Quote from: CalithenaMaybe what people want out of their RPGs is to sit down, zone out, eat junk food, have the DM describe things and tell them to roll dice, and then go home and do something else. To them it's a slightly more social version of TV or a novel, and nothing more. Maybe that's the market.

It's possible that's the majority of the current market of people buying mainstream RPG products in stores, circa right now.

My game is somewhere between boardgame and RPG anyway... and since the boardgame scene is so much healthier, that's where I'm focusing.  Of course that means it's a lot more work than if I just did a hand-wavey, no-choice, railroady RPG... but I wouldn't play that anyway.  And you should at least want to play your own game, right?

Battlelore finally gave me the mass combat system I've been wanting for D&D since 1977. 28mm painted minis on a double size hex map...the elves are about to cross the Aegyptian desert in search of the promised land...

Quote from: CalithenaYou need more confidence in human imagination.

A quarter century of empirical evidence can dampen the confidence... there are constellations where teh awesome will erupt from teh random, but it's rare. C'mon, you know that.

QuoteYou fucking Forgist wankers with your Relationship Maps and Bangs.

Fuck no!

The mere idea, ew.

But this leads me to postulate criterion 1: It's neither railroady nor Forgey when the conflict web does NOT extend to the PCs. It pre-exists them but in a decentralized fashion. They walk into it, but it's not spun around them. Just like in real life.

Quote2. As Elliot always emphasizes, 'matter' in (1) is subjective. If someone really feels they have the right to go to a different city and leave your power relations grid behind, then their dickish game-breaking behavior is the obverse of your railroad.

3. A technique that often works to facilitate 1 in my book is to make at least some of the NPCs on your conflict web want things from the PCs and act on those wants. Harder to stay uninterested or aloof when people are asking you for things, manipulating you to do things, etc. etc.

No argument here.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityBut this leads me to postulate criterion 1: It's neither railroady nor Forgey when the conflict web does NOT extend to the PCs. It pre-exists them but in a decentralized fashion. They walk into it, but it's not spun around them.

On the nose. The "embroilment" shall not be aimed at the PCs unless and until they place themselves in its path. This may, optionally, as a matter of personal taste, include a certain amount of pre-positioning at chargen, such as defining your character's patrons, relations, and especially enemies. (And further optionally: the same can be done via "blue booking"  between episodes of an episodic campaign.)

But even without those options, it's interesting to entertain, for a moment, the idea that the embedded conflicts in a campaign world are railroading. The reason they aren't, IMO, is that while PCs may not be able to ignore OR (seriously be able to) change them, they don't dictate a particular response. This isn't to contradict Calithena's point (1) above that "player choices need to matter". Major world events may be inevitable from the PCs' perspective but they only "matter" insofar as they impact the PCs, and that's where player choices kick in. Epic "stop the dark lord" campaigns are typically railroads; making your way through Thirty Years War Brandenburg isn't, even though you'd better watch your step as various armies crash around on the map.

It's more of a problem when the player-characters just don't care enough to respond more than trivially to any event. Calithena's technique (3) is promising here. Of course it does raise the question for the PCs, "Why us?" (That is, "Are we on a railroad?") I don't have an easy answer for this, though I can suggest that NPC wants directed at the party could/should be provoked by prior PC actions, like finding some coveted treasure or information. Another way of looking at this is what I might want to dub the "Postman always rings twice" perspective: there's nothing special about you, except that you happened to be available. An example: Iazgyus the Grand Zupak of Vrim has a standing offer of 1,000 gold coins to whoever will bring him the head of Bilmin the White Ogre.

Or, depending on how the campaign develops, people may begin to seek out the PCs but only because they've developed a reputation.

But until then part of the assumption has to be that PCs are motivated to do the things that the players are interested in doing...or at least that the PCs are motivated to do things that lead to the stuff that players are interested in playing through. Like, being a mail carrier may not be that exciting in itself (sorry, grubman, just an example); however if it involves occasional encounters with folk who're interesting/dangerous, it may be just the ticket.

Quite so, Rabbit, quite so.

Quote"Why us?"

Because you're the fucking PCs, for fuck's sake.  I've yet to run into any groups or players where this was at all a difficult conceit to grasp, unless they were just being uncooperative imbeciles.  

What a bunch of navel-gazing.

Pierce, I never said anything else. The Grande Outdoors are perfectly handled in Xpert-Set Modules, or the Wilderlands. There´s conflicts, lines and webs of interaction.

But alas, a path carved into the wilds, with Us-Going-In-Circles-Until-We-Enter-Temple (I kid you not! you can´t walk past by it!), or a forced march along a ten foot (or should I say two square?) mountain ledge complete with scripted encounters of the literally unavoidableTM kind, devalues all player input.

