Yeah, I don't think that saying "This approach isn't within the scope of what we're doing," is necessarily a railroad.

Before any restrictions get put on the game there are an infinite number of choices available to the players.  Frodo could eat the ring.  He could stick it in a cereal box and stuff it in a shipment of identical cereal boxes and hope for the best.  He could ally with Sauron.

Part of the job of both the GM and the players is to trim away some of those choices.  Sauron doesn't make allies.  Hobbits don't have cereal boxes (though ... why? ... nevermind).  The ring would give you extreme sour tummy.

The question is not (to my mind) how many choices are trimmed away.  The question is how many remain.

Not to get all mathematical (since, really, the math of infinity is loopy anyway) but you can take away an infinite number of choices and still leave people with infinite choices or you can take away an infinite number of choices and leave people with only a finite number remaining.

You can say "All the ways that you could deal with this other than getting the ring to Mount Doom are closed off ... but all the infinite ways that you could manage to get to Mount Doom and all the good and bad you can do yourselves and others on the way is still wide open."

Or you can say "All the ways that you could deal with this other than recapping the original Tolkien story are closed off.  Your only choice now is the unalterable railroad."

Like I said ... it's not so much what's taken away as what remains available.  So if you can systematically say "We are going to forbid all the things that would fail to make a good story, which we shall define as X, Y and Z" and that still leaves an infinite number of really good stories in your potential arsenal ... and you then tell one such story through emerging play ... well then, you've just guaranteed story without the railroad, right?

Now whether you can systematically define X, Y and Z in that way is more of a controversial question, I expect.  But I think you can, so there you are as far as I'm concerned.

Quote from: MaddmanI'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 :cool: 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.

I agree.

Here's what I would recommend if I were going to GM this: I'd spend some time thinking about both side's capabilities and objectives. My goal would be to play both Sauron and Elron/Gandalf as extremely intelligent adversaries.

Both understand the capabilities of the other--Sauron knows what Gandalf's magic can and cannot accomplish. He knows what the elves can do. He knows how to run intelligence and search/destroy operations in Elf Territory, etc.

The good guys have the same level of understanding -- they know how easy/hard The Ring is to spot. They know that Sauron's minions are deadly, powerful, and fast. etc.

If I start with the assumption that there's no easy way into Mordor, but that it's not *impossible* then we have the foundation for the game.

If I were running the game, I wouldn't be satisfied unless I was able to come up with a variety of "ways in" that I thought were viable -- not so that there would be multiple "switching stations," but to assure myself that I hadn't limited the game into one narrow plot.

But clearly getting into Mordor is difficult and one thing the good guys *don't* know is how to get through the almost-impassable mountains.

Thus enters Gollum. Gollum's not the only way in, but he's probably the good guy's best chance.

So long as there are other ways in, I think this is *fair* -- e.g. not-a-rail-road.

This is risky territory though -- any time there's one-best-way and the other ways "suck" that's reasonably close to rail-road territory.

Still, both real-life and a lot of fiction have situations with narrow sets of good options. I don't think that situation -- by itself -- creates a railroad.

I probably wouldn't be happy with the game until I'd worked out other viable scenarios -- and I'd make sure I was open to improvisation during the game. I rarely think, "Wow! Wouldn't it be cool if X, then Y, then Z..." but if I'm thinking that way, it's a good sign I'm attached to a certain plot or outcome.

If I were running the game, I'd probably position Valamir as a credible, alternative to Gollum -- he and his men probably know enough about Mordor to be able to get the Hobbit's in.

Traveling with them would have it's own set of risks (they'd go after the Ring pretty quickly), but it would be a different set of risks from the ones encountered in the story.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: TonyLBYeah, I don't think that saying "This approach isn't within the scope of what we're doing," is necessarily a railroad.

.....

Now whether you can systematically define X, Y and Z in that way is more of a controversial question, I expect.  But I think you can, so there you are as far as I'm concerned.

Well said; I think you're right to express these as relative infinities -- so long as an infinite number of possibilities remain, it's not a railroad.

I'm intrigued by what you mean "systematically."

Cheers,
-E.

Oh, I just mean "in a way that's thought out and communicated to everyone."

I suppose you could do it unconsciously or unilaterally, but that strikes me as a risky proposition.

