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

[Micah Sweet]

Then what is the -2 penalty for if it's not to represent my character being intimidated due to successful intimidate against him? And I don't know how you missed my saying a zillion times that forced actions, FEELINGS and THOUGHTS are what I don't want to happen. If it's forcing my character to think or feel something, that social mechanic should be taken out behind the barn and shot.

I told you already. It's not force. You can do whatever you want. Certain actions that ignore the social situation in the setting at that moment may be more difficult, but you can still try whatever. Just like we all can in most RPGa I know about. If you don't get that by now, nothing else I say will change that.

Have a nice day.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Can you elaborate?

Some folks seem to think that any social mechanic with any possible effect on the PCs is tantamount to "mind control". I disagree, and have given my reasons more than once.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Well, if there’s no chance of being afraid, then why are any kind of fear rules being invoked?

This varies by game of course (as does everything else in this thread) but I think I can be specific about what I object to: when the game has rules that force characters to react in certain ways (fear, charm, lie detection, etc.) but then the GM also thinks that in other situations the characters "should" act in similar ways. That's the line that I don't like to see crossed.

Take sleep. I have fallen asleep during movies, at concerts (the symphony sort, not the rock sort), in lecture halls, while I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on the baby, etc. Clearly dull content can put me to sleep, with no magic required. And while roleplaying I might respond to a GM description of a scene by having my character fall asleep, especially if there were something about that character that would suggest they would be especially bored by the context. But I would object to the GM requiring me to roll to stay awake in response to an NPC trying to bore me to sleep, simply because "in real life really boring things sometimes put people to sleep."

 

[Bill Zebub]

Some folks seem to think that any social mechanic with any possible effect on the PCs is tantamount to "mind control". I disagree, and have given my reasons more than once.

Could you cite that, where somebody has made that claim? Maybe they have; if so I don't recall it.

"Unacceptable loss of player agency" =/= "mind control."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It would seem to me that in such a case, there would seem to at least be the possibility of fear being an issue.

Why?

I am usually more fine with fear, as it is easier for me to "force" to feel, but I actually (vaguely) remember one instance from some old game (I think it was some sort of White Wolf hack) where this caused serious disruption of immersion to me. I remember my character was this weird shunned goth kid who might have had some special powers, and then the GM described some sort of supernatural apparition (I have forgotten the details.) And for that moment my internal model of the character said very clearly that this character actually is not afraid of this, they are thrilled, exited and interested, and would approach the weird thing (with which they felt sudden kinship.) But there was some mechanics that said my character would be afraid instead and should hide or something. It ruined the cool moment and ruined my immersion for the rest of the session at least and permanently damaged my connection to the character.

If you get to choose the outcome, then it’s not a risk.

But you don't choose the full outcome. You choose your character's stance. You don't choose what the king does once you betray him, you don't choose how the other knights feel about it, you don't choose how the queen will feel in the long run etc.

Again, look at combat. There’s risk in combat because you’re not just free to decide the outcome. It’s out of the player’s control.

But it is not. They choose the tactics, they choose what powers to use, how to move, all sort of things. If the outcome was just determined by a dice roll, there indeed would be no agency and it would be very hard to get invested in that.

I want the players be making choices, hard ones preferably, and I want them to be immersed in their characters and feel the weight of those choices. I don't them to passively observe what the dice say the character feels or does.

Like I don't know, I really have never found gambling appealing, especially if it is just random, but a lot of people are literally addicted to it. So this might be just some sort of psychological quirk. Some people probably can get highly invested in randomised fates, whereas for me to get invested requires me to be deciding things, to be actually making hard choices.

I don’t know. Again, this doesn’t sound like something that happens in play. Is this some kind of situation where there’s like a bluff or deception check by the guard? Again, I don’t know of any games that work this way… but I’d just tell a player “he says there’s nothing beyond the wall… and he seems sincere”. No need to tell the player what their character believes beyond that.

