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

[AlViking]

Well the owlbear is a popular spirit animal

That brings up a whole new can of worms (feathers?) because owlbears can't be spirit animals, they're monstrosities! RTFM!

 

[Thomas Shey]

You ran THE Steve Perrin through a game?

For a number of years prior to COVID I either GMed for, or played in games by him pretty regularly. I miss him a lot, as I'd known him even when he wasn't local for decades.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this example falls into the well known category that it is generally acceptable to use certain terms when using it in-group, even if it would be totally unacceptable if used about someone else?

Probably. Its got a very different semantic impact when used in the context of a group where everyone understands it as not an insult than when used in a general case where its liable to be perceived as one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I see your point, but insisting that comment is only valid if it dispensed equally seems too high a standard to me. People comment on things that matter to them. If the comment is legitimate, why should it be considered less so because the poster didn't comment on someone else doing the same thing? Is that logical?

In general I agree with you, but when an environment has broke down into side-taking (as this thread long ago did), I think not making sure you take your own side to task inevitably comes across as a case of just caring because your ox was gored.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I do think a significant part of it is that a lot of people have dealt with either pretty extreme degrees of illusionism, or an extended shell game to avoid finally admitting that player choice doesn't really matter the way the players thought it did. That is, in my three-way taxonomy above, they've been stuck in lack-of-discussion land, or with true illusionism. If that's happened to someone a lot, I could see them taking a rather tough stand, where anything beyond the most basic limitations (like "actions have consequences") smells of pretense and BS, and is thus "railroading". Doubly so if they don't really have any personal desire to play in modules/APs, and thus the "explicit agreement" category doesn't really exist for them--so the only possible ways they could end up in a rigidly linear adventure are someone failing to say that that's what it is, or someone pretending it isn't that when it actually is.

I think there's some foggy space with people who get into things like Adventure Paths without understanding most of them, to be used in anything like total, do require some degree of restraining choice; assuming the GM realizes this and assumes most players do (and that as you say, those that don't want it simply won't play) you can end up with some serious dissonance where the player expects more freedom of action than the GM assumed they'd want when they signed up for playing in the AP.

My GM in one PF2e campaign at one point just had to flat out say that if we went off and did what we started to it would essentially cause a catastrophic failure in the situation (not only ending any ability to further use the AP, but causing a result we very much didn't want), so we pulled on the brakes. But not every GM is prone to being quite that blunt, sometimes for well-intentioned reasons.

 

[Maxperson]

You’ve missed my point.

You’re asserting that railroading is bad. Always and objectively bad. Yet there are people who play that way and enjoy it just fine.

You’re insisting that a word that can be used to describe their game must be negative, and that insistence has implications… namely that their game is negative.

So yeah… I don’t think my neutral use of the word is anywhere near as disrespectful as yours.

I don't think it can be neutral at all. While I agree with you that there are some very specific and rare instances where a railroad isn't bad, I think that in something like 95%-99% of cases, it's bad. For that last little bit of the time, saying something like, "I think that in X specific case railroading isn't bad." is okay. However, if you are just saying X thing is railroading, it's going to be taken as a pejorative by the people who experience it as a bad thing 95%-99% of the time.

There's no way to use it as a blanket statement without it going badly. Take the "Traditional play is railroading" statement. That's insulting and derogatory, regardless of how the writer may have intended it. It doesn't become neutral because of intent. It's simply going to upset a whole lot of people.

Now if the odds are closer to 50/50, intent become a major factor. It can't be assumed to be bad because in a large percentage of instances it isn't negative or derogatory. You have to look at the context and/or stated intent of the author.

 

[Maxperson]

“Power gaming” is another term that has also had such a reclamation.

A lot of us learned to game in an era that had a pretty unified vision as to how games were “supposed” to be played, and had an awful lot of language around ways of playing games wrong.

Reclaiming some of these pejoratives is a way of continuing to push back against those old mindsets, some of which are still quite prevalent in the broader TTRPG space.

I think with power gaming, a lot of it was a misperception that power gaming was munchkinism or other bad extremes. It was reclaimable because the reality was that it wasn't a bad thing inherently.

Railroading is not reclaimable. It's so overwhelmingly viewed as bad, because such in such an overwhelming percentage of the time it's forcing things on people against their will. People just aren't going to ever view forcing things on someone against their will is good or neutral. The very small percentage of cases folks where enter into it willingly isn't enough to fuel a reclamation.

It's a pejorative and will remain so.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course any time a DM volunteers to run a game they should run the setting past the players. I do it by letting people know about my setting on my invite.

But ... it's the DM volunteering to run a game. They have more of a vote than anyone else at the table. Don't like it? Keep looking or run a game yourself. The person that does the majority of the work to run the game should get special treatment and should be able to run whatever game they want as long as they can find players.

If a player is willing to share DMing duties or rotate campaigns they may get special consideration. But it you want to play in a campaign that is consistent, logical, makes sense, that the DM enjoys planning for, building and running? Give the DM a break or find another game more to your liking.

I think we have very different social situations around our games.

All of my games already have players; we're just rotating DM duties so everyone has a turn DMing. When one game is wrapping up, the other people who have ideas for games present their ideas, and whichever concept has the most enthusiasm is the next game.

 

[TwoSix]

It's a pejorative and will remain so.

I guess we'll see.

 

[AlViking]

I think we have very different social situations around our games.

All of my games already have players; we're just rotating DM duties so everyone has a turn DMing. When one game is wrapping up, the other people who have ideas for games present their ideas, and whichever concept has the most enthusiasm is the next game.

That sounds nice, it's also somewhat unusual. I mean, I like DMing and have told my wife that my brain gets a bit itchy if I don't DM for a long time.

If I created new worlds every campaign I'd likely be more open to different species and assumptions, but I'm not. I've invested a lot of time on the world I run my campaign in and every once in a while it may make sense to allow the occasional oddball species.

But if someone else is DMing? They decide what they're willing to run and what they'll have fun running. If I'd really like to run that warforged TK-421 but it's a gritting low tech world I'll change. I would consider anything less disrespectful. That respect goes both ways of course but in general the DM has veto power. If their pitch doesn't work for me I'll skip the campaign.

I would assume that if everyone else is enthusiastic about a campaign but there's no room for exactly the character you want to play but otherwise it sounds fun you'd compromise a bit?