Well, the slight problem for me Hussar is, I'm actually from Northern Ireland, grew up in Belfast, I have a passing familiarity with terrorist psychology, and the fact of the matter is, lots of terrorists (and other people) like killing people and will do so with a very minimal moral justification, really just a cloak to drape over "We like killing you". Most terrorist groups do set limitations on violence, but those limitations are instrumental, not moral - "We don't want to kill too many of their civilians, or they'll start killing too many of our civilians". If you believe Spielberg's 'Munich', maybe Mossad agents do debate the morality of political assassinations, but IRL most people drawn into political violence are, by the nature of things, people who like violence. So arguably your narrativist approach is only possible through rejecting realistic simulation of terrorist psychology.
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Well, the slight problem for me Hussar is, I'm actually from Northern Ireland, grew up in Belfast, I have a passing familiarity with terrorist psychology, and the fact of the matter is, lots of terrorists (and other people) like killing people and will do so with a very minimal moral justification, really just a cloak to drape over "We like killing you". Most terrorist groups do set limitations on violence, but those limitations are instrumental, not moral - "We don't want to kill too many of their civilians, or they'll start killing too many of our civilians". If you believe Spielberg's 'Munich', maybe Mossad agents do debate the morality of political assassinations, but IRL most people drawn into political violence are, by the nature of things, people who like violence. So arguably your narrativist approach is only possible through rejecting realistic simulation of terrorist psychology.
I agree the scenario I sketched is incomplete. It's about 50 words on a messageboard post. It's meant to give a general feel for the state of affairs I had in mind.
When you say the player has a lot of (other) opportunities, that's incomplete too. How do you know? You're making assumptions about how the gameworld is set up, how the GM presents situations, etc. Likewise when you say it's not a railroad unless the GM says "Whoa there, you can't do that!" What about if the GM has more angels come and take revenge upon the PCs for helping the elementals? Or has every cleric in town refuse them healing? Or just has all there friends and allies turn on them? There's any number of ways, within a given game situation and among a given group of players, to shut down or railroad the players, without literally telling them that their PCs can't pursue a certain course of action.
The last time I was railroaded in the sort of way I'm talking about, my PC was around 9th level, and had a rich backstory and engagement with the campaign world based around being an exiled count whose brother had usurped his holdings as a puppet of some evil overlords (drow, maybe?). The whole focus of my play throughout the campaign had been striving to undo the evil overlords (there was some sort of prophecy involved) so that I could either win back or defeat my brother, and reclaim my land and title.
And then the GM time travelled all of us 100 years forward - no brother still alive, completely different political situation in my homeland, all the work that I and the other players had done on deciphering the GM's prophecy invalidated (because that work had been anchored in the gameworld as we'd been exploring it for 9 levels). I left the game not long after that.
The GM never said "Hey, you can't do XYZ". But the time travel thing, sprung without warning or stated reason (I think that the GM may have become lost in the convulations of his own prophecy), invalidated - rendered meaningless - nearly every prior choice I'd made for my PC, and all the relations that I had built up for my character (and other PCs) that were embedded into the gameworld.
I could still choose whether to pull the left lever or right lever at a fork in the dungeon - perhaps, even, whether to attack the angels or the elementals - but the meaning of any such choice had been stripped away by the GM. As per the quotes from Ron Edwards upthread (#246), all I would be doing is providing a bit of improvisation and colour to the GM's story. That's not what I'm looking for in an RPG, either as player or GM.
That's just not true as a general rule. It may sometimes be true. But a decision like the one I just described - that suddenly the PCs time travel 100 years into the futuer - can be a railroad. And the one that I played through was.
A different example: healing is very important in standard D&D play. Decisions by the GM about the availability of healing to PCs, then (eg locations and attitudes of NPC clerics), can very easily have a railroading effect.
I don't quite see the implication. I'm also not sure what "rewriting" mean here.
I've posted some lengthy actual play examples upthread, where I talk about backstory, and how a player's decisions for his/her PC can interact with it. The key points:
I don't think this is ceding an unusual degree of authority to the player - that dwarves exist in the gameworld is a function of the ruleset chosen (4e D&D + "points of light" setting), and it's not as if I (as GM) have any independent conception of how dwarven military conscription practices might work.
