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2021-09-30, 03:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
As a general rule, people who brag about being good lairs tend to be bad lairs, I feel like that probably extends to DMs bragging about being able to trick their players. I was actually introduced to the phrase "Quantum Ogre" in this thread (which is why it says "Schrodinger's Dungeon" in the title), so I missed a lot of the history there.
The second criticism makes a lot of sense. With random encounters, it's probably not super noticeable, but if it happens too often with more important things, you start to think "Wow, sure is convenient that everything we need just happens to be in front of us." I'm sure for some groups "too often" is reached at 1.
I tend to go with the game theory, where it's a decision between multiple mutually exclusive options, with meaningfully different, knowable outcome. And I would consider a probability distribution to be one outcome, so you know the outcome of your character jumping that chasm, even if he might fall depending on the roll of the dice. So a choice that will have a somewhat predictable effect on the game world.
That's really only moving the question to what's meaningful, but I think that does depend on what each individual group cares about. For example, the choice of which npc to get a ride with is meaningful only if the group actually cares about their characters' relationships with npcs. Otherwise it's only meaningful if they have different costs and safety ratings and stuff.Last edited by Stonehead; 2021-09-30 at 03:33 PM.
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2021-09-30, 03:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Nothing in the statement says the DMs choice has to be retroactive. If they preemptively design to negate player choice to enforce a desired outcome, it still counts.
Pointing at your scenario prep when the player makes a choice and you've intentionally considered it in advance and negated doesn't stop it from being "the players must try to get off the train and the DM must lock the doors".Last edited by Tanarii; 2021-09-30 at 03:25 PM.
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2021-09-30, 03:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
if I may quote you:
Thats why I prefer the Alexandrian's "the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome". Because it requires a player choice first, then a DM action to negate it after, with a purpose in mind. Or to quote from the first paragraph of his article: "The players must try to get off the train and the GM has to lock the doors."
If railroading first requires the players to get off the train, the solution is to build walls around your tracks (or send them through a tunnel? I dunno, metaphors are hard) such that they won't even try.
If you define Railroading as DOING something (Negating player choice), you're building an incomplete picture.
Railroading is the failure to make your players co-authors of the story.Last edited by BRC; 2021-09-30 at 03:27 PM.
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2021-09-30, 03:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
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2021-09-30, 03:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
More generally, the use of the word "Negate" (And referring to 'A player's choice') implies reaction, either reacting to something the players try to do, or pre-emptively blocking the possibility the players might do something. It implies that you must set out to specifically block player agency from influencing your story. It conjures the mind of the malicious, power-tripping GM who just wants to play with their action figures and is trying to stop those pesky players from screwing up their story.
It paints Railroading as a series of specific reactions to specific player actions, either improvised or prepared ahead of time, which is different from just never giving the players any chance to make any meaningful decisions in the first place.
Schrodinger's Dungeon, from the first post of this thread, is an example of a scenario that denies any player agency, but doesn't fit that definition of "Railroading". You're not reacting to "a player choice", you're just failing to give any room for player choices to impact things.
The Alexandrian's definition (I have not read their full post) implies that you have a list of decision trees "If the players try X, I will respond with Y, saying that they cannot", and that if you don't have that, you're not railroading.
"I'll lock my low-level party in a linear dungeon full of monsters that will try to kill them on sight. I can't think of any way for them to do anything but fight their way through my monsters until they reach the exit, but if they think of some way around things, I won't stop them, because I'm Not Railroading"Last edited by BRC; 2021-09-30 at 03:50 PM.
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2021-09-30, 03:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I think this is a useful definition.
There's also a set of choices that I'd call "paint". You can change the paint in the car (some minor cosmetic things), but everything else stays the same. A lot of "choose this NPC or that NPC" choices fall in this category.
It's fairly easy to tell if your choices are having real impact. If they consistently add new information, and that information stays relevant, you're probably good. If almost no information is carried forward, there probably isn't any real agency anyway."Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2021-09-30, 04:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I would argue that most of that is no less contrived, merely most of the contrivance is shifted off camera.
