - and steadfastly holding on to the extremes at either end, while fine if everyone at the table is into it, is more likely to lead to boring lulls, needless frustration, absurd unchallenging results, just acting out the DM's screenplay and less fun all around.

Once again, I want to do my "I sit in on your home game" docu-series.

 

[Aldarc]

The problem with "the monster dies when I decide they do" is that it means that everyone is aware that their actions in combat don't really matter. The DM has already determined the outcome of the combat - the monster will either survive whatever the PCs throw at it or it will die at a climactic moment.

It's the ultimate (combat) railroad.

Did you know that we can agree on things like this? I'm shocked too.

 

[Umbran]

A DM's primary goal is to ensure that his or her game is fun. That's the first and foremost goal. If moving an encounter will help with that, if adding three more monsters will help, if padding out the HP a bit will help? Then, more power to the DM.

Exactly. Dogma about the tools used should be a distant second to the goal of players having a positive play experience.

 

[Lyxen]

The point of my comparison to stage magic is that even though the stage magician is pretending that something that is not true, is true (which is normally an ingredient of deceit), the magician is not setting out to deceive the audience - in fact, the audience knows they're being fooled, but they are willing to play along.

Of course the stage magician is setting out to deceive the audience, which is not necessarily willing to play along but who accepts that they might indeed be fooled, while at the same time just enjoying the show. There is absolutely no difference with what a DM might do, because in all cases, it's for the fun and entertainment of the audience (and the stage magician needs this badly because if the audience does not have fun or is being made fools, they won't like it and will not come back, just as if there is no "magic").

And exactly like stage magic, the audience knows that they are possibly being fooled, but they don't know when, how often and certainly not how, which absolutely fine as they are indeed playing along. I'm sorry, but you can't call what a stage magician is doing anything else than deception.

So IMO you never need to deceive your players. Like the stage magician and the audience, they can know they're being fooled and be willing to play along all the same. (And just like with a stage magician, it's not strictly necessary for the players to know how your tricks work.)

The stage magician needs to deceive the audience, it's the basis of his job, because magic does not exist in our world. Now, it's up to you, but if I want my villains to be real geniuses, for example, I will have to use some tricks for that, because I don't think I'm an evil genius myself. So no, if you play D&D as a combat game, there is need for that. If you play a complex game of intrigue, then it becomes quite necessary.

So what matters isn't whether you fudge or don't fudge dice, whether the ogre is "quantum" or not, and so on, but your intentions and the players' intentions going into gameplay, your gameplay preferences and the players' gameplay preferences, player buy-in, and how it all fits together.

There, I completely agree, what is a problem for me is when some DMs who play in a certain style absolutely need to label things like railroading, deception, fudging, etc. as bad things. To each his own, using the tool just before does not make one a "bad DM".

IMHO, what makes a DM a bad DM is when a DM is taking decisions with something else than his players' fun in mind. After that, a good intentioned DM might be awkward, or too transparent, or just a beginner, or unsure of himself, or less comfortable with improvisation, but it doesn't bring anything to anyone to call him a bad DM.

 

[Umbran]

The problem with "the monster dies when I decide they do" is that it means that everyone is aware that their actions in combat don't really matter. The DM has already determined the outcome of the combat - the monster will either survive whatever the PCs throw at it or it will die at a climactic moment.

You do realize that his is not necessarily true, right? That you are oversimplifying and making assertions that aren't clearly correct?

Because the GM does NOT necessarily know the outcome before the fight starts. The GM may be watching events, and making decisions based on the pacing and feel of the table. For example, if the fight's been going on for a while, and the party's not doing so great, and the Paladin lands a smite with a critical hit. You know, maybe just letting the beast die at that moment might be better dramatically than dragging it out for later.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The problem with "the monster dies when I decide they do" is that it means that everyone is aware that their actions in combat don't really matter. The DM has already determined the outcome of the combat - the monster will either survive whatever the PCs throw at it or it will die at a climactic moment.

It's the ultimate (combat) railroad.

Right. And if you are playing D&D as a board game to win, you won't like the game. And that's perfectly fair.

But if you aren't that type of player... if winning the game doesn't matter and the drama does... how the drama comes about is of much less concern.