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JNAProductions
2017-09-10, 11:47 AM
Just a little thought I had.

I feel that railroading is only bad WHEN IT'S NOT WARNED ABOUT. Now, that has its limits-railroading to the point where characters have no influence at all on the game is bad, or railroading where there's one and only one solution that'll work ever is bad-but in general, so long as the DM is clear with what the rails are and the rails aren't TOO restrictive, it's fine.

For instance-let's say your DM tells you this:

"Hey-I've got an idea for an adventure. You're all young, up and coming adventurers, who are ready to hit the big time, when a dragon kidnaps the princess. Naturally, your party sees this as your chance to hit the jackpot, and so go for the rescue. Sound cool?"

Regardless of whether or not you'd enjoy playing that, we can all recognize there's rails there. You have somewhat set character details, and have a pretty clear path forward. And it doesn't seem, at least to me, to be bad. It lets the DM plan more accurately for what's going to be done, and most importantly, you never feel tricked. You never feel like you had the illusion of choice-you were always going to be going for the dragon and the princess.

Now, if I was to present this as a DM, I'd be reasonably flexible with it. You can fight head-on, sneak in, barter, whatever. Likewise, your character motivations can vary-you could be the up and coming adventurer, you could be an older adventurer who's lost his edge and reputation and is looking to regain them, you could be a (probably spellcasting) prodigy who's never adventured in his life, but wants the princess's hand in marriage... But the point is, you're going on this set adventure.

Thoughts?

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-10, 12:16 PM
That's not really railroading.

JNAProductions
2017-09-10, 12:23 PM
That's not really railroading.

It is. It's not heavy-handed, but it still is.

Without railroading, the events happen-the princess is kidnapped, the dragon makes it away, the king puts out a call for help-but you aren't compelled to do anything about it. You're free to go futz off and investigate the goblins who have suddenly militarized themselves to a high degree, or the impending orc WAAAAGH bearing down from the south, or investigate the pirate city-ship Eternal Damnation.

But this is railroading you to one specific adventure.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-10, 12:35 PM
It is. It's not heavy-handed, but it still is.


For me, scenario details like this don't feel the same as in-play railroading. It's part of the premise--accept or reject. Just like choice of systems.

JNAProductions
2017-09-10, 12:37 PM
For me, scenario details like this don't feel the same as in-play railroading. It's part of the premise--accept or reject. Just like choice of systems.

Which is, I guess, my point. So long as the boundaries are established, most players don't mind following them.

shuyung
2017-09-10, 03:09 PM
I think the objection to the classification stems from it looks more like what you've written up is a scenario pitch. This is technically no different than saying to your group "Hey guys, I just picked up Ravenloft, want me to run it?". That's not a railroad, that's a proposal. Railroading can only really occur during play, and it's a removal/revocation of player agency.

Amphetryon
2017-09-10, 03:10 PM
Which is, I guess, my point. So long as the boundaries are established, most players don't mind following them.

As is often the case in these discussions, the definitions of "Railroading" and "most players" are likely to vary quite a bit depending on individual experience. I've known folks to argue that the scenario you present isn't Railroading, and I've known Players who not only argued that it was Railroading, but objected to it quite strongly. Telling either side that their definition was wrong, or they were wrong to object, is not productive in my experience.

Morquard
2017-09-10, 03:10 PM
And I think the point everyone else is trying to make is this: When people say railroading, this isn't what they mean.

Railroading in this scenario would be something like this then:
GM: And now you reach the Dragon's Lair. As you enter you see...
Player: Wait, we don't want to enter, we want to lure the dragon out
GM: It doesn't come out
Player: Ok, we want to look for another secret way into the lair
GM: There is none
Player: We want to collapse the lair on the dragon
GM: doesn't work
Player: We want to go back to town
GM: Oh... a sudden earthquake happens, the way back to town got destroyed
Player: we sit down and camp
GM: Rocks start falling, unless you jump through the entrance into the lair, everyone dies

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-10, 03:31 PM
I think the objection to the classification stems from it looks more like what you've written up is a scenario pitch. This is technically no different than saying to your group "Hey guys, I just picked up Ravenloft, want me to run it?". That's not a railroad, that's a proposal. Railroading can only really occur during play, and it's a removal/revocation of player agency.

Yeah. With the proposed definition, anything other than a wide open sandbox with player consensus (not DM-led) for starting conditions is railroading. I think there's more nuance than that. For me, there are several varities:

Fixed scenario, then sandbox. This has a defined goal, but the means are open. Not railroading to me.

Story arcs, no main plot. This is my native style. There are many plot hooks (things going on). Players choose one. Events are predictable one to two sessions out. No constraints on means. No predefined "main plot".

Linear story. Flexibility of tactics but not strategy. Works with buy-in (modules). Rails are present, but can be fun if the mood is right.

On rails. No tactical or strategic choice. Do A, then do B. No other way works. Obvious, binding rails. Bad.

Thrudd
2017-09-10, 03:54 PM
It is. It's not heavy-handed, but it still is.

Without railroading, the events happen-the princess is kidnapped, the dragon makes it away, the king puts out a call for help-but you aren't compelled to do anything about it. You're free to go futz off and investigate the goblins who have suddenly militarized themselves to a high degree, or the impending orc WAAAAGH bearing down from the south, or investigate the pirate city-ship Eternal Damnation.

But this is railroading you to one specific adventure.

I don't consider it railroading, either. That is establishing the parameters of the game. Railroading is what happens after play has begun, and you decide that a certain outcome is required or a path needs to be followed by the players.

If I say "In this game, each session the characters will be exploring a different dungeon or going on a mission, the details of which will be given at the beginning of the session." That is not railroading. That is telling the players what the game is going to be about so they can make appropriate decisions for their characters. I can tell them that they find themselves at the entrance to the caves of chaos, having traveled here based on rumors of treasure, looking to make their names and fortunes. Now begin. Not railroading.

If during the session they decide the caverns aren't worth it and wander in another direction, it would be railroading for me to use contrivances to force them to stay - like a random force field appears that they can't go past, or a deity comes down and orders them to turn back, or an earthquake coincidentally collapses just the entrance and exit to the caves so they can't leave.

Of course, players that have accepted the premise that they are going to be engaging in whatever dungeon you present to them each week would be kind of jerks if they suddenly refused to do that with no warning - changing the format of the game should probably involve asking the GM first.

Not everyone may like a game with more restricted premise, and that's valid, which is why you include this as the game description and get player buy-in first, preferably before they even make their characters. If you tell them that you are running a game about a group of heroes whose sole purpose will be saving a princess from a dragon, then they should all create characters based on that premise and understand they are engaging full-heartedly in that quest. You should be suspicious of any player who makes a character with less than fully committed motives or that otherwise has the potential to be in conflict with or reject the game's premise (without your explicit permission) - that is someone purposefully planning on subverting or disrupting your game, forcing you to choose between railroading them (an unforgivable gaming sin) or abandoning all you've prepared to satisfy their need for attention/control.

You need to make it explicitly clear that the game is literally only about a quest to rescue the princess - the campaign will be concluded when this quest has been completed. Any character that decides they don't want to be on that quest becomes an NPC, and a new PC must be made to participate in the game.

FreddyNoNose
2017-09-10, 06:13 PM
Which is, I guess, my point. So long as the boundaries are established, most players don't mind following them.

I can see it now..DM we are doing a murder mystery. The local elf lord was murdered.
Player: this sounds like railroading. We need more information!
DM: Ok, the butler killed him.
Player: Now we're talking!

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-10, 07:15 PM
Eh. An adventure with exactly one solution that the DM will arbitrarily force to have happen is Railroading, be it accepted or not.

In that sense, Railroading can be bad (nobody agreed to it) or it can be good (everybody agreed to it). It can even be between (some people agreed to it, others did not.)

In any case, setting forward the goals and ideas for the campaign ahead of time is a VERY good idea. Not doing so can cause problems.

Anxe
2017-09-10, 11:28 PM
And I think the point everyone else is trying to make is this: When people say railroading, this isn't what they mean.

Railroading in this scenario would be something like this then:
GM: And now you reach the Dragon's Lair. As you enter you see...
Player: Wait, we don't want to enter, we want to lure the dragon out
GM: It doesn't come out
Player: Ok, we want to look for another secret way into the lair
GM: There is none
Player: We want to collapse the lair on the dragon
GM: doesn't work
Player: We want to go back to town
GM: Oh... a sudden earthquake happens, the way back to town got destroyed
Player: we sit down and camp
GM: Rocks start falling, unless you jump through the entrance into the lair, everyone dies

While the scenario is technically railroading, it's not the bad kind that I usually think of. It's the type of agreement we have to come to as DM and players.
"The adventure is over here."
"Okay we go that way, but we're taking this route."
"Fine with me."

If the DM says, "You have to achieve the objective this way or else," that's a different story. It can be something that's agreed upon ahead of time, but then I start asking myself why I'm playing with this person. Roleplaying games are fun for me largely because there aren't barriers in the way of what I want to do. I'm comparing this to video games in my head where I can't go wander into the forest around the evil castle because there's an invisible barrier preventing me from doing so. I don't want those types of barriers when I play pen and paper RPGs. Let me tackle the situation how I want to do it.

Thrudd
2017-09-11, 12:03 AM
While the scenario is technically railroading, it's not the bad kind that I usually think of. It's the type of agreement we have to come to as DM and players.
"The adventure is over here."
"Okay we go that way, but we're taking this route."
"Fine with me."

If the DM says, "You have to achieve the objective this way or else," that's a different story. It can be something that's agreed upon ahead of time, but then I start asking myself why I'm playing with this person. Roleplaying games are fun for me largely because there aren't barriers in the way of what I want to do. I'm comparing this to video games in my head where I can't go wander into the forest around the evil castle because there's an invisible barrier preventing me from doing so. I don't want those types of barriers when I play pen and paper RPGs. Let me tackle the situation how I want to do it.

Every RPG should have a clear motive and goal for the players to work towards. That is not railroading - that is just a part of having a game. Where a game's objective have not been clearly communicated to the players, you get some of the confusion and conflicts regarding railroading. Of course the players won't know what to do or where to go if they aren't told what it is they are supposed to be doing. There is also confusion among some players, I think, who think they can refuse to be told what the game's objective is or that it is optional. At the same time, many people come to GMing with the expectation that RPGs are always about their story, and expect any players to know and accept that without actually mentioning it.

"Adventuring" can have a wide range of definitions, so it helps to be really clear about what type of adventuring is expected in your game, including some appropriate motives and goals for characters to have in that context.

If you have an epic adventure in mind, where a team of super heroes deals with various world-ending threats, then that should be the pitch for the game to the players. You need to have characters that are part of a group of world-savers, and when you learn about a threat you're expected to want to go deal with it. That's the agreement for every player that starts. Mention of a lost treasure under a faraway city might not be expected to peak their interest, but mention of a city under siege by the forces of darkness should.

In a traditional D&D game, the objective is to find fame, fortune and power by recovering treasure and defeating monsters. It is expected that all the players will have characters that want to go find dungeons where there are treasures and monsters - so when they hear about dungeons, the players go there. Mention of a mysterious growing plague in the west wouldn't be something that makes anyone want to go west, but mention of a dungeon with a magic sword in the west should do the trick.

With the vast diversity of RPGs in existence, never mind the normal diversity in how people will run a single game, it is more important now than ever to establish basic expectations for the game you are running - so you aren't ever tempted to use railroading techniques to force things to go the way you want. It should go the way you want because the players and characters have goals and motives that are designed specifically to mesh with the game you are running.

gooddragon1
2017-09-11, 12:24 AM
For instance-let's say your DM tells you this:

"Hey-I've got an idea for an adventure. You're all young, up and coming adventurers, who are ready to hit the big time, when a dragon kidnaps the princess. Naturally, your party sees this as your chance to hit the jackpot, and so go for the rescue. Sound cool?"

Regardless of whether or not you'd enjoy playing that, we can all recognize there's rails there.
Thoughts?

It feels like phantasy star online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljrZS1iZcd0) (not as online as you might think though, go to about 2 minutes 30 seconds to see what I'm talking about). You can move around in the rooms as you want, but the walls are made of indestructium and you can't climb over them (as opposed to Skyrim where you don't even have to go along with the main storyline and the only hard walls are the edges of the map (Morrowind didn't even have these btw, you just kept going further and further into "wilderness")). The converse is open world where you can pick your quests. Though some are used to having individual adventures with clearly defined expectations and probably view railroading as more extreme where the DM says you start taking damage unless you go along with the plot. I guess it depends on the level of freedom you're used to.

oxybe
2017-09-11, 01:30 AM
As others said: the general consensus of when Railroading starts is the removal of agency during play, otherwise we're just faffing about without any starting point.

Is it Railroading to say you want to run a game about a group of pirates? what about chosing to run it in Forgotten Realms? What about stating that there are no elves in this world?

For the most part, those are all metagame elements. Stuff that's decided behind the scenes, with or without the players' input, before game hits the ground running. It's the general conceits and backdrop needed for there to be a game to begin with.

Railroading is what happens once you've started running and realized that there is only one track to run on.

A needs to happen before B and there is only one solution to problem C that needs to be addressed before D can come to light and progress made.

This can be as big as the adventure or campaign's structure itself, where the players need to go obtain a certain plot coupon before any progress can be done, or on a smaller scale as an idividual part of an adventure.

Note that i'm not necessarily talking about overall or overarching goals: Let's say that the setup is the PCs want to clean up their hometown, which after decades of being lead by corrupt officials and nobles, is a hive of scum and villany.

If the PCs want to start by creating jobs and public works-type projects to get people working & better peoples' lives and whatnot, but the GM decides that the PCs need to clear the thieves guild first, that's railroading.

If the PCs go to clear the town of a group of thieves and the GM has decided the only way to do so is by killing them, and any other method the PCs try, like bartering, trying to work with them to better the town, etc... will fail, it's railroading.

But also on a smaller level if the GM decides that the only way to get into their hideout is by tailing one specific member and jumping through various hoops, otherwise they don't react to anything the PCs do and any attempt to enter or force engagement is stymied, again: railroading.

this is the loss of agency people talk about.

Metagame concepts like "Hey, I'm running a game in the Forgotten Realms where the PCs are individuals fed up with the corrupt leadership in their mildly prosperous hive of scum and villainy" are needed for the campaign and party to even come together and work.

But once that's set and the players are left to their devices, if all they can do is march to the DM's song or be chastised for doing otherwise, they're being railroaded.

Note that this doesn't stop some enemies from having contingencies in place as long as it makes sense: the Evil Duke Vorpal Von Hackenslash having his men keep a tight patrol schedule on his personal mansion's grounds makes sense, same with them having to follow certain procedures. the Duke's a tyrant and his grip on the City of Townsylvania is nothing but absolute and he's leaving as little openings as possible.

But the players being aware of this means they can also work within that scope but also outside of it. They can try to sneak into the system and use it's precision work against it, where as long as things are going as needed, no caution is raised and they can make their way to the Duke from within his own system and assassinate him during the night shift, or they can go "bugger it all" and pay off dragons to drop angry earth elemental from upon high on the mansion. both of these are valid solutions.

But if the GM demand that only Orbital Elemental Bombardment is the solution and all goals must work towards that one solution, the PCs aren't needed to tell the story anymore. The GM knows how it will end and as such: choo-choo.

Endarire
2017-09-11, 04:53 AM
+1 to the notion between establishing things on the macro scale (campaign setting, rules allowed, tone, etc.) and the GM forcefully micromanaging the party.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-11, 07:40 AM
I feel that railroading is only bad WHEN IT'S NOT WARNED ABOUT. Now, that has its limits-railroading to the point where characters have no influence at all on the game is bad, or railroading where there's one and only one solution that'll work ever is bad-but in general, so long as the DM is clear with what the rails are and the rails aren't TOO restrictive, it's fine.

Thoughts?

I think Railroading is best when the Players know nothing about it. Most Players, like most People, are perfectly happy to ''not look behind the curtain'' and go on clueless. Players want to show up for a game and have fun; the good player does not nitpick and obsess over ''how'' they have fun...they just want to have fun.


As is often the case in these discussions, the definitions of "Railroading" and "most players" are likely to vary quite a bit depending on individual experience. I've known folks to argue that the scenario you present isn't Railroading, and I've known Players who not only argued that it was Railroading, but objected to it quite strongly. Telling either side that their definition was wrong, or they were wrong to object, is not productive in my experience.

One of the big problems with Railroading is that for Players it is not based on logic or normal thought: It is based on bad feelings and emotions. If a Player had a bad day, and they show up to the game in a bad mood, then everything the DM does is Railroading. And a lot of players are just hostile jerks who are playing the game against the DM, so they see everything the DM does as not only Railroading, but also as a personal attack.


And I think the point everyone else is trying to make is this: When people say railroading, this isn't what they mean.

Railroading in this scenario would be something like this then:


This pointless, vague scenario does not really help as it is just too limited.....unless your saying you really pay the game like this.

It's more ''stupid player idea that would never work'' vs ''common sense game reality''. Take the ''lure the dragon out idea''. It's not a bad idea at all, but it does depend what is done for a lure. Way too many players will come up with a dumb idea like ''we drop ten gold coins in front of the lair, then Redyz attacksz for when the dragon comes out to get the gold!'' The DM will just flat out say ''it does not work and the dragon does not come out''. Then the players all lay on the ground and whine and cry ''railroading!''.

Though the real problem here is the Players assuming the game world is some sort of ''stupid cartoon anime video game that is beyond stupid'' and the DM that thinks the game world is ''a cool fantasy reality''. The DM is thinking ''the dragon won't fall for a typical 5 year old trick'', but might fall for a very advanced adult trick....but the best lure is the dragons greed: the dragon might know something is a trap and still risk it if they want the loot enough. For example an artifact, a rare item, or like a dragon orb is something that might very well have a dragon ''throw caution to the wind''.

But also, even if the player really, really do come up with the greatest idea ever.....it still might fizzle and fail for all sorts of reasons. And way too many players see any failure as ''well the DM must have Railroaded this''. And this leads to the hostile game play as the DM will try to defend himself using the reason (''no see the dragon is asleep, so it can't be lured out of it's lair....it's asleep!").


Eh. An adventure with exactly one solution that the DM will arbitrarily force to have happen is Railroading, be it accepted or not.
[QUOTE]

This Epic Definition of Railroading does not really make sense as A) Most adventures will have only one solution and B) A big part of a normal classical Dm's job is to keep the adventure on track. Just look at most fiction: The Death Star had one weakness, the One Ring had one weakness, Unicron had one weakness and so on.

Even more so a ''classic adventure'' really only has ''one'' thing the characters can do to finish the adventure, as again, this is how fiction works. A group of goblin bandits moves into the badlands and starts to raid passing caravans. The players character's want to stop this. The all most ''one and only'' way is very direct and simple: attack and kill the goblins. And if your playing a action adventure type game, like D&D, it's really the ''only way''. Sure, there are some other ways, but they go beyond the scope of the game play. Like it might be possible for the characters to ''make a truce with the goblins'', though that is very unlikely as both the goblins and humans won't just ''hug and be happy'' just as the players want them to be that way. And also it's a bit more of playing the game ''Peace and Diplomacy'' where you'd have a character with a ''smile +3'' and not a ''long sword +3''.

And while a lot of adventures will have only ''one way''(the One Ring can only be destroyed in the fires of Mt. Doom) and ''one thing'' (well, you need to take the One Ring to Mt. Doom and drop it) there is still a ton of ''between ways and things and other stuff'' for the players to make choices and decisions on. No matter what the characters must get the One ring to Mt. Doom, but they are ''free'' to do that any way possible (I recommend calling the giant eagles, flying over and dropping the ring myself).


[QUOTE=oxybe;22371977]As others said: the general consensus of when Railroading starts is the removal of agency during play, otherwise we're just faffing about without any starting point.

The problem with ''agency'' is that somehow Players get the idea that they should be able to control the game reality on a whim, or to put it another way ''be Co- DMs" (or ''make the DM a player''). This does not really make sense for any normal type of game where the players have characters ''in'' the game, as the players can just say ''oh my character find a trillion gold and a sword +20''. Worse is the idea that ''nothing'' is set in the game: a door is locked and a player whines and cries about not having agency and the door is opened; a draon is a tough foe to defeat in battle and the player cries about agency and the dragon is defeated and so on.




A needs to happen before B and there is only one solution to problem C that needs to be addressed before D can come to light and progress made.

This can be as big as the adventure or campaign's structure itself, where the players need to go obtain a certain plot coupon before any progress can be done, or on a smaller scale as an idividual part of an adventure.

This is a normal part of a plot and adventure, and unless your game is a random mess, you have to do ABC.



If the PCs go to clear the town of a group of thieves and the GM has decided the only way to do so is by killing them, and any other method the PCs try, like bartering, trying to work with them to better the town, etc... will fail, it's railroading.

This gets into ''complex vs simple''. It's complex to have a NPC like ''Don Carlito'' who is a kingpin of crime and loves it and for no reason would ever, ever want to give up that life....really the only way to get rid of him is to kill him. But that is only one NPC, and each NPC in the city will be different, so the characters might be able to work with some of them, but not all of them. And this goes back to a lot of the things above: if the player just try ''we have a crime meeting and then cry on the bad guys and say can't we all just get along'', it will fail as it is so dumb. A complex game the players might have to do several different things is several different ways to get to their goal...and they won't ''automatically do things just as they cry agency''. And something's, like underworld crime peace where everyone does a group hug and cries is like very hard to do on the ten scale...like a nine. While ''kill'em all'' is nice and direct, so it's like a one.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-11, 09:58 AM
I


Eh. An adventure with exactly one solution that the DM will arbitrarily force to have happen is Railroading, be it accepted or not.


This Epic Definition of Railroading does not really make sense as A) Most adventures will have only one solution and B) A big part of a normal classical Dm's job is to keep the adventure on track. Just look at most fiction: The Death Star had one weakness, the One Ring had one weakness, Unicron had one weakness and so on.
Now, I've already schooled you up and down about this in another thread, where your only response was to invent things I hadn't said but you wished I had. But apparently you enjoy looking silly.

The Death Star weakness is the subject of many jokes, up to and including "why not put a grate on it?" And the only way they sorta appeased it is by posthumously adding a guy who purposefully put the flaw, on a team of many engineers, and somehow nobody but him noticed. (Which is equally stupid.)

And again, unless you're doing a very simplistic RPG campaign, one convenient solution will be unlikely. For all your talk of not having simple campaigns, you pick the #1 simplest way to handle a scenario:
Exactly one convenient solution. (McGuffins such as The One Ring are famously considered to be "lazy.")



Even more so a ''classic adventure'' really only has ''one'' thing the characters can do to finish the adventure, as again, this is how fiction works. A group of goblin bandits moves into the badlands and starts to raid passing caravans. The players character's want to stop this. The all most ''one and only'' way is very direct and simple: attack and kill the goblins. And if your playing a action adventure type game, like D&D, it's really the ''only way''. Sure, there are some other ways, but they go beyond the scope of the game play. Like it might be possible for the characters to ''make a truce with the goblins'', though that is very unlikely as both the goblins and humans won't just ''hug and be happy'' just as the players want them to be that way. And also it's a bit more of playing the game ''Peace and Diplomacy'' where you'd have a character with a ''smile +3'' and not a ''long sword +3''.
If you're running a game that simplified and empty, sure. Just hand your players their to-do list and let them know when to pretend their dice roll matters.

Maybe try just writing out a script.



And while a lot of adventures will have only ''one way''(the One Ring can only be destroyed in the fires of Mt. Doom) and ''one thing'' (well, you need to take the One Ring to Mt. Doom and drop it) there is still a ton of ''between ways and things and other stuff'' for the players to make choices and decisions on. No matter what the characters must get the One ring to Mt. Doom, but they are ''free'' to do that any way possible (I recommend calling the giant eagles, flying over and dropping the ring myself).
My campaigns tend to have problems with no preplanned solutions. It's up to the players to figure out what would work, and up to me to be honest about how the rules work and how the world operates based on my prep. Because my games are complex, where yours are simple.

The trouble with the "classic" approach is twofold:
1. It's not how 1e D&D was played, so not actually classic.
2. Basing your rpg on a book neuters the one advantage rpgs have over books: emergent narrative. If you want a book, write a book. It's fun!

Seto
2017-09-11, 10:02 AM
I'm gonna go ahead and agree with OP. I hear what most of you are saying: essentially, "there's a difference between metagame agreement on the direction of the plot, and forcing players into a single-minded approach". Like JNA, I would call those two things acceptable/necessary railroading vs. heavy-handed bad railroading.
So we have two working definitions of railroading: mine and OP's is "railroading is removing options from the game that would plausibly be there, in order to focus on a particular option", yours (feel free to correct me) seems to be "railroading is forcing players into an option when they would like to do something else/it would make more sense for their characters to explore other options."
I think everyone agrees that definition 1 is only a bad thing when it's heavy handed and unilateral, whereas by definition 2, railroading is better avoided altogether. So no disagreement on content - it's only semantic.

Now my argument for using definition 1 is that it allows us to think in terms of a spectrum: at one extreme is single-minded railroading, at the other is sandbox without plot. Good campaign design becomes a matter of striking the right balance between the two (which will vary depending on individual groups). With definition 1, there is continuity between acceptable railroading and bad railroading, and the question is "how much railroading is too much, when does a plot-driven game become too driven?". With definition 2, it becomes hard to explain when and why you cross the line into railroading (railroading being qualitatively different from not-railroading, and being inherently bad) the question is "am I doing it yet?".
I find that the former helps me design my campaigns by giving me a tool and telling me when I'm overusing it and should start avoiding it, while the latter just gives me something to avoid.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-11, 10:18 AM
That's not really railroading.


For me, scenario details like this don't feel the same as in-play railroading. It's part of the premise--accept or reject. Just like choice of systems.


I think the objection to the classification stems from it looks more like what you've written up is a scenario pitch. This is technically no different than saying to your group "Hey guys, I just picked up Ravenloft, want me to run it?". That's not a railroad, that's a proposal. Railroading can only really occur during play, and it's a removal/revocation of player agency.

Indeed.

Establishing campaign premise before the campaign begins is not railroading.

Cause-and-effect is not railroading.

The established facts of the setting (that everyone agreed that the campaign would take place in) are not railroading.

The natural flow of consequences arising from the interaction of the circumstances and character actions (PC or NPC) is not railroading.


While I am in no way accusing the OP of this... historically, trying to include those things in the definition of "railroading" has been a repeated rhetorical trick used by fringe elements at two extreme positions.

One claims that those things are railroading in an effort to establish a false choice between "railroading" and "total chaos", demonstrate that "all GMs railroad", and thereby establish that railroading is "good" and thus justify their own actual outright blatant railroading in the games they run.

The other starts out agreeing with the general view that railroading is bad, but then attempts to cram almost all GM worldbuilding and planning into "bad railroading" in order to push a purely in-the-moment game style that retrocreates the world based almost entirely on things established by the players in-play, asserting that nothing is real or true about the world before it comes up in game -- example, if the players decide to search for the MacGuffin in a deserted tower, whether it's there or not isn't an established fact before they roll, but is determined by the outcome of their rolls. :smallconfused:

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-11, 10:26 AM
Indeed.

Establishing campaign premise before the campaign begins is not railroading.

Cause-and-effect is not railroading.

The established facts of the setting (that everyone agreed that the campaign would take place in) are not railroading.

The natural flow of consequences arising from the interaction of the circumstances and character actions (PC or NPC) is not railroading.


While I am in now way accusing the OP of this... historically, trying to include those things in the definition of "railroading" has been a repeated rhetorical trick used by fringe elements at two extreme positions.

One claims that those things are railroading in an effort to establish a false choice between "railroading" and "total chaos", demonstrate that "all GMs railroad", and thereby establish that railroading is "good" thereby justify their own actual outright blatant railroading in the games they run.

The other starts out agreeing with the general view that railroading is bad, but then attempts to cram almost all GM worldbuilding and planning into "bad railroading" in order to push a purely in-the-moment game style that retrocreates the world based almost entirely on things established by the players in-play, asserting that nothing is real or true about the world before it comes up in game -- example, if the players decide to search for the MacGuffin in a deserted tower, whether it's there or not isn't an established fact before they roll, but is determined by the outcome of their rolls.

I agree. I find that some people want to hang "railroading" on everything to either

a) claim that anything except a complete sandbox is badwrongfun

OR

b) claim that since everything is railroading, railroading isn't bad.

It's false dichotomies and argument by definition all the way down! (ok, it's actually turtles, but, like, whatever. That's just your opinion, man).

Tinkerer
2017-09-11, 11:19 AM
The classical definition of railroading that I'm familiar with is when the GM alters the universe in order to deny characters the ability to influence it. Such as when the GM says "this just happened" like a GM saying "You are all captured by orcs with no chance to fight back". Or a GM who want you to bluff your way through a gate checkpoint putting up increasingly large and unlikely obstacles in the path.

Player: I'll climb the wall.
GM: It's far too smooth to climb however there is a gate around the other side which you might be able to use.
Player: Okay I'll use my grappling gun to hook over the top
GM: Er... There are blades lining the top which cut the line. Trying to get past the guards at the gate would seem to be the much easier option.
Player: That's ok, I'll use my scroll of Fly to gain the ability to fly over the wall.
GM: The wall appears to be emitting an Anti-Magic Field of some sort. Your scroll doesn't work.
Player: Okay, I think I know what has to be done. I approach the guards at the gate.
GM: Finally. The guards eye you suspiciously and shout "Halt! What is your business here?"
Player: "Good evening fine sirs! I was wondering if you happen to know where in town I could buy a shovel at this hour?"

I would disagree that there are several important works of fiction which only had one way of dealing with it. The Death Star and Unicron in particular there were several ways to address them (overloading the reactor is always a popular choice for both of these). I can't say that I've really seen an adventure with only one solution unless you are not very creative.


One claims that those things are railroading in an effort to establish a false choice between "railroading" and "total chaos", demonstrate that "all GMs railroad", and thereby establish that railroading is "good" thereby justify their own actual outright blatant railroading in the games they run.

The other starts out agreeing with the general view that railroading is bad, but then attempts to cram almost all GM worldbuilding and planning into "bad railroading" in order to push a purely in-the-moment game style that retrocreates the world based almost entirely on things established by the players in-play.

Yeah, I've started hearing these two points an awful lot as of late. Particularly on this board. Both are equally ludicrous.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-11, 12:25 PM
The classical definition of railroading that I'm familiar with is when the GM alters the universe in order to deny characters the ability to influence it. Such as when the GM says "this just happened" like a GM saying "You are all captured by orcs with no chance to fight back". Or a GM who want you to bluff your way through a gate checkpoint putting up increasingly large and unlikely obstacles in the path.

Player: I'll climb the wall.
GM: It's far too smooth to climb however there is a gate around the other side which you might be able to use.
Player: Okay I'll use my grappling gun to hook over the top
GM: Er... There are blades lining the top which cut the line. Trying to get past the guards at the gate would seem to be the much easier option.
Player: That's ok, I'll use my scroll of Fly to gain the ability to fly over the wall.
GM: The wall appears to be emitting an Anti-Magic Field of some sort. Your scroll doesn't work.
Player: Okay, I think I know what has to be done. I approach the guards at the gate.
GM: Finally. The guards eye you suspiciously and shout "Halt! What is your business here?"
Player: "Good evening fine sirs! I was wondering if you happen to know where in town I could buy a shovel at this hour?"


That's far closer to how I use the term, and how I've mainly seen the term used, than the broad "alternative definitions". It's about only allowing the game to proceed in one predetermined way, and denying any other course of action no matter how much sense it might make for the setting and circumstances and characters in question.

If I want someone else to tell a story, I'll not bother creating a character or showing up that the table, I'll just go buy a book or watch something on TV. The whole point (for me) is to create a character that I'm interested in, decide how they react to things, and explore how they think and feel and act... and sometimes to see that character do really awesome stuff that I set up.




I would disagree that there are several important works of fiction which only had one way of dealing with it. The Death Star and Unicron in particular there were several ways to address them (overloading the reactor is always a popular choice for both of these). I can't say that I've really seen an adventure with only one solution unless you are not very creative.


Excuse me while I got on a related but tangential "rant"...


Even if there are works of fiction in which there's only one solution... an RPG is not a work of authorial fiction. There are things that work in authorial fiction that just do not work in an RPG. The structure is different, the creative process is different, the experience is different. The person or persons creating a work of authorial fiction can edit the events and dialogue and everything else until the moment it goes out to audiences -- the same is not true for an RPG. All of the characters are controlled by that person or persons in a work of authorial fiction -- the same is not true for an RPG. Etc.

What's even worse is when designers or players try to port something that never works in fiction, something that is a repeated mistake, over to RPGs, "because it's part of (genre)" or whatever. Narrative causality -- "this happens because the plot we're doing needs it to happen" -- being a prime example. A character who has repeatedly picks locks in previous stories needs to be stuck in a locked room, so suddenly their past actions are just ignored, or they "conveniently" get a hand injury, or whatever. Or the mooks can't hit anyone unless THE STORY "demands" that someone be shot in a scene, and suddenly the mooks just happen to get lucky. Or a crucial part "just happens" to break at the worst possible moment. Or come up with your own example. And yet... for some reason... I see people try to encode these sorts of things into the rules of their games. :smallfurious:

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-11, 01:27 PM
JNAProductions, as others have pointed out, you have not given an example of railroading. You've given an example of pitching a game, which is entirely different.

