16 hours ago, penpenpen said:

At least I learned enough to set a definite ending to work towards. And that prewritten stuff is awesome when you make your own.

That's my rule of thumb now. The prewritten stuff is only useful as idea mines, and as a general rule if you try to run it as-written you just paint yourself into a corner.

Only Matt Colville deals in absolutes. lol I'm just messing

On 12/10/2017 at 6:31 AM, whafrog said:

The prewritten stuff is only useful as idea mines, and as a general rule if you try to run it as-written you just paint yourself into a corner.

Or as an emergency resource. "Hey man, GM Frank is going to be sick this week, we're all heading over to your house to play! Be there in about half an hour!"

Well, looks like you get to pull an old WEG game off the shelf and quickly read through it!

I like my games to have a little of column A, and a little of Column B. We just finished a long, and rather convoluted, story arc where I had several factions of badguys doing all sorts of nefarious things. I Provided a several tracks, and for the most part the players stayed with one of them. Things did go off the rails a few times, but for the most part eventually found there way back to the main plot. I always try to prepare for things to go wonky, but I like having guides.

On the other hand, our last session was probably 5 or 6 hours of pure roleplay. I think dice were rolled one time in that whole period, and that was just to see how well somebody could hold their liquor (not very well.) Everything was player driven, and there wasn't any combat at all. We were halfway through the evening before we'd even realized we forgot to dole out destiny points at the start, as it just wasn't coming up.

It's variation in the stories, and the styles, that keeps it all interesting.

4 hours ago, Split Light said:

that was just to see how well somebody could hold their liquor (not very well.)

I was rolling against FOUR red dice for gods sake!

1 hour ago, Desslok said:

I was rolling against FOUR red dice for gods sake!

Sounds like someone should invest more in brawn and grab enhance. Then four red dice are ... well not a cakewalk, but definitely doable.

Please people, handle your gaming groups problems in your groups. And please, be polite in here. These forums have changed more toxic in previous year. (Dark side of growth I presume.)

Disclaimer: I use railroading as derogatory name for bad story driven game, where player agency has been taken away, and GM should have written a novel instead of rpg campaign.

For me sandbox is a game where players actually have a choice what to do in addition to how to do it, and PC motivations are important. Bad sandbox doesn't give PCs anything to hold on, and players feel like being lost (sitting in the sand example). Bad story driven game (railroading) takes away the player agency and choice (think DM of the Rings). Both are bad. In good game players have freedom, choices what they can do, and clear direction what they (players) want to do. There may, or not, be underlying story behind the screen. Anyway, players need to have a something to do. Important part is that players (including GM), are having a good time. And every group is different, and enjoy different games. Freedom and story driven gaming are not polar opposites, unless GM makes it so.

My personal style is that at the beginning of the campaign I tend to have few sessions more planned, to get the game running. After PCs are up to speed, they are free to do whatever they like, and I focus more on places and NPCs (personalities, motivations, etc). I sometimes offer them "quests" which they may or may not do. It's up to them what they do. As a GM I feel that my job is to make sure players have multiple options what to do, if they don't have own agendas to advance.

In our previous campaign, PCs escaped the DS 1 as they defected. Their way of escaping was fully their invention, and after they were safe, they were free to invent their own activities, and they had fiveish leads to scenarios which they could have done. They did something completely different, and their story started to unfold. And later when they didn't have anything important to do, they went for one of the original leads. After 81 sessions, we put the campaign on hold, as it was time to try something different.

These are just my opinions, feel free to agree or disagree. And have a good day (and enjoy Last Jedi when you see it. Tomorrow for me. Whee! ) .

On 7.12.2017 at 10:13 PM, 2P51 said:

You've gotta provide some direction, plot hooks, and a setting or most PCs will be baffled. There is supposed to be a contract among players and GMs in that they're at the table to be adventurers, and you're there to provide the opportunity.

I fully agree. Regardless of the style of the game.

On 7.12.2017 at 10:13 PM, 2P51 said:

As the GM I'm either making a broad environment, like a port city, space station, whatever and populating it with a plethora of faces to talk to and threads to pull,

This sounds very much like a sandbox to me. And is very near to my own style.

On 7.12.2017 at 10:13 PM, 2P51 said:

or it's Murder on the Orient Express and the goal is clear. In either case I'm providing a story. If I don't it's random encounters and meandering around I guess, which frankly would get boring for me. I get to have fun too as the GM.