As to the minotaur thing - I can't remember, but I think I came up with that in the course of play, and have been gradually building on it since.
Rather than player control over backstory, what my playstyle does require is that the GM, both in framing situations and in resovling them (including the derivation of ingame socio-political consequences) have regard to how such resolutions will shape the ongoing game in light of what the players are interested in. (The 100 year time travel is Exhibit A for a GM not doing this.)
This seems confused, to me. My point in the angels and elementals example wasn't that you can't say that all elementals are evil, and therefore they're not - it's that you don't say anything either way - you simply describe their conflict with the gods - and leave it up to the players to decide what, if any attitude, they (via their PCs) want to take towards the elementals.
Another actual play example: the WotC module Bastion of Broken Souls contains, as a central figure, an exiled god (can't remember the name - when I adapted the module to my RM Oriental Adventures game, the god's name became Desu). Desu owns an artefact - the Soul Totem - that the PCs need to resolve a major metahpysical crisis. In the module, the author states that Desu has gone mad from millenia of exile, and the only way for the PCs to recover the artefact is to beat him up and take it. The implicit justification for this act of robbery is that Desu, having been exiled by the gods, is fair game. (Necessity is lurking in the background as a secondary justification, but necessity is always a bit more tenuous.)
This is a setting detail. But in what way is it not a railroad? Of course, it is possible for a game to unfold in such a way that the PCs, if they are to achieve their goals, are forced to make the tragic choice to kill a worthy person. But there is nothing in Bastion of Broken Souls, as written, that supports this approach to Desu. Interestingly, there is another NPC in the module - an angel who is also a living gate, who must be killed if the gate to Desu's prison it to open - who can be approached in this way. But the module provides no support for this approach either - it presents the angel as inevitably and implacably opposed to the PCs.
When I adapted the module, I disregarded both bad pieces of advice. Given that the PCs (who included two monks as well as an exiled animal lord) had already decided that heaven's judgment was suspect, they ended up befriending Desu and gaining use of the Soul Totem through that means. And they opened the living gate by persuading the angel that making contact with Desu was a moral necessity, even if her instructions from the gods did not permit it - she therefore let herself be killed by the PCs.
The bottom line, in my view, is that the game won't stop working, or the GM lose control over backstory, just because the GM refrains from imposing evaluative judgments ahead of time, and creates situations which give the players the space to do this themselves. In fact, my experience is that it makes interesting and surprising play - like the players tugging on the heartstrings of a guardian angel to persuade her to let herself be killed - more likely.
Taking "PC" there to mean "player", and assuming that you're going to all play together, than yes.
Interestingly enough, if you subsitute "goblins and hobgoblins" for "orcs" then you get my current campaign. The wizard PC in that game thinks that all goblins and their ilk are evil, and deserving of death. Besides repeated statements to that effect, he has executed helpless hobgoblin prisoners when given the chance. He takes the same attitude towards devil worshippers. The sorcerer PC, in the same game, takes a different view. He has, on multiple occasions, released goblins and hobgoblins prisoner on their own recognisance after having extracted oaths of non-violence and repudiation of Bane. He has (tentatively) negotiated with devils. And he has been shocked by the wizard's behaviour (and vice versa - the wizard has from time to time mooted tracking down and killing the released prisoners, but has not yet had the opportunity.)
The friction between these two PCs is an ongoing, if too date reasonably low-level, element of the campaign. My job as GM, as I see it, is to provide opportunities to both players to keep playing their PCs in the way they have shown they want to (including allowing the friction to express itself from time to time) without forcing a situation that will make ongoing party play (a pretty core element of D&D) unviable. Will there be a reconciliation between the two? Will one or the other PC have a change of mind? Only play will answer those questions.
I don't see this at all. How is deciding whether or not to kill the prisoners, when you know your fellow PCs (and playes) will be shocked, not a hard decision? How is deciding whether or not to embrace your former tormentors who now need your help not a hard decision? How is deciding whether or not to disobey the gods and make cause with an exile from the heavens not a hard decision?
