Should this be fixed

[Hussar]

See, S'mon, my problem with that is that you have decided, as the DM, what the right answer is. If doing X gives me a good result and doing Y gives me a bad one, then it's pretty obvious what the right answer is. If doing X or Y leads to an equivalent result (either equivalently bad or good) then the choice of doing X or Y comes down to what I believe is right, not what the GM wants me to do.

To me, it would be a genuine serious choice if my choice wasn't being overtly influenced by the GM.

To me, choosing to stop the bomb or not should not be based on an economic model where you minimize the cost to maximize the benefit. It should be based on a belief in what is right or wrong within the context of the setting.

And, to be completely clear, I was completely ready for either eventuality. Stopping the bomb or not stopping the bomb both carried long term consequences that led into further complications.

In other words, as far as I was concerned, there was no right answer.

 

[Raven Crowking]

S'mon, you deserve XP for those last posts....but I can't give you any right now.

 

[JamesonCourage]

If doing X gives me a good result and doing Y gives me a bad one, then it's pretty obvious what the right answer is.

It seems like what you're advocating, Hussar, is a consequence-light campaign. It sounds like you think PCs should be able to kill the king or spare him (or anything in between), and only be bound by how the country changes. If they are arrested, assaulted, assassinated, or otherwise retaliated against after killing the king, then sparing the king is obviously the "right" answer, while killing the king is obviously the "wrong" answer.

That seems incredibly weird to me. It's hard for me to fathom playing in a game world where the only consequences of PC action is how NPCs interact with one another after we, as PCs, act, with no direct reaction to the PCs themselves.

I think I understand you're saying something along the lines of "if they kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his supporters" and "if they don't kill the king, there are repercussions against them from his detractors" and I get it, to some degree. I do not understand how they need to be equal, though. That's not how consequences regularly work.

I'm all for games where that's the case occasionally, but it cannot be a constant motif for the campaign. Every decision cannot carry equal consequences. The GM then must necessarily decide the consequences of actions taken by the PCs. This is not a railroad situation. This is the GM fulfilling his role as arbiter.

 

[S'mon]

See, S'mon, my problem with that is that you have decided, as the DM, what the right answer is. If doing X gives me a good result and doing Y gives me a bad one, then it's pretty obvious what the right answer is.

The S'mon approach:

1. "We stop the bomb. We save dozens of innocent lives. And our employers will want us dead."

vs:

2. "We let the bomb go off, dozens of innocents die. We'll get a commendation and maybe a raise!"

And to you #2 is obviously the right answer, and thus a railroad?!

Basically by preventing negative consequences for stopping the bomb and similar morally right acts, by preventing any tension between "right thing to do" and "easy thing to do", you've negated the possibility of any genuine heroism. It's easy to be Superman when the bullets just bounce off.

 

[Doug McCrae]

"right thing to do" and "easy thing to do"

Isn't this kind of conflict, between two goods, very similar to what pemerton is talking about, and finds desirable in a play experience? If there is some sort of game currency, such as Honor Points or Marvel's Karma, and acquiring Karma is the goal of the game then if one choice, the 'right thing to do' nets the player lots of Karma and the other results in no points at all, then there is no real choice. Otoh if the game awards nothing for doing the right thing, and if doing the right thing is much riskier to the PC's life, as in your example of the German soldier above, *and* if it is generally regarded that a player whose PC has died has 'lost', as in the text of 1e AD&D, then, again the choice is straightforward, but in this case the second choice is clearly superior.

This all assumes a 'game'-y approach where there is some kind of clear scoring mechanism - Karma, PC survival, going up levels, gold, xp, etc. In many games that isn't the case. Or there may be multiple competing scoring mechanisms. Or tension between the nominal scoring mechanism and other types of player behaviour deemed to be desirable by the participants.

In most rpgs I've played I think the strongest tension has been between 'playing your character' ie doing what your character would do, which is regarded as very much a good (in fact the dwarf's player was praised for this upthread), and 'winning the game' - surviving, gaining gold, xp, magic items, etc. Choosing the former over the latter is what is most often lauded as good roleplaying.

 

[RedTonic]

Ganking your friends' fun because of metagame considerations and then crying "it's rolllleplaying!" when you're called out on it is not good roleplaying, even if the character's background superficially supports it. It's still being a jerk. Good roleplaying lets everyone at the table have fun, including the DM; it doesn't continuously hog the limelight; it doesn't sabotage the game; it doesn't create bad feeling around the table.

 

[Elf Witch]

I finally get what some of you are saying. I don't agree with it but I do understand why you could considered it a form of railroading.

The reason I don't agree with it is because to me it is an alien way to play and one that does not interest me at all. I don't see a DM making choices for the NPCs of their world as railroading.