And, like I said, there may well be folks who say "It's just not possible to figure out how to do that and communicate it in advance!  It's artistry, and must occur in the passion of the moment."  And I respect that point of view, while personally disagreeing.

Quote from: TonyLBYeah, I don't think that saying "This approach isn't within the scope of what we're doing," is necessarily a railroad.

Snip

I think I agree with everything in this post!

Cool!

-Marco

On fiction and railroading (a general reply to a lot of posts):

As to the LotR thing--analyzing traditional fiction in the mode of an RPG is difficult at best--and you have to make all kinds of assumptions that have to be stated up front or, IME, you get into trouble very fast (i.e. "Frodo is a PC").

In the LotR scenario, there is so much ... pressure ... on Frodo that he has very, very few good choices and many of his options and assetts get reduced as time goes by (he loses his friends, he can't just throw the ring in a river--he has to bear it--and getting into Mordor requires *someone's* help).

In many ways it might not make for a good, open ended scenario, even assuming the GM just "set it up and played it fair" (i.e. the GM may not know *every inch* of the mountain passes around Mordor but has established they are nearly impassable making Gollum's route an almost necessary oddity).

That said, I am not sure I would consider such a one-way scenario a railroad either. And this is where we get philosophical.

I think that the process of railroading in traditional RPGs centers around the GM acting, intentionally, to remove player agency for meta-game reasons. that is, the PC does/is trying to do something and the GM either stops it or warps the world so as to nullify it--for reasons that do not have to do with "internal cause" (what would 'most likely' happen).

In a more iffy case, the GM might modify the world so as to impact the results of player input so as to alter but not nullify it. An example of this would be making something a player does either a hugely dramatic failure (if a regular failure would be internal-cause driven) or a hugely dramatic success (if a regular success seemed warranted).

In cases like these, I tend to think that even though 'drama' (or maybe 'story') is the meta-game concern, it is likely not railroading if the convention of the game would be reasonably seen to include any kind of cinematic license (which I think many, many games do).

-Marco

Quote from: MarcoIn a more iffy case, the GM might modify the world so as to impact the results of player input so as to alter but not nullify it. An example of this would be making something a player does either a hugely dramatic failure (if a regular failure would be internal-cause driven) or a hugely dramatic success (if a regular success seemed warranted).

In cases like these, I tend to think that even though 'drama' (or maybe 'story') is the meta-game concern, it is likely not railroading if the convention of the game would be reasonably seen to include any kind of cinematic license (which I think many, many games do).

-Marco

This is an interesting discussion and a good point here.

We agree, if I read you correctly, that games should be driven by internal cause (I used the word "fair"), and that the GM should base decisions on "what should happen."

There's always a gray area though. Since the GM will never have enough information about the world to always know what "should" happen, inevitably the GM will end up having to make judgement calls.

Example: Frodo and (later) Sam fight Shelob outside of her lair. Somewhere nearby there is an Orc patrol. What are the odds that the Orcs will show up right at the most dramatic moment (just as Sam is about to lament Frodo's "death"?)

Let's say that the GM has already established some facts:

1) There's an Orc watch tower right by the opening to her cave
2) Orcs patroll the area regularly and are aware that there are (sometimes) tasty loot to be had by her cave, and always check it out

This, by itself, doesn't tell us what the odds are. Ideally the GM would have provided some further rules to help run Orc-patrol encounters. If I were running LoTR in D20, I would stat out Mordor in the following ways

A) Odds of hitting a patrol near a watch tower (say, about 1 in 3 for each hour spent in the tower's immediate vicinity; a single roll on a single passage through)
B) Rules for Orcs making spot checks against PCs hiding in the rocks
C) Some notes on how the Orcs will react (e.g. they won't alert HQ or call for re-enforcements unless the opposition looks overwhelming; they'd prefer to keep the loot for themselves)
D) Rules for the PC's hearing the Orcs coming (e.g. as chaotic, undisciplined troops, you'll hear them babbling away and fighting with each other long before they're actually in sight, with a DC 10 Listen check).

Given these rules, I'd roll for an encounter at some point when the characters emerge from the cave...