If by "hard decision" you mean "decision that risks having me, as a player, have to disengage from the game because my PC has been pointlessly killed or otherwise invalidated as a vehicle for play" then yes, I'm not a big fan of those sorts of decisions. I like to run a game where the players' choices, and the way I respond to them, drive play onward - not shut it down.
What I actually said was "In my view this is not a problem about the adjudication of PC action - it is a metagame/social contract problem. It's solved by finding out whether or not the player is actually interested in playing the game." So it's not about judging PCs - it's about interaction with real people (ie game participants). And the judgments at issue are probably not moral judgments, but aesthetic ones.
I also said nothing about excluding a player. Nor does it say anything about a GM unilaterally deciding to do so. There are other ways of dealing with - and resolving - conflicts at the table. Like talking to people. And finding out what their conception of "the game" is.
Bilbo, Thorin etc are going on a treasure hunt. The contract is a contract between treasure hunters. So adopting a party contract right away establishes a certain point and tone for the game. The Fellowship in LotR didn't enter into such a contract, because they weren't treasure seekers.
As classic D&D bleeds into Dragonlance and post-Dragonlance D&D, a degree of confusion seems to emerge as to whether the PCs are primarily treasure hunters (and hence, in some sense at least, mercenary) or primarily heroes (and hence, in some sence at least, self-sacrificing) or both. The lattermost, which seems to be assumed in a lot of 3E and 4e rulebooks and adventures, is an unstable situation, given the tension between the two sorts of motivation. I don't think that the designers for D&D have done a very good job of giving players and GMs tools to resolve this issue (although 4e goes some of the way with the notion of "treasure parcels").
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RLBURNSIDE
First Post
They
~ we'll have to leave out the overtly political comments at the door, I think. Thanks. Plane Sailing, ENworld admin ~
~ we'll have to leave out the overtly political comments at the door, I think. Thanks. Plane Sailing, ENworld admin ~
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Hussar
Legend
Celebrim - how exactly, in character, does one make a binding party contract with a psychopathic killer?
But, like Pemerton, I see this as a social contract issue. If the group has decided to play a thematic based game and you bring a character that runs entirely counter to that theme, that's not the fault of the game, it's just a douchebag thing to do.
In this case I have ZERO problem with rejecting a realistic simulation of terrorist psychology because simulating terrorist psychology is also completely besides the point of the game. You're example of Spielburg's Munich is spot on. THAT'S the direction this kind of game would go.
The simulationist cow gets led gently behind the shed and turned into hamburger before play starts. I know that people cannot seem to understand how you can play without simulation, but, it is quite possible and, once you uncouple yourself from the idea that an RPG actually has to simulate anything, all sorts of interesting games come to the fore.
But, like Pemerton, I see this as a social contract issue. If the group has decided to play a thematic based game and you bring a character that runs entirely counter to that theme, that's not the fault of the game, it's just a douchebag thing to do.
S'mon said:
In this case I have ZERO problem with rejecting a realistic simulation of terrorist psychology because simulating terrorist psychology is also completely besides the point of the game. You're example of Spielburg's Munich is spot on. THAT'S the direction this kind of game would go.
The simulationist cow gets led gently behind the shed and turned into hamburger before play starts. I know that people cannot seem to understand how you can play without simulation, but, it is quite possible and, once you uncouple yourself from the idea that an RPG actually has to simulate anything, all sorts of interesting games come to the fore.
JamesonCourage
Adventurer
Where you're getting disagreement from multiple people (as far as I can tell) is that negative in-game consequences for player actions are not a bad thing. If you do something in-game that makes all clerics mad at you, you should have no reasonable expectation that they still heal you of their own accord. You could force them to with threats, or bribe them to, or lie to them, or atone, or any number of other actions. If those actions are available, you are not being railroaded. You made the decision yourself, you can deal with the consequences yourself.
If you were stopped from taking the action, then now you're getting into railroad territory. If all NPCs inexplicably hate unless you're following a plot (not necessarily a specific course of action), then you're getting into railroad territory. If you can take the actions you want, and those actions might make certain NPCs think less of you or act against you, it's not a railroad.
The three examples you gave should, in my mind, be expected in an average game. If you side with the elementals, expect their enemies (the angels) to retaliate. They may not, but it's unreasonable not to expect it, as you've clearly exposed yourself as an enemy. Just like if all your friends and allies turn on you because you've betrayed the cause they believe in, you should not be surprised either.
Leaving the game is your call (and I've always been against "time travel" in a fantasy setting... when it's used, it's always been an illusion). However, "all the work" you and the other players had done with their characters should not be for nothing. My players had quite a few "time skips" where they had literally a decade or more of downtime. The political landscape changed during this time. Past a certain point, the players began to deal with things they no longer had deep investments in (other than things like "the multiverse"). However, they had deep, deep investment in the individual characters they were playing. They were seeing new situations to deal with from their individually and immensely developed personal point of view. It made for some interesting play.
Now, connecting is with a setting is something I strongly promote. However, being ripped away from a setting should not mean you no longer have any connection to the character, in my opinion. If I was playing, and my character was captured and taken across "the Great Wastes" to an unrecognizable desert area, I wouldn't think "well, he means nothing now, since everything I cared about is at home." I'd play the character, and how he responds to such an ordeal.
When playing, my interest is in connecting with a character, not in writing the setting or story around me. If everything I've "worked on" suddenly disappears, it will still influence who my character is. I'm much more opposed to something like "you have amnesia" unless it's stated as a campaign idea (which I've played in and had fun with). That might kill my connection to a character, but honestly, I'd probably have a lot of fun re-exploring everything with him again, and seeing how it winds up this time around.
Your connections meant nothing, yes, but it seems as if your character is defined by the way you can shape the setting. That's the wrong approach to take as a player in one of my games (as it likely won't work). Of course, a fun playstyle is subjective, so don't think I'm knocking your style. In D&D, however (or more accurately, in fantasy games), I expect the GM to control the setting, and for the players to explore it.
I totally disagree with this. If you were affecting things when making decisions, than it's not true. Just because all of your decisions on the setting were no applicable, it does not make all past decisions meaningless. And, realistically, I'm guessing that if you did affect the setting in any significant way (which I don't know if you did) before the time leap, then there would be some residual effects for you to find. I don't know if you found any, or if you stayed long enough for them to probably surface.
Setting decisions aren't a railroad, as a general rule. It does not force decisions on behalf of the players. It might encourage them, yes. It might prohibit things (no guns in this setting), yes. But unless the setting itself literally forces the players to follow a plot, it's not a railroad. And, as a general rule, I don't think this is the case.
Now, some setting might be. But for the most part, setting is something that GMs insert to help define the gameworld, and to limit possible interactions within the gameworld. This is not to kill player choices, but to set up a consistent world where players have a better idea of what their interactions will mean.
You may have been railroaded by a setting change, but setting decisions are not generally for railroads.
If the players want to get healing, yes. But if they have the choice on how to deal with it, then it's not being railroaded. Sure, GMs can attempt to railroad via healing, but then again, they can also play favorites amongst the players, so we probably shouldn't have those either.
It's important -in my mind- to think of these things in terms of how they're used with decent to good GMs. And to that end, it's completely reasonable to accept "I pissed off the clerics, and they don't want to heal me now." If you're talking about "I didn't agree to fight the dragon when the hermit in Nation A asked me to, and now clerics in all nations won't heal me" then it's a bad-GM issue, not any other issue.
Well, maybe that's where you and I differ (I'm not, nor have I been, trying to speak for other people, though I have been trying to expand upon what I've taken some to mean). When someone mentions being from a dwarven military, I have a concept in my mind of how that is. Now, I may not have thought in-depth about it, but as soon as it gets brought up, I can pretty much answer questions about it.
So, if someone brought a detailed backstory to me that included serving in the dwarven military service in Kalamane where their unit got into a skirmish with the elves of Nissalli, I'd tell them that it didn't happen. Because that never happened. That's writing something into a setting that isn't there. There was no skirmish between those two nations. There was no hard feelings between those two nations. Likewise, if the player told me his unit got into a skirmish with the trolls of Salik, I'd say "that makes sense" and inquire about details, if I was curious.
At least in my experience as a player and GM, the backgrounds of players are subject to the setting of the GM. If I said "my character was raised by dragons" I would not expect most people I play with to roll with it at face value. Now, maybe something could be worked out, but if I was told "no, it's not how the setting works, since dragons in this setting have an Intelligence of 4" or "because all dragons eat people compulsively" then I'd accept it and move on.
To that end, players do not often write the setting in my experience, though I've seen great leniency in GMs working with players to have a particular background come to fruition within the internal consistency of the game world.
Now, I think a GM should only play the type of game the players are interested in. My players like fights (one is meh about them, but enjoys them), they like intrigue, they love NPC interaction, they like exploring the setting, they like interaction with forces or learning about history. One loves politics, while the rest don't. Now, I have no plans to run a politically-based game, even though I like politics as well, because of this.
Where we differ, however, is the meta-reasoning behind setting or NPC decisions. I make decisions based on what I believe the NPC would do, while you actively seek to move the game towards interesting places and situations. I react more, and you guide more, it seems to me. I make no attempt to make the game particularly interesting, though the players often attempt to (which works wonders). My players think I have a very interesting setting and game, and their proactive interaction with it has driven many interesting events to happen.
I think you can accomplish this just as easily in a game like D&D by saying "all elementals are Evil" but then letting the players choose how they feel about them. I had an NPC monk who was Lawful Evil who mercilessly killed Evil creatures, but refused to believe when magic told him he was Evil. He was a cold-blooded murderer and torturer to Evil creatures, and pretty normal to most everyone else. Though, if you tried to stop him from carrying out his "justice" then he'd label you Evil, and you're fair game.
Was he Evil? Yep, he sure was. Did he believe it? Nope, not one bit. He thought he was a good person. The absolute statement of "all elementals are Evil" does not prevent players nor NPCs from disagreeing with that statement in the least, as they have no such meta knowledge. Does tradition state so? Yeah. Does magic? Yep. Do they believe it? It's up to them. People have many beliefs founded on faith, especially in a D&D universe.
This, to me, is the module commenting on the extreme natures of such beings. Angels are depicted as being pure, and an admittedly crazy individual might have snapped in such a way that he is not going to negotiate, under any circumstances (like the insanity many PCs suffer from). If the module was commenting the mentality of certain important NPCs, it's not railroading. Saying "the paladin in the module will never negotiate with demons, even for the greater Good, as he sees all such attempts to be trickery at best" is a comment on his personality. To that end, it's not a railroad.
Now, if the module forced a particular plot point, it's being railroady. If you can't steal the item from the crazy guy, or put him to sleep and take it, or otherwise take it without beating the crap out of him... yeah, that's railroady.
That sounds cool. I like that take on it. I see this as just another take on NPC mentality, though. It's no more or less railroady to me.
I agree with this. In the game I developed and run, there's no such thing as alignment, and I think play is better for it in "grey" areas. However, in a game like D&D where Good and Evil are real things in the setting, then having "black" and "white" being more prominent makes sense to me.
To this end, in my game, I find it important that the players make characters where inter-party conflict is at a minimum. I've played many games where players made characters independent of how they'd interact with the party, and it nearly always results in PCs being banished from the party. Player violence has luckily been rare, but when PCs are about ready to fight in-game, players become annoyed at the situation out-of-game (not at one another, luckily for me).
So, my advice for others is different than yours, but mine is ultimately very subjective. I'd just advise people to make characters that don't have mentalities that will divide the party. Differences, to be sure, as that's very interesting. But I've seen more than one PC disappear to NPCville because their mentality was poorly thought out.
In my mind, these things can happen regardless of absolutes like "all elementals are Evil."
Yeah, like I said, we differ here, but it's playstyle. Play what you like
Yeah, I agree. Sitting down and deciding as a group "we want to be treasure hunters" is a lot different from "we want to fight goblins for the town guard" and I think discussing even the very basic premise of a party is important. I'd advocate players picking an overall goal for their PCs that cannot be accomplished, such as "rid the world of Evil" or "protect the nation" or something along those lines.
