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

[hawkeyefan]

We agree on that emotions caused by an imagines situation are likely to be less strong than ones caused by a real situation because that is blindingly obvious. But then you seem to conclude that because there is already some distance creating even more distance doesn't matter and I don't.

But I don't know what you mean by "creating more distance".

No, no I can't. Like my actual play bit about my character deciding to kill the NPC. I could not pretend that they decide not to do it, because that is not the output my mental model gave. Nor I van significantly rebuild a mental model whilst inhabiting it.

I think this is a choice. A perfectly fine one, mind you, but still a choice.

We could discuss it, but it is pointless. How can we know anything about though processes of anyone? Same answer. Like in this thread the participants have certainly learned about how each other think.

I'm not sure I follow this... maybe there's a word missing? Is it pointless to discuss, or do we learn how each other think when we discuss?

Sure, but not at the moment. At the moment they create a compel and the player needs to honour it.

My understanding is that the virtues and vices require a roll in certain circumstances, with opposing virtues and vices adding up to 20, and a d20 roll tells you which way you go.

Like, if the character has a high "Lust" vice and goes into a brothel, he may have to roll to resist indulging.

I'm not sure how you think the player has no say in that.

But the player chose that the character does that, right?

Not exactly. I proposed it. Per the rules, the GM is responsible for inflicting Fallout. So, in the first case of the Squire's ghost appearing, I suggested it and players all loved it (the squire was an NPC they all enjoyed, so it was a chance for him to be around again, in a way). So we went with it. Then later, when the character was facing death, the player could choose between taking the final action OR resisting death and coming back changed. He chose resisting and coming back. Then I came up with the change.

Obviously it changed the character as it literally was a different character!

Possibly! It could have just been that the Knight had gone batshit insane and believed he was the Squire.

But the player being in charge does not mean the character does not grow or change. It means that the player chooses if that happens and what it looks like. Though of course the experiences the character has will be informing that.

Yes, the player is free to choose it. I never said that characters cannot grow or change... I said that it doesn't carry any risk. I think it's much more like the authorship that you tried to assign to my approach to play. No matter what, you will be the one to decide when and how a character reacts and behaves and changes. You're the author of that character.

If you were trying to "be" that character then, like anyone, there would be times when you would not be in control of how they felt or behaved.

Because how the mechanics work means the character can be traumatised by stupid things. I explained this in more detail in another post.

I must have missed such posts.

But it's an accretion, no? Stress builds. It's not possible for one event to be the only contributor to the character accumulating enough Stress to get a Trauma. The thing that makes you tick the last box and take a Trauma need not be the actual thing that traumatizes you. It's more the last in a line of things that temporarily break the character. The straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's many things that lead to the trauma. Looking at it as an individual thing is probably not the best way to look at it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Aedhros enters the innkeeper's room, intent on murdering him. The Steel check drive home the sense of what is happening here - me (Aedhros), black metal long-knife in hand, looking down at the inn-keeper in his bed. The failed roll, and resulting hesitation, doesn't "yank me out of my immersion". It reinforces the sense of being there, hesitating to commit such a terrible deed.

It also contributes to my subsequent in-character decision-making. There are two things that Aedhros is feeling/thinking - both his own hesitation to kill, and the magical instruction not to kill. This shapes the way I (as Aedhros) respond to Alicia fainting from Tax: one of Aedhros's Beliefs is I will never admit that I am wrong, and so I (as Aedhros) don't second-guess or revisit the decision not to kill. Rather, I (as Aedhros) internalise it as part of a broader contempt and disregard for others - as if they're not even worth killing. And so just takes the money, and carry off the unconscious Alicia.

I think I'm describing something different here from what @TwoSix has described over the the past several pages. I'm not sure exactly how close it is to @hawkeyefan's account of playing Clara in The Between, but perhaps there might be some similarity? I know - because I was there - that I'm describing something that is immersive, in the sense that I am inhabiting this character and internalising (without being overwhelmed by) these feelings of desire to kill, hesitation to kill, contemptuous disregard for others, etc.

