Quote from: tenbones;919394Maybe you're that rare marsupial of the RPG world. The land-bridge to Australia disappeared after you migrated there and you evolved in isolation!

Took you this long to figure that out?

Reading rgroves posts it seemed fairly likely that was the case. Hes been really blessed with one or more groups of players that seem to really dig his particular style. Else it would have all collapsed long ago.

Quote from: Omega;919396Took you this long to figure that out?

Reading rgroves posts it seemed fairly likely that was the case. Hes been really blessed with one or more groups of players that seem to really dig his particular style. Else it would have all collapsed long ago.

Yeah I wanted him to figure that out on his own. So I just said it. Maybe that will break the cycle.

Quote from: tenbones;919392Dungeoncrawling is not "campaigning" right? You could string together dungeoncrawls and call it a campaign if you were clever enough sure. But in the usual parlance of discussion a crawl isn't what we'd normally call a campaign. Would you agree?

No? Yes? Maybe?

To my mind a single session, whether that session is a dungeon crawl or anything else isn't a campaign. So I agree a single dungeon crawl isn't a campaign. What makes a campaign is the continuation and change of characters over a sequence of sessions and that events in one session have repercussions in following sessions or that following sessions build on previous sessions. The original rules clearly intended that sort of sequence of events (the experience table practically mandates multiple sessions with the same character(s)) with the eventual goal (if successful) of wilderness exploration and keep creation (or seizure). I've never seen anyone play RPGs with real, live people and restrict their play to a series of disconnected dungeon crawls. Someone may have. People are weird. But that is much more the structure of the original Melee/Wizard game than the original D&D game.

So while I'd agree that one session isn't a campaign. I don't know what you think a campaign is beyond what the rules described. The clear assumption in the rules was that the DM set up a dungeon and some sort of place outside it where the PCs could buy stuff, rest up, recruit, and resupply. Even if you don't start out with a fully created world, country, or area, player action and some minimal desire by the DM and players for the setting to make at least a little sense and have at least a little coherence is going to require creation of some sort of setting. After all, successful dungeon crawlers get loot. Now the PCs have gold pieces and their players (at least some of them) are going to want to buy stuff with their gold. Buying stuff requires someone to sell stuff and someplace where it gets sold. And in my experience, GM creativity may not even require player action to start creating more and more setting stuff.  

QuoteIf so - then the point at where dungeoncrawls end and a GM is trying to do more than dungeoncrawl with all those nifty tables in their newly nabbed DMG, with their worldbuilding advice from St. Gary etc.... that's where the pre-biotic slime starts to wiggle.

Maybe we are at cross purposes in the discussion. I was referring to original D&D. So there was no DMG, there was Volume 1: Men & Magic, Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure, and Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures and all 3 volumes came together in the same little box. There was no DMG, just those three little books and suggestions that one might want to buy Chainmail (which was useful) and Outdoor Survival (which was pretty but mostly a waste of money). To create a dungeon, the DM needed to read and understand parts of all three volumes, as well as to make sense of what the GM was supposed to do and what the players could do.

QuoteDungeoncrawling, to me, using my evolution metaphor would be all that RNA milling around trying to self-organize. That's where GM's learn their basic chops on how the system works. The basic nuts and bolts of combat, sneaky PC tricks, etc.

I agree that dungeon crawling is a restricted and simpler environment than the entire world. Which is what made it pretty easy for people to start out as a DM way back in the day. All they needed to do was create a dungeon (even a single page of graph paper might do the trick) and some kind of neighboring town or village (in concept if not in great detail) where the PCs could buy, supply, and rest up in between trips to the dungeon. Player activity and DM creativity seemed to provide the rest as a very natural and gradual outgrowth of play. At least that's the experience I had with my DMing and that of the 6 or 10 DMs I recall from way back when.

QuoteRunning a campaign is a much more complex beast. The longer you do it, the more refined you become in terms of giving your players the agency to do what they wanna do within the context of your game. That's rarely something I *ever* see new GM's do simply by dint of lack of experience.