And IMO game with just random encounters is a hyberbole, and a bad game, not sandbox game. Story can be provided in many ways. When done bad way, it's railroading, when done in good way, it's a good game.

BTW. I have noticed a difference between American RPG culture, and European RPG culture, regarding sandbox games (partially semantic difference). It seems that for americans' sandbox game means a game without any direction, and for europeans' it means a game where the direction comes from player/PC motivations, instead of GM.

2 hours ago, kkuja said:

Please people, handle your gaming groups problems in your groups.

Nothing wrong with asking for advice online, except for how easy it is for the conversation to turn hostile.

3 hours ago, kkuja said:

BTW. I have noticed a difference between American RPG culture, and European RPG culture, regarding sandbox games (partially semantic difference). It seems that for americans' sandbox game means a game without any direction, and for europeans' it means a game where the direction comes from player/PC motivations, instead of GM.

Not really. The American and European idealistic sandbox game (where the direction comes from player/PC motivations, instead of GM) is the same.

From my experiences, I've seen way too many (sandbox) games fall apart because the Gm(sometimes players) cling to this RightWaytoPlay purism.

For me, I have found it much better on my sanity and for the players enjoyment to "read" the players to know where/what to do/go next.

The Modular Encounter that FFG has in Star Wars is something I have been using for two-plus decades.

4 hours ago, kkuja said:

BTW. I have noticed a difference between American RPG culture, and European RPG culture, regarding sandbox games (partially semantic difference). It seems that for americans' sandbox game means a game without any direction, and for europeans' it means a game where the direction comes from player/PC motivations, instead of GM.

I would be interested to know the scope of your research on the subject. In my observations, it's not been geographically-centered, but rather a natural progression in GMing style for many folks all across the globe. That said, the vast majority of my exposure to European RPG culture, and really anything other than American RPG culture, has been online so my scope is limited thus.

For my group (and I'm sure there are other groups out there), the game has, over the course of the year-plus that I've been GMing it, a mix of more sandboxy and narrative-focused. When we first started out, the players were new to roleplaying, all of them. We had played a short attempt of DnD 5E, but they never really got into it, and Star Wars was far more appealing since they already knew the setting and were fans. The first story arc that I put them through ran about eight months of once-a-week play, and for the most part they stuck to a somewhat contained set of choices. There was a beginning, and there was an objective that they needed to get to eventually (stop the BBEG's evil plan). The players didn't have a good idea of the freedom they could have in RPGs, so it was a progression of how much choice they had, since at the beginning they weren't even totally comfortable with making big choices at all. They would constantly look at me for an answer as to what was the "right" path to take, if that makes sense. Since they were an Alliance SpecForce/SpecOps team, it was easy to allow the availability of choice to grow as they grew more comfortable with roleplaying. "First mission: do this. Second mission: do this thing that came from the first mission. Third mission: well, we got some intel from the last one, there's two ways this could go. Fourth mission: well, you hit that one place, but now two more places popped up in addition to the other one you didn't hit, so what's the plan now? Oh, and the clock is ticking, so the more places you decide to go, the further along the evil plan will get" is an idea of the progression I tried to give them. Of course, the BBEG's base was in a fixed site, and eventually they would have to get there, but how and, more importantly WHEN, they got there was more and more based on their own choices, so when they got there and the BBEG had mostly wrapped up what they were doing and trying to evacuate their completed project off-world, the players realized without my prompting that they had allowed things to get this far, and if they had only arrived sooner, perhaps it would've been easier to stop.

Once that arc wrapped up, taking inspiration from Concise Locket's great series of posts about his open-world campaign, I had the Alliance reassign them to a fledgling Sector Force to help build it up into something that could cause problems from the Empire. This time, I've made it clear that they have control over how the building goes about occurring. The Empire has their plans for the Sector, and they may do things that could impact the players and their SecFor, but they are in no way forced to act on any of it. The players, more comfortable with the choices now, made a list of things they need, and started RPing (and rolling of course) gathering intelligence, and then prioritizing planets to head to to try to collect the assets, recruit troops, etc that they decided they needed. I generally have them decide at the end of a session what planet or mission they're going to head to next so I can do some encounter prepping for the next session. About a month ago, I feel like they fully embraced the choice available in roleplaying and I loved it. After they helped a local resistance group take over a planetary defense cannon and destroy a Victory Star Destroyer in low orbit (the cost the resistance group demanded for joining the Rebellion), I informed them that this was something the Empire would not take lightly, and would likely send an ISD with support ships to find out what happened and put a stop to it, fully expecting them to decide to cut their losses and withdraw. However, the players hatched an elaborate, and to me, surprisingly well-thought-out plan to disable the ISD and board it to capture it. They had thousands of these local resistance troops, and enough ships to swarm the ISD, a squadron of Y-Wings with ion torpedoes to disable it once the shields were down, and a plan that made sense. They literally pooled all of their available assets they had accumulated to pull this off, and it almost resulted in a TPK in a brutal fight on the ISD bridge (everyone but one character went down, and one lost an arm permanently), but they won. The players all thought it was awesome, despite the near TPK, and I reminded them that the scenario was entirely of their own design, and that I probably never would have dreamed of putting them on an ISD trying to take it over.

