PDA

View Full Version : Game Theory Musings: Levels of Railroading



Grod_The_Giant
2018-03-29, 10:34 AM
At the risk of starting another long argument... it occurs to me that the question of "railroading vs sandbox" isn't the binary it sometimes seems to be framed as. One person's linear game is another person's railroad, while one person's sandbox is another's dull muddle. So, partially for my own benefit, I thought I'd sit down and try to define what I see as various common types of game, with the hope of spawning some slightly more nuanced terminology. In keeping with the original, I'll try to stick with transportation metaphors.

Airplane: An airplane game is a classic total-railroad. The GM controls more-or-less everything: where you're going, how fast you're going, how you get there, who you're allowed to interact with, when you're allowed to move around... the players really have no option but to sit where they're told and watch the pretty scenery. This is the sort of game that you usually hear horror stories about. (Alternate metaphor: You're playing Time Crisis. You can't do anything but shoot the targets that pop up).

Train Car: If you open up an airplane game slightly, you get a train car game. The players are still on rails, still going where and how the GM wants them to go, but there's at least the appearance of freedom. The plot will continue along the same lines no matter what you do, but you can get up and walk around the car, talk with NPCs of your choice, and make similar non-plot-critical choices. This is more of a "badly written module" level of railroad. (Alternate metaphor: You're playing Halo. There's only one way through the level, but you can poke around a little bit, try different loadouts, take the high path instead of the low, etc).

Highway: Opening things up further, you get a highway game. No more are the players bound to a single track-- instead, there's a set destination, a series of rails to get there, and the players have relative control over which ones they take, how fast they go, when they stop for bathroom breaks and scenic overlooks, that sort of thing. This is "decent-module" levels of railroad. [(Alternate metaphor: You're playing Dishonored. There's a linear series of levels, but each one is big and open and has multiple ways to complete it and secrets to find).

Open Road: A variant on the above, an open road game maintains the multiple-rails-at-your-own-pace-heading-the-same-direction approach, adds in some amount of major decision points-- do you side with the baron or the rebels? Help the girl or abandon her? You're still roughly following the GM's plot, but the game does respond to your choices. (Alternate metaphor: You're playing Deus Ex. Lots of ways through the level, lots of ways the game can end).

Big City: A big city game is a sandbox-with-stuff. There are lots of interesting places you can go in the city, lots of ways to get there, and even similar approaches ("let's bike") have different paths you can follow ("okay, do we go down park street or fifth?"). The GM offers a couple plot hooks, but lets the players find their own way. (Alternate metaphor: You're playing Skyrim. Start on one quest line, abandon it for a one-off, abandon that to just explore, it all works).

National Park: A national park is a more-or-less "pure" sandbox. The GM knows the lay of the land, but otherwise it's entirely up to the players to find their own adventure. Hike a trail? Go fishing? Build a fort? Have a picnic? Sit in the parking lot? All are valid; this is just a big pretty place to explore., and you'll have to make your own goals.(Alternate metaphor: You're playing Minecraft. Do what you want; if there is a plot it's subtle and hidden).

-------

None of these are meant as value judgements (except maybe for Airplane Games). A Train Car game can be relaxing fun if the scenery is nice, the food is good and the company is interesting; it can also be miserable if you're just riding through suburbs in an uncomfortable car full of surly *******s. A National Park game can be a rich experience if the terrain is interesting and varied and your fellow players are of similar mind; it can also be dull if there's nothing but some generic woods and no-one has a good idea what to do.

In any case, where do your games usually fall? I tend towards Open Road, myself, sometimes edging towards Highway-- a couple ways to get to the main plot, some nice open sections while pursing it, and player choices and outcomes sometimes lead to detours or altered destinations.

(Also, think I missed any styles, or lumped any together that are too different?)

Geddy2112
2018-03-29, 10:56 AM
As a GM and a player, I like open road the most and most of my games fall into this, with a slight bias to big city . In my gaming group, we all have been GM at least once, some of us do it frequently. One GM is somewhere between highway and traincar, another is firmly big city with 2-3 session arcs of open road, while the last main GM of the group is a highway through a national park-get off the road and go hiking and you will find a lot to do.

Saying all of that, I don't think each is all encompassing, or that you can't have elements from two different styles in the same game. A game with a traincaresque plot can have a big city couple of freeform exploration, for example.

Cozzer
2018-03-29, 11:02 AM
I'm an Open Road sort of guy, with a few Highway moments (where the choices of the characters "lock" the plot for a while) and a few Big City moments (usually for pacing, after a big plot point has been solved and the story needs a bit of time to decompress).

kyoryu
2018-03-29, 11:19 AM
So, here's what I do:

There's a situation. There's some people that want things that the players don't want. They have agendas - that is, what they will do if left to their own devices. The game is about dealing with this, and is presumed to be about this.

However, how the players go about this is up to them. There are no (or very few) preplanned scenes. I don't know what will happen. The players are free to try pretty much any type of counter that they want. And their actions will impact the world, and the antagonists will change their plans based on this.

I don't know how things will turn out. At all. Including the ending! So it's reasonably directed ("this is what the game is about") but the players have almost complete freedom in how to approach the issue, and I dictate almost no events that will happen. Sometimes, players will lose control because of an action or a consequence of previous actions, but not because I've predetermined that things should go a certain way.

I don't think this fits well with any of your proposed categories. IT almost seems to be a two-axis thing, rather than a single spectrum.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-03-29, 11:24 AM
I don't think this fits well with any of your proposed categories. IT almost seems to be a two-axis thing, rather than a single spectrum.
I dunno, it sounds like a National Park game done well. "This is the world, this is how it works, do what you will with it.". The key point there is that the world exists independently of the players, rather than being a playground specifically built for them.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-29, 11:27 AM
I tend towards train cars, but I'm trying to move towards both big city games and highway games (not overly interested in truly open road games, I find them much harder to write compared to just above and below them).

Humourously big city games I run tend to be located within big cities, while more linear games tend to range over larger areas.

kyoryu
2018-03-29, 12:01 PM
I dunno, it sounds like a National Park game done well. "This is the world, this is how it works, do what you will with it.". The key point there is that the world exists independently of the players, rather than being a playground specifically built for them.

But in most cases in the games I run, the world is tailored to the characters. And the game is really "about" the plot. It's about finding out what happens with that particular "story question", if you will. Done well, the gameplay feels more like a Highway or Open Road, but with National Park levels of freedom.

I'm also a "sandbox"/"National Park" fan, and they're very different game types.

JNAProductions
2018-03-29, 12:09 PM
I'd note there's a difference between linearity and railroading.

Linearity is more what you're describing-it only becomes a railroad when the GM is FORCING it on players.

For example, a GM that says "Hey guys, I want to run this module-it's kinda linear, so try to stick to the story, okay?" and then runs a Train-Car game is totally fine. A GM that says "You can do anything you want! Total freedom!" and runs a Train-Car game by arbitrarily shutting down anything that doesn't follow his plot is a liar, a bad GM, and railroading.

Scripten
2018-03-29, 12:21 PM
Fair warning, this might end up being a long post and I'll probably get ninja'd writing it.

So the big suggestion I would like to put forth is this: We should indeed separate the act of Railroading from the level of linearity in a game. Firstly, this allows us to examine the behaviors associated with Railroading without presupposing any judgement on game style, which I believe is an important distinction. This isn't to say that I believe that your proposed levels of linearity are not useful, but rather that they are not as useful to a discussion on Railroading, per se.

When disucussing Railroading, we're always going to get into a matter of consent, because that's really the underlying issue. When a DM Railroads, they do something that violates the implicit or explicit consent which the players have offered when agreeing to play the game. This consent is given either by a general social contract (as we've seen from other threads, this is muddy and ill-defined), group discussions/votes, or explicit mechanics such as votes or game session primer documents. My primary RL game's primer, for example, discusses some of what a new player can expect in terms of campaign openness and informs them of some mechanical expectations.

I think we can explain the amount of Railroading in a game by breaking down behaviors, although the terms are just conveyances as of yet. I haven't really thought much about them and are pretty much pulled straight from thin air.

Solution Predetermination: This is when a DM accepts only one solution to a proposed problem. This is the DM that only allows the players one option per encounter. This is the Ogre that can't be reasoned with, can't be evaded, can't be lured away, etc, etc, etc. Just like all of the other behaviors, this is sometimes okay. If the players consented to a game with precise puzzles/encounters similar to a point-and-click video game, then the DM shutting down creative "wrong" solutions is acceptable. This occurs almost exclusively in mostly linear games and is a very common Railroading example.

Illusory Arbitration: This is a form of Illusionism where the DM first decides to allow game mechanics to arbitrate a situation but then (secretly) reneges on that decision. This might involve fudging dice rolls, changing target values, or otherwise overruling the mechanics of the game, along with the requirement that the players are unaware that this has happened. Sometimes, again, this is acceptable: If the players consent to the DM giving the Illusion of using the system to arbitrate situations while the DM is actually just deciding arbitrarily, then this is not Railroading. This kind of Railroading can appear in any style of game, including full-on National Park sandboxes.

Mono-pathing: This is another form of Illusionism where the DM offers the players the illusion of choice/agency while actually only offering a single path through the adventure. This is where the term Quantum Ogre comes up a lot, though the Quantum Ogre also (tends to) require that the players are aware of and actively attempting to avoid the Ogre, while I am proposing that Mono-pathing is any false illusion of choice. This is the dungeon with a T in the hallway that somehow always leads to the same room or the quest that lets you side with either faction, but one always betrays you while the other does not. As always, this is not always a bad thing: Sometimes the DM only has so much material prepared, after all. It's only Railroading if the players did not consent to it.

NPC-centrism: I'm not entirely sure about this one; it could probably be rolled into either Solution Predetermination or Mono-pathing. Anyway, this is when the DM offers the players an adventure where they think they are the heroes... until the DMPC or superpowered NPC comes to save everyone. Alternatively, this is also the villain that absolutely cannot be defeated. This is... well, Elminster, the SUE-files' self-insert NPC, or particularly bad interpretations of Strahd. As you may have guessed, this is also not Railroading if the players have consented or the NPC is somehow taken out of the picture or made to be defeatable. A well-run Strahd is the latter case, while our friendly Elder Gods in Call of Cthulhu are an example of an undefeatable enemy that is nonetheless not really in the picture. Generally, the worst cases of this are NPC allies, although they can also be handled without the DM Railroading.

JeenLeen
2018-03-29, 01:35 PM
I prefer something between Highway and Open Road. Any tighter than that, and choice feels too constrained, though I'd be open even for Train if the DM was honest about the type of game being run. Pure National Park sandbox is a bit too 'lack of direction' for my taste. I think I'd enjoy it at first, but get bored without an overarching plot to drive things.

I think why I like those is that it enables me to let my character's morals and personal goals interact with the overall plot in a meaningful way. That is, I have the freedom to make decisions based on those and can still (at least usually) accomplish the goals at the 'plot points'.
I also like games where there are plothooks that are optional. Like a Mage game where we can work with the vampires in town or not. If we do, it opens up some connections but also gets some enemies. If we don't, some stuff is harder but we avoid vampiric politics. Our usual DM is good at having even some major plot points be optional, at least in the sense we are free to ignore them and he won't kill us for it. Although he's up-front that the natural consequences might be really bad (e.g., the city we are protecting becomes a hellscape.)

From what my DM's told me, he usually plots out the major movers in the setting (usually a Big Bad and a few other parties), and decides how they will act during the game to move towards their goals. The PCs interfering are the major plot points. As the PCs interact with the world, he has the major movers respond in a character-consistent fashion. (I was originally going to write 'logical fashion', but not all NPCs act logically, so I realized that 'consistent with their character' is a better descriptor.)

When I DM, I aim for those, but I generally wind up more Highway. But I try to be up-front with my players that I need them to accept certain plothooks or the game won't really move.

Kaptin Keen
2018-03-29, 02:03 PM
As a player, I'm perfectly OK with railroading. Make it interesting, and why would I want to change it?! oO

As a GM, I'm pretty much incapable of anything other than sandbox. I'm simply not organised enough. Sure, I may have some vague idea of where the game is going, but it's likely to change as it gets closer, like some sort of mirage. If the players go somewhere I hadn't thought of, that's generally a source of inspiration.

On the other hand, I'm pretty weak on the mechanics - and I outright suck at running combat - so I'm pretty restrictive with builds and sources allowed and so on =)

Jama7301
2018-03-29, 02:23 PM
Highway with a dash of Open Road. I have the overarching plots. There are a few plot specific locations you may want to go to, to fulfill some criteria of it, but if you want to kick it off road, well, then you have to live with the consequences of the BBEG getting the MacGuffin you were told about.

Quertus
2018-03-29, 03:35 PM
Hmmm... For now, I guess I'll just say that I tend to prefer to run (EDIT: and definitely other to play in (when not playing a module)) games somewhere between Big City and National Park. But I'm not completely certain what the distinction is. Funny how this metaphor makes that sound like such a huge range!

For one-shots and published modules, it's more... hmmm... Railroad with the heart of a National Park?

Warlawk
2018-03-29, 04:16 PM
Highway with a dash of Open Road. I have the overarching plots. There are a few plot specific locations you may want to go to, to fulfill some criteria of it, but if you want to kick it off road, well, then you have to live with the consequences of the BBEG getting the MacGuffin you were told about.

This is a pretty good landing place for the games that I run as well. I tend to have the game focused on a specific plot, and they players know that. As for planning, I have a few key encounters/challenges and the region, how those things all come together will depend on the players actions. I rarely plan, Encounter X at Location Y at Time Z, moving forward to Encounter X2 at Location Y2 at Time Z2. I plan what the antagonists are doing, why they're doing it and then place those actions in ways taht will put them in conflict with the players with the timing and settings determined by what the players do and where they go.


I'd note there's a difference between linearity and railroading.

Linearity is more what you're describing-it only becomes a railroad when the GM is FORCING it on players.


I wanted to second (third?) this viewpoint. The OP seems to describe more the differences between a story/plot focused game and a sandbox game. It's very possible that we're just quibbling over terminology though. Railroading in my 33ish years of gaming has always meant that the DM forces you down a specific path, you MUST talk to this NPC, you MUST go to this location, you MUST solve this puzzle to advance etc.

Cluedrew
2018-03-30, 08:50 AM
On Railroading vs. Linearity: I will fourth that I think this describes linearity instead of railroading. Railroading would be trying to increase the linearity without the consent of the other players. De-railing I supposed would be the opposite? (Decreasing linearity.)

To kyoryu: You said this is a two-axis measure, what are they? I understand that there is more than way to describe a game, but I think only one is described here.

braveheart
2018-03-30, 10:07 AM
My current campaign is definitely a big city campaign, however when I do a one off it is usually a hybrid of freeway and national park by that I mean I present the party with a specific problem in a setting and let them figure it out from there without my input.

JeenLeen
2018-03-30, 10:31 AM
I wanted to second (third?) this viewpoint. The OP seems to describe more the differences between a story/plot focused game and a sandbox game. It's very possible that we're just quibbling over terminology though. Railroading in my 33ish years of gaming has always meant that the DM forces you down a specific path, you MUST talk to this NPC, you MUST go to this location, you MUST solve this puzzle to advance etc.

On Railroading vs. Linearity: I will fourth that I think this describes linearity instead of railroading. Railroading would be trying to increase the linearity without the consent of the other players. De-railing I supposed would be the opposite? (Decreasing linearity.)


With this discussion, it seems to me that forced linearity is a component of railroading. That is, in a pure railroad game (or Airplane game, to use Grod's categories) things are necessarily linear since you are forced to do these things in a given order. As a game gets more towards the sandbox scale, it becomes less linear since PCs can do things in different orders, or skip things, or do different things.

However, I can still picture (albeit with difficulty) a linear game that is still Open Road or Big City. Things X, Y, and Z occur, and those drive the plot. Maybe Do-This D is needed to prevent a really bad thing, but you can still play the game if it isn't done. Thus, linearity is strong, but the PCs still have freedom about how much they interact with the plot (as well as the means through which they interact, e.g., alliances, combat, diplomacy, etc.) and could be spending most of their time on side quests.

EDIT: by "forced linearity"... I guess I mean what Warlawk was referring to, where the linear things are forced upon the players. Of course, in my example, the DM forces X, Y, and Z to occur insofar as the DM describes the narrative around the players.

Darth Ultron
2018-03-30, 10:47 AM
Well, The Open Road fits my game style, except for the pace: my game is blazing fast.

And a put the Open Road Highway as the Normal Game: A typical, classic TRPG.

But Big City National Park breaks down so much that your not even playing a game.

Like the Big City has stuff, and the DM only makes random plot hooks with no content. Then the DM just sits back and ''lets the players find their own way". So, sure, this type of game works great for the Storytelling type games, and especially games with no DM. If the DM is not going to do anything, they might as well just leave, or just be a player.

How does the Big City DM even do anything if they are just ''letting the players find their own way''? If the DM does not make the path of ''the treasure chest is under the oak tree'', then how do the players ever have any hope of finding it? The answer is: they don't.

So this leaves the Big City DM to do random Improv: they just make whatever right in front of the characters. And there is a very narrow window where a skilled DM can pull this off; at least good enough so the players at least don't notice. But other then that, you just get a random mess of an activity.

National Park is even worse. It's staring to even call itself a ''game''. You just kind of sort of do something..or do nothing...whatever, it does not matter.

Scripten
2018-03-30, 12:00 PM
-Snip-

For those unaware, it is not worth it to respond to this post. It will only succeed in turning this thread into another swamp of an argument.

erikun
2018-03-30, 12:49 PM
I find it more useful to think of different aspects of the game as being railroady or not, alongside the degrees of railroadiness. You can have a fairly railroady plothook (this is the thing, nothing is happening until you take the thing) but the actual adventure is quite open. You could have quite the variety and options in plothooks, but they all get railroaded into the same adventure. You could have a railroad main story adventure, but very open side adventures or quests to find the required key components. You could have one singular railroad adventure tonight, because I didn't have time for anything else, but we're back to out regularly scheduled sandbox next week.

In my current game, the main location is sort of a Big City. But the plot hooks lead to things well outside the city, with an Open Road to get there and the objective being a lot more linear when we get there.

Cluedrew
2018-03-30, 01:13 PM
Oh, on thing that sort of occurred to me:
(Also, think I missed any styles, or lumped any together that are too different?)Sort of, besides some things about games not staying at the same level think these really should be considered "bands" instead of styles. For instance the "train car" type of game would include a guided tour of a setting or a series of combat challenges. Both are probably directed and paced by the GM/module while giving a bit of time for the player characters to interact with each other between "view stations" or challenges. So I would describe these as having the same amount of linearity. However they are two completely different types of games.

But I don't think that is a problem, I think we can have a measure for a thing (linearity) that just measures that and doesn't try to be some unified answer to everything.

Scripten
2018-03-30, 01:30 PM
But I don't think that is a problem, I think we can have a measure for a thing (linearity) that just measures that and doesn't try to be some unified answer to everything.

This, I agree, is very important. Keeping these terms constrained and manageable (and hopefully free from subjective values judgements) would likely serve the community better.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-03-30, 02:21 PM
My games end up being pretty linear (at least in a piecewise fashion). But I'm not sure how they fit into these frameworks because they're not designed to be linear--my players are just really good about finding their own highway.

Call it the Self-laying Train Track approach. They pick a goal (in some cases from a short list, other cases entirely freely), and then they blaze a path straight toward it. Each little piece (1-3 sessions) is pretty linear because their chosen methods are (usually) pretty predictable. They usually walk right up to the front door and knock. For being a bunch of ostensibly sneaky types, they don't do subtle.

Campaigns (the longer ones anyway) tend to be made of a bunch of these, laid end to end. I have no clue where the whole campaign will end up (until right near the end), but each individual part of it had a clear goal and them taking the shortest distance between goals. This is true even when the goals bounce all over the place.

Edit: Or is this Open Road? Not sure. Each arc had a goal and I'd build toward it, but the goal was theirs in origin and they could choose to do something different instead. I had an occasional "Hey guys, if you go that way I'll need some prep time" moments when they took a hard right unexpectedly, but they could go there just fine.

Pex
2018-03-30, 02:27 PM
I'll tolerate Highway if I enjoy the company, and the DM makes it fun. My paladin game I talk about often is Highway. The railroad tracks are obvious, but we get to make meaningful choices in the journey. Recently the DM has been good at letting party decisions affect, alter, or abolish planned encounters because our choices changed the circumstances. We can change to a parallel track.

My cleric game, which ended and will become my hexblade game, is Big City in set-up Open Road in play. The DM lets the players choose the adventure. For example, he had the players vote on which of the 5E modules to play instead of him deciding. Storm King's Thunder won out. When in module mode the inherent railroad makes it Open Road, which is ok. Player choices matter, and he'll go off script. It was with this DM where we made a deal with the goblins in Lost Mine Of Phandelver so we didn't have to fight them at all after the ambush and two joined our party as NPCs. One eventually became a PC. He'll be my hexblade's Boss in the new campaign.

My Pathfinder game is Open Road. We have our freedom and choices, but I notice here and there the DM going "You Shall Not Pass", preventing it from being Big City.

I'm not sure I'd like National Park. It sounds as if the DM will make everything up as it happens. The DM has to do that sometimes when players do the unexpected, but as the whole point of the campaign the players and/or DM can get bored fast due to lack of story.

JeenLeen
2018-03-30, 09:01 PM
I'm not sure I'd like National Park. It sounds as if the DM will make everything up as it happens. The DM has to do that sometimes when players do the unexpected, but as the whole point of the campaign the players and/or DM can get bored fast due to lack of story.

While my sentiment about enjoying National Park is similar to yours, I can see a way it could somewhat work.
The DM builds a setting. Let's say a modern old World of Darkness game. From player buy-in pre-game, the 'world' is essentially one big city the game will mostly operate in, though PCs are free to go to neighboring areas occassionally or if they give the DM enough fore-warning.

What do the PCs do? Up to them.
The DM has some stuff set up already. There's a few mage chantries, a Technocrat construct, some werewolves here and there. He has the Camarilla Princedom built up, maybe with a notable Anarch faction in town laying low. And spattering of other supernaturals. And some mortals doing important stuff.

None of the NPCs have some grand plan (as would make it a more constrained 'do you interact with this plot point or not' setting). Instead, they have their motives and goals, but are fairly passive and reactive. If the PCs engage, they will respond, but it puts all initiative on the PCs.

