D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[JamesonCourage]

From exactly the post you originally got abusive about:

I just want to point out that calling what you did (rephrasing what I'm saying when I've already explained it in a negative light and then dismissing it with one word) a dick move isn't abusive. But that assertion is amusing.

Also, that quoted bit looks like something I explicitly skimmed earlier. No interest in reading it now, either.

It's quite possible that I have missed a possibility, but I'm not seeing it.

I know you're not.

But I'm not interested in having a conversation with you any longer. If other posters have the same question (but not phrased in a purposefully negative way), I'll be happy to have a civil discussion with them.

But you? I'm done with you, for this thread (not just this topic). Feel free to quote my posts or talk about my views (even continue to misrepresent them). I won't try to take that way from you. But I'm not going to bang my head against that wall. Not when it's needlessly spiky.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I was hoping that you might explain your reasons.

I think I'm done with that, as far as you're concerned. I have no more interest in discussing railroading with you (just like I'm done discussing illusionism with you).

Again, feel free to quote or mention me. Feel free to assert things about my style in good faith (or not) based on our conversations. But again (if a little late), I made my Wisdom check. I'm done with this part of the conversation with you (though not necessarily other posters).

Hope you get something useful.

 

[Bluenose]

All granted - but that still doesn't speak at all to the original question. It answers the alternative question I gave (again), but that (still) wasn't the original question.

It isn't necessary. For me it quite often depends on what the players are thinking/talking about. If handling the problem is what they're concerned with, then I'm not going to make them turn up too late to do that; the thing that they're interested in is the resolution of the situation, and I'm not going to resolve that without their input. If they're more worried about the trip, then I might well roll some dice between the NPCs to see how long they have; however in this case it's the journey that matters and the time taken for it is the thing they're interested in, and I'll make that journey the focus of the session while resolving the situation will be less important. If they're wondering what will happen if they aren't present; that's the time I'm most likely to roll dice to resolve what happens between the NPCs and how long it takes, and sometimes that means I'll present the players with a situation where they're too late to make a difference to the resolution of a situation but have to handle the aftermath.

I agree. But that is what the failing forward technique is for. You still do not need to prepare a table in advance and roll on it. Less preptime, same result?

Probably it would be done "on the fly" without any advance preparation, though if I know something is going to happen without the PCs present then I might play it out quickly beforehand. It's not likely to involve a table, more something along the lines of a 4e skill challenge or a Heroquest contest or extended contest, which doesn't take more than a minute or two even with no preparation if you know what each party has by way of resources.

 

[pemerton]

my suspicion is that the contention is something like

<snip>

the guy that plays Russian Roulette didn't commit suicide per se, while the guy who put a gun with a live bullet in the chamber and willfully pulled the trigger did.

Not meaning to shoot the messenger (!), but I don't find the analogy very persuasive.

The guy that plays Russian Roulette was hoping that no bullet would be fired. (If, in fact, he wanted to die then it is suicide per se.) But the GM can't pretend that s/he didn't want to introduce some content into the game!

I think it may be railroading if the previous choices of the players are pointing in one direction but the DM throws this encounter out regardless of the direction of play. Ignoring the choices the players have made in order to use the encounter.

<snip>

Random tables don't have that element of DM force - that they are going to use the encounter they drew up regardless of the direction of play.

I don't see why not.

Rolling on a table is no different to picking out of a hat. Suppose there is only one option in the hat - does that make it more forceful? Suppose that I know what that one option is - does that make it more forceful?

I'm not really grasping these distinctions.

Well, then again, maybe they do, since the DM is the one creating this table.

That's my feeling. I don't see how it becomes less forceful because you write it in advance and pick it out of a hat.

The table might have results that don't work out so well - boring, don't fit the genre, absurdly out-of-place, etc.; but what can you do, that's always a risk with any content generation.

Those sound like the typical consequences of railroading!

Maybe it's not just random tables in isolation (or scene-framing in isolation) that leads to railroading but how they are used in the context of the entire game.

<snip>

If it negates previous or future choices - an NPC coming back to life or some sort of super-powerful NPC that the PCs can't resist - then you might be removing some player agency.

This seems right, but also seems to be independent of random tabes vs timelines vs scene-framing vs freeze-frame.

I mean, if the PCs had learned of an impending revolt in the city, and had succeeded in sending reinforcements, then if the GM takes my approach as in scenario 1 - ie the description of the setting doesn't demonstrate any response to these events that the PCs have put in motion - that would seem to me to be just as problematic.