Railroading is not "you have limited options", it is "you have no options". Railroading is not a spectrum, it is one end of a spectrum of possible scenarios, where there is exactly one sequence of events that's only going to play in one exact order due to will of whoever set it up.

Once there are forks on the tracks that the players can choose between, then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players are free to stop, backtrack, waste time etc., then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players can win or lose in a way that definitively ends the game, it's no longer a railroad.

And that's why railroading is bad: because it is bottom-line laziest way setting up and running a game. The effort to get out of that category is minimal. A game with minimal player options may still have problems due to lack of freedom or overly linear design, but using "railroading" to describe those problems is stupid.

Notice how player expectations, consent and feeligns enter to none of this. It's because they don't really matter for defining railroading, nor for why railroading is bad. A halfway competent speaker can easily capture attention of an audience for a couple of hours, so it's really easy to get a situation where players either don't notice or do not care that they're on rails. Likewise a halfway charismatic fellow can get their friends to consent to a stupid thing; that doesn't make railroading better, because the only thing those friends consented to was allow for that fellow to pass where the fence was lowest.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-11, 02:33 PM
Railroading comes in stages. To be technical every game that isn't a perfect sandbox needs some railroading, and sitting down to play at a nonsandbox game is you explicitly agreeing that some railroading is fine. However, the degrees vary, a basic three degrees is below but you can of course add more.

All Roads Lead to Rome: my favourite method, where there's an end in sight and whatever the PCs do will bring that end closer, but the players still get general freedom about what to do. Or as a friend of mine once said when running the game 'I don't restrict where the PCs go, because wherever they go plot happens'. The key thing here is that the GM doesn't have one specific piece of plot they're using per session, but comes to the game with NPCs and ideas and improvises plot developments based on PC actions.

The Quantum Ogre: this can sometimes look like all roads lead to Rome, but you only have the illusion of plotting your own route. In short the PCs are allowed to pick where to go and what to do, but will always run into the same encounter wherever they go. If this is good or bad depends, if the plot is interesting it's completely fine for most people, if the plot is boring people will get annoyed.

Final Fantasy XIII: there is one route you can go on, and one solution to everything. If you go off the plotted path you might be able to continue for a bit, but shortly you will have to return to where you left off. This can be anywhere from 'and so you decide to go to the castle' to 'no, you can't lure the dragon out with 50,000gp in gems, a Staff of the Magi, and a virginal princess'. If the players buy into it the lesser version of this can be fine, fun even, as shown by the popularity of adventure paths.

EDIT: if you wanted to you could call 'all roads lead to Rome' a network rather than railroading, but the other two definitely are railroading (the difference is in the illusion of choice).

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-11, 03:23 PM
Railroading comes in stages. To be technical every game that isn't a perfect sandbox needs some railroading,


Again... this is using "railroading" far too broadly, when there are other terms that already mean what's being said. And while it's pretty clearly not your intent, misusing the term that way lends support to those trying to push the false dichotomy / false choice of "either railroading or total chaos" or "either railroading or true freedom" as support for their fringe agendas.

The developers and/or GM can establish facts about the setting and limits on what characters (as people in that setting) are capable of without it being railroading. This is simply the premise of the game, and a matter of competent worldbuilding.

The GM can establish that NPCs have goals and motives and plans of their own that they will attempt to enact, without it being railroading. This is the GM treating the NPCs as three-dimensional characters -- as "real" people within the setting -- and not as quest dispensers or XP pinatas for the PCs to interact with at their convenience.

Actions and interactions can lead to consequences, cause-and-effect can happen, in the same way they do in the real world, without it being railroading. That can even happen independent of the PCs because of NPC actions, without it being railroading. This is simply treating the fictional setting as a "real" world -- and not as the 2d storefronts propped up in an old west movie set as empty backdrop for the PCs' to swagger around in front of.

Seto
2017-09-11, 03:54 PM
JNAProductions, as others have pointed out, you have not given an example of railroading. You've given an example of pitching a game, which is entirely different.

Railroading is not "you have limited options", it is "you have no options". Railroading is not a spectrum, it is one end of a spectrum of possible scenarios, where there is exactly one sequence of events that's only going to play in one exact order due to will of whoever set it up.
As evidenced by this thread, many people indeed use the same definition you do, and some use the same I do. The problem is, where do you draw the line? What do you call something that is near, but not at, the railroady end of the spectrum? I'll give examples, from light/normal to severe.
"Hey, what about a princess rescue game?" / "Okay, I've prepared a princess rescue adventure, that'll be today's session." / "No, the dragon is hostile, it won't let you parley." / "No, there's no marketplace in that town. So the King enters and sees you..." / "Okay, roll Diplomacy. 25? The mage sadly hangs his head and says: alas, the cruel fates command that we must fight." / "The King tells you to fight one of his guards. - Uh, no, we'll decline and say that instead we... - He really insists. Roll Initiative." / "So the dragon breathes fire at you, but before you can react, that awesome NPC from before leaps in and shields you!" / "Rock falls behind you, only thing you can do is enter the cave."
Some of those are probably not railroading, some of them I would call railroading but be fine with it. Some of them would make me angry. You can stick by your definition and only call the last example, or the last couple, "railroading". But my contention is that doing so makes the term a fairly situational one with few applications. Whereas if, straying from the original metaphor and refining the concept, we admit the idea of varying degrees of railroad, it becomes more broadly applicable and helps us define what's actually inside the spectrum, apart from its ends.


A game with minimal player options may still have problems due to lack of freedom or overly linear design, but using "railroading" to describe those problems is stupid.
Gee, thanks.


Notice how player expectations, consent and feeligns enter to none of this. It's because they don't really matter for defining railroading, nor for why railroading is bad. A halfway competent speaker can easily capture attention of an audience for a couple of hours, so it's really easy to get a situation where players either don't notice or do not care that they're on rails. Likewise a halfway charismatic fellow can get their friends to consent to a stupid thing; that doesn't make railroading better, because the only thing those friends consented to was allow for that fellow to pass where the fence was lowest.

Considering we're still in the context of a game... Feelings do matter, because there's nothing else by which to judge the success of the session. If the players "don't notice or don't care", everything is fine even if game design is lacking, no matter how guilty they sound of having Badwrongfun.

EDIT: I recognize the fallacies and dangers that Max Killjoy points to. It does sound like a good point against using my definition. But I'd argue that, like with everything else, we have to be careful how we use words and not give in to flawed arguments.

Amphetryon
2017-09-11, 04:50 PM
JNAProductions, as others have pointed out, you have not given an example of railroading. You've given an example of pitching a game, which is entirely different.

Railroading is not "you have limited options", it is "you have no options". Railroading is not a spectrum, it is one end of a spectrum of possible scenarios, where there is exactly one sequence of events that's only going to play in one exact order due to will of whoever set it up.

Once there are forks on the tracks that the players can choose between, then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players are free to stop, backtrack, waste time etc., then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players can win or lose in a way that definitively ends the game, it's no longer a railroad.

And that's why railroading is bad: because it is bottom-line laziest way setting up and running a game. The effort to get out of that category is minimal. A game with minimal player options may still have problems due to lack of freedom or overly linear design, but using "railroading" to describe those problems is stupid.

Notice how player expectations, consent and feeligns enter to none of this. It's because they don't really matter for defining railroading, nor for why railroading is bad. A halfway competent speaker can easily capture attention of an audience for a couple of hours, so it's really easy to get a situation where players either don't notice or do not care that they're on rails. Likewise a halfway charismatic fellow can get their friends to consent to a stupid thing; that doesn't make railroading better, because the only thing those friends consented to was allow for that fellow to pass where the fence was lowest.

So, anyone who uses the term "Railroading" differently than you've used it here is not just wrong, but "stupid"?

Thanks. That's a great way to encourage discussion, and will no doubt go over well when GMs inform their Players. Can't imagine that going poorly at the gaming table. Ahem.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-11, 04:53 PM
If you're running a game that simplified and empty, sure. Just hand your players their to-do list and let them know when to pretend their dice roll matters.

Maybe try just writing out a script.

Gosh personal attack after personal attack...well, that sure says something about you.



My campaigns tend to have problems with no preplanned solutions. It's up to the players to figure out what would work, and up to me to be honest about how the rules work and how the world operates based on my prep. Because my games are complex, where yours are simple.

I do find it odd you can't think of any solutions to the in game problems. I guess it is easy to just sit back and say to the players ''I can't think of anything" and let the players do all the work.

And if your not making solutions, what are you even doing during your game prep? Like say your game has an Evil Empire, so you make that and then tell the player ''I can't think of anyway to go against the Empire''. Then when a player says ''well, is there a rebel resistance?" you are quick to answer ''yes'', and thank the player for thinking that up.

So one of the big difference between my game and yours is I made up the rebel resistance before the game even started, and it was there for the characters to discover through game play.



The trouble with the "classic" approach is twofold:
1. It's not how 1e D&D was played, so not actually classic.
2. Basing your rpg on a book neuters the one advantage rpgs have over books: emergent narrative. If you want a book, write a book. It's fun!

1.I'm not really sure why your using just just one edition of D&D and saying ''it is not classic''. I can only guess you had lots of bad games in 1E.

2.Who bases an RPG on a book again? Narrative can’t help but have an internally coherent organizational logic (called "plot"). The important things about this logic are that it unfolds in time for a gamer, that is, has a beginning, middle, and end.

It’s implausible to think that a game could ever exist where players could continually find a consistent, long-term level of narrative fascination without the aid of DM provided elements that are already narrative, elements that already have encoded in them some meaning that the player has to interpret and put to work. Emergent narratives are stories that are not authored by a single person or by any person really. They are stories that emerge from the interaction between players and the systems that govern gameplay. They are random, transient, ephemeral things that only ever exist for one person or the group of players, at one moment in time.

Emergent stories feel more engrossing than authored stories because they’re personal for the player, and that personal interactivity gives it the illusion of importance. Emergent stories are not complete stories, they’re just outlines of a story. They’re living outlines that can be rearranged on the fly, but they’re still just outlines—nothing more than a sequence of vaguely related events.

A story is more than a sequence of events. It’s also a commentary on those events. Through that commentary the story expresses its meaning, its themes, its morals. It becomes something greater than us. This is the key part of any good story because this is what makes it interesting to more than one person. A good story is about some universal human experience. This is where emergent stories fail. An emergent story is just a sequence of events devoid of context and commentary that is only relevant to one person(or a couple players). Interactivity gives it the illusion of importance, and that illusion allows games to tell cheap stories without us noticing until they’re long over.



Again... this is using "railroading" far too broadly, when there are other terms that already mean what's being said. And while it's pretty clearly not your intent, misusing the term that way lends support to those trying to push the false dichotomy / false choice of "either railroading or total chaos" or "either railroading or true freedom" as support for their fringe agendas.


I like to call it DM Agency and not Railroading. And that is the DM guiding the players along the adventure. And fiction requires this, as it is not real. It is things like:

1.Coincidence. Things just tend to ''happen'' right by the characters all ways. It's not realistic, but then again, we are talking about fiction.

2.Clues. There are all ways clues to follow. Again, unlike real life where there are not all ways clues.

3.Exposition. People, in general, will just ''spill the beans'' about most anything. Again, nothing like real life, but it is needed in fiction.

Quertus
2017-09-11, 05:14 PM
That's not really railroading.


That's not a railroad, that's a proposal. Railroading can only really occur during play, and it's a removal/revocation of player agency.

This. The OP does not describe a railroad. "We're playing D&D" established rules for a game, it is not a railroad. "Everyone pick a single color / element / whatever Pokemon has, and play under these house rules" is not a railroad (although it may contribute to one later). "You may only put 25,000 characters in your post" is not a railroad, even though I had no input in deciding that limit. Establishing rules is not a railroad.

Going back and editing my posts so that they say what the Giant wants them to say would be a railroad. Changing the rules of the game so one particular deck wins would be a railroad. Forcing exactly one possible outcome / one particular way of accomplishing that outcome, is the definition of a railroad. This is not that.


JNAProductions, as others have pointed out, you have not given an example of railroading. You've given an example of pitching a game, which is entirely different.

Railroading is not "you have limited options", it is "you have no options". Railroading is not a spectrum, it is one end of a spectrum of possible scenarios, where there is exactly one sequence of events that's only going to play in one exact order due to will of whoever set it up.

Once there are forks on the tracks that the players can choose between, then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players are free to stop, backtrack, waste time etc., then it's no longer a railroad. Once the players can win or lose in a way that definitively ends the game, it's no longer a railroad.

And that's why railroading is bad: because it is bottom-line laziest way setting up and running a game. The effort to get out of that category is minimal. A game with minimal player options may still have problems due to lack of freedom or overly linear design, but using "railroading" to describe those problems is stupid.

Notice how player expectations, consent and feeligns enter to none of this. It's because they don't really matter for defining railroading, nor for why railroading is bad. A halfway competent speaker can easily capture attention of an audience for a couple of hours, so it's really easy to get a situation where players either don't notice or do not care that they're on rails. Likewise a halfway charismatic fellow can get their friends to consent to a stupid thing; that doesn't make railroading better, because the only thing those friends consented to was allow for that fellow to pass where the fence was lowest.

Hmmm... while I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I'm of the opinion that "branching rails" are still rails. "You can present the prince with the blood emerald, to which you have sacrificed both the leaders of these particular nations and this particular half of the party at these particular times and places in order to create an artifact that will seal the gate before the demon arrives (no, there is no other way to prevent the gate from opening), OR you can follow exactly these steps in this railroading campaign to collect these 7 lesser artifacts that will enable you to defeat the demon after it comes through the gate (no, nothing else will allow you to hurt it, and, no, you can't go to its home plane and kill it early), OR the world is destroyed" still sounds like a railroad to me.

jayem
2017-09-11, 05:38 PM
Ignoring the term railroad.

You have a question of how much the world changes, in ways that are not a direct or indirect consequence of the characters actions, as a result of player actions.

E.g. the massively strong King's army deciding to pursue them because they massacred the village makes perfect sense.
The King's massively strong army deciding to pursue them, because you decided to leave the village before the GM wanted you to, is different.

Note:
Not all of this is necessarily bad (it may make for a more interesting game/story).
It is hard to objectively measure (you'd need to know the gm's mind).

So following that, do the changes act in ways that counteract against the players (directly expressed) wishes, and if so how strongly? Do the changes act for the players wishes, again how strongly?
While of course by definition, the planned route should be 'easier' (in Universe, it's really the other way round, you found the easier route). In practice, this will show to the DM what they are thinking, and the players will pretty much pick up to within an uncertainty (in the same way that if a player rolled the die out of sight, you'd have serious questions after the third consecutive 20).

And then finally, you have the players reaction (assume they know) and buy in. In the OP's example they signed up for a find the princess quest. Allowing them to establish their character's but know 'the quest will find them' (and know that they are, more or less, bound to take the hook) is perfectly in accordance with that.

Cluedrew
2017-09-11, 05:49 PM
Well there are many different definitions for railroading for many different purposes. Mine grew out of the diagnose I got for people talking about some of the "play my plot" stories. So I have this:

Railroading: A player, usually the GM, forcing the plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path.

The bit one that gets left out by others most often, is the forced part. Buy-in stops it from being a railroad. It can still be linear and pre-planned but it isn't a railroad. Nor would predicting what the players do next throughout the entire campaign and planning around that, but I can't see that happening unless the players are in for the linear adventure and just do the straightforward thing every time.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-11, 06:28 PM
E.g. the massively strong King's army deciding to pursue them because they massacred the village makes perfect sense.
The King's massively strong army deciding to pursue them, because you decided to leave the village before the GM wanted you to, is different.

How so? Assuming a even slightly good DM they can come up with a valid in-game reason for anything. So even if a player wanted to get all hostile and demand to know why a said event occurred, a good DM could easily defend themselves. Though this quickly devolves into ''what'' each person ''thinks'' is right: The DM says the king thinks and does this; and the player yells and screams and says the king would never, ever, ever do this or that, but would do another thing as they, The Player, say so.

And are you really saying the whole game world is ''frozen'' like a video game unless the player characters take an action? Does everything in the whole game world only happen in reaction to the actions of the player characters?

Like say the characters are just relaxing, and have done nothing, can some bandits attack them? Or do the bandits have to wait until the characters ''do something against them'' and then, and only then, they can act?





Railroading: A player, usually the GM, forcing the plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path.

The bit one that gets left out by others most often, is the forced part. Buy-in stops it from being a railroad. It can still be linear and pre-planned but it isn't a railroad. Nor would predicting what the players do next throughout the entire campaign and planning around that, but I can't see that happening unless the players are in for the linear adventure and just do the straightforward thing every time.

I think we need more specific types of Railroading, and it has to have good and bad in it.

Black Railroading: The DM forcing along everything in the game as part of a twisted power trip and an attempt to ruin the players fun and be an over all jerk. Badwrongfun.

Gray Railroading The DM forcing plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path as they are just following the rules/guidelines/adventure/adventure path.

White Railroading ''DM Agency'' The DM forcing plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path to enhance the gameplay and make the game better, more exciting, interesting and most of all more fun for everyone involved.

''Force'' is not a bad word here, ''freedom'' is, as that is just ''random chaos'' . Roads are a great example: if you want to drive from point a to point b in a car you are ''forced'' to use the roads. You simply can not drive all wild and crazy through yards, fields, sidewalks and such. You are ''forced'' to follow the road to your destination....but you can take lots of routes there.

JNAProductions
2017-09-11, 06:58 PM
Well there are many different definitions for railroading for many different purposes. Mine grew out of the diagnose I got for people talking about some of the "play my plot" stories. So I have this:

Railroading: A player, usually the GM, forcing the plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path.

The bit one that gets left out by others most often, is the forced part. Buy-in stops it from being a railroad. It can still be linear and pre-planned but it isn't a railroad. Nor would predicting what the players do next throughout the entire campaign and planning around that, but I can't see that happening unless the players are in for the linear adventure and just do the straightforward thing every time.

You know, I can agree to that. I can see the difference between forcing and not.

That's reasonable, and I can agree with you.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-11, 07:18 PM
I think we need more specific types of Railroading, and it has to have good and bad in it.

Why do we need this instead of continuing to use the generally accepted terminology?

The first two definitions off of Google:


press (someone) into doing something by rushing or coercing them.


In gaming, the act of forcing a player to "choose to" do something they don't really want to in order to advance the plot according to the wishes or designs of the GM.

I suggest you take to using the term "rollercoaster" for your pre-planned campaigns and stop trying to sell the rest of your forum on your lousy GM practises. I'm sure you don't need our validation.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-11, 07:49 PM
The DM forcing plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path to enhance the gameplay and make the game better, more exciting, interesting and most of all more fun for everyone involved.


The bolded part makes the rest impossible.

There's no such thing as "good railroading".

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-11, 08:27 PM
How so? Assuming a even slightly good DM they can come up with a valid in-game reason for anything. So even if a player wanted to get all hostile and demand to know why a said event occurred, a good DM could easily defend themselves. Though this quickly devolves into ''what'' each person ''thinks'' is right: The DM says the king thinks and does this; and the player yells and screams and says the king would never, ever, ever do this or that, but would do another thing as they, The Player, say so.

And are you really saying the whole game world is ''frozen'' like a video game unless the player characters take an action? Does everything in the whole game world only happen in reaction to the actions of the player characters?
As I and others have actually told you, no.
Our games aren't simple.



Like say the characters are just relaxing, and have done nothing, can some bandits attack them? Or do the bandits have to wait until the characters ''do something against them'' and then, and only then, they can act?
Simple enough 3 step process:
1. Are the bandits in any way motivated to attack travellers/settlements in their territory?
2. Are the PCs within that territory?
3. Is there nothing more pressing the Bandits are currently dealing with?
If the answer to all three is yes, the Bandits can attack, even if the PCs are doing an unrelated quest. Because in a rich and well-developed game world, the bandits aren't going to conveniently wait for their turn to be the Problem of the Week. They will do what they do.





I think we need more specific types of Railroading, and it has to have good and bad in it.
No, we really don't. There's one kind of railroading:
In your words:


The DM forcing plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path.

Whether your players like or dislike this is a moot point. This is Railroading.



Black Railroading:

Gray Railroading .

White Railroading '

These are extraneous wastes of words.



''Force'' is not a bad word here, ''freedom'' is, as that is just ''random chaos''.
My friend, your being unable to achieve or follow our style doesn't make it random.



Roads are a great example: if you want to drive from point a to point b in a car you are ''forced'' to use the roads. You simply can not drive all wild and crazy through yards, fields, sidewalks and such. You are ''forced'' to follow the road to your destination....but you can take lots of routes there.

This is not how RPGs work.


A campaign is made of 3 pieces:

1. The Setting: This is the stuff in the world. The NPCs, the nations, the places, even the things that are already happening when play begins. (Guide to identifying setting bits: Is It A Noun Uncontrolled by the Players? If yesn it's probably Setting.)

2. The Narrative: This is the stuff the group is collectively imagining during the game. The combat, the dialogue, the actions, etc, happening in real time within The Setting. (Guide to identifying Narrative Bits: is it a verb happening currently, during the session? If yes, it's probably Narrative.)

3. The Story: This is what you have when, in the past, some Narrative happened in the Setting producing a sequence of events that we collectively understood to have happened. (The Party went into a Cave -> The Party killed some Goblins -> The Party felt bad about killing goblins -> The Party went back to town -> The party killed some townsfolk -> The Party felt justified. -> the session ended.) (Guide to identifying Story: Is it verbs and nouns that follow a logical sequence of progression that are all past tense? If yes, it is probably Story.)


These things work best when they come into being in the order they are listed. If that order changes, one or more of these things will suffer and die.

If Story comes first, the Setting will be contrived and stupid, and the Narrative will be walking around in shackles and a noose. And the Story will be worse.

If Narrative comes first, there's no place for it to happen unless making the setting is part of the game? But that's an odd game and the Story likely gets weird and hard to follow.

So, to GM most effectively, make a setting rich with cause and effect, threats, NPCs with agendas both hidden and obvious, enemies and allies with hungers and thirsts for power, money, glory, drugs, and/or sex. Make NPCs that want to use the PCs as pawns, and NPCs that want to make the PCs their idols. Make that one NPC who wants both from two different PCs!
Make kingdoms with grudges and unreliable propaganda illustrating both as the victims of foreign aggression. Make badguys doing horrible things for noble goals, and good things for nefarious goals. Make rivals, jealous onlookers, prideful snobs. Fill the world with people who have things to do and who will do it, unless some daring PCs stop them. Give them more problems than they have time for. Give them hard decisions, and the world will demand sacrifice for you. Dangle the gold before them and tell them the REAL cost of all this shiny coin....

And when they rise out of this machine of spinning cogs and counting clocks as battered, weary heroes?
They will know the joy of struggle and the ecstacy of true conquest. And they won't want anything else.


Or, alternatively, give them their to do lists and let them zombie through a walled garden path where if they but heed the master, there will be cake and unenthusiastic applause at the end.

Sure. #2 is simpler and easier.
But #1 is far, far more fun than any book of Tolkien.

Amphetryon
2017-09-11, 10:48 PM
If buy-in is the distinguishing feature to prevent a scenario from being a Railroad, there's a problem: In many cases, removing buy-in removes the GM's game, and with it, the option to play at that time.

"Hey, guys! I have this scenario in mind where you're all working to overthrow the Witch King, by whatever method you like."

'Not interested. That's too restrictive.'

"Well, then I have nothing prepared."

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-11, 11:02 PM
If buy-in is the distinguishing feature to prevent a scenario from being a Railroad, there's a problem: In many cases, removing buy-in removes the GM's game, and with it, the option to play at that time.

"Hey, guys! I have this scenario in mind where you're all working to overthrow the Witch King, by whatever method you like."

'Not interested. That's too restrictive.'

"Well, then I have nothing prepared."

That's a feature, not a bug. Get buy-in BEFORE you prep. It's not hard. I'm not prepping a superhero campaign in hopes my players want to do that. I asked before I started prepping.

If you put all your eggs into one story basket and The players don't buy in, that's YOUR mistake, not an excuse to railroad if they've not bought into that campaign style.

As I said before, preparing a world using basic tools is the way to go. Hard to run out of things to do when there is stuff happening EVERYWHERE.

Amphetryon
2017-09-11, 11:11 PM
That's a feature, not a bug. Get buy-in BEFORE you prep. It's not hard. I'm not prepping a superhero campaign in hopes my players want to do that. I asked before I started prepping.

If you put all your eggs into one story basket and The players don't buy in, that's YOUR mistake, not an excuse to railroad if they've not bought into that campaign style.

As I said before, preparing a world using basic tools is the way to go. Hard to run out of things to do when there is stuff happening EVERYWHERE.
As I've said before, prepping stuff for EVERYWHERE is a time sink that multiple Players I've known would call Railroading (aside from the logistics of actually being prepared for every single thing your Players conceive of to do). That's not a good solution, any more than telling those Players that their definition is "stupid" is a good solution.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-11, 11:27 PM
As I've said before, prepping stuff for EVERYWHERE is a time sink that multiple Players I've known would call Railroading (aside from the logistics of actually being prepared for every single thing your Players conceive of to do). That's not a good solution, any more than telling those Players that their definition is "stupid" is a good solution.

Having a world full of things to interact with as the players choose is not railroading. It's a world full of things going on. Like this one. Where we live.

Look up how many crimes happened in your nearest metropolitan area today and try to tell me a Cop RPG set in your city would only have 1 thing going on per session and be realistic.

To think that any other world should only present its challenges 1 by 1 is ludicrous. And the idea that a player being set down in a world full of various things all going on at once will cry railroading makes my brain hurt as to how they would justify the feeling or how you're interpreting this to make it seem in any way, shape, or form to be the case that a populated and dynamic world equates to "this is the one thing I have prepared and if you don't do this one thing, I'll either force you to anyways or we'll stop playing here."

It works like this:
"Well, you've heard tell of the Witch of Bogswamp from the innkeeper this morning. And Durendal, you're a cleric of Mordheim, yeah?"
"Yup."
"So last you were in the local shrine, you overheard the priests talking about one Father Glaucas having gone missing. And you, Fevnir, while walking through town this morning you saw a strange procession of men in purple robes with masks on poles coming from their backs and shoulders. Seems they were passing through town, singing and clanging cymbals. You've never seen that before, either. So now you're together, what do you want to do?"

Things are happening in this world. They might already be on a quest! But things will happen regardless.

I can't justify that setup as a railroad in my head.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-11, 11:50 PM
As I've said before, prepping stuff for EVERYWHERE is a time sink that multiple Players I've known would call Railroading (aside from the logistics of actually being prepared for every single thing your Players conceive of to do). That's not a good solution, any more than telling those Players that their definition is "stupid" is a good solution.


Multiple players you've known would be wrong, then.

That's called having a fleshed out world ready to interact with the players wherever they go and offer up a wealth of options -- kinda the opposite of railroading.

Florian
2017-09-12, 12:38 AM
I think I can understand why some people think something is a "railroad" and others do not.

I tend to create and run only very focused campaigns based around one overarching plot, with a very specific focus and intended mood and theme. "This is the story of how you start a rebellion in your home town, depose the tyrannical governor and then have to defend against the evil empire long enough and find a way to reach full independence. This campaign will use the Downtime Rules, the Pursuit, Influence, Research and Social Conflict rules, have a 50-50 mix of urban and wilderness areas, is heavy on combat and will mostly feature LE enemies and devils".

That means that the story actually is the setting, the style of game is set to be "Dungeon Adventure" and nothing outside of the set premise matters. Buy in or leave it, but players will have full agency within the boundaries of the set premise.

I think this difference in what exactly the setting is highlights what the base of the misunderstanding here is. To use L5R to accentuate it, itīs like the difference between saying "we play in Rokugan" and "we play in the 4th year of the Four Winds Era". The expectation for the first is that the world reacts as normal and have the player characters front and center, while for the second, the world acts in relation to how that era will develop and the player characters have to share narrative stage with the other movers and shakers.

Amphetryon
2017-09-12, 12:59 AM
Multiple players you've known would be wrong, then.

That's called having a fleshed out world ready to interact with the players wherever they go and offer up a wealth of options -- kinda the opposite of railroading.

I was unaware you were the final arbiter of the correct definition. Also, their being "right" or "wrong" is hardly relevant, since - again - telling them their definition is wrong does nothing to solve the issue.

No, I don't agree that 'no gaming is better than bad gaming' is either true, or a solution, either. Nor is kicking people from the game.

jayem
2017-09-12, 02:10 AM
And are you really saying the whole game world is ''frozen'' like a video game unless the player characters take an action? Does everything in the whole game world only happen in reaction to the actions of the player characters?

Like say the characters are just relaxing, and have done nothing, can some bandits attack them? Or do the bandits have to wait until the characters ''do something against them'' and then, and only then, they can act?

I can see where you got that, it isn't what I meant. It's when they do changes because of the players actions that they 'don't know about'.

If the players are just relaxing in the middle of the bandit infested highway, of course the bandits going up and down the road will meet them .
If it requires the Bandit's deciding to have a gland clan meet, just happening to take a detour, then ...just happen to spot the cave you were relaxing in ...



How so? Assuming a even slightly good DM they can come up with a valid in-game reason for anything. So even if a player wanted to get all hostile and demand to know why a said event occurred, a good DM could easily defend themselves. Though this quickly devolves into ''what'' each person ''thinks'' is right: The DM says the king thinks and does this; and the player yells and screams and says the king would never, ever, ever do this or that, but would do another thing as they, The Player, say so.

True, the DM could also declare whatever totals he liked for the dice roles, and doesn't even need to come up with a reason. But
(a) the players will be able to spot it, unless it's done very well
(b) even if you do fool them/shout them down, it's still fooled them

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-12, 06:00 AM
I was unaware you were the final arbiter of the correct definition.
He's not, but they would be conforming to no known definition I've ever seen. Once they dislike having options available everywhere, what they dislike is PLAYING THE GAME.



Also, their being "right" or "wrong" is hardly relevant, since - again - telling them their definition is wrong does nothing to solve the issue.
Ask them the following question:
"So if you don't like having one option and also don't like having many options, I'm not sure what is you want. Could you tell me what I'd be saying if I wasn't railroading?"



No, I don't agree that 'no gaming is better than bad gaming' is either true, or a solution, either. Nor is kicking people from the game.
One player causing problems and being outright cancerous is a pretty quicj way to kill a campaign. Much like with human bodies, the solution is probably removing the damaging element.

Being impossible to please is a kind of cancerous.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-12, 06:36 AM
Well there are many different definitions for railroading for many different purposes. Mine grew out of the diagnose I got for people talking about some of the "play my plot" stories. So I have this:

Railroading: A player, usually the GM, forcing the plot of the game to progress along a particular pre-planned path.

The bit one that gets left out by others most often, is the forced part. Buy-in stops it from being a railroad. It can still be linear and pre-planned but it isn't a railroad. Nor would predicting what the players do next throughout the entire campaign and planning around that, but I can't see that happening unless the players are in for the linear adventure and just do the straightforward thing every time.

It's a good definition. It's not my personal definition of Railroading (it is, however, my personal definition of a Railroad), but I'll agree it's a fine definition.

For Railroading instead of a Railroad I'd lose the pre-planned part. I've had a GM railroad because we did the one thing he did not expect us to do (head to an industrial park and start building tools and armour once we had enough food for a few weeks), it really brought the game down. That was partially because we had agreed to a buy in for a different game (zombie survival instead of zombie horde killing), which meant that whenever we stopped to plan we got ambushed by conveniently close zombies. The GM wanted to run a sandbox where we could do anything except build items or perform experiments until he had the military come in and tell us they needed our help because we were so good at surviving and zombie killing, which we were because we were the only ones that had a third brain cell and thought to get equipment.


That's a feature, not a bug. Get buy-in BEFORE you prep. It's not hard. I'm not prepping a superhero campaign in hopes my players want to do that. I asked before I started prepping.

If you put all your eggs into one story basket and The players don't buy in, that's YOUR mistake, not an excuse to railroad if they've not bought into that campaign style.

As I said before, preparing a world using basic tools is the way to go. Hard to run out of things to do when there is stuff happening EVERYWHERE.

This brings a thing up, session zero is brilliant for establishing buy-in. Ironically this is one of the things that TitansGrave is great as showing, there was obviously a session zero where everybody agreed to the science fantasy setting and the secrets were come up with these secrets. It also allows the GM to base the campaign the players are buying into based on player input, which a good GM will do.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-12, 07:13 AM
Why do we need this instead of continuing to use the generally accepted terminology?

The first two definitions off of Google:


Why would we just accept whatever Google says? Do you think Wikipedia is the Only One Truth Ever too?


The bolded part makes the rest impossible.

There's no such thing as "good railroading".

I'd say DM Agency because people can't understand that words can have different meanings based on context. Like ''fire is good'' as you can make smores on it, but ''fire is bad'' as it can burn down your house and kill you. Most normal, ration people can accept and understand that: context matters.


As I and others have actually told you, no.
Our games aren't simple.

