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

[Maxperson]

Some players naturally lean that way some do not.
The XP system keeps things fair.

I also give XP. Not out of fairness, which I think is the wrong term. It's not unfair to fail to give XP for people who play or don't play that way. I give it as a reward for good roleplaying, because that's what it is in my opinion. And it also works as an incentive for people who don't play that way to start playing that way, making it a habit after a while.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I mean, I think the core distinction is that I don't feel the weight of that discovery if the discovery is a choice I make as a player. I much prefer it to come from a source external to me, with a real risk that what I think should happen might not happen. I've set up the conflict, the system provides the resolution, and then I narrate the consequences.

At its core, what Max is looking for and what I'm looking for are opposing preferences that can't be reconciled.

And I don't feel the weight if I am not actually making the choice. There is no weight as there is no real choice, there is just random result I had no part in.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, absolutely. Here I was about to agree to take Disadvantage on rolls* for not letting my character be intimidated, and now instead I get offered XP!!! Glad I held out for better terms. Is it too late to get medical insurance with that?




*Just kidding again: I also agreed that the stick version was totally fair.

Usually I've seen the payoff as some kind of metacurrency rather than XP, but that's just a matter of degree depending on how the utility of each in the system involved.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is not intended to be a slight on your style of play here, but I get the bolded portion without relinquishing control. I don't need to relinquish to experience that.

How exactly are you "surprised" by the actions of your PC over whom you have full control at all times, with zero influence of any kind from anything outside yourself?

 

[Maxperson]

I think this sort of bribery with XP is fineish, and it is the sort of middle ground I would be willing to accept, as the player still gets to decide and the reward is pretty much meta so the offer does not need to imply anything specific about the character's state of mind.

Though I have to say, it is a bit "training wheels" to me, and as player I would feel mildly insulted that the GM thinks that they need to bribe me to play my character properly. Blades in the Dark has this sort of thing, and sometimes it feels a tad forced how the players try to trigger the XP rewards. Oh, we have not triggered "inner conflict" crew XP trigger yet, better start an argument!

Not a bribe. For those who are learning or don't know how to play that way, it's an incentive. For folks like you and I, it's neither a bribe, nor an incentive. It's a reward for good roleplaying, just like XP and treasure for killing a monster are rewards for good combat decisions, as well as incentives not to avoid all combat.

 

[TwoSix]

And I don't feel the weight if I am not actually making the choice. There is no weight as there is no real choice, there is just random result I had no part in.

Yes, it's a fundamental incompatibility in our perspectives.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would not GM to a player I would not trust to play their character properly and I would not play with a GM who did not trust me to play my character properly.

As with many things, I don't assume anyone on either end of the table gets it right all the time.

 

[Maxperson]

To be clear, I was doing full inhabitation play 30 years ago; this isn't a case of people "not getting" what you're talking about.

You and Max, among others, have simply chosen (as much as anyone chooses their preferences) to find that inhabitation to be your primary goal in roleplaying; others here (such as myself) just see it as one way to play among many others.

I also see it as just one way among others to play. It's just the one way among others that I very much prefer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be clear, I was doing full inhabitation play 30 years ago; this isn't a case of people "not getting" what you're talking about.

You and Max, among others, have simply chosen (as much as anyone chooses their preferences) to find that inhabitation to be your primary goal in roleplaying; others here (such as myself) just see it as one way to play among many others.

In fact, as I noted earlier, I played almost purely in that mode when MUSHing for quite some time many years ago. I just find that FTF I both want something a little different and find properties of the experience (other people's appearances or at least voices always in front of me) disruptive to that experience anway; it was an experience with some virtues but also some downsides, and on the net I found in the FTF sphere the latter outweighed the former.

 

[Maxperson]

I’m of two minds about this. My more optimistic side would say “of course… there are elements of this in nearly all the RPGs I’ve played, it’s part of what makes them so interesting to me.”

The more pessimistic side thinks “oh, of course you have, Max… your game of D&D allows you to do everything that any RPG allows because of course it does.”

Go with optimism. I never said or implied your pessimistic view there. All I am saying is that I can advocate for my character and make all the decisions, and still end up in wildly different places(with regard to his personal character) than I ever imagined when coming up with the character concept and personality.

That I experience the same thing, doesn't mean that I experience it in the exact same way as every game out there. Different mechanics will color the experiences and journeys. All I'm saying is that the two of us end up in the same place, not that we take the same routes to get there and drive/ride in the same vehicles.