I do think there should be more core support for this sort of thing, but like I said, I think even just a bare-bones sketchy goal goes such a long way for party cohesion and player happiness.
As always, these are just my views, my preferences, etc. Take them with a grain of salt. Additionally, I'm not advocating you stop playing your way in the least. Play what you like
Hussar
Legend
JamesonCourage - Sorry dude, tl&dr. 
I'll come back to your wall of text later. I gotta go to work.
But, your final point is spot on. I too am in no way advocating a "right" way of playing. I'm advocating "a" way of playing, but, certainly not a "right" one. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing things a more traditional way. It's a lot of fun.
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Threadomancy has dredged up yet another example of what happens when you bring your psychopathic character into the wrong campaign - Going to Church, Don't forget your sawed off shotgun
Again, if the group agrees to play X and you bring a character that doesn't fit with X, that's not the fault of the GM or the system. That's just the player being a jerk. Celebrim, your example in DitV pretty much dictates the entire campaign to the rest of the group because you've chosen to play a character that runs counter to the assumptions built into the game. Everyone now has to play to your character because everything they do has to center on how everyone in the setting reacts to the fact that we have this psychopath in the group.
I think there's some miscommunication at that table IMHO.
I'll come back to your wall of text later. I gotta go to work.But, your final point is spot on. I too am in no way advocating a "right" way of playing. I'm advocating "a" way of playing, but, certainly not a "right" one. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing things a more traditional way. It's a lot of fun.
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Threadomancy has dredged up yet another example of what happens when you bring your psychopathic character into the wrong campaign - Going to Church, Don't forget your sawed off shotgun
Again, if the group agrees to play X and you bring a character that doesn't fit with X, that's not the fault of the GM or the system. That's just the player being a jerk. Celebrim, your example in DitV pretty much dictates the entire campaign to the rest of the group because you've chosen to play a character that runs counter to the assumptions built into the game. Everyone now has to play to your character because everything they do has to center on how everyone in the setting reacts to the fact that we have this psychopath in the group.
I think there's some miscommunication at that table IMHO.
OK, thanks, I suspected as much!
I can see how this (Narrativist) approach can work as long as there is strong and explicit buy-in from all participants before play begins. If you don't have that explicit buy in you are going to have players taking a Simulationist approach (like mine above) or in case of games like D&D a Gamist approach, and trying to 'drift' the game in their preferred direction. I think for us guys on ENW playing D&D, the issue is that most D&D players are not looking for Narrativism, and a player like pemerton who apparently comes into a game looking to drift it in a Narrativist direction is going to be the problem. Conversely if I came into Hussar's sci-fi game I'd probably be looking for a largely simulationist approach in terms of consequences, I'd get frustrated if any choice appeared to be equally valid in terms of my PC staying alive & successful. Which is ok and all, but something I think we've established here is that Narrativism is a narrow play style, it is actually very easy to take an 'invalid' approach for a Nar game. And this doesn't necessarily make the player a douchebag; as in your terrorist example they may not have understood the narrow &n un-simulationist, often unrealistic, foundations on which the game is set.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Dear all, let's make sure that terrorist-related examples, should they be really necessary, don't veer towards political comment please.
Thanks
Thanks
One of the points I'm trying to make is that there is nothing narrower about narrativism than simulationism. And the notion the narrativism requires a special sort of explicity buy in is also false, in my experience.
To get a dwarf PC with an interesting background, all I had to tell my player was (i) there needs to be something or someone to whom your PC is loyal, and (ii) your PC needs a reason to be ready to fight goblins. To get the player of that PC to engage in interesting narrativsit play, all I had to do was to provide the player with an opportunity for his PC to act on that background. It's not very esoteric, and I don't think my player has especially rarefied tastes or interests as an RPGer.
I also think a lot of the recurring points of discussion among "mainstream" D&D players - player entitlement; alignment and paladin worries; GM control over setting elements; playrs who are too passive (but at the same time too assertive!); etc, etc - are in fact the result of mostly simulationist GMs bumping heads with players with competing priorities for play.