Like; the hypothetical 50th level party would mean that the most powerful people in history just happened to be born around the same time, become trusted friends (or at least colleagues), survive to be in that position of power, have similar goals, etc.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2021-09-30, 05:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Yup, that describes the origin pretty well.
I like the imagery "Schrodinger's Dungeon" evokes but that is a tangent that derails from your intended meaning*
That is a good summary. The more often it happens the more the players will doubt the "facts" the PCs learn and thus the less the players will trust the informed choices too.
Spoiler: * Derailing dungeon designWhat about a dungeon where all unobserved rooms can shuffle in predetermined sets? Room A can swap with C, D and G but not F. This would allow the PCs to explore the dungeon. Once they realize what is going on they will be confused for awhile. Eventually they will understand the mechanic and use it to progress through the dungeon. Oddly enough this takes the idea of a shuffling dungeon and intentionally gives some agency to the PCs in order to create a puzzle mechanic. (Hence why I call this a derail, because it is no long on topic)
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2021-09-30, 06:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
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2021-09-30, 07:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
That sounds exactly like they're trying to get off the train and you've locked the doors to me.
Edit: I read the sections after their definitions and they definitely appear to be thinking of it as an active thing. What you're talking about, planning and design, are referred to as chokers. The difference being that if they DO think of a way around it, you don't negate that. And assuming you don't intentionally design them to shut down all but one option and it's one of vital importance.
As to your linear dungeon, they have one in the link below. Their take on it: "A mechanical gate like this is only a problem, of course, if Area C is of vital importance." So clearly they do think that your example would be a problem.
It starts here and goes into details and variations (and how to use effectively) in the next article.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...part-4-chokersLast edited by Tanarii; 2021-09-30 at 10:14 PM.
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2021-10-01, 07:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Frankly, this but unironically. I think you can run a scenario set entirely in one room with three NPCs and as long as you don’t have a predetermined sequence of events that you try to make happen, you’re not railroading.
That said, maybe there’s a point at which there are simply so few meaningful choices inherent in the scenario, so little to play with and combine, that the players effectively have no agency. Similar to the distinction between positive and negative liberty in political debates.
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2021-10-01, 11:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I'm not 100% on board with this. I mean, say you make a campaign with ten rooms in a line, with no other doors or windows or realistic other means of escape. If the dm says "No, don't worry, you can do anything, it's not railroading", but the only interesting option is to open the door right in front of you, it sure feels like railroading. The DM not having a scene in mind for room 7 doesn't give the players any more agency in room 6.
Or, maybe to keep with the original example, say it's one really long room, instead of 10 discrete rooms. Setting up the world in a way that gives players no meaningful choice seems just as bad to me as setting up the world in a way that counters choices you anticipate the players will make. Maybe semantically you could say it isn't technically "railroading", but I'd argue it should be avoided just as hard.
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2021-10-01, 12:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
But that's not what he said.
What he said is "three NPCs in a room" might not be railroading - if there are meaningful interactions that can be had and differing ways that the situation plays out. It's the RPG equivalent of a bottle episode.
Originally Posted by HidesHisEyesLast edited by kyoryu; 2021-10-01 at 12:05 PM.
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2021-10-01, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Makes me think of those lockroom escape scenarios. They're just frustrating if there is only one solution, or it feels like there is only one. And you're programmed to be looking for the given solution, because you know that it's a lockroom escape scenario designed by someone with a solution in mind. Instead of just thinking in terms of: here's a problem, what are my options?
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2021-10-01, 01:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Nah, it's more like you tell somebody they shouldn't lock the doors, so they build a traincar with no doors at all, or they chain the PC's to their seats, and then feel good because the doors are unlocked.
The latter is my point.
Discussions about railroading tend to focus on GM's awkwardly trying to steer things back onto the tracks. As a result, the word "Railroading" has become the centerpiece of the discussion, with debates about exact definitions and "Is Scenario X or Y railroading". Is it Railroading if the Players don't realize it? Is it Railroading if I'm theoretically open to them doing something else, but I've designed the scenario with only one solution?
We understand that Railroading is bad, so we've become rules-lawyers around the "Don't Railroad" rule. Endlessly debating and defining this one term without discussing why it is a bad thing. Poking and prodding as if we'll figure out a way to get the rewards without Technically committing the crime.
