Quote from: JimBobOzAnd here we see therpgsite starting to look like The Forge. Long, detailed posts splitting fine semantic hairs, with an excess of courtesy, "Because you are a poor writer and I'm a worse reader, you seem to be saying X. Given that, I say Y. Of course I may have misunderstood and I'm terribly sorry if I have." Plus that annoying affectation of writing posts like emails. "Dear Bob... blahblah... Love Jim."

I thought this was going to be a place of simple, plain and clear speech?

Hey man, I was just trying to be polite. Okay, I admit, I was going to start my post with a "Dear JimBobOz..." but I assure you, there wasn't going to be any love at the end of it

Regards,
David R

Quote from: John MorrowThus Coppola simply returned to an ending closer to the ending of the original story, probably because his new ending wouldn't have worked as well.

I dunno man. The people involved said they "weren't sure how it would end." I tend to take them at their word. Even if, ultimately, the ending was similar to the one in the novel, that doesn't mean that they were sure to get there from the beginning.

Apocolypse Now was presented as an example of a story in which the ending was not pre-determined.

I can pull another one -- 28 Days Later -- the DVD has an alternate ending that's much bleaker than the one in the theatrical release. The director considered *both* and ultimately chose the later.

It's another example. Looking at my movie shelf, I see that True Romance has much the same commentary; according to QT, Tony Scott wanted the happy ending and advocated for it; in the end QT agreed it was -- in fact -- the correct ending for the film, as it was made.

I could go on -- a lot of novels and films get started without the end in mind. Someone already stated S. King works that way.

I think it's not only possible -- or even plausible -- it's not even *uncommon.*

Quote from: John MorrowA railroad is defined by a single track, not necessarily a single outcome.  And if story quality is a concern, many outcomes may be possible but only some will create good stories.  Others will create bad stories.  Some will produce mediocre stories, and so on.  If story quality is a concern, the GM and/or players will be encouraged to force the ending that creates a good story or they'll have to accept a mediocre or bad story.

I think railroading is more about how the game is run than how the starting situation is described. Plenty of military games and stories deal with being given a mission -- I mean, virtually every Star Trek episode begins with the crew coming to a new planet... does that make those stories (when translated into games) railroads by definition?

I don't think so -- ihere's my definition: f a player tries to take a not-predetermined course of action and is prevented by the GM, the game *might* be a railroad. If prevention happens in a way that the player considers "unfair" then it's definitely a railroad.

Quote from: John MorrowWhich means that the adventure relies on the players following the track. There are plenty of players who actually want and enjoy heavily railroaded adventures.  They want the GM to tell them a story and tell them what to do next.  That the players want it and buy into it doesn't make it any less of a track.

... maybe... but I doubt it. You can't look at finished piece of work and determine if was a railroad or not. Even by your definition.

How do you *know* that any potential railroad *relies* on the characters following the track?

The concept of a railroad only applies to RPG's -- you can't really look at a book or movie and say, "that would be a railroad." And in an RPG, you can't know if it *was* a railroad unless you can point to the 'rails' being enforced.

You're making assumptions that aren't warrented.

Quote from: John MorrowOr it could amount to nothing.  Again, I'm not saying that stories can't happen.  The issue is whether you try to guarantee good story quality or not.  If a movie that's been made on-the-fly goes off track, they can edit it back into shape.  That's not available in role-playing, most of the time.  If a rally cool story doesn't happen, then you are stuck with it.

Eh? It's all about the guarantee? Okay -- the we agree! There is no guarantee in roleplaying. There's no guarantee of a good story any time you set out on a creative endevor.

I certainly never claimed there was one -- I only claimed

1) That good stories can and do happen
2) They happen with relative frequency if you set things up right

As I've said before -- the *absence* of a guarantee is, for me, a bonus.

Quote from: John MorrowThat's not a story-oriented concern.  That's a character- or world-oriented concern.  You are willing to risk story for a greater concern.  That's the hierarchy that matters.

Not so -- part of the value of the story comes from the method by which it was created. The more risky the creation method, the more rewarding the creation of a high-quality end product.

For me, a story about a character overcoming incredible odds is more compelling if the odds really were incredible (in a real-life story) or if I felt they were (in a made up story).

RPGs allow a little bit of that to creep into otherwise made-up stories. By being rigorous about world fidelity, my enjoyment of the story is enhanced.

Quote from: John MorrowThat's simply a world-oriented way to produce a story-oriented trip down the tracks.  The odds are stacked in the PCs' favor to produce a story-like result.  That's not necessarily a bad thing but it's essentially another form of script immunity.

Hmm... well, it's not immunity in the sense of a guarantee of any kind; it is stacking the odds to produce a story-like result. But, again, there is no guarantee.

There's nothing no more nefarious here than saying, "This is a CR 3 level dungeon. You can be pretty sure there's not an Ancient Red dragon in the first room... but not *totally* sure... and if you get really unlucky against those kobolds, they'll still kill you."

Script immunity? You tell me -- but if that's the case, there's an awful lot of it going around out there... maybe immunity isn't what it used to be.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Keran

• Do you have a poll of published writers, showing what proportion of them know the end when they set out at the beginning?
• The existence of a single counterexample is sufficient to show that preplanned plot is not necessary to the successful execution of story.

With respect to a poll, no.  Do you?  With respect to a counter example, have I said that a pre-planned plot is necessary for the successful execution of a story or is that a convenient straw-man that you've set up to knock down?  I did say, "Do books get written and movies get made where the author makes it up as they go? Sure, and it usually shows."

Quote from: KeranYou're apparently making an unsupported generalization based either on what you think ought to be true, or what works for you.  But I can't support it as a general principle of writing from my own knowledge, based on the reports of the published writers I listened to at rec.arts.sf.composition or at Forward Motion.

Actually, despite having a BA in English with a creative writing concentration, having read dozens of books on writing fiction, and having listened to many panels of authors and editors at conventions, I have a great deal of trouble writing fiction.  So if it's a personal bias, it's a bias based on knowing why writing fiction doesn't work for me and what a true absence of story concern looks like.

I'm basing my generalizations not only on what published authors said in books on writing and on convention panels but what editors who buy and reject fiction also say tends to work and tends to not work.  Perhaps your milage varies, but I've never run into the "sort of 'let the characters go' and 'see what happens.'" school of writing advice.  Have you?

Quote from: KeranPatricia C. Wrede also teaches writing and disagrees sharply with the notion that there is any One True Way to write: she's had a lot of experience seeing different writers succeed with different methods.  She's left an awful lot of evidence of this opinion behind in the archives.  I decline to accept a contrary opinion apparently based on an idea of how things ought to work, rather than the reports of writers' own experiences.

And that would be a useful critique if I were advocating One True Way to write.  Have I?  Go back and take a look at what I was originally objecting to.  Based on what you've learned from published writers, do you believe that:

Quote from: -E.But there's other ways to create virtually the same product -- and, in fact, they're used in domains other than RPGs. In both books and movies, story-creators (i.e. authors and directors) sort of "let the characters go" and "see what happens." In a lot of movies and books, the people in charge are "making it up as they go" to a very large extent.

...is an accurate assessment of things?

Quote from: John MorrowWith respect to a poll, no.  Do you?  With respect to a counter example, have I said that a pre-planned plot is necessary for the successful execution of a story or is that a convenient straw-man that you've set up to knock down?  I did say, "Do books get written and movies get made where the author makes it up as they go? Sure, and it usually shows."

I'm kind of losing track of what you're arguing here...

I thought that, at first, you said that for something to be a "story" the people creating it had to know the ending in advance...

I can point you to an example (Apocoplyspe Now) of the people who created it saying they "had no idea how it would end."

You don't seem to trust them --  I'm inclined to take them at their word (maybe I missed the part where they said, "We knew how it'd end all along because we read the Conrad story").

But it's clear you weren't saying that it's *impossible* -- just that "it shows."

I guess you didn't like Apocolypse Now, huh?

I think it "shows" in a good way -- I assume that's not what you meant.

I don't have the credentials you do in terms of education or reading books about how to write; I've written short stories and novellas I'm happy with (doesn't take much to please me). More importantly, I've run a bunch of games where

1) I had no idea how they'd end.
2) The outcome was a hugely satisfying story that other players have written up as stories that were, in fact, interesting to people who had nothing to do with the game.

A scientific survey?
Of course not.

But evidence that this sort of thing can work? I'd hope so.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.I dunno man. The people involved said they "weren't sure how it would end." I tend to take them at their word. Even if, ultimately, the ending was similar to the one in the novel, that doesn't mean that they were sure to get there from the beginning.

Apocolypse Now was presented as an example of a story in which the ending was not pre-determined.

Well, the ending that was going to happen was that Willard was going to meet Kurtz.  In other words, the movie was going somewhere, even if the exact ending wasn't defined.  I would also suggest that even Coppola would agree it was a bad way to make a movie for a large number of reasons.

Quote from: -E.I could go on -- a lot of novels and films get started without the end in mind. Someone already stated S. King works that way.

I think it's not only possible -- or even plausible -- it's not even *uncommon.*

I never claimed that it wasn't possible or plausible, nor did I claim an author needed to work out the exact ending of a work before they go there (though Holly Lisle does suggest it can be done that way).  My claim is that  "let the characters go" and "see what happens" frequently doesn't work and, while there are exceptions, there are also plenty of disasters.

Rather than go round and round with anecdotal evidence that won't actually prove anything or play dueling experts, where we go back and forth quoting various experts on how best to write, I'll acknowledge that movies and books can be written by winging it and not having a specific ending in mind.   If you want to write that way, by all means don't let me stop you.  I'll simply suggest that if you keep writing stories that don't go anywhere and/or won't sell, that generally means you should try something different, but by all means get your advice from real authors, not me.

Quote from: -E.I think railroading is more about how the game is run than how the starting situation is described. Plenty of military games and stories deal with being given a mission -- I mean, virtually every Star Trek episode begins with the crew coming to a new planet... does that make those stories (when translated into games) railroads by definition?

I think that as role-playing games, they would feel pretty railroaded.  If you can't walk off of the adventure of avoid the major encounters, character choice is limited.

Quote from: -E.I don't think so -- ihere's my definition: f a player tries to take a not-predetermined course of action and is prevented by the GM, the game *might* be a railroad. If prevention happens in a way that the player considers "unfair" then it's definitely a railroad.

I think you are assuming that railroading is inherently bad, and thus are crafting a definition where it is.  I don't think that's the case.  I think some players enjoy railroaded games and all railroading is not inherently bad.

Quote from: -E.... maybe... but I doubt it. You can't look at finished piece of work and determine if was a railroad or not. Even by your definition.

You can often look back and see the tracks.  A railroad runs on tracks.  

Quote from: -E.How do you *know* that any potential railroad *relies* on the characters following the track?

By thinking about what would happen to the story or game if the character left the tracks.  Leaving the tracks of a railroad produces a disaster.

Quote from: -E.The concept of a railroad only applies to RPG's -- you can't really look at a book or movie and say, "that would be a railroad." And in an RPG, you can't know if it *was* a railroad unless you can point to the 'rails' being enforced.

Yes, I think you can look at a book or movie and say, "that would be a railroad."  For example, in Logan's Run, Logan and Jessica enter the runner's tunnel.  From that point until the point they reach the outside, the movie is a railroad.  They are in a tunnel that has only one way out and the "monster" they have to encounter between them and freedom.  Another example is the Poseidon Adventure (the original one) where the ship is upside-down and flooded and the characters have a particular path they need to take to get to the engine room and, it is presumed, freedom.

Perhaps the funniest example comes from the excellent cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender.  The team has a flying bison and can thus go wherever they want by flying.  There is an episode called The Cave of Two Lovers.  The characters hear about the cave but reject it, instead choosing to use their flying bison to fly where they want to go.  Cut to a scene of them being bombarded by fire nation fireballs in the air.  They come back, looking a bit crisp, and opt to try the cave.  Basically, the plot of the episode required them to go through the cave, which would normally not make any sense, since they have a flying bison.  So the writer shows them trying to fly and failing, to make sure they go through the cave that contains the adventure.

Basically, any time the characters have no control except maybe to go forward or refuse to go forward, it's a railroad.  It's on a track.  And you can see tracks even if the train doesn't try to jump them.

Quote from: -E.You're making assumptions that aren't warrented.

And I think you are, too.

Quote from: -E.Eh? It's all about the guarantee? Okay -- the we agree! There is no guarantee in roleplaying. There's no guarantee of a good story any time you set out on a creative endevor.

Correct.  But there are ways to improve the odds.  One can try to create a good story rather than being indifferent to the quality of the story.

Quote from: -E.I certainly never claimed there was one -- I only claimed

1) That good stories can and do happen
2) They happen with relative frequency if you set things up right

As I've said before -- the *absence* of a guarantee is, for me, a bonus.

I agree with all of that.  But as I mentioned before, the style conflict occurs when the GM or players purposely try to control story quality (or not).  There are some people who are not happy with "relative frequency".  So perhaps we are simply talking past each other here.

Quote from: -E.Not so -- part of the value of the story comes from the method by which it was created. The more risky the creation method, the more rewarding the creation of a high-quality end product.

I have no problem with that, but think that's something very different from what a lot of story-oriented games are trying to do.

Quote from: -E.For me, a story about a character overcoming incredible odds is more compelling if the odds really were incredible (in a real-life story) or if I felt they were (in a made up story).

RPGs allow a little bit of that to creep into otherwise made-up stories. By being rigorous about world fidelity, my enjoyment of the story is enhanced.

I don't disagree with that, either.  But the style conflict comes into play when the players realize that the "incredible odds" that their characters faced were never really incredible.  Should the characters really have a chance or dying or not?  There is no right answer to that and an answer that satisfies one player might ruin the game for another player, and vice versa.

Quote from: -E.Hmm... well, it's not immunity in the sense of a guarantee of any kind; it is stacking the odds to produce a story-like result. But, again, there is no guarantee.

Again, I think that's where the story/world line is drawn.  Do the GM, players, or mechanics have the ability to guarantee story-like results?

Quote from: -E.There's nothing no more nefarious here than saying, "This is a CR 3 level dungeon. You can be pretty sure there's not an Ancient Red dragon in the first room... but not *totally* sure... and if you get really unlucky against those kobolds, they'll still kill you."

But that's not necessarily natural, either.  

Quote from: -E.Script immunity? You tell me -- but if that's the case, there's an awful lot of it going around out there... maybe immunity isn't what it used to be.

I think you are talking about the middle ground between enforced story and story indifference.  That is, creating a story-rich environment and hoping a good story comes out of it.  I think that's a fine way to run a game.

The point I was trying to make is that the more the GM tries to guarantee story-like results, the more artificially story-like evens in the game might seem.  Making a dungeon very survivable is essentially creating a form of limited script immunity and the objective is the same and it can also feel artificial.  It's not exactly script immunity, but it can come very close.

Quote from: David RInteresting indeed. Correct me if I'm wrong but is it your contention that one of the shortcomings of "story" is that the player would be constrained by trying to keep within the perimeters of the story - or rather the story that is apparently being created?

I'm saying that if we're engaging in something like collaborative storytelling or authorship, then a player, as co-author, might reckon that a certain moment in the game is the right time for a plot complication, or a reversal or climax, and then act through the character to bring that about.

Or more likely, in a traditional RPG, the player will work with the GM, actively or passively, to cause those things to happen. Thus a player who's looking to collaboratively tell a "story" (in terms of a plot structure that the group likes) may overlook or even encourage the GM to stage-manage the action as play goes along so as to produce a "big, climactic scene" 90% of the way through a session. The player may also engage in certain dramatically-appropriate actions at key points in play, with the expectation that they'll be ratified by more or less overt GM judgment. Possibly fudging of the dice or rules, possibly a simple use of the GM discretionary power in areas that aren't explicitly covered by rules, such as NPC behavior.

Whereas if the players & GM are working from a paradigm of "set 'em up and let 'em fall"--prepping a scenario or campaign so that it presents an interesting, conflict-laden situation, and then "running" it almost like an experiment, they will be doing something quite different. Again, in a traditional RPG, the players will pursue their characters' interests and motivations as best they can given their characters' resources as represented and abstracted in the game, and the resulting collision of interests should hopefully yield an interesting game.

It's like comparing a sword fight between opponents who both want to win, and a "fight" between people who improvise a series of combat maneuvers and then decide, collaboratively, when to "end it with a bang" for the sake of the audience. The latter two might be very, very good at making it look real, but the experience of pretending to fight for the entertainment of an audience differs quite a bit from the experience of "really fighting" (even with rules).

