Salvaging/learning from the days of railroad

[glandis]

I missed page 2 of the thread at http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=190.50, and posted after Ron said "end thread." Bad me! In case anyone actually has interesting stuff to say on the subject:

Mike Holmes wrote "And then this is where the Village of Homlett goes up in flames, if you will. Some players, fed up enough with the lack of control, will take the implied fight option instead. And now we have the problem that there's no reasonable way to salvage the situation presented in the module (though very creative GMs can even work around this sort of disaster). Either the PCs are dead, or the Patron is."

Some confusion seemed to result about salvaging, and my thought was that the question would be, maybe, is there anything valuable in looking at how those "very creative GMs" work around the disaster? I'd say it's in realizing that if that kind of creativity was available all along (and not just from the GM), there was no reason to be on the gorram module-path in the first place! Certainly, in my D&Dish play over the last decade, play situations have been almost always GM-created, usually customized for the particular PCs. But there may be other answers. Any thoughts?

It's probably also worth noting that while I (as recounted in the other thread) did run into issues with the D&D "orthodoxy", my exit was swift and I missed most of the problems of 1982-1992. I can see here that makes the bad taste in my mouth far less odious and persistent than it is for others.

-Gordon

[Ron Edwards]

I am currently writing an essay which tends to shift back-and-forth in its main point, in this stage of writing, which is why it isn't finished. On the one hand, it's a broad look at how "adventurers who live in a setting but won't turn down a hole in the ground if they see it" can yield engaging play, and on the other (and at this point seems leaning toward) it's a pointed examination of the term "sandbox." So my response to your post is unfortunately me mutely pointing at my head, and at pages of draft with notes all over them, making a frustrated face.

In my not-yet posted recorded conversation with Jim Raggi, I asked him a little bit about this in reference to his adventure for Lamentions of the Flame Princess, The God That Crawls. I'd found it uncharacteristically muddled in terms of "go on the adventure." Jim's writing otherwise reflects exactly what he wants to say based on exactly what he knows for sure from really playing something, but in this adventure, the text waffles. Anyway, in our conversation, he talked about how he felt conflicted in writing it.

In the various OSR venues, it's considered proper that no DM ever tell any player what to do - up to and including the construction of an immediate situation. Yet the DM "being prepared" for any immediate situation that might emerge - to the extent of immediately launching a skirmish-ready set-piece - is also axiomatic, to the point of intense social expectation. And in this case, the adventure is highly location-specific to the point of "get down in that hole or we can't play." It's very open within that framework and in my opinion looks very rewarding and fun, but if you're idealizing "saaanndbox!!" you can't say, get in the hole so we can have a good time.

So Jim was pretty frank about how he likes to play with solidly-prepared components in which the player-characters are necessarily engaged, and doesn't mind a social contract which includes "we're here to be in this situation"* but knows a lot of his audience is gripped by the so-called sandbox expectation (which is actually a pretty amorphous and uncritical thing). There seems to be a breakdown in the "D&D-ness" of it all in the construction of situations. I think it only became more tangled and intractable when White Wolf bloviated about "storytelling" by which they meant nothing more than AD&D2 orthodoxy - railroading from hell," and today's OSR frames its discourse in the context of that knot.

Best, Ron

* Jim and I draw our lines similarly regarding player-characters' actions and goals within that situation, i.e., leaving them completely open without a fixed information-Rome or set-piece or anything like that. I'm talking strictly about the transition from "characters roam in this setting" to "characters are engaged with this situation."

[Eero Tuovinen]

That technical question of engagement that Ron outlines is at the heart of my own recent D&D play; basically, I've resolved to my satisfaction the issue of how to coordinate the party into the hole without trampling over player self-determination in the process. My realizing how to do it in -08 or so was actually the creative inspiration that sent me on to play such a large amount of D&D over the last five years. That's how important it is for the game; it seems like players buying into the adventure is this small formality at the start of the session, but in fact it's something that penetrates everything, and without it we're wide open to the sort of ugly authority struggles that those TSR adventure modules attempt to preempt by ever-more-complex scripting.

As for salvaging anything from those texts except the bare bones of the dungeons, I am skeptical: your average post-Dragonlance TSR adventure module lies. They are texts that attempt to provide scripting without acknowledging that the game upon which the script is supposed to play out has changed. The game, when played with these types of scripts, becomes two-faced: it promises challenges and danger to the players, while promising dramatic satisfaction to the DM. Thus every act of earnest play that a player executes becomes something for the DM to strike down.

[Ron Edwards]

The reasons I spent all kinds of money and time carefully reading every al-Qadim publication include (i) I wanted to see if non-white setting publications could jump-start my love of fantasy again,*and more significantly for this thread, (ii) I had found that many published adventure scenarios were full of brilliant content if you scrubbed away the scripting, especially for Champions, and wanted to see if D&D publishing (of which I'd been entirely ignorant since 1983) had done anything of the sort. It hadn't. I realized after many many pages of note-taking to extract back-story and setting content, that absolutely nothing of the kind existed in those modules aside from what was necessary to make the players do shit, and not only shit, but this exact shit. So Mike's post about it was absolutely confirmatory of my assessment.

Eero, you do understand that your phrase "realizing how to do it" was an act of pure creativity and innovation solely on your part, right? There is literally no play-tradition, text-tradition, or dialogue-tradition about that in the entire prior history of games published under this title, or anything like it.

Best, Ron

* or rather, getting away from the Disney version of medievalism, a weird blend of French geography, Crusaders-era government, and modern British and Scottish accents.

[Callan S.]

Hi Gordon,

Good phrasing of the creativity issue! Sufficiently advanced creativity is indistinguishable from not needing to buy the module to begin with!

I'm still interested in why salvaging was mentioned - I'm kind of thinking that the modules railroad the DM himself, and as per the religion aspect, I wanted to get at the particular feelings a person might have in mentioning salvaging at all.

On the general subject of the railroad: It's interesting how what is basically no rules and just SIS conceit - a fork in a dungeon corridor, has such an effect on making the outcome of play uncertain. No strict rules. Even a blind fork in the road (no hint as to what is at either end) - if it has very different things at either end. The results can be very different, which can have ripple effects going on even to effect the outcome of the session.

Which is possibly why there is the conclusion that sandbox will just work out, since if that dungeon SIS stuff can create engaging play, then people think any old SIS can create engaging play! Thus you get multitudes who are certain this is so and someone out there had fun with it (and indeed with the dungeon, they did), so they will make this SIS stuff fun - force it right down the fun track! Because they know it's fun! Know it!

[glandis]

Callan - "Just KNOW that it can be fun" is a potential explanation for a lot of things. Salvaging, maybe - if you KNOW there's fun in there, you want to salvage. The thing Ron was talking about with non-SIS D&D - some folks (maybe he and, certainly, often me) have just connected dungeon-y and dragon-y stuff with fun, despite the fact that we think so much D&D stuff SUUUUU - ah, is awful.

Ron - Have you ever looked at Judge's Guild stuff in any depth? I'll go into some of the "tournament" module stuff in the next paragraphs, but some of the Wilderlands/Invincible Overlord stuff is one place I'd think the ideal of the "sandbox" sprang from. As I remember, it sometimes betrays that ideal, but sometimes, it's just exactly that partly filled-in map you talked about in another thread - a more highly-flavored version of the "use the AH Outdoor Survival" map from the original 3 books.

Anyway - I dug out a box with old modules in it, expecting to discover that the truly old school stuff I have (say 78-82) actually isn't so useful in this discussion. It's been a quick review so far, obviously, but maybe I found more connection than I expected. It's amazing just how many of these are "tournament" modules, often literally having been run at conventions and then published. I was also amazed at how many of them I'd played all the way through, maybe even more than once - character sheets cut out and marked-up, monster HP damage recorded right in the pages of the booklet, notes as to what happened penciled in.

In any case, my quick review found 3 categories for these: many early examples of total-railroad, where it would not be possible to continue play unless choices were greatly limited (poster child: High Fantasy's Moorguard), a few "here's a reasonably grabby situation - you do HAVE to solve it - but as far as details go, that's on you" (Temple of Ra Accursed by Set), and just a couple "hey, lets do something different" (Escape from Astigar's Lair, where you are given not just character sheets but personalities, and the point is to play consistent with the personality you are given).

Those turn out to be stronger foundations for future "campaign" level developments than I thought: inflexible railroad, potentially unrealistic sandbox, progressive situations that potentially preserve PC choice, and various mild/wild experiments. So - I'm still not sure there's much to find here other than history-explanations and the occasional "this is a good, functional hook to build from." But sometimes a good, functional hook to build from is useful!

[Ron Edwards]

Did you know I actually played High Fantasy for a little while? So much brilliant and so much totally whacked ... a heartbreaker ahead of its time, which I do not lightly apply as a term.

Callan, I like what you said - first, about the module railroading the DM (boy howdy) - and interesting compared to the tournament modules where the DM is enjoined to read completely and only the descriptive boxed text, per room or whatever. Second, about the "fun must be in there" with the specific expectation that it only needs an SIS, period. That dovetails with a certain range of OSR ideals I've run into, that talking about goals is either so multifarious as to be useless (what if this guy's goal is to be funny? and this one to eat sandwiches? and ...) or frighteningly disruptive and divisive, or a sure road to the perdition of railroading.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Eero, you do understand that your phrase "realizing how to do it" was an act of pure creativity and innovation solely on your part, right? There is literally no play-tradition, text-tradition, or dialogue-tradition about that in the entire prior history of games published under this title, or anything like it.

Eh, I'm sure that if and when I get around to writing something seriously comprehensive on the topic, there'll be plenty of people around to tell me that I'm preaching obvious revelations mixed with heresy :D

But yes, the majority of the TSR textual tradition is useless not only for the creative agenda I establish in Challenge-based adventuring (and yes, that initial insight of mine has nothing to do with D&D texts, except as very vague part of my roleplaying background in general; it is only later that I've found substantial parts of the D&D tradition to be very compatible with this style of play), but also for any creative agenda whatsoever. So much of their publishing, especially as time goes on, was artificial word-count, firm in the belief that you can just pay hacks to get something that people will pay for, as long as you emblazon the right logos and appropriate artwork on it. I would argue that there are exceptions, though, particular texts that are nearly cohesive. Keep on the Borderlands (and other early adventure modules, too), is something that I would find remarkably difficult to interpret "wrong"; it's entirely possible to not understand what you're supposed to be doing with it (the ability to clearly verbalize the creative agenda simply wasn't there most of the time), but if you do, it's going to be gamist sandbox logic that emerges from your deliberation.

Yet that aside, my point was to agree in repudiating the later railroady TSR hack material: I don't find it useful or relevant, except for possibly discovering literary inspiration in it. I personally found e.g. Al-Qadim material disappointing in this regard (it's boring cliches all the way down with very rare exceptions), Ravenloft and Dark Sun merely mediocre in their respective genres, while Planescape is sufficiently far out there to often be interesting reading, even if it has very little to do with D&D.

[Mike Holmes]

As to your main question, Gordon, I can only agree with your assessment. I didn't mention salvaging the situation because I felt that it was particularly virtuous to do so, but because it does happen on occasion.

Is this skill useful? Well, the underlying creativity is. What's not really useful is the lying that is part and parcel of the illusionism. The lie is that the stuff that's being made up to salvage the situation was somehow there all along.

Let's look at the example in question, where the PCs kill their patron, instead of giving in to the force being used to make them take the job. The GM here is essentially trying to make things seem like the characters can do "anything." When in fact he needs them to do this one thing to stay on track. So the GM will alter the situation at hand to make it so that the PCs only have the one good option. The lie, again, is that the situation in question was always this way, and has not been altered. The Al Quadim module in question even helps out here, saying that the GM should point out that the patron in question will react badly, possibly even violently, if he is turned down. It's interesting how this is stated, however, not as fact, but just as what the players should be reminded of (the fact in question having been established in the companion book). The text doesn't for a moment pretend that it's not suggesting that the GM manipulate events.

And "salvaging" the situation creatively is just continuing to enforce things no matter how much the players buck things.

The big problem with this lie, the lie that situation exists a priori, is that the players know it's not true. That is, all RPG situations are quite obviously fictional to start. Yes, it's possible in theory to "honor" a set of pre-determined facts if one wants. But even then, no set of pre-determined facts can cover 100% of the play situation as it evolves. It's quite clear to everyone playing a RPG that the participants are inventing pieces of the setting, situation, characters, etc, all on the fly. And nobody has any issue with this on-the-fly creation of facts. The GM is expected to keep his notes secret, surely to prevent players from discovering things before their characters do, but also so that if he changes something, the change may go undetected. Hence why the GM doesn't allow players to see the module AFTER the module has been played, either. But the fact that he doesn't TELLS the players that he's altering things. Else why not let them see it?

So why do GMs ascribe to Illusionism if the players know that they're doing it? Well, first is the self-delusion that you're getting away with it. I, at one point, believed that I had my players snowed. I recall at one point after a session I had run in which I had used Illusionism to good effect in creating an interesting dramatic arc that a player asked me point blank after the session: "How much of that was the module, and how much of that was you pulling stuff out of your ass?" I recall that I smiled coyly, and said something like, "You'll never know." But obviously they did know that it was happening... just not precisely at what moments.

I thought this was a success, until the same player told me that he was disappointed that I had manipulated events at all. At one point when discussing this a few years back, I used this as evidence of a strong Simulationism bias in this player. But I now wonder if, in fact, his statement of a desire for a "hard" background was less to feel that the world was "real," and more just a feeling of having been manipulated.

To whit, I still use the same creativity in play these days. The simple difference is that I tell my players that I'm doing it. I did it in my Monday night Traveller game this week, in fact. The crew was facing the possibility of a neutron bomb going off right under their noses. I didn't want the contest to really be about whether or not it blew up, as I didn't think that a TPK would have been dramatically appropriate at this moment. So I discussed the dramatic corner we'd backed ourselves into, and how we as players might get out of it by adjusting the situation. I use techniques like this all the time now.

Interestingly I then recalled a fail-safe that I had built into the situation in case this came up that I had forgotten to take into account. The result of which is that I now worry that in recalling it that the players might feel that I created the fail-safe, or wedged it into the situation, as an illusionist maneuver. I worry about that a lot now, in fact. I try constantly to ride a balance between using GM authority to make for interesting situations, yet NOT having pre-determined outcomes. And honestly I wonder sometimes if I'm doing a sort of subconscious illusionism from sheer decades of practice. But I digress.

And even if the GM knows that the players know what he's up to, he still might do it. I continued to do it well after my one player told me that it might be problematic. Because at the time it was the ONLY way I thought I could get dramatic play out of RPGs while having it seem like I wasn't railroading the players, and giving them a sense of agency, possibly even a sense that the game world was "real" in a simulationism sense. This is actually a quite common meaning of the otherwise multivariate term "sandbox," and often one meant by the OSR, the meaning of "sandbox" as a place that has a "hard" existence, one that can't be altered by the whim of the participants, but simply exists to be explored. The reason you would want such a sandbox is to get that "real" feeling out of play (remember that feelings aren't illusory, even if an illusion creates the feeling).

I'll leave it to individuals to discern whether or not they've felt that feeling and, if they have, whether or not they value it. What I will say is that it's very difficult to both have that feeling, AND have drama emerge from a game, other than by using Illusionism. That's not an endorsement of Illusionism on my part, but an explanation of why it exists. Essentially it's the basic Sim/Nar incoherence problem.

My players today seem just fine seeing that the situation is malleable, and even helping me mold it into what it needs to be to be interesting going forward. And I wonder if that "sim" player I played with so long ago would be OK with doing this, too. Again, the underlying creativity that is part of the skill of "salvaging" things with illusionism is a great skill. But I just don't have to pretend that the whole universe is worked out in advance, or even much of it at all. I get enough of a sim rush simply by tying things back into the fiction from previous bits of play. This is close to what is called "No Myth" style play, a style named as such because it doesn't attempt to enforce the "myth" that the game universe exists in any substantive way a priori. I come up short if only in that we don't fully deal with the fictional elements as 100% grist for the dramatic mill. There are lines I will draw as to how far I'll adjust the setting in order to get things done (in the Traveller game, in fact, I do tend to try to honor the canon quite a lot).