Someone on these boards in the past few months - but I can't remember who - said that part of the problem of recruting players to RPGs is that prospective new players get told that it's a game of collective or collaborative storytelling - a bit like what we used to do as kids - except that, in pratice, it turns out this isn't true, and that in fact the focus of much D&D play is about the players exploring the GM's (or the module author's) world and story.
Every time I see a post from a GM talk about "taking time out of the main storyline to address a PC's backstory" or something similar, I wonder about the point of a game where the "main storyline" is not something that the players are driving, based on the PCs they've brought to the game, but is something foisted on them by someone else. To me, it doesn't seem to get much more videogame-y than that!
JamesonCourage, thanks for the long reply.
Some thoughts in response (and if Hussar's paying attention, sorry, more TL;DR):
One of my favourite ever PCs in a game I GMed was Xialath, a wizard in a Rolemaster game set in Greyhawk. Born into slavery in Rel Astra, he had (as part of his backstory) been trained as a criminal enforcer before buying his freedom and becoming a successful lawyer. When he actually entered the game as a PC, his story quickly turned into one of decline and near-fall - he became addicted to a trance-inducing drug (in an effort to improve the rate at which he regained spell points), lost his house as he couldn't afford payments on his lease, had a number of near-death or death-but-raised experiences as he was (i) pushed off a floating disc by a demon when the party demon summoner lost control, (ii) knocked off a levitating skiff to fall down the side of the Crystalmist Mountains when hit by a stone from a mountain giant, and (iii) eventually went into a cataonic state from drug withdrawal when he ran out of money. He was temporarily redeemed when a valley elf wizard rescued him from catatonia, joined him in Rel Astra and reintroduced him to the joys of life - but this came to an end when she, shapechanged into a songbird, was cut in half by another out-of-control demon! It was at this point that his companion decided to change sides, from Rel Astra to Vecna (as I was talking about somewhere upthread) - and having nothing left to live for, Xialath agreed to change sides also in return for having his house returned to him and being granted a magistracy. (He then went on to find new meaning in campaigning for an end to discrimination in the wizards' league, and to slavery in the new Great Kingdom.)
I think some of the choices and turning points I've described here were hard ones. And some of the consequences were, I think, negative for the PC. But none of them brought play to an end, or removed from the player the capacity to use his PC as a vehicle for engaging the gameworld and making the points that he wanted to make.
And that past play has been rendered meaningless - not in the sense that it didn't happen (it did, and it was good while it lasted), but in the sense that I had gradually built up a whole set of undestandings and expectations and ingame realities about my PC, which I could then use to do the stuff I wanted to do. And then the GM vacated it all. (The fact that ingame changes achieved by my PC might endure into the future isn't really all that relevant to me here - the point of my play wasn't to get the GM to edit some detail of his gameworld notes, but to build up my PCs relationship and situation in the gameworld so I could do stuff with it, in play.)
As a GM, I expect to have principal responsibility for the bacstory, although the players have a role too - particularly when their PCs are concerned - but once the game is in motion, the setting is a joint possession. If the players have their PCs do stuff, not only is it done at the ingame level (ie is there some ingame consequence) but it is done at the metagame level too - I as GM shouldn't negate it or undo it by (eg) teleporting all the PCs to some other time or place where what they've done is of no consequence to the situation in which they now find themselves.
But to me, this reflection reinforces the way in which decisions about setting, and campaign backstory, and consequences, can very much have the effect (inadventently at least in my case, given that I'm trying to avoid it) of shutting down or invalidating certain sorts of player choices. Which is why I used the word "railroading" way upthread.
Some thoughts in response (and if Hussar's paying attention, sorry, more TL;DR):
I never said they were. But I did say that ingame consequences that shut down play - when the player is still wanting to play, and is still a member in good standing of the play group - are undesirable. Pointless death is a major candidate here, although not the only one.