Except you say that your game is not simple, yet you also say you don't use complicated things like plots. So, there is a bit of a disconnect. You can't ''just say'' something is something as you want it to be so.



Simple enough 3 step process:
1. Are the bandits in any way motivated to attack travellers/settlements in their territory?
2. Are the PCs within that territory?
3. Is there nothing more pressing the Bandits are currently dealing with?
If the answer to all three is yes, the Bandits can attack, even if the PCs are doing an unrelated quest. Because in a rich and well-developed game world, the bandits aren't going to conveniently wait for their turn to be the Problem of the Week. They will do what they do.

Well, this does seem complex enough to be at least a Bandit Side Plot, but then you don't have plots in your game. So, guess you need to do something else?



No, we really don't. There's one kind of railroading:
In your words:

Whether your players like or dislike this is a moot point. This is Railroading.

Yes, this is one of the big foundations of why Railroading exists: To have things happen in the game that the players do not approve of and want to happen. After all, anyone but the best players will all ways say no if you ask them if they want anything ''bad'' to happen to their characters. Only the best players understand the concept of letting anything happen in the game as part of the fun.

And it is amazing that everyone understand the concept of ''the players won't like and approve of everything all the time'', and they even do it in their own games...yet they say they are not Railroading and are doing something else ''special. Every DM here has said that if the characters do something like ''rob a bank'' then the ''law would come after them''. This is both using force and is having an event the players don't approve of happening. Yet DM's will do it. Though they will hide behind the idea that ''they did not do anything'' and ''it is all the players fault: exactly like your average little kids does. The poor DM was just innocently sitting there when the players did something, and the DM was ''forced'' to react...not because they wanted to, but because the players made them do it.



My friend, your being unable to achieve or follow our style doesn't make it random.

As you have said, your style has no plot or ''an internally coherent organizational logic'', so that does just leave ''random mess''.



This is not how RPGs work.

Odd, statements like this just make me wonder if you have ever even played a RPG. It is how ''games work''. The DM presents a problem, say a dragon raiding the land. The player characters then try and solve the problem and ''get rid of the dragon''. Now the players are free to take any ''road'' to the destination of ''get rid of the dragon''. Really this is basic gameplay 101.

But if your game style has some other way then : A)DM creates, controls and presents a problem B)The players choose to solve the problem C)The players are free to solve the problem anyway they want too, but they must stay focused on that end task.



3. The Story: This is what you have when, in the past, some Narrative happened in the Setting producing a sequence of events that we collectively understood to have happened. (The Party went into a Cave -> The Party killed some Goblins -> The Party felt bad about killing goblins -> The Party went back to town -> The party killed some townsfolk -> The Party felt justified. -> the session ended.) (Guide to identifying Story: Is it verbs and nouns that follow a logical sequence of progression that are all past tense? If yes, it is probably Story.)


This might be our big disconnect. You think the ''story'' is just like an ''adventure journal'' where you write down what happened. I think the story is much more then that.



So, to GM most effectively, make a setting rich with cause and effect, threats, NPCs with agendas both hidden and obvious, enemies and allies with hungers and thirsts for power, money, glory, drugs, and/or sex. Make NPCs that want to use the PCs as pawns, and NPCs that want to make the PCs their idols. Make that one NPC who wants both from two different PCs!
Make kingdoms with grudges and unreliable propaganda illustrating both as the victims of foreign aggression. Make badguys doing horrible things for noble goals, and good things for nefarious goals. Make rivals, jealous onlookers, prideful snobs. Fill the world with people who have things to do and who will do it, unless some daring PCs stop them. Give them more problems than they have time for. Give them hard decisions, and the world will demand sacrifice for you. Dangle the gold before them and tell them the REAL cost of all this shiny coin....


And this just highlights the problem. You are seeing the Story as just something you will tell later to someone, after you connected all the random gameplay ''narrative'' stuff.

A story in a normal game is the flow of events along a plot, with internally coherent organizational logic. It starts well before the Pcs get there, and will keep on going after they are gone.

And, again, it does seem like your world is full of stories and plots, yet you say it is not?


I can see where you got that, it isn't what I meant. It's when they do changes because of the players actions that they 'don't know about'.

If the players are just relaxing in the middle of the bandit infested highway, of course the bandits going up and down the road will meet them .
If it requires the Bandit's deciding to have a gland clan meet, just happening to take a detour, then ...just happen to spot the cave you were relaxing in ...

What do you mean the players don't know about what?



True, the DM could also declare whatever totals he liked for the dice roles, and doesn't even need to come up with a reason. But
(a) the players will be able to spot it, unless it's done very well
(b) even if you do fool them/shout them down, it's still fooled them

A good DM can do it no problem. And it's beyond easy in some editions of D&D. The DM can make any number anything, and can even do it to appease hostile nit-picky players.

This is why cries of ''railroading'' or anything else by the players is just silly.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-12, 09:24 AM
Why would we just accept whatever Google says? Do you think Wikipedia is the Only One Truth Ever too?
Offer up a better source, then.




I'd say DM Agency because people can't understand that words can have different meanings based on context. Like ''fire is good'' as you can make smores on it, but ''fire is bad'' as it can burn down your house and kill you. Most normal, ration people can accept and understand that: context matters.



Except you say that your game is not simple, yet you also say you don't use complicated things like plots. So, there is a bit of a disconnect. You can't ''just say'' something is something as you want it to be so.
Having a predefined plot is literally Baby's First RPG. There's a reason people recommend running a premade module before running a sandbox. The first is easier and lazier. You need not do hardly any thinking during the session except mild wrangling. I'm my games, I'm actively engaged the entire time.



Well, this does seem complex enough to be at least a Bandit Side Plot, but then you don't have plots in your game. So, guess you need to do something else?
This is true only if you define literally any thing that happens in the game as a plot.



Yes, this is one of the big foundations of why Railroading exists: To have things happen in the game that the players do not approve of and want to happen.
Having bad things happen to the characters is part of player buy-in.



After all, anyone but the best players will all ways say no if you ask them if they want anything ''bad'' to happen to their characters. Only the best players understand the concept of letting anything happen in the game as part of the fun.
Then I guess like 90% of players are the best players, from my experience.



And it is amazing that everyone understand the concept of ''the players won't like and approve of everything all the time'', and they even do it in their own games...yet they say they are not Railroading and are doing something else ''special. Every DM here has said that if the characters do something like ''rob a bank'' then the ''law would come after them''. This is both using force and is having an event the players don't approve of happening.
Ah, you're back to definine literally anything occurring as a Plot because your logic fell apart and this is your last fallacious bastion.



Yet DM's will do it. Though they will hide behind the idea that ''they did not do anything'' and ''it is all the players fault: exactly like your average little kids does. The poor DM was just innocently sitting there when the players did something, and the DM was ''forced'' to react...not because they wanted to, but because the players made them do it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha



As you have said, your style has no plot or ''an internally coherent organizational logic'', so that does just leave ''random mess''.
Mmmm.... try rereading. You're missing things.
"Internally coherent organizational logic" is not a Plot. Since you don't like Google, how about Websters?

"the plan or main story" which requires it be preplanned, but does not require internally coherent organizational logic.

You can have internally coherent organizational logic without a plot, and a plot without internally coherent organizational logic.



Odd, statements like this just make me wonder if you have ever even played a RPG. It is how ''games work''. The DM presents a problem, say a dragon raiding the land. The player characters then try and solve the problem and ''get rid of the dragon''. Now the players are free to take any ''road'' to the destination of ''get rid of the dragon''. Really this is basic gameplay 101.
Ah, and you've played into what I've been saying:
One exact thing happening at once with one exact solution is indeed the absolute most basic and beginner level rpg stuff, in the same way that learning the alphabet is the absolute most basic beginner level of reading.



But if your game style has some other way then : A)DM creates, controls and presents many simultaneous problems B)The players choose which problems are most important to them C)The players are free to solve the problem anyway they want to and may choose to reprioritize at any time.
Corrections to make this align with how my style works in bold.

As amazing as it might seem to you, my players find this style both highly impactful, highly fun, and highly rewarding.



This might be our big disconnect. You think the ''story'' is just like an ''adventure journal'' where you write down what happened. I think the story is much more then that.
Indeed. Since all of my single author stories are better as novels or short stories and I am very comfortable with my writing to the degree I just, you know, write them, playing Failed Novelist at the table doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather make use of the strengths of the medium.



And this just highlights the problem. You are seeing the Story as just something you will tell later to someone, after you connected all the random gameplay ''narrative'' stuff.

A story in a normal game

I think you mean "beginner's game"


is the flow of events along a plot, with internally coherent organizational logic. It starts well before the Pcs get there, and will keep on going after they are gone.
Everything after the word Plot is describing the Setting. Don't get confused about those.



And, again, it does seem like your world is full of stories and plots, yet you say it is not?

Plots are planned out ahead of time and are immutable.
Events that happen have what I think is a logical outcome if left unchecked, but can be changed at any time due to the direct or indirect influence of the PCs (if two factions are feuding and the PCs deal major damage to one, the other will sieze that opportunity.

(Note the distinction between PC action and Player action here. Players don't influence the world except through the actions of their PC, but that influence is real.)

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-12, 09:34 AM
DU, much like your treatment of the word "railroading", you're cramming a lot of stuff that isn't "plot" under a purely personal (as in, entirely yours) overbroad umbrella definition of "plot".

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-12, 10:12 AM
Offer up a better source, then.

Part of the problem is that, because it's in many ways a fanspeak term in this context, people will interpret Railroading differently. These differences can be minor or major, and so it's important for us to state our personal definitions while arguing. Whether or not any personal definition is more or less valid is like arguing whether you should eat cheese with bread or crackers, the right answer depends on where you are from and sometimes the time of day.


Having a predefined plot is literally Baby's First RPG. There's a reason people recommend running a premade module before running a sandbox. The first is easier and lazier. You need not do hardly any thinking during the session except mild wrangling. I'm my games, I'm actively engaged the entire time.

:smallsigh:

Module versus sandbox is not that simple. People like to pretend sandboxes are complete freedom where the players can do whatever they want, but most sandboxes are restricted in some way (most often it's attempts to leave the sandbox that fail, but occasionally there's a bunch of NPCs you can't meaningfully affect without the session grinding to a halt and the GM having to come up with consequences). Conversely, you're presenting running a module as following exactly what's written, which is not what all module dependant GMs do.

Secondly, running a module can be done for any number of reasons beyond being new, the most common one being that not everybody has the time and money to run a sandbox. I don't even when I don't have any work, you'll never find me making a sandbox because I literally can't design them, instead you'll go through a loosely plotted adventure where you're presented with situations and have to come up with solutions. At the end of the session I'll take your solutions and use them to come up with next session's situations. Other people don't even have the time to come up with a plot, and instead adapt the rough structure of a module around their PCs, running as written in some points and altering it at others to fit the group better or account for PC actions.

FWIW people recommending running a module first because it's easier to learn the game when you don't have to come up with the world, plot, and NPCs first. My first two adventures were modules, since then I've run entirely loosely plotted adventures in order to attempt to provide players with an enjoyable position.


This is true only if you define literally any thing that happens in the game as a plot.

Yes, that is a definition people use, and guess what. We use it because it works.

Or well, anything that happens in game is a plot element, which combine to form a session's/campaign's plot. But there's a difference between a pre-planned plot, and an emergent plot, and only the first can be accused of railroading because the second is by definition the plot that playing the game develops organically. You seem to be arguing that only a pre-planned plot counts as a plot, but having improv experience (albeit only at a light level) I can tell you that simply isn't true.

Honestly, in the absence of railroading I've noticed that most players will happily move the game into a 'standard RPG plot structure'. Most groups I've played with would find sandboxes unsatisfying, we actively hunt for plot hooks while trying to avoid combat encounters. So apparently I'm stuck playing 'baby's first RPG' because I've never found playing in a complete sandbox overly interesting.


Ah, you're back to definine literally anything occurring as a Plot because your logic fell apart and this is your last fallacious bastion.

:smallsigh:

Because you like google so much.


the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence.

We can argue over what this means with relation to an RPG, but 'the players rob a bank and law enforcement comes after them' is certainly an interrelated sequence, which becomes longer as the PCs either hide from law enforcement or get captured and escape. Wow, suddenly from the action of robbing a bank we have and emergent plot.


Mmmm.... try rereading. You're missing things.
"Internally coherent organizational logic" is not a Plot. Since you don't like Google, how about Websters?

"the plan or main story" which requires it be preplanned, but does not require internally coherent organizational logic.

You can have internally coherent organizational logic without a plot, and a plot without internally coherent organizational logic.

So can an improvised play have a plot? If not, what the heck do we call it? 'Well it's a flarghwaffle, which is like a plot but different because it was improvised' doesn't exactly roll of the tongue when I'm trying to explain why a piece of long improv comedy was particularly entertaining.


Ah, and you've played into what I've been saying:
One exact thing happening at once with one exact solution is indeed the absolute most basic and beginner level rpg stuff, in the same way that learning the alphabet is the absolute most basic beginner level of reading.

Except this isn't one exact thing happening with one exact solution.

So we have a situation, the dragon is raiding the land. Assuming for the sake of argument an intelligent D&D-style dragon we could slay the dragon when it next attacks, track it back to it's lair and attempt to kill it there, track it back to it's lair and set up a trap at the entrance, open up a talk and try to negotiate a treaty with the dragon to have it raid the neighbouring kingdoms for money, try to teleport the dragon to the other side of the world, try to get the dragon to marry into the royal family, or a bunch of other solutions.

Please explain how they are all the exact same solution.


Corrections to make this align with how my style works in bold.

As amazing as it might seem to you, my players find this style both highly impactful, highly fun, and highly rewarding.

Please stop pretending your style is the one true style for all games that are not baby's first RPG. There is another style that, in my experience at least, is more common where the GM presents one, or maybe two or three, solutions.


Indeed. Since all of my single author stories are better as novels or short stories and I am very comfortable with my writing to the degree I just, you know, write them, playing Failed Novelist at the table doesn't appeal to me. I'd rather make use of the strengths of the medium.

Cool, but please don't pretend that sandboxes are the one true way. It works for you, great, and my style of making the plot a back and forth of me presenting situations and the players coming up with solutions. We play in the games we want to and we all win!


I think you mean "beginner's game"

:smallsigh:

There's a spectrum between 'railroad' and 'sandbox'. Learn that it exists, or at least please stop insisting that sandboxes are the one true way for anybody not new to GMing. When you do I'll stop putting one true way in bold, but until then I'll do so to try to highlight how stupid the idea of playing make believe having one true way is.


Everything after the word Plot is describing the Setting. Don't get confused about those.

Ah, that's it, long form improvisational comedies don't have a plot, they have describing the setting! How could I get so confused?


Plots are planned out ahead of time and are immutable.
Events that happen have what I think is a logical outcome if left unchecked, but can be changed at any time due to the direct or indirect influence of the PCs (if two factions are feuding and the PCs deal major damage to one, the other will sieze that opportunity.

(Note the distinction between PC action and Player action here. Players don't influence the world except through the actions of their PC, but that influence is real.)

Really we should agree to disagree here, but I have a suspicion that you're going to refuse.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-12, 11:06 AM
Why would we just accept whatever Google says? Do you think Wikipedia is the Only One Truth Ever too?

I will happily accept both what Google and Wikipedia say over what "Notorious Giant in the Playground Forum Poster Darth Ultron" says any day of the week. :smallsmile:

Tinkerer
2017-09-12, 11:41 AM
Except this isn't one exact thing happening with one exact solution.

So we have a situation, the dragon is raiding the land. Assuming for the sake of argument an intelligent D&D-style dragon we could slay the dragon when it next attacks, track it back to it's lair and attempt to kill it there, track it back to it's lair and set up a trap at the entrance, open up a talk and try to negotiate a treaty with the dragon to have it raid the neighbouring kingdoms for money, try to teleport the dragon to the other side of the world, try to get the dragon to marry into the royal family, or a bunch of other solutions.

Please explain how they are all the exact same solution.


I think that this is referring back to an earlier conversation where DU insisted that it was fair and proper to force the players into a situation where there is only one solution which kinda ruffled some feathers (To use your stated definitions he seemed to be advocating FFXIII style gameplay). Indeed earlier in this conversation he said that "''Force'' is not a bad word here, ''freedom'' is, as that is just ''random chaos''" and he appears to be saying that forcing players to choose the decisions you want them to make is the one true path, to use your expression.

I would say however that impartial definitions are an important thing. Back in the 90s if you were on a message board and started talking about railroading people would know exactly what you're talking about. Now we've spent 2 pages going back and forth on what railroading is. Then again a strawberry isn't a berry but a pumpkin is a berry so I suppose it's best to keep an open mind about these types of things (meaning things may not be as they seem).

This case of people trying to redefine railroading seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon, mainly springing up in the last five years. Although since we are throwing around references I'll chuck one more into the mix.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Railroading

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-12, 11:59 AM
I think that this is referring back to an earlier conversation where DU insisted that it was fair and proper to force the players into a situation where there is only one solution which kinda ruffled some feathers (To use your stated definitions he seemed to be advocating FFXIII style gameplay). Indeed earlier in this conversation he said that "''Force'' is not a bad word here, ''freedom'' is, as that is just ''random chaos''" and he appears to be saying that forcing players to choose the decisions you want them to make is the one true path, to use your expression.

Sure, unfortunately my time is short and I didn't have time to do more than skim most of the second page, I will admit I've probably lost a lot of detail.

FWIW, I'm against the one true path of roleplaying no matter where the proposed path leans, agreed rails or sandbox. At it's heart I view roleplaying as a structured game of make believe, and as such the only way that matters is the way that allows the group to have fun. For some it might be following an adventure path on the metaphorical train, some people actually like following rails, others like it when they can do almost anything. Both are valid, neither is the one true way, and arguing that one is 'baby's first RPG' is just plain annoying to me.


I would say however that impartial definitions are an important thing. Back in the 90s if you were on a message board and started talking about railroading people would know exactly what you're talking about. Now we've spent 2 pages going back and forth on what railroading is. Then again a strawberry isn't a berry but a pumpkin is a berry so I suppose it's best to keep an open mind about these types of things (meaning things may not be as they seem).

This case of people trying to redefine railroading seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon, mainly springing up in the last five years. Although since we are throwing around references I'll chuck one more into the mix.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Railroading

Sure, I mean we seem to be split into several rough camps, one saying railroading =/= restrictions, one saying that railroading is stopping actions you don't like, and another saying that railroading is forcing the game to go along with your preplanned story (plus several other important but more minor disagreements). Now the big argument is essentially between camp 1 and camps 2 and 3 (who differ over whether railroading has to be preplanned), FWIW the TV Tropes page leans a little more towards camp 1 by saying that in some situations railroading isn't bad, and in other's it's terrible.

Another problem is that I actually have about three different personal definitions of railroading, depending on the actual situation, and so I'm more likely to consider this someone's personal opinion. The main argument seems to be exactly how broad it is, do we broaden it to the point of near uselessness, restrict it to the point that it only applies with the right intent, or have it be in that area where you might have to justify why you consider events railroading.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-12, 12:14 PM
Corrections to make this align with how my style works in bold.

I never really get when people say this. Like, ok, you have a very long ''game zero'' that lasts hours, days and maybe even months as the players have their characters aimlessly and randomly wander around the great novel the DM has written. As player characters wander, the DM dangles several problems as asks ''you want to do this?''. And eventually, days or weeks or months later the players pick something to do. And then your game can finally start.

But then, on a whim, you are also in love with the idea of throwing out everything? I don't really get that. Like you will game for a couple hours and then the players say ''lets do X'', so you drop everything and do X. I guess it's a good way to make the players all ways happy, but it makes no sense.

Though this does make it sound like you don't put any work or effort into your plotless setting. Of course if you have done nothing, then you don't care if the player suddenly be jerks and are like ''we want to do this now''. Most normal DM's, putting a lot of work into not just a setting, but also a plot and an adventure, don't want to just toss it out on a jerk player whim.



As amazing as it might seem to you, my players find this style both highly impactful, highly fun, and highly rewarding.

I have no doubt you can find people to match your style....the world is full of all types.



Everything after the word Plot is describing the Setting. Don't get confused about those.

I wonder what you even think a plot is? Like a plot is the ''action'', so once your setting stuff ''does'' anything, that is not random, that is a plot. But your saying oh ''the setting does all sorts of stuff all the time'', but it is not a plot?



Plots are planned out ahead of time and are immutable.
Events that happen have what I think is a logical outcome if left unchecked, but can be changed at any time due to the direct or indirect influence of the PCs (if two factions are feuding and the PCs deal major damage to one, the other will sieze that opportunity.

Oh, so your only going by the book or movie definition of plot then? Odd that you again can't separate the same words for different things. For example a movie or book has characters and a RPG has characters, but they are not exactly the same thing. And I think you do under stand that there is not just ''one only'' definition for the word ''character''. Yet you say there is only one for plot?



DU, much like your treatment of the word "railroading", you're cramming a lot of stuff that isn't "plot" under a purely personal (as in, entirely yours) overbroad umbrella definition of "plot".

Well, ''plot'' is a Big Tent Word. I get that you don't want to call ''a series of sequential things with an internally coherent organizational logic'' a plot, but I don't get why not. It's like saying in your role playing game the players don't take on a role of a character when they play a character.


I will happily accept both what Google and Wikipedia say over what "Notorious Giant in the Playground Forum Poster Darth Ultron" says any day of the week. :smallsmile:

Woah...I'm Notorious?

jayem
2017-09-12, 01:04 PM
...the great novel the DM has written.

I suspect that's where you imaging starts going wrong. Their DM probably spent their time creating a game-world instead, on the basis that they want to play an RPG

There is of course much similarity (and some transference) to the process of creating a novel-world, if hypothetically you wanted to use it as a basis for writing instead.

[ETA, in answer to your question, when the NPC's actions respond to PC's actions that the NPC's don't know about
(similar to Metagaming when it's PC's doing it)]

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-12, 01:10 PM
I suspect that's where you imaging starts going wrong. Their DM probably spent their time creating a game-world instead, on the basis that they want to play an RPG

There is of course much similarity (and some transference) to the process of creating a novel-world, if hypothetically you wanted to use it as a basis for writing instead.

[ETA, in answer to your question, when the NPC's actions respond to PC's actions that the NPC's don't know about
(similar to Metagaming when it's PC's doing it)]

And there are many novel-worlds that would not work well for RPGs and vice versa (although it's easier to take an RPG world and use it for a novel as long as you're willing to ignore game mechanics). I should start a thread about people's favorite settings that would be difficult to play in...

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-12, 01:28 PM
And there are many novel-worlds that would not work well for RPGs and vice versa (although it's easier to take an RPG world and use it for a novel as long as you're willing to ignore game mechanics). I should start a thread about people's favorite settings that would be difficult to play in...


Indeed -- what works in authorial fiction doesn't always work in an RPG. They're not the same thing.

Scripten
2017-09-12, 01:42 PM
And yet another thread gets derailed (pun not intended) because someone used the world railroading and a certain GitP poster came in to eternally misrepresent everyone else's arguments...

Tinkerer
2017-09-12, 02:17 PM
And yet another thread gets derailed (pun not intended) because someone used the world railroading and a certain GitP poster came in to eternally misrepresent everyone else's arguments...

At least on the whole this one got derailed after the OP got what they felt was an acceptable answer to their question. There was a reason I held off on providing additional thoughts until after JNA said that he was satisfied with the answer. If every thread were so lucky what a wonderful world it would be.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-12, 03:56 PM
Part of the problem is that, because it's in many ways a fanspeak term in this context, people will interpret Railroading differently. These differences can be minor or major, and so it's important for us to state our personal definitions while arguing. Whether or not any personal definition is more or less valid is like arguing whether you should eat cheese with bread or crackers, the right answer depends on where you are from and sometimes the time of day.

Communication requires a common understanding of what is meant by what word. Everyone having their own definition confuses matters. An outside and consistently approved consensus is best.

For the rest of the post, I'm going to let you in on a secret:
DU gets people's dander up by being condescending and smug. My counterplay is to be better at being those two things. It has a history of working.

Minding that, I'll still respond to your points as they apply to actual nuance.



:smallsigh:

Module versus sandbox is not that simple. People like to pretend sandboxes are complete freedom where the players can do whatever they want, but most sandboxes are restricted in some way (most often it's attempts to leave the sandbox that fail, but occasionally there's a bunch of NPCs you can't meaningfully affect without the session grinding to a halt and the GM having to come up with consequences). Conversely, you're presenting running a module as following exactly what's written, which is not what all module dependant GMs do.

Restrictions to the sandbox should be covered in Session 0, and attempts to leave it countered by mentioning the agreement. Though I usually prepare a pretty dang large swath of land so this has never been a problem for me. >.>



Secondly, running a module can be done for any number of reasons beyond being new, the most common one being that not everybody has the time and money to run a sandbox. I don't even when I don't have any work, you'll never find me making a sandbox because I literally can't design them, instead you'll go through a loosely plotted adventure where you're presented with situations and have to come up with solutions. At the end of the session I'll take your solutions and use them to come up with next session's situations. Other people don't even have the time to come up with a plot, and instead adapt the rough structure of a module around their PCs, running as written in some points and altering it at others to fit the group better or account for PC actions.

Yes. Modules and plotted games are simpler than sandbox games. DU likes to insist it is the inverse, because he has no idea what he's talking about. Excuse my exaggerated terms for that sentiment.



FWIW people recommending running a module first because it's easier to learn the game when you don't have to come up with the world, plot, and NPCs first. My first two adventures were modules, since then I've run entirely loosely plotted adventures in order to attempt to provide players with an enjoyable position.
Indeed. It is simpler.




Yes, that is a definition people use, and guess what. We use it because it works.

Many people use the word Banana to describe a Plantain. And it sorta kinda works. It's not really RIGHT, and it causes confusion, but it kinda works.



Or well, anything that happens in game is a plot element, which combine to form a session's/campaign's plot. But there's a difference between a pre-planned plot, and an emergent plot, and only the first can be accused of railroading because the second is by definition the plot that playing the game develops organically. You seem to be arguing that only a pre-planned plot counts as a plot, but having improv experience (albeit only at a light level) I can tell you that simply isn't true.
You're referring to Narrative, here, from my previous post. (Is it a verb that happens during the session? Then it's Narrative!)



Honestly, in the absence of railroading I've noticed that most players will happily move the game into a 'standard RPG plot structure'. Most groups I've played with would find sandboxes unsatisfying, we actively hunt for plot hooks while trying to avoid combat encounters. So apparently I'm stuck playing 'baby's first RPG' because I've never found playing in a complete sandbox overly interesting.
This is why my players have big invisible targets on their heads. NPCs will seek them out actively for things.



:smallsigh:

Because you like google so much.

I, for one, welcome our Chrome overlords.



We can argue over what this means with relation to an RPG, but 'the players rob a bank and law enforcement comes after them' is certainly an interrelated sequence, which becomes longer as the PCs either hide from law enforcement or get captured and escape. Wow, suddenly from the action of robbing a bank we have and emergent plot.

That is why I differentiate that as Narrative.
Plot is planned ahead of time.
Narrative happens realtime.
Story is what happens after Narrative happens in a setting.



So can an improvised play have a plot? If not, what the heck do we call it? 'Well it's a flarghwaffle, which is like a plot but different because it was improvised' doesn't exactly roll of the tongue when I'm trying to explain why a piece of long improv comedy was particularly entertaining.

"It had an amazing Narrative and made for an awesome Story."
Easy.



Except this isn't one exact thing happening with one exact solution.

So we have a situation, the dragon is raiding the land. Assuming for the sake of argument an intelligent D&D-style dragon we could slay the dragon when it next attacks, track it back to it's lair and attempt to kill it there, track it back to it's lair and set up a trap at the entrance, open up a talk and try to negotiate a treaty with the dragon to have it raid the neighbouring kingdoms for money, try to teleport the dragon to the other side of the world, try to get the dragon to marry into the royal family, or a bunch of other solutions.

Please explain how they are all the exact same solution.
[QUOTE]
I think you're not understanding my point because you don't understand who I'm replying to or his points.

[QUOTE]
Please stop pretending your style is the one true style for all games that are not baby's first RPG. There is another style that, in my experience at least, is more common where the GM presents one, or maybe two or three, solutions.

This is where i remind that this response was custom tailored for one person and to chill.



Cool, but please don't pretend that sandboxes are the one true way. It works for you, great, and my style of making the plot a back and forth of me presenting situations and the players coming up with solutions. We play in the games we want to and we all win!

Indeed. And once DU stops asserting that an absolute railroad is the same, I'll be able to stop being a smug a-hole about the opposite.



:smallsigh:

There's a spectrum between 'railroad' and 'sandbox'. Learn that it exists, or at least please stop insisting that sandboxes are the one true way for anybody not new to GMing. When you do I'll stop putting one true way in bold, but until then I'll do so to try to highlight how stupid the idea of playing make believe having one true way is.

See above



Ah, that's it, long form improvisational comedies don't have a plot, they have describing the setting! How could I get so confused?

They have a Narrative.



Really we should agree to disagree here, but I have a suspicion that you're going to refuse.
Eh... You're responding to something with a purpose that has nothing to do with you as if it was a personal attack.

When dealing with smug condescension from DU, I've found it easiest to just outdo him at being smug and condescending and then the conversation can become reasonable again. *shrug*

I honestly don't mind if people want to railroad. I've said that before. So long as everyone agrees to it, have fun! There is indeed a spectrum, and whatever place your group likes, you should play.

But that's a position of nuance, which DU can't grok. Hence my solution.

Friv
2017-09-12, 04:27 PM
At least on the whole this one got derailed after the OP got what they felt was an acceptable answer to their question. There was a reason I held off on providing additional thoughts until after JNA said that he was satisfied with the answer. If every thread were so lucky what a wonderful world it would be.

Plus it's not the only ridiculous back and forth going on in the thread this time around. Maybe all the other, better-defined arguments flying around will drown DU out for a change.

JNAProductions
2017-09-12, 05:04 PM
Yeah, I'm satisfied with the responses I've gotten from this thread. No worries-derail away! :P

Although I would like to say thanks to everyone who contributed positively.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-12, 06:19 PM
I never really get when people say this. Like, ok, you have a very long ''game zero'' that lasts hours, days and maybe even months as the players have their characters aimlessly and randomly wander around the great novel the DM has written. As player characters wander, the DM dangles several problems as asks ''you want to do this?''. And eventually, days or weeks or months later the players pick something to do. And then your game can finally start.
You're probably failing to understand because you're spending more time making up things people aren't saying than actually reading what they're saying.



But then, on a whim, you are also in love with the idea of throwing out everything? I don't really get that. Like you will game for a couple hours and then the players say ''lets do X'', so you drop everything and do X. I guess it's a good way to make the players all ways happy, but it makes no sense.

I actually lose nothing by doing this. I have things ready for basically any direction the PCs go.



Though this does make it sound like you don't put any work or effort into your plotless setting. Of course if you have done nothing, then you don't care if the player suddenly be jerks and are like ''we want to do this now''. Most normal DM's, putting a lot of work into not just a setting, but also a plot and an adventure, don't want to just toss it out on a jerk player whim.

Now I know for a fact you're back to imagining things that would make it easier for you to be right.
Biggest problem here is, nothing you're saying matches real life.



I have no doubt you can find people to match your style....the world is full of all types.

I've had all types join my games and had all types leave satisfied.



I wonder what you even think a plot is? Like a plot is the ''action'', so once your setting stuff ''does'' anything, that is not random, that is a plot. But your saying oh ''the setting does all sorts of stuff all the time'', but it is not a plot?

You're mixing up Plot and Narrative again. Do try to keep pace, buddy.



Oh, so your only going by the book or movie definition of plot then? Odd that you again can't separate the same words for different things. For example a movie or book has characters and a RPG has characters, but they are not exactly the same thing. And I think you do under stand that there is not just ''one only'' definition for the word ''character''. Yet you say there is only one for plot?

Actually, most of the definitions I am finding don't explicitly tie Characters to being from books or movies, and these definitions easily account for TRPG characters under their umbrella.

Plot, on the other hand, does not.

So I'm gonna assume we're still in DU's Fantasy Land.




Well, ''plot'' is a Big Tent Word. I get that you don't want to call ''a series of sequential things with an internally coherent organizational logic'' a plot, but I don't get why not. It's like saying in your role playing game the players don't take on a role of a character when they play a character.

Except Plot explicitly in nearly all definitions mentions an element of pre-planning.
For our purposes, this does not apply to many things that happen during a normal game.
(Remembering that Normal refers to things that are Within The Norm, as measured by those participating in the discussion. In Hawaii, living close to the beach is Normal. On this forum, having a playstyle which isn't yours is Normal. Just preemptively vetoing your incorrect use of the term Normal to describe your games.)


Woah...I'm Notorious?

Less in the Al Capone sense and more in the Andy **** sense.

martixy
2017-09-12, 07:36 PM
I feel like the thread title is missing a word(or 2): Player styles

You drop some parties in a sandbox and they fumble around like blind kittens. At that point it is time for the DM to take on a more directorial approach.
While others bolt in the other direction at so much as the hint of a directive force.

The trouble with games is, that, unless you've played with your group for a long, long, LONG time, you never know which you're gonna get.

