D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[hawkeyefan]

Because if the fiction reality is undetermined and then it becomes determined, the fictional reality has changed. That's fact. Those are two different states of the fictional reality.

Like your farrier?

All of which is the result of direct PC action.

So what?

 

[Maxperson]

But isn't it the same in combat in dnd? We make an attack, then fictional reality is undetermined until results of attack known. Plus the character may change reality from opponent being alive to being dead.

Not at all. It's nothing like combat. Nothing is undermined because it's all in the present. We determine attackers. We determine attacks. We determine damage. We determine victors. It's all consecutive.

First, the context I'm talking about is undetermined in the past. Those runes have been there for what, thousands of years? And yet they are still undetermined. What the player is doing is determining the undetermined for those thousands of past years.

Second, there's a rather large different between the player determining the undetermined through a metamechanic(the PC isn't doing the determination), and the undetermined future of the combat being determined by mechanics initiated in the fiction by the PCs. Weapon attacks, special PC abilities, spells, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

That doesn't seem right.

If the fictional reality is undermined and then it becomes determined, it becomes set not changed. As in it wasn't there before, now it is.

If reality isn't set, and then it becomes set, it has changed states. Your argument there is semantical and doesn't really change anything. It's still two different states of reality. Unset and set.

Applying that to railroading, IF:

The players THINK the reality is undetermined and that their choices/actions can/will determine it;

BUT ACTUALLY:

the DM determines the reality independently of the players choices/actions (say because he wants the story to go a certain way), but lets the players believe that THEY (the players) determined the reality -

That's railroading. The illusion of choice.

Sure, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in a dungeon with undetermined/unset runes?

 

[Maxperson]

Like your farrier?

The player didn't determine anything there. Nor did the PC. The DM establishing/setting/determining the reality is not unusual in a traditional game. It happens every time he creates an NPC, adventure, or whatever.

 

[Mort]

If reality isn't set, and then it becomes set, it has changed states. Your argument there is semantical and doesn't really change anything. It's still two different states of reality. Unset and set.

I disagree that this is semantics. If something is not determined, then it doesn't yet exist, and might never exist. That's not a state because it's not anything yet. But that's the secondary point here. To the main:

Sure, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in a dungeon with undetermined/unset runes?

Because it matters, it REALLY matters who gets to determine the price of tea or the status of the runes. If the players THINK they have input, because they are making decisions that lead them to believe they have input - but they actually have none (the DM is determining the states regardless of their input) - that's railroading.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If I did leap off a cliff, you beat me there. The DM and players are on the same page in traditional play, therefore if what you and @TwoSix say is true it cannot inherently be railroading when you play traditional play.

These two things have nothing to do with each other.

The “Cunning Expert” character trait in @pemerton ’s game helps define that character’s role and place in the game. You then made some kind of leap describing that as railroading.All I’ve been doing is pointing out how it’s not railroading.

How that means that trad play is not railroading is beyond me.

This is at odds with what you guys have been claiming for years, which is that traditional play is automatically a railroad. Pemerton says it straight out, and others of you agree with him or say it yourselves.

I don’t think that all trad play is a railroad. I think it’s very GM-focused and GM-led. Nothing that you guys have been saying in this thread has made me feel otherwise.

I think that trad GMing is more susceptible to railroading. Keeping information from players and attributing it to “your character wouldn’t know that”, hidden rolls, unknown DCs, and so on. None of that means a game will certainly be a railroad… but they all help allow it.

I'm just pointing it out so that you guys stop making that accusation, since you know(or at least believe) that it's false.

It’s a matter of opinion, I’d say. Different people have different ideas about what constitutes a railroad.

But no, I don’t claim all trad play is railroading.

None at all. What I'd do is look for the candid camera or punk'd folks. I've never encountered that anywhere in my life, or met anyone who told me that they had encountered it. Asking me if it would set of alarms if the DM was an alien is in the same category. It's a nonsensical question.

If it’s so absurd, then why did you bring it up? If it’s not meant to offer some insight into trad play, then why introduce it to this conversation?

What relevance does it have to the topic?

Nonsense. That some of us wouldn't do what you do in our games isn't in any way indicative of railroading on our part.

Sure it may. If I consider a game that doesn’t allow me to have some input on the fiction that happens, if I’m meant to be a tourist witnessing the GM’s world… I’m gonna feel like I’m railroaded. Everything’s predetermined… I mean, that’s a big factor in railroading. Reaching predetermined events.

We can't help the way you feel. All I can do is tell you that your feelings can betray you(getting Star Warsy here). Basically, just because you are feeling railroaded doesn't mean that any sort of railroad is happening. However, if it does make you feel that way, you should avoid those sorts of games.

