The Quantum Ogre Dilemma

[Blue]

The Quantum Ogre stands as one of the most fascinating concepts that has come across my feed. At its core, it highlights the difference between player agency or the illusion of choice presented by the Dungeon Master.

I recently did a unpacking the true ideals of this dilemma, giving my own clarification on the idea. From a Player perspective it is hard to denounce the idea without metagaming, and vice versa with a Dungeon Master. How do you prevent railroading and if you do it, why?

Thought experiment:

How is a Quantum Ogre any different from a Location-Based Ogre in a place they need to go through?

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

How is a Quantum Ogre any different from a Location-Based Ogre in a place they need to go through?

Nobody but the referee will ever know?

(Side question: which is more dangerous, an ogre or a chamax?)

 

[prabe]

Thought experiment:

How is a Quantum Ogre any different from a Location-Based Ogre in a place they need to go through?

Plausibly depends on how the PCs arrive at the determination they need to go through that place, and/or on when it's determined the Location-Based Ogre is there. I mean, if it's the GM deciding they need to encounter the Ogre, there really isn't any.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay. So when your PCs go through a forest, do you describe every tree, every plant their precise geometry, or only the important things? Do you put some red herrings in, things that seem potentially important but aren’t? Etc. You cannot have the PCs walk through a simple forest without scene framing.

Then why isn't that storytelling term used in most books (I don't know if any RPG text that discuss it specifically, but I hardly know everything)?

 

[pemerton]

If the players stake an outcome, and the GM ignores that to generate a consequence regardless, then we have railroading. In the context of the "quantum ogre", this would be (i) the players making decisions, about where their PCs move, with the goal of determining or at least influencing the prospect of encountering X rather than Y, and (ii) the GM ignoring that and placing the ogre in their path in any event.

If the players have not staked an outcome - eg they make a blind choice about where to travel - then the GM choosing to have them encounter an ogre seems neither here nor there.

A lot of discussion about the quantum ogre assumes a type of play - broadly speaking, "map and key" - in which the main determinant of what scenes the GM frames is taken to be where the players have their PCs move on the map. As soon as this assumption is abandoned - eg it's not true of much of my RPGing - then the "quantum ogre" stops being very interesting as a case study. Rather, the interesting question is what principles does the GM use in framing encounters. Some principles may push towards railroad-y play; others may not.