What is "railroading" to you (as a player)?

[Thomas Shey]

No, I get it. I’ve done it before. But I think the distinction here is I perceive that external model as still being you. A set of mental heuristics you apply to “model” a fictional character is still, at its core, you.

Then it still comes back to "desire" being a bad term. Once you set up that set of heuristics, playing them honestly can absolutely produce things I don't know any other term to use that "undesirable" results, perhaps as a consequence of the way the character is set up you didn't think would occur, or because situations come up you didn't see the implications of.

In a certain sense you're producing the result, but that doesn't mean in any useful sense you want that result.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'd go so far as to say that it's either the player or it's just an auton or script. This hypothetical internal model suggests that all actions are clear from its design, but even then, there is a choice made to follow the model or reject it or rewrite it on the fly.

I'm going to say that this assumes the choice is made at the time, rather than as a, from lack of other term, policy. Once I'd set up that sort of thing the only thing that would cause me to either reject or rewrite it would be external factors (i.e. disrupting the game excessively for others), and even in those cases I'd see if we could just back up and not Go There first. In either case I'd consider it a process failure, not a normal part of that style of play.

To ignore any player involvement is, ironically, the opposite of player agency.

Well, in my particular case, when playing in that mode I didn't much care if I (the player) had agency. In fact, to some degree, the less I did the better. I wanted to see how the character would play out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

About mind control magic. I am actually not fan of that either, though it is more tolerable, and as a GM I use it very sparingly. But the thing is that to me mechanics telling you how your character reacts feel like mind control. And if the thing being represented by the mechanics literally is mind control, that is less of an issue.

I've got a player who responds extremely strongly to mind control effects. Even he thinks he overreacts some times, but its still a thing he reacts strongly to. I have avoided asking if there's a--history--involved.

 

[Thomas Shey]

EDIT: I forgot to point it out, but those two effects from 13A are clearly only relevant in combat. There are no specific "diplomacy x loss of control" or "vice x loss of control" or so on rules in it.

I also should note that the confused effect was used rather more strongly in the prior edition, so its clearly been an evolving perspective.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What I think would be a good mid-point design, is that there are these consequences, but it is the player who gets to choose which one applies in this instance. This way it is less likely that the effect would be something that they player would feel is inauthentic to their character.

I think that's fair to an extent, but I think it risks consequence shopping (i.e. picking the one that rather than being most authentic is simply least impactful).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is rather poor list of consequences if it is so easy to choose the one which is the least trouble.

I think you're being a little blase about how easy it is to come up with a meaningful variety of such things that are equally impactful. I've seen parallel situations where even very experienced game designers struggled here.

And if the point is to choose a consequence that matters, then if the situation would somehow render some of them inconsequential, then those cannot be chosen.

There's some land between "inconsequential" and "notably less consequential".

 

[Fenris-77]

I was very confused until I realized that blocking is what is making this hard to grok. Carry on folks.

 

[bsss]

I'm going to say that this assumes the choice is made at the time, rather than as a, from lack of other term, policy. Once I'd set up that sort of thing the only thing that would cause me to either reject or rewrite it would be external factors (i.e. disrupting the game excessively for others), and even in those cases I'd see if we could just back up and not Go There first. In either case I'd consider it a process failure, not a normal part of that style of play.



Well, in my particular case, when playing in that mode I didn't much care if I (the player) had agency. In fact, to some degree, the less I did the better. I wanted to see how the character would play out.

Yeah, I don't think it's invalid to play that way --- it's certainly interesting if nothing else --- but I thought it funny that you follow that to its pristine conclusion and whoops, we just looped back around to "player is in control of nothing" vis-a-vis "what is railroading?".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I don't think it's invalid to play that way --- it's certainly interesting if nothing else --- but I thought it funny that you follow that to its pristine conclusion and whoops, we just looped back around to "player is in control of nothing" vis-a-vis "what is railroading?".

Well, there is a difference: the player was still a watchmaker god when he created the character. You can argue how much he "controls" along the way, but I can't help but think a railroad of your own construction where you don't know the final destination is a bit different a beast than one controlled by a third party who knows very well where it ends up.

Edit: Of course the latter part isn't even automatically true of railroading. I've mentioned the most on-rails campaign I ever ran was my game of Scion 1e, but I had no idea where that was going to go until fairly late in the campaign. So sometimes its not so much knowing the final destination as the next planned stop.