D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[CreamCloud0]

This is literally the second time people have repeated my own argument back to me.

""get off at any time" is functionally an agreement to stop playing. There isn't necessarily anything available for that session if you decide you don't want to do the tomb anymore"

No one ever said this was railroading. I'm merely pointing out why quitting in the middle of a linear adventure usually doesn't happen.

so what if the session has to end if the players diverge from a linear adventure, what does this have to do with them being railroaded or not?

 

[kermit4karate]

Thank you again for your opinion. I have been I think patient and jocular with your japes about my prolix writing, even making fun of myself as I am doing now. And I have tried to take your advice seriously, because I am aware of my limitations.

I checked. The post in question is 416 words long and according to readability metrics has a Flesch score that indicates it is plain English and has a Fry Readability Grade Level of 9th grade.

I realize that you prefaced your comments by saying you are a super-intelligent person who would understand any concept if it was presented to you in simple plain English, but in this case from an objective standard using the commonly recognized measurements, and taking into account that you don't seem to realize that pronouns require antecedents, perhaps go back to high school?

Well, you are correct about one thing -- that I am confused about what you believe you're achieving with your barrage of lengthy comments.

Unsure if you're trying to sway others or simply caught in a loop.

 

[CreamCloud0]

test post, getting an error message when trying to view page 52 of this thread? (posting from 51), i can view the most recent page when logged out.

edit: forum issues seem to be over.

 

[soviet]

This probably deserves a fork to a new thread, but that is not the goal of narrative games. And in fact, that's opposite the goal of narrative games. Narrative games arose out of the big plot heavy story telling attempts of the 1990s that were still tied to game mechanics with traditional events that proceed from the resolution process (like in OSR games that are leaning back into that) and the frustration with people like Ron Edwards that these process heavy resolution procedures never reliably (or at all) delivered the narratives they were promising. The idea then was to make new mechanics that resolved not according to a process that depended on the internal elements of the fiction, but rather on elements of the meta such as "what is the goal of this scene".

I don't know what a narrative game is. Ron Edwards and others popularised narrativist games. I don't know if you mean the same thing. Narrativist games do not necessarily resolve things on a meta level or ignore 'the internal elements of the fiction'. I think what TwoSix said is correct. Perhaps you can name some specific games you are talking about here.

The typical example of a rule of this type is the metarule in Toon that said, "If it is funny, it works."

A game published in 1984 is typical of the games that arose out of the big plot heavy story telling elements of the 1990s? Do I understand you correctly?

Narrative games basically take what trad games would call "railroading" as a desirable thing, and instead of trying to achieve player agency through unbiased mechanics they try to achieve player agency by giving them narrative currency to control the event outcomes - essentially parceling out narrative force rather than giving it all to the GM and hoping he will be unbiased.

This is completely wrong. An essential ingredient of narrativist play (and gamist play) is that the mechanics resolve things without bias, rather than having a GM use force to veto or fudge outcomes. Narrative currency is not GM force, narrative currency is mechanics.

 

[soviet]

Duplicate post due to forum issues, sorry

 

[soviet]

Duplicate post due to forum issues, sorry

 

[soviet]

Duplicate post due to forum issues, sorry

 

[soviet]

Duplicate post due to forum issues, sorry!!!!!

 

[Celebrim]

so what if the session has to end if the players diverge from a linear adventure, what does this have to do with them being railroaded or not?

It doesn't have anything to do with whether you are railroaded or not.

If you track back the conversation, in fact my post was about how we couldn't say whether something was a railroad or not merely because you could (or couldn't) turn around and go back. While I agree inability to leave the rails is a big part of a railroad, it's not a touchstone for reasons I brought up in the original post.

The part that is getting jumped on is that I noted that in a linear adventure the decision to stop in the middle and skip prepared content has social ramifications. Even if the GM wants to allow it, he might not be prepared for the alternative the players present. For more details you can go back and read my overly long server crashing 416 word post.

 

[bloodtide]

duplicate