But that still doesn't provide the key answer: exactly *when* do the Orcs arrive? Are they waiting at the cave entrance? Do they show up 1d20 combat rounds after the PC's emerge (meaning, possibly, durring the fight?) Do they come right after the fight?

Even with a *lot* of information, there's still an element of GM discretion.

I think that, within that small area of ambiguity, it's allowable to make a decision based on what's best for the story (e.g. have the Orc patrol arrive after the fight, before Frodo wakes up...)

Small things like dramatic timing can make a big difference -- and so long as the GM is committed to fairness and doesn't have an overarching agenda I have no problem with making the Dramatist call in a small gray area.

Cheers,
-E.

I'm glad to see things going in this direction. What Marco's just pointed to, the GM "removing player agency for meta-game reasons" is what I'd like to call "motivated GMing". And generally I wouldn't call it railroading unless there's a conflict between the GM's motive and the player's interest. It's a social problem, not a matter of mechanics or technique.

The concept of "motivated GMing" is in contrast to what I'd like to call "neutral GMing", which is where the GM essentially judges things according to cause-and-effect based on known starting conditions, fixed causal rules, stochastic models, and any alterations introduced by the PCs' (their "agency"). -E's example above is "neutral" right up to the point where he accepts a bit of dramatic timing in the appearance of the Orcs. That may or may not work for a given group. But it's indisputably an example of the use of GM discretion in the service of a meta-game concern: dramatic timing. Arguably if everyone wanted even less "drama", the GM could continue to work from a "neutral" standard by rolling the d20 for timing, or by trying to think in terms of what the Orcs would do once they see the hobbits, or even visualizing the situation and using intuition. Not that bias can be completely eliminated from the use of GM judgment (if it could, you wouldn't need a GM, you could just play a board game or a MMORPG), or that it should be eliminated in all cases, but it's meaningful to try to come close to that standard. (It's a similar logic which enables us to have faith in the integrity of the judicial system, and which causes our faith to be shaken when we see certain patterns of judgment or inconsistencies.)

Quote from: David RBut 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.

Of course. The point I'm making is that the methods are so different as to suggest different motivations or priorities in the course of actual play. I'm focused more on the process of play than the product; after all if you wanted "good story" as a product, there are libraries and bookstores to satisfy your need. But one group wants to actively create a story--that's a process--while the other wants to pretend to be characters in an imaginary situation--that's a different process.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI'm glad to see things going in this direction. What Marco's just pointed to, the GM "removing player agency for meta-game reasons" is what I'd like to call "motivated GMing". And generally I wouldn't call it railroading unless there's a conflict between the GM's motive and the player's interest. It's a social problem, not a matter of mechanics or technique.

OOh--right, I'd seen your blog post on this. Yes: I liked that.

As to whether it is railroading or not, I agree: social contract stuff, yeah. I'm of the mind that having my great plan foiled "to make my eventual victory more dramatic when I finally *do* win" is something that is often a case of the GM kidding himself ... but there are clearly cases where a player might prefer his plan be nullified to keep the game going and, so, yes. Clearly that can be okay.

I still do think 'railroading' applies to dysfunction more easily than fun well run games though.

-Marco

If no one has any objection, I'm moving this thread over to the "theory" section. I think it fits there better.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditIf no one has any objection, I'm moving this thread over to the "theory" section. I think it fits there better.

RPGPundit

Works for me.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: KeranI 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.

I started to do the same last night, including a quote from Jack M. Bickham's The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How To Aovid Them) that goes so far as to say, "The more planning you do before starting to write, the better."  And, yes, I know most authors shy away from such absolute statements.  

What I realized, looking at a handful of books I had pulled out to start skimming, is that we can go round and round quoting experts and we really aren't going to get anywhere and I really don't care enough about this to reread (or even skim) 20-30 or more books on writing fiction on my book shelf to mine them for quotes to support where my opinion came from.  So I'll simply accept and agree with your point that different styles of writing work for different people and step away from this argument which doesn't seem to be producing anything useful to the broader discussion at this point.

What I did find before I gave up that was relevant was some advice from Ben Bova that sounds an awful lot like what Forge Narrativism.  He talked about setting up two characters with an interesting conflict between them and letting the story write itself.  I think that's pretty much what people are talking about and what you are talking about.