So that was a long, sorta rambling post, but the TL;DR point that I guess I'm trying to make is that with my players, all new to RPing, I essentially started them on a railroad while they got used to the idea of RPing and how much control they really had, gradually opening up more and more choices until I dumped them into a Sector, gave them a broad mandate from the Rebellion, and said "have at it," which resulted in a major assault on an ISD that I would have never done in a railroad scenario.

I just read this entire thread, as I'm always looking for data to add to the ole' GM databank for future use. For all the rhetoric thus far, I really haven't seen anything useful to someone trying to actually GM a game. Is that our goal here? There's been a ton of "you do you, I'll do me, but here's why I do me and why you doing you isn't quite the bee's knees". For as much as folks like to name-drop Colville I fail to see a primary focus on the one main point he's had in his entire video library (though it's been referenced once or twice in passing):

Are your players having fun (remember: the GM is a player too)? If not, you're doing it wrong. If so, you're doing it right. It's really that simple. The semantics of railroad vs. sandbox and all the shades of gray between the two are meaningless in light of this point.

The argument over railroad vs. sandbox, various hybrids of these two end-of-spectrum extremes, and which variant of play is more correct or enjoyable, is infinitely subjective i.e. completely useless to debate. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all of the opinions being expressed here to a degree, but admittedly this thread hasn't taught me a **** thing except what I already knew: different folks play RPGs differently, and we all need to be in the right group for our preferred playstyles. We all knew that starting on post #1. I love you guys for showing a willingness to flog this horse well past his expiration date, but let this thread die the death it's earned unless we're going to start workshopping how to be better GM's and stop debating the nuance of what we all find preferable in our particular games with our particular players.

16 hours ago, themensch said:

I would be interested to know the scope of your research on the subject. In my observations, it's not been geographically-centered, but rather a natural progression in GMing style for many folks all across the globe. That said, the vast majority of my exposure to European RPG culture, and really anything other than American RPG culture, has been online so my scope is limited thus.

It's not actual research, it's personal perception of matter based on discussions with players (and game designers) who have played with players from other continent. "What about sandbox campaign? It's not campaign if it's sandbox." said one american podcaster. His point of view was that campaign has GM build story structure, and if it doesn't have it, it's not a real campaign. That is kind of opinionated point of view which I don't believe to describe how all american's view the matter. And I'm not saying either way of viewing the matter better, they are just different. There has also been discussion about cultural differences between american style and european style in finnish roleplaying forums, which have also affected my opinion.

One finnish researcher has actually made an actual research about roleplaying culture. I'll check if I can found his or her name and research.

18 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Nothing wrong with asking for advice online, except for how easy it is for the conversation to turn hostile.

True. I should have said something like: "Handle your groups internal problems internally, and ask help if you need it. Blaming others here bring nothing good to anything."

9 hours ago, cdj0902 said:

I just read this entire thread, as I'm always looking for data to add to the ole' GM databank for future use. For all the rhetoric thus far, I really haven't seen anything useful to someone trying to actually GM a game. Is that our goal here? There's been a ton of "you do you, I'll do me, but here's why I do me and why you doing you isn't quite the bee's knees". For as much as folks like to name-drop Colville I fail to see a primary focus on the one main point he's had in his entire video library (though it's been referenced once or twice in passing):

Are your players having fun (remember: the GM is a player too)? If not, you're doing it wrong. If so, you're doing it right. It's really that simple. The semantics of railroad vs. sandbox and all the shades of gray between the two are meaningless in light of this point.

