Quote from: CRKrueger;925536That's because there is no industry standard, not even really back in the day when this shit caused flame wars on Usenet.  So if you think your way is industry standard, you're as much of a fool as the people you are claiming foolish.

You like what you like - and so do your players - good for you.  Don't debase yourself by begging for internet approval or make a fool of yourself through Appeal to Authority.  Stepping into this forum, you've encountered an entirely new playstyle, one that's been around since Braunstein, that you aren't familiar with.  Ok, learn and agree to coexist or stick your head in the sand like an Ostrich Ideologue claiming the nameless masses are on your side.  No one gives a shit.

If you need validation to feel secure in your GMing, you will never get that here.  Stop trying, it's getting tiring to read.

Understood, now kindly direct that same message to the others who are even MORE BLATANTLY claiming their way is the only true path to GM enlightenment.

Quote from: Bren;925592Yes. I find it aesthetically displeasing and unnecessary.

OK, just wanted to get you on record.

Two comments -

One - as to Stage Magicians being upfront. I have never witnessed a magician start his routine but advising everyone in the audience that he is a charlatan and fake and that there is no such thing as magic and that he will instead be taking advantage of all of them. They may assume this but it isn't said. To do so ruins the very illusion they applaud.

Two - “Wow guys that ddn’t go that way I expected. I guess we need a new universe and new PCs. So who wants to be the GM this time?”

Obviously you and perhaps others play a much more superficial and casual game than my group. TPKs and such are DEVESTATING. We place far too much time and effort in our games, especially where the setting and campaign is concerned, to cough it away and "roll up some new guys!"  
I understand groups play with different priorities, that may be at the heart of many of our disagreements here. The "GAME" is almost a work of art in our opinion, an outlet for a vast amount of creative energy and imaginative will. We are rather protective of it. The GM especially. On other nights we play games, fun little competitions or group efforts toward some abstract objective and have a great time but when we roleplay its a very different matter.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925596One - as to Stage Magicians being upfront. I have never witnessed a magician start his routine but advising everyone in the audience that he is a charlatan and fake and that there is no such thing as magic and that he will instead be taking advantage of all of them. They may assume this but it isn't said. To do so ruins the very illusion they applaud.

No it doesn't ruin the illusion. Unless you really think all the people clapping believe it was real magic?

QuoteObviously you and perhaps others play a much more superficial and casual game than my group.

And you are way wrong about that too.

I said that I don't run end of the world adventures. So the world doesn't end when the PCs fail because I am not making end of the game world the consequence of failure. But if I did run an end of the world adventure it would be bad art not to have the world end if the PCs fail.

QuoteI understand groups play with different priorities, that may be at the heart of many of our disagreements here. The "GAME" is almost a work of art in our opinion, an outlet for a vast amount of creative energy and imaginative will. We are rather protective of it. The GM especially. On other nights we play games, fun little competitions or group efforts toward some abstract objective and have a great time but when we roleplay its a very different matter.

I find your art aesthetically displeasing.

Quote from: Bren;925581Oh you with your honesty and upfrontness. What are you doing in this thread anyway?

I was lying. The referee always lies.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925596I have never witnessed a magician start his routine but advising everyone in the audience that he is a charlatan and fake and that there is no such thing as magic and that he will instead be taking advantage of all of them.

Also, numerous debunker/skeptic magicians, but I won't count those.

Quote from: rgrove0172;925593Understood, now kindly direct that same message to the others who are even MORE BLATANTLY claiming their way is the only true path to GM enlightenment.

Well, the other people full of shit are the ones who claim they can always detect illusionism/railroading.  You don't have the GM's map, you don't have the NPC's stats, you don't have the encounter tables the GM is using.  Unless you're a mind-reader, face-reader, or the guy is an idiot, you'll never know whether you just happened to be in the right place/right time, whether 358 on the open-ended encounter roll is actually Nyarlathotep, or whether there was actually supposed to be a pit trap there.

Now if you suspect he's fudging things, you can deliberately try to test some things to trip them up, same as a zero-prepper, but if you're engaged in the game and not meta-investigating what's happening, not gonna happen.  GM's are great liars. They need to be able to look you straight in the eye and tell you that you detect no trap even though they know damn well one more step is a TPK.  You're gonna tell me that you're gonna catch that GM using Quantum Tricks?

