What is *worldbuilding* for?

[Ilbranteloth]

Presenting GM vs Player driven in a dichotomous fashion is limiting. There is a shifting overlap that erases any sharp separation. But it is useful in a directional sense, of pointing which has greater agency.

To return to the question of whether the Yuan-Ti passage exists, I thought that in certain types of games, the player could force the passage to exist. The limiting factor would be in regards to how much “authorship” resource the player had left. And to a degree, how well having the passage exist fit into the story. And, the player may decide to forgo the goal, perhaps because the challenge was too high, or because another story element became more of interest, or maybe they just changed their mind. Then the decision as to the actual existence might never be reached.

Thx!
TomB

Agreed, and that's the case with a lot of these theoretical discussions. But they can be interesting, because a year or two ago if you had asked me if players can help author the world fiction in D&D I would have said no, but as I've parsed through it more I find that it's exactly that, a shifting overlap.

I think you're right, in some games the player probably can force the passage to exist. At least, it's allowable within the rules. I'm not sure if it would always play out that way at the table. I don't know all of the rules systems inside and out.

 

[Lanefan]

Agreed, and that's the case with a lot of these theoretical discussions. But they can be interesting, because a year or two ago if you had asked me if players can help author the world fiction in D&D I would have said no, but as I've parsed through it more I find that it's exactly that, a shifting overlap.

Agreed.

I think you're right, in some games the player probably can force the passage to exist. At least, it's allowable within the rules.

If this is true in any game system then I'll go on record as saying that is a system worth nothing but outright rejection, as it allows the players to author their own solutions to their problems - whether those problems are self-inflicted or presented by the DM - to the exclusion or minimization of engagement and interaction with the game world around their PCs.

In meta-terms, it's the difference between a player at the table saying or thinking:

"I want to find a passage to the Yuan-Ti, so I'll have my PC start searching for one" with no further knowledge whether one exists or not, the same as her PC.

and

"I want to find a passage to the Yuan-Ti, so I'll just author one into the fiction"; she - and thus her PC - know it must exist because she just arbitrarily put it there.

Systems that allow the player to achieve this authorship only on a successful die roll are somewhere between the two above positions.

Lan-"no matter how hard I try in real life, simply saying or thinking there's a beer in front of me doesn't often put one there"-efan

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nor in mine, most likely, but I try to make it that if something works in a certain way 'here and now' it's also going to work that same way 'there and then'. Which is also why I go to a new world for each campaign, as there's often sweeping rules changes going along with the world change.

I want to be consistent 'here and now' because it is required for the players to understand fictional positioning. They can always try to invent some new way to do something, etc. It should still 'hang together' in some sense.

That said, I think were I to stay with the same world through multiple rule-sets like you seem to be doing, I'd make all changes retroactive to the dawn of time just to keep some here-and-now consistency. Thus your 5e PCs would never meet a "pre-1e PC" in its original mechanics form as it would have been converted on the fly to the current system.

Yeah, that's what I've done. I mean, I skipped 3.x, so basically the PCs were all 'classic D&D' characters, meaning that the differences were maybe a point or two of AC, few other minor things. You can basically run an OD&D character in 2e and not worry much about doing a 'conversion'. Certainly to run it as an NPC its fine.

4e represents a much larger difference of course. I did convert some old-time PCs to CC/monster stat block format. In terms of using them as NPCs for a short time that works fine. It really works quite well for fighters and other non-casters. Wizard types were so open-ended in the old days that its hard to really capture the workings of high level ones exactly. Given that you will just do a brief fight or interaction with them though they work, and you can always load them up with rituals for the sort of 'campaign stuff'.

Admittedly, if you went back and examined the precise details of adventures from years ago they might not quite mesh in every detail with 4e, but things are close enough, they're all games of fantasy action with pretty much the same tropes and archetypes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.

What intersection? There is no world, there is no intersection, there are a series of scenes. Maybe we may assume that there are locations which exist between these scenes and which may be traversed, but there's literally no specific thing that any player has been 'railroaded past'. They stated they wanted to go to the reliquary and they went there! How is that a railroad?

It's not bizarre. You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go. In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.

I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that. They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it. Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.

Railroading, by definition, isn't something that happens by the player's will. If they are in charge of the decisions which establish the content of the scenes they are in, by their choices, then they weren't railroaded, were they?

What you are positing is that only a procedure in which every moment of the character's lives from game start to game end is played through at some arbitrary level of detail which you feel is sufficient to represent 'freedom of choice'. ALL we are arguing about is what that level of detail is, in essence. I'm perfectly happy to have the PCs skip a week and end up in another town, you're not. This has NOTHING to do with 'railroading' or 'agency' at all, its about process of play!

 

[pemerton]

If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there. I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things. The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being. I'm simply adjudicating the chances.

How are the chances set? Not by the player, as best I can tell. You are deciding whether or not to say no. You are setting the chance. The player is just waiting to be told.

I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them. It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie. It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go. I literally don't care. My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.

You, as GM, have to choose what the lie is about. You decide that the NPC is untrustworthy. Etc.

This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position. In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.

It's not a distraction. It's the whole point.

When you or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tell the players that their PCs are at an intersection, or stumble on a raised flagstone, or whatever else is part of you "neutral" framing, all you are doing is choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. When I tell the player that his PC is at a bazaar where a peddler has an angel feather for sale, I am also choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. The difference is that you have chosen something that you think is interesting/engaging; whereas I have chosen something that (given the player's signals) I know the player will find engaging/interesting.

If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.

<sip>

my position does not rest on the game world being real. It rests on the game world being rational. What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.

You are choosing whether or not to mention a raised flagstone. Whether or not to mention an intersection. Whether or not to mention a bazaar. Both of us are choosing what to mention to the players.

It's just that I'm choosing on the basis of the evinced dramatic needs of the PCs.

"Stopping at the intersection" isn't a rational world, any more than is one which mentions every flagstone on the floor of the tavern, and every splinter on its wooden stairs. It's just one where the GM is indulging some taste for that particular detail.

I can tell you that if my players want intersections, or flagstone, they're very capable of letting me know!

The idea that it is more railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!

It's not bizarre. You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go.

This is just the same point. You think not mentioning the flagstone is not railroading. Why not? You're depriving your players of the chance to study them, assay them, excavate them, fireball them, etc.

But obviously that's ridiculous. These aren't real worlds. They have no objective existence, waiting to be explored. They're fictions, which the players encounter because the GMs tell them to them. Telling the players stuff that they have signalled will be interesting to them is not depriving choices anymore than telling them "neutral" stuff. It's just (in my experience) more exciting!

 

[pemerton]

But they still have 100% player agency in both scenarios. What that agency allows them to do is different, and that's my point. The "issues they engage within the game" is dependent upon the rules of the game.

<snip>

Player agency itself isn't any different for any of them. They still have full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow. However, they allow different levels of control of the fiction outside of their characters.

This is like saying that chess and snakes and ladders are no different in player agency, because each allows the player full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow.

Or, if you think that's too cheap a shot, then I'll make the same comment about bridge and five hundred. The upshot of the auction + kitty in 500, together with the bower rules (which significantly lengthen the trump suit), means that once the hand actually starts being played players have less agency than they do in bridge. This is why five hundred is a lighter game (in terms of mental overhead) to play than bridge (no trumps can be an obvious exception - at that point the resemblance to bridge becomes much greater).

If, in the context of a RPG, the player has no agency in respect of the shared fiction except to express what his/her player desires (and there are some posters on this board who take that view) then it is self evident that the player has less agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction than one who is playing in a standard Fate or Burning Wheel or HeroWars/Quest or Cortex+ Heroic or 4e game. (Just to pick some examples.)

 

[pemerton]

That looks like some cool stuff there.

However, it's perhaps a tangential example to what I'm saying, for these reasons:

1. In your write-up it seems the various locations referenced are quite close together - each a staircase apart, if I read it right - and so there's very limited opportunity (or need) to introduce intersections and-or other geographical features.

2. This seems to be an example of epic-level play (one of the PCs is already a god, for Pete's sake!) near or at the end of a campaign, which implies most of the fundamental choices have already been made and any earlier distractions long since dealt with. It's a bit late to be introducing something as trivial as a slave being beaten. Yet with that said, you were still introducing DM-driven complications...

3. Further to 2 above, we don't see here how direct or indirect the party's path has been to get to this point; how often they veered off course, or whether there was any point when they could have lost the trail of the story entirely and thus never got this far at all.

The GM introduces complications, but look at how and why that is being done:

Appropriately enough, it was the player of the ridiculously zealous paladin of the Raven Queen who first conjectured that the subject of the riddle was the Raven Queen herself . . .

The sphinx accepted it, but insisted that they also tell him whose pride will be cured. After generic answers ("everyone dies"), which did not really satisfy the sphinx, the fighter/cleric answered "Us". The sphinx replied "Well, yes, you," and this was the clue for the player of the invoker/wizard, who answered "The gods" - because the fighter/cleric is now God of Jailing, Pain and Torture (having taken up Torog's portfolio). . . .

The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler. . . .

I explained to the player of the fighter/cleric (who is now the god of imprisonment, and also has a theme that gives him a connection to primordial earth) that he could sense the Elemental Chaos surging up through the earth of the mortal world (because (i) Torog can no longer hold it back, and (ii) the Abyss, having been sealed, is no longer sucking it down the other way); and as a result, an ancient abomination sealed in the earth had been awakened from its slumber and would soon makes it way up to the surface of the world. I then filled them in on my version of the Tarrasque (the MM version with MM3 damage and a few tweaks to help it with action economy). This created suitable consternation, and was taken as another sign of the impending Dusk War. . . .

This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc. . . .

Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.​

All the complications, and the increasing of pressure on the players, is done by reference to PC dramatic needs. This is what player-driven RPGing looks like: the GM frames scenes, and "[e]ach scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character."

There is no "veering off course" or "staying on course". There is no pre-determined course. There's just these PCs, with these needs, whose players make these choices when the GM confronts them with this situation. Of course at epic tier the in-game stakes are higher; but the methods are no different.

That sort of game really seems to assume the players will be quite goal-oriented

Yes. This is why they have mechanics like Beliefs or Milestones; or why, in my 4e game, I asked the players at the start of the game to give their PCs a loyalty, and a reason to be ready to fight goblins.

I'd rather see the DM framing scenes and introducing vignettes in passing that are intended to try and divert them from their goals or frustrate them from achieving such, rather than just relying on the luck of the dice to provide you with these opportunities.

But you don't need to try and divert. What does that add? Stories are about challenges to the satisfaction of dramatic need. So you present challenges and complications just as Eero Tuovinen describes - eg Can I save the world from the tarrasque, which will probably need the help of my Raven Queen-worshipping friends, without helping them make the Raven Queen the ruler of the cosmos? Does becoming a god help me stand against her, or make me more likely to be humbled by her? Or, for a different PC: Is the only way to keep the Raven Queen's name safe from others learning it for me to learn it?

This will make stuff happen.

you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks

Yes I am, that's what point 3 (repeat until success) covers.

I'm sure I've posted multiple times upthread that this sort of RPGing depends on finality in resolution. There are no retries.

And if a group of players aren't necessarily that goal-oriented and just want to play for gits and shiggles, how's that gonna work?

Maybe not so well. So maybe the GM starts exercising more agency. But it's hard for me to see that a non goal-oriented, "gits and shiggles" player is at the same time one who is exercising lots of agency over the content of the shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], because quoting all your posts without snipping is quite long, I've sblocked them.

[sblock]

Eh, the kinds of choices made are so different that I'm not sure this is even a question that can be answered, much less one that should be answered. It really doesn't matter. In both styles, the players have lots of opportunity to make choices that fit the style and the player choices. Which has more is pointless, and, beside, from your OP and your definition of agency in respect to adding to the fiction, this isn't even important.


I've read a few of your BW play reports that featured combat. In one I recall more clearly, your character was accosted by orcs for failing a check to determine what happened at a sacked farmhouse, and the combat lacked a good deal of tactical depth as well. At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear. These are part and parcel of the DM-facing style, where players are incentivized to be risk-aware because that has positive benefits for dealing with risk. In player facing games, risk occurs no matter what on check failures or scene framing, and there's limited logistical (when to rest, stocking up on potions/scrolls, spell expenditure rates, etc) or tactical (posting guards while a player engages in a time consuming task, having weapons drawn, scouting locations, etc) choices to make. This is because, as a design feature, scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts. Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.

Again, this is intentional -- a specific design goal, even -- that's meant to engage a specific type of play. And that's peachy awesome and not a bad thing, but, as you've said a few times, analyzing where the trade-offs and impacts are is important and requires dispassionate viewing. There's a reason Story Now games are not the mainstream of play, and that's not because they're better systems. They're great systems (again, looking forward to Blades tomorrow, I spent the last few hours making my Roll20 game have everything at hand for character generation and rules references), and they deliver great fun, but they're not superior systems by definition -- they're only superior systems for players/GMs looking for and able to process that style of play. Given how much [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] continue to miss critical differences in the player-facing playstyle making some of their arguments waaaay off base, you've done similar things in describing their playstyle. Perhaps you should take a moment and let that sink in.