Cluedrew
2017-09-12, 08:44 PM
I think we need more specific types of Railroading, and it has to have good and bad in it.Look, I know you do and I know some other people have different definitions, but mine is pretty negative. Because of the background I gave. I use terms like "linear adventure" for what you might call other types of railroading.


You know, I can agree to that. I can see the difference between forcing and not.

That's reasonable, and I can agree with you.
It's a good definition. It's not my personal definition of Railroading (it is, however, my personal definition of a Railroad), but I'll agree it's a fine definition.

For Railroading instead of a Railroad I'd lose the pre-planned part.Thank you both. Yes it is not perfect (considering how many different things it means to different people, I don't think it can be) and there are a couple of semi-arbitrary points (such as pre-planned vs. what you want at the moment), but most of them where made to hone in on what people seemed to be complaining about when they had bad experiences that got labeled railroading. But I think I actually already covered that... so I'm going to stop repeating myself.

Thrudd
2017-09-12, 08:54 PM
I feel like the thread title is missing a word(or 2): Player styles

You drop some parties in a sandbox and they fumble around like blind kittens. At that point it is time for the DM to take on a more directorial approach.
While others bolt in the other direction at so much as the hint of a directive force.

The trouble with games is, that, unless you've played with your group for a long, long, LONG time, you never know which you're gonna get.

Players fumbling around not knowing what to do is a failure of the GM to properly explain the game to them, I think, rather than that they have a "different style". When you play a game, you adopt the "style" that the game demands, the only reason for confusion is lacking understanding of what is expected.

Any game needs goals and motives for the players/characters, and the GM presents them with a setting where there are ways to pursue those goals. With this in place, there is no reason any party should lack direction.

Failure to communicate and enforce expectations is the cause of most all a game's woes.

Segev
2017-09-12, 10:31 PM
It sounds to me like Amphetryon's players define anything that isn't allowing them to do the tabletop equivalent of sequence-breaking is "railroading." If the GM isn't improvising by the seat of his pants, he's railroading. Which...I have to strongly disagree with. Railroading isn't about preparation. It's about whether the world responds to the players, or the players are forced to discover the script to which the world is set.

You can railroad with preparation, obviously. The most common stereotype is the DM who has a Plot(tm) that the players will follow, and will make up anything he has to to disallow and discourage choices that deviate from that plot. He's not the most preparation-heavy sort of railroader, though; he is likely improvising the excuses, obstacles, and contrivances that force the players to follow his script. A truly prepared railroader may not even realize he's doing it: he will have the plotted path be the path of least resistance with fully-fleshed-out obstacles a mile high in every direction other than the established path. It may or may not be as obvious as the improvised "encouragements" of the first sort, but it will be fully prepared-for. We've had a few GMs post about this sort of thing, wondering what they're doing wrong and why their players feel railroaded, because they think they've let them try anything they want...but they'd pre-established reasons why anything BUT their planned-for solutions wouldn't work. They didn't mean to, but they had.

You can also railroad with no prep at all. You're flying by the seat of your pants, improvising the whole thing. But you're not improvising to respond to the players, but to come up with something you want to do. It's a harder thing to do, because you'll usually get your inspiration from player choices. But it's possible. Some bee gets in your bonnet that you think is a really awesome idea, so you shove the players at that direction.


Avoiding railroading with or without preparation is all about how your world reacts to the PCs. Can they accomplish anything meaningful that isn't a pre-planned plot point? If so, you're showing good signs of not railroading.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-13, 02:58 AM
reasonable stuff I don't 100% agree with

Yeah, that's fair. I don't exactly agree with your strategy, and tend to read everything posted on the internet in black text as what the author believes just in case it is (conversely, because the creator of FATAL liked to post in red I pretend he's a massive troll instead of the sad person he probably is), but I will admit your views are valid, even if you use terms slightly differently to me.

I will say going smugger than someone is unlikely to work, but if nothing else works on DU smug away, I'll be here on the sidelines with half the popcorn I'd like.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 03:27 AM
At least on the whole this one got derailed after the OP got what they felt was an acceptable answer to their question. There was a reason I held off on providing additional thoughts until after JNA said that he was satisfied with the answer. If every thread were so lucky what a wonderful world it would be.

True, and to be fair, I think that there are plenty of posters who want to continue to make the same arguments with said poster in this thread as they have in others, which I suspect is causing the problem more readily than one person reposting their opinion in every thread with a particular kyword.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 06:41 AM
True, and to be fair, I think that there are plenty of posters who want to continue to make the same arguments with said poster in this thread as they have in others, which I suspect is causing the problem more readily than one person reposting their opinion in every thread with a particular kyword.

If it were just a matter of one poster having a horribly wrong definition of railroading they liked to post whenever the topic came up, and that was it, I doubt it draw such a response.

Instead, said horribly wrong definition serves as a tool in said poster's near-continuous attempts to push toxic, hamfisted GMing as "right and proper".

Darth Ultron
2017-09-13, 08:06 AM
Look, I know you do and I know some other people have different definitions, but mine is pretty negative. Because of the background I gave. I use terms like "linear adventure" for what you might call other types of railroading.


Well, you could drop Railroading as a word and use my new words: DM Agency.

DM Agency: when the DM takes active control of a game world to force the events in a plot to happen, all most all ways against the wishes of the players(assuming they knew about it and were asked).

Really, any complicated game word setting that makes sense has to have the DM ''force'' things. And we are talking about things happening in the game world that the players would not approve of or wish to happen or want to happen.

Take the Bank idea mentioned. In a complicated game word setting that makes sense, the law will go after criminals that rob a bank. So if the player characters rob a bank the law will come after them. Now this alone is not considered ''railroading'' by most people as the players choose to do it. And if the DM is ''as pure as the wind driven snow'' it might be true that the DM ''did not do anything''. But it does not end there. As the DM has control over the whole game world they can ''force'' the players to take an action: like rob the bank. For example, the bank vault might have a Potion of Life in it that the player characters need/want. But it does make sense that a ''rare item of value'' would be locked in a bank vault....so again this side steps ''railroading'' for most people. And that the ''one and only'' way to get the item is to take it

And a ''not so pure'' DM could just ''put the item of value in the bank to force the characters that want the item to rob it, break the law, and become hunted criminals. But the ''not so pure'' DM can also use everything above to make it seem ''pure''. And as you can't read a person mind you don't know ''why'' they did something. So, in theory, why a person did something does matter...but you could never prove it anyway, so it does not matter.

But then come my Big Point: What if the DM set up the whole ''rob a bank'' plot for a good reason? Like say Amber has a sneaky thief type character that is more ''breaking and entering and robbing'' then ''super awesome sneak attack striker demigod''. But the last game or so Amber has been a bit sad as her character has not gotten to use any of her thievery abilities. So the DM wants to add that possibility to the next game, and hence the plot. And it is not like Amber is special, as each player has 3-5 such plots ''active''. And all the plots are folded into the game so they don't stand out as ''oh, we are just playing the special game for player x now'' and they just become part of the whole.

And you can't just ''ask the player'' for permission to do each plot and get their buy in. Other then this breaks the immersion, a lot of players would agree to a lot of things. And the real, real fun plots are the ones the players won't automatically agree too. Like ask any player ''do you want your character to find an all powerful magic item?'', of course just about all players will say yes. Ask a player ''you want to have your character captured and thrown in a dungeon?'' or ''Do you want a to loose your super special magic item?'' and the vast majority of players will outright say ''no''. And most of the few that say ''yes'', will want some metagame guarantee agreement that they don't have anything ''bad'' happen for long and it will reset or that they force a bribe out of the DM to do so (''ok, my character can loose his sword +2, but then he will find a sword+3, deal?").

And this is the big twist: just as a player says or thinks they don't or won't like something does not mean it is true. Amazingly, when someone tries something, even if they ''knew or thought'' they did not like it...sometimes they find they do like it, or at least that it was not ''so'' bad. And the end result is more fun, not less. (and sure, there are always poor players who are not good people who will curl up into a ball and cry just as their character lost one of their 13 silver daggers and they will sit in the corner and pout and won't play until their character gets their dagger back.....but such a person has a lot of problems.)

But the end result: to have the characters be forced to rob the bank. In reality the DM is forcing things in the game to happen, but in some weird fantasy they can ''hide behind the setting'' and say that they as DM are just ''enforcing the setting'' but it's not ''the DM's will''. This fantasy falls apart quickly as the DM is the one who made the setting and controls the setting and it's just weird to have then run on and say ''I must do this as the setting I made and control says I must do this, so it's really me telling me I must do this, but, um, not me too". The more reasonable DM will just say ''I'm in control and doing this as part of the game''. But a lot of DM's like to say they do it the other way.




Instead, said horribly wrong definition serves as a tool in said poster's near-continuous attempts to push toxic, hamfisted GMing as "right and proper".

SPAM it is that stuff in a can: Mystery Meat. SPAM in the place where you live, SPAM in the place where you are...Spam!

AMFV
2017-09-13, 08:32 AM
If it were just a matter of one poster having a horribly wrong definition of railroading they liked to post whenever the topic came up, and that was it, I doubt it draw such a response.

Instead, said horribly wrong definition serves as a tool in said poster's near-continuous attempts to push toxic, hamfisted GMing as "right and proper".

Well an attempt to say that his style is right and proper, which is of course a thing we all think about our own respective styles. I think maybe if people were less douchy about telling him that his style is badwrongfun, we'd have a lot less threads that were instantly derailed to the point of absolute uselessness. And frankly here we're seeing a level of douchiness in response to him that approaches what I've not seen here since JediPotter, literally any thread where that particular posts becomes immediately useless because of a handful of posters who are convinced that by slamming his arguments they will somehow convince him that his style of DMing is wrong.

That seems to me like not only a waste of time, but a horribly counterproductive exercise, no?

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-13, 08:44 AM
Darth Ultron, you seem to think there is only one type of player.

Now generally there's an agreement that nothing bad happening to a player character will truly 'stick', but this because the game is more fun when both good and bad stuff happens. The game has ups and downs, and while I'd ideally want it to be all ups it's much more fun when there's also downs.

A friend of mine once spent an entire session playing the wrong character because she had allowed her PC to be captured without us knowing (okay, it was meant to take about 20 minutes, but we spent half an hour trying to work out if the captured one was a villain pulling a trick). She had great fun doing it, as did a different friend where his character spent an entire session being beaten to a pulp by his enemies.

Also, if you asked me if I wanted my character thrown into a dungeon the answer would also be different to if you asked me if I'm fine with my character thrown into a dungeon. Of course I don't want my character thrown into a dungeon, but it sounds like you have an idea that might be cool so fine, let's go along with that. Oh no, I lose my sword+2? Either this is a plot point or we've agreed I lose it to rebalance the game (which I'm perfectly fine to do).

Oh, another thing, there is a simple way to ask their permission about the 'rob the bank' plot, give them the option. Players aren't obliged to follow every single plot thread you give them, no matter how annoying it is when you have to shelve a cool plot thread for the fourth time, and if they follow the rob a bank plot thread they've agreed to playing a rob a bank plot, which tends to include evading the authorities. The problem comes when you force them to rob the bank, whereas they might want to contact the owner of the item and purchase it legitimately (and yes, I have been in groups where that would have been the first solution).

Lastly, if a character hasn't been using their abilities, either situations aren't broad enough to allow for such abilities (which can be anywhere from 'a sniper is useless on a spaceship' to 'my character focuses on robotics, not electronics'), or the players haven't been searching for the chance to use them. There's also the fact that not all abilities will be useful in all campaigns, this is why people should discuss the game in a session 0.

EDIT: which is not to say a strong plot is bad, but you seem to be arguing for forcing people into your perceived plot without agreement, which is fine until you run a game based on courtly intrigue but the group would rather have one about guild politics.

Red Fel
2017-09-13, 08:51 AM
Well, you could drop Railroading as a word and use my new words: DM Agency.

DM Agency: when the DM takes active control of a game world to force the events in a plot to happen, all most all ways against the wishes of the players(assuming they knew about it and were asked).

I'm not sure I like this term, and here's why. "Player agency" refers to the fact that the players should be able to control the actions of their characters, if nothing else. The term is effectively a retronym - that is, it exists in contrast to the idea that somebody else (i.e. the DM) is able to control the PCs' actions. "DM agency," then, suggests that absent "DM agency," someone else controls the DM's actions - which is simply not true. "DM agency" is the default state - the DM controls basically everything in the game, other than PC actions, by default.

So the term makes me uncomfortable.


Really, any complicated game word setting that makes sense has to have the DM ''force'' things. And we are talking about things happening in the game world that the players would not approve of or wish to happen or want to happen.

Take the Bank idea mentioned. In a complicated game word setting that makes sense, the law will go after criminals that rob a bank. So if the player characters rob a bank the law will come after them. Now this alone is not considered ''railroading'' by most people as the players choose to do it. And if the DM is ''as pure as the wind driven snow'' it might be true that the DM ''did not do anything''. But it does not end there. As the DM has control over the whole game world they can ''force'' the players to take an action: like rob the bank. For example, the bank vault might have a Potion of Life in it that the player characters need/want. But it does make sense that a ''rare item of value'' would be locked in a bank vault....so again this side steps ''railroading'' for most people. And that the ''one and only'' way to get the item is to take it

I was with you to a point. But here's where my definition of railroading varies.

The DM saying that police will come after those who rob a bank is not railroading. It is stating an obvious truth about the world - if someone robs a bank, police will pursue them. We agree on this point.

The DM saying that a rare and necessary potion is in the vault is not railroading. It is the DM setting up a scenario.

However, the DM saying the "one and only" way to acquire the plot-necessary item is to steal it from the vault is railroading, in that the DM has left "one and only" one course of action to the PCs. They can't negotiate for it. Can't buy it. Can't duplicate it or make their own. And the DM may well say that there is no way for them to succeed without notifying the police.

Herein we come to my definition of railroading: Where, during the game, the DM permits only one course of action, with no deviation, or where the DM defines the actions of the PCs, irrespective of the will of the players.


But then come my Big Point: What if the DM set up the whole ''rob a bank'' plot for a good reason? Like say Amber has a sneaky thief type character that is more ''breaking and entering and robbing'' then ''super awesome sneak attack striker demigod''. But the last game or so Amber has been a bit sad as her character has not gotten to use any of her thievery abilities. So the DM wants to add that possibility to the next game, and hence the plot. And it is not like Amber is special, as each player has 3-5 such plots ''active''. And all the plots are folded into the game so they don't stand out as ''oh, we are just playing the special game for player x now'' and they just become part of the whole.

And here's the thing - that's a campaign pitch. "Hey, guys, this next campaign is going to have heist and chase elements, sound fun?"

As soon as you define those parameters, it's no longer railroading. Notice my definition above - "during the game." That means that if an expectation is created in advance of the game - i.e. the campaign pitch - the players are agreeing to it, and therefore they aren't being railroaded. It's like the classic "you all meet in a tavern" opening; the DM can define the start conditions without it being railroading. And if the start conditions are that the PCs are going to plan and execute a heist, and probably fall on the wrong side of the law as a result, that's a clear and understandable expectation, not a DM seizure of player agency.


And you can't just ''ask the player'' for permission to do each plot and get their buy in. Other then this breaks the immersion, a lot of players would agree to a lot of things. And the real, real fun plots are the ones the players won't automatically agree too. Like ask any player ''do you want your character to find an all powerful magic item?'', of course just about all players will say yes. Ask a player ''you want to have your character captured and thrown in a dungeon?'' or ''Do you want a to loose your super special magic item?'' and the vast majority of players will outright say ''no''. And most of the few that say ''yes'', will want some metagame guarantee agreement that they don't have anything ''bad'' happen for long and it will reset or that they force a bribe out of the DM to do so (''ok, my character can loose his sword +2, but then he will find a sword+3, deal?").

You can ask them in advance of the campaign. As I said, you - as DM - can define the start conditions. After that, though, everything has to flow logically. You're creating a strawman if you think anyone is suggesting that you have to ask the players before bad things happen to the PCs. I don't think anyone should reasonably expect that.

Saying, for example, "I want to run a campaign where the PCs start in captivity," is a fair thing to ask. Important, even, particularly if a player is running a gear-powered PC and spends time and effort gearing him up, only to find at start of play that his PC is rendered naked and useless.

However, if the PCs, say, charge headfirst into the villain's heavily armed and occupied fortress, being captured and stripped of their gear is an understandable event. It's not railroading because it's the natural consequence of what happens. Now, it's railroading if you, as DM, announce, "As enemy soldiers surround you, you throw down your weapons and surrender." But otherwise, if it's a direct and reasonably foreseeable result of PC actions, you shouldn't have to ask, "Is this okay?" Nobody expects you to.


But the end result: to have the characters be forced to rob the bank. In reality the DM is forcing things in the game to happen, but in some weird fantasy they can ''hide behind the setting'' and say that they as DM are just ''enforcing the setting'' but it's not ''the DM's will''. This fantasy falls apart quickly as the DM is the one who made the setting and controls the setting and it's just weird to have then run on and say ''I must do this as the setting I made and control says I must do this, so it's really me telling me I must do this, but, um, not me too". The more reasonable DM will just say ''I'm in control and doing this as part of the game''. But a lot of DM's like to say they do it the other way.

I don't think I understand this.

The DM controls the setting, the events, and the NPCs. This is a truism; it's not some great secret or awkward fiction. Everyone knows this.

The issue isn't with the DM executing the setting or events. The issue is with the DM taking control of the PCs out of the hands of the players. That's the issue. That's where railroading comes in. Talking about the fact that a hypothetical DM tries to avoid the blame for his decisions in executing set pieces isn't really relevant. This song ain't about that.

Scripten
2017-09-13, 09:11 AM
Well, you could drop Railroading as a word and use my new words: DM Agency.

DM Agency: when the DM takes active control of a game world to force the events in a plot to happen, all most all ways against the wishes of the players(assuming they knew about it and were asked).

This doesn't sound any better. The world should be taking actions, but the results of those actions should not be set in stone. You seem to have the two conflated to an absurd degree.

DM Agency (as you put it) would be deciding that thieves are going to attempt to steal from the players. Maybe they succeed. Maybe they don't. Maybe the players notice and act to stop them. Maybe they don't. That's why we have dice to arbitrate unclear results.

Railroading is when you decide, regardless of what the players do, that they are going to lose their magical items and there's nothing they can do to stop it. And frankly, it's no wonder you consider every player in your games to be a potential problem. I, and anyone I game with, would walk out after a stunt like that and never look back. I could easily see other people being "jerks" if you just take away their stuff without giving them a chance to do anything about it.


Really, any complicated game word setting that makes sense has to have the DM ''force'' things. And we are talking about things happening in the game world that the players would not approve of or wish to happen or want to happen.

Take the Bank idea mentioned. In a complicated game word setting that makes sense, the law will go after criminals that rob a bank. So if the player characters rob a bank the law will come after them. -snip- For example, the bank vault might have a Potion of Life in it that the player characters need/want.

If the DM is putting this valuable item in the vault and telling the players about it, that still does not remotely guarantee that the players will attempt to steal it. Nor will it decide how they steal it. The setup could be used to make a heist session where the players physically break into the bank. Or they could find out who the owner is and blackmail them to get the item. Or they could bribe/fool the bank security into giving them the item. Or they could forge papers to get the item.

And sure, the law could come after them, if they get caught. But what if they don't? What if they cover their tracks or, somehow, find out some legal way to get what they want?


But then come my Big Point: What if the DM set up the whole ''rob a bank'' plot for a good reason? Like say Amber has a sneaky thief type character that is more ''breaking and entering and robbing'' then ''super awesome sneak attack striker demigod''. But the last game or so Amber has been a bit sad as her character has not gotten to use any of her thievery abilities. So the DM wants to add that possibility to the next game, and hence the plot.

So the DM sets up the situation and lets the players decide if they want to take the hook. Other than your constant attempts to assume the player's actions, this situation has nothing to do with railroading. Which is really the crux of the matter. Assuming the player's actions is railroading in this instance. Until they have decided what they do, you as a DM should not make assumptions based on those actions. Be ready for various contingencies, sure, but do not assume that there is only one direction the game can go.


Ask a player ''you want to have your character captured and thrown in a dungeon?'' or ''Do you want a to loose your super special magic item?'' and the vast majority of players will outright say ''no''.

Again with assuming results of events. If you want to have an "escape the dungeon" adventure, then have a one-off adventure with that as the starting point. Or save it for when something happens during a campaign that ends a session with the players having been captured. It's not that hard to do without contrivance.

And again, taking away the player's likely hard-won magical item is a jerk move, so yeah, people will react poorly to it. Maybe you have a selection of players you can browbeat into accepting that, but it's still poor adventure design. Plus, as I said, it's assuming the result of an encounter.


(and sure, there are always poor players who are not good people who will curl up into a ball and cry just as their character lost one of their 13 silver daggers and they will sit in the corner and pout and won't play until their character gets their dagger back.....but such a person has a lot of problems.)

...not even touching that.


But the end result: to have the characters be forced to rob the bank. In reality the DM is forcing things in the game to happen, but in some weird fantasy they can ''hide behind the setting'' and say that they as DM are just ''enforcing the setting'' but it's not ''the DM's will''.

There is no situation where the characters should be "forced" to do anything. If you make it such that one player is dying of a super rare disease whose only cure is in a locked vault, then yes, you have a tough situation, but it's not railroading until you start assuming how they will react and pushing them into it. As I said above, there are multitudinous ways to approach getting into the vault and, if all else fails, maybe they just feel it would be in their character's nature to accept the inevitability of their condition and make the best of things, rather than committing a crime.

So, just to recap, here are the things in your post that I consider railroading:
1) Taking control of player characters or assuming PC actions during play
2) Assuming results of uncertain events without arbitrating with dice/player choices

And what is not railroading:
1) Setting up events distinct from the actions of the players
2) Creating situations that require the players to make hard choices

Ninja'd FAKEEDIT: Red Fel said pretty much everything I meant to say and better, but I also spent a lot of time writing this up so I'm going to post anyway. :smallbiggrin:

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 10:08 AM
Well an attempt to say that his style is right and proper, which is of course a thing we all think about our own respective styles. I think maybe if people were less douchy about telling him that his style is badwrongfun, we'd have a lot less threads that were instantly derailed to the point of absolute uselessness. And frankly here we're seeing a level of douchiness in response to him that approaches what I've not seen here since JediPotter, literally any thread where that particular posts becomes immediately useless because of a handful of posters who are convinced that by slamming his arguments they will somehow convince him that his style of DMing is wrong.

That seems to me like not only a waste of time, but a horribly counterproductive exercise, no?


Keep in mind that this is after many people over a long period of time explaining repeatedly and in great deal that his definition of "railroading" is objectively wrong, and coming to realize that he continues to push that definition anyway in the attempt to justify his own self-described abusive GMing practices.

This isn't about "style" or "badwrongfun", or changing one poster's mind when he clearly has no intention of taking facts onboard. It's about counter-pointing the deliberate promotion of abusive GMing practices.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 10:54 AM
Keep in mind that this is after many people over a long period of time explaining repeatedly and in great deal that his definition of "railroading" is objectively wrong, and coming to realize that he continues to push that definition anyway in the attempt to justify his own self-described abusive GMing practices.

This isn't about "style" or "badwrongfun", or changing one poster's mind when he clearly has no intention of taking facts onboard. It's about counter-pointing the deliberate promotion of abusive GMing practices.

I'm not so sure that GMing practices can be abusive. Unless Darth Ultron is forcing people to play in his games. It's not very likely that he's being "abusive", maybe obtuse, maybe he doesn't have the best strategy. But maybe his players like that game. And frankly you have no way of knowing that. But to conflate a DMing style you don't agree with as being abusive that's absurd, and does a disservice to actual abusive relationships.

JNAProductions
2017-09-13, 11:13 AM
I would say this:

The majority of players are fine with bad things happening to their characters. Some players aren't-they want everything to always go perfect for their characters. But most players understand that not everything goes that way.

What most players would NOT be okay with is complete, total, abject failure. Like, nothing they ever do matters, everything is made worse, and they might as well have stayed home for all the good it did. (Call of Cthulhu and similar games notwithstanding.) In D&D, I expect my character to have made an impact on the world for the "better", as defined by that character. Even if, in the final encounter, my party loses, I expect to be able to look back and say (assuming a heroic party) "You know what? The dark lord won. But we inspired that village to fight back-maybe they'll start a resistance. We helped that ghost find her peace-she'll rest easy, even if the world won't. We did good." I would NOT be okay with looking back and saying "Well, we got that village killed-that sucks. And that ghost we only managed to piss off, so that'll be worse. And we didn't defeat the dark lord. Whole world is screwed."

Some downs are fine-the enter game being down is not.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-13, 11:23 AM
I'm not so sure that GMing practices can be abusive. Unless Darth Ultron is forcing people to play in his games. It's not very likely that he's being "abusive", maybe obtuse, maybe he doesn't have the best strategy. But maybe his players like that game. And frankly you have no way of knowing that. But to conflate a DMing style you don't agree with as being abusive that's absurd, and does a disservice to actual abusive relationships.

I have no problem with the term. I've seen a lot of people put off of RPGs because they have a lousy first GM and they think that bad railroaded games are just how RPGs are and decide that they aren't for them.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 11:25 AM
I would say this:

The majority of players are fine with bad things happening to their characters. Some players aren't-they want everything to always go perfect for their characters. But most players understand that not everything goes that way.

What most players would NOT be okay with is complete, total, abject failure. Like, nothing they ever do matters, everything is made worse, and they might as well have stayed home for all the good it did. (Call of Cthulhu and similar games notwithstanding.) In D&D, I expect my character to have made an impact on the world for the "better", as defined by that character. Even if, in the final encounter, my party loses, I expect to be able to look back and say (assuming a heroic party) "You know what? The dark lord won. But we inspired that village to fight back-maybe they'll start a resistance. We helped that ghost find her peace-she'll rest easy, even if the world won't. We did good." I would NOT be okay with looking back and saying "Well, we got that village killed-that sucks. And that ghost we only managed to piss off, so that'll be worse. And we didn't defeat the dark lord. Whole world is screwed."

Some downs are fine-the enter game being down is not.

I don't know... I like Paranoia, and Call of Cthulu.


I have no problem with the term. I've seen a lot of people put off of RPGs because they have a lousy first GM and they think that bad railroaded games are just how RPGs are and decide that they aren't for them.

And some people probably have a DM that doesn't give them sufficient incentive or direction and decide the game isn't for them. The people who would probably enjoy Darth Ultron's style would likely find a different style off-putting as well.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 11:38 AM
And some people probably have a DM that doesn't give them sufficient incentive or direction and decide the game isn't for them. The people who would probably enjoy Darth Ultron's style would likely find a different style off-putting as well.


I cannot imagine someone enjoying the games he describes running, and he invariably describes his players as helpless, hopeless, hapless idiots (not always in so many words, but it's clear he has no respect for them as people), refers to anyone who dares question a GM as "a jerk", and talks about kicking players out of his games for not meekly obeying his dictates.

But at the same time he insists that his games are "fun".

If you don't want to call it abusive, I don't know how else to describe that.





I would say this:

The majority of players are fine with bad things happening to their characters. Some players aren't-they want everything to always go perfect for their characters. But most players understand that not everything goes that way.

What most players would NOT be okay with is complete, total, abject failure. Like, nothing they ever do matters, everything is made worse, and they might as well have stayed home for all the good it did. (Call of Cthulhu and similar games notwithstanding.) In D&D, I expect my character to have made an impact on the world for the "better", as defined by that character. Even if, in the final encounter, my party loses, I expect to be able to look back and say (assuming a heroic party) "You know what? The dark lord won. But we inspired that village to fight back-maybe they'll start a resistance. We helped that ghost find her peace-she'll rest easy, even if the world won't. We did good." I would NOT be okay with looking back and saying "Well, we got that village killed-that sucks. And that ghost we only managed to piss off, so that'll be worse. And we didn't defeat the dark lord. Whole world is screwed."

Some downs are fine-the enter game being down is not.


Actually, that's why I don't care for games like CofC -- abject futility is not a selling point.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-13, 11:40 AM
And some people probably have a DM that doesn't give them sufficient incentive or direction and decide the game isn't for them. The people who would probably enjoy Darth Ultron's style would likely find a different style off-putting as well.

"Bad" isn't a style. One can provide some structure and direction without railroading.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 11:45 AM
I cannot imagine someone enjoying the games he describes running, and he invariably describes his players as helpless, hopeless, hapless idiots (not always in so many words, but it's clear he has no respect for them as people), refers to anyone who dares question a GM as "a jerk", and talks about kicking players out of his games for not meekly obeying his dictates.

But at the same time he insists that his games are "fun".

If you don't want to call it abusive, I don't know how else to describe that.

Well it isn't abusive. And his players might enjoy that. Maybe they like a style of gaming where they're competing against him directly. The players are the enemy in his style, that's why he describes them that way. Also I'm not sure that's the case, you're extrapolating a lot from arguments where people have been brutally laying into his style and he's gotten more and more defensive, until he finally says something that you can latch onto and proclaim as absolute proof that his style is as terrible as you have.

I have no problem with authoritarian GMs. I've played with them, and I have no issue, I've enjoyed games like that, and there are other games I've not enjoyed like that. It's very possible that I would find his games fun, depending on the content and on the other players.


"Bad" isn't a style. One can provide some structure and direction without railroading.

But not the same degree of structure and direction as one can provide with it. Also you're removing stylistic elements that are present in Darth Ultron's stuff so that you can declare his style of gaming to be badwrongfun. Just because it isn't what's considered popular on this forum, and that's horsecrap. No offense, but seriously, the thread derailing problem, that's you guys, who immediately jump on Darth Ultron at the first opportunity, dragging all kinds of baggage into the argument and acting as though you're doing some kind of self-righteous favor to the gaming community.

There are plenty of viable styles of DMing, and some people prefer authoritarianism to wishy-washy.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-13, 11:57 AM
Well it isn't abusive.

I don't think we're going to agree. What particularly stuck out to me is the way that he brags about making "jerk players" quit his games.

As far as I'm concerned, Darth Ultron is doing damage to the hobby and it's important that people continue to discredit him and everything he says at every opportunity so some new GM who wanders into this forum seeking advice isn't given some terrible advice and takes it to heart.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 12:09 PM
I don't think we're going to agree. What particularly stuck out to me is the way that he brags about making "jerk players" quit his games.

As far as I'm concerned, Darth Ultron is doing damage to the hobby and it's important that people continue to discredit him and everything he says at every opportunity so some new GM who wanders into this forum seeking advice isn't given some terrible advice and takes it to heart.

Yes, but your attempts to "discredit" him basically destroys all value to any thread he posts in. Instead of having one post that's bad advice, there's just pages and pages of argument about that one poorly made post. I'm fairly sure that new GMs are probably bright enough to sort out what advice is actually useful to them from what is not and if they aren't they aren't going to be saved by any advice at all.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-13, 12:20 PM
Yes, but your attempts to "discredit" him basically destroys all value to any thread he posts in. Instead of having one post that's bad advice, there's just pages and pages of argument about that one poorly made post. I'm fairly sure that new GMs are probably bright enough to sort out what advice is actually useful to them from what is not and if they aren't they aren't going to be saved by any advice at all.

It's a forum. Discussions are its purpose.

If I may suggest something that's more worthless than beating one's head against the wall of Darth Ultron? Discussions about the value of beating one's head against Darth Ultron.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 12:30 PM
"Bad" isn't a style. One can provide some structure and direction without railroading.



I don't think we're going to agree. What particularly stuck out to me is the way that he brags about making "jerk players" quit his games.

As far as I'm concerned, Darth Ultron is doing damage to the hobby and it's important that people continue to discredit him and everything he says at every opportunity so some new GM who wanders into this forum seeking advice isn't given some terrible advice and takes it to heart.


Agreed.




Well it isn't abusive. And his players might enjoy that. Maybe they like a style of gaming where they're competing against him directly. The players are the enemy in his style, that's why he describes them that way. Also I'm not sure that's the case, you're extrapolating a lot from arguments where people have been brutally laying into his style and he's gotten more and more defensive, until he finally says something that you can latch onto and proclaim as absolute proof that his style is as terrible as you have.


I think you're missing a lot of the things he's said, even just going back to when I first signed up for these forums, then.

This isn't about adversarial play -- it's about one person at the table, one person in a group of equals, regarding the rest of the table of utter disdain and a total lack of respect, and viewing himself as the lord and master of the table.




Also you're removing stylistic elements that are present in Darth Ultron's stuff so that you can declare his style of gaming to be badwrongfun. Just because it isn't what's considered popular on this forum, and that's horsecrap. No offense, but seriously, the thread derailing problem, that's you guys, who immediately jump on Darth Ultron at the first opportunity, dragging all kinds of baggage into the argument and acting as though you're doing some kind of self-righteous favor to the gaming community.


Several of us have explained now why this is simply not the case. This isn't a "badwrongfun" matter or a matter of "stylistic elements", and it's not a matter of others dogpiling on an innocent victim.

People got tired of being told that crap is candy and that up means down.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 12:39 PM
I think you're missing a lot of the things he's said, even just going back to when I first signed up for these forums, then.

This isn't about adversarial play -- it's about one person at the table, one person in a group of equals, regarding the rest of the table of utter disdain and a total lack of respect, and viewing himself as the lord and master of the table.