[glandis]

Hi Mike, and thanks for the post. The "can't use the prep unless you stay on the railroad" issues are, everyone here seems to agree, HUGE, at least when you really want player choice to matter. Whether it be work by the GM or money in buying stuff, prep represents an investment, and it is natural to want to make use of it - so much so that you may end up subverting other, even more rewarding aspects of play. I think with Ron's Relationship Maps, Vincent's Fronts, and other (some still-developing) techniques, there's a decent set of "do LESS, or at least less specific, prep" approaches.

What'd be nice, of course, is a way to use heavier prep, generate some of that "real" feeling you're talking about, and not fall into illusionism. I mean, impossible is still impossible, but given where we're at now - is there something about salvaging a Hommlet derailment that could show a productive path for game prep and management? I'd think it'd start with NOT salvaging by getting back on the rails, but rather running with the change - yet still finding a way to use what was in the prep (I see some of this in what Ron said he'd try to do in 4e - who knows if it'd work).

The only example I can come up with personally is a little too tactical in nature, when in playing the G2 module our party gave up on sneaking through the caves like we were "supposed" to and the DM went ahead and threw the whole dungeon at us in a big battle - which worked because characters could be real powerful. But that's a confined-scale example, and I can't think of anything since where derailment didn't lead to either disaster or a (pleasantly participationist or annoyingly illusionistic, depending) back-to-the-rails correction.

[Ron Edwards]

Gordon and Mike, you've seen Setting and emergent stories, right? It's from a couple years ago.

Best, Ron

[glandis]

Ron - I remember reading through that. Applying it to this current discussion, I'd say that in pointing out the need/value of incorporating specific PC info early even in setting-based prep, it says railroad modules are unlikely to be an effective form of prep (color me not-surprised).

I mean, I'm sure re-reading and applying to actual practice (I am going to prep an odd Mekton/Metamorphosis Alpha game soon) will help uncover more details. The thing I sometimes think I'd like - less work customizing to particular characters, more easily applying something like a "module" to yield Story Now play - is almost never what I actually do nowadays, in no small part because techniques like what you outline in that essay turn out to be fun as well as effective. But the idea of central/company-based prep that needs only minor local adjustment remains intriguing, if only because I'd like to take advantage of that time-leverage (let someone else do 75, 80, 90% of the prep-work? And get great play? Sign me up!)

[Mike Holmes]

I wrote this while Gordon was making his last post above...

Ron, I had not read that, but looking over it, it seems to be a good distillation of a lot of earlier discussions had on the Forge. Meaning I guess I'm in agreement with what you say there. On the other hand, at this stage in the game it seems remarkably rudimentary to me to have to say things like "Fuck the adventure." Rather, your essay seems to be aimed at recovering mainstreamers, if you will. Which, don't get me wrong, is very needed.

So, yeah, the best way to create a situation for play that's ripe for players to create story with during play are the sorts of ways you indicate, Ron. Starting with something like a module means having to do more work deconstructing it.


Is there value, Gordon, in doing the deconstruction in order to maintain a feeling of hardness? Well, the problem with that notion is that if you do the deconstruction, it's no longer hard. Can you fake it? Maintain an illusion that you're not doing a deconstruction? That whatever you tell the players was just coincidentally what was there to begin with? Well... I suppose you can, but I think the ploy will likely be seen through. And in any case then to the extent that you can do this, then you can probably fake it with the non-module creation method as well.

"Oh, wow, you want to play a mighty knight from the Aerdy? Well it just so happens that there's work for him to do in the mountains to the south at the behest of the emperor, killing giants." Notice how I just moved the G series of modules all the way across the face of the World of Greyhawk from the Grand Duchy of Geoff without anyone being the wiser. The problem now is that I have to do MORE work deconstructing the G series of modules in order to make the situation interesting to the players in that it has to fit the characters. But, uh... the entire situation of the G series of modules is just what I explained above. The monarch wants you to kill rampaging giants. And... that's... it. Er... I could have made that up myself off the top of my head. OK, sure, if you extend the G series to the underdark part you get the drow intrigue angle to work in...