The DM has already built where the magic items in town are, and has several potential allies and enemies built up, but the PCs can do what they want. Wanna hunt monsters? Cool. Wanna do politics? Cool. Wanna build up your own empire? Also cool. The DM knows how the NPCs will react, and that shapes the game.


So, in one sense, the DM has already did the "make everything up" in setting planning, but things move at the player's initiative.
(Again, I think I'd find this boring, at least after a while. For a short game, I could see it working. We've contemplated a Worm setting game where a city just got half-destroyed, killing most supers in it, and we are either villains who can carve a niche or heroes who can restore order. I guess that constrains it a little, but it's basically "town is an open playing field, do what you want with your powers". Seems fairly National Park, and I think I'd enjoy it since it'd be a shortish campaign where the only goal is to accomplish our PC's goals.)

Darth Ultron
2018-03-30, 10:14 PM
So, in one sense, the DM has already did the "make everything up" in setting planning, but things move at the player's initiative.


So the DM makes the setting and just lets the players have their characters wander and explore. And this can be plenty fun for a relaxing, casual game. Lots of small, simple stuff can happen to fill up a couple hours.

BUT for anything else to happen in the game, you have to ''move up the list''. Like the characters can go attack the Blue Wizards, and the DM will react and have the Blue Wizards defend themselves. But that is as far as the ''Park" game goes. As soon as the DM has even a single surviving Blue Wizard vow revenge, the game goes up to the ''highway road", at least.

JeenLeen
2018-03-30, 10:42 PM
So the DM makes the setting and just lets the players have their characters wander and explore. And this can be plenty fun for a relaxing, casual game. Lots of small, simple stuff can happen to fill up a couple hours.

BUT for anything else to happen in the game, you have to ''move up the list''. Like the characters can go attack the Blue Wizards, and the DM will react and have the Blue Wizards defend themselves. But that is as far as the ''Park" game goes. As soon as the DM has even a single surviving Blue Wizard vow revenge, the game goes up to the ''highway road", at least.

By "the DM has" do you mean the DM alters or forces events such that one wizard necessarily survives, or that it follows naturally that one wizard survives given the PCs planning, course of action, abilities, etc.? If the former, I agree it is no longer a sandbox. If the latter, see paragraph below.

I'd disagreed with your last sentence. If the final Blue Wizard vows revenge, that's a natural consequence of the PCs actions (including their inability to leave no survivors), given the set-up of the Blue Wizards' mentality from setting-building. The PCs now have to deal with a Blue Wizard trying to kill them (or however it goes about it), and that's now a part of the setting. The PCs are free to respond to that how they like: try to ignore it and deal with consequences, try to kill Blue Wizard, or something in-between (convince it to forgive, get it imprisoned, etc.).

One example that comes to my mind from an oWoD Mage game I was in was that we wanted to befriend some were-ravens to have them as useful contacts. We asked if they needed any work done, and they (of course voiced by the DM) mentioned some evil stuff in the Amazon and asked if we could teleport there and take care of.
Weighing the options, we decided the risk of life and resources, plus potentially making enemies, wasn't worth it, so we declined. We were strong, but we knew there'd be a chance one of us might die or an enemy might escape us.
But if we had accepted and, say, fought a cadre of vampires but one survived and vowed revenge. That one surviving would just be a response to our actions. It's still an extension of the sandbox game since it's a consequence of our actions.

kyoryu
2018-03-31, 01:15 AM
To kyoryu: You said this is a two-axis measure, what are they? I understand that there is more than way to describe a game, but I think only one is described here.

How much the game is about "a story" or story-like things is being conflated with how much freedom the players have to do things.

Darth Ultron
2018-03-31, 10:59 AM
I'd disagreed with your last sentence. If the final Blue Wizard vows revenge, that's a natural consequence of the PCs actions (including their inability to leave no survivors), given the set-up of the Blue Wizards' mentality from setting-building.

So it's only a sandbox because the players caused it? As long as the DM can point to an event the players did, the DM can just to any game type listed above? See that seems weird to me.

And it's bad enough when the DM has to defend themselves vs the players and point to something obvious the players both know about and agree with. But assuming the game is more complex then a cartoon, there will be a lot of times the players won't immediately know all the game details.



But if we had accepted and, say, fought a cadre of vampires but one survived and vowed revenge. That one surviving would just be a response to our actions. It's still an extension of the sandbox game since it's a consequence of our actions.

It just feels so hostile to say ''the DM can't do anything in the game except react to the players''.


BUT, even if you just ''sandbox'' for hours as the DM just sits back and waits for the players to do something to react to, once that finally happens your moving up the list to at least the Open Road...maybe even higher.

Keltest
2018-03-31, 11:20 AM
Personally, I try to be a Big City type of DM. I want the players to follow the plot hooks because theyre engaging and the players are invested in them, not because theyre the only content I prepared. And sometimes this means they stop chasing the bad guy to go follow a butterfly for a bit, and that's OK. It means next time, I should try to get them more engaged with chasing the bad guy.

Unfortunately for some, this does involve more work and improvisation. I have become very good at transforming orc character sheets into bandits, or city guards, or some other similarly physical threat. Heck, just last Saturday I had a session that went off script at the very first dice roll, and it was probably the best session I have ever run for this group. And it was hard work, and I was flying by the seat of my pants, but darn it if it wasn't one of the most satisfying sessions for everyone involved.

The Cats
2018-03-31, 11:43 AM
tl;dr Nothing that actually contributes to the discussion here, just sharing/ranting about/laughing at a tangentially related thing my players do.

I've been trying desperately to keep my game in train cars but my players are pretty insistent on turning it into a big city.

They're in a clear time crunch, they have to go to a place to do a thing (or fail at doing a thing, or do a different thing) or a bad thing will happen. Ok sure, but first let's check out this plot thread that was mentioned ten sessions ago (when it was relevant) that the DM has forgotten about!

Ok I guess I'm improvising this session. Coming up with everything on the fly makes it hard to predict where it'll go or directly tie it back to the main plot but as long as it only takes a day or two of in-game time no big deal. Cue the party making a series of decisions that triggers a huge natural disaster and traps them on another plane.

I could've fudged things a bit but my players can sniff a retcon a mile away. Oh well, planar adventures are pretty fun anyway and now I get to figure out how far along the bad guys' plots will get without the players interfering, and surprise them with it all when they get back to the material.

Protato
2018-03-31, 03:13 PM
I'd run a rather linear game as an inexperienced DM, but I'd let players go about doing things in their own way. For example, the party has to go to a library but upon arriving, they can deal with the guard at the gate however they please, but they know violence would be frowned upon. If they don't wish to use force and can't negotiate their way in, they can down a hidden passage into the library and run into some nonviolent but still hostile, NPCs. They can spare them, they can kill them, they can stun them, they can do as they like. When they're in the library, they can choose to learn a bit more magic (Magic Initiate or Ritual Caster Feat) but it would take money and a bit of time, meaning they have to weigh their options for a not-insignificant boost in utility against spending money they could get magic/masterwork items with, and time they could use to make other preparations or adventures. What would this level be?

Quertus
2018-03-31, 05:31 PM
So, I think I wanna fifth or sixth something, if it's not too late to jump on the bandwagon. In what, to my mind, is a recent development, the Playground has begun using linear as an adjective and railroad as a verb. Where to railroad seems to be defined as to give or enforce how linearly content behaves.

While it's not as sexy as my personal definition, of "the GM changing the rules, established facts, or otherwise making reality inconsistent to force their One True Path as the only possibility", I believe that, as long as we're discussing creating and changing words, that this new version of railroading is probably more conducive to detailed evaluation of gaming culture.

Thus, this thread is more aptly about levels of linearity.


Personally, I try to be a Big City type of DM. I want the players to follow the plot hooks because theyre engaging and the players are invested in them, not because theyre the only content I prepared. And sometimes this means they stop chasing the bad guy to go follow a butterfly for a bit, and that's OK. It means next time, I should try to get them more engaged with chasing the bad guy.

Why that response? Why not respond by including more butterflies in your scenarios?

Keltest
2018-03-31, 08:41 PM
Why that response? Why not respond by including more butterflies in your scenarios?

Because theres a finite amount of effort I'm willing to put in as a GM before I just cant do it anymore. The more butterflies I include, the more work I have to do, and the closer I get to the breaking point where I don't want to do it at all. Its easier for me to make something detailed and well prepared that interests the players than it is for me to start the ground work for a dozen poorly-prepared scenarios of which only one will get used in a session.

I can switch gears once every few sessions, but going in a random direction until they find something shiny or punchable each time we start wears me down. Ideally both the players and the DM are happy with the direction of the party.

JNAProductions
2018-03-31, 08:48 PM
Because theres a finite amount of effort I'm willing to put in as a GM before I just cant do it anymore. The more butterflies I include, the more work I have to do, and the closer I get to the breaking point where I don't want to do it at all. Its easier for me to make something detailed and well prepared that interests the players than it is for me to start the ground work for a dozen poorly-prepared scenarios of which only one will get used in a session.

I can switch gears once every few sessions, but going in a random direction until they find something shiny or punchable each time we start wears me down. Ideally both the players and the DM are happy with the direction of the party.

Bolded for emphasis. The DM is there to have fun just as much as the players are.

Quertus
2018-03-31, 10:55 PM
Because theres a finite amount of effort I'm willing to put in as a GM before I just cant do it anymore. The more butterflies I include, the more work I have to do, and the closer I get to the breaking point where I don't want to do it at all. Its easier for me to make something detailed and well prepared that interests the players than it is for me to start the ground work for a dozen poorly-prepared scenarios of which only one will get used in a session.

I can switch gears once every few sessions, but going in a random direction until they find something shiny or punchable each time we start wears me down. Ideally both the players and the DM are happy with the direction of the party.


Bolded for emphasis. The DM is there to have fun just as much as the players are.

Sure. Those are two very good reasons: because it's too much effort, and because it's not fun for you.

I am curious, though: if I could wave a magic wand, and make it suddenly no effort to create lots of butterflies, would it still be no fun? That is, is your fun dependent upon the lack of butterflies, or just on the lack of the effort it takes to create them? I've known GMs of both types. Heck, I've probably been both of those at some point. :smalltongue:

Florian
2018-04-01, 02:34 AM
Why not respond by including more butterflies in your scenarios?

Are you playing a game or do you just want to have more sightseeing?

Cluedrew
2018-04-01, 07:45 AM
How much the game is about "a story" or story-like things is being conflated with how much freedom the players have to do things.Oh, I see more explicate references to story and plot in the more linear bands, I'm not sure if that was intentional on Grod's part though. I didn't really read focus on story shifting though. I also play very non-linear (open road-national park range) but very focused on plot. In retrospect they sound like they came from linear games, but they didn't. There have been moments where everyone, including the GM, has to stop and go "we that is happening now, where to we going to go now". Well usually the player whose character did the thing expected it, but I think everyone has been surprised at least once.


Are you playing a game or do you just want to have more sightseeing?Inclusive or: Yes and yes. Why do you act if these two things are contradictory?

Keltest
2018-04-01, 08:17 AM
Sure. Those are two very good reasons: because it's too much effort, and because it's not fun for you.

I am curious, though: if I could wave a magic wand, and make it suddenly no effort to create lots of butterflies, would it still be no fun? That is, is your fun dependent upon the lack of butterflies, or just on the lack of the effort it takes to create them? I've known GMs of both types. Heck, I've probably been both of those at some point. :smalltongue:

Its the effort, mostly. I like coherent and extended stories, but a series of unconnected one-offs is just as well

Pex
2018-04-01, 10:51 AM
Car accident on the highway.

Gah!

In my paladin game the party had a plan of action for our current mission. There were several options but talking to friendly NPCs helped us narrow them down to one we thought best would work. We went on our way as the game session ends.

Next session. Different factions of friendly NPCs give us messages and talk to us directly. One faction "advises" us our plan won't work because of reasons and offer suggestions for other things to do, suggestions that were not options at the time when we made our plans. We didn't know such options existed. Meanwhile, two other friendly NPC factions "coincidentally" tell us some NPCs who just happen to be in our area need our help immediately as we're the only ship in the quadrant. In return one faction allied with those NPCs can help us with getting info we're still lacking for our current mission. Naturally we go help these NPCs we never heard of before, defending their mine against an attack from our Enemies and abandon our plan. We choose one of the new "suggestions" as our new plan to deal with our mission afterwards.

What makes this not a train wreck is what our new course of action is. I'll be a Paladin of Torm leading an undead army against a city of mindflayers.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-01, 11:12 AM
Are you playing a game or do you just want to have more sightseeing?

Yes.

(As in, "or" allows the answer to be "both".)

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 04:27 PM
The metaphors presented in the first post aren't bad, but framing the topic as "levels of railroading" is.

There's only one level of railroading: forcing someone down a preselect path. Even the consent stuff that some people get hung up on is irrelevant: it doesn't matter whether you board the rollercoaster by your own free will or not, it will go down the same rails at the same pace all the same. Failure to understand this is a failure to understand the metaphor.

"Linear" is not synonym for railroad. Why? Because in a linear game whether you manage to go through set path depends on you. An honest-to-God rail shooter is less of a railroad than the worst tabletop RPGs, because in a rail shooter your ability to progress depends on your own skill to hit the targets.

Pretty much every time someone cries "railroading!" in a game which is, well, not a railroad, it's because they hit a linear segment in a game with overall more complex structure. Or were otherwise dissatisfied with number of available options. But player feelings and perceptions aren't vital to defining a railroad nor should they be used as the determining factor on the issue.

Beyond the above, the observarion that a scenario's structure isn't binary between "linear" and "sanbox" is correct. But "sandbox" isn't a discreet thing anyway and definitely doesn't sit opposite of "linear" on any spectrum. Instead it's a metaphor for a type of free-roaming player-driven game design. Sandbox games aren't any more similar to each other than real sandboxes. Some are big, others are small. Some are filled to the brim with toys, others have just sand.

Quertus
2018-04-01, 05:17 PM
"sandbox" isn't a discreet thing anyway and definitely doesn't sit opposite of "linear" on any spectrum. Instead it's a metaphor for a type of free-roaming player-driven game design. Sandbox games aren't any more similar to each other than real sandboxes. Some are big, others are small. Some are filled to the brim with toys, others have just sand.

I thought I was with you until this point.

As I define the terms, sandbox, linear, and linear (branching) are ways to express who creates the plot - both the goal and the path. In a linear game, the GM* creatures the goal and the path. In a linear (branching) game, the GM* creates the goal and the paths. In a sandbox game, the players create the goal and the path.

* Or module. Point is, the content had predefined path(s). A group that has agreed to a Linear game has agreed to stick to the path. A group that has agreed to a sandbox has agreed that it's ok to go anywhere.

I fail to see how these are not opposites.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 05:39 PM
They're not opposites because the GM creates the sandbox. There can be any number of linear elements and GM-set goals there, just like there could be any number of toys in a real sandbox. A sandbox with N+1 toys is not opposite of a sandbox with no toys.

Another way to put it: in a sandbox, players set the goals and paths. Well the GM is also a player. Do the math.

Cluedrew
2018-04-01, 05:49 PM
To Frozen_Feet: I think when people say players in that context, they mean players- (players excluding the GM) and not players+ (players including the GM). Which makes the math come out very differently.

I might agree with you that sandbox is not the opposite of linear. For me though it is because sandbox is a particular type of non-linear adventure. Based on setting, usually with a lot of places, people, factions and possible adventures already built in. Which does not describe all non-linear adventures (such as an improvised character focused game).

Quertus
2018-04-01, 05:55 PM
They're not opposites because the GM creates the sandbox. There can be any number of linear elements and GM-set goals there, just like there could be any number of toys in a real sandbox. A sandbox with N+1 toys is not opposite of a sandbox with no toys.

Another way to put it: in a sandbox, players set the goals and paths. Well the GM is also a player. Do the math.

Non-GM players, in this use of the word.

A pure sandbox does not have "linear elements"

If I pick a goal IRL - say, go down the stairs, which is about as Linear as I can imagine - there's still plenty of variety. I can walk down the stairs. I can run down the stairs. I can hop down the stairs. I can skip steps. I can jump down the stairs. I can go down the stairs backwards. I can fail an athletics roll and trip down the stairs, or even fall the subsequent balance roll and fall down the stairs. I can make out halfway down the stairs, forget what I was going down for, and choose to continue or go back up.

Still not seeing how non-linear sandboxes and linear aren't opposite.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 06:14 PM
@Cluedrew: I know the distinction people make between GMs and other players, it's just not relevant to a game being a sandbox. The freeroaming nature and player-drivenness can exists in spite of the GM-set elements. See vast majority of sandbox videogames for examples.

Also, you are correct that sandbox is not the same as non-linear. There are arbitrarily many non-linear game structures which lack free-roaming and aren't player driven. Any antagonism-driven scenario is a good example.

@Quertus: "pure sandbox" is red herring. Again: a sandbox is a sandbox regardless of how many toys are in there. Another person in the sandbox could've built those stairs for you. Think of it like this: since the GM makes the sanbox, you are opposing "GM creates possible paths and goals" with "GM creates space for possible paths and goals". It should be easy to see how these are not opposites even if they're different.

Also, since your metaphor about stairs applies just as well to players setting their own goals in a linear scenario, it just shows how player-set goals isn't really the biggest dividing line between different game structures.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-01, 06:31 PM
To Frozen_Feet: I think when people say players in that context, they mean players- (players excluding the GM) and not players+ (players including the GM). Which makes the math come out very differently.

I might agree with you that sandbox is not the opposite of linear. For me though it is because sandbox is a particular type of non-linear adventure. Based on setting, usually with a lot of places, people, factions and possible adventures already built in. Which does not describe all non-linear adventures (such as an improvised character focused game).



Non-GM players, in this use of the word.

A pure sandbox does not have "linear elements"

If I pick a goal IRL - say, go down the stairs, which is about as Linear as I can imagine - there's still plenty of variety. I can walk down the stairs. I can run down the stairs. I can hop down the stairs. I can skip steps. I can jump down the stairs. I can go down the stairs backwards. I can fail an athletics roll and trip down the stairs, or even fall the subsequent balance roll and fall down the stairs. I can make out halfway down the stairs, forget what I was going down for, and choose to continue or go back up.

Still not seeing how non-linear sandboxes and linear aren't opposite.


The assertion that it's all made by the GM so there's "no difference" also ignores all the various ways the non-GM players can contribute to the worldbuilding and setup for a particular campaign (both informal and formal) and assumes that the system being used even has a GM-role at all.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 06:53 PM
Removing the GM and spreading their tasks across the players doesn't make a relevant difference either. If anything, it merely emphasizes the thought that the GM is a player too.

Cluedrew
2018-04-01, 07:29 PM
@Cluedrew: I know the distinction people make between GMs and other players, it's just not relevant to a game being a sandbox. The freeroaming nature and player-drivenness can exists in spite of the GM-set elements. See vast majority of sandbox videogames for examples.Can break this down a bit more? I'm having trouble following it. That second sentence in particular I feel could be unpacked into a paragraph.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-01, 07:58 PM
Fine, imagine two actual sandboxes.

One is four pieces of driftwood on a beach, forming a square. You and your friends decide it's a sandbox and play there.

The second is a wooden box I made and filled with sand, then invited you and your friends to play with me.

It should be obvious here that who made the playspace isn't relevant for the definition of a sandbox. In the second case, it should however be equally obvious that I made the playspace, explicitly introduced the idea of its function, and implicitly defined (by its construction) the possible paths and goals you could have there.

Now, if I make a toy truck out of wood and put it in the box, I will have implicitly added the possible paths and goals regarding the car. If I then say to you "hey, could you build a circular road for my car?", I have explicitly added a goal not defined by you. But does this make the playspace any less of a sandbox? No, it does not.

Ditto for a game. If I make a large setting for you to roam in, where you are free to build your castles and wage your wars, and then add a number of linear subquests where you must kiss the toad to get yourself a prince or go to a dungeon to free the goblin mechanic, the game's overall structure is still a sandbox. A videogame example would be Terraria, where as many hexcrawls count as tabletop examples.

Quertus
2018-04-01, 10:18 PM
Hmmm... I appear to be defining "sandbox" too narrowly. Or perhaps inconsistently. To my definition, when the content comes with an inherent goal, it's not a sandbox. Or, at least, not a pure sandbox. Or, perhaps that portion is not a sandbox... and, so long as that portion occurs before the game starts, then the game is still a sandbox?

So, any amount of buy-in on the label of the sandbox is fine; any forced direction from the content once the game had begun is not.

It had nothing to do with the number of toys, and everything to do with how one is allowed to play with those toys.

So, if a (GM-inclusive) player creates content with any associated Badwrongfun about how to play with it, it is not appropriate for a pure sandbox.

Am I back to making sense and being consistent?

Florian
2018-04-02, 02:24 AM
Hmmm... I appear to be defining "sandbox" too narrowly.

Am I back to making sense and being consistent?

Nope, because what you describe is still totally static and lifeless with a very egoistical POV.

A sandbox can have any number of "moving parts" or "active elements" that run by themselves, follow an internal logic and don't in any way suppress agency, play-driven choices or the freedom to roam.

Take a look at the whole "Fallout" series. Anything is frozen in time, even the main quest line and nothing will advance on its own unless the player interacts with it (ok, FO1 has you looking for the Water Purification Chip and the Vault will be destroyed in some 100 days or so).

That is basically one player not playing along, just sitting there and waiting to react when the players hit on something that can be interacted with.

If there's an escalator going up, that doesn't force you into anything. If the train leaves the station at 0700 and you miss it, that didn't force you into anything. If a war between two kingdoms will lead to a certain result, that doesn't force you into anything.
What the three have in common is that you, as player, don't have direct control over them and they move on their own set of rules.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-02, 03:43 AM
Hmmm... I appear to be defining "sandbox" too narrowly. Or perhaps inconsistently. To my definition, when the content comes with an inherent goal, it's not a sandbox. Or, at least, not a pure sandbox. Or, perhaps that portion is not a sandbox... and, so long as that portion occurs before the game starts, then the game is still a sandbox?

Again, the purity of the sandbox is a red herring. The toy truck is not part of the sandbox, it could exist without the sandbox just as well, and when you're playing with it you're not necessarily playing with sand... but its presence in the sandbox doesn't stop nor preclude other activities.