I also highly recommend Kate Wilhelm's recent book Storyteller about he Clarion workshops.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBTW, does anyone know if MythusMage is the same guy on rpg.net who has "original gamer" or something like that in his sig?

Okay, I don't want to say who I was getting MythusMage mixed up with over there, but since I see there's a MythusMage on rpg.net who's written about "Dragon Earth", the other guy must be a different person. I just wanted to clear that up.

Quote from: John MorrowI 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.

Well, there's the risk/benefit thing -E.'s already described: real risk is more suspenseful than risk that I know is only apparent, even if a sufficiently artful portrayal can make it possible to suspend disbelief in the latter.

I like the old Outer Limits and the old Star Trek, but I'd describe the former as more suspenseful than the latter.  There's a level on which I know that the main Star Trek characters are going to survive, even if the script presents the illusion that they might not in a fashion successful enough to be entertaining.  But Outer Limits protagonists sometimes really do come to bad ends.

In the medium of RPGs, we have a very limited ability to revise, and except in the case of message-based games, we usually have to produce responses and descriptions quickly -- at the pace of talking or the pace of typing.  The result is invariably much less polished than the final draft of a written story: most mistakes that I make in presentation that detract from the players' ability to believe in or care about the story are made irrevocably, because the session is the work and its improvising creators are also its audience.  I can, with my players, go back and correct factual errors that I've made, so that we operate with the correct information in the future; but I can't rewrite the pacing of a session that I've run badly, or achieve the levels of verbal precision, conciseness, and intensity that I expect to be able to produce in writing.

There's another thing I can't do as a GM: control what the audience looks at, what they pay attention to, by controlling what the viewpoint characters look at.  That is a most important writer's technique for conveying the illusion of peril in a series where we know the main characters aren't going to die, and also for making it easier to suspend disbelief in an inconsistent setting: it may not much impair the story if the reader is following the characters' line of sight, and the characters never notice the inconsistency.

So, owing to a difference in media, what I call sleight-of-pen doesn't work nearly as well in RPGs.  Illusionary suspense and direction away from inconsistency are not likely to be nearly as well-executed.

On the other hand, character identification can be better.  A writer has to interest the reader in a character whose nature, situation, and actions are completely the writer's choice.   The players choose the characters they want to play and direct their actions; potentially they have a greater connection to the character, more interest in their success and their affairs.  For some players, this means a greater interest in the character, at a lower level of tension: what might not engage their sympathy and attention in a story they experience as a passive audience may be entirely sufficient when they're active participants.  I'm one of these people: the very best story I have ever read or watched passively does not produce nearly as intense a connection with the protagonist as immersive roleplay.  It means that things that might have me saying, "Enough already! -- Advance the plot, will you?" in a book I'm reading might be interesting in play.

I appreciate that for some people no such increased intensity of character identification appears to occur; it doesn't surprise me if they want to dial up the plot or the game element, and if they tend to see fidelity to setting and character as much less important.  But since there is a difference between RPGs and passive story mediums for me, if I did the same thing, I would be behaving much like a writer who can't get it through his head that there are approaches that work better in novels than they work in movies: I'd be shortchanging myself by not adapting to the weaknesses of the medium and emphasizing its strengths.

The reason I don't use the story/game split that other people are favoring is that I cannot say anything I just said in the language of game theory, or in anything close to it.  I need the language of fiction-writing.  The semantic difference has a practical effect.

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

It is conceivable that I might use the story game rules that I have seen so far to run one of my campaigns at gunpoint.

So far I haven't seen any that don't give someone besides the character's player the ability to enforce false-to-the-character reactions, based on who wins the mechanical contest.  I would not recommend that anyone hold their breath while waiting for me to decide that this is a good idea.

Then, it seems that the required shared narrative control feature of at least some of the games impair the function of the GM most important to me: to maintain the consistency of the world.  Let a player win the mechanical contest and he can force into the setting something that's false to it.

Finally, it looks to me that all of Forge theory and at least some of the Forge game texts are built on the assumption that the social relationships among the participants in the game work in a way that, in my games, I would consider broken.  I don't think this is a necessary feature of games intended to generate tight and thematically significant plots; I think it's probably an artifact of Forge culture.

QuoteI 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.

This is true.