For these rules to be useful, precisely defining "Railroading" such that somebody can say "I'm doing X, is that railroading?" isn't helpful, because if you have to ask "Is this technically railroading and therefore bad", you're starting from the point that you're trying to force an outcome, you just don't want to do The Bad Thing. The result is GMs who never think about if there game is actually good, just if they're breaking the rules.
The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches".
The fact is, there's basically no "Railroading" technique that doesn't have some possible use in a good game.
There's nothing wrong with Linear Dungeons so long as the player agency is being expressed in some way besides "Which room do we go into". There's nothing wrong with the Quantum Ogre if the players were not trying to avoid Ogres. There's nothing wrong with putting a dragon on a mountain and expecting your players to go slay it.
So long as your players are engaged and getting to direct the story, so long as they're playing their characters and not just walking through a script, you're doing fine. Don't write stories, build scenarios.Last edited by BRC; 2021-10-01 at 01:25 PM.
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2021-10-01, 03:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
The best DM style is to realize the players are items drifting down a river.
They may get caught on some side canal, in a whirlpool stuck spinning around, they might even wash on to the riverbank, but the river is always flowing down to the same final destination.
They may choose to pass down a waterfall, or the fish ladder, maybe the rapids in the other fork through another valley in a different branch of the river before it comes back together. Do they all pass under the same bridge, or is the bridge only from the one riverbank to an island?
No matter what the players do, the river is taking them to the final destination, the question is, what path did they take to get there? A single item is not going to change the end point of a river, but they might change the flow at some point, especially if they combine with other items.
This is DM’ing.
Let me explain:
I create content, and have a story which I hope the players will interact with. I provide a means for them to get back into the flow should they find themselves stuck, but if they don’t want to get unstuck story wise that’s fine and ultimately they may miss an event in the story, at a certain point if characters want to improve or increase their power they need to enter the flow again.
Players are given multiple choices and options in where to adventure or who to interact with, and all have a part somewhere in the flow, but the decisions always leads somewhere predictable down the river. Items don’t flow upstream, nor do they get out of the river. They have freedom to flow within the river, and if the wait long enough sometimes the story comes to them in form of a flood that they have no control over.
This isn’t railroading, this is life. Some content I have created never gets used, but it just goes into the idea bin and might get used in another campaign or adventure. The events of a major world happening impact much of the world, and left unchallenged both evil or good would grow to the point where it would reach into the players local environment.
Strangely the times I’ve been accused of railroading is when I created IF-THAN clauses in encounters even if there are multiple IF-THAN possible outcomes, or when I have an exact tactic for an enemy, especially if it involves retreat or fleeing after x rounds of conflict.
I could literally tell the party where to go and what to do for multiple sessions, but the moment an enemy escapes that they might have defeated with one more round, and I’m accused of making it so he got away, as that was what I wanted to happen no mater what.
This is DMing.Last edited by MR_Anderson; 2021-10-01 at 03:20 PM. Reason: interrupt on device while posting
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2021-10-01, 03:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I disagree, I don't like that river model so it is not the best DM style for me. Although it might be ideal for you?
I am much more interested in finding out where the players will take the story rather than ensuring they will eventually meander to the same final destination.
If the players go tubing on a river, they will go downstream. If the players get out and try to climb a cliff, they may or may not reach the top. Maybe they decide to hike upstream. Maybe they take a flight to a lake. At this point the metaphor is being strained but it still holds.
No matter where the players go, there they are. I don't need to have them go to a "single final destination". They can blaze their own trail and we will discover where the final destination of this trail will be.
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2021-10-01, 04:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-10-01, 07:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I agree. I never know where the party will go more than a few sessions ahead, and that only because they've told me. They're considerate enough to stick to something once they've started, so I know what the "final destination" looks like...for this 2-3 session arc. I usually don't even know what the central conflict/BBEG will be until multiple levels into the campaign. And they've taken me on many twists and turns and unexpected detours. And I've thrown them for a few as the world reacts to them.
