That is absolutely the opposite of what I want out of an RPG. To me, that DM ought to go write a story, because that's what he's doing- he is telling the story he has in mind, with an outcome in mind, rather than playing a game in which he responds to the choices of the pcs.
I disagree with this on a couple of levels. For one thing, writing a story does not require that the writer has the end in mind. In fact, Tolkien himself supposedly did not plan out LotR in advance, which probably explains why it has such a raw, realistic quality. Shared authorship is not the same thing as emergent play, and even if the players never had any meaningful impact on the story, the game could be engaging and surprising for everyone involved.
However, I generally do think that DMing is about more than pure authorship. What I don't agree is that direct player agency is the only alternative. I find that much of the influence the players exert on my campaigns is not the result of direct intentionality on their part.
For example, if I plan a campaign for a generic party, and the players come back with two characters who are a couple, I might change my plans to leverage their relationship. Perhaps have an NPC try to break them up, or have one of them killed and see what the other is willing to do to get him/her back, and so on and so on. The same thing can happen during play. What if a player says offhand something like "gee I hope that NPC isn't secretly a demon who's trying to deceive us". Idea mine! Maybe if a character says something about his tough upbringing, a new quest to help out a homeless orphan appears. There are many cases where either during character creation or during play, a player can influence the course of the game incidentally rather than through direct agency. The game is different because of their presence, but they might not have intended it and they might not even know it.
And after all of that, there is still ample opportunity for the player to influence the game through in-character choice. Another thing to keep in mind is that even if a DM has made a decision, he can always change his mind, and the thing most likely to change his mind is the human being in front of him (that said, my plans also change on a weekly basis based on what fiction I consume, what I read on the news, and what I see through my job and other activities). I think that even an extremely authoritarian DM can still leverage his players very effectively.
With regards to writing a story, I often write narrative summaries of sessions after their completion. I also tend to discuss behind the scenes things once they're no longer going to spoil the in-game action, which does gives the players a venue for seeing exactly what my plans were and how much and why they changed. Which is usually a lot.
If you 'decree' that a PC has a terminal illness arbitrarily, capriciously, with no rolling or reason behind it- well, that's not exactly railroading, so long as you don't force the pc to react a certain way, and as long as you allow him or her to act in the way that he or she sees fit. But that's a circumstance, not a set of actions or outcomes. The outcome isn't even necessarily "the pc dies of the disease"- maybe instead it's "the pc gets the diseased cured/dies in a fire/gives his life in defense of the party" or whatever. It's only when your decree includes "and this is how it ends" that you've crossed onto the (my) railroad line.
That was kind of my point. In this case, I've decreed it incurable and terminal, and the players now know this, but their knowledge is imperfect. After all, doctors are sometimes wrong about these things. You're right that the character might die of something else, and that there is still a lot of room for the player to make meaningful choices even in the face of this apparently final outcome.
Your other example is more troubling to me. If the pc's destiny is to live among the fey, doesn't that mean his destiny is to NOT die while adventuring? Doesn't it mean that he is predestined to make it through the toughest fights, even acting extremely recklessly? If I was playing a pc with a "special destiny", I certainly wouldn't think twice about taking on ridiculous tasks and frontal-assaulting that uberdragon.
Yes, it does. In this example, the PC did not know this, but you are correct that if he had died, I would have either had to change my mind on something I considered very important or raise him from the dead. Predestination does have its problems.
However, these are not unprecedented. In all the movie fight scenes you've watched, in how many of them did you think the main character might actually die? How often did it happen? Not often. Dramatic conceit is hardly unprecedented, and it's not a given that the outcome of a battle has to be in doubt.
I certainly don't advocate using this kind of destiny thing every time around. It was an experiment for me, and one that worked well, but only for that specific campaign.
That part is fine- but how many strings do you, as the DM, pull to keep me "on track" towards that destiny? Moreover, do you do the same for the other pcs?
Very few as I recall. The beauty of it is that it comes very naturally to me to improvise around a few known postulates, and there are many right answers as to how the players can reach the end.
What I object to is when the DM makes decisions for the pcs or capriciously and without regard to fairness. The terminal disease guy? If he caught the disease fair and square, I'm totally cool with it. If you arbitrarily gave it to him for a giggle, less so.
It's arbitrary, and I sure am giggling manically at them, but it serves a purpose. It's actually based on a real life case that I sat in on some doctors talking about. These things can happen suddenly and for no identifiable reason, and this character got cancer at a young age with no risk factors, had a seemingly successful surgery and remission, and now has relapsed with a terminal diagnosis. It's a horror game, and I want them to experience what getting this kind of diagnosis is like. Because they know it's a horror game, to me this is not capricious. In D&D, I think it would be less tonally appropriate.
I agree with you that capricious DMing is bad, and I've been on the wrong end of it in my earlier days (which, frankly, is one of the reasons why I eventually became the consensus DM). However, I struggle to see how it would be defined. Regardless of whether it's horror or fantasy or some other genre, bad things can happen to the PCs. It's not necessary the DM being cruel, but it could be. If you have any meaningful definition of your capricious DMing, I'd be curious to hear it.
Certain outcomes being outside of the pcs' control is fine- that's the point of the game.
Well, I think so too, but is that a consensus here?
I agree that DMing and railroading aren't the same. To me, the line is very stark and bright: it's when the DM makes choices for the pcs or enforces a desired outcome regardless of what they do. In other words, railroading is when the DM disregards the players' control over the way their pcs act.
I can get behind that. To me, the player's ability to control their character is sacrosanct, and it's something I really try not to impinge on during the game. Sometimes, things happen that are beyond the character's control, but whatever agency the character has, I think the players should have too.
I expect that the pcs will miss things in my dungeons. I expect that they'll abandon some adventures midway through. I expect that they'll end up going places and doing things that I'd never considered. And generally, they do all of these things.
I don't dislike that, and it even seems admirable on some level to me.
However, I have a hard time seeing it as being practical, simply because of the stat load required. If you need detailed, customized stats, you have to write them in advance. As a 3e DM, my style is based on time constraints and the perks of the system. I can stat a few pretty diverse cohorts of NPCs, but I can't fill an entire region with enough ready stat blocks to justify calling it a sandbox. The closest thing I ever ran to a sandbox was a more minimalist system (again, CoC) that I ran with dozens of prepped NPCs and associated locations and plot elements in mind, but that was because I literally had three years to prep it.
I assume you must not customize monster/NPC stats much.
By the way, even though we very clearly disagree on a lot of this stuff, thank you for the discussion- it's a good one, and I really appreciate the civil tone!
These past few pages have been more intellectually interesting than most of what's been on the boards during this relative dry spell for the hobby. Which to me, is subsidiary to the OP's point that we should be discussing other things than balance. I do appreciate that you and some others have managed to relate contradictory viewpoints in a generally non-confrontational manner.
And that's fine!
