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

[Bill Zebub]

@Bill Zebub

My examples include social/mental/emotional mechanics and social/emotional consequences:

* A player submitting his PC to the Depression Crit and addiction rules, because of something that has happened to his PC. These produced outcomes that he would not have chosen, and that no one else would have chosen.​

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* A PC hesitating to murder, because of the Steel/hesitation rules.​

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* A NPC turning away from his brother, and forming a deep animus towards the brother's companion, because of the rules for resolving social actions initiated by the PC.​

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* A PC committing suicide, because of the interplay of the rules of the game, and the instigation of another PC.​

Ok, now we’re back in the realm of PCs doing stuff, not just stuff happening to them. So I’m back to not understanding why my inclusion of the word “doing” was inaccurate.

In any event, I don’t find those examples beyond the range of what players do on their own, without social mechanics.

Maybe not suicide. Sacrifice oneself to save others, yes, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to play in a game where straight up suicide happens.

 

[pemerton]

I don’t find those examples beyond the range of what players do on their own, without social mechanics.

No one said they are. No one (but you, misquoting) said that no one would ever choose such things. But no one would have chosen them, then and there, left to their own devices.

 

[bsss]

There are some things at play here that go back to where I was with systems as a participant earlier. I bolded the relevant parts (and as an aside, I don't agree with Vincent Baker regarding the unwelcome/unwanted as the "purpose", but that's irrelevant here other than pointing out I don't agree 100% with what he's saying):

Here's Vincent Baker's account of what is going on in these sorts of instances of RPGing:

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's . . . what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject. . . .

In any event, I don’t find those examples beyond the range of what players do on their own, without social mechanics.

No one said they are. No one (but you, misquoting) said that no one would ever choose such things. But no one would have chosen them, then and there, left to their own devices.

I don't think we can reconcile this without acknowledging that the system has created these social mechanics with the explicit purpose of invoking some of these outcomes without relying on the player to conjure them. Would Bill Zebub play within these systems? If not, I don't know where this conversation can really go.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are some things at play here that go back to where I was with systems as a participant earlier. I bolded the relevant parts (and as an aside, I don't agree with Vincent Baker regarding the unwelcome/unwanted as the "purpose", but that's irrelevant here other than pointing out I don't agree 100% with what he's saying):







I don't think we can reconcile this without acknowledging that the system has created these social mechanics with the explicit purpose of invoking some of these outcomes without relying on the player to conjure them. Would Bill Zebub play within these systems? If not, I don't know where this conversation can really go.

Also, I don't think we can make the assumption that of course all players would be fine with (and even choose) unpleasant outcomes and unfavorable events to occur to their characters if appropriate to the situation, because they're all hard core roleplayers like @Bill Zebub and @Crimson Longinus . Many players IME would simply not make that kind of choice for their PC on their own. Social mechanics can IMO help with these kinds of outcomes in practical play.

 

[pemerton]

Well, my post upthread located social mechanics within the broader context of mechanics in general; and located mechanics within the broader context of RPGing:

RPGs are games of shared imagining. The agency of those who participate in the game, therefore, is about how they can shape that shared imagining.

Because, typically, most of the participants in a RPG are in the "player" role, engaging and affecting the fiction via the medium of a particular character within the fiction, that agency becomes about how the play of that character affects the shared imagining.

Because it's also fun, at least for many RPGers, for unexpected stuff to happen - stuff that no one would just choose here and now, if left to their own devices - we use mechanical systems to constrain our imagining and introduce stuff into it. Social mechanics are a way of doing that, just like any other mechanics are.

And I then posted some examples that illustrate the point - mechanics introducing stuff that no one at the table would have just chosen, then and there, if left to their own devices.

I thought that those posts might provide an implicit reply to those who have queried the rationale for social mechanics, because players are always at liberty to make up stuff that their PCs do. They provide an explanation, with illustrations, of why some RPGers want their RPGing to include stuff other than what the participants will just make up unconstrained.

In the context of this thread, it's also an explanation and analysis that has nothing to do with participant role symmetry (eg that GMs playing NPCs and players playing PC should be governed by the same mechanics - a proposition that is, on its face, pretty implausible), nor does it have anything to do with the quality or abilities of game participants.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think with character feelings and reactions "unexpected stuff no one would choose" should be happen, because that to me indicates that it would be bizarre and completely out of character. If it wasn't, then it certainly is not something "no one would ever choose."

But it can’t be out-of-character if we’re using play to determine who the character is.

 

[soviet]

To my mind there is also a question of how reasonable it is to come to a game with a predefined model of everything the character will or won't do, feel, or say in response to external stimuli. What is play for, in that case? To simply show the character saying 'no, I cannot be persuaded of anything or have a human reaction' in a variety of different circumstances?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To my mind there is also a question of how reasonable it is to come to a game with a predefined model of everything the character will or won't do, feel, or say in response to external stimuli. What is play for, in that case? To simply show the character saying 'no, I cannot be persuaded of anything or have a human reaction' in a variety of different circumstances?

People keep repeating this sort of thing, and it frankly nonsense. That you have a defined mental model of the character does not mean they cannot be persuaded or affected or that you cannot be surprised. It if is just utterly bizarre to me that people would think this. The character will be subjected to situations beyond their control, and those will impact them and they will produce reactions, sometimes surprising ones. Just like happens to people in the real life.

 

[TwoSix]

To my mind there is also a question of how reasonable it is to come to a game with a predefined model of everything the character will or won't do, feel, or say in response to external stimuli. What is play for, in that case? To simply show the character saying 'no, I cannot be persuaded of anything or have a human reaction' in a variety of different circumstances?

I mean, I do think demonstration of character concept has become a pretty central of play goal of OC/neotrad-style play, the type of play that D&D 5e is most closely targeting.

 

[TwoSix]

People keep repeating this sort of thing, and it frankly nonsense. That you have a defined mental model of the character does not mean they cannot be persuaded or affected or that you cannot be surprised. It if is just utterly bizarre to me that people would think this. The character will be subjected to situations beyond their control, and those will impact them and they will produce reactions, sometimes surprising ones. Just like happens to people in the real life.

But we DO think this. (At least, I do.) I might arrive at a decision I didn't expect when play started over a particular scenario, when playing in your "full-mental agency" model, but it's still going to be ultimately what I felt to be right in the moment.

It doesn't leave the possibility open that my character isn't actually who I thought they were, which is something that I'm chasing and you seem to have an aversion to.