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

[Fenris-77]

It was in post #683 at the bottom and while it was not a response directly to you, it is a part of my position on the topic we are discussing. This is a relatively public thread and all of my responses in it are included in my position. It was not just added.

Well, I'll reiterate, I don't think this is an issue that affects whole tables nearly as often as if irks specific people. Every table is different of course and needs to be treated as individual.

 

[Reynard]

I am unconvinced Woody is smarter than Buzz. He is clearly much more sensible, grounded and capable of understanding reality than Buzz, but that's a matter of WIS in D&D!

This is definitely the main point of your entirely serious post and we should debate that and "Who is smarter, Bruce Wayne or Lex Luthor" in great detail. I am very smart.

Also this is worthless when we didn't include Scully as at least one INT higher than Fox! This is Scully erasure!

Being smart myself (at least an 11) I left the odd numbers free so that we can slot in whoever you like.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes it is. Mental acuity doesn't mean "how fast you come up with ideas", it's much, much broader and more vague term than that.

No.

It just means it's not covered. D&D's six stats don't measure everything about a PC's capabilities, and thinking that they do is a big part of making a nuisance of yourself as a DM or player, frankly.

What, exactly, is a "good idea". Define that.

Because animals can come up with "good ideas", man. Animals can process information incredibly fast, often far faster than a human. Does make them higher than INT 8? I don't think so.

A good idea which is relatively simple is not something that requires a high INT. This includes plans like sneaking around - again, stuff even animals are good at.

If the plan involves like, complex physics, or knowing exact detailed routes from a map, or memorizing a bunch of numbers or something, or analyzing complex speech or the like, sure, that's probably off but that's not a "good idea", that's a "complex idea", and often those sort of plans are absolutely terrible plans. Just complicatedly terrible.


What is it that you think deductive reasoning means? Because it's a specific mode of thought, and it's not one that's typically used by D&D players when forming plans, in my experience.

How about instead you show me a single example of someone with an 80 IQ in real life who constantly and quickly comes up good suggestions for overcoming a variety of problems.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I'll reiterate, I don't think this is an issue that affects whole tables nearly as often as if irks specific people. Every table is different of course and needs to be treated as individual.

Right. I'm not talking about whole tables. I was very specifically talking about my table. What a group does over in Nacogdoches, Texas isn't a part of what I am saying. They can make their own determinations about intelligence and roleplay.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How about instead you show me a single example of someone with an 80 IQ in real life who constantly and quickly comes up good suggestions for overcoming a variety of problems.

My cousin Mike!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Ah, there we go.

See, I don’t think there is such a thing.

There is roleplaying…lots of it, really…that I don’t appreciate, and much that I find annoying. But that’s because I have different preferences. I 100% believe that it’s not my business how others choose to express their characters, or how they make decisions for their characters.

I don't see any reason to be coy about this; how people play is largely their own business (as long as you acknowledge RPG gaming is normally a group thing and playing in a way that disrupts everyone else is seriously bad form), and some of how people play isn't focused on roleplaying heavily in the first place. But that doesn't mean I think all of the roleplaying end is created equal, and I see no point in hiding that opinion.

I don't think there's any badwrongfun barring the above group disruption; but if you play a character with a D&D scale INT 4 like they're smart and analytical, trying to claim that's good roleplaying is going to get nothing but an eyeroll from me, and I'm not going to say otherwise. If someone thinks otherwise, that's as it is, but that doesn't compell me to do so.

 

[TwoSix]

How about instead you show me a single example of someone with an 80 IQ in real life who constantly and quickly comes up good suggestions for overcoming a variety of problems.

"X Int = 10X IQ" is from a 40 year old Dragon article, and doesn't represent the realities of modern neotrad play.

Character concept is the core for all PCs and NPCs, stats and classes and such are simply things we layer on to give them a resolution engine. The stats imply, but they do not model.

 

[Maxperson]

My cousin Mike!

You leave Magic Mike out of this!

 

[Fenris-77]

Right. I'm not talking about whole tables. I was very specifically talking about my table. What a group does over in Nacogdoches, Texas isn't a part of what I am saying. They can make their own determinations about intelligence and roleplay.

OK, sure. That's not at all what some of your posts read like but we'll chalk this up to the perils of text-only communication. You and your players do whatever makes the game fun for you guys.

 

[Maxperson]

"X Int = 10X IQ" is from a 40 year old Dragon article, and doesn't represent the realities of modern neotrad play.

Character concept is the core for all PCs and NPCs, stats and classes and such are simply things we layer on to give them a resolution engine. The stats imply, but they do not model.

The old dragon magazine doesn't really matter. An 80 IQ is mildly below average. An 8 int is mildly below average. They are equivalent.