Now, as for "inherent goals" - what I hoped to do with my last post was explain how a purposefully constructed sandbox itself will have the goal of "do play in it". Whether a piece of content has a goal isn't the dividing line, the line zig-zags back and forth based on the nature of those goals and how they're enforced. Note the distinction between explicit and implicit goals in my last post. Even when no goals are explicitly named or enforced, each toy, each new design element hints at a number of possible goals just by its existence.


It had nothing to do with the number of toys, and everything to do with how one is allowed to play with those toys.

So, if a (GM-inclusive) player creates content with any associated Badwrongfun about how to play with it, it is not appropriate for a pure sandbox.

Am I back to making sense and being consistent?

Well you're writing legible sentences, but you've introduced another concept which needs to be blown up.

Every kid playing in a real sandbox brings with them their own ideas of what is or isn't proper thing to do with any toys they bring or any things they build from the sand. A sandbox is never "pure" from intentions of the players. Co-operative play is only possible when actions of a player stay proper in eyes of all the other players. Once this ceases to be true, a fight will break out, a player will take their toys and go home, or, if I made and own the sandbox, I will kick you out.

Again, we find it's not expectation of proper play which is the dividing line - the line again zig-zags around based on specifics of rules of conduct. And again, some rules are implicit from mere existence of an object. If I spend hours lovingly crafting a sandcastle, I probably don't want you knocking it down without asking me first.

As long as you still have sand to play around with, tho, these restrictions to your playspace don't really make much of a difference.

And here I sink my teeth in the idea of "BadWrongFun". So there's this idea that there isn't a single right way to play RPGs. Okay, cool. But this only implies there is multiple right ways to play.

It does not imply there are no wrong ways.

In the real sandbox, it's not proper to, for example, throw the sand out of the box. Because it harms all future attempts of play. It is measurably, objectively a wrong way to play.

In summary, you are correct that "It has nothing to do with the number of toys, and everything to do with how one is allowed to play with those toys". What you need to do is look closer and get more specific about what you think is proper play. Which kind of expectations and actions actually harm a sandbox structure (prevent free roaming, preclude goals set by you)? Which kind are just kinda there and don't mess with you untill you mess with them? And by contrast, which are necessary for the play to continue in the long run?

Florian
2018-04-02, 04:20 AM
Again, the purity of the sandbox is a red herring.

It also can´t exist. A "pure" sandbox is a featureless plane without any interface, construction tools, access or egress. Without determining the what, how and why, which will bring with it the baggage of implicit and explicit methods and goals, there will hardly be any game going. (Even using Traveller will carry an implicit "Work to keep on flying, keep on flying to work" with it)

Darth Ultron
2018-04-02, 07:19 AM
A sandbox can have any number of "moving parts" or "active elements" that run by themselves, follow an internal logic and don't in any way suppress agency, play-driven choices or the freedom to roam.

How can this ever be possible unless the DM just rolls over and does whatever the players want?

Like the DM has a war going on in the back ground, and part of that war is the city of Stoneport is under siege. So the players in the aimless sandbox wander want to go to that city, and then DM says ''well the city is under siege, so your characters can't just walk in". Is that not suppressing the awesome player power to always do anything they want?

Does the DM just alter reality and say ''oh, no more siege'' or does the way end the day the PC are within sight of the city?

Florian
2018-04-02, 07:45 AM
How can this ever be possible unless the DM just rolls over and does whatever the players want?

Like the DM has a war going on in the back ground, and part of that war is the city of Stoneport is under siege. So the players in the aimless sandbox wander want to go to that city, and then DM says ''well the city is under siege, so your characters can't just walk in". Is that not suppressing the awesome player power to always do anything they want?

Does the DM just alter reality and say ''oh, no more siege'' or does the way end the day the PC are within sight of the city?

Yes, it is generally a very sad affair that something simple as a stone wall or a "Trespassers will be shot" can stop you from roaming freely and without consequences, as things like physics and gravity will hinder you from simply flying around... unless you do something, like learning to climb and fly, or actually ask around a bit whether the guy really has a shotgun and is willing to shoot...

Cluedrew
2018-04-02, 08:18 AM
To my definition, when the content comes with an inherent goal, it's not a sandbox.Having heard its usage over the years, when most people say sandbox, that is what they mean. In part, there are some other parts, like the setting focus and having a lot of preplanned stuff in there that can be used, but doesn't have to be. The later is where the name sandbox seems to come from although the no ultimate goal is still a part of it. I suppose a really distant goal that you have a cornucopia of ways to reach might also count. It would probably have the same feel to it. On the other hand having mini-goals (side-quests) I don't think is "un-sandbox". Sort of like what Frozen_Feet said, you can have stuff inside the sandbox, but you shouldn't actually have to pick-up any of them.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-02, 08:49 AM
Nope, because what you describe is still totally static and lifeless with a very egoistical POV.

A sandbox can have any number of "moving parts" or "active elements" that run by themselves, follow an internal logic and don't in any way suppress agency, play-driven choices or the freedom to roam.

Take a look at the whole "Fallout" series. Anything is frozen in time, even the main quest line and nothing will advance on its own unless the player interacts with it (ok, FO1 has you looking for the Water Purification Chip and the Vault will be destroyed in some 100 days or so).

That is basically one player not playing along, just sitting there and waiting to react when the players hit on something that can be interacted with.

If there's an escalator going up, that doesn't force you into anything. If the train leaves the station at 0700 and you miss it, that didn't force you into anything. If a war between two kingdoms will lead to a certain result, that doesn't force you into anything.

What the three have in common is that you, as player, don't have direct control over them and they move on their own set of rules.


To me, "this is what will happen no matter what, unless the players interact with that element" is just as PC-centric as "nothing will happen until/unless the PCs interact with that element".

In the Vampire campaign I ran for several years, there were multiple instances where I specifically had NPCs change their minds, or not make decisions until the situation actually came up, even through it was entirely in the background. There was a fight between two NPCs that made a major impact on the course of events off-screen, and I played that out several times to get a general sense of how it would go and what impact it would have on the "scene" for later investigations -- I didn't just decide from whole cloth.

Keltest
2018-04-02, 10:27 AM
To me, "this is what will happen no matter what, unless the players interact with that element" is just as PC-centric as "nothing will happen until/unless the PCs interact with that element".

In the Vampire campaign I ran for several years, there were multiple instances where I specifically had NPCs change their minds, or not make decisions until the situation actually came up, even through it was entirely in the background. There was a fight between two NPCs that made a major impact on the course of events off-screen, and I played that out several times to get a general sense of how it would go and what impact it would have on the "scene" for later investigations -- I didn't just decide from whole cloth.

I mean, of course its PC-centric. Ultimately, the PCs are the only force besides the GM that has any ability to affect the game world. Sandbox or railroad, the game world exists for the sake of the PCs, at a meta level. You say you've had NPCs change their minds, and had background events that affected the game world, but is that not still just "this is how things will be unless the PCs come in and compel a change"?

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-02, 10:33 AM
I mean, of course its PC-centric. Ultimately, the PCs are the only force besides the GM that has any ability to affect the game world. Sandbox or railroad, the game world exists for the sake of the PCs, at a meta level. You say you've had NPCs change their minds, and had background events that affected the game world, but is that not still just "this is how things will be unless the PCs come in and compel a change"?

So, do you believe that things in the real world will be / will go a certain way no matter what, until you come in and compel a change?

Or are the things that might happen tomorrow half a world away, outside your involvement, uncertain until they actually happen tomorrow? Do the people there all have choices and decisions to make between no and then, just like you do?

Keltest
2018-04-02, 10:42 AM
So, do you believe that things in the real world will be / will go a certain way no matter what, until you come in and compel a change?

Or are the things that might happen tomorrow half a world away, outside your involvement, uncertain until they actually happen tomorrow? Do the people there all have choices and decisions to make between no and then, just like you do?

"an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force."

its a law of physics, but I think it describes people and society just as well. People do have choices, but there is a fundamental logic and reason behind the choices they make, even if they aren't aware of it and cant articulate it. If you take away one of these outside forces that affect that logic and reasoning, the other ones continue to act.

More to the point, your definition of "PC-centric" seems to be so inclusive as to be meaningless. All games exist for the sake of the PCs. Ultimately, the world exists to serve them. Without them, the world cannot go on, at least as an RPG.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-02, 10:48 AM
"an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force."

its a law of physics, but I think it describes people and society just as well. People do have choices, but there is a fundamental logic and reason behind the choices they make, even if they aren't aware of it and cant articulate it. If you take away one of these outside forces that affect that logic and reasoning, the other ones continue to act.

More to the point, your definition of "PC-centric" seems to be so inclusive as to be meaningless. All games exist for the sake of the PCs. Ultimately, the world exists to serve them. Without them, the world cannot go on, at least as an RPG.


And to me, this is what you're describing when you say "the world exists to serve the PCs":



http://www.retroweb.com/40acres/40acres_flat_facades_02.jpg

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-02, 10:49 AM
Irrelevant. In a tabletop roleplaying game, nothing happens before one of the players wills it. How far the things that happen are determined beforehand in absense of interaction from other players is a matter of taste.

Whether a game is player character centric is a different consideration, and I can't for the life of me see the point of conflating "things only happen when player characters do stuff" with "things happen unless player characters do stuff". Because in the latter model, things are happening centered on something else than the player characters all the time.

Suppose I go to the sandbox and decide to build a multi-story castle to populate with toy soldiers if no other player interrupts me. It should be obvious that the process is centered on my desires and ideas, not those of the other players, in spite of the if-clause. How strongly I preplanned my castle doesn't matter.

Florian
2018-04-02, 11:00 AM
And to me, this is what you're describing when you say "the world exists to serve the PCs"

More than irrelevant. The only thing that exists and matters are the folks playing the game, no "world", no "npc", no "characters" and stuff like "immersion" or "verisimilitude" are not required to play the game, they're only part of personal gusto and taste.

(Rise of an Empire voice): "Only the player exists... only the players.... and only a handful of dice is needed, dice...."

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-02, 11:29 AM
More than irrelevant. The only thing that exists and matters are the folks playing the game, no "world", no "npc", no "characters" and stuff like "immersion" or "verisimilitude" are not required to play the game, they're only part of personal gusto and taste.


Or rather, the non-existence thereof is also a part of personal gusto and taste.

Your ongoing comments about other people's approaches to and experience of gaming come across as a claim that your approach is the one true pure core of what it is to "do RPGs", and that things other people want from gaming and you don't, are just tacked-on stuff that really doesn't matter.

Personally, I can't see how one could do the roleplaying part of "RPG" without the characters and their world and getting at least a little bit inside their head and into their world -- to me, it comes across as a complex boardgame, and the PCs as nothing more than playing pieces like the shoe or the scotty dog in Monopoly, without those elements.

(And that's part of what fails in the TPG model, it asserts that the PCs are "Toys" for all the reasons that they're not just toys / plastic pieces.)

Keltest
2018-04-02, 11:34 AM
Or rather, the non-existence thereof is also a part of personal gusto and taste.

Your ongoing comments about other people's approaches to and experience of gaming come across as a claim that your approach is the one true pure core of what it is to "do RPGs", and that things other people want from gaming and you don't, are just tacked-on stuff that really doesn't matter.

Personally, I can't see how one could do the roleplaying part of "RPG" without the characters and their world and getting at least a little bit inside their head and into their world -- to me, it comes across as a complex boardgame, and the PCs as nothing more than playing pieces like the shoe or the scotty dog in Monopoly, without those elements.

(And that's part of what fails in the TPG model, it asserts that the PCs are "Toys" for all the reasons that they're not just toys / plastic pieces.)

Some people can make due with that stage shop you posted, others need a living, evolving Middle-Earth-esque world to operate in. Clearly you fall in the latter camp, but that doesn't mean the former doesn't exist. The depth of the game world isn't really relevant to whether or not its a sandbox campaign, although having more stuff existing certainly makes it more interesting.

RazorChain
2018-04-02, 06:06 PM
Fair warning, this might end up being a long post and I'll probably get ninja'd writing it.

So the big suggestion I would like to put forth is this: We should indeed separate the act of Railroading from the level of linearity in a game. Firstly, this allows us to examine the behaviors associated with Railroading without presupposing any judgement on game style, which I believe is an important distinction. This isn't to say that I believe that your proposed levels of linearity are not useful, but rather that they are not as useful to a discussion on Railroading, per se.

When disucussing Railroading, we're always going to get into a matter of consent, because that's really the underlying issue. When a DM Railroads, they do something that violates the implicit or explicit consent which the players have offered when agreeing to play the game. This consent is given either by a general social contract (as we've seen from other threads, this is muddy and ill-defined), group discussions/votes, or explicit mechanics such as votes or game session primer documents. My primary RL game's primer, for example, discusses some of what a new player can expect in terms of campaign openness and informs them of some mechanical expectations.

I think we can explain the amount of Railroading in a game by breaking down behaviors, although the terms are just conveyances as of yet. I haven't really thought much about them and are pretty much pulled straight from thin air.

Solution Predetermination: This is when a DM accepts only one solution to a proposed problem. This is the DM that only allows the players one option per encounter. This is the Ogre that can't be reasoned with, can't be evaded, can't be lured away, etc, etc, etc. Just like all of the other behaviors, this is sometimes okay. If the players consented to a game with precise puzzles/encounters similar to a point-and-click video game, then the DM shutting down creative "wrong" solutions is acceptable. This occurs almost exclusively in mostly linear games and is a very common Railroading example.

Illusory Arbitration: This is a form of Illusionism where the DM first decides to allow game mechanics to arbitrate a situation but then (secretly) reneges on that decision. This might involve fudging dice rolls, changing target values, or otherwise overruling the mechanics of the game, along with the requirement that the players are unaware that this has happened. Sometimes, again, this is acceptable: If the players consent to the DM giving the Illusion of using the system to arbitrate situations while the DM is actually just deciding arbitrarily, then this is not Railroading. This kind of Railroading can appear in any style of game, including full-on National Park sandboxes.

Mono-pathing: This is another form of Illusionism where the DM offers the players the illusion of choice/agency while actually only offering a single path through the adventure. This is where the term Quantum Ogre comes up a lot, though the Quantum Ogre also (tends to) require that the players are aware of and actively attempting to avoid the Ogre, while I am proposing that Mono-pathing is any false illusion of choice. This is the dungeon with a T in the hallway that somehow always leads to the same room or the quest that lets you side with either faction, but one always betrays you while the other does not. As always, this is not always a bad thing: Sometimes the DM only has so much material prepared, after all. It's only Railroading if the players did not consent to it.

NPC-centrism: I'm not entirely sure about this one; it could probably be rolled into either Solution Predetermination or Mono-pathing. Anyway, this is when the DM offers the players an adventure where they think they are the heroes... until the DMPC or superpowered NPC comes to save everyone. Alternatively, this is also the villain that absolutely cannot be defeated. This is... well, Elminster, the SUE-files' self-insert NPC, or particularly bad interpretations of Strahd. As you may have guessed, this is also not Railroading if the players have consented or the NPC is somehow taken out of the picture or made to be defeatable. A well-run Strahd is the latter case, while our friendly Elder Gods in Call of Cthulhu are an example of an undefeatable enemy that is nonetheless not really in the picture. Generally, the worst cases of this are NPC allies, although they can also be handled without the DM Railroading.

I think you are forgetting "No-ism" where the GM simply denies you an action. You can't go there or you can't do that. If you want to roll for it you will fail. This could be rolled into solution predeterminiation but it is more of a path predetermination.

Quertus
2018-04-02, 06:07 PM
Having heard its usage over the years, when most people say sandbox, that is what they mean. In part, there are some other parts, like the setting focus and having a lot of preplanned stuff in there that can be used, but doesn't have to be. The later is where the name sandbox seems to come from although the no ultimate goal is still a part of it. I suppose a really distant goal that you have a cornucopia of ways to reach might also count. It would probably have the same feel to it. On the other hand having mini-goals (side-quests) I don't think is "un-sandbox". Sort of like what Frozen_Feet said, you can have stuff inside the sandbox, but you shouldn't actually have to pick-up any of them.

So, at least I'm not completely insane.

Clearly, however, I've failed to get across the full extent of what I mean - and what I don't mean - when I say "sandbox". So perhaps I should start by trying to give a more detailed version of my definition (so people can then tear that apart).

To me, a sandbox is the opposite of linear play. In linear play, the content comes with a plot (goal and path(s) to that goal), and the game must sick to the path. In a sandbox, the content does not come with predefined paths, and the game can go whatever.

In a linear game, there is a wrong way to do things, a wrong way to play with the toys; in a sandbox, there is not. But that's wrong, from a certain point of view... So, let me try again: in a linear game, there is a wrong way to play with the toys inherent to the toys; in a sandbox, there is not. There may be possible and impossible, but not wrong.

What do I mean by that distinction? Largely, I mean the gentleman's agreement. I mean that, if you took the exact same content, and handed it to a different group, the game could look different, because they will have their own rules about attacking other PCs, sexual content, etc.

A toy car has wheels. It's good at rolling. A bucket has a flat side. It's good at standing. It has a big'ol good at holding things. But, turn it on is side, and it's not so good at holding things, and can roll. Toys have properties, and follow the rules of physics.

What don't I mean?

My definition doesn't care whether the universe is static or dynamic - whether it just sits there until the PCs touch it, or continues on with a life of its own. So, you can have a windy day sand box, where the toys tend to move around a bit, in accordance with the laws of physics. Or you can have a calm day sandbox, where the toys just sit there, and wait to be played with. Now, personally, I happen to generally disdain static worlds as unrealistic, but that is technically irrelevant to whether I'll call something a sandbox or not.

My definition of a sandbox doesn't care whether the GM has plotted out exactly what all the NPCs would do if the PCs didn't exist before the game even started, or whether they figure things out the moment they get to them. Personally, I probably do a bit of both.

My definition of a sandbox technically works regardless of the number of toys, although I have a difficult time imagining a sandbox with 0 toys. But...

What do I mean by "toys"? Notable things for the PCs to interact with. 1,000 villagers are "sand"; Bob the Miller is a toy.

Toys are not random. If this is a political sandbox, I expect the GM to have quite intentionally picked out a number of toys that he believes are good at being played with politically. A good sandbox GM will include a good variety of such toys, rather than having all those political toys feel same-y. To say that from the perhaps more important flip side, for every possible action, there should be toys that will respond to that action. Erm, that probably doesn't make sense... Let me try it in programming terms: for every method that can be called, there would, Ideally be one or more toys that respond to that method. That is, if you look at my (stolen/modified) trivial example of a political sandbox, you've got the king, the duke, the church, the thieves guild, the merchants, and the orc tribe. This sandbox is a bit too simple for my tastes, as there isn't really a good set of toys to play the "arranged marriage" game, for example. If, when a player hears "political sandbox", they get their heart set on dealing with arranged marriages, they will be disappointed. Worse is if they don't realize or cannot communicate what "political" means to them, and just consider the game (or the GM) "bad".

... Is that any clearer?


Nope, because what you describe is still totally static and lifeless with a very egoistical POV.

A sandbox can have any number of "moving parts" or "active elements" that run by themselves, follow an internal logic and don't in any way suppress agency, play-driven choices or the freedom to roam.

I actually expect a sandbox game to generally have more toys / moving parts / active elements than a Linear game.


Well you're writing legible sentences, but you've introduced another concept which needs to be blown up.

Every kid playing in a real sandbox brings with them their own ideas of what is or isn't proper thing to do with any toys they bring or any things they build from the sand. A sandbox is never "pure" from intentions of the players. Co-operative play is only possible when actions of a player stay proper in eyes of all the other players. Once this ceases to be true, a fight will break out, a player will take their toys and go home, or, if I made and own the sandbox, I will kick you out.

Again, we find it's not expectation of proper play which is the dividing line - the line again zig-zags around based on specifics of rules of conduct. And again, some rules are implicit from mere existence of an object. If I spend hours lovingly crafting a sandcastle, I probably don't want you knocking it down without asking me first.

As long as you still have sand to play around with, tho, these restrictions to your playspace don't really make much of a difference.

And here I sink my teeth in the idea of "BadWrongFun". So there's this idea that there isn't a single right way to play RPGs. Okay, cool. But this only implies there is multiple right ways to play.

It does not imply there are no wrong ways.

In the real sandbox, it's not proper to, for example, throw the sand out of the box. Because it harms all future attempts of play. It is measurably, objectively a wrong way to play.

In summary, you are correct that "It has nothing to do with the number of toys, and everything to do with how one is allowed to play with those toys". What you need to do is look closer and get more specific about what you think is proper play. Which kind of expectations and actions actually harm a sandbox structure (prevent free roaming, preclude goals set by you)? Which kind are just kinda there and don't mess with you untill you mess with them? And by contrast, which are necessary for the play to continue in the long run?

Here's something I've seen several times just this year - hopefully you can relate. You're at a park. The park has posted rules about no fighting, no kicking sand out of the sandbox, etc. There are kids playing. But one of the kids is boosting the others around, telling them what to do. ... Or, kids playing a game of make believe, one is trying to control what the other kids say. ... Or, in D&D, the GM / the plot needing certain things to happen a certain way, otherwise the plot / the module / the content falls apart into an incoherent mess.

I think, in discussing wrong ways to play, you sound like you're talking about the gentleman's agreement, which lives separately from whether something is a sandbox or not - just like whether play is structured or freeform is independent of the rules of the playground.


Some people can make due with that stage shop you posted, others need a living, evolving Middle-Earth-esque world to operate in. Clearly you fall in the latter camp, but that doesn't mean the former doesn't exist. The depth of the game world isn't really relevant to whether or not its a sandbox campaign, although having more stuff existing certainly makes it more interesting.

I think that I am forced to mostly agree.

Whether things make any sense when you look at them isn't technically required for a sandbox. However, unless "don't look at things too closely" is implicit or even explicit in the gentleman's agreement, you can quickly reach a point where the game crashes because the players did the "wrong" thing of looking at things too closely. So, there being wrong ways to play with the toys being part of my definition of the distinction of linear and sandbox, it is easy to feel that the two are related.

Pex
2018-04-02, 06:49 PM
I liked this thread before it devolved to whose definitions of words were superior.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-02, 07:12 PM
I liked this thread before it devolved to whose definitions of words were superior.

Welcome to the typical RPG theory discussion once someone tries to impose their pet theory and its precise divisions and dichotomies as TruthTM via controlling the definitions.

(See also, why I usually end up spending more time rejecting and resisting definitions than offering them up.)

Quertus
2018-04-02, 07:53 PM
I liked this thread before it devolved to whose definitions of words were superior.