I agree it's more complex, though I tend to look at it from the other direction as the dungeon being more simple. But allowing players to do stuff within the context of the game was clearly intended in the original rules. It also seemed like a natural evolution of dungeon crawling as players tended to want to do something with their loot and that required a setting to do stuff in.

Traveller was set up in a similar way in that you could create a sector and expand it based on PC action and GM (what did Traveller call the GM?) interest. You didn't have to come up with the entire galaxy or even one empire before you started play.

QuoteNow it could be it's happened. Stipulated. Anything is possible. But I've never seen it or even heard of it. Hell I don't even RECOMMEND it for completely new GM's without having a good sounding board.

I think there is a big difference in trying to master less than 60 pages* of material back then and trying to master the multi-volume omnibus monstrosities that most game rules became after OD&D, Traveller, and Runequest. All three of those games had pretty short, pretty easy to decipher rules. Chivalry and Sorcery was only a single (but long) volume, but it used the tiniest font ever so it probably was at least the equivalent of all 3 AD&D volumes.

Becoming a DM was a common thing, in my experience. I'd say about 1/3** of the regular players I knew in the first 2-3 years became DMs. About 1/3 had no interest at all in being the DM and never even tried it. And maybe 1/3 faffed about either trying and failing or more commonly half-halfheartedly trying. But being the DM takes more commitment, time, and energy than being a player so I wouldn't expect everyone to want to do it anymore than I would expect everyone who plays a sport to want to coach or referee. Though in my experience back in the day the percentage of players who DMed was quite a bit higher than the percentage of weekend warrior athletes who coach or referee.




* A bit less because nobody started out first level PCs who were heavily involved with aerial combat, ship to ship combat, and castle construction. That stuff could wait weeks or months before the DM really needed to read it, much less understand it.

** Totally made up percentages based on gut feel and wanting a nice and tidy division into three parts.

I will stipulate everything you said as generally true, Bren. I find nothing there that I would waste my time arguing over and I don't find any of it objectionable.

I would put one single emphasis on my perspective in this regard: I'm talking about going from being a new GM, someone that is faced with running a game and learning the general swing of things to being a *good* GM - someone that runs full campaigns that go on and on until everyone is laying in a sweaty satisfied heap (okay hyperbole aside) and what kind of methods are used to achieve this goal.

That's a pretty big gulf, perhaps larger than some here might agree with. But that's what I'm talking about. Most GM's never make it that far for the variety of reasons you cited. And obviously there's more. All the similar stories of GMing that are collectively shared experiences wouldn't exist, otherwise. I'm not saying this to put anyone on a pedestal - it's just an observation about an activity I expect to see in anyone engaging in an activity this long. There are phases. We pass through them. Something else emerges on the other side. I don't see a lot of heavy-railroading as a method of emphasis in GM's that go this distance. It's a precision tool at best for minor nudging. I don't find it used as indicated in the examples of this thread as a "best practice".

Quote from: tenbones;919430I don't see a lot of heavy-railroading as a method of emphasis in GM's that go this distance. It's a precision tool at best for minor nudging. I don't find it used as indicated in the examples of this thread as a "best practice".

I agree with you. I don't see railroading as best practice.

I've always played RPGs with adults or at the very least with teenagers. But even if I played with people younger than that what I am about to say would apply. We all know we are playing a game. With other humans at the table. We all know, in theory at least if not from actual practical experience, that the GM and each one of the players has finite resources, time, energy, and attention. So if for some reason, one might be really, really tempted to engage in heavy railroading a similar result can often be achieved with a brief out of character statement to the players. Something along the lines of...

"It's fine if you don't want to [help the landlord find his missing child/rid the village of the monster that terrorizes them at night/act as guards for the merchant's caravan/or engage with whatever hooks are on offer], but that's what I prepared for tonight. So what would you like your characters to do instead?" Instead of trying to somehow subtly railroad the characters into biting on this weeks plot hook or following your planned adventure.