Nope.

Quote from: CRKrueger;925616Well, the other people full of shit are the ones who claim they can always detect illusionism/railroading.

Sigh. And people who say they play in character all the time are also full of shit, right?

We're all of full of shit. That's why we have colons.

OK, I'm going to define something my way:

Railroading adventures are those that have a predetermined outcome.  No matter what the players do, whatever happens, will happen.

'Zero Prep' Triggers occur if and when the Players DECIDE they do.  They have a CHOICE.

Quote from: DavetheLost;925624We're all of full of shit. That's why we have colons.

Fair point. But at least I'm up to date on my checkups.

A little anecdote, apropos of nothing...

At my last session I made a lightning-quick reversal of judgment. A PC was working over some street toughs in an effort to find their boss. Since they were right in front of one of his main hangouts -- and since there was a commotion -- I figured it was reasonable enough that the boss was there and alert to the presence of the PC.

PC: "I'm looking for your boss, punk!"
[booming voice from behind]: "You ain't gotta look far, sucka!"

Then the player described how he coolly dropped the quivering youth and slowly turned to face --

BUT THEN -- I remembered the smart-ass hustler/street contact NPC the PC had run into earlier that day...

[my best Kevin Hart voice] "Naw, man, I was just fuckin' witcha!"

Not the most brilliant moment ever, but it got some laughs and broke up the action a bit.

But for one second, it really was the crime boss standing behind the PC. And I teleported the contact there in his place. And I am unrepentant.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;925625OK, I'm going to define something my way:

Railroading adventures are those that have a predetermined outcome.  No matter what the players do, whatever happens, will happen.

'Zero Prep' Triggers occur if and when the Players DECIDE they do.  They have a CHOICE.

I like that definition.  Using it I can honestly say I have never railroaded...ever.

Quote from: CRKrueger;925616Well, the other people full of shit are the ones who claim they can always detect illusionism/railroading.

Always? No. But there are some really accurate gut feelings out there.

Things just get really tricky when things like railroading, illusionism, or even PC-death_enabled can be flipped on and off like a switch.

For instance, a pick-up game I played in highschool ended up turning into a long-running Greyhawk campaign. After it had run a while, it seemed like the GM might have been fudging in the players favor to avoid PC death. One of the players seemed to pick up on this and started pushing the envelope. For a while, it was pretty epic. After all, this player's character was a cleric of  Heironeous the Invincible and was thwarting and slaughtering enemies of the faith. It seemed to make sense. But the player continue pushing the envelope, so it seemed to leave the GM with a choice. Slap the player down with extreme "let the dice fall where they may"ism, or risk destroying the credibility of what had been an awesome campaign. A few sessions later, the PC died.

In reality, do any of us know for sure whether PC-death was enabled all along and it just took time for the player's luck to run out or whether the GM flipped the switch? Not really. Not at all. Before the one player had started pushing the envelope we all certainly played as if PC-death was enabled. So if the GM ever did have to fudge things for us, it was rare anyway. And maybe for that exact reason, the GM himself had not even decided how the switch was set because it's just not something that ever came up. But when the campaign started to really ramp up, maybe he just wanted to prolong it just a bit more so fudged a bit, then realized he'd let it get too far. Or maybe all along it was a Spiderman thing, "Everybody gets one."

We don't know. But the gut feeling was that at least towards the height of the campaign, safety mode was on. The player proceeded to make major decisions accordingly, and for a time anyway, it proved lucrative. There seemed to be verification that the gut feeling was right. But whether or not the GM actually flipped a switch, the bottom line is it didn't last. The experiment proved to not be repeatable. And certainty in the proposition was instantly vaporized.

I still strongly believe this sort of thing actually is easily detectable. It's just not certain. And so I feel it is always 100% of the time wrong in all cases for a player to ever call a GM out as a cheater of any sort. If you think you're playing a rigged game, play accordingly. Position yourself so the rigging works in your favor. That is, if you have the balls to do so. If you are so certain you're right. And if you can equally give the GM credit and sense when/if he's flipped the switch. Let conviction and fairness be the ultimate arbiters.

Quote from: Bren;925619Sigh. And people who say they play in character all the time are also full of shit, right?

Correct