Honestly, I don't want to know the end from the beginning. Because most of the fun is seeing what happens next and being surprised. Do the players have perfect agency? No. They're constrained by the choices they've made and the state of the world. But do they have enough agency? I hope so. And locking them down robs me of the joy of getting blindsided by something, and of the joy of having a brainstorm during the middle of a session and finding my mouth throwing in a completely unplanned curve-ball. Both of which are among my favorite things.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2021-10-01, 09:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Frankly, I think you're out-and-out wrong about GMing. Reading your post feels like someone who has only ever directed stage plays telling me that my film needs to consist only of a fixed camera pointed at a stage. To say I disagree with you completely would be an understatement.
I think that looking at games through this lens leads to really terrible outcomes. Like, the entire notion that the GM is all-powerful, that the story they want to tell is a river that cannot be defied, that can only be surrendered to, is the kind of thing that can lead players to becoming completely passive actors in games. Is it any wonder why players might mentally check out during a session if they know that the GM thinks of them as little more than flotsam floating in a river? The story does not move on their terms - the destination is inevitable and cannot be changed. Like, what??? I would never want to participate in a game where I'm an actor reading from lines somebody else wrote, and I'd consider it a total failure on my part if my players felt that way. I play tabletop roleplaying games, I run tabletop roleplaying games, with the player characters at the center. Their actions and agency shapes the plot. The story is about them, and I'm learning where their actions lead at the same time they are. I play to find out what happens.~The meteorite is the source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see,
and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite's just what causes the light, and the meteor's how it's perceived,
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2021-10-01, 10:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Okay. Fair enough. I really don't think either I or the Blogger at the Alexandrian strictly disagree with that.
In fact ...
The question should always be "Does this Scenario give my players enough Agency" and "Does this scenario have enough depth to handle a variety of approaches"
The fact is, there's basically no "Railroading" technique that doesn't have some possible use in a good game.
That's probably why they defined railroading so 'strictly'. As a specific kind of active denial of player agency. Because there are plenty of useful tools in a non-story DM's game-prep toolbox that aren't flat out preemptively denying agency. But yes, still ones you need to be careful with.
Unfortunately Quantum Ogres and Illusionism are both tools that cross the line.Last edited by Tanarii; 2021-10-01 at 10:05 PM.
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2021-10-01, 10:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I feel like this is kind of a no-brainer. Like, of course fictional positioning dictates the kind of actions you can take. I completely agree. But like, that's not something imposed by the GM whatsoever - it's imposed by the fiction of the game.
I genuinely want to know what you mean by this. Endlessly circling around... what? The paradox of choice? What actual choices are they being presented here? Surely if the players are portraying their characters with goals and intentions and stuff they want to do, in a game where they aren't constrained, they wouldn't get stuck. They'd just do the things they want to do. Could you give me an example of this happening in one of your games, so we can be on the same page?
I've definitely encountered passive players (and been a passive player) who, when presented freedom, doesn't really know what to do with themselves. When you're used to just reacting it can be hard to switch to a proactive mindset. I think I get what you mean there.
That's fair as well. You can present circumstances to light a fire under the players and get them to start making proactive choices, keep the game moving, etc. In Masks, for instance, one of the points where you as the GM are supposed to make a GM move is when action at the table is beginning to slow down, or when the table is looking to you for what happens next. In situations like that, it's often appropriate to spring a new challenge or crisis on the heroes, to keep their lives interesting and dramatic.
This is also a fair point. I play games where preparation is very easy/completely obviated by the system, so I don't encounter this problem as much, but it's still helpful if I've got a big set-piece prepared to guide my players to that set-piece.
Frankly, I don't think you, or any GM need to take this burden on alone. Like, surely your players also want to have fun, are also familiar with the three-act structure, want to have cool and engaging set pieces as much as you do? Working together with your players and the system, you can create buy-in for scenarios and develop stories without having to brute-force them with things like, well, what this thread is all about. I dislike railroading because it's inherently non-collaborative. It creates a toxic and destructive power dynamic between the GM and players; a situation where the GM is like a beleaguered and fussy mother hen, trying to get all their children (ie, players) to behave because they don't actually know what they want or what's good for them. You see people talking about this all the time. Horror stories about killer GMs or authorial GMs, about players whose characters are totally passive or act out randomly, attack NPCs, get up to all sorts of stupid shenanigans as a means of trying to make some mark on the doorless hallway they're being guided down.
