Quote from: SpikeIs that Platonic?

No--sounds like a bitch for you, though.

Anyways, back on topic.

It's been my experience that the planned series of increasingly difficult tactical encounters as described by Haffrung is the way D&D players in my community here play the game.  It's one of the more significant reasons why I have such a hate-on for D20.  I found that conversation over at Paizo that Sett linked to to be profoundly unsettling.  Makes the war talk here seem a lot less annoying, considering that the majority of the conversation is among open-minded people.  But over at Paizo, fuck those people were like zombies.  Blaming the OP for having read the adventure after and saying that's the only reason he knew it was a railroad.  They are such slaves to the Encounter Level or whatever it is called that they've sacrificed their own freedom to ensure a perfect climax.  I guess it must work, but it sure doesn't sound like much fun to me.

Spike, the droog quote is showing he doesn´t understand the Sandbox mindset. The problem he adresses doesn´t exist.
If the players go somewhere else, you roll up somewhere else.

Quote from: SettembriniSpike, the droog quote is showing he doesn´t understand the Sandbox mindset. The problem he adresses doesn´t exist.
If the players go somewhere else, you roll up somewhere else.

Settembrini, my old cabbage! You just can't stay away!

Of course I understand your precious mindset. I was doing sandbox when you were playing in a sandpit. A few years ago I was statting out the entire Earth of the 6th century AD, from China to Africa.

Quote from: droogNo--sounds like a bitch for you, though.

It was something of a challenge, but I also cheated a little. Since they wanted to jump on a caravan to 'someplace else' I gave them some bait to an area I had recently been developing, then I dragged the caravan process out a few sessions to give me more time to refine my ideas.

So: They picked where to go, but I controlled the pace of how fast they got there...

Quote from: walkerpAnyways, back on topic.

It's been my experience that the planned series of increasingly difficult tactical encounters as described by Haffrung is the way D&D players in my community here play the game... They are such slaves to the Encounter Level or whatever it is called that they've sacrificed their own freedom to ensure a perfect climax.  I guess it must work, but it sure doesn't sound like much fun to me.

The worst thing about this dominant model of adventure design is not simply that it sacrifices player freedom (though that does suck), but that players nurtured on this model regard any setting or adventure that isn't built on a finely calibrated CR/EL/XP rollercoaster as bad design. They assume that an anomalous deadly encounter is evidence of an incompetent designers, and that any adventure that gives players different motivations and different ways to do things is unfocused.

The success of Paizo can't help but shape the D&D adventure market, and punish those designers who don't follow a strict CR/EL/XP progression model. Sure, happy ghettos like the Dungeon Crawl Classics can survive, provided they explicitly declare their old-school allegiances. But I doubt any 4E publishers will find any traction among the mainstream WotC market for anything but inflexible clockwork adventures.

Which means that you and I, Haffrung, are free to play the kind of D&D we like in whatever system we like, from the brown books to 4e.

If the community won't support us, there's no cost in playing the game we want to play it.

That said, I think that there is a certain phenomenon of 'fanboy retrenchment' on the internet. When people criticize something we like, we tend to want to defend it, even when the criticisms are valid. So there may be some of that going on there. I'm not going to read the thread to find out.

Quote from: SpikeIt was something of a challenge, but I also cheated a little. Since they wanted to jump on a caravan to 'someplace else' I gave them some bait to an area I had recently been developing, then I dragged the caravan process out a few sessions to give me more time to refine my ideas.

So: They picked where to go, but I controlled the pace of how fast they got there...

So you did actually control the process a bit. You nudged them in a specific direction, which starts to get away from the Platonic ideal.

I wouldn't fault you for that, either as a player or a fellow GM (I've done it myself), but I'm just saying that it's 'railroading' in Cal's broad sense. He revised what he was saying later, so it only applies to his original formulation.

Settembrini suggests that you can just 'roll up' another area. Well, possibly--if you have charts for every possible area the PCs could take it into their heads to visit. I do think that even if this were the case, you run into the 2D problem Pierce mentioned. Say you've got the Wilderlands in all its detail; how can you detail another environment to that level in a reasonable time? Considering you bought the Wilderlands to save on prep time in the first place?

My own solution, if I were to run a game like this again, would be to come clean and say "Look, guys, I need a few weeks to prep if that's where you're going. Let's play another game next week."