That would be your interpretation of what he's said. I didn't get that same vibe, except for when you guys have dogpiled on him until he winds up saying things that are probably not exactly what he means to try to explain his position. Also of note, I've been here a lot longer, and I've seen other posters in the same position as Darth, anybody who is strongly not-conforming to the GiTP view of how you should play who is not good at explaining their choices gets into this kind of mess.

I suspect a great deal of this has to do with you reading Darth Ultron's stuff with certain preconceptions and then confirmation bias does it's work. Rather than Darth Ultron being a really terrible human being. I would imagine he likes different style of game than you do, and that's totally fine.

Hell, even if he views the DM as the most important part of the game, that's not that big a deal.



Several of us have explained now why this is simply not the case. This isn't a "badwrongfun" matter or a matter of "stylistic elements", and it's not a matter of others dogpiling on an innocent victim.

People got tired of being told that crap is candy and that up means down.

Yes it is you guys dogpiling on somebody who is not equipped to effectively present his own defense. I'm sorry (to both you and him) but it is. He is not able to present an argument which you will find compelling. And I doubt that there is any argument that would move you to say that style is anything good.

But you are claiming it's "abusive" that's equating with a moral wrong, you're claiming that he views others as being less than himself. You're making moral accusations, that's not acceptable over a difference in gaming style, not by any stretch, and frankly that should not be tolerated.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 12:46 PM
But you are claiming it's "abusive" that's equating with a moral wrong, you're claiming that he views others as being less than himself. You're making moral accusations, that's not acceptable over a difference in gaming style, not by any stretch, and frankly that should not be tolerated.


It's not over a difference in gaming style.

It's over how he has openly said that he regards and treats his fellow gamers. No one has to distort what he says, no one has to put words in his mouth.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 12:49 PM
It's not over a difference in gaming style.

It's over how he has openly said that he regards and treats his fellow gamers.

And they being grown-ass adults, do not need you to defend them. They can vote with their feet if they don't like it, and apparently some of them do. But some of them don't.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-13, 12:51 PM
And they being grown-ass adults, do not need you to defend them. They can vote with their feet if they don't like it, and apparently some of them do. But some of them don't.

No one is kicking in the door to Darth Ultron's house and demanding that he lets his gaming hostages go. But if he chooses to post about his toxic GM practises on an open forum he then becomes fair game.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 12:54 PM
No one is kicking in the door to Darth Ultron's house and demanding that he lets his gaming hostages go. But if he chooses to post about his toxic GM practises on an open forum he then becomes fair game.

True. But in your eagerness to condemn him you guys have derailed and destroyed dozens of threads with otherwise productive discussion.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 12:55 PM
And they being grown-ass adults, do not need you to defend them. They can vote with their feet if they don't like it, and apparently some of them do. But some of them don't.


He certainly doesn't regard them as adults, based on his own statements.

And really, if this is going to become a question of adults not needing someone else to defend them... then maybe he doesn't need you to defend him.




But if he chooses to post about his toxic GM practises on an open forum he then becomes fair game.


Exactly.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 12:59 PM
True. But in your eagerness to condemn him you guys have derailed and destroyed dozens of threads with otherwise productive discussion.


Counting back through the posts on this thread and how many have gone to this tangent... I'm finding a bit of irony there.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 12:59 PM
He certainly doesn't regard them as adults, based on his own statements.

And really, if this is going to become a question of adults not needing someone else to defend them... then maybe he doesn't need you to defend him.



Except I'm really not. I'm attacking your guys' response to him. That's a very different thing. You guys are the ones causing threads to be derailed, if you just let him have one post of potentially crappy stuff, and then moved on, the discussion could continue to be productive. But now it's "how long until somebody jumps on Darth Ultron's crap and derails a thread to the point where there is NO MORE valid discussion because it's only you guys arguing with him.

I mean you aren't going to convince him, he's not going to convince you, and a thread is pretty much trashed by the exact same argument, over and over and over and over. It's not quite as bad as it was with JediPotter, but it's pretty close. It used to be that there was a lot of good discussion about railroading and when railroading began and how to avoid the perception of such. Now it's just sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. And frankly the fault is mostly with those responding to Darth Ultron, more even than Darth Ultron himself, since defending a position is pretty expected.


Counting back through the posts on this thread and how many have gone to this tangent... I'm finding a bit of irony there.

True but the thread was already thoroughly derailed. And would never have come back, pretty much flat out. Since all of the thread was Darth Ultron and responses to him after a couple pages. Meaning any further value was unlikely to develop. And I'm personally hoping that the people who frequently jump on his posts are able to be swayed by discussion to potentially examine refraining from doing so in the future.

Tinkerer
2017-09-13, 01:05 PM
Well an attempt to say that his style is right and proper, which is of course a thing we all think about our own respective styles. I think maybe if people were less douchy about telling him that his style is badwrongfun, we'd have a lot less threads that were instantly derailed to the point of absolute uselessness. And frankly here we're seeing a level of douchiness in response to him that approaches what I've not seen here since JediPotter, literally any thread where that particular posts becomes immediately useless because of a handful of posters who are convinced that by slamming his arguments they will somehow convince him that his style of DMing is wrong.

That seems to me like not only a waste of time, but a horribly counterproductive exercise, no?

I do concur which is why I've pretty much disengaged. I may disagree with almost everything which DU says on this page however that is no reason that a forum poster shouldn't be able to get the answer to their question. I will say however that DUs argument style is quite perturbing, mainly insisting that players are horrible petulant snot nosed little children combined with raising entire armies of strawmen whenever presented with a counter argument. Not to mention saying that saying that those who don't subscribe to their way of thinking are roll-players who only want teh combatz.

I think that the other posters raised up a number of the issues inherent in the heist plan, namely that there are a number of ways that it could be addressed. I do think that any GM who just says to any of the alternate ways "No that won't work" isn't very creative and is being a touch jerky. Although I do have to agree with DU that forcing buy in on every adventure is definitely immersion breaking and not to be confused with buy in on campaign which I view as mandatory. But that doesn't change the fact that saying "the only way to get this item out of the bank is through a bank heist" isn't realistic, is fairly immersion breaking, and appears to be an example of railroading.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 01:09 PM
Except I'm really not. I'm attacking your guys' response to him. That's a very different thing. You guys are the ones causing threads to be derailed, if you just let him have one post of potentially crappy stuff, and then moved on, the discussion could continue to be productive. But now it's "how long until somebody jumps on Darth Ultron's crap and derails a thread to the point where there is NO MORE valid discussion because it's only you guys arguing with him.

I mean you aren't going to convince him, he's not going to convince you, and a thread is pretty much trashed by the exact same argument, over and over and over and over. It's not quite as bad as it was with JediPotter, but it's pretty close. It used to be that there was a lot of good discussion about railroading and when railroading began and how to avoid the perception of such. Now it's just sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. And frankly the fault is mostly with those responding to Darth Ultron, more even than Darth Ultron himself, since defending a position is pretty expected.


At this point, you're doing the equivalent of walking into a room, seeing a lot of horsecrap, and blaming the people trying to clean it up instead of the horse it all actually came from.


We literally cannot have a discussion about railroading without said poster crapping it up with his self-serving, self-aggrandizing, bloviating, argument-by-definition nonsense. This is not a matter of interpretation, or of how one person sees it versus how another person see sit, or "that's just your opinion, man".


If someone was constantly telling people "you can run your car on melted butter" in an automotive discussion forum, would you expect the rest of the posters to just roll their eyes and ignore it, while new readers came in and read it and thought "hey, that's a great idea, I'll try putting melted butter in my gas tank instead of gasoline next time".


Said poster's comments and advice on GMing are literally bad for gaming, and will absolutely result in bad games and the loss of gamers. His statements on what makes for a good game and power dynamics at the table and the "correct" GM-player relationship are so awful that I have to remind myself that it's not a parody. It's Poe's Law in action.




I will say however that DUs argument style is quite perturbing, mainly insisting that players are horrible petulant snot nosed little children combined with raising entire armies of strawmen whenever presented with a counter argument. Not to mention saying that saying that those who don't subscribe to their way of thinking are roll-players who only want teh combatz.


On the nose.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-13, 01:13 PM
Wait, this is a thread where people actually reply? I'd mistaken it for a forum bot arena. It's certainly different from most of the playground, there's a suspicious like of theoretical optimisation.

So the real question the playground should be answering is, is there some way to add railroading to my build in order to end up with a stronger character? Will going off the rails increase my ability to solve problems?

Tinkerer
2017-09-13, 01:17 PM
Wait, this is a thread where people actually reply? I'd mistaken it for a forum bot arena. It's certainly different from most of the playground, there's a suspicious like of theoretical optimisation.

So the real question the playground should be answering is, is there some way to add railroading to my build in order to end up with a stronger character? Will going off the rails increase my ability to solve problems?

Anonymous I come from Palladium. Proper railroading can kill an Eldar God.

(For those of you who don't get the joke in Palladium a runaway train inflicts more damage than a nuklear warhead)

EDIT: Typo accidental but I do enjoy Brian Clevinger so I'm leaving it.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 01:22 PM
I do concur which is why I've pretty much disengaged. I may disagree with almost everything which DU says on this page however that is no reason that a forum poster shouldn't be able to get the answer to their question. I will say however that DUs argument style is quite perturbing, mainly insisting that players are horrible petulant snot nosed little children combined with raising entire armies of strawmen whenever presented with a counter argument. Not to mention saying that saying that those who don't subscribe to their way of thinking are roll-players who only want teh combatz.

I would certainly agree that his style (in forum posting) leaves a lot to be desired. I'm fairly sure though, from reading through his posts that his style in gaming is not nearly as extreme as his posting style would suggest. I suspect strongly that he is just not able to formulate good argumentation for his points, hence the armies of strawman and poor response to counter-arguments.


I
I think that the other posters raised up a number of the issues inherent in the heist plan, namely that there are a number of ways that it could be addressed. I do think that any GM who just says to any of the alternate ways "No that won't work" isn't very creative and is being a touch jerky. Although I do have to agree with DU that forcing buy in on every adventure is definitely immersion breaking and not to be confused with buy in on campaign which I view as mandatory. But that doesn't change the fact that saying "the only way to get this item out of the bank is through a bank heist" isn't realistic, is fairly immersion breaking, and appears to be an example of railroading.

True, but there are DMs like that. And if they have sufficient good qualities to make it fun to play with them, I wouldn't mind that too terrible much. Obviously there are those that would, but for me that isn't that big a deal. I go to plenty of games where it's a combat simulator and I just go to play combat and get awesome combat moments, there are games where it's the DM's novel, and if that novel is good (or amusingly bad), I can tolerate that.


At this point, you're doing the equivalent of walking into a room, seeing a lot of horsecrap, and blaming the people trying to clean it up instead of the horse it all actually came from.

No, this would be like coming into a room with horsecrap and yelling at people who were tracking it around and spreading it so that it wasn't just in a small area but rather spread all around the room. You're only cleaning it up if he backs down and agrees, since he doesn't, and he continues to respond, then you're spreading it around, not cleaning it up. You're not solving a problem you're exacerbating it, and that's pretty obvious.



We literally cannot have a discussion about railroading without said poster crapping it up with his self-serving, self-aggrandizing, bloviating, argument-by-definition nonsense. This is not a matter of interpretation, or of how one person sees it versus how another person see sit, or "that's just your opinion, man".

Yes, and if you let that one post go, without jumping back to the same argument as before, it'd be just one post. And frankly it is "just your opinion, man"



If someone was constantly telling people "you can run your car on melted butter" in an automotive discussion forum, would you expect the rest of the posters to just roll their eyes and ignore it, while new readers came in and read it and think "hey, that's a great idea, I'll try putting melted butter in my gas tank instead of gasoline next time".

But we're just talking about slightly more railroading and a more authoritarian approach. That's not melted butter in a gas tank, it's a style argument. That's like you arguing against muscle cars on a car forum because they have many negative qualities. Which is arguably true, but it's still a matter of opinion rather than an objective fact no matter how many times you declare it to be so.



Said poster's comments and advice on GMing are literally bad for gaming, and will absolutely result in bad games and the loss of gamers. His statements on what makes for a good game and power dynamics at the table and the "correct" GM-player relationship are so awful that I have to remind myself that it's not a parody. It's Poe's Law in action.

Bad for gaming in your most not humble opinion. I've stated that I've played games as he's described running them, and not minded it. Just because you wouldn't enjoy something doesn't mean that what he's describing is awful. No matter how poor he is at actually describing things or how aggrandizing he is.

Also I'm glad that you are an authority on what is "good gaming" and what is "bad gaming" I thought that had to do with whether the participants were having fun, but I guess Max_Killjoy has the objective truth in what is good and what is bad for gaming for all gamers. That's amazing, I should definitely just do whatever it is you say for all my games.

Friv
2017-09-13, 01:33 PM
Well an attempt to say that his style is right and proper, which is of course a thing we all think about our own respective styles. I think maybe if people were less douchy about telling him that his style is badwrongfun, we'd have a lot less threads that were instantly derailed to the point of absolute uselessness. And frankly here we're seeing a level of douchiness in response to him that approaches what I've not seen here since JediPotter, literally any thread where that particular posts becomes immediately useless because of a handful of posters who are convinced that by slamming his arguments they will somehow convince him that his style of DMing is wrong.

That seems to me like not only a waste of time, but a horribly counterproductive exercise, no?

I mean, it definitely is. My life has gotten a lot better since I've stopped trying to engage with him, and started just talking around him and presenting counter-arguments as if he isn't there (and occasionally posting memes at him). But he does have a knack for getting under people's skins that I haven't seen in a while.


I'm not so sure that GMing practices can be abusive. Unless Darth Ultron is forcing people to play in his games. It's not very likely that he's being "abusive", maybe obtuse, maybe he doesn't have the best strategy. But maybe his players like that game. And frankly you have no way of knowing that. But to conflate a DMing style you don't agree with as being abusive that's absurd, and does a disservice to actual abusive relationships.

To be fair, we're talking about a guy who has repeatedly bragged about leaving players in tears, and driving players who follow different styles than him out of gaming entirely. He then follows up, invariably, by complaints about how awful his players (and by extension all players) are. So I'm willing to say that even if he has a style that some people like, he's garbage at implementing it.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 01:33 PM
Bad for gaming in your most not humble opinion.


No, just plain bad for gaming, end of story. He's the sort of GM who poisons the well.




I've stated that I've played games as he's described running them, and not minded it.


I frankly doubt you have. Try going through his posting history in detail, and really looking at how he says he treats his players, and the things he says about his players, and really all players.




Just because you wouldn't enjoy something doesn't mean that what he's describing is awful. No matter how poor he is at actually describing things or how aggrandizing he is.

Also I'm glad that you are an authority on what is "good gaming" and what is "bad gaming" I thought that had to do with whether the participants were having fun, but I guess Max_Killjoy has the objective truth in what is good and what is bad for gaming for all gamers. That's amazing, I should definitely just do whatever it is you say for all my games.


Strawman much?




I mean, it definitely is. My life has gotten a lot better since I've stopped trying to engage with him, and started just talking around him and presenting counter-arguments as if he isn't there (and occasionally posting memes at him). But he does have a knack for getting under people's skins that I haven't seen in a while.


It's the constant refusal to respond to what other people have actually said, and the raw self-righteousness with which he presents disrespectful toxicity as the proper approach to gaming.




To be fair, we're talking about a guy who has repeatedly bragged about leaving players in tears, and driving players who follow different styles than him out of gaming entirely. He then follows up, invariably, by complaints about how awful his players (and by extension all players) are. So I'm willing to say that even if he has a style that some people like, he's garbage at implementing it.


Exactly -- and I'm starting to wonder how someone (not you Friv) who's been here even longer than I have, could have just totally missed the long history said poster has of saying those things.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 01:35 PM
To be fair, we're talking about a guy who has repeatedly bragged about leaving players in tears, and driving players who follow different styles than him out of gaming entirely. He then follows up, invariably, by complaints about how awful his players (and by extension all players) are. So I'm willing to say that even if he has a style that some people like, he's garbage at implementing it.

To be unfair, Gygax often talked about how he "beat" his players or thwarted their designs. He's considered pretty influential on gaming. So it's a different more competitive style. The same way that a boxer might talk about how he made his opponents leave in tears, or a wargamer. That's what the closer point of comparison would be. So that's not necessarily a representation of abuse, but I suspect a different style of gaming.

Also that sounds pretty hyperbolic to me. Like the kind of things that a wargamer would brag about with no basis in actual fact.


No, just plain bad for gaming, end of story. He's the sort of GM who poisons the well.

Only in your most esteemed opinion. I'm sorry that I contradicted your opinion. It turns out those aren't facts. Restating them doesn't make them become any more factual.



I frankly doubt you have. Try going through his posting history in detail, and really looking at how he says he treats his players, and the things he says about his players, and really all players.

I certainly have, are you claiming that I'm lying. And I've been here lurking a lot longer than you have. I've seen most of his posting history and other like him from before. He's got a different style, and you disapprove. But I've played with that and not minded it.



Strawman much?

Well you're the one implying that you objectively know what is best for gaming. That's not really a straw man that's a corner you've painted yourself into.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 01:53 PM
I certainly have, are you claiming that I'm lying. And I've been here lurking a lot longer than you have. I've seen most of his posting history and other like him from before. He's got a different style, and you disapprove. But I've played with that and not minded it.


No, I'm telling you that I doubt you've ever been in and enjoyed a game like said poster actually describes running.

You've quite possibly been in and enjoyed many games that are like your very generous and forgiving interpretation of how he describes running his games.




Well you're the one implying that you objectively know what is best for gaming. That's not really a straw man that's a corner you've painted yourself into.


No, I'm not. Not at all.

"This person is telling you to eat poisonous food" is not a claim that one's tastes in food are objectively the best for everyone. Food that will make people sick, or kill them, is not a matter of a "different style", or "opinion".

There's a vast range of gaming that's not a toxic mess of GM self-aggrandizement. Pointing out a specific GM for being -- BY HIS OWN WORDS OVER MULTIPLE YEARS -- toxic and self-aggrandizing, and actively hostile and openly disdainful and disrespectful towards players, is not a claim to know what's best for all gamers and all gaming.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:04 PM
No, I'm telling you that I doubt you've ever been in and enjoyed a game like said poster actually describes running.

You've quite possibly been in and enjoyed many games that are like your very generous and forgiving interpretation of how he describes running his games.

So I'm an idiot or I'm a liar. I'd like to know which you think I am. Go into detail, am I an idiot or am I liar?

I've played games where the DM was antagonistic, where the DM insulted people, where the DM bragged about driving people off who weren't teh hardc0rz enough to handle his games. And I enjoyed them, but I like that kind of competitive atmosphere, I always have. It's definitely not for everybody, but it's also not "game poison that is good for nobody".




No, I'm not. Not at all.

"This person is telling you to eat poisonous food" is not a claim that one's tastes in food are objectively the best for everyone. Food that will make people sick, or kill them, is not a matter of a "different style", or "opinion".

There's a vast range of gaming that's not a toxic mess of GM self-aggrandizement. Pointing out a specific GM for being -- BY HIS OWN WORDS OVER MULTIPLE YEARS -- toxic and self-aggrandizing, and actively hostile and openly disdainful and disrespectful towards players, is not a claim to know what's best for all gamers and all gaming.

It's a claim that style is not good for gaming. And I'm saying that there are serious gamers who enjoy a hostile atmosphere like that. You don't get to **** on their parade because you don't enjoy that. Hell when I was 15 or 16 that would have been my preferred gaming style, now I've mellowed out and I enjoy a much wider range of things. But that was the style that got me into gaming, and the reason I stuck with it. Ergo your whole claim is a pile of crap.

And this isn't going to "make people sick" it won't fricking kill anybody. It's just a different way to play a game. It's like the nerdy guys claiming that the way that jocks play football is toxic because they talk crap during the game, without actually understanding that culture or what surrounds it.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 02:10 PM
So I'm an idiot or I'm a liar. I'd like to know which you think I am. Go into detail, am I an idiot or am I liar?

I've played games where the DM was antagonistic, where the DM insulted people, where the DM bragged about driving people off who weren't teh hardc0rz enough to handle his games. And I enjoyed them, but I like that kind of competitive atmosphere, I always have. It's definitely not for everybody, but it's also not "game poison that is good for nobody".


Based on that description, I think you're probably right up said poster's alley, and it's a good thing we'll never be in a game together.

But the good news is, I don't think you're an idiot or a liar... and we've figured out why you don't object to his toxicity.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:16 PM
Based on that description, I think you're probably right up said poster's alley, and it's a good thing we'll never be in a game together.

Well 15-16 year old me was definitely most into that kind of game. I've mellowed as I've gotten older though, I like a lot of different styles of game now. I'd bet I could even run a game to your liking. Although 15-16 year old me probably couldn't have. But I like how you've switched to personally insulting me based on the kind of games I've enjoyed as a player because that disproves your argument.

Everybody likes different games, I used to like that kind of douchey teenager game where the DM is bad guy and you guys are trying to pull one over on him, because every story he has where he drives somebody off in tears, you have a story where you pull something off that works out for your character. Or where you get something awesome. Or roll really well. In a game like that you can really enjoy even the small victories.

Now I like a lot of gaming styles and DMing styles, so I think you'd be surprised about my ability to run games that you would enjoy. I wouldn't sell me short, just because of the styles of game I used to enjoy.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 02:20 PM
Well 15-16 year old me was definitely most into that kind of game. I've mellowed as I've gotten older though, I like a lot of different styles of game now. I'd bet I could even run a game to your liking. Although 15-16 year old me probably couldn't have. But I like how you've switched to personally insulting me based on the kind of games I've enjoyed as a player because that disproves your argument.



It doesn't disprove my argument, it just clarifies which side of the argument you're on, and why you're defending a self-described bully.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-13, 02:22 PM
Yes, but your attempts to "discredit" him basically destroys all value to any thread he posts in. Instead of having one post that's bad advice, there's just pages and pages of argument about that one poorly made post. I'm fairly sure that new GMs are probably bright enough to sort out what advice is actually useful to them from what is not and if they aren't they aren't going to be saved by any advice at all.

To say nothing is effectively the same as agreeing. Which I don't.

And I'm fairly certain DU does not need any sort of provoking to say things that are indicative that he thinks all players are idiots, jerks, or idiotjerks waiting for the right moment to ruin everything. He has literally made his first statement in threads outlining almost exactly that. To say he's not exactly a bastion of having respect for your fellow players doesn't require me to stretch or provoke at all. Dude offers it up in his opening statements.

Edit now that I'm caught up:

I'm 100% certain as someone working in the psych field that there is a difference between friendly insults between competitors, and abusive word vomit.
Honestly, anyone who enjoys actively being insulted with intent to demean and attack for real with no safeword available should have my job. I get that every single day from these patients. That someone would subject themselves to the treatment I get daily for fun strikes me as being highly, HIGHLY abnormal. I don't even know BDSM enthusiasts into this kind of thing.

In short, I've seen sufficient of DU's agenda and asserted points to know that it is not worth giving a benefit of the doubt. Just take at face value.

I'm also interested that you're taking offense at the implication that you are either a liar or an idiot, when DU uses EXACTLY THAT IMPLICATION to make his points. If DU is defensible, we shouldn't be offended by his tactics.

I say nothing here of his person, but his behaviors here have a long history of being not acceptable in their lack of basic respect for other human beings. To the degree that starts up, I will do unto others as they do unto the posters. Give no respect, receive none. Eventually, maybe, being made to feel like an idiot and a liar will clue him in that making others feel that way is BS. Or maybe it will just steer him clear of threads I post in. I'm ok with either.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:25 PM
It doesn't disprove my argument, it just clarifies which side of the argument you're on, and why you're defending a self-described bully.

Your argument is that he would push people out of gaming who started with his games. I pointed out that I started with that kind of game. A wishy-washy FATE or FUDGE type game would turned 16-year old me off. I would have not enjoyed that and would have been pushed away by that style of gaming. I think that any style of gaming has a chance to drive players off, depending on their own tastes. Now that I'm older I've learned to enjoy a wider breadth of styles.

So your argument is wrong. Your assertion that his way to enjoy the game is wrong, is not founded. You dislike that style of game, but some people don't. So for that class of people they'd be fine with it. You're attacking a culture with which you are unfamiliar, to defend people who are willingly participating in that culture, I'm not sure that you have any grounds to do any of that.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:27 PM
To say nothing is effectively the same as agreeing. Which I don't.

Ummm... no it isn't. That isn't how that works. At all. I can disagree with something without loudly voicing my opinion. That's pretty common knowledge.



And I'm fairly certain DU does not need any sort of provoking to say things that are indicative that he thinks all players are idiots, jerks, or idiotjerks waiting for the right moment to ruin everything. He has literally made his first statement in threads outlining almost exactly that. To say he's not exactly a bastion of having respect for your fellow players doesn't require me to stretch or provoke at all. Dude offers it up in his opening statements.

And again that's a part of a particular gaming culture that DarthUltron is part of, and that I have been a part of. Talking crap about people is part of a very specific kind of culture. I wouldn't argue that DU is a bastion of having respect for fellow players. He's pretty intolerant of styles not his own as well. But I would argue that your sides argument's against are ineffectual and are largely based on a failure to understand the style of gaming that he partakes in. Which is not worth derailing every thread that has to do with a particularly common gaming topic over.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-13, 02:38 PM
If someone was constantly telling people "you can run your car on melted butter" in an automotive discussion forum, would you expect the rest of the posters to just roll their eyes and ignore it, while new readers came in and read it and thought "hey, that's a great idea, I'll try putting melted butter in my gas tank instead of gasoline next time".

1) I would expect everyone to roll their eyes and ignore him.
2) I have see no evidence of any new poster thinking "hey, that's a great idea" in response to Darth Ultron, for the same reason I've never seen anyone having that response to "you can run your car on melterd butter". The reason for that being that the ideas presented are self-evidently nonsense.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 02:40 PM
Your argument is that he would push people out of gaming who started with his games. I pointed out that I started with that kind of game. A wishy-washy FATE or FUDGE type game would turned 16-year old me off. I would have not enjoyed that and would have been pushed away by that style of gaming. I think that any style of gaming has a chance to drive players off, depending on their own tastes. Now that I'm older I've learned to enjoy a wider breadth of styles.

So your argument is wrong. Your assertion that his way to enjoy the game is wrong, is not founded. You dislike that style of game, but some people don't. So for that class of people they'd be fine with it. You're attacking a culture with which you are unfamiliar, to defend people who are willingly participating in that culture, I'm not sure that you have any grounds to do any of that.


If someone enjoys being belittled, insulted, talked down to, and dealing with an openly hostile and disrespectful GM who regards all players as either game-destroying jerkidiots or game-destroying jerkidiots who haven't revealed themselves yet... if someone enjoys being the puncher or the punchee in a game of mutual bullying and harassment... that's not really a counter-point to my argument that said GM is bad for gaming.

It's evidence that there are more gamers out there who are bad for gaming that maybe we realized.




And again that's a part of a particular gaming culture that DarthUltron is part of, and that I have been a part of. Talking crap about people is part of a very specific kind of culture. I wouldn't argue that DU is a bastion of having respect for fellow players. He's pretty intolerant of styles not his own as well. But I would argue that your sides argument's against are ineffectual and are largely based on a failure to understand the style of gaming that he partakes in. Which is not worth derailing every thread that has to do with a particularly common gaming topic over.


"Abusive, bullying, disrespectful jerks who take pleasure in the suffering of others" is not a culture or gaming style.

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:43 PM
"Abusive, bullying, disrespectful jerks who take pleasure in the suffering of others" is not a culture or gaming style.

But it is... I mean have you ever been around people smack talking in a basketball game? It's certainly cultural there, and in these kind of games it's the same cultural idea. It's talking smack. And it's fine to do that. In some gaming circles you talk like that to let people know vicious and hardcorez your game is, and then other gamers talk about having survived your games as a player as a badge of honor. Again it's a culture you don't understand, but that doesn't make it not a culture or a style.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-13, 02:46 PM
Ummm... no it isn't. That isn't how that works. At all. I can disagree with something without loudly voicing my opinion. That's pretty common knowledge.

Where did "loudly" come into the picture? My earliest responses to DU in other threads were as measured as was deserved and based on my belief that human beings deserve respect until proven otherwise, and sometimes even then.

Since then, I've solved this particular puzzle and so I don't bother playing the same game.



And again that's a part of a particular gaming culture that DarthUltron is part of, and that I have been a part of. Talking crap about people is part of a very specific kind of culture.
Smack talk comes from a position of mutual respect, where a crossed line means backing up and apologizing. This is the kind of thing normal teenagers do.
Bragging about making someone cry is the kind of thing the bullies on my unit do.
Calling people idiots and assuming they have no capacity for agency or wise decisionmaking with no element or inkling of respect is not smacktalk.

I reject this "it's just smacktalk" smoke and mirrors out of hand.


I wouldn't argue that DU is a bastion of having respect for fellow players. He's pretty intolerant of styles not his own as well. But I would argue that your sides argument's against are ineffectual and are largely based on a failure to understand the style of gaming that he partakes in. Which is not worth derailing every thread that has to do with a particularly common gaming topic over.
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I have to disagree. I've been part of smacktalking, comptetitive groups, too.

That ain't what DU is talking about.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 02:49 PM
But it is... I mean have you ever been around people smack talking in a basketball game? It's certainly cultural there, and in these kind of games it's the same cultural idea. It's talking smack. And it's fine to do that. In some gaming circles you talk like that to let people know vicious and hardcorez your game is, and then other gamers talk about having survived your games as a player as a badge of honor. Again it's a culture you don't understand, but that doesn't make it not a culture or a style.

Sounds like an utterly broken and destitute "culture".

AMFV
2017-09-13, 02:53 PM
Where did "loudly" come into the picture? My earliest responses to DU in other threads were as measured as was deserved and based on my belief that human beings deserve respect until proven otherwise, and sometimes even then.

Since then, I've solved this particular puzzle and so I don't bother playing the same game.

Well it's become loud in recent times, I'm not sure if it was you, but at least one poster was bragging about repeatedly trolling DU posts, and I'm fairly sure that was you. In fact if you'll check post #62 you'll see that it was you, and that you admitted to following him to other threads to continue the same stupid argument that you'd been having elsewhere. As a matter of fact that is exactly the post that inspired me to comment on this bullcrap.


Smack talk comes from a position of mutual respect, where a crossed line means backing up and apologizing. This is the kind of thing normal teenagers do.
Bragging about making someone cry is the kind of thing the bullies on my unit do.
Calling people idiots and assuming they have no capacity for agency or wise decisionmaking with no element or inkling of respect is not smacktalk.


You aren't familiar with smack talk like I've seen then. You've been involved in smack talk lite. Like not the same kind of stuff I've seen. I have an advantage, I'm blue collar, I've worked construction (and still work in construction) and I've been in the military. I've definitely seen pretty severe giving somebody **** and then have it be just that.



I reject this "it's just smacktalk" smoke and mirrors out of hand.


Based on your interpretation of my experiences, that seems not exactlyt



I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I have to disagree. I've been part of smacktalking, comptetitive groups, too.

That ain't what DU is talking about.

I'm pretty sure it is, and you haven't been a part of the kind of group I'm describing. You've been a part of something that's similar but much less, and so you aren't qualified to comment, only that you yourself don't understand what's going on and think because you've had similar experiences you can dictate stuff to others.


Sounds like an utterly broken and destitute "culture".

Not in my experience, I've had the same experience with friendships and what-not in that culture as in others. The same kinds of personal experiences, just a different way of interacting, if you haven't been a part of it, you can't understand it, that's pretty much how it is.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-13, 03:13 PM
Not in my experience, I've had the same experience with friendships and what-not in that culture as in others. The same kinds of personal experiences, just a different way of interacting, if you haven't been a part of it, you can't understand it, that's pretty much how it is.


There's nothing to understand.

People treating each other like garbage is what it is.

Friv
2017-09-13, 03:37 PM
We literally cannot have a discussion about railroading without said poster crapping it up with his self-serving, self-aggrandizing, bloviating, argument-by-definition nonsense. This is not a matter of interpretation, or of how one person sees it versus how another person see sit, or "that's just your opinion, man".

You don't have to listen to him, though. When Darth Ultron posts a thing, just post "Everything Darth Ultron says is wrong", and then ignore the rest of his posts in the thread. If everyone does that, his first post in each thread will be met with an appropriate degree of scorn, and confused onlookers encountering this for the first time can get a feel for how accurate his claims are without anyone wasting time debating him.

(I mean, read the post first, because he's only wrong about 90% of the time, and you don't want to post that everything he says is wrong the other 10% of the time.)

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-13, 03:52 PM
Well it's become loud in recent times, I'm not sure if it was you, but at least one poster was bragging about repeatedly trolling DU posts, and I'm fairly sure that was you. In fact if you'll check post #62 you'll see that it was you, and that you admitted to following him to other threads to continue the same stupid argument that you'd been having elsewhere. As a matter of fact that is exactly the post that inspired me to comment on this bullcrap.
"Thou shalt not do unto others as they have done unto you."
Shove off. If you're fine with throwing shade, that shouldn't bother you one iota. I'm literally doing the thing you're telling us is ok, but you've got your panties in a bunch about it.

Does not compute.



