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

[TwoSix]

Weeping and gnashing of teeth

Don't forget the wailing! A necessary component.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Lamentations. Gotta have their lamentations.

That is the meaning of life.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I have no mouth, and I must scream

Not exactly no mouth, but this comment reminded me of 3.5e's monster the tortured looking Wheep.

 

[SkidAce]

I like the idea of a low-Wis character that warns the party away from threats that don’t exist.

I'm playing a low Int, above average Wis character atm.

Not good at math, or multiple step planning, but has common sense.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Other times, specially when i'm tired, i would rather just roll and see if my character can solve it. But that goes for pretty much any mental action. Sometimes i want to role play diplomatic negotiations. Sometimes i just wanna roll Diplomacy and see what dice result gets me.

Yeah, I don't ever enjoy that. If it got to that point I think I'd rather just ask the GM to just narrate the outcome.

That's mostly how we do it in our group. I might be playing int 8 character, but as a player, i might catch something, like that guard might be persuaded to let us trough. Then, in player to player talk, i say it to my friend who plays bard, and then his bard is doing all the persuading and rolling.

Right. Which is the sensible way to do it. Because if the player of the low-Charisma character jumps in and tries to do the sweet-talking, the GM is going to frown and say, "Ok, you roll, then..."

But here's the thing: the low-Charisma character might succeed anyway. I mean, it's not really that improbable, unless the DC is super high. But let's say the GM sets the DC at 15, and by "low charisma" we mean 6. Even untrained (no applicable skills) that's still a 20% chance of success.

Which illustrates a point I've been trying to make: low scores (and high scores) in D&D are less significant* than we sometimes make them out to be. An observer who couldn't see the character sheets or the dice rolls, but only observed outcomes of dice rolls (success or failure), who was asked to guess which character had an 8 in a given stat, and which had a 12, might easily guess wrong after observing a session, because a limited number of dice rolls could easily end up favoring the 8.

Thus my skepticism about the premise that one must roleplay their stats, because if you work backward from the mechanics, a "low" ability score isn't debilitating. It's just...below average. Yes, the PHB does define Intelligence (albeit less by "defining" it and more by enumerating cognitively unrelated activities) but it doesn't define how those skills correlate to the scores. There's no text that says, "With a seven Dexterity, you have trouble brushing your teeth and walking at the same time." Which means that if a player wants to express their low Intelligence score as completely unapparent to others, or even "I'm terrible at learning new languages and magic...which is why I became a Fighter...and linear algebra always stumped me, but I'm an excellent tactician and I'm great at solving puzzles" nobody can (or should) tell them they are wrong.

Which gets me back to my (and other's) basic premise: roleplay your characters (and your NPCs, if you are the GM) however you want. But stop judging others for how they roleplay theirs, because any attempt to define good/correct from wrong/incorrect is entirely subjective.

*With the caveat that I totally empathize with, and am guilty of, wanting every +1 I can get in combat, even though the difference isn't really apparent unless you carefully track a lot of dice rolls.

 

[Reynard]

Because you have no way to change the outcome of the deck because you are plane locked. A game layer who draws the imprisonment card just lost their character for multiple sessions. People whine about being hit with a banishment spell and that’s a few minutes. The deck has cards that can eliminate characters from the campaign. Its plane locking and the deck combo that is railroading.

That is not a definition of railroadibg I have ever seen before.

Again, the Deck is optional. Also, the player that drew the Void card didn't throw a fit. He rolled up a new character to play in the meantime. Like an adult.

 

[Bill Zebub]

People whine about being hit with a banishment spell and that’s a few minutes.

I'll posit that this hints at a problem, and that it has nothing to do with game design.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think it comes from some assumptions.

In the early days, game was played to challenge Players, not Characters. Stats were there just for rolls. Also, there was way wider distribution between penalty, no bonus no penalty and bonus. For instance, in 2ed, Str is mainly to hit and damage stat. You don't get bonus/penalty to hit if your Str is 8-16, and get no bonus/penalty to damage if your Str is 6-15, weight allowed difference between 8 and 15 is only 20 pounds. In game play, having Str 8 or 15 has no real difference, you hit and damage are the same. Most stats are like that, where they have wide gap where low or high stat doesn't change much if anything in game play.

If the game assumes that primary challenge is to player, mental stats are irrelevant in role play. You rely on your (player's) stats to come up with clever solutions. If game assumes that primary challenge is to characters, than there could be argument for mental stats mattering, since you rely on game mechanics to come up with solutions.

I think this is an interesting hypothesis, but the posters most AGAINST « stats being there just for rolls » are ALSO the most traditional players.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think this is an interesting hypothesis, but the posters most AGAINST « stats being there just for rolls » are ALSO the most traditional players.

Interesting assertion. Not sure I see that correlation.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Maybe the problem is that we've been too abstract. Can you describe an example situation, where the player of a low Int character is overstepping by proposing a solution to a problem, without describing any actual actions by their character?

i'd say when their solution relies on or assumes their character knows world information, like the 'trolls are vulnerable to fire' situation.