One of the most troubling things I've noticed in this thread is the concept of GMs who use these methods of railroading or controlling the narrative while keeping their players none the wiser, or trying to create the illusion of choice. I think this is incredibly disagreeable in part because the solution feels so obvious to me: just be honest with your players about what's going on, what your expectations are, what you've got prepared for the session, what you'd like to see happen, and have an actual conversation with your table rather than keeping them in the dark or trying to manipulate them. Some of the key tenets of GMing that I've taken from Apocalypse World are 'Say what honesty demands' and 'Say what your prep demands.'Last edited by Kymme; 2021-10-02 at 02:56 AM.
~The meteorite is the source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see,
and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite's just what causes the light, and the meteor's how it's perceived,
and the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee.~
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2021-10-02, 01:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I should quibble here and note that the GM is, in many games (most if not all versions of D&D not least), the final arbiter of the fiction of the game outside of the player characters themselves, meaning the GM often is the person who determines the "fictional positioning that dictates the kind of actions [a player character] can take". (And, indeed, is not railroading as a GM misbehaviour a way of interpreting the in-game fiction in a maximally-restrictive way with respect to player agency?)
Say rather, perhaps, that the fictional positioning that constrains player action is, ideally, imposed by the consensually-established fiction of the game?~ Composer99
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2021-10-02, 03:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
That's a very fair read. I was a bit vague with my wording, but you've got the right of it. Especially in regards to the problematic behavior of interpreting the in-game fiction in ways that restrict the players actions unfairly. Ideally, the shared fiction of the game is something everyone is on the same page about. The GM isn't going to suddenly spring things like 'oh actually there are 15 additional orcs all standing between you and the stone idol' or 'actually the villain could always fly and I never specified if this room had a ceiling or not.' Similarly, it'd be bad form for players to suddenly dictate completely new fictional circumstances for their player characters whenever they need an advantage or are caught in a bind. Things like 'oh actually I'm immune to fire so being dropped into lava doesn't hurt me' or 'I'm not standing next to the fighter, I'm actually behind the enemy caster!' Both of these are poor behaviors, and neither is conducive to enjoyment at the table.
That said, choice few traditional games possess any effective means of actually getting everybody at the table on the same page about the fiction of the game. There are some new games that really nail it, and I've found that abilities that build off of the example set in Apocalypse World (actions that let the player ask the GM questions and receive truthful answers) go a long way to helping with that.~The meteorite is the source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see,
and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite's just what causes the light, and the meteor's how it's perceived,
and the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee.~
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2021-10-02, 04:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Huh. I seem to have missed a lot of quotes.
@BRC: I both agree, and disagree completely.
1) yes, theft is bad, but that doesn't mean that the word "murder" needs to be updated to include "theft" as part of its definition. Similarly, "railroad" doesn't need to include various forms of bad scenario design. It's perfectly fine to have a word for just one subset of all bad things.
2) you said that railroading tools had valid uses… then described nothing involving railroading. This is really bad. Because, since nothing you said involved changing facts or physics to negate player agency, the logical conclusion is to apply to your larger superset, which you explicitly want to be "all bad things", no?
Yes, I would love if… well, not if we focused less on Railroading, because it's still a leading cause of death, but if we focused more on creating good games vs your larger net of bad than we do.
Perhaps we should create a new word, that is the superset you believe should be the focus, and work to mainstream that new word. I'll happily try to help push it into Playground parlance, like "sandboxy", or "balance to the table".
Or look at it positively, as you suggest:
Originally Posted by BRC
This seems pretty good, but… I dunno… feels backwards, maybe? Like "buttons have shirts, and shirts have owners"?
In fact, "what is a meaningful choice" is where it all goes wrong. Because, say, choosing to murder this person, or set that house on fire, or steal that priceless relic can be merciful choices, but if I'm trying to choose something legal, and none of those options qualify, then those aren't meaningful choices for me. Similarly, if I care about food allergies, "what I have to eat" is a meaningful choice in that context; if I'm trying to get to Death Valley to fight the Death Knight, not so much.
