D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

Heh. After some long edition-war-era rants from 'simulationists,' I concluded that a simulationist game is one that makes the kinds of sacrifices you would have to make to modify a playable game into an accurate simulation. That is, balance and even basic fairness are right out, anathema to the agenda - and playability is just the bare minimum to make the exercise possible, if tedious. But, it makes those sacrifices for their own sake, not to simulate anything.

The players exploiting the necessarily imbalanced mechanics to maximum advantage? (I guess that's 'skilled play.')
The DM showing off his imagined world with the players as tourists?
Re-running a typical genre story but having it turn out 'right' instead of conforming to genre tropes?
(ie: Thulsa Doom polymorphs Conan into a nematode, Dominates(pi) the hot princess, and takes over the world; Ganfalf uses The One Ring to destroy/become Sauron, Dominates(pi) Galadriel, and takes over the world; Merlin disintegrates the Stone, renders Excalibur for Mana, Dominates(pi) Morgan le Fey, the Lady of the Lake, & Guinevere, and conquers England; etc...)

Well, I might be a bit less harsh I mean I 'get' what [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is attempting to do. I just think its mostly vain and what you really end up with, given that narrative and gamist considerations perforce must be considered in order to have workable play experience, is something that is a limited form of gamist or narrativist play that IME simply improves when you take it at face value. The IDEA is OK, the problem is there's not a huge reason to do it except for 'skilled play', so maybe the agenda REALLY is 'skilled play', the testing of the player, not the character, at which point there is an antagonist that is embodied by the GM and so some semblance of fair play is necessitated. Naturalism is presumptively then an objective standard of that.

 

[LostSoul]

What is the result of the players turning left or right? The end result (or consequence) is that they reach the ritual as it is in progress.

What are the players actually playing at that point? If a game is full of uninformed decisions, what's the difference from the player's perspective between making a choice and using a die to randomly pick? The players have no agency - no ability to affect the outcome.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Yeah, I'm quite lost as to what makes it 'rails'.

I know you don't.

/Wisdom check made; I'm moving on.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Dictionary definitions are all very well for winning semantic arguments

So in this case, literally what we're talking about.

It's a shame for me that you only skimmed it, since I am discussing here because I am testing my own new-found lack of "faith" in sim roleplaying, so any insight would be welcome. But you don't have to supply insight on demand, obviously.

Yeah. I just don't find Saelorn's bit particularly engaging. I'm willing to talk about stuff I find more engaging, though.

 

[JamesonCourage]

What are the players actually playing at that point? If a game is full of uninformed decisions, what's the difference from the player's perspective between making a choice and using a die to randomly pick? The players have no agency - no ability to affect the outcome.

First, who is talking about a game of uninformed decisions? Really? Is anyone?

Secondly, as I've noted, whether or not the players are informed is separate from whether the choices is meaningful. Their choice would have natural consequences (if they turn left and explore the library, they arrive too late and the ritual is completed). If the GM takes that away, they've imposed their own desired results, disregarding the decision made by the players (railroading).

I'm not arguing that uninformed decisions are somehow good; I'm not arguing over whether or not the fork scenario is good or bad design; I'm not arguing that railroading is bad.

Is that clear? I feel like I've been very clear on those things.

 

[TwoSix]

I know you don't.

/Wisdom check made; I'm moving on.

If you're going home, can you at least leave your ball?

No, I think I get what you're saying, even if I'm not sure I agree with it. You're basically saying that if every event is located somewhere that's thematically and narratively relevant, there's nowhere else in the game to go that isn't relevant, right? You can't go to the Desert of Dessicated Frogs just because it got mentioned in passing, and even if you do, the Desert will now BECOME relevant. There's no exploration purely for its own sake.

 

[JamesonCourage]

If you're going home, can you at least leave your ball?

No, it's just the same as what I told pemerton earlier about illusionism: I'm done talking about it with him. The same now goes for this topic and this poster. I'm willing to engage with other posters, or even this same poster on other topics.

