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

[Dannyalcatraz]

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

Mod Note:

The Admiral has already been in here asking certain people- without naming- to stop arguing over who is being more offensive. In RED text, even. Apparently, you don’t think you were one of the people he was addressing.

TBH, I don’t know either. But even if you weren’t, it should have been taken as a general warning against anyone arguing along the same lines. So, threadboot 4 U.

Anyone else?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, that's just a normal sandbox style campaign, far as I can tell. While those aren't as common as they once were even within the D&D sphere, I'd hardly call it really unusual.

Nor would I. But it's not a specific campaign with a beginning, end, and points along the way. More like, but not the same as, what @Lanefan does in my estimation.

 

[clearstream]

Communication doesn’t require consensus.

Strictly speaking, communication, at least in language, requires consensus as to the meanings of words.

The only reason you can understand the above to agree or disagree with it, is through that consensus. This, too.

 

[Aldarc]

No hawkeyefan or pemerton in this thread anymore? Yeah, I would say that this conversation has now reached a dead end. Maybe it's just time to close the thread and be done with it.

But taking @Dannyalcatraz's "Anyone else?" offer is also unironically pretty tempting considering the direction this thread is heading.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, actually, yes it makes perfect sense. Very, very few people have ever played in these open, multi-year campaigns. Even back in the day, it was very uncommon for people to play that way. It's not like there weren't serial adventures back then - GDQ, A1-4, the U series, just to name a few. And, the setup of AD&D lends itself very strongly to retiring characters after name level, that's why you got a keep and all that kind of stuff. That told players it was time to retire.

So, if every time you use the word campaign, you are using it differently than most people around you, you are deliberately obscuring communication. And it's not like you don't know that you are using the word differently than everyone else. Because you've been told repeatedly that no one uses the word the way you use it.

Now, campaign has, AFAIK, no connotations attached to it at all. Negative or positive. I cannot think of any connotative meaning.

Railroading OTOH, has been pretty much universally used as a negative for decades. It's in the same category as Monty Haul, or various other negatively charged terms. I cannot think of a single example where it isn't used negatively. "This AP is a railroad" is never meant neutrally or positively. It's always understood in a negative context.

Now, if you want to keep using a term that you know everyone around you understands as a negative, and then insist that just because you personally don't think it's negative, that's not on them. That's on you. You're causing the break down in communication, particularly when there is a perfectly neutral term - linear - that no one would object to.

The only connotation I can think of for "campaign" is that it'll last a relatively decent time--not necessarily a "long-runner", since people usually use more specific terms when they want to communicate that idea. But it's generally in contrast to a single-adventure or "one-shot", where the expectation is brief and focused. I would be a little surprised to hear, say, a single-month game being called a "campaign".

But beyond that, yeah, it's pretty much connotation-free and lacks any positive or negative implication.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If they think the label "railroading" applies, why should they not apply it?

Same reason why anyone would argue against anyone else's application of a term, when the user believes they're correct: because the person arguing against it believes they aren't.

Your explanation relies upon "railroading" having a different meaning from "linear". I'm saying that's right, so that -- as you explain -- someone may indeed try to disguise the one as the other. Disguising something as itself isn't deception.

I was responding to others who had asserted that "railroading" is always deceptive. I don't think that's true. I think it can exist without deception. Hence, my three-way categorization: linearity, when it's all above board and everyone knows what's up; inflexibility, when it's all tacit hope that things will go with the flow; and illusionism, when it's outright deceptive. I presented why I thought someone might confuse mere inflexibility with outright illusionism.

I was also responding to an assertion that railroading can only exist if someone "pushes" against its boundaries--you can't find out you're on rails unless you try to go off of them. That implies more...active intentionality than I think is required. "Testing" the rails can be something as small as roleplaying in a way that doesn't conform, and thus generates a big ol' hoopla despite being seemingly unimportant. Or it could be a particular beat being especially jarring despite not being something the players actively resisted; a ham-fisted transition, for example, could make it clear that important things are being skipped or ignored or downplayed so that the one correct result can play out. Analogically: a poorly-designed roller coaster can fail to hold the cars to the tracks, if the designers put in a turn too sharp for the cars to actually follow. Thats obviously quite rare, train derailments of any kind are rare, but they can happen even without the party actively doing much if anything.

 

[Hussar]

The only connotation I can think of for "campaign" is that it'll last a relatively decent time--not necessarily a "long-runner", since people usually use more specific terms when they want to communicate that idea. But it's generally in contrast to a single-adventure or "one-shot", where the expectation is brief and focused. I would be a little surprised to hear, say, a single-month game being called a "campaign".

But beyond that, yeah, it's pretty much connotation-free and lacks any positive or negative implication.

And, really, that's not even the connotative meaning in context. "relatively decent time" is pretty much the denotative meaning of a campaign. Typically differentiated from one shot or single adventure (which might be a couple of sessions long, but, isn't really meant as a campaign). So, yeah, I doubt many people would call a month long single adventure a "campaign". Granted, I suppose, where the cut off line is a bit fuzzy, but, it's not like it generally matters that much.

And yeah, there's certainly not any positive or negative associations with any of the three - one shot, single adventure or campaign. Really, there generally aren't a lot of negative connotations for most of the terms. Linear or sandbox aren't really positive or negative. It might be good or bad depending on what you want to play, but, that's not really an issue either.

 

[Lanefan]

And, really, that's not even the connotative meaning in context. "relatively decent time" is pretty much the denotative meaning of a campaign. Typically differentiated from one shot or single adventure (which might be a couple of sessions long, but, isn't really meant as a campaign). So, yeah, I doubt many people would call a month long single adventure a "campaign". Granted, I suppose, where the cut off line is a bit fuzzy, but, it's not like it generally matters that much.

It also depends on a table's expected pace of play. Even just a single adventure here can take us 5-10 sessions (i.e. 1-3 months), where it seems other tables might blast through the same adventure in 1-3 sessions.

And yeah, there's certainly not any positive or negative associations with any of the three - one shot, single adventure or campaign. Really, there generally aren't a lot of negative connotations for most of the terms. Linear or sandbox aren't really positive or negative. It might be good or bad depending on what you want to play, but, that's not really an issue either.

Agreed.

"Railroad" isn't often seen kindly, even sometimes by those who do it.

And whether "metagaming" is seen as bad or not probably depends on one's degree of acceptance and-or enjoyment of it.

 

[AlViking]

Time to retire that one character. Not time to sink the whole campaign. Instead, you'd roll up something else and keep going, or take your original character's hench on as your main PC, or pull another one out of the stable and run it for a while; meanwhile the greater campaign just keeps chuggin' along for as long as the DM is willing to run it.

And I very much suspect that longer-running style of play was considerably more common - particularly among groups of friends, as opposed to gaming clubs and RPGA play - back in the day than you're giving it credit for.

I started way, way back in high school and we ran with the same characters for years. I even started work on the world I still use back then. Our idea was a little more nebulous back then, but my experience isn't that much different. Sadly we all had to move because it was a small farming community.

I played a little bit in college, but later on when I started playing again I just assumed everyone ran long term campaigns unless it was a public game.

So I don't know how common your experience was, but it wasn't unique.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

IMO. One reason power gaming could be reclaimed (not sure it ever actually needed reclaiming in the first place as it was often seen as a virtue depending on your social circle), but assuming it was reclaimed is because there were other words to describe the negative aspects that were sometimes coupled with a neutral meaning of power gaming.

If we take railroad to be the neutral term and equivalent to linear there’s suddenly no word left to describe certain negative aspects sometimes coupled with linear play.