Quote from: -E.I'm kind of losing track of what you're arguing here...

Are you losing track of what I'm arguing or what people think I'm arguing?

Quote from: -E.I thought that, at first, you said that for something to be a "story" the people creating it had to know the ending in advance...

No.  I suggested that when writing a story, it was better to know the ending in advance.  I even said, in that first post, "Do books get written and movies get made where the author makes it up as they go? Sure, and it usually shows."  I'm not sure how that gets transformed into your summary.

Quote from: -E.I can point you to an example (Apocoplyspe Now) of the people who created it saying they "had no idea how it would end."

I think we have a different definition by what it means by knowing how it would end.  I think that knowing that Willard will meet Kurtz is essentially "knowing how it will end".  I think you are thinking in terms of how that final encounter turns out.  I think we are likely just talking past each other.

Quote from: -E.You don't seem to trust them --  I'm inclined to take them at their word (maybe I missed the part where they said, "We knew how it'd end all along because we read the Conrad story").

I don't believe what seems to be your interpretation because their model was a particular book that has a specific ending and they were shooting based on a script, even if they were rivising it while they were shooting.

Quote from: -E.But it's clear you weren't saying that it's *impossible* -- just that "it shows."

I said, "it usually shows".  

Quote from: -E.I guess you didn't like Apocolypse Now, huh?

I think it "shows" in a good way -- I assume that's not what you meant.

I thought it was over-rated but not bad.  I also think it's atypical, which makes it a poor example.  

Quote from: -E.I don't have the credentials you do in terms of education or reading books about how to write; I've written short stories and novellas I'm happy with (doesn't take much to please me).

My "credentials" aren't really worth anything.  I mentioned them originally to explain the source of my opinions and later simply to point out that I know I'm missing someting.  If you've written short stories and novellas that you are happy with, you are already ahead of me when it comes to successfully writing fiction.

The main reason why I said anything that there are a lot of people who write but never get to a point or produce a sellable story.  Many people expect plots to happen automatically and for many of them, they don't.  It probably would have been better if I had said, "And if that doesn't work for you, you should try..." rather than saying it doesn't work.

Quote from: -E.More importantly, I've run a bunch of games where

1) I had no idea how they'd end.
2) The outcome was a hugely satisfying story that other players have written up as stories that were, in fact, interesting to people who had nothing to do with the game.

A scientific survey?
Of course not.

But evidence that this sort of thing can work? I'd hope so.

And I didn't claim that it couldn't.  But did you simply "let the characters go" and "see what happens" or was there a little more to it than that?

Quote from: MarcoI don't buy that the experiences aren't all that important.

I didn't say that the experiences weren't important.  I said that "the details of the actual experiences didn't matter all that much."  Not the same thing at all.

Quote from: Marco1. They are important to the audience (at least this audience member) as part of "the story." They, amongst other things, illuminate character and setting.
2. They would be important to me as a player in an RPG (from an immersed standpoint and making decisions about how I view right and wrong or at least who my character is).

Correct.  But I can think of dozens of scenes that could illuminate the character and setting and so on and select any half-dozen to get the point across.  It isn't the specifics that are important.

Quote from: MarcoI think I would be able to "hold story quality as a concern" and still accept a poor story the same way I'm willing to hold "getting out of the dungeon alive" as a concern and still accept a TPK.

Correct.  But then it's not a primary concern and you have other concerns that you are interested in supporting.  A player for whom "getting out of the dungeon alive" is a primary concern may expect the GM to fudge to keep their character live.  All games contain a hierarchy of different concerns.  What determines the style of a game is which concerns win when two conflict with each other.

Quote from: MarcoI'd accept a bad story. It makes the cool storys that much richer, IMO.

I personally agree.  Not everyone does, which is why you have people designing games to guarantee good or at least passable stories.

Quote from: MarcoDoes this make all dungeons railroads? After all, there's a series of rooms and the players can't get to some without going through others?

A linear dungeon is essentially a railroad.  See that recent thread about dungeon maps.  Count the tracks.  If there is only one, it's a railroad.

Quote from: MarcoDoes this make Dogs in the Vinyard a railroad since the PCs are pointed at a town and instructed to uncover the sin and judge it?

In some ways, it is.  If not railroaded, it's certainly limited in scope.  Isn't that one of the critiques that RPGPundit and others make about it?

Quote from: MarcoI mean, if so, then some huge percent of RPG-play seems to fall into this category. It seems that if in each encounter along the way, the player gets to make a choice that is meaningful to them (either as an audience member thinking it's interesting that he doesn't take the girls or surf or as an invested player--deciding not to give back the surfboard) then gets to decide what to do at the end (join up or kill the target)--I don't see how that's more railroady than a dungeon or Dogs play.

I think all of those things can be railroady to some degree.  If the player can't avoid the stations, then they are on a train.

Quote from: MarcoAgain, my problem here is with *guarantee*--that seems like playing D&D where you *guarantee* that everyone will survive and get rich and level up because that's what someone has decided the 'goal of the game' is.

I've played D&D games like that.  Not my cup of tea, but they do exist.  And some people do like it that way, just like people who play video games with cheat codes and god modes.

Quote from: MarcoI think there's a big difference in script immunity and favorable odds (of course depending on "how favorable"). Certainly taking the chance-of-death down to a fairly low level will tend to produce a low-death game ... but lots of games and systems (Hero) are fairly low fatality at most power-levels.

Correct.  But as the risk of death approaches zero, it becomes essentially script immunity.

Well, I guess I fundamentally disagree about what a "railroad" is. I do see Dogs as "limited in scope" but I do not see it as a *railroad* (that is, I understand the complaint and find it valid for what it is--Dogs is not a game where you would do much but play Dogs--but I would not use the term railroad to describe it).

For example:
1. The player (let's say, in a dungeon or spy game) comes to the table knowing there will be a mission and they will go to solve it. If the player is complicit and understands this correctly then it isn't dysfunctional (IMO, a key point of railroading). In any event, there is agreement and I think that distinguishes it from being something "the GM is doing."

2. If I ran a super-spy game and the player made a spy and then refused to go on the mission, I would tend to stop the game and talk with them: what went wrong? Was the mission 'bad?' Were they expecting something radically different--where was the misscommunication?

If it turned out that they were just exercising their player-power to ditch the mission and do something else, I would consider that breach of contract (same as if I sat down to play a super-spy game and the GM teleported me to a fantasy land and I felt baited-and-switched).

3. I haven't read the dungeon map thread (although I'll look) but I would say that if we consider a dungeon, where the PCs set the pace and where the solutions to the various areas are their own to invent (and reasonably adjudicated by the GM) then the term loses some meaning.

If a standard dungeon is a railroad then I'm not sure I see a difference between "railroading" and "GMing."

But we can use the term to mean whatever we like. I'm fine with having the GM throw situation at me. I'm not fine if the GM mandates how it'll turn out. I'm not fine if the GM ensures that situation A will *always* lead to situation B--but if the adventure (the context) has me going down a river where B is further down than A, and I don't leave the river, say, and go on foot, that seems pretty fair to me.

So we can call that river railroading (or an adventure where the PCs climb a mountain, say)--but then we need another term to describe the GM seizing control of the PCs actions or nullifying their decisions (i.e. the PCs decide, weirdly, to go down the river, back the way they came and *still* run into the next situation even though it was wasn't there when they came that way).

If you want to use words for those events other than railroading then, for purposes of this conversation, we can certainly discuss those.

-Marco

Quote from: Elliot WilenI'm saying that if we're engaging in something like collaborative storytelling or authorship, then a player, as co-author, might reckon that a certain moment in the game is the right time for a plot complication, or a reversal or climax, and then act through the character to bring that about.

Or more likely, in a traditional RPG, the player will work with the GM, actively or passively, to cause those things to happen. Thus a player who's looking to collaboratively tell a "story" (in terms of a plot structure that the group likes) may overlook or even encourage the GM to stage-manage the action as play goes along so as to produce a "big, climactic scene" 90% of the way through a session. The player may also engage in certain dramatically-appropriate actions at key points in play, with the expectation that they'll be ratified by more or less overt GM judgment. Possibly fudging of the dice or rules, possibly a simple use of the GM discretionary power in areas that aren't explicitly covered by rules, such as NPC behavior.

But surely this is an example of a certain kind of playstyle, right? A playstyle which is more collaborative in nature. Most gamers use the traditional set up in your post to achieve achieve similar more random results. I mean to me it's seems that some gamers (the more collaborative ones) want to know how the story ends or to overtly participate in it's creation and for others they want to see where it's going.At the end of the day, both produce a story, just using different methods.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: John MorrowI personally am coming to the table with one very simple assumption -- that there are good stories and bad stories.  That assessment doesn't even need to be objective.  It can be entirely subjective for every participant.  It could include a plot-driven pacing-centered idea of what a good story, which is what  I think most people think of when they think of the aesthetics of story, or it could include any of the other things that you talk about -- the desire toe explore certain ideas, imagery, theme, language, adventure, humor, a particular character, and so on.  But, ultimately, it's a desire for a specific result.

Yes.

QuoteWhen a human being is given a choice and selects choices that they think will produce something good or avoids choices that they think will produce something bad, it creates a pattern that is not natural, because nature don't care about a good story or a bad story.  The aesthetic filter that gets applied leaves a  pattern in what passes through it.  The more the filter is used, the more obvious it's mark will generally be.

What if the specific result I want is "What would really happen if I dropped this conflicted character into this situation"?

Now you, or any other person, might not enjoy the results of my trying to tell that particular story.  You may think it aesthetically unsatisfying, or an actively bad story to the point where it's no story at all.  It doesn't necessarily follow that I won't enjoy it as a story, or that I can't reasonably expect or intend to enjoy it as a story when I know that that method often works.

The stories I create that I find least satisfactory are the ones where, for one reason or another, I have failed to portray the characters or the setting in the manner that I think is true to them.

If I believe on a subconscious level that the obstacles that the setting has presented are not real -- if the setting and the antagonists are not behaving the way I subconsciously believe they really ought to be behaving -- then so far as this is the case, the story is drained of force.  I don't tend to find over-the-top action movies with highly cinematic action as suspenseful as movies in which the threats to the characters are more realistic, for instance: I have more of a sense that the peril cannot be real, and neither will the hero's inevitably over-the-top response be.

Similarly, to the extent that I don't believe that a character is responding the way they would really behave, the story is drained of force.  The implausible is not suspenseful or dramatic.  I might think that a character's action is unbelievable for anyone in the same circumstance -- say, if I see a trained combatant doing something tactically preposterous because the director thinks it looks flashy.  Or I might think that it merely doesn't fit the particular character -- say, when I started to write my verse narrative and developed the sense that no way in hell would the character as he was developing take the action I had ascribed to him for the reason I had him doing it.  A story is an artistic failure to me to the extent that my suspension of disbelief goes sproing!

QuoteIn other words, when you intentionally set out to produce a certain effect, that intent can leave a noticeable trace.  It doesn't have to be as heavy handed as railroading or script immunity.  It can even be more about what doesn't happen than what does -- for example, if the players never simply stumble into the solution to a problem without having to work for it.  If the GM intentionally sets out to create a good story, no matter what that means, it will determine how the game plays out.  In other words, if you are trying to intentionally tell stories, either you can manipulate what happens to produce good stories or you can be indifferent to quality, unless you believe that good stories are always an inevitable outcome of any sequence of events.

You've omitted a possibility.

I can set up in a fashion that often, but not invariably, produces results I enjoy as stories, and play it out naturally from there.  You may think the result is a bad story -- and it will be, at least in the sense that it will be very first draftish, since we don't often revise in this medium.  But I may find that the very real risk that the characters will fail -- or that the problem I pose will turn out not to have any solution at all -- is worth its weight in platinum: it's real suspense, not the sleight-of-pen that an author has to perform to try to keep a reader bothering to turn the pages in a genre in which the characters aren't allowed to crack up irrevocably.

QuoteFor example, if the story goal you have is to see how a character copes with a built-in conflict, you will likely avoid any situations where another character or external event resolves the conflict for the character because that will rob you of experiencing the story you want to experience. If you apply a filter that prevents the conflict from being taken away from character or resolved in a mundane way though an external flow of events in the story outside of the character's control, then ever time you apply that filter, it leaves behind the mark of intent.  Often, that mark is not noticeable in isolation, but the more frequently the filter is applied, the more of a mark it leaves behind and the more likely it will be noticed.

That's why part of setup is constructing situations in which I'm not likely to have to do things like that.  I have a character who's undead, and I want to see how he copes with that, so the magic in his setting is not capable of returning him to life.  Having him returned to life would make me miss what makes him interesting.  Having him wanting to return to life, and having someone in the setting able and willing to do so, but having him prevented by some half-baked obstacle that probably doesn't really make sense wouldn't be any too satisfying either.

QuoteThe reason why people discuss your "Platonic Ideal of the Story" that "seems to involve a lot of action falling into patterns that are not too probable, not very likely to happen naturally" is that this is a very clear way of illustrating the application of a filter and how it is noticeable.  It's easier to notice script immunity in a violent game than it is to notice subtle shifts in NPC behavior to keep them from stepping on a PC's built-in conflicts.  But that doesn't mean that it's not possible to notice more subtle patterns, especially over the course of many games and a long "campaign".

Sure.  But you're talking to someone whose major characters have sometimes reacted in a fashion in which, OOCly, I would greatly have preferred that they had not reacted.  And I let them do it.  The reason I let them do it is that they were true reactions, and there is no action as undesirable in a story as rendering a main character a hollow shell by falsifying their reactions.

I've been known to play badly, to misplay a character by mistake; but the Prime Directive is never, ever, ever intentionally to utter a falsehood about any character or the setting.

When I create things, I try to create things that are interesting, and that will fit together in particular ways; but once they're "really" there, they're sacrosanct.  If I know how the NPC should react based on their nature, that's what's going to happen.

QuoteWould any of those books have been as successful if they didn't have a good plot?

At least two of them had a plot that was, to my mind, bad in spots.  I would have preferred a good plot all the way through.

QuoteThat a story does other things well and can capture your attention in other ways does not mean that the fundamentals of plot, pacing, and so forth are not very important.  You don't need the climax of North by Northwest to have a good story but the absence of any climax or plot structure is going to leave most people going, "Jesus, Grandpa, what did you read me this thing for?"

I have found that managing to play through to the point where at least one of the significant conflicts on the table is resolved makes for a satisfactory plot, at least in my eyes.

QuoteThe simulation == !story was developed to explain why David Berkman's game Theatrix, which was heavily plot-oriented to the point where it was heavily influenced by Syd Field's books on screenplay plotting, didn't appeal to some of the regulars on rec.games.frp.advocacy.  That's why the language and focus deals with that distinction.  It does a very poor job of making distinctions between various types of story concerns and, as theory that revolves around resolution techniques, it does a very poor job of speaking toward set-up concerns such as setting up story-rich characters or settings, even if no sense of story actually gets forced during the game.

Indeed.  And in practice, I've been playing with another rgf.advocate, and we discovered that our typical language tends to be somewhat misleading: I flatly refuse to admit that a good story is necessarily false to the characters and the setting and have always hedged enough to sound significantly dramatist, and his descriptions of his style have always sounded more simulationist.  In practice it works out the other way around: my campaigns are simmy as hell and his have a heck of a lot more conscious production of plot tension, etc.

QuoteDo you agree that the natural actions of the character may not produce a good story?

... Do I?

Well, broadly, given what I think you probably mean: you're thinking of fitting the character into a particular campaign, right?  And there are certainly characters whose natural reactions will wreck particular campaigns -- I retired one before he even got into play once, when I realized what his probable reaction to the other characters would be, given what he knew and the way one of them was behaving.  There are characters whose natural reactions will wreck particular stories, or particular sorts of stories.

What there probably aren't is very many characters about whom no story can satisfactorily be told.  Most people have conflicts they either resolve, or decisively fail to resolve.

QuoteYou also might not wind up telling an interesting story.  Is it possible that the way the character copes with their build-in conflict is boring or simply not terribly interesting?  And if you find yourself telling a story that's not terribly compelling for others to read, do you adjust your character, their build-in conflict, or events in the story or do you just let it go because you enjoyed the exploration of the character as a writer and don't care if the result is a story that other people would enjoy reading?

Disclaimer: I don't write for publication often because I hate the business end of writing, but I have sold stories to minor markets, and there are a few of characters I wrote purely for commercial purposes.  And they're not "real."  They're written the way they are purely to produce an effect.  Some of them are shadows of "real" characters who're hanging around in my head, and whom I may write or play some day.  This isn't my usual approach, though, and I don't like writing this way well enough to keep it up, even though I succeeded at it, I suppose.  Aside from these cases ...

If I'm bored with the way the character copes with conflict, I'm not going to finish the story.  So far I haven't had that happen, though -- boredom tends to be a sign of mis-structuring the story so that what was interesting about the character in the first place isn't what I end up writing about.  Aside from that, mostly I think that presenting a conflict in an interesting manner is a matter of skill.

If I think the reader is likely to be bored with the way the character addresses an interesting conflict, it means there's a fault in my presentation that I should try to fix.

I adjust the character, or try to, if I have the sense that I haven't gotten some important thing about the character right.  Sometimes this involves a lot of thrashing around -- for instance, it took me ten years to figure out why one of my characters took an apparently out-of-character action I was convinced he'd actually taken.

I don't adjust the character or the built-in conflict in any way to fit the plot, because the point is to tell the story of the character I'm interested in, not to relate a particular plot.

QuoteIt is possible that your purpose isn't to write a story?  Is it possible that even after you develop your "writing chops", the character will not be compelling?  Are you writing to tell a story to others or are you writing to explore a character as an author?  You seem to assume that what you are doing will eventually work the way you intend.  Why are you so certain that this character addressing their built-in conflict will be an interesting story, no matter how it plays out?

Well, I may be defeated in writing the story.  I did intend to write one, though.

I think this series of questions just told me something that may be important to why I'm not satisfied with it.  The raw series of events could easily make an adventure story, with the main character making a crucial decision to undertake a courageously suicidal act.  It looks like the story ought to be structured around that choice; a typical story would be structured around that choice -- but it's a cheat.  It's a fake dilemma, in the sense that it's never really in doubt.  I could try to make it look that way -- but I know he's going to do it, and so (I think) does he.  Told this way, the plot is hollow; nothing turns on what's supposed to be the pivot point.

 (The character's actions aren't hollow.  The actions are bloody heroic.)

I started out knowing what state the character is in after the whole thing is over, but I didn't know how he got there -- he's not the kind of person you'd normally expect to end up that way.  So it's exploration, yes, in the sense that I want the right answer.  At this point, I think I know pretty well what the sequence of events was.

... I think there's a good chance that what's wrong with it is that I need to cast the story as what it is to me -- the unravelling to a mystery.  It's not immediately obvious how to do that, but nothing about this thing has been obvious.

This is probably why I can't figure out how to write the next scenes,  It's the alleged pivot point coming up, and the way I've been thinking of it, it just won't cut it.

Later: No.  That's not it.  I know what's going on.

This work actually exists in the setting, and is being written in third person omniscient by one of the characters in it.  And she doesn't think she's writing about the character I meant to write as the main character.  She's writing about the disastrous magical storm and what it was like, to explain it to younger family members who weren't around for it.  So of course the way I thought I was going to finish it doesn't work.

Thanks for those questions.  You just solved a problem I've been getting nowhere with for months.

QuoteDo you care about the story quality of the end result or not?  If, for example, you reach a point where the way the character deals with their built-in conflict just isn't interesting, do you change the conflict, change the character, or simply live with the result because you accomplished your goal?

I care passionately, which is why I'm still working on it seven years later.  Some individual scenes are very good, even excellent, but the overall structure is not good.  Which I mean to fix if it takes me the rest of my life.   (Which it may.)

QuoteThe issue with story is not necessarily pre-planning.  It's about the intentional manipulation of events in a game toward a certain story-like end.  And that's what all of those techniques are for.  If those issues didn't have to be managed and manipulated by an author to produce a good story, then they wouldn't be such important writing techniques.  And applying those techniques to filter what can and can't happen in a game or story can leave a noticeable footprint.

Most of them, except intentional plot manipulation, don't have to change what happens away from natural development, though.

Quote from: John MorrowI'm basing my generalizations not only on what published authors said in books on writing and on convention panels but what editors who buy and reject fiction also say tends to work and tends to not work.  Perhaps your milage varies, but I've never run into the "sort of 'let the characters go' and 'see what happens.'" school of writing advice.  Have you?

Some quotes from Stephen King sound very like that, as I recall.  Since I haven't nead his entire book, however, I don't want to represent it as the whole of his advice.  I've certainly heard it discussed as one of numerous approaches in r.a.sf.c.

QuoteAnd that would be a useful critique if I were advocating One True Way to write.  Have I?  Go back and take a look at what I was originally objecting to.  Based on what you've learned from published writers, do you believe that:

QuoteBut there's other ways to create virtually the same product -- and, in fact, they're used in domains other than RPGs. In both books and movies, story-creators (i.e. authors and directors) sort of "let the characters go" and "see what happens." In a lot of movies and books, the people in charge are "making it up as they go" to a very large extent.

...is an accurate assessment of things?

I never had any interest in writing screenplays and haven't read anything on the subject, so I couldn't say there.  The only movie I know of from other sources where it wasn't clear which ending they were going to use well into the making of it is Casablanca.  Not my department.

As far as rules for writing stories go: they're products.  Nobody's selling the process; they're selling a manuscript.

One published writer to another:

Quotepwrede6...@aol.com (PWrede6492) writes:
>In article , p...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean
>Dyer-Bennet) writes:
>>It's not useful advice for everybody and it is generally so presented.
>There does not seem to be *any* writing advice that works for
>*everybody*, all of the time.  Except maybe "Get words on paper
>somehow."
>Hmmm -- have we finally found a writing generalization that really
>*does* hold?