The argument over railroad vs. sandbox, various hybrids of these two end-of-spectrum extremes, and which variant of play is more correct or enjoyable, is infinitely subjective i.e. completely useless to debate. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all of the opinions being expressed here to a degree, but admittedly this thread hasn't taught me a **** thing except what I already knew: different folks play RPGs differently, and we all need to be in the right group for our preferred playstyles. We all knew that starting on post #1. I love you guys for showing a willingness to flog this horse well past his expiration date, but let this thread die the death it's earned unless we're going to start workshopping how to be better GM's and stop debating the nuance of what we all find preferable in our particular games with our particular players.

I guess you missed a post of mine from 3 days back, let me get that for you.

I am not a fan of using the word fun when it comes to these discussions, fun brings haha with it more than I care to agree with. I prefer the word enjoyment.

On 12/10/2017 at 9:20 AM, Moon of Dalo said:

What I have found to work, for me, over the years is:

I use:

• Sandbox
• Railroad
• Illusionism
• Lying
• Cheating
• Fudging
• Manipulation
• Crying
• Begging
• Linear Plots
• Ignoring
• Meta Gaming

Or anything else I think will keep the Players engaged.

To me, keeping the Players engaged is VASTLY more important than any RightWaytoPlay purisms people cling to.

YMMV

3 hours ago, Moon of Dalo said:

I guess you missed a post of mine from 3 days back, let me get that for you.

I am not a fan of using the word fun when it comes to these discussions, fun brings haha with it more than I care to agree with. I prefer the word enjoyment.

Respectfully, you guessed wrong. I distinctly remember reading your post and one or two others in a somewhat similar vein. However, those posts are exceptions in a thread that is leaning towards debate over objective determinism of correct/incorrect ways to play RPGs. I'm not seeing what calling extra special attention to it with an assumption I missed it provides, except to patronize. If that's not your intent I stand corrected. Text on a page can be somewhat ambiguous when trying to determine intent. I'm actually in alignment with your post for what it's worth (which should be obvious from my initial post): do whatever it takes to keep your players engaged and wanting to continue playing. Do WHATEVER it takes to keep them (and yourself) having fun. There is no right/wrong way to do this. It's all subjective. The only way to objectively determine if you are playing "correctly" is the fun (or not) being had at the table. Continuing to mull over subjective topics in some form of pseudo-debate doesn't provide any useful GM'ing data to anyone reading this thread, which was the point of my initial post. Which segues nicely into my next point.

Your preference for using "enjoyment" vs. "fun" is just, like, your OPINION man. Whatever baggage you bring with your use of the word "fun" is your business. I don't see why making that distinction matters, except we now know that you find the distinction important for your particular style of play, and I don't. It is subjective.

I didn't guess wrong, I was being polite.

And well, duh, my preference for using "enjoyment" vs. "fun" is just, like, my OPINION man. Hence why I worded the two sentences the way I did.

I've been thinking about railroading.

We've derided it aplenty here, but you know, there are some players who enjoy it. I'm thinking about the immersive character-focused players who enjoy the GM's story mostly as nice backdrop to their own character drama, and doesn't really mind being lead by the hand through the story, as it isn't their main focus anyway.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Even if they don't engage with the story directly, they do tend to add colour to it wherever they go.

Sometimes I'm fine with riding a railroad, but it's usually easy to get that abnegation fix outside of a tabletop RPG. I've had some days where I was content to run around an MMORPG. "Go to waypoint, do a thing, next waypoint." Usually for a group to enjoy it, they have to be in that wind-down mode, rather than wanting to be challenged.

I can also see a one-off railroad quest as a sort of pacing control. Give the players something straightforward and low stakes after the high point of the previous adventure that lets them feel how awesome their characters have gotten for surviving the ordeal.

i think of it like this. The GM is an amusement park creator. A sand box with no toys is boring. A park with out things to do is boring. What a GM should do is at the beginning of the game discus with the payers what kind of game all the players want including the GM. Then the GM should set about building those kinds of rides. And some times a little bit of railroading at the beginning is good. As it can get the ball rolling. Oh and the dirty little secret. if the GM makes their prep generic enough you can place what you created in front of any choice they make.

There’s so much here.

My opinion is that this all depends on the players, the game, the setting... basically it all just depends.

I’ve found that no one likes railroading, but players sometimes flounder when given a complete sandbox to play in as well.