I find it a bit puzzling that multiple posters assume an interesting scene description is a railroad - negating or failing to respond to some previous choice - whereas a pedestrian one is not. I'm not sure why that is. The pedestrian description is OK only if the PCs have done nothing to disturb life in the city; but then, in that case, the interesting (overturned wagon) one probably is as well!

 

[TheFindus]

I'm just picturing demons not even existing in the world. The other PCs just tell him the bad guys are possessed.....

That could indeed be an interesting scenario.Maybe the demon hunter eventually finds out that there actually are no demons and has been fighting possessed people all along. But even then: the player's choice to be a demon hunter would have impact on what the game will be about - demons or no demons. It lends a focus to how a story will develop.

 

[TheFindus]

Session 0 isn't part of the game. It's entirely external to the game. If the game can be compared to a novel with multiple authors in a complex power-sharing arrangement, then session 0 is standing in the book store and reading the back blurb in order to decide which book to buy. Nothing within the story is influenced by your decision to get this book instead of that book.

I disagree with you here. The choices made in session 0 and the things discussed there will color what the game will be about because it has a continuing influence. The character, once made, will stay the same. That choice will matter after session 0. And if a player decides to change the PC (for example multi-class or become a bard in 1st edition ADnD) that makes a difference, too. Players are going to always solve problems through the use of their characters and their abilities. Players want to be challenged about what their PCs (and sometimes the players) can do or not do. That is the same in any playstyle, which one can clearly see from the descriptions given in this thread and many others. That is what railroading runs against. Which seems to be one of the major topics this thread is about.

 

[TheFindus]

Oh, yeah, I see it now (I think). I feel that without those dice rolls I am going to be determining if the PCs succeed or not. I don't want that responsibility. I make wandering monster checks as the mechanics dictate not because I think it's adding to the verisimilitude of the game or the plausibility of the setting - though good tables can do that - but mainly because I don't want to have to decide when and how many encounters the PCs face.

I make those rolls because I think these things are too important to the success or failure of the PCs to leave up to my judgement, which is full of bias - especially when done behind the screen.

But do you really not leave success or failure up to the PCs when not rolling on a table? The result of the dice rolls will influence the situational content in the same amount as a simple pick from the table without the roll of a die because you could have rolled any result.
The risk you run into, though, is that you could roll something up that is completely uninteresting and unengaging for the players. Is that risk not more likely to be important for the success and failure of the PCs?

As far as I understand it, the major advantages for this playstyle presented are:
1. that the DM simply picking something without rolling leads to railroading
2. that a roll on a table leads to a more believable content
3. the DM's taste or wish has no influence in what is going to happen.

Maybe I have misunderstood some of the nuances of the discussion, but as far as I see it right now, this is what it boils down to. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Now, what I am saying is this.

Ad 1: Railroading is about negating player choices (x happens no mater what the PCs do). But not rolling or scene-framing is not about advancing any DM-plot. I do not have a plot in mind when I DM. There are NPCs with motives and plans, locations etc. But I do not decide what the PCs do. I just narrate the consequences which will lead (and this is crucial) to the next scene which is heavily influenced by what the players interests are (because we talked about it in advance or they picked paragon path x or theme y etc.). There is no railroad.

Ad 2: If you roll on a table and you are willing to live with any result (which you seem to do) than you regard anything on that table to be plausible. Also, you, the DM, made that table or you, the DM picked it up somewhere because you thought it full of plausible things. Rolling the dice is therefore unnecessary to introduce plausible content. You could just pick one result to get a plausible thing. So why roll the dice?

Ad 3: The tables you, the DM, make so you have something to roll for are influenced by yout, the DMs taste. So any table has something to do with what you find interesting, plausible or fun. Which, to be clear, I do not find in the least surprising or bad. It is human and the DM has to like the game, too. This is especially true for the genre (why should anybody DM an underwater setting if she is not in the least attracted to this?) but can go as far as PCs actions (for me, evil PCs come to mind - I hate those. Why should I offer to DM if this is what the game will be about or turns out to be about?). So you make your tables and you think that the content on the tables is good, reliable, plausible etc. content. I mostly make stuff up as we go along and have the setting, locations and NPCs (with their plans) in mind but do not roll. How is that different? The only thing different is the point in time the two of us made it up. You much more in advance than I did. The decisions are still based on what we, as DMs, fell is plausible etc.