This is where at least some minimal implication of the characters in the setting, or commitment of the players to it, is necessary in practical terms. And yes, in some very broad senses, it could be seen as railroading (or self-railroading when there's some collaboration in selecting or constructing a setting). But in a practical sense, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. You can only have a completely open setting if it extends infinitely in all directions...and if the rules are different in different places...etc. My life is 'railroaded' by virtue of being confined to the 2d surface of the earth--would that that were the extent of my constraints!

Just getting Spike up to speed.

droog, you seem to be assuming that the caravan leaves the campaign map.  Is that so?  Personally I would have no problem telling the players that the campaign map constitutes the entirety of the gameboard, especially if I was working with so large a setting as the Wilderlands.  On the other hand, the players will want to leave the Spinward Marches (or whatever) at some point, if only to satisfy their curiosity as to what lies beypnd the known borders of the setting.

Quote from: jrientsdroog, you seem to be assuming that the caravan leaves the campaign map.  Is that so?  Personally I would have no problem telling the players that the campaign map constitutes the entirety of the gameboard, especially if I was working with so large a setting as the Wilderlands.  On the other hand, the players will want to leave the Spinward Marches (or whatever) at some point, if only to satisfy their curiosity as to what lies beypnd the known borders of the setting.

It just grew out of what Cal and I were talking about--to some extent there is a measure of railroading (in the broad sense) in every sort of game. It's pretty obvious and limiting when you talk about a linear track (like the Paizo adventure), but there's still some of it happening if you tell me we can't go off the board.

If you do let me leave the board, you immediately run into problems of depth and development, which is very likely to cause another sort of railroading (GM throws something at the players to hold their attention). This is compounded if your original area is highly detailed: the contrast is obvious. I see only a couple of solutions, one of which is to halt play until you catch up, the other being to spread a very thin layer of prep over a very large area and do a lot of improvising.

So I argued to Calithena that Kickers are simply another sort of 'gameboard' in that sense, and that all methods of generating situation have their drawbacks. He then revised his terms and we're sweet.

Quote from: droogIf you do let me leave the board, you immediately run into problems of depth and development, which is very likely to cause another sort of railroading (GM throws something at the players to hold their attention). This is compounded if your original area is highly detailed: the contrast is obvious. I see only a couple of solutions, one of which is to halt play until you catch up, the other being to spread a very thin layer of prep over a very large area and do a lot of improvising.

I think reasonable players in a sandbox game will understand that the more latitude they have for going anywhere and doing anything, the less detail they can expect when they get there. And a good GM give cues about where the opportunities for adventure lie. He may offer rumours and plot books for the three or four locations he has prepared in detail. He may have mentioned in passing a couple places or organizations that he has at least sketched out. And for the places where they may just wander into during the next session or two, he should probably have a random encounter table, and maybe a few scripted encounters that are illustrative of the location or culture.

Bill Webb of Necromancer Games outlined his method for running a Wilderlands exploration game in just this fashion. With a few hours work, he can prepare for several sessions of play in a region.

Now, if the players ignore all the cue from the DM and make a bee-line for the far corner of the map, then they can't reasonably expect to find much detail when they get there. So are these cue railroading? Not really. There's a big difference between laying out the options of exploring the Caves of Dread, hiring on as guards for a caraval on the Winedark Sea, trying to recover the Chalice of Faldirk from an abandoned shrine, and exploring the region of the Dreadwood north of the Roglaroon Estuary; and scripting a chain of encounters so the PCs arriving just in the nick of time (no matter what they do) to see the Duke murdered by the Sorceror of Myrk, and then making sure the ensuing battle with the sorceror's minions yields just enough XP for the PCs to level and so tackle the next stop on the tracks.

Total freedom of action is hardly possible in a campaign that involves anything more than random encounters. But you can offer a wide scope of free action with less work than some are suggesting. You just have to be able to improvise, telescope in an out to varying degree of detail, and give and receive cues to your players about their range of options.

William of Guile, 10th Level Fighter: "Well... I'm not wandering about the map. I'm gonna get my sword, and I'm going into that dungeon, and I'm going to kick that son-of-a-bitch Dragon's ass so HARD... that the next Dragon wanna-be is gonna feel it. Now who wants to go home... and who wants to go with ME! "

:haw: