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

[Bill Zebub]

People who don't have as severe an attachment to it as you are are rather more prone to accepting a cookie to do something that may cause some trouble, and other players at the table are often more willing to accept it when there's some kind of benefit.

You thought I was being facetious?

I was perhaps being flippant, but if the player has the choice of accepting or rejecting the XP then they are totally in control of their character.

Heck, I might be getting XP for something I would have done anyway!

(I was once generating Hazards for my own version of Moria for TOR, and one of them involved a character finding a well. If they dropped a rock in it they would get XP.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

You've never had a player (or yourself) go "oh, you know what? wow, that's hard to say exactly how CharName would take this. Let me roll a dice of fate / make a check here / etc to see how they'd react!"

Cause that happens a decent bit in my groups! Including the folks who mainly play 5e.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread (you really need to learn to read 1,500+ posts most carefully, and remember who said what, ok?) I think that's totally fine. I don't personally make decisions that way, but if a player chooses to roll dice to figure it out that's cool.

What I'm trying to say is that, however the player makes their decision, I don't think anybody else at the table has any business saying "I don't think your character would do that in this situation."

 

[Maxperson]

Die rolls are an abstraction of events happening in the setting of the game, representing all those little things that are difficult or impossible to simulate in real life. This IMO is just as true in the social arena as in other areas, especially since we want (I think) folks on either side of the screen to be able to portray characters with social skills that vary from our own.

Er, that's what social skills vs. NPCs are. Social skills of NPCs vs. PCs have nothing to do with the player side of the screen being able to portray characters with social skills that are different from their own.

 

[zakael19]

As I've said elsewhere in this thread (you really need to learn to read 1,500+ posts most carefully, and remember who said what, ok?) I think that's totally fine. I don't personally make decisions that way, but if a player chooses to roll dice to figure it out that's cool.

What I'm trying to say is that, however the player makes their decision, I don't think anybody else at the table has any business saying "I don't think your character would do that in this situation."

DO you think people are allowed to ask a question though? Maybe posed as reflection, or suggesting a point of view, or reminding the player of a detail they may have forgotten?

 

[Maxperson]

Edit: Also, it shouldn't be that alien. Coming up with narrative justifications on the fly to match a resolution result is what we're usually doing when we're GMing. You don't try to immerse yourself in every NPC you're running, right? Your perspective is outside of them, focusing on producing some kind of event in the fiction. Same deal.

As the DM I am playing multiple NPCs, monsters, describing areas, answering questions, etc. It's very rare that I can immerse myself in a character, and when I do, it's usually when I'm playing a single important and/or recurring NPC that is currently involved in a fairly lengthy RP session.

As a player I am only ever playing one PC, so immersing myself is really easy and is my ultimate goal and major reason for playing RPGs. This is probably one of the main reasons that I am so vehemently against social skills working on PCs. To inhabit my PC to the point where I am thinking and playing a character that is unlike me, struggling with hard decisions that the PC would struggle with, I need to know and understand the character very well.

As soon as some mechanic tells me that my character thinks or feels some way other than he would think or feel, I'm booted out of immersion and it is an incredibly hard and lengthy process for me to achieve that same level of understanding with this new thing in his character, and such immersion will likely never occur again, since by the time I can do it, more social mechanics will have altered him further starting the whole process over again.

Social skills vs. PCs destroys one of the main reasons I play roleplaying games.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, obviously. Those are the "issues" I am referring to. They ar an issue for me.

You are free to enjoy it. It is terrible for me. As your previous reply indicates, you're going fro more detached author stance play, in which this probably is a less of a problem. And yes, I have hard time understanding why people would like this, but that is pretty common with all sort of preference issues.

But frankly, I think this thread has achieved something that many previous threads about similar matters have not: people actually admit that they like author stance play. Which is fine, absolutely nothing wrong with it. It just is that usually when I complain that certain mechanics push for this sort of stance people deny that this happens. Here people seem to admit that it happens and they like it. Which is progress. We agree on what is happening and why, and then whether one likes it is matter of taste. And that pretty much concludes the topic.

(Though we'll no doubt post for hundreds of more pages until a mod finally locks the thread.)

Well, no, not exactly. This is you inferring something that's not really what I'm talking about. My decision making for Clara was entirely based on what I expected her to do. Author stance is more about making decisions based on what the player wants to happen in "the story". That's not really what I was doing. My decisions were always based on what I believed Clara would do. It's much more actor stance.

What I'm describing as enjoying the character's journey as if a member of the audience is because I am curious about her, and about the other PCs. This is also the way The Between approaches play... the characters' pasts are intentionally not defined ahead of play. The game tells you not to do this. At points during play, you are then prompted to describe a significant scene from your past. So we were discovering things about Clara and the other PCs during play. Things that had not been decided ahead of play.

That type of discovery might be absent in a method closer to yours. I'm able to both advocate for the character and make decisions on her behalf, and still be surprised by her. This is not really based on any kind of social mechanic results, which The Between doesn't really have specifically, although players can introduce such things as potential complications, which the GM can then inflict.

So no, I don't think it really has anything to do with author stance. All it takes is relinquishing some amount of control over the character.

I'm curious...because this form of RPGing is so alien to me...if it would have the same appeal in a solo game. In other words, does the pleasure come from portraying Clara to other people at the table, or would it be as immersive if you were playing solo? Or with an AI GM?

Portrayal is a part of it, sure, but probably not as much as you think. It's more about learning about her during play... as a result of the game. There are a couple of ways this happens. First, you can make the Vulnerable Move. This is when two PCs spend some time together, you can either clear a condition (recover from injury/affliction) or you can share a detail about your past.

The other way, which is a bit deeper, is that when you use certain abilities, you are then prompted to narrate a flashback to answer a specific question about your past. There are only so many of these questions, and when you run out, your character is then in danger of dying or otherwise being removed from play. Again, the answers to these questions are no meant to be determined ahead of play.

As we played, we learned things about Clara that explained why she was the way she was, but also added new context that made us see her in a different light. I still sympathized with her, but perhaps not as much as I had at the start of play. And part of me also really despised her.

 

[Maxperson]

You've never had a player (or yourself) go "oh, you know what? wow, that's hard to say exactly how CharName would take this. Let me roll a dice of fate / make a check here / etc to see how they'd react!"

Cause that happens a decent bit in my groups! Including the folks who mainly play 5e.

It happens very rarely in games that I run, and is incredibly rare for me, but I have been known to do it. Sometimes the options are so incredibly close that I can't come to a decision on which way my PC would go. This probably happens once every 3-5 years of real time. When it does, I roll for what happens and go with it. That doesn't destroy my immersion, because no matter which way the die lands, it's something I can see my character doing and so he remains a character I can be immersed in.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, idk, this sort of thing happens a lot with the <30 crowd I play games with a lot.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah...no. Nobody knows what a PC "would do" as well as the player.

Interesting premise. Doesn't mean I automatically buy it though, so here we are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You thought I was being facetious?

Just to be clear, I'm not so good at reading that on the Net, especially given that people try to have it both ways, that I make no assumptions one way or anothr.

I was perhaps being flippant, but if the player has the choice of accepting or rejecting the XP then they are totally in control of their character.

Its a variation of the carrot to the stick I've been talking about, honestly.