Is 'Railroading' A Useful Term

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Travis (TrizzlWizzl),

Great post. I hope this reply is going to reveal a tremendous amount of agreement between you and me. I'm breaking up a part of your post into three quotes, not to pick at them but with any luck to create kind of a triangulation toward my final point.

First, you wrote,
"If the labeling of certain conflicts as 'relevant' to his character is not within the player's decision-making power, how then is the player not being railroaded?"

I agree. I agree, totally. My first post on this thread is all about how a degree of player authority regarding a character decision/action is necessary for successful play of any kind. I'll expand that point now to say, in Narrativist play, that the players have just as much authority, if not more, than the GM regarding what conflicts are relevant!

This may strike you as strange or contradictory to what you've perceived about Narrativism. Hence:

"My opinion (this is my opinion now, formed after months and months of debate and conversation with one of the most steadfast narrativists in this community) is that narrativism is predicated on railroading players into addressing conflicts that have been pre-designated as 'relevant' (i.e. the emotional/moral/ethical) by the system."

Jesse may be one of the most steadfast Narrativists, but he is not one of the most experienced ones, especially during the bulk of the debate you're referring to. (My apologies to Jesse, but this is necessary to say at this time.) I suggest that at some point during that debate, a connection between Narrativism and "you gotta play the way I say" got established that doesn't really exist.

Your "system" point is worth a look. One of the issues we've been discussing lately is that Narrativist Premise is often fairly abstract in the game text, such that players and GM may specify it themselves as they see fit.

For instance, in Sorcerer, just what ethical conundrums are posed by practicing sorcery is completely customized by the group. Or in Hero Wars, the setting describes a large-scale cultural conflict, but where (across a wide variety of geographies and peoples) you want to address this, and which side or combination of the sides you want to be on, is totally up to the group. The systems of both these games reinforce their respective premises (ie something's gotta happen about these things, but they don't dictate just how you want to address them, ie, how you "have" to play.

In Sorcerer, it is perfectly OK for a player to decide that his character is going to 0 Humanity as fast as he can possibly go. In Hero Wars, it is perfectly OK for a player to decide that his character has become a Lunar and joined the Imperial Army. Both of these address the respective game's Premise just as thoroughly as striving to maintain Humanity or rebelling fiercely against the Lunars. The only "concession" to the system is simply being willing and interesting to address those issues, which need not be based on anything more profound than simply liking the sound of it, or anything especially out-of-character or notably "deliberate" during play.

"Hence the character decision making process has been taken out of the hands of the player and put into the hands of the system... which has been defined by Mr. Edwards as 'railroading'."

With any luck, I've managed to show that the character decision making process is precisely what has been left free, rather than being dictated, in this method of play (and game design that reinforces it).

So to conclude: I'm with you on this issue.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hello,

Well for the record during our ongoing debate I've only ever defined 'relevant conflict' as: That which addresses the previously agreed upon Premise.  I don't believe I've ever said, "Premise is what the GM says."  I HAVE said that a lot of Narrativist games have their Premise directly built into the system such as Sorcerer's Humanity mechanic and that Premise is defined for the group as a whole.  But how the Theme (answer to the Premise) is developed is entirely left in the hands of the player.  As, Ron says, running your Humanity score deliberately to zero is player perogative.

Oh, and no need to appologize for pointing out my lack of practical experience in Narrativist play.  I get the theory but I've got a LONG LONG LONG way to go in terms of actual practice.

Jesse

[TrizzlWizzl]

Ron,

Thanks for your comments.  I'm glad we're getting somewhere... 'somewhere' being a place where I can sit down and enjoy a narrativist game with a slightly more robust understanding of the key principles than I do now.  I have, of course, read your essay (off of a printout with a pencil in hand no less) and Chapter 7 of Sorcerer and Sword (so my knowlege of narrativism comes not only from Mr. Burneko but your writings as well), but the ideas regarding role playing games are fairly perpendicular to my own.

I told Jesse I wasn't really going to be going back and forth with him on the topic of narrativism until I've had a chance to play it, so the same should apply to you.  Unfortunately I'm really bad at not asking questions and one sentence from your last post encapsulates why I consider 'railroading' to be a cornerstone of narrativism:

For instance, in Sorcerer, just what ethical conundrums are posed by practicing sorcery is completely customized by the group.

I think a definition is called for here, namely for 'decision making ability'.  Once again, your definition of 'railroading' is (was): 'the removal of character decision making ability from the player'.  So do you not consider an ethical conundrum being generated by the system to be chipping into character decision making?