If you have two choices and you want to explore the moral implications and how they influence the game world if you know that your PC won't face any consequence to their actions to me seems a cop out.

Part of the reason I play DnD is to explore the concepts of good VS evil and how a group of people can through their actions change the world for better or worse.

Sometimes to be a hero you have to appear as the bad guy the only reward you get is to know that you choose the right path even if the rest of the world does not.

Just to be clear I am not saying playing that way is wrongbadfun. For me it would be because I wouldn't enjoy it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you have two choices and you want to explore the moral implications and how they influence the game world if you know that your PC won't face any consequence to their actions to me seems a cop out.

I agree.

And it isn't wrongbadfun, but it does seem to me rather weak sauce.

 

[pemerton]

I am not at all sure what you mean here by "an ingame matter".

Whether or not a player choice will upset the other players is not an ingame matter - it is not an issue about the fiction or the gameworld. It is a metagame matter - an issue that effects the real people actually sitting around the table playing the game.

The WIS check, as a response to this sort of situation, is an attempt to turn what is a metagame matter into an ingame one (by reference to the fiction: namely, the content of a PC's mind). I am personally not a big fan of this sort of approach to RPGing, despite it having a long heritage going back at least to Gygax's discussion of bolts of lightning from the heavens in his DMG (I think in the section entitled "The Ongoing Campaign").

Again, take a look at the OP. The GM wanted to ensure that the player understood the value of the objects

<snip>

within the tradition of D&D, necromancy is, far more often than not, considered "evil" in that sense. It would have been irresponsible of the GM not to have ensured that the player understood that things were different in her campaign milieu before he destroyed the artifacts.

So why make all this crucial information hostage to a die roll?

So, let me get this right.

You think that the player was in the right, because the GM failed to provide enough information for him to make a meaningful decision. You also think that the GM providing meaningful information is railroading.

As I said upthread, I think you're confusing me with Eamon in relation to the information issue. I never suggested the GM provided insufficient information.

 

[pemerton]

Apparently even shifting PC Alignment from G to E because they rob and murder would be railroading; if the player declares that murder and robbery is Good, then for the DM to declare otherwise is hashing his bliss.

In games like 1e-2e AD&D You can't eat babies, rape cabin boys, sacrifice puppies to Satan and still be classed as Good. That may be Railroading by Ron Edwards & Vince Baker's Forgeist definition, which seems some kind of Nietszchean "I am my own value-creator" idea, but not by mine or I think any reasonable definition.

If you are using alignment mechanics to stop other players taking the game into territory you're not interested in - murder, robbery (other than of orcs?), sacrifice, etc - then this would be exactly what I mean by sublimation of a metagame issue into an ingame issue. I personally don't find this a very effective way of resolving the problem.

If a GM doesn't want to run such a game, I don't see the benefit of saying "no evil PCs" as opposed to "we're going for heroic rather than brutal in this game".

But look upthread at the discussion of slavery - a pretty common fantasy trope, and we can't get agreement from those talking about it as to how D&D alignment rules are to treat it. If you don't want to play a game in which players own or capture slaves, then just say so. Conversely, if you want to make slavery a focus of your campaign (and I have done this in the past), then how is alignment helping, other than encouraging the GM to prejudge the issue and enforce that judgement on the rest of the table?

In D&D, at least by RAW, "evil" is more than a metaphysical concept. It is "real", and it can be detected. Whether or not something is "evil" in that sense can be a known factor within the context of the world.

The problem is that in D&D alignments ARE. (I'm not the first to bring this up.)

<snip>

The overall point is that the DM does need to determine what is a good act and what is an evil act as a truth.

Well, what you say is true of AD&D and 3E. It isn't true of 4e - the notions of "good act", "evil act" and "changing alignment" are not canvassed anywhere in the rules as I recall.

This is one reason why I prefer to play 4e rather than earlier editions.

I also totally agree that D&D is NOT the system for the style of play that I'm talking about.

I'd never, ever run this sort of game in D&D. It just doesn't work. Good and Evil in D&D are ontological. They aren't abstract in the slightest - they're actual physical forces just like gravity. To do this sort of narrativist game in D&D would require a HUGE amount of reworking of the mechanics.

In 4e this is not true at all. I know, because I'm doing it - running thematically-focused 4e without having to change the mechanics at all.

In AD&D it is not all that hard either - you just ignore the alignment rules, and then you have only the detect/protection from evil things to worry about (I can't remember exactly how I handled these back in the day).

I can't comment on 3E, other than to say that alignment mechanics seem more strongly built in (a wider range of alignment oriented spells, clerics with restrictions closer to those of an AD&D paladin, damage reduction keyed to alignment, etc).