One of my favourite ever PCs in a game I GMed was Xialath, a wizard in a Rolemaster game set in Greyhawk. Born into slavery in Rel Astra, he had (as part of his backstory) been trained as a criminal enforcer before buying his freedom and becoming a successful lawyer. When he actually entered the game as a PC, his story quickly turned into one of decline and near-fall - he became addicted to a trance-inducing drug (in an effort to improve the rate at which he regained spell points), lost his house as he couldn't afford payments on his lease, had a number of near-death or death-but-raised experiences as he was (i) pushed off a floating disc by a demon when the party demon summoner lost control, (ii) knocked off a levitating skiff to fall down the side of the Crystalmist Mountains when hit by a stone from a mountain giant, and (iii) eventually went into a cataonic state from drug withdrawal when he ran out of money. He was temporarily redeemed when a valley elf wizard rescued him from catatonia, joined him in Rel Astra and reintroduced him to the joys of life - but this came to an end when she, shapechanged into a songbird, was cut in half by another out-of-control demon! It was at this point that his companion decided to change sides, from Rel Astra to Vecna (as I was talking about somewhere upthread) - and having nothing left to live for, Xialath agreed to change sides also in return for having his house returned to him and being granted a magistracy. (He then went on to find new meaning in campaigning for an end to discrimination in the wizards' league, and to slavery in the new Great Kingdom.)
I think some of the choices and turning points I've described here were hard ones. And some of the consequences were, I think, negative for the PC. But none of them brought play to an end, or removed from the player the capacity to use his PC as a vehicle for engaging the gameworld and making the points that he wanted to make.
Interestingly, it seems the opposite to you - I react to the decisions that the players make, in order to keep pushing them to new decision points and new choices. Whereas decisions that the GM makes purely on the basis of his/her own judgment of what is "reasonable" within the gameworld seem to me to be more guiding of the players - it seems to me that, on that approach, the GM is primarily responsible for what happens in the gameworld.
I'm not that interested in just "playing a character" - I see the character as a means to an end. (One shots or conventions are a bit different, although even then I find that the character tends to come alive, for me, because of the relationships and backstory in which s/he is embedded.) My PC is my vehicle for doing stuff. And when I've been pursuing that end for 9 levels, doing a whole lot of stuff, only to have all that effort undone by the GM, my interest in starting from scratch is pretty slight.
And that past play has been rendered meaningless - not in the sense that it didn't happen (it did, and it was good while it lasted), but in the sense that I had gradually built up a whole set of undestandings and expectations and ingame realities about my PC, which I could then use to do the stuff I wanted to do. And then the GM vacated it all. (The fact that ingame changes achieved by my PC might endure into the future isn't really all that relevant to me here - the point of my play wasn't to get the GM to edit some detail of his gameworld notes, but to build up my PCs relationship and situation in the gameworld so I could do stuff with it, in play.)
My player isn't defined in the way you describe - but my interest and investment in the game is defined by the way I can use my PC to do stuff, which is typically going to be expressed by building up certain relationships in the setting and acting on them.
As a GM, I expect to have principal responsibility for the bacstory, although the players have a role too - particularly when their PCs are concerned - but once the game is in motion, the setting is a joint possession. If the players have their PCs do stuff, not only is it done at the ingame level (ie is there some ingame consequence) but it is done at the metagame level too - I as GM shouldn't negate it or undo it by (eg) teleporting all the PCs to some other time or place where what they've done is of no consequence to the situation in which they now find themselves.
Sure. For me, this means that I do my best to introduce consequences that don't negate or undo what the players have chosen. Sometimes this requires a judgment call. I posted an example of this upthread in my discussion of the dwarf PC in my group - if I were to suddenly introduce a new, serious element to his so far somewhat comic dealings with the NPC dwarves (eg it turns out that one of his tormentors, on whom he's now had his revenge, was responsible in the past for saving the PC's family from death) would I be adding a complication that drives things forward? Or would I be undoing what the player has done, in part by introducing seriousness where he had (not unreasonably) though that there was only comedy, and therefore retrospectively making his PC look pretty bad in a way that the player coulnd't reasonably have been expected to anticipate? I think maybe the latter, which is why I'm approaching it very cautiously.
But to me, this reflection reinforces the way in which decisions about setting, and campaign backstory, and consequences, can very much have the effect (inadventently at least in my case, given that I'm trying to avoid it) of shutting down or invalidating certain sorts of player choices. Which is why I used the word "railroading" way upthread.
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