Basically, a mechanical concept that seems inherent to narrativism seems to be the idea that in order for 'story now' to happen, characters must be forced into a position to make ethical/moral/emotional decisions.  I won't disagree that the classically understood concept of 'story' is indeed generated in this way, but I will have to disagree (at least until I play the freaking game and can comment further) that the player isn't railroaded by the system to some degree.

To be more clear about this, I'll have to learn what you mean exactly when you say 'the player's decision making capability regarding his character' (okay, that's not a direct quote but I'm paraphrasing here).  Maybe it's my gamist tendancies at work, maybe it's my predisposition to actor stance, but I'm finding it quite hard to come to grips with the idea that emotional conflicts induced by the system isn't 'railroading'.

Of course I'm coming at this from a strictly 'system oriented' perspecitive.  I'm well aware that if a group sits down to play Sorcerer while totally cognizant (sp?) of it's mechanical tendency to emphasize emotional conflicts over tactical, uses some sorcery and whammo here's a moral conflict they're not going to feel railroaded... so by many definitions they're not actually being railroaded.  But I seem to recall you, Ron, saying something along the lines of how railroading is an objective element that is always bad, so... tell me again how players aren't getting railroaded when the ability to decide whether or not to even have emotional conflicts seems to be removed from game play via system?

one,
Trizzl

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Travis,

Whew, finally a chance to get back to this thread .... Apologies to both Jesse and Travis for taking so long.

Let's take a look at any role-playing - something or another must be taken as "given," in order to play at all. Hell, even in Universalis, everyone has to agree that the mechanisms of the system are to be used in order to create all the setting and other stuff.

The more focus in terms of goals, the more "given" there has to be. I don't see any of this "establishing the given" as railroading, and if the system (for instance) provides a fair amount of it, I don't see the agreement to use that system as an acceptance of railroading. We are basically talking about agreed-upon creative constraints, prior to play, which includes certain standards about how to play once we get there.

Since goals are a multi-person thing in role-playing, the next question has to be, "how much of the 'given' stuff is going to be generated by anyone, and how much gets to be generated by a specially-designated someone?"

This is an interesting question, because we are still talking about agreements - what everyone is willing to do, once we get to the role-playing. For instance, in traditional play (oh, let's say a bread-and-butter RoleMaster game), we all agree that George will spend a lot of time coming up with Setting details, System interpretations, and most especially Situation, such that we, armed with Characters, get to enjoy ourselves.

George provides tons of character hooks, up to and including poisoning our characters, blackmailing them, trapping them in town with suddenly-fallen meteorites, and whatever else. It ain't railroading if we all went into this happy with the knowledge that we gave that power to George. God damn it, we are going into that haunted temple to rescue the Duke's wayward son, and George wants us to, and we entered into this in order to do, basically, what George wants. Cool! I'll play a grumpy dwarf and have a good time.

All this is no more to agree with you about the emotional/contextual element of railroading: no violation of the social contract = no railroading.

Now, what about that "objective" business, then? I state with confidence that I have never used the word "objective" in relation to this issue, because I never use that word at all. I think what you are referring to is my claim that railroading is not merely an I-said-you-said type of thing.

This is because social contracts are real, not imaginary, and certainly not utterly internal. They exist between people. When you set up to play together, you either have one that's stated in some way, or everyone has one that they individually are "sure" everyone else shares. Now is when all the trouble starts.

The most basic railroading is the easiest. We have a social contract that includes the idea that Character Motive is sacrosanct for the player - and the GM goes and says, "You fall in love with the Princess." Well fuck! I got railroaded. The standards were set nicely but someone didn't follow them. The trouble is, this easy version of the problem almost never happens.

More commonly, the social contract is merely assumed at the outset. Eventually the GM says, "You fall in love with the Princess," the player has a hairy fucking cow, and the GM reacts with hurt surprise - "What, you said you wanted to play an adventure with lots of emotional motivations!" Lacking any vocabulary to deal with this, and both clinging to their initial perceived social contracts (which unfortunately were not the same), they don't get anywhere. The player says he got railroaded, and according to his social contract, he was; the GM says he did no such thing, and according to his social contract, he didn't; eventually they descend to claiming that one another has "ruined the game," is "bad" at role-playing and so on.

Ha, now we are seeing the I-said-you-said thing going on at full blast. Now it looks as if the railroading is fully "subjective" (I put that word in quotes because it is not a defined term and I disavow its actual use). However, I suggest that we are dealing with the same old concrete violation of the social contract - the trouble is not that the railroading is being defined on-the-spot, but that the social contract itself was not actually established, only imagined to be established.

Best,
Ron