Then we do not disagree on how this sort of thing should be handled, so stop arguing with me about it!

My point is that you are capable… any player is capable… of ignoring their personal response and crafting a response for their character that’s different.

And in the process to ruin what is most important to me in the game. I mean I could, like I could throw the dice out of the window or intentionally pour my drink on the GM, but why would I? I am not gonna do those things. And any game that forces me to do that is a terrible game in my book.

 

[Maxperson]

I told you already. It's not force. You can do whatever you want. Certain actions that ignore the social situation in the setting at that moment may be more difficult, but you can still try whatever. Just like we all can in most RPGa I know about. If you don't get that by now, nothing else I say will change that.

Have a nice day.

So then I can do what I want without the -2, because my character wasn't intimidated? Because what you seem not to get, is that if I'm not intimidated, there's nothing about failing an intimidation roll that would make the situation more difficult for my PC.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This varies by game of course (as does everything else in this thread) but I think I can be specific about what I object to: when the game has rules that force characters to react in certain ways (fear, charm, lie detection, etc.) but then the GM also thinks that in other situations the characters "should" act in similar ways. That's the line that I don't like to see crossed.

Take sleep. I have fallen asleep during movies, at concerts (the symphony sort, not the rock sort), in lecture halls, while I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on the baby, etc. Clearly dull content can put me to sleep, with no magic required. And while roleplaying I might respond to a GM description of a scene by having my character fall asleep, especially if there were something about that character that would suggest they would be especially bored by the context. But I would object to the GM requiring me to roll to stay awake in response to an NPC trying to bore me to sleep, simply because "in real life really boring things sometimes put people to sleep."

So you want to have control over something for your character you just admitted you don't have control over for yourself in real life?

 

[Maxperson]

Some folks seem to think that any social mechanic with any possible effect on the PCs is tantamount to "mind control". I disagree, and have given my reasons more than once.

Because it forces emotion and feeling on the PC that the PC does not have. If I determine that my PC isn't at all intimidated by the axe wielding orc, there is nothing at all to make it harder(-2) for him. The -2 can only happen if on some level my PC is intimidated/afraid of the orc.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that I can determine whatever I want for my PC(actions, thoughts and emotions), and then force penalties on my PC for failing social checks. Those penalties = dictating my PC's actions(because the penalty my put something out of reach and I have to do something else), thoughts, and emotions.

 

[Maxperson]

So you want to have control over something for your character you just admitted you don't have control over for yourself in real life?

Yes. What's the problem? I the player have that control. My PC does not have that control. He's subject to my decisions for him. If I decide he's intimidated, he is and he didn't control that. If I decide he is not intimidated, he isn't and he did not control that.

Nobody is arguing for the PC to have the control.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No one is arguing that they should. Some people have expressed a preference for games where the internal state of the characters is part of the shared fiction and influenced by both the mechanics and GM situation framing. Also, that there is agency involving managing your character's internal state in such games, particularly when designed in a comprehensive way.

It's fine to have a preference for games in which the internal state of the characters is entirely up to the players' own internal models, but one in which it is part of the shared fiction is no way antithetical to the medium. To argue that such games basically play your character for you is silly and bears no relation to these games as actually played.

Also, the idea that they are universally antithetical to embodiment of the characters we play is also silly. They might be for specific individuals, but that is a them-thing. The idea that a singular method is the only way to get there is inane. It's the same sort of limited thinking that followers of Stanislavsky's The Method in acting show when there are plenty of other approaches to acting that work for other actors.

I have at no point tried to tell others how they should feel or how they should approach things, and if it has come across as such, then I am sorry.

But I am describing how my though process works, and what works and what very much does not work for me.

I already reached "yeah, different tastes" stage with several posters here earlier and I don't quite understand why @hawkeyefan keeps arguing with me. To me it seemed that they simply did not believe what I say about my own process, but that might have been an misunderstanding.