In point of fact, I did just this thing about a year ago. That is I set a game in the Vault of the Drow (since there's no drama in the dangerous walk there), and I had the players make characters who would be in the city. Details here for the curious: http://wiki.stryck.com/VaultOfTheDrow/VaultOfTheDrow

Note that I read through every single letter of the original published module looking for anything to use, and distilled the entire thing down to essentially "City of 6000 degenerates including drow, demons, goblinoid servants and slaves of every race." Other than that, you have two factions of drow noble houses (I was really disappointed to find out that this was all the complexity that had been put into the whole 12 noble houses thing). Which amounts to just the names of the houses, and the heads of a few of them. Heck, I had to look up a map somebody made online to get even a vague description of the contents of the city. The module itself actually says something at some point like, "The GM may want to use the city for all sorts of intrigue... but we leave it up to the GM to come up with the details."

So I took those extremely few details from the module, and did my normal situation-map creation techniques, and jammed the extant named characters into the map. All of which is to say that basically the exercise came down to "Let's story-game the Vault of the Drow, and see what happens to whatever characters we throw into the mix there." Again, it would have been LESS work to have created a locale from scratch that was something like, "An underground city of evil elves."

Was it worth that extra effort? Well... I'm that geeky that I enjoyed the challenge of wedging all of that stuff together to make it work. In the end we only played about 5 sessions or so before I couldn't maintain my interest enough to keep it going. I've been running things in the World of Greyhawk for a while now using various systems (from 4E to homebrew cortex-ish stuff). And it's less about the "hard" feeling (which I doubt my players give a rats ass about), and more just my personal need to gain closure with that damn world after 30 years of it being an open wound of terrible play for me.

Put another way, if you're wanting to use narrativism-supporting technique, then you probably aren't really all that interested in high-sim value in the first place. I'm constantly half-way attempting this sort of "hybrid," but willingly admit that it's likely of little added value to any of the participants but myself. For instance, instead of making up characters from scratch, I'll often use extant ones of which I'm aware from the setting, if they happen to fit a particular need. This gives me a kick, but for my players few of whom knew what the World of Greyhawk was before they started playing my game (much less who the canonical characters are), this can't be very meaningful. For me, the more I can touch from the setting, the better I'll feel when I can finally put it to bed after three decades. I guess.

[Moreno R.]

Mike, you have way more endurance than me with these modules.

Some years ago, thinking about running ELFS at a gaming convention, I had a great idea: RAVENLOFT.  Not the setting, but the first module, the 1983 adventure against the "gothic vampire" Strahd von Zarovich written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, the "best adventure ever written for AD&D" (for Dragon magazine readers, at least)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenloft_%28module%29

Think about it:
- You get to play ELFS
- You give a big "F*** you!" to AD&D
- You give a big "F*** you!" to Vampires
- You give a big "F*** you!" to Tracy Hickman's adventures
all at the same time!

ELFS in Castle Ravenloft? Trying to eat, f*** or steal anything they see? I smile even only thinking about it!

But it remained only a thought. I started to read the module, and it was too much work. I could use only the map and the characters, but then I would have lost what characterize that module, making the satire pointless. Too work for the result. Or I could have tried to maintain as much as I could of the text, increasing the work needed.

When I sold off much of my old AD&D modules (most of them like new, never used, so I had least got back most of the money) I kept some of the most famous ones, hoping to salvage something from them, to be able to use them in some ways, but I never could. The amount of work needed was enough to deter me from even trying.

[Ron Edwards]

Jesse did it, the sicko! You can find him thinking about it as far back as 2003, in stinking elfs! and Elfs Question, and getting to it in 2005: [Elfs] RavenElfs First Session (which got sidetracked by group dysfunction) and [Elfs] Gothic Elfs, in which we learn sadly too little about what sounded like a lot of fun.