Mostly it happens in instances of play. A GM makes a decision, and I just think about how I wanted something else to happen. In a Star Trek Adventures fame, I said I wanted my character to move into the hallway of a station we’d sneaked into. BeforeI could describe that I was moving stealthily, hugging the wall of the curving corridor, the GM declared that two people rounded the corner and spotted me. It felt forced to me… this was what the GM decided would happen, and so that was that. I didn’t like it. That was the only instance of it in the entire session… everything else he did was cool. But that moment was a bit of railroading.

Like I said, it’s not about the cackling archvillain or a slippery slope or any of that. It’s very much about the dynamics of play and what constraints there are on the GM and what principles are in place to help set expectations and guide play.

 

[Lanefan]

I would expect play in the games of many folks in this thread to feel at least a bit railroady at times.

Oh, sure - and as with everything, if done in moderation a bit of railroading (or as I call it, "lead 'em by the nose" play) isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Enrahim]

The player didn't determine anything there. Nor did the PC. The DM establishing/setting/determining the reality is not unusual in a traditional game. It happens every time he creates an NPC, adventure, or whatever.

How about the stronghold location described here?

Who is making this claim, in relation to players and their play of their PCs? And what are their examples of it (either RPG texts that suggest it, or actual play that exhibits it)?

I mean, here is an early example I know of, from Gygax's DMG (p 93), discussing player contributions to setting/backstory; it is in the context of building strongholds:

Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that he can do so. You give him a map of the hex where the location is, and of the six surrounding hexes. The player character and his henchmen and various retainers must now go to the construction site, explore and map it, and have construction commence.​

The player didn't propose a high bluff overlooking a river, suitable for the construction of a small concentric castle because he thought that this was the most likely terrain. The player wants his PC to build a castle!

Relating to the thread topic, it seems that Gygax was less conservative about the role of players in contributing to setting/backstory than some of the posters in this thread who frame their expectations for play in terms of D&D.

I think this example is interesting. I didn't see it much discussed when it first came up. An important observation is that this rule is not player facing. Question is if this had been a player facing rule; would this be problematic, or would this actually be fine?

The distinction I see is that here there is an explicit GM filter based on a criterion; and a level of creative freedom on the GM side as to where this feature is. But as long as it is reasonable, it appear player can take an undetermined plot of land and make it set to have certain terrain features that must have been around for a long time.

This example do not set of my alarms in terms of world integrity the way the runes example does. I struggle a bit to pinpoint why.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The player didn't determine anything there. Nor did the PC. The DM establishing/setting/determining the reality is not unusual in a traditional game. It happens every time he creates an NPC, adventure, or whatever.

But did you as GM “change” the fiction? You said earlier in the thread that it meant the farrier had always been there.

Oh, sure - and as with everything, if done in moderation a bit of railroading (or as I call it, "lead 'em by the nose" play) isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I don’t think it’s objectively bad. There’s a huge portion of the hobby that has embraced this style of play. They play adventure paths. I mean… as far as metaphors go, path is maybe a little softer than railroad… but they both mean the same thing.

But subjectively? It depends on what someone wants. I can tolerate a little railroading (like in the Star Trek example I just provided; didn’t like it, but it didn’t make me quit the game) but overall, it’s not what I want to happen in a game, and the more present it is, the more dissatisfied I’ll be with the game.

 

[Enrahim]

Mostly it happens in instances of play. A GM makes a decision, and I just think about how I wanted something else to happen. In a Star Trek Adventures fame, I said I wanted my character to move into the hallway of a station we’d sneaked into. BeforeI could describe that I was moving stealthily, hugging the wall of the curving corridor, the GM declared that two people rounded the corner and spotted me. It felt forced to me… this was what the GM decided would happen, and so that was that. I didn’t like it. That was the only instance of it in the entire session… everything else he did was cool. But that moment was a bit of railroading.

Like I said, it’s not about the cackling archvillain or a slippery slope or any of that. It’s very much about the dynamics of play and what constraints there are on the GM and what principles are in place to help set expectations and guide play.

This example is a bit interesting to me. First of: I assume you agree that one of the GMs tasks in more dynamic play (not map and key), is to figure out things that complicates what the player characters try to acheive? In order to do so the GM need to have an idea about what the characters try to acheive.

The incident you describe appear to fit into this pattern. Your PC clearly wanted to get into a hallway, but encountered a complication in doing so.

The complication also doesn't seem contrieved as you wanting to move stealthly indicate you were aware the area might be populated - and people just standing around in hallways seem more like a crpg thing than a ttrpg thing.

So what made this particular incident of the GM creating a complication trigger your railroading sense, when I guess you have encountered hundreds of complicatons deliberately put out by the GM to complicate your PC progress, without any issue?

(As a side note - would it have felt less railroady if the GM afterward would have showed you their pre-planed map and key, including timeings for people transiting between various locations?)