I think there is some similarity to Clara, yes. She was very different from many of the characters I play. This was largely due to the game... it requires that the characters' pasts be (mostly) blank slates. Other than a few details necessary to get started and to connect the character to Hargrave House, the fraternity of monster hunters to which they belong, we don't know anything about them other than what their playbooks hint at. It's also a horror game, and all the PCs have some type of dark or complicated past.

So the game went to some dark places, thematically. Clara's backstory became darker and darker as it was revealed, and then consequentially, I played her as more and more haunted by it as play progressed. She had a cold pragmatism that I lack, though she would have done anything for her creation, The Child. Her darker feelings and actions were harder to kind of just immediately feel... I had to think about them. My instinct would not be to go so dark right away.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don't know if you have half of the people here blocked or something, but you seem to be missing a big part of the conversation. Yes, what you describe is how D&D works, and that's fine by me. But there were several people who said that it should not work that way, and they want social mechanics that are more binding to the player. That if NPC's deception beats the PC insight, then it would mean that the character must believe what the NPC says, or at minimum suffer some sort of a penalty if they behaved like they didn't believe the NPC.

I've never blocked anyone, though there are a few people who've blocked me. As I've said, there may have been posts that I've missed, but from what I've seen, most folks are advocating for something very different than allowing social skills in D&D to dictate player decisions for their characters. The few posts I did see about that were more along the lines of "if PCs can do it to NPCs, then why not vice versa?" or similar sentiments.

The person who has the mental model of the character is the one who knows the character. So that's the player if they have such a model and no one if they don't.

But you also claimed you can infer it. That you can detect when a player somehow deviates from this model. Then you covered it up with the pawn stance vs. Larper comparison.

This is why I'm confused by your comments... these two seemingly contradictory ideas. That only the player knows how to play their character, but you as GM know when a player has deviated from properly play of their character.

I'm not in any way advocating for anyone other than a player judging how they choose to play their character. And that means not only their choices, by also why they make those choices.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But I don't know what you mean by "creating more distance".

The emotions that the mental model interacting with the fiction outputs are real, even if weaker than ones a real situation would elicit. There is some distance, but there is a clear correspondence. But a mechanic dictated by the mechanic is not real. "Scary 32" does not feel even least bit scary, so there is greater distance to the reality.

I think this is a choice. A perfectly fine one, mind you, but still a choice.

No, it is not. Like I certainly can choose to say that my character does something else than the mental model dictates, but then I have broken the immersion. I am just acting the script, I am not feeling like I'm in the character's head.

I'm not sure I follow this... maybe there's a word missing? Is it pointless to discuss, or do we learn how each other think when we discuss?

Well, I am certainly beginning to have some doubts. But yes, generally people can learn how other think by discussing matters with them, thus one could learn what sort of approach one has to roleplaying their character. And to me stating this seems pointless, as it is blindingly obvious.

My understanding is that the virtues and vices require a roll in certain circumstances, with opposing virtues and vices adding up to 20, and a d20 roll tells you which way you go.

Like, if the character has a high "Lust" vice and goes into a brothel, he may have to roll to resist indulging.

I'm not sure how you think the player has no say in that.

What? You describe how the mechanics force the character to feel in certain way and then you think the player has a say in that? The mechanic dictated it, just like you said, they did not have a say.

Not exactly. I proposed it. Per the rules, the GM is responsible for inflicting Fallout. So, in the first case of the Squire's ghost appearing, I suggested it and players all loved it (the squire was an NPC they all enjoyed, so it was a chance for him to be around again, in a way). So we went with it. Then later, when the character was facing death, the player could choose between taking the final action OR resisting death and coming back changed. He chose resisting and coming back. Then I came up with the change.

I mean they chose the actions that lead to the squire's death in the first place?

Possibly! It could have just been that the Knight had gone batshit insane and believed he was the Squire.

I think it is pretty wild to me that you don't think this is an important distinction. Like the player literally does not know whether they switched characters or not.