Only if "paper" is metaphorical.  Some writers write on the computer
and email their stuff in.  [ducking]

I can assuredly dig up more specific comments on outlining, knowing the end of the story before you start writing, and so on, but not tonight: I'm up too late already.

Quote from: JimBobOzAnd here we see therpgsite starting to look like The Forge. Long, detailed posts splitting fine semantic hairs, with an excess of courtesy, "Because you are a poor writer and I'm a worse reader, you seem to be saying X. Given that, I say Y. Of course I may have misunderstood and I'm terribly sorry if I have." Plus that annoying affectation of writing posts like emails. "Dear Bob... blahblah... Love Jim."

I thought this was going to be a place of simple, plain and clear speech?

Thank you for saying it. The first handful of posts were all right by me, but now my eyes glaze over and I lose time when I try to read the rest. Guess this stuff still isn't for me. Either that or I was abducted by aliens.

For the folks out there, I'd just take Settimbrini's original argument as a good idea to take home: Story in RPGs is a subjective experience and the methods by which those experiences can be offered often entail limiting freedom of player action.

Quote from: John MorrowThe point I was trying to make is that the more the GM tries to guarantee story-like results, the more artificially story-like evens in the game might seem.  Making a dungeon very survivable is essentially creating a form of limited script immunity and the objective is the same and it can also feel artificial.  It's not exactly script immunity, but it can come very close.

I think I was missing this;

It's a good point and I agree with it -- once someone (players can do it also) starts trying to guarantee a given result, it's going to damage the experience for me.

I'd rather see things fall apart completely than have the GM manipulate the game to make a "story" happen.

That's why I think setup and communication before the game starts are so important -- if the game is pointed in the right direction (meaning a direction all the players, GM-inclusive, agree on) and the characters are designed to work well with it, IME there's a good chance you'll get a story-like result from any set of player decisions, short of decisions intentionally designed to end the game.

In my experience there's more successes than failures --but I generally play with groups that communicate well and trust each other.

I think your take on rail-roading was interesting;

My take

1) Railroading has pretty bad connotations. I dislike any definition where someone could say, "I was railroaded -- it was nice."

I'm not claiming I have the power to write the dictionary definition, but I think most folks would find a positive use counter-intuitive.

2) I don't think you can "look back" (or forward) and "see the tracks." You can't really know if a game is a railroad unless you're stopped from trying to do something you "ought" to be able to do.

Your example of characters who are forced to go into a cave rather than flying over it -- that *could* be a railroad. In an RPG game, if the GM told me, "You try flying, but you take... (roll roll)... 8 points of damage and return home, wiser for it." I'd consider that a textbook railroad.

But let's look at another case -- lthere's a classic example from Lord of the Rings, that' I'm going to crib: Frodo (a PC in this case) says, "The hell with this quest crap. I know Gandalf has giant eagles. We ride one over Mt. Doom. I drop the ring in. We're back in the Shire by late afternoon."

The GM considers: "Well, there's the all-seeing eye; if you're up in the sky -- without cover -- the odds of you being seen are *much* higher than if you carry the ring above ground. And the Nazgul fly on these worm/dragon things... your odds of making a High-Altitude approach without being detected are low... say, one in fifty. If you *are* detected, Nazgul fly faster than Giant Eagles... your odds of not-being intercepted are very low, indeed."

Is *that* a railroad?

Harder to say; I don't think so. It's more of a gray area. I think it's *reasonable* for the GM to set up a situation where a PC's approach might not work...

For me, it would be a matter of what I expect from the world. Presumably Sauron, Gandalf and Elron are all pretty smart guys who are knowledgeable of their own capabilities and their enemies.

It's *unlikely* that they would overlook an easy, low-risk way of destroying the Ring of Power. As a player in a LoTR game, I wouldn't consider it unreasonable if the GM ruled that the Eagle approach was near-unto-suicide.

All of this is YMMV -- and a *lot* of it would depend on the "vibe" I got from the GM. If I got a "You're wrecking my beautiful story" vibe no amount of solid explanation would convince me that it wasn't a railroad... but absent that vibe calls like the one I described above strike me as completely fair and evidence of a free, not-railroaded game.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.But let's look at another case -- lthere's a classic example from Lord of the Rings, that' I'm going to crib: Frodo (a PC in this case) says, "The hell with this quest crap. I know Gandalf has giant eagles. We ride one over Mt. Doom. I drop the ring in. We're back in the Shire by late afternoon."

The GM considers: "Well, there's the all-seeing eye; if you're up in the sky -- without cover -- the odds of you being seen are *much* higher than if you carry the ring above ground. And the Nazgul fly on these worm/dragon things... your odds of making a High-Altitude approach without being detected are low... say, one in fifty. If you *are* detected, Nazgul fly faster than Giant Eagles... your odds of not-being intercepted are very low, indeed."

Is *that* a railroad?

Harder to say; I don't think so. It's more of a gray area. I think it's *reasonable* for the GM to set up a situation where a PC's approach might not work...

I'd say no, taken by itself it isn't a railroad.  It could be as part of a larger whole though.  If the GM has decided ahead of time "The only thing that will work is following Gollum through the cave of Shelob and making their way overland."  If every other plan is shot down except the one the GM has in mind, then it's a railroad.

Even if there's more than one plan, to me the GM forcing his solution is the railroad.  Even if he's selected 2 or more acceptable solutions to the problem, that's not free choice that's a railroad with a switching station.