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

[AlViking]

Okay.

What do you call it, then, when the DM...does that? When they engage in illusionism--making it seem as though the players are the ones running the show, when actually it's just the DM?

Because that's a thing. People have talked about it on here extensively. I can dig up at least one entire thread about it, if you like.

I would call it bad DMing, which sadly does exist. Fortunately in my experience it's been a very small minority. Quite frequently GMs run linear campaigns where we know that we have to find the McGuffin to kill the big bad or we're all DOOMED but exactly how we get the McGuffin, or if we find a different way to stop the big bad, is up to us.

Nope! Wrong. Incorrect.

My point isn't that this is anything like what the world is.

I am asking--I have been asking, for quite some time now--for the alleged constraints/limitations/fnord that you and others have repeatedly asserted are the thing that mean the GM's choices are not driven by what they choose to happen, but rather in some way "forced". I believe that was a word used to describe it--that the GM has no choice but to do X instead of Y, even though they might like to do Y, because of something that gets in the way. No matter what they might do, no matter how much effort they might expend, they'll just never be able to do Y because something forces them to do X.

Thus far, every single answer has been built on...a thing the GM has complete and absolute control over and which is not in any way separate from them. Context? GM decides what counts as context and what doesn't. Setting? That's literally something they wrote, or something they're re-writing from someone else's work. (E.g. I don't imagine that @Maxperson would merely accept it even if Ed Greenwood himself declared that, say, an alien species colonized a sparsely-inhabited portion of the Realms--nor would I expect him to never ever deviate from, say, the monster design of trolls to say that this troll is weak to lightning and cold rather than acid and fire, merely because--I am making this up, to be clear--all trolls in FR are weak to acid and fire.)

Players can declare actions, yes. But those actions can only be declared within a context entirely developed by the GM--and the consequences of those actions are, likewise, entirely within the GM's purview to control. It doesn't require outlandish things for the GM to still be fundamentally in control here.


You build the world, populate it, make all decisions for all sapient and non-sapient beings, develop new parts of the world when you feel like doing so, decide what information the players will be allowed to learn or forbidden from learning, set the terms for any action they take, create and enforce all consequences of any action they take, and have complete control over what qualifies as relevant context for every single one of the foregoing things.

Yes. Characters take actions. You're still responsible for both 100% of the inputs that go into those actions, and 100% of the outputs that result from those actions. Because it all has to come out of the black box before players are even potentially capable of learning anything about it--and thus of doing anything about it. You cannot act when you have genuinely zero information.

There is nothing I can say that will satisfy you, because it's all been said numerous times. I create the fiction for a world, add inhabitants, throw in a double dash of conflict and set the players loose. I do my best to have the inhabitants react to what the characters have done in a way that is logical but of course it is always a judgement call. Meanwhile the players decide what interests them which may include one of the multiple plot hooks I've exposed or could be something they just come up with on their own. The players always have as much information to make decisions as I think would be reasonable for the characters to have. I have complete control over all of the NPCs and monsters but I do not have any control over what they character say, do, or where they choose to go in the fictional world.

D&D and related games are not for you if all of that bothers you, because that's how the game has worked for the past half century and continues to work for me and the people I game with.

 

[Campbell]

@SableWyvern

I think where many of us bristle is with the idea that the GM having exclusive ownership of the setting and players having exclusive ownership of their individual characters is foundational to roleplaying games rather than just a subset of them and that it's an inherently more freeing experience for the GM. Many of us have experienced having felt very constrained by that model of play in the past (as both players and GMs). For me personally, a shared ownership model of both setting and character were fundamental parts of my play basically from jump - definitely after the first time I played Vampire and got into games like Legend of the Five Rings that allowed me to dictate a lot of setting through its 20 questions with the idea that the GM would make those answers matter.

It was also a large part of my experience with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs where working with Storytellers on stuff we wanted to see and conversations on the stuff we wanted to do moving forward was a big part of play.

