D&D General Railroads, Illusionism, and Participationism

[Umbran]

The DM is still lying by omission. The placement of two door and the two passages behind going to two different areas is the DM saying that choice matters. Choose one and you will reach X location in the dungeon. Choose the other and you will reach Y location. If both X and Y result in the same thing(assuming the passages don't physically reconnect prior to reaching the ogre), the choice is an illusion(lie) and is railroading.

You seem to be conflating an inaccurate inference on your part to be a statement of truth on the GM's part.

There are three exterior doors on my home. They all lead to the same yard, on the same plot of land. If I look out the window, and I see the neighbor's kids have set up a lemonade stand, I can go out the main door and encounter them. But, if I go out either of the other doors, I will also encounter them.

Am I being "railroaded" into my own yard? Did the architect lie to me by placing three doors that all lead to basically the same place? By the fact that there are separate doors, do they need to lead to separate places that are not basically conjoined in some way?

Which is why I bring myself to ask how the information about the ogre is being communicated. If it is done by implication and inference, rather than explicit statement, I think the argument collapses.

 

[pemerton]

Two things. First, if the players know that the illusionism is happening and are okay with it, then no harm no foul. They've agreed to it. Second, in your inn example there was choice and the players chose. It might not be a major deal, but it matters in the fiction because the are near the exit or back in the corner. If a fight or fire breaks out, their positioning could end up being very important. You didn't negate their choice.

But the analouge to the quantum ogre is that the mysterious stranger comes up to them whichever table they are sitting at - the GM doesn't make a check to see if the mysterious stranger fails to notice them sitting in the corner; or to see if they are occluded by an opening door at just the moment the stranger looks around the inn trying to spot them.

I am very confident that I have both GMed and played in situations in which the choice of seat, of food from the tavern menu, the choice of clothes for PCs, the choice of weapons in some contexts (eg in Moldvay Basic mace vs war hammer is mere colour, as best I recall without going to check my book), was just colour. It's just there for fun, not because anyone thinks it will actually matter to what happens next.

 

[Manbearcat]

One thing I will say in regards to this whole choices / illusionism thing... is that I personally do not put nearly as much stock in having the ability to make meaningful choices as others do. Because quite frankly, meaningful choices to me are meaningless if the results of those choices end up being bland, boring, incomprehensible, or just outright bad. If a poor-quality DM just doesn't have their crap together to produce fun and interesting content... the fact that I could choose how to engage with it doesn't make it any better.

I will almost always take and play through a fantastic DM's personalized and virtually unchangeable, linear, railroady story over a DM who just doesn't do a good job, has bad stories and boring reactions but allows me to make whatever choices I want. There's a reason why 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' books are not seen as the highest level of literary quality, and it's not because you get to choose the direction of the story.

Despite the fact that I really like the lead post (and only disagree on subtilties around the edges), I'm sprinting through this thread. This caught my eye. I just wanted to comment.

I'm assuming you do feel like (i) meaningful choices + (ii) provocative, interesting, intelligible consequences (and subsequent situation framing) can happily ride along together if the GM is skilled and the work the system does to facilitate play is on-point (functional/efficient/rewarding/coherent)?

Right?

You can have all of that stuff together?

If you agree that you can have all of that stuff together...is that preferred for you?

The only reason I can see for that not being preferable (and this is totally a legitimate reason...its actually the reason why Participationism - see lead post - is such a significant cross-section of the play in the hobby) is because the player either (a) doesn't have the energy/zeal to propel play with their cognitive horsepower (maybe they have a life that steals it from them so they have to ration it carefully) and/or (b) they actually want a Setting/Metaplot Tourism experience (they probably want a "passively consuming media" + social engagement experience).

These are the kinds of things I wish we talked about more clearly (that you can have (i) and (ii) riding together but some may not want that because of (a) or (b) ) and how to be honest, critical, and precise about table dynamics + what is actually happening during the play to resolve (or even challenge) those table dynamics.

