T w e n t y S i d e d
Did you say RAILROADING!?!?!
In my Derailers post Purple Library Guy has this to say:
although, he was asking for that controversy by titling a post “The Case For Railroading” when in fact, once he and everyone else looked rather more closely, by most definitions what he was making a case for *wasn't* railroading.
He’s right. That’s where a lot of this went sour. A lot of people took the “railroading” very seriously and personally. I sort of expected it to be taken in a spirit of fun – I manage to advocate all sorts of outragous stuff at the end of each DMotR comic without people getting all worked up. I realize the post wasn’t attached to a comic, but I thought some people would understand that I was being a little hyperbolic on purpose. I could have titled the post The Case for Guiding the Direction of a Roleplaying Campaign with Deference to Unspoken Social Contract in Order to Facilitate a More Entertaining Gaming Experience” but for whatever crazy reason I just thought that the “railroading” one was more appealing.
Anyway, what should have been a fun discussion between people who all like the same hobby but have different play styles turned into an angry debate. Next time I’m not going to be so tolerant when people storm in here and start a freakin’ fight. I should have reigned reined this one in sooner. There are lots of places where you can flame people over how they choose to enjoy their hobby, and I don’t want this to be that sort of place. To wit: Think twice before you come in here and call me a liar. I enjoy discussion. I have no time for babysitting the crazy people of the internet.
Thanks to everyone who joined in and put up with the huffing and puffing.
-2 to CON
“I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying. You just can’t think of anything fun to do.”
The doctor called me to let me know that I am not dying. I was actually mildly worried. My father died at 59 of cancer, and by the time they found it the thing was large, advanced, and inoperable. It had obviously been growing in him for a very long time. So as I’ve entered my 30’s I’ve been a little uneasy that the same would happen to me. When my guts stopped working right last week the thought jumped into my head, this is it! You’re done for!
I have to go to a specialist, but only so we can figure out which mundane and moderately benign malady I’m suffering from. I can’t eat more than once a day right now, which is making me a little grouchy. This is offset by the knowledge that the Grim Reaper isn’t entering my address into Google maps so he knows the way when the time comes.
Whatever I have, it’s doing wonders for my weight. It’s only been a week and I’ve already lost enough weight that you can see the difference in my face. Now all I need is to develop some sort of illness that compels me to exercise for twenty minutes a day.
Derailers
Once I’d gotten around to clarifying my point, yesterday’s discussion on railroading yielded a lot of interesting comments and suggestions. A few people copped out and refused to consider the hyothetical situation presented with reasons why the DM shouldn’t ever BE in such a spot or how they would avoid the situation by having the bad guy escape. This is why they are called hypothetical situations. Sheesh. The point wasn’t to argue about game mechanics or playing styles, or the appropriate strength for the antagonist in a game, but to illustrate a situation where altering the unknown portions of the gameworld was preferable to letting the story run into the ground or lose momentum
A few other people joined in with posts at their own blogs: Catalyst had interesting things to say. Big City, Bright Lights jumped in with some interesting thoughts which were diminished by stooping to petty insults.
Also, while not directly a response to my post, this post at New Media Matters has a lot of related thoughts on the subject. (Also, NMM looks like a brand-new blog, and there are already a lot of great posts there.)
A couple of people took reflexive and almost irrational offsense at my suggestion, and some were even insulting. You’d think I was barging in and telling them how to run their game or something. I have bite marks all over my ankles now.
However, many people took the time to form an interesting answer and proposed a few other ways of dealing with events that threaten to take the excitement out of the plot of the game. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Derailers”
No DMotR Today
I usually have comics done a couple of weeks ahead of time, but when I get an idea for a strip to be inserted within the current week, I have to choose between letting the idea slide, or postponing a strip and making the comic during the week. As we approach the end, I’m increasingly reluctant to skip material, so I’m going to push the comic to Friday.
Perhaps the following silly image will appease you:
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Catching up
Here are a bunch of links. I’d wanted to do a post about each of these, but I am falling further behind and just don’t have time to do some of this stuff justice. So let me just point to some posts and say, “That’s cool.”
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Speaking of old games, Mark has a great series of posts on old Commodore 64 games. It looks like he was able to grab some great screenshots using his emulator. I never had a C64 (alas) but I saw variants of these games on other systems and I enjoyed seeing them again.
Steven has moved his long-standing anime site over to mee.nu. The new site just has new content, but it sure is nice to have permalinks to work with. Now I can link to a particlar post that stikes my fancy, as in this case where he foretells the future using only numbers as his source of divining power. (I’ll bet he’s right. I’ll bet 148 million bucks he’s right.)
Cineris has a great post up on some anti-nerdist advertising. Er. Nerdisim? Nerdaphobia? He also has a post on his first impressions of Final Fantasy XII. His thoughs on the game are similar to mine, although thankfully he wasn’t baffled by the plot the way I was at first.
Let’s try this again
Some people had great responses to my earlier post on railroading, although a lot of the controversy arose from different interpretations of my hypothetical situations. I think many people were not seeing the heart of the difficulty I was trying to present, perhaps because my examples was too poorly defined. So let’s try to tighten up the definition and see how that changes things.
I have a main villain in my campaign. He’s pretending to be a good guy, and later I have a plot twist where his evil is revealed. He’s a sort of Palpatine character: He seems a little “off”, but not evil, and the players don’t yet have enough information to suspect him as their true foe. His plans are taking shape in the background while the players try to figure things out and dispatch his henchmen.
Then the players go to see him as part of their investigation. A fight breaks out for whatever reason, initiated by the players. They have no idea this is the bad guy, they just know they’re dealing with a bit of a jerk and the conversation gets out of hand. Perhaps they try to threaten information out of him, and he calls what he thinks is a bluff. Perhaps he catches them doing something illegal while conducting their investigation, like spying or swiping documents. Whatever the reason, a fight ensues.
There are only three outcomes I can see:
- If I stick to the plan, they will kill the main bad guy and only after the fight would they discover who he was, and that the adventure was over. They accidently won, there was no climax, and all of my plot twists go to waste.
- I can brute-force railroad them, by making my bad guy escape, overpower them, or otherwise prevail in a situation where he should have been outmatched. This is “cheating” to most people, and it will not result in happy players.
- I can do as I said before: Create a new bad guy, and have this guy be a servant of that greater power. They get the satisfaction of defeating one of his lieutenants, gaining some loot, and moving the plot forward. Tension builds in the story, instead of the whole thing fizzling out.
For those who dislike my style of railroading: How would you approach the given situation? Would you let things fizzle or would you make changes to keep the game going? Is there another option I’m missing?
From The Archives:
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
The Plot-Driven Door
You know how videogames sometimes do that thing where it's preposterously hard to go through a simple door? This one is really bad.
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Raytracing
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
Object-Oriented Debate
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
How to Forum
Dear people of the internet: Please stop doing these horrible idiotic things when you talk to each other.
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.