@Melan: I was aggressive, because I was pretty angry. When you game weekly for three months hors after hours trying to make an influence, and the modules keep getting more and more encount4rded, it´s tough. Even moreso if you find out that two six hour strategy and course plotting planning sessions were in vain.
And after all that three months worth of shit, you are railroaded at last to a dungeons entrance and hope "At least that´s what they really can do at Paizo!" you are sent into a set-piece-unavoidable-frozen-in-time-single-room dungeon, you would be pretty pissed, too.
And I WANTED to convey the strong emotional side to this. Because it´s our free time, and we WERE very angry at the time of playing, for weeks. This is not something to be taken lightly. The after-hours-workday-scheduled weekly 3.5 game with people out of college is ONLY possible with published adventures, preferrably with a campaign. The whole setups crumbles if the DM needs to up his prep time even more.


BUT: James Jacobs seems to see some of the wrongs in Paizos ways. Here´s another thread opened up by one of the other players in the very same campaign, wherein JJ sort of admits the crime.

THE MOST shocking part for me were the fan responses, though. We are told not to think so much. And that sophisticated RPGers value the "Story" whereas only bad and dumb people like old modules which are only hack & slash anyways.

The mind boggles!

I never encountered more tactically reactive "I waste him with my crossbow"-style-hack & slash than in those Savage Tide Modules.

We were getting so pissed at everything, and our only mode of influence was to kill things. Go figure.

Quote from: CalithenaBattlelore finally gave me the mass combat system I've been wanting for D&D since 1977. 28mm painted minis on a double size hex map...the elves are about to cross the Aegyptian desert in search of the promised land...

I use "Age of Mythology Boardgame" minis in conjunction with it. I stat them up myself, and we already did some nifty battling with the Lords of the Citadel´s Invasion of the Elphand Lands.
It also worked great with the quasi-Siege of Duat.

The PC´s greatest and most important asset: A Lyre of Building.

The Paizo/ WotC model of adventure design isn't primarily about railroading. It's about meticulously laying out a sequence of tactical challenges so that each set-piece has just the right challenge and reward. Railroading is a neccesary element of this style of game because you can't have PCs tackling challenges before they are strong enough and so getting themselves killed, or gaining too much experience on side-treks and then wiping the floor with a tactical encounter that is meant to be climactic.

I was looking at some Paizo adventures at my FLGS on the weekend and I noticed they were all for a specific level. So no more 'An Adventure for Levels 4-6.' Instead, it's 'An Adventure for Level 6.' That has to tell you something about the premise of D&D today. The mechanics of D&D, from class balance, to damage potential per level, to spell power, to CR level, have been so finely calibrated that most players now expect that any fight in an adventure will be perfectly balanced to present them with the just the right level of challenge.

And you know what? They're right. A designer who understands the math underlying D&D 3.x can calibrate adventures and encounters to present just the right level of challenge. A warm-up encounter, followed by three resource-draining encounters, followed by a major enouncter that will push the PCs to the limit (but not kill anyone). Rest, restore, go tackle a couple more resource-draining encounters, and then the big adventure climax. Rest, level up, and you're on to the next series of tactical challenges. The Paizo adventure paths are indeed exemplars of adventure design for the kind of players who enjoy a series of carefully calibrated tactical challenges. And that seems to be most players.

Players who prefer or are accustomed to that model of play will become frustrated at the options and variable challenge level of a sandbox or web-model adventure. They will become frustrated when their PCs face challenges of varying severity, challenges that may be too much for the PCs to face. It's very difficult to present a nice, plotted scale of challenge when the players have real choices about whether to visit the Undying Duke's castle, explore the Dread Smoke Caverns first, or chase down the rumour about the buried treasure on Thrilanka Island.

I personally prefer the web-model of adventure and setting design. Ancient Kingdoms Mesopotamia is an excellent example of this format. You have the Red Wastes area mapped out, with descriptions of the tribes who live in the wastes, a cult, a desert of bones, the ziggurat of the vampire queen, the mines if Shishmesh, and the Lost City of Ibnath, which itself has several dungeon complexes. You have a history of the region, a description of the various factions, their schemes and ambitions, and the location of items that will further these ambitions. Each chapter has several plot hooks of how PCs could get involved, with motives ranging from the heroic to the mercenary*. This is all summarized in a page that breaks the setting down into chapters and possible sequences of playing those challenges. It's flexible, intriguing, and fantastic.

But I don't see how such a format would be appealing to that constituency (which I presume to be a majority of D&D players) who regard Challenge Ratings and Encounter Levels as essential parameters governing proper design and fair play.

*Nothing pisses me off more than an adventure that assumes the PCs are heroic world-savers. Give me several motivations for play, that cover as many options from heroism to curiousity to greed to self-preservation to revenge.

QuoteTHE MOST shocking part for me were the fan responses, though. We are told not to think so much.

I just read that thread, and it confirms my presumption that the vast majority of players do indeed see adventures as a series of scripted tactical challenges, and they have no problem with it. It seems that 2E-style railroading is alive and well.