Go back and read the parts of my pasts you snipped out, it's pretty obvious.

I never said they didn't matter, I said player facing ganes tend to minimize tactical agency. BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics. For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering. Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning. Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A. Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes. That's random, not tactics.



Add for my points, if you'd stop snipping them, they'd be obvious.

Sometimes obviousness is in the eye of the beholder. I assume by "add" you means "as".

In any event, I've quoted the whole of your post about my BW game and bolded the salient bit. You said that it did not appear there were tactical choices to be made that would mitigate danger. I've contradicted that. Do you think that has any bearing on your claim?

That particular melee was resolved using the Fight! subsystem.

Fight! is resolved in exchanges consisting of three volleys each. At the start of each exchange you have to blind script 3 volleys. The number of actions in each volley is a function of the Reflex score. The options that are available on each action are fairly standard for a fantasy RPG: strike, block (= parry in some systems), avoid (= dodge in a system like RQ), feint, counterstrike, tackle, push, lock (= grapple in some systems), etc.

At the top of each exchange you also have to declare a positioning manoeuvre (close, maintain or withdraw).

There are rules for changing the script of unresolved volleys following the resolution of a volley, but it requires forfeiture of actions.

All resolution is simultaneous, volley by volley (for positioning) and then action by action. (My PC, wearing armour, has only 3 actions. One thing I have to have regard to in scripting is that a 4 reflex opponent will have one volley with a second option following the first, against which I will have no corresponding action.)

I don't remember all the details of my scripting in that particular combat, but I do know that I used my positioning to protect my companion (an unarmoured mage); and then later on used positioning to try and reach my horse before the orcs did.

Plus there were the standard scripting choices of when to attack, etc.

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, one of the PCs (an orcale) has an ability that allows for the spending of resources (plot points) to reduce the size of a doom pool die. The player of that PC uses that ability to modulate risk (in particular, to try and stop the doom pool building up to contain 2d12, which the GM can spend to bring the scene to a peremptory close.

In BW, players can modulate risk in all sorts of ways - I've described some just above. In the first session of the campaign, the player of the mage initially thought about reaching out to the Gynarch of Hardby, but then decided to reach out to a lesser personage - Jabal - because the consequences of any blowback should things go wrong were likely to be less. That is player management of the stakes.

Because BW is a grity game, where equipment lists matter and gear can easily get lost or broken as a consequence of failure, where healing takes a long time ingame, and where periodic maintenance checks are necessary, logistics can also become important in a way that is not the case in Cortex+ Heroic or (my approach to) 4e.

In the original version of HeroWars, extended contest resolution involves a literal stake-setting system in which participants stake more or fewer action points on an exchange - with zero action points remaining meaning los of the contest. HeroQuest revised maintains a less mathematically and mechanically intricate version of this system.

Dogs in the Vineyard allows the player, at every point of resolution, to choose to yield (so as to avoid the risk of fallout) or to escalate (so as to try and get more and better dice, at the risk of more extreme fallout).

Etc.

Again, this sounds like you're not that familiar with a cross-section of systems.

Having weapons drawn absolutely matters in BW. (In Fight! it's two actions to draw a sword.) In my Marvel Heroic game, in one session War Machine began the session in his civvies (so as to earn a bonus plot point) and then later on had to make a successful check against the Doom Pool in order to have his armour fly to him so he could suit up.

In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, when the PCs came to a giants' steading the scout PC scouted it (initially establishing an Overview of the Steading Interior Asset by climbing up the pallisade, and then establishing a Giant Ox asset by spotting said ox in the giants' barn). This is tactical choice at the table, as it consumes actions (which might otherwise be spent on, say, fighting or talking) and - in this context - it fed into an approach based on social resolution (by trying to sell the giants' ox back to them, relying on their dimwittedness) rather than fighting.