"Folks, that ordinary looking [farmer/townsman/bystander/tavern patron/etc.] you've been questioning for the past [30 seconds/30 minutes/3 hours] is an ordinary looking [whatever they are]. There's nothing more to see here and I've exhausted my store of meaningless conversation for this particular NPC. How's about moving on to something that might be more fruitful for your PCs or at the very least something more interesting for me?" Instead of allowing the players to continue to spend scarce and precious free time being bored or frustrated.

"Yes I realize that attacking the evil baron's castle in the middle of a thunderstorm does sound like it will make climbing the walls of his tower more difficult, but [you are all big damn heroes so it shouldn't be impossible/you have a stack of benny representing poker chips in front of you that makes it look like you are trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo, why not spend a few?/if climbing seems to dangerous, have you considered that there might be some way other than climbing a rain slick tower in a lightning storm to get inside the tower, like trick a guard, try a disguise, use some magic?]." Instead of trying to force the players to engage with your drama or a situation that you hadn't intended to be automatic death.

"I'm glad you guys are excited about finding passage on a boat going to the semi-mythical Outer Isles, but I haven't fully detailed the Isles yet, so we can start the journey, but depending on how long it takes in real time, we might have to cut the game a little short if I need to prepare more stuff for you or if you'd rather you can [go back to the nearby dungeon you haven't finished exploring/try and solve the rest of the mystery you've been working on/or otherwise look for adventure somewhere closer to home]. What's your preference?" Instead of having absolutely no boats available for sale or lease in the largest port city of the Empire, a sudden and unexplained wind that blows steadily from the Outer Isles for however long it takes for the players to give up on trying to go there, or ninjas attack.

"OK it seems like you guys are stuck, am I right? Why don't [I/you/we] review what you have figured out so far and see it that gives you some ideas as to what to try next?" Instead of allowing your players to continue to flounder about in frustration for the next 2 hours.

"OK it seems like you guys are frustrated and unsure how to [solve the current problem] you could try [list other alternatives that seem obvious to the GM but are at the moment eluding the players]?" Instead of allowing your players to feel like totally incompetent boobs or that you are a dick GM who doesn't want them to ever have any fun playing.

Players often are not fooled by "subtle" railroading. So why bother trying to do that when there are straightforward ways of addressing the problem that railroading is supposed to solve?

Just to play devil's advocate, some players may find those out of character GM to player conversations more immersion breaking and less desirable than a bit of illusionism or railroading.

Of course, allowing the players a certain degree of 'scene-framing' ability goes a long ways towards alleviating either sort of problem, but some find that to be as controversial as railroading, fudging, and illusionism.

Quote from: Manzanaro;919499Just to play devil's advocate, some players may find those out of character GM to player conversations more immersion breaking and less desirable than a bit of illusionism or railroading.

Sure it could detract from immersion. It is, after all an OOC conversation. And sure, some players might prefer being fooled to having an OOC conversation.

What I was thinking was more like you might just already know your player's preferences without the need for the conversation, not so much that you're fooling them. There's a difference. Especially if you are trying to emulate genre.

Yep. I don't disagree with any of that line of logic.

Quote from: Bren;919483Players often are not fooled by "subtle" railroading. So why bother trying to do that when there are straightforward ways of addressing the problem that railroading is supposed to solve?

This is what I call the "What's in the crate?" problem. I'm good at improv. I can extemporaneously tell a PC what's in a given random container in any given random building in any town. I recognize a lot of GM's aren't good at it (and nor is it mandatory). But because I'm good at it, I rarely have the problem of players going into regions I'm not prepared for, or rather I'm not prepared to improvise on and backfill later. My players generally can't even tell. Which is good, since I really want to keep immersion.

But most GM's I play with are rarely good at it (and I do believe it can be learned to a good degree), but I've seen many GM's choke on that simple phrase of walking into a warehouse and trying to open a crate a few times until the GM just said - "There's nothing in the fucking crates. Move on."

