D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Thomas Shey]

Ok, but then I really don’t understand how as a player that you’d be unhappy that something you didn’t know would happen, happened?

Well, that's always the illusionism argument, but as I've noted before, I think people are far more casual about thinking they can make that work consistently than is reality, and it doesn't take many times for the player to spot the man behind the curtain before it poisons all his expectations from that GM. This is why if you're going to make serious use of illusionism, I think its a good idea to make sure no one cares (and really, a lot of people don't) before you get into it.

 

[Charlaquin]

The problem with that is that with a level system, experience is too disconnected from the sense of advancement anyway, since its a multi-session contributor. A few people may like that sense of accumulating numbers, but for most its just pointless bookkeeping; its the levelling and the things that come with it they care about.

Hard disagree. Human brains love watching progress bars fill up. You may or may not be consciously aware of it, but having the progress bar of XP gradually filling up over the course of a few sessions is very viscerally satisfying for most people.

Whether or not that satisfaction is worth the bookkeeping is of course a matter of preference.

 

[TheSword]

Though one can question what the point of the objection is then; at least most deontological positions are based on process being bad in and of itself, and if that's where people are coming from you need to step back and indicate why that is rather than just "because". I do suspect you're right that some of the objection is to the process itself, but without indicating why you think so, that's kind of begging the question.

I actually don’t think it is a deontological position.

I refute the idea that pre-planned encounters are morally superior or create greater satisfaction than random encounters, floating encounters or making it up on the spot. There is no moral hierarchy for game writing… the best method is whatever works for you.

They just have different investment requirements in resources like time, effort and creativity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But avoiding the randomly encounter by pure luck doesn't involve agency either.

At no point did I say anything about pure luck. I specifically mentioned doing things to avoid encounters.

 

[TheSword]

I realize, I was just noting that there's an argument to be made that the "ogres either place" argument is dependent on only the immediate time frame being relevant, and that's not something someone is required to give you.

Following on from this I think there’s an argument that Place doesn’t need to be an element of adventure design at all. Player choices can lead to different events in Time without Place even being an issue. Adventures like Rough Night at the Three Feathers are a good example of this.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hard disagree. Human brains love watching progress bars fill up. You may or may not be consciously aware of it, but having the progress bar of XP gradually filling up over the course of a few sessions is very viscerally satisfying for most people.

Whether or not that satisfaction is worth the bookkeeping is of course a matter of preference.

I think that satisfaction is far more prevelent and relevant to people when either levelling is spread out longer or alternatively its visible in realtime (such as a computer game). And I think the increase in milestone advancement in games recognizes that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

At no point did I say anything about pure luck. I specifically mentioned doing things to avoid encounters.

But that's not what this has been about. The example doesn't involve the PCs taking intentional steps to avoid the ogres. I agree that invalidating such a choice would be violating the player agency. Not that that in itself is necessarily a terrible sin either if it doesn't happen often.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I actually don’t think it is a deontological position.

I refute the idea that pre-planned encounters are morally superior or create greater satisfaction than random encounters, floating encounters or making it up on the spot. There is no moral hierarchy for game writing… the best method is whatever works for you.

They just have different investment requirements in resources like time, effort and creativity.

I'm not sure why you're refuting it potentially being a deontological position. If someone objects to it in principal, that's still whether you agree with the principal or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But that's not what this has been about. The example doesn't involve the PCs taking intentional steps to avoid the ogres. I agree that invalidating such a choice would be violating the player agency. Not that that in itself is necessarily a terrible sin either if it doesn't happen often.

CL, seriously, go back and look at the chain of statements I was making. You're essentially talking about a different thing than I was. As I said, I'm suggesting that a legitimate objection to the Quantum Ogre is that it limits its time frame too much in terms of where the meaningful choice is. That's it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Following on from this I think there’s an argument that Place doesn’t need to be an element of adventure design at all. Player choices can lead to different events in Time without Place even being an issue. Adventures like Rough Night at the Three Feathers are a good example of this.

I absolutely agree, but I suspect they're still too structuralist in setup for most of the sandbox proponents.