Just keep playing the same party instead of switching parties every campaign, and you'll get to the same place. The fact that you haven't let those characters continue is what makes this feel contrived, and is itself a strange contrivance, that the characters only exist while on camera.
Granted, the "survive" might be in doubt… but if you gave your players the agency to rest after every fight and never face any challenge like they want to, rather than focusing on an appropriate amount ofTPKdeathchallenge, they'd probably pull it off. If not in the first attempt, then in a subsequent one.
So, pretend they've already done that.
If, y'know, you're willing to give them the agency to make meaningful changes to the world on their own terms.
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2021-10-02, 04:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Well that’s what I was getting at in my second paragraph. You’re right that if I put the the PCs in an empty room with no exits and tell them to do whatever they like, that’s not technically railroading by my definition but it’s probably still ****. (“Probably” because hey, maybe a really creative group turns that into an improv play like something by Samuel Beckett, which might be cool but it’s arguably not an RPG at that point.)
But I think it’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum. It is SO unlikely that anyone would actually do that that I don’t think it’s really something worth worrying about. The point is that the most minimal, bounded scenario (that people would actually play) probably still has enough elements that the players can have agency and the whole group can find out what happens together organically - as long as the GM doesn’t have a predetermined narrative or ending in mind.
And it’s a good point, but see my response to Stonehead.
As for GMs trying to get away with railroading on a technicality, I agree that’s a problem and the conversation around railroading is a big mess most of the time. But to me that’s why my “predetermined narrative” definition is useful: it’s holistic, it refers to the entire campaign, not individual choices. I completely agree that quantum ogres and many other things can be used in a way that’s not railroading, because the real question is always “are you doing this because you want the narrative to go a certain way?” I think even focusing on player agency can be a distraction here. There will be moments in a campaign when the players lose their agency. It might seem flippant but this is a core part of most RPGs: when you fail a dice roll the GM is going to tell you what happens and you can’t do anything about it. Again the question is: when the GM decides what happens on that failed roll, are they basing the decision on a predetermined narrative or on something else? (And there are many other options).
Oh and your last sentence - “don’t write stories, build scenarios” - should be printed at the top of every page of every GM’s notebook.
If that metaphor works for you then more power to you. I would describe that as a very light railroad. I’ve heard it described as a “corridor” - overall you’re heading to a predestined place but you can move around freely on the way - but to me it’s essentially a railroad. That’s because, for me, the real magic of RPGs as a medium is precisely that I don’t know what’s going to happen along the way OR where it’s going to end up. You emphasise big, world-changing events that will affect the PCs on a local level as they progress down the river, and that’s cool, but I find a small scenario with a limited scope but complete uncertainty about how it will turn out more compelling. It’s the uncertainty that does it for me, not the scope. That’s why I’ve been talking about games set in one room in this thread.
But! We have different perspectives on the whole thing and that’s totally fine.Last edited by HidesHisEyes; 2021-10-02 at 04:59 AM.
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2021-10-02, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I recommend taking the neutral approach with the mechanisms and a positive/negative approach with respecting/disrespecting the playgroup's preferences.
In our (I am including you two) various discussions about railroading on this forum we have encountered players that prefer a more guided experience and players that prefer a more unbounded world. If those players were trying to define railroading as "this bad thing is defined by XYZ mechanisms" they would struggle and disagree because some of those mechanisms are ones that benefit the guided experience but destroy the unbounded world.
BRC is probably right or nearly right about every Railroading "technique" having a possible use in a good game. It is harder for me to imagine those examples because my preferences are strongly towards the sandbox end of the continuum, but I can give a try.
Think about MR_Anderson's River (I will describe my understanding of it as it relates). That campaign promises the Players that their PCs will eventually reach a predetermined finale. No matter how lost the PCs get there will be mechanics that guide them back to the river and towards downstream. It is strategic hard and soft denial or counteraction of player agency. When MR_Anderson is forthright about that campaign premise to their playgroup, I presume their playgroup liked the idea that their player agency would be denied/counteracted if they made a game breaking mistake. Sort of like how a sandbox GM might ask "are you sure?" except the GM and playgroup already decided they want to answer "no" to gamebreaking mistakes. So if the PCs get lost or are about to break the game, then MR_Anderson strategically negates that player agency as a means of satisfyingly the play preferences of MR_Anderson and the rest of their playgroup.