When things start going to places that the PC's need to consider, I definitely try to queue them as much as possible through Int/Wis checks, skill rolls etc to give them some extra expository information to help them get a *real* gauge about the situation. But I generally leave them to do what they want. If the sign says there's "Here be Dragons" - and your PC knows about the the disappearance of the Hamhock Halfling-clan in this region, and their sheep... and you persist to go visit that area... yeah don't be shocked when Smaug Jr. shows up to light your asses up.

Quote from: rgrove0172;919325Would you still view it as some sort of GM diaper awaiting a potty training?

Yes.

If you and yours are having fun getting together every Tuesday and watching Dora the Explorer, more power to you. But that doesn't mean that Dora the Explorer is suddenly using advanced cinematic techniques and fully-developed storytelling.

(Except I wouldn't even go so far as to call it potty training. That would imply that it's actually a valuable step towards achieving your goal. It's more like someone deciding to pee in the potted plants. It's a dead end. You've taken a wrong turn and the only valuable thing to be learned from it is that you shouldn't do it.)

I was going to just bow out of this thread, and maybe all of them until this post caught my eye.

Manzanaro -  "some players may find those out of character GM to player conversations more immersion breaking and less desirable than a bit of illusionism or railroading."

It really got me to thinking that perhaps the reason, in almost every thread Ive started, post Ive made or position Ive taken, that I seem to be in the minority has to do more with my group's approach to gaming rather than my individual approach as a GM.

When I hear statements like " you are fooling the players" or "Its not fair to them" or "your not giving them a real choice" or "your not using the rules consistently" and a number of comments - Im actually a little confused. These elements NEVER come up in our games, haven't for over 30 years. Obviously other types of players, including many of you commenting here, hate it when a GM does some of the things that my group not only seems not to mind but appreciates. Somebody said I must be very lucky to have players that tolerate me. Ill have to agree but what is the difference? Ive even discussed what has been said here with my players and unanimously they found my approach to be more enjoyable and wouldn't consider a change no matter what was said by other gamers.

Something weird is going on here and it is spread across many different topics here, but there is a common thread and I think I know what it is.

Every gamer plays for a different reason, everyone likes some elements and disliked others. It would appear that a majority (If a dozen or so members here that comment regularly can be called a majority and I am accepting that assumption) of gamers play with the aspect of the "Game" being a priority. Adherence to rules, fairness, balance, lack of GM intrusion, complete freedom of action, GM transparency, zero bias, characters as the stars, and so on - are all elements that speak to this when they are weighed as a priority. In that environment I can see readily that many of the choices I make as a GM and the style I demonstrate would definitely clash. Ive been trying to hard to defend it but when I look at it that way its indefensible. No wonder you guys are in a feeding frenzy, Im fresh meat and I get it. It makes complete sense within those parameters...however, what I may not have made clear enough and seems so obvious now is that it is not the environment that we game in, the priorities are all different, the expectations different and therefore the perception of my GM style different as well.

We rarely if ever talk about such things as fairness or adherence to the rules because stories, adventures  and yes even real life and therefore our game are not fair and the rules, frankly, are there to help not hinder the story we are telling through it. Fooling players? To us that's part of the game. The players rarely know what is going on completely and view the world only through the limited perception of their characters so as GM I am constantly 'fooling' them, directing the story around them, manipulating the in game reality for the best (Yes ..best as perceived by me as the creator and director) result. Zero bias, characters as the stars, GM transparency? None of these has any bearing on our game at all. Absolutely I as GM am biased towards the players, the game isn't nearly as fun when they die afterall and is way more fun when they succeed so there is an implied advantage to being a player character over an NPC and I as GM use it. Characters are stars but not always, its perfectly acceptable for them to step back into co-star role or even bit player role at times, in some circumstances the key movers and shakers of the world ARENT the players, especially at lower levels. I hear many gamers balk, or become incredibly offended at this but it happens all the time in our game and nobody minds, the players find their place in the story - perhaps as leader of the hoard one session or just one of the hoard in another.

