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

[Bill Zebub]

How is the distance artificially increased? What do you mean by that?

Well, if that example....the difference between genuinely wondering why the troll scary monster keeps regenerating, and knowing exactly why but pretending you don't...doesn't explain itself, I don't know if I can.

Unless you are specifically referring to the word "artificially", in which case I guess I can offer two clarifications:

1. "Artificial" in the sense that I am pretending to not know the solution, rather than genuinely not knowing the solution
2. But also artificial in the sense of it being a problem (if one sees it as such) of the DM's own creation: it would be trivial to switch things up...modify the monsters...to make the feeling authentic

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yes. It doesn't mean the feeling is not there or that it being there is immaterial. Again, that the player and character experiences never perfectly match doesn't mean we would not aim for it or intentionally create more disconnect.

On occasion while playing a video game I have falled (or jumped) off a cliff and physically experienced a mild sensation of falling. It doesn't mean I'm genuinely thinking I'm about to die, but it does remind me of falling.

 

[Fenris-77]

I usually change my trolls, or have more than one type, just to prevent players having to worry about this sort of thing.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I usually change my trolls, or have more than one type, just to prevent players having to worry about this sort of thing.

Lava trolls. Fire heals them.

(I have never actually used that, but now I have to...)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

On occasion while playing a video game I have falled (or jumped) off a cliff and physically experienced a mild sensation of falling. It doesn't mean I'm genuinely thinking I'm about to die, but it does remind me of falling.

Yeah, and to me evoking these sort of correspondent emotions is a huge part of the whole point of RPGs. RPGs are better for it than books or movies, as they situate you into the first person perspective and also expect you to react based on such emotions.

 

[Fenris-77]

Lava trolls. Fire heals them.

(I have never actually used that, but now I have to...)

Anything to work against unfounded player expectations is great in my books.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Sure. But there’s a distance there, which is my point. The severity or depth of the feeling is different. The way we feel it is different.

yeah, you can intellectually understand that your character might be angry or under pressure, but you really aren't experiencing the same emotionally altered mindset that your character is feeling from the situation, it's like, watching a quiz gameshow, you can answer all the questions on the screen and empathize 'man they must be under a bunch of pressure' but it's not the same as being the one on that podium, spotlights and cameras on you in front of the studio audience feeling your mind drain of every geography lesson you ever had when the host asks you 'what's the capital of spain?'

 

[Reynard]

I usually change my trolls, or have more than one type, just to prevent players having to worry about this sort of thing.

The Shadowdark monster mutation tables are a great place to start, regardless of the game system.

 

[thefutilist]

What more elaboration can there be? The mechanics say that the situation is such that my character gets traumatised, and my internal model says it is not.

The buy in to Blades is that you’re creating characters that can be traumatised by the events of the game in the way the system says. So your internal model has to account for that.

Given that, Blades might or might not do that way in a satisfying way. In other words you can like trauma mechanics but think Blades does it in a really crappy way. Or your group applies the system in an unsatisfying way.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The buy in to Blades is that you’re creating characters that can be traumatised by the events of the game in the way the system says. So your internal model has to account for that.

Yes, in theory. But this would require everyone to create bizarrely randomly mentally fragile characters all the time, which would just be weird.

Given that, Blades might or might not do that way in a satisfying way. In other words you can like trauma mechanics but think Blades does it in a really crappy way. Or your group applies the system in an unsatisfying way.

I mean, it does it in a crappy way. I think they fixed it somewhat in Deep Cuts.

Though of course the player has control over stress. They decide whether to spend it, whether to resist a consequence. But I don't think a player managing this semi meta resource in attempts to make it overflow in dramatically appropriate moments instead of stupid ones is a good way of doing things.