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

[Bill Zebub]

I mean, just going around the table and asking someoe to describe their character, especially a specific part of their character like their boots, still takes quite a lot of players a good amount of time to come up with something creative.

I was working with a small (10-12) person, virtual company, and I proposed we kick off our weekly all-team Zoom meetingswith "Victory, Challenge, Shout-Out" where we go around and each person would take THIRTY SECONDS to say something that went well in the last week, something they were struggling with, and a shout-out to somebody else on the team.

It remained our ritual (until the company was acquired and dismembered...) but you can imagine how well people stuck to the 30 seconds. I even found a Zoom addon that let me run a stop-watch that everybody could see. No effect. Some people regularly spoke for 3-5 minutes on their turn.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It occurred to me that a cool use for AI would be to generate "topic histograms" illustrating what any given thread is actually about, over time (or "over posts"). These longer threads keep evolving into totally different topics.

And the next task would then be to figure out which topics (metagaming! NPCs using social skills! fighters suck! AI sucks more than fighters! warlords!) get touched on by the most threads.

 

[Scott Christian]

I was working with a small (10-12) person, virtual company, and I proposed we kick off our weekly all-team Zoom meetingswith "Victory, Challenge, Shout-Out" where we go around and each person would take THIRTY SECONDS to say something that went well in the last week, something they were struggling with, and a shout-out to somebody else on the team.

It remained our ritual (until the company was acquired and dismembered...) but you can imagine how well people stuck to the 30 seconds. I even found a Zoom addon that let me run a stop-watch that everybody could see. No effect. Some people regularly spoke for 3-5 minutes on their turn.

I am confused what that has to do with improvising a decision. You did this every week. People knew the exact question that was going to come up. So they can prepare, get ready, and have something on hand. Seeing a battlefield suddenly change dynamics and having twelve spells at your disposal plus potions and a few magical items, that might be a bit different.

All I am saying is combat can get complex in games like D&D, and it might take some players longer than five seconds to analyze the situation and determine what to do.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I am confused what that has to do with improvising a decision. You did this every week. People knew the exact question that was going to come up. So they can prepare, get ready, and have something on hand. Seeing a battlefield suddenly change dynamics and having twelve spells at your disposal plus potions and a few magical items, that might be a bit different.

All I am saying is combat can get complex in games like D&D, and it might take some players longer than five seconds to analyze the situation and determine what to do.

It's just another version of "people don't know how to answer a question succinctly and move along." They think while they talk.

 

[zakael19]

5 seconds or whatever to make a decision is not "you have 5 seconds to speak." The players in my PBTA games generally make a decision very quickly on their action when they get spotlighted, but they might ask for a clarification or two on the fiction before launching into their action.

 

[Thomas Shey]

5 seconds or whatever to make a decision is not "you have 5 seconds to speak." The players in my PBTA games generally make a decision very quickly on their action when they get spotlighted, but they might ask for a clarification or two on the fiction before launching into their action.

I'm assuming you know this, but that kind of rule, especially with that specific short a time frame, is tantamount to "Don't play in this game" for some people. They won't learn to do it that fast just because its necessary, they'll just fail out until they get disgusted and stop coming.

 

[zakael19]

I'm assuming you know this, but that kind of rule, especially with that specific short a time frame, is tantamount to "Don't play in this game" for some people. They won't learn to do it that fast just because its necessary, they'll just fail out until they get disgusted and stop coming.

It's not my rule, I'm just sharing how quickly the decision making tends to flow at my tables; without counting clarification questions!