I hope what Im saying here is making sense. I really want to continue my membership here and take part in the discussions but I cant do so if constantly seen as some sort of GM degenerate that has not yet matured or refuses to mature to the point where all the other enlightened GMs have arrived. I enjoy hearing others styles and learn a great deal but as has been said a few times by others here - my players wouldn't play in your game either! They are looking for a different experience, some have tried it your way at conventions or in other groups and have found a home in mine! All I have asked in this forum is for a little respect, an admission that there is a place in the hobby for responsible"railroading" if you have to call it that. It can be hated, sure - but its a matter of choice and it is a style that has been used successfully for years.

Those that choose to use it or accept it from their GM do so for a reason, they LIKE IT, not because they don't know better or haven't been graced by a REAL Game Master yet. All of those notions are extremely condescending and bring out the very worst in a discussion.

So let me just sum it up. Yes, I will readily admit that a vast number of gamers would resent what I, and other, GMs do (referring to the railroad phenomena) and I can understand (given their expectations of what they want to experience in a roleplaying game) why! However, change those expectations and the effectiveness or even acceptance of a given style of refereeing changes. My players and I enjoy taking part in a detailed, dramatic and well prepared story where the quality of the scenes, attention to detail and theatrical elements are as or more important than any sense of freedom of choice, GM transparency or even fairness. We like it when the elements all line up like they do in a novel, (a storm breaks out just a you reach the mansion, the cavalry arrives just as you run out of ammo, the monster lurches by a few feet away but doesn't find you as you hide etc.) It is these kinds of scenes we play for and as GM I don't risk the possibility that whim, chance, or blind player choice will deprive us of them.

Now, to me - we only stretch those boundries now and then - I would call it Marginal Railroading if I had to give it a designation. To some of you that would already be intolerable. I get that - but understand, in my experience we have played some games (Investigation/mystery for example) where even I would have declared the level of railroading MAJOR and surprise... we had a great time, even when the players knew exactly how much leeway the GM was taking.

Many of you have mentioned letting the Players have more control. In our game the relationship between players and GM could be portrayed as kids going to an amusement park. The players are the kids, and I as GM am the park. Its my job to make sure they have fun, how I do that is my business. I can fool them, trick them, pick on them, cheat them, coddle them or what the hell ever. They know me, trust me and understand that whatever is done will result in a fun time for all.

Boy I hope that clears this up a bit.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;919537Yes.

If you and yours are having fun getting together every Tuesday and watching Dora the Explorer, more power to you. But that doesn't mean that Dora the Explorer is suddenly using advanced cinematic techniques and fully-developed storytelling.

(Except I wouldn't even go so far as to call it potty training. That would imply that it's actually a valuable step towards achieving your goal. It's more like someone deciding to pee in the potted plants. It's a dead end. You've taken a wrong turn and the only valuable thing to be learned from it is that you shouldn't do it.)

What the hell ever.. laugh

Im actually wondering if my long post above shouldn't be the start of a new thread. Why do you game? What are your priorities? What do you expect from a roleplaying session? It might make the comments some of us are making make a little more sense. When we argue from totally different viewpoints it almost fruitless and just annoys and aggravates with little benefit.

rgrove, I honestly don't think it's the 'game', particularly notions of fairness, that most people here have been focusing on. It's more the difference between simulation and narrative.

I'm heavy on the simulation end. My players never have to wonder if they won because I jiggered the outcome. This isn't about fairness, but about simulating a world that does not care about protagonist status. The player's victories and defeats are not authorially mandated any more than a real person's are.

You, on the other hand, seem much more about the experience of being a character in a story, and so the authorial hand will always trump the rules of simulation for you, and your players know this. They are not bothered by the occasional glimpses of that hand.

Neither of us is WRONG, and in fact narrative qualities are important to me too. It's just different approaches.

Well it should be understood though that I do allow players to fail or even die. I probably would intervene to prohibit some meaningless death like fumbling a roll as you approach a helicopter or something but my players understand and appreciate that part of the drama we are creating involves risk. They know I may step in and help once in a while for the good of the group but they cant count on it.