The significance of these tactical choices is different - in the Cortex+ game (which is a viking game) the player is taking us in the more comedic direction of contests where Thor is trying to drink the ocean or wrestle Jormungandur, rather than the drama of the Ragnarok. And in BW, if you can't make your maintenance check then the game is probably not going to just end with your PC starving in the gutter - the GM might frame that scene ("You've no money, no food, your landlord has kicked you out, you're sitting in the gutter wondering what to do . . .") but then would follow up with something like ('" . . and then a coach pulls up, and Jabal's head pokes out - 'Jobe, I see that you've fallen on hard times'").

But they're there, in different forms dealing with different subject matter in different games, and they matter to how events unfold in the fiction.

It's amusing that you cut out the bits of my post where I specifically point out those mechanics that are after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences and then present these exact things as if it refutes my argument. I'm specifically taking about action declaration to reduce or mitigate risk which is why I called out the post-hoc mechanics.

And, yes, I'm aware BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, and one that is especially brutal and difficult to use. This isn't common in player-facing games, though, so it's not really a good example of the nature of the genre, just of itself. That said, the combat mechanics of BW are really designed to make fighting a bad choice -- both from the player perspective by being so overly complicated compared to the rest of the system, and from the character perspective in that even a simple combat has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead. As such, it's brutality is more of a push to keep the game away from combat rather than a wealth of tactical choices available to the player.

I've quoted this post in full. You said that you're aware that BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, so maybe you were aware that it allows tactical choices to manage danger? But had forgotten when you made the earlier post? I don't know - that's why, as I posted upthread, I don't understand what you're trying to get at in this respect.

You also say that I present these exact things - ie after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences. But not a single of the examples in the post you quoted - and I've bolded them for ease of reference - is an example of after the fact resource expenditure to reduce consequences. This is why I posted, in reply, that "I don't really know what you mean by this."

Perhaps you'll explain?

BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics. For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering. Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning. Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A. Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes. That's random, not tactics.

Have you played this system?[/sblock]

 

[pemerton]

the player gets to decide how best to further his goal. What he decides may or may not truly be the best way, but the player has made that value judgment, not you.

This is an instance of a lack of finality in resolution, resulting from the fact that the GM is establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.

You're going to have to do some serious explaining on this one. I have absolutely no freaking idea how leaving both coming up of what to do and the choice to do it to the player, can possibly be the DM establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.

You said what [the player] decides may or may not truly be the best way. In other words, the player's action declarations following his/her decision as to how his/her PC will further his/her goal don't determine that matter.

And I'm 99% sure that you don't have in mind the possibiity that the player's chosen approach may turn out to be a mistake because eg an aura reading check fails; because I'm 99% sure you dont' run a system in which these elements of setting are established as consequences of checks rather than inputs into them.

If that necklace is magic and the lord hires a wizard to walk around detecting magic to locate it, the PCs made that possible by not placing it in a lead box or hiding it somewhere else that it won't be found out.

This looks very similar. The resolution of the theft of the necklace is not established with finality. The GM is the one who is making decisions about whether the lord hires a wizard, where the wizard walks and detecs, etc. This is not being done as part of consequence narration, or as the setting of stakes in scene framing.

A contrast would be the resolution of this as a skill challenge in 4e: at a certain point, for instance, the GM might narrate - as part of the framing of a check during the course of resolution - "Word reaches you that a wizard is wasndering the stressts, apparently looking for an enchanted item." The player can then declare an action to indicate how s/he overcomes this obstacle (anything from a Streetwise check to stay ahead of the wziard, or some sort of magical action to conceal the magic of the necklace, as takes the player's fantasy and fits the fiction of his/her PC and whatever is already established about genre and setting). If the skill challenge eventually succeeds, that is finality: the PC's theft of the necklace has defeated the lord's attempt to recover it.

Of cousre if the player deliberately restakes it, that's a different matter. But walking around in it is probably not going to be an instance of that - as opposed to, say, trying to use it to pay off a debt to the self-same lord!

 

[Maxperson]

Are you really saying the following is railroading?

GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?

Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.

GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.

<players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​

Where's the railroad?

There isn't, because the players indicated what they wanted to do and were able to do it. Had they walked there more slowly, though, they might have made some allies or acquired some items in the Underdark to help them with the giants. You did deprive them of those(and more) opportunities in the rush to get them to the giants.

Let's consider a variation of the above:

. . .

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​

Where's the railroad?

The railroad is in the last sentence. You played their PCs for them and decided for them that they would be reckless, taking no precautions to avoid being seen. You also decided that being seen was automatic. The players should have been given the opportunity to decide their approach tactics, but instead you forced them down the rails.