Shrug. I'm a rules lawyer at heart. What's the point of making a really good solution to the wrong problem? Since there is a great deal of difference in how people view the word "railroad", making a metaphor based on one of those definitions is bound to cause some friction.

So, which definition of railroad is the most useful to the hobby? Well, that's something we're working out. Or trying to. In theory.

Personally, I'd love it if there was a retcon way to pull off-topic stuff into it's own thread. Because, honestly, I'm not personally clever enough to just create new threads when appropriate. One of my many flaws. I hope my player got something really cool for all the flaws he gave me. :smallannoyed:

Cluedrew
2018-04-02, 09:19 PM
I liked this thread before it devolved to whose definitions of words were superior.Well to be fair before that pretty much boiled down to people going "Yup, but replace 'Levels of Railroading' with 'Levels of Linearity'" I'm not sure how long we could keep that going. I mean if you have something to add go for it. I'd jump onto that.


(See also, why I usually end up spending more time rejecting and resisting definitions than offering them up.)Because problems are easier to find than solutions.

To Quietus: I missed this at first but... we don't need another thread on railroading. As much as I enjoy the deep dive I realized my option hasn't changed the last couple of threads on the matter. So I think I am done with that. On the other hand my option changed twice in the last caster/martial thread, so maybe than one is still worth talking about.

martixy
2018-04-02, 09:24 PM
First, I didn't read the entire thread because who has time for that... (Disclaimer for if I'm repeating stuff already said. And based on the last reply, I don't want to either.)

We've established there is a continuity between railroading, rather than a binary state.
The next step is to realize that campaigns don't stick to the same level of railroading throughout their run either.
Like it might start constrained on a track and then open up to a greater world. Or might start open and fall into a track. Or bob and weave.

In any case, I'm probably doing a highway campaign, or maybe open road, the distinction there is really arbitrary. However right now, we're on a ship, which is as close to an airplane you'll get in the classic D&D.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-02, 09:55 PM
To me, "this is what will happen no matter what, unless the players interact with that element" is just as PC-centric as "nothing will happen until/unless the PCs interact with that element".


But is not anything the DM does in the game FOR the benefit of the Players? The whole point of having anything happen in the foreground or back ground is to make a ''living breathing game world" For The Players.

RazorChain
2018-04-02, 10:40 PM
To me, "this is what will happen no matter what, unless the players interact with that element" is just as PC-centric as "nothing will happen until/unless the PCs interact with that element".

In the Vampire campaign I ran for several years, there were multiple instances where I specifically had NPCs change their minds, or not make decisions until the situation actually came up, even through it was entirely in the background. There was a fight between two NPCs that made a major impact on the course of events off-screen, and I played that out several times to get a general sense of how it would go and what impact it would have on the "scene" for later investigations -- I didn't just decide from whole cloth.

How you simulate the world is less important to me than that the world gets simulated.

I do a lot of impromptu simulation. When the PCs get back to town Joe the town elder has died, he died happy in bed with that teenage milkmaid, the town is in shock and grief.

It doesnt have relevance to anything but Joe that sent the PCs to clear the goblins out of the mines is dead.

Me just deciding things is just as good as using some random mechanic.

When I resolve things in the background I can throw in twists that no random mechanics can come up with.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-03, 05:33 AM
Here's something I've seen several times just this year - hopefully you can relate. You're at a park. The park has posted rules about no fighting, no kicking sand out of the sandbox, etc. There are kids playing. But one of the kids is boosting the others around, telling them what to do. ... Or, kids playing a game of make believe, one is trying to control what the other kids say. ... Or, in D&D, the GM / the plot needing certain things to happen a certain way, otherwise the plot / the module / the content falls apart into an incoherent mess.

Yes, you've identified a player bossing others around. What you haven't identified is specific ways of bossing people around that make or break sandbox play. Or any of the reasons why other players would tolerate someone bossing them around. You're being too general.


I think, in discussing wrong ways to play, you sound like you're talking about the gentleman's agreement, which lives separately from whether something is a sandbox or not - just like whether play is structured or freeform is independent of the rules of the playground.

No. I'm talking of explicit rules of play and rules of play which are implied by actual game elements and actions. An outspoken "gentlemen's agreement" is a type of the former, an unspoken "gentlemen's agreement" which comes from outside the game is neither.

Again: a purposefully made sandbox itself implies a goal. It's a specific mode of play with specific boundary conditions, and because of that, there are good ways and bad ways to play which are specific to this mode. I'm asking you to identify those.

"Don't kick sand out of the box" is the metaphorical example precisely because it is not independent of the sandbox - it directly stems from construction of the box, and only makes sense within confines of the box.

Quertus
2018-04-03, 10:18 AM
No. I'm talking of explicit rules of play and rules of play which are implied by actual game elements and actions. An outspoken "gentlemen's agreement" is a type of the former, an unspoken "gentlemen's agreement" which comes from outside the game is neither.

Again: a purposefully made sandbox itself implies a goal. It's a specific mode of play with specific boundary conditions, and because of that, there are good ways and bad ways to play which are specific to this mode. I'm asking you to identify those.

"Don't kick sand out of the box" is the metaphorical example precisely because it is not independent of the sandbox - it directly stems from construction of the box, and only makes sense within confines of the box.

If I create a sandbox, there are no rules inherent to the sandbox.

There are rules inherent to the system.

There is the gentleman's agreement.

If the sandbox has a label (ie, "political sandbox"), then there is the expectation that the sandbox be played with in accordance with the label.

I can see "don't leave the created content" as a common sandbox rule, but it is not actually required for all sandboxes. See Minecraft. Content can be added dynamically to a sandbox without it suddenly no longer being a sandbox.

So, no, there are no rules inherent to the sandbox base class as far as I can see. Unless you count the rules to the GM: "don't create a plot, let the players do that", and "however they play with your toys is fine".

Why, what do you expect to be common rules of all sandboxes?

Florian
2018-04-03, 10:36 AM
@Quertus:

Do you know the old Jabberwocky poem? This is basically the level of sense you make by using things in an insular and self-referencing matter, without being able to explain what you mean.

It´s nice to jabber about a gentlemen's agreement when you can´t even define why you need it, what's the source of the disagreement it should bridge or avoid and how it should look.

And yes, everything comes equipped with inherent rules, goals and limitations. That's the basic nature of existence. And also yes, there're things that are badwrongfun and should be named as such - something that the D&D community avoids like the plague.

Quertus
2018-04-03, 10:47 AM
@Quertus:

Do you know the old Jabberwocky poem? This is basically the level of sense you make by using things in an insular and self-referencing matter, without being able to explain what you mean.

It´s nice to jabber about a gentlemen's agreement when you can´t even define why you need it, what's the source of the disagreement it should bridge or avoid and how it should look.

And yes, everything comes equipped with inherent rules, goals and limitations. That's the basic nature of existence. And also yes, there're things that are badwrongfun and should be named as such - something that the D&D community avoids like the plague.

Actually, the gentleman's agreement can be handled as a black box just fine for this conversation. It is it's own set of limitations, independent of whether the game is a sandbox or linear. Done.

The point is, the way I play and understand the game, there are no limitations* inherent to the tag "sandbox". Although the limitation, "play in accordance with the label, if any" matters for a foo sandbox (political, exploration, etc), and "remain within the confines of the created content" seems likely but not required (as demonstrated by Minecraft).

Again, what limitations do you see as inherent to a sandbox?

EDIT: I believe that the term "gentleman's agreement" is interchangeable with "social contract".

* player side, that is. On the GM side, the limitations are "don't create a plot - leave that to the players", and "let the players play with your toys however they want". However, there is the player side responsibility to actually, you know, do that whole "create a plot" thing.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-03, 02:09 PM
If I create a sandbox, there are no rules inherent to the sandbox.

There are rules inherent to the system.

This is falsest of false dichtomies I've seen in a while. Inherence is a red herring. The rules of the system are explicit rules of your sandbox, full stop. Furthermore, the explicit rules of the system also imply goals. For the most trivial example, if the sandbox game is constructed as a hexcrawl, this has implications for pathfinding. "Move from A to B in least amount of hexes" is a player goal that only makes sense in a hexcrawl, it is implied by structure of the game.


There is the gentleman's agreement.

You have not defined what this should even be. You equating your "gentleman's agreement" to "social contract" is entirely unhelpful. First: if it is unspoken, it is questionable if there is an actual agreement. Second: any unspoken deals are social contracts, but so are the explicit game rules. Third: like already said, any outspoken agreement is just game rules. Fourth: I'm still not asking for general rules of conduct, I am asking for rules specifically suited or not suited for a sandbox game.


If the sandbox has a label (ie, "political sandbox"), then there is the expectation that the sandbox be played with in accordance with the label.

That's a functional rule for games which happen to be something else in addition to a sandbox, but says nothing specific to sandbox games.


I can see "don't leave the created content" as a common sandbox rule, but it is not actually required for all sandboxes. See Minecraft. Content can be added dynamically to a sandbox without it suddenly no longer being a sandbox.

This is almost getting somewhere. Ask yourself: what kind of content makes a sandbox and what kind of content can be added without detracting from it? By contrast, is there a type of content the adding of which makes the game not a sandbox?


So, no, there are no rules inherent to the sandbox base class as far as I can see.

If "sandbox" can at all be considered a "base class" of scenario types, it must have a distinctive identifying features. (Inherence is once again a red herring.) If you cannot identify and list those, were back to me saying "sandbox" is not at a discrete thing and cannot be placed on a spectrum.


Unless you count the rules to the GM: "don't create a plot, let the players do that", and "however they play with your toys is fine".

Why, what do you expect to be common rules of all sandboxes?

I was asking you. Do you think those rules are necessary for good sandbox play?

Quertus
2018-04-03, 07:32 PM
This is falsest of false dichtomies I've seen in a while.

That was not a dichotomy, false or otherwise.


Inherence is a red herring.

Perhaps a poor word choice, but it's the crux of the matter. Kinda the opposite of a red herring, actually.

Whether a rule is caused by virtue of something being a sandbox (as opposed to, say, the rules of the game, or the social contract) is vital to clarifying the meaning of a sandbox.

-----

Perhaps an example will help.

We're playing a game, and a player says, "I jump to the moon".

The rules layer tells you something about appropriate responses:

"OK, make a jump check, DC 5.044 billion"

"yes, and..."

"That will generate paradox. Were there witnesses?"

"No. Just no."

The rules layer provides checks against game physics, which will vary by system:

Can the PC make a DC 5.044 billion jump check?

Do they have the appropriate spheres?

Do they have enough ranks in Hyper-leap?

Is it cool?

The social contract is generally independent of system, game, etc, and will vary by group. At this layer, eh, we might check for...

Is it PvP?

Is it profanity?

Is it sexual content?

Would it trigger Bob's paralyzing fear of spiders?

Now, as to sandbox vs linear...

The "linear" layer of checks adds checks like:

Is this the plot?

Does this affect the plot?

Does this destroy the plot?

The sandbox layer checks...

...

... nothing.

The sandbox version of the sandbox/linear layer adds no additional checks. Definitionally, the sandbox layer adds no additional checks to determine the validity of a move.

It's not that a sandbox has no rules; rather, it's that the sandbox layer of the game imposes no additional rules.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-04, 12:56 AM
Whether a rule is caused by virtue of something being a sandbox (as opposed to, say, the rules of the game, or the social contract) is vital to clarifying the meaning of a sandbox.

A sandbox game is literally constructed from its rules. This becomes blindingly apparent when you're talking of, or even try to imagine, any computerized sandbox game. That is wht saying "well this is inherent to te game rules and not the game being a sandbox!" is a false dichtomy and a load of crap.

Also, no such thing as "the" social contract. Again: the explicit game rules themselves are a social contract. The logical corollary to that is that, since a sandbox game is constructed from its rules, when run by living humans, the sandbox is a social contract. The distinction you're making is artificialand arbitrary. It is no wonder you can see no rules in the "sandbox layer", because you have mentally portioned off all things that could be there and labeled them something else.

Florian
2018-04-04, 02:49 AM
@Quertus:

This is why you fail so horribly at gaming theory, because so can´t critically examine your own state of knowledge.

Let´s use the technical term "exploration" to look at the main activities you want in your game, especially when looking at a quite nebulous concept of "sandbox".
The things you want to explore are possible "setting", "travel and survival", "character", "combat", "social interaction", "emergent plot" and "organization/kingdom management".
This list by itself is already a set of "top level rules" how one thinks that a "sandbox game" should look like, maybe even concretizing something like wanted the overall tone change at "name levels" by automatically switching over to "kingdom management" or anticipating something likes "planes walking".

Now it´s decision time how exactly you want to model these activities on the concrete rules level and by extension, what game system and house rules to use to facilitate that. For example, Pathfinder doesn't come with any rules for hex crawling per se. These are included in Ultimate Campaign and supersede the prior movement-based rules, and are expanded into travel and survival rules in Ultimate Wilderness, which alters and supersedes both prior versions. The choices which of the three rules sets to use will drastically alter the look and feel of crawling a hex.

Same as with the "kingdom management". Do you want to handle it as "emergent" (ie. "We've killed the hobgoblins and captured the fort, it´s powers now!") or do you want to run that with the Kingdom rules from Ultimate Campaign, that will alter how some basic rules like time, gold and the Leadership feat work? And so on, and so on....

RazorChain
2018-04-04, 04:42 AM
A sandbox game is literally constructed from its rules. This becomes blindingly apparent when you're talking of, or even try to imagine, any computerized sandbox game. That is wht saying "well this is inherent to te game rules and not the game being a sandbox!" is a false dichtomy and a load of crap.

Also, no such thing as "the" social contract. Again: the explicit game rules themselves are a social contract. The logical corollary to that is that, since a sandbox game is constructed from its rules, when run by living humans, the sandbox is a social contract. The distinction you're making is artificialand arbitrary. It is no wonder you can see no rules in the "sandbox layer", because you have mentally portioned off all things that could be there and labeled them something else.

I'm with Quertus. Sandbox is independent of rules. I can make settings and a sandbox before I pick out rules or maybe I just go with freeform and don't use any rules.

I can even adapt a ruleset to my sandbox

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-04, 06:44 AM
@Quertus:
This is why you fail so horribly at gaming theory, because so can´t critically examine your own state of knowledge.


It's comments like this that demonstrate why RPG theory continues to fail.

Keltest
2018-04-04, 07:38 AM
It's comments like this that demonstrate why RPG theory continues to fail.

If you don't want to participate in the conversation, then don't. Sitting here and sniping at people benefits nobody, least of all yourself.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-04, 08:16 AM
I'm with Quertus. Sandbox is independent of rules. I can make settings and a sandbox before I pick out rules or maybe I just go with freeform and don't use any rules.

Untrue. Just like it is untrue to say freeform has no rules. (Just two of the biggest rules from freeform boards of these forums: no controlling other people's characters, defender describes effect of any attack.)

Like Quertus, you've just portioned those rules to some differently labeled category and hence fail to recognize them as rules. When you decide your game has a night-day cycle, you have decided upon a rule. When you decide how many humans live in the game's setting, you have decided upon a rule. A playable game does not exist without a scenario, and any gameable details of the scenario are rules which define the game's move space.

Again, this becomes blindingly obvious if you ever try to computerize a game. Though it should become obvious at the tabletop also the moment you actually try to play your game, because at that moment at latest you have to decide how the setting interacts with the player, and from that point the run of the game is shaped by your decisions. The supposed indepence doesn't exist in a playable game.


I can even adapt a ruleset to my sandbox

No-one here is saying all sandbox games have the same rules. I'm asking you to identify which rules distinctly lend themselves to sandbox play, and which distinctly do not.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-04, 09:03 AM
If you don't want to participate in the conversation, then don't. Sitting here and sniping at people benefits nobody, least of all yourself.


So telling someone that their elitist-sounding, "your failure to agree with us is a failure to understand the subject matter" comment is typical of why the subject is largely rejected... is "refusing to participate in the conversation".

Right...

Florian
2018-04-04, 09:18 AM
It's comments like this that demonstrate why RPG theory continues to fail.

It´s still a simple problem of people not being able or willing to separate objective (a car) from subjective (my driving experience with that car). The later might often be more dependent on the car stereo and if music you enjoyed was on air.

You should know that best, with your focus on immersion and your character. We could well ask the question: Are associated mechanics a fundamental necessity for the game itself? No, they are not. Are associated mechanics a fundamental necessity for the enjoyment of the game by some players? Yes, they most definitely are. Now we could go on and ask the question whether using associated mechanics will reduce the joy for those that don't deem it necessary and will probably land by a no, but should give some thoughts about what happens should the answer be a yes. This is why we do engage with theories. Frankly, the three of you, you, DU and Quertus, argue on the same gut-feeling and pure personal experienced level, a pattern that can be seen repeated in both ongoing "differences in the editions" discussions.

So, if someone can´t answer the question whether "sandbox" is a distinctive play style or whether "sandbox" is a method of playing that can be adapted to multiple play styles, the answer is mood, same as the secondary question here, whether a play style will come along with its own defined rules or whether the rules are separate from the play style, ex. RAW.

So there's nothing "elitist" about asking the question "Ok, tell my what you think about that car and then tell my how your driving experience was" and not accepting "It was good, some old Metallica songs were on air" as an answer.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-04, 09:30 AM
@Florian,

But what if there are no objective answers? What if the entire field is subjective (or at least in inextricably connected to subjective determiners, and those subjective parts dominate)?

Can we (usefully) theorize about flavors of ice-cream?

Some things may be best studied descriptively--describing how people use things instead of trying to decide a "best" or "right" way of using things. This can lead to categorization, but it will always be subjective (there are many "right" ways of splitting that bundle of characteristics). You can derive empirical (experience-based) rules, but they're fuzzy, situational, and not always logically consistent.

NB: all of these are questions. I'm not claiming that any of them are true, but it's a threshold question that needs answering. From reading these threads I'm not convinced one way or another.

Florian
2018-04-04, 10:10 AM
Can we (usefully) theorize about flavors of ice-cream?

I´m in the beverage industry. Yes, you can. Flavors, how you get them the natural way, how you create synthetic ones, how the human body reacts to them, on and on, a very broad and also very well plumbed and investigated subject. It´s quite fascinated to compare different emulsion methods, all that. (Fooling around with yeast to create esters and then use different methods to tread those esters to generate different flavors is a highly fascinating topic)

Naturally, all of that includes multiple feedback rounds, active product testing, blind testing to compare the result to the competition, getting feedback from retail/POS and again and again asking customers, because tastes will change and new competition will also challenge the status quo. (Ok, I've got to admit that my first long-term customer as an IT freelancer was Schöller, an ice cream manufacturer)

While we can do a lot of groundwork without needing feedback, like checking if the math works out, the main reason to create theories is to build analytical tools based on them and then frameworks so we can make sense of the whole mess of subjective feedback that we become and can sort it into meaningful results.

Ie. the step from assuming "D&D is fun by default" and going over to identify different player types and what exactly they find to be "fun" when playing D&D is an application of theory that can be applied in practice, either game design or as the gm.

Or take the OP: This is a theory about how the gradients between two extreme positions can be sorted and described. Part of the sub-discussion here is whether and to what extend both extreme positions are still present when you start mixing them up, or "how much linear elements until you can´t talk about sandbox elements anymore and vice versa".

This begets the question what qualities make "linear" and "sandbox" elements in the first case.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-04, 10:28 AM
I´m in the beverage industry. Yes, you can. Flavors, how you get them the natural way, how you create synthetic ones, how the human body reacts to them, on and on, a very broad and also very well plumbed and investigated subject. It´s quite fascinated to compare different emulsion methods, all that. (Fooling around with yeast to create esters and then use different methods to tread those esters to generate different flavors is a highly fascinating topic)

Naturally, all of that includes multiple feedback rounds, active product testing, blind testing to compare the result to the competition, getting feedback from retail/POS and again and again asking customers, because tastes will change and new competition will also challenge the status quo. (Ok, I've got to admit that my first long-term customer as an IT freelancer was Schöller, an ice cream manufacturer)

While we can do a lot of groundwork without needing feedback, like checking if the math works out, the main reason to create theories is to build analytical tools based on them and then frameworks so we can make sense of the whole mess of subjective feedback that we become and can sort it into meaningful results.

Ie. the step from assuming "D&D is fun by default" and going over to identify different player types and what exactly they find to be "fun" when playing D&D is an application of theory that can be applied in practice, either game design or as the gm.

Or take the OP: This is a theory about how the gradients between two extreme positions can be sorted and described. Part of the sub-discussion here is whether and to what extend both extreme positions are still present when you start mixing them up, or "how much linear elements until you can´t talk about sandbox elements anymore and vice versa".

This begets the question what qualities make "linear" and "sandbox" elements in the first case.

I was trying to ask about theorizing about which taste is better, but I get your meaning.

The part I'm not convinced about is that there's enough similarity and grounding in the game field to do more than a taxonomic, descriptive theory. And while that can be useful, it's also likely to devolve into pure semantics (arguing about names, not concepts) and heavily based in individual taste.

I'm not convinced that models and frameworks provide much more than does repeated, pooled, anecdotal experience. There are just so many variables and the whole measurement process is strongly tied to subjective taste.

That's why I started the other theory thread--the responses have been almost entirely either a) hypotheses that are strongly controversial/discredited or of limited applicability or b) empirical rules of thumb.

So far, I haven't seen a hypothesis that both stands the test of application and says anything that can be applied to make a game better. I've also not seen foundations beyond the empiric (these things worked, people liked these). This may just be the physicist in me talking, but theories ungrounded in clear principle make me nervous and skeptical.

Florian
2018-04-04, 10:55 AM
This may just be the physicist in me talking, but theories ungrounded in clear principle make me nervous and skeptical.

Well, look at how your field developed from the chinese five elements theory, over the early greeks to Newton and how it, time and time again, mingled with religion or branched and regrouped. You should know how the scientific method works, by falsifying theories and coming up with new, hopefully better ones.

Now my areas of experience are advertisement (soft-ish social sciences), IT and programming (very hard sciences) and beverages (mix of both. Hard physical part, soft "taste" and consumer-oriented part). So while I hope everything was as clear and dry cut as in the IT sector, I do accept that we're in the same situation when talking about gaming theory as in the beverage business, in that we can have talk about the "hard science" parts, ie. mechanics, modeling chances at success, modeling physics, but are still in the infancy stage when talking about the social and other "soft" aspects of it. As it´s multidisciplinary, there's (so far) not even agreement on what other fields to loan concepts and vocabulary from (ie. I'm strongly opposed to loan concepts from literary arts).