I think we would still call that a railroading mechanic despite the entire playgroup wanting the mechanic to be used. It is a mechanic that negates / denies player agency, and in this unusual situation that was something the playgroup valued positively.
That is why I have taken to using railroading as a neutral connotation describing the mechanisms that deny/decrease player agency that some (many) players might have preferences that object to some or all of those mechanism in some or all situations.Last edited by OldTrees1; 2021-10-02 at 10:11 AM.
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2021-10-02, 11:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
I would rather refer to those as LINEAR, rather than railroading.
Linear is more neutral, to me, while railroading has at least the implication of being forced or coerced.I have a LOT of Homebrew!
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2021-10-02, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
No one ever has 100% agency at all times at any point.
Limiting agency is fine as long as you keep it in mind. In fact, limiting agency allows for more advanced preparation, and a campaign/adventure/session/encounter that was planned in advance will always be better than one that was not.
I think game structure is important when considering agency. In an open structure (a "sandbox", if you must), there's plenty of agency to go around, so you can limit it more where you want to.
In a linear structure (like a chase scene or an abandoned wizard's tower), agency is much more important, because the structure already limits it quite a bit.
Encountering an ogre no matter which path they take isn't automatically "railroading". Take these three different ogre-based encounters:
"As you come around the bend, you see an ogre standing in the road. It bellows a challenge, raises it's club and charges!"
"As you come around the bend, you see the flare of a campfire through the trees. Some ways off the road, an ogre sits at the fire, a barrel of pickles in its lap, eating noisily."
"As you come around the bend, you see an ogre walking slowly down the road. It is covered in deep, purpling bruises and seems to be limping. It sees you and freezes, gripping it's club and watching you closely."
--the first one doesn't offer much in the way of agency. Ogre, roll initiative.
The second allows the players to set up an ambush. Or just keep walking. Or ask the ogre if they can have a pickle.
The third gives the players a lot of choices as well--slay the wounded ogre, pass on by, talk to it, help it, etc.
And if the consequences from the player's decisions follow them into the next scene, then their choices mattered. Having less hp or spell slots is a consequence that will follow them, but it's pretty basic. An ogre that sees their tracks and decides to follow them and ambush them is more significant, as is one that they befriended and will help them in the future, and so on.
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2021-10-02, 04:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Consequences, Railroading, and Schrodinger's Dungeon
Just for the record, there are games that are just that - where the PCs are all at a location, each role-playing their character, attempting to meet certain (often conflicting) objectives.
And I wouldn't mind playing a game not unlike that. Heck, I've spent a session (in the middle of a blizzard, where most of the players were too smart to show up) just sitting around a campfire, chatting in character.
So… definitely agency in the games defined that way, not sure about the "chatting around a campfire" (although copying spells, discussing tactics, and passing along clues and monster lore, and how much that is free vs barter, certainly makes it feel meaningful to me).
Well, that's the paradox - as I understand it, the River isn't exactly linear.
Linear / "guided" games aren't inherently bad. Bad for me, almost always, yes. Require buy-in, definitely, yes. And… it's arguable that I personally don't get enough explicit buy-in when running a published module (I tend to assume that most players grok that most modules are rather linear in design; if a problem comes up (a player takes an action that the module cannot handle), I address it OOC, and ask the players how we should handle it)
So… to me… Railroading is the act of using the tools to negate player Agency. So I can understand (I think) the concept of the tools being neutral. Although "changing game physics or established facts" being put to good use sounds like a mythic rare occurrence, that requires "the River" level of explicit buy-in in session 0.
Actually… I'm not completely certain what tools "the River" uses.
Railroading is bad, because it is by definition bad. Illusionism is bad, because it is by definition bad. But the tool of "changing established facts" can, theoretically, have consequences that aren't horrific for all groups in all circumstances.
Make sense? Baby steps? Or totally offtrack?
Citation needed… no, skip that. I've played in "planned" foo that were so terrible, it's be hard for anyone to create something unplanned and worse, let alone all the "not planned" foo that I've played (and run) that were better.
So, hard no.