 

[Mannahnin]

But Choose Your Own Adventure books are railroads. I mean, almost literally - the paths are all laid out and you can draw them up in a little diagram. (I assume that that's what the authors do when they're writing them!) The only exception I recall is the one about UFOs where there was one entry you couldn't get to via any of the choices in the book, and if you turned to it the book commented on what you'd done (I can't remember now if it chided you for cheating or praised you for discovering utopia - I'm remembering something from about 40 years ago).

When I'm making choices in a RPG, of the sort that I enjoy playing, I'm not choosing from a menu, or choosing which of the GM's pre-authored latent situations to activate. I'm making new fiction here-and-now with my PC, and my PC's struggles, at the heart of it.

This is certainly a reason why RPGs are superior to Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Digression:
I wouldn't necessarily call a CYOA a railroad, though. The better ones have all kinds of possible outcomes, rather than one fixed, predetermined plot ending. The one with the UFO, BTW, praises you for finding the utopia. It hints in the text that you have to go outside the boundaries. Other books have "dummy" entries designed to catch "cheating" players and chide them for it. I seem to recall at least one or two instances of this in Steve Jackson's Sorcery!

Here's an interesting article talking about and illustrating (among many other interesting things) how CYOA books got more linear over time:

One Book, Many Readings

An infographical analysis of the structure of the Choose Your Own Adventure books series

samizdat.co

 

[Mort]

But Choose Your Own Adventure books are railroads. I mean, almost literally - the paths are all laid out and you can draw them up in a little diagram. (I assume that that's what the authors do when they're writing them!)

This isn't what railroading means (not in the gaming context).

Railroading isn't limited choice, it's when the players make a specific choice but the GM ignores that choice for what he wanted to happen instead (sometimes it's disguised, sometimes not).

In choose your own adventure books, the reader is presented with something like:

Choice A goto page 154
Choice B goto page 123

As long as the choices are different, that's not railroading.

Railroading, in this context, would be if pages 154 and 123 read exactly the same (despite different outcomes having been suggested).

 

[Umbran]

This is my main argument against "scene-framing" - it simply skips over far too much in between the scenes, and takes away the players' ability to explore the (geographical!) setting on their own terms and at their own pace.

Exploring the geographical setting may not be a meaningful part of every game. If I set a game in modern day Boston, my players living in Massachusetts who all visit the city frequently will not need to explore the city to find out what the city is like - they know that and I am likely setting up to assume their knowledge.

Not all adventures are "location based" such that you must stumble onto the location in order to find the adventure.

There are things that can be explored other than physical geography - if I am running a vampire-hunting game set in Boston, I am not going to expect the PCs to wander the streets with stakes in their hands until they stumble into a lair. I am going to expect the PCs to be engaged with their communities, and have their connections indicate events they might want to investigate. Their exploration is far more likely to be of the politics and relationship network than the physical geography of a known and well-mapped city.

 

[pemerton]

@Campbell

Your post about trusting one another reminded me of my group's last Traveller session, which was earlier this year. A PC had been apprehended trying to break into a NPC noble's ship (don't ask!), and the noble was holding a trial of the PC - she believed herself to have the relevant authority to hold the trial, although the PCs on the planet didn't fully concede the point (don't ask!).

Anyway, the player of the PC first established that she still had all her gear. To which I answered yes - nothing had been said about searching her or taking her stuff. And we confirmed that this included the grenade she was carrying. (It might even have been around this point that she used her psionic invisibility power to make sure the grenade wasn't detected.) And then the player confirmed that there would be a bit where she could say her piece - to which I answered yes, as that seemed to make sense for a trial. And we agreed that that would take place at the "front" of the space they were all in, with everyone else towards the "back" listening to the PC's oration. And then the player explained that, as she was saying her bit standing up the front, she pulled out her grenade and threw it into the crowd of everyone else - the noble NPC, her entourage, and another PC (a secondary character under a different player's control) who was siding with the noble against this PC.

