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

[bsss]

I'm not denigrating it per se. I've just got two fairly big issues with it, but they're both from where I sit and don't expect them to matter to anyone else necessarily. At least one of them is a big enough deal I'd have serious problems playing in a game as a player or a GM where they were done radically different from my preference on it though.

And I feel like I'm an advocate for your 1st point but not your 2nd, so I think we have at least four takes in this very thread, haha.

Imagine a "pick lock" ability in which it was assumed that, if you failed to pick the lock, you would no longer desire to open the door...

"Welp! Clearly this door is unopenable."

 

[Thomas Shey]

And I feel like I'm an advocate for your 1st point but not your 2nd, so I think we have at least four takes in this very thread, haha.

Well, notice my feelings on the second part are less strong than the first. Like I said, it just makes my brain itch in a bad way, but its not a hill I'd die on the way I would for the first.

"Welp! Clearly this door is unopenable."

In practice I've seen it damn near treated that way in some interpretations of some game systems.

 

[soviet]

"Welp! Clearly this door is unopenable."

But... that's entirely accurate to how things work in real life. You don't know that picking a lock, fixing your PC, climbing a high wall, or whatever is beyond your abilities. You try, you fail, you try, you fail, eventually you figure you can't do it and you give up. You don't know it's impossible.

 

[Bill Zebub]

But... that's entirely accurate to how things work in real life. You don't know that picking a lock, fixing your PC, climbing a high wall, or whatever is beyond your abilities. You try, you fail, you try, you fail, eventually you figure you can't do it and you give up. You don't know it's impossible.

I think the original point has drifted somewhat. I was proposing (facetiously) that a single failure to pick a lock would remove the desire to open the door. @bsss turned that into a conclusion not only that the lock can't be picked, but that the door cannot be bypassed by any means.

But even the conclusion that the lock can't be picked is, in my mind, going too far. You're right...people try, fail, try, fail, try fail (and in fact the "skill" that seems to be most lacking in our schools is perseverance). But too many games model it as "you try and fail and so you give up after one attempt." At which point the other characters, even with zero skill, chime in, "Can I try?" Which wouldn't make any sense if the expert deemed it beyond his/her skill.

This is why I prefer rules like Shadowdark, where it is assumed that you will eventually succeed if there's no time constraint (or other complication).

 

[bsss]

I should have worded that as "clearly this door is an impassable false door", because our point is that it's not like the player abandons all interest in seeing what's through the door. If I fail at Pick Lock, I know that the PC couldn't do it under those specific circumstances. Maybe with a bit of luck or whatever in-game condition the check abstracts, they could have. There's still something I want to address, so I ask the fighter to bust down the door or get out my stone to mud wand or whatever. I don't necessarily abandon it.

Now apply the same logic to Sense Motive. To treat social/knowledge skills differently, to assume by definition now the character is compelled to give up, is the folly we're invoking.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I should have worded that as "clearly this door is an impassable false door", because our point is that it's not like the player abandons all interest in seeing what's through the door. If I fail at Pick Lock, I know that the PC couldn't do it under those specific circumstances. Maybe with a bit of luck or whatever in-game condition the check abstracts, they could have. There's still something I want to address, so I ask the fighter to bust down the door or get out my stone to mud wand or whatever. I don't necessarily abandon it.

Now apply the same logic to Sense Motive. To treat social/knowledge skills differently, to assume by definition now the character is compelled to give up, is the folly we're invoking.

And part of the problem is that most game systems only model success/failure, but not false positives or false negatives, and certainly not multiple outcomes with different probabilities.

The only way I could think to do it would be to:
1) Have the GM roll secretly for the player, which for a lot of people is a non-starter
2) The result generates a probability table: as far as you can tell, it's possible but unlikely that the NPC wants A, it's more likely that he wants B, but probably it's C.
3) The player then factors in their character's skill at these things and makes a choice.

Once upon a time I tried to generate rules just like this for navigating abstract (meaning, not mapped in detail) Moria-like dungeons. I never came up with anything I liked.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That, by itself, blows my mind.



Maybe that's all I want out of this. I feel like my style of roleplaying is being denigrated in these discussions, and I have to justify it by citing rules. What I'm hearing is "players should be required to..." and what I want to hear is "it bothers me when players don't....".

And I TOTALLY get the latter. There's certain kinds of roleplaying that really bother me. (Such as the one guy in my group who always roleplays his characters as something from modern media: e.g, Inigo Montoya.)

RAW doesn't matter. RAI either, at least in the games I prefer. I truly believe that. What matters is what you and your Players want from the game. I've been very clear about how I interpret the rules and about what I want.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I was just thinking about this example yesterday. I have never heard of anybody suggestion that the PCs should make a party-wide "reaction" check.

The way I see it, the reaction roll exists to ease the burden of the GM and to allow for the unexpected while still having most results go the way you would expect under the circumstances. Both are laudable goals, but serve little purpose for Players who are portraying their characters as creatures within the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Imagine a "pick lock" ability in which it was assumed that, if you failed to pick the lock, you would no longer desire to open the door...

Physical skills don't involve motive.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Physical skills don't involve motive.

Why is there a whole field of "sports psychology"?

EDIT: "Human gullibility" might be a valid answer.