 

[TheFindus]

It's a bit of a side-issue, but I don't really see what's unbelievable about an overturned wagon. I'm sure I've read city adventure modules in which wagons have collided or overturned (I think Night's Dark Terror has something like this, for instance).

I do not find anything unplausible with a hay wagon that is used to smuggle weapons. Something goes wrong for the smugglers. I also can see "my" players jump at this immediately. But I also think that a result like this could be found on of [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION]'s tables. And "his" players might pursue this as well. The process of introducing this content would be different though, I guess. Because if "my" players showed no interest in a "we enter the city and something remarkable happens" then I would not waste the time with scene-framing this. After all, they could choose to teleport into the city and skip the city gates completely.

In my experience, a lot of unexpected things can happen in life. A lot of things are plausible.

What does push against "naturalism" is that the PCs repeatedly find themselves at the centre of unlikely occurrences, but I don't see how any interesting RPG is going to avoid that - it's endemic in all serial adventure fiction.

I agree. I have yet to meet a player or a DM who wants to roleplay beet-farming until they reach level 12. And even though one of the people I play with built a school in a big city, that was not what the focus of the game was about.

 

[pemerton]

I think I'm done with that, as far as you're concerned.

Very Delphic. Not very helpful, though.

An observation that also pertains to my conversation with [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]:

The only unequivocal example of railroading that has been provided in this thread (at least recently) is [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s story about the corpse-eating demon, which also seems to have lead to illusionistic backstory manipulation to get the game "back on the rails".

I don't see how it would have been any less problematic, in all the ways that it was, if it had come about because the GM rolled on a random table and it happened to be the result that came up.

If my example of a PC falling through the Elemental Chaos is supposed to be railroading (which I don't remotely see - what player agency was blocked/negated?), how would it have been less so if it had come about because I rolled it on a random table?

And more generally: railroading pertains to the relationship between the GM's introduction of new fictional content, and the past player decisions, PC actions, etc. But random tables, use of freeze-frames etc are all just variations on GM-side techniques for making a decision about what to introduce. None of them, in and of itself, implies anything about a relationship between the GM's decision to introduce new content and past player decisions, PC actions etc. Hence why I cannot see any relationship between the use of them, and railroading.

Obviously the use of a freeze-frame scene (the overturned wagon, the demon eating the corpse, the githzerai training in their dojo like the closing scene of Tai Chi Master) might be railroading, if it negates some prior exercise of player agency. But so can rolling on a random table, or sticking to the setting description in the GM's notes, or imposing a GM timeline.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My puzzle is what any of this has to do with railroading or player agency.

Which was my question to @LostSoul and @JamesonCourage and, in a subsequent post, @Saelorn. I think it is also the question that @Balesir is asking.

What you describe above is an aesthetic preference - that the world be "naturalistic", that if 100 adventuring parties arrive at the Garden Gate then the scenes the GM describes occur with roughly the percentage likelihood they would in "real life", etc. As you said, it's about "the world seeming authentic enough to provide a pleasing play experience".

As Balesir asked, what do departures from this aesthetic preference - eg direct GM authorship rather than GM-authored random charts whose application is mediated via dice rolls - have to do with railroading? How do the players have more agency if the GM writes a chart and then rolls on it?

Nothing, IMHO. I don't agree with either [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6668292]JamesonCourage[/MENTION] on this point at all. Their definitions of railroading and GM force IMHO are quixotic and don't withstand analysis. As you say, this is primarily and fundamentally an aesthetic issue, and as such I don't see any reason to favor one agenda over another purely on the basis of some inherent quality of their aesthetic merit.

My personal perception is that most people start out at the sort of default simulationist approach. If a person continues to play the 'unicorn' nature of simulationism quickly asserts itself and they arrive at some level of naturalistic approach, or alternately modify the simulation into a gamist approach. Usually the narrativist approach is a later stage, one that arises out of a desire for a more dynamic exploration of RP. It is therefor tempting to label it 'more advanced' or 'more sophisticated', and perhaps it tends to deploy more varied and subtle techniques. However, as we have seen, it is certainly possibly to evolve a very refined naturalist approach, which verges on narrativist, and its certainly also possible to push your gamist agenda pretty far and refine it in a lot of ways, though we haven't really had a ton of expostulation of that agenda here beyond considerations of playability.