Theater kids like me, who approach the hobby, as a sort of extension of our experience in theater, can often feel like the stuff, we consider fundamental to our engagement is treated like its intrusive. Like the way we play isn't worthy of the same respect. Like even after 20+ years we're still treated like visitors and not valued practitioners of the craft.

Part of that comes from talking about a single approach or a related set of approaches as if they defined roleplaying games as a whole.

 

[Maxperson]

People tend to write a lot of things, that's true. Doesn't mean I have to buy in to every new term someone invents.

Then use whatever term you choose that makes you happy. What do YOU call it when someone is railroaded behind the scenes in such a way that they often can't see it, such as with the quantum ogre that is behind whichever door they pick?

Some call it the invisible railroad, others the illusionism railroad, and it is a railroad because the DM is invalidating PC choice by forcing them down the path he wants them on. What kind of railroad do you call the kind you can't see?

Also I would think that a DM would have a rather high opinion of themselves if they thought they could consistently and faultlessly outwit 4-5 other people for a sustained period. I find most players are highly intelligent, and can pretty quickly figure out that they're being deceived. A clever and charismatic DM might keep the charade up for a while, but it wouldn't last forever.

It only has to be one single time for it to be a railroad. One time won't make it a railroad game, but that one time will be an instance of the DM railroading the players in such a way that it's not easily seen.

 

[Maxperson]

By putting the goblin there, you have just broken the past context and rewritten things to include goblins, even though there objectively weren't any before and if the players could see your notes, they'd know that. Hence, by doing this, you have just proven that context and setting are not in any way a limitation. In trying to disprove a small claim, you have surrendered the greater. I don't think that's what you intended to do.

No. Because the goblin stepped into the camp(context the players provided by camping), and into the firelight(context the players provided by lighting a fire at the camp), and interrupting dinner(context the players provided by saying they were eating dinner), and on and on.

A huge amount of the context of that goblin scene came from the players and NOT the DM.

But that's what people have repeatedly told me is the case. They've repeatedly said that the GM cannot just act as they like, that there really IS something that limits them. This means either you're wrong, or they have been wrong this whole time. Which is it?

Acting in the manner you are describing, where there's no context being provided by the players as the DM is ignoring it, would be if @Lanefan described the goblin walking up to the party as they were pushing through the night, after having decided not to camp or eat anything. THAT would be an example of the DM providing almost all of the context and the players not providing much. I say "almost all," because the fact that they PCs are there is the players providing at least a bit of the context. THEY created those PCs and that part of the context, not the DM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay.

What do you call it, then, when the DM...does that? When they engage in illusionism--making it seem as though the players are the ones running the show, when actually it's just the DM?

Because that's a thing. People have talked about it on here extensively. I can dig up at least one entire thread about it, if you like.

I'm sure people do it, but I don't, and I've never caught a GM doing it. In fact in my family game recently my kids encountered a statue that spouted a mysterious clue that turned out to point them toward an area they already explored. My son wondered why I bothered including it, and I told him the statue was in place before they encountered it and I don't believe in changing the world as it was designed because it's no longer narratively relevant.

 

[Maxperson]

DMs who can do this indefinitely either
(a) Have players who do not know any better
(b) Do not know better themselves.

This, I suspect, happens mostly with homogenous tables who do not get any exposure.
I experienced one such group such as this during my time as a player when 4e came out.

EDIT: Adjusted per my posts with @SableWyvern

Illusionism is only indefinite in the sense that there isn't a specified amount of time for them to get away with it. It can be as little as one instance, such as with the example upthread of throwing a continent in front of a ship that turned around or driving the group to it in a storm, or it can be longer.

What it can't be is unlimited in time. Sooner or later the group will figure it out. They will realize that they can't ever avoid things they want to avoid, etc. and the jig will be up, or the DM will blunder as with the continent example.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, in my case, it's because I ask about what things are removed from that power.