The way I’ve always handled it is to give them things to initially do within the world. Straightforward tasks meant to introduce the world, npcs, etc. Now within those straightforward tasks, I welcome (and hopefully am prepared) for outside the box thinking and ideas. These kinds of interactions make the players feel as though they’re instantly impacting the world and they usually enjoy it more and the feeling of being led around isn’t as apparent.

Once they get a feel for things, I usually present them with four choices for the next adventure: three made up by me and one that’s whatever it is they want to do. If the players prefer to really interact with the world then “my” three choices are often made from their direct actions within the world. If they’re not heavy into the roleplaying aspect (or they’re new to the whole thing) then “my” three choices usually reflect that.

Basically after introducing the elements of the game to the players, this method lets me (lazily) guage how interactive they are with the roleplaying.

11 hours ago, penpenpen said:

I've been thinking about railroading.

We've derided it aplenty here, but you know, there are some players who enjoy it. I'm thinking about the immersive character-focused players who enjoy the GM's story mostly as nice backdrop to their own character drama, and doesn't really mind being lead by the hand through the story, as it isn't their main focus anyway.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Even if they don't engage with the story directly, they do tend to add colour to it wherever they go.

I think this is an astute observation - we often talk about railroading, but I think the term is often confused. Just because a GM has a story in mind and wants to keep it on track doesn't mean the GM is railroading - that only comes into play when the player agency is removed in my mind. Ultimately it comes back to Rule Zero but there are definitely instances where a GM leading the group is not only fine, it's actually welcome.

Roleplaying games are an art of "group story telling."

Everyone has a job to do.

The GM does provide an overall superstructure for the narrative and may have an idea for a "plot."

But no plan survives contact with the "enemy" and the players introduce a dynamic element of improv.

To wit, its not a scripted plot and story. Its deftly managed chaos.

As a result, the game-master has to be able to adjust, retcon, and even entirely change plans on the fly.

And, between sessions or before the campaign begins, the players will have their own say.

But they also have to play cooperatively and try to tell a good story rather than saying "how do I blow up the gamemaster's work?"

That would be bad citizenship. I hate players like that.

Meeting in that point of dynamic tension at the table that makes a game "sing."

Also, any experienced gamemaster knows the best holdout blaster is Shroedingers Gun .

"Oh, yes, my brilliant plot anticipated where your choices would take us all along!"

Muahahahahahaha!!! Right....

Of course, I'm a big fan of Chandler's Law .

And, Lester Dent's "heap more trouble on the hero" approach to storytelling.

On 12/15/2017 at 10:23 AM, themensch said:

I think this is an astute observation - we often talk about railroading, but I think the term is often confused. Just because a GM has a story in mind and wants to keep it on track doesn't mean the GM is railroading - that only comes into play when the player agency is removed in my mind. Ultimately it comes back to Rule Zero but there are definitely instances where a GM leading the group is not only fine, it's actually welcome.

Often player agency can end up looking like a railroad. I think that gets lost in the endless debating about this.

People(players) often forget that choice comes with consequences . It is often just a series of logical outcomes to player agency. That choice you as a group made 4 sessions reverberated throughout the area.

23 hours ago, Vondy said:

Roleplaying games are an art of "group story telling."

Everyone has a job to do.

The GM does provide an overall superstructure for the narrative and may have an idea for a "plot."

But no plan survives contact with the "enemy" and the players introduce a dynamic element of improv.

To wit, its not a scripted plot and story. Its deftly managed chaos.

As a result, the game-master has to be able to adjust, retcon, and even entirely change plans on the fly.

And, between sessions or before the campaign begins, the players will have their own say.

But they also have to play cooperatively and try to tell a good story rather than saying "how do I blow up the gamemaster's work?"

That would be bad citizenship. I hate players like that.

Meeting in that point of dynamic tension at the table that makes a game "sing."

Also, any experienced gamemaster knows the best holdout blaster is Shroedingers Gun .

"Oh, yes, my brilliant plot anticipated where your choices would take us all along!"

Muahahahahahaha!!! Right....

Of course, I'm a big fan of Chandler's Law .

And, Lester Dent's "heap more trouble on the hero" approach to storytelling.

IDK, if a player is new to the group, sure you might not know what they will do. I don't buy into that, gamers typically choose only a handful of ways

For me "Oh, yes, my brilliant plot anticipated where your choices would take us all along!" is true, to an extant.

I've been gaming since the mid 80s, players are not nearly as inventive as they think they are. Just like GMs are not nearly as mysterious as they think they are.