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-04, 02:31 PM
But what if there are no objective answers? What if the entire field is subjective (or at least in inextricably connected to subjective determiners, and those subjective parts dominate)?

You asked Florian and not me, but the thought has crossed my mind.

In order for the entire field to be non-objective, player preferences shouldn't correlate strongly with any persistent personality traits *). For example, outside the field of RPGs, we've found out evidence that temperamental traits such as openness to new experiences are fairly persistent and even genetically determined. So this should not correlate strongly with what kind of a game a person enjoys.

The corollary to this would be that, since gaming preference does not depend much on the person themselves, it must be adopted from an outside source. This in turn would imply that no such thing as "objectively good game design" exists. Instead, what is considered "good game design" turns entirely in a question of marketing and persuading other people to follow your design paradigm.

The logical conclusion from that would be that there's really only two worthwhile ways to talk about game design: the first is to pander as well as possible to the existing paradigm, utilizing confirmation bias, nostalgia etc. to benefit from the status quo. The second is to market your own design paradigm as the better choice as loudly as you can, in as great volume as you can, untill the message pervades into the mainstream or at least gets you large enough paying audience to feed yourself. Game design itself can be largely arbitrary.

In short: in a world where the field is entire non-objective, the Forge and GNS went about it exactly right and the flaws in their theory don't matter.

*) Since someone will inevitably be confused by this, let's open this up a bit: suppose a group of people have a persistent personality trait, such as autism. We can trace such persistent traits to some objective, physiological reasons, in the way we have linked many forms of autism to genetics and neurological differences. Now suppose autism correlates strongly with being distressed by some kind of game element. With statistical study, we can find this out, and then we can link the effect of the game element to the underlying causes of autism. The end of the line here is being able to say things like "you shouldn't put this element in the game if you don't want to distress autists" as an objective game design guideline.

Now, someone will raise their hand ans ask "but isn't distress a subjective thing?" The answer is yes, but subjective is not hard antonym of objective. Modern science already has linked many subjective (=mind-dependent) experiences to objective (=mind-independent) causes. When I punch you and cause you the subjective feeling of pain, I can tell you the objective reasons why you feel that pain. And, if you do not feel any pain, that is a sign there's something objectively abnormal with your body, and there's a laundy list of reasons we can check.

PandaPhobia
2018-04-04, 03:29 PM
As a GM and a player, I like open road the most and most of my games fall into this, with a slight bias to big city . In my gaming group, we all have been GM at least once, some of us do it frequently. One GM is somewhere between highway and traincar, another is firmly big city with 2-3 session arcs of open road, while the last main GM of the group is a highway through a national park-get off the road and go hiking and you will find a lot to do.

Saying all of that, I don't think each is all encompassing, or that you can't have elements from two different styles in the same game. A game with a traincaresque plot can have a big city couple of freeform exploration, for example.

I think the *appearance* of freedom is all well and good, but players derail themselves, and sometimes you have no choice but to get them back on track, complaining and all.

kyoryu
2018-04-04, 03:59 PM
I was trying to ask about theorizing about which taste is better, but I get your meaning.

The part I'm not convinced about is that there's enough similarity and grounding in the game field to do more than a taxonomic, descriptive theory. And while that can be useful, it's also likely to devolve into pure semantics (arguing about names, not concepts) and heavily based in individual taste.

I'm not convinced that models and frameworks provide much more than does repeated, pooled, anecdotal experience. There are just so many variables and the whole measurement process is strongly tied to subjective taste.

That's why I started the other theory thread--the responses have been almost entirely either a) hypotheses that are strongly controversial/discredited or of limited applicability or b) empirical rules of thumb.

So far, I haven't seen a hypothesis that both stands the test of application and says anything that can be applied to make a game better. I've also not seen foundations beyond the empiric (these things worked, people liked these). This may just be the physicist in me talking, but theories ungrounded in clear principle make me nervous and skeptical.

I'm not sure that's true, but I think it's going to be more of a bottom-up development, rather than a top down. And that's the problem, really, with most RPG theories, is that someone gets an idea and then goes through mental gymnastics to make all examples fit, and then when they are clever enough to do so, proclaims that they've discovered The Truth. See: The Law of Fives (http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Law_of_Fives)

Or, to quote:


I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look.

My personal theory is summed up as much as follows:

Game groups have needs. Things they want out of their gaming.

Game systems can be set up to satisfy needs. They are good if they satisfy the needs they set out to, or at least the needs of a group.

Needs can contradict each other. For instance "I want to be superheroic and larger than life" contradicts "I want to feel mortal danger be in constant danger." These two don't really work together - if you're superheroic and wade into every fight, but even the most minor mook can kill you if they get lucky, you're not superheroic. (If you want to quibble on the language, that's fine, but the point stands).

A system can satisfy a wide variety of needs, but when it tries to satisfy mostly-or-partially contradictory needs, or does things to satisfy need that contradict another need, it is almost inevitable that the players will override the system in some ways. For instance, D&D 3.x is mostly fantasy superheroes. However, at low levels death is a simple bad roll away, at mid levels it can be a couple bad rolls away, and even at high levels we have Save or Die effects. Which (in this framework) neatly explains why in most "fudging" discussions the number one defense of fudging is "what, you want characters to die for no reason?" People want fantasy superheroes, but the lethal aspects of the game counter that, so they get overridden at the table via fudging, or other house rules (starting at 4th level, etc.).

This doesn't really tell you how to make better games necessarily, but it does, I think, give a decent mental model for reasoning about how to make good games.

RazorChain
2018-04-04, 04:11 PM
Untrue. Just like it is untrue to say freeform has no rules. (Just two of the biggest rules from freeform boards of these forums: no controlling other people's characters, defender describes effect of any attack.)

Like Quertus, you've just portioned those rules to some differently labeled category and hence fail to recognize them as rules. When you decide your game has a night-day cycle, you have decided upon a rule. When you decide how many humans live in the game's setting, you have decided upon a rule. A playable game does not exist without a scenario, and any gameable details of the scenario are rules which define the game's move space.

Again, this becomes blindingly obvious if you ever try to computerize a game. Though it should become obvious at the tabletop also the moment you actually try to play your game, because at that moment at latest you have to decide how the setting interacts with the player, and from that point the run of the game is shaped by your decisions. The supposed indepence doesn't exist in a playable game.



No-one here is saying all sandbox games have the same rules. I'm asking you to identify which rules distinctly lend themselves to sandbox play, and which distinctly do not.

Day and night cycles aren't rules, populations in the setting aren't rules. This isn't a simulated sandbox computer game

You don't have to account for everything beforehand like you have to do in a computer game.

A rule would be how does darkness and light affect your character.

A sandbox can be portion of a world or just the whole world and you don't have to codify every natural law. If the group never visits the shore then you don't have to account for the tides

If I sit down with a group I can just improvise a sandbox on the spot. If I present them with a valley shrouded in darkness with scattered ruins and a small village. If the ruleset doesnt account for darkness then it's just there for ambient effect, so to speak.

If the population of the village dictates what goods can be bought then population starts to be part of the rules

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-04, 04:17 PM
Day and night cycles aren't rules, populations in the setting aren't rules. This isn't a simulated sandbox computer game

You don't have to account for everything beforehand like you have to do in a computer game.

A rule would be how does darkness and light affect your character.


I'd also make roughly that same distinction. For many gamers, "rules" in the RPG context refers to mechanics and such, far more than it refers to the "facts of the fiction", or to behavioral expectations between the players. For the sake of clarity, it's probably better to use different terms for mechanics, setting details, and interplayer standards, and not try to lump them all under "rules".

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-04, 05:34 PM
Day and night cycles aren't rules, populations in the setting aren't rules.

If those things influence anything at all in the game, then yes they are. If they don't they aren't relevant part of the game and aren't part of the sandbox.


This isn't a simulated sandbox computer game.

Any attempt at computerizing a sandbox game needs to follow same rules as a tabletop sandbox game, if sandbox is at all a distinct game mode. Hence, any attempt to computerize, or even imagining such an attempt, will inform you about what are the necessary rules for such a game. If you need to tell a computer how to do a thing in order for the game to happen, that's a rule a human would also need to implement, no matter how trivial it seems to a human.


You don't have to account for everything beforehand like you have to do in a computer game.

This only says a thing about when rules are made, not about what is or is not a rule. I'm well aware a tabletop game can be incomplete by design, but that's because there is a living human at the table to make rules and rulings to patch over the holes!


A rule would be how does darkness and light affect your character.

Congratulations, you have managed to recognized one rule while arbitrarily failing to recognize others.


A sandbox can be portion of a world or just the whole world and you don't have to codify every natural law. If the group never visits the shore then you don't have to account for the tides.

And I've not said otherwise. You have answered the question "what rules do you need for a sandbox?" with "well you don't need rules for everything". Your answer is not even wrong, it fails to address what I was even talking about.


If I sit down with a group I can just improvise a sandbox on the spot. If I present them with a valley shrouded in darkness with scattered ruins and a small village. If the ruleset doesnt account for darkness then it's just there for ambient effect, so to speak.

1) Improvization once again only says when something is introduced, not whether what is being introduced is a rule or not.
2) any interactive and influential details of the ruins and the village are rules. Congrats, you improvized rules.
3) whether your ruleset prior to introducing darkness accounted for it is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether you, from that point, allow the darkness to influence the game. If you do, congrats, you have filled in the rules for darkness into your ruleset by deciding how it works. If you do not, then you have removed darkness as gameable element in your game - it is no longer part of the sandbox.


If the population of the village dictates what goods can be bought then population starts to be part of the rules

Congratulations, you have understood what "gameable detail which defines the move space of a game" means. Now what were you supposed to be disagreeing about with me?

---


I'd also make roughly that same distinction. For many gamers, "rules" in the RPG context refers to mechanics and such, far more than it refers to the "facts of the fiction", or to behavioral expectations between the players. For the sake of clarity, it's probably better to use different terms for mechanics, setting details, and interplayer standards, and not try to lump them all under "rules".

"Rules" is a broad category which (in general) includes or (for specific games) can include all of setting details, mechanics, interplayer standards etc.. If you think otherwise, you're not speaking English.

Now, of course we can break rules into various subsets based on what they govern, how they function etc.. But any argument that these subsets are not part of the larger set of rules is a non-starter. It is the same sort of BS as your earlier gripe about me pointing out scenario design as game design.

RazorChain
2018-04-04, 05:36 PM
I'd also make roughly that same distinction. For many gamers, "rules" in the RPG context refers to mechanics and such, far more than it refers to the "facts of the fiction", or to behavioral expectations between the players. For the sake of clarity, it's probably better to use different terms for mechanics, setting details, and interplayer standards, and not try to lump them all under "rules".

My thought exactly, it's only going to confuse the matter if the settings natural laws and descriptions are referred to as rules.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-04, 05:40 PM
My thought exactly, it's only going to confuse the matter if the settings natural laws and descriptions are referred to as rules.


Plus, frankly, it's a little demeaning to tell a group of adults that they're "breaking the rules" by not following one person's expectations of what goes on around the playing table / area,

Florian
2018-04-05, 01:07 AM
Plus, frankly, it's a little demeaning to tell a group of adults that they're "breaking the rules" by not following one person's expectations of what goes on around the playing table / area,

It´s more likely that you create rules to avoid this exact situation. Instead of arguing about how far a Hobbit can jump, you create some "jumping rules" to handle that (and then argue about whether those rules make sense or not).


My thought exactly, it's only going to confuse the matter if the settings natural laws and descriptions are referred to as rules.

I think we can distinguish between "soft" and "hard" rules. A "soft" rule is something that is based on our commonly shared understanding, like there being a day/night cycle, water being wet, the sky is blue, blood is red and such. It´s still a rule because it governs how things interact and can´t really be changed. "Hard" rules come in when we either deal with a concrete effect, like the aforementioned darkness and wind effects when you're sailing, or we deal with effects that have no equivalency in the real world and need to be fully simulated so you can "grasp them somehow", like the "auras" in Ars Magicka, a "Blood Moon" having a concrete effect on necromancy, or making "honor is a force stronger than steel" into actual physical reality.

RazorChain
2018-04-05, 03:04 AM
It´s more likely that you create rules to avoid this exact situation. Instead of arguing about how far a Hobbit can jump, you create some "jumping rules" to handle that (and then argue about whether those rules make sense or not).



I think we can distinguish between "soft" and "hard" rules. A "soft" rule is something that is based on our commonly shared understanding, like there being a day/night cycle, water being wet, the sky is blue, blood is red and such. It´s still a rule because it governs how things interact and can´t really be changed. "Hard" rules come in when we either deal with a concrete effect, like the aforementioned darkness and wind effects when you're sailing, or we deal with effects that have no equivalency in the real world and need to be fully simulated so you can "grasp them somehow", like the "auras" in Ars Magicka, a "Blood Moon" having a concrete effect on necromancy, or making "honor is a force stronger than steel" into actual physical reality.

Why not just call it natural laws? Or laws of physics? Or theory? It's what we call it in RL. You can model the theory of gravity into your game or just resolve falling damage with a rule that you take d6 per 10' you fall.

Those laws might be inherent to the game world not only the sandbox

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-05, 06:59 AM
It´s more likely that you create rules to avoid this exact situation. Instead of arguing about how far a Hobbit can jump, you create some "jumping rules" to handle that (and then argue about whether those rules make sense or not).


"How far a Hobbit can jump" really doesn't have anything to do with "please show up on time" or "please don't play Angry Birds when it's not your PC's action in a combat". Using the word "rules" for both of those, in the context of gaming, is just asking for confusion -- and like I said, lecturing a group of adults about "the rules here" as if they were a group of kindergartners runs a high risk of creating more problems than it solves.

Setting facts and game mechanics should align, but that's not the same as calling them both "rules".

Quertus
2018-04-05, 08:31 AM
Why not just call it natural laws? Or laws of physics? Or theory? It's what we call it in RL. You can model the theory of gravity into your game or just resolve falling damage with a rule that you take d6 per 10' you fall.

Those laws might be inherent to the game world not only the sandbox


"How far a Hobbit can jump" really doesn't have anything to do with "please show up on time" or "please don't play Angry Birds when it's not your PC's action in a combat". Using the word "rules" for both of those, in the context of gaming, is just asking for confusion -- and like I said, lecturing a group of adults about "the rules here" as if they were a group of kindergartners runs a high risk of creating more problems than it solves.

Setting facts and game mechanics should align, but that's not the same as calling them both "rules".

There is definite value in keeping the various layers district, and being able to discuss them separately. Heck, TCP/IP has 7 bloody layers, and all it does is get data from one place to another. RPGs are much more serious and complex than that!

EDIT: and trying to conflate "how gravity works" as being inherently related to how linear game design or gameplay is... well... that just seems... wrong.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-05, 09:04 AM
Why not just call it natural laws? Or laws of physics? Or theory? It's what we call it in RL. You can model the theory of gravity into your game or just resolve falling damage with a rule that you take d6 per 10' you fall.

Because calling them natural laws does not mean they're not rules. More precise taxonomy of rules is not an excuse to not acknowledge a basic set-subset connection. You might as well be asking "what's the point of calling humans animals? Most people don't think of humans when you say 'animal', it's just confusing. Why not just call them 'people'...?"


Those laws might be inherent to the game world not only the sandbox

Did you count how many times I replied to Quertus that inherence is a red herring? Again: a game is constructed from its rules. Any natural laws of the setting which at all influence the game, are rules of the game. Hence, whether a game is a sandbox depends on those laws. The corollary is that if you grokked this point, we could have a meaningfull discussion of which kind of natural laws, and by extension which kind of settings, are good or bad for sandbox games.

By contrast, again: natural laws which don't affect anything are not rules, but neither are they meaningfull part of the game. They are not part of the gameable content and hence not part of the sandbox.

---


Plus, frankly, it's a little demeaning to tell a group of adults that they're "breaking the rules" by not following one person's expectations of what goes on around the playing table / area,

1) By assuming "a group of adults", you disqualify yourself from meaningfull discussion of designing games for children and teenagers, or even just age-neutral games.
2) explicit game rules always are a set of codified expectations. If you think laying out explicit rules of co-operation and then telling other people when they break those is somehow odd, or non-adult-like, you are wrong.
3) if you think adults don't have implicit rules of co-operation, which will make them cease co-operation if broken, you are wrong.
4) I was asking Quertus which expectations, which rules, are good or bad for a specific type of game. It should be obvious from the wording that I do not assume all rules are reasonable, and neither do I assume they are unreasonable. You, on the other hand, are making an assumption of unreasonability. Regardless of whether many are breaking rules set by one, one is breaking those of many, or some are breaking rules of some, the rules themselves still need to be evaluated before you can comment how "demeaning" they are; you are not doing that. Aso, as an adult, you should be able to imagine a situation where a demeaning comment is completely deserved.


"How far a Hobbit can jump" really doesn't have anything to do with "please show up on time" or "please don't play Angry Birds when it's not your PC's action in a combat".

You are right, but that's because those latter two are not rules. They are mere requests, because their effect on the game is left undefined.

Actual rules on those subjects would look like this:

"If you don't show up on time, your character will be controlled by the game master for the session."

"If you playing Angry Birds distracts the game, your character will be given to another player and you will be removed from the game."

Both types of rules are common as dirt. They're suitable for ages 5 to 99.


Using the word "rules" for both of those, in the context of gaming, is just asking for confusion -- and like I said, lecturing a group of adults about "the rules here" as if they were a group of kindergartners runs a high risk of creating more problems than it solves.

This is just a strawman. Adults have rules for personal conduct in games all the time. Nothing in it requires lecturing. And the idea that rules which are good for kids are automatically bad for adults is a load of crap anyway.


Setting facts and game mechanics should align, but that's not the same as calling them both "rules".

The reason why setting facts and game mechanics should align stems directly from them both being rules. Because if they don't, you have two contradicory rulings for the same subject, and have to pick which takes precedence, either at the expense of fidelity to the setting, or at the expense of your game system.

Again: more precise taxonomy of rules is not an excuse to not acknowledge basic set-subset connection.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 09:09 AM
@Frozen_Feet

I think you might get more traction if you simply said, "they are all subsets of the set of things that affect the game", rather than insisting on calling them all "rules".

Keltest
2018-04-05, 10:19 AM
I think its fair to call "Don't play on your phone at the table in between your turns" a rule. Its not a game rule though because it isn't actually regulating anything about the game. Its a rule of the group, or the table, or the house, or however you want to phrase it, since its regulating the behavior of members of the group in meatspace when theyre together, and therefore of questionable relevance to whether something is a sandbox.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 10:26 AM
I think its fair to call "Don't play on your phone at the table in between your turns" a rule. Its not a game rule though because it isn't actually regulating anything about the game. Its a rule of the group, or the table, or the house, or however you want to phrase it, since its regulating the behavior of members of the group in meatspace when theyre together, and therefore of questionable relevance to whether something is a sandbox.

Social contract, as distinct from the rules. But still a "rule" in your sense of "how we play here".

Keltest
2018-04-05, 10:29 AM
Social contract, as distinct from the rules. But still a "rule" in your sense of "how we play here".

Semantics. A contract is just an agreed upon set of behavioral rules. But yes, it is part of a separate rules body than the actual rules of the game.

Florian
2018-04-05, 10:42 AM
Why not just call it natural laws? Or laws of physics? Or theory? It's what we call it in RL. You can model the theory of gravity into your game or just resolve falling damage with a rule that you take d6 per 10' you fall.

Those laws might be inherent to the game world not only the sandbox

Because at the end of the day, it´s players participating in a game, using the rules as sort of UI to experience the game and also gain feedback based on that. We only ever handle that UI level, nothing else, but try to "immerse" around that as part of "make believe".

And no, something being inherent is really a bit red herring here. Game, game system and game world are interconnected things that make use of the same rules and can´t really be divorced - no, not even when they are called "universal" or "generic", because one of those will always impact and alter the others, ie. you will have to connect a "rules free" setting with the actual game rules you use and begin to translate it (yes, that tree over there now carries a tag with the climb dc and hardness)

@Quertus:

Cheap cop-out. Gentlemen´s Agreement, Social Contract and such are the rules that really matter, they govern how to use the rest and how we all do play the game. Saying "no PVP" is vastly more important and carries more impact than any BS written in a PHB. That really is the top level of the rules that govern the game, which everything else being mere sub-sets of it.

Quertus
2018-04-05, 10:43 AM
Semantics. A contract is just an agreed upon set of behavioral rules. But yes, it is part of a separate rules body than the actual rules of the game.

Absolutely, it's semantics. So, once we changed the words, does anyone still disagree with this?

1of3
2018-04-06, 08:25 AM
(Also, think I missed any styles, or lumped any together that are too different?)

No idea. You basically took one blurry metaphor and substituted it with five blurry metaphors.

There are things you might ask that shed some light. Like: Who creates what kind of content when? E.g. some GMs will create a whole epic plot before play starts. Some start the game and start introducing things after the first few sessions. Or do you use official material? Random tables? In my campaign about half the relevant NPCs where created by the players. What's your ratio? Did you do something akin to city generation with group? How does your game handle statting NPCs? Some limit you quite alot. Are there reliable rules to convince and turn NPCs for the players to use? Do the protagonists have back stories that are incorporated into play?

Those are only some of criteria one might look at to understand the actual interactions at the table.

Florian
2018-04-06, 10:05 AM
Tsk, 1of3, don't ask :T:-level questions on a D&D-focused board.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-06, 10:18 AM
@Frozen_Feet

I think you might get more traction if you simply said, "they are all subsets of the set of things that affect the game", rather than insisting on calling them all "rules".

The "set of things which affect the game" is even larger than (game) rules, and would include things like real human and natural laws. I already told you what the set I'm talking of consists of: explicit statements of the game, and statements implied by elements and actions in the game. I said this when explaining which part overlap with your "gentleman's agreement". Any outspoken agreement which deals with how to play the game is included; any unspoken agreement stemming from game elements and actions is included. Unspoken agreement which originate from outside the game are not included. For example, "do not murder real people" is an unspoken rule in most tables, but it stems from explicit law and concerns from outside the game, so it doesn't count even if affects the game. (You could have a game with an explicit rule, "do not murder real people", but it would be rather quaint. It would not surprise me if a real game with such a rule does exist from the times of Satanic Panic, though.)