You aren't familiar with smack talk like I've seen then. You've been involved in smack talk lite. Like not the same kind of stuff I've seen. I have an advantage, I'm blue collar, I've worked construction (and still work in construction) and I've been in the military. I've definitely seen pretty severe giving somebody **** and then have it be just that.

That you went severe into it and were still friends is great. Being bluecollar or in the military sadly does not give you a monopoly on high-filth smack talk. And since I've worked in several blue collar jobs across multiple state lines, and have two construction workers in my family, one former military family member, and am close friends with an actual sailor, I'm rejecting this attempt to pull rank. It can shove off.
There's a difference between throwing shade/roasting, and rejecting someone's basic humanity.



Based on your interpretation of my experiences, that seems not exactlyt




I'm pretty sure it is, and you haven't been a part of the kind of group I'm describing.
I've been in the kind of group where being flagrantly racist to one another was in the clear, as well as other crap that would get me labelled a bigot in literally any other social situation. And we STILL at least acknowledged one another's basic humanity.



You've been a part of something that's similar but much less, and so you aren't qualified to comment
Shove off.



, only that you yourself don't understand what's going on and think because you've had similar experiences you can dictate stuff to others.

Acknowledging the line between throwing shade and being a ridiculous tool and pointing out when it is crossed is apparently not cool anymore.
"Thou shalt not point out people being a-holes," apparently.



Not in my experience, I've had the same experience with friendships and what-not in that culture as in others. The same kinds of personal experiences, just a different way of interacting, if you haven't been a part of it, you can't understand it, that's pretty much how it is.
Once again, shove off with this idiotic attempt to pull rank.
I reject it out of hand for the "Oh, you had to have been there" Big Fish Story it is.

I think this bait is safe to ignore, now.

Segev
2017-09-14, 12:19 AM
raising entire armies of strawmen How do straw men compare with skeletons and zombies, in terms of combat effectiveness? Is there a HD limit to control them, or are they more expensive and built as constructs?


So the real question the playground should be answering is, is there some way to add railroading to my build in order to end up with a stronger character? Will going off the rails increase my ability to solve problems?
Knowing what the rails are and deliberately playing to them will always make your character more powerful, as long as the rails call for you to fill a role of one of the heroes. You can bend any obstacle to your railroad-driven path to your whim as long as you use the bending of it to serve the job of staying on-rails.

Though you're out of luck if it's something like the Witchblade Trilogy, as written for Iron Kingdoms; those rails never let you actually touch the plot, and give you almost as much illusion of impact as a roller coaster with a narrative about how you're involved (when you know you really are just a spectator). Only you can FAIL at various parts of it and thus get kicked off the ride.

AMFV
2017-09-14, 01:01 AM
"Thou shalt not do unto others as they have done unto you."
Shove off. If you're fine with throwing shade, that shouldn't bother you one iota. I'm literally doing the thing you're telling us is ok, but you've got your panties in a bunch about it.

Does not compute.

No you aren't. You're being an ass of a different sort and then assuming that because I would be an ass in a gaming situation of a certain type that I should be okay with that, worst of all you're being a disruptive ass to potentially useful threads. So no, not the same at all, and you shouldn't even try to make the comparison.




That you went severe into it and were still friends is great. Being bluecollar or in the military sadly does not give you a monopoly on high-filth smack talk. And since I've worked in several blue collar jobs across multiple state lines, and have two construction workers in my family, one former military family member, and am close friends with an actual sailor, I'm rejecting this attempt to pull rank. It can shove off.
There's a difference between throwing shade/roasting, and rejecting someone's basic humanity.

I don't think DU has "rejected his fellow player's basic humanity". here's where you can shove off. You clearly haven't been around the same kind of stuff as I have. I'm sorry it's very clear from your manner of speech and from the quick offense your taking at being called out on that sort of thing. I don't think you have any additional room to talk here.



I've been in the kind of group where being flagrantly racist to one another was in the clear, as well as other crap that would get me labelled a bigot in literally any other social situation. And we STILL at least acknowledged one another's basic humanity.

Good for you, that still doesn't mean you've been in groups that were as heavy on the smack talk as I have. Apparently. And you're inventing an arbitrary line with no strong definitions. When does it go past smack talk and to "rejecting somebody's basic humanity" nobody knows but you, you're the drawer of the line as to what's appropriate.



Shove off.

Sorry, kid, go **** yourself. Grow up, realize that not everybody has the same the standards that you do, and you don't get to enforce standards on groups of which you are not a part. You tell them you don't approve by not involving yourself with them. Going on a public witchhunt for another poster, where you're following them from thread to thread, derailing multiple threads and admitting to that as though that's something you're proud of. Yeah **** off, you have no moral high ground here.



Acknowledging the line between throwing shade and being a ridiculous tool and pointing out when it is crossed is apparently not cool anymore.
"Thou shalt not point out people being a-holes," apparently.

Yep, cause you don't own that line, every group gets to decide where it is for themselves. And going thread to thread harassing a poster has never been cool. Regardless of what you felt about how they said, bringing up stuff they said in previous threads, yeah, not cool. And I'm sorry but I'm calling you out on it, you're being far more disruptive to the forum and far less pleasant than DU being an arrogant ass ever has been.



Once again, shove off with this idiotic attempt to pull rank.
I reject it out of hand for the "Oh, you had to have been there" Big Fish Story it is.

You reject it out of hand?!? Well I reject your claim that you have been in the kind of group you describe. I reject the idea that you understand what that kind of group involves or the people involved in it. And again, you can go **** yourself. Seriously, like you don't get to claim my experiences are invalid when they would conveniently disprove your point, not at all.

Lacco
2017-09-14, 06:01 AM
How do straw men compare with skeletons and zombies, in terms of combat effectiveness? Is there a HD limit to control them, or are they more expensive and built as constructs?

They do get this +5 to Intimidation against Crows... however, they perform very badly against fire-based opponents.

Good thing is, that if you get fire-resistant units, you can remove the penalty for fighting in darkness if you set them on fire!

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-14, 06:17 AM
You reject it out of hand?!? Well I reject your claim that you have been in the kind of group you describe. I reject the idea that you understand what that kind of group involves or the people involved in it. And again, you can go **** yourself. Seriously, like you don't get to claim my experiences are invalid when they would conveniently disprove your point, not at all.


The deep irony of that entire paragraph needs to be captured for posterity.

"You don't get to tell me my experiences are invalid, your experiences are clearly not valid for doing so."


Meanwhile, I don't care about this supposed "culture". If this "culture" finds treating people like garbage "good fun", then said "culture" is just part of the problem. See also, "hazing"... many other examples where "culture" is used as an excuse for people treating each other like garbage ("Oh that's part of their culture we can't question it") would break the forum rules, but several should be immediately obvious.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-14, 06:27 AM
No you aren't. You're being an ass of a different sort and then assuming that because I would be an ass in a gaming situation of a certain type that I should be okay with that, worst of all you're being a disruptive ass to potentially useful threads. So no, not the same at all, and you shouldn't even try to make the comparison.

And yet I did. And will.
While you derail the thread over this stink, and go on to get mad and start flinging down below.
I think I'm A-OK on the ass front.



I don't think DU has "rejected his fellow player's basic humanity". here's where you can shove off. You clearly haven't been around the same kind of stuff as I have. I'm sorry it's very clear from your manner of speech and from the quick offense your taking at being called out on that sort of thing. I don't think you have any additional room to talk here.

Describing a difference and taking offense are two different things. :D



Good for you, that still doesn't mean you've been in groups that were as heavy on the smack talk as I have. Apparently. And you're inventing an arbitrary line with no strong definitions. When does it go past smack talk and to "rejecting somebody's basic humanity" nobody knows but you, you're the drawer of the line as to what's appropriate.

My baseline tends to fall here:
Most people will be absolute savages to their friends in their kind of context. You can tell it's a friend because they don't sling that same crap all over town.
I will tell most of my friends they are worthless idiots of some description or another to their face and it's fine.
I don't go onto public forums and complain about my friends being worthless idiots, and because MY friends are worthless idiots, literally everyone's friends are worthless idiots.
The 2nd is not cool on several levels, whereas the first is only not cool if that particular friend has legit psych issues or depression or something. (Been down that road, too. Work in it.) The 2nd is also actively malicious, where the first is not.

Then again your friends were SUPER EDGY so like, basic social skills somehow don't apply?



Sorry, kid, go **** yourself.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/666/360/9ba.jpg

Now he's swearing and calling people "kid" to prove how mature he is.
2/10



Grow up, realize that not everybody has the same the standards that you do, and you don't get to enforce standards on groups of which you are not a part. You tell them you don't approve by not involving yourself with them. Going on a public witchhunt for another poster, where you're following them from thread to thread, derailing multiple threads and admitting to that as though that's something you're proud of. Yeah **** off, you have no moral high ground here.

You do realize it is now you who is derailing the thread? DU backed out a while back and the only stink around here is you raising a stink about people raising a stink.
You have literally become the problem you're complaining about.
Allow me a moment to chuckle.

Referencing a thread discussion that happened the day before about exactly the same topic is not exactly >FORBIDDEN!< here.



Yep, cause you don't own that line, every group gets to decide where it is for themselves. And going thread to thread harassing a poster has never been cool. Regardless of what you felt about how they said, bringing up stuff they said in previous threads, yeah, not cool. And I'm sorry but I'm calling you out on it, you're being far more disruptive to the forum and far less pleasant than DU being an arrogant ass ever has been.

Mk.
And the stink you're currently derailing the thread with is.....? Noble? Because it's YOUR idea?
Or do you just not like it when someone refuses your attempt to arbitrarily reject them?



You reject it out of hand?!? Well I reject your claim that you have been in the kind of group you describe. I reject the idea that you understand what that kind of group involves or the people involved in it. And again, you can go **** yourself. Seriously, like you don't get to claim my experiences are invalid when they would conveniently disprove your point, not at all.
Except:
1. They don't disprove any point, they're a sad attempt to disclude anyone who doesn't meet an arbitrary standard from participating, which isn't an argument.

2. It complicitly approves of hauling a group's BS spreading into another medium with no context and applying said BS to everyone else (what DU does), which is not wanted, asked for, or even cool, bruh.

3. You're now resorting to edgy swearing to prove how grownup you are, which is a bad strategy against a guy who works with Adolescent Psych patients all day (you're really not shocking me or hurting my feelings.)

weckar
2017-09-14, 07:41 AM
It is simply not railroading if the players are helping to lay the tracks.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-14, 07:45 AM
I mean, it definitely is. My life has gotten a lot better since I've stopped trying to engage with him, and started just talking around him and presenting counter-arguments as if he isn't there (and occasionally posting memes at him). But he does have a knack for getting under people's skins that I haven't seen in a while.

My knack is not only a beautiful gift from the Great Architect, but it is also a finely tuned ability fuels by my endless passion and sharp mind.



To be fair, we're talking about a guy who has repeatedly bragged about leaving players in tears, and driving players who follow different styles than him out of gaming entirely. He then follows up, invariably, by complaints about how awful his players (and by extension all players) are. So I'm willing to say that even if he has a style that some people like, he's garbage at implementing it.

People that cry, and I do really mean cry, over something that happens in a game have lots and lots of problems. And it is only worse when it is there fault and don't ''get'' why did there character die after touching the Orb of Death after being told three (or twelve) times ''don't touch the Orb of Death''.

I do ''drive away'' people that have different styles then mine, but how is this bad again? I like a game that is XYZ. Period. If you like PTQ type games, there is really no point in us gaming together.

And we get ''extension'' that when I say ''some players'' people ''read that'' as all players? So if I type ''all players'' I wonder what that means? I wish I had the ''other'' translation book other people are using(not that I'd follow it, but I'd just want to see it).


No, I'm telling you that I doubt you've ever been in and enjoyed a game like said poster actually describes running.

You've quite possibly been in and enjoyed many games that are like your very generous and forgiving interpretation of how he describes running his games.

Well, I'm very generous in game play (the character has to get that sword +5 before they can loose it. Though, this is logical based sequence of events or a ''plot'', so not everyone does the game play this way. )

But it is fair to say I'm not very forgiving, in the sense I'm sure your using the word. For example I allow no smoking in my house, so if I catch you sneaking a smoke in my house(say in my daughter's bedroom) I'm going to have rocks fall on your character and tell you to leave my house. I won't care that you ''just had to'' have a smoke and you did not want to go all the way outside because it was ''cold''. But I know that a lot of people are ''forgiving'' in the ''other way'' and will basically let anyone get away with anything any time for any reason and all ways forgive them no matter what. So,no, I'm not like that.



"This person is telling you to eat poisonous food" is not a claim that one's tastes in food are objectively the best for everyone. Food that will make people sick, or kill them, is not a matter of a "different style", or "opinion".

This part is true as I (or, well mostly my wife) often make ''party trays'' full of fruits and vegetables and cheese (I do love cheese myself and buy only the real stuff) and a lot of gamers don't want to eat that ''poison healthy food'' and will run over to the Quick-E-Mart for junk food.



There's a vast range of gaming that's not a toxic mess of GM self-aggrandizement. Pointing out a specific GM for being -- BY HIS OWN WORDS OVER MULTIPLE YEARS -- toxic and self-aggrandizing, and actively hostile and openly disdainful and disrespectful towards players, is not a claim to know what's best for all gamers and all gaming.

Well, remember I'm only ''bad hard'' on the bad players, but I'm ''hard fun'' on the good players (I know it is hard to understand the difference between the two) .



And I'm fairly certain DU does not need any sort of provoking to say things that are indicative that he thinks all players are idiots, jerks, or idiotjerks waiting for the right moment to ruin everything. He has literally made his first statement in threads outlining almost exactly that. To say he's not exactly a bastion of having respect for your fellow players doesn't require me to stretch or provoke at all. Dude offers it up in his opening statements.

I all ways though that when I put words like ''some'' it meant ''not all'', guess that was not clear enough. Guess I have all most exactly said that, but I did not. Humm?



I'm 100% certain as someone working in the psych field that there is a difference between friendly insults between competitors, and abusive word vomit.
Honestly, anyone who enjoys actively being insulted with intent to demean and attack for real with no safeword available should have my job.


Some differences, yes. Safewords? Lol. I do offer people Safe Spaces: literally anywhere in the world they wish to go other then my house :)



In short, I've seen sufficient of DU's agenda and asserted points to know that it is not worth giving a benefit of the doubt. Just take at face value.

I can see that you have judged yourself to be the all knowing and always right judge of judges to make such a statement.




I'm also interested that you're taking offense at the implication that you are either a liar or an idiot, when DU uses EXACTLY THAT IMPLICATION to make his points. If DU is defensible, we shouldn't be offended by his tactics.

Well, as someone working in the psych field to another, you might want to stop and look at yourself. If you see statements as ''implications'' and see all ''implications'' only one way...well, this might be an indication of a mental problem. 12.7 Million adults suffer from treatable mental conditions, and get no treatment.



I say nothing here of his person, but his behaviors here have a long history of being not acceptable in their lack of basic respect for other human beings. To the degree that starts up, I will do unto others as they do unto the posters. Give no respect, receive none. Eventually, maybe, being made to feel like an idiot and a liar will clue him in that making others feel that way is BS. Or maybe it will just steer him clear of threads I post in. I'm ok with either.

Long history? Check my sign up date. Well, guess it depends on your definition of ''long''. I've been posting for more then a week if that is a ''long'' time to you.

I am all ways amused by the attitude ''if you don't bend over backwards to me First and All Ways then I won't be nice to you or respect you. Like such a person is just waiting to be offended (''they have been in the room 6.2 seconds and have not said ''hi' to me they must be Evil Incarnate!''). But with my psych field back ground, I at least, understand the behavior.


Your argument is that he would push people out of gaming who started with his games.


Sure, maybe? I don't really keep track of bad ex-players. They could have or might of have done anything.



And again that's a part of a particular gaming culture that DarthUltron is part of, and that I have been a part of. Talking crap about people is part of a very specific kind of culture. I wouldn't argue that DU is a bastion of having respect for fellow players. He's pretty intolerant of styles not his own as well. But I would argue that your sides argument's against are ineffectual and are largely based on a failure to understand the style of gaming that he partakes in. Which is not worth derailing every thread that has to do with a particularly common gaming topic over.

Yea, what he said. Except I don't talk (or ''type'') crap about people. And I might be part of a counter-culture.

Tinkerer
2017-09-14, 09:15 AM
How do straw men compare with skeletons and zombies, in terms of combat effectiveness? Is there a HD limit to control them, or are they more expensive and built as constructs?


They unfortunately do not compare favorably. In 3.5 they have 1HP and a -10 BAB. They literally exist solely as an attempt to make the person combating them look good. On the plus side due to this their effective HD is 0 so you can raise legions of them without running into issues about control. They usually require about 15 seconds to a minute to raise and there is a stigma around their construction but they are more common than one might think. Although with the proper feat selection you can attempt to shape them into more cunning and dangerous shapes their base stats always remain the same.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-14, 10:47 AM
I all ways though that when I put words like ''some'' it meant ''not all'', guess that was not clear enough. Guess I have all most exactly said that, but I did not. Humm?
Ah, allow me to amend:
The assertion has been, in the past, that 99% of players are idiotjerks. (Or close to.)
Sorry to overstep that 1%.



Some differences, yes. Safewords? Lol. I do offer people Safe Spaces: literally anywhere in the world they wish to go other then my house :)
The term Safeword comes from the BDSM lifestyle, and has no relation to the Safe Spaces thing.



I can see that you have judged yourself to be the all knowing and always right judge of judges to make such a statement.
reporting your personal policy:
Now requires omniscience.



Well, as someone working in the psych field to another, you might want to stop and look at yourself. If you see statements as ''implications'' and see all ''implications'' only one way...well, this might be an indication of a mental problem. 12.7 Million adults suffer from treatable mental conditions, and get no treatment.
Ah yes. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and loves bread, you're crazy if you call it a duck.



Long history? Check my sign up date. Well, guess it depends on your definition of ''long''. I've been posting for more then a week if that is a ''long'' time to you.
Nitpicking the use of the word "long."
Keep reaching and you might get to the same zipcode as a straw.



I am all ways amused by the attitude ''if you don't bend over backwards to me First and All Ways then I won't be nice to you or respect you
for fun and profit replace "me" with "my plot" and bathe in the irony.



. Like such a person is just waiting to be offended (''they have been in the room 6.2 seconds and have not said ''hi' to me they must be Evil Incarnate!''). But with my psych field back ground, I at least, understand the behavior.

See here the rare strawman/adhominem hybrid.
Definitely has a chance against Skeltons, but still very weak against PCs with access to the Detect BS skill.




Yea, what he said. Except I don't talk (or ''type'') crap about people. And I might be part of a counter-culture.
At least we can put the Smacktalk theorem to rest...

Friv
2017-09-14, 11:49 AM
Is it irony when a thread about railroading goes completely off the rails?

Thrudd
2017-09-14, 12:05 PM
Is it irony when a thread about railroading goes completely off the rails?

Don't try to railroad our thread! We are allowed to completely ignore the topic if we want to, that's poster agency!

Tinkerer
2017-09-14, 12:25 PM
Don't try to railroad our thread! We are allowed to completely ignore the topic if we want to, that's poster agency!

Sorry I wasn't paying attention, did somebody say agency poster???

https://cdn3.volusion.com/xmxml.hphyl/v/vspfiles/photos/P3768-2T.jpg?1425292216

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-14, 03:33 PM
Actual picture of the railroad:
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/685/548/a39.jpg

Remember, loyalists: only Chaos railroads. The Emperor runs sandboxes.

georgie_leech
2017-09-14, 09:36 PM
Sorry I wasn't paying attention, did somebody say agency poster???

https://cdn3.volusion.com/xmxml.hphyl/v/vspfiles/photos/P3768-2T.jpg?1425292216
Nah, I'm pretty sure it was Rail Agency.

http://www.eimrail.org/uploads/news/ERA.jpg

Darth Ultron
2017-09-15, 06:28 AM
Ah, allow me to amend:
The assertion has been, in the past, that 99% of players are idiotjerks. (Or close to.)
Sorry to overstep that 1%.

I have set the percentages at 75% and 25% myself, as I have said.



The term Safeword comes from the BDSM lifestyle, and has no relation to the Safe Spaces thing.

Not sure I know what that life style is.....



reporting your personal policy:
Now requires omniscience.

Well, maybe just ''amazing intelligent intuition and awarness''. Though I do subscribe and read Omni, and that is about science.



Ah yes. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and loves bread, you're crazy if you call it a duck.

Exactly! Like how your game has a plot, you demand it is not a plot, yet nearly everyone else will say ''well, that is a plot'', and you double down on ''it may look exactly like a plot, but it is not!"



Nitpicking the use of the word "long."
Keep reaching and you might get to the same zipcode as a straw.

I know like ''a week'' is a long time to some people, and most little kids and anyone under 25 or so (Remember the Southpark were Cartman could not wait three weeks for the Nentendo Wii to come out...lol). Myself, a ''long'' time is like 10+ years. I would not say ''I have owned a Iphone X for a long time''.


Don't try to railroad our thread! We are allowed to completely ignore the topic if we want to, that's poster agency!

This is so funny. And so true.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-15, 07:10 AM
Some differences, yes. Safewords? Lol. I do offer people Safe Spaces: literally anywhere in the world they wish to go other then my house :)

To explain the difference as I understand it between a safeword and a Safe Space, a Safe Space is when people don't want dissenting opinions and so insist they can't come into the 'Safe Space' (which while I think it's a stupid idea, as someone who has been in fierce debates I also understand it).

A safeword is where two consenting adults wanting to do things that could get a bit out of hand to the point where a participant feels uncomfortable agree that in this specific case no doesn't mean no, because they both know that octopus (or whatever word is unlikely to be used in the activity in question) means no. This originates in BDSM, because not all forms and extremes of BDSM are comfortable for all participants, and sometimes saying no is part of the act, so safewords exist as a way to remove consent without stopping when that isn't the intention.

Sorry to any BDSM practitioners offended at how bad the explanation above is, I do not personally participate in the lifestyle and have only a passing interest. As long as it's all SSC I don't care what happens behind closed doors.

Pleh
2017-09-15, 08:14 AM
To explain the difference as I understand it between a safeword and a Safe Space, a Safe Space is when people don't want dissenting opinions and so insist they can't come into the 'Safe Space' (which while I think it's a stupid idea, as someone who has been in fierce debates I also understand it).

A very slanted view of the term.

Replace "dissenting" with "hostile" and you get a bit closer. The real contention behind the term is how subjective it can be to perceive hostility from another person.

Safe Spaces try to err on the side of caution, causing them to be a bit heavy handed in their protectiveness. After all, if you don't want the censorship, you can leave the Safe Space.

In a very real way, this forum matches a definition of Safe Space in how it protects against certain interactions that other contexts would not enforce.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-15, 08:32 AM
"Safe spaces" may well have started out for legitimate reasons, for people who faced actual traumatic experiences and needed a place without outside noise and possible hostility on the subject.

Now... a "safe space" is too often nothing more than what certain sorts call their echo chambers.

Scripten
2017-09-15, 08:48 AM
I have set the percentages at 75% and 25% myself, as I have said.

The point was that you consider the vast majority of players to be problems. The exact percentages aren't important; it's the mentality behind them. (And I've seen you use various different numbers before anyway.)


Exactly! Like how your game has a plot, you demand it is not a plot, yet nearly everyone else will say ''well, that is a plot'', and you double down on ''it may look exactly like a plot, but it is not!"

This is a constant problem with talking to you. Your definitions for things are different from everyone else's. So when we talk about "plots", we're talking about stories written before the campaign starts where the player characters' actions are predetermined, but you define anything that has any amount of preplanning whatsoever so be "plotted out", which is a wildly different definition.

Of course, there are other problems with your described DMing style, but your conversational skills/techniques are the primary issue here.


Myself, a ''long'' time is like 10+ years. I would not say ''I have owned a Iphone X for a long time''.

Pedantry doesn't prove arguments. All it does, as you've seen time and time again, is frustrate the people you are talking to. Quotes like the above are pedantry.


To explain the difference as I understand it between a safeword and a Safe Space, a Safe Space is when people don't want dissenting opinions and so insist they can't come into the 'Safe Space' (which while I think it's a stupid idea, as someone who has been in fierce debates I also understand it).

The actual origins of safe spaces are actually for keeping discussions on-topic, rather than re-litigating agreed-upon premises. For example, if you are discussing a controversial, for whatever reason, scientific or sociological phenomenon from a certain point of view, a "safe space" (which is actually a term used to disparage academics created by people who don't understand the intent of the concept) is established where the discussion is kept to discussing how to handle the phenomenon, rather than explaining, for the upteenth time, how said phenomenon works.

As with most things in science, it's been co-opted by angry, ignorant people of a certain persuasion to dump on other people of a certain persuasion.


This originates in BDSM, because not all forms and extremes of BDSM are comfortable for all participants, and sometimes saying no is part of the act, so safewords exist as a way to remove consent without stopping when that isn't the intention.

Not a BDSM practitioner myself, but safe words are definitely used to reinforce consent, not remove it. Though that may be what you meant to begin with and my comprehension is off.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-15, 08:59 AM
The actual origins of safe spaces are actually for keeping discussions on-topic, rather than re-litigating agreed-upon premises. For example, if you are discussing a controversial, for whatever reason, scientific or sociological phenomenon from a certain point of view, a "safe space" (which is actually a term used to disparage academics created by people who don't understand the intent of the concept) is established where the discussion is kept to discussing how to handle the phenomenon, rather than explaining, for the upteenth time, how said phenomenon works.

As with most things in science, it's been co-opted by angry, ignorant people of a certain persuasion to dump on other people of a certain persuasion.

Yeah, I completely get the theory behind them, I just found out about them after people started using the idea as 'this is a safe space so don't say that stuff' (which can include 'science says this, what to talk about it'). Which I'd be perfectly fine with if people bothered to signpost their echo chambers before getting annoyed that I've walked into one.


Not a BDSM practitioner myself, but safe words are definitely used to reinforce consent, not remove it. Though that may be what you meant to begin with and my comprehension is off.

Kind of? As far as I understand it they perform both functions, in allowing a practitioner to state that they're fine with it or that they want to slow down/stop. I don't fully understand the world do I've likely got things wrong, but my understanding is that either having a safeword means there's consent but there's a way to stop/slow down, or there's multiple safewords to allow people to consent to something harder, say they're uncomfortable, or ask to stop.

I make no claim to understand this beyond the level of 'because of what some people like to do, they agree that no won't always pick no and pick a different word for "I don't want to do this anymore."'

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-15, 09:00 AM
@Anonymouswizard:

I find it funny how people always jump to BDSM to explain safe words. They, along with tapping out, exist in combat sports just as well. The point is to unambiguously tell another person to stop when you can't take it anymore.

Use of safewords are easily justified for physical activities where a person might otherwise be unable to disengage from a situation. Less so for tabletop games where people can stand up and leave on their own volition at any moment.

Now "safe space" simply means a space where harassment, bullying etc. hostile behaviour is banned and gets you booted out. Theoretically all gaming tables would do best if they were safe spaces. The difficulty is how some people's subjective notions of such things are obtuse or ridiculously broad.

Scripten
2017-09-15, 09:09 AM
Yeah, I completely get the theory behind them, I just found out about them after people started using the idea as 'this is a safe space so don't say that stuff' (which can include 'science says this, what to talk about it'). Which I'd be perfectly fine with if people bothered to signpost their echo chambers before getting annoyed that I've walked into one.


I can understand the frustration. Funnily enough, this particular sort of thread is a really good indicator of what the concept of "safe spaces" was designed to prevent. In this case, we were lucky enough to get OP an answer because this was a question thread, but imagine a discussion thread about railroading called, I don't know... "How to Mitigate Railroading in my Games: A DM's Guide". Essentially a thread meant to theorize on how to prevent your games from becoming railroads.

The discussion starts out fine, but half a page in, someone comes in and says, "Well, railroading is good/not real and this is why..." repeatedly, until someone engages and then the thread is essentially over, never having served its original purpose. Nobody who was talking in the thread wanted to have to redefine and debate the existence of railroading; they just wanted to come in with the premise that it exists and causes bad games and to talk about how to identify and stop it. That's where establishing a "safe space" would be useful in the context of this forum.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-15, 09:09 AM
@Anonymouswizard:

I find it funny how people always jump to BDSM to explain safe words. They, along with tapping out, exist in combat sports just as well. The point is to unambiguously tell another person to stop when you can't take it anymore.

Use of safewords are easily justified for physical activities where a person might otherwise be unable to disengage from a situation. Less so for tabletop games where people can stand up and leave on their own volition at any moment.

Honestly, I've just never heard them used in that way. I understand tapping out as being something in combat sports that serves the same function, but never heard of a safeword used in those contexts. Maybe it's because everybody jumps to BDSM when explaining them.


Now "safe space" simply means a space where harassment, bullying etc. hostile behaviour is banned and gets you booted out. Theoretically all gaming tables would do best if they were safe spaces. The difficulty is how some people's subjective notions of such things are obtuse or ridiculously broad.

As I said, I have no problem with the theory, it's the practice which has always let me down.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-15, 09:23 AM
I can understand the frustration. Funnily enough, this particular sort of thread is a really good indicator of what the concept of "safe spaces" was designed to prevent. In this case, we were lucky enough to get OP an answer because this was a question thread, but imagine a discussion thread about railroading called, I don't know... "How to Mitigate Railroading in my Games: A DM's Guide". Essentially a thread meant to theorize on how to prevent your games from becoming railroads.

The discussion starts out fine, but half a page in, someone comes in and says, "Well, railroading is good/not real and this is why..." repeatedly, until someone engages and then the thread is essentially over, never having served its original purpose. Nobody who was talking in the thread wanted to have to redefine and debate the existence of railroading; they just wanted to come in with the premise that it exists and causes bad games and to talk about how to identify and stop it. That's where establishing a "safe space" would be useful in the context of this forum.


Now there's a specific useful application of the concept, even if the term "safe space" is IMO kinda misleading in that context.

Scripten
2017-09-15, 09:36 AM
I mean, that was likely the intent when the people who coined the term started using it. :smallbiggrin:

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-15, 11:03 AM
I have set the percentages at 75% and 25% myself, as I have said.

Your numbers change as often as gas prices, so I'm not surprised they've changed.



Not sure I know what that life style is.....

At least we know you're sheltered.



Well, maybe just ''amazing intelligent intuition and awarness''. Though I do subscribe and read Omni, and that is about science.

Thank you for not reading thoroughly and missing the point, whereby you accidentally complimented my amazing intelligent intuition and awareness.
Thanks!



Exactly! Like how your game has a plot, you demand it is not a plot, yet nearly everyone else will say ''well, that is a plot'', and you double down on ''it may look exactly like a plot, but it is not!"
Exactly 1 person (you) claiming what I'm doing is a plot is nowhere even close to "nearly everyone else."
Quote me three people who have explicitly taken your stance.
I'll wait.



I know like ''a week'' is a long time to some people, and most little kids and anyone under 25 or so (Remember the Southpark were Cartman could not wait three weeks for the Nentendo Wii to come out...lol). Myself, a ''long'' time is like 10+ years. I would not say ''I have owned a Iphone X for a long time''.

Pedantic red herrings are pedantic and red

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-15, 11:53 AM
Honestly, I've just never heard them used in that way. I understand tapping out as being something in combat sports that serves the same function, but never heard of a safeword used in those contexts. Maybe it's because everybody jumps to BDSM when explaining them.


Possibly because in most non-BDSM context, the safe word is just "STOP!" or some equivalent and doesn't require much explanation. (In Judo: "Maitta!", Japanese for "I surrender!") The reason why BDSM, LARPing etc. have to get inventive about safe words is because there is an element of acting, so the safe word has to clearly break character as well. (ie. "STOP!" doesn't work if your character could reasonably yell it as part of the game.)

kyoryu
2017-09-15, 01:33 PM
Every railroading thread ever:

The Vast Majority of People: "Railroading is a thing, and we all agree on what it is fairly closely, though there's a few grey areas. Some people like it, some don't, and that's fine, just make sure you're all on the same page. I personally do/don't like it, but also don't believe that my preference is a statement of objective goodness or that people doing/not doing it are having badwrongfun."

One Or Two People: "Railroading is the best/worst thing ever, and if you do/don't do it, you're an inferior gamer and probably emotionally defective in some way. I will further prove my point by trying to stretch the definition of railroading in some way that nobody else in the thread agrees to, so that I can then refer to my personal definition as proof of my correctness. If you disagree with me, you are literally Hitler."

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-15, 02:16 PM
Honestly, I'm annoyed at Darth Ultron because, on a basic level, I agree that sometimes, in the right groups, railroading can make the game better. The players not doing anything? If you railroad them into the start of a plot you've at least got some momentum going. New GM? Run a module and most players will except staying on the rails.

The problem is DU seems to assume all groups are those groups where railroading is good, and I disagree with that.

(On the other hand, I also believe that if the players choose to follow the plot of their own will, it's not railroading, I had a GM who would railroad for the first few encounters while we were getting used to the setting, and then suddenly throw us into the sandbox with a vague goal of 'follow the leads you have', at which point we tended to follow the leads. He wasn't the sandboxiest GM ever, but he could pull out enough quantum ogres and reserve NPCs to make an enjoyable session when we went somewhere he didn't expect.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-15, 06:05 PM
The point was that you consider the vast majority of players to be problems. The exact percentages aren't important; it's the mentality behind them. (And I've seen you use various different numbers before anyway.)