Yes, the player is free to choose it. I never said that characters cannot grow or change... I said that it doesn't carry any risk. I think it's much more like the authorship that you tried to assign to my approach to play. No matter what, you will be the one to decide when and how a character reacts and behaves and changes. You're the author of that character.

If you were trying to "be" that character then, like anyone, there would be times when you would not be in control of how they felt or behaved.

But like I have said to you the internal model interacting with the fiction can generate unexpected outcomes, just like you as real person interacting with the real world can generate unexpected outcomes.

Like if you believe that your real brain you use to make your real decisions can generate unexpected reactions when interacting with real events, why you think that the same brain interacting with fictional events would not do the same?

But it's an accretion, no? Stress builds. It's not possible for one event to be the only contributor to the character accumulating enough Stress to get a Trauma. The thing that makes you tick the last box and take a Trauma need not be the actual thing that traumatizes you. It's more the last in a line of things that temporarily break the character. The straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's many things that lead to the trauma. Looking at it as an individual thing is probably not the best way to look at it.

Yes, sure. But it is both dramatically unsatisfying and psychologically questionable. The game mechanics really do not differentiate between big traumatic life changing events and minor inconveniences. Resisting a consequence in either can net you five stress and take you out of the scene. And in latter case it will just come across as silly an implausible. And the designers of the game seemed to think it too, as they changed the trauma timing in Deep Cuts.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I've never blocked anyone, though there are a few people who've blocked me. As I've said, there may have been posts that I've missed, but from what I've seen, most folks are advocating for something very different than allowing social skills in D&D to dictate player decisions for their characters. The few posts I did see about that were more along the lines of "if PCs can do it to NPCs, then why not vice versa?" or similar sentiments.

So what you think it working vice versa would mean?

But you also claimed you can infer it. That you can detect when a player somehow deviates from this model. Then you covered it up with the pawn stance vs. Larper comparison.

This is why I'm confused by your comments... these two seemingly contradictory ideas. That only the player knows how to play their character, but you as GM know when a player has deviated from properly play of their character.

I don't understand why you've gotten hung up on this. I did not say or imply that I have some magical skill to know people's inner thought about how they play, merely that it can be learned like anything about people, either by them directly telling it or over a longer period of time inferring from other things they say and do. And obviously people can tell different play styles apart, otherwise there would be no discussion about them or specific term for them. All this just seems obvious and utterly non-controversial to me.

I'm not in any way advocating for anyone other than a player judging how they choose to play their character. And that means not only their choices, by also why they make those choices.

OK, good. But there has been a lot of sentiment in this tread where people do not trust others "to play their characters right" thus they want a carrots to reward "correct behaviour" and also sticks to punish it.

 

[Bill Zebub]

What game are you talking about here?

As in, what game involves dice rolls for your PC to keep/lose their cool in non-dramatic, non-impactful contexts?

Oh, I understand what you're getting at now. I clicked back through to read the thread. Nobody was suggesting that this happen purely on a dice roll, without there being anything dramatic/impactful. When I said I would wait for a dramatic/impactful moment I meant when my character's response would be dramatic and impactful based on my judgment, not the dice's. I wasn't talking about whether or not what was happening in the setting was dramatic and impactful.

 

[Bill Zebub]

To me, that doesn't sound all that immersive, unless my character is also cool as a cucumber. It seems to me that only someone who was super cool would work systematically through a list of possibly effective substances like that.

Your hyperbole aside, I do tend to play the kind of person who would venture into a dark cave full of undead, not helpless shopkeepers.

(Although a dark cave full of helpless shopkeepers might actually offer a better risk:reward ratio....)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Your hyperbole aside, I do tend to play the kind of person who would venture into a dark cave full of undead, not helpless shopkeepers.

(Although a dark cave full of helpless shopkeepers might actually offer a better risk:reward ratio....)

I wouldn't mind seeing the occasional shopkeep in a lower level of the dungeon. Reminds me of Nethack. Good times.