QuotePierce, I never said anything else. The Grande Outdoors are perfectly handled in Xpert-Set Modules, or the Wilderlands. There´s conflicts, lines and webs of interaction.

Oh, I know, Sector Duke. I was just speaking in the abstract.

The funny part re. Paizo: Most responses (but not Clark's) to a recent thread on the subject on the Necro boards are indistinguishable from the Paizo fans' reaction. That one did surprise me.

On a different note, are you saying that in your weekly game you actually, literally play the Paizo modules out of the box? Without even a readthrough first? I could understand that, given my own schedule, but, man, I'd rather not play than put myself at the mercy of that.

Nono, the DM must still prep a lot. Reading up the stat-blocks alone is a chore, you see they go all bonkers with crazy spells, abilities and stuff, he must do a lot of book flipping beforehand to run it as nice & smooth as he does. Hunt out the minis, print out the Dungeons and Handouts and Scissor them, read all the background, advance the timeline. Find pics for NPCs, advance their timelines... It´s quite a Materialschlacht, a "Spellgewitter", if you will.

Great fun and grandiose sights, as long as you can take part in it in a meaningful way.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityBut this leads me to postulate criterion 1: It's neither railroady nor Forgey when the conflict web does NOT extend to the PCs. It pre-exists them but in a decentralized fashion. They walk into it, but it's not spun around them.

Quote from: Elliot WilenOn the nose. The "embroilment" shall not be aimed at the PCs unless and until they place themselves in its path. This may, optionally, as a matter of personal taste, include a certain amount of pre-positioning at chargen, such as defining your character's patrons, relations, and especially enemies. (And further optionally: the same can be done via "blue booking"  between episodes of an episodic campaign.)

This accurately describes RPG use of relationship maps as outlined in The Sorcerer's Soul supplements by Ron Edwards.  He suggested not including the PC's in the relationship map -- matching the detective fiction he was using where the detective was not a part of the tangle of relationships.  Specifically, he suggested taking characters from a modern detective story, mapping out their relationships, and then presenting their tangle of conflicts as a scenario that the PCs may choose to engage with.  

Personally, I'm not so fond of this.  It is a trope of some fiction and some RPGs for the main characters to be rootless wanderers who solve other people's problems.  However, I've usually preferred more continuity where the PCs stay in mostly one place and have a bunch of relations and connections to where they are.  I've usually had the PCs an integral part of the action.  (This is the standard in Amber, for example, where the PCs are usually an integral part of family relations.)  

Quote from: Elliot WilenBut even without those options, it's interesting to entertain, for a moment, the idea that the embedded conflicts in a campaign world are railroading. The reason they aren't, IMO, is that while PCs may not be able to ignore OR (seriously be able to) change them, they don't dictate a particular response.

Exactly.  I don't think there's anything railroady about embedded conflicts or targetting the PCs as long as there isn't a particular path that you're trying to drive them towards.

Quote from: jhkimThis accurately describes RPG use of relationship maps as outlined in The Sorcerer's Soul supplements by Ron Edwards.  He suggested not including the PC's in the relationship map -- matching the detective fiction he was using where the detective was not a part of the tangle of relationships.  Specifically, he suggested taking characters from a modern detective story, mapping out their relationships, and then presenting their tangle of conflicts as a scenario that the PCs may choose to engage with.  

One wonders just how accurately one is able to describe an approach outlined in a book one has never even read; especially when that book was predated by 20+ years of actual play in that vein, including one's own; but which actual play the book seems to reinterpret in terms of the novelistic for its own well-known purposes.

Now, whether or not the waters are being muddied here by either R. Edwards or you or both, can be decided only by purchasing and reading said book, for which obviously there's not a chance in hell.

So, yeah. Thanks for sharing.

I think that targeting them "too directly" (note: subjective measure) can be railroady in effect if not intent. E.g. if the player's become highly attached/invested in some game world element, then endangering/destroying it may leave the PC with nothing interesting--all options look like one (crappy) path. Suppose they've come into possession of a ship; sinking it doesn't force the PCs in any particular direction. So I don't like to see stuff like that happen arbitrarily. I'd rather have it be a consequence of an established "fact" (even if that amounts to a roll on a random events table). Framing it as a challenge might also work: "the ship is attacked", or "there's a bad storm", or "there's a fire down by the harbor" what do you do? But in general, deliberately poking at the PCs just to see what they'll do, when they aren't asking for it is something I'd like to avoid. I'd rather if possible be looking at the big picture and then see how it impacts the PCs.

As for R-maps, I think the difference is that I'm looking for them on several scales (campaign wide down to the local) and with a lot of persistence, so you can leave one and return to it later in the campaign. Another thing that may differ from Sorcerer's Soul is that I expect time to be a factor; the R-map doesn't sit around waiting for the PCs to come and disturb it. I can dig episodic games but the sandbox is ideally something different.