Well, 25% of bad players is not a ''vast'' amount. So that is 25% good players, and 50% are just average. I would note that just as someone does not agree with me, say they like a very slow, casual and boring game play, I don't consider them a ''bad'' player.



This is a constant problem with talking to you. Your definitions for things are different from everyone else's. So when we talk about "plots", we're talking about stories written before the campaign starts where the player characters' actions are predetermined, but you define anything that has any amount of preplanning whatsoever so be "plotted out", which is a wildly different definition.

Right, lots of words like ''plot'' have more then one meaning. For an RPG the definition is: A plot is the sequence of events in a story. Traditional narrative terms -- such as plot, theme, and story -- are often used to describe role-playing game (RPG) play. However, RPGs are also fundamentally different from narrative forms like books and film. The result is that trying to discuss "plot" in RPGs leads to a quagmire of jumbled assumptions.

Like my example above, both movies and RPG's have Characters. But an actor does not ''make a character'' using the ''movie rules'' and then ''play out'' the character anyway they wish to as they film the movie. And a DM does not give the players a script to memorize and scenes to rehearse and ''direct'' the players of a character on what to say and think and do. So, note the two types of characters are different.



Of course, there are other problems with your described DMing style, but your conversational skills/techniques are the primary issue here.

Conversational?



Pedantry doesn't prove arguments. All it does, as you've seen time and time again, is frustrate the people you are talking to. Quotes like the above are pedantry.

OK?


That's where establishing a "safe space" would be useful in the context of this forum.

You could all ways make your own forum and only invite people that agree with you on everything 100%.


Every railroading thread ever:

The Vast Majority of People: "Railroading is a thing, and we all agree on what it is fairly closely, though there's a few grey areas. Some people like it, some don't, and that's fine, just make sure you're all on the same page. I personally do/don't like it, but also don't believe that my preference is a statement of objective goodness or that people doing/not doing it are having badwrongfun."

One Or Two People: "Railroading is the best/worst thing ever, and if you do/don't do it, you're an inferior gamer and probably emotionally defective in some way. I will further prove my point by trying to stretch the definition of railroading in some way that nobody else in the thread agrees to, so that I can then refer to my personal definition as proof of my correctness. If you disagree with me, you are literally Hitler."

Woah now....as the person on the Other Side this is not accurate. It is:

The Vast Majority of People: Railroading, plots, plot hooks, stories and anything else that I don't like or use in my games is all ways badwrongfun! Bad!Bad!Bad! There is no debate, I'm right! Badwrongfun is bad, and wrong!

The Others Railroading, like just about everything in life depends on how and why and what way it is used to determine if it is ''good or bad''. Very, very few things in life are always good/all ways bad.(but there are a couple) But a person should not just take one small bad side of something (''fire burns me!'') and then say that thing is all ways bad (''Fire is Bad, never use it to cook food or keep warm or anything else!")




The problem is DU seems to assume all groups are those groups where railroading is good, and I disagree with that.

What? I'm pretty sure I don't assume all railroading is good,; when I say stuff like ''sometimes railroading can be used for good reason and is not all ways Badwongfun!''

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-15, 06:41 PM
Well, 25% of bad players is not a ''vast'' amount. So that is 25% good players, and 50% are just average. I would note that just as someone does not agree with me, say they like a very slow, casual and boring game play, I don't consider them a ''bad'' player.
Literally within the span of 2 posts the numbers have moved around again.




Right, lots of words like ''plot'' have more then one meaning. For an RPG the definition is: A plot is the sequence of events in a story. Traditional narrative terms -- such as plot, theme, and story -- are often used to describe role-playing game (RPG) play. However, RPGs are also fundamentally different from narrative forms like books and film. The result is that trying to discuss "plot" in RPGs leads to a quagmire of jumbled assumptions.
This is why we say things like have been said in this thread multiple times and ignored by you in favor of pretending things are more confusing than they are. The forum is largely in agreement about the following:
Plot = Preplanned sequence of events that WILL be followed, PC action be darned. (PCs CANNOT change this)
Story = What you have after you're done playing, namely the sequence of events that transpired. (PCs MIGHT be able to change this)
Narrative = The individual actions occuring in the fiction layer of the game during gameplay, aka the current collective imagination space we use while playing. (The PCs CAN change this)



Like my example above, both movies and RPG's have Characters. But an actor does not ''make a character'' using the ''movie rules'' and then ''play out'' the character anyway they wish to as they film the movie. And a DM does not give the players a script to memorize and scenes to rehearse and ''direct'' the players of a character on what to say and think and do. So, note the two types of characters are different.
Yes, and yet other terms between the two don't change definition. Things like Fiction and Motive and Goal and Personality mean the same thing between these two versions of character.
Just like how the plot in one medium can be the same as plot in another medium, even while other terms are different.
This is not hard.



Conversational?

You state opinions as absolutes and use purposefully inflammatory terms seemingly whenever possible as if you're actively trying to bait people.
These are plainly bad conversational skills.



OK?

It means you wasted time on nonsense for no reason.



You could all ways make your own forum and only invite people that agree with you on everything 100%.

Congrats on missing the point entirely in favor of yet another strawman.



Woah now....as the person on the Other Side this is not accurate. It is:

The Vast Majority of People: Railroading, plots, plot hooks, stories and anything else that I don't like or use in my games is all ways badwrongfun! Bad!Bad!Bad! There is no debate, I'm right! Badwrongfun is bad, and wrong!

The Others Railroading, like just about everything in life depends on how and why and what way it is used to determine if it is ''good or bad''. Very, very few things in life are always good/all ways bad.(but there are a couple) But a person should not just take one small bad side of something (''fire burns me!'') and then say that thing is all ways bad (''Fire is Bad, never use it to cook food or keep warm or anything else!")

Not even I am saying the latter, if you actually read anything people wrote. I've said repeatedly that Railroading with buy-in is fine, so long as the players want it/are ok with it.
My issue is not with railroading as a practice in all situations.
Reeeeaaaaaddd



What? I'm pretty sure I don't assume all railroading is good,; when I say stuff like ''sometimes railroading can be used for good reason and is not all ways Badwongfun!''

Railroading because your players want it and agreed to it is A-ok. I've literally never said otherwise.
What I HAVE disagreed on is that literally any GM action is railroading.

You're probably not doing well in this argument because you're not arguing against a thing that's real.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-15, 08:03 PM
Literally within the span of 2 posts the numbers have moved around again.

Well, I all ways said 25% are bad and 75% are not.




This is why we say things like have been said in this thread multiple times and ignored by you in favor of pretending things are more confusing than they are. The forum is largely in agreement about the following:
Plot = Preplanned sequence of events that WILL be followed, PC action be darned. (PCs CANNOT change this)
Story = What you have after you're done playing, namely the sequence of events that transpired. (PCs MIGHT be able to change this)
Narrative = The individual actions occuring in the fiction layer of the game during gameplay, aka the current collective imagination space we use while playing. (The PCs CAN change this)

And like I have said again and again:

Plot: For some reason you are using the Book/Movie plot for an RPG. Though books/movies and RPGs are not the same thing. They do both have plots, and characters and lots of other shared words that do not mean exactly the same thing.

Story: Yes the doing random things randomly, and stopping at a random time to write all the things done in order and adding meaning and reasons for it all, is one way to tell a story. But, again, it is not the only way.



Yes, and yet other terms between the two don't change definition. Things like Fiction and Motive and Goal and Personality mean the same thing between these two versions of character.
Just like how the plot in one medium can be the same as plot in another medium, even while other terms are different.
This is not hard.

What?

I'm pretty sure Fiction all ways means ''not real'', unless you have some odd personal definition?
I'm pretty sure Motive is all ways ''a reason for doing something'' or ''movement''.
I'm pretty sure Goal is all ways ''a desired result'' or ''place to score a point in a game''.
And sure personality has lots of definitions.

And yes a plot can be the same in two mediums, but for an RPG that would not be a Normal Game. So, yes, a Jerk DM can do a ''movie plot'' in the RPG, but that does not mean every single plot in every single RPG ever is exactly like that one jerk DM's view.




Not even I am saying the latter, if you actually read anything people wrote. I've said repeatedly that Railroading with buy-in is fine, so long as the players want it/are ok with it.
My issue is not with railroading as a practice in all situations.

I don't count player buy ins as Railroading myself.



Railroading because your players want it and agreed to it is A-ok. I've literally never said otherwise.
What I HAVE disagreed on is that literally any GM action is railroading.

I've been pretty clear that it is only Railroading if the DM is advancing a plot (or in your game that thing that is exactly like a plot but you call it, um, ''the setting'' or something).

A DM can do lots of actions that are not Railroading, like:

-Random Stuff
-Quantum Ogres (I do think this is worse then Railroading myself, though)
-Rolling over and doing whatever the players tell the DM to do



You're probably not doing well in this argument because you're not arguing against a thing that's real.

We are all but shadows on the wall of a cave

Segev
2017-09-15, 08:59 PM
"Safe spaces" become a problem when they get so prevalent than you need to be in specially designated zones to have a right to voice any opinion that isn't on a pre-approved list. They can, however, be a bit insulting when their existence is crafted to imply that disagreeing with the echo chamber they promote constitutes "hostility." Nobody likes being falsely accused of being hostile, especially since it's one of those self-fulfilling accusations. Being told you're being hostile means that you either immediately kowtow to whatever appeasement is demanded to prove you're not, or you're "proving" that they're right.

Fortunately, free speech is not a right to demand a forum. So safe spaces are perfectly fine, as long as they remain on privately-held property. But just as people have a right to associate only with those who make them feel "safe," so, too, do others have a right to call them out for close-mindedness and any aggressive victimhood. (You know; wounded gazelle gambits where they aggressively identify any behavior or opinion they dislike as "hostile," so anybody who doesn't conform to their specified behaviors and opinions is "victimizing" them. It's really a brilliant strategy, because it makes the aggressor in a squelching campaign out to be the victim and works to isolate those they wish to silence as "bad people" who don't deserve to be allowed to have opinions.)

None of this, however, has much, if anything, to do with railroading in the RPG sense.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-15, 09:08 PM
Well, I all ways said 25% are bad and 75% are not.
Uhuh....



And like I have said again and again:

Plot: For some reason you are using the Book/Movie plot for an RPG. Though books/movies and RPGs are not the same thing. They do both have plots, and characters and lots of other shared words that do not mean exactly the same thing.

Lemme stop you right here.
Remember: you were complaining about only a few people using my definition.
Problem: you're the only person in this thread who uses the wider definition.
Ergo, the person communicating incorrectly for the terms generally accepted by the community is....?

(Hint: Name has "Darth" in it.)



Story: Yes the doing random things randomly, and stopping at a random time to write all the things done in order and adding meaning and reasons for it all, is one way to tell a story. But, again, it is not the only way.

Yes. But unfortunately, you're using the wrong sense. When we say Story, we mean what I just said.

You seem to think I'm debating what the definitions SHOULD BE. I'm not. I'm informing you of what everyone else means when they use these terms, and why you are not communicating effectively by using different definitions. If you're in a forum where the word Chicken generally means the meat from the animal, you will probably not get far trying to use the term to refer to the living bird.



What?

I'm pretty sure Fiction all ways means ''not real'', unless you have some odd personal definition?
I'm pretty sure Motive is all ways ''a reason for doing something'' or ''movement''.
I'm pretty sure Goal is all ways ''a desired result'' or ''place to score a point in a game''.
And sure personality has lots of definitions.

And yes a plot can be the same in two mediums, but for an RPG that would not be a Normal Game. So, yes, a Jerk DM can do a ''movie plot'' in the RPG, but that does not mean every single plot in every single RPG ever is exactly like that one jerk DM's view.

Except that yes, on this forum, a plot is prestructured.
Narrative is not.



I don't count player buy ins as Railroading myself.

Neat. Some other people do switch terms when there is buy-in, but I don't.
If there's only one way in and one way out and one viable path, that's a railroad. The illusion of multiple paths with only one path being for-realsies viable is still railroading.
Some people like that.
Others don't.
This has literally 0 bearing on how "normal" or "casual" their game is.



I've been pretty clear that it is only Railroading if the DM is advancing a plot (or in your game that thing that is exactly like a plot but you call it, um, ''the setting'' or something).

Go read and try to actually understand what I'm talking about, maybe?
Then you'd be able to participate without looking like you've shown up to a debate about Hamlet after reading your own Shakespeare fanfic.



A DM can do lots of actions that are not Railroading, like:

-Random Stuff
-Quantum Ogres (I do think this is worse then Railroading myself, though)
-Rolling over and doing whatever the players tell the DM to do

Remember that bit where you seem like you're just trying to bait people? This is that thing. The thing I mentioned.
This is it.

"You do it the way I do it, or you do it in this way that I will word as dismissively and insulting as possible!"

I'd recommend reading "how to win friends and influence people" for a look at how this doesn't help you at all. But I'm guessing you wouldn't benefit, given the difficulty you're having with the basic concepts used in this thread thusfar. So I'll just point out that this is list is exactly as stupidly inaccurate as ever.



We are all but shadows on the wall of a cave
You know, comparing yourself to the guy chained in a cave with a not even vaguely accurate perception of the real world is way more accurate that I think you intended.
10/10 self burn.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-15, 09:47 PM
"Safe spaces" become a problem when they get so prevalent than you need to be in specially designated zones to have a right to voice any opinion that isn't on a pre-approved list. They can, however, be a bit insulting when their existence is crafted to imply that disagreeing with the echo chamber they promote constitutes "hostility." Nobody likes being falsely accused of being hostile, especially since it's one of those self-fulfilling accusations. Being told you're being hostile means that you either immediately kowtow to whatever appeasement is demanded to prove you're not, or you're "proving" that they're right.

Fortunately, free speech is not a right to demand a forum. So safe spaces are perfectly fine, as long as they remain on privately-held property. But just as people have a right to associate only with those who make them feel "safe," so, too, do others have a right to call them out for close-mindedness and any aggressive victimhood. (You know; wounded gazelle gambits where they aggressively identify any behavior or opinion they dislike as "hostile," so anybody who doesn't conform to their specified behaviors and opinions is "victimizing" them. It's really a brilliant strategy, because it makes the aggressor in a squelching campaign out to be the victim and works to isolate those they wish to silence as "bad people" who don't deserve to be allowed to have opinions.)

None of this, however, has much, if anything, to do with railroading in the RPG sense.


Extremely well said on all angles.

Seto
2017-09-16, 04:22 AM
The actual origins of safe spaces are actually for keeping discussions on-topic, rather than re-litigating agreed-upon premises. For example, if you are discussing a controversial, for whatever reason, scientific or sociological phenomenon from a certain point of view, a "safe space" (which is actually a term used to disparage academics created by people who don't understand the intent of the concept) is established where the discussion is kept to discussing how to handle the phenomenon, rather than explaining, for the upteenth time, how said phenomenon works.

As with most things in science, it's been co-opted by angry, ignorant people of a certain persuasion to dump on other people of a certain persuasion.

That's interesting. Do you have a link or a reference where I could read more? I'd only ever heard "safe space" used (both by people who advocate for them and by people who disparage them) to mean "a space where you avoid debate and confrontation in order to recharge your batteries", in the political/social sense of the term, rather than scientific.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-16, 07:38 AM
Uhuh....
Lemme stop you right here.
Remember: you were complaining about only a few people using my definition.
Problem: you're the only person in this thread who uses the wider definition.
Ergo, the person communicating incorrectly for the terms generally accepted by the community is....?


Only person in this thread....ok? But how do you make the leap from the couple posters in one thread to ''the whole community''?



You seem to think I'm debating what the definitions SHOULD BE. I'm not. I'm informing you of what everyone else means when they use these terms, and why you are not communicating effectively by using different definitions. If you're in a forum where the word Chicken generally means the meat from the animal, you will probably not get far trying to use the term to refer to the living bird.

I'm not ''debating'' that a lot of words have more then one meaning. And that a lot of words have their meanings changed depending on the context (or ''medium'') they are used it. This is a Fact.

Your the odd one for saying ''words only have one definition and it is the one I like''.

Lets note your chicken example, as chicken does have more then one definition (I know, yet another word like that). If you ''are a chicken'' a person is not saying your a ''small bird'', they are saying ''you are a coward''. And ''everyone'', other then I guess you on your closed community knows and understands that.



Except that yes, on this forum, a plot is prestructured.
Narrative is not.

So you get to decide such things why?




This has literally 0 bearing on how "normal" or "casual" their game is.

Well, like I said, a DM only needs to railroad if the game is complex. A simple, easy, casual game will never need a DM to railroad.



"You do it the way I do it, or you do it in this way that I will word as dismissively and insulting as possible!"

Where Did I say that?



I'd recommend reading "how to win friends and influence people" for a look at how this doesn't help you at all. But I'm guessing you wouldn't benefit, given the difficulty you're having with the basic concepts used in this thread thusfar. So I'll just point out that this is list is exactly as stupidly inaccurate as ever.

Wow, is that an old and outdated book with a wacky one sided view...but if you read and belive and follow everything in that book...well, guess that explains some things.


I know your oddly offended by the word ''simple'', but that is all on you and word odd perception of things. To most people ''simple'' is not bad: ''I had a simple breakfast of juice and toast''. I even ran a Simple Game two weeks ago for some 11 year old girls: An evil ogre stole the pretty unicorn and all the heroines had to get it back. It was an amazing game, and girls (mostly) all ways work together as a team. They tracked down the ogre, saved the unicorn and, er, tied up the ogre(yea, they did not kill him.)

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-16, 08:57 AM
Only person in this thread....ok? But how do you make the leap from the couple posters in one thread to ''the whole community''?
You forgetting where you made the leap from literally only you to "most normal people?"
You're messing up linguistics and communication 101: know your audience.



I'm not ''debating'' that a lot of words have more then one meaning. And that a lot of words have their meanings changed depending on the context (or ''medium'') they are used it. This is a Fact.
And I have informed you of what Plot means for the context of this thread, as have several other posters.
The only not in agreement is the one who keeps bringing it up: you.
Fall in line with the term as used in this context or leave to a context where it matches yours.
Anything else is purposefully being confusing.



Your the odd one for saying ''words only have one definition and it is the one I like''.
Not even vaguely what I'm saying. Try reading what I wrote instead of imagining something else and see if that helps.



Lets note your chicken example, as chicken does have more then one definition (I know, yet another word like that). If you ''are a chicken'' a person is not saying your a ''small bird'', they are saying ''you are a coward''. And ''everyone'', other then I guess you on your closed community knows and understands that.
Yes. And if you attempt to use the wrong meaning, ambiguously, in a context where the agreed-upon meaning is not what you're using, that's called "being a confusing A-hole on purpose."

Sidenote: You also missed the point of my example to instead imagine another thing. You've really rocked that straw mockup of me, but I'm sadly over here.



So you get to decide such things why?

For the same reason someone counting how many people like chocolate ice cream vs. Vanilla icecream eventually gets to say "people prefer X flavor." Eventually.




Well, like I said, a DM only needs to railroad if the game is complex. A simple, easy, casual game will never need a DM to railroad.

Uhuh. You keep telling yourself Beginnersville is complicated. Whatever helps you sleep at night.



Where Did I say that?

Every time you word a differing option as dismissively and trollishly as possible.
Just, not out loud.
That's a translation of what your tactic communicates to people. I do that with teenagers who similarly struggle with realizing why people dislike them.



Wow, is that an old and outdated book with a wacky one sided view...but if you read and belive and follow everything in that book...well, guess that explains some things.

The high pitched whistling noise you heard while writing this was the point whizzing by waaaaay above your head.



I know your oddly offended by the word ''simple'', but that is all on you and word odd perception of things. To most people ''simple'' is not bad: ''I had a simple breakfast of juice and toast''. I even ran a Simple Game two weeks ago for some 11 year old girls: An evil ogre stole the pretty unicorn and all the heroines had to get it back. It was an amazing game, and girls (mostly) all ways work together as a team. They tracked down the ogre, saved the unicorn and, er, tied up the ogre(yea, they did not kill him.)

And said simple game was, I'm sure, a railroad.

Meanwhile, as I've said before, what I do and what you've labelled a simple game, has gone like this:

>Errol, the driver, and Fortress, the warrior, kill one of a trio of brothers trying to steal his cargo. This brother is left to rot in tidal waters while Errol and Fortress hotleg it back to Austin to report a disappearance.
>Wren, cult leader, struggles to keep her congregation fed and safe, as political struggles between The Rick and a local crimelord named Rolfball begin to heat up, and her congregation becomes divided between who they support. And when a strange new preacher from the tidelands begins to prophesy of salvation in the sea, things only get worse.
>Saffron finds her bar and restaurant quickly becoming a major point of vital territory in the tug of war between these two forces, with The Rick demanding special treatment and Rolfball demanding a permanent place within.
>Meanwhile, a small child named Paris has been birthed from the psychic background radiation, and now flees its vindictive grandfather, who seeks to use the child to fuel mankind's violence and draw endless sustenance from their misery.

This was session 1 out of about 12.
None of it was preplanned.
And by none of it, I mean NONE OF IT.


But hey, it's real simple. Could be wrapped up in two sessions. One clear problem, one clear outcome, one clear solution. Simple.

Since you have nothing further to offer the discussion, you are now free to go. :D

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-16, 09:32 AM
Well, like I said, a DM only needs to railroad if the game is complex. A simple, easy, casual game will never need a DM to railroad.


I get it now... he's posting from opposite world.

In the world the rest of us are posting from, one of the main reasons GMs decide to railroad is because they can't handle complexity. They need a nice neat linear path with no significant deviation and players only interacting with the things said GMs have already prepared for along that path.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-16, 12:11 PM
You forgetting where you made the leap from literally only you to "most normal people?"

I think it is fair to say ''most normal people understand words can have more then one definition or meaning.



And I have informed you of what Plot means for the context of this thread, as have several other posters.
The only not in agreement is the one who keeps bringing it up: you.
Fall in line with the term as used in this context or leave to a context where it matches yours.
Anything else is purposefully being confusing.

I'm perfectly fine with saying ''the thing ImNotTrevor says is a plot in his very small corner of the community'', or something like that.



For the same reason someone counting how many people like chocolate ice cream vs. Vanilla icecream eventually gets to say "people prefer X flavor." Eventually.

When you say odd things like this it just makes me wonder about you. I Love Rocky Road myself.



And said simple game was, I'm sure, a railroad.

Of Course, but it is expected as I'm a Railroad DM....Like Casey Jones going downhill in an Illinois Express 503 'Fireball' Engine on the Forth Of July at Noon, while on Fire!

Meanwhile, as I've said before, what I do and what you've labelled a simple game, has gone like this:



>Errol, the driver, and Fortress, the warrior, kill one of a trio of brothers trying to steal his cargo. This brother is left to rot in tidal waters while Errol and Fortress hotleg it back to Austin to report a disappearance.
>Wren, cult leader, struggles to keep her congregation fed and safe, as political struggles between The Rick and a local crimelord named Rolfball begin to heat up, and her congregation becomes divided between who they support. And when a strange new preacher from the tidelands begins to prophesy of salvation in the sea, things only get worse.
>Saffron finds her bar and restaurant quickly becoming a major point of vital territory in the tug of war between these two forces, with The Rick demanding special treatment and Rolfball demanding a permanent place within.
>Meanwhile, a small child named Paris has been birthed from the psychic background radiation, and now flees its vindictive grandfather, who seeks to use the child to fuel mankind's violence and draw endless sustenance from their misery.

This was session 1 out of about 12.
None of it was preplanned.
And by none of it, I mean NONE OF IT.



Wow, lots of stuff to work with here....maybe we can get somewhere.

1.Ok, is each named person a player character?
2.Is this a list of separate games? Done at separate times, or does Player Bill play character Paris in his own special solo game and the other players just sit there and watch?
3.So, does this mean you don't do group games? You just do a couple solo/duo games?

Game Bit One-Well two dudes kill a dude sounds like and exciting ten or eleven minutes of game play.
Game Bit Two-I guess this has some fun shopping struggles (''roll a 1d20 to buy some bread''). And somewhere in the back ground two guys heat up a thing for no reason. Now this is where you really, really loose me. Your saying the political struggles was not pre-planned. So you never thought of it or planed to do it ever. So Wren is just struggling....and then you randomly just are like 'pop' and 'boom' political struggles from nowhere. And where did the strange new preacher come from ? Just random?

For example, a normal GM might think ''humm, I want to make the political struggles be worse'' and come up with the strange new preacher idea in what normal people would call pre-planning. But you say you don't do that, so everything comes from nowhere?

And I do get that ''wild and crazy inprov '' is all cool and hipster. And as GM you can just sit there as a 'blank' and react to the player (''when Wern walks into the bakery he sees bread on the shelves''). And then you can toss in the surprise(''Wern turns the corner as sees The Mysterious Preacher in the parking lot"). And really that is great for a couple minutes of game play. BUT. Then you have to add in details. Otherwise it is just a pointless random waste of time encounter. So you give the Mysterious Preacher a name, a background, motivations, a personality, a goal...and dare I say a plot. And, ok, see right here: you just pre planned.

Unless your saying that you just drop in the Mysterious Preacher and do not make up a single thing or even think of a single thing about them: they are just there. Then as the player character reacts to the Mysterious Preacher you randomly make up random stuff. Though you do say you don't do that.

And the making up random stuff quickly leads to a mess. In session 5 you randomly say '' Mysterious Preacher grew up on the beach and loved to surf'', but then in session 8 you say randomly '' Mysterious Preacher grew up in Denver''. Opps! Well, this is where a bit of pre-planning would have helped as you could have had the whole background of the character right in front of you.

Game Bit Three-Is much of the same:Saffron finds her bard is randomly ''in the middle'' for no reason? You, the GM, did not plan to have the two mob guys go to her bar....but it happened randomly somehow. And you never planned for her to be in the middle...but suddenly she is.
Game Bit Four-I hate kidz gamers so i'll skip this one.


Like myself, and a lot of normal Gm's would sit back and say ''ok, I need to think of fun and interesting things to happen'' and then make them. You..don't do that.

And I'd point out, all your ''stuff'' are plots.

jayem
2017-09-16, 01:17 PM
None of it was preplanned.
And by none of it, I mean NONE OF IT.



And I do get that ''wild and crazy inprov '' is all cool and hipster. And as GM you can just sit there as a 'blank' and react to the player (''when Wern walks into the bakery he sees bread on the shelves''). And then you can toss in the surprise(''Wern turns the corner as sees The Mysterious Preacher in the parking lot"). And really that is great for a couple minutes of game play. BUT. Then you have to add in details. Otherwise it is just a pointless random waste of time encounter. So you give the Mysterious Preacher a name, a background, motivations, a personality, a goal...and dare I say a plot. And, ok, see right here: you just pre planned.

I must admit to being a little intrigued as to what 'None' refers to.
If it really is everything-everything then it sounds like some form of freeform (which is perfectly valid type of game, but is different...)
If rather, their past is 'planned' but their future is not fixed. So that e.g. Saffron's bar was in the range of the 2 criminals was planned (at least from the moment she said about the bar), but not how she reacted to their offers (and hence how they reacted). In which case the quote is half true, that is true regarding to how the game plays out from minute 1, but not as regards the positions at scene 1.
And if (instead of what you said) their past and future is fixed, then my understanding it's DU's type of game.

Interestingly I do find myself wanting to say 'plot threads' although not talk about an existing 'plot'.

Florian
2017-09-16, 02:04 PM
I get it now... he's posting from opposite world.

In the world the rest of us are posting from, one of the main reasons GMs decide to railroad is because they can't handle complexity. They need a nice neat linear path with no significant deviation and players only interacting with the things said GMs have already prepared for along that path.

Hm... I think I can get behind this one:

A simple, static scenario like a dungeon just needs the gm as judge of the rules, nothing more. The dungeon (and goal) are set, not too many "moving parts" here, just do the regular gm job and be done with it.

A complex scenario, letīs say for a more political game, will require extensive pre-work, as most of the time all pieces are already set into motion and the characters are thrust into an already developing situation. Building NPC and mapping their relationships on an r-map builds up an pre-existing story of the world so far and there are, if you want to call it such, rails set into place to move the characters into a (or one of many) certain direction.
In this case, we most certainly prep some plans that will start when the players begin to interfere, like what happens when they back "House A" or "House B", which we do to ramp up the tension and go for more conflict potential.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-16, 02:41 PM
Hm... I think I can get behind this one:

A simple, static scenario like a dungeon just needs the gm as judge of the rules, nothing more. The dungeon (and goal) are set, not too many "moving parts" here, just do the regular gm job and be done with it.

A complex scenario, letīs say for a more political game, will require extensive pre-work, as most of the time all pieces are already set into motion and the characters are thrust into an already developing situation. Building NPC and mapping their relationships on an r-map builds up an pre-existing story of the world so far and there are, if you want to call it such, rails set into place to move the characters into a (or one of many) certain direction.
In this case, we most certainly prep some plans that will start when the players begin to interfere, like what happens when they back "House A" or "House B", which we do to ramp up the tension and go for more conflict potential.


Is the outcome of the second scenario set in stone, or does PC action have an effect?

Is this scenario dumped on the players, or did they agree to a political intrigue campaign?

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-16, 06:38 PM
I think it is fair to say ''most normal people understand words can have more then one definition or meaning.
That is not what I'm referring to, but you're missing the point. Again. Probably on purpose.

In the context of this forum, Plot refers to the practice of a preplanned sequence of a events from which there shall be 0 to minimal deviation.



I'm perfectly fine with saying ''the thing ImNotTrevor says is a plot in his very small corner of the community'', or something like that.

If it were just me, we'd not have the thread go on this long.



When you say odd things like this it just makes me wonder about you. I Love Rocky Road myself.

Aaaah you can't comprehend metaphor.
I'll simplify for your benefit.



Of Course, but it is expected as I'm a Railroad DM....Like Casey Jones going downhill in an Illinois Express 503 'Fireball' Engine on the Forth Of July at Noon, while on Fire!
Thank you for agreeing railroaded games to be simple.



Meanwhile, as I've said before, what I do and what you've labelled a simple game, has gone like this:

Missed the sarcasm, eh?
And I even labelled it.
So metaphors and sarcasm are both beyond your capacity. Noted.





1.Ok, is each named person a player character?

The ones at the start of the paragraphs are PCs.



2.Is this a list of separate games? Done at separate times, or does Player Bill play character Paris in his own special solo game and the other players just sit there and watch?

One session, 5 people, utilizing the power of the Scene Change to balance out spotlight time. Really not that hard.



3.So, does this mean you don't do group games? You just do a couple solo/duo games?
No. I only do groups of 4+.



Game Bit One-Well two dudes kill a dude sounds like and exciting ten or eleven minutes of game play.

The combat took about that long total, with scene changes between rolls to break up the action and build tension.



Game Bit Two-I guess this has some fun shopping struggles (''roll a 1d20 to buy some bread''). And somewhere in the back ground two guys heat up a thing for no reason.
To be honest, I listed these things in no particular order.
I asked questions of the group about the post-apocalyptic Austin community, mostly about its problems. The Rick came from those questions, and he was a great villain for the campaign that everyone hated. And I didn't have him prepped before play started. He evolved out of questions.

Remember, bread can't just be bought like in our world now. Society has broken down. So, actually, problems like "we don't have enough food" are highly problematic.



Now this is where you really, really loose me. Your saying the political struggles was not pre-planned. So you never thought of it or planed to do it ever. So Wren is just struggling....and then you randomly just are like 'pop' and 'boom' political struggles from nowhere. And where did the strange new preacher come from ? Just random?
Wren's class involves having a cult, and involves mechanics for the daily goings-on. Due to bad rolls at the start of the session, her cult is in Want. When her cult is in want, by the game rules, they begin to desert her. I simply asked myself where else they would go and what kind of thing someone would preach about in a world that, for all intents and purposes, floods every night due to extremely erratic tides.
Thus the Tidecaller was born as a threat.



For example, a normal GM might think ''humm, I want to make the political struggles be worse'' and come up with the strange new preacher idea in what normal people would call pre-planning. But you say you don't do that, so everything comes from nowhere?

Comes from thinking logically while I play, based on what the system produces. *shrug* It's really not mindblowing at all.



And I do get that ''wild and crazy inprov '' is all cool and hipster. And as GM you can just sit there as a 'blank' and react to the player (''when Wern walks into the bakery he sees bread on the shelves''). And then you can toss in the surprise(''Wern turns the corner as sees The Mysterious Preacher in the parking lot"). And really that is great for a couple minutes of game play. BUT. Then you have to add in details. Otherwise it is just a pointless random waste of time encounter. So you give the Mysterious Preacher a name, a background, motivations, a personality, a goal...and dare I say a plot. And, ok, see right here: you just pre planned.

A name, background, motivations, personality, and a goal don't add up to a plot. They add up to a character who will do stuff if left to his own devices. (Based on what makes sense at the time, not a "this will happen exactly" thing, like a plot is.) Some of which he got away with, and a significant part he totally didn't because the PCs got involved and killed him before he became a larger threat (leaving other threats to grow instead.)



Unless your saying that you just drop in the Mysterious Preacher and do not make up a single thing or even think of a single thing about them: they are just there. Then as the player character reacts to the Mysterious Preacher you randomly make up random stuff. Though you do say you don't do that.
Correct. I make things up based on input from the system, setting, PC info, PC actions, and create something sensible and consistent.

So if you want Random to mean literally its opposite, ok. You're wrong, but ok.



And the making up random stuff quickly leads to a mess. In session 5 you randomly say '' Mysterious Preacher grew up on the beach and loved to surf'', but then in session 8 you say randomly '' Mysterious Preacher grew up in Denver''. Opps! Well, this is where a bit of pre-planning would have helped as you could have had the whole background of the character right in front of you.
Taking notes about what I've said in the past is no more prelanning than a news article about tax reforms that happened is preplanning the tax reforms.



Game Bit Three-Is much of the same:Saffron finds her bard is randomly ''in the middle'' for no reason? You, the GM, did not plan to have the two mob guys go to her bar....but it happened randomly somehow. And you never planned for her to be in the middle...but suddenly she is.



Game Bit Four-I hate kidz gamers so i'll skip this one.
Hahahahahahaha the guy who played the child character was an adult.



Like myself, and a lot of normal Gm's would sit back and say ''ok, I need to think of fun and interesting things to happen'' and then make them. You..don't do that.
I do. I just do it during the session based on player input even moreso than my prep between, which is fairly minimal beyond the note organizing after my first session.



And I'd point out, all your ''stuff'' are plots.
I reject this bait. I've schooled you sufficiently already, your incapacity to understand basic communication has been noted.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-16, 06:41 PM
I must admit to being a little intrigued as to what 'None' refers to.
If it really is everything-everything then it sounds like some form of freeform (which is perfectly valid type of game, but is different...)
There was a system.


If rather, their past is 'planned' but their future is not fixed. So that e.g. Saffron's bar was in the range of the 2 criminals was planned (at least from the moment she said about the bar), but not how she reacted to their offers (and hence how they reacted). In which case the quote is half true, that is true regarding to how the game plays out from minute 1, but not as regards the positions at scene 1.
The bar patrons and their goals were, partially, born from asking questions and partially born from her class, which comes with debts and problems the bar has to deal with. (She opts into what KIND of problems, but not whether or not she has them.)



And if (instead of what you said) their past and future is fixed, then my understanding it's DU's type of game.
This would be a plot, yes.



Interestingly I do find myself wanting to say 'plot threads' although not talk about an existing 'plot'.
Setting Elements or Narrative Elements suit a more accurate purpose.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-16, 07:39 PM
A complex scenario, letīs say for a more political game, will require extensive pre-work, as most of the time all pieces are already set into motion and the characters are thrust into an already developing situation. Building NPC and mapping their relationships on an r-map builds up an pre-existing story of the world so far and there are, if you want to call it such, rails set into place to move the characters into a (or one of many) certain direction.
In this case, we most certainly prep some plans that will start when the players begin to interfere, like what happens when they back "House A" or "House B", which we do to ramp up the tension and go for more conflict potential.

I'd note ImNotTrevor says he does none of the above.


Is the outcome of the second scenario set in stone, or does PC action have an effect?

Is this scenario dumped on the players, or did they agree to a political intrigue campaign?

I really don't get the crazy obsession with the first one. Other then the Jerk DM, RPG plots are not set in stone. The whole point of the game is the PC's can do something. There is no grantee, but they can effect what is happening. But plots also have a 'set in stone' outcome if the players are Jerks and don't do anything.

And the second one really makes no sense in a normal game. The DM has events happen in the world, but does not stop and ask the players for permission before doing so. Unless your just talking about session zero here and not being clear.


That is not what I'm referring to, but you're missing the point. Again. Probably on purpose.

In the context of this forum, Plot refers to the practice of a preplanned sequence of a events from which there shall be 0 to minimal deviation.

Well, hope this does not like shatter all your illusions: you you can't just ''say(type)'' something and have it be true. Reality does not work like that.



scene changes

Are you shooting a movie or playing a RPG?



And I didn't have him prepped before play started. He evolved out of questions.

Ok, so I understand:

1.You cane to the game with nothing: just a blank and the setting.
2.You did the lazy, casual DM trick of ''guys I can't think of anything, give me some ideas by answering my random questions."
3.After a time of getting answers, the players thought up the NPC Rick and you thanked the players.
4.Then the normal game play continued.
5.At some time and some when you had to flesh out the NPC Rick, unless your saying the players do all that work too while you just sit there and watch. In any case, even during the game(though technically doing 20 questions is not ''playing the game'') NPC Rick is made, with out pre made plan, a plan or even a plot.
6.So NPC Rick waits in Limbo until you randomly decided to drop him in the game. (You can't even do something like place him in the game for a Pc to encounter as that is pre-planning and you say you don't do that).



Wren's class involves having a cult, and involves mechanics for the daily goings-on. Due to bad rolls at the start of the session, her cult is in Want. When her cult is in want, by the game rules, they begin to desert her. I simply asked myself where else they would go and what kind of thing someone would preach about in a world that, for all intents and purposes, floods every night due to extremely erratic tides.
Thus the Tidecaller was born as a threat.

I understand the part were your playing one of the anti-D&D games where the ''game'' does a lot of work for you so you can be a casual GM...but still:

When you make a plan to do something, like say ''make where the deserters are going'', how is this not pre planning or even just planning?



Comes from thinking logically while I play, based on what the system produces. *shrug* It's really not mindblowing at all.

Except thinking logically would involve plans and plots, so you must be doing something esle...



A name, background, motivations, personality, and a goal don't add up to a plot. They add up to a character who will do stuff if left to his own devices. (Based on what makes sense at the time, not a "this will happen exactly" thing, like a plot is.) Some of which he got away with, and a significant part he totally didn't because the PCs got involved and killed him before he became a larger threat (leaving other threats to grow instead.)

You are correct that just making a single NPC does not equal making a plot. A plot is much bigger with lots more details.

As you play such a randical anti-D&D type game....I wonder why you even post in a thread about things like plot, railroads and other elements of most RPGs.

And when you do, why don't you start with ''I player this wacy random not normal RPG that ''tells me'' what to do and is nothing like normal, classic RPGs. "

Like say if someone made a thread and asked the question "In my Dull and Boring RPG I have used all twelve of the Narrative Events for Casual DMs and my game has gotten dull and boring and repetitive. What can I do?"

If I was to post in such a thread I'm start with ''well I never, ever have played such a game and never will as it sounds like a bad nightmare'' and then give my ''amazing'' advice of ''you might try to think of your own Event Watevers and not just use the ones in the book on page six."

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-16, 10:31 PM
Well, hope this does not like shatter all your illusions: you you can't just ''say(type)'' something and have it be true. Reality does not work like that.

There is sufficient evidence for my interpretation to be correct in this context that I am really not worried about your feelings on the issue.



Are you shooting a movie or playing a RPG?

The latter. Turns out you can go back and forth between what multiple people are doing at once.
It's called Multitasking. Try it sometime.



Ok, so I understand:

1.You cane to the game with nothing: just a blank and the setting.

In this case, I didn't have the setting, either. But that's a system quirk and so I omitted it.



2.You did the lazy, casual DM trick of ''guys I can't think of anything, give me some ideas by answering my random questions."

Ah. The old "word it dismissively" tactic.
I use the Actual Good GM Practice of getting Player Buy-In on the world and getting them to actually give a darn because the world is in part theirs. They care what happens in it, now.



3.After a time of getting answers, the players thought up the NPC Rick and you thanked the players.
Eh, not really. The question I asked that created him was "Who is in charge here, politically, and what do people hate about him?"
Non-answers don't count but they had already figured that much out. Their answer was that the title of Governor was held by a man with a long greed streak and a bad attitude. Via political jokes about a current texas politician his name became Rick, and to emphasize his self-absorption it became The Rick.



4.Then the normal game play continued.

5.At some time and some when you had to flesh out the NPC Rick, unless your saying the players do all that work too while you just sit there and watch. In any case, even during the game(though technically doing 20 questions is not ''playing the game'') NPC Rick is made, with out pre made plan, a plan or even a plot.

I have said repeatedly that I know what will happen if the PCs do nothing, more or less. Rather, how the NPC will behave based on what I know about them. But curveballs happen.



6.So NPC Rick waits in Limbo until you randomly decided to drop him in the game. (You can't even do something like place him in the game for a Pc to encounter as that is pre-planning and you say you don't do that).
He was literally in that session.



I understand the part were your playing one of the anti-D&D games where the ''game'' does a lot of work for you so you can be a casual GM...but still:




When you make a plan to do something, like say ''make where the deserters are going'', how is this not pre planning or even just planning?

I said I don't use Plots, not that I dont do prep.
Read.



Except thinking logically would involve plans and plots, so you must be doing something esle...


Still conflating disparate ideas. This bait is old and your shenanigans tiresome.



You are correct that just making a single NPC does not equal making a plot. A plot is much bigger with lots more details.
Yes. And yet that campaign was constantly active, had high risk, and even ventured into metaphysical concepts and conflicts beyond the mortal ken, as well as good old fashioned one-on-one brawls, killing swarms of cultists, revolution, larceny of supplies, and etc.
(None of which is listed on some big table in the rules, btw. I'll cover that little tall tale below.)



As you play such a randical anti-D&D type game....I wonder why you even post in a thread about things like plot, railroads and other elements of most RPGs.
Because D&D is one RPG, not most of them. Not by a long shot. And, I've applied the principals of this system into:
D&D
FATE
Only War
Stars Without Number (an OSR game)
And others.

Since SWN is based on old editions of D&D and I applied the principals there as well, would you prefer that I recount that campaign? It went similarly.

Mercenaries on the run from previous employers, con men with lots of past connections coming back to haunt them, (several of which happened on-the-spot due to rolls) and a few horrible misandventures due to accidentally screwing up warp jumps. Crime bosses doublecrossing them, them doublecrossing crime bosses, their own friends and allies becoming targets of the mercenary's old coworkers...
Virtually none of which I knew would happen until it did.

But keep hammering this fallacious button.



And when you do, why don't you start with ''I player this wacy random not normal RPG that ''tells me'' what to do and is nothing like normal, classic RPGs. "
Because that description is wildly inaccurate and you're making it up to purposefully be obnoxious and baity while failing to comprehend metaphor and sarcasm previously.



Like say if someone made a thread and asked the question "In my Dull and Boring RPG I have used all twelve of the Narrative Events for Casual DMs and my game has gotten dull and boring and repetitive. What can I do?"
Now you're in fantasy land, talking about things you're imagining and know jack diddly about the thing your trying to criticise. Which makes you look extremely silly.



If I was to post in such a thread I'm start with ''well I never, ever have played such a game and never will as it sounds like a bad nightmare'' and then give my ''amazing'' advice of ''you might try to think of your own Event Watevers and not just use the ones in the book on page six."

Still in fantasy land, arguing against topics and ideas nobody is talking about because you can't handle concepts such as "not all RPG campaigns fit into one of 3 narrow and poorly defined boxes" or "the use of metaphor."

At this point it's not even bait. You're just throwing the whole fishing pole into the water.

Florian
2017-09-17, 12:20 AM
Is the outcome of the second scenario set in stone, or does PC action have an effect?

Is this scenario dumped on the players, or did they agree to a political intrigue campaign?

Youīre skipping the important question: Do we handle it as part of world building or as game content? That makes it either part of the overall setting or part of a scenario (keeping in mind that the setting can always turn into a scenario).

@Darth Ultron:

Letīs have a chat....

In Germany, D&D is a fringe game and often considered to be some kind of "amitrash". The 800lb. gorilla here is DSA and that works very different than most US-based gaming systems.
From the start, it always has been a "shared world experience", as the expectation here is that all groups ultimately play in the same setting (Aventurien) and everyone more or less participates in the ongoing meta plot that shapes the game world (to use a Traveller term, there is no MTU).

It is widely accepted that a "good" character is one that seamlessly fits into the setting and a "good" player is one that accepts that he is playing a character that is part of a bigger "whole". A character might have some mechanical power or benefits, but if weīre into playing, for example, the Drakensang story arc, what matters more is that you use what fits to the arc, not what you mechanically have. I.e. I might be playing a great genie binder, but if using those powers would disrupt the ongoing arc, Iīm going to refrain from it. Itīs become a common "sport" to create a character that can scale well from low to high power to fit the ongoing arc, learning along the way how to best fi into said arc.

A lot of what you write reminds my about this kind of gaming culture. Howīs your stance on it?

Darth Ultron
2017-09-17, 04:10 PM
I said I don't use Plots, not that I dont do prep.
.

I think it is clear you use plots, RPG plots not movie/book plots. And you have been all over the place with things like saying ''I do no pre planning'', and then explaining how you pre-plan things.

I can see you will never grasp the idea that a RPG Plot is a ''choose your own adventure'' type plot.

NPC A will do plot A, unless the player characters do something; and if they do he will react in way C or way D and try to do plot B as per his premade write up.

Pick up nearly any published adventure and you will see a lot of ''if the Pc's do this then this happens'' or ''If the Pc's don't do this then this might happen'' and all sorts of stuff like that...endless plot ''what ifs'' . But I guess every adventure you have ever seen has only been on a postcard and said something like ''the PC's kill the dragon and get loot and xp'' end of game.





@Darth Ultron:
Letīs have a chat....
A lot of what you write reminds my about this kind of gaming culture. Howīs your stance on it?

A ''good'' character is one that is fun to play, it does not matter if the ''fit'' in anywhere.

A ''good'' player has all the qualities of a good person: honesty, charity, niceness, etc and they want to play a social game with others to have fun.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-17, 04:48 PM
I think it is clear you use plots, RPG plots not movie/book plots. And you have been all over the place with things like saying ''I do no pre planning'', and then explaining how you pre-plan things.
You're still having trouble following fairly basic threads of conversation. Let me correct your mistakes:
1. I utilize Narrative within a Setting to produce a Story. Plots are a different thing, as you've been informed. The thing you THINK is a "plot" is a mixture of Narrative and Setting elements, hence why you are failing to comprehend something fairly basic.



I can see you will never grasp the idea that a RPG Plot is a ''choose your own adventure'' type plot.

That is because there is already a word for this in RPGs:
Narrative.

Since that word already exists, we don't need another one. Plot can mean what it already means and we can use Narrative for the RPG term without confusion.
Really not all that hard.



NPC A will do plot A, unless the player characters do something; and if they do he will react in way C or way D and try to do plot B as per his premade write up.
As a plot is a predetermined and unchangeable set of events that WILL happen, this is nonsensical.

But you're so close to correct I can't help but applaud you. We're finally making headway.

NPCs and their plans are part of Setting (the framework in which the game proceeds) and can ve directly affected by the Narrative (the actions of the PCs and NPCs within gameplay), none of which is Plot, since Plot is another thing.

What you're talking about is Setting and Narrative mixed into a soup that can't be teased apart, hence your confusion. Include that dividing line and let Plot be what it actually is, and you'll catch up.



Pick up nearly any published adventure and you will see a lot of ''if the Pc's do this then this happens'' or ''If the Pc's don't do this then this might happen'' and all sorts of stuff like that...endless plot ''what ifs'' . But I guess every adventure you have ever seen has only been on a postcard and said something like ''the PC's kill the dragon and get loot and xp'' end of game.
Ah, from progress right back to elementary-school quality insults of my games. Darn.

I tend to only deal with problems as they will progress if PCs do nothing. Because once they intervene, it's not all that hard to work out what individual NPCs will do, since I know what they care about, want, and are willing to do. Working from the fly is pretty easy with well-made NPCs.

Reacting in real time is Narrative.
The NPCs plan is the Setting.
What we get when the PCs become involved and we look back on it is the Story of what happened.

Story is past tense. "This has happened"
Plot is future tense. "This will happen"
Narrative is present tense "this is happening"
Prep involves the Conditional "this might happen"

I don't write my campaigns out as set of if/then because it means that I'm only prepared for a limited number of inputs, which is no different from a CRPG, so why bother? I have no graphics, the gameplay is slower, and CRPGs have multiplayer nowadays so even the group element is a moot point. Like I've said before:
If you're running it like Baldur's Gate, with a set of predetermined If/Then statements.... then there's little reason to not just play a CRPG.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-17, 05:56 PM
That is because there is already a word for this in RPGs:
Narrative.

Ok, think I get it now.

When they made the first anti-D&D games they needed a way to say ''plot'', but did not want to say plot as it is BadWrongFun. So enter the word: Narrative. A Narrative is a plot that is not a plot.

And ''Narrative'' fits so perfectly as one definition of the word is: A carefully selected set of supposedly true events, experiences, or the like, intended to support a particular viewpoint. And that is perfect for the viewpoint of ''D&D/plots/railraoding is badwrongfun, but out game is better and we are right''...and, of course ''buy our game.''



What you're talking about is Setting and Narrative mixed into a soup that can't be teased apart, hence your confusion. Include that dividing line and let Plot be what it actually is, and you'll catch up.

I'm never going to agree to your wacky split of Setting and making your own personal definition of Narrative. To me the Setting is all ways static background, and the plot is things taking place and moving in the game. I don't have a super special word for ''just'' waht the players do: I call that just playing the game.



Reacting in real time is Narrative.
The NPCs plan is the Setting.
What we get when the PCs become involved and we look back on it is the Story of what happened.

Reacting in real time=Game play or playing the game.
An NPC plan is a plot (and this is literally the meaning of the word plot here as a plot is literately a set something that someone is trying to do.
Looking back we get a game log.



Story is past tense. "This has happened"
Plot is future tense. "This will happen"
Narrative is present tense "this is happening"
Prep involves the Conditional "this might happen"

Guess your not into the ''never-ending story'' concept.
Plot is much more ''this might happen''.
Game play is happening.
Prep is ''might'', odd it is just ''made ready'' to the rest of us




I don't write my campaigns out as set of if/then because it means that I'm only prepared for a limited number of inputs, which is no different from a CRPG, so why bother? I have no graphics, the gameplay is slower, and CRPGs have multiplayer nowadays so even the group element is a moot point.

I do get that as a more casual DM you are not an adventure writer.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-17, 06:26 PM
Ok, think I get it now.

When they made the first anti-D&D games they needed a way to say ''plot'', but did not want to say plot as it is BadWrongFun. So enter the word: Narrative. A Narrative is a plot that is not a plot.


Nope.

Or rather, narrative is "plot that is not plot", in the way that a cat is a "dog that is not a dog".

All of these words have histories far longer than RPGs, and meanings that have nothing to do with RPGs. As being used here, they are "terms of art".

The reason some people use "narrative" in this context is specifically because "plot" when used as an RPG term-of-art -- as you are using it -- had come to imply things that are not true about their games and their campaigns. They wanted a way to talk about things in their games/campaigns that ARE true, without the baggage that "plot" would lug in. Specifically, they wanted a way to talk about a game/campaign that had NPCs with their own goals and independent minds, and settings limits, and cause-and-effect, and so on... without dragging in the implication that any of the future, post-campaign-start events were set in stone or that the game was on rails.

A game can have all that other stuff, without having a fixed future that will come to pass no matter what. In that sense, the game can be just like the real world -- the past is set in stone, the present is a set of standing facts, and the future has yet to be determined.

But at this point you've had that explained to you so many times, in so many ways, by so many people... you don't have to like how they use those words, but you're clearly refusing to set that aside even enough to avoid deliberately misrepresenting what those other people are saying. It appears that you're being deliberately obtuse, and that you'll do whatever it takes to avoid dealing with the vast excluded middle between "railroad" and "total aimless chaos".

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-17, 06:41 PM
Ok, think I get it now.

When they made the first anti-D&D games they needed a way to say ''plot'', but did not want to say plot as it is BadWrongFun. So enter the word: Narrative. A Narrative is a plot that is not a plot.

Are you trying to portray your lack of understanding as d&d's supposed victimhood now?
Wow.

And that's not the origin of the term, so again your imagination is wrong yet again. You should probably stop hypothesizing like this. Your one and only accurate guess thus far is below. That's a rather low batting average.

It comes from people noticing many terms with confusing overlap and establishing vernacular for clear communication when talking about the many moving pieces of an RPG. Similar to how clockmakers don't call every part inside the clock a "gear," but differentiate their purposes and designs to clarify communication. (THAT WAS A METAPHOR, DRAWING SIMILARITY BETWEEN TWO SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT SITUATIONS, WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT CLOCKS NOW. You had trouble last time, thought I'd clarify.)

I'll also say I've never said plots(using the right definition, not yours) are bad. They're just not what I do. I never said railroading is bad, except in the context of it being simplistic and ineffective in the longrun and making sure youre players are onboard for such rails.

So the longrunning history of not knowing wtf you're talking about continues...



And ''Narrative'' fits so perfectly as one definition of the word is: A carefully selected set of supposedly true events, experiences, or the like, intended to support a particular viewpoint. And that is perfect for the viewpoint of ''D&D/plots/railraoding is badwrongfun, but out game is better and we are right''...and, of course ''buy our game.''

The hypocrisy of quoting the dictionary for Narrative here and denying it for Plot is hilarious to me.

Not a lot of thinking going on before you start talking, eh?



I'm never going to agree to your wacky split of Setting and making your own personal definition of Narrative. To me the Setting is all ways static background, and the plot is things taking place and moving in the game. I don't have a super special word for ''just'' waht the players do: I call that just playing the game.

Plot already has it's meaning. So does narrative.
I really don't care how you feel about it. Nor does anyone else.
Take it or go.
Up to you.



Reacting in real time=Game play or playing the game.
An NPC plan is a plot (and this is literally the meaning of the word plot here as a plot is literately a set something that someone is trying to do.
Looking back we get a game log.

Now you're adding in further definitions of plot to pad this and increasing the confusion by making it mean, now, about 4 different things in any given conversation, making it necessary to constantly clarify which one you mean.
And then you're claiming it's clearer than having different, distinct words for these concepts so you don't need to clarify.
This is hilariously backwards.



Guess your not into the ''never-ending story'' concept.
Literally your only correct guess so far. A game with no ending has no point. I can't think of any long-running series with no real endings that are still consistently of quality. This means Never-ending-story games eventually peter out and die slowly until someone does an arbitrary climactic" ending from nowhere without context.



Plot is much more ''this might happen''.

Nah.



Game play is happening.

Yes. Which is distinct from Narrative. (Fiction layer versus Game layer distinction.)



Prep is ''might'', odd it is just ''made ready'' to the rest of us
Literally only you.




I do get that as a more casual DM you are not an adventure writer.
And I do get that as a bad DM you're just doing low quality CRPGs with worse stories and pacing, and losing players left and right.

Meanwhile I don't have that problem, we have fun, and my players tell the stories of their characters with enthusiasm.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-18, 06:34 AM
Are you trying to portray your lack of understanding as d&d's supposed victimhood now?

I'm not a victim, never have been, never will be. Victimhood is for people on the other side of the isle.



Meanwhile I don't have that problem, we have fun, and my players tell the stories of their characters with enthusiasm.

I guess this is the big difference here, your so player focused. And that just does not make sense to me. I think the focus should be on everyone, not just the players.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-18, 06:55 AM
I'm not a victim, never have been, never will be. Victimhood is for people on the other side of the isle.
That's a possessive "'s" at the end of D&D there, buckeroo.
Apparently reading is only for this side of the table, too.




I guess this is the big difference here, your so player focused. And that just does not make sense to me. I think the focus should be on everyone, not just the players.
Still missing the word "We" which is the first person plural and implicitly includes me as part of the collective group.

Didn't think I'd need to do grammar lessons today.

georgie_leech
2017-09-18, 08:09 AM
Didn't think I'd need to do grammar lessons today.

On GITP? We have threads dedicated to the things :smallbiggrin:

Theoboldi
2017-09-18, 09:14 AM
Guys, just a quick FYI, none of you are looking any better than Darth Ultron in this discussion. Your posts are just as filled with personal attacks and fallacious arguments as his, and are entirely unconvincing to a neutral observer.

The amount of circlejerking that's going on is really not conductive to a useful discussion, and actually just kind of pathetic. If you're looking to discredit his ideas and further your own, you're really not going a good job of it.

Scripten
2017-09-18, 09:19 AM
On GITP? We have threads dedicated to the things :smallbiggrin:

And each has been evidence as to why we as a community should stay as far away from that topic as possible. :smalltongue: Also, I really wish this hadn't become a contest between "D&D" and "Not-D&D", though I do appreciate that ImNotTrevor has specifically said that his argument is system-agnostic.

@DU: Nothing about the argument you are making supports anything within any version of D&D. What you have is a distinct misunderstanding of adventure design and a refusal to use words in a way that the rest of the TTRPG community (and the English-speaking world, occasionally) use them. Instead of trying to get everyone else to use those words the same way, why not just either a) translate your thoughts into arguments using those words in ways that other people use them or b) disengage for the sanity of everyone involved?

Otherwise, you're just going to run into this same situation over and over again.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-18, 09:55 AM
Guys, just a quick FYI, none of you are looking any better than Darth Ultron in this discussion. Your posts are just as filled with personal attacks and fallacious arguments as his, and are entirely unconvincing to a neutral observer.

The amount of circlejerking that's going on is really not conductive to a useful discussion, and actually just kind of pathetic. If you're looking to discredit his ideas and further your own, you're really not going a good job of it.

Eh. I'm not really all that concerned with being thought of as an A-hole by random people on the internet who I'll never meet.

Turns out I can live with that.

I'd rather just I be the massive tool about it and let everyone else chill.

Doesn't make me noble, really, but eh. Better a fireduel than a flamewar.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-18, 11:38 AM
Guys, just a quick FYI, none of you are looking any better than Darth Ultron in this discussion. Your posts are just as filled with personal attacks and fallacious arguments as his, and are entirely unconvincing to a neutral observer.

The amount of circlejerking that's going on is really not conductive to a useful discussion, and actually just kind of pathetic. If you're looking to discredit his ideas and further your own, you're really not going a good job of it.

Why he is wrong has already been explained to him at great and patient length by a large number of polite and reasonable people. He refuses to listen and continues to **** up threads with the same tired incorrect and annoying arguments. At some point patience wears off. Get outta here with your tone policing.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-18, 12:15 PM
Guys, just a quick FYI, none of you are looking any better than Darth Ultron in this discussion. Your posts are just as filled with personal attacks and fallacious arguments as his, and are entirely unconvincing to a neutral observer.

The amount of circlejerking that's going on is really not conductive to a useful discussion, and actually just kind of pathetic. If you're looking to discredit his ideas and further your own, you're really not going a good job of it.

That's a bit of a false equivalency you're trying to establish there between the thread-crapper and those who are tired of the threads being crapped.

Not to mention the wide variation in the tone and content of how different people are responding to said crapper, even now.

georgie_leech
2017-09-18, 02:10 PM
Why he is wrong has already been explained to him at great and patient length by a large number of polite and reasonable people. He refuses to listen and continues to **** up threads with the same tired incorrect and annoying arguments. At some point patience wears off. Get outta here with your tone policing.

While I'm hardly one to defend DU and am somewhat irked by his language myself, the irony of this post is staggering. But I'm no hypocrite; by all means, continue complaining about someone complaining about what others are saying. :smallwink:

Koo Rehtorb
2017-09-18, 02:43 PM
While I'm hardly one to defend DU and am somewhat irked by his language myself, the irony of this post is staggering. But I'm no hypocrite; by all means, continue complaining about someone complaining about what others are saying. :smallwink:

I don't object to DU based on his tone. I object to DU based on the fact that everything he says on this subject is objectively wrong and he continues saying it after being thoroughly and repeatedly debunked in a relatively polite manner by multiple well-intentioned people over the course of months.

The fact that he's kind of an ass on top of that is mostly irrelevant to me.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-18, 03:24 PM
While I'm hardly one to defend DU and am somewhat irked by his language myself, the irony of this post is staggering. But I'm no hypocrite; by all means, continue complaining about someone complaining about what others are saying. :smallwink:

I don't think yiu have enough layers.

Complaining about a complaint about people complaining. (Edit: and I just realized you could easily see this post as a Complaint about complaing about a complaint about people complaining. )

Its complaining all the way down. Mr. Whine's Wild Ride. There is no such thing as enough complaining!

Mordaedil
2017-09-21, 06:30 AM
Even after all these threads I still can't tell if Darth Ultron is an old grognard who can't deal with these kids edging in on his hobby or if he is a relatively young newcomer who can't tell toxic behavior from the established gentlemens agreement at the table.

Segev
2017-09-22, 08:38 PM
I get it now... he's posting from opposite world.

In the world the rest of us are posting from, one of the main reasons GMs decide to railroad is because they can't handle complexity. They need a nice neat linear path with no significant deviation and players only interacting with the things said GMs have already prepared for along that path.

He may be confusing "complexity" with "convoluted."

A Xanatos Gambit can be complex, with many interlocking features that cause the net effect of "Xanatos wins." A Gambit Roulette will feature a sequence of events that, if they hadn't unraveled exactly as they did, would not have allowed the gambit-player to win...but since they all happened "just as planned," it worked out.

A convoluted plot where all must happen "just so" seems complex, but really just plays out because all the interlocking bits are contrived together by the author's writing or the GM's railroading.

A complex plot that is not railroaded in a game will have a lot of pieces the players can play with, and a lot of ways things could wind up going depending on what the players do and do not do. A convoluted plot is fragile and can be broken by players failing to make the "right" choices, so players cannot be permitted to make the "wrong" choices and must be guided to play their part in the intricate dance so that it winds up where it must be.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-22, 09:57 PM
A convoluted plot where all must happen "just so" seems complex, but really just plays out because all the interlocking bits are contrived together by the author's writing or the GM's railroading.

A complex plot that is not railroaded in a game will have a lot of pieces the players can play with, and a lot of ways things could wind up going depending on what the players do and do not do. A convoluted plot is fragile and can be broken by players failing to make the "right" choices, so players cannot be permitted to make the "wrong" choices and must be guided to play their part in the intricate dance so that it winds up where it must be.

I can heartily agree with this.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-22, 11:38 PM
Even after all these threads I still can't tell if Darth Ultron is an old grognard who can't deal with these kids edging in on his hobby or if he is a relatively young newcomer who can't tell toxic behavior from the established gentlemens agreement at the table.

Neither? I'm a second generation ''grognard'' and don't really care about the kidz.....they can have fun playing coolz 5E.

And I do not believe in the ''gentleman agreement '' silly stuff, and never have used such things in my game or any type of social activity. (Though #4: Players are expected to comply with such railroading as may be essential to a smooth game. is not a bad agreement to have.)





A complex plot that is not railroaded in a game will have a lot of pieces the players can play with, and a lot of ways things could wind up going depending on what the players do and do not do. A convoluted plot is fragile and can be broken by players failing to make the "right" choices, so players cannot be permitted to make the "wrong" choices and must be guided to play their part in the intricate dance so that it winds up where it must be.

The above is a perfect example of a mess of a simple game.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-22, 11:57 PM
Neither? I'm a second generation ''grognard'' and don't really care about the kidz.....they can have fun playing coolz 5E.

So.... yeah, a grognard.



And I do not believe in the ''gentleman agreement '' silly stuff, and never have used such things in my game or any type of social activity. (Though #4: Players are expected to comply with such railroading as may be essential to a smooth game. is not a bad agreement to have.)

Basic Social Skills and Courtesy: not for this guy, apparently.





The above is a perfect example of a mess of a simple game.

Except that literally none of that description sounds messy in any way. Just varied.
More than one possible outcome =/= messy.

Still not hitting the Basic Reading requirement. That's not an insult. Just informing you that reading may be helpful in a text medium, and to try doing more of it.

Mordaedil
2017-09-23, 09:35 AM
I feel like in trying to avoid being labeled, I guess we figured out more than we wanted to about Darth Ultron.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-23, 10:25 AM
I feel like in trying to avoid being labeled, I guess we figured out more than we wanted to about Darth Ultron.

Sometimes, the best way to make your point is simply to keep the other guy talking.

Friv
2017-09-23, 04:46 PM
The above is a perfect example of a mess of a simple game.

HOW.

How can you look at a two-sentence list of two examples, and call them one example of a game of any description?

HOW??

georgie_leech
2017-09-23, 05:03 PM
HOW.

How can you look at a two-sentence list of two examples, and call them one example of a game of any description?

HOW??

Doublethink? :smallamused:

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-23, 05:28 PM
HOW.

How can you look at a two-sentence list of two examples, and call them one example of a game of any description?

HOW??


Doublethink? :smallamused:


Halfthink.

kyoryu
2017-09-25, 12:46 PM
Even after all these threads I still can't tell if Darth Ultron is an old grognard who can't deal with these kids edging in on his hobby or if he is a relatively young newcomer who can't tell toxic behavior from the established gentlemens agreement at the table.

Well, considering that the "real" grognards didn't do "plots" (I mean, that was that crazy new-fangled DragonLance stuff)....

Segev
2017-09-25, 02:53 PM
The above is a perfect example of a mess of a simple game.


HOW.

How can you look at a two-sentence list of two examples, and call them one example of a game of any description?

HOW??

This is my question, as well.

Darth Ultron, can you please elaborate on this? What in what I wrote is a "simple" game, and how is it a "mess?"