Context? Context is determined by the GM. Things that the GM doesn't consider relevant context won't be included in the decision. Things they do, will. Hence, what counts as "context" in the first place is wholly under the GM's purview. The context cannot be separate from the GM if the GM is the one and only person who gets to decide what counts as context and what doesn't. And unless you're actively speaking your decision-making process out loud--which I have been under the distinct impression is not true of the folks speaking in this thread--then the players don't get any say in what the GM considers to be context or not-context, unless they dispute the decision itself and then get a (partial) expanation--if they're lucky, and the decision wasn't based on context they aren't allowed to know.

Plausibility? Again, the GM is the sole arbiter of what results are "plausible" or not. That's been made very clear. Players might--some of the time--have the right to question it. But in plenty of other cases, it's "plausible" only because, again, the black-boxed information the players aren't allowed to know. Maybe they'll learn it later; either way, if that's part of the context, the players (as I have been explicitly told) must wait MONTHS before they're ever allowed to question it.

"Realism"? Already dealt with that one to hell and back, especially because when people actually did give me an answer, it was...to use the above words to explain it anyway.

I'm looking for something that is genuinely, wholly independent of the GM. Something that--as was repeatedly referenced earlier in the thread--makes it so the GM is not deciding to do X instead of Y, but rather the GM has to do X instead of Y. Where are these "I had to do X" limiters? I know people described the GM as not doing something because they wanted to, but because they had to. Where is that? All the answers I've been given always loop back to the GM doing a thing because they wanted to, a limitation they could easily (not trivially, but easily) rewrite or discard if they wished to.


No, they don't get to mind-control the players.

But they do get to decide what options are "plausible". In other words...they get to decide the menu of things the players can pick from. Which is literally what I used very early in the thread as one of the softest forms of railroading, and nobody seemed to be particularly annoyed at that description at the time (not compared to various other things that elicited a much stronger response).


Question: What, exactly, prevents the GM from developing a reason why there would be goblins there, even if previously there definitely weren't? The players cannot see the notes, they'll never know that a new development contradicts that--like literally, it's not possible for them to know that. Even if the GM has already explicitly said in the most absolute and certain terms, "There are absolutely no goblins in <region>", it's been explicit that you don't want a "machine" world, you want a world controlled by a person. What stops that person from deciding, a week after saying "there are absolutely no goblins in the High Forest", that an expedition has been sent from Goblinia to the High Forest? As far as I can tell, nothing stops them from doing that. They then develop this expedition further--the goblins are trying to keep a low profile so they hide their numbers, forage, avoid settlements. Presumably they want something in the High Forest.

Would this not be explicitly acceptable by your rubric? It's plausible, Goblinia exists and has done raids and such in the past. The High Forest has never been a target, but just because it's never happened before doesn't mean it can't ever happen (after all, before the first raid of any kind, no raids had ever occurred!)


I strongly disagree. Because of things like the example above. The enormous amounts of context that have not ever been touched by players (beyond, perhaps, the most cursory references) can act as justification for damn near anything. That's...kind of the point of my criticism. There's so much the GM can use, which the PCs literally cannot possibly know about, but which can be used to justify nearly anything.


Not me! I'm still waiting for some kind of limitation or restriction or constraint that isn't, fundamentally, built on something the GM wrote and thus something the GM could revoke or rewrite or rework or develop (etc., etc., etc.) into nearly anything they want.


When the world is inside a black box, and nothing can be added except by the black-box-controller, and the players only get to hear secondhand some of the things that are in the black box, I really don't see what power the players have beyond:

• Complaint, which has been previously dismissed with "you just have to trust the GM", "you need to wait 3-6 business months", or "[functionally] never during session"
• Kicking up a fuss, which has been previously dismissed with "do that and I'll show you the door", or
• Departing the table

Within the dynamic of "I am a player in this game", the player seems to have functionally no power at all. Threatening to leave because the GM is doing something you dislike is already an indication that play is deeply dysfunctional--trying to present that as the players having power is frankly pretty ridiculous. Like saying that being an American citizen is optional because you can always just abandon your entire life, social support network, and physical resources to live somewhere else (because everyone knows immigration and naturalization are trivial processes nobody ever has difficulty with...)

Can't you just say you prefer games where the GM has hard restrictions in what they're allowed to do? As far as I can tell that's what this all boils down to. You want the GM constrained in a stronger way than their own judgement and the social contract. Others don't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The claim was that, because players have choices, GMs functionally have no power at all--"all that power is worth naught."

Which is patently ridiculous when GMs, literally for decades, have practiced invisible railroading, where the players THINK they're making decisions and driving the plot etc. etc., and the actual result was already perfectly determined in advance by the GM....the GM is just very good at twisting, folding, and rearranging the things players "chose" so that the consequences just so happen to be what the GM planned all along.

What power does player choice have in the face of an invisible railroad?

How exactly do you plan to force an end to the "invisible railroad"?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, in my case, it's because I ask about what things are removed from that power.

Context? Context is determined by the GM. Things that the GM doesn't consider relevant context won't be included in the decision. Things they do, will. Hence, what counts as "context" in the first place is wholly under the GM's purview. The context cannot be separate from the GM if the GM is the one and only person who gets to decide what counts as context and what doesn't. And unless you're actively speaking your decision-making process out loud--which I have been under the distinct impression is not true of the folks speaking in this thread--then the players don't get any say in what the GM considers to be context or not-context, unless they dispute the decision itself and then get a (partial) expanation--if they're lucky, and the decision wasn't based on context they aren't allowed to know.

We are kind of going around in circles I think, but the players absolutely shape the context because they are part of the situation. You cannot remove the players from whatever arises around them. If you commit a murder and no one is there to see it, that is a completely different context than if you commit a murder in the presence of a cops. In a game, the players can choose to be violent in different contexts, and they contribute to the context itself.

 

[SableWyvern]

@SableWyvern

I think where many of us bristle is with the idea that the GM having exclusive ownership of the setting and players having exclusive ownership of their individual characters is foundational to roleplaying games rather than just a subset of them and that it's an inherently more freeing experience for the GM.

I tried to be quite clear in my recent response to @EzekielRaiden, and I feel that @Bedrockgames has done the same in his comments, that it's foundational to what we, personally, find valuable and enjoy about these games. We're talking about what these games mean to us; no more, no less.

If you consider this aspect of limited importance, or even actively harmful, to your games, that is entirely your prerogative and I would never intend to suggest your perspective in this is invalid.

Many of us have experienced having felt very constrained by that model of play in the past (as both players and GMs). For me personally, a shared ownership model of both setting and character were fundamental parts of my play basically from jump - definitely after the first time I played Vampire and got into games like Legend of the Five Rings that allowed me to dictate a lot of setting through its 20 questions with the idea that the GM would make those answers matter.

I have never suggested anyone should engage in a mode or style of play that doesn't interest them or which they don't like/ I fully support everyone running their games the way they want, and participating in games that give them what they're looking for.

It was also a large part of my experience with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs where working with Storytellers on stuff we wanted to see and conversations on the stuff we wanted to do moving forward was a big part of play.

Theater kids like me, who approach the hobby, as a sort of extension of our experience in theater, can often feel like the stuff, we consider fundamental to our engagement is treated like its intrusive. Like the way we play isn't worthy of the same respect. Like even after 20+ years we're still treated like visitors and not valued practitioners of the craft.

Part of that comes from talking about a single approach or a related set of approaches as if they defined roleplaying games as a whole.

It may be intrusive to my style of play, but that's neither here nor there. You should feel free to play the way you want. I'm sure there are times when it does look like I'm saying my way is best, but I'm only ever talking about what my experience shows me works best for me. I mean, I jumped in to defend illusionism recently, even though the last time I used it I literally ended up feeling shame. I'd never recommend it; I'd even actively recommend against it, but if a group decides it's their thing, then good on them, I say. Have fun with it.

A lot of the really narrative stuff seems clearly to me to be just a long, long way away from what I want from my gaming. But that says nothing about anyone but me.