No, I think I get what you're saying, even if I'm not sure I agree with it. You're basically saying that if every event is located somewhere that's thematically and narratively relevant, there's nowhere else in the game to go that isn't relevant, right?

It depends on what you mean by relevant. There's stuff going on, but the PCs may not care. And if they don't, they can leave (barring something stopping them, but now we have conflict) and find something they care about where something else is going on.

You can't go to the Desert of Dessicated Frogs just because it got mentioned in passing

What? Why not?

and even if you do, the Desert will now BECOME relevant.

Relevant to the players, exactly. Yes.

There's no exploration purely for its own sake.

I've had two players express at various points over the years (but hardly often) that they think it would be fun to go off the map to see what's there. That's fine with me. I'll make a new map (even if the players don't have it), populate it, etc., and they can explore the setting.

Basically, I'm not interested in exploration purely for its own sake. If you want to go around through the hills or forest or the mountains while I describe nature to you, and you want to go in every cave, climb every tree, etc., then I find that boring. If you want to explore untamed lands looking for people or interesting things, I'm happy to resolve such endeavors via rolls. But just prodding around the wilderness just for its own sake? No thanks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you're going home, can you at least leave your ball?

No, I think I get what you're saying, even if I'm not sure I agree with it. You're basically saying that if every event is located somewhere that's thematically and narratively relevant, there's nowhere else in the game to go that isn't relevant, right? You can't go to the Desert of Dessicated Frogs just because it got mentioned in passing, and even if you do, the Desert will now BECOME relevant. There's no exploration purely for its own sake.

I would say the exploration is of the creativity and imagination of the people at the table. Someone is going to find some interesting way to portray the desert and combine that with some backstory, agenda of another of the PCs, something to come up with fun. In the alternative, assuming the DM of the sandbox doesn't place something in this location, is maybe some random encounters. I guess the theory is that random encounters and player antics, shorn of any significance or coherency beyond the structure of the encounter table and the bare outlines of the map, will outshine anything the participants could come up with in terms of a creative agenda. Its a theory, and it certainly could be true for some tables.

Its just that IME what DOES happen is someone finally imposes some sort of direction on the thing. The DM invents some ruins to explore or monsters capture the characters, or who knows what. In fact it is pretty similar to what happens in the narrativist case, just less artfully.

 

[pemerton]

What is the result of the players turning left or right? The end result (or consequence) is that they reach the ritual as it is in progress.

I wish you would stop making up a hypothetical (whether the players turn left or right they end up at point X) and then asserting that that is how I have, or GMed, some episode of play.

The "arrive in time to rescue the prisoners" is an actual thing that I actually GMed, and have set out in some detail in this and other threads.

It had absolutely nothing to do with turning left or right. I have actually described the geography of the Well of Demons in this very post, and explained how and why I ran it as I did (ie following the map as printed).

 

[pemerton]

The railroading is only enough to start the scene, yes. But it's railroaded to open it, since the outcome of their decision (at the fork, in this scenario) is entirely decided by the GM's whim. It's exactly the GM's desired outcome.

I'm talking about when a GM forces an outcome no matter what the players do. Can you expand on what you mean by WHEN A PLAYER asks for SOMETHING?

If you mean the players say "I want a fight, please," and the GM says "okay, I'll throw you guys into a fight." Then he contrives a fight scene (naturalistic or not- we'll say something plausible for their circumstances), then yeah, that's railroading, in my opinion. Their choices don't matter.

Let's put to one side that you are talking about a scenario entirely of your own contrivance (which you are then imputing to me, for reasons that I don't understand since I already mentioned hundreds of posts upthread that the scenario is your contrivance and not mine).

In the hypothetical that you state here, the GM did not force anything. The players asked for something, and the GM gave it to them. Had they not asked, s/he would not have given it to them. So how can you say the players' choices don't matter? It was their choice to ask for something that was crucial!

Perhaps you mean - the outcome wasn't the ingame causal or mechanical consequence of the players' action declarations for their PCs? That looks like its true in your description, but I don't see how that is relevant to railroading. If it was, every time a GM said yes rather than calling for a die roll (in "say yes or roll the dice games") there would be a railroad!