On the other hand, Florian's example, "no player versus player", very obviously counts if it's made explicit. "Players" only exists in the context of a game, so it is a statement of how to play a game. If it's not made explicit, it is dubious if it counts. It could count, if the structure of a game scenario very obviously requires player co-operation and the game is lost if players play against each other. If the structure of the game doesn't, or does the opposite, then such implicit "gentleman's agreement" is not part of the game rules - either there is no agreement or by accident the players all carried the same an unspoken expectation into the game from elsewhere.

RazorChain
2018-04-06, 01:41 PM
Because at the end of the day, it´s players participating in a game, using the rules as sort of UI to experience the game and also gain feedback based on that. We only ever handle that UI level, nothing else, but try to "immerse" around that as part of "make believe".

And no, something being inherent is really a bit red herring here. Game, game system and game world are interconnected things that make use of the same rules and can´t really be divorced - no, not even when they are called "universal" or "generic", because one of those will always impact and alter the others, ie. you will have to connect a "rules free" setting with the actual game rules you use and begin to translate it (yes, that tree over there now carries a tag with the climb dc and hardness)



That a game world and system are interconnected is a bit of a red herring in this case, because you can run a lot of settings with different systems. I am running Mythic Europe (Ars Magica) using Gurps for instance. You can make a setting/world without thinking about a system just like Tolkien made Middle Earth or my favorite person to hate, Ed Greenwood, started to make Forgotten Realms in 1966. You can also make a system without a setting.

The Game world and the system become connected when you decide upon what system to use. When I make a setting or a world I often do so without thinking about the system I will be using and then I pick out the system I want to use. Before I choose a system my trees don't have hardness or difficulty of climbing.

Most systems will use RL physics in most cases because that is the norm for us and often we don't have to codify it into the rules unless relevant. If you throw a puppy from the Empire State building and ask how for it flies and if it survives then the GM might just tell you how far it flies before hurling to the ground and dies with a sickening thud instead of consulting any rules at all.

95% of the time I play I am not using the rules, in a computer game I use the UI almost all the time. I am going to propose that the rules aren't the user interface, you and your fellow players are the user and the interface

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-06, 01:54 PM
95% of the time I play I am not using the rules, in a computer game I use the UI almost all the time. I am going to propose that the rules aren't the user interface, you and your fellow players are the user and the interface

I agree--a couple of expansions/clarifications/amplifications:

1) Some systems are much more multi-setting friendly than others. On the flip side, some settings fit some systems much better. I prefer to mold the setting to the system when making custom ones, but that's personal preference.

2) I like to think that the players (other than the DM) are the users, the DM is the interface between the users and the world (in both directions), and the DM uses the rules to structure that communication. Maybe compare them to a shared language?

The game rules (game mechanics) are the structures that are used to translate between the fictional universe events and the players declared actions (and vice versa). The mechanical rules are a tool available to both DM and players to make the game fun. They are not the game (for an RPG), but they're a significant aspect of it.

If you're just telling stories (pure narrative free-form), you don't need formal game mechanics. You do need social rules (don't step on each other, etc). If you're playing a board game (where every possible interaction is enumerated), you don't need a separate person to act as a rules arbiter (because the system is mostly self-enforcing at the cost of not being open-ended). RPGs are somewhere in the middle.

RazorChain
2018-04-06, 01:59 PM
I agree--a couple of expansions/clarifications/amplifications:

1) Some systems are much more multi-setting friendly than others. On the flip side, some settings fit some systems much better. I prefer to mold the setting to the system when making custom ones, but that's personal preference.

2) I like to think that the players (other than the DM) are the users, the DM is the interface between the users and the world (in both directions), and the DM uses the rules to structure that communication. Maybe compare them to a shared language?

The game rules (game mechanics) are the structures that are used to translate between the fictional universe events and the players declared actions (and vice versa). The mechanical rules are a tool available to both DM and players to make the game fun. They are not the game (for an RPG), but they're a significant aspect of it.

If you're just telling stories (pure narrative free-form), you don't need formal game mechanics. You do need social rules (don't step on each other, etc). If you're playing a board game (where every possible interaction is enumerated), you don't need a separate person to act as a rules arbiter (because the system is mostly self-enforcing at the cost of not being open-ended). RPGs are somewhere in the middle.

My thought exactly...just better worded :smallwink:

Just that I'm used to systems where other players may have some narrative control and therefore become a part of the interface as well.

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-06, 02:03 PM
My thought exactly...just better worded :smallwink:

Just that I'm used to systems where other players may have some narrative control and therefore become a part of the interface as well.

Yeah, giving players narrative control spreads the "interface" role around a bit. "Classic" (D&D-like) games are further to the "DM is the sole interface and the rules serve him" end (with all the faults that implies), while games that give more narrative control have to have meta-rules about how you use that narrative control so as to not cause conflict. Trade-offs everywhere.

I'm starting to think that the law of conservation of annoyance (all systems/models are annoying in about the same total amount, just spread around differently) is more than just a joke. The trick is to pick a system that pushes that annoyance to somewhere that doesn't matter for the present purposes.

RazorChain
2018-04-06, 03:00 PM
Yeah, giving players narrative control spreads the "interface" role around a bit. "Classic" (D&D-like) games are further to the "DM is the sole interface and the rules serve him" end (with all the faults that implies), while games that give more narrative control have to have meta-rules about how you use that narrative control so as to not cause conflict. Trade-offs everywhere.

I'm starting to think that the law of conservation of annoyance (all systems/models are annoying in about the same total amount, just spread around differently) is more than just a joke. The trick is to pick a system that pushes that annoyance to somewhere that doesn't matter for the present purposes.


I'm mostly beyond annoyances with systems. I know what system is good for what and choose the ones that annoy me the least. The second is system mastery, if I run a system I study it inside out so I don't have to confer with the rules during play. The most annoyance I have with systems is if they block the flow of the game.

System mastery is important for me as a GM because that means the system works for me not against me and then it is one less thing to worry about. Train hard, fight easy.

Lorsa
2018-04-09, 06:25 AM
While levels of railroading is interesting, I tend to view it in a similar light as Scripten, that it's better to talk about different types of railroading, not the amount, or level of it. In addition to the list that was suggested before, I would add the following:

Scene selection:
When the GM is in total control over which scenes are played, and the players can not alter this in any way. For example, let's say the players are sitting in a tavern discussing how to solve the quest, and the GM has planned the next scene to be when they talk to a certain NPC (X), but instead the players decide to go to the library to search for information. The GM would then never allow this scene to take place, rather just state "ok, you search through book for a couple of hours and find blah blah, and now you're back at the tavern...". This could go on ad infinitum until the players say "we go talk to NPC X" - and THEN get a scene that's played through.

Adventure design railroading:
When the GM might allow characters freedom per se, but the scenario is made in such a way that the players will "naturally" do things in a specific order, decided by the GM. A dungeon that is essentially a long corridor with rooms passed through in order is an example of this. I know it can lead to a long discussion whether or not this is actually railroading; but I think it qualifies on the list just as much as the "Quantum Ogre".

In any case, I've always found it more interesting to break down railroading into specific types and behaviors, rather than levels or amounts.

If I were to give an account of my own GMing, it would usually be an Open Road or a Big City.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-09, 07:37 AM
While levels of railroading is interesting, I tend to view it in a similar light as Scripten, that it's better to talk about different types of railroading, not the amount, or level of it. In addition to the list that was suggested before, I would add the following:

Neither of your examples seems like railroading.



Scene selection:
When the GM is in total control over which scenes are played, and the players can not alter this in any way. For example, let's say the players are sitting in a tavern discussing how to solve the quest, and the GM has planned the next scene to be when they talk to a certain NPC (X), but instead the players decide to go to the library to search for information. The GM would then never allow this scene to take place, rather just state "ok, you search through book for a couple of hours and find blah blah, and now you're back at the tavern...". This could go on ad infinitum until the players say "we go talk to NPC X" - and THEN get a scene that's played through.

This is not Railroading, this is simply a simple easy game vs a complex hard game or even planned prepared things vs random improv or game that makes sense vs player wish fulfillment. In the complex game the DM decides things like what npc knows what information or even what book in what location has the information. And this does not change very much no matter what the players do. Jod, the retired soldier knows about the Battle of Two Trees as he was there 20 years ago. If the characters want to know about the battle they 'must' talk to Jod.

The easy random improv wish fulfillment is no matter what the players have their characters do they will find the answer. So if the characters read a book, they find the answer. They talk to any npc on the street, they find the answer(and don't even have to talk as they can just roll a ''GM tell us stuff" roll).




Adventure design railroading:
When the GM might allow characters freedom per se, but the scenario is made in such a way that the players will "naturally" do things in a specific order, decided by the GM. A dungeon that is essentially a long corridor with rooms passed through in order is an example of this. I know it can lead to a long discussion whether or not this is actually railroading; but I think it qualifies on the list just as much as the "Quantum Ogre".


This seems to be natural vs player wish fulfillment here.

One game has ''natural'' things: Demons live in the Abyss, sailors make up the crew of a sailing ship, banks have money in them and so forth. So if a player wants there character to do something they must do things the ''natural'' way.

The other side here is just the player wish fulfillment: whatever the players have their characters do just happens exactly the way the players want.


Neither of them is Railroading(you know the bad kind).

Lorsa
2018-04-09, 07:55 AM
Neither of your examples seems like railroading.

And yet they are (or can be, when done in excess)!



This is not Railroading, this is simply a simple easy game vs a complex hard game or even planned prepared things vs random improv or game that makes sense vs player wish fulfillment. In the complex game the DM decides things like what npc knows what information or even what book in what location has the information. And this does not change very much no matter what the players do. Jod, the retired soldier knows about the Battle of Two Trees as he was there 20 years ago. If the characters want to know about the battle they 'must' talk to Jod.

The easy random improv wish fulfillment is no matter what the players have their characters do they will find the answer. So if the characters read a book, they find the answer. They talk to any npc on the street, they find the answer(and don't even have to talk as they can just roll a ''GM tell us stuff" roll).

I see you failed to grasp the important concept I was trying to convey, and instead got hung up on irrelevant details in the example. Try to extend your abstract thinking a little bit and see what I was trying to say.

First of all, I never said anything about NPC X having a specific kind of information. Merely that the GM had decided that the next scene will be when the players talk to him. It doesn't even have to be connected to the library thing. Could be that the king has summoned them for a meeting the next week to give them a quest, and the GM then will essentially not allow the players to do anything meaningful in that week (by not allowing any scenes to take place).

The point is, if the GM is denying players the ability to choose scenes in the game, it is a form of railroading. Often, this can be done with good intentions and even with the consent of players (in which case it is not railroading as stated by other people in this thread). When it is without consent, it is a form of railroading.

Basically, I want my character to do something (of meaning to my character), but the GM won't allow it to happen or play out as the scene will not take place.



This seems to be natural vs player wish fulfillment here.

One game has ''natural'' things: Demons live in the Abyss, sailors make up the crew of a sailing ship, banks have money in them and so forth. So if a player wants there character to do something they must do things the ''natural'' way.

The other side here is just the player wish fulfillment: whatever the players have their characters do just happens exactly the way the players want.

I see you read my example... [/sarcasm]

My point is scenario design such as: the players have decided to travel by sea to an island where the adventure is going to take place. The GM then has one and only one boat sailing to that place in the coming month. So obviously the players will chose that boat. Those things are completely fine as isolated incidents, but when done in excess it means the players are not able to make any real choices whatsoever, as they are practically always limited to one. It may seem as if, technically, the GM offers the players freedom, but since the scenario design never includes any actual choices... it's like hiding behind the letter of the law while completely violating the spirit thereof.

Scripten
2018-04-09, 09:05 AM
Scene selection:
When the GM is in total control over which scenes are played, and the players can not alter this in any way. For example, let's say the players are sitting in a tavern discussing how to solve the quest, and the GM has planned the next scene to be when they talk to a certain NPC (X), but instead the players decide to go to the library to search for information. The GM would then never allow this scene to take place, rather just state "ok, you search through book for a couple of hours and find blah blah, and now you're back at the tavern...". This could go on ad infinitum until the players say "we go talk to NPC X" - and THEN get a scene that's played through.

Adventure design railroading:
When the GM might allow characters freedom per se, but the scenario is made in such a way that the players will "naturally" do things in a specific order, decided by the GM. A dungeon that is essentially a long corridor with rooms passed through in order is an example of this. I know it can lead to a long discussion whether or not this is actually railroading; but I think it qualifies on the list just as much as the "Quantum Ogre".


These seem similar to what I was thinking when I was going over Mono-pathing and Solution Predetermination. It may be useful to have the order of scenes and encounter solutions separated out, though!

I would definitely consider the "natural order" example to be Railroading, if the world is expected to be open. For example, if the dungeon map shows two rooms next to each other and the players could reasonably use digging tools to get through, then they should be able to do so if they have those tools. Of course, the DM could say, "This dungeon is linearly designed, so your characters won't have the means to break through the walls or anything" and it would be perfectly fine. Plenty of my one-shot adventures have been run like that.


-Snip-

@Lorsa (& others): Just don't respond to him. He's going to do the exact same thing he does in any other thread. Next thing you know, we'll be thirty pages in with no actual discussion being had; just a series of DU's willful misinterpretation and people trying in vain to get through to him. It's not worth it.

Lorsa
2018-04-09, 09:32 AM
These seem similar to what I was thinking when I was going over Mono-pathing and Solution Predetermination. It may be useful to have the order of scenes and encounter solutions separated out, though!

I would definitely consider the "natural order" example to be Railroading, if the world is expected to be open. For example, if the dungeon map shows two rooms next to each other and the players could reasonably use digging tools to get through, then they should be able to do so if they have those tools. Of course, the DM could say, "This dungeon is linearly designed, so your characters won't have the means to break through the walls or anything" and it would be perfectly fine. Plenty of my one-shot adventures have been run like that.

I guess we were thinking sort of along the same lines at least.

I thought the "scene order" to be quite different from solution predetermination though. In solution predetermination, you only have exactly one way to resolve your current scene, whereas with scene order railroading, you have no ability to influence which the next scene will be.

Also, it seems as though your example of mono-pathing involved too much "make two paths identical" or "regardless of choice, same thing happens". My view was more "construct a scenario where there is only one practical choice to be made".

I feel as though I should make a thread about the nature of choices, different types of choices and how to include more of them in your games.

Scripten
2018-04-09, 09:57 AM
I guess we were thinking sort of along the same lines at least.

I thought the "scene order" to be quite different from solution predetermination though. In solution predetermination, you only have exactly one way to resolve your current scene, whereas with scene order railroading, you have no ability to influence which the next scene will be.

Good point! So a DM could allow for multiple ways to solve a particular scene but have a single point of transition between scenes, which makes those decisions meaningless outside the context of that particular encounter. I think I get where you are coming from now.



Also, it seems as though your example of mono-pathing involved too much "make two paths identical" or "regardless of choice, same thing happens". My view was more "construct a scenario where there is only one practical choice to be made".

I feel as though I should make a thread about the nature of choices, different types of choices and how to include more of them in your games.

Ah, okay. My intent was to be more generalized, but I can see where you could separate the two.

I second the idea of making a thread about including meaningful player choices in one's games. That sounds like a useful discussion and resource to have.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-09, 06:10 PM
The point is, if the GM is denying players the ability to choose scenes in the game, it is a form of railroading. Often, this can be done with good intentions and even with the consent of players (in which case it is not railroading as stated by other people in this thread). When it is without consent, it is a form of railroading.

Basically, I want my character to do something (of meaning to my character), but the GM won't allow it to happen or play out as the scene will not take place.

I guess this is the thing between a traditional RPG based on reality and a wacky alternative activity.

Your way is...somehow...players ''pick the scenes'' and control the game. So, in your game, there is no reason to have a GM. And, sure, your way works great for any game without a GM. All the ''players'' can just sit around ''pick scenes'' and ''alter game reality'' and ''do whatever they want and just say 'and then' over and over and over again".

And sure, it is great fun for that one specific type of game. I just wonder why you would apply it to all other games?





My point is scenario design such as: the players have decided to travel by sea to an island where the adventure is going to take place. The GM then has one and only one boat sailing to that place in the coming month. So obviously the players will chose that boat. Those things are completely fine as isolated incidents, but when done in excess it means the players are not able to make any real choices whatsoever, as they are practically always limited to one. It may seem as if, technically, the GM offers the players freedom, but since the scenario design never includes any actual choices... it's like hiding behind the letter of the law while completely violating the spirit thereof.

This just sounds like complaining for complaining sake.

Cluedrew
2018-04-09, 09:20 PM
On Scene Selection: Roughly speaking, I actually think that is a train car (Halo) campaign on the scale, just phased a different way. In that you can do what you want on the train at the stations (within scenes) but you can't change the train's route (next scene).


Scene selection:
When the GM is in total control over which scenes are played, and the players can not alter this in any way. For example, let's say the players are sitting in a tavern discussing how to solve the quest, and the GM has planned the next scene to be when they talk to a certain NPC (X), but instead the players decide to go to the library to search for information. The GM would then never allow this scene to take place, rather just state "ok, you search through book for a couple of hours and find blah blah, and now you're back at the tavern...". This could go on ad infinitum until the players say "we go talk to NPC X" - and THEN get a scene that's played through.


Train Car: If you open up an airplane game slightly, you get a train car game. The players are still on rails, still going where and how the GM wants them to go, but there's at least the appearance of freedom. The plot will continue along the same lines no matter what you do, but you can get up and walk around the car, talk with NPCs of your choice, and make similar non-plot-critical choices. This is more of a "badly written module" level of railroad. (Alternate metaphor: You're playing Halo. There's only one way through the level, but you can poke around a little bit, try different loadouts, take the high path instead of the low, etc).

Scripten
2018-04-09, 10:33 PM
On Scene Selection: Roughly speaking, I actually think that is a train car (Halo) campaign on the scale, just phased a different way. In that you can do what you want on the train at the stations (within scenes) but you can't change the train's route (next scene).


I think the difference is that one is presented in terms of a Railroading behavior and the other is a campaign design schema.

Lorsa
2018-04-10, 06:38 AM
I guess this is the thing between a traditional RPG based on reality and a wacky alternative activity.

Your way is...somehow...players ''pick the scenes'' and control the game. So, in your game, there is no reason to have a GM. And, sure, your way works great for any game without a GM. All the ''players'' can just sit around ''pick scenes'' and ''alter game reality'' and ''do whatever they want and just say 'and then' over and over and over again".

And sure, it is great fun for that one specific type of game. I just wonder why you would apply it to all other games?

Your intelligence astounds me. The brilliant understanding of my point and the clever wit of rebuttal. I have no other choice than to exclaim defeat.



This just sounds like complaining for complaining sake.

I am complaining about a game without choices as it is a boring game (to me).



On Scene Selection: Roughly speaking, I actually think that is a train car (Halo) campaign on the scale, just phased a different way. In that you can do what you want on the train at the stations (within scenes) but you can't change the train's route (next scene).






I think the difference is that one is presented in terms of a Railroading behavior and the other is a campaign design schema.

I think Scripten has the right of it. I also think there are more than one way to run the Train Car campaign than strictly controlling the scene selection. More than that, I think some GMs aren't even aware of that scene selection can be a form of railroading when done in extreme. I mean, the GM IS the one in control of the scenes, but they can take input from the players (or not). When they don't, it can easily become a kind of railroading where the GM still feels they are providing agency by allowing freedom (of solution) within each scene.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-10, 06:44 AM
On Scene Selection: Roughly speaking, I actually think that is a train car (Halo) campaign on the scale, just phased a different way. In that you can do what you want on the train at the stations (within scenes) but you can't change the train's route (next scene).


I'm not sure why this is even a complaint.

In most games, most of the time, the PCs are just a ''hardy band of adventurers/agents/operatives" and can only effect things on a very local, very personal level. Sure, there are some games where the PCs are demigods and they can blow up planets, but most games take place well below such epic levels.

So, in most cases the players can't just effect or change the plot or ''next scene'' without a huge investment of time and effort...and there is no promise that it will work.

And if your game has the PCs altering reality on a whim, that is a bit of a silly cartoon game..or like a Star Trek time travel episode.

Scripten
2018-04-10, 08:54 AM
I think Scripten has the right of it. I also think there are more than one way to run the Train Car campaign than strictly controlling the scene selection. More than that, I think some GMs aren't even aware of that scene selection can be a form of railroading when done in extreme. I mean, the GM IS the one in control of the scenes, but they can take input from the players (or not). When they don't, it can easily become a kind of railroading where the GM still feels they are providing agency by allowing freedom (of solution) within each scene.

To an extent, allowing for freedom of solution is a form of player agency. For a lot of smaller single-session adventures, I find that I actually prefer scene selection to be limited by the DM. Granted, this is usually because the smaller adventures have a pre-stated raison d'etre IE "This adventure is all about [story]" or "This is a linear dungeon crawl with a set of consecutive puzzles".

Honestly, you could probably have a dungeon with the scenes pre-selected that has branching changes that propagate through the adventure. (And by could, I mean I have personally run and been a player in such scenarios.)


-snip-

Not worth replying to. Work on your comprehension.

Lorsa
2018-04-10, 09:53 AM
I'm not sure why this is even a complaint.

In most games, most of the time, the PCs are just a ''hardy band of adventurers/agents/operatives" and can only effect things on a very local, very personal level. Sure, there are some games where the PCs are demigods and they can blow up planets, but most games take place well below such epic levels.

So, in most cases the players can't just effect or change the plot or ''next scene'' without a huge investment of time and effort...and there is no promise that it will work.

And if your game has the PCs altering reality on a whim, that is a bit of a silly cartoon game..or like a Star Trek time travel episode.

If the players say "We go to the Temple of Doom" and the temple is located a couple of miles inland from the city they are on, what makes most sense; that the next scene takes place on the way to or at the Temple of Doom, or on a ship headed for another continent?

When you can answer that question correctly, maybe you can join the discussion.



To an extent, allowing for freedom of solution is a form of player agency. For a lot of smaller single-session adventures, I find that I actually prefer scene selection to be limited by the DM. Granted, this is usually because the smaller adventures have a pre-stated raison d'etre IE "This adventure is all about [story]" or "This is a linear dungeon crawl with a set of consecutive puzzles".

Honestly, you could probably have a dungeon with the scenes pre-selected that has branching changes that propagate through the adventure. (And by could, I mean I have personally run and been a player in such scenarios.)

Yes, freedom of solution is a form of player agency. This is why we want to split up railroading by behavior types in the first place. Some games provide different forms of choice, and sometimes one is preferred over the other.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-10, 10:00 AM
I said this in another thread, but to me "railroad" in the RPG context is a verb, not a noun.

It's a bad faith action by a GM, involving deceit or manipulation, as a means of maintaining the GM's preferred course of events instead of the natural outcome of the interaction of current circumstances and character (PC or NPC, doesn't matter) actions.

Scripten
2018-04-10, 11:01 AM
Yes, freedom of solution is a form of player agency. This is why we want to split up railroading by behavior types in the first place. Some games provide different forms of choice, and sometimes one is preferred over the other.

Exactly. I can't really think of any one behavior that constitutes Railroading that is always bad, assuming the players buy into it. I've not myself played in games with fudged rolls, but I can see where they might be preferred and, as I stated before, I've played in tons of games with scene selection and have done a few encounters that have predetermined solutions.

One of my favorites was an adaption of the game Hexcells (http://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/) which went over swimmingly with the party. I've also had an averted version where I broke out my Othello board for a non-violent Pegasus encounter, but let the players use their turns to push their tokens around or otherwise act. The D&D minis fit perfectly on the board.


I said this in another thread, but to me "railroad" in the RPG context is a verb, not a noun.

Sure, which is why we're breaking it down into behaviors. Identifying the DM actions that could potentially be railroading is important if we want to actually define railroading.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-11, 12:07 AM
If the players say "We go to the Temple of Doom" and the temple is located a couple of miles inland from the city they are on, what makes most sense; that the next scene takes place on the way to or at the Temple of Doom, or on a ship headed for another continent?

When you can answer that question correctly, maybe you can join the discussion.

Well, to everyone except you the answer is: the next scene takes place on the way to or at the Temple of Doom. But you have already stated that is a type of railroading you don't like: The Bad GM is making a scene that the players are forced to go to. You would still be crying about how the GM made the next scene right? And how you as a player could not just do any random thing you felt like doing?



Yes, freedom of solution is a form of player agency. This is why we want to split up railroading by behavior types in the first place. Some games provide different forms of choice, and sometimes one is preferred over the other.

Except all the examples are negative? Maybe we should add some positive ones....




It's a bad faith action by a GM, involving deceit or manipulation, as a means of maintaining the GM's preferred course of events instead of the natural outcome of the interaction of current circumstances and character (PC or NPC, doesn't matter) actions.

I point to the above as an exhibit for my view of Reality Gaming: Where someone has such a deep illusion view of the game, that they think it's real...and not a game anymore.

Point: There IS nothing natural that happens in a fictional game: It's all fake. At best it is fictional natural...but that is still 100% fake and not real.

Lorsa
2018-04-11, 01:24 AM
Well, to everyone except you the answer is: the next scene takes place on the way to or at the Temple of Doom. But you have already stated that is a type of railroading you don't like: The Bad GM is making a scene that the players are forced to go to. You would still be crying about how the GM made the next scene right? And how you as a player could not just do any random thing you felt like doing?

Except the scene follows as a choice the players made. Therefore it is the thing I am in favor of. That is, if the scene had NOT been on the way to or at the Temple of Doom, then we could claim it is scene railroading



Except all the examples are negative? Maybe we should add some positive ones....

I think Scripten was doing just that?

Overall, any negative example can turn positive by adding "the players like it". So it's a bit pointless really.

Drascin
2018-04-11, 03:12 AM
Highway seems to me to be about where roleplaying games shine. I want to have an overarching plot that we're working towards. Total freedom to do anything usually ends up as futzing around with little rhyme or reason.

A series of scenes that can be solved in multiple ways and all impact the overarching narrative in some ways (even if it's just "this is a Character A establishing moment") on the other hand, I'm all for. Train car also works for me. I've been in plenty of scenes where the GM and players had already decided the final outcome of the scene before starting it, and the fun was in getting there.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-11, 07:41 AM
Except the scene follows as a choice the players made. Therefore it is the thing I am in favor of. That is, if the scene had NOT been on the way to or at the Temple of Doom, then we could claim it is scene railroading


So you are saying it ok, as long as the players agree it is ok. THIS is tyrant players, where the DM has to ask permission and defend themselves for everything they do. It's a very hostile way to play the game. But, you like it?



I think Scripten was doing just that?

Overall, any negative example can turn positive by adding "the players like it". So it's a bit pointless really.

I agree the Tyrant Player type of game is pointless, but you like it. Sure it's great fun to be a player in such a game...you get to be hostile to the GM and attack them all the time. It is very attractive to players that are bullies and over all bad people.

Cluedrew
2018-04-11, 08:19 AM
One thing that occurred to me, if you want keep yourself from railroading but also want to run a linear game the solution is quite simple. Be upfront about how linear the game is. I mean I think a lot of people knew that already, but if railroading comes from a discrepancy in how linear everyone wants/expects game the game to be, the simple way to avoid that is to {drum role please} make sure everyone expects the same level of linearity in the game. So yeah, just tell them how linear the game is. Also helps avoid the opposite... stalling campaign problem if no one decides the next move.

Isn't it nice when these theories we have align nicely with common sense?

Keltest
2018-04-11, 08:22 AM
So you are saying it ok, as long as the players agree it is ok. THIS is tyrant players, where the DM has to ask permission and defend themselves for everything they do. It's a very hostile way to play the game. But, you like it?

Do you know what a DM does when their players aren't happy and don't want to play the game? They don't play D&D, that's for sure.

Scripten
2018-04-11, 08:54 AM
-snip-

Just a reminder: If you don't respond to him, he won't be able to derail the thread.


Overall, any negative example can turn positive by adding "the players like it". So it's a bit pointless really.

I would like to make a small correction to that: the players don't necessarily have to "like" any of these behaviors, only consent to them. The reason I make this distinction is because sometimes a DM might be building up to something or otherwise needs the players to "play along" until the payoff comes at a later time.

This is important because linear games might include scenes that do terrible things to the players' characters, only to make the final payoff that much sweeter.

(This is all mostly for the benefit of mitigating arguments that DMs are kowtowing to players by getting consent to Railroad in certain ways.)


One thing that occurred to me, if you want keep yourself from railroading but also want to run a linear game the solution is quite simple. Be upfront about how linear the game is. I mean I think a lot of people knew that already, but if railroading comes from a discrepancy in how linear everyone wants/expects game the game to be, the simple way to avoid that is to {drum role please} make sure everyone expects the same level of linearity in the game. So yeah, just tell them how linear the game is. Also helps avoid the opposite... stalling campaign problem if no one decides the next move.

Isn't it nice when these theories we have align nicely with common sense?

Yep! This is exactly why I argue that a lack of consent is the most crucial element of Railroading. Once you have consent to run a game with these behaviors, they cease to be Railroading because they lack that layer of deceit.


Do you know what a DM does when their players aren't happy and don't want to play the game? They don't play D&D, that's for sure.

While I'd like to avoid the discussion centering around him, I imagine this is why DU argues for Railroading, against sandboxes, and against player agency. If the community doesn't accept that the first is toxic gaming and that latter two exist, then players do not have the conceptual basis to avoid those DMs before the game starts.

Florian
2018-04-11, 09:37 AM
One thing that occurred to me, if you want keep yourself from railroading but also want to run a linear game the solution is quite simple. Be upfront about how linear the game is. I mean I think a lot of people knew that already, but if railroading comes from a discrepancy in how linear everyone wants/expects game the game to be, the simple way to avoid that is to {drum role please} make sure everyone expects the same level of linearity in the game. So yeah, just tell them how linear the game is. Also helps avoid the opposite... stalling campaign problem if no one decides the next move.

Isn't it nice when these theories we have align nicely with common sense?

Hm. Yes and no. Thing is that a lot of game systems present themselves as "wide open" on the player side, but more or less take the gm into the small shadowy alley and talk shop about how that isn't so and give strong hints about how to use stuff like illusionism to cover up that gap.

Basically, I think that's not only up to the gm to be upfront about stuff, but also the creators of a system talking/presenting it to the potential players that should aim towards at least talking about he bridge/gap.

Frozen_Feet
2018-04-12, 12:13 PM
@Scripten & Lorsa: the criticism towards what you're doing remains the same as towards Grod: you're identifying actual behaviours in gaming, but framing the discussion in terms of railroading is stupid. You don't need to break railroading into its component parts to define it, everyone who is not Darth_Ultron can grok what "forcing someone down a single, predetermined track of events" means. :smalltongue:

Quertus
2018-04-12, 12:43 PM
One thing that occurred to me, if you want keep yourself from railroading but also want to run a linear game the solution is quite simple. Be upfront about how linear the game is. I mean I think a lot of people knew that already, but if railroading comes from a discrepancy in how linear everyone wants/expects game the game to be, the simple way to avoid that is to {drum role please} make sure everyone expects the same level of linearity in the game. So yeah, just tell them how linear the game is. Also helps avoid the opposite... stalling campaign problem if no one decides the next move.

Isn't it nice when these theories we have align nicely with common sense?

Strongly agree. Communication is the key to a healthy... anything, really.


Hm. Yes and no. Thing is that a lot of game systems present themselves as "wide open" on the player side, but more or less take the gm into the small shadowy alley and talk shop about how that isn't so and give strong hints about how to use stuff like illusionism to cover up that gap.

Basically, I think that's not only up to the gm to be upfront about stuff, but also the creators of a system talking/presenting it to the potential players that should aim towards at least talking about he bridge/gap.

Can you give an example of a system which seems open but requires rails?

(Obviously, 13 candles or whatever requires rails, but it's upfront about it.)

Darth Ultron
2018-04-12, 07:04 PM
Do you know what a DM does when their players aren't happy and don't want to play the game? They don't play D&D, that's for sure.

This is only true for normal gamers.

After all, somehow, everyone is has the idea that, somehow, players are forced to play in a railroad game.

Keltest
2018-04-14, 09:05 PM
This is only true for normal gamers.

After all, somehow, everyone is has the idea that, somehow, players are forced to play in a railroad game.

I don't think ive ever seen anybody say that railroaded players are forced to participate?

Lorsa
2018-04-15, 07:42 AM
@Scripten & Lorsa: the criticism towards what you're doing remains the same as towards Grod: you're identifying actual behaviours in gaming, but framing the discussion in terms of railroading is stupid. You don't need to break railroading into its component parts to define it, everyone who is not Darth_Ultron can grok what "forcing someone down a single, predetermined track of events" means. :smalltongue:

I am not trying to define railroading, merely describe it. My experience is that some GMs believe themselves to not be railroading, as they only think of it in terms of one or two behavior types, whereas they may (unknowingly) engage in a third.

So actually, DU isn't alone with not understanding railroading.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-15, 01:38 PM
I don't think ive ever seen anybody say that railroaded players are forced to participate?

Really? Then I'm a bit confused as to why Railroading is even seen as bad if poor players are not forced to do it.

Like how does Railroading even happen then? Is it just the players being like sheep?

DM: "HAHAHA, it's my game and you are only players in it, HAHAHA! Your characters MUST go to Mt. Doom and fight my dragon! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHAAAA!"

Players: "Yes, DM, we will do whatever you say"

So how does it work? How do players play in a railroading game if and when they don't want too?

Keltest
2018-04-15, 01:42 PM
Really? Then I'm a bit confused as to why Railroading is even seen as bad if poor players are not forced to do it.

Like how does Railroading even happen then? Is it just the players being like sheep?

DM: "HAHAHA, it's my game and you are only players in it, HAHAHA! Your characters MUST go to Mt. Doom and fight my dragon! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHAAAA!"

Players: "Yes, DM, we will do whatever you say"

So how does it work? How do players play in a railroading game if and when they don't want too?

Are you being deliberately obtuse, or are you legitimately incapable of thinking of a reason why somebody might stay in a game they aren't enjoying for a session or two before bailing?

Darth Ultron
2018-04-16, 06:40 AM
Are you being deliberately obtuse, or are you legitimately incapable of thinking of a reason why somebody might stay in a game they aren't enjoying for a session or two before bailing?

???

Well, just speaking for myself, I would stay in a game exactly zero seconds after my enjoyment stopped.

I don't really get the idea of spending hours doing something for ''fun'', that you are not enjoying.

Lorsa
2018-04-17, 02:10 AM
???

Well, just speaking for myself, I would stay in a game exactly zero seconds after my enjoyment stopped.

I don't really get the idea of spending hours doing something for ''fun'', that you are not enjoying.

The question was if you could understand reasons for why others might stay, not what you would do yourself.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-17, 06:57 AM
The question was if you could understand reasons for why others might stay, not what you would do yourself.

Yes, I understand deeply why people to bad, stupid, unwise, dumb, pointless and otherwise wrong things. And I think it is very sad such people can't see what they are doing.

But still to say that there are ''special'' people that for ''reasons'' stay in bad games and then apply that to the whole of all gamedom is silly.

Like poor Bob is one of this type of person. And for two years, for ''reasons'', he stays in a horrible game run by a jerk monster of a negative railroading DM. Then after that Bob says ALL TRPG are ALLWAYYS like the ONE bad game he was in...for years and formulates his ''hate'' for railroading.

See, that makes no sense.

Lorsa
2018-04-17, 07:55 AM
Yes, I understand deeply why people to bad, stupid, unwise, dumb, pointless and otherwise wrong things. And I think it is very sad such people can't see what they are doing.

But still to say that there are ''special'' people that for ''reasons'' stay in bad games and then apply that to the whole of all gamedom is silly.

Like poor Bob is one of this type of person. And for two years, for ''reasons'', he stays in a horrible game run by a jerk monster of a negative railroading DM. Then after that Bob says ALL TRPG are ALLWAYYS like the ONE bad game he was in...for years and formulates his ''hate'' for railroading.

See, that makes no sense.

So you don't understand.

Got it.

Cluedrew
2018-04-17, 08:08 AM
If you guys want to talk about why people might play in a game where they are not currently having fun, that is a different topic and hence a different thread.

I'm going to keep on talking about linearity. First off I was going to say that I don't feel that high linearity games are really taking advantage of the medium. I'm not going to go all purist on you guys and say that it isn't a role-playing game (they are) but Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games seem to sit around Train Car/Highway. Personally I don't turn to table-top/pen-and-paper for low production value CRPGs (although there is possibility there if you like FF/DQ).

Just because I have found those campaigns to be boring. Not completely, but still not nearly as fun as the less linear campaigns. We played a bunch of non-linear, non-sandbox campaigns that were amazing (the best description I have is that they where character focused campaigns, while a linear campaign is plot focused and sandboxes are setting focused) that were probably "big city".

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-17, 08:39 AM
If you guys want to talk about why people might play in a game where they are not currently having fun, that is a different topic and hence a different thread.

I'm going to keep on talking about linearity. First off I was going to say that I don't feel that high linearity games are really taking advantage of the medium. I'm not going to go all purist on you guys and say that it isn't a role-playing game (they are) but Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games seem to sit around Train Car/Highway. Personally I don't turn to table-top/pen-and-paper for low production value CRPGs (although there is possibility there if you like FF/DQ).

Just because I have found those campaigns to be boring. Not completely, but still not nearly as fun as the less linear campaigns. We played a bunch of non-linear, non-sandbox campaigns that were amazing (the best description I have is that they where character focused campaigns, while a linear campaign is plot focused and sandboxes are setting focused) that were probably "big city".

Yet there are people who find sandboxes boring. I find Minecraft terminally dull because I crave narrative. As long as the rails aren't in-your-face-obvious, I can have fun in a linear game. I'm likely to have more fun if my actions make a difference in resolving the scenes, even if the next scene is largely predetermined. Even choosing different responses in a CRPG (where those responses don't change anything) is enough to keep me at least partially involved.

De gustibas non est disputandum should be the governing motto of these forums...

Cluedrew
2018-04-17, 09:44 AM
Yet there are people who find sandboxes boring.Two things. First, this is a personal view on these things so it yes, there will be people - reasonable people even - who don't agree with me. Second, I don't think I have ever played a sandbox campaign. At least not by my understanding of a sandbox game as a world (sandbox) with lots of things in it that you can go in interact with, locals, NPCs and factions for instance. It was very different from that. Full of plot and action but with only a small slice of the world filled in. There doesn't seem to be a common term for that style of campaign (short & player-driven maybe) so I guess it is not very common, but I enjoy it.


De gustibas non est disputandum should be the governing motto of these forums...I think I might know but... what does this mean in English? Agree to disagree?

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-17, 09:48 AM
I think I might know but... what does this mean in English?


"In matters of taste, there can be no disputes" (literally "about tastes, it should not be disputed/discussed").

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-17, 10:48 AM
Two things. First, this is a personal view on these things so it yes, there will be people - reasonable people even - who don't agree with me. Second, I don't think I have ever played a sandbox campaign. At least not by my understanding of a sandbox game as a world (sandbox) with lots of things in it that you can go in interact with, locals, NPCs and factions for instance. It was very different from that. Full of plot and action but with only a small slice of the world filled in. There doesn't seem to be a common term for that style of campaign (short & player-driven maybe) so I guess it is not very common, but I enjoy it.


I'd call that a perfectly fine sandbox. Not all sandboxes are infinite in extent--you can have a limited scope sandbox without issue, as long as it's understood where the bounds of the setting are before you begin.

RazorChain
2018-04-17, 03:16 PM
Strongly agree. Communication is the key to a healthy... anything, really.



Can you give an example of a system which seems open but requires rails?

(Obviously, 13 candles or whatever requires rails, but it's upfront about it.)

Early D&D sells you that you can do anything and be anything. The Dungeon Master Guide did not agree and neither did publishef modules.

Illusionism stems from the good old days when it was perfectly normal and acceptable (20+ years ago).

It was seen as superior methods to forcing your players down the track.

kyoryu
2018-04-17, 03:41 PM
Early D&D sells you that you can do anything and be anything. The Dungeon Master Guide did not agree and neither did publishef modules.

Illusionism stems from the good old days when it was perfectly normal and acceptable (20+ years ago).

It was seen as superior methods to forcing your players down the track.

Well, that depends on how you define "early" D&D. The railroading wasn't really in play until the DragonLance modules hit.

Cluedrew
2018-04-17, 04:25 PM
Thank-you Max_Killjoy.


I'd call that a perfectly fine sandbox. Not all sandboxes are infinite in extent--you can have a limited scope sandbox without issue, as long as it's understood where the bounds of the setting are before you begin.That second part is why I said it wasn't really a sandbox. Although it is technically true that there is an area we can't leave, really that doesn't come up because the plot never took us near the edge. Most of the time we just make a place exist when we need it to and every place we didn't go was just off the map. The idea of there being a map to explore (which I connect strongly with sandboxes) just isn't there.

Although after the active sandbox thread, I really don't care about the exact sandbox definition. As much as it would be fun to hijack the sandbox thread with meaningful conversation.

RazorChain
2018-04-17, 05:12 PM
Well, that depends on how you define "early" D&D. The railroading wasn't really in play until the DragonLance modules hit.

I started playing in '87 so to me that counts as the good old days, the Dragonlance modules were published in '84.

My early days were about railroading, monty haul and overpowering dmpc's. Boy did we have fun!

Quertus
2018-04-17, 05:40 PM
Early D&D sells you that you can do anything and be anything. The Dungeon Master Guide did not agree and neither did publishef modules.

Illusionism stems from the good old days when it was perfectly normal and acceptable (20+ years ago).

It was seen as superior methods to forcing your players down the track.


Well, that depends on how you define "early" D&D. The railroading wasn't really in play until the DragonLance modules hit.


I started playing in '87 so to me that counts as the good old days, the Dragonlance modules were published in '84.

My early days were about railroading, monty haul and overpowering dmpc's. Boy did we have fun!

Ok, I'm confused. If D&D didn't have railroading until the Dragonlance modules, then, as I parse the logic here, D&D does let you "do anything and be anything", and the limitations are an artificial add-on. If it's always had limitations, then talk of the Dragonlance modules is a red herring.

So, what, exactly, are we trying to say about D&D?


The idea of there being a map to explore (which I connect strongly with sandboxes) just isn't there.

So, wait, are you saying that my idea of a political sandbox, where there are a lot of political toys to play with, wouldn't feel like a sandbox to you?

Cluedrew
2018-04-17, 05:51 PM
To Quertus: Considering I am approximately 100% certain I have never played a political sandbox, I'm not sure. I mean maybe the political sandbox with political toys would form a kind of political map that would make it feel sandbox-like.

kyoryu
2018-04-17, 05:55 PM
Ok, I'm confused. If D&D didn't have railroading until the Dragonlance modules, then, as I parse the logic here, D&D does let you "do anything and be anything", and the limitations are an artificial add-on. If it's always had limitations, then talk of the Dragonlance modules is a red herring.

So, what, exactly, are we trying to say about D&D?

Well, I'm saying that early D&D (pre-DragonLance) was primarily exploration and sandbox play. Any claims about D&D being heavily railroady-illusionisty are really only valid post-DragonLance *.

So, trying to claim that that type of restriction is built into the system from its earliest days is simply incorrect. The buzz around the DragonLance modules, when they came out, was that they were a pretty new and different way to play.

(There's a reason my avatar here is the old wizard)

* Yes, a few of the other modules were kind of hinting that way, but those were really tournament scenarios that were then sold, and not really indicative of the majority of play in that era.

RazorChain
2018-04-17, 06:12 PM
Ok, I'm confused. If D&D didn't have railroading until the Dragonlance modules, then, as I parse the logic here, D&D does let you "do anything and be anything", and the limitations are an artificial add-on. If it's always had limitations, then talk of the Dragonlance modules is a red herring.

So, what, exactly, are we trying to say about D&D?



This is a bit tricky. You see Gygax was a wargamer and wargaming is about scenario design as much as fighting battles.

Gygax seems to never have been interested in the roleplaying part of the game. He would design a scenario and your character would go through that and claim the treasure in a exploration obstacle course.

D&D didn't have railroading hardcoded into the system but a lot of the gaming practices, DM advice and culture encouraged railroading.

A good example is an adventure by Ed Greenwood where you encounter a skeletal revenant that is a quest giver. All your attacks, physical and magical bounce off him so he can say his piece. If the PCs leave then he will haunt their dreams so they cant sleep until the fulfill the quest.

kyoryu
2018-04-17, 07:09 PM
This is a bit tricky. You see Gygax was a wargamer and wargaming is about scenario design as much as fighting battles.

Gygax seems to never have been interested in the roleplaying part of the game. He would design a scenario and your character would go through that and claim the treasure in a exploration obstacle course.

Define "roleplaying".

Specifically, every story I've heard of playing with Gygax involved a *ton* of navigating the world *as the character*. If you mean "story", then that is a true statement. If you mean "taking the part of a character in an imaginary world", then I'd disagree. Heavily.

I mean, there's folks still active on the net that played with Gygax, including his son. I'm sure I can ask them if Gygax ever cared about "roleplaying". I highly suspect that their response would involve a hefty amount of laughter. Now, again, note that the answer might vary depending on how you define "roleplaying".


D&D didn't have railroading hardcoded into the system but a lot of the gaming practices, DM advice and culture encouraged railroading.

In 2nd ed and beyond? Perhaps. Before DragonLance? No.

You can certainly make the argument that a good number of changes in 2nd ed were to support DragonLance-style play (note the decreased emphasis on xp for gp).


A good example is an adventure by Ed Greenwood where you encounter a skeletal revenant that is a quest giver. All your attacks, physical and magical bounce off him so he can say his piece. If the PCs leave then he will haunt their dreams so they cant sleep until the fulfill the quest.

As far as I can tell, Greenwood didn't contribute anything until at least '87.

In the late 80s and through the 90s, railroading was fairly standard *across the industry*. It wasn't an early part of D&D but was added into it as this became the trend of the time (again, starting with DragonLance). As such, I don't think it's really fair to say that it's an inherent part of the system in any way, especially given that the presumptions of the game prior to DragonLance were very much about explorative play.

Keltest
2018-04-17, 10:43 PM
Modules are a really bad example for any talk of railroading, because they are meant to bring the players along a specific trail. There might be room to wander, slightly, but in general a module is played with the intent and understanding that a specific adventure is going to happen and that there isn't anything else to see or do but that adventure. If youre going into a module, theres an implicit understanding that things will happen according to a formula and predetermined series of events, and things will keep pushing you in a certain direction: towards the end of the module.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-18, 08:21 AM
Modules are a really bad example for any talk of railroading, because they are meant to bring the players along a specific trail. There might be room to wander, slightly, but in general a module is played with the intent and understanding that a specific adventure is going to happen and that there isn't anything else to see or do but that adventure. If youre going into a module, theres an implicit understanding that things will happen according to a formula and predetermined series of events, and things will keep pushing you in a certain direction: towards the end of the module.

I would note this is true of ANY Adventure.

Keltest
2018-04-18, 08:27 AM
I would note this is true of ANY Adventure.

Not true. A module provides a predetermined static amount of content. The villain will always do the same things every playthrough. The players always have the same goals. Everybody goes in with the understanding that we will play this specific set of things and not try to deviate because there wont be anything there if we do.

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 08:27 AM
Define "roleplaying".

Specifically, every story I've heard of playing with Gygax involved a *ton* of navigating the world *as the character*. If you mean "story", then that is a true statement. If you mean "taking the part of a character in an imaginary world", then I'd disagree. Heavily.

I mean, there's folks still active on the net that played with Gygax, including his son. I'm sure I can ask them if Gygax ever cared about "roleplaying". I highly suspect that their response would involve a hefty amount of laughter. Now, again, note that the answer might vary depending on how you define "roleplaying".



In 2nd ed and beyond? Perhaps. Before DragonLance? No.

You can certainly make the argument that a good number of changes in 2nd ed were to support DragonLance-style play (note the decreased emphasis on xp for gp).



As far as I can tell, Greenwood didn't contribute anything until at least '87.

In the late 80s and through the 90s, railroading was fairly standard *across the industry*. It wasn't an early part of D&D but was added into it as this became the trend of the time (again, starting with DragonLance). As such, I don't think it's really fair to say that it's an inherent part of the system in any way, especially given that the presumptions of the game prior to DragonLance were very much about explorative play.


There are Gygax quotes and stories that seem to go all over the place on this, and a lot of gaming "theory" topics, depending on the time and subject.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-18, 08:51 AM
Not true. A module provides a predetermined static amount of content. The villain will always do the same things every playthrough. The players always have the same goals. Everybody goes in with the understanding that we will play this specific set of things and not try to deviate because there wont be anything there if we do.

Again, this is true of Any Adventure. An adventure will always be a static baseline...but then so is the whole game world.

And it's not the badworngfun negative that the players ''have'' to do the adventure and can't just ''suddenly go left''....it's more like the players have chosen to do the adventure.

But sure, if it works for your game you can do the wacky: Players pick adventure A, for almost and hour...then just toss their dice aside and say ''haha, we want to do adventure B now" and then you do adventure b for a couple minutes, then it's ''haha we want to do adventure c now" and so on for the whole game time. So after a couple hours the players have sort of started 15 adventures, but have finished zero. I guess some people would say that was a good game?

Max_Killjoy
2018-04-18, 09:12 AM
Not true. A module provides a predetermined static amount of content. The villain will always do the same things every playthrough. The players always have the same goals. Everybody goes in with the understanding that we will play this specific set of things and not try to deviate because there wont be anything there if we do.

Way back in the day, it was my habit, if using a module, to (figuratively) pull the thing apart and turn it into elements for use and expand on the sparse parts, and convert it from "this is what's going to happen at X place and Y time" to "this is what each NPC wants and their plan / methods for getting it", so that it was a toolkit instead of a script.

When someone says "I'm going to take my players on an adventure!", what I hear is "I'm running a themepark and my players are going on the ride I've built!"

I have no interest in being taken on a ride or told a story when I "RPG".

If I wanted a predetermined story, I'd just go read a book or watch a movie or whatever.

If I wanted to follow someone else's script, I'd just try to get into acting.

What's the point of an RPG if I don't get to make the character's decisions and the character's decisions don't matter at all?

PhoenixPhyre
2018-04-18, 09:17 AM
Way back in the day, it was my habit, if using a module, to (figuratively) pull the thing apart and turn it into elements for use and expand on the sparse parts, and convert it from "this is what's going to happen at X place and Y time" to "this is what each NPC wants and their plan / methods for getting it", so that it was a toolkit instead of a script.

When someone says "I'm going to take my players on an adventure!", what I hear is "I'm running a themepark and my players are going on the ride I've built!"

I have no interest in being taken on a ride or told a story when I "RPG".

If I wanted a predetermined story, I'd just go read a book or watch a movie or whatever.

If I wanted to following someone else's script I'd just try to get into acting.

What's the point of an RPG if I don't get to make the character's decisions and the character's decisions don't matter at all?

There's fun in playing through a story, even if you don't have total control (at least for me). If nothing you do matters even at the scene level (if nothing short of a TPK will fail things, and a TPK only gets you "spared miraculously" or something similar), sure. That's just a visual novel with poorer special effects. Pass.

I'm running one of the 5e printed modules with a group (as a player). We all know there are rails and boundaries, and we're cool with that. But we can choose what and how we act--we managed to talk our way out of fighting one group (which we went to out of sequence and that would have plastered us); we didn't do another fight at all (walled up a ghost instead of fighting it), etc. Even though major events will still happen at predetermined times, it's still fun.

kyoryu
2018-04-18, 10:35 AM
Modules are a really bad example for any talk of railroading, because they are meant to bring the players along a specific trail. There might be room to wander, slightly, but in general a module is played with the intent and understanding that a specific adventure is going to happen and that there isn't anything else to see or do but that adventure. If youre going into a module, theres an implicit understanding that things will happen according to a formula and predetermined series of events, and things will keep pushing you in a certain direction: towards the end of the module.

Depends on the module, don't it?

I mean, yes, if you're using a module, you're going to engage with that content. But two groups going through Keep on the Borderlands, or Temple of Elemental Evil can have incredibly different experiences, while pretty much every group going through Dragons of Despair will have the same experience.

Keltest
2018-04-18, 10:43 AM
Depends on the module, don't it?

I mean, yes, if you're using a module, you're going to engage with that content. But two groups going through Keep on the Borderlands, or Temple of Elemental Evil can have incredibly different experiences, while pretty much every group going through Dragons of Despair will have the same experience.

Sure, but my point is that modules have a specific, well defined amount of content. You can navigate an encounter however you want, but there was always going to be an encounter there. The princess will always be in the highest room of the tallest tower, etcetera. They don't support abandoning the princess to go fight the kraken instead, or going to raise an army to storm the castle, or other such actions that would require going out of bounds.

Delta
2018-04-18, 10:52 AM
What's the point of an RPG if I don't get to make the character's decisions and the character's decisions don't matter at all?

In my experience, there's a BIG difference between "Some of what happens during this adventure will be scripted and ultimately out of your control" and "All of your decisions don't matter at all!"

Quertus
2018-04-18, 12:14 PM
I would note this is true of ANY Adventure.

Hmmm... Let's take a look at this.

There are several layers to consider here. Let me attempt to refine my vocabulary further.

Content: Dragon (upset at king for removing tasty sheep from its hunting ground), king (being pressured by cattle guild to make beef what's for dinner), princess (continuing her tour of the kingdom).

Scenario: the Dragon kidnaps the princess, and threatens to eat her in one month if the tasty sheep are not returned. The king, needing the support of the beef guild, is reluctant to give in to the dragon's demands.

Adventure: the PCs go kill the Dragon and rescue the princess.

To pull a DU, most bad GMs write adventures; most good GMs write scenarios. Really, it's less about good and bad as it is about level of linearity.


Again, this is true of Any Adventure. An adventure will always be a static baseline...but then so is the whole game world.

And it's not the badworngfun negative that the players ''have'' to do the adventure and can't just ''suddenly go left''....it's more like the players have chosen to do the adventure.

Adventure are rarely run through with perfect information. Usually, information is gained throughout the course of the adventure. Often, this new information will cause the PCs to change - or at least modify - their plans.

When you signed up to GitP, did you expect to get punched in the face every day? What if you find out that this was a side effect of your membership here - would that change your plans regarding posting here? Perhaps a bit extreme and silly, but hopefully it adequately illustrates the notion that "signing up for X" with imperfect information often involves "signing up for Y" as well, and, when that is discovered, can change one's stance regarding X.


Way back in the day, it was my habit, if using a module, to (figuratively) pull the thing apart and turn it into elements for use and expand on the sparse parts, and convert it from "this is what's going to happen at X place and Y time" to "this is what each NPC wants and their plan / methods for getting it", so that it was a toolkit instead of a script.

When someone says "I'm going to take my players on an adventure!", what I hear is "I'm running a themepark and my players are going on the ride I've built!"

I have no interest in being taken on a ride or told a story when I "RPG".

If I wanted a predetermined story, I'd just go read a book or watch a movie or whatever.

If I wanted to follow someone else's script, I'd just try to get into acting.

What's the point of an RPG if I don't get to make the character's decisions and the character's decisions don't matter at all?

Hmmm... I find it curious that I both strongly agree with you, and also disagree. Let me see if I can tease that apart.

I very strongly agree that, if I'm just going to be told a story, I'd rather watch a movie or read a book. The content and social effects will be better, it will take less time / be a more efficient use of my time, and it'll be easier to find someone to talk with about my experiences.

But, between Participationism, and your (and my) habit of ripping out the rails wherever possible, I guess I'm not sure why you view modules as negatively as you do.

What about modules that start in media? Where it's, "here's where you ate and what you've agreed to do - now pick / build a character who fits into that model"? You're a group of bounty hunters who have agreed to bring back a fugitive, and have tracked him to this cave entrance? You were passengers on a merchant ship traveling from X to Y, when a massive storm swept the ship out to sea - you've been lost for days, and supplies are low*?

* obviously, if set in D&D, and the whole party is Clerics with Create Food and Water, the scenario falls apart.

RazorChain
2018-04-18, 03:23 PM
Define "roleplaying".

Specifically, every story I've heard of playing with Gygax involved a *ton* of navigating the world *as the character*. If you mean "story", then that is a true statement. If you mean "taking the part of a character in an imaginary world", then I'd disagree. Heavily.

I mean, there's folks still active on the net that played with Gygax, including his son. I'm sure I can ask them if Gygax ever cared about "roleplaying". I highly suspect that their response would involve a hefty amount of laughter. Now, again, note that the answer might vary depending on how you define "roleplaying".

I'm not going to fall into the trap of defining anything on these forums.

Playing a role is done in lots of activities from cops and robbers to computer games. You can even name your chess pieces and do a little roleplaying while playing chess.

Just what I've read from Gygax and his collaborators (Tim Kask for instance) is that they treated their characters more like a play piece. By reading through Roleplaying Mastery and Master of the Game has led me to believe that me and Mr. Gygax had very different opinions on roleplaying.

Male Elf or Melf is infamous already and he was played by Gary's son.




In 2nd ed and beyond? Perhaps. Before DragonLance? No.

You can certainly make the argument that a good number of changes in 2nd ed were to support DragonLance-style play (note the decreased emphasis on xp for gp).



As far as I can tell, Greenwood didn't contribute anything until at least '87.

In the late 80s and through the 90s, railroading was fairly standard *across the industry*. It wasn't an early part of D&D but was added into it as this became the trend of the time (again, starting with DragonLance). As such, I don't think it's really fair to say that it's an inherent part of the system in any way, especially given that the presumptions of the game prior to DragonLance were very much about explorative play.

Now I can't speak much about my experience before '87. I can only speak of the gaming environment I grew up in which was dominated by D&D until 1990s when the gaming stores really started to florish and you could get your hands on Gurps, CoC, RuneQuest etc and didnt have to mail order things from the states (no internet only mail catalogs)

Of course we can summon 2D8HP for a history lesson and he'll kindly explain why it was a mistake to name D&D a Roleplaying game instead of adventure game

kyoryu
2018-04-18, 03:54 PM
I'm not going to fall into the trap of defining anything on these forums.

That's not my point. My point is the fact that he was not doing the things you consider "roleplaying" does not mean that he wasn't roleplaying.


Just what I've read from Gygax and his collaborators (Tim Kask for instance) is that they treated their characters more like a play piece.

Based on conversations I've had with people that played with Gygax, I'd dispute this.


By reading through Roleplaying Mastery and Master of the Game has led me to believe that me and Mr. Gygax had very different opinions on roleplaying.

I do not dispute this at all.


Male Elf or Melf is infamous already and he was played by Gary's son.

As was Tenser (Ernest).


Now I can't speak much about my experience before '87. I can only speak of the gaming environment I grew up in which was dominated by D&D until 1990s when the gaming stores really started to florish and you could get your hands on Gurps, CoC, RuneQuest etc and didnt have to mail order things from the states (no internet only mail catalogs)

Of course we can summon 2D8HP for a history lesson and he'll kindly explain why it was a mistake to name D&D a Roleplaying game instead of adventure game

Well, I'm speaking about my experience before '87. And there wasn't really railroading in any appreciable way before DragonLance.

2D8HP
2018-04-18, 04:53 PM
I've only skimmed the first, and the last two posts on this thread, so my apologies if I"m way off base.



Now I can't speak much about my experience before '87. I can only speak of the gaming environment I grew up in which was dominated by D&D until 1990s when the gaming stores really started to florish and you could get your hands on Gurps, CoC, RuneQuest etc and didnt have to mail order things from the states (no internet only mail catalogs)....


Well, at the shops I frequented, RPG's other than D&D were on the shelves in the late 1970's, and were most of the space on the shelves before the mid '80's (depending on the shop, more so than today!).

What I dimly remember about playing D&D from the late 1970's to the mid 1980's is that DM's running Campaigns were rare. Mostly I remember lots of relatively short low level adventures/dungeon explorations, and the DM would usually be whomever was having the game at their house that week, which would often rotate (I don't remember any system to deciding who would be DM that week beyond, "want to try my dungeon?).

I'd read of long campaigns with many players in magazines back then, but that wasn't my experience, usually it would just be two to five players per DM, and playing the same PC for more then a couple of months was rare. We'd try "modules" ever so often, but mostly the adventures were homebrewed, as were the "world's" (but the "world's" weren't that different usually).

By the late 1980's and definitely by the early 1990's there wasn't a problem finding regular GM's who ran long RPG "campaigns", but I did have a problem finding DM's and player's, as it seemed that few people around wanted to play D&D anymore, only other RPG's (I believe the last RPG I played was Cyberpunk sometime in the early 1990's, with no further gaming on my part for decades until after the publication of 5e DnD which brought me back to the hobby).

And after I rejoin RPG'ing, I find I've "Rip Van Winkle'd/Captain America'd" into a strange new world in which thanks to "The Adventures League", and the "Pathfinders Society" they're lots of willing players, but seemingly few DM's (I've also discovered that my ability to read and remember new rules is now terrible!).


Of course we can summon 2D8HP for a history lesson and he'll kindly explain why it was a mistake to name D&D a Roleplaying game instead of adventure game


And so I shall!

I assume you're referring to this old post:

Dungeons & Dragons came first. D&D is not "video-gamey", video games are "D&Die" (and many of them really were modelled on D&D).
Which is precisely what D&D started as! It said so on the box!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/SfSTvUzCu4I/AAAAAAAAA9A/9bUyti9YmUk/s320/box1st.jpg.While I'm ever grateful to Holmes for his work translating the game rules into English, perhaps he (an academic psychologist) is to be blamed for mis-labelling D&D with the abominable slander of "role-playing" (a psychological treatment technique).
It's too late now to correct the misnomer, but D&D is, was, and should be a fantasy adventure game, not role-playing, a label no good has come from!
.

DOWN WITH ROLEPLAY!

UP WITH ADVENTURE!




A longer version:


The first version of what became D&D was the rules system inside Dave Arneson's mind.

The rules are there because players want some idea of what the odds are first, and it's easier to choose from a catalog than write on a blank page.

When D&D started there was no mention of role-playing on the box!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DSs2bX13hVc/SfSTvUzCu4I/AAAAAAAAA9A/9bUyti9YmUk/s320/box1st.jpg
While the 1977 Basic set did indeed say "FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME"
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_basic_set_1stedition_origi nal_box_holmes_edition.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C386
The phrase "role-playing" was not part of the 1974 rules.
http://i2.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/original_dungeons_and_dragons_dd_men_and_magic_cov er.jpg?zoom=4&resize=312%2C494
Notice that the cover says "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames", not role-playing!
I believe the first use of the term "role-playing game" was in a Tunnels & Trolls supplement that was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", but early D&D didn't seem any more or less combat focused than the later RPG's I've played, (in fact considering how fragile PC''s were avoiding combat was often the goal!) so I wouldn't say it was anymore of a "Wargame". I would however say it was more an exploration game, and was less character focused.
Frankly while role-playing is alright, it's the 'enjoying a "world" where the fantastic is fact' part that is much more interesting to me.

Dungeons & Dragons,
Book 1:
Men & Magic
These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs'
Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last
bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

While I'm ever grateful to Holmes for his work translating the game rules into English, perhaps he (an academic psychologist) is to be blamed for mis-labelling D&D with the abominable slander of "role-playing" (a psychological treatment technique).
It's too late now to correct the misnomer, but D&D is, was, and should be a fantasy adventure game, not role-playing, a label no good has come from!

Ernest Gary Gygax on role-playing

“If I want to do that,” he said, “I’ll join an amateur theater group.” (see here (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200609/?read=article_lafarge))[/quote].
While Dave Arneson later had the innovation of having his players "roll up" characters, for his "homebrew" of Chainmail:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/04/the-original-dungeon-masters/

At first the players played themselves in a Fantastic medievalish world:
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/2016/10/in-celebrate-of-dave-arnesons-birthday.html?m=1

So a wargame was made into a setting exploration game, and then was later labelled a "role-playing" game.
While it's still possible to play D&D as the wargame it once was, I'm glad that the game escaped the "wargame" appellation, which makes the game more attractive to those of us with 'less of an interest in tactics, however I argue (to beat a dead horse), that the labeling of D&D as a role-playing game is hurtful ("Your not role-playing, your roll-playing! etc.).
Just label D&D an adventure game, and people can be spared all the hand-wringing, and insults when acting and writing talents don't measure up to "role-playing" standards, and instead we can have fun exploring a fantastic world together.
Please?

Anyway, IIRC the games were always a mix of "railroad" and "sandbox", the railroad being "Your in a place", rather than "Stuff has happened"

By the time Dragonlace came out I rarely played D&D so I've no experience of it, but campaign "story arcs" were already a thing, such as with the 1982 Call of C'thullu adventure, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, and by '83 I was playing more Rolemaster, RuneQuest, and other games, and GM-ing more CoC, Traveller, etc. than D&D, but in the 1978 to '82 D&D games I played as often as not we wouldn't bother to play the same PC's even if they survived the last session, if anyone's PC's died we'd all roll new one's in solidarity (and also because it was easier than saving the piece of paper from last session) at the tables I played at.

Our PC's were mostly disposable, and while I knew of "Campaigns" from issues of The Dragon, what I mostly played was one-shots.

Darth Ultron
2018-04-18, 06:25 PM
Sure, but my point is that modules have a specific, well defined amount of content. You can navigate an encounter however you want, but there was always going to be an encounter there. The princess will always be in the highest room of the tallest tower, etcetera. They don't support abandoning the princess to go fight the kraken instead, or going to raise an army to storm the castle, or other such actions that would require going out of bounds.


I just don't get this reasoning.

The players pick to do the module....and you say that is bad as at a random point the players can't just say ''oh we stop doing the module and now what to do X"?




Adventure: the PCs go kill the Dragon and rescue the princess.

I would point out that this is a bad adventure premise. The much better one would just be ''Trouble in the Kingdom", where the DM would present the background and then the players pick what they want to do. The NPCs IN the adventure want the PCs to do set things, like the NPC king might want the characters to kill the dragon and save the princess, but this is not the DM saying it. And in no way does the fictional king force the players to do anything.



Adventure are rarely run through with perfect information. Usually, information is gained throughout the course of the adventure. Often, this new information will cause the PCs to change - or at least modify - their plans.

True. A very basic adventure trope(really for all of fiction), after all, is the twist. You know...the king that hires you to find the lost royal crown.....IS the guy that stole the crown...What a Twist!



Hmmm... I find it curious that I both strongly agree with you, and also disagree. Let me see if I can tease that apart.

Yup, that is me....



why you view modules as negatively as you do.


I'm not sure why many people have such a negative view. I don't get how people don't see the ''what ifs'' written on just about every page and somehow just ''think'' modules are a one way track.

*Grabs random adventure off shelf* Gets: Return of the Eight(from '98)
*Page three-The DMs notes gives some examples of how to work the PCs into the adventure and make it part of the game world. It does not anywhere say the Pcs must be forced to do anything.
*Page four-Has an encounter...with the word ''if'' used several times ''if the PCs'' do this or that." Again, no where does it say ''this one thing happens''.
*And so on...