The rest of the table was stunned. I assumed that the grenade was for making a daring escape by eg blowing open a hatch or something, not just blowing everyone up! The player of the secondary PC was outraged, not because of what happened to that PC - Bobby "the Robber" had had dead meat (metaphorically) written on him since he first entered the campaign about 16 sessions earlier, so no one was very surprised or sad to see him go. It was the immorality of the action that shocked the player. A third player laughed at the audacity of it, and then had his PC who was in the vicinity, though not in the blast radius, help tidy up the evidence and finish off the survivors.

If and when the outraged player's main character - also a noble, who at the time of these events was on his ship in a different system - learns what happened, things could get ugly. Another possible source of ugliness may be when the PC who helped with the tidy up learns that the PC noble's NPC girlfriend/partner, who pilots his ship but is also a skilled physician, has been carrying out Alien-style medical experiments on the people put into her medical care, which happens to include the tidy-up PC's NPC girlfriend/friend-with-benefits. (Who came into that medical care as a result of being mauled by the result of the previous experiment on a NPC who had been one of the trial-holding noble's entourage but had been taken prisoner by the PCs.) Now that one is on me (the referee) as the initiator (though the taste for medical experimentation was well established before the NPC hooked up with the PC), but the player of the PC knows and the PC knows or at least very strongly suspects, but isn't doing anything about it because it's the PC's girlfriend/partner and she's the ship's pilot . . .

You kind-of just have to let the madness take its course and see what happens, don't you? It's no one's job to try and lock this stuff down.

 

[pemerton]

This isn't what railroading means (not in the gaming context).

Railroading isn't limited choice, it's when the players make a specific choice but the GM ignores that choice for what he wanted to happen instead (sometimes it's disguised, sometimes not).

In choose your own adventure books, the reader is presented with something like:

Choice A goto page 154
Choice B goto page 123

As long as the choices are different, that's not railroading.

Railroading, in this context, would be if pages 154 and 123 read exactly the same (despite different outcomes having been suggested).

I tend to think that if the outcomes (i) matter - ie something that a player cares about is at stake - and (ii) are prescripted, then it's a railroad.

This is one reason why I don't regard The Alexandrian's "node-based design" as an alternative to railroading.

Others may not agree. As I think the OP recognised, railroading has a normative element to it, and these normative judgements aren't universally shared.

 

[Umbran]

We aren't talking about what NPCs say in game. We're talking about the DM himself lying to the players directly.
Either overtly, "There are two doors in front of the party, one leads to freedom and the other has an ogre behind it.",

So... the GM gives the players objective information about the world that the PCs don't know, out of game, and the players use that in-game?

How many of you who object to this lying also object to metagaming - because this is metagaming.

while knowing that an ogre is going to be behind both doors, or covertly through illusionism, "There are two doors in front of you." while knowing that the players' choice is irrelevant since there will be an ogre behind whatever door they choose.

Again - why do you think the presence of two doors out of one room implies that they go to different places, and failure to have them do so is "lying"? Did the GM assert at session zero that there's no such thing as a redundant path in their game world, or something?

Your incorrect inference does not constitute a lie on the GM's part.

 

[niklinna]

I tend to think that if the outcomes (i) matter - ie something that a player cares about is at stake - and (ii) are prescripted, then it's a railroad.

This is one reason why I don't regard The Alexandrian's "node-based design" as an alternative to railroading.

Others may not agree. As I think the OP recognised, railroading has a normative element to it, and these normative judgements aren't universally shared.

This kind of gets into the balance between preparation and improvisation. A GM has to have some minimum amount of material planned in advance based on likely player action (A, B, and C), but when the players pick option X instead, out go the notes! Different games, and different GMs, support or prefer different balances of prep & improv.

Update: And I have definitely been in sessions where the GM has said, "Well, you picked option X, which I have no prep for, so we are wrapping here for the night and I'll prep that out for you for next time." As well as sessions that ended at a natural decision point and the GM asked us to declare what we want to do so he could prep it out (further).